by Danie Ware
And then, a voice.
‘Be still, Sister. You are safe.’
It is a woman’s voice. One that I do not recognise. I try to speak. To fight her. But those hands hold firm and the voice speaks again.
‘Breathe,’ she says. ‘Just breathe.’
Left with little choice, I do as the voice commands me. I breathe. I allow myself to be still. And little by little, my senses return.
Touch, first. The cold floor under my hands and knees. Then sight. Bare steel treadplate, and my own hands, wrapped tightly in blood-speckled bandages. Scent. Incense and blood and the harsh tang of counterseptic. Other sounds filter in. I hear the click and hum of machinery, and the soft murmur of prayer. I am in a hospitaller’s ward. I exhale, slowly.
‘There we are,’ says the voice.
I look up at the owner of the voice. She is of the convents. Non-militant, but a Sister nonetheless. The hospitaller is pale as new marble, clad in robes as white as her hair. I cannot tell the colour of her eyes, because she will not meet mine.
‘You were dreaming,’ she says. ‘That is all.’
I try to tell her that I do not dream. That I haven’t since I was a child. Since before my Sisters and before Adelynn and before the convents. But all that I can make is the shape of the words. A rasp in my throat, like steel on stone.
‘My name is Lourette,’ the Sister Hospitaller says, her voice patient and calm. ‘Let me help you.’
I do not resist as Lourette helps me to my feet and sits me down again on the edge of my cot. This place is not so much a ward as a private room. The walls are clad with whitewashed flakboard and hung with linen drapes. Lourette gives me a plastek cup to drink from. The water is so cold that it makes me cough myself double. Lourette holds out a silvered bowl for me as I spit clots of blood and blackness into it until I can breathe again. When I do, I taste stale air. Recycled. All at once I know that I must be aboard a starship. That I am no longer on Ophelia VII.
At the thought of my home world everything returns to me. The Contemplation. The Last of Days. Losing my Sisters, one by one. I wait for grief to strike me, to sweep over me, but all I feel is emptiness.
‘Are you in pain, Sister?’ Lourette asks.
I wish I were. Pain is honest. It gives you focus. I am not in pain. In its place, all I feel is emptiness. That deceitful nothing. I cannot explain that to Lourette, so I just shake my head and ask a question in return. It takes three attempts, because my throat is so unused to speaking.
‘What ship is this?’
Lourette still does not look me in the eyes. She sets about changing my bloodied bandages with slow and deliberate care. Even that does not hurt.
‘The Unbroken Vow,’ she says. Her voice is soft and patient, with the clipped pronunciation of the convents. ‘It is a Dauntless-class cruiser sworn to the commandery of Canoness Elivia. We are holding at high anchor over Ophelia VII.’
The information sinks in slowly. Canoness Elivia. Like so many of my Order, she was far from Ophelia VII when the Rift opened and the darkness descended.
Very far.
Dread settles over me like a shroud.
‘How long have I been here?’ I ask.
‘You have been under our care for six weeks,’ Lourette says. ‘We kept you dreaming so that you could heal.’
I take a breath that hurts. Six weeks of slumber, as my world burned beneath me. Six. Weeks.
‘Then, the cardinal world?’
I say the cardinal world but I think my home. I steel myself, expecting Lourette to tell me that it is gone. Burned and broken to nothing, like my Sisters. But she doesn’t. Instead, Lourette smiles a small smile.
‘It was spared at the final hour,’ she says.
I remember the thunderclaps. The golden light that I mistook for the God-Emperor’s final mercy. ‘By who?’ I ask.
Lourette stops in her work and makes the sign of the aquila. Her bloody hands begin to shake, and the moment before she speaks seems long and charged, like the quiet before a storm breaks.
‘By Roboute Guilliman,’ she says softly. ‘The God-Emperor’s son is arisen.’
I feel blinded all over again at her words. Unable to catch my breath. My skin begins to burn as though I have a fever. I start to shake, too. From my core outwards.
The God-Emperor’s son.
‘Arisen,’ I say, because it is all that I can say.
Lourette nods. She does not try to prevent me when I pull away to make the sign of the aquila, too.
‘The primarch came from Terra, and brought with him a new crusade to wrest back what has been taken from us by flame and by sword. Countless warriors follow with him. The Adeptus Astartes. The Silent Sisterhood and the God-Emperor’s own Custodian Guard.’ Lourette takes a breath. Another awestruck smile pulls at her scarred face. ‘And our Sainted Sister.’
Her words settle slowly on me. The God-Emperor’s son arisen. The Silent Sisters and the God-Emperor’s watchmen treading the stars. Saint Celestine, returned.
‘It is a miracle,’ I say.
Lourette goes back to removing the bindings around my arms. She still has not looked at me directly. Another long moment passes before she speaks again.
‘I have heard the same word whispered about you, now and then,’ she says.
I blink. My eyelids are still sticking. ‘Why?’
