by John French
‘You see me clearly, inquisitor,’ he said, sucking breaths between each word.
Covenant nodded, and Enna thought she saw something other than cold control in the gesture.
‘And…’ hissed Vult, struggling for breath, ‘I see you. You were not part of the atrocity on Ero. You are a fanatic. You are young, but you are… you are also right.’ Vult reached up and secured his mask. Enna though she saw the Terminator armour flex as he took a breath. ‘What did you find here on Iago?’ he asked, his voice again an amplified rasp.
‘I think you know,’ said Covenant.
‘Evidence that Talicto has been dead for years,’ said Vult.
Enna blinked, stunned.
‘Did you kill him?’ asked Covenant.
Vult shook his head.
‘It was a guess, but if you look at what has happened from a certain point of view, it is obvious.’
‘What point of view would that be?’
‘There is a story, Covenant, a story from the far past, that once there were inquisitors who looked at the greatest of heresies, and thought to save mankind through damnation.’
‘The Horusians…’ said Covenant.
Vult looked up at the flat brightness of the sky. ‘We should be gone from here,’ he muttered, and gestured at the dark grey-armoured troopers. ‘Bring the gunships in and signal the ships to be ready to break orbit as soon as we are aboard. Transfer crew to Inquisitor Covenant’s craft to cover his losses.’
‘Lord Vult,’ said Covenant, still not moving, ‘we have no agreement.’
‘But we do,’ said Vult. ‘We agree in a way that only our kind can – not in why something matters, but in what must be done. You were right, Covenant. A serpent has wakened amongst us, and it must be destroyed or it will destroy what we seek to protect.’
‘They remain hidden,’ said Covenant. ‘You cannot kill shadows.’
‘But you can,’ said Vult, and the rasp of his voice seemed almost a laugh. He gestured at Viola and Cleander. ‘And your servants have given us the means to find them.’
‘That is not an answer,’ asked Covenant.
Vult shrugged. Enna almost laughed.
‘No, but it might be part of one,’ said Vult. The first gunship came in low above the macro-ingot, and slammed to a halt in mid-air, thrusters peeling metal dust from the metal cliffs as it descended towards them. ‘So, Inquisitor Covenant, do we have an accord?’
Part Three
Lost Dreams
Thirteen
Josef leaned on the rail of the gantry and watched as the lord inquisitor’s retinue moved across the main hangar bay of the Valour’s Flame. Commander Zecker’s destroyer had been chosen as a place of conference. Although it was seconded to Covenant’s command, it held more of an air of neutrality than either the Dionysia or the warship which had brought Vult. The lord daemonhunter had arrived in a black-hulled gunship that had disgorged a procession of figures into the light.
A cluster of pale-faced men and women formed a loose vanguard. All of them wore dark grey uniforms with simple rank insignia in silver, and their eyes moved coldly over every detail of their surroundings. None of them bore weapons, but Josef could spot killers when he saw them. Black-robed clerics followed them, swords sheathed over their backs, tattooed symbols marking their shaven scalps. Their skin had an unhealthy sheen, and red veins threaded the whites of their eyes. These were the vaunted Black Priests, recruited from the Ecclesiarchy to serve the Ordo Malleus as exorcists, investigators and purifiers. Josef had encountered them before, and never found the experience pleasant; they were like carrion crows drawn to the bones of atrocities. Every now and then one of them would pull a vial of oil and blood from their robes, and watch the two liquids swirl as they shook them. Josef had no idea why they did it, but he was sure that he did not want to. Almost two decades serving at Covenant’s side, and seeing the ways of the warp and the power of Chaos, made him value ignorance.
Last of all came Vult, encased in his pearl and gold armour, following his vassals like a king. Covenant, Severita, Enna and Viola waited in a loose circle. He watched as the distance between the two groups narrowed.
He coughed, winced and wiped his hand across his mouth.
He closed his eyes for a second. Fatigue swirled the colours behind his eyelids. Iago… Iago had not been good.
You need to rest, old man,+ Mylasa’s voice whispered in his thoughts. Josef felt his lips twitch as he instinctively made to speak a reply. He stopped and framed the words into a clear thought.
Rest? If I wanted rest, girl, I would have made sure I was dead by now.
Still…+ said the psyker’s voice, then changed texture. +Are you joining Covenant for this council?+
For my sins.
You don’t like it, do you? Making an alliance with Vult?+
Like or don’t like, it’s happening.
You are less than your normal gruff but welcoming self.+
Josef grunted aloud and shifted his hand position on the observation rail. Below him, Vult’s party had halted, and words that he could not hear clearly drifted up to him.
He should have gone somewhere else to find peace, he thought. Perhaps he should have gone to the chapel to pray, but prayer did not always lead to peace. He had learnt that long before he took the robes of office.
I am fine, he thought.
A lie a day…+
He smiled.
Time, lady, just time. It has a habit of running away and then circling back to remind you what’s changed.
He heard her chuckle in his skull.
Is this melancholy something you have been working on, or more of a spontaneous development?+
Another smile.
