Honourbound - Rachel Harrison Read online

  Wyck’s headache is rooting properly now. The light is dim in the forge, but it still hurts his eyes. ‘So?’ he says, impatient.

  ‘So how did the Sighted get them?’ Crys says. ‘Steadfast has been under Imperial control for over ten years. It’s the best protected world in the sector.’

  Wyck looks at the rifle in his hands. There’s a silver aquila on the stock that the Sighted has tried to remove with the point of a knife. He can’t help thinking of what the witch showed him. The thing Zane called a truth. The five dead, marked with their silver eagles. The blood dripping from the point of his knife.

  He shakes his head to clear it. ‘I don’t know,’ he says. ‘Killed for them, I’d bet. Took them off the dead.’

  Crys frowns, her tattooed arms folded across her broad chest. ‘You’re probably right, sarge,’ she says. ‘But I’m taking it to the commissar.’

  Wyck shrugs. ‘If there’s one thing I know,’ he says, ‘it’s killing, and the why of it.’

  ‘Don’t we all?’ Awd says, laughing again, loud this time.

  Crys joins in as she takes the rifle back and slings it across her shoulders. Wyck doesn’t laugh, though.

  He didn’t mean that as a joke, either.

  Andren Fel approaches Lydia Zane slowly. It reminds him of his training on Antar. When they sent him out against the wyldwolves with nothing but the blade that his mother had left to him. They dropped him in the middle of the black forest, where the roots are a tangle and the canopy is so thick it is dark always, only here and now the tangle of roots is a tangle of the dead. The canopy is the vaulted ceiling, and the smoke makes the darkness.

  The wyldwolf, sitting perfectly still, is Lydia Zane.

  She is on her knees at the foot of the Sighted’s abominate machine. It has fallen onto its back, punched with holes by the Imperial Knights, then finished by one of their roaring chainblades. Fel can see the cut curving up and over the repurposed tank chassis. Inside the thing is dark, and something darker dribbles out onto the plasteel floor. The puddle spreads slowly towards Zane.

  ‘The spiral,’ she is saying, softly.

  Fel keeps his gun raised. She is so still, and covered in wide open wounds that wrap around her arms and criss-cross her scalp. They are psycho-stigmatic. Witch-marks. Zane has one hand pressed against the metal hull of the dead thing, where the Sighted have painted their own mark onto it.

  ‘The spiral,’ she says again, and she turns her head slowly to look at him. ‘The spiral is broken.’

  Fel doesn’t lower his gun, even when she looks at him. Zane’s false eyes are without pupils or irises. They are just silver, from edge to edge, like old ice, and surrounded by cruel old scars. She peels her hand away from the machine’s hull, and Fel sees where the spiral has broken. One of the blasts from the thermal cannon has gone right through the armour at the centre of that mark. Right where they paint the eye.

  ‘The spiral is broken,’ Zane says. ‘But the shadow remains. Can you feel it?’

  Fel feels a lot of things in that moment. The searing pain of the las-wound in his leg. The ache in his bones from where the explosion in the tunnel caught him. The other ache that comes from the loss of one of his own, because Rol never came up with the rest of them. Most of all, he feels a cold, deep fear, not of the Sighted or their war machines, but of Lydia Zane. But Andren Fel is made for the moment when fear cuts close, and trained to act against it, so he doesn’t freeze, or run. He walks over to Lydia Zane, lets his rifle fall loose and puts out his hand.

  ‘On your feet,’ he says. ‘You need to move.’

  Zane blinks her strange, unnatural eyes. Though they are silver, they will never again be grey. They will never again be Antari eyes.

  ‘You do not feel it,’ she says. ‘But then, how could you?’

  She lets him help her get to her feet. The moment of contact, even through his gloves, is singularly unpleasant. Like ice water and needles under the skin.

  ‘What shadow?’ he asks her. ‘What do you mean?’

  Zane looks over towards the Delta Gate, to where the Knights and the Lions are breaking the Sighted.

  ‘It is impossible to say,’ she says. ‘Because it has no shape, just depth. Like water, it changes to fill the space.’

  She leans heavily against that staff of hers. There are cracks running up the darkwood. They are dark and wide like the cuts that have opened in her skin.

