For that alone Alivia was glad of his presence.
Deeper and deeper they went, silently crossing decks where the broken servitors prowled, mindlessly enacting ritualised functions they could no longer perform. They bypassed sealed vaults where lethal radiation was slowly wearing away protective wards. They covered their ears as they traversed abandoned machine-temples where corrupt code burbled heresies of Old Night.
Alivia kept hold of the Ferlach serpenta, her finger curled around the trigger and the safety off.
‘Did Theresia Ferlach really make that gun?’ asked Severian.
‘She did,’ said Alivia, deciding to intercept what she knew was coming. ‘And yes, that was a hundred and eighty-seven years ago.’
Severian took this in his stride. ‘So that makes you over two hundred years old.’
‘It does,’ replied Alivia.
‘But I’m guessing that’s not even close to the truth.’
‘It’s not, but do you really want to know?’
‘No, keep your secrets,’ said Severian. ‘The galaxy’s more interesting that way.’
Despite the strangeness of the situation, Alivia felt herself warming to Severian.
‘So how does one of the Warmaster’s sons end up, what was it you said, on the side of the angels? And in unmarked armour?’
Severian didn’t answer, and Alivia thought he wasn’t going to until he said, ‘There was an Ecclesiarch of Old Earth who once said “treason is just a matter of dates”.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘When the Luna Wolves needed to decide something, it was customary for us to draw lots,’ said Severian. ‘For command of a speartip, the composition of an honour guard and suchlike. When it came time for Horus Lupercal to send a warrior to join the Crusader Host, it was my name that was drawn.’
‘You didn’t want to go?’
‘What do you think?’ said Severian. ‘To leave the Crusade? To sit out the greatest war-making the human race has ever waged in some gilded palace on Terra? Of course I didn’t want to go, but what choice did I have? My primarch had given me an order, I had to obey.’
Alivia felt a creeping dread settle upon her as the relevance of the long-dead Ecclesiarch’s quote became clear.
‘Tell me,’ said Severian. ‘Have you ever seen Horus Lupercal?’
Alivia nodded stiffly. ‘I met him once,’ she said, a shuddering breath escaping her at the memory.
The Warmaster’s cursed blades shearing her spine and shattering her ribs. Her blood flowing out onto the black gate. His last words to her…
You shouldn’t put your faith in saints…
‘Then you’ll know that it’s next to impossible to refuse him,’ continued Severian. ‘Little Horus Aximand once said the only way he ever remembered what he was about to say was to look at Lupercal’s feet. Catch his eye, and your mind would go utterly blank.’
Severian paused before continuing, as though weighing the cost of where the path of his life had taken him.
‘I wasn’t there when my brothers of the Sixteenth turned, but I’d always thought that if I had been…’
‘What?’ asked Alivia, when he didn’t go on. ‘That you’d still be with them?’
‘No, that I maybe I could have stopped it,’ said Severian. ‘Then I look at Loken and think it’s probably just as well I wasn’t.’
Severian grunted, a sound that was part anguish, part amusement at the cosmic joke the universe had played upon him.
‘You ask how I came to be on the side of the angels. Luck.’
‘That’s not true, Severian,’ said Alivia with insight that came not from her abilities, but from the pain in Severian’s words. ‘And you know it. You came to Molech to stop the Warmaster, didn’t you?’
‘I never set foot on Molech,’ replied Severian.
‘Then why are you here?’
The Luna Wolf shook his head. ‘Like I said, the galaxy is a more interesting place with a few secrets left to it.’
They huddled in the corner of the meat locker farthest from the door, six frightened children clinging to the last shreds of courage Vivyen’s story had given them.
Vivyen thought Uriah was still alive, but she didn’t know for sure. She’d seen his eyelids flutter not long ago, though she had heard dead people sometimes twitched and burped after they’d died, so maybe that didn’t mean very much.
Oskar and Lalique had tied some cloth around the boy’s shoulder. It was soaked with blood and his skin was white, like a ghost.
‘Why are they doing this?’ said Ivalee for the hundredth time. ‘What did we do wrong?’
‘Nothing,’ said Lalique. ‘We didn’t do anything.’
‘Then why are they hurting us? We must have done something.’
Lalique had no answer for the youngster and Vivyen hated these men who’d taken them more than ever. Even if they somehow managed to escape this cell, the damage had already been done. Ivalee’s innocence had been stripped away and replaced with a twisted sense that she was to blame for what was happening.
‘This isn’t your fault,’ said Vivyen, trying to copy the same tone Alivia used whenever she really wanted to make herself clear. ‘It’s not any of our faults. Mama told me that some people are broken inside, and that makes them like doing bad things. It’s like a sickness or something. When bad people do hurtful things to us, it’s them we need to blame. Even if they didn’t start out bad, what they’re doing to us is wrong, so I want you to remember that none of this is our fault.’
‘Then why are they doing this?’ said Vesper, her face puffy with tears. ‘Why did they take my sister? They’re hurting her now, I can feel it.’
‘I don’t know,’ said Vivyen, slipping the book from her dress. ‘There’s a story in here about an evil mirror that gets broken into tiny fragments, and when someone gets a bit of its glass in their eye or their heart they can only see bad things and feel bad things.’
‘Do you think these men have glass in their hearts and eyes?’
Vivyen felt tears prick her eyes.
‘I think they must have.’
Lalique chewed her bottom lip and said, ‘Any stories in there about bad people getting what’s coming to them?’
‘It’s not really that kind of book,’ said Vivyen, turning its crumpled pages.
‘What’s that one?’ asked Oskar. ‘She looks pretty fierce.’
Vivyen looked down at the book, her eyes widening at the ink-etched woodcut picture. She read the name beneath the picture, and her brows furrowed in amazement. ‘I haven’t seen that one before, but it looks like–’
Before she could say any more, the cell door burst open and six figures robed in white entered. One for every child. Like the one who’d taken Challis, their skin was burned and their lips were stained purple.
Vesper and Ivalee shouted at them. Oskar put his arms around Uriah as Lalique stood up with her fists balled at her side. Vivyen cried out as the first man into the meat locker quickly hoisted Lalique onto his shoulders with the ease of a man used to hefting dead weight. A second man grabbed Oskar, who howled and punched like a dervish. A third dragged Uriah’s wounded body as a woman with darting, bloodshot eyes took Ivalee’s hand. The girl didn’t make a sound as she was led away.
Vesper was lifted screaming onto a man’s shoulders, while the one who had taken Challis advanced on Vivyen.
She backed into the corner of the room, holding her book across her chest. She’d been afraid of this man before, but not any more. She hated him, but her fear was gone, displaced by faith in someone she knew would risk anything to save her.
‘Going to try and hurt me, girl?’ he asked. Spittle gathered at the corners of his mouth and his eyes were veined with pink threads.