Incarnation - John French

by Warhammer 40K

  This was the Walk of the Pious, a road as much as a corridor. Wide enough that two cargo transports could have passed each other without touching, it ran for three kilometres through the monastery’s heart, linking the House of Concordance and the Great Cathedral. Its walls went up and up until they met an open lattice of iron from which the skulls of the blessed dead hung on chains. When the winds were high, you could hear the chains clinking and the clack of bones knocking together. Pilgrims called the sounds the Voices of the Ascended.

  ‘Which ship?’ he asked. A procession from the Weighted Order of Penance passed them, iron chains rattling across the flagstones behind them. He was careful to bow respectfully.

  ‘A hauler called the Bounty of Stars,’ said Claudia, in a sharp whisper.

  ‘Carrying food?’

  ‘Yes,’ nodded Claudia.

  A crowd of penitents in grey robes were approaching from the opposite direction, and he had to nod solemnly as they paused to bow to him.

  ‘Did it unload its cargo?’

  ‘No. It broke orbit still fully laden. The representatives of the Chartist Captains are refusing all requests to meet with the deacons.’

  Iacto blinked.

  ‘How much of the grain reserve has been used?’

  ‘Five-eighths at last measure.’

  ‘And that was?’

  ‘Five days ago.’

  ‘Dominicus Secundus?’

  ‘The riots are still burning, and the Agri-guilds trebled their prices within an hour of the Bounty of Stars breaking orbit.’

  ‘They are playing a dangerous game. The Adeptus Terra must be within a hair of stepping in and confiscating their holdings.’

  ‘Maybe, your holiness, but they haven’t yet.’

  Iacto lapsed into silence, smiling and offering the sign of the aquila to the groups of clergy that were growing in number as they drew closer to the House of Concordance.

  ‘Who else knows?’

  ‘The deacons, and the high confessors of the Great Cathedrals, and the Administratum adepts, of course. News of it has not got out yet, but it will.’

  Iacto smiled and paused to bow and exchange signs of blessing with a cluster of blind scribes being led by a pack of cyber-implanted dogs on gilded chains. The dogs barked. One of them took the chance to spread a pool of urine across the flagstones. Iacto stepped carefully over the steaming puddle as he continued on. He could see the doors of the House of Concordance now, the blaze of the Emperor’s halo spreading across the fifty-foot-high slabs of night wood and iron.

  ‘Make sure that the news reaches, oh, Abbess Linnis. Just after Archdeacon Sul begins his address. That would be best, don’t you think?’

  ‘Difficult in the time we have, your holiness.’

  ‘Difficult, yes, but it will be done. You will find a way.’

  ‘Your holiness wishes to start riots?’

  ‘Abbess Linnis. Just after Archdeacon Sul begins his address,’ said Iacto, carefully. ‘Make sure it is done.’

  Claudia did not answer, but bowed her head briefly and slipped away. When he glanced back he saw her vanishing through one of the narrow side doors set into the walls. They were called whisper doors, and they linked every part of the monastery sprawl, offering ways for lower orders to pass swiftly without having to pause to give respect to their seniors, or slip past a slow-moving ceremony. Some had called such behaviour impious, but the doors remained and were used simply because devotion could only go so far when running a monastery complex housing over three million souls. The divine Emperor of Mankind could send miracles and visions, but for everything else He needed minds that could understand particle necessity. The words of saints and the might of angels might lead humanity to salvation, but even in that blessed future there would need to be people who understood that crops, and shelter, and authority were necessities. As he stepped beneath the arch of the House of Concordance, Abbot Iacto reflected that he was glad to be such a man.

  ‘And you have told no one else of this?’ asked Xilita.

  Agata shook her head.

  ‘No one.’

  Xilita turned her head to look at where the candles burned on the small altar. Her chains clinked.

  ‘Do you know what my predecessor said to me when he was dying?’ Xilita shuffled to the altar, lifted a fresh candle from a box beside it, and lit it from one of those that had burned almost to the nub. ‘He said “This is not a monastery – it is the holy Imperium of Man, writ small enough that we can see it. What passes here echoes the greater truth of the God-Emperor’s realm. As above so below. Never forget that.”’

