by Ian Watson
‘I’m sure she will. The Assassin card stabilizes her. Yet your reaction to that Daemon card, both now and aboard the Free Enterprise, compels me to put an Inquisitorial question to you, Captain d’Arquebus.’
Briefly Jaq willed the electrotattoo on his palm to display its daemonic face. ‘I speak now as an inquisitor, of the Ordo Malleus, whose primary concern is daemonic activity,’ he said solemnly. ‘In your past career as a Space Marine, have you ever had acquaintance with the Power known as,’ and Jaq lowered his voice, ‘Tzeentch? Have you ever had contact with, or knowledge of, this Power? Confess to me, Lex, if you have. Confess to me. In the Emperor’s name tell me. In nomine Imperatoris!’
That mighty man blanched. He knelt.
‘Yes,’ he murmured.
Haltingly the story came out.
IT WAS MANY decades earlier, long before Lexandro d’Arquebus became an officer. It was in a cavern of a mining world inhabited by squats loyal to a rebel lord named Fulgor Sagramoso. Lord Sagramoso’s followers had captured Lex and his companions. The captive Space Marines had been chained down. They were to be sacrificed to the Changer of History. The corrupted Lord Sagramoso himself underwent vile bodily changes. Such disorienting nausea had plucked at the very foundations of Lex’s being. He had witnessed daemonic possession. He had known the sickness unto death.
Blessedly, Terminator Marines of the Imperial Fists in lustrous armour had come blasting their way into the cavern, storm bolters blazing with salvation.
Because of their bravery and endurance Lex and his two surviving comrades had been judged worthy to remember their experience rather than being mind-wiped to ensure their sanity. Lex and Yeremi and Biff had sworn never to tell any of their other battle brothers about the phenomenon of Tzeentch.
Lex had not sworn not to tell this to an inquisitor. That memory from the past still disconcerted him hideously.
‘You endured a close encounter with Chaos,’ Jaq said respectfully, absolvingly. ‘You understand how tortuous our cosmos is, and thus how ingenious – even devious – the champions of truth must sometimes necessarily be.’
As devious as Jaq himself?
Was this confession of Lex’s another indicator to Jaq that the route to illumination might well be through Tzeentch rather than through Slaanesh? Through mutability, rather than through lust?
Was it possible to balance the two Powers so that a person became simultaneously possessed by both, and therefore fully by neither? Could there be jealous conflict between rival daemons? A war in one’s very soul! Thus daemons would mutually disable one another, allowing their intended victim to squirm free to salvation and immunity! Could it be?
From inside his robe Jaq drew his force rod. He kissed its tip sacramentally.
‘With this instrument are daemons dispelled...’ He offered the rod to kneeling Lex, also to kiss.
‘If I was ever... possessed,’ mumbled Lex, ‘could your rod save me?’
‘Or slay you. Or both.’
‘And I you, likewise?’
Jaq frowned. ‘Only a powerful psyker may use this rod.’ A psyker, untrained, was a potential magnet to daemons. If a trained psyker such as Jaq were to abuse his training and subvert his own sanity, what might he conjure?
‘What became of your two comrades?’ asked Jaq. Lex scratched fiercely at his left hand.
‘Biff died fighting tyranids,’ he said simply. ‘Then Yeri died too. Everyone’s destiny is death.’
Jaq frowned. ‘Except for those supposed immortal Sons of the Emperor! If they truly exist. Supposedly their destiny is death too, in the bonfire of souls which kindles the Numen!’
If those Sons existed. Wherever they might be.
SIX
Robbery
AWAY FROM THE mansion it wasn’t too difficult to remember to call Jaq Tod or Sir Zapasnik. Inside the mansion itself, however, the moment inevitably came when Grimm refened to the boss as ‘Jaq’ in Rakel’s hearing.
‘Jaq,’ Rakel said tentatively as the foursome sat at table later, ‘the food in your house always seems to be so wonderful.’ They were eating purple Sabulorb caviar and medallions of yellow mahgir fish poached in spiced camelopard milk.
Rakel’s voice was really quite like Meh’lindi’s. Meh’lindi would never have made any such remark. To Meh’lindi it had always been a matter of pure indifference whether she ate a raw rat or a ragout to fuel herself. Jaq’s knuckles whitened as he clutched his plasteel fork.
