Part Two: Thief
The sun rose the next morning over Riga revealing the endless throngs pouring into the street, most making their way slowly to the City Square, where towers of seats had been built so as many as possible could hear the opening speeches and presentations. The main event would be the final ceremonial speech by Cardinal Osslin tomorrow. The speech by head the Riga's local Ecclesiarchy operations was the main event of the celebrations, usually extolling the people to serve the Imperium, remain steadfast in their faith of the Emperor, and celebrating the rather boring history of Riga. All eyes would be on the Cardinal and the pageantry, which was perfect for Emelia; today they would be taking in the sights and sounds of the penultimate day. With the attention riveted elsewhere, all hoping others noticed how devote and rapt they were, she could probably score some great takings, hopefully more so than normal.
While the drug dealers, obscura fiends, thieves, the murderers, and the black marketeers would never rest in their business, most of the populace would either be at the invent or at one of the many locations set up to display a visual field of the parade grounds during the ceremony. Emelia rolled up her blanket and stretched out, making sure she was limber before she began her scavenging for the day.
Crawling back through the gate, the one she had escaped through the day before, she squeezed her way back out onto the packed street and picked a direction at random. All the streets were the same to her, lined with huge edifices to an Imperium that had forgotten her. She was a lost child, one of the many people who's name just vanished from Imperial records at some point. No family, no place of residence, nothing; her name would eventually be entirely lost to the Emperor's Imperium and when she eventually died, no one would know or care. She tried not to think on the subject very much, how she was alone with no one to be a friend to and no one to care about her; she was not the first and would not be the last to find this their fate in the mid-fortieth millennium.
Everywhere, brightly-colored banners bearing the holy symbols of the Imperium flapped in the breeze, everyone pretending to be more pious than they probably were for this day of the year. The local Adeptus Arbites, what few there were on the planet, were also out on patrol; Emelia made sure to stay clear of where their field command centers were set up, their Repressor vehicles brimming with terrifying weaponry such as Storm Bolters. One shell from such a weapon would tear a full-grown man in half, but that was not even the scariest thing to Emelia about the carapace-armor clad Arbites: it was their Cyber-Mastiffs. Cybernetic dogs, trained to hunt and bring down suspects; even though her crimes were petty and to survive, she knew the Arbites made no such distinction.
The local Planetary Defense Forces were also mustered and on display, more for ceremonial reasons, but also for crowd control as nearly the whole planet crammed itself into the capitol. Though Riga had no Hive Cities, the capitol sprawled and covered a good portion of the region; it also contained more than enough souls already before the influx of pilgrims for the ceremony. Emelia blended into the crowd, another unwashed member of the rabble, completely unnoticed by even those she was walking next to.
She weaved her way down the streets, waiting for something to catch her eye, either easy to steal food or something shiny she could sell later for a few coins. Most of the people making their way through the streets towards the parade grounds looked meager in their means, Emelia didn't even bother, she had come to learn what a good mark looked like. It was the way they dressed, they way they walked, the way they carried themselves: all these things usually betrayed they had something worthwhile in their pockets.
Crossing through an intersection, she turned left and found herself on another street much like the first. Lined with inns, most of the people emerging from the buildings on this street were travelers, either off-worlders or pilgrims here for the festival. A flap of a long cloak caught her eye a few yards ahead of her on the cracked stone road. Hurrying her step, she closed the gap between herself and this person, getting a better look at them. It was a man, looked late forties, but ages were nearly impossible to determine in the Imperium if the person was rich or important enough to have juvenat treatments. He had ruffled black hair pulled back into a short ponytail, and a hawkish nose; Black boots, black trousers, his cloak was long and a mahogany colour, a vest of equally deep blue and a white ruffled shirt complete his ensemble. This was a worthy mark by any means. He was not the flashiest dressed on the street by any means, in fact he was terrible average when compared with the other off-worlders, but something about the way he carried himself let Emelia know he was different from the others and probably had valuables were stealing. He carried himself with an assured purpose, not like the others still yawning as the dawn fell over the city, or struggling to find a place in the flowing crowds in the street.
She matched his pace and saddled up silently next to him. On either side of her people towered, she was invisible in the crowd. Flicking her fingers she carefully raised her hand and slipped it in his coat pocket. It was a voluminous space, and disappointingly empty. Emelia was about to withdraw her hand in frustration at the lack of coin purse when she felt some metal brush her fingers. She closed her hand around it and withdrew the object, the walking man never even noticing his pockets were becoming lighter. As her hand came away from his coat, she halted in her step, letting the man walk on and her disappearing into the crowd once more. She made her way out of the throng and down a side alleyway where she wouldn't be disturbed. Once she was temporarily out of the view of others, she looked down and slowly opened her hand to see what treasure she had managed to purloin from the off-worlder.
