by Dan Abnett
‘We climb,’ said Thonius.
‘Up that?’ Plyton laughed.
‘Yes,’ said Thonius.
‘We’re rushing this,’ said Plyton. ‘We have no idea what’s up there. We should surveil it properly. Maybe get up in the crags to the west there,’ she pointed. ‘I don’t like the idea of just charging in. We need to bed down and watch the place, measure what we’re up against.’
‘I agree,’ said Ballack. ‘A few days, and once we’re sure–’
‘I don’t have a few days,’ said Thonius.
‘What?’ asked Ballack, brushing back strands of long white hair that the wind had blown across his face. Thonius realised what he had said.
‘We don’t have a few days,’ said Thonius.
‘No, we don’t,’ said Belknap. He put his field glasses back in their worn case. ‘If Kara’s alive–’
‘Hell with Kara!’ snapped Ballack. ‘This is too important to–’
Belknap held his rifle out to Plyton.
‘Hold this, Maud.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I’ll shoot him otherwise.’
She took the gun. Belknap moved with breathtaking speed. His fist smashed into Ballack’s mouth.
‘I’ll tell you what’s important, you bastard,’ Belknap said, glaring down at the prone interrogator. ‘Kara. Kara, Kara, Kara. Stay here, if you like. I’m going up there.’
‘Madman!’ Ballack coughed, spitting out blood.
‘That’s enough,’ snapped Thonius. Quietly, he was impressed by Belknap’s reactions. Quite apart from his speed and power – it was easy to forget that the doctor was a veteran soldier first and a medicae second – Belknap had acted out of loyalty, love and friendship. Those were the only things that mattered any more. Belknap was on his side.
‘Let’s not fight amongst ourselves,’ Thonius said. He held out his right hand to haul Ballack up, and then, at the last moment, proffered his left hand instead. ‘Come on.’
‘I’m sorry, doctor,’ Ballack said as he was helped up. ‘I spoke without thinking. Of course Kara is a priority.’
Belknap grunted and took his weapon back from Plyton.
‘We go up,’ said Thonius. ‘I know a few days’ surveillance would prepare us better, Maud, but we can’t afford it. Kara, bless her soul, can’t afford it. If she’s alive.’
‘She’s alive,’ said Belknap grimly. Plyton touched his arm reassuringly.
‘We can’t do this by the book,’ said Thonius. ‘We can’t even call for backup. So we go in tonight.’
Belknap nodded. Plyton sighed.
‘Say we do,’ said Ballack, fingering his split lip ruefully. ‘How? That’s a thousand metres sheer.’
‘We climb,’ said Thonius.
‘Again,’ snorted Plyton, ‘up that?’
‘There are several routes,’ said Thonius. ‘Cliff pathways. I can–’
‘You can what?’ asked Ballack.
‘I can see them,’ Thonius replied, pointing. ‘There, there, and there.’
Belknap took out his binoculars again and adjusted them. ‘Yeah, he’s right. Well spotted, Carl. How the hell did you see them?’
Thonius shrugged.
‘Pathways?’ asked Plyton.
‘There are at least three routes up the cliff, east and west,’ replied Belknap. ‘They’re treacherous and steep, but they’re a way in. If we survive the climb in the storm that’s about to break over us.’
‘Big if,’ shuddered Plyton.
Belknap looked over at Thonius. ‘What’s the plan?’
‘We go up, we get in. We... I dunno, kill things?’ said Thonius. ‘Let’s get up there first.’
‘I think we should–’ Ballack began. The other three were already marching off down the field through the enclosing dusk.
‘All right,’ Ballack said. ‘We’re going. I get that. Wait for me.’
Five
Orfeo Culzean opened the door to the Alcove. The sounds of a party rang in after him from a terrace high above.
‘They’re having fun,’ said Kara Swole.
‘They are, aren’t they?’ Culzean agreed.
‘Now you come for me,’ she said. ‘More fun?’
He closed the heavy, black door of the room behind him and shut the sounds out. ‘Oh, don’t be like that. It doesn’t have to be like that.’
‘You intend to torture me,’ said Kara. She was shackled, painfully tight, to a wooden chair. It was the very same chair Culzean had sat on during his conversation with Ravenor in the cornfield.
