Durham Red: The Unquiet Grave

by Peter J Evans

  Harrow had said something about this, on the way in. Red gave the abbot a look: go on.

  "Well, so the story goes, when he arrived Lavannos wasn't here. Which must have been somewhat embarrassing, since he had all his followers with him at the time." The abbot gave her an almost imperceptible wink. "A misunderstanding on Otor, apparently. Then, as the followers questioned Lavann's sanity, this moon appeared before them, glowing with heat."

  He was walking slowly around the Arch. "They had to wait fifty years until it was cool enough to build upon. But his followers were so stunned by seeing the moon appear before them that they never abandoned him, not one of them." He reached out to the Arch itself, not quite touching it. His face was a study of reverence, as if he could somehow feel its age, its holiness, past the millimetre gap between skin and steel.

  "This was here when he arrived. No other structure on all Lavannos, just this. He built his church around it. His followers named the moon after him, of course."

  Red began to back away, towards the curtain. There was something in the abbot's voice that was starting to bug her, to send little spikes of memory up from the darker places in her mind. Had she been given a similar spiel by the Osculum Cruentus?

  On the face of it the abbot seemed benign, his religion no more unusual than many she had known. Untold monasteries throughout the ages had been built around the site of some holy vision or miracle cure. The Church of the Arch should have been no different.

  But she was getting some very bad vibes from somewhere.

  She smiled at the abbot and tapped the back of her wrist, hoping he'd know what it meant. She'd been away from Harrow too long, been gawking about this cold place listening to fairy tales when she should have been hunting for Godolkin. It was time to be away.

  The abbot looked at her blankly for a moment, then grinned. "I'm so sorry. Of course you need to be elsewhere. And I must begin preparations for Compline." He raised his right hand, the fingers slightly bent. "Peace be with you, Het Carmine."

  Durham Red returned the gesture, falteringly, and then ducked back past the curtain and away.

  On her way out of the chapel she resisted the urge to run.

  * * * *

  She headed back through the refectory, past several monks already making preparation for the after-Compline meal, and returned to the cloister. She was hoping that Harrow might be waiting for her at the entrance, but the corridor was empty.

  Red paused there for a moment, gnawing her lip. Harrow could be on the other side of the monastery, or he could be around the next corner. Unable to call him for fear of blowing her cover, she was reduced to waiting around for him; never something she enjoyed.

  Vow of silence my arse, she thought angrily.

  If anyone found her here they might very well wonder just why she was hanging about in a corridor. Red decided to go into the cloister. At least there she could wander back and forward to her heart's content, pretending to meditate. That was what cloisters were for.

  She opened the door and went in.

  The cloister was a long hall, two storeys high but open to the ceiling. Two lines of white pillars stretched away to the far end, and there were stone benches arranged down the centre-line of the black marble floor. Statues, their heads universally bowed in prayer, lined the walls, and great urns with long-leafed plants provided welcome patches of colour.

  She couldn't see Harrow and the cloister was very quiet.

  Red walked slowly in, studying the statues. Abbots and priors who had gone before, she guessed. The carving was of a high standard—hand-made, with visible chisel-marks, but skilfully executed and the faces were compelling. Their blank marble eyes seemed to watch her as she walked past. It was hard, in this lonely place, not to feel as if she was under scrutiny.

  There was a sound ahead of her, a slight scuffing.

  Red almost called out, but the noise might have been from someone other than Judas Harrow. She increased her pace.

  Midway down the cloister, she saw him.

  He was lying on his side, his cloak spread around him. His eyes were open. A thin line of foam had edged from the corner of his slack mouth to pool on the floor.

  He wasn't moving.

  Red gasped, and started towards him. As she did, a figure stepped out of the shadows next to Harrow's prone form.

  It was an attendant, a woman. Small, very young: Red saw jet-black hair, brown eyes, a smooth face with skin the colour of dark sand. She wore simple, loose clothes under her cloak, unadorned save a heavy, silver crucifix slung around her neck.

