by Dan Abnett
Ten metres.
"Hey! Hey!"
Carl stopped and turned slowly. "What?"
"You want me to get a medicae to check you out, Jagson?"
"No thanks. Just let me catch my breath. I'll be fine."
Another few steps. The smell of the rain. The night air.
Carl was out.
A few at a time, they came back to me in the ruined stack hideaway. Patience and Zael first, followed by Zeph, who'd taken a few extra minutes to conceal his transport in a lockup storage hut.
+You did well.+
Patience nodded, and went into the mouldering bedroom to strip off her ragged clothes and put on something a little more Patience Kys.
"You too, Zael," I said, switching to transponder. The boy wasn't listening. He was trying to peer around the door into the room where Patience was changing.
Wystan Frauka put down his slate, leaned forward, and gently turned the boy's head to face me.
"Adults only, kiddo," he said.
Zael scowled, partly because his view had been deprived, mostly because Frauka had leaned back on the sofa and, under the show of reading his slate, taken a good, connoisseur's eyeful himself.
A kineblade whacked into the seat back beside Frauka's neck and quivered.
"Hey, just checking you were okay, Patti," Frauka said, A second kineblade thumped in beside the first. "Not a Patti. Right," said Frauka, unruffled, and turned back to his read and his latest smoke. The kineblades pulled themselves out and hovered back into the bedroom.
"You did well, Zael." I repeated.
"Did I?"
"How did you feel it went?"
"Okay?" he shrugged.
"You played your part."
"Yeah, like Mr Thonius said. With the faked-up hand prints. Is this what it's like?"
"What?"
"Being part of an inquisitor's warband?"
"Sometimes."
"There wasn't much... war."
"Then thank the Emperor for that." I told him. "Go get yourself some refreshment."
Zael wandered away and found the bags of salt rind and the swoter loaves we'd bought the night before.
Zeph came in, damp with rain.
"Any problems?" I asked him.
He shook his head.
"Were you followed?"
He looked at me as if to question the temerity of such a suggestion.
"Watch the stairwell, please."
Zeph took out his handgun, armed it, and went back out into the dim hallway.
Twenty-eight minutes later, Nayl and Kara arrived. They came in and began to strip off their packs.
"Well done," I said.
"Is Carl out?" asked Kara.
"He's on his way."
"I heard there was a problem," Nayl said.
"Everything's fine. Carl got what we wanted."
Frauka tossed him a lit lho-stick and Nayl caught it in his teeth. "Sweet." Nayl said.
Carl Thonius arrived last. I heard some banter on the stairs, Zeph pretending he didn't recognise Carl and threatening to whale on him.
There was a heated exchange.
"That awful man's a complete frigwit," Carl said when he came in. Truth was, he didn't look like Carl Thonius. Nor did he look like the guard whose visage I had moulded. The slackening had begun, the stroke-like collapse of muscle tension as the effect faded. Carl looked dreadful, and though the process was passing, it was painful as it wore off.
"Holy Throne," said Patience.
"Just don't look at me," Carl said, and wandered into the bedroom.
+You did well, Carl. Really well.+
"Whatever."
Alone in the bedroom, Carl sat down on a creaking chair in front of the dressing mirror and gazed at his face. Tears welled in his eyes as he tugged at the misshapen muscles and tissue with his fingertips.
He knew the suffering would end soon, and he'd get his face back. He tried to take his hands away, but the right hand stayed there, pinching and pulling at the flesh of his face.
He had to grip his right wrist with his left hand to drag it away.
He wanted to feel better. He'd fouled up. He'd been given a chance and he'd spoiled it. He wanted to feel better. There was a way. The way was in his coat pocket.
He knew he couldn't do that here. Not in such an intimate billet.
But the craving...
"Carl?" Patience peered in around the door. "You okay?"
"I'll be fine. Facial transfiguration by psionic manipulation is a complex process, painful, and may take many hours to relax. Four to five hours is the norm, after the initial slackening, though some tics and discomforts may be felt as long as forty-eight hours later."
