Ciaphas Cain: Choose Your Enemies

‘Readings across all parameters are reaching paradox,’ rasped Geddon. The hawks spiralled down out of the darkening sky. Ninkurra could feel it now – metal on her tongue, static shivering on the inside of her skin. The mass of pilgrims were looking up at the thunderhead darkening the air above them. Some were crying out, some were already running.

‘We have targets locked and weapons live,’ said a voice in Ninkurra’s vox-bead.

The gunships were visible now. The sound of engines growled across the distance.

‘Do you have a triangulation?’ asked Memnon, calmly.

‘No, lord,’ shouted Geddon, her fingers clacking the keys of the controls that took the place of her left arm. ‘Phenomenon and paradox traces are changing too rapidly. The prospect is not clear.’

‘Very well,’ said Memnon. ‘Gunships into gyre pattern. Nothing that runs lives.’ He began to walk down the gentle slope towards the tabernacle and the crowd of pilgrims. ‘We will need to identify the prospect directly. There is not much time.’

The hawks on Ninkurra’s shoulders took to the air with shrill cries as she followed him.

Lightning flashed inside the cloud above them. Thunder rolled.

‘Come,’ said Memnon. ‘We must be pilgrims now.’

The Black Priest walked in silence through the Dionysia. Midnight robes billowed in his wake. Vials of holy water and silver aquilae hung from his waist, and a heavy ‘I’ set with a rayed skull hung around his neck. Two void-armoured troopers in pressure helms followed him, their shot-cannons held low but ready. If the priest was disturbed by their presence he did not show it. No muscle twitched under the pattern of tattoos which covered his face, and his hands hung loose beside the pommel of his sword and the butt of his pistol. The guards had let him keep both. It was a sign of trust, but Viola could not help thinking that it, like the threat of the troopers, held little sway on the priest’s mind.

‘They make them from priests who have seen the truth of the warp,’ Josef had said when she had talked of the meeting.

‘Make them?’ she had asked, arching an eyebrow above her chrome-clouded left eye.

‘Don’t get me wrong, they are taught and trained, too – litanies of castigation, rites of exorcism, myth and knowledge that would earn a death penalty across the Imperium – they learn it all. A Black Priest is never a fool and often as clever as they come.’ Josef had smiled. ‘Some of them might be even cleverer than you.’

She had shrugged away the jibe.

‘That’s just education, unusual but not–’

‘Once they get past that they are tested. Every lie and heresy a daemon can utter is thrown at them. They pass through hunger and thirst, pain and torment, and all the while they hear lies, and truths that are worse than lies. Those who get that far are marked with verses of the books of detestation. The tops of their heads are opened and the inside of their skulls etched with sigils of protection. Only then are they sent out to those of the Inquisition that want them.’ Josef had paused and shivered. ‘So, yes, they are made, just like you would make a sword, and you have to treat them as if that’s what they are – things with sharp edges made to do harm.’

The Black Priest stopped a pace from Viola. The door at her back remained closed. She met his gaze. His eyes were pale grey, she noticed.

‘I am Viola von Castellan. I bid you welcome to the Dionysia.’

‘I know who you are,’ said the Black Priest.

‘And I you, but there is a politeness to observing the form of things, don’t you think?’

He moved his head to look at the door behind her and then back.

‘Hesh,’ he said. ‘That is my name.’

Viola fought to keep the frown from her face.

‘My master will see you.’