In her hand was a metal letter "I", a deep crimson embossed with a red border, measuring several inches long and and inch or so wide. In the center was a stylized skull in gold smiling back at her. She stared at it for a second, her heart skipping a beat, her breath caught in her throat. Despite her young age, despite being riff-raff, she knew what this was, every Imperial citizen knew what this was.
This was a rosette belonging to a member of the Imperial Inquisition.
The Inquisition: just the mention of it name would still the beating heart of even the fiercest fighters, would send people scurrying away for shelter. Inquisitors, charged with protecting the Imperium against threats within and out, hunting the xenos and the heretic and worse. They had absolute authority when they chose to invoke it. They spoke with the might of the Emperor and could even sanction the destruction of inhabited worlds.
She quickly closed her fingers around the rosette, hiding it from the world. Nervously she whipped her head back and forth, suddenly terrified that she was being watched at that very moment. No one emerged from the shadows though, and the traffic on the thoroughfare continued unabated. Hoping that it would have some how vanished, she slowly opened her fingers once more, the gold skulls still smiling up at her from the middle of the crimson letter "I". This was a score she did not want by any means. Anyone who would risk buying such a thing were the kind of people even criminals stayed away from, and to incur the wrath of an Inquisitor was even worse. Tucking the rosette her pocket, she darted back out onto the street, sweat streaming from her brow and her heart beating like it was trying to escape out of her chest.
Bending low to see at knee-length, she thought she saw the flair of the Inquisitor's cloak up ahead on the road. She poured on all the speed she could along the busy street and tried her best to catch up to him. If she was lucky, she could just deposit it back in his pocket and no one would be the wiser, if he discovered it was missing, she feared for her soul. She was not usually concerned with matters of Imperial faith, but when faced with the prospect of having angered the Inquisition, it came forefront to her mind.
Despite her best efforts, she could not seem to catch up to the man; he was deftly moving about the traffic with a skill nearly as good as hers she had practiced for years. Despite all the obstructions and slow-moving people in the street, the Inquisitor's pace never seemed to slow. He entered a hostel before she could catch up to him. Emelia stood on the front steps, looking up at doors he had entered, despair awash on her face. How was she supposed to return this terrible treasure now without him noticing? She had to return it, it would be far worse if the Inquisition came looking for her; she would disappear and no one would ever know or care. Steeling her nerves, she took a deep breath and looked for an alternate way into the building. She didn't want to be noticed, she wanted to get in and out as quickly as possible; the less people knew she was even here for whatever reason the better.
It took a few minutes of circling the building before she found a loose window into a storage room, which then led her into the ventilation ducts. Normally too small for any kind of egress, Emelia was able to slide through. She crawled as silently as possible, peering through every grate she found, hoping to discover where the Inquisitor had gone to.
She knew she was on the right path when she spied a visual scanner stuck to the side of the venting up ahead. Someone important must be near by for such an expensive device to be set-up in a air shaft where no one should be anyway. Emelia had come across these several times before in her 'scavenging trips' and was able to recognize it before it had recognized her. Backing up around the bend, she glanced around until she found what she was looking for: rat droppings. Following them to their source, she located a group of rats and was able to catch one without much trouble. Avoiding it's teeth, she brought it back to the corner where the motion sensor was and flung it past. The scanner sprang to life and turned to follow the movement suddenly going past it. As it was focused, Emelia flattened herself as much as -possible and slid past.
Further down the duct, the next obstacle presented itself, a sliding air-gate. It was solid piece of metal that blocked the entire vent, helping manually regulate airflow. It opened for a few moments, then slammed shut with enough force to cut something living in half; Emelia had seen several rats go that way during earlier scavenging trips. Reaching into one of the precious few pockets her tattered clothes afforded her, she pulled out a piece of paper, an earlier score from a book merchant. Folding the paper, she folded it as many times as it could go. She waited for the gate to open, then jammed the paper in. Resisting the force of the day, the paper wad created a jam, and forced the door open again. She had seen this happen with rat carcasses: if the door failed to close, it would remain open until maintenance could come and remove the obstruction. Pausing for a few more moments to make sure it was truly staying open, Emelia slid past as fast as she could. The fear of the system re-setting and cutting her in half was nothing of the fear of the wrath of the Inquisition if she did not return the stolen item.
