Organ music swelled around them. The hallway terminated in a large, high-ceilinged room, its far wall a maze of pipe organs, a great trident overhanging a rostrum, where a priest stood, and before that an altar crackling with energy, showing signs of recent construction. They had reached the chapel. Already hundreds had gathered, and Avery was surprised at the size of the room. Half the town must have been demolished to accommodate this one place.
On the stage, in a corner, stood Sheridan.
“Dear gods,” Avery said, swinging around and lifting his cowl to cover his head. Looking back, he saw her—crisp and sharp in her admiral’s uniform, sweeping the assembly with her gray gaze. Avery felt his temperature drop.
“She is everywhere,” Janx said.
“Come with me.”
They marched in the opposite direction, having to push through the tide still pouring into the room. When a priest stopped them, Avery said, “Just have to check on my friend. He had a little too much to drink.”
The priest, perhaps having seen the man of whom Avery spoke, let them go, and Avery was never more glad to slip down a hallway and away from a crowd.
“Think she saw us?” Janx said.
“I don’t think so. Even she can’t see everything.”
“You sure?”
“We have to find that relic.”
They passed the drunken man who had collapsed against the wall, stepped around him and kept going.
Footsteps ahead. Shadows against the walls—priests, by their hats.
Avery and Janx hastened into a room and closed the door softly behind them. The footsteps reached the door and paused.
Very slowly, Avery turned the lock.
The knob rotated, and weight pushed at the door. It didn’t budge. The footsteps moved on. Avery breathed a sigh of relief.
“Let’s avoid that hall,” Janx said.
The room was lit with a single electric bulb hanging from the ceiling—the town had a generator—but it illuminated only a few ratty pallets ... and a far door. They crossed to it and entered another chamber, a long and oddly shaped room, passed through this to another, a tiny little closet with a warped ceiling, and a door. Several rooms later they realized they were going at an angle, as they could hear the singing of the congregation change pitch and grow muted in the distance, the sound traveling easily through the thin walls.
“Idiots,” Janx said. “’least they could sing better …”
He had flicked on his own flashlight, and as they entered the next room it had fallen on a figure slumped against the far wall next to a dirty pile of rags. Avery knelt down beside it. It proved to be a young woman, naked and sick with Atomic infection, one wrist cuffed to a manacle sprouting from the wall. Her eyes rolled under her sockets, her flesh burned, and redness showed around patches of scales on her chest and neck. She didn’t even seem aware of Avery as he looked in her eyes, felt her forehead and counted her heartbeat.
“She’s not going to make it,” he said. “A day, maybe two.”
Janx drew one of the sheets up to hide her nudity. Tugging at the chain, he said, “We should free her.”
“We don’t have a key.”
Janx grabbed the chain and tugged with both arms. Pulling as hard as he could, he ripped the base of the manacle loose from the half-rotted wall and stumbled backward.
Not held up by the chain any longer, the girl lolled backward and collapsed on the filthy floor. Avery sighed and arranged her so that she was more comfortable.
“She didn’t get sick from the Sacrament,” Avery said.
“No?”
“See the bruises on her wrists? She’s been here for weeks, I bet. She only became infected days ago, judging from the redness.”
“I guess we know how she got infected,” Janx said darkly, and Avery nodded. Exchange of bodily fluids was a common means of transmission.
“This is how it gets them,” Avery said. “The Collossum. It gives the priests what they want, and in return they help it gather power.”
“Pieces of shit.”
“Yes.”
They pushed through several more rooms, finding beds, a kitchen, and more habitable areas. In the near distance came the sound of humming, and as Avery neared a doorway with light coming from around its edges he felt heat and humidity. He opened the door to see none other than—his mind spun—the mobster Gaescruhd, reclining on the bench of a sauna with a naked boy of shockingly young age kneeling between his knees.
Gaescruhd, fat and hairy, stopped humming and only slowly opened his heavy-lidded eyes, whereas the boy leapt up in fright.
“Go,” Avery told him, and he ran, disappearing instantly through a far door.
Gaescruhd, his member standing stiffly up, didn’t even bother to hide himself or shift position.
“I hope you’re going to finish me off, one of you,” he said, “because I have to say I was nearly there.”
Janx grinned nastily and drew his knife. “Oh, I can finish you off, all right. Gaescruhd, of all people. Huh. How many would give their fortunes to be where I am now?”
“But I’ve made many fortunes as well. For my friends,” the mobster added significantly.
“I’ll just bet you have.” Janx stepped forward. “How many folk have you sold into slavery? How many have you killed?”
