A/N: No review responses today. Bit busy, but didn't want to miss the promised double-post. This and Chapter ten are linked, the same as my last doublt post. So when done with this chapter, please continue reading.
Chapter Nine: Ne Comedas in Quocumque
The next evening, after receiving permission from Lord Moro, Lyta retrieved her cousin from her cell. The three days her cousin spent alone, manacled to a table on a hard steel chair, had left her trembling. She wept uncontrollably as Lyta led her out of the room and into the hall, holding onto her arm.
She could have delegated; perhaps she should have. But one of the first things that was drilled into her head in Progenium was facing the harm she would inevitably have to cause in the Emperor's name. It was her decision to leave her cousin in isolation for three days. It was a kindness compared to what Zhaena or any of the other interrogators would have done, but it nonetheless caused her sensitive cousin great distress.
Artigan once again waited for her with two more Ordos stormtroopers. They stood not before a ground car, but rather a flier with the Inquisitorial icon on its hull. "Do you wish me to pilot, Lord?"
"No, thank you, Commander. The Lady Corantha will sit co-pilot."
"Is she rated?"
"Not even remotely."
"As you say, Lord."
The walk through the hab spire had given Corantha to regain some semblance of control. She was still the scion of an ancient noble family, and had the best education money could buy. This included lessons on comportment. The weakness she showed to her cousin she tried her very best to hide from the men in white carapace armor and closed helms.
At Lyta's direction, Corantha took her place in the co-pilot's chair. It was not a necessary position in the small five-man flier, merely a precaution. Their escorts strapped in behind them as Lyta ignited the thrusters and sent the flier off the pad in the large hangar, and into the sickened air of the late evening.
"Where are we going?" Corantha spoke in a fragile voice, like glass about to shatter.
"Your home," Lyta explained. "It's easier to fly to the upper spires. In two days, you're going to accompany me to the family archives. But tonight and tomorrow, you need to rest, and eat. You'll do that easier at home."
"Are…are you going to kill me?"
"No, Cori. I know this was hard for you, but we had to be sure you didn't carry taint, or were a part of it."
Corantha held her hands to her chin and softly began praying. In the meantime, Lyta burned prometheum to push the flier above the cloud cover into the late, clear evening sky. A thousand artificial stars shone above them from the constant stream of orbital traffic. The Bet Spire of the hive was several kilometers away, but it shone like a star itself as they approached.
Aunt Caethia and her line of the family had their own hab drum rising from the central Bet spire, but it was one of dozens from the wealthy merchants and nobility that essentially owned the hive. The hangar pad doors were secured, but opened immediately when Lyta sent her Ordos credentials.
When she brought the flier down, she felt no surprise when her aunt came rushing into the spacious hangar with several household staff and two Rothid militia.
Despite the late hour, the sister of the former Archduke of Botan wore Alamine silk from the silk farms of Quintalia IV. The ursine fur coat hid her slim, carefully sculpted figure. Though she was approaching seventy, with her most recent rejuvenat she looked the same age as Lyta herself did. Like her daughter, Caethia was strikingly beautiful in the way only wealth could permit.
The eldest living Rothid held her hands under her chin in a mirror image of her daughter praying and watched as Lyta climbed out, and then assisted her cousin. Artigan and his troopers followed.
Caethia, Lyta knew, was a politician. After speaking to her sister, she'd studied just what her aunt had to do to maintain Rothid control of the hive, which had more people, resources and wealth than many planetary systems. She led the Regency Council until Amorine reached her majority.
And though she was obviously upset over the state of her daughter, she was also very closely studying Lyta's power armor, and the hexagrammic runes and prayer strips that hung from it. She saw the laser pistols that hung from her hip, and the newly requisitioned power sword that Zhaena insisted she carry and train with daily.
She saw the interrogator's mark.
"How shall I refer to you? My dearest Lyta, or Interrogator Rothid?"
It was a good question; both in the asking and the telling.
"For now, I am an Interrogator of Lord Moro. My men need to search the premises. I expect full cooperation."
"Of course, Lord Rothid. And my daughter?"
