The Infernal Lands (The Aionach Saga Book 1) (5 page)

“I’m going to treat this incident as a momentary lapse in
judgment,” Wax had said. “I don’t think you’re fit for duty with Mobile
Operations right now. We’ll see how your common sense fares while you’re part
of the Sentries. If you can prove yourself worthy of more responsibility while
you’re there, maybe we’ll reinstate you in a few months. One more screw-up, though,
and I won’t be so lenient. Captain Robling, this man is the newest member of
your security team. Get him acquainted.” Wax had hopped back up onto the
loading platform and disappeared inside his warehouse.

Merrick had been surprised, relieved, and about to piss his pants.
The men had cut the ropes from his wrists, and Captain Robling, the Sentry
Commander, had beckoned him to follow. That was the last time Merrick had
spoken to Pilot Wax.

A voice from behind seized Merrick’s daydream away. He was
still sitting in the rusty folding chair, gazing up at the crystal chandelier
three stories above him. The late afternoon had taken the last rays of light
from the walls and left the room in drab gray shade.

“I can’t imagine how you keep yourself entertained up here.”
Seaton Jamerton stood in the doorway, lighting a cigarette with his striker.
The striker’s metallic scraping took Merrick back to the cistern, but he shook
the memory away.

“All I have to do is think about how much handsomer you get
every time you smoke one of those,” Merrick said, smirking. He inhaled,
wondering how he’d missed the sound of Seaton’s boots coming up the stairs.

Seaton took his first drag and pulled the cigarette away. “Don’t
you lie to me. We both know I couldn’t get any handsomer.”

“Right, whatever. Jackass.” Merrick stood, and the two men embraced.

“Anything big happen over here since last shift?”

“Yeah, the old lovebirds from
Providence Hills came to life and started humping each other.” Merrick motioned
toward the billboard across the street, then held out his hands and thrust his
pelvis. “Nah, it’s been mostly quiet. A couple muties showed up, but someone
took a shot and they ran off.”

“Uh oh. I’m telling the Captain. Wasting ammo. That’s a big
no-no. I’ll have to make a report.”

“Shut up,” Merrick said, laughing as he slung his
rifle across his back. “Yeah, not much else. Nothing since Praul.”

Seaton shook his head and took a long drag. “Praul. Those
bastards got what they deserved.”

Merrick looked at the ground. “Sure enough.”

When Merrick looked up again, Seaton was staring down the
street, lost in thought. He looked like a brick oven with his red clay skin and
the smoke venting from every orifice in his head. When he spoke again, the rest
of the smoke poured out. “Welp, you’re off, buddy. Enjoy it.”

“You too, comrade,” Merrick said.

Seaton flapped his lips together, mimicking the sound of
flatulence. “We both know that’s not gonna happen, Comrade Dickhead.”

“You’re right. I’m about to have a way better time than you
are.”

Seaton made a rude gesture.

Merrick saluted his comrade before starting down the creaky wooden
stairs.

CHAPTER 5

Preparations

The corpse’s skin was powder-white, like the surface of
a sandswept rock after too many windstorms. Sister Bastille traced a line from
sternum to pelvis with a resolute hand. Her scalpel was a seafaring vessel, the
flesh parting beneath its keen edge like a wave. A thin red ribbon flooded the
gap and overflowed, washing both sides of the abdomen in crimson.

“When you arrive at the genitals, you needn’t cut any
further.” Her voice echoed loud and level in the stark flagstone room. The
familiar scent of cold entrails wafted up from the incision. Performing these
rites had become second nature to Sister Bastille. She only hoped one of her
pupils would show interest in learning them as well.

Against the back wall of the room, four ceremonial robes
dangled from hooks like purple ghosts. Bastille’s robe was trimmed in black
velvet, pronged archaic symbols stitched into the panels. The acolytes who
owned the other three robes were standing in front of the high concrete slab
where Bastille was working, green-faced and trembling, hugging themselves
against the subterranean clime.

Bastille gave her students a glance before she began peeling
the skin. Two women and a man, her smallest crop of new pupils in months.
What
dreadful specimens,
she thought
. If these people are the future of the
Order, may the Mouth devour us all
. “Ultimately the heart is to be removed,
but we’ll get to that later,” she said. “First, the skin is separated and the
muscle is cut from below the ribcage, like so.”

She took a flap of skin between her fingers and pulled. It
was cold but supple, and it made a sound like a cheese grater shredding a hard
vegetable. With her other hand, she slipped the scalpel between the dermis and
the underlying muscle. The flesh broke from its moorings as she worked the
blade through, leaving a viscous froth on the sheeting of muscle beneath.

It had been harder to butcher her first calf as a girl in
Wynesring than to dissect her first human as a priest of the Order. Bastille
remembered the strange warmth of blood spray on her hands, the surge of
adrenaline that had shot through her as she felt the life leaving the animal’s
body. How her father had stayed with her while she was sick in the back room.
The way he’d encouraged her despite the poor job she’d done, letting her try
again—forcing her to try again.
Butchering takes guts
, he always said,
laughing at his own wit.

