Horusian Wars: Resurrection

by John French

  Yasmin shivered, but held herself poised.

  ‘We wish to help you, but we wish you to help us also.’

  ‘Oh?’ said Viola. ‘With what?’

  Yasmin shook her head.

  ‘Your request has caused,’ she paused; considered, ‘certain matters to be discussed by the Consanguinity. There are,’ another pause, ‘familial matters involved, you understand? Complex matters that Yeshar must see resolved.’

  ‘Without knowing what they are, we cannot agree to anything,’ said Viola, ‘and, without you giving us what we want, then we are left with you refusing a direct request from the Inquisition.’

  ‘I cannot explain the matter to you,’ said Yasmin. ‘There are aspects of it that I am not privileged to know. So the first condition is that you follow me now, so that the matter can be explained.’

  Cleander shook his head.

  ‘I don’t like it,’ he said. Viola looked at him, and caught the hardness in her brother’s eye. Be careful, her look said, these are not creatures to be trusted even a little.

  Viola almost smiled at the moment of mutual understanding.

  ‘I don’t like it either,’ said Viola. ‘No. The answer is no. Whoever can explain this complexity, and give us what we need, can come to us.’

  ‘I am afraid that is not possible,’ said Yasmin. Her hands were shaking now, Viola noticed, almost vibrating like plucked harp strings.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because Heir Apparent Livilla has not moved from her chamber in three centuries.’ Yasmin stepped back and motioned at the door, which slid into the walls without a sound. ‘Please, follow me. She waits to speak to you.’

  Enna spun as the doors to the chamber opened. The muzzles of combat shotguns looked back at her. Figures in white and blue carapace flowed through the doors, fanning out to cover every corner of the room. Her hands twitched towards her own weapons but she did not draw. Covenant remained by the shelves which covered each of the room’s towering walls. He held a leather-bound volume open in his hands. Severita stood three paces from him, still and watching. The light of a setting sun poured through the high windows, fire orange and bruised violet.

  ‘Absolute authority does not remove the value of courtesy.’

  The woman who followed the voice was swathed in black and daubed with gold. A high, elaborately crested helm rose above a wrinkled face. A pair of bright eyes scanned the room as she strode forward, augmetic bracing clacking with each step. A golden two-headed eagle spread its wings from the top of the staff in her right hand, its claws clutching the scales of justice. The base of the staff tapped the floor with each of her steps. Authority and raw, impatient willpower radiated from her. Judge Orsino stopped in the middle of the room. Her jaw shifted as though she was chewing. The wrinkles of her face shifted into deeper patterns of age.

  ‘Your honour,’ said Covenant, closing the book and replacing it on the shelf.

  Orsino breathed out, gave a slight shake of her head, and sighed.

  ‘I have a cult of witch-addled fanatics setting fires that burn across half of this world, a global riot in the making, and a governor who thinks the best way of coping with it all is to close the doors and hope it goes away,’ she paused. ‘And something tells me that none of these things are what has brought about this reunion.’

  Covenant stepped away from the side of the room, his hands crossed behind his back, the grey of his unmarked robes shifting to dark red as the light of the setting sun caught them. Shotgun muzzles tracked him.

  ‘I need your knowledge,’ he said.

  Orsino’s mouth twisted, though Enna could not tell if it was a sneer or a smile.

  ‘Leave us,’ said Orsino, glancing at one of the Arbites. ‘Secure this room. No one disturbs us.’ The troopers lowered their weapons and withdrew, moving like components of finely set cogwork. Only a diminutive figure in purple and black robes remained at the judge’s side, shoulders bowed under the weight of a clicking auto-scribe, which was spooling parchment onto the floor. The doors to the chamber closed, and Enna heard a series of heavy thumps as bolts slid into place. She felt herself tense. She did not like the sudden feeling that they had been confined. Orsino glanced at the robed figure.

  ‘Please stop scripting my words, Galbus,’ she said, ‘and disable any data-recording devices. This is not a conversation that the Adeptus Arbites will want remembered.’

  She looked back at Covenant.

  ‘No Josef?’ she said. ‘Surely he can’t have passed to the Emperor’s grace.’