Memories, memories I had not thought of in a long while, that’s all. You know, of all the things I have seen – things that a soul should not have to know are real – it’s not the horrors that I would like to forget. It’s all the mistakes that you didn’t realise were being made.
I can help you with that…+
He laughed out loud, and saw some of Vult’s grey-clad followers look up at him.
This… this reminds me of what happened before, with Idris and Argento. When we heard what the old man was doing. It felt… just like this.
I remember,+ said Mylasa. +But we are not going to confront an old friend this time.+
It’s going to get difficult, he thought.
If Viola and Cleander do have information that will lead us to who was really behind the attack, the chances of it becoming energetic are high. I can’t disagree. But at least we have gained allies rather than enemies.+
Have we?
You do not trust Vult?+
I think he is an inquisitor – an old inquisitor too. They don’t start simple, and age does not improve them.
The vibration running through the ship changed note. Josef knew it meant that the warp engines had begun to power up. They were closing on the edge of the Iago system, and once they reached it all three ships, the Valour’s Flame, the Dionysia and Vult’s Sixth Hammer, would be plunging into the storm-wracked warp. Where they were bound, and if they would go together, would be decided in the next few hours.
It’s not what’s going to be done, it’s just a feeling, a feeling that this will always happen. That moments like this just keep coming around.
You are a wise man, Josef.+
Another chuckle drew a cough from his throat.
I am a survivor. Living despite doing everything that should kill you teaches some things.
A brief sensation like a sigh of air on skin touched his mind, and Josef knew that the feeling was a direct transmission from Mylasa’s mind, a sign to help his understanding in this silent conversation. Others might find such a connection with a psyker unsettling, but to Josef it was merely disconcerting. He had been a priest of the
Ecclesiarchy but even then he had known that to hate the witch blindly was foolish – was not the Emperor a psyker?
Viola has doubts too, and if we are not sure of Vult, then why is he?
That is his matter, Khoriv. And I respect his judgement enough to not second guess it.+
But this…thought Josef. If I didn’t know better I would say that it was driven by something other than judgement. That makes me worried, Mylasa.
Every human decision is emotion, even the decision to put emotion aside.+
I thought I knew him.
None of us know him, not really.+
He heard a space open in the flow of interconnected thoughts, and had a feeling of standing in front of someone who had turned their face to look at something in the distance.
Why am I here?
He looked at his hands resting on the rail. Tattoos covered both but the left was also a mass of scar tissue. Ink had changed the twists of skin and pits into the mouths and eyes of dragons. The colours were faded, the red fire pouring from the creatures’ mouths diluted by time.
I am here because the Emperor wills it. That’s the way it’s always been. Covenant, Cleander, even Idris in the old days. I am here because they need me… His thought trailed off. He took a breath. There was a taste of iron in his mouth. One day… He felt his mouth open and close. One day I won’t be here for them.
He pushed himself away from the rail and made for the doors that led from the bridge to the rest of the command quarters.
Josef…?+ sent Mylasa, and he felt the puzzlement in the thought voice. +What is the matter? What did you…?+
Thank you, lady, he thought, letting calm and strength fill the words in his head. I would sleep while you can.
I don’t sleep, Khoriv.+
‘Something tells me neither will I,’ he muttered.
The two inquisitors met not in a grand stateroom, but in an empty magazine close to the bilge levels. Dust and rust clung to the heads of rivets covering the slab walls, and the open space beneath the reinforced roof had only been home to empty containers and slowly rusting machinery for a long time. A gang of servitors had cleared the detritus to the side, leaving an open circle of stained metal. Armsmen had cleared the decks and companionways around the chamber, but there were few creatures in this forgotten reach of the Valour’s Flame.
Viola knew that its isolation and the fact that its walls and doors were metres thick was why it had been chosen, of course, but something about it seemed wrong. What was going to be discussed was not something that should happen amidst dust and the smell of metal rot. She glanced over to where Cleander stood beside the chained figure of Navigator Titus Yeshar. The spindle-limbed mutant was swaying, long fingers moving in the air as though plucking invisible harp strings.
Then again, she thought, perhaps rot and shadows was only appropriate.
She glanced over to the door as Koleg and one of Vult’s black priests walked in through the chamber’s wide blast doors. The priest bowed towards Vult, who stood on the opposite side of the circle of open floor. Koleg looked the other way, towards Covenant, and gave a nod.
‘Seal the doors,’ said Vult. A second later, the blast doors began to grind closed. Silence followed the low boom as they met.
Vult and Covenant’s entourages looked at each other across the open space. Viola could feel the strained formality of the moment stretch. She kept her eyes on Vult. She did not trust him. You could not trust someone that clever, but he had kept his word. No one and nothing on board the Dionysia had been harmed after Cleander had yielded the ship. Neither had he asked them for any information, though he seemed to have plenty of his own.
‘Inquisitor Covenant,’ said Vult. ‘I am gratified that we have reached this point in our mutual understanding. Long may it endure and deepen.’ Covenant gave a single nod in acknowledgement. ‘In the interest of trust,’ continued Vult, ‘let us exchange what we know. Much has passed from my factotums to yours, but I would hear from you how you see the path that led here.’
