Blind (Shira Calpurnia Book 3) by Matthew Farrer

Author:Matthew Farrer [Farrer, Matthew]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Black Library
Published: 2011-06-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER NINE

‘They’re in place,’ said Rede as Calpurnia sat down opposite her. ‘She’s spotted two of them, and there’s a second level hanging back. There’s also one remote drone with one of the lay arbitor-techmen from our shrine. Here, eat.’ She put a platter of oily bread-balls and heavy grey nutriate strips on the table between them. ‘We tend to find that if the station’s getting to you, you deal with it better on a full stomach.’

They were in Rede’s long, cluttered office, tables and benches littered as ever with papers and slates.

‘This drone, it’s come to us from the Mechanicus? How long has it been since its spirit was in service to them, not us?’ Calpurnia picked at the nutriates. The headache was going, but her stomach still knotted at the idea of eating.

‘Fair question,’ said Rede, ‘but I think it can be trusted. I was at the ceremony when the Tech-priests forswore the thing over to the Arbites.’ Calpurnia nodded her approval, and Rede went on. ‘The drone will keep her under watch and I’ve got half a dozen arbitrators on an ostensible snap inspection of the outer galleries. Their paths won’t cross Ylante’s, but they can be on her at speed if any of the others report something.’

‘Operation leader?’ Calpurnia picked off a piece of bread between her fingertips. The oil had a crisp scent.

‘Proctor Lagny, the drone operator. She’s on a level two delegation from me. She’s capable.’ Rede picked up a strip of bread for herself and bit off half of it. ‘While we’re discussing our so-respectable quarry, allow me to direct you to…’

With a gesture, Rede brought up streams of script and images across the tapestry-screen.

‘So, the concordiasts,’ said the detective, ‘attendants, keepers, interpreters. Their job is to know the astropaths well enough to be able to calm them down after their trances, interpret the messages, and talk them back into their own bodies after they’ve been, you know, out there.’ Rede made a flippant wave of her hand, but she put the lie to her casualness by carefully making the sign of the aquila at those last two words. ‘A good concordiast is sought after. The bonds they develop with any astropath they work with for any length of time can be quite intense.’

‘They’re allowed relationships?’ Calpurnia chewed cautiously on the bread.

‘No,’ said Rede. ‘Not of the sort I think you have in mind. The bond isn’t romantic. It’s not dutiful, not religious, and certainly not carnal. The astropaths’ metabolisms are so unhinged by what happens to them that as far as I can work out, they’re effectively sexless. It’s hard to confirm. There are some taboos involved in talking about what they actually go through.’

‘Probably because, Detective Rede, what they have been through has taken them onto the very soil of Earth where they touch the presence of the God-Emperor. Even though these people you dismiss as “witches” have stood on such holy ground that the respect of poor sinners like you and I can’t bother them any more, I’ll still thank you to show a little more reverence.

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