{"id":2406,"date":"2026-10-17T19:57:58","date_gmt":"2026-10-17T19:57:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kourentzes.com\/konstantinos\/?p=2406"},"modified":"2026-10-17T19:58:00","modified_gmt":"2026-10-17T19:58:00","slug":"the-mercy-account","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kourentzes.com\/konstantinos\/index.php\/2026\/10\/17\/the-mercy-account\/","title":{"rendered":"The Mercy Account"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A Warhammer 40,000 story<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I. The View<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The dead man had been dressed for dinner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Someone had shaved him, closed his mouth and put a fresh gardenia in his buttonhole. He lay on a couch upholstered in pale green silk. Beyond the open windows, water fell from the terraces of Bellacourt in long white curtains, and the first of the evening pleasure barges was crossing the lake.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Investigator Oswin Pahl lifted the dead man’s right hand. The nails were clean. The skin beneath the wedding ring was grey and soft.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou washed him.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNaturally,\u201d said the physician.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBefore the examination.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere had been an accident.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pahl looked up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The physician swallowed. \u201cOf the bowels.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThey do that.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Behind him, Sister Meret shifted her weight. Her armour made a small mechanical correction at the knee. She had been standing since their lander touched down, refusing three chairs, a footstool and an attendant whose only apparent duty was to hold her helmet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The red of Our Martyred Lady showed at her cuffs. Pahl had requested her by name when Ghedde authorised the inquiry. Seven months of working together had taught him that she would question his decisions to his face and defend him until the shooting stopped. He needed both qualities more often than he admitted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pahl set the hand down. \u201cHow old?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOne hundred and seventeen, subject to rejuvenation.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI meant the corpse.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNine hours.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Examiner Stenn had been dead for nine hours, then, and had requested assistance eleven days before. His message had travelled off-world by astropath. Pahl had received it aboard an Inquisitorial courier, three systems away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

*Discrepancies in household expenditure. Require independent spiritual assessment. Bring someone who will not enjoy herself.*<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The last sentence had persuaded him. Stenn had disliked jokes in official communications.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWas he alone?\u201d Meret asked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAt the end.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWho was with him before?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The physician glanced towards the door.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou can tell us here,\u201d Pahl said, \u201cor you can tell me somewhere without windows.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMistress Ramm. The comptroller of the palace households. She visits all distinguished guests in distress.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meret went to the couch. Stenn’s left hand lay flat against the silk, fingers spread. There were shallow crescent marks in the upholstery.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHe gripped this.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cA cardiac episode can be painful.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She bent closer. White hair fell against the gorget of her black armour.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThen why are his fingertips burnt?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The physician had no answer for that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Outside, a choir began singing from one of the barges. The sound carried beautifully over the water. Pahl waited until the physician had gone before he drew back the dead man’s collar.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Under the left ear was a pinprick, sealed with transparent surgical wax.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meret touched the scar above her own ear, where an armour jack had once become infected. \u201cA neural contact?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cPossibly.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou knew him.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHe lent me money.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDid you repay it?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNow you sound like him.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She waited.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYes,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Only then did she help him turn the body.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Their hosts received them on a balcony wide enough for a military parade. Roses climbed pillars banded in gold. Imperial eagles hung above the balustrade; below it, orchards and pleasure gardens descended through the foothills to the lake. Snow remained on the mountains because, Pahl was informed, visitors preferred it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He had seen worlds whose entire annual water allowance would not have supplied this balcony’s fountains for a week.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mistress Ramm wore unadorned grey among the silks. She was a broad woman with close-cut hair and a slight tremor in one hand. Her face had the patient, practical expression of someone who knew how long everything took to clean.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cExaminer Stenn was a valued guest,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHe was an auditor.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe distinction needn’t make his stay unpleasant.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ramm offered the household records, the physician’s notes and unrestricted access to the deceased’s rooms. All had been prepared before Pahl arrived. He disliked competent hospitality. It removed useful reasons to be rude.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He presented his warrant. The seal belonged to Inquisitor Ghedde of the Ordo Hereticus; the signature beneath it was Pahl’s own. Delegated authority, considerable but not unlimited. Ramm studied it with appropriate gravity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou will have every assistance.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cPeople sometimes say that.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI expect they do.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She turned to Meret. \u201cAnd accommodation for your needs, Sister. A private chapel has been consecrated. We have no wish to interfere with your observances.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMy needs are ammunition, maintenance access and an unbarred exit.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAll three have been arranged.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ramm’s eyes dropped, briefly, to the Sister’s right knee.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That evening Pahl stood alone on the balcony, stretching his fingers. His joints ached after warp travel. He had begun to suspect that they also ached before it, during it and whenever there was no travel to blame.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

His reflection in the window looked more distinguished than he felt: long grey hair, a carefully trimmed beard, an investigator’s black coat under ceremonial red. Bellacourt had good glass. Even exhaustion looked expensive in it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meret appeared behind him carrying two cups.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cRecaf,\u201d she said. \u201cI watched it made.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhat happened to the man who made it?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHe survived.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He accepted his cup.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Below them, attendants were lighting the garden paths one lamp at a time. A distant woman laughed, and another voice answered her. Somewhere near the lake, an animal gave a deep, contented cough.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHave you been here before?\u201d Meret asked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWorlds like it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI haven’t.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDoes it offend you?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She considered the question instead of giving him the answer expected of her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe water does.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He liked her a little more for that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cStenn sent three requisitions for neural analgesics,\u201d he said. \u201cEnough for a siege hospital. None reached the palace pharmacy.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhere did they go?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHousehold expenditure.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meret watched a barge turn beneath them. Its canopy shone with tiny devotional lights.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThen we should see the household.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

