The Outcast Dead

  Never before had the Primus Gate been shut, and the stark fact of its closure struck a clear note that the axis of the galaxy had tilted. Humanity had a new enemy, one that wore a familiar face, and whose agents might even now be among them.

  No longer could Terra’s citizens walk freely within the domain of their master.

  Until now, the travellers’ journey into the peaks had been largely unhindered by the rigorous new security that surrounded the continental palace of the Emperor, but they had drawn too near the bright flame at the heart of the Imperium to pass unnoticed. Millions of migrant workers had come to the palace, and so many faces needed watching.

  As it transpired, the Primus Gate was traversed without much in the way of inconvenience, for they had come with documents affixed with the seal of one of the great Navigator houses, and its amethyst hue was given due deference by the gate’s castellans as the way was opened. Passing beneath its shadow took many hours of travel, and once beyond the gate the magnificence of the palace proper began.

  It had been described as a crown of light atop the world, a continental landmass of unrivalled architectural brilliance, and the greatest work of man, but such descriptions failed to capture its epic immensity, the sheer weight of awe it engendered and the colossal impossibility of its very existence. Many supplicants who had spent their life’s worth to see the palace passed its first gate and climbed no further, humbled to the point of insensibility by even its least noteworthy avenues, processionals and towers. It was a monumental endeavour built not to the scale of men, but the scale of gods.

  Beyond the docking rings and landing fields of the Brahmaputra Plateau rose the tallest peaks: the Naked Mountain, the Great Black, the Turquoise Goddess, and once mightiest of them all, the Holy Mother. None of them had escaped the attentions of the Mechanicum or the Emperor’s warmasons, their summits planed flat, and their bedrock burrowed deep to anchor the footings of the mighty palace.

  ‘Impressive,’ said Bellan Tortega from the back of the luxurious, up-armoured skimmer.

  Kai Zulane fixed the chirurgeon with a hostile stare. ‘I hate you,’ he said.

  THE INTERIOR OF the skimmer was panelled with off-world wood from the broadleaf forests of Yolaeu, its metallic surfaces edged with chased platinum and inset with smooth pict slates that displayed a rolling series of serene alien landscapes. The seats were plush amethyst velveteen, with the crest of House Castana embroidered in gold. Subtle lighting kept the hard edges of the interior soft, and a well-stocked chill-bar meant even a long journey could pass in comfort. All that spoiled the elegant luxury of the interior was the presence of four House Castana armsmen.

  Clad in loops of gleaming black carapace and bonded leather armour, they filled the interior of the skimmer with their augmented physiques. Castana was pre-eminent among the families of the Navis Nobilite and could easily afford the ruinous cost of Mechanicum enhancements for their security personnel. Their faces were invisible behind glossy black helm visors, and each was wired with crystalline psi-dampers – as was the skimmer itself – to shield them from psychic intrusion.

  Ostensibly, these men were here as a protective escort, but the combat shotguns gripped tightly in heavy leather gauntlets left no doubt in Kai’s mind that he was little better than a prisoner. He eased his back into the wide seat, finding himself unable to enjoy comfort he had once taken for granted. He cradled a glass of mahogany-coloured amasec, swirling the drink in a cut crystal glass that would cost more than most citizens would earn in a year. Idly he thought of throwing the glass out the window, but decided that such petty rebellion would only irritate him afterwards.

  Besides, the liquor dulled the ache of psi-sickness that had plagued him since his return to Terra.

  Across from Kai, Bellan Tortega stared out of the window with open-mouthed delight. It was the chirurgeon’s first time visiting the palace, and it showed. He had been naming landmarks and marvelling at the sheer number of people within the palace precincts ever since they had passed beneath the Primus Gate, nearly twenty hours ago. Their route took them over the Brahmaputra Plateau, and Kai kept an artfully bored expression glued to his face. He knew it was an honour to see the cradle of humanity up close, but was too wrapped in his own misery to take much notice of his surroundings.

  ‘I believe that covered amphitheatre, the one encased in scaffolding, is the Investiary,’ said Tortega. ‘The statues of the Primarchs within are hooded with mourning shrouds.’

