Chapter 2

Arran sidled along the back of the chapel and crossed his arms. The church’s hooded acolytes were arranging in chorused rows before the elder at the pulpit. The one Arran had just spoken to slipped amongst other acolytes, their figures as maroon shadows resolving from hidden alcoves into yellowy torchlight that was fooled by the long folds of their robes such that it rarely reached their faces, and then only at angles that accentuated their pale features. The evening service was about to begin.  Finlowe’s attention was focused down at the stand, the robed figure obscured behind a heat haze warming orange and yellow from torches wrought to the edges of the pulpit. His head was down, his hood concealing his features. He drew a sleeved hand in a line across a page. He hunched over his materials and scanned them closely.  It was cooler here by the door, the air fresher. The chapel was kept hot and pungent with aromas of burning wildstalk and red weave and several others Arran could not place. A breath brought sharp tangs of intermingling warmth and earthen bitterness. Chambered incense smouldered hanging from the ceiling by fine chains. Smoke swirled in shadow. Altogether the chapel was hot, stinging, and it disoriented him. The acolytes thrived on the dense environment, the smells of alien plants, the warmth. It helped them focus. Arran thought they were mad. He’d stay near the vestibule until the service was over.  Brushes of wooden stalk emerged from polished vases gleaming in the low light, their dense maroon flowers the same shade as the acolytes’ robes. Moonrise had come and its glow came up faintly through the chapel floor. The acolytes arranged above it. Arran leaned back and rested his chin down and exhaled through his nose.  A woman with her back to him waved at her face with a hand fan. She was one of a few others watching, a sparse congregation sat alone on pews below rows of dark arches steepling the chapel nave – a long throat before the voice of the enclave.  A cough came from the pulpit. Elder Finlowe lowered his hood. A smooth scalp gleamed above imperious features made more graven by two wide, black lines tattooed back from his forehead. They travelled down each side of his neck and into his robes, visible again emerging from his sleeves at his wrists.  The bony, slender fingers he used to draw back the hood featured two gold rings, one with a red gem, the other fixed with a green one. They wrapped around the front of the pulpit as he leaned over it to deliver his liturgy. The gems in his rings caught a low reflection off the torches.  ‘Good evening, brothers and sisters. Diametric Equinox approaches, and we stand today in the shadow of its profound transit,’ he said, his low voice settling those attending. ‘Tonight we wait expectant of the truths that will soon come into focus. Cirus moves into the house of Laxapris. Milvant into Forne. It is a time of hierophany. For us, it means a time of reserve, of meditation, as our holy matrices become apparent, and our minds become ready to observe them. Remember that our Axis always guides us through the dual nights of the soul.’  Arran’s acolyte reappeared drifting near the Elder to pass a whisper into his ear. Finlowe cocked his head away from the words spoken to him. His eyes came sharp. They pierced through the semidark chapel and found the peacekeeper as a shape against the wall.  Arran crooked at the hip and leaned into nearby torchlight. He gave a thumbs-up.  Finlowe’s expression returned sedate and he looked down his nose. He continued. ‘As we must, each day we remember when man walked the heavy earth in toil and sought to rearrange the constellations of his heavens. Be it not up to us to remove the constellations, no more than we would remove the light from each other.’  Arran grimaced.  ‘Look upon the stars that give us their light as guiding markers, who frame us as peers amongst them. Let them show you the way. Observe our simple lien of their will, now.’  At a wave of his hand a faint bluish aura swirled around it, a concentration of electric particles that reacted immediately with a great orb that hung on the wall behind him, hung overhead from a golden chain by a rood-pin and a heavy clasp. The orb flared brightly, coming alive in a flash.  Others in the congregation shaded their eyes as the burning intensity cast the room in sharp relief, and the Elder stood with his arms aloft, basking in its rays. So intense was the light its heat baked even at the back of the chapel, and the brightness spread their silhouettes long across the pews, the aisle, and up the walls.  