II. At Table<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

At supper, a woman with pearls sewn into her hair asked Pahl whether he had ever condemned an innocent man.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cCertainly.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She laughed, assuming wit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHow terrible you are.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNot nearly enough to discourage the questions.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She moved away after that. The young man reclining at her feet followed, carrying her wine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The feast occupied a hall whose outer wall was almost entirely open to the lake. Musicians played behind a lattice of beaten silver. Marble saints stood between the pillars, their familiar instruments of martyrdom rendered with such delicate craftsmanship that the wounds seemed decorative. A white tiger lay under a table of sugared fruit. Its handler was feeding it morsels from a fork.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meret remained in armour. An attendant had been trying for several minutes to arrange cushions behind her without touching her boltgun.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cStop,\u201d she told him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He froze.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe cushions. I can’t feel them through ceramite.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMy apologies, Sister.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou haven’t injured me.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He had a crooked little finger, improperly set. Pahl noticed Meret noticing it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The attendant introduced himself as Bero. He was perhaps thirty, with a gold leaf caught in his dark hair and an old burn showing above the drape of his white tunic. His smile arrived promptly whenever anyone looked at him. It disappeared the instant they looked elsewhere.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMay I bring you something less cumbersome to wear?\u201d he asked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNo.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSomething to eat?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meret looked towards Pahl.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cUnless the enemy has infiltrated the apricots,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She took one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Later he would remember that quite clearly: her expression when she bit into it, the surprised stillness. A woman who had eaten field rations through eighteen campaigns discovering what fruit tasted like when no one had dried it, processed it or grown it beneath a manufactorum.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cGood?\u201d he asked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYes.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She finished it with great care.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The evening’s entertainment began with a recital by a fleet captain. He read a list of engagements in which he had participated, pausing after each name for applause. A woman beside him kissed the decorations on his chest. He was very drunk and, Pahl thought, very close to crying.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Across the hall, another guest was being held while she wept openly into an attendant’s shoulder. Nobody found this remarkable. She was a provisioning prefect from a war zone. Her bracelets were worth the collective wages of a regiment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe are accustomed to difficult arrivals,\u201d Ramm said, taking the chair beside Pahl. \u201cPeople bring their duties with them.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI hope they take them away again.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMore effectively, in most cases.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She watched the prefect. There was no mockery in her face.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe armies need supplies. Supplies need signatures. After a certain number of casualties, some people find they can no longer lift the pen.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThat sounds like a selection problem.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou would prefer less sensitive administrators?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pahl took a drink.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The wine was excellent. He disliked being offered a proposition he could not dismiss without lying.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the far side of Meret, Bero dropped a spoon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He apologised. As he stooped to retrieve it, his hand touched the Sister’s gauntlet. She looked down. He was holding something against her palm.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She closed her fingers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ramm was asking Pahl about the voyage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The object was a laundry tally, thin bone marked with a room number. Someone had scratched a second set of figures into its reverse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cA date?\u201d Pahl asked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cA lift designation.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He looked at her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere are maintenance markings on the service doors. I read them.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They were in his suite. Meret had checked the vents while he dismantled a devotional cherub which had shown an excessive interest in his correspondence. Its recording spool lay on the table beside its artificial eyelids.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBero may be bait,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThen we find out what for.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She unclasped her right greave. Beneath the armour, her knee was wrapped in old scar tissue. The joint had healed at a slight angle. He had known her for seven months and had never seen it before.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou could have that replaced.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt’s been replaced twice.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAh.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She adjusted a worn actuator. He offered her a tool without being asked. For a while they worked in comfortable silence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhere?\u201d he said eventually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe evacuation at Drail.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He knew the campaign. A breach in the perimeter. Hospital trains trapped at the terminus. A Sororitas rearguard under orders to hold until the last civilian transport cleared the line.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI read the citation.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThen you read the train left.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt did.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOne did.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She took the tool back.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He said nothing. He knew when a silence was being entrusted to him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meret tightened a screw, tested the joint and began again. \u201cThere was a porter under a carriage. His name was Tull. We couldn’t move the carriage without bringing down the roof. He asked me not to leave him.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou stayed.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cUntil the charge was set.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She watched her own hands for a moment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI could still hear him when we fired it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pahl had an answer ready, one of the serviceable things people said about duty and necessity. He was glad he did not use it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHow old were you?\u201d she asked him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhen?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhen you condemned the innocent man.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He smiled without humour. \u201cWhich one?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She did not smile back.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After she left, he opened Stenn’s effects. There was no diary. There were seventeen receipts, a change of clothes, two letters from an estranged daughter and a small pharmacological handbook.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The handbook had been opened so often at the section on pain that its binding had split.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Pahl<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

III. Below the Falls<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The service lift descended behind a waterfall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For three floors, the glass shaft gave them a view through moving water. The palace became a blurred arrangement of gold and sunlight. Then the glass ended, the lights changed, and the smell of hot linen replaced the roses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bero was waiting beside a trolley of towels.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou came together.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWould you prefer we took turns?\u201d Pahl asked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bero ignored him and looked at Meret. \u201cI thought you would understand the number.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhere does it lead?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMy mother.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They followed him through a laundry where workers moved in the steady mechanical rhythm of people who could not afford errors. Numbered brass bands clicked against the sorting tables. A woman with reddened forearms held a sheet to the light, found a stain and quietly began to cry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

No one stopped working.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhy not approach Stenn?\u201d Pahl asked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI did.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhat did he say?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHe wanted proof.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDid you give it to him?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHe’s dead.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bero led them past the kitchens, past a chapel where the congregation prayed without sitting down, and into a corridor marked with the crossed instruments of a medical ward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

His mother lay in the fourth room.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She was awake. Someone had brushed her hair and put a clean pillow beneath her head. Fine gold wires ran from contacts behind her ears into a socket in the wall. Her hands were strapped beneath the blanket.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIdda,\u201d Bero said, too brightly. \u201cI’ve brought someone.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She turned towards the Sister.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou shouldn’t be here,\u201d she whispered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meret looked at the monitor. \u201cWhat have they given her?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThey stopped telling me.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pahl read the case sheet. Occupational injury. Compensatory placement. Voluntary assumption of transferred burden.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He read the last line again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the bedside cabinet lay a little painted eagle. Its wings had been handled until the gilding wore away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhat’s the burden?\u201d Meret asked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Idda shut her eyes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From somewhere inside the wall came the opening bars of the music they had heard at supper.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The woman’s back lifted clear of the bed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bero caught her shoulders. Meret reached for the leads, but Pahl stopped her. A warning rune on the monitor had changed from amber to red. Beneath it, in precise surgical script: *Abrupt interruption risks cortical failure.*<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cFind the regulator.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cShe is in pain.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI can see that.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For six minutes, while Meret worked the controls and Pahl read the machine’s instructions aloud, Bero held his mother and told her lies about how quickly it would end.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When the monitor returned to amber, Idda was crying silently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meret stood with her hand on the regulator. There were dents in its metal casing where she had gripped it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWho is on the other end?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pahl checked the destination code.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The provisioning prefect. The woman who had wept at supper.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There were forty beds on that floor and five more floors beneath it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The hospital’s overseer received them with professional irritation. He wore Mechanicus red beneath a sterilised apron; the organic portion of his face consisted of one eye and a patch of cheek. His name, according to his brass credential, was Adept Uhl.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThese procedures have local medical authorisation.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pahl set his warrant on the desk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Uhl’s remaining eyelid retracted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cLocal,\u201d Pahl repeated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He ordered the machinery held at its current setting, no patients moved, no records destroyed. Meret took the ward keys. Bero stayed beside his mother.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The records occupied six cabinets. Physical records: vellum, paper, copper strips for the expensive guests. Names above, numbers below. A continuous exchange of distress, from people wealthy enough to reject it to people whose contracts allowed very little rejection at all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The analgesics had been used here. Not on the guests.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pahl photographed every page. The apparatus was neither standard medicae technology nor any sanctioned treatment he had encountered. Uhl insisted it used a devotional relic to focus a sympathetic neural circuit. He repeated the phrase three times, each repetition quieter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhich relic?\u201d Meret asked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI maintain the contacts.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThat wasn’t the question.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe central reliquary is under the comptroller’s authority.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the back of the final cabinet, Pahl found the transport manifests.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Penal labour. Debtors. People reassigned after emergency censuses. Each lot had been purchased through intermediaries and processed as voluntary household service.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He stopped at a familiar seal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nine years earlier, on Vey’s Landing, he had investigated stolen grain. There had been a riot, a breached ration depot, an appeal for exemplary punishment. Pahl had secured commutation for four thousand people scheduled for execution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He had written *reassignment without right of return*<\/em> because that was the concession available to him. He had been proud of obtaining it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The receiving stations had never sent confirmation. His office had requested it twice, then closed the matter. In his annual account of the operation, Pahl had included all four thousand among the lives preserved through his intervention.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here were eighty-three of their names.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He remembered the office in which he had signed. The clerk had sneezed on the blotter. He remembered asking for another.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cInvestigator?\u201d Meret said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He turned the page before she could see the signature.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe need the central reliquary.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Someone began running in the corridor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first shot struck Uhl in the chest. He fell against the cabinet, trailing cables. Meret shoved Pahl behind the desk and fired twice through the doorway. The sound in the confined office was appalling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pahl drew his pistol. A man in a laundry uniform crawled past the opening, pulling one leg. Meret caught him by the collar and dragged him inside. His weapon was a palace-issue stub carbine, its serial plate filed smooth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHow many?\u201d she asked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He tried to raise the carbine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She broke his wrist against the floor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHow many?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He bit down. Blood ran between his teeth, blackened almost immediately. By the time Pahl reached him, his pulse was gone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the far end of the corridor, an alarm sounded. Doors began closing on the wards.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meret was already moving.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pahl gathered the manifests, including his own. He had time to do it. Afterwards he would measure that time against everything else.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By the time he reached the fourth room, Meret had forced the door back into its runners. Bero was alive. Idda was still connected.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Sister had caught a bullet in the side of her neck, where the seal joined the gorget. Blood ran beneath her armour. She pressed a dressing to it with one hand while keeping the door open with the other.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cGet the wounded,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From the floor below came a long, rising scream, followed by others.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Someone had increased the load.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

