Rakel ventured to ask: ‘Is that why I should not praise the food we eat, no matter how fine it is?’
‘Not at all! We eat well because austerity narrows one’s perspectives.’
Grimm tilted his pot of ale. ‘You used not to allow any alcohol aboard the good ship
Tormentum
, Jaq.’ These days, Grimm had been allowed to provision the larder with beer and wine and even some of the strong local
djinn
spirit. Jaq himself still drank no alcohol. For Lex, with his supplementary preomnor stomach and his purifying oolitic kidney, indulgence would be futile. ‘Alcohol disorders the senses,’ Jaq explained. ‘I may need to exploit disorder. You, Rakel, in your new assassin shape, should not express sensual preferences regarding food. It isn’t fitting.’
Jaq placed the assassin’s sash upon the table. From the sash he removed three small hooded rings, baroque thimbles. ‘Wear these on your fingers, Rakel.’
With a professional, if puzzled, eye Rakel was assessing the possible value of these supposed items of bijouterie.
‘You crook your finger suddenly just so,’ Jaq mimed. ‘These are rare digital weapons of jokaero manufacture. One fires a toxic needle, the next a laser beam, and the third is a tiny flamer. Each will fire once. We have no means to replenish these. They are only for use in case you are cornered, with no other means of escape.’
Rakel eyed the three digital devices, and the three other persons seated at table.
‘See how we trust you!’ sneered Grimm.
‘You would not defeat me,’ Lex growled at her, ‘not with toxin nor flame nor laser burst. Even blind, I would break your back.’
‘And your body would soon go into flux,’ said Jaq. Nodding, Rakel slid the three digital weapons on to different fingers. ‘You’re perfect,’ Jaq said bleakly.
The abhuman dabbed a stubby finger in the spiced milk and sucked as if on a teat. ‘Huh, this sauce is getting cold!’
R
AKEL WAS NO
longer a free agent. No longer was she even herself, physically. But then, what did freedom signify? What value was there in the freedom to tote a valise of stolen gems and drugs and Imperial credit tokens and such from star system to star system, paying bribes and sweeteners in the process? What value was there even in a self, in this cosmos of untold trillions of selves? If anything defined her self, it was thievery, the purloining of material aspects of other people with which to embellish in private her own identity.
In this mansion she had attained, inadvertently, a whole new counterfeit identity, forged upon her very flesh. Wasn’t this a perverse kind of triumph? Now she had a mission and a mandate to steal, bestowed by a clandestine inquisitor. Wasn’t this a perverse kind of recognition?
She proved to be a useful intermediary. Her main contacts were the Shuturban brothers, two dark moustached men whose father, now elderly, had been a camelopard driver and smuggler. Chor Shuturban was sly, she explained. Mardal Shuturban was rash and quick-tempered.
The Shuturbans had been most intrigued by the alteration in Rakel’s appearance since last they had seen her. Indeed, at first they had been quite sceptical that Rakel was Rakel – until she reminded them of previous illegal dealings known only to herself and the brothers.
So had she undergone major surgery at the Hakim Hospitalery – and recovered already? She was obliged to tell Chor and Mardal – exaggeratedly – about the lichen juice of her homeworld, and how this made her people masters and mistresses of disguise. She had actually been in disguise prior to this – so she claimed, with a twisted smile – and now they beheld her true self. She spoke of shape-shifting chemicals in her blood. Chor had muttered darkly about wizardry.
Chor Shuturban did indeed know the present whereabouts of that thigh bone. It had been retrieved from the ruin of Oriens in its severely damaged golden reliquary when a tunnel was cleared of debris during his father’s time. Occidens’ deacons had been supervising the excavation. Shuturban senior had made it his business to learn where so much crushed wrought gold was taken. The reliquary had been locked inside an altar in one of the side-chapels in the basilica of Occidens.
While the elder Shuturban was musing about the future of that gold, a tetchy camelopard had kicked him in the gut. His pain wouldn’t subside. Some organ must have been ruptured. It was only when he went to Occidens to pray in that particular chapel, and when he vowed never to desecrate it, that he was healed miraculously.
The reliquary must still be there to this day. Due to religious rivalry, how long might the relic remain out of sight, unexamined – and maybe in time become forgotten? No pledge prevented his sons from disposing of the gold if someone else should choose to loot the altar.
