by Dan Abnett
‘Give us a moment,’ the surveyor of fabric told Tuvi, and she nodded, waiting outside.
The door pulled shut behind her. Franco Boone pulled back his cowl. ‘Two minutes,’ he told his fellow genewhips. ‘Two minutes before that little bitch suspects something. Quick and clean, no messing about.’ The men, Roke and Pharon, spread out and began to search the apartment area.
‘Boone!’ one of them hissed. Boone hurried into the bedchamber. Pharon was holding up a canvas jacket, soiled and dirty.
‘Since when does an uxor wear something like this?’
‘Bag it and hide it under your robe,’ Boone replied. ‘We’ll test it for gene elements.’
‘Here!’ the other genewhip called urgently. Boone went into the dressing room, and found Roke staring at a dresser top crowded with bowls and dishes of water.
‘What the hell is this about?’ Roke asked.
‘Is that you, Rukhsana?’ Grammaticus called, walking out of the wash room into the bedchamber, naked. He froze at the sight of Boone and his men, and grabbed at the bedspread to cover himself.
‘Who are you?’ Grammaticus yelped.
Boone hesitated, startled. ‘Uhm, surveyor of fabric, we—’
‘Genewhip Boone? Is that you?’ Grammaticus growled.
‘Do I know you, sir?’ Boone asked, quite taken aback.
‘I should think so!’ Grammaticus snapped. ‘Kaido Pius!’
‘Oh, good grief! Yes! Sorry, Hetman Pius,’ Boone stumbled. ‘Sorry, sorry, didn’t recognise you with your clothes off.’
‘What the hell are you doing in my uxor’s chambers, Genewhip? Sniffing around?’
‘We had a lead, a lead about a—’
‘A what?’
Boone paused. He smiled. ‘All right, you got me, het. My hands go up. I wanted to check on Uxor Rukhsana because of information received.’
‘What sort of information?’
‘That she might be carrying on.’
‘She is,’ smiled Grammaticus. ‘With me. It isn’t just the aides who like to put it about, you know?’
‘Shouldn’t you be out at the Great Welcome, het?’ Pharon ventured.
‘Yes, I should,’ Grammaticus grinned. ‘But it’s much more fun being in here. Shouldn’t you be out at the Great Welcome?’
The genewhip looked at his feet.
‘Well, I believe we’ve just embarrassed each other,’ Grammaticus said. ‘Me being here and you… coming in here unauthorised. So what say we forget this ever happened?’
Boone nodded. ‘That’s a splendid notion, het.’
‘Is that my jacket?’ Grammaticus asked. ‘Toss it over here. I’ve been looking for that.’ Pharon threw the jacket to him. ‘All good?’ Grammaticus asked. ‘All good,’ Boone nodded.
‘Good. Now get the hell out of here and I’ll forget you ever tried this.’
‘You won’t tell the uxor?’ Boone asked. ‘Would I?’
Boone and his men left fast.
Grammaticus sighed and sat down on the bed. In looks and build, he was nothing like Kaido Pius, het of the Carnivales. It was amazing what a confident, clear tone of voice could do. Such was the strength of a logokine. A logokine’s voice could tell you what you were seeing in defiance of your eyes and your better judgement.
But it had cost him. Exhausted, Grammaticus flopped back on the bed and stared at the ceiling. He knew a blackout was coming.
He embraced it, even though he knew there would be dragons in it.
OUTSIDE, THE GREAT Welcome was dispersing. Namatjira, with all ceremony, was leading Alpharius and the senior commanders towards his pavilion to discuss forward planning. The vast troop marshals were spilling back towards their billets and positions.
Coming out into the sunlight, Franco Boone paused. Walking back through the palace, he’d had a mind to find Uxor Mu and remonstrate with her for sending him on a fool’s errand. How clumsy to have embarrassed a distinguished het like that!
Now he was in the open, a mist of doubt filled his head. The encounter in the uxor’s quarters took on a disquieting, dream-like gloss. He found he could barely remember the actual exchange.
‘Something the matter?’ asked Roke, walking at his side.
‘Kaido Pius, right?’ Boone asked.
Roke nodded. ‘Bare-assed. Takes all sorts, I suppose.’
‘Rukhsana is a tempting prospect,’ put in Pharon, the other genewhip.