IV. A Useful Man<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

They saved nineteen people before Meret reached the distribution room.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She put a burst through the lock, kicked the door open and found a woman at the controls. The woman was wearing a surgeon’s gown over evening dress. She held a little silver rod between thumb and forefinger, turning it with the absorbed pleasure of a musician tuning an instrument.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meret shot her before she could turn it again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pahl arrived in time to see the gauges fall. He picked up the rod with a fold of the dead woman’s gown. Its tip was the shape of a hooked crescent. Although the room was cold, the metal scorched the cloth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The same shape was repeated inside the opened console, worked into a ring surrounding a cloudy crystal. He knew it from a book he had once been permitted to read under armed supervision.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDon’t touch that,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meret had seen it too. She backed away, taking him with her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They severed the cables at the wall with the surgeon’s own tools. Only when the surviving patients had been disconnected did Meret burn the console.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For an instant, the crystal showed a room much larger than the one around them. Someone in it lifted a hand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then the promethium caught, and there was only fire.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ramm was waiting upstairs with armed household guards and three frightened physicians.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She surrendered her keys without protest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDr Hest was appointed before I assumed office,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou knew her name quickly,\u201d Pahl replied.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI know all my senior staff.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He detained the physicians, took the guards’ weapons and placed Ramm under confinement in her own office. The household soldiers obeyed the warrant. One thanked Meret, very quietly, as he handed over his carbine. After questioning them separately, Pahl rearmed six and set them to guard the prisoners and the wards. He disliked depending on men whose names he had learned that morning. There was nobody else.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For a few hours the palace behaved like an ordinary criminal enterprise after a competent raid. People hid papers. Minor officials denounced their superiors. Locked rooms were discovered to have extra keys.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It reassured Pahl more than it should have.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They established a ward in a dining room overlooking the lake. Meret requisitioned beds, dressings and the palace’s entire stock of uncontaminated analgesics. Servants appeared with them, then stayed to help. A man who had spent the previous night arranging fruit held a basin while a former laundress vomited into it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Idda survived. She could sit up, though she no longer recognised her son’s face reliably. Bero introduced himself each time she woke.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pahl dictated a warning for the palace astropath to send to Ghedde: evidence of a proscribed cult, medical atrocities, compromised household authorities. Through the orbital vox relay he ordered a local halt to passenger departures and requested armed assistance from the courier.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The courier that had brought them was already carrying Ghedde’s other agents towards the system’s outer settlements. Its armed tender could return in eight days. The station commander acknowledged the quarantine and began holding outbound vessels.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pahl had done the essential thing. He told himself this while preparing the annexes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

His clerk aboard the tender had requested scans ahead of collecting the originals. The transport manifests were relevant. They established how long the practice had continued, which departments had enabled it, and who had supplied the victims.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He put his own commutation order beside the transmitter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The open channel waited.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was possible to explain. It would cost him his position, probably his life, but it was possible. Ghedde was a severe woman; she was not stupid. She knew what a signature could and could not prove.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pahl imagined giving evidence before her. He imagined the moment she would turn a page and cease to regard him as useful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He sent the medical records instead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When Meret came in, he was sealing the manifests in a document case.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAnything?\u201d she asked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cEight days.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThen we have eight days.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Her neck dressing was already wet. He made her sit while he replaced it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou should let a physician do this.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou arrested them.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere are others.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou have clean hands.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He nearly laughed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ramm’s office contained no secret altar. There were duty rosters, repair schedules and a collection of cheap ceramic dogs. Pahl examined each dog. Ramm watched without comment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHest worshipped Slaanesh,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSo you believe.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThat is not a useful answer.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou seem to have a particular definition of useful.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He put the hot silver rod on her desk, inside a leaded specimen box. Her trembling hand stopped moving.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhere is the central reliquary?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBeneath the reception hall.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou will open it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOf course.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAnd Stenn?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She looked at the box.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHe found the distribution rooms. Before you did.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHe was murdered.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHe wanted to know whether the treatment could be made safe. I arranged a demonstration. He tried to pull the conductors from the panel. Hest increased the current.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOn your instructions?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ramm was silent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pahl pressed the box shut.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHe sent for me eleven days ago. You had time to dispose of the evidence.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI kept him alive because I needed to know who else he’d told. He gave us names. We had to check them. By the time he died, you were already in the system.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For the first time, she sounded angry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere are two hundred and forty people attached to that system. Thirty-one distinguished guests were undergoing treatment when you entered the wards. Hest panicked. If she’d followed my instructions\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cFewer witnesses would be alive?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ramm’s mouth closed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He had his first unqualified pleasure since arriving on Bellacourt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then she said, \u201cHow many people did you save on Vey’s Landing?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He left his hand on the lid of the box.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ramm did not smile. \u201cYour name is in the manifests, Investigator. I know whose papers arrive in my office.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou bought them.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYes.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou knew what would happen.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYes.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Her willingness to say it deprived him of the next thing he had meant to say.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAnd now,\u201d she continued, \u201cyou have to decide how much of that your Sister ought to hear.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pahl called the guards and ordered Ramm taken below.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He could have told Meret that evening. There was time, and she would have listened.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Instead he asked her about the patients.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"His<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

