Belknap was sorting medical instruments and dressing packs into his black leather practice bag. ‘Getting ready,’ he said.
‘For what?’
‘Nayl told me what was going on. He wanted to borrow some field dressings and wound kits. Well, if you’re going into a situation that you know is going to be violent, I think you need a trained combat medicae with you.’
‘Oh no—’ Kara began.
‘It’s not up for debate,’ Belknap said. ‘What happens if me being there to patch one of you up and get you back on your feet is the difference between success or failure today? I don’t even want to think about how much is at stake.’
Kara sighed. Belknap opened a metal foot locker and took out an object wrapped in an oil cloth. ‘Besides,’ he went on, ‘it’s a bonus if that medicae knows how to shoot,’ An old, well-worn, las-carbine came out of the cloth. It was Guard-issue, and had a folded skeleton stock. Belknap looked it over with practiced skill, then dropped it into his bag.
‘This is all because I kissed you, isn’t it?’ Kara said.
‘Yeah,’ smiled Belknap. ‘Probably is.’
LATER IN THE afternoon, a few spits of rain in the air, Belknap opened the metal shutters of his lockup’s loading bay, and the Bergman rumbled out onto the sink street, followed by the cargo-8. Belknap closed and locked the shutters, and then climbed into the cargo-8. A moment later, the two vehicles pulled away and joined the up-stack traffic.
From the grubby window of the lockup, Frauka watched them leave.
‘Just you and me now,’ he said.
Frauka took out his handgun, checked the load, set it on the table beside him and sat down next to Zael’s cot.
SEVEN
‘IT’S TIME, SIR,’ said Revoke. ‘The sixth hour.’
Trice knew that. He had just changed into the long grey robes prepared for the ritual, and in doing so had removed his pocket chron for the last time.
‘How do I look?’
‘Regal,’ said Revoke. ‘But we should be leaving now.’
Side by side, they left the state apartments and strode down the long hallway. ‘Reports?’ Trice asked as they walked.
‘The Diadochoi and the ritual cipherists are already en route to the sacristy. The anonymic wafers have been sent out to the axial temples. Our people there report capacity congregations for the evening masses. City media networks have been switched to our control and selective broadcast will begin shortly. Astropathic function for the entire hive is also secured and shut down. Situations says the crisis we stage-managed in Carbonopolis is monopolising global attention as we hoped. The perfecti of the geometricians confirms that the Encompass Room is aligned and composed.’
They reached the secure elevators. The duty guards bowed as they stood back to admit the chief provost.
‘Any problems?’ Trice continued.
With a low warble, the elevator began to carry them up through the palace.
‘Some crowd issues in Formal A,’ Revoke said. ‘Nothing serious, but a lot of people gathering. Some are worried about the terrorism reports from the second city and just want to get into the grand templum to pray. But a lot more are there out of curiosity. We’ve closed the area down, but it’s obvious from a distance that something big’s going on.’
‘How do we handle that?’
‘I’ve already spoken to Sankels,’ Revoke said. ‘He’s moving every available marshal from Interior Cases into the cordon zone to supplement the secretists. Sankels has assured me he’s mobilised full crowd control and riot gear.’
‘All right. That’s good. Anything else?’
Revoke shook his head. The elevator came to a stop and the doors slid back to let them out onto the concourse of one of the small cap-level landing bays. A luxurious armoured flier with the crest of the Ministry on its stubby wings sat on the pad, engines idling. Two gunship escorts sat behind it.
Guards snapped to attention. The side hatch of the flier stood open and the chief provost hurried to it, Revoke with him.
They climbed into the passenger bay and an aide closed the hatch.
‘Conveyance of the lexicon will begin in fifteen minutes,’ Revoke said.
‘Then we go to condition beta,’ Trice replied.
The flier rose into the air and powered out of the landing bay with the gunships flanking it. It was already getting dark, and the immense city below spread out in a mass of gloomy monoliths and glittering lights.
WE WERE STILL streets away, but already it was clear that the precincts of the grand templum were the scene of some important event this night. A bright glow of searchlights lit up the sky beyond the nearby buildings and crowds of pedestrians were beginning to clot the approach roads. Overhead, fliers and gunships buzzed past with increasing frequency, some obviously patrolling the district.
