by Dan Abnett
‘Go on,’ she said, brushing red hair off her face.
Belknap smiled a little self-consciously. ‘Corny, I know, but… strong, positive thinking. Your state of mind can have the most extraordinary effect.’
‘Oh, of course I want to stay positive…’
‘I’m talking about more than that. Belief,’ He reached into his vest and pulled out the silver aquila that he wore alongside his old dog-tags. ‘In wartime, call it courage. In peacetime, call it faith. In the Guard, I saw men do amazing things… fight off infection, heal wounds… just because they believed. And I saw men die just because they didn’t.’
‘Well, I believe,’ Kara said. ‘I mean, I’m no zealot. I can’t actually remember when I last went to temple. But I believe in the God-Emperor. After all, I’ve pretty much devoted my life to His service.’
‘Oh, I know,’ Belknap replied. ‘And that’s good, but it is easy to believe in Him, isn’t it? We know He’s real, after all. The faith I’m talking about, the real faith, comes from the belief that He’s watching us and has the power to transform our lives.’
Kara pursed her lips. ‘Well, I think I’ve always believed that,’ she said. ‘But I’ve also always believed in expressing devotion to the Golden Throne through deed and duty. I’ve never been big on high mass and nightsong and all that standing up and sitting down.’
‘Fair enough,’ said Belknap. ‘But the ritual can be good too. It focuses the mind on the act of belief. Devotion through deed is fair enough, but most of the time all you’re thinking about is the deed itself, not the devotion. Making time to go to the temple reminds you it’s just about the divine. About you and your relationship to the power above us all. Sometimes worship should be a choice, not a by-product.’
‘I’ll take that under consideration,’ Kara smiled.
Belknap got to his feet, clearing away the torn paper packet of the dressing. ‘That’s fine. You asked my advice. In my experience, faith is the strongest medicine of all. Especially in cases, such as yours, where the illness is so…’
‘Terminal?’ she suggested bluntly.
He nodded. ‘In such cases, there can be a measurable effect. Just through faith and positive thinking, patients have reduced painful symptoms, enhanced their quality of life, extended their expectancy, even, in rare cases, found remission. I mean to say they have survived cancers that absolutely should have killed them. Because they believed the God-Emperor was watching, and He was.’
‘Right,’ said Kara, also rising to her feet. ‘I’ll stop off at a temple on my way back now, light a taper, say the vobis. How’s that?’
‘It’s a start. Two streets from here is St Aldocis Understack. Small place, poor, but honest. You could do worse.’
Kara shook her head. ‘Oh no,’ she said. ‘If I’m going to go to a temple, I want the full awe and wonder experience. I want heavyweight Ecclesiarchy The whole deal.’
‘Well, Petropolis has more than its share of fine cathedrals and high temples,’ said Belknap. The Basilica Hierophantus in Formal B, St Benedict’s, St Malkus in the Square – tallest spire in the subsector, Falthaker Abbey – that’s in C, very pretty. And of course the grand templum and the Ecclesiarchus in Formal A.’
‘They sound about right,’ Kara said. ‘Thanks. I’ll come back and see you in a day or two,’ She started to leave.
‘Kara?’ She turned back and was suddenly face to face with Belknap. He reached up and unclasped the silver aquila’s chain from around his neck. ‘Something to help you on your way.’
‘That’s yours,’ she protested.
‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Been with me since I was a boy. But I think it’ll be content enough to come along with you.’
She put up her hands to lift her hair away from the nape of her neck so he could hook the chain in place. For a second, she felt the warmth of his hands, and smelled the faint musk of his cologne. Then he stepped back.
‘Thank you,’ she said.
OUTSIDE, IN THE sub-stack sink, Kara hurried along the underwalk towards the transit station. The night was bustling with people, and rainwater from the ferocious storm high above was drooling down through the sink levels.
Kara pulled out her hand-vox. ‘It’s me. I’m on my way back. Just a quick stop to make. I’ll be an hour and a half. Any sign of Patience yet?’
