Diocletian breathed a disbelieving laugh. A Black Ship. The Black Ships of the Silent Sisterhood are sailing across three segmentums, unescorted, hiding from battle and harvesting psykers on an unprecedented scale. And they are doing it practically unseen by anyone, oath-binding whole governments to silence.
Once he knew what ships were causing the flaws in the galactic pattern, the calculations solved themselves. Dozens of similarly shrouded equations noted Black Ships in Terra’s orbit, committing shuttles, loaders and transports of cargo to the planet’s surface without registering upon terrestrial traffic. And dozens more were drawing towards Terra from across the galaxy.
Diocletian had a fair suspicion of just where Kaeria had gone. He turned to a nearby serf at a cogitation console and narrowed his eyes.
‘You.’
The worker halted but didn’t look away from his screen. Numeric runes flashed upon his unblinking eyes. ‘Golden One?’
‘Arrange for a vox-link to the Magadan Orbital Construct. I wish to speak with the Mistress of the Black Fleet.’
It came as no surprise to Diocletian when, two hours later, he saw a familiar figure on the crackling hololith connection. Kaeria stood at the side of a robed and cowled fellow Sister, the former armed and armoured just as Diocletian had last seen her, the latter with her eyes hidden by the fall of her hood. The Mistress of the Black Ships wore leather gloves with reinforced knuckles and dagger-length knives for fingernails. In the rippling holo image, she seemed to be clicking them together.
‘Mistress Varonika,’ he greeted the spindly creature clad in black, adding ‘Sister Kaeria,’ a moment later.
The older Sister wove an elaborately formal greeting with her brutal finger-blades. Kaeria offered no more than a nod.
Diocletian wasted no time. The door to the communications suite was sealed. He was entirely alone, bathed in blue holo-light. ‘What is the Black Fleet doing?’
Both Sisters signed a reply at once, curt without rudeness.
‘And what is the Unspoken Sanction?’
Another brief reply. One that Diocletian had expected.
‘Forbidden,’ Diocletian replied. Well, the Sisters of Silence were entitled to their secrets in the Emperor’s service. Never would they act without the Emperor’s command.
‘Where are you housing these harvested psykers?’ he asked.
Again, a curt reply from both Sisters. Forbidden.
‘Be that as it may,’ the Custodian replied, ‘you cannot ship tens of thousands of psykers to Terra and hide them indefinitely. Have you taken their sustenance into consideration? Half of the Throneworld’s granaries already stand hollow. Water farms across the Afrik Swathe stand mute in rainless thirst.’
He expected another blunt, curt response. To his mild surprise, Varonika replied by signing a longer reply with both hands. Diocletian could almost imagine the click-clack of her bladed talons meeting on several of the words.
‘Then I will press no more on the matter,’ said the Custodian. ‘But in the Emperor’s name, tell me whether I might expect reinforcements in the webway as a result of your scheming.’
The merest flicker of the older Sister’s finger-blades was enough to betray her hesitation. She signed a negative response, but Diocletian found her hesitation intriguing.
‘Very well. Am I to assume you will be returning when I lead House Vyridion and the Archimandrite’s convoy into the Dungeon, Kaeria?’
The Oblivion Knight bowed her head once more, more formally this time. He needed no sign language to see her respect in the reply, nor any further explanation to note her refusal. She was staying there.
‘So be it. Good eve, Sisters.’ Diocletian terminated the link and exhaled slowly. He knew better than to pry further into whatever secrets they sought so ardently to protect. If they required his aid, they would ask for it.
The Custodian turned back to the closest bank of monitors, resuming the staring absorption of limitless, scrolling data.
II
Cargo
This is not now. This is then. This is when she was caged away from everything she had ever known.
Skoia sits on the floor, breathing slowly, listening to the voices of those trapped here with her. They don’t speak often; few of them know one another and no one has any answers to offer to the others. Sometimes there are brief outbursts of fury that begin with the aggressors beating their hands bloody on the sealed metal doors and end with them sinking, weak-limbed and no freer, to the floor. Others give in to despair and wail, or weep quietly alone, which achieves just as much – just as little – as angry defiance.
At first there had been a sense of community and shared suffering, when the villagers and townspeople came to realise they were all ancestor-speakers and witch-priests, taken in a harvest tithe up into the belly of an Imperial spaceship. But the days became weeks, then months, and the cargo hold grew cramped with more and more people – these spoke in different languages and came from different worlds, and soon enough everyone was weak and weary enough to see out their suffering alone.
‘Astropaths,’ another man declares. He, too, is from another world. ‘Astropaths. We are to be trained as astropaths. You will see. You shall see. Astropaths.’ He repeats the word as if it were talismanic. Skoia isn’t certain if he seeks to reassure the others or convince himself. Whatever the truth, she has no conception of his meaning. He doesn’t answer when anyone asks him.
The spirits are silent, have been silent since she first looked up and saw the dead-eyed woman above her back in the forest. Not once has Skoia heard their whispers, perhaps because they are the ghosts of her own planet and she’s far from home, or perhaps because she has been severed from the Wheel of Life by the soulless women who crew this vessel.
Servitors bring them their food in strange sealed pouches. The food is a rendered brown paste that tastes of nothing natural. Skoia has to force it down with a wash of the powdery water that tastes of machinery and recyc-processing.
The more violent souls among the captive community have tried to kill the servitors before, but several of the soulless women now stand watch each ration hour. They remain by the doors with their blades held in their hands and bulky pistols that eternally sigh with the threat of breathing fire. Approaching them is impossible. Anyone who tries is wracked with cramps and sickness, vomiting onto the deck, seemingly poisoned for hours afterwards. One man collapsed and didn’t wake for three days.
‘Devils,’ some of the captives call the eagle-tattooed women. ‘Banshees.’ ‘Husks.’ ‘Undead.’ Each culture has its own words for the creatures that have captured them.
‘They have no sixth sense,’ explains one of the others in a bizarrely accented variation of Gothic. Skoia can follow his words if she concentrates. ‘No anima. No psychic capability.’
She looks away, saying nothing. His words are without meaning or relevance. She knows the only truth that matters, that these women have no souls.
The ship often shakes around them, buffeted by the eddies of its voyage through the galaxy. It does so now, but more violently than ever before. Nervous voices begin to clamour. Wide eyes meet other open gazes. The turbulence is enough to send the captives sprawling. Some of them collide with the iron walls, and their voices rise higher, bordering upon panic in proto- or post-Gothic languages Skoia can’t understand. Those that she can are mumbling of crashes and attacks and their own helplessness.