Honourbound - Rachel Harrison

by Warhammer 40K

  Waiting for death.

  Wyck rests his head against the cold stone. It does nothing for his headache. He wonders if it’ll happen in here. If after all his running, it’ll happen in the Sanctum of Bones, in a holding cell where the walls are marked with bloody scratches from whatever was held here before he was. If after everything else he’s done, he’ll die for helping to save the life of a Throne-damned witch.

  ‘Stupid,’ he says. The room catches his voice. There’s no echo in here. ‘So stupid.’

  Wyck doesn’t mean to start laughing. It just happens. He laughs so much it hurts. So much that his eyes run and he can’t tell whether it’s even laughter anymore.

  And then he hears the door bolt slide across. Loud, like a gunshot. It makes him flinch. Before the door can open, Wyck runs his hand across his face and uses the wall to stand up because if this is really it, and this is where he dies, then he’ll do it on his damned feet.

  ‘Daven Wyck.’

  Severina Raine’s outsider accent twists his name. Wyck had thought her dead, just for a while. That he’d escaped her judgement. Wyck looks at Raine standing there. Her shadow-black coat is blood-spattered and torn by fire and cutting edges. She holds her bolt pistol at her side, her dark eyes unreadable. He realises he should have known better. That she wouldn’t die so easily.

  That you don’t escape the judgement of a commissar like Severina Raine.

  ‘Commissar,’ he says, and his voice is a rasp that sounds weak, which makes him angry at himself.

  Raine walks into the room, but she is not alone. Zane is with her. The witch is bound too, her thin wrists manacled, though Wyck knows she could break them easily if she tried. It’s a show of faith. Of obedience. Wyck’s eyes catch with her silver ones, and a word pushes into his head.

  Kin.+

  It’s almost enough for Wyck to start laughing again.

  Raine drags two chairs into the middle of the space.

  ‘Sit,’ she says.

  Wyck does as he’s told and Zane does the same beside him. Raine doesn’t sit. She stands and watches them both, so still that she could be carved from darkwood.

  ‘You know why you are here,’ Raine says. ‘The charges set against you.’

  Wyck nods.

  ‘Four counts of murder,’ Raine says. ‘Against men sworn in service to High Command.’

  Wyck thinks about the lake in the witch-dream and all of those that rose to the surface. The real count is closer to the number of links in the chain at his wrists than it is to four.

  ‘It was me,’ he says. ‘The lot of it. Zane did nothing.’

  It’s all of those dead that makes him say it. All of the things he has done. His ugly secrets and his sins make him try to save Zane, even though she’s a witch, and she’s already as good as damned. Because she is Antari, and so is he, and if he is to be judged today then he’ll take one decent act with him into the After. Zane flinches beside him, as surprised at his words as he is.

  ‘What are you doing?’ she hisses. ‘Commissar, his words are false.’

  Raine shakes her head. She still has her pistol drawn. The steel of the casing glints in the lumen light and her eyes glint too, as she stares at Wyck.

  ‘I know they are,’ she says. ‘And those are the only lies that I will hear from you, sergeant. Is that clear?’

  Wyck realises then that Raine has never fallen for any of his lies. That she has always seen through to the sharp edges of his soul. It should horrify him, knowing that, but it doesn’t.

  Somehow, it’s a relief.

  ‘Clear,’ he says. ‘Yes, commissar.’

  Raine nods.

  ‘Now,’ Raine says. ‘The truth.’

  Severina Raine stays standing as Wyck and Zane recount what happened. The more they tell her, the more tempting it is to pace, to act, as they describe how four men sworn to High Command came to take Zane under the pretence of reassignment. A reassignment that had no Antari backing or Munitorum approval. It is just like what Raine found in Tula’s records. Zane would have been registered MIA, just like the other psykers. Sent to join all of the other ghosts.

  ‘And when you intervened,’ Raine says, to Wyck, ‘what did they do?’

  He is flexing his fingers in an effort to stop his hands shaking. Raine has seen him do it before. If you didn’t know him, you could take it for nerves.