‘Huh!’ blustered Grimm. ‘Never call the boss that in public! And it’s me who’s the chef. Anyway, you shouldn’t seem to enjoy your grub so much.’
‘No, I sympathize,’ Jaq said to Rakel with an effort. ‘You’ve had your body altered by the thing you most fear – so that I can safely trust you rather than kill you. How much trust do I bestow?’ He glowered briefly at Grimm. ‘Rakel, my name is indeed Jaq, and I’m acting under cover. Deeply under cover. I am an inquisitor. Do you know what an inquisitor is?’
She did know. She paled. She had visited numerous worlds. On one of those planets an Inquisition purge of heresy had been underway.
They had allowed Rakel to return to her former lodgings, with Lex as escort, to retrieve her stolen valuables and to bring those back to the mansion to keep in her new room on the second floor. Rakel’s accumulated treasure was trivial compared with the jewels still encrusting the forbidden book in the cellar.
Jaq insisted that Rakel must exercise gymnastically. For this purpose Grimm had obtained a range of equipment, now housed in a chamber adjacent to hers. Bars, pulleys, beams.
As a nimble thief, Rakel had never neglected her body. Now she must hone herself supremely. She would become a fitting shrine for Meh’lindi’s spirit! Yet Jaq did not tell her this. The nominal aim was to keep the false Meh’lindi occupied and exercised and expend her surplus energy.
Rakel had fretted that such strenuous activity might disrupt her new body. But no, reinforcement was the goal, so Grimm assured her. In the curtained house, Rakel was adjusting to her new companions, bizarre though their own mysterious goals might be. The atrocity which had been inflicted on her was... surmountable. What other choice did she have than to align herself with this trio?
As majordomo of the household Grimm could always find ways to busy himself, especially in the kitchen. Lex also exercised solo, observing the proper Astartes rites. Nevertheless, Lex craved more than exercise and prayer. To Grimm, who had been preparing spare ribs of camelopard in a spiced sauce at the time, Lex had confided his mounting urge to scrimshander. He yearned to inscribe a fine image upon a bone.
The little man suggested using a camelopard rib after Lex had sucked it clean. This provoked Lex to fury. Did the abhuman not understand that Lex could only engrave scrimshaws upon the bones of fallen comrades? Maybe he might honourably decorate a bone of someone who had belonged to another devout Chapter. Alas, no corpses of Ultramarines had been buried on Sabulorb. All who fell would have been returned to their fortress-monastery.
Did Grimm, with his supposed reverence for ancestors, not understand this?
Lex was frustrated.
Grimm had mentioned this matter to Jaq.
‘THIS WORLD WAS once infested by genestealers,’ Jaq told Rakel at the dinner table. ‘Do you know what those are?’ Yes, her criminal contacts had told her about the infestation by Old Four-Arms.
‘Not all hybrids may have been destroyed,’ said Jaq. ‘The courthouse does not seem to be exercising enough diligence these days. I do not suggest that the courthouse is contaminated. However, an inquisitor must always harbour many suspicions – and often act secretly. You may have seen an inquisitor storming about on that other world you visited. The best work of the Inquisition is often pursued unseen, until the crucial moment. That book downstairs contains secrets about genestealers and their origin.’ Did it? Did it not?
They’re bred by tyranids, Lex almost said; but he kept silent.
In the tyranid hive-ship, in that evil leviathan shaped
like a snail, Biff and Yeremi had died...
'To read the book I shall need something which is probably stored in the courthouse. I must not reveal myself prematurely to the Arbites. So your arrival is timely. However, you must be tested. We intercepted you, after all.'
‘I’m told,’ Jaq continued, ‘that the Oriens Temple was once home to the ancient thigh bone of a Space Marine, housed in a reliquary.’ The real Meh’lindi had told him this. ‘I wonder whether that thigh bone survived the destruction of the temple? I wonder whether the Occidens Temple sequestered that bone, just as they have done with the Emperor’s fingernails. Find out, Rakel, find out from your criminal contacts! If that femur is hidden away in Occidens I want you to steal the bone and bring it here for Lex to ornament with his graving tool.’
‘Oh yes indeed,’ said Lex. ‘Oh yes!’ His fists opened and closed as though already grasping the revered bone.