Fifty side chapels were in that basilica. Some of the altars were of adamantium. One was of ivory, dedicated to the Emperor’s teeth. The majority were of plasteel. In exchange for a half-share of the precious metal Chor Shuturban would tell Rakel which was the chapel. Rakel had promised to consider this offer.
‘Logically,’ Jaq declared, ‘it should be the Chapel of His Thighs...’
Rakel had already arrived at the same conclusion. Occidens was open again to the public, after the paroxysm of the unveiling. On the way back from the Shuturbans’ premises she had visited Occidens to pray her way around the so-called Stations of the Emperor, as hastily as was compatible with decorum.
Many body-bags of camelopard hide cluttered the basilica, unclaimed, the odour of decay almost masked by the prevalent sweet incense drifting from the atrium. Because pilgrims had died in adoration of the True Face, they merited a time of display in the basilica. Body-bags were all tied at the necks, exposing to scrutiny the head or remains of a head. This was for identification – yet also so that a miracle could be recognized. A corpse might remain uncorrupted, demonstrably blessed by Him-on-Earth. Invariably there were one or two such miracles. These miracles vindicated all the deaths which might otherwise have seemed, to a heretic, to mar the climactic ceremony of Holy Year.
In the basilica, unfortunately, there was one chapel dedicated to His Left Thigh, and another chapel to His Right Thigh.
‘Do we flip a shekel?’ asked Grimm after Rakel had delivered her report.
Jaq scowled at this irreverence. ‘It will be the chapel sinister where they hid the bone. The left-hand one. Leftward is the side of formulae, occult science, guile – and secrets.’
Lex agreed. It was on the bones of his left hand that he had inscribed the names of dead Biff and Yeremi.
‘The priests wouldn’t disregard the customary symbolism,’ Jaq stated.
R
AKEL’S BEST ROUTE
into Occidens would be through one of the apertures in the dome of the atrium, through which the smoke of incense vented. Clad in black, she would descend on a thin strong rope like a spider on its silk, then drop cat-like to the floor. At night, when the temple was closed, no armed deacons might be on patrol in the atrium of the basilica. She had noted that residents of the temple – as opposed to visitors – rarely glanced upwards. Upwards was wreathed in smoke.
From the atrium she would proceed silently into the basilica. Apply lock-picks to the plasteel altar. Heave out the reliquary, heavy with gold.
‘Heavy on account of the femur too,’ insisted Lex. ‘Space Marine bones are big, and reinforced.’
Rakel glanced at him curiously, but did not question.
Next: open a body-bag.
‘Hide the corpse away inside the altar?’ queried Grimm.
‘No,’ said Jaq. ‘That would be sacrilege.’
Put the reliquary inside the bag along with the body. Tie the bag up again. Return to the atrium. An accomplice would let down the rope for Rakel’s retrieval.
‘Am I to be on the rooftop?’ Grimm demanded. ‘What sort of solo test is this?’
Rakel smiled wanly. ‘There’ll be other ways into the temple. Sewers, for instance. I’m sure Chor Shuturban will tell me if we promise enough gold. Wouldn’t we prefer to amaze him?’
She wasn’t Meh’lindi. Meh’lindi would have found a way in through the sewers, contorting herself and dislocating her limbs if need be. Yet Rakel was cleverly analytical.
The morning after robbing the altar she would present herself at the temple accompanied by a burly slave. She would identify a head poking from the bag. She would weep with mingled grief and joy. The slave would help her carry the burden away.
And if the reliquary proved too large, even in its crushed state, why, the night before she would cut off the head of the corpse, hide the headless body, then fasten the head to the top of the reliquary. The reliquary would substitute for the body.
‘Hide, where?’ demanded Jaq.
‘I’d hoped to make use of the altar,’ Rakel said humbly.
‘Sacrilege. Blasphemy.’
‘Indeed,’ said Lex.
‘I suppose,’ grumped Grimm, ‘this means I might have to haul up this rotting headless corpse on the end of the rope after you’ve climbed it?’
‘A thief uses every means she can,’ said Rakel.
Jaq said sternly. ‘You’re attempting to manipulate us to compensate for what has happened to you.’
Rakel shrugged. ‘I serve you,’ she said flatly, ‘in whatever way I best may.’
Jaq’s eyes widened at this echo of his dead assassin-courtesan. ‘It’s a plausible plan,’ he acknowledged.
‘Just so long,’ jeered Grimm, ‘as you don’t fasten yourself inside the body-bag as a way of getting out of the temple! Even with verdigris and cosmetic slime on your face the priests might decide you were uncorrupted, and a miracle. Ach, that prompts a thought. Don’t you reckon a corpse that’s getting a bit high might fall to pieces en route to the roof?’