  There was an expression on her childlike face of absolute horror.

  "You!" she hissed, incredulously.

  Red stopped. "Me?"

  "God is with me," the woman muttered. She reached up to the crucifix and tugged it free. Tiny links of metal chain fell from it to the floor, bouncing off the marble.

  She did something to the silver cross with her fingers. Abruptly it blossomed from either end, splaying out to a ridged tube in one direction and, with a complicated metal sound, a long blade in the other.

  A silver blade. Red had seen such a weapon before, in other hands. When Godolkin had tried to take her head off with one, it had been two metres long and as wide as her thigh. This was on a different scale entirely: half the length, two fingers wide at the base, wickedly sharp.

  But there was no mistaking an Iconoclast's holy sword.

  7

  Into The Dark

  Judas Harrow was alive. Red could hear his soft, ragged breathing. But his eyes were not moving.

  The small woman was standing dangerously close to him. She had dropped into a strange, fluid crouch, the blade held horizontally over her head, both hands around the grip. She must have attacked him while he waited for Red in the cloister and paralysed him with toxin.

  Red looked her up and down. She seemed so young, so small. Compared to the other Iconoclasts she had seen, this woman was a child. She had none of the sensory implants the shocktroopers sported, no mesh of charm-tattoos that mutated her skin into a living circuit board. Her eyes looked like normal eyes, not milk-white data-feeds. On the street Red would have passed her by without a second glance.

  Maybe this is what troopers start off as, she wondered, before they end up like Godolkin.

  "Aren't you a little short," she said, "for an Iconoclast?"

  The woman narrowed her eyes. "I'll be taller than you, Blasphemy, when your head lies chattering on the floor."

  "Cute." Red folded her arms. "Listen, kid. I don't know who you are, or what you're playing at. But I told the Tenebrae and now I'm telling you: I'm not part of your stupid little war. Never have been, never will be. So put the toy sword away and I might be persuaded not to slap you around this place for poisoning my friend."

  The woman's eyes flicked down. "Your what? You and—" She shook her head. "No, I'll not be trapped by your lies, Blasphemy. The Lord has sent you to me, and this is where your journey ends. Make your peace with God, monster!"

  She charged.

  Red didn't even have time to back up; the woman was stunningly fast. The blade whined through the air at neck level, coming within a hair's breadth of her throat. Red twisted sideways, slapped the sword up with the back of her hand and tried to follow with a kick to the woman's ribs, but the Iconoclast's knee was already slamming with incredible force into her sternum.

  She felt herself whirling backwards. The marble floor hit her in the back and she slid, fetching up hard against a pillar.

  The Iconoclast was in the air, coming down at her.

  Red snapped sideways, punching across hard. Her blow caught the Iconoclast in the side of the head, but didn't even slow her. The blade snapped up again, whipping out to Red's face.

  She blocked it with her forearm, knocked it away, used her other hand to chop out at the Iconoclast's neck. She felt the blow connect—the woman let out a cry and twisted away, but before Red could follow up she had lashed out with her foot, a flurry of perfe
ct kicks that took Red in the knee, the thigh and the hip.

  Red's leg went out from under her. She span on her back, darted up again, smashing the heel of her hand into the woman's chin, bringing her elbow around and up to connect with stunning force into the left side of the Iconoclast's jawbone. The woman dropped to one knee, but her sword was suddenly in her left hand, her arm up and behind her, the blade singing towards Red. She had to block it with her hands; the left, the right, the left again, before she was able to draw a breath and jump away.

  She was panting, sweat beading her brow. This wasn't right. She was weaker than normal, she knew, still recovering from the Glow and all its effects, but she was still more than a match for any Iconoclast she'd seen. She'd taken Godolkin minutes after waking from the cryo-tube.

  This woman, with her smooth face and her childlike form, had come damn close to taking her head off her neck.

  Red wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. "Not bad."

  The woman was back on her feet. She rolled her head around on her neck, as if getting kinks out of her shoulders. The sword was still in her left hand, but as Red watched she flung it lazily back to the right, twirled it around and back to upright.

