He closed the book, tucked it into his robe and began to walk away, back up and out of the archive.
‘Where are you going?’ asked Claudia to his back. He did not answer. He paused and looked around at the robed figures moving on the platforms, and the books piled on shelves and lecterns. His duty, the holy work and treasure of every man and woman who had stood in his place.
‘Get all of our order out of the cloister,’ he called to Claudia. ‘Get as many of them as far away from the lower reaches as you can. Close to the landing pads if you can get that far. It won’t be long before night comes for us here, too.’
Iacto was still for a moment.
‘What are you going to do?’ asked Claudia. Iacto looked at the note at the bottom of the prayer book, then gave a cold smile.
‘I am going to go and see what salvation your discovery can buy us.’
The cold smile had not moved from his face, and in his mind the single line written by the dead monk turned over and over in his thoughts.
Most blessed are we who stand under the sight of those who keep vigil in the Most Holy Emperor’s name. She is an abomination. The girl is an abomination.
It had been the last marked page in the book, and after it were only blank pages, waiting for prayers and thoughts that would not come.
Josef turned in time to see the arbitrator who had been guarding the alley mouth yanked into the air on the stilt-walker’s hand. The man fired. Shot blasted through rags and flesh. The stilt-walker arched its back and shrieked, with a voice that sounded all too human. It brought up its other hand, and tore the arbitrator’s head from his torso.
Agata fired then. Three bolts punched into its shoulders and head. It shuddered back, dropping the remains of the arbitrator. Its bulk still blocked the exit from the alley.
Josef ran towards it, forcing down the numbness of his injuries. The stilt-walker lashed a kick at Agata. Josef saw the flash of sharp metal. Agata moved back fast, bolter braced to fire… and her leg – the wounded leg that had carried her since the first ambush – crumpled beneath her. Josef saw it happen in a jammed-clock slowness, as he ran towards the opening. Agata’s gun fired. The bolt cut wide. She was trying to rise, fresh blood running down the battered silver of her greave, black in the cold monochrome of his dimming vison. And the stilt-walker was coiled back, limbs bunching under its rags, blood showering from it. Agata’s gun was rising, but too slow. It sprang forwards, and Josef swung his hammer up, even as he knew that he would not reach it in time.
A shotgun blast roared out of the dark. A solid round struck the stilt-walker dead in the centre of its mass and pitched it forwards. It caught itself as it fell, twisting around with a snap of popping vertebrae.
Josef reached it and swung his hammer down. An arm, stick thin and iron hard, flicked out, and hit him in the gut as his blow descended. He flew back and hit the alley wall. Stars exploded in his sight. He was gasping, his insides burning.
The thing was rising, its rags bloody tatters.
Another shotgun blast, and the thing slammed backwards with the impact.
Proctor Gald walked out of the dark, his gun levelled. His helmet was gone, and the left side of his face was a bloody ruin. He racked the slide of his shotgun. The spent casing clicked to the ground.
The stilt-walker leapt from the ground. Gald pulled the trigger. Shot ripped through the creature like hail through wet paper. Agata fired. A trio of bolt shells tore the creature’s left arm and leg off in a ripple of explosions. Josef forced himself forwards.
The creature, though, was still alive. It struck Gald hard and rammed him back onto the snowy ground. It was gurgling, bloody froth gagging its shrieks as it scrabbled at the proctor with its iron claws. Gald had his hands up. Josef was next to the creature, hammer swinging up above his head. The creature battered Gald’s hands away. Josef swung his hammer down.
There was no prayer on his lips, no plea to the Emperor for strength, just the raw surge of muscle and anger. The head of the hammer struck the thing’s back. Force juddered the haft in his hands. He heard bones crack, but he was already shifting his weight to pull the hammer up and around to hit again, and again.
‘Josef.’ He heard the words and then felt a hand yank at his shoulder. ‘Josef!’
