The central vault of the Archivia Primus is so tall that I cannot see the ceiling. It must extend to the very top of the spire, where the clouds grow too thin to make rain. The vault is circular and lined with bookcases and shelving. Servitors mounted on slide rails move up and down the racks, turning the scrolls and books to keep them from wearing unevenly. Cherubim hover and hum softly, carrying lanterns in their bionic hands. The lumen strips set into the walls are yellow and dim so as not to bleach the texts, and the few narrow windows are set with coloured crystal and sealed with heavy bolts to keep out the cathedral world’s moods. In the middle of the circular space is a massive table carved from a single piece of marble, the surface of which has been polished to remove any imperfections or flaws. Any snags, or hollow spaces.
Standing on the opposite side of the table to me and my squad are the cardinal-principal and his Master of Trails. Silvera avoids my eyes even more determinedly than before, as if he knows I am wondering about his earlier words. Canoness Elivia stands at one head of the table, while Ravara stands at the other. All of us are clad in white, like the doves that make their homes in the hollows of the Archivia. Like memorial statues.
Placed on the table is a map made of a dozen or more sections of parchment. On it are depicted hundreds of spires and thousands of lesser structures, the miles-wide avenues merely fine lines running between them. Placed around the edges of the map are dozens upon dozens of texts and maps and rolled scrolls in leather wraps. Some are handwritten. Some are replicated. Copies of copies.
‘What you see before you is our entire collection of records concerning the construction and disposition of the south-western cathedral quarter,’ Castanne says.
‘Are they unbroken?’ Elivia asks. ‘The records?’
Castanne reaches out, stopping just short of touching the closest of the scrolls. We are all wearing the same pale gloves for the purposes of handling the ancient texts, but Castanne still wears his multitude of heavy, studded rings on chains around his neck. Ruby and platinum. Topaz and gold. I am certain that the cardinal has more wealth on one of those chains than most of the people in the district he serves.
‘No, Canoness,’ he says. ‘Unfortunately they are not.’
Silvera nods. ‘Few things are, in these times.’
‘Perhaps there is something to be done about that, if we find the Shield.’ Ravara looks at me. ‘Evangeline, tell them what you have seen.’
For the first time in a long time, I do not look to anyone else before I speak. I do not seek permission. I just take a breath, and begin to talk. I tell every soul standing around the table of the absolute darkness. The single candle, and the path made from ninety-nine aquila-stones. I tell them of the iron-wrought gates and Saint Katherine’s image, and the vast chamber beyond. The smell of cold air and candle smoke and dying flowers. I tell them of the pedestal draped in crimson cloth, bearing the Shield of Saint Katherine. I tell them about catching fire and about the golden light that filled my vision. About crossed hands, covered in blood.
In the wake of my words they are all quiet. Reverent. Everyone is watching me closely, save for Silvera, who still declines to look at me directly.
‘The Mark of Martyrs,’ Castanne says. ‘That is the meaning of the crossed hands, seen alone.’
‘An unsurprising vision, for one of our Order,’ Elivia says.
Ravara shakes her head. ‘I dreamed of them too,’ she says. ‘Set into the walls of a vast hall. Hundreds of thousands of human bones, all gilded.’ She pauses, and looks down at her own hands. ‘I have seen places painted in such a way before, too. Old places.’
Silvera nods. ‘It is used in different ways on different worlds. Sometimes as a warding sign, sometimes to seal something in.’ He starts sorting through the texts with gloved hands. Unlike the cardinal, Silvera wears no jewellery. No signs of status. ‘Most often the Mark of Martyrs is cast in the walls of tombs, and of memorials. Particularly those that were constructed in the wake of the Apostate period.’
The cherubim overhead wail at his words. A long, atonal keen. All of us bow our heads and cross our hands for a moment in recognition of the name. Of a period of such darkness.
‘We are looking for somewhere ancient,’ Ravara says, when the cherubim stop their crying. ‘Somewhere likely buried by the weight of ages. The entrance might be hidden, or blocked off altogether.’
‘There must be a thousand such places in the low districts alone,’ Castanne says.
Silvera nods. ‘More than likely.’
‘Then how can we possibly hope to find it?’ he replies.
‘Faith.’
The word belongs to Elivia, and it is so flatly spoken that the cardinal recedes a little further from her. He bows deeply.
‘Of course, Canoness,’ he says. ‘Of course.’
He casts his eyes around those present.
‘We seek the specifics,’ he says. ‘The gate and the path to find it. The Mark of Martyrs.’