Boone nodded. There wasn’t a man in the Chiliad who’d disagree with Pharon’s appraisal. ‘But it was Pius, wasn’t it?’
Roke and Pharon looked at the senior genewhip and laughed.
‘Are you getting peck that’s stronger than we get?’ Roke chuckled.
‘The question stands,’ said Boone. ‘Was that Kaido Pius?’
‘Yes, Franco!’ Pharon laughed.
‘Then explain that to me, would you?’ Boone asked, pointing.
Through the crowds of dispersing troopers, a hundred metres away, the Chiliad company of Carnivales was breaking ranks to head for their station. Pikes and banners had lowered, the men moving in easy groups, chatting, laughing, taking pinches of peck from their golden boxes.
In the midst of the huddle, joking with his bashaws, was Kaido Pius.
‘PETO? PETO!’ KAIDO Pius cried in delight. He pushed past his bashaws to embrace Soneka.
‘Good to see you,’ Soneka gasped, clenched in a serious bear hug.
‘Good to see you? Good to see you, he says!’ Pius cried to the bashaws. ‘We thought you were dead!’
Soneka smiled, and embraced each of the bashaws in turn. ‘I very nearly was,’ he said.
‘You got out of Visages, then?’ Pius asked.
Soneka nodded. ‘I did. Just.’
‘Where have you been hiding yourself?’
‘The hospital wing. I’m staying there with Lon and the others. Hey, Lon, Shah! Come over here!’
Pius shook his head. ‘Shameful, that’s what it was. When we heard about Visages, we were shocked. My boys have drunk to the Dancers’ memory several times.’
‘Thanks for that, Kai,’ said Soneka. ‘Glory, it’s good to see you.’
Pius looked at Soneka. ‘Come back with us to our billet. We’ll drink and talk of old times.’
‘Later, Kai, I’ll come and find you. Where are you posted?’
‘Line fifteen north, under Uxor Sanzi’s ’cept.’
‘I’ll join you later, all right?’
‘We’ll look out for you, Peto!’ Pius cried, already disappearing in the moving mass. Soneka was pushing on, through the shambling ranks, past the banners of the Threshers and the Arachne.
He could see another banner, up ahead, above the moving tide of troopers.
The Jokers.
Soneka pushed his way forwards until he reached the ranks of the Jokers. He had a terrible, queasy feeling.
‘Hurtado?’ he whispered.
Fifty metres away, through the flowing throng, Bronzi turned and looked back at him. The Jokers’ het was flanked by Tche and Leng, his massive bashaws.
For a moment, through the moving crowd, their eyes locked. Soneka and Bronzi.
‘Hurt? You’re alive! For Terra’s sake! Hurt!’
Bronzi frowned. Then he turned away and was lost in the tide of bodies.
‘Hurt?’ Soneka stood still, as the river of soldiers flowed around him. He wondered if he should follow Bronzi.
He decided that was probably a very bad idea.
SEVEN
Mon Lo Harbour, Nurth, the evening of the day
DINAS CHAYNE HAD been intent on scouring the palace for the author of the insolent, provocative note. He had not risen to its bait, or allowed himself the distraction of anger, but it had usefully focused his mind. Chayne held a frightening grip over his emotions, a skill he’d mastered between the ages of twelve and thirteen. He did not allow emotions to rule his behaviour, ever. Instead, he channelled them as fuel for his actions.
He returned to the security
post to review all the feeds from the palace’s sensor lattice, but one of the adepts had brought him a coded message from the Lord Commander, summoning him with immediate effect. The Lord Commander was holding his first meeting with the Master of the Alpha Legion in his pavilion, and wanted the Lucifer Black bajolur to witness and observe the proceedings.
‘Have this run through full gene and biometric testing,’ he told the adept, handing him the note. ‘Report to me, directly on my link. Misplace this evidence, and I’ll have you shot.’
The adept hurried off to do Chayne’s bidding, a sick and anxious expression on his face.
