The Unbroken Vow’s main cathedral is a massive space, easily the equal of the minor halls of worship on Ophelia VII, with thick, armaglass windows stained with depictions of saints and martyrs, of the history of our Order, and of the Imperial Cult. In most of them I see Saint Katherine. In one she stands alongside Alicia Dominica as the tyrant Vandire is beheaded. In another, she bears a flaming sword, cutting down a mirrored mutant. In yet another, she holds her own heart in her hands, burning brightly.
Beyond the armaglass the stars track slowly as the Vow moves away from the rest of the crusade fleet, and away from our home, accompanied by two Navy escorts, the Wanderer and the Northward Star.
‘My Sisters.’
The Canoness’ voice draws my eyes from the saint, and the void. Elivia stands at the pulpit, her gauntleted hands resting on the carved stone. One of the Vow’s cherubim lingers by her shoulder, a vox-amplifier grafted into its chest and throat to propel Elivia’s voice to all of those arrayed before her. Not that she needs it. Elivia’s words carry with ease across the vaulted hall.
‘Our astropaths have received a message from the Convent Prioris, on Terra.’
Nobody in the cathedral speaks a word, but I feel a tensing in my Sisters at the utterance of those names. A fervour. Few amongst us have ever set foot in the Sol System. Never mind on the Throneworld itself.
‘The message was harried and tattered by the storms, but the meaning remains clear.’ Elivia pauses, and frowns. ‘The Praesidium Protectiva, the Shield of Our Martyred Lady, is lost beyond the Great Rift.’
This time, there are words muttered. Prayers, and benedictions. The cherubim keen and there is a hum of armour plate as my Sisters make the aquila sign all around me.
Elivia holds up her hand, and all falls quiet again. All falls still.
‘Even now, the cardinals senior and the servants of the Orders seek the Shield’s whereabouts,’ Elivia says. ‘We will go to Terra to receive their guidance before striking out into the darkness beyond the Great Rift in search of the Shield.’
Elivia pauses again. Her eyes find me in the crowd.
No, I think, all over again. Please do not say it.
‘The Shield’s location is as yet unknown,’ Elivia says, her eyes still fixed on mine. ‘But there is one amongst us who is set to find it. She who is marked by His favour. Burned but not butchered. Sister Evangeline.’
Nobody moves to look at me, but I feel their attention nonetheless. It is like waking in the hospitaller’s ward all over again, with a light shining so brightly upon me that I cannot speak or move. My lungs refuse the cold, smoke-spiced air.
‘See to your preparations, my Sisters,’ Elivia says. ‘Arm and armour yourselves for the crusade yet to come.’
She lifts her hands from the pulpit and closes the right over her heart, her eyes still fixed on me.
‘The God-Emperor expects,’ she says. ‘Let us not keep Him waiting.’
After the briefing, I speak to no one. Not Elivia, nor Ashava, nor the squad I have been given. For three days, while the Unbroken Vow makes preparations to sail the sea of storms, I seclude myself in prayer, first in my chambers, and then in the chapel. I kneel for hours in the cold, listening to the ship’s engines burning and the cherubim singing, and ask the God-Emperor for guidance. Ask Him what He intends for me and what the mark I am left with means. Ask Him where I will find the shield. But my mind is unquiet and unstable, and His answers are not easy to hear over the noise. Frustrated, I find myself needing to act. To fight. So I leave the chapel behind and go down to the training halls to worship through blades instead of words.
The sword Elivia gave me is lighter weight and longer than any other I have ever used. It doesn’t have the heft of a chainsword, or the hollow feel of a training blade. It crackles instead of churning, and it is perfectly balanced, despite the length of the blade. It is this latter thing that makes it so hard to use, because the sword might be perfectly balanced, but I am not. My long sleep has made me slow and unsteady, and my muscles tire easily. My lungs feel shallow. Despite this I still set the training servitors to draw blood. To test me. I set them to come in groups of three, on random attack patterns. I fight without pause, sweat soaking through my tunic and robes and my heart hammering in my ears. The air in the training hall is cold and stale and feels as though it clings to me. My ragged breathing mists the air. Far above, cherubim flutter artificial wings and chant as I disable, despatch and destroy.
Through trials, may the God-Emperor make me resolute, they intone.
Three more servitors come. One bears a shock-mace, one a hook-blade and one a polearm. My sword shatters the polearm easily, and kills the servitor wielding it in three cuts. They are not artful, or deft. The polearm-servitor dies messily, because I am putting too much weight behind the blade. It causes me to overstep and overbalance, which lets the servitor with the hook-blade catch me across my ribs. Blood mingles with my sweat and I stagger. The shock-mace connects, too, sending a jolt of numbing pain through my body. My hand wants to spasm open and release the sword.
Through suffering, may the God-Emperor make me strong, the cherubim say.
I refuse to let my hand open. Instead I force myself to turn and clash my sword against the shock-mace, pushing the servitor back on its spidery replacement limbs. I follow up by punching the hilt into the iron mask of the mace-servitor’s face, denting the metal inwards. It staggers now, mutely juddering. The blade-servitor sees this as an opening to attack. I duck the hook-blade this time, feeling the air shift as it rushes by my ear, then cut the servitor’s lumpen head from its shoulders. This time it takes only one strike, though the death is no less messy. Oil and blood spray the deck and spray me too.
I lurch through the oil-blood rain to where the mace-servitor is juddering and twitching with its faceplate crumpled. It is the only kill with any grace. A heartstrike, straight through the necrotised skin and metal plating. A mercy. I let the servitor’s remains fall clear of my blade, and stand for a moment, just breathing.
Through pain, may the God-Emperor make me worthy, the cherubim say.
My bones are aching, and the cut across my ribs burns. My arm throbs from the touch of the shock-mace and from swinging the sword. Sweat stings my eyes, and my heartbeat is louder than the Vow’s engines. All of these things are blessings, just as the cherubim say. Pain, after all, is honest. Suffering is to be celebrated. But today I find no peace in it, because despite fighting for hours and hours, I am still unbalanced. Not just because of the blade, or my injuries, but because of what lies ahead. Before the Last of Days I would have entered into any battle or trial without hesitation, but now? Now, I am not so sure.
And that in itself is a sin.
I hear the sound of footsteps and turn from the mess that remains of the servitors to see Ashava approaching across the training hall. My Sister is back in her black armour plate and crimson vestments.
‘No more crutches,’ I say, stepping out of the training circle. The bell rings to end the fight-cycle. ‘Then you are healed?’
‘They have removed the cages,’ she says, as if that is the same thing. ‘I will never be what I was, but I can stand. I can fight.’ Ashava looks around at the ruin I have made. ‘As can you, it seems.’
‘I will not be found wanting a second time,’ I say, putting my hand to the wound at my side. It comes away bloody.
Ashava’s eyes narrow at the sight of it.
‘I know,’ I say, though she has not said anything. ‘I must be swifter.’
She chuckles. ‘I am hardly the one to speak to you of speed now, Eva.’
My face must betray my discomfort, because she tuts at me.
‘Come now,’ she says. ‘If we cannot laugh at cruelty, then it has already bested us.’
‘Is that another of Triumph’s creeds?’ I ask.
‘No,’ she says. ‘It is just common sense.’
That does make me smile, despite everything.
‘And besides,’ Ashava says, ‘it is not swiftness you are missing with a blade such as that.’
‘Then what?’
‘It is certainty you lack,’ she says. ‘Self-assurance. It is not in the hand that you hold the sword. It is the heart. The blade is a part of you now, as much as any other.’
‘As much as the mark,’ I say.
Ashava is quiet for a moment. The fight-cycle might have stopped, but the cherubim never do.
Through trials, may the God-Emperor make me resolute, they say.
‘It is a gift, Eva,’ she says. ‘The God-Emperor has chosen to spare you for a greater purpose.’
‘But I do not know how to find the Shield,’ I say.
Ashava’s face does not change. ‘You will,’ she says, just as Elivia did.
‘You make it sound so simple,’ I say, before I can stop myself. ‘But this feels anything but. Everything has changed, Ashava. I have changed.’
She shakes her head and shifts her weight on her injured legs, just a little. ‘We all have,’ she says. ‘But we cannot go back. Only onwards.’
Shame pulls at me, looking at my Sister who has lost so much, but accepts it so readily. I look down at the sword in my hand.
‘Perhaps I lack certainty because I should never have been given the blade,’ I say, then I look up at her. ‘It should have been you.’
‘Adelynn chose you,’ she says simply.
I blink. ‘What?’
‘She told us each in turn, long before the opening of the Rift. If she were to fall, the sword and the title were to come to you.’
Through suffering, may the God-Emperor make me strong, the cherubim say.
‘She never told me,’ I say. ‘Why didn’t she tell me?’
Ashava shrugs. ‘That, I do not know, but I do know this. Adelynn never doubted you, Evangeline, so you had better find that certainty, and find a way to take that blade and what it stands for into your heart. To do anything else is to dishonour her.’
I feel as though she has struck me. As though I would deserve it if she did.
‘I will not dishonour her,’ I say, firmly. ‘I cannot.’
‘I know,’ Ashava says. ‘So tell me what you want me to do.’
I glance down at the sword once more. My sword.
Through pain, may the God-Emperor make me worthy, the cherubim say.
I exhale, slowly.
‘Call for the others,’ I say. ‘The survivors of Helia’s Mission, and Elivia’s few. We will be amongst the tides soon, and it is time that I spoke with my squad.’
Ashava nods, and half bows.
‘Aye, Sister Superior,’ she says.
My armour awaits me in my quarters. It hangs from a stand, rebuilt and reconsecrated. Relacquered, in void-black and arterial red. My two armoury vassals await me too. Wyllo and Dallia are both void-born slender, with eyes that are dark to the edges. They keep those eyes downcast as I secure my sword on the rack on the far wall, shed my tunic and robes and step down into the armoury circle in the middle of the small, spare room. Only then do my vassals look up and see the marks left on me by Ophelia VII. I wait for them to say something, to mutter a prayer, or a catechism, but they remain silent and begin the armouring as they always do.
For that, I will always be grateful.
Wyllo and Dallia move around me in perfect, silent synchronicity. They wash me clean of blood and sweat and dress the wounds I took in the training halls, before blowing coils of scented smoke and scattering blessed ashes over my body. When that is done, Wyllo steps forward and I close my eyes so that she can pass her blackened thumbs over them gently.
‘Blessed are the eyes that see His works,’ she says.
I open my eyes and hold out my hands, palm up. Wyllo draws her hands over mine, leaving ash-prints behind.
‘Blessed are the hands that do His work,’ she says.
They clad me first in the flexible bodysuit that will sit under my armour. This, too, is blessed with smoke and ashes. Then they clad me in my vestments before beginning with my armour proper, piece by intricate piece, from my toes to my throat. Sabatons. Greaves. Poleyns. Cuisse and tassets. My armoured chestplate, shoulder guards and vambraces. My gauntlets. As Wyllo and Dallia work, I turn my left arm to let the vambrace catch the candlelight. A pattern plays across the black lacquer – one of coils and ripples, like oil cast into water.
‘We did our best with the marks, my lady,’ Wyllo says, as she secures the vambrace on my other arm with her slender augmetic fingers. ‘To remove them entirely would necessitate stripping the outer layers completely. Going right back to the bone, as it were. The marks do not affect integrity. Just the aesthetic.’
I very nearly smile at that.
‘It can still be done, of course,’ Dallia says, in her vox-rig rasp. ‘Should you demand it.’
As they continue working I turn my arm again and watch that pattern play across the surface. It matches exactly to the scarring on my skin. Ashava’s words come back to me.
We cannot go back. Only onwards.
‘It can remain as it is,’ I tell them.
‘Very good, my lady,’ Wyllo says.
‘Yes,’ says Dallia. ‘Very good.’
The pair of them utter the last words together: ‘Blessed is the heart that knows His protection.’
