‘What is it?’ his friend asked. But the boy didn’t need to answer. ‘Oh,’ his friend said a moment later. ‘Come on, before they see us.’
The boy stayed where he was. Trash lined the alley’s narrow walls. Amongst the refuse, a couple embraced. At least, the man embraced the woman. The woman’s clothing was ruined, cut up and torn, and she remained limp on the dirty ground. Her head was turned to the boy. As the man moved on top of her, she watched both boys with black eyes.
‘Come on...’ his friend whispered, dragging him away. The boy said nothing for some time, but his friend made up for it, talking all the while.
‘You’re lucky we didn’t get shot, staring like that. Didn’t your mother teach you any manners? You can’t just watch like that.’
‘She was crying,’ the boy said.
‘You don’t know that. You’re just saying it.’
The boy looked at his friend. ‘She was crying, Xarl.’
His friend shut up after that. They walked the rest of the Labyrinth in silence, and didn’t say goodbye to each other when they finally reached their habitation spire.
The boy’s mother was home early. He smelled noodles on the boil, and heard her voice humming in the hab-chamber’s only other room: a small kitchen unit with a plastek screen door.
When she came into the main room, she rolled her sleeves down to her wrists. The gesture covered the tattoos along her arms, and the boy never commented on the way she always hid them like this. The coded symbols inked into her skin showed who owned her. The boy knew that at least, though he often wondered if perhaps they meant even more.
‘Your tuition academy prelected me today,’ she said. His mother nodded over to the prelector – it was blank now, but the boy could easily imagine his tutor’s face on the flat, grainy wall screen.
‘Because I’m slow?’ the boy asked.
‘Why do you assume that?’
‘Because I did nothing wrong. I never do anything wrong. So it must be because I’m slow.’
His mother sat on the edge of the bed, her hands in her lap. Her hair was dark, wet from a recent wash. Usually, it was blonde – rare for the people of the city. ‘Will you tell me what’s wrong?’ she asked.
The boy sat next to her, welcomed into her arms. ‘I don’t understand tuition,’ he replied. ‘We have to learn, but I don’t understand why.’
‘To better yourself,’ she said. ‘So you can live at City’s Edge, and work somewhere... nicer than here.’ She trailed off on the last words, idly scratching at the ownership tattoo on her forearm.
‘That won’t happen,’ the boy said. He smiled for her benefit. She cradled him in response, the way she did on the nights after her owner hit her. On those nights, blood from her face dripped into his hair. Tonight, it was just her tears.
‘Why not?’ she asked.
‘I’ll join a gang, just like my father. Xarl will join a gang, just like his. And we’ll both die on the streets, just like everyone else.’ The boy seemed more thoughtful than melancholy. All the words that broke his mother’s heart barely moved him at all. Facts were facts. ‘It’s not really any better at City’s Edge, is it? Not really.’
She was crying now, just as the woman in the alley had cried. The same hollow look in her eyes, the same deadness.
‘No,’ she admitted in a whisper. ‘It’s no different there.’
‘So why should I learn in tuition academy? Why do you waste money on all these books for me to read?’
She needed time before she could answer. The boy listened to her swallow, and felt her shaking.
‘Mother?’
‘There’s something else you can do.’ She was rocking him now, rocking him the way she had when he was even younger. ‘If you stand out from the other children, if you’re the best and the brightest and the cleverest, you’ll never have to see this world again.’
The boy looked up at her. He wasn’t certain he’d heard right, or that he liked the idea if he had.
‘Leave the whole world? Who will...’ He almost said Who will take care of you, but that would only make her cry again. ‘Who will keep you company?’
‘You never need to worry about me. I’ll be fine. But please, please answer your tutor’s questions. You have to show how clever you are. It’s important.’
‘But where would I go? What will I do?’
‘Wherever you want to go, and whatever you want to do.’ She gave him a smile now. ‘Heroes can do whatever they want.’
‘A hero?’ The idea made him giggle. His laughter was balm to his mother’s grief – he was old enough to notice it happen, but too young to know why such a simple thing could resonate within a parent’s heart.
