by Dan Abnett
He was still twitchy. Calm, calm, he told himself.
He blinked. The cleric had just said something that sounded odd. The congregation answered. As Jairus watched, the cleric touched the top of the triptych and it folded in on itself.
The tri-part image it then revealed was worse than anything he'd ever seen, even in his worst looks. He gasped and jumped in his seat. The images, the images, they were so...
...they reminded him of the dream of the burning city.
Jairus realised he had wet himself involuntarily and cried out. Too much noise. The entire congregation, and the cleric himself, was looking back at him.
Just make your exit, just make your exit nice and nothing needs to-
"Hello," said the man, sitting down beside him in the pew.
"U-hh," was all Jairus could manage.
"I think you've come in for the wrong service," the man said gently.
"Uh. I think so."
The man was lithe and long-limbed, his face lean and refined. His clothes were dark, immaculate. His hands were gloved.
"What's your name?" the man asked. "My name is Toros Revoke."
Say nothing, Jairus thought. "My name is Jairus," his mouth said anyway.
"How d'ye do, Jairus? You're a clanner, am I right? A... what is it now... a 'moody hammer'?"
"Yessum, sir."
"And you're... how does it go... 'witchy for a look'?"
"Yessum, sir, I guess I am." Why are you answering? Why are you answering him, you knuck?
"Bad luck, old boy," the man said, and patted Jairus reassuringly on the thigh. Jairus cringed. "You weren't meant to see any of this. Closed chapel, you see. How did you get in?"
There was something about the man. Something in his eyes or tone that compelled Jairus to answer, even though he didn't want to.
"I... I pretended I was a gamper, sir."
"Did you? How cunning."
"Master Revoke?" the cleric called from the front. "Is there a problem?"
"Just a poor man who mistook his way into our assembly, father. No need for a fuss. He'll be going shortly."
The man looked back at Jairus. His pupils were stale yellow, like burned-out suns. "What were you doing here?" he asked softly.
"I was just..." Jairus began.
"Intending to rob the collection plate," the man said, looking away. "To afford the price of a look. You were going to hold up this entire body of good people to slake your habit."
"Not I, sir, I-"
Somehow, the man had got hold of Jairus' gun. He held the weapon up.
"With this."
"Sir, I..." Jairus fought the man's compelling force. This was madness! He was a slab-ox, vat-built, he ought to be able to crush a wimp like this in a heartbeat. He swung around, grabbed the man by his dove-grey lapels and smashed him repeatedly against the pew back until the skull cracked open, red and wet. Then he ran for the chapel door and-
Jairus was still sitting in the pew, unable to move. The man was smiling at him. "Interesting idea," the man said. "Very robust. Very direct. But... never going to happen."
"Please..." Jairus mumbled.
"I'll tell you what," the man said, reaching his free hand into his tailored coat, his other hand toying with the heavy handgun. "Here's one on me."
He handed Jairus a small parcel wrapped in red tissue paper.
"Now... get on your way."
Two rectors unbolted the chapel doors for him. Jairus ran.
He got as far as the ironwalks above Belphagor Under-sink before the steel teeth of panic finally began to relax their bite. His breathing was ragged and he was twitching all over. He grabbed the handrail for support, leaning over, ignoring the acid-itch on his palms from the recent rain.
The man had been bad enough, but the other thing... the tri-part image revealed when the triptych slid open.
Most Glorious Throne of Terra, what a thing! Of all things holy, that certainly wasn't one of them.
The city sub-levels lay below him, a blizzard of lights in the darkness under the ironwalk. Jairus wanted to calm down, relax his pumping heart.
He took out the parcel the man had given him, unwrapped the red tissue paper and looked at the flect. That would do it.
Except... that man, that soft-spoken man with his stale yellow eyes. How could he trust a man like that who simply gave flects away?
Jairus weighed the lump of glass in his hand, then turned and threw it into the darkness off the ironwalk.
"Shame."
