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Joy of the Martyr – Extract

A Black Library Publication

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Joy of the Martyr

Ness Brown

Candlelight guttered in the prayer alcove within the Beatitude’s starboard apse. Sweet smoke rose towards the ceiling, where a servo-cherub perched on a vaulted rib. The eulogistic hymn spooling from the voxmitter grafted onto its jaw had been playing without cease for three days – the time it had taken the Beatitude to arrive in the transport’s target system, and the time that had elapsed since Sister Superior Praxiah’s death.

Her butchering, Sister Verine corrected herself. Praxiah was butchered.

Verine watched the altar candle cry wax droplets until her eyes stung, but she didn’t follow suit. Her grief, too hot to condense into tears, boiled through her veins like the molten gold bent into the gilding on the icon of her Order.

She had told the other three Sisters aboard the transport – the few of Praxiah’s unit to make it off the daemon-infested planet where their Sister Superior had fallen – that she would honour their commander alone. Her vigil should have filled the alcove with praise for Praxiah’s last stand, for the blood with which her other slain Sisters had anointed the battlefield, and for the God-Emperor, who blessed them with the chance to offer themselves to His avail.

She had yet to utter a single exultation.

Verine had delivered the words for countless other Sisters of the Order of Our Martyred Lady. She had always raised her voice in proud elegy for those offered the God-Emperor’s greatest gift, roused by vicarious fervour. Other Sisters had told her that her face – raked into a permanent grin by old scars – looked rapturous in the hell storm of combat. That her deafening, zealous song galvanised those still fighting at her side.

When she tried to offer the same prayers for her Sister Superior, however, they stuck in her throat, reminding her of how Praxiah had choked on her own blood as those first wicked claws punctured her black power armour.

Verine’s recollection of her life before the Sisterhood was hazy and shrouded. By grace and miracle, however, she could recall every detail of her service in the Adepta Sororitas with perfect clarity. But this boon, which had clinched the successes of countless holy assignments all over the Imperium, was now a curse. Behind her eyes, Praxiah’s death replayed like a hololith projected in crisp clarity: the unlucky stutter of her boltgun, the daemonic surge through the gap in suppressive fire, the last gesture of her arm before it was ripped by slavering teeth from its socket.

Verine glanced down at her gloved palm. Resting there was the keepsake that Praxiah had thrown to her, moments before being slain.

Between thrusting her blade through a mutant canine’s skull and hurling a grenade into the maw of a reptilian monstrosity, Verine had barely caught the amulet, only realising she had been bequeathed the Sister Superior’s most prized possession a mere heartbeat before daemon talons had severed Praxiah’s head from her neck.

The cherub’s voxmitter hitched as it restarted the hymn, yanking Verine from the stench-memory of pieces of Praxiah being snatched from one foul set of fangs to another.

Swallowing bile, she brought the keepsake closer to the altar candle’s flame. Dangling from its patinated chain was a strange gemstone stippled with black flecks so dark they seemed to suck in the holy candlelight.

Praxiah had attributed every victory to its supposed powers. She had once hand-signed the gem’s history: mined from an ore vein consecrated to the God-Emperor on the forge world where she was born, then crafted into an amulet after deflecting an attack on her ancestors by a coven of witches lurking within the planet’s deep caverns. Convinced by this old tale, Praxiah’s father had named it the Believer’s Shield before his death from the virulent disease that had ravaged the mining clans and left Praxiah mostly deaf. Family legend swore that it would protect her from all enemies of the Throne, that it would repel heretics, monsters, and anything unclean in the God-Emperor’s sight.

All lies.

Verine clenched her fist around the keepsake until the gemstone bruised her palm through her thick glove. The Shield had done nothing for Praxiah, despite decades of devoted service and faith enough to move a mountain. Before every battle, she had prayed it would delay death long enough for her to fulfil her ordained task, so that when she was struck down, she could kneel at the Throne and report the accomplishment of His will. Instead, the amulet had abandoned her to mutilation by the carrion beasts and feculent creatures of the warp before her duty was done.

He had abandoned her.

The cherub’s hymn ground to a halt. The sudden quiet was jarring and accusatory. Verine felt the prickle of eyes on her nape. When she glanced up at the servitor, she expected it to be staring down at her with damnation, as if having heard the apostasy of her thoughts.

Instead, the cherub was staring at the alcove’s door. Verine spun around.

Standing at the threshold was a hulking shadow, broad enough to fill the entire frame. Verine’s hand twitched towards the holster at her hip before reason and recognition returned to her.

‘Basilissa,’ she said, her voice hoarse with disuse.

The other Sister was a head taller than Verine; her scalp nearly brushed the ceiling, buzzed to skin except for the dark forelock draped over her eyes. She offered no greeting in return – Verine could count the times Basilissa had volunteered unnecessary speech. The glint in her steely eyes, however, proved that she hadn’t missed Verine’s flinch.

The cherub flapped off its perch, listing sideways as it descended. It had been damaged in their last battle, its anti-grav motor scored by flying shrapnel while delivering alms and ammunition to the Sisters fighting against the unrelenting daemon horde.

Basilissa caught the cherub one-handed despite its weight, tucking it into her elbow for protection, its synthetic skin peeling and melted by crossfire. She gestured down the aisle outside the alcove, towards the end of their transport’s nave.

‘It is time,’ she grunted.

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