‘Is there a way to find out who requisitioned the wheel-lift from the library, curator?’ I asked. ‘This book was in one of the compartments. You say other sacred things have been stolen – perhaps the thief was using that lifter? They were careless, or got interrupted, and didn’t take the book out when the lifter was taken away by the colonnade crew.’
Wymes’ posture had recovered a bit from its sag, his hands gripping the front of his robe. He stared down at them, forced his fists to open with a visible effort of will, and looked at me again.
‘The wheel-lift,’ he said.
‘Yes, sir. Found in the anchorhold, if you can believe that! The colonnade crew who were using it had no idea where or how, but that’s where it was.’
‘I understand. Dumped in the anchorhold with the Doctrines and Revelations stuffed into the compartment like an empty food-pail.’ Wymes’ voice was hoarse. ‘Do you ever wonder what manner of man might commit an act like that, Noverin? Sanian?’
We shook our heads. Even in the state he was in, Wymes had a weird sort of charisma, more teacherly than preacherly, but enough to sweep us both along.
‘And books,’ he said, ‘books can be rewritten. But think of the things that were taken from the reliquary, the ossuary. Urns of martyrs’ ash. A mappa imhava, a thousand years old, drawn in the Hagian sunlight.’ The name meant something to Sanian; she looked up, eyes wide.
‘A feather from the psyber raven that carried the garland over the catafalque when the White Scars took the Saint home to her rest,’ Wymes said, his voice shaking harder with every word. ‘What did… what have… when you finally see what it means…’
He bit his lips together and pressed a palm against his forehead. Sanian was staring down at her interlaced hands. We made a tableau like that for I don’t know how long until the distant clang of a crew-chime came drifting in from the library vestibule.
‘That’s me,’ I said, meeting their stares, feeling like someone who’d just farted in the middle of a funeral oration. ‘I used your crew station to check in for a D and L summons when I got here. Uh. Sorry.’ Wymes waved the apology away.
‘Do your duty,’ he said. ‘All of us have a duty. Whether or not we… no. Go. Go. Sanian, go with him. From now on, no one enters here without your eyes on them.’
Don’t worry, no offence taken, I thought but didn’t say as I hurried past his wet-eyed gaze. Sanian stayed on my heels until we were out through the doors.
The library vestibule was a solemn space, a high cylindrical chamber whose stone ribs framed frescoes of scholars and scribes, staring disapprovingly down as they held up plaques of scripture for inspection. The crew station that opened off it was considerably humbler and much more to my taste. Plain walls, low ceiling, scuffed plastek furnishings, cupboards along the walls with badly fitting doors, a wash station and a badly painted portrait of the captain against the far wall, over the message cradle. I yanked the reception cord and stood there avoiding Sanian’s stare while distant clanks and wheezes came echoing through the message pipe. Dammit, Mowle, whatever you had to tell me so urgently better be worth it.
‘Is he going to be alright, do you think?’ I asked her eventually, for want of any better way to break the silence.
‘He went out among the procession when the shutters were opened,’ Sanian said. ‘He looked out at the Visage. The sight of it can change people. I have read many accounts in my studies.’
‘You’re not going to go and look at it yourself?’ Her whole posture stiffened and she shook her head violently. I wondered if I’d offended some odd Hagian taboo by asking until I realised she wasn’t offended. She was terrified.
‘I can’t. I can’t. No. Uhh!’
She cried out with shock as the message shell – finally! – clanked out of the pressure-tube behind me. I spun around and grabbed it out of the cradle, cursing and juggling it until the brass cooled enough that I could grip it properly and start wrestling with the cap.
It was as much an excuse to avoid talking to Sanian as anything. It feels like an unworthy thing to admit but I didn’t feel in any shape to hear why the thought of going out to behold the Holy Visage, the whole point of a voyage that would take up to half a year out of her life, suddenly frightened her out of her wits. As it turned out I was going to hear it anyway.
