by Dan Abnett
‘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 primeval, 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.
So she’d borrowed her uncle’s transport and driven in to work instead. Uncle Valeryn was getting on, and pretty much housebound. He’d been a musician in his day, though mental infirmity meant the clavichord no longer sang under his fingers. But he’d been successful enough to accumulate modest wealth, and afford a two-storey town-hab in an inner formal, and a private nurse.
Maud was his only living relative, and she’d come to live with him when she started her work with the Magistratum. Valeryn hadn’t really approved of his niece’s occupation, though nowadays he often couldn’t remember what it was she did.
‘Can I borrow the Bergman, Uncle Vally?’ she’d asked that morning, drinking a caff over the sink, clad in her full uniform. It was early still, dark outside, but her uncle had been up for hours, sitting at the spinet as if wondering what the ebony keys were meant to do.
He hadn’t driven the Bergman since ‘89, when the Administratum had cancelled his permit on health grounds. But he kept it garaged in the private bunkers under the hab block, and once in a while allowed Plyton to drive him out to the Stairtown Parks on her day off.
‘Are we going to the parks?’ he asked.
‘Not today, Vally. But I need to get into the A. Work. It’s important.’
He looked at her, in her full Magistratum harness, body-plate, helmet hooked at her waist, and said, ‘What is it you do, Maud?’
‘I work, Vally. Can I use the Bergman?’
He shrugged. ‘I suppose,’ He turned away, and started to plink at middle C.
She let herself out quietly, taking the keys from the jar on the shelf above the hall heater.
The Bergman Amity Veluxe was a four-litre carbide coupe with slate-green bodywork and extravagant chrome. Plyton adored it, adored its leather and linseed smell, its rumbling under note. On her salary, even allowing for promotion, she’d never afford a private transporter like the Bergman herself. The story went her
uncle had been given it as a gift by a conductor who had been brought to tears by the way Valeryn had played a particular work.
As she drove up through the expressways and interlinks of the inner formals, the traffic grew denser. Thick clouds of acid fog had draped the streets with a yellow mist. She saw rail transit stations closed and guarded, and PDF detachments manning unshrouded weapon emplacements on the buttresses of high stacks. The hive had armed itself.
Regular roadblocks hemmed in the choking traffic, Magistratum officers in rain-slickers checking permits and idents. Plyton began to wonder if she’d have been better off staying at home.
She began to wonder what the hell had happened at the diplomatic palace.
She risked a down-ramp, and used her knowledge of the sink-level street-grid to pull ahead of the blocked arterials. At Whiskane Circus, she took a surface ramp and tried to join the Formal A South Express.
Another impasse. A vast multitude of Administratum workers had attempted to meet the start of their shifts by walking in along the pavements and overpasses. Now the foot traffic was also bound up, as the Magistratum checked IDs and gradually let them into the inner formal walks a few at a time.
She waited patiently until the crawling line of traffic brought her up to a checkpoint.
An officer approached.
Plyton opened the cab window and flashed her warrant. ‘Special Crime Department. I’m trying to get to work.’
‘Not this way, marshal,’ the officer said. ‘Sorry. No road access to A along here.’
‘What do I do?’
The officer waved with his lumin baton in the fog. ‘Turn east. We’re allowing Magistratum personnel into the formal along Parsonage Avenue,’ He turned. ‘Magistratum! Let it through!’
Plyton yanked on the anchor-shaped wheel, and pulled through the gap he had indicated as other officers lifted aside a sawhorse barrier. Other traffic – omnibuses and private cargoes – hooted in disgust as they watched her slip through.
Plyton edged the Bergman along through packs of pedestrians slow to give way. Through the rain and the stroking wipers, she glimpsed a familiar face and thumped the horn.
Grim, weary faces turned to scowl at her.
She leaned out of her window. ‘Limbwall! Hey, Limbwall!’
In the crowd, the department’s skinny secretary officer, laden down with an armful of files, turned and saw her.
‘Get in!’
Perplexed, he clambered in the passenger side, and Plyton moved off through the crowd.
‘Morning,’ she said.
‘Is this yours?’ he asked, trying to wipe the sudden condensation off the fat lenses of his augmetic optics.
‘I borrowed it.’
‘Who from?’
‘My uncle.’
‘And he’s what? The playboy nephew of the lord governor sub?’
‘I know. Nice, isn’t it?’
‘Doesn’t even begin to cover it. Throne, what a morning! Like a fool, I tried to walk in. Rail was closed.’
‘You walked from Formal E?’
He looked at her. ‘I serve the aquila. What else was I supposed to do? I mean, what in the name of Terra happened here last night?’
‘I was hoping you could tell me that.’
Limbwall shrugged. ‘I don’t know much. I heard rumours that an attempt had been made on the chief provost’s life last night.’
‘Where? At the palace? Someone tried to kill Trice?’
‘That’s what I heard.’
‘From?’
‘People in the crowd.’
‘Not a great source, Limbwall. Stick to your clerking. No one’s crazy or powerful enough to try for Trice.’
Limbwall glanced out of the window. ‘You got a better explanation?’
She hadn’t. The clogging tides of pedestrians had thinned out now, and they were making better time through almost deserted streets and sink-routes that the barricades had closed off. Even so, they had to stop twice to allow unfriendly squads of PDF to check their authority.
‘You realise that we’re going to have to go all the way round the inner circle to get to mag central.’