‘Yes. If you pass the trials, you’ll be taken by the Legion. You’ll be a hero, a knight, sailing the stars.’
The boy looked at her for a long time. ‘How old are you, mother?’
‘Twenty-six revolutions.’
‘Are you too old to take the trials?’
She kissed his forehead before she spoke. Suddenly she was smiling, and the tension in the small room evaporated. ‘I can’t take the trials. I’m a girl. And you won’t be able to take them if you’re just like your father was.’
‘But the Legion takes boys from the gangs all the time.’
‘It didn’t always.’ She lifted him away, and returned to stirring the noodles in the pan. ‘Remember, it takes some boys from the gangs. But it’s always looking for the best and brightest stars. Promise me you’ll be one of those?’
‘Yes, mother.’
‘No more silence in tuition?’
‘No, mother.’
‘Good. How is your friend?’
‘He’s not really my friend, you know. He’s always angry. And he wants to join a gang when he’s older.’
His mother gave him another smile, though it was sadder, seeming like a wordless lie. ‘Everyone gets into a gang, my little scholar. It’s just one of those things. Everyone has a house, a gang, a job. Just remember, there’s a difference between doing something because you have to, and doing it because you enjoy it.’
She placed their dinner onto the small table, her pale hands in little gloves to keep them from being burned on the tin bowls. Afterwards, she tossed the gloves
on the bed, and smiled as he ate his first mouthful.
He looked up at her, seeing her face change in stuttering, flickering jerks. Her smile warped into a twisted sneer as her eyes tilted, pulled tighter, slanting with inhuman elegance towards her temples. Her wet hair rose as if charged by static, cresting into a stiffened plume of arterial red.
She screamed at him, a piercing shriek that shattered the windows, sending glass bursting out to rain down onto the street far below. The shrieking maiden reached for a curved blade on the nearby bed, and–
He opened his eyes to the comforting darkness of his meditation chamber.
But the solace lasted no more than a moment. The alien witch had come through, following him back to the waking world. She said his name, her feminine voice breaking the black silence, her scent carried with her movements on the stale shipboard air.
The warrior reached for her throat, huge fist clutching the pale woman’s neck as he rose to his feet and carried her with him. Her boots dangled and kicked in weak resistance, while her mouth worked without air to fuel her voice.
Talos released her. She fell a metre, crashing to the deck on boneless legs, falling to her hands and knees.
‘Octavia.’
She coughed, spitting and catching her breath. ‘No, really, who did you think it was?’
By the open doorway leading into his meditation chamber, one of the Navigator’s attendants stood hunched and squirming, a scrap-metal shotgun in his trembling, bandaged hands.
‘Need I remind you,’ the Night Lord said, ‘that it is a violation of Covenant law to aim that weapon at one of the Legion.’
‘You hurt my mistress.’ The man somehow stared with blinded eyes, his aim unw
avering despite his obvious fear. ‘You hurt her.’
Talos knelt down, offering his hand to help Octavia rise. She took it, but not before a moment’s hesitation.
‘I see you inspire great loyalty in your attendants. Etrigius never did.’
Octavia touched her throat, feeling the rawness there. ‘It’s fine, Hound. It’s fine, don’t worry.’ The attendant lowered his gun, returning it beneath the ragged folds of his filthy cloak. The Navigator puffed a loose lock of hair from her face. ‘What did I do to deserve that welcome? You said I could enter if the door was unlocked.’
‘Nothing,’ Talos returned to the slab of cold metal he used as a repose couch. ‘Forgive me; I was troubled by something I saw in my dreams.’
‘I knocked first,’ she added.
‘I am sure you did.’ For a moment, he pressed his palms to his eyes, wiping away the after-images of the alien witch. The pain remained, undeniably worse than it had been in past years. His pulse thudded along the side of his head, the pain cobwebbing out from his temple. The injuries earned only a month before had done nothing but fuel the pain’s growth. Now it hurt even to dream.
