Ciaphas Cain: Choose Your Enemies

She blinked her left eye and the door opened. Hesh waited for a second and then stepped through. Viola followed, sealing the door with another blink.

The space beyond was small, barely five paces across, but its stone walls extended up and up until they met a crystal dome that let in the light of the stars outside the ship. Candles burned on iron brackets. Covenant stood opposite the door, clad in the plain grey robe of an adept. Josef waited behind him, the head of his hammer on the floor between his feet, his hands resting on the top of the haft.

‘You are Covenant?’ asked Hesh.

‘Yes.’

Hesh bowed his head.

‘You brought me here because you wish to know something. I submitted because I would know how my lord died.’

‘The circumstances of Lord Vult’s death were presented by my lord inquisitor to a conclave of his peers,’ said Viola, moving to stand behind Covenant.

‘Falsehoods,’ said Hesh.

‘You call my lord a liar?’ asked Viola.

‘All inquisitors are liars,’ said Hesh.

‘For the truth will destroy us all,’ said Covenant. Hesh looked at Covenant. Their gazes locked.

‘True,’ said Hesh.

‘You will address him as lord,’ growled Josef. Covenant gave a small turn of his head and Josef went still and silent.

‘You served Vult for five decades,’ said Covenant, ‘you held his proxy during the purges of Lamish, and turned down the calling to be invested as an inquisitor in your own right, did you not?’

Hesh nodded once. Covenant returned the gesture.

‘He is gone, but I have need of you,’ said Covenant.

‘I was my master’s servant, not yours.’

Covenant’s gaze did not shift, but Viola saw the twitch next to his temple.

‘You are anything I decide you are,’ said Covenant softly.

Hesh’s face was a mask, his pale eyes moving across Covenant’s young features. Then he nodded.

‘How may I serve?’

Covenant looked at him for a long moment.

‘What do you know of Horusians?’ he asked at last.

They were on the edge of the crowd of pilgrims when the lightning struck. Ninkurra felt it before she saw it. White light drowned her mind for an instant. She stumbled and fell. The hawks clinging to her shoulders shrieked. Above her a finger of light uncoiled from the black sky and struck down. Light and shadow reversed. White to black. Black to white. Blue to blood red.

‘Throne’s tears,’ grunted Ninkurra, and pushed herself up from the ground. Lights bubbled in her eyes. The psy-connection to her hawks had vanished. Voices washed through her skull. She could feel the telepathic bow wave break against the psy-engrams trained into her psyche. The crowd of pilgrims lay strewn on the flattened corn stalks, a sea of blue fabric. Memnon had not fallen but even he had stumbled to one knee. In front of them the lightning bolt shone, frozen, a blinding column connecting earth and sky. At its heart a lone figure stood, pinned in place by light.

It had not been one of the priests. It had not even been one of the pilgrims deemed worthy enough to reach the inner sections of the tabernacle. It was just a man, old enough to know that life is neither as cruel nor kind as it seems to the young, young enough to make the pilgrimage on foot from whatever farm compound he lived in. Perhaps he had been having dreams: dreams of great cities of rotting stone and lights that never faded; visions of great battles in times that were already the dust of history. Perhaps he had seen nothing in his sleep but had felt the fire behind his eyes, and wondered at the taste of ashes in his mouth when he woke. Perhaps there had been no signs, and the moment the lightning fell came without any warning. Who he was and how he had come there would never be known, and did not matter, because in that instant the secret power of the universe had reached down and touched him.

Saints, rogue psykers, holy instruments or witches – the difference was not one that Ninkurra had ever tried to understand. Memnon had always said that the difference was only clear after it no longer mattered. She could see why. In moments like the one unfolding in front of her eyes it did not matter whether the power earthing itself in reality was divine or profane. It was just dangerous.

‘Gunships, in now!’ she shouted. ‘Full kill pattern.’

The figure at the core of the lightning twitched, and the field of pilgrims rose as though pulled by strings. Memnon had stood too, but he was no longer her concern. She was not here to protect him. She was here to kill by his will.

The gunships were coming in fast, engines roaring. Ninkurra shrugged the shard-blade from her back as she ran. A man in pilgrim blue blocked her, staggering, blood running from stigmata on his throat. He reached for her. The shard-blade unfolded from its haft as she swung. The pilgrim fell, and there was blood in the air and blood scattering in her wake. She felt her connection to her two hawks return. Their sight filled her mind. She drew her pistol. It armed at her touch.

‘Please…’ The voice came from the mouths of every pilgrim, a deafening whimper of pain. ‘Please… I can’t…’