V. The Quiet Room<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The reliquary was behind a chapel altar.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They opened it under floodlamps, with Ramm kneeling in restraints and Meret covering her. Pahl had brought tools, recording equipment, sanctified oil and as much of his limited understanding as he could assemble.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Inside stood a chair.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was upholstered in red velvet, worn dark at the arms. Gold cables ran from its back into the walls. Above the headrest hung a disc of polished metal, pierced by six narrow slits. The space behind the disc appeared deeper than the chapel itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meret began the Litany of Detestation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the third line, something behind the disc said the fourth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Her bolt struck the metal squarely. The impact threw fragments across the chamber and knocked Pahl from his feet. The disc remained intact. Meret brushed a fleck of hot gilding from her neck dressing without lowering the weapon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDon’t fire again,\u201d he said, tasting blood.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She held her aim.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI said don’t.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The chapel was silent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pahl took a slow breath and examined the feeds. The crystal in the distribution room had been one of several intermediary devices. This was the heart of it. Cutting power extinguished the lamps but left a weak light in the slits. He sealed the chamber behind a portable warding screen from his field kit and sent a second warning to the tender. It would bring demolition charges and the courier’s sanctioned psyker, who knew rather more about containment than he did. The reply forbade further contact. Pahl copied the prohibition onto the chapel door and posted guards.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He entered *probable daemonic artefact*<\/em> in the report. No euphemism this time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWho made it?\u201d he asked Ramm.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI don’t know.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhat is behind the disc?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt calls itself the Guest.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAnd you believe that?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI don’t believe anything it says.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meret lowered her boltgun by a fraction. \u201cYou served it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ramm looked up at her. \u201cI found it easier to serve things when I was younger.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They took her away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Four days passed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The patients grew worse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some had ordinary wounds which could be treated. Others had spent years receiving sensations their bodies had not produced. Cut free of the apparatus, they suffered attacks no sedative could reliably suppress. The physician Pahl finally cleared for duty explained it twice before admitting she did not understand it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The former guests suffered too. A general began screaming during breakfast and had to be restrained with curtain ties. The provisioning prefect clawed her face when the memory of a starving garrison returned with every detail intact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There were people who demanded the treatment be restarted. Meret sent them away. When one threatened a servant, she put him through a door.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She slept in the ward for ninety minutes at a time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the fifth night of quarantine, Pahl found her with Idda’s hand between both of hers. The older woman had mistaken Meret for a daughter who had died long before Bero was born.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cStay,\u201d Idda said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI’m here.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou keep saying that, and then you go.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meret watched the sweat gather at Idda’s hairline.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNot yet.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meret flinched as if something sharp had entered her damaged knee. Her fingers tightened around Idda’s hand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Idda stopped trembling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The bedside monitor settled.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhat did you do?\u201d Pahl asked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meret did not answer. Her jaw was clenched. He could hear her breathing through her teeth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Idda fell asleep.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They tested it in the morning with the physician present and Bero watching every movement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meret held a sick man’s hand. His spasms eased; her pulse rose. When she withdrew, his symptoms returned gradually over several minutes. The physician found no new neural contacts on the Sister, no device under her skin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There was a small burn at the base of her throat, beneath the dressing. It resembled the marks on Stenn’s fingers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pahl made her remove the dressing completely.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSince the chapel?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI don’t know.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou should have reported it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI thought it was from the wound.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He examined the burn through a lens. It was neither a recognised holy sign nor a symbol he could identify.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cStop doing it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She looked past him towards the beds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou don’t know what it is.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cExactly.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou don’t know what it isn’t, either.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMeret.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She pulled her collar closed. \u201cI know.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For the rest of the morning she obeyed him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At noon, a kitchen worker began convulsing so violently that his recently mended arm broke against the bedrail. Meret caught him. She could have held him through the fit, as the physician instructed. Instead she took his hand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By evening there were people asking for her by name.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Later that sixth day, as she walked between the beds, a woman kissed the hem of her tabard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meret told her not to do it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When Pahl checked on her after midnight, she was still awake. She had smoothed that patch of cloth flat across her lap.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pahl found Bero on the balcony, repairing a tear in one of the Sister’s spare surplices. He had a needle tucked behind his ear and a bowl of apricots beside him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThose hers?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cShe forgets to eat.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou could remind her.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cShe says there isn’t time.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pahl sat down. Below them, the pleasure barges were tied up along the quays. For once, nobody was singing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWas Stenn kind to you?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bero continued sewing. \u201cHe wasn’t cruel.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThat isn’t the same thing.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNo.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The needle went in and out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDid you know he’d been in the chair?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bero nodded. \u201cHe said he was testing it. He slept afterwards. It was the first time I’d seen him sleep.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAnd then?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHe tried to shut it down.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cRamm told me that.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDid she tell you he’d gone back three times first?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pahl looked at the lake.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMy mother wants to leave,\u201d Bero said. \u201cThere’s a workers’ shuttle held at the lower port. She has a sister on the station.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNothing leaves until the tender arrives.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI know. I wanted to ask whether we could go with it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIf she’s fit to travel.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cShe isn’t fit to stay.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He examined Bero’s neat stitching. \u201cYou could find work on the station.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHer sister repairs pressure suits. She said she could teach me.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBetter than this?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bero drew the thread through and held it against the seam. \u201cWhen someone tears a suit, they know who did it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pahl promised to arrange their passage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Later, when he went to find Meret, she was sitting upright in the ward, white-faced, while a man rubbed warmth into her fingers. She had taken pain from eleven patients. It had not left her; he could see what carrying it was costing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He knelt beside her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis ends now.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHelp me up.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou need rest.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere are two more.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou can’t save everybody.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She looked at him with sudden, unguarded hatred.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It lasted only a moment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He helped her stand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

