by Dan Abnett
Then it mewed pitifully, writhed and flew off into the night.
Revoke turned and stared at his master. A huge tumult of panic and confusion rang from the palace behind them.
"Dear gods without name." Jader Trice murmured. "All that I owe you up to now, Toros, is nothing. I owe you my life."
Blood was pouring from Toros Revoke's mouth. His lips were split. He spat out gore onto the flagstones, and a shattered tooth came out with it.
"Just doing my job... lord," he lisped.
Orfeo Culzean caught the trigger-orb as it fell from Keener's collapsing body. It was smoky-hot.
"Shit," said Leyla Slade.
"Indeed," Culzean said. He seemed almost amused.
"What happened?" Lezzard asked.
"They bested us," Culzean said. "I offer my apologies, magus-clancular. I underestimated their resources."
"We have... failed?" Arthous asked.
"Tonight, yes, most probably. I am an expediter, Frater Arthous. You employ me for my skills and my experience. Not only because I know what to do, but because I know what else to do when things don't go according to plan. This is just a setback. I'll ponder for a while, and decide upon the next best course of action."
"A setback?" Arthous seemed contemptuous.
"Perhaps not even that," Culzean said. "Have the fraters look to their mirrors. Examine the prospect and its determiners over the next day or so. It's possible that even without killing the chief provost, we might have derailed his involvement favourably."
"What of your servant?" Stefoy asked.
"It is cut loose, wild. It will return here in a few hours and shut itself down. Make sure it's well fed, or it won't be willing to serve us the next time we employ it. And - we will need another psyker. Someone very able. I'd like the Fratery to procure one this time, preferably someone from off-world. Bring them here."
"Of course," said Lezzard. "Anything else, Orfeo?"
"Give me time to think, magus."
"Yes, but the prospect-"
"The prospect is the only thing that concerns me, magus-clancular. One hundred per cent, I will make it happen."
Orfeo Culzean turned and walked up out of the basement, Leyla Slade at his side.
"I think we should leave," she whispered.
"We are leaving, Ley."
"I mean the planet. This is turning into a lousy deal. The Fratery might turn nasty if we don't deliver."
"We will deliver. This is exactly why I choose to be in this game. It's so seldom a real challenge arises. This is the one, Ley. The expedition that will make my name immortal. Can't you feel it?"
"I feel something. Those frigging one-eyes glaring at us. I say we make our excuses and quit."
"Leyla Slade, that's hardly the backbone I hired you for."
She shrugged.
"I'm hungry," Culzean said. "I need a decent meal and some distraction. Is it too late for the last show at the Carnivora?"
"I'll check."
"Tomorrow, I want a day without interruption. And I need you to look out some books for me, some old almanacs from my library. Anything you can find on the subject of Enuncia."
"Yeah? What's that?"
"No one really knows anymore. Just a memory of a myth. But that man tonight, the one who kept our Thief at bay. I'd stake my professional reputation on the fact that he was using it."
ELEVEN
"So how did this happen?" Belknap asked, slowly packing the wound with sterile gauze and tissue-cleaner.
"I cut myself shaving," said Harlon Nayl.
"Right," said Belknap. "There was I thinking this was a gross wound caused by a side-blown round on the tumble."
Nayl sat, stripped to the waist, on a wooden stool in the spartan kitchen of Miserimus House. The doctor's practice bag was open on the table and the contents spread out. Kys stood in the doorway, watching, Zael at her side. It was almost an hour past middle night, and the city outside was deathly quiet.
"You know a lot about gunshot wounds, do you?" Nayl said.
"I know a lot about a lot, mister. There. Done. Keep it clean and I'll check it in a day or two."
Belknap looked at Kys. "Two, you said."
"The other one's upstairs."
"All right, then. Show me. And, just so we're clear, I'm not happy about this. Slaphead here is moody-class muscle, and you, I don't know what you are."
"I can hear you," Nayl said.
"I don't care." Belknap replied. "I'm doing this for Zael, okay? And in return, I'd like you people to do something for me."