  Covenant shook his head.

  ‘He lives. He is aboard the ship we travelled on.’

  Orsino nodded.

  ‘Good. I always thought that the jaws of death would spit him out if they tried to chew on him.’ Her gaze moved to Enna and then to Severita, eyes glinting and clear. ‘So these two are new – tough and sly, and tough and cruel, but which one is which?’

  She smiled, and then flinched. A spasm of pain pinched the wrinkles tight on her face. She waved a hand and Galbus stepped forward to take the eagle-topped staff from her. She let go of it, and reached up to the helm.

  ‘Help me with this, girl,’ she said. Enna hesitated, uncertain. ‘Yes, you, come here. Trust me, I am not going to use it as an opportunity to try to kill you or your master. Would have done that when I walked in, if I was feeling that angry or stupid.’ Enna bristled, then moved forward and helped unfasten the headdress from the servo bracing around the judge’s collar, pulling it from Orsino’s head. Orsino straightened. Beneath the tall helm, her hair was a cropped layer of iron grey.

  ‘One of the lesser-known torments of authority,’ she said, nodding at the crest, and rolling her shoulders. The augmetic bracing beneath her robes whirred with the movement. She moved to the black marble desk that sat across the largest set of windows. Enna thought the old judge was going to sit on the high backed chair behind the desk, but instead she leaned against the desk and crossed her arms. Enna almost laughed. For a second, the image of the judge leaning casually against a bar in a hive drinking hole filled her mind with perfect clarity.

  ‘You know what is happening?’ asked Orsino. She looking at Covenant, and raised an eyebrow. ‘Half of the worlds this side of the Veil Stars are burning. Madness and rebellion are crawling out from their holes beneath the light of the stain across the stars. I have reports that say the Techrachs on Prion dumped the output of their chem-stills into the water supply of every major settlement on the planet. They killed themselves at the same time, although less painfully than the end they imposed on their people. Vox-hailers across the world shouted that they were saving their world from the “three monarchs of night”. The astropath that interpreted the message expired while receiving it. On Helix an army of pyro-cultists has turned the city buried under the southern pole into a furnace. Five billion souls turned to ash. On Kret every first born soul vanished in a single night. No traces. No bodies. That was yesterday. There are more, from across Caradryad. I could go on…’ she paused, sighed, shook her head. ‘But of course you know this. It’s just not why you are here, is it?’

  Covenant pulled the venom crystal blade from a slit in his robe, and set it carefully down on the black marble desk. The pale crystal looked like frosted glass against the dark surface. Orsino looked at it, eyes flicking along its length for a long moment.

  ‘Well,’ she breathed, ‘what a nasty thing. You know what it is?’

  Covenant gave a small shake of his head.

  ‘Only what it does,’ he said.

  ‘Kill, that is what it does,’ said Orsino. ‘Venom crystal, lethal in all kinds of ways.’ She reached out and picked up the blade by its leather bound grip. ‘Rare too. It’s not naturally occurring – it’s grown. Not the kind of thing you just find, or that you buy from even the most subtle shadow trader.’ She flicked the blade into the air. It spun, the crystal blur
ring as it fell. Enna felt herself tense. The old judge caught it, and held it still in front of her eyes.

  ‘It’s from Iago,’ said Orsino, ‘from the catacomb warrens under the furnace cities. The water from the upper strata used to pull all kinds of things out of the tox-zones, and then trickle down to harden in the dark. Thousands of years, thousands of litres of water and poison, to make something that can take life with a single cut, or give nightmares with a scratch. All depending on where in the warrens it came from.’ She looked at the blade. The milky crystal was catching the light of the setting sun, its splintered edges sparkling red. ‘Nasty thing, as I said. Who did you get it from?’

  ‘A dead man,’ he said.

  Orsino laughed.

  ‘You always were secretive,’ she said, replacing the blade on the desk. ‘I was just asking because whoever it was must be the last of their kind.’

  Covenant frowned.

  ‘There was a cult, of course,’ said Orsino. ‘Called themselves the Renewed. Lived down there in the dark warrens of Iago, would take people from the higher stratas above and remake them.’

