by Dan Abnett
She took him by the hand and dragged him up from the couch.
‘Going well so far,’ he murmured.
She kissed him again. Lips locked, they rocked each other back and forth, knocking into the table with their legs, shivering the glasses. His amasec spilled. Her mouth was inhumanly hot, her tongue rapid like a wet snake.
‘Here? Really?’ he mumbled when their kiss finally parted.
A smile licked across her mouth like a flame across parchment. She gestured at the white silk walls around them and the flickering silhouettes cast upon them, with a casual flip of her black-gloved hand.
‘The salon prides itself on privacy and discretion,’ she said.
‘But the walls are thin. Just silk–’ he began.
‘Are you afraid?’
He nodded. Then they both laughed. They kissed again, bumping into the couch and the table.
‘Throne!’ he gasped.
She pulled off his coat and yanked open his shirt, tearing the seams apart.
‘Where?’ she demanded.
‘Gut level,’ he replied, moving against her. She ripped his shirt down further to expose his torso, slick with sweat.
‘Where?’
‘There!’ he whispered, pointing to the thumb-length, dark scar on his knotted lower abdomen, just above his hip.
She dropped to her knees in front of him.
‘Oh, well now...’ he sighed, blinking.
She kissed the scar. She lingered. Her tongue slid on his flesh. Then she stood again to face him.
‘You’re stopping there?’ he gulped.
Something chimed. She took out her vox.
‘My master summons me,’ she said.
‘Throne, really?’
‘Really.’
She turned and picked up her hat. ‘You shouldn’t be alive,’ she told him. ‘Carthaen steel. You are one of a very select group, Harlon. What we call Wyla Esw Fauhn, which means “spared by the genius”.’
‘Will I see you again?’ he asked, feeling foolish and fourteen the moment he said it.
Angharad smiled. The smile was predatory and thrilling to him.
‘Always,’ she said. Then she pulled back the silk drape and vanished.
Nayl sat down. A servitor peered in through the drape.
‘What may I fetch for you, master?’ it whirred.
‘An amasec. A large one. And also a fresh shirt,’ he replied.
Six
‘The hobbled bastard was right, then,’ muttered Inquisitor Fenx. ‘You have to hand it to him.’
‘You do, you really do,’ replied Ballack.
‘Here all the time,’ Fenx continued. He slid down out of the halted carriage into the gloomy side street. ‘And we laughed at his hunch.’
‘Ravenor is old and experienced,’ Ballack said, clambering out to join Fenx. ‘What was it he said? He has faith.’ Ballack spoke the word as if it was dirty. ‘He knows his business.’
‘I will have to make my apologies to him,’ Fenx decided. ‘Glory, Myzard will have to make her apologies too. Now I understand why he’s so highly regarded.’
Fenx looked at Ballack.
‘Provided, of course, that this is confirmed. This is confirmed, I take it?’
‘The intelligence is immaculate,’ said Ballack. ‘Gathered from eight separate spy units, and corroborated by gene sensors. Molotch is here.’
‘We have him cold?’
‘We have him cold, sir.’
Fenx torched up the power to his black body armour. There was a whine, gathering in pitch. Green signal lights lit off around his high collar. He unshipped his bolter and racked it twice.
‘Bring them up,’ he ordered.
Interrogator Ballack nodded. The others dismounted from the waiting carriages. D’mal Singh and her gunhounds, Shugurth, Claudel, Mentator.
‘Where’s Angharad?’ Fenx asked.
‘On her way. She’s signalled.’
Fenx shook his head. ‘We can’t wait for her. Not with the target in sniffing range. We commence.’
‘We commence!’ Ballack called to the waiting figures.
‘Not like that,’ grumbled Tarkos Mentator, the old savant. He hobbled forward on his cane. ‘Not with firearms.’
‘What?’ Fenx spat.
Mentator shrugged as if in the most humble of apologies. He aimed a palsied hand at the dark building before them. ‘Your prey, sir, has made his nest in a house of generation. Public generation 987, to be accurate, serving the western district of Basteen. Quite apart from the power cells contained in this place, there are volatile chemicals held in suspension. Use of firearms would be a very bad idea.’
