Eisenhorn Omnibus - страница 16

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Aemos and I descended from the landing platform superstructure by caged elevator and found yellow-robed custodians waiting to escort us. Despite the rancid white light all around, they still held ignited light poles. We made short, hard shadows on the dry rockcrete of the concourse as we crossed to an open limousine. It was a massive chrome-grilled beast with pennants bearing the Hubris crest fluttering on its cowling. There were four rows of overstuffed leather benches behind the centre-set driver's cockpit.

We hummed through the streets on eight fat wheels. The boulevards were wide and, needless to say, bright. To either hand, glass-fronted buildings rose towards the blazing plasma sun-globe high above, like flowers seeking the light. Every thirty metres along every street, chemical lamps on ornate posts strained to add their own light to the brilliance.

Traffic was sparse, and there were at most a few thousand pedestrians on the streets. I noticed most wore yellow silk sashes, and that garlands of yellow flowers decorated every lamp post.

The flowers?' I asked.

'From the hydroponic farms on east-dome seven/ one of the custodians told me.

'Signifying?'

'Mourning.'

'Same as the sashes/ Aemos whispered in confidence. 'What happened last night is a major tragedy for this world. Yellow is their holy colour. I believe the local religion is a solar belief

The sun as Emperor?'

'Common enough. Extreme here, for obvious reasons.'

The custodial hall was a glass spire close to the town centre, a solar disk overlaid with the double-headed eagle of the Imperium decorating its upper faces. Nearby was the local chapel of the Ecclesiarchy, and several buildings given over to the Imperial Administratum. It amused me to see they were all built of black stone and virtually windowless. Those Imperial servants stationed here obviously had as little track as me with the constant light.

We drew in under a glass portico and were escorted into the main hall. It was seething with people, most of them custodians in yellow robes, some local officials and technomagi, some clerks and servitors. The hall itself was of the scale of an Imperial chapel, but raised in yellow-stained glass on a frame of black cast-iron. The air was full of golden light shafting down through the glass. The carpet was vast, black, with a sun-disk woven into its centre.

'Inquisitor Eisenhorn!' declared one of my escorts through a vox-hailer. The hall fell silent, and all turned to watch us approach. High Custodian Carpel sat on a hovering lifter-throne with gilt decorations. A burning chemical light was mounted above the head of the floating chair. He swung in through the parting crowd towards me.

'High custodian,' I said with a dutiful nod.

They are all dead,' he informed me. 'All twelve thousand, one hundred and forty-two. Processional Two-Twelve is dead. None survived the trauma.'

'Hubris has my sincere sympathies, high custodian.'

The hall exploded in pandemonium, voices screeching and shouting and clamouring.

"Your sympathies? Your damned sympathies?' Carpel screamed above the roar. A great part of our ruling elite die in one night, and we have your sympathies to console us?'

That is all I can offer, high custodian.' I could feel Aemos shivering at my side, making aimless notes on his wrist slate about custom and clothing and language forms… anything to take his mind from the confrontation.

'That's hardly good enough!' spat a young man nearby. He was a local noble, young and firm enough, but his skin had a dreadful, sweaty pallor and custodians supported him as he stumbled forward.

Who are you?' I asked.

Vernal Maypell, heir-lord of the Dallowen Cantons!' If he expected me to fall to my knees in supplication, he was in for a disappointment.

'Because of the gravity of this event, we have roused some of our highborn early from their dormancy/ Carpel said. 'Liege Maypell's brother and two of his wives died in Processional Two-Twelve/

So the pallor was revival sickness. I noticed that fifty or more of the congregation present were similarly wasted and ill.


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