by Dan Abnett
The windows were all locked. Peering out, I felt sure I was capable of climbing down the face of the mission house, but it was not an option. To get out, I’d have to break a window, and that would bring people running. I would not get down the face of the building in broad daylight without being detained.
I sighed, and ate more of the bread and cheese.
I considered why the Ecclesiarchy had involved themselves in my business. If my value was simply as a blank, then the Church should have no real difficulty acquiring one through other means. Pariahs are rare, but not impossible to find. The ecclesiarchs had no reason to steal one from the Ordos.
It was possible that neither Blackwards nor the Church knew who they were dealing with. By its very nature, the purpose and business of the Maze Undue was a secret. It was conceivable that neither party realised that the Holy Inquisition was involved. Perhaps they believed the Maze Undue was part of a darker, less legal, less wholesome operation.
But there were too many mysteries. If Blackwards and the Church suspected that the Maze Undue was part of an illegal operation, why were they involving themselves in it? Was there corruption with the Ecclesiarchy in Queen Mab? It wasn’t unheard of in the history of the Imperium, but it was a serious matter. If they found out they were revealing their leanings to an agent of the Inquisition…
Other things bothered me greatly. The words and terms they had used, such as the King, the programme, ‘the Eight’. Lupan had indiscreetly acknowledged that Blackwards knew of the Cognitae, and that said society was involved in the downfall of the Maze Undue.
My best guess was that I had been swept up in the fall-out of some significant Ordo operation that the Maze Undue had been part of, and which the Secretary and Mam Mordaunt had not made an account of to any of us. With them gone, there was no ready source of data to fill in the details, but it seemed likely that the Maze Undue had been involved in some disguised form, so that others perceived the Maze Undue to be something that it was not. It seemed to me that the Secretary had been employing some strategy wherein the Maze Undue and its candidates were performing the roles of a clandestine secret society, perhaps even a heretical one, in order to draw out and destroy a real one.
If I was lucky, and I was brought into the person of the Pontifex Urba, I hoped I might make a judgement of him and, if I felt him true, make representations to him by which the Inquisition could be contacted directly and an ending made of the whole sorry matter.
If he was true.
Of course, I would have been a fool not to consider other possible interpretations of recent events, no matter how unpalatable they might be, and I was no fool.
But some of those notions were so dark they distressed me, because in order for them to be the authentic version of things, I would have to re-understand almost everything I had been brought up to know.
CHAPTER 23
The Basilica Saint Orphaeus
Lupan took me down.
I had washed, and dressed in the clothes he had given me. The body-
glove was a reasonable fit, and the dress was adequate. The robes made me feel like a monk or novitiate, and Lupan insisted I wore the hood up. The brown wool was coarse and rough. It was good at least to be out of the confining and now quite dirty garments of Laurael Raeside. I felt I had put her aside too.
He took me from the room along a considerable hallway with a painted ceiling, golden chandeliers and a stone-dressed floor. The hallway had doors on either side, all of them closed. There was no one else around, and the cool air smelled faintly of incense. In the distance, I could hear the bells chiming in the high towers, calling the faithful to worship.
I had considered overpowering Lupan when he came back to collect me, but he brought one of the bodyguards with him, one of the men. I did not want to undertake that kind of fight.
At the end of the hallway, a great circular staircase brought us down two floors to a vestibule where Balthus Blackwards was waiting. With him were the other three bodyguards, and two robed confessors of the Adeptus Ministorum.
One of these, whose name I learned was Hodi, looked me up and down, and lowered my hood to consider me.
‘This is what your King has produced?’ he asked, doubtfully. He was an unattractive, grizzled man with a blotchy face and poor teeth. His robes were pristine white, and decorated with gold thread and stoles of scarlet satin.
‘Not my King, father,’ replied Blackwards.
Hodi shot a glance at him then went back to his consideration of me.