‘You don’t understand,’ she said, in a voice almost as distressed as Wymes’ had been. ‘I saw Hagia saved. I was there! I saw the Doctrinopolis burn and then I saw the light from the tomb. I saw it! I saw that poor soldier take on the Nine Wounds and the ershul burned in the snow. I saw it all!’
‘Good for you. Unstick, damn you.’
‘I saw it happen and I took up a weapon because I thought my way was clear. I stepped off the esholi path but then it was the soldier, not me, and they said it was a machine. Not her light, not her voice. A machine that would have worked for anyone. How was I to know what to believe? I still don’t know what to believe!’
‘That’s, uh…’ What do you say to someone who’s having a fundamental crisis of faith right in front of you? Years of haranguing deckhand crews about sticking to their shift rosters hadn’t prepared me for this.
‘This was going to be my last hope. I came out here to see her face in the stars. I’ve prayed for it every day since we took ship.’
‘Well…’
‘What if I stand in front of the Visage and all I see are stars? What if her face is just imagination? Lines on a map? What if I never hear her? What if it’s empty? All of it? Just empty?’ Her voice was soft like a child’s. Her eyes were on me but I don’t think she really saw me.
I’d been trying to hide behind a cranky, worn-out mask for long enough to get away from her, out of all this craziness so I could just catch my breath. But the mask was slipping. I couldn’t find it in myself to just walk out and leave her like this. I took a few moments to weigh up my words.
‘For whatever it’s worth, Sanian, coming from a tired old man who was supposed to spend this entire voyage down-deck and never even set eyes on the colonnade, let alone look out the windows at the Visage… go and look. Then you’ll know. I suppose the preachers will say that faith is stronger than knowledge, but I say, you’ll know. In a way you don’t know now. Whatever grief that knowledge might bring you if the Visage doesn’t show you what you hope to see, it’ll be something you can heal from. You’ll never heal if you hide in here and spend the rest of your life wondering.’
She didn’t answer me. I bowed and left her. And as I crossed the vestibule the shell finally opened and I was able to read Mowle’s neat little cursive hand on the blue message film inside.
Sir
Body recovered from plasma conduit is not repeat not Esholi Brillin
M
Oh, COME ON.
The whole business had gone to crap. Worse than that. Crap could get piped away, boiled, filtered, the water squeezed back out of it, churned back into the mulch beds to nourish the fungus and beetles whose mash we chewed down most mealtimes. Crap was salvageable. What was there to salvage from this? I wasn’t even back to square one. This mess would see me sliding right back down past square one to who knew where. I was too old to go back to swelter-deck haulage duty. Not that that would matter once the demotion was signed off. I’d work until my hearing went and my back broke and I fell into the machinery and, well, wheels get greased, we all knew the saying. It was how most deckhands expected to go in the end. I supposed I’d been an idiot for thinking that managing to clamber up to a low-tier supervisor’s post meant a chance of dying in bed.
In this cheerful frame of mind, I went shuffling down the colonnade again. I passed an archway into a viewing gallery standing empty for a few minutes between delegations, and I decided it was time I followed my own advice. A quick look up and down the nearest parts of the concourse and then I ducked into the dimness and stood at the enormous portside windows.
I won’t say it wasn’t stirring. But it was stirring just for its own simple n
ature. We almost never got to see out into space, and now here I was not fighting for a spot at a scuffed little porthole but looking through a window-wall so clear it might as well not even have been there, into the depthless black and the blaze of stars. It wasn’t until I heaved in a lungful of air that I realised I’d been holding my breath.
But that was all it was. Even without one of the little printed maps they’d been handing out to the faithful, the lines of the Visage were clear to me. I could see the shape of the face, tilted as if looking up just over my left shoulder. I could make out the curve of the brow and the eyes, nose and mouth; the set of the cheekbones, the angle of the chin. It was startling. I wondered who had first flown out this way, set eyes on these stars from this place and found it. But…
But that was all it was. A striking array of stars, lovely, unforgettable. But I felt no spirit touching mine. I heard no voices, saw no visions, spoke no prophecies. No fire consumed my heart. I wondered if telling Sanian to come here had been the right thing to do after all.