  ‘Why?’ asked Kai.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean why hood a statue? It’s not like it can see.’

  ‘It’s symbolic, Kai,’ said Tortega. ‘It represents the desire of the Emperor to shield his sons from the treachery of their brothers.’

  ‘Represents a waste of time if you ask me. I would have thought the Emperor had more to worry about than pointless symbolism.’

  Tortega sighed. ‘You know your biggest problem, Kai?’

  ‘I am well aware of my problems, good chirurgeon,’ snapped Kai. ‘You never tire of reminding me of them every day.’

  ‘You take no appreciation of how lucky you are,’ said Tortega, as if Kai hadn’t spoken.

  Kai bit back a caustic response and took another drink.

  ‘Patriarch Verduchina would have been well within his rights to have you cast out of the Telepathica, and then what would you have done? You’d have been picked up by the psi-hounds within a day.’

  Kai used to try and defuse these lectures while in the medicae facilities of House Castana on the island crag of Kyprios, but time and apathy had made him realise that once Tortega had begun, there was no stopping him.

  ‘You think you could have afforded those ocular augmetics without the Castanas?’ continued Tortega. ‘Disgrace the House and they’ll take them back, mark my words. You have a lot to be thankful for, young man, and it’s time you realised that before it’s too late.’

  ‘It’s already too late,’ said Kai. ‘Look where we are, where I’m going.’

  ‘We’re in the bosom of our species, Kai. And when the Imperium is reunited after this silly war, people will flock to this place,’ said Tortega, leaning forward and placing a hand on Kai’s knee.

  The sensation was painful, and Kai flinched at the chirurgeon’s unwarranted over-familiarity.

  ‘Don’t touch me,’ said Kai. ‘Don’t you know anything about telepaths? Do you really want me to know all your dirty little secrets?’

  Tortega snatched his hand back, and Kai shook his head. ‘Idiot. I’ve no talent for psychometry, but you were worried, weren’t you? What are you keeping from old Verduchina? Drug abuse? Illicit liaisons with your patients? Aberrant sexual deviancy?’

  The chirurgeon reddened, and Kai laughed. ‘You’re a pathetic little man, Tortega. You think Verduchina values you? Likes you? You’re nothing to him, just another disposable functionary. That is if he even knows your name.’

  Tortega’s back stiffened, but he refrained from rising to Kai’s bait. Instead, he returned his gaze to the wonders passing their skimmer.

  ‘There,’ said Tortega archly, ‘that’s the Hamazan Ossuary. I’ve seen picts, but they don’t capture the grandeur of its scale. You really have to see it to appreciate the harmony of its proportions. And there, I believe that colonnaded archway with the golden finials and weeping domes leads to the Astartes Tower. They say it’s the last place the Emperor and the primarchs spoke before the expedition fleets set off to the far corners of the Imperium. The glorious arias of Kynska’s The Score of Heroes tells of each day the Emperor spent with his sons.’

  ‘I’ll bet he wishes he’d spent longer,’ said Kai idly, finishing his drink and placing the glass on the polished mahogany rest beside him. He wanted another, to drain the entire bottle. Anything to dull the ache.

  ‘What do you mean?’ said Tortega.

  ‘Maybe if the Emperor had spent longer than a day with Horus Lupercal, we wouldn’t be in this mess.’

  ‘Hus
h,’ said Tortega. ‘You cannot say such things, not here, not in this place.’

  ‘Who is to stop me?’

  Tortega shook his head. ‘What pleasure do you get from being so provocative?’

  Kai shrugged. ‘I was just pointing out that had the Emperor spent more time with his primarchs, then perhaps they might not have turned on him. It’s hardly a treasonous thought.’

  ‘Who is to say what is treason these days?’ sighed Tortega.

  ‘Just ask the Crusader Host,’ said Kai. ‘I’m pretty sure they could tell you.’