Her father hadn’t been there to walk her through her first
human, but the process had been similar enough.
The Mouth is the perfect
enemy of all living things, and there is no mystery of life that it cannot
unravel,
she thought, quoting the scriptures. She scooped a tangled mass of
intestines onto the table and held the tin lantern aloft so her pupils could
see inside.

“With the abdominal muscles pinned back, we have access to
cut free the stomach from beneath the rib cage, here. Stand a little closer if
you have trouble seeing. Look down into the opening, just there.”

Her students shuffled closer to the slab, its porous surface
stained with the fluid of countless subjects. They regarded the corpse with
wide eyes, peering into the abdomen with varying amounts of curiosity and
disgust.

“After we’ve cut the stomach and its adjoining organs free,” Bastille
said, pointing to the locations in question, “we should be able to reach into
the chest cavity, assuming the lungs are deflated, and find the heart.”

Sister Jeanette gave a crude grunt, then
clapped her hands over her mouth and fled the room, leaving the door open
behind her. Bastille sighed.
One down already.
“Close that door, will
you please?” she said, motioning toward her male student, Brother Mortial.

Mortial was tall and underweight, with a curved spine that made him lean to the right. Thick medium-blond hair grew long around his ears and over his gray-green eyes.
Bastille’s demonstration was making his skin go paler than its usual shade; he and the
remaining young woman both looked as though they were ready to join Sister
Jeanette in the privy, but Mortial obeyed Bastille’s request and returned to
his place without a word.

“Uh, Sister Bastille? Kind Sister?” The door creaked opened
again, and spry old Brother Soleil was poking his head inside, gripping the doorjamb
with a bony hand. Soleil was one of the four priests who formed the Most Highly Esteemed, the Order’s
most prestigious rank. Feather-white hair crowned his spotted scalp, and gentle laughing
crow’s feet sprouted from the corners of his eyes.

“Kind Brother Soleil. Welcome,” Bastille said, forcing a
smile. Smiling always made her feel too transparent. She ceased her rummaging,
but kept her hand inside the corpse so as not to lose her grip on her subject’s esophagus.

 “One of your charges has surrendered her bowels to the
lavatory, I fear,” Soleil said, chuckling. “Sister Jeanette, I believe. Best
not to urge her back here. We shall find service for her elsewhere.”

“Very well, kind Brother. Thank you.”

Soleil observed Bastille for a moment, a gleam in his eye,
then slipped out again.

“Few are fit to perform the sacrificial rites,” Bastille told
her two remaining pupils, resuming her work. “I’m sure you’ve both met Brother
Soleil before. He’s our most skilled practitioner, and the only member of our
Order experienced in both the sacrificial rites and the surgical Enhancements.
A great many of our Cypriests were converted by Brother Soleil himself. If
either of you is selected to undergo the full training, it will be your
privilege to study under him, as I did.”

Bastille picked up a small cutting saw and shoved her other
hand through the opening. A hollow, serrated chewing sound came from within as
she began to work the blade. The corpse’s limbs lurched and wobbled along the
joints like something coming to life.

“Tolerance for this kind of work is only half the
requirement, however. One must also learn the systems of the body in both part
and function. Familiarity with the flesh is a learned skill, and one that
requires a certain amount of… firsthand experience. Ah, here we go.” Bastille
withdrew the blade, then propped one hand on the ribcage and pulled with the
other. There were two short pops as the stomach gave way. She wedged her
slippery prize through the opening and added it to the pile.

“Kind Sister?” Brother Mortial half-raised his hand.

“Yes, kind Brother. What is it?”

“May I excuse myself?”

Bastille snicked, resting her hands on the slab, palms up. “Must
it be now? We’ve come almost to the dissection of the heart.”

Brother Mortial lowered his eyes to study his toes—or perhaps
to look for patterns in the flagstones and distract himself from nausea.

“Are you going to be sick?”

“Don’t know, kind Sister,” Mortial said, gulping.

Bastille flung a dripping hand toward the door. “Go, then. We’ll
wait.”
Kindest and Most High Infernal Mouth! Who can I entrust to perform
the sacred rites when I’m gone if there isn’t a single soul who can so much as
stomach the instruction?

Sister Adeleine, the lone female acolyte who remained, crossed
her arms over her chest. Whether it was for warmth or to comfort her stomach,
Sister Bastille couldn’t guess. Sister Adeleine had long, wavy hair that hung
past her shoulders, a muted strawberry blonde. Her bulky white underclothes
were more flattering than most, clinging to her curves without effort or
strain.

“You must have been an avid seamstress in your past life,”
Bastille said.

“I… um. Pardon, kind Sister?” Adeleine said, shrinking.

“Needlework appears to be a strong suit of yours. That isn’t so with
the average initiate, but your workmanship is quite good. Most of you look like
badly shorn sheep in your first set of undergarments.”

Sister Adeleine gave a nervous laugh. She had appeared as
sick as the others earlier, but now the rosy color had returned to her cheeks,
and she was looking on with what might’ve passed for vague interest.

“Have you a mind to stare at this poor fellow all morning?”