Jairus turned. The man was sitting on the ironwalk stairs behind him. He looked like he had been there for hours. He was smoking a lho-stick in a long holder which he held pinched between his slim, gloved fingers.
"That would have been quick and clean. There would have been pain, but only very briefly."
Jairus bunched his fists.
"We now have to move to other options."
"What are you... what... what...?" Jairus stammered.
"You saw too much. Far too much. And I'm a secretist. I'm paid to ensure there are no loose tongues. And your fine augmented tongue, Jairus... well, it looks loose to me."
"I shall do this?" inquired a whisper-thin voice. Jairus realised that there was a second presence, standing on the stairs behind the man. So thin, so pale, almost transparent.
"No need, Monicker," the man said, getting to his feet. "I feel like some practice."
The man flicked away his lho-stick, slid the holder into his pocket, and took a step towards Jairus. The half-visible figure behind him remained motionless.
"It really could have been quick," the man whispered. "With the flect, I mean. A happy way to go. It's not going to be quick now. And it certainly isn't going to be painless."
Jairus settled his shoulders low and raised his hands. "Let's see," he replied. It was the boldest thing he'd ever said. And it was the last thing he'd ever say.
The man uttered something. A word that wasn't a word, a sound that wasn't a sound. A single syllable.
Jairus reeled. He felt as if he'd been smacked in the face with a jackhammer. Blood sprayed from his mashed nose.
"Is good," whispered the half-visible figure.
"It gets better," said the man. He said three more un-words in quick succession, his lips flexing oddly to make and accommodate the sounds. Jairus shuddered as something broke his collar bone, something else shattered his left elbow and something else splintered his right knee.
He fell down. The pain was enormous. Years before, he'd been beaten by a rival clan crew. They'd used panel-hammers. He'd been in the public ward for eight months.
That had nothing on this.
The man stood over Jairus, who clawed at his trouser leg. The man announced some more un-words.
Jairus' teeth exploded out with the first. All of them. Incisors like cracked porcelain, molars like bone pegs with their bloody roots. His tongue burst. The second un-word detonated his spleen. The third caved in his ribs and collapsed his right lung. The fourth relapsed his colon. Blood was pouring out of him, through every natural exit it could find.
A final un-word. Jairus' kidneys were quivered to mush.
"He now is dead?" the half-visible figure asked.
"Ought to be," said the man. He paused and raised a glove to his face, dabbing a tiny trickle of blood that leaked from his own lower lip.
"Your technique, it improves," his companion noted.
"Practice makes perfect," the man replied.
Jairus was still twitching. The blood draining out of him was streaming through the open mesh of the iron-walk deck.
"Can't leave him here," the man said. "The wound-type is very... singular."
"I will not carry him. Not I. He smells, and he is messy."
The man looked up and called out: "Drax?"
A third figure appeared, up at the roadway level. He was tall and slender, hunched about his heavy shoulders. A mane of wispy grey hair framed a face that was curiously shallow and wide, with small piggy eyes and a m
assive jaw that gave him an underbite.
"Mister Revoke?"
"Pick him clean, please."
The newcomer, Drax, hurried down the stairs to join them. He was wearing a skin-suit of leather jack-armour with a row of buckles down his chest, but his entire right arm and hand were encased in a thick gauntlet of chainmail.
"Step you back, then, Mister Revoke," he said. He took a psyber lure from his belt, unwound the silver cord and began to spin it in slow circles. The lure made a humming murmur.
"Here they come, the little beauties."
Jairus coughed blood suddenly and opened his eyes. He stared up at the sky.
The last thing he saw were the sheen birds, hundreds of them, mobbing down out of the dark towards him, metal pinions fluttering. They were the last thing he saw because they went for his eyes first.
The last thing he felt was agony. It lasted for six whole minutes as the sheen birds pecked and stripped the flesh from his bones.
TWO
So, late in the year 402.M41, we returned to Eustis Majoris to finish the work.