  She smiled. "Is that all you've got?"

  "Out of practice." Red linked her fingers and cracked her knuckles, then shook her hands loose. "But it's all coming back to me."

  "Oh good." The woman brought the sword back up above her head, the two-handed grip again. "Iconoclast Special Agent Nira Ketta. Just so you know the name of the one who kills you."

  "Pleased to meet you, Nira. I'm Durham Red!"

  And she leaped.

  She flipped herself up, high over the Iconoclast's head, turning a perfect somersault and kicking out as she did so. Her boot caught Ketta in the shoulder and slammed her across the floor, into a stone seat. The sword span away.

  Red was on Ketta in a second, punching down with all the strength she had. But Ketta wasn't there. She'd already ducked out of the way, and Red's fist punched a kilo of stone out of the seat instead. Ketta's fist took Red in the stomach, knocking her back, then the Iconoclast's foot came up and around, kicking high, taking Red in the side of the face and spinning her one-eighty in the air.

  She came down hard, jumped up again as Ketta dived past her, going for the sword. For a second or two the women could do nothing except exchange a blistering series of punches, each blocked by the other, until Ketta mis-timed fractionally and Red got her twice in the head.

  She reeled back.

  Red barrelled into her, shoulder-smashing her around, then got her arms tight around Ketta's head. "Sorry," she said, and twisted hard. The woman's head went around front to back, with an ugly cracking noise. She slumped.

  Red let her drop, and let out a long breath. That had been damn hard work. She hadn't had anyone fight like that in a long time—any one of the blows she had landed would have smashed the bones of a normal opponent.

  Her leg really hurt.

  She went over to Harrow. As she crouched by him, his eyes moved fractionally towards her. "Sneck, Jude," she whispered. "What did she do to you?"

  "He's alive," said a voice behind her. "So it should be obvious I did nothing."

  Red's eyes went wide. "You've got to be snecking kidding…"

  Ketta was rising from the floor.

  Her head was still twisted almost entirely the wrong way, but as Red watched in horror, she reached up and swivelled it smoothly back on her shoulders. The Iconoclast tilted left and right, as if testing the way her skull sat, then assumed another fighting stance, this one obviously designed for unarmed combat. She smiled. "You can submit now, if you wish."

  "You can piss right off, if you wish." Red got back to her feet. "I told you, I'm not part of your games any more."

  "Even if that were true, monster, an Iconoclast lies dead upon this world. And you'll pay for that."

  Red gaped. "What? An Iconoclast? Where—"

  Ketta blurred towards her.

  Red leapt out of the way, but she wasn't quite fast enough. Ketta's hand clamped down onto her ankle and yanked her back in range of a whirling kick to the ribs. Red felt the breath go out of her, lashed out reflexively with her left hand, hitting nothing but air. She staggered back, took two more blows to the face, then kicked up, high and true, catching Ketta under the nose and flipping her onto her back.

  The woman bounced up, hammering another blow into Red's skull.

  Red snapped clear around, kicked back hard into Ketta's kneecap, slammed her elbow back and felt the impact as she found the Iconoclast's ribs. Ketta went back slightly and Red ducked under her next blow, lashing out in another kick that took Ketta in the temple. As the woman reeled, Red grabbed her by the side of the head, whirled her about and into a pillar.

  Ketta cried out. Red yanked her head back and slammed it, with all her strength, into the marble.

  The stone shattered.

  Ketta's head went halfway through the pillar in a cloud of dust and stone fragments. She snarled in fury, battered Red's hand away and hit her with a straight-arm punch just below the throat.

  Durham Red skated backwards across the floor and into an urn. It exploded, showering her with soil and foliage.

  She coughed and spat blood. Ketta was staggering away from the pillar, shaking chunks of marble out of her hair.

  "Wait," Red gasped. She got up.

  Ketta shook her head slowly. "No, Durham Red. We finish this now."

  "You think I killed an Iconoclast? Here?"

