With all my mind, with all my heart, with all my soul.
They were singing the same thing now. Faith was cheap, for the desperate. It was only valuable for those with the strength to understand its purpose. The mania that gripped the throngs below could so easily be turned, channelled into devotion to another power. That was what the orders of the Imperium existed for: to keep the fire of fervour stoked, but also to keep it directed. The masses believed through fear, and that kept them safe, whatever Crowl might preach.
At the thought of her master, her stomach twinged with distaste, and she chided herself. In his own way, following his own method, he was as devout as her. He had to be. If he were not, then he would not have survived here, for this was the heart of it all, the sun around which the faith of quadrillions orbited.
Crowl would call her soon. With the dawn, he would meet her and Revus, and they would plan their next move. It was impossible to argue now that his instincts had been wrong — something terrible had been carried on that void-hauler. And yet, and yet…
Somewhere out there, mingling with the billions, she lingered. Falx. That was business left unfinished, a stain on her honour that could not be left hanging. If Crowl cared little for such things, then she did. Time spent with the Angels of Death had taught her that, in the final resort, when privation left no space for the more rarefied human emotions, what remained were the primal aspects of the species — rage, honour, endurance.
Far in the east, the pattern of black-and-red began at last to bleed away. In an hour or so the horizon would discolour into grey, creeping like a spill of protein-sludge across the heavens until every surface was bathed in its sickly drear.
Terra was more endurable at night. The towers rose more sheer, the statues were more grave, the arches were more sweeping, bereft of the signs of decay that mottled the stone. In the dark, the cleansing dark, it was possible to imagine how it had might have been when He was still present in the mortal world, walking with His people, bathed in the gold blush of pristine eternity.
Crowl would call her soon. She would have to return to her cell before the summons came, attempt to gain an hour or two of sleep, and then steel herself for whatever task would be given her.
But not just yet. For a moment longer she lingered, looking out over the heart of the shrine world, its wretchedness and its magnificence, drinking it in, wondering what she would have thought on that freezing night on Astranta if the taciturn man had told her she would be here, now, doing these things, as far from the edge of the galaxy as it was possible to get.
She liked to think that she would have been pleased, that she would have been able to seize the chance, and understand what an honour that was, and how few living souls could dream to achieve so much.
She watched the multitudes of the eternal city, and heard the screams of awe and anguish, and saw the pennants snap in the hot, hot air.
Crowl would call her soon.
The drums never stopped.
With all my soul, she thought.
Crowl entered the archive chamber, and Huk turned to greet him. She smiled toothily, and her cabling scraped as she shuffled over to him. Above them both, the servitors rattled and hauled up their long chains.
‘She came down here,’ Huk said, holding out her ironwork hands.
Crowl took them, and nodded. ‘Yes, she told me. I hope you were helpful.’ ‘Always.’ Huk shot him a look of childish reproach. ‘And now you are here too. It has been a very long time.’
‘When the time allows, you know I wish for nothing more.’
Huk snatched her hands away. ‘Just information, then, you want.’
‘On this occasion. Inquisitor-Lord Hovash Phaelias, the Ordo Xenos.’
‘You don’t know the name?’
‘People always seem surprised.’
Huk shot him a conspiratorial smile. ‘You don’t miss much.’ Then she limped over to the cogitator stands. ‘Why do you want to know?’
‘I wish to find him, if that remains possible. So, everything we have, please.’
Huk inserted her augmetic node, and the servitors began to alter course, sweeping up to parchment shelves, whiteless eyes scanning the rows of vellum data-tags.
‘Is it the Feast yet?’ Huk asked.
‘Soon.’
‘I would like to see that.’
‘I do not think you would. Better to remain here, I think.’
Huk scowled, twisted in her robes and jerked the cables tighter. ‘Ach. Sometimes, sometimes, the hate for them is too much.’
‘They serve a purpose.’
‘Don’t we all?’
‘For good or ill.’
The servitors began to return, dumping sheaves onto a waiting gurney. Crowl reached for the topmost and began to leaf through it. The documents were mostly of the thick vellum used by Adeptus scribes for their scholarship, wrapped in fading leather covers, blackened at the edges by old fires, neglect or simply age. All were stamped with the blood-red classification seals of the Inquisition, and most had scribe-marks annotating the margins. Many of the varied typefaces were archaic, almost unreadable even to him, reflecting the hidebound practices of the arcane copyists and their guild training.
‘He seems to have kept himself to himself,’ Crowl murmured, looking through references to Phaelias in official almanacs.
Huk chuckled. ‘A crime?’
‘In my mind, a positive virtue.’ Crowl skimmed over more of the paperwork. ‘I’ve more names here. He had a large retinue.’
‘All ought to.’
Crowl raised an eyebrow, then carried on reading. ‘Slaro Argorine, abhuman, henchman grade thirteen. The muscle, I suppose. Noode de Quin, a hierophant from the Night Worlds. Veronika Skeld, crusader, interesting. Bors Dalamor, weapons specialist. Niir Khazad, assassin, Shoba death cult. Inducted Guardsmen, drawn from several regiments. Jerro Vaskadre, savant. Throne, he had an army. Where have they all gone?’
Huk edged closer, peering down the lists, mouthing the words as she read them. ‘Where was he located?’
‘Not ordinarily resident,’ said Crowl, turning to other documents. ‘One of the wanderers. Terra proved unexpectedly dangerous for him, but I suppose we knew that already.’
Huk withdrew from Crowl’s side, returning to the cogitators, where she hauled on levers, dimming the floating lanterns, summoning more servitors. Crowl carried on reading for a little longer, selecting some documents and taking them out of the folios. Once he had accumulated a handful, he threw the rest of the leather-bound tomes back into the gurney and brought the bundle over to Huk.
‘See that Spinoza reads this,’ he said. ‘I will be absent from Courvain for a while.’
Huk bowed, and accepted the bundles. ‘I’ll have them copied. Where do you go now, or is that forbidden knowledge?’
Crowl smiled sadly. ‘What would be the use, Yulia?’
‘I could imagine it. I imagined it when you went to the Palace, in the days when you told me things.’
‘That was a long time ago.’
‘Shows how often you come down here.’
‘I will do so more often. When all this is done with, we’ll talk. I’ll tell you tales.’
Huk beamed, her grey mouth glinting from the metal within. ‘You promise?’
‘When all this is done with.’
Crowl left her then, and stalked back towards the doors. As he went, Huk gazed after him, almost hungrily. Only once the doors were closed did she turn back to the servitors, three of which hung on their chains before her, their jaws hanging, their withered skin as dry as cured leather.
‘To work again, then,’ she muttered, shaking her scrawny head.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN