‘So what happened here?’ said Roxanne.

‘Death happened here,’ said Palladis, fighting the urge to look over his shoulder at the Vacant Angel. He lifted his voice so that the rest of his congregation could hear him. ‘Evil men came to us and paid the price for their wickedness. Death looks for any chance to take you to into his dark embrace, and to walk the path of evil is to bring you to his notice. Look now, and see the price of that path.’

The people of the temple cheered, holding one another tight as his words reached them. They had stepped from the shadow of death and the light beyond had never seemed brighter. The colours of the world were unbearably vivid, and the comfort of the loved one nearby had never been more achingly desirable. They looked at him as the source of their newfound joy, and he wanted to tell them that he had not caused these men to die, that he was as shocked as they were to still be alive.

But one look at their enraptured faces told him that no words he could summon would change their unshakable belief in him.

Roxanne gestured to the dead bodies. ‘So what do we do with them?’

‘Same as all the rest,’ he said. ‘We burn them.’

‘Ghota won’t take this lightly,’ said Roxanne. ‘We should get out of here. He’ll raze this place to the ground.’

‘No,’ said Palladis, picking up the strange rifle one of Ghota’s men had carried. ‘This is a temple of death, and when that bastard comes back, he’s going to find out exactly what that means.’

FIVE

Old Wounds

The Unthinkable

The Troubled Painter

KAI AND ATHENA descended the tower, making their way down the grav-lifts towards the mess facilities near the base of the tower. They hadn’t spoken since breaking their most recent connection to the nuncio, and both were drained with the effort of maintaining a shared dreamspace. An appraisal of his improvement could wait until they had the distraction of a drink and the barrier of a table between them.

The mess halls of the tower were iron-walled, stark and low-lit, reminding Kai of the serving facilities aboard a starship. He wondered if that was deliberate, given where most astropaths were destined to spend much of their lives. Solitary figures were scattered around the echoing chamber, lost in thought, trailing their fingers over an open book or adding fresh interpretive symbols to their Oneirocritica. They found a table and sat in silence for a moment.

‘So, am I getting better?’ asked Kai.

‘You already know the answer to that,’ replied Athena. ‘You managed to send a message to an astropath in the Tower of Voices, and it almost drained you.’

‘Still, it’s an improvement, yes?’

‘Fishing for praise won’t do you any good,’ said Athena. ‘I won’t give it out for anything less than the full return of your abilities.’

‘You’re a hard woman.’

‘I’m a realistic one,’ said Athena. ‘I know I can save you from the hollow mountain, but I need you to know it too. You have to be able to send messages off-world, to starships a sector over, and you need to send them accurately. You’ll have a choir for the last part, but you know as well as I do that the best of us work alone. Are you ready for that? I don’t think so.’

Kai shifted uncomfortably in his seat, fully aware that Athena was right.

‘I don’t feel safe hurling my mind out too far,’ he said.

‘I know, but you’re no use to the Telepathica unless you will.’

‘I… I want to, but… you don’t know…’

Athena leaned forward in her chair, the electro-magnetics of its repulsor plates setting Kai’s teeth on edge.

‘I don’t know what? That we take risks and brave horrors that even the most heroic Army soldier or Legionary wouldn’t be able to comprehend? That every day we could be corrupted by the very powers that make us useful? That we are in the employ of an empire that would collapse without, yet fears us almost as much as the enemies at our frontiers? Oh, I am verymuch aware of that, Kai Zulane.’

‘I didn’t mean–’

‘I don’t care what you meant,’ snapped Athena. ‘Look at me: I’m a freakish cripple that any medicae worthy of the name would have let die the moment he laid eyes on me. But because I’m useful I was kept alive.’

Athena tapped her scarred palm on the metal of her chair. ‘Not that this is any kind of life, but we all have our burdens to bear. I have mine, and you have yours. I deal with mine, and it’s time you dealt with yours.’

‘I’m trying,’ said Kai.

‘No, you’re not. You’re hiding behind what happened to you. I’ve read the report of what happened on the Argo. I know it was terrible, but what good do you do by letting yourself get drained in the hollow mountain? You’re better than that, Kai, and it’s time you proved it.’

Kai sat back and ran a hand over his scalp. He smiled and spread his hands out on the table. ‘You know that was almost like a compliment.’

‘It wasn’t meant as one,’ replied Athena, but she returned his smile. The tight skin at her jawline stopped the right corner of her lip from moving, and the gesture was more like a grimace. A robed servitor brought them two mugs of vitamin-laced caffeine. He took a sip and sucked his cheeks in as the bitter flavour filled his mouth.

‘Throne, I’d forgotten how bad the caffeine here is. Not as strong as they make it on Army ships, but pretty damn close.’

Athena nodded in agreement and pushed away the mug in front of her. ‘I don’t drink it anymore,’ she said.

‘Why not? Aside from the fact it tastes like bilge water and you could repair blast damage on a starship’s hull with it.’

‘I acquired a taste for fine caffeine aboard the Phoenician. Her quartermasters and galleymen were the very best, and when you’ve tasted the best, it’s hard to go back.’

‘The Phoenician? That sounds like an Emperor’s Children warship.’

‘It was.’

‘Was?’

‘It was destroyed fighting the Diasporex,’ said Athena. ‘It took a lance hit amidships and broke in two.’

‘Throne! And you were aboard at the time?’

Athena nodded. ‘The engine section was dragged into the heart of the Carollis Star almost immediately. The forecastle took a little longer. A secondary blast took out the choir, and venting plasma coils flooded the ventral compartments in seconds. My guardians got me out of the choir chamber, but not before… Not many of us escaped.’

‘I’m so sorry,’ said Kai, with a measure of understanding. ‘I’m glad you got off though.’

‘I wasn’t,’ said Athena. ‘Not for a while, at least. I was living with a lifetime’s worth of pain every day until Mistress Sarashina and Master Zhi-Meng taught me tantric rituals to make it bearable.’

‘Tantric?’

‘You know how Zhi-Meng works,’ said Athena neutrally.

Kai considered that and said, ‘Maybe they could teach me?’

‘I doubt it. You’re not as broken as me.’

‘No?’ said Kai bitterly. ‘It feels like I am.’

‘Your body is still in one piece,’ pointed out Athena.

‘Your mind is still in one piece,’ countered Kai.

Athena gave a gargled chuckle. ‘Then between us we have a functioning astropath.’

Kai nodded, and the silence between them was not uncomfortable, as though in sharing their hurts they had established a connection that had, until now, been missing.

‘Looks like we are both survivors,’ said Kai.

‘This is surviving?’ said Athena. ‘Throne help us then.’

AT THE HEART of the web of towers within the City of Sight lay the Conduit, the nexus of all intergalactic communication. Carved by an army of blind servitors from the limestone of the mountains, these high-roofed chambers were filled by black-clad infocytes plugged into brass keyboards and arranged in hundreds of serried ranks. Once each telepathic message had been received and interpreted – and sifted by the cryptaesthesians – it was processed and passed on by the Conduit to the intended recipient by more conventional means. Looping pneumo-tubes descended from the shadowed ceilings like plastic vines, wheezing and rattling as they sped information cylinders to and from the clattering, clicking keystrikes of the infocytes.