Why Lex should wish to engage in such an activity was not to be confided. Rakel knew Lex’s name – but not his identity.
‘Ask about illegal cults as well,’ continued Jaq. ‘Is there any cult devoted to metamorphosis – or to revolutionary change? Is there any cult devoted to lust and wanton pleasures of the flesh?’
Rakel ventured to ask: ‘Is that why I should not praise the food we eat, no matter how fine it is?’
‘Not at all! We eat well because austerity narrows one’s perspectives.’
Grimm tilted his pot of ale. ‘You used not to allow any alcohol aboard the good ship Tormentum, Jaq.’ These days, Grimm had been allowed to provision the larder with beer and wine and even some of the strong local djinn spirit. Jaq himself still drank no alcohol. For Lex, with his supplementary preomnor stomach and his purifying oolitic kidney, indulgence would be futile. ‘Alcohol disorders the senses,’ Jaq explained. ‘I may need to exploit disorder. You, Rakel, in your new assassin shape, should not express sensual preferences regarding food. It isn’t fitting.’
Jaq placed the assassin’s sash upon the table. From the sash he removed three small hooded rings, baroque thimbles. ‘Wear these on your fingers, Rakel.’
With a professional, if puzzled, eye Rakel was assessing the possible value of these supposed items of bijouterie.
‘You crook your finger suddenly just so,’ Jaq mimed. ‘These are rare digital weapons of jokaero manufacture. One fires a toxic needle, the next a laser beam, and the third is a tiny flamer. Each will fire once. We have no means to replenish these. They are only for use in case you are cornered, with no other means of escape.’
Rakel eyed the three digital devices, and the three other persons seated at table.
‘See how we trust you!’ sneered Grimm.
‘You would not defeat me,’ Lex growled at her, ‘not with toxin nor flame nor laser burst. Even blind, I would break your back.’
‘And your body would soon go into flux,’ said Jaq. Nodding, Rakel slid the three digital weapons on to different fingers. ‘You’re perfect,’ Jaq said bleakly.
The abhuman dabbed a stubby finger in the spiced milk and sucked as if on a teat. ‘Huh, this sauce is getting cold!’
RAKEL WAS NO longer a free agent. No longer was she even herself, physically. But then, what did freedom signify? What value was there in the freedom to tote a valise of stolen gems and drugs and Imperial credit tokens and such from star system to star system, paying bribes and sweeteners in the process? What value was there even in a self, in this cosmos of untold trillions of selves? If anything defined her self, it was thievery, the purloining of material aspects of other people with which to embellish in private her own identity.
In this mansion she had attained, inadvertently, a whole new counterfeit identity, forged upon her very flesh. Wasn’t this a perverse kind of triumph? Now she had a mission and a mandate to steal, bestowed by a clandestine inquisitor. Wasn’t this a perverse kind of recognition?
She proved to be a useful intermediary. Her main contacts were the Shuturban brothers, two dark moustached men whose father, now elderly, had been a camelopard driver and smuggler. Chor Shuturban was sly, she explained. Mardal Shuturban was rash and quick-tempered.
The Shuturbans had been most intrigued by the alteration in Rakel’s appearance since last they had seen her. Indeed, at first they had been quite sceptical that Rakel was Rakel – until she reminded them of previous illegal dealings known only to herself and the brothers.
So had she undergone major surgery at the Hakim Hospitalery – and recovered already? She was obliged to tell Chor and Mardal – exaggeratedly – about the lichen juice of her homeworld, and how this made her people masters and mistresses of disguise. She had actually been in disguise prior to this – so she claimed, with a twisted smile – and now they beheld her true self. She spoke of shape-shifting chemicals in her blood. Chor had muttered darkly about wizardry.
Chor Shuturban did indeed know the present whereabouts of that thigh bone. It had been retrieved from the ruin of Oriens in its severely damaged golden reliquary when a tunnel was cleared of debris during his father’s time. Occidens’ deacons had been supervising the excavation. Shuturban senior had made it his business to learn where so much crushed wrought gold was taken. The reliquary had been locked inside an altar in one of the side-chapels in the basilica of Occidens.
While the elder Shuturban was musing about the future of that gold, a tetchy camelopard had kicked him in the gut. His pain wouldn’t subside. Some organ must have been ruptured. It was only when he went to Occidens to pray in that particular chapel, and when he vowed never to desecrate it, that he was healed miraculously.