"I'm returning her to your custody for the next night and day. She needs food and rest, and the day after tomorrow she will accompany me to the family archives. She was in possession of a proscribed item, and she will assist me in tracing how and where she found it. After that, I will be recommending she be referred to the family deacon for prayer and meditation, as well as a visit from Lord Moro's psyker. She cannot discuss anything she may have seen or heard, on pain of death."
"And after that?"
"After that, Auntie, she should be more careful. She is a precious soul, and it would hurt all of us to lose her to the Ruinous powers."
"I…see. You will join us for dinner?"
"Not tonight, Lady Caethia. Not like this, in armor. If I ever have the privilege of gracing your table, I would prefer it to be as family."
There was relief there, Lyta could see it. Because both knew Lyta would not have held out the possibility if the family was under suspicion.
"My dearest Lyta will always be welcome in this home. Until then, we will cooperate with the Inquisition. Tell us what you need."
~~Revelation~~
~~Revelation~~
Lyta did not have to come looking for her cousin when the day arrived. Even before her briefing, Corantha presented herself at the first security cordon for the base.
Lord Moro excused her from the briefing for the day when he received the notice. When she retrieved her cousin, Lyta saw that Corantha appeared more rested, but her cheeks were still sunken, and dark rings still ringed her eyes from her ordeal. She wore relatively understated slacks and a silken blouse and fur-lined coat despite the oppressive heat that permeated even the upper spires.
Cori followed Lyta without a word to the hangar. Lyta's suspicion that Artigan had been assigned full time as her keeper was confirmed when he stood waiting with five more troopers by the same flier they used the previous evening. She was surprised, however, to see the slim, slight figure of Maerya there. The pale, white-haired psyker looked almost child-like next to the stormtroopers.
Attending at Lord Moro's direction.
Lyta spoke as they walked toward the waiting groundcar. "When you were looking for works in the family archive, did you find anything else that mentioned someone associated with Saint Elosia?"
"I know she had a whole cult in Merican," Corantha said. "I saw something about it in the archives. There was a collection of early reports from the Adeptus Arbites. One of the reports mentioned Telos."
Once again, Lyta felt a strange surge of cold, and a subvocal growl from the Warp itself. The name Telos seemed to enrage the Warp for some reason. She sensed odd movement and turned to see Maerya staring, her cloudy eyes wide in alarm. The other psyker also sensed the rage at the name.
~~Revelation~~
~~Revelation~~
The Rothid Family took residence in the Bet Spire. However, their ancestry heralded from the older Gimel Spire where Lord Moro maintained his hab spire. The hive city itself was one of the oldest hive cities on Terra, and consumed the entire ridgeline of the Merican northeastern continental escarpment. Gimel was the oldest spire within the hive.
As Lyta flew their craft along the vast sloping walls of the larger spire toward the old, ancient Rothid ancestral hab drum that rose up out of the larger structure, she remembered her vision of another time, and a man in a role not so different from her own, flying to this very spire. Only then the spire still stood apart from the greater Botan Hive. An arcology, it was still called at the time. It seemed impossible that even then there were open green spaces.
Now?
Small swirling vortexes of toxic chemicals and pollutants traced the path of air cars, transports and loaders that crisscrossed the skies of the twelfth largest hive structure on Terra. Thousands of them buzzed around and below, keeping a respectful distance from the heavily armed Inquisitorial transport. Beacons blinked in a never-ending attempt to highlight their structures out of the constant pollution cloud that blanketed the whole planet.
Even they ended up slowing as the congestion of air traffic grew particularly dense, threatening to send a spire-sized food transport crashing into a series of open-air pilgrim barges. Finally, the various lines of air traffic sorted themselves, and they continued toward the old spire that her ancestors had converted into a family archive and library.
Being a private facility, only the very wealthiest patrons could find admission, and it was that funding that kept the library open and maintained. They were probably not going to be happy about being invaded by the Inquisition.
Artigan sat in back with a squad of five of his veterans. But in the space between, Maerya sat listening to music through her vox bead with her clouded eyes closed and her knees pulled up under her chin. She was humming to herself, perhaps trying to drown out the noise of the transport's engines.
Corantha sat quietly in the co-pilot's seat, obviously cowed by the stormtroopers.