Chayne made his way to the pavilion. A vast edifice of void-shielded silk marquees, it had been erected on a low tel south of the palace precinct. The first streaks of evening were discolouring the sky, and the shadows had gone soft and long, as if they were melting. Thousands of filament lights, in crystal shades, had been strung like climbing ivy around the structure of the pavilion, and they twinkled in the dusk like the lights of a distant hive. They reminded Chayne of the god-walls of the Imperial Palace on Terra, the mountainside bastions and soaring ramparts illuminated by billions of slit windows, and the great beacons of light that sent vast beams of radiance into the top of the sky. That was a monument no man could see without experiencing an emotional response, not even Chayne. In the older days, it was said that the antique Great Wall of Zhongguo could be seen from near orbit. The Imperial Palace could be seen from Mars.
Chayne entered the pavilion via the security portal, and submitted himself for checking and searches. On Sameranth, two years earlier, a security detail at the pavilion portal had waved him through, not wishing to interfere with a Lucifer Black. Chayne had ordered the detail’s immediate execution. A Lucifer Black uniform could be stolen or copied. No one could be given access to the Lord Commander until he had proved he was who he appeared to be.
Chayne paused briefly in one of the outer tents to converse with Eiman and Belloc, two of his most trusted Lucifers. He explained the business of the note to them, and told them to return to the palace and continue the search. Their conversation, to an outsider, would have seemed odd. There was nothing convivial or comradely about it. Brief statements and instructions were exchanged or given. Lucifer Blacks related to one another in a dry, utilitarian shorthand, dealing only in facts. They expected one another to fill in any speculative blanks, and make their own conjectures.
Chayne had already decided what the note meant, and was fully confident that Eiman and Belloc had grasped the implications too, from the bare facts he had relayed. As had been suspected, a process of espial was active at Mon Lo, within the weave of the Imperial fortifications. The spies were good, able, intelligent and well equipped. Their loyalties were unclear. Chayne had suspected the Nurthene, but no Nurthene would have left a note in Low Gothic, unless the Imperials had massively underestimated the enemy’s capacity for psychological warfare.
The note meant many things, but most of all it meant over-confidence, and that was a fatal weakness in any person. A weakness of emotion. It was quite a feat to be able to sneak out from under the piercingly vigilant lattice of an Imperial security system, but it was altogether something else to acknowledge that you had been there, to leave a trace, a signature, a calling card. Why evade detection, seamlessly in this particular case, if you then admit that evasion by taking credit for it? Two motives occurred to Chayne: someone wanted to goad him and play games with him, or someone was so sure of himself, the gamesmanship was part of the sport.
Either way, over-confidence. A fatal flaw.
The note itself, that little scrap of paper, would tell him everything he needed: the choice of language, the use of language, the phraseology, the psychology of meaning, the pen weight, the handwriting, the paper source, the type of stylus, the ink residue, the gene residue, the fibre trace, the note’s position, the type and origin of the stone left to weigh it down.
The spy, Chayne’s prey, had betrayed himself in a hundred different ways, simply by being cocky. And that cockiness was the biggest lead of all.
Chayne removed his black helmet, slid it under his arm, and entered the main chamber of the glowing pavilion. Inside, lords of mankind were speaking with demigods.
‘KON, MY LOVE?’ the dragon crooned, and licked his forehead with its red tongue.
John Grammaticus forced his way out of the dragon’s biting jaws and woke up. Rukhsana smiled down at him, stroking his cheek.
‘Damn. What time is it?’ he asked.
‘Night has fallen, Kon. Lord Alpharius is dining in the pavilion tent with the Lord Commander.’
Grammaticus sat up quickly, blinking. ‘Damn! I have to go. I have to be there.’
‘Be here with me instead, Kon.’
‘I wish I could.’
He began to get dressed. She sat back, sullen and rebuffed. She glanced around. ‘I think someone’s been in here,’ Rukhsana observed. ‘Yes. The genewhips,’ he said, nodding. ‘Terra!’ she asked. What were they looking for?’
‘Me,’ he smiled.
A SLOW SMILE extended across Namatjira’s lips. ‘I’m no expert,’ he said, ‘but you can’t all be Alpharius.’
Alpharius, or at least the giant who had presented himself as Alpharius to the Lord Commander at the Great Welcome, tipped back his head and laughed.
‘Of course not, lord. My Legion is one body, and we share everything. Identity can be used as a weapon, so we turn one face against the enemy. However, we are friends here.’