  ‘They told me it was above my clearance,’ he says. ‘Then they tried to shoot me.’

  Raine knows that he is telling the truth. There is a way to Wyck’s voice when he lies.

  ‘So you killed them before they could kill you,’ Raine says. ‘Before they could take Zane.’

  He breaks eye contact with her for a moment and looks to the pistol she holds at her side, then he rolls his shaking hands into fists.

  ‘Yes,’ he says.

  ‘He was not the only one to do the killing,’ Zane says.

  The psyker looks physically diminished after facing Cretia Ommatid, almost as if she has been starved. There are dark hollows around her false eyes, and her veins are stark under her skin.

  ‘I broke one of the soldiers,’ she says, absently. ‘He shattered easily. Like eggshells.’

  ‘Mists alive,’ Wyck says.

  He is already sitting as far as he can from Zane, but he recoils from her anyway. To Raine, that hatred has always seemed rather a double standard for someone as damaged as he is.

  ‘Before he broke, I caught the edges of the soldier’s memories,’ Zane says. ‘They were shattered too. In pieces. But there were images.’

  Raine is practised at hiding her emotions. It is a necessity as a commissar to keep your balance at all times, just like running those icy gantries over the ocean. To be sure and swift in your choices. But the more that Raine hears, the more difficult it is to remain balanced. It is the fact that the traitors managed to slip by her and get to one of her own regiment. It makes her heart burn. Makes her want to do much more than just pace the room.

  But she cannot. Not yet. Raine takes a steady breath.

  ‘What images,’ she asks, evenly. ‘What did you see?’

  ‘Machines,’ Zane says. ‘Needles, being pushed under skin. I saw them in the soldier’s memories, then again in my dreams.’

  She takes a ragged breath.

  ‘I did not know it then, but it was the fate-engines I saw,’ Zane says. ‘They are fuelled by the gifted. By taking power from those like me and using it to change the fate of another soul.’

  Wyck shakes his head. His manacled hands move to make that superstitious Antari gesture of steepled fingers.

  ‘Justar and his lot wanted the engines preserving,’ he says. ‘You are telling me that they meant to use them?’

  Zane shakes her head. ‘Not for themselves,’ she says. ‘It is the King of Winter who seeks the fate-engines.’

  Raine blinks at Zane’s words. At having the story Fel told her be twisted.

  ‘The King of Winter,’ Wyck says. ‘You’re talking about the old stories.’

  ‘I am talking about a monster who seeks the hearts of the strong,’ Zane snarls. ‘I saw it in my dreams.’ Zane shakes her head. She has paled, even more so than usual. ‘Ommatid spoke of him too,’ she says. ‘Though she called him by another name.’

  ‘What name?’ Raine asks.

  ‘Manticore,’ Zane whispers. ‘She called him manticore, and said that we would know him soon enough. He is one of us, not one of them. Hidden amongst loyal souls.’

  Wyck shakes his head again. ‘And you’re going to trust the words of a traitor witch?’

  Zane turns her silver eyes on him, furious, and Wyck flinches away from her.

  ‘I do not trust Cretia Ommatid,’ Zane snarls. ‘She is wicked, and false. She lies.’

  The cables at the psyker’s scalp hum, and Raine catches the scen
t of ozone. The chair Zane is sitting on rattles.

  ‘Control,’ Raine says, firmly.

  Zane exhales a long breath before nodding.

  ‘I do not trust Cretia Ommatid,’ she says again, as if it bears repeating. ‘I trust what I saw in my dreams and what I felt.’

  ‘What did you feel?’ Raine asks.

  ‘The manticore is afraid of death,’ Zane says. ‘It has known the touch of the After. It has been bloodied by the jaws of the hounds, and it seeks a way to undo it for good.’

  ‘To change fate,’ Wyck says. ‘In exchange for its soul. That’s what you said.’

  Zane looks at him sidelong. ‘That is what I said.’

  Wyck curses again, in Antari.

  ‘Enough,’ Raine says.

