by Ian Watson
‘Blissh, blissh!’ he bawled. He sounded like a psychotic sheep.
‘Whoever diesh shall go shtraight to paradishe to enjoy the eternal embraces of nymphets and lushty lads—’
To endure those embraces, more likely! What could such nymphets be, but daemonettes of Slaanesh? The lusty lads likewise: daemons!
Many refugees were faithful to the Emperor. They called upon His name to preserve them. “Emperor of Us All! God on Earth!” If the Emperor had once possessed an actual name, it was long forgotten even by Himself. Thus the pious called on a name which no one knew.
True believers began to rage at those who were swayed by that orator. Brawling was breaking out. Blood was being shed. The demagogue bleated on about bliss.
Meh’lindi gestured with her needle pistol at that mockery of a preacher on the plinth. Jaq shook his head brusquely. Too much of a long shot. Hers wasn’t a needle rifle. To wade deep into a surging crowd would be folly.
Overhead, smoke writhed as if trying to assemble itself into some vast distorted drifting body. Dusk was coming on now. The street lamps of Caput City were out of action. The glow-globes upon their fluted ceramic columns remained inert.
Jaq and his companions detoured once more.
ONLY THE SKY-GLOW from scattered fires and the flash of spasmodic explosions lit the prevailing gloom as the trio finally arrived in a certain courtyard off a certain Lapis Lane. Quieter, here.
Plasteel shutters covered windows. Buildings were pretending not to exist. This was the jewellery district. Here was where gems excreted by the poisonous sand-grubs of the desert – and other stones mined in the mountains – were cut and polished and set and sold. The district cowered silently. Within the workshop-dwellings lapidaries and their families would be cringing.
The insurrection was motivated by lustful corruption of the flesh, not by gems and gewgaws.
Yet perhaps, since gems were ornaments of the flesh, the jewellery area therefore remained inviolate and sacrosanct. Obviously no looting had occurred. Lapis Lane was quiet. The dark courtyard was deserted.
GRIMM POUNDED ON a door – THUMP, thump, thump; THUMP, thump, thump. He banged over and over in the same rhythm until a small security shutter opened. A frightened face peered from the darkness within – into a lesser though larger darkness which framed a bearded man in tattered black and a tall woman so inky that her eyes seemed to hover disembodied. On tip-toe, Grimm grunted, ‘It’s me, Mr Kosmitopolos. Open up.’
MEH’LINDI HAD PLUCKED a pencil-lumen from her sash. Mr Kosmitopolos blinked in its light. The tubby merchant was sweating. To be harbouring a Navigator at such a time! He began to stammer a question of Grimm. The merchant’s accent wasn’t local.
So he too hoped to be able to escape on a warpship with a bag full of the finest gems, if the need arose...
Grimm had chosen a good hiding place for the Navigator.
‘Who are you?’ Kosmitopolos gasped at the inquisitor. ‘Who are you?’ at Meh’lindi, black as ebon, almost invisible behind the glow of her lumen, a void-like silhouette.
‘Te benedico,’ Jaq said in the hieratic tongue, thus blessing the man for his contribution to a higher cause. ‘The Emperor be with you always.’
Jaq nodded to Meh’lindi. Even in the darkness the hint was unmistakable.
Meh’lindi appeared merely to touch Kosmitopolos on the side of the neck. With a sigh of departing breath the merchant slumped to the floor.
‘Huh,’ said Grimm. ‘I suppose I would have shaken him off more noisily! Wouldn’t have robbed him, though, squats’ honour.’
The beam of the lumen picked out a high wainscot of ornamental panelling, with tiles cemented above. As if the pencil light were a cutting laser Meh’lindi traced swiftly around some of the panels.
‘I was about to tell you—’ began Grimm. Meh’lindi clicked her tongue. Her fingers roved. She pressed the wainscot just so. A low door swung inward. The door, hardly high enough for a squat, was of plasteel, veneered on the outside to hide its nature.
The entire wainscot must be of plasteel with a decorative facade to disguise it.
Quite shrewd of Kosmitopolos to have located this hidey-hole near the front door. If intruders burst into the merchant’s house to ransack it, their instinct would be to rush on into the interior to search for his treasures. If, forewarned, he was already in his hidey-hole, he would have a chance to escape while the intruders were otherwise occupied. The wainscot had betrayed itself to Meh’lindi by being excessively high, enough so to accommodate a concealed door.