Covenant bowed his head briefly and raised an open palm in acknowledgement, but his face remained impassive. Then he began to speak. The account was a long one, and Viola knew each beat of it in detail, though she had never heard Covenant render it himself. Sketched in his cold and clipped words, Viola’s mind walked again through their uncovering of a school of proscribed knowledge on Niamarin, from there to Kaul and the inescapable conclusion that another inquisitor was behind the abomination they found there. From those early days of the hunt came Agern, the Sons of Illumination, Dominicus Prime, and all the rest of the last few years. At last the details of what Covenant had found in the sepulchre of the Renewed on Iago rose and passed. Though she had not been there, Viola found that, for an instant, she could see Talicto dead on his throne of bones amidst the water-filled sarcophagi.
‘He was a good man once,’ said Vult after Covenant had finished.
‘Aren’t they all?’ said Covenant.
‘No,’ said Vult, the rasp of his voice hardening to an edge. ‘Sometimes they are not.’ Covenant remained silent. The lord daemonhunter seemed to shiver inside his armour. ‘If we accept what you witnessed as true, then Talicto was killed by other inquisitors, a group he referred to as the Triumvirate. He would have fought hard. He was tenacious.’
‘Didn’t do him much good in the end…’ growled Josef.
‘Indeed, Khoriv Josef,’ said Vult, meeting Josef’s eyes where he stood behind Covenant. ‘Indeed. His killers succeeded, and then subsumed whatever they wanted from his operations and turned them to their own ends. The presence of the so-called Renewed on Ero makes that clear. They became tools of new masters.’
‘The question really is why would they bother?’ said Cleander.
‘Because Talicto had what they wanted, knowledge and tools that they could use,’ said Viola. Her brother glanced over his shoulder at her, raised an eyebrow and then looked away. At the end of his chains, Titus Yeshar pressed his hands over his ears.
‘Hush… hush… hush…’ hissed the Navigator.
‘This Triumvirate could then use his identity and agents to shield their own activities,’ continued Viola, ignoring both her brother’s look and the Navigator’s words. ‘If any one of their endeavours was discovered, then the thread of guilt and judgement would lead only back to a man that wasn’t there.’
‘It worked,’ said Covenant. ‘It worked.’
‘What are they trying to do?’ asked Cleander, shaking his head. Viola felt her gaze harden on him. He had been morose and irritable ever since they had gone to the Yeshar. ‘I mean, everything has a purpose, and you don’t do something like this for nothing.’
‘That is the question,’ said Vult. ‘That is the question that we must answer before they realise we are searching for the answers.’
‘But there are some obvious possibilities,’ said Covenant, looking at Cleander briefly.
‘Indeed,’ said Vult. ‘The acquiring of knowledge, occult research, and the use of cults could have many motives for those of the Horusian conviction.’
‘Which is?’ said Josef.
‘At its simplest, Horusianism says that to defeat the horror of Chaos it must be enslaved. Its adherents seek a soul or souls that can possess all its power, but who are not enslaved by it. They seek living gods that can destroy gods in turn. While those of the Thorian belief seek the Emperor reborn, the Horusians seek a darker messiah to do what he could not. That is what those who have followed this path before have believed, but it is a doctrine that has been expressed in many ways.’
‘Madness,’ said Josef. ‘Vile madness.’
‘Only from our point of view,’ said Vult. ‘From theirs it is the path to salvation, the true and only way to save everything from the dark.’
‘How can any believe that? How can inquisitors know the truth of Chaos, and think it can s
ave us?’
‘Was not the Emperor a man who possessed transcendent power? Was that power not rooted in the substance of the warp? Is it not a tragedy that those souls who fall to the warp do not have the strength to be the master, not the slave?’
‘You speak heresy,’ said Josef.
The air became charged, storm-taut, balanced before a lightning strike.
‘You forget yourself, preacher,’ said Vult, his voice low and dangerous. ‘Your master values your council, and I see why. But I answer to none beneath the Golden Throne, and I have fought this war for long enough to understand that there are truths even in the lies of enemies and the delusions of the damned. It is madness, you are right. There are no messiahs of any kind coming to save mankind. There is only humanity, and it must save itself.’
‘You are right,’ said Covenant, and Viola looked at her master. There was something dangerous in the mildness of his voice. ‘I do value Josef’s council, and I also say that you speak heresy.’
The black and grey figures behind Vult were suddenly alert with readiness and tension.
‘Do you wish this dispute?’ said Vult. ‘Now? Facing what we face?’
Covenant inclined his head, and the tension seemed to release a fraction.
‘The enemy exists and must be faced,’ said Covenant. ‘That is what we agree on.’
‘How can we face an enemy we cannot see?’ asked Cleander.
‘Mistress von Castellan,’ said Vult, gesturing to Viola. She felt the gaze of everyone in the room shift to her. She let out the air she had been holding in her lungs, and stepped forwards. It had taken her seventeen hours of unbroken focus and mental application to prepare for this moment. Now that it was here she felt more nervous than she would have guessed. It was not the scrutiny. It was the possibility that she might have made a mistake.