  Just as she told Vander, Raine does not trust either Wyck or Zane, but she does understand them. They are two of a kind. Broken edges that can be used effectively, if handled carefully. They can be relied upon to act and react in ways she can anticipate. It is the reason that they are both still living, despite the risks they pose.

  ‘Listen to me carefully,’ Raine says. ‘Because I will say this only once, and have no doubt that I mean every word.’

  She looks at each of them in turn. At Wyck’s flint-grey eyes, and Zane’s false silver ones.

  ‘Not a word spoken in this chamber leaves it,’ Raine says. ‘Not about the Kavrone. Not about the one called the manticore. Is that clear?’

  ‘Yes,’ Wyck says.

  ‘Aye,’ says Zane.

  ‘You are both Antari,’ Raine says. ‘You know the importance of loyalty. Know that we fight for the Bale Stars, and for the Emperor, no matter what that means, or who we have to face to do it. We will not back down, or become complicit in corruption.’

  Raine ejects the magazine from her pistol and takes out two of the shells. One for each of them.

  ‘Both of you have killed in cold blood,’ she says. ‘The punishment for such an act is death.’

  Neither Wyck nor Zane speak. They just look at the shells in the palm of Raine’s gloved hand. Their death sentences, wrought in steel.

  ‘I will stay those punishments,’ she says. ‘On the understanding that you were acting out of loyalty, and you will do so without question in future. That if you see or hear anything else, you bring it straight to me. Do we understand one another?’

  ‘Yes, commissar.’

  This time the answer comes from both of them, without hesitation or a trace of deceit. That’s another thing Raine understands about the two of them, and the Antari in general. They place a great value on debts owed, and on what is given being repaid. By staying their sentences, she has placed them firmly in her debt. Raine finds manipulation distasteful, but it is another skill that she is practised in. Another necessity, for a commissar.

  ‘Good,’ Raine says. ‘Because failure will mean death.’

  Zane nods. ‘As it always does,’ she says.

  Raine finds herself nodding too.

  ‘Yes,’ she says. ‘As it always does.’

  Steadfast, before

  Severina Raine sits in the hallway with her fists locked together tightly. So tightly that her nails dig into her skin. So tightly that her hands can’t shake in the way that they so want to.

  ‘Cadet.’

  The word makes her look up. It comes from the guard. The big one, with the cruel scar that has turned one of his eyes porcelain-white and useless. He has a heavy pistol at his belt and a lasrifle slung across his chest. His uniform is black, like Severina’s own.

  Executioner’s black.

  ‘It is time,’ he says.

  Severina gets to her feet. Her legs try to shake now, just like her hands. She follows the guard down the hallway, keeping her eyes on his back, and not on the bare rockcrete walls, or the heavy, windowless cell doors set into them. Her boots ring on the stone floor, and she is reminded for a moment of that day long ago. The day an officer came to explain that her mother was dead.

  ‘In here,’ the guard says, and he indicates the last of the heavy doors. ‘Five minutes. No longer.’

  Severina reaches out and releases the bolt on the door. It echoes in the silence of the corridor. She pushes the heavy door open, steps into the cell and takes her seat in the empty chair, bolted to the floor. Then she finally looks at the cell’s occupant, whose hands are knitted together, too, and bound by silver chains that lock to the table in front of her.

  ‘Sister,’ Lucia says, softly.

  Her eyes are flat, like dulled metal. Bruising presses in on them, and coils itself around Lucia’s throat. Old blood is dried around her nose.

  Coward’s blood.

  ‘Do not call me that,’ Severina says. ‘You have no right.’

  Lucia nods. ‘No,’ she says. ‘I suppose not.’

  Lucia falls silent and still. The penitent’s shift she wears hangs from her, as if she has not eaten in weeks.

  ‘Will you say nothing?’ Severina asks.

  ‘What would you have me say?’ Lucia says. ‘What could I possibly tell you that could ease that agony you feel? Do you want me to tell you that I regret my actions? That I was fooled, or framed?’ She shakes her head. ‘They would be lies, Severina, and no matter what else I have become, I will not lie. Not to you.’