A steep flight of stone steps plunged claustrophobically into absolute darkness.
Grimm called out softly: ‘Azul! Azul Petrov! I’m with friends. Keep your bandanna on! We’ve come to fetch you. We’re coming down.’
Meh’lindi was already descending, black and silent. To her, a claustrophobic plunge was an invitation. She averted her eyes in case the Navigator failed to heed Grimm’s advice.
THE UNDERGROUND CELL pleased Jaq. How it reminded him in miniature of the catacombs of Tormentum Malorum. Illumination came now from a glow-globe, which previously had been doused.
A bunk. A table bearing some microtools and lenses. A small stasis chest of food. A large flagon of water. Trays of gemstones were stacked.
And here was the Navigator, perching nervously on a stool.
Walls were hung with faded quilted tapestry, to deaden sound. Those dim designs were of statuary on a lawn surrounded by high hedges. Marble men and women stood static and unmenacing.
PETROV HAD NEVER seen such a woman as Meh’lindi before, and kept staring at her golden eyes as if those were large living beads of amber.
His two visible eyes were a cool green. And large. His once-handsome face was wrinkled, just as Vitali’s had been, by exposure to the warp. One thought of the frail grey gills of a fungus. The shape of that face was mantis-like, so that his eyes seemed those of an insert. His ear lobes were large and studded with tiny rubies as if droplets of blood were welling. Two similar rubies studded his nose. A larger one, the tip of his sharp chin. Yet another, his lower lip. He might have been a haemophiliac. To touch him would make him bleed.
But bleed hard. Bleed rubies. A Navigator needed strength to steer a ship safely through the warp.
Azul Petrov wore a grey damask robe hung with rune-embroidered ribbons. The moiré surface of the damask shimmered, hinting at blue or green. It could have been coated with a film of oil. There was an evasive sliminess to his attire, a muted chameleon quality. But mostly, a sense of slipperiness. It was he, after all, who had escaped from the massacre of his colleagues – albeit with the help of the squats.
Petrov darted glances at Meh’lindi, but didn’t enquire about her.
With Jaq’s role in the scheme of things he seemed conversant. He acknowledged the electro-tattoo on Jaq’s palm as conveying authority. Navigators travelled widely; Navigators told each other secrets. He understood that Jaq was empowered to commandeer assistance and obedience in the Emperor’s name.
Jaq interrogated, impatiently but not harshly.
Had Petrov spent his period in hiding down here studding his ear-lobes and lower lip and chin with choice items from the merchant’s collection?
Oh no! Jaq must understand that the rest of Petrov’s body was similarly studded with excrescences of crystal-blood. Petrov’s navel, his nipples. Other parts too...
‘In my warp-eye,’ rhapsodized the Navigator, ‘there are a thousand billion atoms, I believe. Atoms are so tiny! In the galaxy there are a thousand billion suns. I think that each atom in my eye must correspond to one of those suns! No one beholds a Navigator’s warp-eye nakedly without dire consequences. Yet let me tell you, inquisitor, that it is black, solid black. Once, there was a pupil and an iris in that eye. But not now, oh no. My eye has become a sphere of jet, which can enclose the galaxy. It is a bio-gem. I have secreted my eye just as the sand-grubs of the deserts of this interesting world secrete other hues of gems. When I die, will
my eye continue to see? Will I be within my eye, hung around someone’s neck in a velvet pouch? If that someone is in danger, will they expose the eye at their enemy? My beautiful deathly orb of jet! If they are in danger of capture and torture, will they take my eye from the pouch, themselves to gaze at its black lustre – and momentarily behold the warp, and die?’
Well, this was all within the parameters of strangeness of Navigators! Vitali Googol, with his doomful verses... Petrov, with his fixation upon that organic gem in his forehead...
The Navigator leaned forward intently. ‘It’s said, inquisitor, that the eldar wear a special crystal in a pouch, into which constantly trickles their soul throughout their lives. When they die their soul is saved within that gem... Have you heard this, inquisitor?’
‘Perhaps,’ said Jaq.
THE INQUISITION FOREVER gathered such information, much of it of the highest secrecy, not suitable to be shared.