It had been well over twelve months since we had last stood together upon that dark, overpopulated planet, and we returned now incognito. Our enemies believed us to be long dead. So much the better. Secrecy was the only real weapon we had left. From the moment of our return onwards, everything would be secrets and lies, until death rendered all things equal and void.
On the last night of our journey back, I visited my comrades, one by one. It was a courtesy I paid out of respect. I was about to ask a lot from each one of them.
I found Harlon Nayl hunting game on a shelf of evergreen forest below a pearl-white glacier. The air was cold and thin. Will Tallowhand was with him, and they were walking together with their long rifles leaning across their shoulders.
I approached through the long grass, spreading my hands to ruffle the stalks that swished around me. Will saw me first. He turned and smiled at me, then tapped Harlon on the shoulder.
Will Tallowhand had been dead a long while. He called something out to me that I couldn't catch. By the time I'd reached them, he had faded away like smoke.
Harlon Nayl looked me up and down. "Been a long time since you've done this, Gideon," he said.
"I know." I replied.
"Looking good," he said.
"Looking whole." I answered.
He nodded. He was a big man, tall and corded with muscle. His bullet head was shaved but for a tuft of beard on his chin.
"Is it that bad?" he asked.
"That bad?"
He shrugged. "Been a long time, like I said. It must be bad for you to come to me like this. I think I know what you're here to ask."
"Do you now?"
Harlon nodded again. "Think I do. You want to know if I want to go on."
"And do you?"
"I always thought I'd be in it for the long haul..." He looked away as his voice trailed off wistfully. The ghost shapes of prong-horn game were melting into the tree-line.
"Where is this?" I asked him.
He shrugged. "I forget. Durer, maybe, or Gudrun. Sleep often brings me here. Although last time, the glacier was over there."
We reached the edge of mountain lake lying like a glass spearhead amongst the evergreens. It was so still and glassy it mirrored the trees, the glacier and the sky.
And there we were too, side by side. Harlon, broad-shouldered, thick-armed, his physique as tough and flexible and well-worn as the leather bodyglove he wore. And me, as I had been at the age of thirty-four, an eternity before. A little shorter than Harlon, rather lighter in build, long black hair tied back from a high cheek-boned face that I'd once seen regularly in other mirrors.
"What are you in your dreams?" Harlon asked.
"Am I like this, do you mean?"
"Yeah."
I shook my head. "No, not for years now. I dream like I live, confined and yet unlimited, in the darkness. But I thought I'd look like this for a change tonight."
"Because it's that bad? I hope this isn't a psychological game. You wearing your old face to remind us how we met you and who we first swore allegiance to? Hard to say 'no' to someone's face."
"Do you want to say no?"
"Boss, we've been through plenty together. Plenty of bad things. Molotoch. That business on Dolsene. Stuff I don't want to remember. Is this really that much worse?"
I paused. "It could be."
"What about the others?"
"I haven't asked them yet. I'm asking you."
"And I'm saying yes. You're going to the others now?"
"Yes."
"Can I come?"
I said yes. We broke the mirror lake into shards and blurred into a stone cell in a tower on Sameter where Patience Kys was singing a lullaby to her long-lost sisters. Prudence and Providence were snuggled up in their cots, ten years old. Outside, an electrical storm split the night.
"Who are those men?" Prudence asked, pointing.
Kys turned sharply. The two silver kineblades pinning her long black hair plucked themselves free and circled towards us in the candlelight.
I brushed them aside carefully. Even in dreams, such weapons can wound.
"What are you two doing here?" Kys spat. She was a tall, slender woman in her mid-twenties, agile and quick. Unloosed, her straight black hair framed her pale, high-cheek bones and her fierce green eyes.
"I'm sorry to intrude, Patience." I began.
"He's come to ask the question, Kys," Harlon Nayl said beside me.
"Yeah?"
"Yes," I said. "If you want to step off, I'll understand. Do it now before it's too late."
"You staying?" Kys asked Nayl.
"Of course," he replied.