The reliquary must still be there to this day. Due to religious rivalry, how long might the relic remain out of sight, unexamined – and maybe in time become forgotten? No pledge prevented his sons from disposing of the gold if someone else should choose to loot the altar.
Fifty side chapels were in that basilica. Some of the altars were of adamantium. One was of ivory, dedicated to the Emperor’s teeth. The majority were of plasteel. In exchange for a half-share of the precious metal Chor Shuturban would tell Rakel which was the chapel. Rakel had promised to consider this offer.
‘Logically,’ Jaq declared, ‘it should be the Chapel of His Thighs...’
Rakel had already arrived at the same conclusion. Occidens was open again to the public, after the paroxysm of the unveiling. On the way back from the Shuturbans’ premises she had visited Occidens to pray her way around the so-called Stations of the Emperor, as hastily as was compatible with decorum.
Many body-bags of camelopard hide cluttered the basilica, unclaimed, the odour of decay almost masked by the prevalent sweet incense drifting from the atrium. Because pilgrims had died in adoration of the True Face, they merited a time of display in the basilica. Body-bags were all tied at the necks, exposing to scrutiny the head or remains of a head. This was for identification – yet also so that a miracle could be recognized. A corpse might remain uncorrupted, demonstrably blessed by Him-on-Earth. Invariably there were one or two such miracles. These miracles vindicated all the deaths which might otherwise have seemed, to a heretic, to mar the climactic ceremony of Holy Year.
In the basilica, unfortunately, there was one chapel dedicated to His Left Thigh, and another chapel to His Right Thigh.
‘Do we flip a shekel?’ asked Grimm after Rakel had delivered her report.
Jaq scowled at this irreverence. ‘It will be the chapel sinister where they hid the bone. The left-hand one. Leftward is the side of formulae, occult science, guile – and secrets.’
Lex agreed. It was on the bones of his left hand that he had inscribed the names of dead Biff and Yeremi.
‘The priests wouldn’t disregard the customary symbolism,’ Jaq stated.
RAKEL’S BEST ROUTE into Occidens would be through one of the apertures in the dome of the atrium, through which the smoke of incense vented. Clad in black, she would descend on a thin strong rope like a spider on its silk, then drop cat-like to the floor. At night, when
the temple was closed, no armed deacons might be on patrol in the atrium of the basilica. She had noted that residents of the temple – as opposed to visitors – rarely glanced upwards. Upwards was wreathed in smoke.
From the atrium she would proceed silently into the basilica. Apply lock-picks to the plasteel altar. Heave out the reliquary, heavy with gold.
‘Heavy on account of the femur too,’ insisted Lex. ‘Space Marine bones are big, and reinforced.’
Rakel glanced at him curiously, but did not question.
Next: open a body-bag.
‘Hide the corpse away inside the altar?’ queried Grimm.
‘No,’ said Jaq. ‘That would be sacrilege.’
Put the reliquary inside the bag along with the body. Tie the bag up again. Return to the atrium. An accomplice would let down the rope for Rakel’s retrieval.
‘Am I to be on the rooftop?’ Grimm demanded. ‘What sort of solo test is this?’
Rakel smiled wanly. ‘There’ll be other ways into the temple. Sewers, for instance. I’m sure Chor Shuturban will tell me if we promise enough gold. Wouldn’t we prefer to amaze him?’
She wasn’t Meh’lindi. Meh’lindi would have found a way in through the sewers, contorting herself and dislocating her limbs if need be. Yet Rakel was cleverly analytical.
The morning after robbing the altar she would present herself at the temple accompanied by a burly slave. She would identify a head poking from the bag. She would weep with mingled grief and joy. The slave would help her carry the burden away.
And if the reliquary proved too large, even in its crushed state, why, the night before she would cut off the head of the corpse, hide the headless body, then fasten the head to the top of the reliquary. The reliquary would substitute for the body.
‘Hide, where?’ demanded Jaq.
‘I’d hoped to make use of the altar,’ Rakel said humbly.
‘Sacrilege. Blasphemy.’
‘Indeed,’ said Lex.
‘I suppose,’ grumped Grimm, ‘this means I might have to haul up this rotting headless corpse on the end of the rope after you’ve climbed it?’