He lowered the hammer. Agata was next to him. He was gasping air, his eyes still blurred and swimming with spots of bright colour. He shook his head, trying to clear it, and looked at the tangled heap of flesh and rags on the ground at his feet. He could see limbs and skin where the fabric had fallen aside. Crude stitches criss-crossed starved flesh that looked as if it had been stretched, melted and set like a child’s sugar treat. Some of it looked human, other parts of it like a dog. A jagged rune spiralled across an exposed area of skin. When he shifted his gaze, the mark remained for a second inside his eyes. The claws on its hands and legs were metal blades jammed into flesh and bone, and bound in place with barbed wire. Josef recognised a paring knife and the blade of a set of shears amongst the blades, both sharpened so that point and edge shone in his dark sight.
A gurgling cough pulled the hammer up in his hands for a second before he lowered it again. Gald lay half under the thing’s remains. The proctor’s face was a mask of his own blood now. His left arm ended in a torn stump of ripped fingers and twisted armour. More blood was flowing in a steady beat from a hole punched through his chest plate.
‘Help me,’ he called to Agata, and bent to pull the proctor out from under the dead stilt-walker.
Gald shook his head.
‘There are more of them…’ Blood foamed from his mouth. ‘They will be coming. Taking that one down made a lot of noise.’
‘We will get you back to the monastery,’ said Josef. ‘There are medics. You will live.’
Gald smiled. His chest was heaving now, each breath jolting through him.
‘Old and fat, and a soft fool, too,’ hissed Gald. Then he twitched and went still. Josef did not move for a second. The blood that had been beating from the hole in Gald’s chest had become an oozing trickle.
‘He was right,’ said Agata. ‘We have to move, and move now.’
Josef nodded. His hands were red.
‘We have to reach Covenant,’ he said.
Krade’s words rattled in the hollow of his thoughts.
‘It is coming – the last, true pilgrim of hate…’
He forced himself to stand, and felt himself sway. Close by, a hooting cry rose up into the snow-flecked air. He took a first step and paused, looking back at Gald lying on the cold ground, snowflakes already turning his blood to pink slush. Then he bent and closed the eyelids over the man’s pale eyes.
‘Emperor of all, welcome the soul of this, Thy unfailing servant,’ he said, and then straightened, and began to limp towards the lights of the distant monastery.
Crowds ringed the entrance to the Great Cathedral. Members of every order, high and low, pressed close, shouting for the shrine guards to let them into the sanctuary. Half of them thought that the Great Cathedral was the safest place to be. Others saw it as a holy place that the Emperor would never let harm come to. All the mob wanted to get inside for one purpose – to live a little longer. But the shrine guard had their orders. They barred the path to the high doors, their bronze shields touching, iron staves raised and ready.
Iacto shoved his way to the front, ignoring the words shouted at him. He stepped towards the line of guards.
‘I am Abbot Iacto,’ he called. A loud shout went up from behind him, and then a broken tile flew through the air and broke on one of the guard’s shields. They took a step forwards. He had never been in a fight, let alone a warzone, but he could read the tension in the guards even through their masks. He stepped out of the crowd towards the shield-wall, hands raised in peace, and spoke as loudly and as calmly as he could. ‘I am Abbot Iacto of the Sage Order of the Faithful, I must be admitted. I must see the bishop.’
‘Get back,’ shouted one of the guards, and shoved ou
t with his shield. Iacto staggered back into the press of bodies behind. A jeering growl rose around him as some hands pushed him forward and some tried to pull him back. He recognised a woman in the robes of a senior sister in the Order of the Blessed Flame. Her face was twisted around a shout, her eyes flashing with rising panic.
This is what we truly are, he thought. Underneath all the piety and prayer, we now stand pure and clear. For all the words and forms we stood behind, we now feel the world shake, and what do we find we are – saints, or weak souls wanting to live just a little longer?
He stepped back towards the shields. The guard raised his iron truncheon.