Maerya's eyes opened and she stared with only her psychic vision at Lyta–so much so that Lyta felt it, the same way she felt anyone observing her. She had no idea how old Maerya was, or what motivated her. She did not know the woman's relative power ranking. What she knew, though, was that the warp was not a gift. Its ravages often left pyskers with an odd agelessness. She could have been as young as twenty, or as old as forty. Even young psykers often looked old and ragged.
"You have a thought, Maerya?"
"Sometimes more than one," the psyker said. She was not being sarcastic or witty.
"What is your most pressing thought?"
"You're afraid you're going to find what you're looking for."
"Do you know what that is?"
"No more than you, Lord."
"Take your medicants today, Maerya?" Artigan asked casually.
"My lord encouraged me not to, today."
Corantha opened her mouth to ask a question, but then thought better of it. She was, technically, their prisoner, not their friend.
"Beginning our final approach," Lyta said for everyone's benefit. "Maerya, do you sense anything that might be pertinent to the mission?"
"The warp is troubled," the psyker said. "Something is coming."
Artigan sobered. He had likely worked with enough psykers to know not to dismiss such statements. "Good or bad?"
"Maybe?" Maerya tilted her head and blinked her augment eyes absently. "I…yes. Definitely a maybe."
"Well, clears that up," the stormtrooper commander said dryly.
They landed moments later, flying into a cramped, dedicated bay that was only available for official Rothid family business–or the inquisition.
"Commander, secure the facility," she said as they entered the foyer. "Clear all visitors for now, but make sure to get the logs for all visitors and staff for the past twelve months."
"I'll see to it, Lord," Artigan said. He led four of his men out of the foyer to the administrative center. The fifth remained with Lyta.
"Cori, I need you to take me to where you found the dataslate," Lyta said.
Corantha nodded soberly and began walking into the main library. Maery followed with their escort.
The Rothid Family Archive was housed in what was once the ancient family palace, filling its own hab drum that rose up from the slopes of the greater Gimel Spire. It was a massive palace, once, now reduced by age and changed usage to a still impressive library. Though not the largest hab drum in the Gimel Spire any more, it still provided a great deal of space that could have housed tens, or even hundreds of thousands of menials.
The structure itself rose forty or so levels from the main spire, terminating well below even Inquisitor Moro's spire. It dated back so long ago that at one point it was likely the tallest structure on the spire.
The library rose up around a central column of open air lit by stationary floating lumens. Each level had an open balcony that provided a dizzying view of the lobby floor forty floors down. The ancient bronzed banisters bore a sheen from the polish of thousands of hands. The fabric of the settees and lounges were worn from thousands of posteriors. The air smelled fairly musty, though she could feel the recycling vents.
Each level represented an entire millennium, and there were twenty five such levels filled, and fifteen more empty in anticipating of the continued march of time.
"So many volumes," Maerya whispered to herself.
"Our family traces its ancestry back before the Great Crusade," Corantha said. Though she spoke softly, Amelyta heard some of the old zeal her cousin used to have. "Back even during the Dark Age of Technology. I found works in this library in languages that haven't been spoken in millenia."
"Does the library share those works?" Maerya was looking everywhere at once, though not with her eyes.
Corantha glanced at Lyta. "No, not really. I know that during Unity, the Sigillite copied every work the family held at that time for the Imperial Palace. But now, it's limited access to those who can pay. It's how the library maintains itself."
"Where next?" Lyta asked.
"Sixth century, M30, if I remember correctly. Definitely M30, not a hundred percent on the century."
Which meant going down ten levels. They piled into one of the ornate, gilded lifts. When they arrived on the M30 level, Lyta still felt astonished at the sheer volume of works their family possessed. Just this level alone was the same size in terms of square meters as the Fortress library.
As they made their way along the various indices, she could see static shields buzzing in front of all the shelves of ancient dataslates, storage devices and printed volumes. And why not? The works were beyond any monetary valuation. Yet, despite the riches, the carpet they walked on was threadbare to the point of exposing the rockcrete flooring underneath, and one out of every five lumens was dark from neglect.
