Chapter 3: Revealed in Fire

"… I can't allow it."

Raised voices, muffled and distorted as though she were underwater and some distance away floated to Isha in the fading blackness. Something was pressed tightly against eyes, holding them shut.

"She's my sister! You have no right to hold her without charge!"

Isha's hearing started to improve, and the muffled distortions became clear shouting from somewhere above her? She realized she was lying down on something relatively soft. Then the scents hit her, the metallic scent of blood, the smell of recently burned flesh, and an overwhelming cacophony of sterilizing chemicals. A medicae facility?

Her heart started to race and some medical device off to her left began chirping in distress. What had Arya done?! She should be nowhere near a medicae facility! Her arms were starting to tingle as feeling returned, but she couldn't move them. Was she restrained? She fought down a wave of panic, willing her breathing to slow as she focused on the one thing she could do, listen, and try to place the voices.

"She's the subject of an ongoing investigation and I have every right to do as I bloody well please, including having you tossed in a hole until your father comes down here himself to retrieve you!"

"My father is exactly who you'll be hearing from, mark me!"

Two men, shouting. The second she didn't know but the first was Lord Marshall Justinian Abigor, the commander of the arbites throughout Mur'kula. She felt a cold chill stir deep in her guts and wondered in confusion who was brave enough to have a shouting match with the monstrous man. The list was short, it had to be a noble from one of the four houses, no one else would be either so presumptuous or so foolish.

A door slammed, then another further away. Dimly Isha heard the roar of an air bike engine rev and fade away. She slowly became aware of her arms and legs. With that sensation came pain, dull but strong, like the ache of frozen bones. Her whole chest felt like she'd been stepped on by a fungrox.

"Icksth," she tried to speak and coughed, the cough turned into a groan as the pain kicked into a much higher tempo as the cough vibrated her chest. She had to wait a few moments before she could try again. "Is anyone there?" Her voice was tiny and echoed strangely as though the room were metallic and larger than she had imagined it. It was bright too, even through the contact lenses, her own eyelids, and whatever was covering them, she could still make out the hazy outline of something very bright shining down directly in front of her.

A mechanical lock to her left chirped and beeped and a moment she had the impression that a large door had just opened. Immediately she heard two distinct sets of feet, one hard and staccato like iron-spiked combat boots, the other was soft and light like the tread of a dancer.

"Ah, she's awake, excellent!" Isha heard the Lord Marshall comment.

"She shouldn't be," another voice stated and Isha saw the shadow pass over her and to the side, then return, then move to the other side. She felt something prick her fingers one by one as they twitched reflexively. "I dosed her hard enough to put her out the whole night. Have you been drinking lady Gregarian?"

"That depends," Isha did her best to turn her head towards the looming shadow that could only be Lord Marshall Abigor, "am I under arrest?"

The Marshall gave a rumbling boom of a laugh that shook his huge frame and rattled the chains wrapped around his black, carapace breastplate, "smart girl," he grunted and as the shadow loomed closer Isha felt intense pain burst over her chest all at once. She screamed and thrashed until the pain receded. "Alive, and healing well, good reflexes throughout the body, no limit to motion or nerve function I think, doctor?"

There was an exaggerated sigh, "could you please not torture anyone while they're still my patient, Justin?"

Abigor moved his hand away from where he'd been pressing on Isha's sternum, flexing her rib cage and creating a small tear of blood to weep from her sutures. "Ah but she can't complain," Abigor bumped the surgical light away with a hand and stripped away Isha's blindfold, "can you, Valkyrie of mine?"

Isha blinked hard, even with the contacts in place, even with her modified eyes, the room was blazing in light, and not just the usual spectrum, ultra-violet light burned like the hearts of newborn stars in several machines throughout the room, sterilizing medical equipment. Tears sprang to her eyes in response to the blazing brightness and her head ached as her nerves burned under the onslaught.

"Medicae," Isha began, focusing on the smaller man and reflexively trying to lift her arms to wipe at the makeup now running down her face.