  ‘Remake?’ said Enna.

  Orsino looked at her, eyes glinting.

  ‘Made them no longer themselves. At least, that is what the reports said. People would vanish and then turn up again, but not be themselves. Never enough of a problem to become a real problem, of course. Or so I thought. They never threatened the planet’s output. Murder and abduction are not crimes against the Imperium,’ she shrugged, ‘so I never went to prosecute them.’

  ‘But you remembered them,’ said Covenant.

  ‘I remember every little seed of darkness I come across,’ said Orsino, and smiled, but there was sadness, not pride in her eyes. ‘That’s why you came here.’

  ‘You said whoever this came from must have been the last of their kind,’ said Covenant. ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I must have been wrong in my judgement,’ said Orsino. She looked at the setting sun, and frowned. She looked at Enna, and waved her forward, dipping her head to receive the tall crested helm. Enna lowered it into place and heard the servo braces lock. Judge Orsino straightened, any illusion of being anything other than the manifest instrument of the Emperor’s justice gone as she took her staff of office from the hunched Galbus. She took a step away from the desk, and then turned to look at Covenant. ‘I must have been wrong, because a decade ago one of your peers went to Iago and purged the Renewed to the last. Not even ashes left to mark the deed.’

  Covenant’s stillness had hardened.

  ‘Which inquisitor?’ he said.

  Orsino frowned, and gave a small shake of her head.

  ‘Talicto,’ she said, after a pause. ‘Inquisitor Goldoran Talicto.’

  Covenant nodded and turned away, his fingers tapping the edge of the desk as though in time with the rhythm of a secret thought.

  ‘We will need any records you have relating to Iago, this cult and Talicto’s action.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Orsino. ‘I will see that you have it before you leave.’

  Covenant nodded, but his eyes were on the blade.

  Orsino watched him for a long moment.

  ‘This is not about a Thorian matter, is it?’ she said, her voice low with control. ‘A ghost of Argento’s mistakes leading you into the dark?’

  Covenant shook his head, paused and then turned away, dark eyes on the fire-lit horizon.

  ‘Idris is dead,’ he said, softly, and looked back at Orsino, and it seemed that the fire still clung to the darkness of his eyes. ‘Talicto killed her.’

  Orsino let out a breath, and then shook her head.

  ‘I am sorry,’ she said. ‘Truly. We never saw eye-to-eye, and I am not able to forgive her, but I am sorry.’ The old judge bit her lip, and shook her head again. ‘Covenant, it is not my place – God Emperor, it isn’t – but no good can come of this. I don’t know what is happening, I don’t know who or what is involved, but I do know something of serving the Inquisition. And if what I know from those times means anything, it allows me to remind you that obsession is the first step to blindness. And no matter what else, an inquisitor should never be blind.’

  Covenant shot her a look, and for a second Enna thought she saw something in the dark eyes that she had not seen before, a shadow of a something, quickly veiled.

  ‘Thank you, your honour,’ he said, his voice as steady as ever. ‘For your knowledge, and your words.’

  Orsino inclined her head, and then turned for the door. Galbus’ auto-quills clattered back into action, poised to pour words onto parchment.

  ‘If you wish to serve again…’ said Covenant suddenly, and Orsino stopped and look back at him. He met her gaze. ‘Then I would value your skills and wisdom.’

  ‘Skills and wisdom…’ she chuckled. ‘You were never a flatterer, Covenant, so I will take it as a compliment that you tried. But the answer is just as it was after he raised you to the rank. I have other duties, and another calling.’ She nodded at Enna and Severita. ‘Besides, you have others to walk this path with you.’ She walked towards the doors, which opened at her approach. ‘You know, I sometimes wonder, if I had been chosen, what it would have done to me?’ She turned on the threshold and gave Covenant a final look. ‘Most of the time I am glad I did not find out,’ she said, and was gone, her steps clicking in time with the scratch of Galbus’ quills as he hurried in her wake.

  ‘I leave you here,’ said Yasmin, as they stopped behind a circular door sealed by an iris of copper-plated steel. The intermediary bowed her head once and glided back down the passage and out of sight.

