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No Good Men – Extract

A Black Library Imprint

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Aberrant

Chris Wraight

The city sweated.

From Revenna to High Ledge, from the old Scarlands to new Novgy, from the flat coastal sumps where a limp wind moaned over dried-black grasses to the high praesidium spires of armourglass and plasteel, it was all baked hard and wet with the heat. Workers lolled at their stations, beads glistening at the end of their noses. Functionaries lolled at their cell-stations, greasy palms gripping their quills. Vladars lolled in their thrones, barely lifting their hands to give an order.

Agusto Zidarov, probator at Bastion-Urgeyena, looked up into the pale sky, wrinkled his nose a little, and found himself praying for rain. The Urgeyena city district had two seasons, each as unbearable as the other when at their height. When you’d had one for long enough, you begged for the other to come. And then, when it did, you wanted to go back again.

He leaned back against an unpainted rockcrete wall. He’d taken his overcoat off three months ago and hadn’t reached for it since. His shirt had been pressed overnight, but now clung to his chest and stomach, spotted with damp patches. It was harder to be out of condition in the heat. In the rain, he could mostly ignore how much heavier he was getting. Under the beat of the sun, every surplus inch of flesh made its presence felt.

He really ought to get in shape. Milija, his partner, had been begging him to for years. Still, they both ate the same things, both worked the same punishing shifts. She could have set an example, if she had really wanted to. Now that their daughter had left for military training and they had the hab to themselves again, so many things ought to be easier than they were.

The heat didn’t help. It was hard even to think, let alone work.

He blinked, and his iris – the internal augmetic coiled around his cheekbone and up into his retina – fed him the latest order-batch. Most of his caseload was well under control – things that he either had in hand or could be ignored for some other chump to look into. The one thing he couldn’t put off any longer was the priority signal routed over the city’s dataveil from the Ecclesiarchy’s upclave liaison office.

Zidarov didn’t like priests. Never had. Many people did, clinging to the clerics for some kind of relief from the dead weight of their overloaded lives. He’d often wondered if those people ever got much satisfaction. The Church seemed keener on loading them up with more injunctions. But perhaps that was just him. Perhaps other people genuinely did find their souls placed at ease by contributing a little more to the district tithes, or adding an extra visit to the altars. You couldn’t assume anything about people. Maybe all those supplicants told the truth, even to themselves. Maybe.

He glanced at the bulletin, glowing in virtual runes across his visual field. The priest’s name was Yvgen Asparev. He was a senior cleric in the Vostoka Communion, working directly for Deacon Stanislasca, one of only a few who was said to have the old woman’s ear. Since Stanislasca was a senile old harridan who’d long since traded her last scraps of acumen for bootleg bottles of slatov, that was no particular honour. Asparev probably ran things in the communion more or less as he liked to.

Asparev also had a privileged node on the dataveil, so Zidarov used his iris to give him notice he was on his way. He knew he could probably walk the short distance to the Ecclesiarchy’s spires, but given the heat he decided he’d take a groundcar, and escape from the shimmering asphalt for just a few moments.

After that, he just stayed where he was, mouth half-open, looking up into the sky.

The day would only get hotter.

The Ecclesiarchy compound was standard. Perfectly standard, just like they all were everywhere. Not that Zidarov had seen many others – he only had the other sites in Urgeyena to go on – but he knew that they all looked the same across Varangantua, across Alecto, across every world in the Imperium. There were templates used to design them, sacred documents in their own right, held carefully in heavily protected vaults, hoarded by missionaria loremasters.

He got out of his groundcar, straight into a wall of itchy humidity, and looked up at it. It was brutal. Its flanks were clad in heavy granite, over-carved with gargoyles, angels and skull-faced monsters writhing together like hormone-addled teenagers. The grand entrance had a chipped golden portico. It all glistened, not just from the tarnished metal, but from the just-visible aegis of a repeller field. Gigantic columns supported jet-black statues of the holy primarchs, each one contriving to look suitably noble under a dried crust of palumba droppings and atmospheric filth. Several big spires soared up behind an immense outer wall, all skull-topped, all floodlit even in the melting heat.

A failure of imagination, he thought. It was ugly, even more so than the monolithic hab-blocks around it, and it was fraying badly at its edges. Perhaps the cathedrals on Terra itself, the models used for all these provincial temples, were genuinely impressive. Perhaps they were made of solid gold, and smelled of more than drains and refuse.

The approaches to the compound were crowded with tatty supplicants, all of whom kept their distance, herded into long queues, patiently waiting for the command to come forward. Zidarov secured his groundcar, ignored the cordoned waiting pens and walked up a long stairway to the first perimeter gate. The guards at the summit wore long white robes and carried cumbersome flamers. Their eyes were hidden behind metal visors, and the visible skin of their face was heavily inked. For all their weaponry, they looked listless in the heat. It must have been a chore just keeping hold of one of those flamers.

‘Probator, Bastion-U,’ Zidarov told them, exposing his holo-seal. ‘Here to see Father Asparev.’