They reached the central data node for M30. Lyta had never been in this section of the library–though in truth she'd only been to the facility twice before, and never for long–but even so she was surprised to see the number of empty shelves. Of course, the sparsity was relative. There were still thousands of items, but compared to the hundreds of thousands from each millennia above, it was notable.
There were no servitors at the node, nor human servants. They found nothing but an automated cogitator interface for simple searches.
Lyta glanced at her cousin for a moment before stepping to the ancient but still functional interface. The rune keys were all in high Gothic, as was the data architecture of the ancient dataloom. She had to pause and adjust her thoughts to the archaic, formal language before she typed a name that did not appear in the after action of Major Stein, but which she heard regardless in her vision: Taylor Hebert.
The proof that such a person existed made her heart thud.
The Saint Everlasting: [Purgatorio Extremis]
Ten Thousand Years: [Purgatorio Extremis]
The Living Face of [REDACTED]: [Purgatorio Extremis]
On and on it went, title after title either redacted or purged by order of the Inquisition. The purge orders had no dates, either, so could have occurred ten thousand years before, or last week. And the titles were so enticing! One after the other, she had tantalizing hints of all the works speaking of the woman that Renald Stein had guarded; the woman who somehow had a special claim on Malcador the Hero, First Regent of Terra and most trusted of the Emperor's companions.
"That's it," Corantha said softly, standing to one side where she could see the search results. She pointed to a line on the monitor display. An extract of a report not on a dataslate, but in a preserved bound folder from a woman named Kandawire–with a title she did not recognize. It was, oddly, an arrest warrant from the end of the seventh century, M30.
She marked the place the data node provided, and began walking down the sparsely filled shelves. "What is it you seek here and now, Lord?" Maerya asked.
"Clarity," Lyta said. In truth, she wasn't sure. Her interrogation of the tainted survivors revealed a witch cult that seemed, for whatever reason, to wish to destroy the authorized cult of Saint Telosia. That was, Lyta knew, what she should have been investigating. But she couldn't forget her vision. She had to understand what happened.
"I see," Maerya said. "Clarity can bring understanding, I suppose, but I've come to believe understanding rarely brings clarity."
It was a typical psyker-ism. Lyta wouldn't understand it until it was too late to do her any good. So, they continued walking down the ancient, musty hall. They were only a third of the way down the canyon of shelves that made up the vast library. Fifteen levels more hung below, lost in the dim glow of distant floating lumens. A younger Amelyta would have wanted to go digging down there–the inquisitor recognized the danger of old information.
They made their way together until they reached the designated shelf. There were ancient style dataslates, not so very different from the one she already carried. But there were also specially preserved vellum and even paper reports and news sheets. One shelf held a prominent news sheet declaring the death of liberty–High Commander Stein Surrenders! The Tyrant of Terra Wins Again.
It seemed so impossible that any decent person would oppose the Emperor of Man. But it was a different time, she knew.
Finally, she found the report in question. It was a bound collection of reports and papers published by the former Grand Provost Marshal of the early Imperium of Man. These were, Amelyta realized, produced by the very first Adeptus Arbites.
She reached for the bound, preserved sheets, only to pause when a thin hand rested lightly on hers. Maerya's skin was so pale that she could see the woman's veins, like thin lines of ice under the pale surface.
"What do you sense?"
"I don't know," Maerya said. "A…vibration? Resonance? Yes, that s a good word. Resonance. There is a resonance in that folder."
"Resonance with what?"
"I'm surprised you do not know, given your vision and warp talent. The resonance is with your own soul, Lord."
She knew, in that moment, that if Maerya had been in the chapel, she would have sensed a similar resonance in the after-action report Father Colindaus possessed. "Is it the Warp? Do you sense taint?"
"I…no? Maybe? Maybe no? Not…warp taint. I sense a story. Memories."
"Of whom?"
"Wrong question. Not whose memories, but who is the audience?" Cloudy eyes looked up at her intently. "The story is yours, Lord. It is for you, and you alone."
Knowledge was dangerous. But the absence of it could be even more so. To truly understand, she had to know more. She reached forward, and took the volume in hand. Even half-expecting it, the vision struck without warning. She began to fall, just like last time, while in the back of her head she heard a voice asking, "...Himilazia?"