‘Because?’ Fenx asked. He caught himself. He was sounding stupid. ‘Because we’ll blow ourselves to hell, right. Thank you, savant.’ He holstered his bolter. ‘Muzzle your firearms!’ he ordered, drawing a short, curved sword.
Claudel put away her plasma pistol and pulled out two bloodletting sickles, one in each hand. Cursing, Shugurth patiently detached his cannon from his shoulder socket, put it back in the carriage, and hefted up a war axe with a long, knurled grip.
‘Guns, no!’ D’mal Singh instructed her whining hounds. Their weapon systems deactivated and withdrew. ‘Teeth, good!’ she said. They chomped and clacked their razor edged jaws, growling.
Ballack had drawn a rapier and a matching poniard.
‘Commence,’ snapped Fenx, walking towards the building. ‘Bonus pay to the one who brings me Molotch’s head.’
The corpse lay face down in the dark on the cold steel decking.
‘Where did you procure the cadaver?’ Molotch asked.
‘It’s the inker you killed,’ Worna said. ‘We needed a body and we had one lying around. Not a great likeness, but then who knows what you look like any more?’
‘Will it suffice?’
Lucius Worna, massive and massively scarred in his chipped power armour, nodded. ‘I had it typed and matched to your gene, palm and retina. They won’t know the difference.’
‘End of story?’ Molotch asked the giant bounty hunter.
Worna smiled. ‘End of story.’
‘That sort of typing and gene-scripting costs dearly,’ Leyla Slade said.
‘It costs what it costs,’ Orfeo Culzean replied. ‘Are we all ready? Zygmunt, you know how this has to work?’
‘I know, Orfeo. I truly know. Consider this recompense for my mistake.’
‘I will. I do. But Ballack–’
‘Leave Ballack to me,’ Molotch replied.
Warning runes lit up on Leyla Slade’s auspex grid. ‘Door four and door seven!’ she hissed. ‘Here they come.’ She rose in one fluid movement from her cross-legged position on the deck and drew a stabbing sword. Lucius Worna moved forward beside her, a warhammer resting across his shoulder plate.
Molotch stepped in front of them. ‘May I crave a favour? From you, Lucius, and you, Leyla? May I do this?’
‘You’ll need support,’ growled Worna.
‘No, I won’t. But if I do, you won’t be far away, will you?’
Worna shrugged, a tectonic gesture of his powered plate.
‘Let me do this,’ Molotch insisted. ‘Let me enjoy this.’
‘Let him,’ said Culzean.
Leyla Slade grinned and offered the grip of her blade to Molotch.
‘I won’t need that,’ he said. He turned, and vanished into the shadows.
The house of generation was very large, with a high roof and deep pockets of darkness. The main body of the hall was lined with generator hubs throbbing in the half-dark. The light was violet, dim. Fenx’s team moved in, whisper quiet, spreading out between the aisles of humming hub units, slipping from shadow to shadow.
Bringing up the rear, Tarkos Mentator shuffled along on his cane. He let the others do the real work, the violence. He was only there to advise.
‘Bad place for a fight,’ a voice whispered in his ear.
‘It is,’ Mentator agreed lightly, then caught
himself. He was suddenly terrified. Someone was walking along just behind him. Just a shadow, just a shape at his shoulder.
‘I am reminded of Purlingerius, in the third act. The choral requiem,’ the voice suggested. ‘What is it again? “A man must choose his final resting place, as befits his soul.” Quite magnificent.’
‘Ah, I see you know your Stradhal,’ Mentator answered timidly.
‘Know it well,’ the voice replied. ‘You like opera, then?
‘I do.’
‘So do I. Stradhal. Jevoith. Carnathi, apart from the awful final works.’
‘Oh, they are awful, aren’t they?’ Mentator agreed. Fear was almost choking him.
‘Are you afraid of me?’ the voice beside him whispered.
‘Yes, yes I am,’ Mentator answered, ‘very much.’
‘You want to cry out to the others, don’t you?’
‘Y-yes.’
‘But you dare not raise your voice, do you?’
‘N-no.’
‘You know who I am?’