And then they light my armour’s reactor. My suit sets to humming that rises slowly to a steady, familiar growl, and I realise how much I have missed it. With my armour complete, Wyllo and Dallia are left only with the cloak to affix. It is new, a weighted fall of black and crimson cloth that they secure under my shoulder guards as a sign of my rank. Though it is impossible given my power armour’s boons, I fancy I can feel the extra weight when they hang it. Wyllo offers up my helm, which I lock to my belt. Dallia follows suit with my bolter. Even though she is strong from augmentation and service, it still takes all of her effort to lift the weapon. I take it from her easily with one armoured hand.
My bolter has been rebuilt, too. Reconsecrated. Dallia has wrapped lengths of prayer-parchments around the stock with care. The script is delicate, and tiny. Perfect.
‘Thank you,’ I say to them both. ‘This is fine work. All of it.’
They both flush crimson and bow to me.
‘You needn’t bow,’ I say, like I always do.
‘Apologies, my lady,’ they say, together. It is as much a rite as the armouring is. I have been asking them not to bow for almost a decade.
I leave the armoury circle, then, and take up my sword once more from the rack on the wall. With the boosted strength of my armour plate, it feels feather-light. Those words on the blade catch the light again.
‘In faith we are found,’ Wyllo says, reading them too.
I nod, and slide the blade into the scabbard at my waist.
‘Yes. We are.’
My Sisters await me in one of the Vow’s small, spare chapels. It seems only right, given that we are to be bound together in blood and in service, to do so under His sight.
The chapel is on the spine of the Vow, towards the rear of the ship. It is close enough to the engines that everything hums along with them as the ship burns hard for the system’s Mandeville point. When I push open the doors, coils of candle smoke steal out, drawn from the chapel’s sanctity by the cool air of the spinal corridor. Like everywhere else on the Vow, the iron of the ship’s ancient skeleton is exposed in the chapel, looming darkly from the shadows like leviathan bones. Candles burn everywhere. There are no pews or benches here, because worships should be made on your feet or your knees. The floor is bare and hard, just like the walls.
My Sisters stand waiting, all clad for war in their full armour plate, but with their helms locked at their belts and their blades and bolters slung. I look upon faces old and young, tattooed and scarred, and they all look back at me, expectant. Waiting. Some of these faces I know, like Ashava and the others who once served Palatine Helia as a part of her Mission. Brave, fierce Qi-Oh, with her long-limbed strength, and her head shaved to the bare scalp. One of her eyes is hazel-coloured and full of fire, the other a brass augmetic, nested in a deep, old scar. With her is Calyth. The only other survivor of Qi-Oh’s squad is pale and mountainous, her armour adjusted to best fit her strength and height. Calyth’s eyes are silver-pale and contemplative against her strong-jawed, well-scarred face. Next to her are Sarita and Munari. Both are taller even than Ashava is, with long, slender features and large, dark eyes. They are sisters in blood as well as service, the only two I have ever known. Before, it might have been easy to mistake one for the other, but not now. Not since the Last of Days. Now a knot of scar tissue twists across Sarita’s face, coiling down onto her throat and disappearing into her armour. Munari did not escape unscathed, either. I know that beneath her armour, she bears a silver augmetic in place of her left arm.
Then there are those of Elivia’s mission, who I do not know yet, but whose names and likenesses the Canoness spoke to me. Burn-scarred Haskia. Smiling Joti, who will bear our blessed battle-standard. Severe Veridia with half of her scalp wrought from steel, and last of all small, quiet Eugenia. The last of my Sisters is also the youngest, her tan skin marked only by the simple fleur-de-lys tattooed under her right eye in red ink. I find her the most difficult to look at, somehow.
‘My Sisters,’ I begin, thinking of how I was sworn into Adelynn’s squad, and of all of the speeches I have heard before battles and campaigns. I think of readings and sermons and swearings-in. Grand words rise up inside me, but I find I can say none of them. They feel dishonest. Empty, as I have felt since waking.
‘I should have called for you days ago,’ I find myself saying instead. ‘I should have done so the moment that I was granted the sword.’
I draw it then and hold it out in front of me.
‘I wanted to learn the art of such a sword before I stood before you,’ I say. ‘I wanted to understand it. But it is only in standing here now that I think I do, because the sword means nothing without the nine of you.’