"Ah ah ah," Abigor tutted, his huge hand coming back towards her, pausing at her chest, and moving up to her cheeks to wipe away the black streams of makeup and tears. "I'm afraid there's no avoiding me, little one. I am, after all, a concerned citizen, a friend even, bringing a wayward mouse home to tend its wounds and listen to whatever truths it might squeak out, mmm?"

Isha swallowed, refusing to look at the man's face, difficult considering its size and closeness as the Lord Marshall peered down at her. From her time training under his abusive martial arts instruction, however, she knew he always preferred directness. "Master Medicae?"

"Magos biologis actually," the smaller man corrected, tending to one of the chattering machines she was hooked up to.

Isha forces her eyes to stay open and focused away from the Lord Marshall's face despite the ultraviolet glare reflecting off the bits of him that had long since been replaced with metal.

"Where is Lady Ayara Salvich, I presume she's here?"

"Little Domus girl, about ye high? Long in the mouth but short it seems on driving skills?" Abigor answered as though she'd asked the question of him. "Hmph," Abigor snorted in annoyance, "she's fine," he waved a hand dismissively, "Sigismund!"

The door at the other end of the room banged open and five men stormed in, hellguns and shockmauls at the ready. The room, once so large and bright, became comfortably dim and seemed much, much smaller with the large men in black carapace filling it. Isha watched as they covered every corner and angle, as though the medicae equipment itself might suddenly leap up and attack them.

"Yes mi'lor—ngh" In less than the space of a blink Abigor had spun around and grabbed the first, largest of the men by the throat and lifted him into the air with one hand, the other hand had delivered three rapid punches to both the man's kidneys and groin, causing him to drop the hellgun he'd been carrying and moan in pain.

"Not mi-loooord!" Abigor bellowed in the man's face, "Justinian, ordinary citizen, seeing young Domus girls in distress with aircar troubles and helping them, right?" He turned to the other four arbites shock troopers, "that's what you all wrote on your little datasheets, right!?"

A chorus of affirmatives wrang back in terrified unison.

"And then tying one to a bed and locking the other one in your wine cellar," the small magos, no, no he was of ordinary size Isha decided, tutted, moving about the room as though it weren't filled with burley, sweating, arbites brutes.

"Right!" Abigor agreed, ignoring the magos. "Sigismund! You are demoted to Kevin, be glad I don't demote you to Punch Bag!"

"Y-yes mi-l… sir!" The first man grunted, throwing a quick salute then moving to the back of the room as Abigor dropped him and he struggled to breathe.

"Sigismund!"

One of the other four had stepped forward to take the first man's slot, rotating as though they were interchangeable cogs in a gearbox. "Sah?"

"Take Macharius and Phoenix outside and summon the Valkyries, there may be a raid tonight and I want us locked down like walls of Holy Terra itself!"

"Yes sah!" three of the men saluted and dashed out of the room at a dead run. Miraculously agile for their bulk, they managed to make it all the way into the hall without toppling anything fragile onto the floor.

"Punch Bag!"

"Sir, yes sir!"

Abigor gave the man a punch in the chest as he rushed forward to salute and Isha heard the air leave his lungs. To his credit, the man seemed to have been ready for it and didn't otherwise flinch.

"Good man! Take new Kevin and head upstairs to the study and complete all the paperwork on my desk, if it's not done by sunrise you'll both be on bedtime story duty, and you know what that means!"

The man nodded once and half helped half hauled his companion out of the room.

"Excellent, now, Maggy! Come untie our guest and turn off all these ultraviolet lights that somehow ended up in here. Quickly Maggy, the poor girl is suffering." Abigor waved the thin man over, grinning broadly as though he'd just made a hilarious joke.