Plyton nodded. ‘Better that than wait in a queue. Besides, this way we can stop in at the sacristy en route. I was going to have to go there this morning anyway. This saves me a trip. If you don’t mind.’
‘Not at all,’ Limbwall said. He was clearly enjoying his ride in the ornate roadster. ‘By the way, speaking of the sacristy case, I pulled that file for you.’
‘Yeah? From home?’
Limbwall blushed slightly. ‘Yes. Throne, please don’t tell Rickens. He’ll have my guts. I’ve enhanced the cogitator in my hab with department codes so I can keep up with the workload after hours. I’d never manage otherwise.’
‘Limbwall, you know that after hours is meant for recreation? A relaxed meal, a drink or two with friends, maybe even a relationship?’
‘If I didn’t take the work home, I’d never meet the deputy’s needs. Six hours, maybe seven, I work off-duty. Don’t tell me you never take work home.’
‘Well…’
‘Yeah. Since when did you have a relationship?’
Plyton scowled and said nothing.
Limbwall pulled a file from his armful. ‘Here. I processed it last night. Basic stuff, like you said.’
‘Early drawings? Templates? Street plans?’
‘Uh huh. Even records about the pioneer builders, pulled from the archives of Scholam Architectus. You ever hear of a man called Cadizky?’
‘Uh, there’s a Cadizky Square in Formal B.’
‘Named after. Theodor Cadizky. Thanks to him, the original city plan was what it was.’
‘Bio?’
‘It’s all in there.’
Plyton reached one hand off the wheel, took the folder Limbwall offered and stuffed it into the driver’s door pocket.
‘That’s great. Thanks. I think location is everything with the Aulsman case. I mean, that hidden roof. It’s got to be significant.’
‘Well, just be careful. That data took a lot of… digging out.’
‘Unauthorised? You mean… you stole it?’
‘Let’s just say I bypassed some meanings of the word “legitimate”, Emperor forgive me?’
Plyton grinned. She pulled them to a halt in Templum Square. The towering facade of the grand templum rose above them. The place was quiet in the rain. In front of the templum arch, a few Magistratum vehicles were parked. The place was still cordoned off.
‘Wait here,’ she told him. ‘I won’t be long. Just a few more picts for the record. I promised Rickens.’
She got out of the Bergman, and hurried into the cover of the portico. A pair of Magistratum officers approached.
‘Mamzel, you can’t—’
‘Relax. Special Crime,’ she grinned, flashing her shield. ‘This is my case.’
She hurried in through the vast dome of the templum, along the cloister and into the old sacristy. She was checking the magnetic charge of her hand picter when she realised a service-issue blunt was being aimed at her face.
‘That’s about far enough,’ a man’s voice said.
‘What the Throne?’ she began.
‘Really slow now. Hand me the picter.’
Plyton looked up, arms up. Two men stood before her, blocking the entrance. Both wore Magistratum armour, but armour which entirely lacked any ident or badge. Their visors were down. Their handguns were threatening.
‘Easy,’ she said. ‘I’m going to reach for my badge right now, okay?’
One of them nodded.
She hooked out her shield. ‘Maud Plyton, junior marshal. This is my case.’
One of the men took her warrant, studied it, then tossed it back to her. ‘Not any more,’ he said.
‘What?’
‘Interior Cases is taking over, marshal. Walk away.’
‘Wait a minute…’
‘Leave. Now,’ the other said. ‘This belongs to Interior Case
s now.’
‘Why?’
‘We don’t have to tell you anything,’ said the first officer. ‘Report back to your department.’
‘You have to tell me one thing,’ Plyton stated.
‘Yeah? What?’
‘Magistratum dictate one-seven-eighty. Identity of officers. Who are you?’
‘I told you. Interior Cases.’
‘Names?’
‘Marshals Whygott and Coober. All right? Are we done?’ ‘We’re done,’ Plyton said, and walked back to the Bergman.
SHE PARKED THE old roadster in the depths of the rockcrete bay under the central tower, left her permit on the dash, and went upstairs with Limbwall.
The Department of Special Crime was ominously silent. There was no one around, not even Mamzel Lotilla. Under the cream-shaded electro lamps of the wooden mezzanine, the desks were silent and unoccupied, the teetering towers of files and folders stirring in the processed breeze.
Plyton and Limbwall looked at each other. They could hear voices raised in the deputy magistratum’s private office.
Plyton sat down at her desk and code-entered her cogitator’s data-function along with the Canticle of Awakening. Surface data fluttered up, but nothing deep. All her precious records of the Aulsman case, including the first round of picts she’d taken of the secret ceiling, were inaccessible. Blanked. Gone.
That had never happened before.
Well, that wasn’t actually true. A year or so earlier, there had been a case, a street-crime woman who had claimed she was an Imperial inquisitor. Gideon something. Two men had come to see Rickens, and shortly afterwards the file trace had been erased. She queried, and Rickens had told her to forget it. ‘No good will come of it,’ he’d said.
Plyton had tried to forget about it, but it wasn’t easy. She’d always assumed the affair had really concerned an Imperial inquisitor. Why else would Rickens have erased the file? It made her feel better about it to think she was secretly serving the holy ordos of the God-Emperor.
But this?
What was the excuse this time?
The main elevator hatch swished open, loud in the quiet office space. The breeze ruffled the stacked paper files. A squad of cogitator adepts from Technicus, escorted by a phalanx of Magistratum marshals, entered the Special Crime department.