Slowly, he raised his head to look at her. ‘You are not in your chambers. The ship is blessedly free from that horrendous shaking, as well. We cannot possibly have arrived already.’
Her reluctance to dwell on the topic was crystal clear. ‘No,’ she said, and left it at that.
‘I see.’ She required another rest, then. The Exalted would be less than thrilled. The three of them shared the silence, during which she flashed her lamp pack around the walls of his personal chamber. Nostraman writing, the flowing runes raggedly drawn, covered every surface. In some places, new prophecies overwrote older ones. Here was the prophet’s mind, spilled onto the metal walls, scrawled in a dead language. Similar runic prophecy was carved over patches of his armour.
Talos seemed unconcerned with her scrutiny. ‘You look unwell,’ he said to her.
‘Thank you very much.’ She was well aware how sick she looked. Pasty skin and a sore back, with eyes so bloodshot and sore it hurt to blink. ‘It isn’t easy to fly a ship through psychic hell, you know.’
‘I meant no offence.’ He seemed more thoughtful than apologetic. ‘The pleasantries go first, I think. The ability to make small talk. We lose that before anything else, when we leave our humanity behind.’
Octavia snorted, but she wouldn’t be distracted. ‘What was your nightmare about?’
Talos smiled at her, the same crooked smirk usually hidden by his helm. ‘The eldar. Recently, it is nothing but the eldar.’
‘Was it prophecy?’ She rebound her ponytail, checking her bandana was still tight.
‘I am no longer sure. The difference between prophecy and nightmare isn’t always easy to perceive. This was a memory that became twisted and fouled towards the end. Neither a prophetic vision, nor a true dream.’
‘You’d think you could tell the difference by now,’ she said, not meeting his eyes.
He let her venom pass, knowing its source. She was afraid, rattled by his treatment of her upon awakening, and doing her best to mask the fear in condescending anger. Why humans let themselves become enslaved to such pettiness remained a mystery to him, but he could recognise it and acknowledge it, rendering it ignorable.
Encouraged by his tolerant silence, she said ‘Sorry,’ at last. Now their eyes met – hers the hazel of so many Terran-born, his the iris-less black of all Nostramo’s sons. The gaze didn’t last long. Octavia felt her skin crawl if she stared too long at any of the Night Lords’ enhanced, proto-god features. Talos’s face had healed well in the last month, but he was still a weapon before he was a man. The skull beneath his delicate features was reinforced and disgustingly heavy: a brick of bone, hard as steel. Surgical scars, white on white, almost concealed by his pale skin, ran down from both of his temples. A face that would’ve been handsome on a man was somehow profane when worn by one of these towering warriors. Eyes that might have been curious and kind were actually disquieting, always seething with something rancid and unconcealed.
Hatred, she suspected. The masters hated everything with unending ferocity, even one another.
He smiled at her scrutiny. That, at least, was still human. A crooked smile: once worn by a boy who knew much more than he wished to say. For a moment, he was something beyond this scarred statue of a hateful god.
‘I assume there was a purpose to this visit,’ he said, not quite a question.
‘Maybe. What were you dreaming about... before the eldar came?’
‘My home world. Before we returned to destroy it.’ He’d slept in his armour, all but for his helm. Septimus had repaired it with Maruc’s assistance, and Octavia had been present in the final moments, watching Talos re-breaking the aquila with a single ritual hammer blow.
‘What was your family like?’
The warrior sheathed his golden blade in its scabbard, locking it to his back. The grip and winged crosspiece showed over his left shoulder, waiting to be drawn. He didn’t look at her as he answered.
‘My father was a murderer, as was his father before him, and his father before that. My mother was an indentured whore who grew old before her time. At fifty, she looked closer to seventy. I suspect she was diseased.’
‘Sorry I asked,’ she said with feeling.
Talos checked the magazine in his massive bolter, crunching it home with a neat slap. ‘What do you want, Octavia?’
‘Something Septimus told me once.’
He paused, turning to look down at her. She barely reached the base of his sternum. ‘Continue.’
‘He said you killed one of your servants, a long time ago.’