‘Torture is too strong a term,’ said Culzean. The Alcove was a dark, dank space in the lower reaches of Elmingard, more a cell than anything. Culzean believed it had been used by the monks, ages past, when they withdrew to meditate. Experimental seances also suggested that this was the place where the astronomer’s servants had locked him on the days when his madness ran particularly wild. Culzean had made it his own, a private sanctum. Not even Molotch was allowed in here. Age-browned specimen skeletons hung from racks, their connective tissues replaced by intricate brass hinges and pins, every bone numbered and serialed in ink. All of the specimens belonged to freaks of nature: a giant, two encephalitic dwarfs, conjoined twins, a canine with a human skull, and other things too misshapen to identify. They were just fused masses of bone and calcification. Fat glass jars sat on shelves full of diseased viscera, tumours, xenotype organs, and pickled animals, blanched white like albinos in the preserving fluids.
Culzean walked over to a chest of drawers and began rifling through the contents.
Kara stared at her captor. ‘Let me tell you, Orfeo... you are Orfeo Culzean, aren’t you?’
‘I am.’
‘Uh huh,’ she nodded, her lips cut and swollen. ‘Look, Orfeo, I understand what you are. I know what you want. I have spent a week being tortured by that animal Siskind. He had Worna’s help. He was skilled. I have nothing left to tell.’
‘The thing is,’ said Culzean, ‘I actually believe you. Siskind is third generation Cognitae. He has tremendous invasive skills, and Worna, well, Worna is Worna. I am truly sorry for you, the pains you must have endured, but the thing is, the thing is, I think you might know more than you think you know.’
‘I don’t. Just kill me,’ Kara begged. ‘Please don’t hurt me any more. In the name of–’
‘Kara, I don’t intend to,’ said Culzean. He drew something out of one of the drawers. ‘Do you know what this is?’
‘I can’t imagine.’
‘It’s a kinebrach oculous. See?’
He held it out in front of her. He showed her the head brace, and made the coloured lenses flip and exchange.
‘Surprisingly timid, the kinebrach, very cautious. Humanoid forms, about so high,’ he held out his hand in indication. ‘They liked to know what was coming. Of course, they’re long dead, so maybe this device has its limits, although I like to think that, through such instruments, they saw their impending doom. Anyway, where was I? Ah yes. You look into this and...’
He paused. ‘Kaleidoscopes. I had a kaleidoscope when I was a boy,’ he said. ‘Did you?’
‘I was a girl.’
‘Funny, Kara. Did you? A kaleidoscope?’
‘Yes.’
‘Great, weren’t they? The shuffling and the clattering? I loved that. I saw the galaxy through mine. What did you see, Kara?’
‘Pretty patterns.’
‘A kinebrach oculous is very like that. It doesn’t hurt. It just shows you the truth. Pretty patterns of truth.’
Kara made a tiny moan.
Both of them jumped as Culzean’s link chimed. Taking it out of his pocket, Culzean looked at Kara and laughed.
‘My, my! Tense, aren’t we? Must be the storm.’ He put the link to his ear. ‘Yes, Leyla?’
‘We’re tracking someone. A warm hit on the crag paths below us.’
‘A shepherd, probably.’
‘No, Orfeo,’ the link crackled. ‘I’m waiting for confirmation
, but I think we have a genuine bio-sign fix.’
‘An identity? Who’s coming to call at this late hour, Ley?’
‘Try Carl Thonius.’
Culzean blinked. ‘Track him. Arm the sentry guns and track him, Leyla. Call me back the moment you have that confirmation.’
‘Yes, sir.’
Culzean closed the link. He looked back at Kara Swole.
‘You got a message off to your people, didn’t you? Oh, you clever girl. You clever, pretty girl... and you hid that from Siskind and Worna so well. What else are you concealing, Kara? Ravenor’s real fate, perhaps?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘That part is true.’
‘There’s something,’ said Culzean gently, bending down to peer into her eyes. She could smell his sweet, clean breath and his hair oil. His eyes were almost kind, almost concerned for her wellbeing. ‘I can see it in you... something...’
‘Nothing.’
He peered closer, until the tips of their noses were almost touching. ‘I have been reading the languages of the body, face and eyes for years, far longer than Siskind. He missed this, but I can see it. There’s something wrapped up in that head of yours.’