‘NO,’ I RESPONDED. ‘I’ll keep you informed.’ I closed the link and turned my chair back to the others. Patience was now almost two hours overdue. Carl was showing nothing useful on his data-engines, and there was no response from Patience’s hand-vox. Every five minutes, I had Frauka activate his limiter so I could look for her, but it was no good. She was either shielded somewhere, or—
I didn’t want to think about the alternative.
Nayl was getting impatient. ‘I’m going back,’ he said, getting to his feet.
‘Back where?’ Carl asked.
‘The Ministry tower,’ Nayl replied.
‘We don’t know she’s there,’ Carl said.
Checking his weapon and his vox-link, Nayl glared at him. ‘We don’t know much about anything helpful at all, do we, Thonius? Which is frigging ironic given the stuff you know.’
‘Lose the snide tone, you knuck-head oaf,’ Carl snapped. ‘I’m worried about her too.’
‘That’s enough, both of you,’ I said.
Nayl shrugged. ‘All right. But the one thing we do know is the Ministry tower’s the last place she was seen.’
‘You’re tired,’ Mathuin said. ‘I’m fresh. I’ll go.’
Nayl shook his head. ‘I’ve spent the day there, Zeph. Know my way around at least a little. Better if it’s me.’
‘I find myself agreeing with Carl,’ I put in. ‘We don’t know where Kys is, so I don’t know how you expect to find her in a place that size.’
‘I don’t. You’re going to find her,’ Nayl said. ‘Don’t know how, but you’ll think of a way. And when you do find her, I’ll be right there, ready and waiting to get her out.’
With that, he left. We heard the main door slam shut.
‘Wystan,’ I said. ‘Let’s try it again.’
Frauka activated his limiter.
+Patience?+
No reply.
+Patience, where are you?+
KYS OPENED HER eyes. It was cold. She was lying on the ground, on her side. In front of her, just a metre away, the foot of a whitewashed brick wall. The floor she was sprawled on was tiled with glossy white squares.
For a moment, she thought she was naked, until she realised she was wearing a thin gown of disposable paper, the type they sometimes gave patients in infirmaries. Her feet and legs were bare. Her hands were cuffed in front of her with heavy metal binders. She realised that the main reason she’d felt naked was because not a single erg of psy-power existed in her head. Her talent was gone, as surely and completely as when Frauka did his blunting trick.
She rolled over so she was facing into the room. A secure cell, definitely. Caged lights in the ceiling, a heavy gauge hatch in the opposite wall. A plain wooden chair on the floor next to her. Across the room, a man sat on an identical chair, facing her, his back to the door. He wore a simple, sober suit of dark grey with a black dress shirt. His pale skin was freckled and he had slightly thinning red hair.
As she rolled over, he reached a hand to his ear and activated what must have been a micro-bead comm-link.
‘She’s awake.’
Then he remained sitting there, staring at her.
After a couple of minutes, the hatch whirred open and an identically dressed man entered. He was a little taller, a little heavier than the first, paunchy around the waist, with cropped dark hair and the flat nose of a pugilist. He carried a paper sack in one hand, and a small, stubby actuator wand in the other, which he waved to close the hatch behind him. The freckled man got up, took the wand from his colleague, and went to stand by the door.
The dark-haired man sat down facing Kys, and held out one hand to indicate the
empty chair beside her. Kys got up, unsteady at first, and sat on the chair.
The man looked at her. ‘Things sometimes aren’t what they seem,’ he began. ‘At face value, they’re one thing, but peer under the surface and you find all kinds of secrets. Luckily, secrets are what I and my friend here deal in. Secrets. We’re experts, you might say.’
Kys made no reply.
‘So you,’ the man went on. ‘At face value, you’re Junior Scribe Merit Yevins. You started work today in Administry Tower Three, department G/Fl, station eighty-six.’ He reached into the sack and produced Kys’s permit. ‘Your documents check out. They’re not fakes or copies. We even ran them through the Informium. Merit Yevins. That’s you. So, what we appear to have is a junior scribe, who became unwell after accidental exposure to a subliminal whilst working at her station.’
Kys just stared back at him.
‘But there’s more to it, isn’t there?’ the man said. He put the permit back in the sack and lifted out the analyser. ‘You were found to be concealing this. Data-analyser, expensive model. That’s odd, isn’t it? Why would a junior scribe be transmitting data for analysis?’