There was some chatter over the compound’s internal vox-net, and the lead guardian nodded tersely. The gates clunked open, allowing him to walk inside. Before he could get far across the internal courtyard, a woman in black robes came to meet him. Her head was shaved, her skin puckered with what he initially thought were augmetics, but which on closer inspection were probably penance studs. She had a limp, maybe also self-inflicted, and had an electro-scourge hanging from her belt.

‘Greetings, probator,’ she said. ‘Please allow me to direct you to the priest’s chambers.’

Zidarov looked at the scourge distastefully. ‘Lead on.’

They passed through a series of cloisters, marked with thick colonnades and gurgling fountains. Acolytes and prayer-servitors shuffled around in the shadows, mouthing benedictions or memorising catechisms. Statues were everywhere – the Agony of Sanguinius, the Resolution of Saint Agata, the Martyrdom of the Alectian Penitents. Incense hung heavily in the still air, even more so once they moved inside again, padding down dark and narrow corridors lined with carved texts.

Asparev’s chambers were several storeys up. The attendant rang a chime, opened the doors for him, then left without another word. Zidarov walked into an open room, heavily carpeted and decked with ponderous furniture. The walls were covered from floor to ceiling with portraits – cardinals, saints, archdeacons, all staring from the canvas with accusing, hollow eyes.

Asparev was sitting at one of a number of large desks, and got up to greet Zidarov. He was a thin man, very dark-skinned, grey-haired, sharp-featured. His robes were dark purple and looked like real velvet. He smelled of the Ecclesiarchy – incense, mustiness, the faint hint of burning.

‘Probator,’ he said, his voice as furred as his robes. ‘Thank you for coming. Have a seat.’

Zidarov found an armchair, one with hard leather arms, facing narrow windows that looked north. Asparev sat opposite him, placing his thin hands in his lap. His movements were deliberate, precise, restrained.

‘Are you a devout man, probator?’ Asparev asked.

Well, then. That was a question. ‘We’re all devout, aren’t we?’ he replied.

‘Not as many as I’d wish.’

It was hard to see how that could be true. Every citizen of the city was required to attend the cult temples and cathedrals with numbing regularity. There were more priests in Urgeyena than enforcers. Everything, all the time, was about the Church – the times of the day, the greetings, the dress codes, the work patterns. What more could he possibly want?

‘Well, we don’t always get what we wish for,’ Zidarov said.

‘It is not what I wish for that matters. Only the work of the Throne.’

So this one was a zealot. Zidarov didn’t mind the corrupt priests so much – the ones who spent their tithes on topaz and parties. You could have a drink with them, at least. No, it was the true believers who chilled him. They were the ones who’d get you turned into an arco-flagellant, given half a chance.

‘You had a complaint,’ Zidarov said, steering things back to business.

Asparev smiled. ‘A complaint. What a quaint expression for the prosecution of duty.’ He reached for a dossier and handed it to him. ‘Take a look.’

Zidarov flicked the seal, pulled out some parchment leaves with official stamps. It was all High Gothic, so bound up in legal expressions as to be almost unreadable. Still, he could get the gist.

‘Aberrations,’ he said.

‘I fear so,’ Asparev said, making a sign of warding across his chest. ‘After the last purge, I trusted that we had removed the scourge entirely. Now, though, you can see we have signed witness testimony. Sightings, throughout the habclave, verified under interrogation.’

Zidarov flicked through the testimonials. You could learn very little from such things – anyone finding themselves facing an Ecclesiarchy official across a steel table in a lightless cell would tell them whatever they wanted to hear. Still, the rumours had likely come from somewhere.

‘These are all from Vostoka,’ Zidarov said.

‘Yes, and in a fairly small area. I should think it would be easy to locate the source of this contagion.’

Possibly true. Still, moving around in such places wasn’t either entirely safe or straightforward. ‘How did these come to you?’ Zidarov asked.

‘My clerics work wherever there is a need,’ Asparev said. ‘There is a great need, down where your law runs only fitfully. What they hear comes to me, in time.’

‘Though these are only rumoured sightings,’ Zidarov said, doing his best to make sense of the arcane language. ‘No reports of actual outbreaks, disorder?’

‘Nothing so tangible.’ Asparev sniffed. ‘They are beasts, but given a share of cunning. They stay out of the light.’ He leaned forward a little, and fixed Zidarov with a hard glare. ‘But they are foul, and devious, and if left alone, they will spread.’

Zidarov rubbed his chin sceptically. ‘So we’re always told.’ He put the parchment back in the folder. ‘I can keep these?’

‘Of course.’

‘Then I’ll get to work. Thanks for the names – they’ll be a great help.’

Asparev bowed. ‘A pleasure. If I can render any further assistance, do not hesitate to ask for it. I have troops under arms, cult-sanctioned, including those schooled in the ways of sacred flame.’

Of course he had. Zidarov had no intention of letting those fanatics anywhere near this. ‘I’ll bear that in mind.’ He got up. ‘And I’ll be in touch if I find anything.’

Asparev remained seated, managing to look both saintly and belligerent at the same time, which was quite impressive. ‘Go under the Throne’s gaze, then. May its light watch over you.’

The classic double-handed benediction, part promise, part threat.

‘Thanks for that,’ he said, walking back to the doors. ‘I’m sure it’ll come in useful.’

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