by Dan Abnett
‘No one can do that,’ said Leyla Slade. ‘Not against the incunabula. It’s not possible.’
‘It seems it is. I’m seeing it,’ said Culzean. ‘I knew Trice would employ seriously capable protectors, but this a revelation. The movements are so fluid, so fast, I can scarcely track them. But it won’t last.’
‘You’re sure?’ asked the magus-clancular.
‘The Thief never tires. The man will. And he is, as I said, unarmed. All he can do is protect himself.’
Instinct told Revoke he was just two, maybe three, strokes from running out of luck. He couldn’t sustain this pace of combat much more than a few seconds longer. He sidestepped the Thief and yelled an un-word in desperation.
The force of the un-word smashed the incunabula back fifty metres. It hit the processional’s side wall, cratering it, and fell to the floor.
‘What… what was that?’ Saul Keener gasped.
‘I don’t know,’ Culzean snapped. ‘Hold your concentration, damn it!’
Revoke sprinted down the hall and caught up with Trice. He started to hurry his master towards the nearest exit. ‘Securitas!’ he yelled into his vox. ‘Securitas to the main processional! Code black!’
‘What was it?’ Trice asked, his eyes wide with shock.
‘Not was, is. Still. Come on!’ Almost dragging Trice, Revoke reached the stairwell that led down to the palace’s wide courtyard. Behind him, the incunabula stirred and got up. It flew after its prey, down the hall, down the staircase, into the courtyard.
And halted. The raised weapons of sixty palace troopers faced it.
The men opened fire.
The vast barrage blew the stone doorway apart, shattered the lintel and punched deep shot-craters in the stones of the wall. The night lit up with a dazzling storm of energy bolts.
The incunabula came out of that fire, las-rounds bouncing like raindrops off the primaevally-forged metal of its sheathing armour. The rhyming swords glowed red with heat as they swung.
A guard lost his face in a burst of blood. Another went over, headless. A third staggered back, missing his left arm; a fourth was savagely deprived of most of his rifle and both the hands that had been clutching it. Still the shots rained as the Brass Thief hacked into their ranks. Two men toppled slackly, their waists clean-severed. A decapitation. A trooper fell to his knees, trying to hold his stomach in. Another fell on his back, his sternum snapped through. The troopers kept shooting, though they were now backing away, splashing through the pooling blood that was starting to cover the flagstones. An arm was struck off, a leg at the knee. A man flew backwards through the air, cut in two, and crunched down onto the roof of a parked transport, bursting out the windows. A trooper sank onto his side, clutching his visor. Another dragged himself across the slippery paving, trying to find his legs.
There was an especially vivid flash of light. A specialist trooper team hefting a plasma cannon had begun to open fire. The Brass Thief lurched as it was hit, turned, and threw one of its rhyming swords at the weapon-team.
Tip-first, the whistling blade tore through the plasma weapon’s breach and impaled the chief operator. Its power-pod ruptured, the plasma cannon exploded, incinerating the entire team in a boiling cloud of violet energy. The shockwave felled another dozen men nearby. A fragment of razor-sharp debris from the cannon’s focus ring zinged out and sliced through the neck of a guard officer.
Culzean smiled. ‘Oh, tell him to bring that, Saul. For my collection.’
The remaining troopers had broken in terror and were running for their lives. The blazing wreck of the exploded cannon formed a white-hot pyre at the heart of the courtyard, the leaping flames reflected in the oil-dark lake of blood. Bodies and body parts lay everywhere. Nearly forty men of the palace elite, butchered.
The Brass Thief stepped forward, the firelight glinting off its blood-flecked armour. It bent down and picked up the piece of focus ring and hooked it around its belt. Then it held out its empty hand and the rhyming sword it had thrown flew back into its grasp, plucked from the burning corpse.
On the far side of the courtyard, Revoke pushed Trice behind him, and turned to face the oncoming spectre of destruction.
‘Toros, old friend,’ Trice said. ‘Please, don’t let it get me.’
Revoke tried to reply, but his mouth was bleeding from the un-word he had used to knock the daemon down in the processional. That had been the only thing that had worked.
Though it hurt and tore his throat, Revoke howled another un-word. The advancing incunabula rocked back as if it had been hit in the chest by a tank round .
Revoke could smell psychic powers suddenly. The trace had probably been there all along, but he’d been too busy to taste it. He reached out with his telepathy, not at the approaching daemon – that would have been futile – but at the distant mind that guided it.
‘Toros!’ Jader Trice cried out. The Brass Thief was powering forward. Two more un-words, agonisingly voiced, slapped it back. Revoke’s real counterattack was somewhere else. As he shouted the monster down, his mind was soaring elsewhere, into the dark, into the depths of the city.
There. There. There! Some twitching lunk called Keener.
‘Saul?’ Culzean said.
‘Mhhh…’ Keener replied.
‘Saul, disengage now. Right now.’
Orfeo Culzean tore his hand away from the orb to break contact. He had felt what was coming. A vengeful telepathic fury of hideous force struck Saul Keener like a hammer blow. He stroked out at once, his brain pulped. His eyes burst into flames.
With a violent, twitching fit, he toppled over, dead.
Loosed, unguided suddenly, the incunabula staggered, off-balance. It glared around the courtyard for a moment, the firelight dancing off its crested mask. 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 any more. 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’s 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.
