Kian had barely stepped out of the Alpha Filtration Hub when the vox-bead at his hip crackled to life. He picked up. It was the comms unit at the Mid-Hive distillery calling in.
He'd installed communication equipnt across all his operations — any manager could reach him the mont sothing needed attention.
The voice that ca through belonged to Big Joel.
"My lord — the glassworks next door has delivered the bottles. The vintage you put down three months ago has finished conditioning. Shall we begin bottling?"
Kian's expression brightened imdiately. The first batch of wine. Finally.
"Hold on. I'm coming to take a look."
He made his way back to the distillery and arrived to find workers unloading crates at the entrance — the custom wine bottles he'd commissioned from the neighbouring glassworks. Two Agri-Scrips per unit, cork stopper included, with a label already affixed to each bottle.
The label carried the standard production details — vintage date, batch information. The front design was a printed illustration of Sister Teresa lifting her skirts to tread grapes, her white stockings and white dress generously spotted with grape juice.
Big Joel and his wife looked at the bottles in silence for a long mont. Neither of them said anything.
When Kian arrived and Big Joel's wife opened her mouth, she thought better of it and closed it again.
Big Joel asked: "My lord — the bottles are ready. Do we begin filling?"
"Not yet. Open one cask, fill twenty bottles, set them aside for to take. The rest can wait."
Big Joel complied. One oak cask was opened, and twenty five-hundred-millilitre bottles were filled and set aside.
Kian took the twenty bottles back to the Sanctum and placed them before the Imperial Shrine for consecration.
When two bottles had been sanctified, he returned to the distillery.
He handed the two bottles of Holy Amasec and a dropper to Big Joel.
"Start filling. One rule — for every bottle, draw one drop from these with the dropper and mix it in."
Big Joel acknowledged and set the workers to it. Seventy casks of wine yielded one thousand four hundred bottles, each holding five hundred millilitres.
The finished stock was packed into wholesale cartons and stacked in the corner — a small mountain of potential inco.
Every bottle carried a single drop of sanctified wine. The quantity was negligible by volu, but the effect — that distinctive sensation of Chaos-taint being flushed clean from the body — would be unmistakable to anyone who experienced it. That alone would carve out a substantial market.
The problem was distribution.
This wine was ant for the Spire — for the upper nobility, not the working population. But the Spire had lost more than half its residents in the recent disaster. Those who remained were the genuine elite, sealed behind the inner walls of their towers.
He had no connections to reach them directly. Not yet.
The Confessor had connections, but sothing about asking the Confessor to move luxury wine felt wrong in a way Kian couldn't quite articulate. The man would probably do it — but he might find the request distasteful. Best not.
Renaud? No good either. Renaud had just been elevated to the nobility alongside Kian. His previous network through the rcator Aqua had been gutted by the unrest. Neither of them had Spire-level connections to speak of.
Only one option.
Kian looked at the ring on his hand.
Half an hour later, the small private elevator opened and Kian stepped out into the Spire — into the warehouse belonging to Lady Nightingale.
When the Poxwalkers had been roaming freely, this place had been dead and empty. Today it was alive with activity — workers moving back and forth, cargo being shifted in every direction.
Kian stepped out of the elevator. A foreman approached imdiately, eyeing him with visible uncertainty. Kian was wearing a PDF field uniform with a combat webbing belt — the look of a man who belonged in a trench, not the Spire.
The foreman maintained his courtesy and bowed.
"Sir — how can I assist you?"
Kian lit a lho-stick.
"Baron Kian Voss. I'd like to pay a visit to Lady Nightingale."
He held up his hand and turned the ring so it caught the light.
"This ring is from the Lady herself. Pass that along when you announce ."
The combination of a barony and Lady Nightingale's personal ring moved things along quickly. Within minutes, arrangents had been made.
Lady Nightingale. House Campella. Eldest daughter of the thirteenth generation. Proprietress of one of the great spire-towers — a structure whose uppermost garden reached into the lower atmosphere. In every aningful sense, a woman whose ho touched the sky.
An antique groundcar rolled up to the warehouse entrance. A liveried attendant stepped out, opened the rear door, and bowed.
"My lord Baron, if you please. The Lady is expecting you."
Kian got in. The car moved off toward House Campella's tower.
After a short while, the groundcar passed through an enormous archway, and the world opened up.
He was inside a Spire tower now.
A tower was more than an address. It was a fortress, an independent kingdom, a self-contained ecosystem. The private armies quartered in the outer sections told you everything you needed to know about how seriously its owners took that independence.
Kian looked out the window. The lower levels of the tower housed barracks. He saw soldiers — a great many of them — and the glint of powered armour.
That's a Duke-level house. Household force in the thousands.
It struck him then, and the thought settled in unpleasantly.
He turned to the attendant in the front passenger seat.
"If you don't mind my asking — how large is Lady Nightingale's household force? I noticed a considerable number of powered armour troopers."
Household military strength was a point of pride for noble houses. The attendant didn't hesitate.
"Our lord, Campella the Thirteenth, maintains five thousand household soldiers. Six hundred of them equipped with powered armour."
Kian let out a long, slow breath through his teeth.
Six hundred powered armour troopers.
Sothing about that number didn't sit right.
When the unrest was at its worst — when Lady Nightingale had been trapped inside the Grand Theatrum — why hadn't House Campella moved? Six hundred soldiers in powered armour, with heavy las-weapons, loading into Chira transports, cutting a corridor in and out before the psychic contamination spread — it should have been viable. Fast enough, hard enough. Get in, extract the Lady, get out.
Why didn't they go?
He sat with the question. The answer, he suspected, was complicated in ways that would be unpleasant to fully understand.
The groundcar entered another elevator. The elevator ascended.
When the doors opened and the car rolled out, Kian arrived at Lady Nightingale's personal residence — the Atmospheric Garden.
The tower was imnse — a columnar structure over ten kilotres across at its broadest. The very apex of that structure branched into more than a dozen smaller spires, each serving a different purpose: so were landing platforms for aircraft, others were noble residences.
The Atmospheric Garden was a vast circular glass do, enclosing a spread of grass and flowers. A gravel path wound through it. The lawn was immaculate. Blooms of every variety were open.
At the centre of the garden stood a three-storey house — the silhouette of a Victorian country manor, understated and comfortable, built for soone who wanted to forget, at least occasionally, where they actually were.
The groundcar stopped. The attendant opened the door.
"My lord Baron — this is the Lady's private residence. The remainder of the way, you walk alone."
The groundcar turned, re-entered the elevator, and was gone.
Kian stood alone on the gravel path.
[End of Chapter 193]
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