Ravenor Omnibus

by Dan Abnett

  ‘So you just practise now anyway?’ Kys asked. ‘As a rogue medicae?’

  ‘Listen, mamzel friend-of-Zael’s. The formal infirmaries automatically deny treatment to any clan members injured in street clashes. Any drug addicts. Any persons who’ve lost their subsist code. Any child who doesn’t present with a registered parent or guardian. The Administratum, by its own figures, recommends there should be one practising medicae for every five thousand citizens of any Imperial city. You know what the split is here in Petropolis? One medic for every hundred thousand habbers. A hundred thousand, so help me! You think the God-Emperor of Mankind is happy that’s the way it is here? I’m just trying to even down the stats!’

  The train rocked. The lights went on and off again quickly. The train was pulling into a sub-stop. Belknap collected up the scattered change.

  ‘Good luck,’ he said. ‘Zael. It might be way too late, but be a good boy, all right?’

  The train shuddered to a halt. The auto-hatches opened.

  Belknap got up, but Patience was right in front of him. ‘My name’s Patience Kys,’ she said.

  ‘Patrik Belknap,’ he replied.

  ‘Isn’t that Medicae Patrik Belknap?’ she asked.

  They looked at each other for a long moment.

  ‘Sit down, sir,’ she said. ‘You’ll do.’

  He sat. ‘Patience Kys, eh? I look forward to finding out your real name.’

  ‘Don’t hold your breath,’ she replied.

  The hatches slipped closed and the train began to pull away.

  NINE

  ACROSS THE HIVE, out where Formal Q met the bay, the occulting lighthouse was blinking into the night. It was one of the twenty-nine station lighthouses that warded the curved seaboard of Petropolis.

  The private flier swung down out of the sky, through the squalling rain. It landed on its eight jointed legs in the centre of the stone dock, and then, wings cased, walked itself over until its body hatch was under the rainguard awning.

  The entrance was lit with fluttering candles and glow-globes. Magus-clancular Lezzard and about forty of the Fratery’s seers stood in the wind, waiting.

  The body hatch opened, three figures dismounted and strode, side by side, towards the doorway.

  Orfeo Culzean, business-like in a blue suit, flanked to his right by Leyla Slade, dressed in dark red. Her right hand was poised on the butt of the handgun holstered in the small of her back, and she scanned left and right, watching for movements out amongst the dark and the rain-blurred lights of the vehicle.

  At Culzean’s left walked Saul Keener, the notorious unsanctioned psyker. He had prospered over the years by offering his skills via Petropolis’s black market, and he was always in demand. He was a short, dumpling of a man. His fine clothes spoke of his wealth and his build positively screamed of the obscene high living his art had afforded him. Keener displayed the symptoms of an obsessive-compulsive. He was constantly rubbing his beringed, sausage fingers together, and he had a great many tics and quivers that flapped his round, jowly face.

  Keener held the trigger-orb in his fat hands. He’d had it close to him for several hours, so as to build a sympatico with the incunabula.

  ‘We look upon you, Orfeo,’ Magus-clancular Lezzard said.

  ‘Magus-clancular, thank you for this greeting. Thank you to the Fratery for making us welcome here.’ Culzean’s molten voice somehow cut through the sound of the rain and the flier’s panting jet-pods.

  ‘Enter,’ Lezzard said. He turned, his exo-skeleton hissing in step with Culzean. Slade and the psyker came behind, trailed by the body of the fraters.

  ‘Everything’s prepared?’ Culzean asked as they walked down the entrance hall of the old lighthouse.

  ‘Everything, to your requirements. It’s all prepared.’

  ‘The device I sent you? It’s safe?’

  ‘Perfectly safe, Orfeo.’

  They came out into the basement chamber of the lighthouse, a drum of a room, formed from local stock brick and dripping from the sea. The correct number of tapers – three thousand, one hundred and nine – were lit about the place. The device sat in the centre of the floor, silent, surrounded by the scribings. The marks on the stone floor formed a perfect pentagrammic ward.

  They had been made with bone ash; or at least Culzean hoped so, or the night would come to a very sudden, very messy end.

  Inside the outer scribings, the cages of payment waited. The poor human vermin within the iron boxes mewled and scratched.

  ‘Locals?’ asked Culzean.