‘Please... I swear there’s nothing else.’
He rose. With steady, gentle hands, he fitted the kinebrach device around her head, dropping the coloured lenses over her eyes, and arranging them carefully. The iron scalp brace sat like a barbarian’s crown on her red hair. He buckled the straps under her chin. Content with the preparations, he stood back and stared at her.
‘Relax,’ said Culzean. ‘Let it do all the work.’
Nothing happened for a moment. Kara sat, stock-still, tensed for the worst. Then she began to twitch her head slightly every few seconds, flinching a little, as if to avoid some flying insect buzzing at her face.
‘Kara?’
She murmured something. Her twitching became more accentuated. Her body jumped and jolted, like a blindfolded person tormented by sounds darting about around them.
‘Make... make it stop,’ Kara said, her voice wobbling.
‘Only when we’re done,’ said Culzean. He placed a hand on her left shoulder to steady her. ‘Look directly into it. Stop flinching away.’
‘No...’
‘Do it, please.’
She began to tremble. The tremble was so spastic, it seemed to be prefiguring a grand mal seizure.
‘Oh!’ she cried. ‘Oh! Oh Throne! Oh Emperor!’
‘What do you see?’ Culzean asked. She made a choking, gagging sound in her throat, as if she was about to retch. She writhed in the restraints.
‘Tell me,’ he soothed.
‘I remember! I remember!’ Kara Swole shrieked. ‘Carl!’
Then she began to scream.
On the lower south terrace of Elmingard, Siskind was celebrating. All of Culzean’s people not on duty that night had assembled. There were about twenty-five in all – hired guns, savants and technical experts, and some of the senior domestics. They had taken dinner in the long room over the terrace, and had come out onto the terrace with drinks in their hands to watch the storm begin its slow, lusty tumble down the nightscape of the mountains.
In a half hour or so, conditions would be too fierce and wet for them to remain outside, but just then there were only a few big raindrops in the air, propelled by the gathering wind. The revellers gathered amongst the fluttering taper lights, and enjoyed the building light show of the storm. Lightning, blue-white and vivid, lanced around the crags of the hog’s back, fixing its silhouette against the bleak night sky. Sheet electrics, a foggy, blinking radiance, underlit the bunching cloud wall.
Siskind had already drunk too much. In a voice louder than any of the jovial voices on the north terrace, he was regaling some of the staff members with the tale of Ravenor’s demise. Worna, a bottle of amasec in his fist, sat aloof at the end of the terrace, regarding the pitch black drop into the flat country below.
Molotch appeared beside him. He was dressed in black with only his head and hands exposed. He loomed, like a spectre.
‘A notable night,’ Worna rumbled, as if the thunder was speaking through him.
Molotch half nodded.
‘An achievement,’ Worna added, taking a sip from his bottle. He offered it to Molotch, but Molotch shook his head. Worna shrugged and said, ‘I know this is a result you have longed for these many years. Your enemy is dead.’
‘Yes,’ said Molotch.
‘You are pleased, then, sir?’ Worna asked.
‘I am trying to allow myself a feeling of triumph,’ said Molotch quietly. ‘I certainly thank you and the shipmaster for your sterling efforts. Ravenor has, as you remark, dogged me for more years than I care to recall. I have wished him dead so many times, yearned for it. I suppose now it is actually true, it feels like an anti-climax. It is often the way with things that are sought after for so long. Compared to the effort, the victory seems barren.’
Worna grunted. ‘I know that one. Hunting a mark for months or years, and when you finally get the strike, it feels hollow and empty, but there’s more to this, isn’t there, if you don’t mind me asking?’
Molotch glanced at the ancient bounty hunter and smiled an asymmetrical smile. ‘You amuse me, Lucius. For all your brute demeanour, you exhibit a perceptive mind. Yes, there is more to this.’
Molotch looked away as a particularly violent jag of lightning seared the peaks above. It seemed as if he was unwilling to say anything further.
Then he glanced back at Worna and said. ‘There are dark days ahead, you see, Lucius, dark even by our standards. Through Orfeo, I made Ravenor an offer. I have no love for him, you understand, but he was a very capable being. I believed that, together, we might avert the oncoming darkness. Ravenor chose to reject my offer. Now he is dead, and in no position to reconsider it. So, I suppose, I mourn his death as much as I celebrate it.’