‘Crewman.’ Something hard nudged me in the back.
Two Adepta Sororitas were standing behind me. Orders Militant, armoured in white and black, hung with green silk vestments and icons on golden chains. I had never seen them up close before. They were majestic.
The thing that had poked me in the back was a gun, a boxy, heavy-bored thing that looked as if it’d dislocate my arms if I tried to lift it. It must have been a boltgun; it certainly didn’t look like any firearm I knew.
‘Your place is not here, now,’ the closer Sister said. They were both helmetless, their expressions as cold as the statues out on the colonnade. I nodded, and they stood back to let me pass. I had half expected them to drag me out of there by my collar, but instead, when I turned to bow to them, they both returned it and smiled.
‘Beautiful, isn’t she?’ one of them said, and I found myself smiling back.
‘She is.’
That lightened my spirits enough that I was smiling most of the way back down to my own deck. Until I found Mowle fidgeting outside my compartment door.
‘Remainder of your sleep shift is cancelled, Mister Noverin, sorry. Sorry.’
‘Don’t apologise for what’s not your fault, Mowle. Just tell me the rest of it. There has to be a rest of it.’
‘Mister Yebrett is waiting for you in the Second Medicae. I’m to escort you there with no delay.’
That I had not expected.
‘What the hell’s Yebrett doing in the medicae?’
‘I’m not to tell you, Mister N. He said he wanted to see your face.’
‘You’ve got a gift, Noverin,’ Yebrett said. ‘One you’re honing to perfection, for all that you found it late in life. You are uncovering a gift from the Emperor Himself for spoiling my meals. So you’ll appreciate why I feel no need whatsoever to make your day any more pleasant in return. What? Yes, good, give it here.’
I watched him snatch the little plypress tag from the robed and veiled medicae attendant and press his signet ring to it. There was a click and a hiss as it burned his mark into the tag’s corner, and he held it up for me to see.
‘That is what should have happened hours ago, Noverin. You pull that rubbish’ – he half-turned and gestured to a familiar charred skull sitting in a basket behind him – ‘out of the conduit, apologise to the enginarium for their trouble, bring me the tag to sign off the death and get on with your damn job. I thought you were big enough and old enough to understand how this works. Not go flapping about the high decks stirring up our betters on some wild fantasy about a murdered priest.’
‘Esholi, Mister Yebrett.’
‘What?’
‘The esholi aren’t priests, technically, they’re more a sort of schol–’
‘Are you trying to ruin my next meal as well in advance, Noverin? Because you’re giving me proactive indigestion. You got it wrong, Noverin. I can see you know it. You’ve worked for me for too long for me to not see it. Look at you there, sagging your shoulders and avoiding my eyes. When I realised exactly how badly you’d fouled this up I decided the least I could do for myself to take the edge off was to be there to see your face when you realised it too. Apropos of which, thank you, Mowle, I do know you went and spoiled my lovely surprise today.’ Beside me, Mowle went pale and shrank back behind my shoulder.
‘There’s no call to bully her, Mister Yebrett,’ I said. ‘Or to snap at the medicae. Or anyone except me. Fine. I’ll take it on myself. Just tell me who it turned out to be and then tell me what you want me to do next, and I promise your next meal will be the most peaceful you’ve ever had.’
‘It doesn’t matter who it was, Noverin. That was the first damn thing I tried to tell you when you came panting up the Long Lounge to tell me about this whole squalid business. Go to your quarters and enjoy them while you still have them. I’ll send for you.’
The silence drew out, and drew out. I closed my eyes for a moment to think. And what I mainly thought was: screw it.
‘No.’
‘I beg your pardon, Mister Noverin?’
‘No, that doesn’t fit. You can’t sign off the death because this wasn’t one of your crew. Remember? Everyone was accounted for.’