  ‘Mostly,’ said Lezzard. ‘But some of the fraters too. Those who have suffered the Unholy Macula and who are no use to us as seers.’

  ‘Anything you need to update me on? Anything new? New determiners? Has the Fratery’s meniscus revealed any changes?’

  ‘Some,’ Lezzard gurgled. He nodded to Stefoy, and the seer handed Culzean a clump of papers on which recent seeings had been scribbled.

  ‘No. Not important. No,’ Culzean said, sorting through them and crumpling some to throw aside. ‘This, interesting. A change in the clouding, here, just an hour or two ago. Suddenly, the prospect is more likely. Why?’

  ‘We have not yet fathomed it,’ replied Arthous. ‘But we are pleased.’

  ‘Curious,’ Culzean continued to stare at the scrap of paper. ‘There is a name here. What is it?’

  Leyla Slade leaned over and looked. ‘Belknap, sir,’ she said.

  ‘Belknap. Fascinating,’ Orfeo Culzean threw the crumpled paper away and looked at the next. ‘Now this…’ he began.

  ‘We were pleased by that reading,’ Lezzard said. ‘It supports your instinct. That man, high-born and powerful though he might be, is the key at this time. The most potent determiner. If he continues in his path, the prospect will fail.’

  ‘So nice to be vindicated,’ Culzean grinned. ‘Saul, would you like to take your place and we can get started. I sense a scratchy impatience within the device. Magus-clancular? Withdraw your fraters.’

  Lezzard turned and ushered his followers back, until they were lost in the darkness of the basement, behind the candles. Culzean could see their augmetic eyes glowing in the gloom like a gang of cyclopses.

  ‘Leyla?’ Culzean said over his shoulder. ‘Be ready. Shoot anything that doesn’t obey.’

  The woman nodded and drew out her Hostec Livery 50. She slid out the clip of standard rounds and slotted in a magazine of specially prepared loads. Then she slunked the slide.

  ‘Master Keener?’ Culzean said. ‘Go to work.’

  Saul Keener raised the trigger-orb and, as he had been instructed, started to slide reality with his mind. It grew cold in the basement of the occulting lighthouse.

  The device in the centre of the floor began to vibrate. It was a small pyramid, wrought in gold and silver. It started to rock and vibrate, as if a charge were passing through it.

  Keener pressed on, turning the orb in his hands. The device continued to quiver.

  ‘I sense him now,’ Keener muttered. ‘Oh, yes. He’s coming to my bidding. Oh, yes, here…’

  The three thousand, one hundred and nine candle flames flared and grew taller. The light spread. The little golden pyramid shook again, and then unfolded.

  It didn’t unleash a figure. It bent and deformed to create one. The folding golden sides twisted and extended, doming a shape that coalesced out of a mist that spilled from the opening centre of the pyramid. A crouched, hunched figure formed, head down, curled. The golden tracery of the device wrapped itself up and down the figure’s limbs, creating armour, an encasing suit, a crested helmet.

  The Brass Thief rose to its feet. Smoke poured off it, gusted from its awakening. It was thin, wrapped in segmented plates of gold and brass, faceless but for eyeslits in the high-crested helm.

  ‘The incunabula is awake,’ Keener whispered.

  ‘Tell it to feast,’ Culzean said.

  Keener spoke with his mind, via the orb, and the golden figure stepped forward. War
p-smoke dribbled off its golden limbs. It raised its hands and, with a wet click, extended the rhyming swords.

  It took a step towards the nearest cage. The sacrifices within saw it coming and squealed.

  It lashed through the bars, its blades meeting flesh, and began to feed.

  Six minutes later, with the cages reduced to buckled frames full of fuming bones, the incunabula clacked to the edge of the scribing and folded its rhyming swords.

  ‘It’s ready,’ Keener said, rubbing frantically at his hands. ‘It’s really ready. It’s fed and it’s yearning to know what is next. It wants to know why you’ve woken it.’

  Culzean nodded. He looked round at Leyla Slade, who had been training her handgun on the incunabula for the last five minutes.

  ‘Put that away, Ley,’ Culzean said.

  He took a step forward until just the outer line of scribing separated him from the incunabula.

  ‘Hello,’ Culzean said softly. ‘Remember me? Of course you do. I’m going to show you a name. You know what to do then.’