‘She is more than she looks,’ Blackwards continued. ‘The programme has been refined over a long period. They know what they are doing. This is a very rare opportunity for–’
Hodi looked at Blackwards again.
‘Always selling, my son. You are always selling. Rid yourself of the habit here. This is a house of the divine. Money has no function here. We are about the most illustrious work now. We will find a destiny for this child that the King, for all his vaunted intellect, could not have begun to imagine.’
He paused.
‘Don’t look so stricken, Blackwards. You will be amply rewarded, as per our agreement. It simply pains me to deal with souls like you who do not see the reward in this endeavour for its own sake, beyond mortal desserts.’
Blackwards nodded. It was clearly hard for him to appear humble.
‘Will you be able to procure others for us?’ the other confessor asked.
‘I believe so,’ said Blackwards. ‘We are making investigations.’
‘Maybe she knows where another can be found?’ the other confessor asked, looking at me.
‘I do not,’ I said squarely.
Blackwards looked dark. The confessors glanced at one another and smiled.
‘Is she cuffed?’ Hodi asked. ‘Controlled?’
‘She has a limiter cuff,’ said Blackwards.
Hodi reached out, took my wrist and raised it to expose the cuff. It was set to live. He examined it and then let go of my wrist.
‘Do not reset this,’ he told me directly. ‘Your blankness will not be appreciated by those gathered today in the brass room. Do you understand me?’
I nodded.
Hodi looked at his fellow confessor.
‘I will escort her,’ he said. ‘You may bring the others after us.’
He turned to lead me away.
‘I will keep her in my sight until our business is concluded!’ Blackwards exclaimed, stepping forwards.
Hodi turned and gave him a dismissive look.
‘Do you accuse the Church of attempting to swindle you?’ he asked. ‘You think we would trick you?’
‘She remains my merchandise until the deal is done,’ said Blackwards.
‘She is not merchandise, Balthus,’ said Hodi. ‘She is the possibility of salvation from that which persecutes us all. Be advised, my son, we have tolerated your involvement because you are in a position to assist us, but you are lucky to have been allowed to come this far.’
Blackwards looked suitably quelled. I felt sure I saw a tiny flicker of satisfaction on Lupan’s face.
Confessor Hodi took me by the arm and walked me towards a massive set of golden doors, which were richly encrusted with bas-relief carvings showing the glory and magnitude of the God-Emperor. Seeing him approach, attendants opened the doors for us. The attendants were wardens of the precinct staff, docents and junior clerics who tended the shrine and guarded it from thieves. They wore pale grey robes and masks painted with the likenesses of saints.
The doors opened onto a great marble chamber, and let sound and bustle and light out at us. The chamber was actually an enclosed bridge that linked the mission house to the mighty basilica. Flights of steps ran up from the street level several floors below to allow public access, and the piered crossing was lined with tall columns, each one fashioned into the likeness of a saint or virtue. Daylight flooded in from both sides through the high spaces. There was a great but distant hiss of voices. We crossed the space,
threading through the groups of worshippers and pilgrims.
I felt apprehension. The Basilica Saint Orphaeus was one of the largest and most important structures in Queen Mab, the focus of the Imperial Faith in this corner of the world, and a noted shrine. I had not been there for many years, and I had forgotten its majesty. We were crossing to what was just one of its many portals. The view from the bridge showed me other bridges on either side of us crossing to other portals. The vast bulk of the basilica rose above us like a cliff, and we came into its shadow.
Inside, there was a greater sense of space, and darkness, and hush. The voices of the pilgrims around us dropped respectfully. My mind reeled at the thickness of the walls we passed through, the height of the ceiling. There was a sepulchral gloom, pierced by the tiny lights of hanging candelabras. The space took our voices, and gave them back as meek echoes.