I look at them in turn.
‘We have all lost. All suffered. And we will do so many more times as the God-Emperor intends, blessed be His name. All that I ask is to suffer with you, as your Sister.’
There is a long, aching moment of silence where all that I can hear is the crackling of candles, and the hum of the Vow’s engines, but then one of them speaks. I expect it to be Ashava, who knows me best, or Qi-Oh, who is known for being quick with her words, but it isn’t.
‘Aye, Sister Superior.’ Eugenia’s voice is soft and measured and carries the sort of stillness that makes me think of prayer. She is the first to speak, but not the last. Every one of the women standing before me echoes her words. They bow their heads, just a little, and make the sign of the aquila with their gauntleted hands.
‘We have all lost,’ I say again, ‘but I swear to you now that we will all have vengeance against the darkness and those that take shape in it, by blade and by fire. By the will of the God-Emperor of Mankind.’
There is no momentary silence this time. They all answer me immediately.
‘Vengeance,’ my Sisters say, as one. ‘By His will.’
After the chapel, I meet with each of my squad alone, in turn. I let them choose the place and the means of it because it is what Adelynn did when I first joined her squad all those years ago. She said that it helped her to see the truth of me, and what I needed from her.
Calyth is first. Her choice of meeting place is one of the lowdeck chapels. It is a place used not by Sisters of the Orders, but by the crew. The little chapel is not so solemn as our halls of worship. Hundreds and hundreds of votive decorations in the shape of fleurs-de-lys are pinned all along the walls, so many that they have started to overlap. They turn gently in the recycled air, each one made from offcuts of different coloured cloth. Yellow, blue, red and green. I even catch sight of the gold worn by officers amidst the riot.
‘The vassals pin them here for the dead,’ Calyth says, when she sees me looking. ‘As a mark of their passing.’
I say nothing. I am watching a man wearing Navy colours as he affixes another scrap of cloth to the wall. This one is red as blood. His hand lingers on the fleur-de-lys for a long moment before he turns away.
‘I think it is like a meadow,’ Calyth says. ‘Don’t you?’
I shake my head. ‘I have never seen a meadow,’ I say, looking away from the wall. ‘I was born on Ophelia VII, where all is marble and memorial, and all I have seen since are the fields of war.’
‘Truly?’ Calyth asks.
I nod. ‘Truly.’
Calyth’s pale eyes go distant. ‘I was raised amongst meadows,’ she says. ‘On a world that was made to grow the flowers for a system’s worth of memorials. Golden heartfires, eagle’s claws and cloud-lilies. Every colour imaginable, from horizon to horizon.’
‘Is that why you come here?’ I ask her. ‘Because it reminds you of the world where you were born?’
She nods slowly. ‘In part, I suppose. But that is not the only reason why. I come here because it is simple. Quiet. Because of the words, too.’
‘Which words?’
‘Come,’ she says. ‘I will show you.’
She nods for me to follow her, and together we go to the middle of one of the chapel’s rows. Just like in our worship halls, there are no benches. Here, though, there are small, thin cushions to spare the congregation the cold of the deck. Each cushion has a stitch-bound text lying on it. They are well-thumbed and dog-eared, and when I kneel beside Calyth and open the book, I catch the scent of reconstituted parchment. The lettering inside is so haloed and faded that it can only have been copied from a copy. My eyes snag halfway down the list of verses, and I flip gently to the middle of the book. On the page turn, my fingertips linger under the faded header.
‘The Virtues of Service,’ I say, softly. ‘My mother used to sing this verse to me when I was a child.’
Calyth looks at me. ‘Are you certain?’
I let my fingertips trail down the page. The act conjures the sound of my mother’s voice, high and clear. The darkness of our tiny hab, lit only by a single candle. The smell of ink and of old parchment. Copies of copies.
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘She would sing it to me when I could not sleep. It was one of her favourite verses.’
‘It is one of my favourites, too.’ Calyth smiles absently, her pale eyes contemplative. ‘Was she kind, your mother?’
I think of my mother’s ink-stained hands, and her low, intelligent voice. Her eyes a vivid green, like Adelynn’s were. I think of how she always seemed to be smiling, especially when she looked at me.