Everyone nods and sets to busying themselves with consulting the texts and scrolls. My Sisters pore over prayer scrolls and verses while Silvera and Ravara talk in low voices about the use of iron to make gates, and the setting of stepped paths in stone. About the Mark of Martyrs. I search through histories, and records of building, and battle. I read the apocryphal tales of the Renouncement. Of Thor, and the Confederation of Light. Of the Great Defence of 858, which made an icon of Sister Amelda of the Bloody Rose. Time ticks on, and the rain lashes against the spire. Lightning flashes. The servitors turn their scrolls and the cherubim hum and time still ticks on, but I find nothing of the ninety-nine steps, or the iron-wrought gate. I find nothing to tell me where to find the Shield.
I close the last of the tomes on my side of the table, my hand lingering on the cover. Ashava pauses in her work beside me.
‘Anything?’ she asks, in a low voice.
I shake my head, because I cannot bring myself to say it. She folds closed the book in front of her, and puts her hand flat on top of mine.
‘Adelynn told you that you had the answer,’ she says. ‘Perhaps we are all looking in the wrong place.’
‘Or looking too hard,’ Eugenia says.
Qi-Oh nods. ‘Frustration does nothing but quiet His guidance.’
‘He wants you to find the Shield, Eva,’ Ashava says. ‘Not me, or us. Not Elivia, or these others. You.’
‘But I do not know where to begin,’ I reply.
‘You do,’ Sarita says.
‘You just don’t know it yet,’ says Munari.
‘Listen to your heart,’ Veridia says. She puts her fingertips to the steel plate in her scalp. ‘The mind can fail you. It can be changed or broken, but the heart cannot. That is where the God-Emperor truly rests.’
I hesitate, wavering under the weight of their expectations, and everyone else’s. Of my own. Ashava squeezes my hand tightly. Her eyes are full of warmth.
‘He chose you, Eva,’ she says. ‘And so did she.’
I take a deep breath of the cool, smokeless Archivia air, and nod. Ashava lets go of my hand as I turn back to the table. To the vast, sprawling map of Dimmamar’s south-western cathedral quarter. Almost thirty thousand square kilometres of city, rendered painstakingly in ink and leaf. I walk around the map’s edge, taking in the spires and the slums. The cathedra and the avenues. The pilgrims’ paths and workhalls. I do not think. I do not question. I just keep walking until I reach the far side of the table. Until I recognise a shape made by the buildings and the roads. The same shape that I bear around my eyes, that has started to burn again under the Archivia’s yellow lighting.
The Imperial aquila is made purely by the shapes of the city. It has habitation towers for claws, and avenues for wings. Its body is made of memorials, and its twin heads are spires. The murmur of voices and turning of papers fades away. All sound does, save for the cherubim humming far above me. I lean closer to read the names of the avenues and of the buildings, and as I do, my scars begin to burn more fiercely. Not just my face, but my throat and chest. My legs and arms.
My hands. They are the worst. The most painful. It is as though they are aflame all over again. Ablaze. I pull off my gloves just to allow the air to touch my skin, though I am dimly aware of Castanne raising his voice and then Ravara doing the same. I ignore them both. I ignore everything, save for the burning, and the humming of the cherubim. Save for my hands. I turn them and look at the scars lining and discolouring my palms, made by the melting of Adelynn’s sword on the Last of Days. And in them, too, I see a shape. I cross my hands as if I am about to make the sign of the aquila, and every single line and every discolouration matches up with the map beneath my hands. Everything save for one mark on the inside of my left palm.
Right where the eagle’s heart would be.
‘I already had the answer,’ I say numbly.
At my words, sound filters back in and I become aware of the others all gathered around me. All making the same mark as me. They are all looking at the map, save for Ravara, whose amber eyes are shining. She mouths two silent words, meant for nobody but me.
Thank you.
‘What district is this?’ Elivia asks. Her voice is possessed of a softness I have not heard since we first stood together in her chambers aboard the Unbroken Vow.
‘The fifty-fourth,’ Castanne replies. ‘It is a burned district.’
Ravara looks at him. ‘Burned,’ she says. ‘What do you mean?’
‘It was struck by debris from the fleet battle in the wake of the Rift,’ Castanne says. ‘When the enemy came in great numbers. The district was on fire for days. Perhaps weeks. We had no course but to isolate it and let it burn.’ He shakes his head. ‘It ravaged the surface structures. Killed tens of thousands.’
‘But what lies beneath likely remains intact,’ Silvera says. ‘District fifty-four was not always named so.’ He reaches out, stopping just short of touching the map. ‘It is old. Old enough that once it had a name and not a number.’
‘And what was the name?’ Elivia asks.
‘Canderum,’ Silvera says, his fingertips lingering over the map. ‘It means light.’