Adeleine was caught off-guard. “No… I was… uh…”

The acolyte’s reaction pleased Bastille, though she gave no
outward sign of it. Sister Adeleine had shown her penitence, a virtue praised
in the scriptures. Bastille recited the words to herself.
A heart of
contrition is quick to accept guilt, which is borne of heathen desire. The
apostasy of desire is the recognition of shame, and shame is the stimulus for
sanctification.

“One who misses one’s opportunity to learn,” Bastille said,
“may find oneself unable to perform his or her destined service.”

“Yes, kind Sister,” Adeleine said.

Sanctification, Brothers and Sisters, is what separates us
from those who do not yield to the all-devouring Mouth. So burn your desires,
and let them not consume you in their destruction. For the Mouth desires all
things to be devoured by its smile, and to devour is to aid the Mouth in its
infinite design
. Bastille almost smiled. “Well then. What questions do you
have of me, while we wait for Mortial’s return?”

“How… or, um… what…” the younger woman said, grasping. “What
was… his name?”

Bastille was surprised. “Everyone admitted inside the
basilica’s walls either joins the Order or is disposed of. This man failed to
meet the requirements for conduct during his initiation. Thus, he was never
officially inducted as an acolyte, and he had not been given a sacred name at
the time of his death.”

“His… before-name… I mean,” the younger woman pressed
further.

This is a feisty one, this Adeleine. These questions
border on insolence
. “I told you, he
had
no gifted name. I do not
know, nor would I care to know, his before-name. That information is
inconsequential and irrelevant. Now. Any questions
about the rites
?”
Bastille articulated the last three words with no attempt to hide her
irritation. Lakalie Hestenblach, the daughter of Kabel Hestenblach and his
erstwhile partner Yuliya Friedlander, had lived in Wynesring before she came to
Belmond to join the Order of the Infernal Mouth. She considered herself
fortunate to have been given the sacred name Bastille; it was a name of great
honor and tradition in the Order, and while she thought it rather mannish and
brute-sounding, she would never have expressed that sentiment aloud. Lakalie
Hestenblach’s parents were dead now, and the stepmother who lived in her
father’s house in Wynesring was a cold sort of woman whom Bastille would sooner
forget. Carudith had always treated her as though she were a specimen in a
laboratory. Perhaps that was where Bastille had picked up the habit.

“Uh, yes…” Sister Adeleine said. Her uncertainty made the lie
apparent. “I want to know, if… if…”

The heavy wooden door creaked on its hinges as Brother
Mortial slinked into the room and retook his place next to Sister Adeleine.

Bastille eyed him. Blood was congealing around her
fingernails and in the creases of her skin. “Feeling better?” she asked, though
she meant something different by it.

Brother Mortial’s oblique posture was more evident than
before. He gave her a bashful nod, as though he wanted to be invisible.

“Very well. As you were saying,
kind
Sister?”

“I… I meant to ask, do you have to ever… remove things, in a
different order, if the procedure is… if it—if it is a…”

“If it is a
what
? Spit it out.”

“An Enhancement.”

“Why yes. That is a
very good
question.” Again,
Bastille was pleased, but not so much as to reward the acolyte with a smile.
“However, a far greater deal of care must be taken with the Enhancement
surgeries, since we intend on the subject being at least partly alive
afterward. By the time you learn those procedures, kind Brother Soleil will be
instructing you.”

Bastille was about to continue when she noticed Brother
Mortial’s blank stare. His eyes were fixed on the concrete slab, open-mouthed
and daydreaming, absorbed in a thought that had taken him far from the room.

“Brother Mortial. Your attention, please.”

Mortial snapped back to the present, blinking.

Bastille kept her gaze on him as she shoved her hand into the
corpse and groped past the remaining obstacles.

The dead fellow began to dance again.

“Do you know what an Enhancement is, Brother Mortial?”

Dazed, he looked around the room, as if to find the answer
hidden in the flagstones. “The Enhancement Rites are performed on prospective
Cypriests,” he said.

“That is correct. So you
have
been paying attention.
You must also know why we have the Cypriests, then.”

“To protect the basilica grounds against all who would seek
to destroy our Order and disrupt our way of life,” Brother Mortial said.

“Good. And?”

“And…” Mortial shook his head.

“Sister Adeleine?”

“To… preach to the heathens?”

“No, dear girl,” said Bastille, with something that sounded
more like disdain than laughter. Her hands were halfway up the chest cavity,
sawing again. “There are two other reasons we have Cypriests—or rather, one
reason that is two-fold. NewTech devices replicate the functions of the flesh.
We can circumvent the effects of disease and injury, thereby both prolonging
the lives of our high priests and preserving the technology of the past. A
Cypriest with a NewHeart can live up to three times as long as an unenhanced
person. After storing human tissues for a time, a Cypriest can survive with far
less sustenance and under much harsher conditions.

“Those who possess NewLungs, NewEyes, or any of the other
available components have an even longer expected lifespan. Of course, the
quantity of NewTech organs is severely limited, since none have been
manufactured since the Heat. There are many members of our Order who came here
with some malady or another, in hopes of eventually becoming a Cypriest one
day. In truth, we should all be so fortunate.”