"The stuff you know," she smiled.
Carl stared at himself in the dirty mirror. "I don't know who I am anymore, Kys," he said.
"Oh, that's just the face thing," she said, and pushed the door shut after her.
"Not what I meant," he said at his reflection. "Not what I meant at all."
SIX
It was a chilly morning, but at least they had been spared rain. The sky over Formal A in the heart of Petropolis lowered like grey smoke. When Deputy Magistratum Dersk Rickens got out of his matt-black transporter in the wide flagstone plaza of Templum Square, the first thing he noticed was the knot of onlookers gathered around the main doors of the grand templum, and the two uniformed officers keeping them out.
Rickens approached. He walked with a steel-shod cane, the legacy of an old line-of-duty injury. He observed the crowd. Mostly worshippers, the sick or the elderly, their sores plastered with faith paper, waiting to get into the grand templum to receive their daily blessings and the food provided by the almoners. But there were temple clerics too, young men in robes of scarlet and purple. They looked upset. Why weren't they being let inside?
The grand templum was an ancient, towering place, though it was dwarfed by the enormous Administry towers around it. It was just one of the tens of thousands of Ecclesiarchy temples and chapels in the wide city, but it was held in particular regard because of its location. It stood at what was popularly regarded as the precise geographical centre point of Petropolis, which made it the axis of all city life and faith. It was here that the primary religious services were held, here that the chief ministers and men of office observed the feast days and holy days, here that the nobility and the highborn were baptised, married and seen to their rest. It was here that the Lord Governors Subsector were inaugurated.
With a nod to the uniforms, Rickens went through the crowd and into the templum. He loved it in here: the delicious cool, the tobacco darkness, the coloured windows, the sense of boundless space. The domed vault was so high that the images of the God-Emperor and his primarchs painted up there were only half-visible in the candlelight.
Rickens advanced down the nave, his cane tapping against the marble tiles. He was just a tiny speck in that immensity. When his wife had passed away, he'd come here a lot, to sit and mourn in the tranquility.
Junior Marshal Plyton suddenly appeared at a door in the west end and hurried down to him the moment she saw him.
"Morning, sir. Sorry to call you in."
"Something you can't handle?"
"Something I think you should, sir."
Maud Plyton was a dark-haired woman in her early twenties, her slightly thickset frame curiously at odds with her delicate features. The functional duty uniform and harness she wore were not flattering to her build.
Rickens thought highly of her. She was a sharp-witted and extremely capable officer. It worried him that she thought this was something she couldn't deal with herself.
"Particulars?" he asked as they started to walk towards the west end.
"A senior cleric of the templum, Archdeacon Aulsman, has died."
"In here?"
"No, sir. In the old sacristy, actually, but I thought we should close the entire place until we've checked over everything."
"And what's the answer to the question?
" Rickens said. Plyton smiled. Rickens was the head of the Department of Special Crimes, the smallest and most underfunded of the hive's Magistratum divisions. Their remit was essentially to investigate anything that did not fit into the procedural scope of the other departments. They got the odd, the weird, the nonsensical and, most often, the downright boring wastes of time nobody else wanted to be bothered with.
"The question," was what Rickens always asked his officers. "Why us? Why has this been given to Special Crimes?"
"Because we don't know what sort of crime it is, or even if it is a crime." Plyton said. "The beat marshals who were first on the scene called it in to us because they didn't know who else to vox."
"I see."
"There's also the sensitivity issue, sir," said Plyton. "That's why I sent for you. The suspicious death of a senior cleric in what is, let's face it, the most revered sacred building in the hive. I thought we should be seen to be dealing with it seriously."