  Culzean held up one of the scraps of paper. ‘You see? Read it right. Understand?’

  The Brass Thief gently nodded its crested helm.

  ‘That name is Jader Trice,’ said Culzean. ‘Do your worst.’

  The Brass Thief rocked and vast metal wings articulated out of its back. The wings flapped and it ascended, turning out of the scribed circle, out of the lighthouse. Towards the city.

  TEN

  THE SPEECH, WHICH had been elegantly crafted and masterfully delivered, came to an end, and the audience rose to its feet, applauding wildly. The furious approval shook the majestic state banqueting hall, the most regal chamber of the diplomatic palace in Formal A.

  At the head of the fan of crowded tables, the speaker waved his hand and accepted the applause graciously, smiling at the cheers he had raised from the assembled highborn dignitaries of the Manufactory Guild. The guild was one of the most influential bodies in the subsector, representing both state and private business interests, and its leaders were men and women of great learning, wit and commercial acumen.

  And also fools, thought Jader Trice, if they could be brought to their feet in jubilation by meaningless phrases such as ‘genuine market prosperity’, ‘financial upturn’ and ‘glorious futures for our children’s generation’ all strung together and said out loud. Of course, it was the way he had said them.

  The guild mistress, Sephone Halwah, got up from her seat beside Trice, shook his hand, and gestured broadly to calm the assembly. The uproar slowly died away.

  Halwah was a tall, poised woman in her one-seventies, who looked a youthful forty-something thanks to the expensive juvenat treatments she had enjoyed. Her hair, the colour of spun gold, was contained in a crispinette of white ribbon behind her round, ermine hat and barbette, and her long gown, covered by the ornately embroidered mantle of her office, was made of ice-white silk and frieze. She raised her goblet. Her gown had long, ballooning sleeves tied with golden thread around her cuffs. Wise, thought Trice, to choose a cut that conceals your elbows, my mistress. It was always the elbows that gave away a woman’s true age, no matter how strenuous the juvenat work.

  ‘My guild fellows,’ she said. ‘I would ask you to join me as I pledge a heartfelt thanks to the honoured speaker at our annual dinner, the first provost of the Ministry of Subsector Trade, Sire Jader Trice.’

  More applause, and a general, loud toasting as the cups were raised. Almost at once, music struck up from the gallery and attendants hurried forward to clear the tables. Some guests resumed their seats, others moved forward into the open floor space to begin the stately dances.

  ‘Fine words, provost,’ the guild mistress said as she sat down next to Trice. ‘You know how to stir an assembly.’

  ‘If only you knew,’ Trice murmured.

  ‘I’m sorry?’ she said, leaning forward. ‘The music is rather loud.’

  ‘I said I am gratified, mistress.’

  Halwah turned to speak with a guild senior who had approached. Trice sat for a moment, toying with his goblet, staring at the dancers, the hurrying servants, the clusters of guests in loose conversation. Jader Trice was a slender, ageless man with a distinguished beard on his chin and long, black hair that he had tied back for the evening. He had unmatched eyes, one sea-blue, the other ember-brown. He wore heavy brocade robes of gold and sarry over a long gown of silver willowthread. His amulet of office hung around his neck on weighty gold links. Sharp-minded, silk-tongued, he was one of the most effective and assured political operators in the Angelus sub. Trice recognised no superior except the lord governor subsector himself, and the ministry he controlled had been established by Barazan when he had come to office in 400.

  Trice was a little weary. The day had been long and spoiled by an unexpected turn of events. He also had little relish of functions such as the guild banquet, but these were important people and he wanted to keep them on his side.

  +My lord.+

  Trice looked up. Right across the busy hall, two hundred metres away, a figure had appeared, and was standing in the grand doorway, half hidden by the ormolu frame.

  +I need a word.+

  Trice nodded slightly, so only the figure would notice. He rose to his feet.

  ‘Not going, surely? You promised me a spin,’ Halwah said, turning to look at him. Several guildsmen around them also urged him to stay.

  Trice smiled his most winning smile. ‘Of course not, my friends. But you know my job never stops. Word is, the value of the crown… which we all worship as the true master of mankind, do we not?’

  The guilders roared at his joke.