When Jaq had been admitted into the Ordo Malleus, he had learned more than most ordinary inquisitors knew about the tragedy of the eldar species. This topic abutted upon daemons, and upon a Chaos god – whose deluded human cultists were responsible, in fact, for the present strife upon Luxus Prime. Slaaneshi cultists! Worshippers of Slaanesh. Evokers of daemonettes.
The honour of Slaanesh seemed to dog Jaq.
The Chaos world which his little “family” had trespassed upon in the Eye of Terror – the world which was supposedly the origin of the hydra creature – had been a planet under the aegis of Slaanesh, the daemon power of cruel lust.
That visit had sowed a poison seed within Vitali. Vitali had succumbed.
Once the eldar had been a great species. Their civilisation had spanned the stars. Now they were reduced to scattered remnants, inhabiting enigmatic “craftworlds” lurking deep in the interstellar void. Even these remnants were puissant and proud and seemingly more perfect – at least in their own opinion – than the festering rag-bag of humanity which had supplanted the eldar across the ocean of stars.
Eldar could be as cunning as Callidus – and as relentless in pressing an attack as any assassins of the Eversor shrine or even elite Space Marines. The roaming artist-warriors of the eldar rejoiced in the name of Harlequins. Maybe they bitterly mocked themselves with this name!
Whatever had destroyed the eldar civilization was linked to Slaanesh. Yet in precisely what way? Or even imprecisely! Eldar were notoriously evasive in this regard. So quoth the illuminated Inquisition reports which Jaq had scanned. Some of those reports had been denied even to him, a secret inquisitor. Those were shut under a seal of heresy, access-locked.
Somewhere in the galaxy, so it was whispered amongst Inquisition, was the answer. Somewhere there existed – supposedly – a Black Library, repository of invaluable and ghastly knowledge about daemons and about Chaos. Eldar fanatics and terrible psychic barriers guarded that library.
Did even the Hidden Master of the Ordo Malleus know the full truth of all this? Or were those records of the Inquisition heresy-sealed so as to conceal a terrifying ignorance?
IF THIS NAVIGATOR were to accompany Jaq and Meh’lindi and Grimm, he would glean worse secrets than gossip about the eldar. ‘Continue,’ said Jaq.
And Petrov confided: ‘It’s said that the eldar journey afar by means of a webway through the warp. They possess no Navigators such as myself and my kin. Eldar ships don’t jump through warp space. They themselves can walk through tunnels in the warp. They step through gateways and soon are elsewhere...’
‘Perhaps,’ said Jaq.
Meh’lindi was listening so attentively. Mention of the eldar stirred a bitter reverie. She had even masqueraded as an eldar female once. Never to do so again. Not with that alien beast concealed within her.
Was Petrov fascinated by the eldar – fixated upon those rumoured spirit-stones and upon that rumoured webway because of his own peculiar concept of the warp-eye in his forehead?
Oh, this was well within acceptable limits of oddity for a Navigator. Those limits must needs be broad ones, here and now, in chaotic Caput City! Compared with Vitali Googol at the terrible finale of his life, Petrov seemed positively sane and pure.
‘Will you swear loyalty and obedience to me, Azul Petrov, in the Emperor’s name and by the honour of your House and by your soul? And,’ added Jaq, ‘by your special eye, which I swear I shall pluck out and shatter if you betray me?’
Grimm nodded encouragement to the Navigator. ‘That might sound a bit remorseless. It’s just so we all know where we stand!’
Jaq glared at the squat. ‘Do we know any such thing? Curb your tongue, abhuman! Do you swear by those things, Azul Petrov?’
The Navigator gave his word.
WHEN THEY REASCENDED those steep steps from the hiding place, the house remained silent. Nothing stirred.
The merchant’s body lay where it had fallen. In the interior of his home, were a wife and children still stifling their anxieties at the knock on the door half an hour earlier? In another half an hour, would the wife nerve herself to creep out and discover the corpse? Then at least she would be certain that her husband had not deserted her.