  The bishop placed the candle on the altar and bowed her head for a second. The gilded face of the Emperor looked down on her, flanked by saints Goneril and Sebastian Thor. ‘I never really agreed. Not then, not until recent times retaught the lesson. Ships flee from the system. Dark omens and visions of hope come as night gathers to fall. A storm is coming, they say, and all the threads of what we know fray and snap… As above so below, indeed.’

  ‘Do you believe I am losing my mind?’ asked Agata, after a long moment of quiet.

  ‘You are not losing your mind, but beyond that I do not know what to believe.’

  She turned and motioned to one of her attendants. The man came forward and handed her a brass scroll tube. The bishop raised the jewel lens at one end to her right eye. A beam of light flicked out, and a moment later the cylinder unlocked with a clatter of releasing mechanisms. Agata remained silent and watched as the bishop removed the scroll. She looked at the words scribed across it for a moment, and then handed it to Agata.

  ‘The astropaths in the Crow Complex have been able to get few messages out, and have been able to receive even fewer. This one came through clear enough that most of it could be transcribed before the receiver fell into a coma.’

  Agata read the transcription and interpretation of the message the astropath had heard while he listened to the immaterium. She looked up as she finished, not trying to keep the shock from her face.

  ‘In the realm of the soul there are no such things as coincidences,’ said Xilita, taking the parchment from Agata and replacing it in its case.

  ‘The Inquisition is coming here?’ she asked, still shocked. In all her years, she had seen a member of the Holy Ordos only once, and that at a distance. They were the Emperor’s judgement and authority made manifest.

  ‘To this monastery, in fact,’ said Xilita.

  ‘Do any of the rest of the clergy or orders know?’

  ‘Not yet,’ said Xilita, locking the case with a snap. ‘This message was only received in the last few hours, and no one else in the monastery has the sanction for it.’

  ‘Why is an inquisitor coming here?’ asked Agata.

  Xilita let out a long breath before speaking.

  ‘The Season of Night is about to fall across us. We are on the precipice of famine and, unless I am wrong, bloodshed. Miracles are proclaimed daily. Yours is not the only account of visions and ill omen I have heard. And unto this the left hand of the God-Emperor Himself comes, like the last warrior across a bridge before the floodwater takes it.’ She looked again at the candlelit altar. ‘The reason the Inquisition comes here worries me less than the question that comes just after – why now?’

  ‘May I humbly submit to my brothers and sisters, bound as we are not just by devotion, indeed by the truth of our common creed, manifold in its many paths, just as His radiance is divided as the light of dawn divides when it strikes the jewel…’

  Archdeacon Sul droned on, his voice growling from the speaker-fitted cherubs fluttering above the racked seats that circled the chamber. Iacto kept his face impassive. Many of his brothers and sisters were less caring of decorum. Abbess Granta had rolled her head back and was holding the bridge of her nose as though the pain she was experiencing was only just under her control. Prior Nacem’s head had lolled down onto his chest as soon as the archdeacon had taken the rostrum.

  ‘…the soul of human
ity is the soul of the Imperium, blessed as it is under the gaze of the God-Emperor – praise eternal to His name – and so when we consider all matters that pertain to His realm, be they matters great or small, we talk not just of the physical but of matters both numinous and eternal…’

  It was a ruse, of course. Sul was using boredom as a weapon. As the archdeacon droned on and the two hundred and one representatives of the orders listened, the monastery and every soul in it was creeping towards starvation and anarchy. And no one knew what to do. That was the problem with power: the people who could claim it were so rarely those who could wield it effectively. No matter, in crisis there was always opportunity to correct that state of affairs.

  ‘…and by our deliberations here, in this place, so do we do more than talk…’

  Movement caught Iacto’s eye and he saw a senior brother in the hessian robes of the Order of the First Blessing hurry down between the seated representatives. A few others looked, too, but Sul did not falter in his droning delivery.