  ‘And just like water,’ Zane says, ‘it would seek to drown us.’

  Severina Raine steps over and around the dead as she walks towards the Delta Gate with Yuri Hale beside her. Raine’s boots stick where blood has been spilled. Each step nudges shell casings aside and sends a dull ache through her bones. She is exhausted. Injured. Out of ammunition and hoarse from shouting orders.

  But there is still the inner forge. The dread machines still need securing. Their duty isn’t finished.

  The two Knights from House Stormfall stand sentry now on either side of the Delta Gate, painted in their new heraldry of war. They are scorched and burned, pockmarked by gunfire. Their banners are tattered and trailing loose threads. The barrels of their thermal cannons are blackened, their chainswords reddened. They are so still, you would be forgiven for thinking them statues. Raine walks into the long shadows cast by the war machines. This close, she can feel the thrum of their reactors running along her bones. Still, but not sleeping. The Delta Gate yawns open, the interior lost to smoke and flame. Somewhere inside, the rest of Serek’s Lions are fighting. Raine can hear the sound of gunfire carrying on the hot forge air.

  One of the Lions of Bale posted at the Gate breaks the line and approaches. She is a tall woman, built like a slabshield wall, with a fur-trimmed cloak that makes her look bigger. She carries a chainsword, and a heavy laspistol at her hip. Her hand rests lightly at the grip of it.

  ‘Commissar,’ she says, prompting Raine to introduce herself, before turning to Hale. ‘Captain Hale. Still lucky, I see.’

  Hale snorts. ‘Apparently,’ he says. ‘Good to see you, Karandi. Or should I say Captain Karandi?’

  ‘You should,’ Karandi says, with a smile that doesn’t quite reach her eyes.

  ‘The Delta Gate–’ Hale begins.

  Karandi raises her hand to cut him off. ‘Is no longer your concern,’ she says. ‘The Lions have it, and the machines within.’

  ‘The duty is ours,’ Raine says, levelly. ‘And it is unfinished.’

  ‘With all due respect,’ Karandi says, ‘it may not be finished, but you are. You have fought hard, and well, but you are in need of reinforcement and resupply, and we are not.’

  Hale shakes his head. ‘I can rest when I’m dead,’ he says. ‘Until then, I’ll do what I came here to do with the troops that I have.’

  ‘I am afraid I have to agree with Captain Hale,’ Raine says. ‘Our orders come from High Command, and nobody else.’ She allows herself the sparest smile. ‘With all due respect.’

  ‘Then take it up with the Lord-General Militant,’ Karandi says. ‘Because I have my orders too.’

  ‘Take what up with me, captain?’

  Raine knows the voice. The warm rasp, like steel on stone. She snaps to attention, and sees Hale and Karandi do the same.

  ‘At ease,’ says Alar Serek.

  A kastelan automaton stands at the Lord-General Militant’s back, painted in the same red and gold as his Lions of Bale. The robot’s arms end in two massive power fists that are oxidised from use. Raine is reminded briefly of the corrupted automata that they fought in the forge. Of their single-minded defence of that which they were ordered to protect. The kastelan robot is not the only one accompanying the lord-general. No more than five paces back, five more of his Lions wait, all clad in carapace plate and armed with hellguns.

  Serek has changed little since Raine last saw him, save for the strands of grey in his fair ha
ir, and the new scars on his angular face. He still wears a cloak of fur on one shoulder and carries a sabre at his hip. His blue eyes are still intelligent and keen. And then there is the way that his mere presence is a pressure, like standing in a holy place and knowing you are to be judged. Serek is a tall man, built strong and made even more so by a life spent serving the crusade, but it is not his physicality that sets him apart. It is his sheer force of will.

  That has certainly not changed, either.

  ‘Captain Hale and Commissar Raine are concerned about their duties regarding the inner forge, lord.’

  Karandi’s voice is different now, more measured. She keeps her eyes at a point somewhere around Serek’s collar as she speaks, as if she cannot look him in the eyes.

  ‘The duty is ours, lord,’ Raine says. ‘And we do not leave them unfinished.’

  Serek looks at her with those keen eyes, and Raine finds it hard to hold them too. She prides herself on being able to read those she serves with, but with him it is impossible. It always has been, which is why it is such a surprise when he smiles.