‘I... I can guess.’
‘I think you guess right, my friend. If you did cry out, well then... things would become very painful and awkward for you. But I’d hate for that to happen to a fellow appreciator of the operatic art. Why don’t we just walk for a while, side-by-side, you and me? We could discuss Stradhal some more.’
‘Well...’
‘That would be all right then, wouldn’t it?’
‘Yes.’
They walked on a little further.
‘I’m about to be attacked,’ said the voice calmly. ‘Try to remember not to cry out.’
Mentator nodded.
A shadow moved suddenly. Interrogator Claudel pounced on them from behind a turbine hub. Her sickles were swinging, flashing like ice in the gloom.
They did not connect.
‘Claudel,’ Molotch said.
‘What?’ She faltered, robbed of action by the tone of command.
His fingers stabbed into her throat and she died. Molotch caught her falling body and carried it down to the ground gently. He picked up her sickles.
‘Oh Throne, you have slain her!’ Mentator stammered.
‘Yes, I have.’
‘Oh Throne! Oh Throne!’ His voice started to rise.
‘Remember what I said,’ Molotch warned.
‘Fenx! He’s here!’ Mentator yelled. ‘He’s here!’
‘Oh dear me. I thought we had an understanding,’ said Molotch. The sickles flashed.
Inquisitor Fenx heard the savant’s urgent cry, cut off short. He ran back down the aisle of the turbine hall.
Claudel lay quiet and still on the decking, as if asleep. Behind her, Tarkos Mentator was curled in a foetal knot, his robes soaked black with blood.
‘Throne!’ Fenx growled. ‘How did–’
‘That happen?’ Molotch finished for him.
Fenx swept around at the sound of the voice, but his sword sliced into empty shadows. Misdirection was Molotch’s favourite game. He threw his voice well.
There was a blunt crack of bone. Fenx staggered backwards, bumping sidelong into the nearest hub. One of Claudel’s sickles transfixed his skull, the handle jutting up from the crown of his head.
Fenx fell back against the hub and slid down until he was almost flat on the floor. He opened his mouth and blood trickled down his chin. The light in his eyes went out and his face went slack.
Molotch turned from Fenx’s corpse as a wail of misery echoed down the aisle behind him. D’mal Singh stood twenty metres away, the gunhounds at her side. She gazed at Molotch in anguish and hatred.
‘Murderer...’ she gulped.
‘Murderer...’ he echoed quietly, not for sense, but to practise the timbre of her intonation.
‘Kill, good!’ she snarled.
The gunhounds took off towards Molotch. They were heavy and powerful, their scrambling paws slapping on the deck, their iron claws scraping. Their razor jaws opened.
‘Kill, good...’ Molotch murmured, getting a true measure of D’mal Singh’s palate and tone. Gunhounds of this model were voice-controlled, specifically keyed to their owner’s voice pattern.
A voice pattern he now used, perfectly. ‘Down, good!’
Five metres short of him, the gunhounds skidded to a halt and lay supine, whimpering, resting their chins on their forepaws.
Molotch smiled. He saw the look of bafflement and horror cross the small woman’s face. Confused, she was vulnerable to the tone of command.
‘D’mal Singh,’ he called. ‘Mute.’
She opened her mouth to command her hounds again. No sound came out. She gaped, her jaw moving uselessly.
There was no time to enjoy her helpless state. Molotch felt a presence at his back, heard a heavy step. The ogryn. The ogryn was coming up behind him. He had a second or less to react.
Molotch threw himself forward between the gunhounds. The ogryn’s axe crashed down into the deck where he had just been standing. As he dived, he hurled the remaining sickle. Spinning, chopping through the air like a fan, the sickle flew in a horizontal arc and smashed D’mal Singh clean off her feet.
Her body landed on its back with a thump and a violent, loose-limbed bounce.
Shugurth howled, yanked his axe-head up out of the punctured deck, and charged. Molotch leapt up, rotating to confront him.
‘Kill, good!’ he ordered in D’mal Singh’s voice.