‘Yes, she was.’ I glance at Calyth. ‘Wasn’t yours?’
Calyth shakes her head. ‘I do not remember my mother,’ she says. ‘Nor my father. I do not remember anything much from my time before the convents, save for the meadows. The sound of all those flowers, moving in the wind.’
I try to imagine it, but I have no frame of reference. No understanding of that many beautiful things.
‘Would you like to sing the verse?’ Calyth asks. ‘For the memory of your mother?’
I look at the page. At my armoured hands and the spirals burned into the ceramite, and I think of Isidora’s last words.
S-sing.
I close the book of verses gently.
‘I would like to hear you sing it,’ I reply.
Calyth nods. She takes up her own book of verses and begins to sing. Her voice is a surprise. It is soft and comforting and when Calyth comes to the last line of the verse her voice is joined by another inside my mind. One that should be my mother’s, but could just as well be Adelynn’s.
And death is a virtue earned and not owed.
One only granted, for those who are bold.
The next of my Sisters to call for me do so together.
Sarita and Munari do not so much choose a place, as choose the Vow herself. I meet them at the midships junction of the spinal corridor and together we set to walking towards the bridge.
‘What would you like to know, Sister Superior?’ Sarita asks.
‘Something of yourselves,’ I say. ‘Something true.’
‘Something of ourselves,’ Sarita says.
‘Something true,’ finishes Munari.
Their sharing of sentences is a habit I noticed long before the Contemplation, before the Rift, when we would undertake briefings and prayer together as a part of Helia’s Mission. I do not know the twins well, but it is impossible not to see the ways in which they are connected beyond even the way the rest of us are.
‘What about Gellax, sister?’ Munari says. ‘Why don’t you tell Evangeline of the eradication of the Cult of Drowning?’
Sarita shakes her head. ‘I loathe that story. You know I do.’
Munari grins. ‘All the more reason to tell it. We rarely love our own truths.’
‘Philosophy, sister,’ Sarita says. ‘Really?’
Munari laughs. ‘Always. Now tell the story.’
Sarita ignores her, looking at me instead. ‘Do you have any siblings, Evangeline?’
I shake my head, because it has always been just me.
‘Would you like one?’ Sarita asks.
Munari scoffs. Sarita laughs, and I do too, for what might be the first time since I awoke. It immediately makes me feel guilty, as though my right to laugh died with my own Sisters.
‘If you won’t tell the story then I will,’ Munari says, oblivious to my discomfort. ‘I will tell Evangeline of how you alone pushed beyond the battleline to reach the heart of the corruption. I will tell her of how you killed seven of the Archenemy who were swollen with dark power, all by yourself. I will tell her how you burned their fane to the ground, and walked out of the flames unscathed.’
‘I know this story,’ I tell them. ‘But I did not know it was you.’
Sarita clucks her tongue. ‘That is because I don’t like others to know,’ she says. ‘It feels self-aggrandising.’
‘There is such a thing as too humble, you know,’ Munari says.
‘The verses would beg to differ,’ Sarita replies, and she pushes gently at her twin’s shoulder with the flat of her hand. ‘Besides, what about you, little sister?’
‘Little,’ Munari says, shaking her head now. ‘You say that as if there’s a candlewick between us.’
‘Fourteen minutes is much more than a candlewick,’ Sarita says. She is smiling now that their roles are reversed. ‘If you must bring up the Cult of Drowning, then perhaps I should speak of the Bladed Wastes.’
Munari blushes. ‘That is different.’
Sarita looks at me. ‘It isn’t,’ she says. ‘Munari was the one who led the train of pilgrims across the Bladed Wastes on Vilium to keep them from the teeth and knives of the drukhari. The xenos came upon the train five times, and every time they did, Munari killed their reavers and raiders. She did not lose a single soul. Not one.’
Sarita’s eyes soften as she looks at her sister.
‘If you have come here seeking a truth, Evangeline, then that is the one I would give you. Munari is selfless, and strong. She will serve you well.’