  ‘Captain Karandi,’ he says. ‘You are charged with guarding the Delta Gate. Go back to it.’

  His voice is even, with no displeasure in it, but there is no question as to whether or not it is an order, or whether Karandi will obey.

  ‘Yes, lord,’ Karandi says.

  She does a neat half-bow, and then marches back to her post.

  ‘You will have to forgive my Lions for showing you their teeth,’ Serek says. ‘They are fierce in every regard.’

  Raine thinks about the way they fought in the forge halls, putting the Sighted to sword and flame, and she cannot deny it, nor will she ever forget it.

  ‘Then our orders, lord?’ Hale asks.

  Raine has never heard that kind of tremor in his voice before. Not in the moment before a charge, or at the news of terrible losses. Not even when speaking of that traitor psyker. That thin smile flickers on Serek’s face again.

  ‘You are relieved of them,’ he says. ‘You fought with honour and conviction, and without your regiment’s sacrifices there would have been nothing left of the forges for us to secure.’

  Serek puts his hand on Hale’s shoulder.

  ‘This victory is yours as much as ours. Gather your troops, leave the forges to the Lions and go forward to win me another.’

  Hale bows his head. Another order without question, impossible to refuse.

  ‘Aye, lord,’ he says.

  ‘For the Bale Stars,’ Serek says. ‘For the Emperor.’

  Raine makes the sign of the aquila and says the words back in the same moment as Hale, her blood burning with pride.

  ‘Commissar Raine,’ Serek says, before she can move from the spot. ‘A moment.’

  ‘Yes, lord,’ she says.

  Hale glances at her once, then bows and walks away to gather what is left of his company. Serek moves too, towards the Delta Gate. Raine keeps step beside him, with the kastelan and the Lions at her back. Both are silent and watching.

  ‘It is three years since last our paths crossed,’ Serek says.

  Raine doesn’t have to think about it. She remembers it with absolute clarity.

  ‘Hyxx,’ she says. ‘At the collapse of the Temple of Unlight.’

  He nods. ‘You were serving with the Tolus Fifth Mechanised then.’

  It seems a lifetime ago now. The cold Ecclesiarchy moon, where the Sighted turned the cathedrals into fanes and slaughterhouses. Where so many of the Tolus Fifth were lost that the regiment was dismantled and absorbed into several others. It seems a lifetime ago, but Raine can still recall every name and face, because she never forgets the dead.

  ‘Yes, lord,’ she says.

  Serek stops, looking up at the Delta Gate. ‘Much has changed since Hyxx,’ he says. ‘The Sighted twist and change shape like a blood sickness. They adapt to our weapons and our tactics, and the only cure is total elimination. Purification.’

  ‘Through blade and bolt, lord,’ Raine says. ‘Through faith and fury.’

  Serek does something else then that surprises Raine. He laughs.

  ‘Three years since I last saw you,’ Serek says again. ‘In that time you have only grown more like her. Your mother would have had no qualms about looking me in the eye and speaking her mind, either.’

  Raine feels unsettled, as if the floor has tilted under her feet. There are few people who speak to her of her mother, and fewer still who she will allow it from. But she can deny him the words no more than she can deny his orders.

  ‘I cannot say I remember her well,’ Raine says. ‘But I remember a little.’

  And they are things she holds tight to. The discerning darkness of her mother’s eyes. The clear sound of her voice, like the ringing of the prayer-time bells as she read from treatise and tacticae. The gold of her medals and commendations. Then she remembers the man who came wearing braiding and bearing a letter to explain to two daughters that their mother was dead. His dress boots echoed so loudly on the marble floor.

  ‘She always told me that fury is the flame that tempers faith’s edge,’ she says. ‘That makes it keen and strong.’

  ‘They are good words,’ Serek says. ‘Thema always was an inspiring speaker. She had a fierce heart.’

  His words pull at something in Raine’s core and make her miss her mother more keenly than she has in years.

  ‘Words are powerful, lord,’ Raine says. ‘They can begin wars and end them. People will die in the name of them, or to defy them.’