‘Because of how they found you. Ablaze, but alive.’ Lourette finishes unwinding the bandage from my left arm and lets it drop onto a silvered tray in loops. ‘I have never known a soul to be burned the way you were and live, much less heal.’
I look down and see where my skin has run and set again from the touch of the warpfire. In places, I am patchworked to stark white, all of the pigment gone. There is no blood, though.
No pain.
‘And then there is the matter of the mark,’ Lourette says.
‘Which mark?’ I ask, because there are so many.
Lourette finally looks at me, then, and the expression on her face makes me wish she hadn’t. Her limpid eyes are wide with fervour.
‘You do not know,’ she says. ‘Of course you do not know.’
She stops her work and goes to fetch a mirror-glass from one of the equipment trays. She holds it up in front of my face, and I notice that her hands are trembling now too.
‘Do you see?’ Lourette asks.
I take the mirror-glass from her and look at my reflection, and the patchwork that the warpfire has made of my face. All of the pigment is gone from around my eyes and across my cheeks, leaving bright white streaks against my skin that almost look like wings.
‘It is the God-Emperor’s mark,’ Lourette says. ‘A blessing.’
I stare at my reflection. At the shape of the eagle, so clearly writ into my skin. It is the God-Emperor’s mark, just as Lourette says. A blessing.
‘Do you see it?’ she asks.
I nod, because I cannot speak. Because I can see the mark, but I cannot feel it. I cannot feel anything. I am nothing, and no one.
Just a heartbeat, in a hollow shell.
I realise that Lourette is still speaking, her words hurried by zeal.
‘The God-Emperor saw you, Evangeline,’ she says. ‘He sent His son to spare you. Graced you with His mark and His favour.’
I put the mirror-glass face down on the cot and ask Lourette the only question I can think to ask. The only one that matters.
‘And my Sisters?’
Lourette frowns, taken aback by my words, and the implied dismissal in them. ‘They were lost,’ she says. ‘All save for one.’
My thoughts slow to a crawl once more. It is all that I can do to ask her who survived, and Lourette’s frown only deepens when she says the name.
‘Ashava,’ she says.
Lourette is reluctant to let me leave my cot, but I
insist on it. Six weeks of sleep is enough for a lifetime, and I will wait no longer to see my Sister. Lourette uncouples the pain relief and fluids before bringing me a set of robes. I stand, for the first time in weeks. My legs buckle and try to give under my weight, but I refuse to fall. I refuse Lourette’s offer of help.
Stand, Adelynn’s voice says, in my head. Until you cannot.
So I do, because I must. Because I want to see my Sister.
‘Where is she?’ I ask.
Lourette’s frown is still in place. ‘The training halls,’ she says.
I blink, surprised. ‘Then, she is healed?’
‘Ashava lives,’ Lourette says, though that is not what I asked, and then she beckons me to follow her.
We leave the quiet and the sanctity of the Vow’s hospitaller ward behind and go out into the ship proper. The Unbroken Vow is ancient. Ironwork shows through the gilding and plaster all along the vaulted corridors. Candles burn in sconces leaving long, overlapping trails of wax to run down and pool and thicken on the deck floor. Cherubim thrum their artificial wings amongst the rafters and iron supports, playing repeated loops of hymnals through their tinny vox-casters. The arterial corridors are long, and made longer by the slowness of my still-waking limbs, and the constant flow of ship’s crew and priests and others of the Orders. Everywhere I go, there are whispers and sideways glances. I catch sight of one of the ship’s crew making the sign of the aquila as I pass, and it takes all of my self-control not to lash out and put him against the wall.
Eventually, we reach the Vow’s training halls. They are vast and vaulted, made to accommodate dozens of Sisters at any one time, but inside Hall Tertius we find only two, standing alone in the middle of the massive space. The first is another Sister Hospitaller, clad this time in the crimson vestments of the Bloody Rose. The other is Ashava. Looking upon her, I understand Lourette’s answer, because my Sister might indeed live, but she is not healed.
Ashava is clad in loose training clothes that are cut short to mid-thigh and shoulder. Both of her legs are encased in brutal wire and steel support frames that catch the candlelight. Long, ridged scars run down the lengths of her arms and her legs, and her skin is marked with fading bruises. Ashava leans heavily on a pair of gnarlwood crutches, limping slowly towards the Sister Hospitaller. The crutches toll against the exposed decking like funerary bells. As we approach across the training hall floor, the Sister Hospitaller turns. Her augmetic eye glows in the dim light.
‘Sister Lourette,’ she says, and then looks at me. Her human eye widens, just a little. That makes me want to lash out, too. ‘Evangeline,’ she says.
Ashava stops limping, but she still does not turn.
‘Melanya,’ Lourette says, in reply. ‘A word, if I may.’
The Sister Hospitaller nods. As she passes Ashava, she puts her hand on my Sister’s shoulder.
‘Keep strong,’ she says to Ashava. ‘All pain must pass.’