She tried to ignore the fear threatening to bubble over inside her and move on: the sooner she could return the rosette, the sooner she could escape. She could then disappear back into the city, lost, where no one would ever find her again. She figured the Inquisitor must have just arrived in the area or else for sure he'd have better defenses, better methods of detecting intruders; of course, who in their right mind would go against an Inquisitor? She didn't event want to think about those types of people. Emelia was not the most pious person in the Imperium, but the words heretic and chaos still chilled her heart just as much as the next person.
Emelia finally found her destination: in a room through the grate ahead, she recognized the Inquisitor's coat hanging on a chair. Slowing her movements, she crawled up to the gate and peeked in. The air vent led to a bedroom to one of the larger suites in the hotel. The coat was slung across a chair and the room was deserted, except for the rich furniture decorating it. The furnishings were just as nice as Emelia had seen in the rich houses up in the Northern District of the city where she sometimes ventured when she felt brave enough. She was about to pop the gate open when she thought better of it and looked around the edges where it fastened to the wall.
It was a good thing she did, a thin wire was running around it, a wire that looked newer than the gate and the ducts. She wasn't sure what it was for, but assumed it would trip some alarm or even explode if the grate was removed. She laid there for a few minutes examining the problem. If she knew it wouldn't explode, she'd just pop the gate, throw the rosette back into the room and then run as fast as she could. But, with the possibility of the entire duct being engulfed in flames, she didn't want to risk it. There was a small hole in the grate and she put her finger in it, prying ti sideways. The grate was old and began to give way. Emelia hit upon an idea: she wouldn't have to remove the grate, just clear out the center of it. It would be a tight fit for sure, but she reasoned she could open the center of the panel and slip through without ever having to remove it. Keeping one eye on the door in case someone entered, Emelia slowly and quietly began peeling away the thin metal of the grate, widening the hole in the center.
After a few minutes, the whole was wide-enough; Emelia summoned her courage and slipped face-first into the room. She put her hands out and rolled forward, coming to a stop in the middle of the room. She glanced around the room; she couldn't quite see the corners of the relatively-small room, but she couldn't see anyone. Slowly standing, no alarms went off, and no one burst in, so she tip-toed over to the chair. Pulling the rosette out of her pocket, she dropped it back into the coat pocket, letting it fall from her hand like she had touched something disgusting. Not disgusting in this case: terrifying. She took a few steps back when something on the desk caught her eye.
She glanced back at the door, it was still shut and she didn't hear anyone outside. Looking around the room once more, she still couldn't focus on the corners of it, but she didn't see anyone anyway. Against her better judgment, she took a few steps away from the grate she had began heading back to and sided up the desk to see what it was. Sitting on the desk amongst a clutter of documents and other devices she had never seen before was a sizable stack of coins. Quite sizable. Emelia's heart beat in excitement at seeing more money than had ever been before her. She reached out, then remembered where she was and withdrew her hand like a poisonous animal was on the desk ready to strike. Seeing a note half-obscured by the glittering pile of coins, she cocked her head to the side and quickly read it. An official Inquisitorial report, the document stated that these coins were part of a larger sum confiscated from a corrupt administrator and had been tagged for delivery to several city Ecclesiastical charities such as poor kitchens, shelters, and other programs to help the poor. She stared hard and long at the pile of coins: it would give her a warm place to sleep and food for several months at least. She could get clothes that fit her, covered her, and kept her warm; it could feed her so you wouldn't be able to see her ribs anymore and the pain that was constant in the pit of her stomach would go away.
Emelia shook her head; this was not her. She would steal from businesses, from the rich, from those that wouldn't care. She had never stolen from those just as miserable as her. Even at her young age, she knew it was wrong to take from people who had as little than her. She wanted to take that pile of coins and be out there to better places, but she knew that no matter how comfortable she could make herself, it wouldn't sit right with her. She stole from people who by and large wouldn't miss it, not from those that would weep for it. As much as it pained her, she took a step away from the coins on the desk, she wouldn't steal them.
"Well done child"
Emelia's heart almost jumped out of her chest as she her a voice very close to her in the otherwise empty room!
She whipped around, arms up ready to defend herself, spinning around to see who else had managed to sneak in there with her.
"I could have got through the vents"
A female voice now echoed through the room; still Emelia saw no one as she spun, but the voice sounded familiar.
