Tariel muttered something about his cursed luck and Kell brushed past him, back into the cockpit. The pilot was already pushing the transport into a steep turn. Below them, distinguished only by a slight change in the tone of the chem-snow, he spotted the mottled lifeless landscape of the Aktick ranges through the spin and whirl of the blizzard-borne ice. There, beneath the craft, was a low blockhouse of heavy ferrocrete, distinguishable only by stripes of weather-faded crimson outlining the edges of it, and the steady blink of locator beacons. But where there should have been the hex-shape of a landing silo, there was only a maw belching black smoke and flickers of fire.
Kell caught the tinny sound of panicked voices coming through the pilot’s vox-bead, and as they banked, he thought he saw the blink of weapons discharges down inside the silo proper. His jaw stiffened; this was no chance accident. He knew exactly what had happened.
‘Oh. They woke him,’ said Iota, from behind, giving voice to his thoughts. ‘That was a mistake.’
‘Take us in,’ Kell snapped.
The pilot’s eyes widened behind his flight goggles. ‘The silo is on fire and there’s nowhere else to set down! We have to abort!’
The Vindicare shook his head. ‘Land us on the ice!’
‘If I put this craft down there, it might never lift again,’ said the pilot, ‘and if–’
Kell silenced him with a look. ‘If we don’t deal with this right now, by sunrise tomorrow every settlement within a hundred kilometre radius will be a slaughterhouse!’ He pointed at the snow fields. ‘Land this thing, now!’
Instead of returning home to the small apartment cluster where he lived alone, out near the western edge of the radial park, Daig Segan took a public conveyor to the old market district. At this time of night, none of the stalls were open to make sales but they were still hives of activity; men and women loaded produce and prepared for the dawn shift, moving crates on dollies this way and that across shiny tiled floors that were slick with sluice-water.
Daig crossed the covered market to the other conveyor halt and took the first ride that came in, irrespective of its destination. As the monorail moved along the line embedded in the cobbled street bed, he gave the carriage a long, careful sweep, running over the faces of the other passengers with a policeman’s wary eye. There were only a handful of people. Three teenagers in loader’s hoods, tired and serious-looking. An old couple, bound for home. Men and women in work-cloaks. None of them spoke. They either stared into the middle distance, or looked blankly out the windows of the conveyor. Daig could sense the tension in them, the unfocussed fear. It manifested in short tempers and hollow gazes, brittle silences and morose sighs. All these people and everyone like them, all were looking to a horizon lit by the distant fires of war, and they wondered – when will it reach us? It seemed as if Iesta Veracrux was holding its collective breath as the shadow of the rebellion drew ever closer. Daig looked away and watched the streets roll by.
He rode for three stops before disembarking once more. He took another conveyor back the way he came, this time stepping off the running board just as it pulled away from the halt before the market. The reeve jogged across the road, throwing a glance over his shoulder to be certain he had not been followed. Then, his toque pulled low to his brow line, Daig vanished into an ill-lit alleyway and found his way to an unmarked metal door.
A shutter opened in the door and a round, florid face peered out at him. Recognition split the face in a broad smile. ‘Daig. We haven’t seen you in a good while.’
‘Hello, Noust.’ He nodded distractedly. ‘Can I come in?’
The door creaked open in reply and he stepped through.
Inside it was warm, and Daig blinked a few times, his eyes watering as the chilled skin of his face thawed a little. Noust handed him a tin cup with a measure of mulled wine in it and the reeve followed the other man down a steel staircase. A breath of gentle music wafted up on the warm air as they descended.
‘I wondered if you might have changed your mind,’ said Noust. ‘Sometimes that happens. People question things after they take on the belief. It’s like buyer’s remorse.’ He gave a dry chuckle.
‘It’s not that,’ said Daig. ‘It’s just that I haven’t been able to get here. It’s the work.’ He sighed. ‘I have to be careful.’
Noust shot him a look over his shoulder. ‘Of course you do. We all do, especially in the current climate. He understands.’
Daig sighed, feeling guilty. ‘I hope so.’
The staircase deposited them in a cellar with a low ceiling. Lumes had been glued to the walls along the long axis of the chamber, and in rough rows there were a collection of seats – some plastiformed things pilfered from office plexes, others threadbare sofas from lost homes, a few little more than artfully cut packing crates – all of them arranged in a semi-circle around a cloth-covered table. Red-printed leaflets lay on some of the chairs.
High-Reeve Kata Telemach would have given much to find this place. It was one of a handful, each concealed in plain sight across Iesta Veracrux. There was no identifying symbol to show it was here, no secret passwords to be spoken or special sign that would grant access. It was simply that those who were called to know these places found them of their own accord, or else they were brought here by the like-minded; and despite what the High-Reeve insisted, despite all the hearsay and foolish gossip that was spread about what took place in such cellars and hidden spaces, there were no horrors, no murderous blood rites or dark ceremonies. There were only ordinary souls that made up the membership of the Theoge, that and nothing more. He thought on this as he rubbed his thumb over the smoothed gold of the aquila talisman about his wrist.
On the table, there was an elderly holographic projector that flickered and hummed; a blue-tinted image of Terra floated above it, a time-lapse loop of the planet’s day-night cycle. At the side of the projector was a book, open at a page of dense text. The book was made of common-quality vinepaper and it had been bound without a cover; Daig understood that a friend of Noust’s who worked the nightshift at an inkworks had used cast-offs from other jobs and downtime between the print runs of paying customers to run out multiple copies of the document.
The pages were careworn from many sets of hands upon them, and he wanted to pick them up and leaf through them, draw comfort from the writings. Daig knew that he only had to ask, and Noust would give him a copy of his own to keep, but to have the book in his home, somewhere it could be discovered by mistake or worse, used to incriminate him by people who didn’t understand the true meaning contained in it… He couldn’t take the risk.
Noust was at his side. ‘You timed it well. We were just about to have a reading. You’ll join us, yes?’
Daig looked up. There were only a few other people in the cellar, some of whom he knew, others not so familiar. He spotted a new face and recognised him as a jager from the precinct; the man returned a wary look, but Daig gave him a nod that communicated a shared confidence. ‘Of course,’ he said to Noust.
A youth with a bandaged hand picked up the book and handed it to Daig’s friend. On the front was the only element of adornment on the otherwise Spartan document.
Picked out in red ink, the words Lectitio Divinitatus.
If the Garantine had once possessed a true name, that time was long ago and of little consequence. The entire concept of a past and a future, these were strange abstracted notions to the Eversor. They were things that – if he had been able to stop to dwell on them – would have only brought tics of confusion; and as with all things about him, rage.