Her voice is serious, now. No more laughter. Munari must recognise this because her eyes soften, too. A perfect mirror for those of her twin.
‘Not as well as you,’ she says.
They clasp hands for a moment, and I find that I have to look away because it is not just sentences that Sarita and Munari share, but everything. They are one heart, cast in two bodies. Each completely defined by the other. It makes me think even more about the things I have lost. About what it would mean if one of them were to die under my watch.
‘Are you all right, Sister Superior?’ Sarita asks.
Munari nods. ‘You seem troubled.’
I look at them in turn, and try not to think about them dying.
‘I am sorry,’ I tell them. ‘But I have to go. Thank you for your stories.’
They smile and nod and I leave them to keep to their patrol, matching each other’s stride and pace perfectly and talking in their low, warm voices.
Each completely defined by the other.
I meet with Veridia at the spinal viewport as the Vow’s shutters close in preparation for our first jump towards the Throneworld.
‘I am afraid I have little to offer you in the way of truths, Sister Superior,’ she says, as the shutters grind inexorably downwards. ‘I lost most of mine when I gained this.’
She puts her fingertips to the steel plate that dominates one side of her skull.
‘I remember who I am, and how I am, but not how I came to be.’
‘Do you remember how it happened?’ I ask her.
She frowns on the side of her face that still can. ‘Only because others told me,’ she says. ‘I took the injury in the commandery’s last battle before being called home to Ophelia VII. We were suppressing a heretic uprising in the border worlds of the Segmentum Pacificus.’
‘And you were victorious?’ I ask.
Veridia smiles faintly. ‘Reportedly,’ she says.
The Vow’s artificial lumens bloom to compensate for the lack of starlight as the void shutters approach their final position.
‘It is strange,’ Veridia says. ‘I only know that those memories are missing because of the spaces left by them. I realise that probably sounds like foolishness.’
I think of the spaces within myself, left behind by the Last of Days. The things that I only know are missing by the absence they left behind.
‘No,’ I say, as the shutter locks itself into place with a heavy thud. ‘It doesn’t.’
Qi-Oh petitions me several times to meet her in the training halls in the Vow’s lower decks. Her fervour does not surprise me. We may have been in separate squads before, but I know Qi-Oh well enough to know that the God-Emperor did not bless her with patience. When I arrive, she is waiting in the marked circle with a training blade in hand, which does not surprise me, either.
‘You asked for honesty,’ she says. ‘I could not conceive of anything more honest than combat.’
I nod and take up a training blade from the rack on the wall. I test the weight of the longsword, and step into the marked circle.
‘Not the other sword, then,’ Qi-Oh says, nodding towards the one belted at my hip.
I shake my head. ‘Not against my own.’
She tilts her head as if considering it, then shrugs. The sparring bell tolls and Qi-Oh does not hesitate, impatient even now. She darts forward and strikes at me, so swift it is hard to stop. Almost as swift as Ashava once was. Where Ashava used artistry, though, Qi-Oh uses ferocity. It is easier to see, and to counter. I catch her blade on my own, turning it aside. Qi-Oh paces back, frowning. The expression pulls the scarring around her bionic eye taut.
‘So, how does this work?’ she asks, as she circles.
I am the one to attack, now, with a crossing strike that she parries. ‘Just speak your mind,’ I tell her. ‘Tell me what it is that you need.’
Qi-Oh tilts her head again, and I feel then that this is as much her testing me as anything else.
‘I need only orders, Sister,’ she says. ‘Enemies to fight, and wars to win. Vengeance, as you said.’
‘For Ophelia VII,’ I say.
Her frown deepens. ‘Not just Ophelia VII,’ she says. ‘For everything. What happened on Ophelia was because of the Rift. The Rift exists because of sin and weakness. Decades and decades of it.’
It is then I start to see the truth of Qi-Oh. Not just her fervour, or ferocity, but her anger. I know then that if I am going to give orders, I need to know the root of it. I dart forwards, and this time it is Qi-Oh who has to work to catch my blade and force it aside.
‘We will have vengeance,’ I tell her. ‘That is our purpose. What He made us for.’
‘I know,’ she says. ‘That I do not doubt.’