VI. What She Could Bear<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

On the seventh day of quarantine, the chapel guards called Pahl to deal with Meret.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She had come without her armour. She could no longer bear its weight over the accumulated pain. A white robe hung from her shoulders; her feet were bare on the cold stone. In one hand she carried her bolt pistol.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMove,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He stood in front of the warding screen. Behind her, two guards waited with their weapons lowered, visibly relieved to have someone else decide what to do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt gave you this.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThen it can take it back.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThat is what it wants you to think.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHave you ever been burned, Oswin?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He had. She knew it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cTry remembering all of them at once.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She was shaking hard enough that the pistol tapped against her leg. He wanted to take it from her. He was afraid she would let him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe tender arrives tomorrow.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere are people who won’t reach tomorrow.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAnd there will be more if you open that door.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She closed her eyes. He could see her counting breaths, a technique he had watched her teach a frightened witness months earlier.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou’re right,\u201d she said at last.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Her knees gave way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He caught her, awkwardly, and almost fell. For a few seconds she leaned her full weight against him. He had never realised how small she was without the armour.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI’m sorry,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He held her until she could walk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That was the moment he would later return to most often. She had turned away. There had been a door, and she had left it closed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ramm asked to see him that afternoon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In confinement she had begun to age. Her cheeks sagged. The tremor had spread into both hands. Pahl wondered how long the palace physicians had been maintaining her, and by what methods.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou’ve been busy,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cTell me how to free her.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou can’t.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He put his pistol on the desk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ramm looked at it. \u201cYou could certainly free me.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe Sister.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI understood.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He drew the chair close.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI know you aren’t resigned to dying. People who are don’t keep asking the guards what time it is.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ramm’s mouth worked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere are surviving branches of the circuit,\u201d she said. \u201cOld guest suites. Private treatment rooms. Your people haven’t found them all.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhere?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She gave him six locations. He wrote them down.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe burden can be spread among willing participants. Small shares. No one needs to bear what she has taken.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAnd what does the Guest receive?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAttention.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cTry again.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ramm rubbed her hands together.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cPeople come here wanting something to stop. They discover how good it feels when it does. After a while they don’t want to return to ordinary life. Ordinary life begins to hurt. The device helps that process along.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pahl thought of Stenn returning to the chair.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou made addicts.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYes.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAnd Meret?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ramm watched him carefully. \u201cAsk her how she feels when they thank her.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He struck the desk hard enough to jar the pistol.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDon’t.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She drew back. He was pleased to see the fear, and knew that she saw his pleasure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI can’t tell you what it will do,\u201d she said. \u201cI used machinery. It has found something it likes better.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou chose her.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI chose to offer you a pleasant room and her a chapel. You found my wards. She burned my surgeon. Don’t make me cleverer than I was.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He took the locations to Meret. The instruction against contact remained pinned to the chapel door. He passed it on the way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first volunteer was a former artillery officer named Hauk, a guest who had never used the treatment. He had helped carry patients upstairs. When Meret explained that he would experience a small portion of their distress, he agreed without asking what he would receive in return.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pahl watched the connection made through a small subsidiary panel. The physician monitored all three of them: Hauk, Meret and the patient.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For twelve minutes it worked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hauk sat sweating, but smiling. Meret’s hands steadied. The patient’s breathing became regular.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When the session ended, Hauk said he would do it again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pahl documented everything. He called it an emergency measure. Meret called it sharing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They dismantled the panel afterwards, bagged its components and placed them under seal. They had used a thing they knew was corrupt, and neither pretended otherwise. Tomorrow there would be specialists. Tonight, for twelve minutes, three people had survived something they might not have survived alone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the next bed, another patient asked when his turn would come.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meret looked at the sealed bag.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By midnight there were twenty volunteers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They sat in a circle in a treatment room beneath the reception hall, each with a thin gold lead clipped behind one ear. Meret moved among them, checking faces, asking permission, stopping when someone said they could not continue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The second time Hauk volunteered, he wanted to bear more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou don’t need to prove anything,\u201d she told him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI know.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But he watched her until she agreed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pahl stood at the door with the list of names. His handwriting became cramped near the bottom. He had stopped entering the word *temporary*<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bero brought water. He looked at the gold leads, then at the discarded seals on the floor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhen does this finish?\u201d he asked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cTomorrow,\u201d Pahl said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Across the room, Meret was laughing softly at something Hauk had said. It was the first time Pahl had heard her laugh since they landed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bero put down the water and went to his mother.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Afterwards they ate upstairs, in the part of the reception hall that had escaped conversion into a ward. The volunteers were hungry. Meret insisted they be fed from the guests’ kitchens, and soon there were silver dishes passing between people who had never been allowed to touch them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A woman brought the Sister a robe of soft white silk. Her own was stained through at the collar. Meret accepted it, then accepted help changing behind a screen. When she returned, an attendant settled her among the cushions and loosened the fastening at her throat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She started to object to the attendant’s touch, then settled back. The dressings had pulled at her skin for days. He worked them free, bathed the wound and laid a warm cloth along the muscles of her neck. She closed her eyes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Someone began playing the small stringed instrument left behind by the musicians. A few of the patients knew the tune. They sang badly and with pleasure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThey needed this,\u201d Meret said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pahl nodded. A woman on the opposite couch was smiling without pain. It was difficult to resent the means while looking directly at her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He reached for his cup. A hand supplied it before his fingers touched the table.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The attendant behind Meret asked whether he should stop.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cA little longer,\u201d she said, without opening her eyes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Meret<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

VII. The People Who Came to Help<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The tender landed at dawn.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lieutenant Sabet came down the ramp with twelve armsmen, a demolition case and a sanctioned psyker whose weatherproof coat had been darned at both elbows. The psyker’s name was Noll. He was old enough that the sanctioning brand on his temple had stretched into the folds of his skin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meret watched him from the edge of the landing ground.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cPut her behind a screen,\u201d he told Pahl quietly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou haven’t examined her.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI’m examining her now.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She heard him. Her expression did not change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They held the examination in Pahl’s suite. Meret surrendered her pistol, then sat between two warding standards while Noll worked. He asked her questions about her childhood, the taste of salt, the prayers she said before sleeping. Twice he made her repeat an answer. Once he apologised.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pahl stood at the window, hating the sound of the old man’s breathing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Finally Noll touched the edge of Meret’s throat wound with a silver probe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Every glass in the room cracked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI’m sorry,\u201d he said again, and drew the probe away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meret’s face was wet. She had not made a sound.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cCan you remove it?\u201d Pahl asked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI can attempt to separate her from the focus. Whether she survives is another matter.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIs she possessed?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Noll hesitated. \u201cThere is still a boundary. She’s maintaining it. I’ve never examined a Sister in this condition, Investigator. Don’t ask me to promise what her faith will withstand.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAnd the patients?\u201d she asked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThey will need ordinary care.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOrdinary care isn’t working.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Noll sat opposite her. He made no effort to look imposing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI know.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHow many will die?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI don’t know.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cTwenty? Forty?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cPossibly.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She looked towards the window. Outside, the transport crew were unloading blankets and field cots. Genuine help, arriving with all the ugly limitations of genuine help.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou can still refuse it,\u201d Noll said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meret turned back.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhatever it has promised. Whatever it has already done. You can refuse the next thing.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pahl thought she would strike him. Instead she asked, very carefully, \u201cWill you help them first?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe will move everyone we safely can. Then we destroy the focus. You will be under guard until I can treat you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She nodded.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They took her to the chapel and replaced Pahl’s portable screen with Noll’s heavier apparatus. Within the field, Meret’s pain diminished enough for her to stand unaided. The old psyker seated himself outside the chamber while Sabet’s men carried in the charges. At her request, he permitted her to return to the ward under escort and identify the patients who could be moved. She was not to touch any of them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For most of the morning, the evacuation proceeded.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bero had packed his mother’s things in a laundry bag. There were very few of them: a comb, a spare shift, the little painted eagle from her bedside.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI found something for you,\u201d he told Pahl.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was Stenn’s missing notebook.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhere?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHe gave it to me before they moved him upstairs. I didn’t trust you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pahl opened it. Medical observations, account numbers, the dates of Stenn’s treatments. On the final page, a statement in a hand made almost illegible by pain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