"What?" asked Kys.
"Let him go. Cut him loose. Give him a few hundred crowns... your type probably has that in change... send him on his way. Give him a chance, I mean, before this gang-life of yours swallows him up."
"Our type?" Nayl said.
"Shut up, Harlon." Kys warned. She looked at the doctor. "This is not what you think."
"It really isn't." Zael put in.
"A rented house, a gunshot wound, serious muscle, the need for a back-street sawbones. I'm not stupid, lady. This is connected syndicate stuff. You're in something up to your ears. Tell me I'm wrong."
"You're not wrong." Kys submitted. "We're up to our ears."
"Show me the other one," Belknap said.
They went upstairs.
+Patience?+
+Yes, Gideon?+
+We appreciate this medicae's help, but can he be trusted?+
+Zael says he can.+
+The question stands.+
+All right. Call me a woman of simple instincts, but I reckon if you cut the doctor through the middle, you'd find the word "trust" written right through him.+
+Let's hope I don't have to ask you to do that.+
Kys led Belknap down the upper hallway, Zael trailing behind them.
"How did you sucker him in?" Belknap asked her.
"Zael? Actually, we brought him along for his own good."
"Your kind always says that."
"Sometime soon," Kys said sweetly, "you and I are going to have to have a little talk about what you mean by that phrase." She opened the door to Kara's bedroom.
Kara lay on the little cot, twitching and pale in her fever-sleep. The bandages Nayl had wrapped around her stomach were leaking blood.
"Oh... Throne." Belknap whispered. "What the hell's this now?"
He sat down beside Kara and undid the bandage.
"Blade wound... hell!" he jerked back as droplets of blood billowed out of the cut in Kara's belly. "God-Emperor, that's not normal! What did this?"
"It was something they called a vampire blade," Zael said. "They said it tasted her. The wound won't close. Please, Doctor Belknap. Do something. Kara's too nice a lady to die."
"I don't even know..." the doctor began. He rose to his feet and looked at Kys and the boy. "What is this? What the hell is this?"
I slid into the room, my chair hovering noiselessly. Belknap stared at me for a long moment.
"My name is Gideon Ravenor, Doctor Belknap." I transponded. "These people, Zael included, are my associates. I thank you for the help you have offered us so far. I understand you are scared, and also admirably concerned for Zael Efferneti's welfare. I believe this might reassure you."
I activated my chair's display mechanism. The slot opened and the projector slid out, casting the hololithic image of my rosette.
It was not the regular red sigil. I had adopted the azure mark of Special Condition, the grave, winged skull.
Belknap recognised it all the same. "I... the Inquisition?"
"I am an inquisitor, yes. Once of the Ordo Xenos Helican. Now in Special Condition operation here on Eustis Majoris."
"The Inquisition?" Belknap repeated.
"These are members of my team, doctor. We are here on a mission of the utmost gravity, and we are here in total secrecy. That's what Special Condition means. We cannot contact the authorities for help. Not even medical help. That is why Patience and Zael came to find you."
"
This... this is all too much..." Belknap stammered.
"Too much for you, doctor?"
"As I understand it, an inquisitor carries with him the personal authority of the God-Emperor himself," Belknap said quietly, staring at me. "To disobey the orders of an Imperial inquisitor is to disobey the voice of the Golden Throne itself. Right?"
"That about sums it up," I said.
"Then I will not question you and I will do everything you ask me to." Belknap said simply.
"Save Kara's life," I said.
He turned to work. "I have a salve, a certain tincture. I can arrest the blood loss for a while. Then, if I can run some tests, I might be able to counter the damage. But, my resources... I'll need a transfuser, of course..."
"Whatever you need, doctor," I said. "We have funds. Tell Patience or Zael what you want and they'll get it for you."
I swung my chair round and faced Kys.