  Cleander glanced at Viola, but his sister was steely faced, her eyes moving over the sealed door. Koleg stood behind them both. He had been permitted to keep his weapons, a fact that seemed to make him comfortable, and Cleander nervous. There was a dismissive degree of confidence in letting someone bring a selection of compact but highly effective weaponry into your presence.

  That they were going to converse with an Heir Apparent of House Yeshar was also not helping his nerves. He had dealt with Navigators – it was an unfortunate necessity for a rogue trader – but he had always tried to keep such dealings at arm’s length. He never spent more time with the warp-seers than he had to, and had never met with one of the senior members of any Navigator House. Let alone one that had been confined to one location for centuries. His hand flinched towards where his own needle pistol hung in a holster under his blue dress coat.

  The iris door opened with a murmur of gears. A short length of corridor waited beyond the threshold. Another copper and steel iris sealed the passage’s far end. He stepped forward, glancing at Viola, who followed. The doors shut behind them. A second later the warm light that suffused the passage vanished. Cleander tensed, hand on his pistol. Behind him he heard the soft noise of Koleg drawing a weapon. Violet light filled the passage. Grey moisture sprayed from hidden nozzles in the walls. Cleander tasted chemicals as the mist wetted his face. The sprays stopped, the violet light blinked off, and the doors before them opened.

  Cleander blinked at the sudden brightness. He could see thick foliage, and sunlight. He took a breath and his nose caught the scent of earth and flowers. For an instant he hesitated, and then stepped forward. Warmth folded over him as he crossed into the space beyond the door.

  A latticed dome of wrought iron arced above him, holding a clear blue sky and white puffs of clouds. Trees spread their leaves in the sunlight, and Cleander caught sight of birds taking wing from branches, their feathers sudden flickers of colour. Wrought iron paths curved away from the door, meandering between trees and crossing chuckling streams. A breath of warm wind touched Cleander’s face, and he laughed.

  ‘Such paradises do we make that gods do tread the earth and believe themselves still in heaven’s embrace,’ he said.

  ‘Or do the bowers of this mortal heaven a sou
l’s prison hide,’ answered a voice that came from all around them. More birds took wing at its sound. Koleg still had his pistol out, and raised its barrel. ‘I have not met someone who could quote ancient Terran verse in a long time.’ A shape moved forwards from the dappled shadows beneath the trees. Koleg’s gun rose but the shape was only a bird that hopped onto a branch within a stride of Cleander and cocked its head. Its plumage was iridescent blue. Now it was still, Cleander noticed the silvered device that sat on its head where its left eye would have been. A tiny turquoise lens gleamed in the chromed setting.

  ‘So you are Cleander von Castellan,’ said the omnipresent voice, and as it spoke Cleander saw the bird’s beak open as though it were singing. ‘And Viola, your noble sister, and the reason that your dynasty did not crumble beneath you sooner.’

  ‘To whom do we speak?’ asked Viola.

  ‘Looks are difficult to interpret aren’t they? I am Livilla Yeshar, Tertiary Heir Apparent of House Yeshar. Forgive my not meeting with you sooner.’

  ‘You know what we need, honoured mistress,’ said Viola. ‘Without wishing insult, our patience is wearing thin, and we would receive the information we have asked for and be on our way.’

  ‘Soothe your humours, precious one,’ said the voice of Livilla Yeshar. ‘Given what I have been told of you both, I had expected your brother to be the impatient one, but then who can know what shape a thing truly is without seeing it?’ The blue-feathered bird spread its wings and flitted to a branch further into the forest-filled dome. ‘Follow my fetch – it will lead you to me.’

  Cleander advanced along the metal path. The bird went ahead, gliding and hopping to stay always just within sight. They moved under the canopy of trees. Insects buzzed in the air, and the cool shadows swirled in the breath of a wind that must have been made by artifice, but seemed and smelled as real as any breeze that Cleander had ever felt. At last the bird hopped onto a branch and did not fly away as they moved towards it. The forest opened as Cleander stepped past the bird. A swathe of meadow grass sat under the false sun, the heavy heads of flowers swaying in the air.