  ‘The value of the crown in the rimward market is still declining. I have to put in a call to the chief treasurer on Caxton before the market closes. Once that onerous duty is done… the chief treasurer does so enjoy the sound of his own voice amplified by astropath…’

  More laughter.

  ‘…I will return. Between you and me, honoured friends, it’s jitters. Our Lord Barazan came to office three years ago, and the honeymoon period is over. Investors and some trade amalgams in the rim are getting edgy that the liberal reforms our lord promised at inauguration are slow to be fulfilled. What is it I always say?’

  ‘These things take time!’ a senior guilder nearby called.

  ‘Precisely, Sire Onriss,’ Trice smiled as the laughter buffeted once again. ‘So excuse me while I take a moment to dampen their nerves. You’ll appreciate it on the morrow when you slate-read your trading portfolios. As for you, dear Mistress Halwah, I swear on my mother’s pristine honour that I will return in no more than fifteen minutes. Then you will experience a volta more sublime than your wildest dreams.’

  Yet more laughter, led by the exaggeratedly demure Halwah. Trice strode from the table.

  Immediately, four waiting house guards from the Gubernatorial Service closed around him: bullish men in dark blue leather and ceramite, visors down, hellguns mag-clamped to their chest plates. As a senior official of the subsector Administratum, Trice enjoyed all the protection benefits of the lord governor himself.

  Escorted, he walked down the length of the banquet hall and out into the crystal-lit grand processional. The chatter and music of the feast dimmed behind him.

  The figure was waiting for him up ahead beside the door of a privacy suite. Servants dashed past.

  ‘Wait here,’ Trice ordered his house guard squad, and went into the suite with the waiting figure.

  The suite was a series of luxurious meeting rooms, designed to be completely surveillance-opaque, so that the senior ambassadors of the diplomatic department could conduct conversations in the strictest secrecy.

  As soon as he was inside, the door closed. Trice felt the vibration hum of audio-bouncers, vox-inhibiters and psy-blunt systems activating and overlapping.

  Trice walked over to a gilt cabinet and poured himself a large amasec.

  ‘Anything for you, Toros?’

  Toros Revoke
shook his head politely. Revoke was wearing a subtle, dark suit, and his hands were gloved. He was as much a part of Trice’s protection as the armed house guards waiting outside. But nothing like so official. Toros Revoke was a senior lieutenant of an unofficial body known as the Secretists.

  ‘Well, that’s another evening of my life I’m never getting back,’ Trice said, sipping his amasec and sitting down on an upholstered tub chair. He crossed his legs, folding the heavy gown across his knees for comfort. ‘They’re all idiots, you realise? Every last jack one of them. Fools in love with profit. I could have told them I shat stools of solid gold and they’d have asked me to show them how.’

  ‘The public face,’ Revoke said.

  Trice nodded. ‘The public face. So tell me about your day. Tell me something to make me happy.’

  ‘Well…’

  ‘You’ve got bad news, haven’t you, Toros?’

  ‘Not at all. Curious news, perhaps. I’ll start with the good. Nine more private masses went ahead tonight, all as decreed, all in temples along the defined axes.’

  ‘I heard there was trouble the other night. Where was it?’

  ‘The chapel at Rudiment and Pass-on-over. The usual story. A poor nobody who shouldn’t have been there wandered in on the service.’

  ‘Did he see anything?’ Trice asked, swirling the dark liquor in his glass.

  ‘Oh, plenty. Fortunately, I was there to secret the mass. I’d brought along Monicker and Drax too.’

  ‘How is Monicker? Still not sure who she is?’

  ‘She’s a dissembler. It goes with the territory. We turfed the man out, and saw to him.’

  ‘Cleanly?’

  ‘The Unkindness stripped him bare.’

  Trice smiled. ‘I do so love it when this city looks after its own secrets.’

  Revoke crossed the room and sat down in a plush seat opposite Trice. ‘I understand today has been eventful. I heard about the business at the sacristy. Do you need my people to cover that?’

  Trice shook his head. ‘No, it’s in hand. Could be a blessing, actually. It may transpire that we’ve been this-locating the true centre all this time. There is a secrecy issue. Some strand of the Magistratum has got it already. But I’ve put wheels in motion. So now, this curious news of yours?’