"Magos Biologis Mallard Navoo," the Magos replied, in part it seemed to introduce himself to Isha and in part to correct Abigor. "You no doubt had some fungahol in your system judging by your breath and resistance to sedation," he commented, carefully uncuffing Isha's wrists and ankles from the surgical bed. "Take it very slowly for a while, those sedatives may be muted but they're still active. Also, please avoid driving, flying, lifting anything weighing more than twenty pounds, or bending excessively at the waist until those stitches heal."

Isha nodded, and accepted his help sitting up, the pain of the motion, sedatives or no, drained all color from her already ashen face.

"Nonesense!" Abigor threw up his hands, knocking the surgical light into a spin. "My Valkyries must be prepared to fight at all times!"

"Thank you, Magos," Isha replied, ignoring Abigor as she followed a few simple commands to test her mobility and allow the physician to wrap her ribs in a fresh set of bandages.

"Enough with that, Maggy," Abigor shoed him away and picked up Isha in his arms like a young girl might cradle her dolly, "you are now on babysitting duty! Go to the cellar and make sure our other guest isn't drinking herself to death, or freezing to death, or getting into my secret cache!"

"I don't work for you," The magos replied, idly flipping switches. Isha groaned in Abigor's arms, partly in pain partly in relief as the ultraviolet lights went out and her headache receded. Abigor glared at the magos but made no move towards him. Thirty seconds later the operating theater was in comparable blackout, lit only by a single, overhead lamp. "But since I hate to see beings of all types suffer unnecessarily…" the Magos let the word hang in the air but continued just as Abigor opened his mouth to reply, "I'll go ensure that Lady Salvich is comfortably taken care of."

Isha closed her eyes, gritting her teeth against the pain as they started to move through the house, Abigor's great boots stomping like the hooves of some great beast on the ancient wood floors. When she finally did open them again, they had stopped, and she felt Abigor set her down on an oversized couch. She practically sank out of sight into satin cushions meant for his massive frame and clearly in need of new springs. A moment later a thick blanket draped over her and he set to starting a fire in the hearth the couch faced.

"Your friend tells me you killed her handmaidens today, little Valkyrie." He grunted, standing up from his stoop over the fireplace as the facsimile wood caught and began to burn a dull orange glow. "She says you claim they killed her, or tried to kill her I suppose would be more accurate, though she was quite specific on that detail. Said you'd come unhinged too." The man expertly loosed belts and straps, tossing his huge, carapace breastplate and pauldrons into a corner with a loud clatter of loosed chains.

Isha didn't reply, instead staring around at the vaulted chamber. Shelves lined the walls. Row upon row of bookshelves from floor to ceiling, a battered bronze ladder hanging loosely from a single runner halfway up the wall where something had caught and twisted it out of its frame. Scalps, skulls, various weapons, hundreds of small trinkets, sat, or hung where the books should have been. They were haphazardly arranged as though they'd been tossed onto the shelves and forgotten. A lingering smell of powerful antiseptic wafted off them.

"Maybe," Abigor casually lifted an oversized arm-chair with one hand and set it down facing the couch, between the couch and the fireplace. "Maybe you let the monster out to play, hmmm? Maybe it's been too long since you last raided with me, my little, pale Valkyrie. It's been what? A whole year since you left without a word and never came back?"

Isha shuddered under the weight of the memories of those nights. Those terrifying, glorious, cursed nights when a young girl of fourteen had firmly believed in the absolute rule of law, the absolute truth, the absolute righteousness of divine justice. Abigor's hands were digging grooves into the chairs armrests and the wooden frame groaned under the power of his grip. His face was veiled in shadow, backlit by the glow of the fire. Only his red eyes were easily distinguished, glowing with the internal light of high-grade augmetics.

"Monster," she called him, the word seeming to break some invisible glass barrier that had grown between them.

"Your first word to me in twelve months," he nodded, his hands relaxing, the black cushions attempting to recover from the great squeeze he'd just subjected them to. "It is fair. All beings are monsters after all." He leaned back into the seat and his great face seemed to smile broadly.