‘I have come from the inquisitor,’ he said, clearly but in a voice that he hoped would not carry. The guard hesitated, and Iacto stepped closer. ‘I have been in the House of Concordance consulting with the inquisitor’s servants, and I must see the bishop immediately.’
The guard glanced behind himself as though for help. Word of the inquisitor’s arrival had spread almost as fast as the panic. Iacto was not certain which was the source of more terror to most: the murder tide rising from the drifts or the coming of the Inquisition.
The guard looked back at Iacto, who had stayed perfectly still.
‘Immediately,’ he repeated.
The guard hesitated for another second, and then stepped to the side, motioning for Iacto to get through the shield-wall fast. The crowd behind him roared as they saw the opening, and surged forward. Iacto was through the line and passing through a small sally door set next to the closed main doors.
Silence closed over him as he stepped beyond. The vast space beneath the processional was dark. The candles that hung in their thousands on wheel-like candelabras were unlit. The air smelled of dust. In the distance, the flames of the high altar burned, the light slicing into thin shadows as it passed through avenues and rings of pillars as wide as castles.
Iacto paused for a moment, considering his next step. Bishop Xilita had a private chapel and sanctuary beneath the high altar. In times like these she was likely to be there. He took a step towards the light of the altar and then paused. There were sure to be more shrine guards around the high altar and the entrance to the bishop’s sanctuary. He did not want to have the same argument with them as he had had with the guards on the main doors – an argument he was not convinced he would win again. And he was not certain how much time there was. The inquisitor was not here to protect or save them, and that meant that a new set of decisions had to be made if they were not all going to end as ashes. Xilita was the only one who might be able to do something. But she could only do that if she knew, and soon. There was no time to argue with terrified underlings.
There were other ways into the sanctuary. Like anywhere in a monastery complex, for every door and passage you could see there were more that you couldn’t. After another moment of thought he slid sideways into the shadowed corners. He found the small door he needed tucked in behind a dried fountain made to wash pilgrims’ feet. He almost forgot to take a light, and then took an unlit candle from a stand, and lit it with a striker. Then down he went, into the narrow, dust-scented world of the undercroft.
He edged through passages, shoulders brushing the bare stone walls, pausing when he found another door or spur to remember the plans of the passages he had examined in the past. He took a wrong turn three times, but at last reached a doorway only half a metre wide, the wood black with age. It was locked, but like most whisper doors in the monastery, the lock opened to the flat, iron key he carried as a mark of his office. As he pushed it open a crack, the thought of whether any of the red pilgrims knew their way through the whisper tunnels crossed his mind. A chill glided over his skin, but he shook it free. It was a worry that would have to wait.
He pushed the door wider. The hinges turned silently, as though they had been oiled. A corridor ran to the left and right. The light was low. Only single candles had been lit on the candelabras hanging from the ceiling. Red and white tiles covered the floor, and tapestries showing the wounded Emperor scattering blood to his most holy saints hung over the stone walls. There were doors leading off the corridor in both directions. Most were narrow and would lead to contemplation cells. On occasion in the past, a bishop would choose a few select pilgrims to become companions of their solitude. They would live down here in the bishop’s sanctuary, never seeing another soul outside of the bishop’s entourage. Dark whispers said the companions’ prayers were said to have kept some bishops young past the age of dotage. Orphaned children and the dying had once been much favoured. Iacto had never heard of Xilita following the practice, but he had also never been into the bishop’s sanctuary before.
He stood for a moment orientating himself to what he could remember of the plans, and then turned in the direction of the chapel. He moved carefully, listening and glancing around as he took every step, but all was silent. That was strange; he had expected at least a token number of the shrine guard, but there were none.
He reached the chapel door. It was shut. He paused then pushed it softly. It was not locked, and hinged open a crack without making a sound. He pushed it slightly wider and slipped through. He was not sure why he was moving like a thief, other than he had no formal permission to be there. But something about the silent, half-lit passages made him shrink from shouting his presence.