‘Then what do you doubt?’
She breaks away, breathing through her teeth. ‘I do not doubt,’ she snarls. ‘I will do as He intends, until the God-Emperor sees fit to take me up to His side.’
It is an evasion, and I will not have it.
‘But something troubles you,’ I say.
Qi-Oh snorts. ‘You asked for honesty?’
‘I did.’
She paces around me, gauging the best time to act. Qi-Oh moves with enviable lightness, even in full plate.
‘What troubles me is the fact that the weakest amongst humanity will go on sinning. They will go on doubting. They will make new wars for us to fight and new enemies for us to face, born from their wickedness.’ She spits on the training hall floor. ‘It will go on and on and on, until the stars themselves are stained with our blood, all because of those who are too weak to keep faith.’
Qi-Oh attacks again, this time with a feint intended to make me turn and leave myself open for a second strike. Instead I turn into her attack and push her backwards.
‘All of that weakness,’ she says. ‘It is abhorrent.’
‘It is the way of things,’ I say. ‘You know that.’
Qi-Oh lashes out, opening up the space between us, before coming for me again and again with that same ferocity. With all of that anger. There is no chance for artistry. It is all I can do just to block the weight of her attacks as she pushes me back across the circle, towards the edge.
But she is not just propelling me towards the edge.
I twist my body and slip past her. The edge of her training blade skitters across my armour, shoulder to hip. It would be enough to grant her victory, were it not for the fact that her momentum sends her over the edge of the marked circle. At once, the fight bell tolls and I lower my sword. It takes Qi-Oh a moment to do the same. She is looking down at her feet. At their position over the circle’s edge, her shoulders rising and falling with each breath.
‘You are not what I expected,’ she says, in a low voice.
Her words surprise me. ‘What did you expect?’
She looks up. ‘You asked for honesty?’ she asks, again.
I nod. ‘I did.’
‘I expected a miracle,’ she says. ‘What else could I expect of one who is marked by His favour, who is meant to find the Shield of our Saint?’ Qi-Oh shakes her head. ‘They all said the same thing. Lourette. Calyth. Even Veridia said it, of all souls. You will see, Qi-Oh. When you see the mark you will understand. But you are not a miracle.’
It is almost enough to make me laugh, because I have looked at the mark a dozen times or more, and I do not understand. But I cannot tell Qi-Oh this when it seems I have already fallen so far short of her expectations.
‘I never claimed to be,’ I say, and I glance down at the blade in my hand. ‘But I am your Sister Superior.’ I look back to Qi-Oh, making sure to hold her eyes with mine. ‘If you have quarrel with me, I would hear it now. We have enough enemies without finding them in each other.’
A long moment of quiet stretches out between us. Qi-Oh tilts her head again, gauging me, but before she gets the chance to speak, a massive tremor shakes the deck underfoot. Thunder builds around us as the Vow’s warp-drives come to life. The sound rises to a crescendo, and the overhead lumens in the training hall flare and then flicker off momentarily. A sensation comes over me like a thousand hooked blades snagging all across my skin and beneath it, too, as if they are trying to tear at my soul. I mutter a benediction as tectonic shudders run through the Vow’s old bones.
God-Emperor, armour my soul.
Qi-Oh looks up at the training hall’s distant ceiling.
‘Once more, into the domain of devils,’ she says absently.
‘You did not answer me,’ I say. ‘Do you have quarrel with me?’
Qi-Oh looks back at me. Her hazel eye has cooled like an ember left behind in the wake of a fire.
‘There is no quarrel, Sister Superior,’ she says. Her voice is cooler now, too. Less angry. ‘I should like to return to my training, now, as atonement for my failure.’
I cannot tell if she means her failure to defeat me, or her failure to keep her temper, but the way Qi-Oh says my title is careful, and measured. It is a small offering from someone who finds it hard to give in, even just a little, so I swallow my own pride and I nod.
‘That will be all, Sister,’ I say. ‘I will leave you to your swords.’
There is a flicker in her hazel eye and then Qi-Oh nods and goes back to the circle. I take my leave, hearing the fight bell toll again as the door grinds closed behind me.