"Give an ecclesiarch a congregation and he will preach to them, using them for his own gain and enjoyment along the way. After all, he is divinely appointed, they are his flock, his property, his to reave and ravage, to mold and shape, and all in the name of divine obeisance. No one will question that his every decision comes from the golden throne itself." The man took a silver box from a pocket in the black bodyglove he wore under the armor and retrieved two cigars. He squeezed them together between his palms and lit the resulting, twisted mass. Holding it to his lips he breathed in deeply.

"Give a nobleman a city and he will grind the population down like a sculptor, chopping off the elements he dislikes, shaping politics, law, and lives to fit his whims as he imagines himself to be god-emperor of his own Terra. His word become law he will do all he wills to satisfy his great appetites and ambitions. He will hire loyal monsters to carry out his every command and as he surrounds himself with golden light he casts a shadow of darkness and despair over the helpless and oppressed." Abigor let the comment hang in the air for several minutes, staring intently at Isha, content to wait for her to give in and reply.

"Is that how you see yourself then?" She asked, her voice utterly cold and contemptuous. "My father's loyal, monstrous dog?"

"Barking and biting at his whim," Abigor smiled and nodded, "how could I be anything else? I am what I am, and your father knew me for what I was when he made Lord Marshall of this blighted backwater." He paused, leaning forward and studying Isha's face, "Oh ho? You roll your eyes but think on this, Valkyrie of mine. What man in his right mind takes an arbites Justicar and makes him a Lord Marshall? What king could not know what he was doing taking a cage fighter and naming him chief diplomat? Mm?" Abigor took another long pull on the crushed cigars. "But we're not here to talk about me, are we? You aren't even angry with me, are you? All these months of no contact, of hiding that burning shame in your bosom and letting it stew into wrath and hate. For me? No…" he waved his hand dismissively, "not for me."

Isha wanted to leap up and shout in the big man's face, to scream at him, to grab one of the iridescent blades in a great heap by the corner and— and she stopped. She stared, mouth working but no words able to form, eyes suddenly focused on a second, far smaller stack of blades. A little dolly with long, white hair and a missing eye sat on top of it, half its body burnt away as by fire. Her eyes widened in shock and her gut wrenched at the memory of the last time she was at his side.

"You, bastard!" she spat, ignoring the pain as adrenaline surged through her, lifting her from the couch, shrugging off her blanket, and propelling her right down into the carpet as her legs, still completely numb gave out after only two steps. She retched on her hands and knees as the sudden pain, spasmed and pumped the fungahol and a half dozen hors d'oeuvres onto the floor. Her retching became a scream as the weight of two, heavy boots, came to rest on her back and shoulders, pinning her to the floor. She managed to turn her face to the side as she sputtered in her own vomit, the long, wet fibers of the rug threatening to suffocate her. She lay there whimpering in pain and stared up at Abigor's face in hatred and disgust.

"Admit it," he said quietly, gently, like a father might speak to a beloved child. "You do not hate me." He leaned closer, staring down at the little domus girl who glared at him in defiance with the one eye not pressed down in vomit. "You only hate yourself, your true, monstrous self." Isha's eyes began to water. From the pain, she told herself as her vision blurred with tears.

"Forge a child in righteousness, justice, put purity in their heart and they will burn with holy anger against all kinds of evil. Give that child means and power, and they will turn holy fire on the enemies of mankind." Abigor quoted, pointing at the sole remaining book on his many shelves. "The Children's Legion. A monstrous treatise written by High Ecclesiarch Schamus, The Winnower. A primer used across the subsector." His grin widened as he stared down at her.

"Make a child a Valkyrie and that child will raid the homes of pedophiles and rapists, pimps and drug lords and heretics, monsters all, and burn them alive without remorse or regret." Isha felt the boots lift from her back as Abigor crossed his legs and leaned back, his eyes staring off into some distant place, firelight but not from the hearth, danced in his irises. "But all children grow up," he continued, watching impassively as Isha managed to roll herself on to her back, panting, red spots growing beneath her bandages. "And they come to realize that the monsters are not monsters at all, just people. And then they realize that they are no less monstrous inside than those they called monster."