The chapel was small, barely twenty paces from door to altar. The only light came from half a dozen votive candles burning on the altar, beneath a statue of the Emperor carved from jet. Gilded chains circled and weighed down His bare shoulders, tethering Him to a sea of golden hands reaching up to Him. There were no benches or pews. Those who came here to pray knelt on the stone floor. At that moment there was only one supplicant.
Bishop Xilita knelt at the foot of the altar, her back straight and her head bowed. The weighted chains of her order lay on the floor around her, their weight lifted for this time of prayer.
Iacto shut the door silently behind himself and was about to step forwards, when Bishop Xilita spoke.
‘I knew one of you would come,’ she said, without moving. ‘I had faith.’
Iacto shook off his surprise, and opened his mouth to speak.
‘Faith…’ said another voice. Iacto froze. Ice poured through him. ‘Perhaps…’
A man stepped out of the gloom beside the altar and into the glow of the candlelight. Behind him the shadow of a narrow whisper door stood open. The man was robed in aged patchwork cloth. His head was clean-shaven, his skin golden-dark and faded tattoo dots marked his cheeks. Iacto would have taken him for one of the countless ascetics that came to holy places with just the faith in their hearts and the air in their lungs. But there was something in his eyes and the way he moved that made Iacto shrink back to the shadows by the door.
The man stepped next to Xilita. The bishop did not move from her place of prayer.
‘You doubt me?’ she said. ‘I kept your Revelation safe here. And in all these years since, I have kept its secrets, but in all those years I have heard nothing.’
‘Not my Revelation,’ he said, turning to look at the candles burning on the altar. ‘And for your devotion you were raised high. But in your service you failed. Do not think that your service buys you more than you have already received. The reward of faith is suffering.’
Xilita looked up then, chains clinking as she moved.
‘Is it here? I watched, as I did before, even after Revelation was taken from me. There have been signs in the last days. Is this the moment? Will it be here that He will rise again?’
‘Yes,’ said the man. Xilita shuddered at the word, and the chains clinked. After a second Iacto saw tears running down her cheeks, sparkling in the candlelight. The man reached out a hand and brushed them from her face. ‘But there are things that must be done – prices that must be paid.’
‘I have always been faithful,’ said Xilita, still weeping. ‘All that can be given, I have given.’
‘No, you haven’t – not yet. Tel
l me, bishop. What did happen to Revelation?’
‘It was as I told you,’ she said, and there was an edge of desperation in her voice. ‘The scribe we used to teach her grew afraid. He… started to see something in her. He vanished, and then a little while later so did she.’
‘Out of a cell no more than twenty paces from this spot, under the eyes of you and your guards… gone like a whisper.’
‘It was and is the truth.’
He nodded once, and gave a sad smile.
‘I know,’ he said. ‘I see it in you.’
‘It is happening again, isn’t it? Just like when Revelation was found. The signs began, and for a moment I thought she was here again, that she had come home.’ She paused, looking up at him, and then shook her head, with a melody of chain links. ‘There is an inquisitor called Covenant here,’ she said. ‘He has people looking through the records, looking for marks of a miracle. For a moment I thought he was one of you. He is just like–’
‘I know who he is,’ said the man, gently. ‘I am here in part because of him.’
Xilita tilted her head, eyes narrowing.
‘He is your enemy…’ she said.
‘He is something that needs to be dealt with.’
‘But he is one of you, one of the Inquisition. You are the Emperor’s chosen, His instruments.’
‘Naivety does not suit you, bishop.’
‘Then what have I believed in all these decades? What was I doing when I lied to my brothers and sisters in faith?’
The bald man let out a breath.
‘Everything you have been told is a lie,’ he said, and knelt down so that he was face to face with the old bishop. ‘And all of it is true. The end of everything that has been is coming, but salvation will also come to humanity. You have helped that come to pass. That is true, Xilita, and you can believe that.’
‘And Covenant?’
‘It is not just enemies that stand across the true path, fools do too.’
She nodded and then raised her head again.
Incarnation - John French Page 22