The man dropped the analyser into the sack, rummaged around for a moment and then took out Kys’s hand-vox. ‘Then there’s this. Hand-vox. Common enough. So what? Well, this is odd too. It’s new. It was purchased locally not more than a week ago. And it’s been altered. Altered by someone who really knows his way around tech-priest stuff. No stored calling codes, which is funny, because everybody stores calling-codes. And it doesn’t log. It’s been fixed not to log. Outgoing or incoming, no codes get recorded. So there’s no way of telling who Merit Yevins calls or who’s been calling Merit Yevins.’
He looked at Kys for a moment, and when she made no reply, he continued. ‘So we’re really scratching our heads at this point, and then we find these.’ He put the vox back in the sack and took out something else. ‘They were laced into the hem of your jacket. Thin blades, without handles, seriously sharp. That’s a whole new level of odd. Then one of my colleagues here – and I might point out at this stage that the people I work with have all kinds of specialist knowledge – anyway, he says these are kineblades. Designed for use by adepts with telekinetic powers. So we scanned you. You were unconscious through all of this, by the way. And lo and behold, the scan reads you as a telekine. What’s more, the sort of telekine it doesn’t pay to mess with. So I’m thinking it’s very likely that you’re not Merit Yevins at all. Because Merit Yevins isn’t a trained combat telekine with access to these sorts of toys. Nor is she the sort of person with the expertise to persuade the Informium itself to lie about her identity,’ He smiled. ‘We still don’t know how you pulled that one.’
‘Incidentally,’ he said, putting the kineblades away and handing the sack to the freckled man, ‘we inhibited you. You must be able to feel that. Standard limiters, even lockable ones, can be removed or tampered with. So we injected a fluid suspension of micro-blockers directly into your bloodstream. You won’t be able to use your psychic powers again for at least another twelve hours.’
He leaned forward, his elbows on his knees. ‘Do you have a name?’
‘Do you?’ Kys asked.
The man sat back and grinned. ‘All right, let’s play. I imagined we would. My name is Suldon. My pal here, his name is Brade. We are agents of the Ministry of Sub-sector Trade, though our agency is clandestine. We’re called secretists. You’re being detained in the secure wing of our headquarters. I tell you all this simply to demonstrate the hopelessness of your situation. No one knows where you are. No one is coming for you. Our powers of detention are entirely beyond Administratum law, as are our methods of interrogation. You will never see the outside world again. You are not likely to live more than a day or two. Everything you are, everything you were hoping to achieve, it’s all over and done with. Finished. The only thing you have left is the power to determine the quality of what remains of your life. Give us the information we need, and that quality will be relatively high. We’ll take care of your last few hours in a way that you will thank us for at the end. Obstruct us, and when that end comes, I promise you you’ll remember this moment, and loathe yourself for making the wrong choice.’
‘Do they train you in these techniques,’ Kys asked softly, ‘or were you born a silver-tongued bastard?’
The man was still smiling as he rose to his feet. ‘Girl, I make this crap up as I go along. Now, let me tell you what I think.’
‘Please,’ Kys said.
‘I think there’s a very good chance you’re an associate of Gideon Ravenor, the rogue inquisitor. We’re very keen to speak with him. Actually, that’s a lie. We’re very keen to kill him in the most painful and permanent way imaginable. I know it must be very hard to contemplate giving up a friend, betraying them and their confidences. Ravenor’s probably your mentor, right? Father-figure? Beloved leader? But I tell you what, you’ll be so grateful that you did.’
‘My name is Merit Yevins,’ Kys said.
Suldon pointed at her and winked. ‘I love it when they play hard-to-get. We can bring in a psyker any time, rip the truth from your boiling skull. But I have a better idea. It’ll involve a lot less mopping the floor.’
He looked at the freckled man. ‘Brade? Go get prisoner AA-15 and bring him here.’
Brade nodded, waved the actuator wand to open the door, and left.