  The woman's reaction surprised her. An awful expression crossed Ketta's face, a kind of sick horror. "Him, and the others," she whispered. "Blasphemy, you truly are a monster. To have done such a thing."

  "Eh?" Red straightened up. "I've been here half a day, you dipstick! I came here looking for an Iconoclast."

  "You found one." Ketta was breathing hard, and she wasn't smiling any more. Red would have taken that as a good sign, a hint that she could take this girl in the next round, if she didn't herself feel as though she'd been chewed up and spat out.

  "Are you saying," she said quietly, "that you've seen a dead Iconoclast on Lavannos?"

  Ketta looked at her for a long time. Then she reached into her clothing and took a small metal pod from a pocket there. "See for yourself," she replied.

  She threw the pod at Red.

  "Crap!" Red dived aside, heard the pod skitter past her and fetch up in the pile of soil from the smashed plant. It was bleeping. She covered her head.

  Nothing happened. Eventually she looked up, from under her crossed arms.

  Ketta was gone.

  Red went over to the urn, warily. The pod was still there, bleeping plaintively. A small circular screen on one face was showing a blinking green dot. "Sneck. A tracker."

  She pocketed the pod and walked back over to Harrow, feeling more than a little foolish. "Don't look at me like that, Jude. It might have been a grenade."

  "Mwrr," he replied. His eyes were following her, now.

  "Somebody got you pretty good, didn't they?" She got him up into a sitting position, and wiped the foam from his lips. "Come on, Jude. We can't stay here. They'll want us to sweep up."

  * * * *

  It took some effort getting Harrow back to his room without being seen, but Red managed it. Just.

  By the time she laid him down on the narrow bed he was starting to get some voluntary movement back and trying to speak. "Bubburr," he kept saying.

  She smiled down at him. "Jude, you know I've not got a clue what you're saying. Put a sock in it until I get back, okay?"

  "Ba. Burrbr."

  "I've got to do this. You heard what she said. Maybe it's him and maybe it isn't, but I've got to know."

  She went to the door, taking Harrow's breath-mask and thermocowl from a hook, and ignored his incomprehensible mutterings. The door could be locked from either side, with a mechanical device so primitive it had taken her some time to work out how it was used. She turned back
to Harrow and held the key up.

  "I'll lock you in, okay? That way you'll be safe until I get back. In the meantime, just chill out and practise those buburs."

  Out in the corridor, she checked Ketta's tracker over. It was a flattened egg of black metal, not much bigger than the palm of her hand. There were a few control studs ranged along one side, but she didn't want to touch those and risk losing the signal. Instead she cradled it carefully, turning around to see how the dot moved.

  It was pointing roughly northeast with a distance marker that Red took to show about five kilometres. Not far, she thought. She could get there on foot, if she had to.

  There was still some time until Compline would take place, so there was a risk of being seen in the monastery if she hung around. She had to remind herself that the case against the place still wasn't proved—all she had were some odd feelings and the words of a crazy little Iconoclast who was sworn to kill her. But the more she thought about it—about the refectory with its massive doors and scratched tables, the oddly-familiar Arch, the over-friendly abbot and his tea—the more she wanted to leave the weird moon.

  The best way to go, she decided, was outside.

  There were heat-locks in several positions around the courtyard, the closest of which lay just to the east of the main gate. Red found it without too much trouble, only having to hide once or twice, and put the thermocowl and breath-mask on. Once the integral heaters were up to speed, she keyed the heatlock and went through.

  Moments later, she was in the courtyard.

  The gravity was light out here, and the thin air stunningly cold. Red had forgotten what it would be like outside, and wondered for a moment whether she should go back and find another way to track down the signal.

  "Sneck, girl," she hissed to herself. "It's just a bit of weather!"

  Once outside the gates she hugged the side of the monastery as long as she could; partly to avoid being seen, partly for shelter. It was only when she reached the northeastern corner that she realised the route she would have to take.

  The tracker was guiding her along the rim of the Eye of God.