Surrounded by his Lucifer Black companions, Namatjira stood at one end of the tented chamber, the senior commanders of the expedition grouped around him in a crescent. The filament lamps covered the pavilion ceiling like stars, and lumen banks underlit the tent walls. Striped and spotted animal pelts had been laid out across the floor as rugs, overlapping and luxurious. Serendip, Namatjira’s thylacene, had laid itself down on a speckled hide at the end of its slack, gold lead.
Facing them were four Astartes in purple plate. Foremost, Alpharius, his helmet still doffed, his copper skin lustrous in the golden light. The other three had joined him for the meeting, though no one, as Chayne would later discover to his consternation, could say from where.
Chayne slipped in through a flap at the rear of the chamber, behind Namatjira’s entourage. Through a slit in the folds of the pavilion’s walls, he could see gangs of liveried servants awaiting the order to hurry in with trays of sweetmeats, wine and fruit. Chamberlains were holding them at the ready.
‘I am Alpharius,’ said the copper-skinned giant, repeated the pledge-claim he had made at the Great Welcome. ‘I have brought with me Ingo Pech and Thias Herzog, my first and second captains.’
Two of the Astartes behind him stepped forwards, removed their helmets with a click-hiss of collar locks, and bowed. They were shaven headed and copper-skinned too. A simple human glance would have read all three as identical triplets.
Chayne did not make a human glance. He appraised them, quickly and efficiently. Not identical triplets, not non-identical triplets, or even uterine brothers. The immediate similarities were strong but superficial. Alpharius was considerably taller than both of his captains. What was more, there was an evident ethnic derivation in the build of his cranium, a slope of the forehead, a mass of the brow. Chayne had been in the presence of Horus Lupercal, and he’d seen that distinctive physiognomy before. There was something about the eyes too. Alpharius’s eyes were cold blue, and shone with an arctic intelligence that made Chayne shudder slightly.
Of the other two, Herzog was ever so slightly the taller. Chayne gauged their heights using the angles of the guy wires and sheet planes of the pavilion behind them. Herzog and Pech were not related either. Chayne counted eighteen points of dissimilarity between the comparative angles of their skulls, their eyes, their lips, the structure of their cheeks, the muscles of their necks, their noses and, most especially, the fingerprint-precise lobes of their ears. Herzog was older by twenty years. Pech was
smaller, but stronger and smarter. There was a very slight but telling shadow around Herzog’s scalp that suggested his hair was of a darker natural colour, and that he shaved his head to resemble his primarch and his fellow captain. Herzog’s eyes were blue, like his primarch’s, but Pech’s were gold-flecked brown.
‘Welcome, captains,’ Namatjira said.
The Astartes nodded.
‘And the other?’ Namatjira asked.
The fourth Astartes had remained at the back of the group, his helmet in place.
‘That is one of my common troopers,’ Alpharius said. ‘He is simply here as an escort. His name is Omegon.’
The warrior bowed, without removing his helmet. The first lie, Chayne thought. Omegon is no common trooper.
Chayne estimated Omegon’s stature, once again using the geometries of the tent structure as a scale. The Astartes was at least as big as the primarch himself.
Who are you, Chayne wondered? What are you pretending to be?
‘Let us talk of Nurth, my lord,’ said Pech, ‘and of how we finish this war.’
Namatjira smiled. ‘This compliance,’ he corrected.
‘It is a war, sir,’ Pech replied, ‘as I’m sure the stalwart soldiers of the Imperial Army would attest. Let us not dress it up in political terms. Let us not skip over their sacrifices.’
Major General Dev and Lord Wilde of the Torrent coughed to suggest their gratitude at Pech’s acknowledgement of their efforts. Some of their huscarls and high officers clacked their swords against their shields in approval.
Namatjira snapped up a hand quickly for silence.
‘Of course it’s a war, sir,’ the Lord Commander said, acid in his tone. ‘Men die. My men die. But this is still an Action of Compliance, or are you questioning the Emperor’s design?’
Pech shook his head. ‘No, lord. I appreciate that the Emperor upholds a teleological scheme for the future of man, and I will endeavour to uphold it.’
‘He chases a Utopian ideal,’ Herzog put in.
‘He wishes to unify and perfect humanity through the intense application of martial violence,’ said Pech.
‘We have no quarrel with that approach,’ said Herzog. ‘It is the only proven way man’s destiny has ever been advanced.’