*It does not take anything away. I can still remember every question I asked and what they did when I asked it. I only want to forgive myself more than I want to stop.*<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Below that were the beginnings of a message to his daughter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pahl closed the book.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhy now?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBecause you’re getting us out.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Across the ward, Meret stood between two armsmen, watching a patient being lifted onto a stretcher. A young woman thanked her. Meret opened her mouth, but the woman was already thanking the physician who had secured her splint.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pahl saw her expression change. Only a flicker. She was tired; she was in pain; there were many innocent explanations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bero saw it too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first death occurred on the stairs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The patient was Hauk, the artillery officer. He had insisted he was strong enough to walk. Halfway to the landing, he stopped, tried to speak and fell against the rail.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meret reached him before the physician.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDon’t,\u201d one of the armsmen said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She ignored him and put her hands against Hauk’s face.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nothing happened.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

His eyes moved towards her. He tried to smile.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Noll’s voice came over the vox. \u201cKeep her clear. We’ve broken the first feed. This may be a withdrawal response.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cReconnect it,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe can’t leave\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cReconnect it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The physician began compressions. Meret held Hauk’s hand, saying his name. Around them, the evacuation stopped.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pahl watched the exact moment she understood that she could do nothing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He had seen her under fire, wounded, exhausted, trapped. He had never seen that expression before.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The physician stopped working.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAgain,\u201d Meret said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSister.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAgain.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The physician looked at Pahl.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He shook his head.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meret let go of the dead man’s hand. She rose slowly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cTake me back,\u201d she said. \u201cI can’t bear it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The armsmen glanced at one another. Their orders were to return her to the warding field if her condition deteriorated. One called Sabet for confirmation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNow,\u201d Meret said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

VIII. The Last Prayer<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Noll had drawn a circle on the chapel floor with a stick of pale chalk. Inside it, the gilt chair looked shabby. Velvet had peeled from one arm. The disc above it hung at a slight angle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Without the gold lamps and the music, the object seemed almost contemptible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meret stopped at the edge of the circle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cCan it restore him?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Noll did not ask whom she meant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNo.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Behind the pierced disc, something breathed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt will claim otherwise,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pahl and Sabet arrived together. Ramm was already in the chapel, held by an armsman. The lieutenant had brought her to identify the remaining feeds. She looked at Meret, then at the open reliquary, and began pulling against the grip on her arm.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cGet her out,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBe quiet.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou don’t know what she’s connected to.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNeither did you,\u201d Pahl said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNo.\u201d Ramm’s voice broke. \u201cI didn’t.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meret stepped closer to the chalk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Noll lifted his hand. \u201cPlease stay where you are.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She halted. For a little while, there was nothing but the steady clicking of the demolition timer being set.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere were two trains,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pahl knew at once where she had gone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMeret.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOne left. We had enough charges to clear the track for the second. The commander said the line beyond the terminus wouldn’t hold its weight. She was right. I knew she was right.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Her hands opened and closed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI still dream about moving the carriage.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The thing behind the disc made a sound like someone settling comfortably into a chair.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Noll spoke over it. \u201cIt knows what you remember. That doesn’t make it the people you’ve lost.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI know.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt knows how to make this feel necessary.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI know.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That was worse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Sister knelt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pahl heard the beginning of a prayer he knew well. She had said it before entering burning buildings and before shooting a prisoner whose mutation had finally become visible. It asked for strength, clarity and an end worthy of the Emperor’s service.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Her voice was steady until the last line.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHelp me leave them,\u201d she whispered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Noll did not interrupt. Sabet lowered her weapon a little.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meret remained kneeling. Beyond the chapel walls, someone in the ward was calling for her. It might have been an ordinary cry. Pahl would never know whether the thing had made it louder.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Sister stood.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDisconnect the charges.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sabet raised her weapon again. \u201cI can’t do that.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOswin.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He looked from her to the lieutenant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He could order a pause. He still held the senior warrant. They would listen for a few minutes while he searched for another arrangement, another exception, something that preserved what remained of the woman who had brought him recaf and trusted his hands.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stenn’s notebook was in his pocket.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNo,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meret looked at him for a long moment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then she stepped across the chalk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Noll cried out. The sound had an ugly physical effort in it, as if he were holding something enormously heavy. Blood appeared beneath his nostrils. The chapel lamps dimmed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For two steps, Meret struggled. Every movement cost her. Pahl saw the old injury in her knee give way and caught himself reaching to help.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She fell against the chair.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou can still come back,\u201d Noll said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The thing behind the disc spoke in Meret’s own voice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAnd leave them here?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She put her hand on the velvet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pahl never forgot what happened to her face. The pain went out of it. So did the exhaustion. She drew a breath that seemed to fill her for the first time in years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Noll’s chair scraped across the floor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sabet fired.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first las-bolt struck Meret’s shoulder. The second caught the gilt frame. Meret flinched, and in the ward above them, a patient screamed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cStop!\u201d Pahl shouted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sabet did not stop. She had understood the same thing he had and reached a different conclusion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meret raised her injured hand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Noll went rigid. The chalk circle blackened around him. He held for three breaths, four, while the armsmen tried to reach their lieutenant and Ramm crawled towards the doorway.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The psyker looked directly at Meret.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou’re doing it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For an instant she seemed to wake.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She could have lowered her hand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Instead she closed it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The old man fell sideways. The room filled with the smell of scorched cloth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Something struck the armsmen from behind. Pahl saw gold cables tearing free of the walls, moving with a strength and purpose no machine should have possessed. One wrapped around Sabet’s rifle. Another caught the demolition case and dragged it into the dark beneath the chair.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sabet drew a knife and cut herself loose. She reached the doorway, pushed Pahl through it, and shouted into her vox for a full withdrawal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then the door closed between them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pahl hit it with his shoulder. It did not move.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the other side, Sabet kept firing for a surprisingly long time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When the chapel opened again, Meret was sitting in the red chair.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She wore no armour. The wound in her shoulder had closed. Her damaged knee rested straight beneath the hem of her robe. Fine gold threads lay across her hands, following the paths of the veins.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ramm knelt at her feet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI can run the households,\u201d the comptroller was saying. \u201cYou will need someone who understands them.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meret looked past her at Pahl.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhat did she do to Stenn?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He found he could still answer questions. \u201cShe arranged it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ramm shook her head. \u201cI told you\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAnd the wards?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cShe ran them.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI can be useful.\u201d Ramm had turned towards him now. \u201cTell her.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meret touched the side of the comptroller’s face.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For a moment Ramm appeared to receive the comfort she expected. Her breathing steadied. Then her eyes widened. She tried to pull away, but Meret held her gently in place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou should know them,\u201d the Sister said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pahl thought she meant the patients.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He understood when Ramm began to scream.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It lasted until Meret could no longer keep her alive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When it was over, the woman in the chair looked sickened. Pahl took one step towards her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMeret.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She touched her throat. The gold beneath the skin brightened.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Her expression eased.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Outside, the bells began ringing for the evening meal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"The<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