I do not know if Melanya is referring to Ashava’s injuries, or to me. The two Sisters Hospitaller leave the training hall, their boots echoing on the deck. The door slides closed behind them with a thud, and only then does Ashava turn to look at me. It is an awkward, unsteady movement. Her crutches toll against the deck again. She locks her eyes with mine. Her scarified face is still and unreadable. For a moment neither of us says a word. I have known Ashava for the better part of a decade. I have fought and trained and prayed with her, but in that moment, I am unsure of what to do.
I am unsure of her.
Ashava limps over to me slowly and stops, less than an arm’s reach away. This close, I can see the way the frames around her legs are secured by pins that go straight into the bones. All that I can think about is how swift she was before, and it makes me want to weep.
‘Sister–’ I begin, but Ashava cuts me short with a sudden and fierce embrace. Her crutches fall against the deck with a clatter. She falls against me a little, too, without them. I hold her up, and hold onto her, and for the first time since waking in the hospitaller’s ward I don’t feel quite so alone, or quite so empty.
‘It is good to see you, Eva,’ she says in her soft, edgeworlds burr.
‘And you, Sister,’ I say, and I mean it.
Then Ashava lets me go, and I stoop down and give her back her crutches. She leans on them anew, and I can see the relief written plainly on her face. Merely standing is agony for her, now.
‘Do you want to rest?’ I ask her.
She shakes her head. ‘As I recall it, Adelynn bade me to stand.’
A small, sad smile finds its way onto my face. ‘Yes, she did.’
‘And Melanya bids me to walk,’ Ashava says. ‘So, let us walk.’
I nod, and together we walk the training hall deck. I slow my pace to match hers. Neither of us acknowledge it.
‘They were set to take my legs,’ Ashava says. ‘To carve me like a kill and replace the broken parts.’ She shakes her head, her face set in a scowl. ‘They said it would be less pain.’
‘And what did you say?’ I ask her, though knowing Ashava I can guess.
‘That it would be kinder to kill me,’ she growls. ‘That I would stand again on flesh and bone or not at all.’
The answer does not surprise me. The world where Ashava was born is far from the galaxy’s heart. Triumph is dominated by a singularly martial understanding of the Faith that sees them raise warriors without peer. Ashava’s people see the body as an extension of the God-Emperor’s will, scars, wounds and weaknesses all. That is their creed, and even after being taken from there and raised in the convents, she has not forgotten it.
‘They could have gone against my wishes,’ she says. ‘But they didn’t.’
‘Do you think that the Canoness intervened?’
Ashava shrugs. ‘Or perhaps they did not wish to take anything more from me.’
‘Perhaps,’ I allow.
We are quiet for a moment then, accompanied only by the rapping of Ashava’s crutches on the deck.
‘The mark,’ she says, after the moment passes. ‘You truly can see the God-Emperor’s sign in it.’
I cannot find words with which to answer her, so I don’t.
‘It troubles you, doesn’t it?’ Ashava asks.
‘The mark does not trouble me. It is everyone else. They watch and whisper and look to me as though I am blessed. As if I am worthy of praise.’
‘Aren’t you?’ Ashava asks. ‘You bear His mark, Eva. You stand where others have fallen, without the aid of cages or crutches or butchery.’
I stop walking, and so does she. I look at the mess that’s left of her.
‘I am sorry, Sister,’ I say. ‘I meant nothing by it.’
‘Neither did I,’ she says. ‘I do not begrudge my injuries. Things are what He shapes them to be, through blade or clay.’
It is another of the Triumphal creeds. One that Ashava has written into her skin in scars.
‘And what of me?’ I ask her, before I can stop myself. ‘What is He shaping me to be?’
Ashava smiles in a patient sort of way, as she often would when we trained. You must be swifter, Eva. Always swifter.
‘Only two can know that,’ she says. ‘You, and Him.’
The door at the far side of the training hall slides open again. I look, expecting to see Lourette and Melanya returning, but the woman who enters the room is clad for war, in ornate black battleplate. A crimson half-cloak stirs at her back like a bloodied shadow, and a gilded longsword is sheathed at her hip. Her face is dominated by a deep, knotted scar that starts at her throat and ends when it reaches her cropped white hair. That alone is enough to tell me who she is, though we have never met. I duck into a shallow bow and Ashava does the same beside me, though it clearly pains her.
Canoness Commander Elivia shakes her head. ‘Please, Sisters,’ she says as she crosses the room to
stand before us. Elivia’s voice is warm, and war-torn. ‘We bow for no one save the God-Emperor.’
I know that Ashava smiles at her words without having to look.
‘How may we serve, your grace?’ I ask.
‘That is why I have come,’ she says. ‘I must speak with you, Evangeline.’
I nod my head. ‘Of course,’ I say. ‘Though if I may, what is it that you wish to speak of?’
Elivia smiles at me, fractionally. It reminds me of a blade’s edge.
‘The matter concerns a sword,’ she says.
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A Black Library Publication
First published in Great Britain in 2020.
This eBook edition published in 2020 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.
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Cover illustration by Akim Kaliberda.
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ISBN: 978-1-80026-411-3
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