‘Tertius. The warp took hold of him.’ Talos frowned, almost offended. ‘I killed him cleanly, and he suffered little. It was not a mindless murder, Octavia. I do not act without reason.’
She shook her head. ‘I know. It’s not that. But what happened? “The warp has a million ways to poison the human heart”.’ She smiled, barely, at the ancient and melodramatic Navigator’s quote. ‘What happened to him?’
Talos locked his double-barrelled bolter to his armoured thigh plating. ‘Tertius changed inside and out. He was always a curious soul. He liked to stand on the observation deck when we plied the warp’s tides, staring out into the midst of madness. He looked into the abyss for long enough that it poured back into him. The signs were few at first – he would twitch and bleed from the nose – and I was younger then, I barely knew what to look for when it came to corruption. By the time I knew he was lost, he was a ravenous thing, crawling along the lower decks, hunting and eating the human crew.’
She shivered. Even the youngest Navigators knew the myriad degenerations that could take hold of humans in the warp, and despite her tedious career on Maiden of the Stars, Octavia had seen her fair share of taint in an unguarded crew. Nothing quite that bad, but still...
‘And what happened to Secondus?’ she asked.
‘I have no desire to speak of the second. It is not something I recall with any pleasure, nor even any vindication when it was over.’ He picked up his helm, turning it over in his hands. ‘Just tell me what’s wrong,’ he said.
She narrowed her eyes. ‘How do you know something’s wrong?’
‘Perhaps because I am not a complete fool.’
Octavia forced a smile. He could kill her; he would kill her, without a heartbeat’s hesitation.
Now or never, she thought.
‘I keep seeing the Void-born.’
Talos breathed slowly, closing his eyes for several seconds. ‘Go on.’
‘I hear her weeping around corridor corners. I catch glimpses of her running down empty passages. It’s her. I know it is. Hound hasn’t seen her, though.‘
Her attendant gave a bashful shrug, not enjoying the Night Lord’s sudden scrutiny. Talos looked back to Octavia.
So.’ She tilted her head. ‘Am I tainted?’
When he answered, it
was with a tolerant sigh. ‘You are nothing but trouble to me,’ he said.
His words stoked the embers of her pride enough that she squared her shoulders, standing up straighter. ‘I could say the same thing to you. My life has hardly been any easier since you captured me. And you hunted me, remember? Dragging me on board with your hand around my throat, like some prize pet.’
Talos laughed at that – his laughter was always the barest chuckle, little more than a soft exhalation through a crooked smile.
‘I will never grow tired of your bladed Terran tongue.’ The warrior took a breath. ‘Guard yourself, Octavia. Despite your fears of your own weakness, the fault doesn’t lie with you. This ship has spent an age within the warp. The corruption is not within you, but the Covenant itself. Taint rides in its bones, and we all breathe it in with the air supply. We are heretics. Such is our fate.’
‘That... is hardly reassuring.’
He gave her a look then, almost achingly human. A raised eyebrow, a half-smile, a look that said: Really, what did you expect from me?
‘The Covenant hates me,’ she said. ‘I know that. Its spirit recoils each time we touch. But it wouldn’t haunt me like this, not on purpose. Its soul is too simple to consider such a thing.’
Talos nodded. ‘Of course. But the Covenant is crewed by as many memories as living, breathing mortals. More have died on these decks than still work them. And the ship remembers every one of them. Think of all the blood soaked into the steel that surrounds us, and the hundreds of last breaths filtering through the ventilation cyclers. Forever recycled, breathed in and out of living lungs, over and over again. We walk within the Covenant’s memory, so we all see things at the edges of our vision from time to time.’
She shivered again. ‘I hate this ship.’
‘No,’ he said, holding his helm once more. ‘You don’t.’
‘It’s nothing like I imagined, though. Guiding a Legiones Astartes warship – it’s what every Navigator prays for. And the Covenant moves like something from a dream, twisting and turning like a serpent in oil; nothing can compare to it. But everything here is so... sour.’ Octavia’s words trailed off. After a moment, she watched him closely, smelling the tang of acid on his breath.
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