‘You’re going to love this bit,’ Suldon told her. ‘Brace yourself. Don’t make this too easy for me.’ He took a palm-sized scanner pad out of his jacket pocket. ‘Bio-metric reader,’ he said. ‘Set to register physiological changes like heart rate, pupil dilation, breathing fluctuations and skips in synapse activity.’
‘Truth reader,’ said Kys.
‘That’s right,’ Suldon nodded. ‘It reaction-scans even non-verbal responses. Don’t worry, it’s not for you.’
The hatch opened again. Brade re-entered. ‘In here,’ he said.
A small figure shuffled in behind him. He was shackled at the wrists and ankles, his depth of stride seriously restricted. His head was bowed. What was left of his uniform was torn, and from the bruises and dried blood caking his flesh, it was clear he had been severely beaten more than once in the last few days. Fresh purple contusions mottled older, yellowing bruises. Hideous gashes, each more than a week old, crusted the man’s chest and shoulders. Something had been used to sever the fourth and ring fingers of both his hands.
When he looked up, his face was a swollen black gourd of bruising and half-dosed, bloodshot eyes.
Even so, he was still recognisable.
It was Shipmaster Sholto Unwerth.
HIS FINGERS STEEPLED together, his chin resting on his thumbs, Orfeo Culzean slowly looked up from the regicide board in front of him. The game was set on a little turntable, and Culzean was tournamenting himself.
He rose to his feet. The hotel suite was quiet, except for a delicate sonata by Hanz Solveig that Culzean had left playing at low volume.
‘Hello,’ he said.
‘I let myself in,’ said Toros Revoke.
Culzean recognised him instantly. It was the man who had gone head-to-head with the Brass Thief at the diplomatic palace.
‘I’m sure you did,’ said Culzean. ‘I’ve been expecting you, actually. It’s a pleasure to meet you.’
Revoke half-nodded. ‘You are Orfeo Culzean?’
‘Yes, I am. You?’
‘Toros Revoke. You seem remarkably composed, Culzean. Considering your situation.’
‘And what is that, exactly?’ Culzean asked.
‘Precarious,’ smiled Revoke.
‘Would you like a drink?’ Culzean asked. ‘Perhaps an appetiser?’
‘I’m fine,’ said Revoke. The little simivulpa was hiding under one of the chairs, hissing at the secretist in pure malice.
‘Stop that,’ Culzean shushed. ‘So, let’s get to business, shall we?’
‘Business?’ Revoke echoed. ‘There is no tra
nsaction here. You speak like you have some leverage. You do not. I… visited your employers at the lighthouse in Q this evening. They are all dead now.’
‘I expect so. You are a dangerous man.’
‘Thank you. Their leader, Magus-clancular Cornelius Lezzard – as he kept reminding us – remained alive long enough to tell me all about you. By the end, he was quite desperate to tell me, in fact.’
Culzean walked over to the sideboard. ‘Do you mind?’ he asked.
Revoke shook his head. Culzean poured himself an amasec, trying hard not to give away how much his hands were shaking.
‘You are a facilitator, an expeditor, and you work for cult concerns such as the Divine Fratery, so long as they can afford your fees.’
‘Yes, sir. That is what I do.’
‘You make things happen.’
Culzean took a sip of his drink, breathed deeply and nodded. ‘I have skills and means. If something needs to be facilitated, I’m the one people come to.’
‘According to Lezzard, the Divine Fratery was concerned with the birthing or manifestation of a daemon called Slyte, whose occurrence they had foreseen. They employed you to make this happen. The birth of this daemon was tied into the activities of Inquisitor Gideon Ravenor, who currently acts against my interests. So that made me and my commander, the chief provost… how did Lezzard put it? It made us negative determiners. Is that right?’
‘It is.’
‘And that’s why you unleashed an incunabula to kill the chief provost?’
Culzean took another sip. ‘Naturally. It was the most expeditious option. But you stopped it. I watched you. It was very impressive. I should like to know how you did that, Master Revoke. As a result, the determiners changed slightly.’
‘Favourably, I gather. Lezzard was quite clear that, despite the failure of your attack, this Slyte was quantifiably more likely to be manifested.’
Culzean set down his empty glass and shook his head. ‘Throne, sir. You really must have hurt Magus Lezzard to get him to tell you this.’