  It’s going to be difficult to ignore in a moment though, you pompous old fool, thought Iacto.

  The brother of the First Blessing stopped beside Abbess Linnis, and bent down to whisper something in her ear. He saw her stiffen, her scar-pocked face creasing in concentration, and then anger. She stood.

  That was the trouble with pure conviction: it allowed so little space to be anything other than predictable.

  ‘…the role of the faithful is not simply to believe, though the devotion of those who–’

  ‘How many weeks are we from starving?’ Abbess Linnis’ voice rose loud and clear. Iacto stared at her, frowning, his face a mirror of the confusion on the other faces around the chamber. Sul looked for a second as though he was going to try and just carry on.

  ‘How long have you known that the last provision ship just fled the system without unloading?’

  Sul looked at Linnis. He was trying to keep himself composed, trying to think. Iacto could almost see the tensions pulling at his face.

  ‘The blessed abbess is interrupting the correct order of precedence–’

  ‘How long until there is no food?’

  Murmurs rippled through the chamber.

  Sul glanced around, rheumy eyes flicking between the hardening stares.

  ‘How long until famine stalks these halls?’ called Linnis. The old woman was almost shining with anger. ‘And why have you kept its coming from us?’

  ‘I…’ began Sul, then hesitated. Iacto had to work hard not to grin. ‘The situation is not a matter ready to be discussed in this chamber.’

  Uproar. Shouts rose as half the house took to their feet.

  Iacto let the sound wash over him as holy men and women shouted at the archdeacon, at each other, for the sake of shouting. The House of Concordance had always been a gathering at odds with its name. There were over five hundred orders, shrine keepers and sects in the Monastery of the Last Candle, all following their own version of the Imperial Creed. Some had existed for millennia, some for years. Nominally, each held its own place under the sacred dominion of the Ecclesiarchy. In practice there was a hierarchy, there was precedence; subtle and not so subtle lines of authority and influence. The ultimate expression of that was the House of Concordance.

  Two hundred men and women sat in the chamber, and discussed the secular matters of the monastery. Those two hundred places were a matter of tradition, and in rare cases merit. Iacto’s own order had only held a seat for eight hundred years, and that simply because the Sage Order of the Faithful controlled the second and third most important pilgrim shrines in the complex. That made them wealthy, not in a spiritual sense, but in the same sense that had made gold and jewels and the coins that rattled into offering bowls valuable since the beginning of human history. They had money, and even in these sacred halls, that mattered.

  There were three positions that were most important of all in the Monastery: the Bishop of the Great Cathedral, who was the supreme spiritual authority, the archdeacon, who administered all the holdings of the Ecclesiarchy, and the Voice of the Concordance, who spoke for the orders in all matters and was their de-facto leader. There had not been a Voice for two years since the death of the previous incumbent. In that time no one had succeeded in marshalling enough support to take the office. With Bishop Xilita in her dotage, Archdeacon Sul had worked hard to maintain his effective monopoly on authority. Iacto had seen no way to change that. Until now.

  The clamour in the chamber was reaching a peak. The guards from the Bearers of the Lamp shifted nervously around the base of the rostra. The ceremonial scythes they bore shifted in their hands. Sul was shouting for order. Voices were joining his, and others shouting back. Static screeched from the circling cherubs.

  Iacto stood. Most did not look at him. He waited, then tapped the inside of one of his rings of office.

  ‘Blessed…’ The amplified word cut through the chamber, as each of the cherubs spoke the word with perfect clarity. Silence fell, and Iacto spoke into that silence. His voice was now unamplified, strong and carrying, but measured.

  ‘Blessed sisters and brothers, if what Abbess Linnis has said is true then it must have an answer. We must have an answer.’ He looked around the chamber. ‘And we must give the most reverend archdeacon an opportunity to give us that answer.’ He turned to Sul and gave a small bow, then sat down. Sul appeared uncertain how to respond to this intervention, but after a second returned the bow, and then looked around at the expectant sea of faces. He closed his mouth for a second. A gust of chill air from an unsealed door stirred the yellow wisps of his long hair and beard.