  IT TOOK ANOTHER day to reach their destination, and Tortega spent his time cataloguing wonders of the palace he would probably never see again: The Gallery of Winter, Upanizad’s Tomb, the Petitioner’s Hall, the Crystal Observatory, the fire-blackened Preceptory, the Long Room and the Forge of Flesh and Steel, where the historic pact between the Martian priesthood and Terra had finally been sealed. Its double-headed eagle capstone was fashioned from ouslite and porphyry. In the dying sunset it looked bloody.

  Kai sensed the presence of the City of Sight long before he saw it over the horizon, a grimly empty space amid this teeming anthill of mental activity. The psi-dampers fitted to the skimmer had blocked virtually every stray thought from the billions of workers, labourers, scribes, technicians, artisans and soldiers within the palace walls, but Kai had still sensed the background thrum of so vast a populace.

  Approaching the headquarters of the Adeptus Astra Telepathica, there was nothing, no trace that anyone lived in this forsaken part of the palace. Kai knew better, having spent nearly a decade within its bleak towers, learning how to harness his abilities for the betterment of the Imperium. Thinking back to those days, he felt a fleeting touch of nostalgia, but quelled it bitterly, for this was no joyous homecoming.

  Where other regions of the palace were celebrations of Unity, the builders of the City of Sight seemed to have gone out of their way to craft something calculated to weigh on the soul. Beyond the domain of the astro-telepaths, the architecture of the palace was raised up in glorification of mankind’s achievements, its statuary fashioned to remind a grateful populace of all that had been rebuilt in the wake of the terrible, world-spanning wars that had almost dragged the species down into extinction.

  None of that was to be found in the City of Sight, and Kai felt only aching despair as the skimmer passed beneath the Obsidian Arch in its outer walls. Tortega twisted his head as he stared at the forest of iron towers, lightless garrets and silent thoroughfares within. The streets of the palace beyond the glossy black archway were alive with the heaving, vibrant mass of humanity, but only solitary ghosts in hooded green robes populated these streets.

  ‘A lot of memories here for you, I expect,’ said Tortega.

  Kai nodded and said, ‘I really hate you.’

  IT WAS FOOLISH to be out on the streets this late, but Roxanne had little choice but to risk the darkness. Though it was night, the Petitioner’s City was never truly dark. Drumfires cast flickering illumination on the walls of the buildings around her, and hooded lanterns hung from hooks on makeshift lamplighter posts.

  Fumes from chemical burners clung to leaning structures built from prefabricated panels stolen from the spoil heaps of the Mechanicum or the construction fields before the palace walls. Whip antennae reached up into the smoky haze hanging over the ad hoc city from some of the larger dwellings, and cloth bunting was strung from corner to corner in a failed effort to leaven the appearance of squalor. The wall next to her was plastered with Lectitio Divinitatus flyers, crudely printed on old propaganda sheets.

  Roxanne’s every instinct had counselled against her leaving the temple, but the sight of Maya’s crying children had persuaded her that there was no other option. The infections ravaging their tiny frames were well advanced and, without medicine, they would be dead by morning. Two of Maya’s offspring were already laid at the feet of the Vacant Angel while their mother wept and wailed to its featureless face.

  Palladis had given her directions to the Serpent House, and Roxanne took care to follow them exactly. She had never travelled so far from the temple, and the experience was fearful and exciting in the same breath. To a girl raised a virtual prisoner by her own family, the sense of danger was liberating and intoxicating.

  And just as the city was never truly dark, nor was it ever truly silent.

  Metal hammered on metal, children cried, mothers shouted, lunatic preachers read their holy writ of the Emperor, and drunks yelled obscenities at the air. Roxanne had read volumes of history in the family library that spoke of Old Earth’s cities, how they had been teeming slums where millions of people lived cheek by jowl with one another in appalling poverty.

  That, her carefully-vetted tutors told her, had been an ancient age, an age before the coming of the Emperor. To Roxanne’s freshly-opened eyes, it didn’t look like much had changed. It seemed absurd that poverty like this could exist in the shadow of the palace, the living symbol of this new age of progress and enlightenment. The gilded halo around the palace bathed the tallest buildings of heroic architects with lambent illumination, but little hint of the light and wonder the Emperor’s armies were bringing to the galaxy fell upon the Petitioner’s City.