This was but a chamber of admittance, where pilgrims could wash their hands and feet in stone basins of cool water, and prepare their minds for contemplation. Hodi did not pause here, but drew me on. We approached the doorway facing the bridge entrance, which was the yawning mouth of a vast, bas-relief face that made up the wall. The sightless eyes gazed upwards in supplication. The face looked a little like it was howling, but a little more like it was open-mouthed in metaphysical rapture. The wall and the face were of beaten copper and, in the fustian gloom, I did not see what their form was until we were close to them, and only then, I realised I was about to be devoured.
Inside the doorway mouth, we reached a bank of moving staircases, four of them, side-by-side, each set wide enough to take three persons standing abreast on a step. We took the left-hand one. The intricate and ancient treads were made of gold and brass, and the moving handrails were sleeved in segmented ivory. The apprehensive hands of the faithful had polished the bone to a dull gleam.
We stepped onto the staircase, and then let it carry us. We stood side-by-side as it solemnly bore us down into the massive interior of the basilica.
Have you been there? To Saint Orphaeus? I know many have. Thousands of pilgrims visit, every year. I know there are great buildings in other cities and on other worlds, but it is the first great Imperial building I ever saw, and it has stayed in my mind as such. The scale is numbing. In the main part of the structure, under the dome, there is an expanse of floor like a city plaza, on which the crowds of pilgrims and worshippers gather like patterns of lichen. Half of that area is given over to rows of pews, thousands of rows, where the faithful may sit and pray and observe the high altar. The dome is so vast and so high, a microclimate weather pattern of clouds forms under the apex. On all sides of the main part, pillared doorways admit crowds from the street, and banks of moving staircases like the one we were standing on carry them down from the adjoining buildings. Each bank of staircases emerges from another open mouth like the orifice through which we had entered, but these mouths belong to faces that are larger, and bright with gold leaf, and have huge sun-ray headdresses. The basilica walls are composed of such giant faces: the awestruck, ethereal humans out of whose mouths the staircases flow, and, alternating between them, the sublime visages of stylised visors, the aspects of the Adeptus Astartes.
Noise is the vast hush of a filled emptiness, an open space where voices are diminished by the distance. Thousands of people are speaking down below, and choirs are singing, and pilgrims are praying, but the noise is reduced to a background static by the immensity, and held inside a veil of echo. There is a foggy, celestial light, like golden lamps burning on a vaporous day.
The domed main space encircles the altar end, which is a gigantic canyon of steep organ pipes and choir stalls leading down in a dramatic defile to the high platform and the thrones of the exalted. It is looking down a sheer and impenetrable ravine towards the rising sun, a dark gorge of pipes and sharp pillared cliffs facing the monumental light of day.
‘I am told your name is Alizebeth,’ the confessor said as we descended.
‘Yes, sir,’ I replied.
‘I urge you to cooperate, Alizebeth,’ he said. ‘Answer his questions. Be courteous. His manner can be strange.’
I felt that he was trying to be kind, trying to prepare me for what might be a difficult situation.
‘When you say “strange”, sir…’
‘I mean that the weight of faith weighs upon men such as he. His mind is oftentimes elsewhere, involved in the invisible symmetries of devotion. You may find him distant.’
I nodded.
‘There may be testing. For that we will go to the brass room. He will want you to be tested, and the mediators will want to watch him test you.’
‘Mediators?’
‘Do not trouble yourself about it,’ he said.
‘I wish to please and serve the holy father as my Emperor,’ I said. ‘I can know that better if I understand what he needs me to do.’
He looked at me, surprised.
‘You urged me to cooperate,’ I said.
He shrugged and nodded.
‘The mediators represent the interests of a party that is collaborating with the Sancour diocese. They will be present, but you will not see them.’
‘Because they wish to remain anonymous?’
‘Yes, and because they are not–’ He stopped, thought better of it, and said, ‘Yes, let that be the reason.’
I was quite sure he had been going to say, ‘Because they are not easy to behold.’