Smart woman, Rickens thought. They passed through the west entrance, and out along a wide exterior cloister to the door of the old sacristy. Though now regarded as a side chapel and annexe of the grand templum, the sacristy was actually an entirely separate building. It predated the templum itself by nearly three centuries, and had actually been the city's original high church in the early years. As Petropolis expanded and grew, the sacristy was deemed too slight and small to properly serve a thriving hive-state, and the grand templum had been raised beside it, eclipsing it and turning it into just one of the many buildings - dormitories, almshouses, beneficent chapels and church schools - that clustered around the grand templum's skirts.
They entered the sacristy. Though far smaller than the grand templum, it was still an impressive vault. The narrow dome was painted with gilt figures against a white field and this, together with the deep, clear-glass windows, made the place seem much lighter and brighter than the great temple.
But it also showed its great age, and the way it had been neglected in favour of its more splendid neighbour. Plaster peeled, and there were patches of damp on the limed walls. The stone flooring was worn, and the slabs cracked and uneven.
Rickens saw the scaffolding at once. It was hard to miss it, especially because of the man hanging by the neck from the upper platform.
"That the reverend cleric?" asked Rickens. "Or is there something you're not telling me?"
"That's him," Plyton said. "We left him in situ while we covered the scene. Medicae mortus and forensic fysik are waiting to move in."
"He hanged himself," Rickens said.
"He hanged to death, yes," replied Plyton. "More than that, we don't know. Suicide, murder, accident..." She shrugged.
The scaffolding was a huge structure that reached right up into the bowl of the dome. Pews had been cleared aside to accommodate it. Drip sheets had been stretched out, and there were piles of unassembled scaffolding, along with artist's equipment and pails of paint and lime. Two more of Rickens' junior marshals were present, Broers and Rodinski. Broers was standing beside a long-haired young man in paint-spattered overalls who was sitting on a pew.
"What do we know?" Rickens asked.
"The sacristy is undergoing cleaning and restoration, sir," said Plyton. "Archdeacon Aulsman was responsible for supervising and approving the work."
"Who's the young man?"
"A limner. Name's Yrnwood. Part of the restoration team working on the dome. He's eager, very skilled, I think, loves his work. He came in early this morning, to put in a few extra hours. It seems he found something up there, sir. When Aulsman looked in to see how he was getting on, Yrnwood took him up the scaffolding and showed him what he'd found. And then..."
"Then?"
"Yrnwood's not making much sense. Aulsman was troubled, apparently. Upset. Before Yrnwood understood what was happening, the archdeacon had fallen off the scaffolding. Either he got tangled in a trailing rope on the way down, or it was already around his neck. Anyway, here we are."
"And you make of it what?" Rickens asked her.
"Like I said. A nasty accident. An unconventional suicide. Or someone - and the fingers would point at Yrnwood - killed him."
Rickens looked around the sacristy again. There was something about the place that had always made him feel uncomfortable. In the days immediately after his wife's passing, he'd come here first, assuming the sacristy would be more private and soothing than the grand templum. But for all its lime-wash white and glowing gilt, it had seemed oppressive. Enclosing. After a few visits, he'd taken to sitting in the umbran shadows of the grand templum instead.
"If Aulsman killed himself, we'll soon know," Rickens said.
"I've already got Limbwall running background checks," Plyton said. "Trying to turn up any private troubles."
"Tell him to be thorough. Secret debts. Hidden illness. The usual things, up to and including shameful secrets involving altar boys or dining hall waitresses."
"Of course."
"Thorough, but circumspect, Plyton. I want to find secrets, not create a juicy scandal."
"Sir."
Rickens tapped his way over to Broers and the young man. The young man was very handsome, in a wild, artistic way. Long, agile fingers, long hair romantically flecked with dots of paint. A long face, narrow and bony, with the sort of stark cheekbones Rickens had last seen on himself in his graduation pict. Magistratum Induction, class of seventy-two. Two hundred and seventy-two.
I'm getting old, Rickens thought.
"Rickens, Special Crime. What can you tell me, Master Yrnwood?"
The young limner looked up. His eyes were wet with tears, and he was shaking. "He just fell off."
