Ciaphas Cain and the Tourist Trap Chapter 6 (AKA the Epilog )
*One Week After Ciaphas Cain's first Nameday Celebration on Slawkenberg, after the Liberator declares War on Nurgle*
"Thank you for coming, Father. How goes the ministry?"
"Terrible, as usual, Jurgen." Father Peter shook his head. "Never knew how much I relied on my sparkling personality before I had to do without."
Jurgen nodded with sober sympathy. In truth, the Father looked more like a collection of wadded clothing swaddling a corpse than the stylish bon vivant he'd used to hammer together an underworld gambling empire.
"Do you need a bigger stipend?" He asked, and Father Peter shook his head.
"Can't use it." He said. "I've enough for myself, and I ceded the distillery to people capable of running it. Except for the Finest." he sniffed, holding up several bottles of Slawkenberg's Finest, and a worn deck of cards. "How many tries is this?" Father Peter asked. "I lose track."
"48," Jurgen replied, precise as always.
"Here's to try 49." Sighed Father Peter, clinking the bottles together.
Jurgen had cleared the afternoon schedule for this visit, as he had every time before, explaining to the staff that the Liberator had withdrawn for meditation and spiritual renewal, and would not be available this afternoon to petitioners.
Jurgen set the proffered bottles on his butler's tray, pushed open the door, and let Father Peter in to see Ciaphas Cain, a man that, in the hectic years since the Libearation, had become their leader.
"Drink, sir?" Jurgen asked. "Slawkenberg's finest."
Cain looked up from his stack of papers, his face terminally careworn, then brightened noticeably. "You always know."
"I've brought you a visitor, sir." Jurgen tried, nodding at Father Peter.
"This brings back memories." Cain said, who had eyes only for the amasec, his tone wistful with nostalgia.
"I pray to the Emperor it does." Father Peter said. Cain ignored him.
"Did you know," he mentioned, looking at the tray Jurgen was holding. "Giorba tried to bribe me with this the first time he invited me to a party?" He sighed. "It was all I could do to pretend it was terrible. I said it was ok if you were slumming it but the Throne Reserve from Terra is better."
He took a sip, and sighed.
"First time I ever tasted it. Had to pretend it was the worst to get Giorba going down the right path."
He heaved an even heavier sigh, eyes looking sightlessly. "I always wondered who made the stuff. Nobody would tell me, even after the Uprising."
"I made it." Said Father Peter, patiently. "But the entropic curses from the Twin Magisters of the Nurgelite coven means you don't remember me."
"It's like I'm almost there." Cain repeated. "Back where it started." His eyes glanced aside at Jurgen. "You weren't there. You wouldn't remember."
"No, sir, I wouldn't." His aide agreed. "You hadn't rescued me yet."
"I was there. You don't remember me." Said Father Peter. "Just like you don't remember the Second Battle with the Nurgelite coven."
Jurgen nodded as Cain's eyes grew even more unfocused. Evil runes gleamed momentarily on his skin, the beginnings of pustules, then flickered and tried to vanish again as golden amasec coursed through his veins. It was always disconcerting to see him like this, but like Father Peter had said, they had to try.
Jurgen started the next part of the attempt, as he always had before. They were working blind, and they both knew it, and Jurgen knew better than to attempt anything complex or complicated when dealing with the primal stuff of the warp. Bring it solidly back to the materium, anchoring your self there, like a plug of fossil ice in bedrock, his father had used to say about any tricky emotional problem. And it had worked just as well for warpcraft.
"Father Peter found the twin Magisters, sir." Jurgen continued, watching anew as the curse blazed up over the Liberator's eyes and yellow puss seeped from his ears. The curse, provoked, was showing itself. Jurgen's voice took on the cadence of an oft repeated-story. "Father Peter sprayed them with a firehose of blessed wine. All of it- a whole truckload. They were huge, moving piles of garbage and filth, and their tentacles flailed as they screamed and melted under the blessed libation. One grabbed father Peter. The other grabbed you. They cursed the both of you before I could pull you out."
"The first one cursed Father and said, "May you be overlooked. Forgotten. Utterly disregarded until you embrace the Grandfather's love!"
"The second one cursed you and said, "May you forget your friends. May your plans and ambitions fail until your soul embraces the Grandfather's love!"