The Elder’s silhouette stood out strongest, borne long across his congregation.  Behind the orb the light reflected off a circular plate matching the starmetal etched with the radials and markings of the church. Those were visible despite the silver cast shining in the full light of the orb as the Elder made one last ritual gesture, lowering his arms. As he did the orb rang against the plate and a long, deep peal went out, amplified by the recessed architecture of the chapel.  It was said the depth of its tone sustained all who heard it. It was said humanity was strengthened by its toll. The acolytes here saw it as a healing-bell. The sound travelled far outside the church. The people heard it ring down the Hollow and bounce off the panes and rattle the superstructure each solar night.  For most it was the sound that rang out the day. Arran blinked as the chapel star lost its brilliance and returned to its usual opaque silver.  The ceremony was over. The Elder gave a short bow.  ‘Thank you all, brothers and sisters. Until tomorrow.’ He cleared his throat again and shot Arran a look as he left the pulpit. Arran was to follow.  The woman with the hand fan set it aside to make a few short claps that were muted in the ringing hush left after the bell’s toll. When she got up to turn she saw Arran. Arran had thought he recognised her.  ‘Mrs. Graney,’ he said, stepping off the wall.  Her countenance changed when she saw him. She was in her church clothes. Where once she had seemed calm now she was infuriated, her pale blue eyes turning to stony anger as she came down the aisle between the pews.  She walked Arran down and slapped him across the cheek.  A few of the acolytes looked over, but seeing the peacekeeper slapped, they wisely looked away. This was not their business.  ‘Yep,’ Arran said.  ‘That was not the way to handle it.’ She was trying to keep her composure.  ‘Yep,’ Arran said. The point was made.  The widow stormed off. She turned around the vestibule. Arran considered going after her, but he’d have to find her later, after she’d calmed down. He didn’t need an embarrassing argument on the grounds of the church plaza. He had Hall business to attend to.  He almost lost the Elder in the mix of acolytes separating but glimpsed his bald head flitting under a dark archway at the back, going into the church’s workings. Arran went after him, through into the fat abdomen of the church.  Burning torches marked each corner. Here, too, were vases of brushstalk and the lingering trails of its incense. The floors were bare by tradition and the narrow, smoky halls steep enough for overhead travel. He followed in silence as was expected of visitors. They passed a few acolytes, themselves deep in hooded contemplation who gave no regard to Arran or the Elder.  Finlowe brought Arran past the reading room and the meditation chambers where the floor enclosed from moonlight and they went by only the odd torch lit in the church’s less-visited foundations. The air was still. He could sense the Elder’s displeasure. He snapped around the next corner.  They went down a set of stairs and along a short hall. At a junction with a wide double door of polished slate Finlowe stopped. Arran paused, looking with some foreboding at the entrance to the undercroft.  Finlowe turned, face unreadable, and beckoned at Arran’s gun with a ringed hand. Silence held while he waited.  Arran nodded and unholstered the ancient gun. He took it by the grip and passed it overhand so he gave it to the Elder by its heavy, reuleaux-cut barrel.  Finlowe took it and slid it away into his sleeves. ‘Go ahead, brother. I shall await your return.’ He extended that same hand now to usher Arran into the undercroft. The door split inwards at his wave. Inside was gloom. This part of the church was hidden from the stars.  Arran descended to the ground and stepped under the low ceiling. He took a deep breath as the doors slid closed behind him.  Finlowe’s deep voice rumbled in warning from behind him. ‘Do not be long about the ossuary.’  A heavy click. Darkness, so deep not even his augments could see into it. The heat of the church was gone and he was cold. He stepped forward.  