‘It’s getting sticky,’ Carl voxed. He was up ahead of me, riding in the Bergman with Kara and Maud Plyton. ‘Lot of crowd build up and a palpable sense of unease, almost panic. We can see cordons now. Yeah, riot cordons. Armed marshals. Roadblocks too. They’re checking all traffic. Nothing’s getting within a kilometre of the templum precinct except Magistratum vehicles.’
‘Understood,’ I said. I consulted my chair’s filed charts of the templum area. ‘Any suggestions?’
‘Plyton says she and her pal got in last night by way of the north-west corner. It’s a jumble of buildings, alms-houses and beneficent chapels and the like.’
‘I see it on my chart.’
‘The three of us might be able to slip in that way. I’d like to give it a try.’
‘All right,’ I replied. ‘But be careful and stay in contact.’
Up ahead, through the front screen of the cargo-8’s cab, we saw the Bergman pull off through the crowds down a side street and disappear.
‘What about us, then?’ Nayl asked from the wheel.
‘We try the front way,’ I said.
‘Just walk in?’ Kys asked, dubiously.
‘Well, I could make everyone in the crowd and every marshal on that cordon line think we were a Magistratum truck full of riot officers, but I don’t want to play the psyker card too early and get us picked up.’
‘If you can’t make us look like a Magistratum truck, why don’t we just use a Magistratum track?’ Belknap asked. ‘I like the way he thinks,’ Nayl said.
IT TOOK NEARLY twenty-five minutes to navigate around the backstreets of the district to the north-west corner of the templum precincts. But Carl’s instinct had been good. The area was almost deserted. The crowds, evidently, were favouring the more public zones like the wide boulevards leading into Templum Square.
Plyton drove the purring Bergman into a cobbled lane that ran down the back of the Choristers’ Hall, and pulled into a small yard. The old precinct buildings around them were deserted and dark though beyond them, in the south-east, the night sky was glowing with the powerful illumination set up around the templum.
The three of them got out and checked their equipment one final time. Plyton was wearing her black Magistratum body armour with the badges and insignia of Special Crime removed and, apart from her bolstered Tronsvasse 9, she carried a big, black pump-action riot gun that Nayl had found for her. Plyton seemed a big, bulky figure compared to the much shorter, curvier Kara, whose compact body was wrapped in a dark purple armoured bodyglove with a short tan jacket over the top. She carried the shivered sword across her back, and a bolt pistol in her hands.
‘Which way?’ Kara whispered.
‘Follow the light,’ Carl said, snidely.
‘We can do that,’ Plyton said. ‘But if we jink over to the left there, we can come in along the side of the Paupers’ School, and then be screened by the alms-house wall all the way down to the refectory and the gate lodge.’
‘The stuff you know,’ Carl mocked, checking his Hecuter then sliding it away under the long brown leather coat he was wearing.
‘What’s that?’ Kara asked, pointing at the tails of his coat.
Carl opened the leather coat and drew the sheathed blade out.
‘Throne, where did you get that?’
‘It’s one of the rhyming swords that incunabula used to kill Mathuin,’ Carl replied. ‘I found it in the rubble just before we left. I intend to shove it right back down the throat of whoever sent that thing.’
With Plyton leading, they scurried down the gloomy lane, and across into a paved courtyard lit by a single lamp. On the far side, it opened up into the circuit road that ran around the inner precinct proper. They could see the white cordon barriers running all along the street. A Magistratum riot crawler rumbled past along the circuit road.
‘Anyone around?’ Kara whispered.
‘Yeah, there’s a three-man patrol down there,’ Plyton replied. ‘Give it a sec. Yeah, they’ve gone round the corner. Go!’
The three of them dashed across the circuit road, ducked under the luminous white cordon, and into a small, unlit cobbled lane with the bulk of the Paupers’ School to their right. They hurried on, keeping their backs to the wall. Kara signalled them to freeze as a six-man squad of riot officers in full armour jogged past the end of the lane.
Then she beckoned them on again.
Carl brought up the rear. He looked around and sniffed the cold night air. ‘It’s going to be a wild night,’ he muttered.
A LARGE BLACK Magistratum truck came grumbling down the empty transit underway and Belknap stepped out from behind the cargo-8 waving his hands.