Jurgen continued. "You were brave, sir. You snapped, "Frakking warp, my soul's my own and I'm keeping it." I could see the tendrils they had questing for your soul recoil in shock. You slashed at them with your chainsword, and they tried to pull you with them into the warp.
"Father Peter was brave, too. He grabbed you, and I grabbed him, and I was able to pull you both out." He glanced at Father Peter, who had a sickly collection of psoriasis bubbling across his face. "That's why I remember it all, see. I was there before, during and after, you see, and when the curse tried for me I blocked it. That's why I can see around the curses."
"I blasted the vile filth, and they vanished into the warp, and here we are." Jurgen finished. He poured another drink. Cain tossed it back, as did Father Peter.
The seeping pus around Cain's ears grew briefly yellower, then vanished as Jurgen's words stopped provoking it. It was as strong as ever, twined around the only parts of Cain's memory it could get a grip on, for all that it couldn't and hadn't ever found any purchase in Cain's soul.
Cain blinked, then took another sip of the amasec, returning to normal. Or, at least, returning to the very picture of the soul of courage and freedom for an entire world. There was nothing remotely normal about Cain.
For his part, Father Peter looked nothing like his old self, Jurgen noted. He was disheveled, dirty, and dingy, as if his clothing were only vaguely condescending to hang out in his general vicinity. It looked as if he ought to smell, and Jurgen's nose tried to wrinkle, but his Sight betrayed the 'stench' it for the warpcraft it actually was. It was balanced, almost exactly, by the sharp-edged glow of the Emperor, who protected His most faithful servant's soul from complete corruption, yet it was a tenuous balance held together by Father Peter's will. Privately, Jurgen thought the emperor could stand to give the man a budget, too, but for now money smuggled from Jurgen's capacioius funds as the senior aide to the most powerful man on the planet was sufficing.
All in all, Father Peter made a startling contrast with Jurgens relentless neatness. They had experimented, once, and it didn't matter if the Father had just emerged from a bath- his clothes wrinkled with entropy's foul decay almost immediately, and his skin crawled with diseases.
Jurgen remembered the days the Father had been a plump, clean, convivial banner of generosity and geniality, and quietly fed the flare of rage into fed his disciplined hatred of Nurgle.
"It's like an old friend." Cain said, taking the proffered second glass. He sighed again. "Or what I imagine an old friend would be like. I don't imagine I'll find any from the schola around here anytime soon, and they'd probably shoot me anyway."
He brightened slightly, again. "Except Dangold. He'd tackle me into the pitch first for edging him out at the scrumball semifinals, give me a noogie, and *then* shoot me."
His eyes appeared to focus for an instant, and Father Peter looked briefly hopeful, then sighed as Cain's eyes looked straight through him again.
"Giorba's ball: that memory's a bit earlier than last time." Jurgen said, in a deliberately bolstering tone, but Father Peter shook his head. "No, it isn't. It's the same. I don't have anything left of the batches he had earlier. The material connection makes a difference, and I don't *know enough* to break the curse without anything left of those batches. We'd need...I don't even know what we'd begin to need." Father Peter groaned in frustration. "I just brew the amasec, and the Emperor's blessing does the rest. I'm not a sister, I'm not a saint- I'm barely an Ecclesiarch, and at the moment it would be suicide to contact the wider imperium at all with any of this."
"And you're his only friend, sir." Jurgen said.
"Emperor help us all, I think I am." Father Peter. "And you're mine." It was strange, talking in front of Ciaphas, and have the alert, active, perpetually attentive commissar's eyes slide right by his existence. He supposed he'd get used to it, eventually.
*It's been five years.* Father Peter thought to himself. *You'll never get used to it. You'll just get better at handling it.*
He wrenched his attention away and back to Jurgen. "Have you noticed? Has he forgotten anyone else?"
"No." Jurgen shook his head. "Since I become his aide, he's remembered every single person I've ever seen him interact with. I keep the records, and he sees them all. He sees everyone except you." He started, tentatively. "Should we try Krystabol again?"
"After what happened last time?" Father Peter snorted. "The curse made her overlook me, but I do NOT have any desire to be anywhere near another Slanesshi sorceress putting out an omnidirectional force burst when they sense something of Nurgle or the Emperor and set the surrounding twenty feet on fire on general principles. You didn't have any luck explaining to her what was going on anyway, did you?"