Isha coughed, weakly aware of Abigor stooping over her, whipping mucus and vomit off her cheek and brushing matted hair out of her eyes so she could stare at him, face to face.

"You hate yourself because you grew up and found out that you're a monster too, my little, pale Valkyrie. You blame me for that inevitable awakening," he tutted, his voice like the prattle of an idling engine at this close distance. "And you avoid me because I remind you that you're a monster too."

Abigor lumbered away to the edge of the room to retrieve the half-burnt dolly. "My job is to separate the monsters who are useful to the Throne from the ones who are not." He pressed the dolly into Isha's hands and her body shook as she started to weep, squeezing the dolly weakly. "In the past two-hundred years I have found one thing to be unerringly true. Those who realize they're monsters and accept that fact are able to defend themselves when their monstrous nature rears its ugly head, or better, find a calling where that monstrous self can effectively serve The Golden Throne. The former wears a mask to subvert their inner self, they follow creeds, or professions, or a personal code that allows them to be ordinary. The latter leashes and trains the monster inside, feeding it, exercising it, and finds a place in society where unleashing it is acceptable. These latter ones become extraordinary."

Abigor tossed the remains of his crushed cigars into the open hearth with the flick of one, ponderous finger. "But not so are those that live in denial of their monstrous selves. They have no such defense. Falling prey to their own natures, they become enslaved to every whim and while. Or worse, are consumed and become true monsters, their only redemption the cleansing flames of the Emperor's wrath."

"You were the ordinary once. Isha the ordinary girl. Newest in a long line of pet Domus girls adopted, fattened, nurtured to be sacrificed at the right time. A waste. I merely opened your eyes." He pointed to the doll, "You chose to be extraordinary, like me." He sat back in the chair and cracked his neck, "I'm afraid there's no going back for either of us, that ordinary good-little-girl mask you wear just doesn't fit anymore, does it?" he pulled another two cigars out of the tin and lit them. Taking a deep pull, he breathed the smoke out over the shivering, girl, clutching the half-burned dolly as she cried, "does it? My Valkyrie."

"You're a bastard," Isha sobbed, trying to control her breathing, to bury the past as she had for nearly a year. Not talking to him, not talking about it to anyone… But he was right. Mur'kula take him! he was right. The mask didn't fit, not anymore. There was no taking back what she had done, what she'd become, the scars, the memories… Her fingers whitened around the doll; the evidence would always be there. As would the one thing she feared most, the enjoyment, the freedom… the fury. "How could you!?"

"How could I what? Valkyrie?" Abigor pulled her limp form up gingerly and began to towel her off with the blanket. His massive hands worked with a grace and gentleness that spoke to inhuman fine-motor skills matched only by his inhuman brutality.

"You stole it from me," She cried, squeezing her eyes shut against his visage and the pain. "I was just a little girl, happy, your student for nine years and I trusted you! Emperor, help me! I idolized you, wanted to be you." She lay limply in his lap as he sat back down, resting her head on the black satin of one, huge armrest. She opened her eyes, tears still running down her the sides of her head as she stared up at the only father figure she'd ever had.

"And you feel that I betrayed that trust, in the end." Abigor nodded sagely, as Isha's jaw clenched and unclenched. "I do not love you, Isha." The girl's eyes blinked in surprise at the sudden change of tone and topic. "Your father, absent from your life as he may be, truly does care for you, loves you, even though it surprises and frightens him. Perhaps you are even the only loved of all his children, the only who is not also a threat, political pawn, or target of blackmail and extortion. Emperor, you're the only one he can risk loving."

Isha remained still, quiet anger in her voice, "Don't change the subject."

"I am not," Abigor countered, "I am having the conversation I would have had with you twelve months ago if you had simply been brave enough to come to me with your fears. You chose to be the coward and run from your problems, but as with all cowards, you eventually found that you cannot run any further and that in truth, you never actually got away in the first place. If you run from fear, you will only carry it with you wherever you go. It is futility."