+Your instinct was good.+
+I'm glad. I thought so, but...+
+Patience, I need to tell you something about Zael. Something Wystan found out tonight.+
+Crap, what's the kid done now?+
+It's not like that, Patience. It's about... what he might do.+
+What do you mean?+
I was about to reply when the psy Shockwave hit me. I was unprepared for the force of it, and it lurched me over. A huge psyclonic event had just boomed across the hive.
I left the shell of my chair at once and went bodiless into the night above the house. I could hear Kys' desperate calls echoing below me.
+Gideon? Gideon?+
+I'm fine. Check the house security.+
I rose up, free, into the night sky, the vast city blazing below me. Traceries of bright psi-fire burned over the inner formals. Taking the aether form of a salmon, I swam down towards them and saw-Throne! The blood. The butchery. The dismemberment. The palace yard filled with dead, fire boiling from a ruined weapon. This was the diplomatic palace in Formal A, the heart of subsector power. Wholesale carnage had happened here.
I read the dying fibre-traces of a daemon in the air. It was loose, somewhere, a being so powerful I didn't want to find it. Something primaeval, an atavistic throwback to the pre-formed ages of Chaos, an incunabula.
And there, hurrying for cover, that was certainly the chief provost, Jader Trice, supported by another man in a dark suit. Attendants were rushing to them, medical teams spilling out into the horror of the courtyard. Alarm bells.
What in the name of the God-Emperor had just hap-
The man in the dark suit looked round. He smelled me. He was a psyker - a very, very powerful psyker - and he had caught the scent of me on the wind.
I couldn't allow that. I recoiled at once, pulling back. His mind snaked up after me.
"Wystan?"
Wystan Frauka put down his slate and deactivated his limiter.
The world went dark. Somewhere, invisibly, the hunting mind of the man in the dark suit roamed on, thwarted.
"Ravenor?" Kys asked.
"Get Thonius working. Get him to tap into the news vox and the Ministry-ciphers. Something just happened down at the diplomatic palace, and I want to know what it was. Now."
TWELVE
Even as it began, Maud Plyton decided it was going to be one of those days. She knew why, of course. The night before, the public data services had carried special announcements informing all hive citizens of a "grave incident" at the diplomatic palace. They didn't specify what, but the PDF had gone to stand to, and entry to the hive-heart formals was likely to be restricted, so it had to be something pretty big.
Plyton lived in the spare room of her elderly uncle's town-hab in Formal E, and usually travelled to work on the rail transit. She'd put in a call to the department to find out what was going on, but all she'd got had been a recorded vox message advising staff to expect delays on the transit network.
So she'd borrowed her uncle's transport and driven in to work instead. Uncle Valeryn was getting on, and pretty much housebound. He'd been a musician in his day, though mental infirmity meant the clavichord no longer sang under his fingers. But he'd been successful enough to accumulate modest wealth, and afford a two-storey town-hab in an inner formal, and a private nurse.
Maud was his only living relative, and she'd come to live with him when she started her work with the Magistratum. Valeryn hadn't really approved of his niece's occupation, though nowadays he often couldn't remember what it was she did.
"Can I borrow the Bergman, Uncle Vally?" she'd asked that morning, drinking a caff over the sink, clad in her full uniform. It was early still, dark outside, but her uncle had been up for hours, sitting at the spinet as if wondering what the ebony keys were meant to do.
He hadn't driven the Bergman since '89, when the Administratum had cancelled his permit on health grounds. But he kept it garaged in the private bunkers under the hab block, and once in a while allowed Ply-ton to drive him out to the Stairtown Parks on her day off.
"Are we going to the parks?" he asked.
"Not today, Vally. But I need to get into the A. Work. It's important."
He looked at her, in her full Magistratum harness, body-plate, helmet hooked at her waist, and said, "What is it you do, Maud?"
"I work, Vally. Can I use the Bergman?"
He shrugged. "I suppose." He turned away, and started to plink at middle C.
She let herself out quietly, taking the keys from the jar on the shelf above the hall heater.