  Serek nods. ‘And they can bleed you as soon as shield you,’ he says. ‘Those are good words, too, Severina Raine.’

  Gloam, before

  The ceremony chamber is hung with tapestries depicting the Emperor and His nine angels. Censers burn in sconces on the walls, filling the air with a richly spiced smoke. Cherubim flutter to and fro, snapping their part-mechanical wings and playing hymnals through vox-emitters grafted into their throats. Severina stands with those of her age and class, as she has been taught. Back straight. Hands knitted behind. Feet spaced. The smoke stings her eyes, but she does not blink. The stone floor is hard and cold through her soft-soled shoes, but she doesn’t shift and shuffle, because to do so is to show weakness, and today of all days is not the time for such a thing.

  Lord-General Militant Alar Serek stands at the lectern on the raised dais at the head of the hall. He is dressed in white, with a dark red sash across his chest, pinned with medals and commendations. A sabre is belted at his hip, the hilt worked in gold. He puts his hands flat on the lectern, and speaks without a vox-caster, his voice carrying easily across the vastness of the audience chamber and the heads of hundreds of progena.

  ‘Children of the Emperor,’ he says. ‘Today is an auspicious day. Today these progena will be granted the honour of service in the Bale Stars Crusade.’

  Severina looks to the side of the dais. She can see her sister standing there amongst the graduating cadets. Lucia’s hair is tied in a crown braid that Severina made. She had twisted it tight and pinned it in place so that it could not come loose, like their mother taught them to do. Severina’s heart is alight with pride, seeing her sister standing there. It is an effort not to smile.

  ‘Today one fight ends, and another begins,’ Serek says, looking back over the crowd. ‘Because the truth of it is that there is no moment in life in which we do not fight. No easy victories, or respite.’

  Severina knows this to be true. She has been fighting since the day she arrived at the scholam, and long before. Fighting those who would seek to discourage her, or test her. Fighting herself when she felt weak. Fighting the doubt that arises from her blood, that she knows Lucia feels too. The doubt that comes from their father’s failings, and the cowardice that got him killed. From their mother’s successes, and trying to live up to her legacy. Their heritage is a blade
that cuts both ways.

  ‘I wear this sash to honour the memory of such a fight,’ Serek says. ‘On the world we now call Steadfast, I fought and killed the heretic known as Dektar the Ascended.’

  Severina moves in the same instant as all the other progena, raising her closed fist over her heart in recognition of the legend. The sound of so many salutes is a reverent murmur. Serek salutes them all the same way in return, before drawing his gold-hilted sabre and placing it on the lectern. It catches the light the way the brass casing of Lucia’s timepiece does.

  ‘I fought Dektar the Ascended alone, with this blade. He was strong, and clever, but he was reckless. And I had something that he did not.’

  He looks to the progena awaiting their ceremonial rites.

  ‘Tell me what that was,’ he says.

  Severina’s heart sings as her sister steps forwards. Her polished boots click loudly on the stone of the dais.

  ‘Lord,’ she says, with a neat bow. ‘The answer is faith.’

  Serek looks at her for what seems a long time. Severina can’t even track it with heartbeats, because it feels as though hers have stopped.

  ‘Your name, cadet.’

  It isn’t a question. Those of Serek’s rank and glories do not ask questions.

  ‘Lucia Raine,’ she says, somehow keeping all but the barest tremor from her voice.

  ‘A good answer,’ Serek says. ‘Return to your place, Lucia Raine.’

  Lucia does, and in doing so, Severina catches her eye for the sparest moment and gives her sister the smallest of nods. It is a fractional movement that could earn her a caning or two days without food if it goes noticed, but in that moment, Severina doesn’t care. She considers it worth any amount of reprimand to convey how incredibly proud she is of her sister.

  ‘Faith is what makes us all children of the Emperor,’ Serek says. ‘It is what gave me the strength to keep fighting, even when I was cut by the heretic Dektar, from here, to here.’

  He puts his fingertips to his shoulder and follows the shape of the sash to his hip.

  ‘That is why I wear the red,’ he says. ‘Not to remind me that I won, but to remind me that without faith, I would have been killed there and then. Or I would have died walking back through the ruins of Steadfast. Or on the operating table as those who served me worked to save me.’