Pentimento, Nick Kyme [each kindness read aloud TXT] 📗

‘Inside…’

Mabeth followed, leaving the two sentries outside.

The tomb had been made for a dignitary of the city, an ecclesiarch judging by the religious statuary. Something lay piled in one corner, folded neatly upon a stone seat. She assumed they were robes. Perhaps they are symbolic, thought Mabeth. A reliquary stood upon a plinth in the middle of the gloomy chamber, the bones of two saints entwined, their heads upturned to a light they would never see, their bony hands outstretched in faux supplication.

‘I don’t understand,’ said Mabeth, frowning. ‘Where is the–’

Levio ignited a lumen and the bones shone faint pink.

She gasped, as the awful truth revealed itself. ‘Emperor…’

‘He isn’t here,’ breathed Levio.

The robes, they weren’t… And then the bones…

‘How?’

Levio didn’t answer, and that was answer enough.

Markings had been scrimshawed into the bone. Mabeth moved nearer for a better look.

Outside, the clamour had grown. Closer.

A word, carved into femurs and rib bones and clavicles. Paradisum. High Gothic, barely used now, but more common several centuries ago.

A warning shout alerted her. One of the peacekeepers. A ­coalition of voices answered.

Paradise…

‘I can’t do this…’ Mabeth fled the chamber and stepped outside into chaos.

A mob had descended. They were afraid, like wild animals, running with fire and knives, desperate to quench their fear with blood. A shotgun barked, so close it startled her and the sound of it rang in her ears like tinnitus. The sepulchre was sunk into a natural valley, and there were men roaring down a ramp towards it. Towards her.

A second blast, no longer in warning. A man was cut down. The two peacekeepers stepped up, one kneeling as the other stood and braced. They bellowed their authority at the coming horde, but their words lacked conviction. Levio didn’t join them, and stayed with the dead.

Breathless, terrified, her mind close to shutting down, Mabeth called out. ‘Gethik,’ she rasped, ‘get me away from here.’

The servitor obeyed, his lurching, patchwork frame never more reassuring as it drove like a plough into the mob. Mabeth stayed close, a desperate hand clinging to his belt. Behind her, the shotguns spoke again. They spoke one more time, a press of shouting men around her unable to dull the shock of the sound. Then no more.

She was fortunate. The mob had no interest in her, though she would have been collateral if not for her slave. He must have killed a few in his headlong charge. She had heard bone breaking, cries suddenly choked off.

Gethik himself was torn, a dozen wounds spilling blood and oil, the whole mess of it congealing as it turned his boiler-suit black. He stumbled, slowing. A servitor is a cyborg, but it is still flesh. Mabeth knew his injuries were mortal. Dull-eyed, uncomprehending, Gethik got her as far as the only maglev out of the district before he slumped, a puppet left slack on its strings, and did not stir again.

Mabeth reached Auric House in a half-blind panic. The guard was absent his post, likely fled. Bolting up the stairs, she got to her domicile and fumbled with the locks, several nervous glances behind her revealing nothing but a dimly lit corridor.

Inside, the door slammed in her wake. Heart hammering, she lurched through the entryway and into the studio where the paintings stood, apparently innocuous.

And yet…

The old renderings of saints had been further scraped away, by her hand, by another; Mabeth no longer knew for sure.

She tried to raise Yrenna via the fonogram. She had a speech prepared, about demanding to know the provenance of the paintings and the identity of who had bought her expertise. She would reject them, reject the commission. Claim it was occult. Proscribed. She would threaten, mention the interrogators. Her blood was up, and she trembled with anticipation of the furore to come. But Yrenna did not answer and the fonogram returned only dead air.

Mabeth smashed down the receiver cup, partly shattering the plastek. She wanted to scream, anger a natural antidote to fear.

A snarl on her lips, she stalked to the lectern and snatched all three canvases, hastily bundling them under her arms. She recalled the patron’s address in the city and, despite her best good sense, ventured back out.

I should burn them, she thought, but had no desire to add an angry patron to her woes. And the merchants in Durgov were not known for their forgiveness, particular in matters of property. It might not matter, anyway. The city was burning, at least in the slums and the poor districts. A fever had gripped it: fear, the great motivator for selfish men who hide their anxieties behind cruelty and wanton violence. Mabeth wanted nothing more than to shut herself away, but only when this last act was done and she was rid of the paintings could she hide again. She had been hiding for years, ever since Hakasto…

Ever since…

Lost in her thoughts, Mabeth almost didn’t realise she had arrived at her destination.

A razor-wire fence surrounded a nondescript warehouse and offices. A faded sign declared the name of the merchant-combine who owned it, and answered the minor mystery of what the ‘V’ stood for on the metal tube.

Valgaast Exports.

The warehouse was burning, every inch of it wreathed in conflagration. Flames reached up into the sky, turning it a deeper red, staining it black with smoke.

Nothing else burned, only this property, and the mob had not reached this district yet. And the fire did not spread, as if dedicated solely to the destruction of Valgaast Exports. The oddness of it sent a spasm through Mabeth. Her grip tightened on the canvases still clenched in her shaking hands. She wanted to tear them, rend them into pieces and cast them onto the fire. Instead, she sank to her knees and wept.

It took a few moments for Mabeth to regain her composure. She knew she couldn’t stay here. She had to get back to Auric House. Maybe she could try Yrenna again. She hadn’t realised how badly she needed to