IX. The Witness<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Pahl found Bero at the service lift.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He had Idda in a wheeled laundry chair. Her feet were wrapped in towels. Beside them stood two surviving armsmen, one supporting the other. The unwounded man turned his rifle towards Pahl, then lowered it when he recognised the seal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe landing ground’s blocked,\u201d he said. \u201cThe lieutenant ordered us to withdraw.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI heard.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe household guard are shooting at the ramp.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They had obeyed Pahl when he showed his warrant. Now someone else was issuing orders.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bero held out a small data wafer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe records,\u201d he said. \u201cYour clerk opened the case. I helped him feed the pages into the reader. He went to the landing ground when they called the retreat.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhich records?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAll of them.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pahl looked at the wafer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bero noticed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYour name’s there,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The wounded armsman made a low sound. His companion tightened the bandage around his ribs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYes,\u201d Pahl said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDid you know?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhen I signed? No.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhen you found the papers?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The lift arrived with a chime. Behind its glass, water moved downwards in bright, unbroken sheets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI was trying to get you out.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bero’s face changed. There was no shock in it, only an exhaustion so complete that Pahl briefly mistook it for forgiveness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThen come.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He moved his mother’s chair into the lift. The armsmen followed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pahl stayed in the corridor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cCome,\u201d Bero said again. \u201cTell them yourself.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The offer was real. There were armed men, a service route to the lower port and, if they could reach it, the workers’ shuttle. Bero had every reason to leave him behind and had still made room.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pahl could picture the hearing. He could picture what would be said about Meret: contamination, apostasy, exceptional but decisive failure. They would want every detail. He would have to give them the apricot, the hands, the way she had asked for help leaving the people she could not save.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He would have to admit that he had brought her the locations of the surviving circuits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cGive me the wafer,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bero stepped back.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The unwounded armsman lifted his rifle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pahl’s pistol was already in his hand. He shot the man through the throat, then fired at the second before he could free his weapon from its sling. In the confined lift, the reports were deafening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Idda began calling for her son.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bero stood between her chair and Pahl.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou could still let us go,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pahl shot him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He had expected him to fall at once. Bero remained standing for a moment, one hand on the back of the chair, as if trying to remember what he had been doing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then he sat down hard on the lift floor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The wafer fell beside him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pahl picked it up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Idda reached towards the sound of his movements. \u201cBero?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He could not make himself answer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He used his warrant to recall the tender.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The pilot demanded Sabet. Pahl reported her dead and gave the correct emergency cipher. He reported Noll dead as well. He ordered the vessel to hold above the palace, beyond range of the household guns, until he brought out the surviving patients.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The pilot complied. He had been ordered to rescue an Inquisitorial investigator and the evidence of a cult. Pahl gave him exact numbers, landing instructions and the voice of a man accustomed to being obeyed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He omitted the service lift.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then he opened the palace command channel and told the household guards which colonnades the pilot would be unable to see.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By the time the tender returned to the landing ground, Meret’s people had moved concealed weapons into the colonnades.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pahl watched from an upper window. He did not look away when they opened fire.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The pilot tried to lift. One engine failed, the vessel yawed across the gardens, and its stern struck a fountain. The ramp was still down.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For several minutes, people in white carried the injured into the palace. Meret went to meet them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The courtyard grew quiet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pahl sat at his desk. His hands were shaking so badly that he could not insert the data wafer into the reader.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He finally managed it on the fourth attempt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meret found him after midnight.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There was blood on the cuff of her robe. She had brought a basin and a cloth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe old woman is alive,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIdda.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYes.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He watched her set the basin on the table.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cShe keeps asking for Bero.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI know.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meret knelt beside his chair. He flinched when she took his hand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI saw the manifests,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cRamm?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe copies in your case.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He stared at the opposite wall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThey were going to be shot. I got them reprieved.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI believe you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou shouldn’t.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She turned his hand over and began cleaning blood from the lines of his palm. He could not remember whose it was.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI can help with this,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He almost let her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He had never wanted anything with such immediate, humiliating force. Stenn had been right. Nothing would need to be forgotten. He could remember Bero exactly, and be able to bear remembering him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNo,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Her hand stopped.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI need it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe pain?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He nodded.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She studied him, and for a moment he saw the Sister who had waited patiently for an honest answer beside a damaged suit of armour.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cKeep it, then.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She resumed washing his hand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pahl understood, with a coldness that reached his teeth, that she had found something else to give him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He could go on suffering. He could count that as payment. She would allow it for as long as it kept him at the desk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He pulled his hand free.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The clean cloth lay between them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After a while he asked, \u201cWhat do you need?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou know how to make them listen.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Outside, the lake reflected the windows of the palace. There was light in every one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