"You wouldn't have listened, I—"

"Shhhhhh…" Abigor placed a large finger against her pale lips, "maybe when you have lived three-hundred years and seen the galaxy as it burns you can have a part in this conversation, but for now, you know nothing, have seen nothing, and have no wisdom to contribute of any worth, mm?"

Isha pursed her lips but remained quiet.

"Good. The first part of wisdom is knowing when to be silent." Abigor took another long pull from the crumpled cigars and breathed it up into the air. "Your father loves you, cherishes you, and so he keeps you far away where no one else will notice lest you become a target. He realized just how much you meant to him that day you took the inquisitor's minions into the tunnels, never to return. That very week he pulled you from the children's schola and sent you to me. Why waste time on a diplomat's flowery education if you were destined for the tithe ships, eh? But maybe, if you were trained by the best from an early age, you might survive, might have a chance, might be extraordinary. His daughter, not some domus trash babe adopted off the streets to fill the administratum's quotas, but a force of imperial might to be loosed on the enemies of mankind."

"I fired my first lasgun at the age of six," Isha made a face, the memory as fresh now as it had been ten years ago, "as part of a firing squad execution. I didn't even know what death was. I didn't miss."

"I killed a man at the age of five, an underhiver, tired, on his way to work, I think. I lured him into an alley with a cry for help and dropped a stone on his head from a fire escape. All to take the pale of thin gruel and corpse starch he has brought for lunch, to keep myself from starving." Abigor blinked and shushed Isha again, "you distract me."

"Your father offered you into my care to give you a chance at surviving what he must do to you two years from now when you come of age and leave with the tithe." Abigor continued, "but your father is a monster, consumed by his ambitions and appetites—"

"Fit only for the cleansing flame of the emperor's wrath?" Isha raised an eyebrow, her tears having finally stopped.

"Yes," Abigor surprised her, "but even monsters sometimes make their dens in convenient places, sometimes spread their territory in such a way as to keep worse predators out. But he will never be extraordinary, never a true servant of the Emperor in heart or mind. Just an ordinary monster, playing a role, doing what he must and getting away with what he can." Abigor shrugged, staring down into Isha's cold eyes. "He sleepwalks through life like so many, making decisions he believes are his but, in truth, are just impulses of unmanaged desire from a nature he neither understands nor controls. I didn't want that for you. He wouldn't want that for you either."

Abigor produced an iridescent, iron dagger he'd picked up when he retrieved the dolly and pressed it into Isha's hands. Isha stared down at the blade and the engraved double staff that ended in thin, spread wings which ran along its length. Emotion threatened to bring tears to her eyes, or a blade to Abigor's neck. She fought down both but couldn't keep her hands from trembling as she held the familiar weapon.

"I want you to be extraordinary too," Abigor continued. "The men who wanted me to be extraordinary made me this way," he indicated his great bulk and briefly touched the many surgical scars visible on his forearms and neck, "I still hate them for it." He shrugged, the motion causing the chair to creak and moan, "but I would not accept any bribe, station, life, or luxury to go back to being ordinary again."

Abigor stood, cradling Isha carefully over to the couch and setting her down again. He picked up the large blanket and tore it in half as though the thick, expensive fabric were nothing more than flimsy paper and laid the clean half back over her. "Hate me if you must," he indicated the dolly and the dagger she held, "but think carefully before you choose which of those you walk out of this room with."

He turned his massive bulk away and Isha heard him thump across the floor. The large door boomed open and a thin trail of dust curled down from the shattered wall as it struck. "Your ordinary friend will benefit more from one than the other, I think." The door slammed shut even more forcefully, causing the flames in the fire to dance in the backdraft. Isha was left on the couch, eyes staring into the fire, mind replaying over and over a very different fire and small figures that jerked and spasmed in sync with the flames of the hearth…