‘Noverin, if that’s the case then obviously you’ve been even sloppier than–’
‘No!’ I cut him off again and his eyes bulged. ‘No. I’m good at my job, sir, and everyone was accounted for. That’s not one of ours… and by the way, how do we know that’s not Brillin? I’m supposed to stand here and look at my shoes and admit I’m wrong without knowing that? You!’ The medicae jerked in surprise as I stepped forward and jabbed a finger at them. ‘You made out the tag. What name is on there? I want to know!’
The voice from under the blue cloth turned out to be a woman’s, pleasantly husky with a slight Orestean accent.
‘Standard rundown. We filled out the dossier for the remains with information from the recovery site from a crewman… Skosse? And when it was taken up for filing the logister threw a yellow flag that we had to confirm. That’s why your superior is here to sign.’ I didn’t dare look at Yebrett’s face.
‘What kind of flag? That doesn’t make any sense. What’s there about those remains that would snag in the logister?’
Nobody was even trying to answer. I looked from silent, staring face to silent, staring face. Was I going crazy? Was this what it felt like? I ground the heels of my hands against my temples and groaned. Think, Noverin, think!
‘What information was it that triggered the flag?’
‘Wasn’t identified,’ said the woman promptly. ‘Sorry.’
‘Then…’ Deep breath. ‘Then with respect, mamzel, what was it the flag said? Are you able to tell me that?’
‘It just said “Crewmember”. I didn’t have authority to reverse the redaction on the name.’
‘See, Noverin? Crewmember. Not this priest of yours,’ Yebrett added. I held up a finger.
‘Not a priest. Esholi are… No. No, it still doesn’t make sense. How can it be one of ours, this random menial everyone keeps insisting on, if the name is redacted? Since when do we keep them off the books? Since when do we identify–’
I stopped.
‘Mam, you took the extra information my crewman Skosse gave you and added it to the file.’ The veiled head nodded briskly. ‘And that was what snagged in the system and brought a yellow flag down for Mister Yebrett.’ Another nod, from both of them. ‘The information Skosse added was the dimensions of the skull. He told me that. His visor measured it automatically. Fifty centimetres? More than that, I can’t remember the damned number but that’s what it was.’ My hands were rubbing my temples again. Mowle was looking up at me saucer-eyed.
‘I know this,’ I muttered. ‘I know this. This is it, this is what I was missing. The skull! The measurement of the skull! Who has their measurements taken? Who has all their bones measured in advance so a place can be made for them in the ship’s ossuary when they die? Whose names are
struck from the crew records because they’ve surrendered their identities to the ship itself?’
I looked around. Come on, was nobody else going to put it together?
‘The most holy people on the ship! The only ones who’ve truly left their old lives behind and let their faith consume them completely! Forget the passengers, the bishops and canonesses and whatnot, I’m talking about the holiest of the crew! Our own!’
I was shouting now, but I didn’t care.
‘The anchorites! They forsake their name when they enter their cell, they earn a permanent place in the ship, first at their prayers and then in the ossuary when they die! I knew it! I could feel it! Something was so bloody wrong down there!’
I took a gulp of air, stopped waving my arms around and composed myself.
‘Mister Yebrett, if you would like to see me really disgrace myself, then you can help set me up to do it right now. Please summon us an escort – some good strong deckhands would be fine, but armed shipwardens would be even better. Maybe ask if the doctor here would care to join us. A D and L page to the library would be wonderful. And… are we able to call up deeds of passage for a particular name? Including the sponsoring crew member? If you’re authorised to do that, Mister Yebrett, I have a name in mind.’
I was feeling dizzy all of a sudden. Maybe excitement was a young man’s game. But one way or another, the game would be over soon.
And do you know, I almost didn’t think they would go along with it. There was a moment there, surely no more than a moment, although it felt like a whole extra shift slid by while I stood in front of Yebrett and the medicae, when I was sure I’d finally burned through my last chance and I was about to be shackled and marched away. But maybe I’d earned enough credit with Yebrett over all the time I’d answered to him, or I’d reeled off too many oddities for him to be able to just wave away any more, or there was some private caprice of his that I’d never know about. Whatever it was that got him to go along, I was grateful for it.
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