‘I shall take a net with me,’ explained Rakel. ‘A net with a narrow mesh. Plenty of suitable fishing nets are on sale in Shandabar.’
‘A net with a corpse in it,’ muttered Grimm. ‘What a haul.’
‘I feel corruption gathering around me,’ Jaq murmured sombrely. He added very softly: ‘As I suppose it must gather.’
‘Cults,’ continued Rakel. ‘I was to ask about cults. There is a private society of lust in the Mahabbat district of Shandabar. Aphrodisiacs, orgies. Mardal Shuturban attends its debauches. And his brother has heard rumours of a cult of “transcendental alteration”. Evidently some people aspire to evolve beyond our human condition.’
Grimm asked: ‘Do these dental alterationists by any chance file their teeth to points so they look like genestealers’ fangs?’
‘Mardal has only heard vague rumours. My startling change in appearance seemed to explain my interest.’
‘Could be a remnant of genestealer hybrids, boss.’
‘Or else unwitting disciples of a certain Power, who foolishly imagine that evolutionary change is virtuous! Oh, the courthouse is surely all too lax in its investigations,’ declared Jaq. ‘Praise be that there is an inquisitor here, to test just how lax.’
T
HE NEXT NIGHT
, two hours after midnight, Jaq and Lex were lurking amidst the piled-up wreckage of vendors’ booths which had been demolished during the furore of the unveiling.
It was that hour when body and spirit are at their lowest ebb, the hour when people most frequently die in their sleep. This nocturnal ebb seemed especially melancholy in the great space fronting the temple. By now the flood of visiting pilgrims had quit the city. Where a throng of tents had been, only scattered beggars slumbered, their bodies fully covered against the cold, dead to the world. Maybe in the Mahabbat district vigorous beggars were still holding out hands to drunks departing from brothels, to lucky winners leaving gambling dens. But not here. Here, the inert shrouded beggars seemed to epitomize the exhausted
tristesse
of the city in the aftermath of the frantic climax to Holy Year. No one stirred. Not even a cough to be heard.
The sky-wide stipple of stars only feebly illuminated the temple square and the looming domes of Occidens. Deprived of his power armour and interface with its calculator, Lex could not see telescopically. No magnified image fed directly to his visual cortex now. He strained to perceive the obscure tiny figures of Grimm and Rakel upon the temple rooftops. Maybe he wasn’t even seeing them at all, but only a trick of darkness and starlight. Maybe Grimm had already propped the ultralight telescopic ladder against the dome above the atrium so as to reach the lowest vent. Maybe Rakel was already descending into smoky darkness, relieved only by a myriad pin-pricks of burning incense. Lex kept his enhanced ears alert for any outburst of gunfire.
How his hands itched to caress the thigh bone and to power up his graving tool. Such meditative peace of mind that would bring; such reverent serenity. Let the theft not fail. Theft, indeed! It was the restoration of a sacred bone into the rightful hands, so that Lex could honour whoever that Marine had been, dead for millennia perhaps. The exploit must succeed.
‘With your permission,’ he whispered to Jaq, ‘I’m going up on to the roof in case there’s trouble.’
‘I shall pray there isn’t,’ was the reply.
A great shadow departed swiftly.
G
RIMM’S EYES STUNG
and watered as he peered down into the atrium. The rope had gone slack in his hairy hands. He had pulled it up a good way, in case some insomniac priest went a-wandering and noticed. The end of the rope was highwayman-hitched to a spur of stone with a knot Grimm had learned on a world of nomad herdsmen where highway trails were beaten out by hooves across vast grassy steppes, and where steeds were tethered thus for quick release. A steed could tug on its tether until it was blue in the face. A rider need only jerk on the end of the rope for the knot to collapse.
Even with keen squattish eyesight Grimm could hardly make out the grossest shapes below. He might have been peering through a porthole upon a smoggy fuming dark nebula in which tiny dimmed stars burned feebly at a vast depth. Mustn’t silhouette himself too much, even so! Might seem like a voyeurish gargoyle. Bit like keeping watch down a chimney. Grimm suppressed a ticklish urge to hawk and spit phlegm.
I
N THE BASILICA
a thousand candles burned. Light waged its perpetual doomed war with darkness. Light must eventually fail, for darkness was a fundamental condition.