The gunhounds ploughed forward either side of him to meet the charging ogryn. They slammed into Shugurth with an impact that arrested his forward motion, and brought him down hard on his back. Then they were on top of him. To his credit, the ogryn didn’t cry out much, even though his death was drawn out and messy.
Molotch turned and walked away from the sounds of slavering chops and cracking bone.
‘You can come out now, Ballack,’ he suggested casually.
Interrogator Ballack stepped into the open. His sword and dagger were both drawn.
‘Well, aren’t you quite the psycho bastard?’ Ballack said, his longer blade rising to touch Molotch’s throat.
‘I am, I really am. You can put that away, Gall. We’re done.’
Ballack sheathed his sword with a nod. ‘Of course we are. That was just for show.’ He flipped his dagger over in his other hand and tucked it into its scabbard.
‘It’s all just for show,’ Molotch agreed. ‘You are quite treacherous, Ballack.’
Ballack bowed and smiled. ‘It is a matter of the most pleasant fraternal confidence.’
‘How did an alumnus of the Cognitae end up in the ordos?’ Molotch asked.
‘Where else could I do most good?’ Ballack asked.
‘You efforts are noted,’ said Molotch. ‘Now all that’s left is to make this look convincing.’
‘I’ll make the report, of course. The others died trying to bring you down.’
‘Naturally.’
‘You have a corpse prepared?’
Molotch nodded. ‘I left it over there,’ he said, pointing to their left.
‘And it will convince the most scrupulous tests?’
‘It will. Especially given the fact it will be extensively burned. A stray shot during the battle...’
Ballack smiled approvingly. ‘That will conceal a multitude of sins.’
‘Yours included,’ said Molotch. He brushed against Ballack so fleetingly, the interrogator didn’t understand what was happening until it had happened. There was a metallic clack as the handcuffs locked into place. Ballack suddenly found his left wrist cuffed tight against the casing of a turbine hub.
‘Molotch? What... what is this?’
‘This is goodbye, Ballack.’
‘Molotch!’ Ballack screamed. ‘Molotch!’
She reached the dark side street where Fenx’s carriages were parked. There was no sign of anyone around. The last message she had received had informed her that the team was deploying into the house of generation across the street.
Something was
wrong. Very wrong. She was getting only a dead response from her body-to-body comm. A trickle of dead air.
‘Fenx? Sir?’
Vox static.
Angharad stripped off the rest of her formal black dress, tossed it aside, and cinched tight the straps and buckles of the form-fitting leather armour she was wearing underneath. Her clan armour. There was no time to find the cloak. She eased the Carthaen steel out of its long case.
She prowled across the empty street, the steel in her hands quivering like a diviner’s rod. Overhead, the stars were cold smudges of light in a purple sky. Two of Tancred’s moons were aloft, both claw shapes. Killing moons. A good omen, or a bad one, depending on who survived to see the following sunrise.
Under the eaves of the great building, it was as black as a cavern. She heard a distant sob from within, a stifled croak of pain. She pushed open the outer door and immediately smelled blood on the close air inside.
Evisorex smelled it too. Holding the long sword in a tight, raised grip, she stepped across the threshold and made her way into the turbine hall.
Silence. Darkness.
Ten seconds later, with a catastrophic roar, a tidal wave of boiling, golden flame blew out through all the windows and doors.
Seven
Kara had walked the long way around, through the recreational gardens where the gentlewomen of the city came in their long dresses and tall hats to sit under the trees and make civilised conversation, around the ornamental lake, and up through the patchwork of lesser shrines and chapel houses where the pilgrims queued. The temple of Saint Karyl sat on a shelf of dark volcanic rock at the western edge of Basteen, a white dome rising above the mosaic of red-brick buildings in the bright afternoon heat. Priests were calling the faithful to worship, and peddlers were hawking their votive trinkets from handcarts. Ritual banners hung limp against an indolent yellow sky.
She entered the temple through the western porch, and walked around the back of the vast church, relishing the stone cool. A small congregation was gathering at the altar rail, and their voices were muted echoes in the magnificent, spacious emptiness: motes of human life in a giant cave of stone.
She went through into the side chapel, a round chamber set off from the main body of the temple, where candles fluttered on a brass stand below high windows.