"Only in discussing the most general theory.'" Jurgen shook his head. "Anything specific and I might as well just save my breath. I don't even know what she hears when I speak, but she can't hear anything about you. No one can."
"Overlooked." Father Peter agreed. "Unnoticed." It had made his new criminal enterprise of housebreaking a lot more feasible, now that his gambling empire had crumbled under Nurgle's curse. Robbing from the rich and giving to the poor had always suited him.
"What about Jafar?" They both contemplated this idea with increasing with unhappiness, and set it aside as well. Jurgen had sat in on every briefing Jafar had ever given Cain, and the idea of the twisty Tzeenchian anywhere near Cain's memories was enough to give him nightmares.
"I wonder why the first part of the curse worked, but not the second?" Jurgen said, a new thought occurring to him. He'd never felt that he was particularly bright, but he had been, as his Dad said, stubborn as a valhallan glacier grinding boulders to dust. This insight had been edging into his head for awhile now, with all the slow, solid flow of a glacier.
"What do you mean?" Father Peter replied.
"The curse. It took his memory of his only friend, but all his plans and ambitions are succeeding." Jurgen said. "Why is that part of the curse failing?"
They both contemplated the careworn man in front of them, contentedly sipping amasec.
"Doesn't that depend on exactly what his plans and ambitions are?" said Father Peter, slowly.
Cain took another appreciative sip of the amasec. "You know, Jurgen." He said, meditatively. "Some days I wonder what it would be like to just drink and play cards with friends all day. I've never actually had the chance. It seems...restful."
Father Peter and Jurgen exchanged glances of horrified understanding.
Jurgen poured another glass of Amasec. and said, "I'll play cards with you, sir. As usual."
"Better than nothing, I suppose." Cain replied. "But we both know you're terrible at them."
"Not this time, sir. I think I've got an Ecclesiarch or two up my sleeve."
Jurgen unfolded a rickety card table. He also pulled out three rickety chairs, suitable for one of the more impoverished bars- because mementos were important, when keeping a memory- even a cursed, buried one- alive. He pulled out a chair for Cain, one for himself, and one he characterized as "Absent Friends" to Cain's inquiring look. Father Peter settled into it, looking grimier and more dishevleed than ever. But he produced a stack of cards and began shuffling them dexterously.
Jurgen had learned to occasionally throw out a few sparks as a show of warpcraft, and Cain's mind reliably filled in the blanks that Jurgen was using his powers to feign at playing two hands at once in an attempt to make things interesting. He'd learned to do that after the Liberator had felt *something* and reacted as forthrightly as he always did to threats, nearly slashing Father Peter with a wild swing of a chainsword. It had been the worst of the experiments, and Ciaphas has been out of sorts for weeks afterwards.
So Jurgen had learned to do his part to preserve the peace and help sell the illusion that Father Peter was merely the ghost of a wistful fantasy, a part played by a faithful aide- instead of the real, live, flesh and blood man himself.
And every time he did it, Jurgen fed his hatred of Nurgle.
These evenings were important to Ciaphas, little though he had any ability to remember them. He just thought he was occasionally getting shitfaced drunk, while the only man he trusted to watch his back stood guard, instead of feeding his souls and playing with his oldest, best, and only friend. And he was cheerful for weeks after.
And if Father Peter and Jurgen were right about Cain's ambitions, and about the effect of the curse...
Jurgen wondered how much the so-called 'Grandfather' would come to regret hauling the Liberator away from his bars, his drinks, his dancing and cards and song- of freeing the man they called The Liberator from his garden of peace and into direct, open war with Nurgle.
He smiled, his first untrammled, sincere smile of the afternoon, and placed his first bet.
I am extremely proud of finding a way to put Father Peter on a bus without actually killing him, because what's crackier than plot-convenient amnesia? This fits in with the story thus far, and *might* explain a bit more as to why Cain has such a specific hatred of Nurgle.
I thought about describing the second battle against the nurgelite coven, the one the cement's Cain's reputation as a bona-fide hero on Slawkenberg, but honestly, describing Nurgle battles is gross and it's far funnier to have it be mostly a noodle incident.
And yes...I totally had Nurgle transform Father Peter into cannon!Jurgen. Because who is Cain without a little odiferous help from a sincere Emperor-botherer with a unique selection of psoriasis and the ability to scrounge anything?