The staircase finally brought us to the open floor of the basilica and we stepped off. Wardens in saint masks bowed as the confessor passed. Pilgrims lay face-down on the flagged floor, arms spread, foreheads on the cold stone. Horns blew from one corner of the place, and a hollow voice boomed from another. It seemed to me as though several services and ceremonies were being conducted simultaneously under one roof. I glanced up at the yawning faces that surrounded us, gold like angels, immense as the sky, the staircases gliding down from their lips like the tongues of lizards.
Hodi led me to the pews. It was quite a long walk. Not only was the place so large that multiple services were taking place, it was so large that many functions were co-existing, as in a commercia or market. Here, a group of pilgrims stood in prayer around a stone plaque on the floor commemorating some lost person of note. There, a warden led a party on a guided tour of the frescoes. Here, a row of mothers brought their children to a font to be baptised. There, a leper begged for alms. Here, choristers in white robes ran to catch up with their preacher. There, a naked man stood on a stone block to demonstrate his devotion.
Across from us, pilgrims were threading into the shrine chambers under the staircases. Behind us, in one section of the pews, a preacher conducted a service of deliverance for a group of Imperial Guardsmen. They were dressed in red, with black hoods on their caps to show respect for the dead they were honouring. To our right, a deacon on a small wooden podium was reciting a lesson for a gathered crowd. To our left, a group of children from the mission’s scholam progenium sat on the floor around their master as he instructed them in the observances.
The last sight made me sad, for it all too strongly reminded me of another school.
Hodi gestured for me to sit in an empty pew. I sat. Two rows ahead of me, a woman was sobbing and hugging a swaddled child to herself. A row behind, an old man sat staring at a worn medal that showed the God-Emperor of Mankind.
‘Wait here,’ said Hodi, and walked off in the direction of the altar. In less than a minute, he was just a speck among specks, dwarfed by the golden angels that supported the oratory platform, which in turn were dwarfed by the polished black tree trunks of the organ pipes.
I waited, obediently. It occurred to me to run, but it was a very great open space, and there were too many potential enemies disguised among the bustling thousands around me. So I waited. An old man, his face, neck and upper spine gnarled by shiftlag palsy, came and sat at the end of my pew. He leaned forwards, resting his elbows on the pew in front, and started to pray. For his own mortal r
epair, I imagined. I felt the wooden seat under me vibrate with the tremors of his neurally devastated body. A girl took a place three rows ahead of me. She sat gazing at the high altar, her head on one side in contemplation. Without looking, she mortified the flesh of her left forearm with iron thorns bound around her right hand. Prayer drones buzzed around the pews, flashing gospel quotations on their sizzling brown screens. One was a large model formed by two golden mechanical cherubs supporting a gilt-framed screen between them, like an airborne version of some ornate over-mantle mirror. The beaming mechanical cherubs took it in turns to squeal ‘Regard! Regard!’ as they swung the screen from pilgrim to pilgrim. They reminded me too much of Blackwards’s frightful dolls.
I looked away. The confessor was taking a long time. I began to wonder if Hodi was more sympathetic to my cause than I had first appreciated. Was he deliberately delaying his return? Was I supposed to run for it while he was gone? Would he come back and be dismayed to find me still here?
I looked around. A man had sat down in the pews across the aisle, almost level with me. He had a large, powerful build, and was dressed in black. He was not a young man: his scalp was bald, and his craggy face showed the signs of old scars, but his bearing was noble and his demeanour grave. There was a power to him. I imagined he was a high-ranking veteran officer of the guard, a general. He had that air. His long, heavy coat was black, but it was shot through with green thread and had an elegant golden trim. He sat stiffly, as if he was somehow crippled, or his body was surgically braced.
As I looked at him, he looked at me. It was the oddest thing. He reacted, yet he did not react. His expression did not in any way change to show surprise or interest or contempt or any other thing. But his eyes showed me something. He was astonished by me. It was recognition, and there was genuine pain in that recognition. He was quite taken aback by the sight of me.