The courtyard was pitch-dark. Gunfire crackled here and there. A flash lit the sky briefly. A feral animal, Meh’lindi sniffed the air. Extending his psychic sense, Jaq was aware of the turbid slosh of life and death throughout the city. What once might have seemed – spuriously – like a limpid lake of sweet water was now an agitated swamp. Foul mud had been stirred up; and worse: slimy phosphorescent creatures of the mud, aglow with corruption, homicidal, voracious. Ebbing and flowing, waxing and waning, a ghostly daemonic presence was yearning to incarnate itself.
The insurrection was evidently proceeding in spasms, in spastic paroxysms. In rabid convulsions punctuated by pauses. Lulls interspersed the fevered delirium, lulls from which the loyalists could take little comfort other than to grab some rest before another frenzied surge occurred, before another festering wave assaulted them.
When Jaq had discharged his force rod in exorcism at the coagulating presence, maybe he had impaired the co-ordination of the rebellion in some small degree. Doubtless he should be hunting for all manifestations of vile otherness, such as had seized upon Vitali Googol. Jaq should be expunging each such manifestation that he found, snipping off the feelers of evil.
Alas, there was no time for such sanitary ministrations. Those might cripple him. Might cause his death. Might cause him to be marooned here.
‘There’s a lull,’ Jaq told the others. He was shielding the white spark of his own soul from the attentions of that inchoate Chaotic power brooding over the city. He was casting an aura of protection around his companions. Even so, they mustn’t use the powertrikes again – irrespective of whether Petrov might have been able to ride pillion with Grimm. Too noisy.
It wasn’t too far to the governor’s palace, there to take callous advantage of this pause in the collapse of Lagnost’s reign. ‘We need stim-pills, Meh’lindi.’
From her assassin’s sash, without asking for further clarification, she provided two.
None for herself. The synthetic skin she wore over her scarred and tattooed body provided booster chemicals, as well as protection and oxygen.
Grimm tossed back his pill, and belched quietly. ‘Good square meal is what I’d prefer, boss. You always kept a good larder.’ Boss? Whose boss, genuinely, was Grimm’s?
No pill for Petrov. He’d been resting until now. He mustn’t become hyped and manic.
SIX
Astropath
DURING HIS PREVIOUS audience with the governor, Jaq had sensed the whereabouts of that “safe deep location” where the astropath was cooped. Although Jaq had never been able to detect persons as such at a distance, he was certainly sensitive to the sparkle of a psychic’s spirit. An astropath sending out telepathic messages was a beacon as clear to him, in miniature, as the Astronomican to a Navigator.
The man named Fennix was four levels almost directly below the governo
r’s audience chamber.
Half a dozen mustard-uniformed guards armed with laspistols were on weary duty in the audience chamber. Glow-globes were at half power while Lagnost slept. The guards became more alert as the ragged inquisitor entered, flashing his palm-tattoo. Emperor’s Mercy was holstered. Jaq was insisting that his three companions accompany him.
The gross governor was wallowing in a doze on a great divan, his weight crushing satin cushions. His young concubines and catamites clustered around him like so many silky cubs. His peacock hat was set atop a lacquered brass pillar inset with gems. Did he suppose that if a murderer managed to rush into this chamber the intruder might mistake that peacock-perch for Lagnost himself and fire his single hope of a shot at the ormolu pillar instead of at the governor?
A genuine expert from the Officio Assassinorum would immediately have detected Lagnost’s asthmatic wheeze.
What did such a man as Lagnost know of genuine assassins? What did anyone know – until one day they stared death in the face, for a moment or two?
The guards’ cheek-tattoos were of fanged worms. An officer in peaked cap and braid, with a flower tattoo and a single carbuncle earring, was sitting on a pouffe. He cradled a long-barrelled lasgun while he awaited his lord’s revival from slumber. This was sudden.
Lagnost peered.
‘You’ve brought a Navigator with you, Sir Draco. And I suppose the squat is an engineer. Does that mean we must evacuate? Can the situation be so bad?’ Lagnost gazed at the rips in Jaq’s habit. ‘You’re wearing some sort of armour, aren’t you? Won’t you give it to me? The Emperor’s loyal governor needs to survive.’
Indeed, the death of Lagnost would castrate the loyalists. The governor hauled himself laboriously upright scattering catamites and concubines. Air sighed through his breathing tubes.
‘My lovelies,’ he lamented, resigning himself to their loss. Aye, to become the playthings of Slaaneshi cultists, until each perished! ‘The armour,’ he repeated more brusquely.