The Bergman Amity Veluxe was a four-litre carbide coupe with slate-green bodywork and extravagant chrome. Plyton adored it, adored its leather and linseed smell, its rumbling under note. On her salary, even allowing for promotion, she'd never afford a private transporter like the Bergman herself. The story went her uncle had been given it as a gift by a conductor who had been brought to tears by the way Valeryn had played a particular work.
As she drove up through the expressways and interlinks of the inner formals, the traffic grew denser. Thick clouds of acid fog had draped the streets with a yellow mist. She saw rail transit stations closed and guarded, and PDF detachments manning unshrouded weapon emplacements on the buttresses of high stacks. The hive had armed itself.
Regular roadblocks hemmed in the choking traffic, Magistratum officers in rain-slickers checking permits and idents. Plyton began to wonder if she'd have been better off staying at home.
She began to wonder what the hell had happened at the diplomatic palace.
She risked a down-ramp, and used her knowledge of the sink-level street-grid to pull ahead of the blocked arterials. At Whiskane Circus, she took a surface ramp and tried to join the Formal A South Express.
Another impasse. A vast multitude of Administratum workers had attempted to meet the start of their shifts by walking in along the pavements and overpasses. Now the foot traffic was also bound up, as the Magistratum checked IDs and gradually let them into the inner formal walks a few at a time.
She waited patiently until the crawling line of traffic brought her up to a checkpoint.
An officer approached.
Plyton opened the cab window and flashed her warrant. "Special Crime Department. I'm trying to get to work."
"Not this way, marshal," the officer said. "Sorry. No road access to A along here."
"What do I do?"
The officer waved with his lumin baton in the fog. "Turn east. We're allowing Magistratum personnel into the formal along Parsonage Avenue." He turned. "Magistratum! Let it through!"
Plyton yanked on the anchor-shaped wheel, and pulled through the gap he had indicated as other officers lifted aside a sawhorse barrier. Other traffic- omnibuses and private cargoes - hooted in disgust as they watched her slip through.
Plyton edged the Bergman along through packs of pedestrians slow to give way. Through the rain and the stroking wipers, she glimpsed a familiar face and thumped the horn.
Grim, weary faces turned to scowl at her.
She leaned out of her window. "Limbwa
ll! Hey, Limbwall!"
In the crowd, the department's skinny secretary officer, laden down with an armful of files, turned and saw her.
"Get in!"
Perplexed, he clambered in the passenger side, and Plyton moved off through the crowd.
"Morning," she said.
"Is this yours?" he asked, trying to wipe the sudden condensation off the fat lenses of his augmetic optics.
"I borrowed it."
"Who from?"
"My uncle."
"And he's what? The playboy nephew of the lord governor sub?"
"I know. Nice, isn't it?"
"Doesn't even begin to cover it. Throne, what a morning! Like a fool, I tried to walk in. Rail was closed."
"You walked from Formal E?"
He looked at her. "I serve the aquila. What else was I supposed to do? I mean, what in the name of Terra happened here last night?"
"I was hoping you could tell me that."
Limbwall shrugged. "I don't know much. I heard rumours that an attempt had been made on the chief provost's life last night."
"Where? At the palace? Someone tried to kill Trice?"
"That's what I heard."
"From?"
"People in the crowd."
"Not a great source, Limbwall. Stick to your clerking. No one's crazy or powerful enough to try for Trice."
Limbwall glanced out of the window. "You got a better explanation?"
She hadn't. The clogging tides of pedestrians had thinned out now, and they were making better time through almost deserted streets and sink-routes that the barricades had closed off. Even so, they had to stop twice to allow unfriendly squads of PDF to check their authority.
"You realise that we're going to have to go all the way round the inner circle to get to mag central."
Plyton nodded. "Better that than wait in a queue. Besides, this way we can stop in at the sacristy en route. I was going to have to go there this morning anyway. This saves me a trip. If you don't mind."
"Not at all," Limbwall said. He was clearly enjoying his ride in the ornate roadster. "By the way, speaking of the sacristy case, I pulled that file for you."