  You look old, your reverence, thought Iacto. I wonder how old and weak you feel at this moment.

  ‘My thanks for the wisdom of Abbot Iacto,’ said Sul, at last. ‘As to the matter that Abbess Linnis…’

  And with such words you would hand me a crown. Iacto allowed the feeling of a smile to spread across his thoughts, even as his face remained impassive. It did not matter what Sul said now. All that mattered was that he had acknowledged Iacto. The truth was that nothing could prevent a degree of hardship and unrest now. Food was the final currency of life, and anarchy followed in hunger’s wake. But in all anarchy there was possibility, and true strength could only shine in a time of crisis. It had been an age in coming but this was his time now, and from its trials he would rise.

  SACRED WATER

  Acia woke to the sound of metal scraping on metal. She raised her head from under the blanket, eyes still fogged by sleep, and smudged dreams of weeping faces and pleading voices.

  ‘Grandfather?’ she asked. The old man was crouched at the other end of the hovel’s narrow space. He had a battered metal can in one hand and was scraping at its inside with a blunt knife. ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Water,’ he said, and looked up at her, his smile showing the blackening remains of his teeth. ‘I went out, people are talking about this weeping stone saint…’ He bent back to scrape the inside of the tin. The knife skidded on the hardened filth on the inside of the can, and the blunt tip rammed into the other hand where it was holding the rim. He yelped, wrinkled face squeezing tight with pain.

  Acia was across the room in a blink, taking the blunt knife from her grandfather’s fingers and squeezing her hand around his. They were trembling. They trembled more these days. After a second his hand stilled and his eyes opened.

  ‘Bless you,’ he said and tried to smile, but pain turned it into a wince.

  There had been more pain recently, and he had started sleeping more. When he did go out into the drift, it was with a wild intensity that passed as soon as it came. He would try and find food, would talk about finding a way to have her adopted by one of the holy orders in the walls, even about getting on a ship to the stars and going away. Those times passed as quickly as they came, and they were getting fewer. They lived off what Acia managed to steal and find now.

  ‘What are you doing?’ she asked again.

  ‘Wa
ter,’ he said, and shivered, and then it came out in a rush, as it often did when he was in the grip of whatever dream he was holding on to. ‘There are people talking about this weeping saint, how pure water came out of this old stone saint. People say that one of the girls that found it was pulled up into the clouds, and the other one heard the voices of saints. They are carrying her around in a chair, and she is dipping her hand in the water that people bring her, and they are paying, see. Paying in real coin. People want the water, see, the weeping saint’s tears, and word will be getting to the other drifts and pilgrim holes soon, and they will want sacred water, won’t they…’ His voice trailed off. He looked from Acia to the dirt-caked can. ‘They might pay for sacred water…’ His lip trembled for an instant, and a shadow seemed to pass over his face. ‘They might…’ Then he shook himself and reached for the blunt knife to carry on cleaning the can that in his mind could hold sacred water.

  Acia reached and took the can from him, and began to scrape the dirt off the inside.

  ‘You sleep, grandfather,’ she said. ‘You need your strength.’

  He looked like he was going to object and then nodded, and crawled back to the ragged blanket.

  ‘Not for long,’ he whispered. ‘We have to get to the pilgrim holes before anyone else.’

  ‘Yes, grandfather,’ said Acia, but the old man was already falling back down into the only peace that he could find.

  FIVE

  The drug vial hissed as it dumped its contents into her vein. Viola blinked, feeling her eyes sting and then the warm prickle in her skin. She held the injector for a second, and just let the world be still while it took effect. She felt the dull haze still lingering from sleep drop away. Thoughts began to fire, reaching out and fizzling out when they found nothing to latch on to. She had taken a large enough dose of kalma to drop herself so deeply down into sleep that even her subconscious thought patterns had quieted. Now it was time to wake it all up again.