"Why did he fall?"
"He was upset. I'd showed him what I'd found. It surprised me too, of course. But when he saw it, he... he just went to pieces. He was shouting these things I didn't understand and-"
"What had you found, Master Yrnwood?"
"The other ceiling, sir."
Rickens looked up at the dome and then back down at the restorer. "Other ceiling?"
Yrnwood swallowed. "I've been working on the dome for weeks now. Replacing the gilt where the damp had got to it. It's bad in places. You have to lie on your back on the scaffold and work above you. It's tiring on the arms."
"I bet."
"Some parts have just collapsed. I mean, the lime plaster's like wet paper, and just hanging off. There was a particularly bad bit up there."
The limner rose and pointed to a shadowy black stain on the roof just above the golden shoulder of Saint Kiodrus.
"It was really going, with the recent rains, so I came in early to try and seal it before it spread. I got up there, and it just came away."
Rickens saw a splattered mess of old plaster and shredded mulch on the sacristy floor under the scaffolding.
"I thought for a second the whole dome was going to fall on me." Yrnwood went on. "Then I saw the hole. It's quite big. A hole right through the dome. So I got a lamp and looked up through it."
"What did you see, Master Yrnwood."
"The other roof, like I said. This dome is a false ceiling. There's a cavity up there, and beyond it. There's a whole other dome about two metres above it. It's painted. I mean, the frescos are beautiful. So very old. There's no record of it. I mean, it must have been hidden up there for centuries. Centuries! Why would they cover something like that over? Why doesn't anyone know about it?"
"This is what you showed the archdeacon?"
Yrnwood nodded glumly. "He was intrigued. Excited, when I told him. He climbed up, and borrowed my light. Looked through. Then he simply went... mad."
"Describe mad."
"He came back out of the hole, and first off he was just murmuring and shaking. Then he started shouting, and threw the lamp at me. I ducked. I didn't want to fall. Next thing I knew-"
"He was dead."
Yrnwood nodded.
Rickens looked around at his juniors. "Anyone else taken a look?"
Broers and
Rodinski shrugged. "Not yet, sir." Plyton admitted.
"Maud," Rickens said. "There's no way in the world I'm going to get up there. With my hip."
Plyton nodded. Rickens only called her Maud when he really needed her. She stripped off her gloves, unhooked her helmet from her belt, tossed the gloves inside it and handed it to Broers. Then she slid out her power maul and gave that to him too.
"Be careful," Rickens said.
"I've a head for heights," she grinned.
"That's not actually what I mean." Rickens muttered.
Plyton started up the scaffold ladder. The entire structure trembled slightly as she went. The lashed ladders zigzagged up the scaffolding frame.
The air had become very cold by the time she reached the top platform. The last part of the climb had taken her right up past Aulsman's body, so close she had looked into his bloodshot eyes and seen the swollen, mauve flesh of his throttled face. His body had begun to pendulum slightly from the vibrations of her ascent.
Maud Plyton had no head for heights at all, but she was damned if she'd let her beloved superior down. The floor of the chapel was so far away now, the figures looking up at her were the size of dolls.
"Crap," she whispered, as she finally dared to rise to her feet on the top platform. So high up. The platform boards did not quite meet, and she could see the drop between them. That was so much worse. That, and the vibration.
Look up, she told herself. The dome was just above her face. What had looked splendid and golden from the ground was mouldering and rotten close up. She could smell the decay, see the gilt tissue peeling like scabs from the blind faces of disintegrating worthies. Saint Kiodrus' face had discoloured so much that it looked as dark and dead as the archdeacon's.
Left hand out for balance, Plyton walked along the boards, plucking her service stablight from her belt and switching it on. The tight bright lance shone like a las-beam in the cool gloom.
She saw the hole, the mucky, blackened puncture in the ceiling. The smell of rot was more intense here. Old air, stagnant like water that had stood too long. The smell wafted out of the hole.