  Roxanne wondered if her family had sent anyone to find her, if there were, even now, agents of her father scouring the streets of the city looking for his wayward daughter. Perhaps, but most likely not. The dust had yet to settle from the scandal surrounding her last voyage, and she imagined there would be those amongst the family hierarchy who would be more than happy to see her lost amongst the faceless masses.

  She put such thoughts from her mind and concentrated on the route ahead.

  Dangerous enough to roam the streets of the City this late without letting her mind dwell on the injustices of the world or the life on which she had turned her back. This was her life now, and it was about as far from the one she had known as it was possible to get.

  Swathed in a hooded robe of rough muddy brown fabric that Roxanne wouldn’t have dreamed of wearing a few months ago, she was an innocuous enough presence on the streets. The few people she passed carefully avoided her glances and made their own furtive ways through the streets. She kept her hood pulled tight around her head, keeping her features in the shadows and walking with the hunched gait common amongst the city’s inhabitants.

  The less notice she attracted the better.

  The Serpent House was deep in Dhakal territory, and she most assuredly did not want to run into any of the Babu’s men before she got there. At best they would kill her quickly and rob her. At worst they’d take their time in violating her before dumping the mutilated corpse in the gutter.

  Roxanne had seen the body of a girl who’d run into Ghota, the Babu’s most feared enforcer, and she found it impossible to comprehend that a human being could do such terrible things. The girl’s father had brought her to the temple and handed over everything he owned. Palladis had tried to stop the man leaving, knowing full well where he would go, but the father’s grief was unassailable. His dismembered body had been found hanging from iron meat hooks on the edge of the Dhakal territories the following night.

  Yes, it was dangerous to be out in the Petitioner’s City after sundown, but Maya’s little ones needed counterbiotics and Antioch was the only chirurgeon who had medicine that hadn’t been cut with too many impurities to do any good. The old man’s prices were ruinous, but that didn’t matter to Palladis when it came to children.

  In any case, what price could you put on a life when the temple was never short of money?

  The bereaved were generous with their coin, as though fearing any hint of pecuniary reticence would somehow prevent their dead from finding peace. Imperial truth owned to no life beyond the corporeal, that death was the end of a person’s journey, but Roxanne knew better. She had stared into the tenebrous realm that lay beyond the hideously permeable borders of reality, and seen things that made her question everything she had been t
old.

  She shook off such dangerous thoughts, feeling her breath quicken and her heartbeat race. Suppressed memories threatened to surface, horrors of skinless bodies on fire from the marrow, wet organs hanging from ruptured torsos and skulls licked clean from the inside, but she fought to quell them by fixing on something inconsequential.

  The wall next to her was daubed with graffiti, and she focussed the entirety of her attention upon it as her memory recalled the smell of blood and the ozone stink of failing shields. It was a mural depicting hulking warriors of the Legiones Astartes atop newly conquered worlds, gaudy in colour and robust in vigour if not aesthetic merit. The artist was clearly ignorant of their true scale, as the armoured figures were not much bigger than the mortal soldiers accompanying them.

  Roxanne had seen the terrible might of the Legiones Astartes, and knew just how unnaturally swollen they were, their bulk freakishly ogre-like, yet surprisingly supple and graceful.

  The mural had been vandalised, and several of the figures were partially obscured with hurled whitewash and slogans that reassuringly told her that the Emperor protected. The purple of the Emperor’s Children and the blue of the World Eaters was almost completely gone, while the white and ochre green of the Death Guard poked out from a numerous angry brush strokes. A Luna Wolf howled from behind a wide splash of paint, while an Iron Warrior’s face had been unfairly hacked from the wall and lay in pieces on the hard-packed earth.

  Roxanne’s breathing slowed and she reached out to touch the mural, letting the reassuring solidity of the wall bring her back to a place of equilibrium. She closed her eyes and rested her forehead against the rough brickwork, taking in slow breaths and imagining the expanse of an empty desert wasteland. The metallic reek of innards faded, and the pungent odour of roasting meat and stale sweat returned with its all-too-human aroma. The toxic smell of bac-sticks waxed strong in the mix.