Today is the Feast of the Emperor’s Ascension, and I am at a funeral. Istar Korthos Icilius – minor local celebrity, an artist most subtle – has brought us together. Vying for attention, minor members of the upper class speak, praising him with appropriate effort.
‘How muted his colours!’
‘How tame his angles!’
‘How reserved his creativity!’
Truly, a unique and highly tolerable creator for the Ecclisiarchy to have watched with only mild concern as he embellished their placards.
Crimson tapestries spill down the back walls of the apse, the same hue I have seen scattered across alleys throughout the hive. The body lies on a knee-high granite altar, subservient to the waist-high marble altar a few feet farther back, so as not to offend the holy representation reposing thereon.
It is said that he died from an overdose of Black Lethe. I would concur. The drug is quite common here on Cyclopean Prime and easily obtained. The whispers say it was not his first time using it, and so it is unsurprising that he met his end with the narcotic.
I would say I am sad like the other funeral attendees, but that would be a lie because I am unable to feel sadness. I am unable to feel any emotion, or so I have been told.
Now it is Sanguinala and I have made a friend. He, like myself, is a former member of the planetary defense force, though we were made to leave for different reasons. His name is Leonon Lacrimar and, unlike myself, he has not done much with his life since then.
I met him outside a bar, one of many nameless, pointless establishments in the area. I had been there looking for someone, but did not realise I had been looking for him until my eyes spied him. He was slumped across from the bar at the intersection of an alley for those left behind and a thoroughfare for those leaving their troubles behind.
I strode across the street, other hivers making way for me, and gave him a nod. His hand-painted sign asking for handouts had no misspellings, so he must have had a learned person – probably a soft-hearted priest – help him. I told him I felt sorry for him and offered to take him into the bar for an amasec to drown his sorrows. He jumped at the opportunity, or would have if he had more than half a leg. I helped him into the bar, placed our order, and found a spot where we could talk so I could get to know him.
His story is pathetic, so I try to make the face that other people show me when they are sad. I fail to do a good job, but he is a few cups in and does not care all that much. His story is not special, though I do not tell him that. I want him to feel valued – that he is worth something to someone, anyone even – for the moment. At the end of our almost entirely one-sided conversation, I slide him the stub gun. I tell him that I think we will need it. He looks at it with what I have noted to be surprise, then revulsion, then a particularly interesting grateful sorrow.
Tomorrow I shall attend his funeral – or what will pass for it with his back-alley commiserators – because tonight he will die in an apparent suicide and there is nothing I can do to stop it. Still, I will not be sad.
It is a new season and tonight is the Burning of Sins. I will not be attending, however. Not because I am free of sin, for I have committed many, but because I have different holy plans. I will be with a priest, Egnatius Decidius.
I have induced him to provide me tutelage. I told him I wished to be a layperson spreading the word of the Cult Imperialis to the wretches suffering through life here. Though he was hesitant at first to offer any kind of instruction to one not officially part of the Ministorum, I was very convincing.
White smoke from rare candles drifts up towards clerestory windows in the confined room I have chosen. We talk at extreme length, missing the night’s festivities. It is acceptable, though. I share my views with him and he reciprocates. I learn much from what he says and use his own words as armaments when we delve into a conversation of vital importance later.
Some time from now, he will be found in a flophouse, hanged. Surely he must have felt guilt over some of his decisions and most certainly regret at several of his recent ones. Looking back on my time with him, I wonder if things would have gone differently if I had asked different questions or brought up different topics. In the end, though, ‘what if’ means nothing because the result is all that matters.
After all these years, I still cannot feel a thing: not a drop of sadness at each victim’s funeral, not one iota of any emotion after killing each of them. Yet still the whispers insist that if I keep spilling blood for their god, I will feel something, eventually. So, I look around the room and find someone new.