The truck came to a halt, engine running, and a marshal, looking huge in his riot armour, clambered down.
‘What’s the problem?’ he crackled over his helmet vox.
‘My eight’s broken down. I was told to clear out of the area just now by some of you boys and then the damn thing stalled on me. Can you give me a hand? I’m no good with engines.’
The marshal signalled to his driver and followed Belknap around the cargo-8 to the open engine hatch. ‘Surprise,’ said Nayl, and shot him through the visor.
At the same moment, a kineblade whistled out and pinned the truck’s driver to his seatback.
‘Clear!’ called Kys.
Unwerth jumped down from the tailgate of the cargo-8 and opened the back hatch of the Magistratum vehicle for me. Belknap, Nayl and Kys dumped the bodies of the marshals in our vehicle and locked it up. Then Belknap and Kys joined Unwerth and myself in the back of the Magistratum track and Nayl got in behind the wheel.
He put the big machine in gear and drove us away along the transit, turned right into one of the boulevards, and began to crawl through the pedestrian crowds gathering at the cordon across the mouth of Templum Square. There were two similar Magistratum tracks and a riot crawler in line ahead of us, and the marshals at the cordon had lifted the barriers aside to bring them through.
‘If anybody wants to pray for good fortune, they should do it now,’ Nayl said as we closed on the barrier. To my surprise, Belknap actually did what Nayl suggested, closing his eyes and mouthing the charm of sanctity under his breath.
Through the armoured hull of the truck, we could hear the anxious murmurings of the vast crowd.
‘Nearly there,’ Nayl said.
Eager to get the cordon closed and prevent the pressing crowd from spilling through, the marshals waved us on after the other vehicles.
We were in the huge plaza of Temple Square now. It seemed ominously empty after the bustle of the streets. The bulk of the grand templum towered ahead of us, lit up by dozens of powerful searchlight units that had been erected around the plaza. The huge white stab beams lanced up into the night sky and tracked slowly, occasionally catching on the fuselage of one of the patrol fliers circling low over the area. There were a lot of riot marshals on the ground around the templum, along with figures in grey suits. I noted that at least three of these grey figures were managing weapon-servitors on leashes.
Marshals with lighted batons were ushering us over to park with other Magistratum trucks in the plaza on the east side of the templum. There were dozens of vehicles drawn up there already. Nayl pulled us in on the far side of them, so line of sight from the main activity around the front entrance to us was blocked by the parked trucks.
‘What’s the time?’ Kys asked.
‘Nearly seven-thirty,’ I replied.
JADER TRICE CLIMBED out of his flier and walked clear, keeping his head low as it rose away again, into the search-lit sky. Revoke led the chief provost in through the main entrance of the grand templum, and the secretists and marshals all around them broke into spontaneous applause.
‘Thank you,’ smiled Trice. ‘Thank you all.’
Boneheart awaited them in the immense nave.
‘Everything is secure. All units report steady status, condition beta.’
‘Excellent,’ Trice said, straightening his robes.
‘The lexicon is two minutes away,’ Boneheart added.
‘I want to see it arrive,’ Trice said. ‘Where’s the Diadochoi?’
‘Already in the sacristy,’ Boneheart replied. ‘He went through as soon as he touched down, along with the cipherists.’
‘And Culzean?’
‘Culzean was with him, sir.’
Trice turned to Revoke. ‘I’d like you to come with me, Toros. After all your work, you should witness this too.’
‘I should stay and supervise—’ Revoke began.
‘Everything’s covered,’ Boneheart said. You go on.’
Revoke nodded to Boneheart and followed the chief provost out through the west entrance and along the wide exterior cloister to the old sacristy. This building too was floodlit, the vertical searchlight beams like the bars of a giant cage around it.
‘Day of days,’ Trice murmured.
‘This is a great moment for you, sir,’ Revoke replied. ‘A culmination.’
‘A great moment for us all,’ Trice said.
They entered the old sacristy.