"Yeah," a male's voice, cocksure and laughing, now floated around her, "with a chest like yours?"
"I'll kill you Denny," the woman didn't sound amused, "so easy to do so"
"Hey," laughed the voice she had called Denny, "what would you do without my pretty face and expert shooting around here?"
"Probably have a much more quiet time," the first voice spoke again, a male's voice that carried gravity with it, strong but aged.
Emelia was crying with fear, she knew she was, she could taste the tears on her lips as they ran down her face, but she could her fists up, refusing to go without a fight.
"That's enough Barnabus," the first voice said again, "I think we've scared the poor girl enough"
Suddenly, the shadows in the corner that she couldn't quite focus on came into view, the darkness clearing and her gaze finally able to find its purchase. Emelia's heart faltered and her fists fell. There was no hope, there had been no hope from the start.
All four corners of the room were occupied by some very serious-looking people. One corner held a very large muscular man, arms folded, short-cropped black hair an an Lho-stick between his lips, smoke gently wafting from it as he took another drag. He was wearing a very old Imperial Guard jacket, had a lasrifle slung across his back and a combat knife held casually in one hand, the blade tip resting against his bulging forearm. The next corner was the man that had to have been 'Denny'. He looked just as sure of himself and his looks as his voice had suggested. Blond hair cut to a medium length, amethyst eyes, he also wore an Imperial Guard jacket, but in much cleaner condition than the other man. He was leaning nonchalantly against the wall in the corner, looking at her with a smile. Next to him, leaning on the wall as he was, was a huge sniper rifle that had a barrel longer than Emelia was tall.
Next to him was the woman that had been angry with Denny. Emelia's eyes widened as she recognized the woman: it was the one from the other day that had suddenly dropped down next to her and asked for directions! She was still wearing her skin-tight bodysuit but had her visor off, a pair of intense green eyes now looking back at her.
"Hey there Emelia," the woman smiled, "good to see you again"
Emelia tried to say something back, but the words were still-born in her dry throat.
The third corner contained the one the other voice must had referred to as 'Barnabus'. This man stood in a slouched posture, thick black robes with red trimmings hanging heavy on him. His skin was pale and his head bald, covered in sweat instead of air. He looked nervous, but nodded graciously at her as Emelia turned to face him. The last corner contained the person she expected but was the most terrified to see: the first one that had spoke, the Inquisitor.
The same man she wished so badly she had not stolen from in the street earlier that day. Dressed the same as he had been in the street, minus his cloak that was hanging on the nearby chair, he cut an imposing figure while not standing any more over six feet tall. His ruffled black hair was undone and hung just to shoulder length, he was easily recognizable with his hawk-like nose. He had several scars that ran deep, scars that juvenat treatments had lessened but could not completely erase. His eyes were the most piercing of all, as if his deep blue eyes were staring right through her into her soul.
She hung her head and fell to the floor, sitting in a hunched kneeling position. She knew her life was over. Now she cried. A little girl, a ten-year old thief, sat hopelessly surrounded by members of the Imperial Inquisition and its agents. From a situation like this, there would be no escape and her life of pain would only intensify then end in a terrible way. Emelia didn't know why she had been selected for such a horrible life, why the Emperor had seen fit to forget her amongst his great Imperium, but now her miserable existence was reaching its end.
A minute passed, and no one had advanced on her. She was shaking, but dared not look up. Maybe they were just toying with her. She cringed, expecting the pain to start any moment, but it did not.
"My child, why are you crying?"
It was the Inquisitor who had asked.
Shakily raising her head, she saw him still staring at her, but she couldn't see any anger in his face. She was confused, why wasn't he torturing her? Why wasn't he killing her? Why was she still here?
"Why are you crying dear girl?" he asked again.
"Be... because," the words came out as sobs, "I stole from you... and now... and now you're going to hurt me"
The room was silent for a minute, just her sniffs filling the air.
The Inquisitor spoke again, "and why would I hurt you?"
She shrunk back a little as he said the word 'hurt', but she forced herself to respond, "I broke... I broke the law, I stole from an Inquisitor"
The Inquisitor strode forward, his polished military-style black boots coming to a stop right before her. Emelia screwed her eyes shut. She expecting a swift kick, or a backhand, or a knife plunging through her frail body any second now. There was a movement of air but she felt no pain. Reluctant to do so, she she opened her eyes: he was kneeling right in front of her, hand outstretched. She stared at it, bewilderment awash on her face.
"My name is Inquisitor Toren Alexander and I'd like to ask for your help"