Silver dishes atop pedestals on either side of him came alight with bursts of green flame. The gloom was kept back by it, and Arran proceeded along a stone walkway towards the dais. On the dais was a simple paper journal, open in the middle. It was a receptacle of souls.  Below the pedestals was emptiness. Arran could see no bottom to the floor, if there was one. Each pedestal was sentinel above it. He dared not look down into that emptiness for too long and walked the stone path to its end.  A third flame ignited, this one bigger and central to the dais. Beyond it the gloom stretched endlessly, held back but always present. His skin pricked, though he was only here to perform a simple rite and no horrors lurked in the dark.  Arran took a deep breath and spoke into the journal’s blank pages. ‘Odelford,’ he said. ‘He had a boy killed. I know his mother.’ He reached down to the silver paten and its heaped bonemeal offering and drew a thumbprint of chalky grey he touched from the point of his forehead to the step of his nose.  The ossuary turned over him. His head went back, mouth agape, lost in a moment of consciousness. His eyes, wide, glowed brightly green and the flames on the pedestals burned brighter. He felt it there, the cold, creeping hand at the back of his mind plucking the experience from him and dragging the memory out and scratching it into its dark accounts. The final record of Odelford’s life.  Rushing, violent whispers in his ears. He tried to scream but he could not. His blood pumped cold.  The dais received his interment and the central flame went out. Once again, though not for a long time, the dead grip of the ossuary left him. Perturbed, Arran made no point of staying to pay respects. He left the dais and the creeping gloom behind him.  A ritual only performed out here on the panes. When man could walk back from death, only annihilation could wholly end it, and so each act of absolution demanded some respect paid to it. Though the regrowth tanks were said to rob a human of some essence and that was a death in itself, only annihilation demanded this ritual.  The door slid shut. Arran was alone. Finlowe had sneaked off with his gun, and violated their sacred tradition.  That gun was not Finlowe’s to take. It was forged in the warren city of Carnegie and belonged only to Arran and the ancient tendrils of Fate that assembled it. One thousand years had passed since the heat of its cosmic origin. The Elder should have known better.  Arran went back, cursing his own shortsightedness and Finlowe’s greed. The reading room was empty, even the heights where light came in from stained glass windows and acolytes sat.  He navigated the halls considering the reason Finlowe might have wiled him and caught a glimpse of an acolyte slipping hurriedly towards the meditation rooms. He keened an ear down that way. Faint voices were causing commotion. Trouble, then. Perhaps not greed. A bloodcurdling scream bouncing down the halls confirmed it. He kept pace behind the acolyte and arrived to find a panic.  Finlowe had his sleeves up around his elbows. Flames burned from hanging drapery and he and the other acolytes worked to put it out and control a writhing acolyte held flat on a wooden table. ‘We mustn’t let him harm himself!’ he said.  The young acolyte’s hair was matted and wet from terror and agony. The acolytes lost him as he kicked one off and screamed through bared teeth and contorted. He arched off his back and they pushed him back down.  ‘Where are the salves?’ an acolyte asked, panting.  A torch was downed where the young acolyte had burst from a meditation chamber and knocked it into the curtains. Flames licked higher, engulfing a run of fabric and blazing in Finlowe’s face. He flinched from it, startled. ‘Pull that down!’ he said.  An acolyte left his side and ascended to snatch at the eyelet. He gripped it and with a tear ripped it off the rod and went off with it. Flames whipped the air. Ashes of charred maroon went whirling.  Finlowe spoke to the one who had mentioned salves. ‘Did you try inglewood?’  ‘The ambry is empty,’ the acolyte responded. Finlowe looked to the other side of the room, spotting a cabinet in the corner. Atop it an incense-well fumed.  The tormented acolyte’s head thrashed. He let out a strained gasp, teeth clenched tight, eyes bulging, his whole body making retching, convulsive spasms while the others fixed over him.  Finlowe, pinning the straining acolyte by the shoulder, used an elbow to barge another away who made to grab the acolyte’s head. ‘Don’t do that or he will snap his neck! Find the salves!’  ‘Brother neglected to decouple,’ another acolyte said, binding a wrist tighter, putting his weight down rougher. His eyes blazed in the fires around him. ‘Damn fool!’  The rebuke was punctuated by a pained scream from the table. Spittle came out of the acolyte’s mouth. ‘No! It’s gone!’ The words came harsh from his throat and ended with a pained whine. He wrested his right arm free and rolled on his side, the cry rising in pitch as he punched again and again at his own skull. ‘It’s gone! Where’s it-where-where’s it gone?’ His voice broke and the acolytes piled on him again to control his anguish.  Finlowe let out an exasperated gasp and left the acolyte’s side, flying across the room to the ambry. He thumped into the cabinet and flung its door open. ‘They must be here!’  His searching was in vain. He spun back around, raising an arm to direct one of his acolytes about. ‘There’s mush of inglewood in-’  Arran couldn’t let him continue.  The distance between them snapped away in a blur. He sprang between Finlowe and the acolytes, stopping between them before the Elder could return to his flock. Finlowe stopped.  Arran looked down at him, his breathing still and measured, but staying firm. ‘Gun.’ He held out his hand and upturned a palm worn through by lines. Such was the shape of its grip you could look at Arran’s hand and the gun and know each part was made for the other, the same way a nut is for a bolt. Finlowe’s eyes flicked aside, at where the acolyte’s ravings now became unintelligible and run through by fevered accusations. The Elder let out a harried sigh and passed the gun out of his sleeve. The dark yellow sigil embossed into the deep blue of its grip there showed plain. Finlowe made sure Arran saw it. Saw what it meant.  ‘I am waylaid. My apologies. Pleasant evening, Arran,’ Finlowe said.  ‘It’s not your place-’ he began.  Finlowe recoiled out of annoyance, shook his head and dispelled the words between them. ‘No, no it isn’t. Get out of here, this is no place for you.’ He slid around Arran and back to the acolyte’s side. ‘Sister, go, inglewood in the offering-box.’ He pointed and sent the acolyte from the room.  ‘Hurry!’ he called after her.  Arran folded his arms and studied the acolyte. He talked in gibberish, of words Arran knew but understood little about. None of them seemed connected, but he spoke them with eyes wide with the truth of fear and madness. He spoke of dark comings and stars gone out. At once the straining acolyte saw the Elder and recognised him.  ‘What happened, boy?’ Finlowe said, patting the acolyte’s cheek. ‘You’re going to be alright, just wait, the ringing must settle.’  The young acolyte’s mouth worked soundlessly, the eyes locked to Finlowe’s wide with fear. He drew short breaths that grew shorter as he failed to breathe back out. Those eyes rolled back, again turning white. Before he could faint, Finlowe slapped him harder, across the whole face. The acolyte started back awake with a hard spasm that wracked his whole body. He foamed at the mouth while the other acolytes struggled to hold him down.  Finlowe said, ‘Good! Your brain will not bleed! Remember your training!’  Elder Finlowe. Now, there was a pillar of the community. They met eyes. Each nodded to the other, understanding of their shared sacred duties.  Arran took his exit. Outside he passed the acolyte returning from the chapel with a small golden crucible held in both hands. She brushed past him. Her expression became dismissive at Arran having seen her face. Arran shrugged. She was pretty.  He nodded to her and continued down the way she had come. He saw no-one else in the halls and floated on above the stars wondering what could have happened to have unsettled that acolyte so. Arran had not been trained in religious studies. What infinity spread out below him offered no way of enforcing the law, so he ignored it.  The young acolyte’s tormented screams became a fading echo as he returned to the chapel. He descended. His bootheels twisted against the threshold of the vestibule. His weight settled into his hips and he cracked his shoulders.  With only one stop left Arran pursed his lips, becoming aware of the church’s heavy presence around him. Finlowe was right. This was no place for him. A century of unending violence was buried deep in his biology. He was programmed for justice. He would be glad for settling this matter of Odelford entirely. He was ready to punch the clock and be done.