  Severina is no longer able to control the way she trembles. All of the pretty words she imagined saying melt away like snow and the only ones left are the ones that hurt as badly as she does.

  ‘How could you?’ Severina asks. ‘How could you give in to it, after everything we promised one another?’

  Lucia reaches across the table, as far as the chains will allow. Her fingertips barely brush against Severina’s wrist, making her recoil. That is when her sister’s eyes go from flat to glittering with tears.

  ‘I did not give in,’ Lucia says. ‘But I did fail. I failed the crusade. The commissariat. I failed mother, and I failed you.’

  She leans back again and pulls her hand away.

  ‘The price for failure, Severina,’ Lucia says. ‘What is it?’

  For an instant they are just girls again, reading by candlelight when they should both be asleep. But that memory, like all of the others, is damaged now. Tarnished.

  ‘Death,’ Severina says. ‘That is the price for failure.’

  The words fall heavy between them.

  ‘I followed what was in my heart,’ Lucia says. ‘And in turn I have broken yours. For that, please know that I am truly sorry.’

  Severina shakes her head. She has to do it to keep herself from crying.

  ‘My heart is not broken,’ she says. ‘Attachment is a weakness and I am better rid of it. Better rid of you.’

  Lucia blinks, then she nods. A tear traces its way down to her chin.

  ‘Yes,’ she says. ‘I think that you are.’

  There is still time left but Severina cannot bear the cell any longer, nor the sight of her sister. She gets to her feet, aching now as well as trembling. Burning with rage and hate, and most of all, with grief. She turns her back on Lucia and puts her hand on the cell door.

  ‘Goodbye, Severina.’

  Severina does not answer. She just opens the cell door and walks out without looking back.

  Fifteen

  The truth is contained within

  Lydia Zane listens to the psy-reader tick and scratch in time with the commissar’s pen against the page, and tries not to think of Cretia Ommatid, or what she was shown in the Sanctum of Bones. What she felt, upon being offered freedom and companionship.

  It is just another test, she thinks. Do not break.

  The psy-reader ticks more quickly, and Zane squeezes her false eyes closed.

  Please, do not break.

  ‘Tell me about the tree,’ Raine says.

  Zane has told the commissa
r many times about where the singing tree grew, and how she heard the Emperor’s voice in the rustling of its leaves, but she has never spoken of what happened afterwards.

  ‘The singing tree,’ Zane says, softly. ‘Not long after I came into my gifts, it caught afire.’

  She stops and breathes and smells it again. The burning of the singing tree. The acrid taste of smoke plays over her tongue.

  ‘Everyone in the village ran to the tree,’ Zane says. ‘They tried to douse the flames, but they were fierce and strong and they would not die until the white bark was blackened and the leaves were ashes.’

  She digs her fingernails into the arms of the chair. The binders on her wrists dig into her skin. The commissar keeps writing and Zane’s birds sit on either side of her, watching.

  ‘They said that it was witch’s work,’ Zane says. ‘That I had done it.’

  Her voice catches, and the psy-reader’s needle does the same. The commissar stops writing, and glances at the psy-reader as it draws jagged lines like tongues of flame. Like those Zane saw in the vision, burning around Ommatid and Rol.

  Such screaming.

  ‘I pleaded with the villagers,’ Zane says. ‘With the priests and the traders. With the elders. With my mother, and my father.’

  She remembers all of those grey Antari eyes, so full of fear and hate. That same look that she has earned every day since, from every one of her kin.

  ‘They did not believe me,’ Zane says. ‘So they bound my hands and covered my eyes. They cut off all of my hair. Then they took me deep into the forest where the night was coldest and left me there. Scattered ocean salt around me in a witch’s circle.’

  Raine frowns. ‘You did not argue?’ she asks. ‘Or fight?’

  Zane remembers how she had felt as her hair was cut roughly with a blade. As they dragged her with her feet snagging over roots and wet earth until they dropped her bodily to the ground and said those words. The ones that she told Kayd could not hurt her, but they always do, because she hears them in the voices of her mother and father.