"I'm staying too," she told me, fixing me with those terrible green eyes. "It's an honour thing."
"Because you want revenge?" I asked.
"No, because I'm sworn to you, and this is what we do."
We left Kys to finish her song. Carl Thonius was harder to locate. The boundaries of his dreams were thick and clotted, and when we entered them, we found ourselves lost in a forest of clothing racks hung with thousands of beautiful garments.
The air was colder than Nayl's alpine dream.
"Carl? Carl?"
At the heart of the forest of hanging clothes, Carl Thonius sat naked in a clearing, surrounded by framed mirrors. He rose as we dragged our way in through the jackets and pantaloons and waistcoats. He put on a robe.
The innermost rings around the clearing were bare metal racks rattling with empty clothes hangers.
"This is an intrusion," he said. Carl Thonius was a very mannered person: slender and spare, elegant, his hair a blond, coiffured fringe. His voice trailed away as he saw the guise I'd come in.
"He wants to ask you the question," Nayl said, grinning at Thonius' discomfort. "You know, the question."
"The inquisitor knows the answer." Carl replied tersely. "I am his interrogator. I go where he goes, in the Emperor's name, worlds without end."
"Thank you. But I had to ask, Carl," I said.
"I know you did, sir," he answered, pulling his robe tight. "Our status is Special Condition?"
"Yes. When we arrive at Eustis Majoris," I said, "our first problem will be establishing and maintaining cover identity. False documents won't get us very far and I'll be damned if we're going to lose our only advantage."
"We'll all be damned," smiled Carl.
"Then we need something else. Something clever."
"I'll give it a little thought, sir," he said.
Two pale, wan suns were setting over us as we crunched down a stretch of foreshore together. There was a figure ahead of us in the twilight, scooping and searching along the beach.
The shoreline was littered with billions of left hands, each one real and flesh and blood. All the same, each one was impossibly fitted with a chrome bracket at the wrist.
Zeph Mathuin was moving along the shoreline, picking up each hand in turn and trying it a
gainst the socket of his left arm. Each mis-fitting hand he tossed aside.
Mathuin was a tall, dark-skinned man of enormous physical strength. His black hair was braided in rows. In this, his dream, his eyes weren't the red-coal augmetic flicker of life. They were soft and brown.
He looked round as we approached, discarding another clenching hand.
"Shit," said Nayl, gazing at the long, wide beach of twitching hands. "Zeph's dreams are so much freakier than mine."
"Zeph?" I called out.
"I can't find it. Can't find it. Can't."
"Zeph," I said again.
"What?" he barked, turning to glare at me.
"I wanted to ask-"
"The answer's yes," he said, and turned back to his sorting along the shoreline of wriggling fingers.
We finally located Kara Swole in a dressing room behind a thunderous wooden carnival hall in the backwoods of Bonaventure. Outside, barkers with brass voice-trumpets shouted the odds, and the crowd was roaring. Kara sat before the harshly-lit make-up mirror, her red hair pulled back in a lace strap as she white-powdered her face.
Short, supple, voluptuous, she turned in her camp chair as we came in.
"Is it time already?" she asked.
"Yes," I said.
"Time to go on?"
"Yes."
She came over to me and stroked my arms, tugging at my cuffs.
"You were such a handsome man, Gideon."
"Thank you."
"Sometimes I forget... I forget what you looked like, back then. You haven't come to me this way in a long time."
"That's just what I said," said Nayl.
Kara's face changed. "I'm dreaming, aren't I?"
"Yes, you are."
"We're starting tomorrow, aren't we?"
"Yes."
"This is the dream where you come and ask me if I want to go on, isn't it?"
"Yes, it is."
"Even to the death?"
"Even that."
"What about the others?"
"Patience, Zeph and Carl are all with me," I said.
"Me too," said Nayl.
"Frauka and Zael?"
"I couldn't get into Frauka's dreams if I tried... and I won't get into the boy's. It's just us, the band. I needed to know you were still with me."