X. Household Expenditure<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Forty-three days after the deaths of Lieutenant Sabet and her party, Pahl completed his report.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He attributed the massacre to the terminal manifestation of the entity contained in the reliquary. He listed the artefact as destroyed, its human custodians executed, its surviving victims under medical supervision. Mistress Ramm’s body and the surgeon’s records supplied useful corroboration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Noll was recorded as having died in the successful containment of the outbreak. Pahl gave him a generous account of his courage. Every word of that part was true until the last sentence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The loss of the tender was blamed on cultists in the household guard. Six guards were selected, shot and entered into the report. Four had taken part. Two had been guarding the wrong door when names were required.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meret was listed as unfit for transport following grievous injury sustained in the Emperor’s service. Pahl attached old medical scans to new dates. Her Order would ask questions. Ghedde would ask more. He had not devised a permanent answer to either.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For now, astropathic disruption following the manifestation explained the delays. Destroyed records explained the gaps. The palace’s surviving dignitaries supplied statements praising the investigator who had saved them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Most believed what they signed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pahl did not need to persuade the entire Imperium. He needed a port official to honour a medical requisition, a transport clerk to accept a seal, and the next inquiry to arrive later than the next departing ship.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He had spent his working life learning how to obtain those small accommodations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The station commander had refused to lift the general quarantine. Pahl had therefore requested a single humanitarian exemption, attaching the endorsements of three senior officers recuperating in the palace. The approval allowed one transport to carry convalescents and medical equipment to the next system. Everything else would wait for Ghedde’s investigators.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The great reception hall had been restored.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The bullet marks were gone. New carpets covered the damage to the floor. The marble saints had been altered so subtly that an arriving guest might first have noticed only the workmanship: a hand held at an unfamiliar angle, a smile that had not belonged on that face, a thin curve of polished stone emerging from beneath a robe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In private gatherings, the Imperial banners were rolled up. Purple hangings took their place. The gold symbols on them hurt Pahl’s eyes if he looked too long.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He looked away often.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meret reclined where the provisioning prefect had once sat. Her white hair had grown past her shoulders. The gold threads beneath her skin had become a fine network visible at the throat and wrists, gathering into a darker mark on her upper arm. A circlet framed her head, its narrow spokes recalling the disc behind the old chair.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The chair itself had been broken up. Pahl had watched the pieces burn. Nothing in the palace had changed when they did.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The people around her wore white, gold and the washed red of her old Order’s colours. Some were former patients. Some were guests. Several had been household guards. They knelt beside the couch, laid their heads against the cushions and waited for her attention.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The tiger slept at her feet. Its handler had vanished. Nobody remembered having dismissed him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She still spoke gently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She still remembered names.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pahl had once thought those things meant something definite about a person. Now he watched her call a woman forward, touch her cheek and relieve a pain she had endured for twenty years. The woman’s gratitude was real. So was the look on Meret’s face as she received it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It faded too quickly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cStay,\u201d she said when the woman began to rise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The woman knelt again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There were rules now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nobody was to be connected unwillingly. Nobody was to receive a burden without having agreed to bear it. Nobody was to be punished for declining.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meret insisted on the wording. Pahl had written it down.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The guests learned that declining meant waiting longer to see her. The attendants learned that leaving her service meant losing access to treatment. Those who volunteered eagerly were given lighter duties, better rooms, more time in her presence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After a fortnight, people began competing for the heavier burdens.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After a month, there were private contests to determine who could bear the most without crying out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meret disapproved of the contests. She summoned their organisers, heard their apologies and allowed them to remain. That night she asked why nobody had told her what they were willing to endure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pahl was there when she began asking them to show her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He continued entering the figures in the household accounts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Idda asked to leave on the morning the first medical transport was cleared for departure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She had been given a room with a view of the mountains. She could walk a little now. Her hands no longer shook. Every morning someone brought her clean linen, fresh fruit and flowers she did not know the names of.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She asked for her son less often. Pahl did not know whether Meret had done something to achieve that or whether the woman had simply learned that nobody answered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He found her standing in the doorway with her laundry bag.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMy sister lives on the station,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI remember.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cCan I go?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He looked at the bag. The painted eagle protruded from its neck.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou would need to speak to her.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Idda’s grip tightened.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI thought you could ask.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pahl could. She had chosen the right person. That made it worse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He took her to the reception hall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meret listened without interrupting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Around her, the court waited. The fountains sounded loud in the silence. An attendant held a goblet near her hand, making no attempt to draw attention to the effort of holding it there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAre you unhappy?\u201d Meret asked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI want to see my sister.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe can bring her here.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Idda looked at Pahl. He said nothing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI want to go to her.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meret sat forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For a moment the fabric at her knee pulled tight, and Pahl remembered the scar beneath it, the little mechanical correction of her armour. There was no scar now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe treatments aren’t finished.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou said I was better.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou are.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThen I should be able to go.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Someone near the couch drew a sharp breath. Meret glanced at them, and they lowered their eyes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou don’t understand what it costs,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Idda held the bag against her chest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI think I do.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pahl wanted to stop her. He wanted to tell her that this was courage wasted, that there were gentler ways to ask, that she should wait until Meret was rested, satisfied, less closely watched.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He recognised every excuse before he made it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meret extended her hand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cCome here.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Idda did not move.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Sister’s expression tightened, hardly at all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI won’t hurt you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The old woman walked to the couch. It took her some time. Nobody offered an arm.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meret laid her palm against Idda’s forehead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Idda sighed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Her shoulders loosened. The bag slipped from her hands. She sank to her knees beside the couch, looking up with an expression Pahl had seen on the faces of people given water after days without it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere,\u201d Meret said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Idda tried to speak.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou were frightened. That’s all.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The old woman’s lips moved again. Pahl could not hear the words.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meret withdrew her hand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At once Idda caught it and pressed it back against her forehead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Sister smiled.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pahl bent to retrieve the bag. Inside were the comb, the spare shift and the little painted eagle. There was also a single gold leaf, bent almost in half. He recognised it from Bero’s hair at supper.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He closed the bag.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From the terrace came the sound of engines. The medical transport was lifting through the afternoon light, carrying six treatment cabinets, twelve attendants and an authenticated recommendation to a military convalescent station. He had signed the recommendation an hour earlier.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meret watched it rise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThey’ll send more people,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYes.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cGood.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She settled back among the cushions. An attendant offered the goblet again, and this time she accepted it. At her feet, Idda held on to her hand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The bag was still in Pahl’s arms when a servant approached him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cShall I return the patient’s belongings to her room, sir?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He looked down at the worn cloth. A brown stitch marked the place where Bero had repaired the handle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cShe won’t need them,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He handed it over and went back to his desk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Pahl<\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On the Imperial pleasure world of Bellacourt, an auditor\u2019s suspicious death draws Pahl and Meret beneath the palace\u2019s immaculate splendour. There they discover a forbidden treatment that relieves the powerful by making others suffer. Their investigation becomes a struggle with their own convictions: Pahl\u2019s faith in necessary compromises, and Meret\u2019s determination to save everyone. As rescue approaches, the promise of mercy begins demanding choices neither can undo.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2407,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_eb_attr":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2112,2114,29],"tags":[2034,2132,2129,1131,2130,2135,2131,424,2134,2136,94,2133],"class_list":["post-2406","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-creative-works","category-literature-reviews","category-visual-art-illustration","tag-adepta-sororitas","tag-chaos-corruption","tag-gothic-horror","tag-grimdark","tag-imperial-inquisition","tag-moral-corruption","tag-psychological-horror","tag-science-fiction","tag-slaanesh","tag-the-mercy-account","tag-warhammer-40k","tag-warhammer-fan-fiction"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Mercy Account - k.kourentzes.com<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"On the Imperial pleasure world of Bellacourt, an auditor\u2019s suspicious death draws Pahl and Meret beneath the palace\u2019s immaculate splendour. 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