The vault was lit by thousands of glow-globes. Ministry contractors had erected a large circular dais under the domed roof, the centre of the dais positioned directly beneath the apex of the dome. Ranks of seating had been built into the edges of the dais, facing inwards and, at the compass points, sleek obelisks of resonant stone had been set upright in sockets, each one corresponding exactly to the axes of the hive’s occult geometry. Trice climbed up the short flight of steps onto the dais, seeing Culzean and his bodyguard sitting amongst the other senior cipherists and dignitaries in the seating section. Culzean nodded to Trice, but Trice chose to ignore him.
The air was clean and cold. The central area of the wide dais was empty, except for the hub of suspensor rods poking up through the precise centre of the stage. Around this hub stood the thirteen grey-robed cipherists chosen to officiate the Enunciation. The Diadochoi was with them.
‘What is he wearing?’ Trice hissed to Revoke.
The Diadochoi was not dressed in the grey ritual robes Trice had so carefully designed and made. He was wearing a tailored gown of scarlet velvet and a long shrouding mantle.
‘Lord,’ Trice said, approaching the Diadochoi.
The Diadochoi turned and smiled at Trice. He was using his public face, the face of Oska Ludolf Barazan.
‘Jader! Our great day reaches its climax. Aren’t you excited?’
‘Lord, you should be changed by now. The ritual robes—’
‘Too drab for an occasion like tonight. I will be wearing this.’
‘Not drab, lord,’ Trice fought to contain his fury. ‘I designed the robes to be inert, so that they would not, by colour or design or pattern, threaten the purity of—’
‘You worry too much, Jader,’ the Diadochoi said. ‘Hush up now. See? The lexicon is here.’
Trice was about to explode with rage, but Revoke squeezed his arm and shook his head. Everyone looked up.
The ages-old false ceiling of the sacristy roof, accidentally penetrated by a simple limner, had been torn out. The real roof, the original dome, was now revealed. The she
er beauty of the ancient frescoes: the haloed figures, the golden temples, the idyllic pastoral landscape, stilled Trice’s anger for a moment. Perfection unveiled. Paradise found.
This, Trice considered, was what had driven Archdeacon Aulsman to suicide. The sheer heresy of it. For all its ornamentation, for all its lapis and selpic, its silver-etched constellations, this was Theodor Cadizky’s handiwork. There was no God-Emperor, no primarchs, no illustrious holies of the Imperial creed. What the frescoes showed, and boldly proclaimed in their inscriptions, was a prelapserian Eden, where ordinary men and women walked upon the face of Terra and were bestowed with the power of gods. Around them were the esoteric marks of a great chart, a mirror of the scribings the geometricians had wrought upon the floor of the Encompass Room. The perfect axial alignment of the hive’s mechanism, the occult order and the lines of power that Cadizky had built into his Petropolis.
‘Lexicon conveyance approaching,’ Revoke said, as his headset bipped.
‘Open the shutter,’ said the Diadochoi.
With a whirr, the central portion of the dome high above them slid open, leaves of metal unfolding around each other. They could hear the jetwash of a lifter hovering over the roof.
‘Time?’ Trice asked.
‘Ten minutes to eight, sir.’
‘We are at condition alpha,’ said Trice.
KARA, PLYTON AND Carl had reached the north-east gate lodge of the templum precinct. The old sacristy was ahead of them now, swathed in light.
‘Cover!’ Carl hissed. They ducked into the shadows as the roar of an approaching lifter echoed around the old walls.
‘Gods!’ said Plyton, peering out. Blazing with stab-lights, a heavy lifter was coming in over the domed roof of the old sacristy, caught in the beams of the flood-lamps. It hovered in place, the noise of its engines shrill, and projected an intense white beam down from its belly, apparently into the top of the dome.
‘Ravenor! Ravenor!’ Carl voxed anxiously. ‘It’s started. Something big is happening!’
ON THE EAST side of the grand templum, we got out of the Magistratum track. There was no longer any time to worry about the risks of discovery. I slid my chair up around the outer wall of the templum, heading for the main entrance. Belknap and Nayl followed me, running. Nayl, a huge shape in his brown armoured bodyglove, held a custom plasma rifle up to his chest. He’d fitted it with an underbarrel grenade launcher. Belknap, leaner than Nayl, in his black army fatigues and long, billowing leather coat, cut a romantic figure, like a pirate or a swashbuckler. He carried his practice bag in his left hand.