Worna shrugged. ‘I dunno,’ he considered, ‘the crippled bastard was the enemy, when all was said and done.’
‘There is another enemy,’ said Molotch. He looked around. ‘Where’s Culzean? He usually enjoys this kind of merriment. I haven’t seen him since the end of the meal.’
Worna shook his scarred head. He felt awkward. Culzean had ordered him firmly not to tell Molotch about the prisoner, and he found it extremely uncomfortable keeping secrets from Molotch. There were very few things in the forsaken galaxy that Lucius Worna was afraid of, but Zygmunt Molotch made the cut.
‘He’ll be back, I’m sure,’ Worna said. ‘He’s probably checking something.’
Leyla Slade leant over Drouet’s cogitator post in the security control centre, watching the multiple images drifting and switching on the hololithic projection.
‘That’s definitely Thonius,’ she said.
‘Bio-print confirms,’ Drouet said.
‘Pinpoint, please.’
Drouet adjusted some of the cogitator’s controls. ‘West flank of the cliffs, between markers thirty-six and thirty-seven,’ he replied. ‘That’s about sixty metres shy of the summit. I’ve got him painted by three motion and pict scanners. Positive ID. If he continues unchecked, he’ll make west low terrace in under ten minutes. I thought he was supposed to be a principal agent, mam?’
‘Why do you say that?’
Drouet shrugged. ‘He’s not exactly moving with any skill or subtlety. It seems to me it’s taking all his effort just to climb the cliff. Doesn’t he realise we’ve got him cold?’
Leyla leaned in closer. ‘Have we got a gun on him yet?’
‘Sentry 18 will acquire him in about three minutes. He must know we can see him, surely? He must realise Elmingard is locked down tight with scanners and trips?’
‘Apparently not,’ Slade replied. ‘I think our friend Thonius has underestimated our capabilities. Load sentry 18. Track and fix, and fire on my command.’
‘Yes, mam,’ said Drouet.
‘Mam?’ Tzabo called from his machine. She crossed to him. ‘I’ve found
another. Confirmed sensor hit. Eastern side, a little closer than target one.’
‘Show me.’
‘He’s in deep shadow, and partially concealed. I’ll punch up night scoping and enhance.’
An image – just a portion of a profile boosted by low-light enhanciles – flickered onto the ’lith projection.
‘Know him?’ asked Tzabo.
‘No, I...’ Slade paused. ‘Shit, that’s Ballack! Frig it, he’s supposed to be dead! Molotch killed him on Tancred!’
‘Not with any lasting success, it would appear,’ said Tzabo.
‘Is he ranged?’ Slade asked.
‘He will be in twenty-five seconds at current rate of advance.’
‘Get me–’ she began. Her link beeped.
‘Slade,’ she answered, pulling the device out of her pocket.
‘Ley, it’s me.’ Culzean’s voice floated back. There was a strange, muffled yelping sound coming through behind him.
‘What’s going on?’ Slade asked. ‘I can hear–’
‘Ignore the background fuss,’ Culzean replied. ‘The lovely Kara just had an epiphany, and she’s getting over it. Ley, tell me quickly, have you confirmed Thonius?’
‘Bio-trace and visual,’ she said. ‘Definitive match. Palpable. Get this, we’ve also got Ballack coming up for a visit.’
‘Ballack? Really?’
‘I’d wager my reputation, sir.’
‘Listen to me, Leyla, and listen carefully. I want them taken alive, especially Thonius.’
‘What?’
‘I’m deadly serious, Ley. Do this for me, and do it discreetly. Knock your systems back to passive before they realise they’re being targeted.’
‘Orfeo, that’s madness! The sentry guns are seconds away from acquiring them both. I can hose them off the rocks!’
‘No! I want Thonius brought in alive, you understand me? Alive. Do it personally, if you have to. Get him into custody, immediately and quietly. Make sure Zygmunt doesn’t know anything about it.’
‘This has a bad feel to me,’ she warned.
‘Leyla, I love you, but this is one of those times when you act like a good girl and do exactly what I frigging well tell you. Go passive, shut the system back, get Thonius alive. Ballack too, the silly little fool, but I don’t care so much if you have to top him. Are we clear?’
