by Dan Abnett
Molotch paused, frowning.
‘It wasn’t easy to do,’ said Culzean. ‘So show me some damn respect.’
Molotch took a step backwards. It was rare for him to be blindsided. He groaned. ‘Oh, Orfeo, this is precisely why we should be working together. Talking to each other. Your strategy with Ravenor is brilliant. I commend it. But you should have told me!’
‘Calm down,’ Leyla said. ‘Just calm down. Don’t make me draw on you twice in one day, Molotch.’
Molotch was too exasperated to be mollified. ‘Draw away, Leyla. You know what happened last time.’
Annoyed, Slade pulled her pistol and aimed it at the side of Molotch’s head.
‘Again with this,’ Molotch said, making that particular flicking gesture with his right arm. Slade’s weapon tumbled up into the air. He caught it.
Her left hand was aiming a las-blunt body pistol at him. ‘I learn.’ she said. Behind her, Lucius Worna had quietly unshipped his bolt pistol.
‘Oh, put them away, both of you,’ Molotch said sourly. He looked at Culzean. ‘We need to start sharing and cooperating right now.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I fear things have gone wrong.’
‘Wrong?’
‘Ignorant of your fine scheme and concerned with the situation, I have put plans of my own in motion. I fear they will now conflict with yours, and that conflict may harm us both.’
Culzean sighed. ‘Throne, Zyg, what have you done?’
As if on cue, the exclave’s outer gate bell chimed.
‘Visitor.’ said Leyla.
‘See to it,’ Culzean replied. Leyla holstered her las-blunt and caught her pistol as Molotch threw it. She locked it away and headed out of the room.
Culzean look at Molotch and repeated, ‘What have you done?’
‘I was looking after myself.’
‘Leave that to me.’
‘I will, if you keep me informed and remain open to my ideas. We have to work together or we’ll destroy one another.’
‘I heartily concur.’
Slade returned, trailed by a figure in a long grey storm cloak, the hood up.
‘A visitor for our guest,’ she said.
‘Probably not a great idea to entertain with a corpse on the floor,’ Worna rumbled, glaring at the dead inker.
‘I won’t stand on ceremony,’ said the hooded figure. The newcomer turned and faced Molotch. ‘This is a matter of the most pleasant fraternal confidence.’
Molotch smiled. The ancient Cognitae code greeting was like a lost, mournful echo to him. ‘And I stand ready, in confidence, for a knowing brother,’ he replied, as was the form.
‘Ravenor is quitting this world. His hunt is over,’ said the hooded figure.
‘Good news,’ Molotch replied.
‘There is just the final business to conclude,’ said the hooded figure.
‘Oh, Zygmunt, tell me. What the hell have you gone and done?’ Culzean whispered.
‘I have made a commitment that must now be honoured,’ Molotch said. ‘We must make the best of it.’ He stared at the hooded figure. ‘What remains?’
The man drew his hood down and shook out his long, white hair. ‘All that remains is the most dreadful amount of killing,’ said Interrogator Ballack.
FIVE
THEY MET IN the pavilion of a salon in the depths of Basteen. It was a genteel place, the haunt of fashionable society. Dressed in robes, in jewelled gowns, in all their finery, the grandees of Basteen came to the salon and others like it, to see and to be seen. Carriages and ground cars queued to deposit their passengers under the tented awning where lasdancers and contortionists performed in the twitching brazier light.
Inside, the place was lit by glow-globes and hanging lanterns. Each booth and dining table was screened off in its own tent of white silk, which magnified the lamp light and created a creamy luminosity like vellum. Silhouettes moved across the silk screens. There were the sounds of laughter, of conversation, of clinking glasses, of soft chamber music. The smells were of perfume and obscura, secum and hot, intense chocolate. Servitors hurried to and fro, bearing laden trays.
He took a booth on the right-hand side of the salon, and had ordered amasec and a pot of mud-thick dark chocolate when she arrived. ‘Drink?’ asked Nayl.
She shook her head. She was wearing a black velvet overgown, as rich and black as the night outside, a matching hat with a lace veil, and a stole of jet-dyed fur. She looked regal, like an empress, like the dowager governor of an ancient core world. ‘Sit, then.’
She sat on the satin upholstered couch across from him. Dainty laughter, prompted by some witty remark, peeled like bracelet bells through the white silk wall behind her. She reached her arms up, drew long silver pins out from behind her head, and removed her hat and veil. It was the most sexually charged disrobing he’d ever seen. ‘Will your master miss you?’ she asked.
‘What?’
‘Will your master miss you?’
‘Oh. No, not tonight. Too much on his plate. You?’
‘Fenx lets us out,’ Angharad replied.
‘Why did you want to meet with me?’
‘You knew my aunt. I would hear you speak of her.’ Nayl sipped at his amasec. It tasted like molten gold. He couldn’t take his eyes off her. ‘If that’s what you want.’ he said. Nayl felt vulnerable, and it wasn’t just the fact that he’d come unarmed because of the salon’s potent weapon scanners. When she’d told him where she wanted to meet, he’d been obliged to dress up. A grey linen coat and trousers, a white shirt of sathoni cloth. He felt ridiculous. He felt under dressed. He felt… not at all like Harlon Nayl.
He also felt as if he was committing some kind of betrayal, like an illicit affair. He hadn’t told anyone where he was going, especially not Ravenor, and he wasn’t quite sure why.
‘So, your aunt—’ he began.
‘Yes.’
‘Your aunt. Well, I knew her, but my master knew her better.’
‘Your master isn’t going to talk to me. Not openly. I need to know about the blade.’
‘The blade?’
‘Yes, the blade.’
‘Not your aunt?’
‘She died. The clan has come to terms with that. But the blade, Barbarisater. It must be reclaimed.’
‘Reclaimed?’ Nayl asked.
‘The steels belong to the clan. This is ancient law. Barbarisater must be reclaimed.’
‘Well, that’s tough. My master has it.’
‘Your master? Ravenor?’
‘No, uh… my previous master. Eisenhorn.’ Nayl’s voice faltered.
‘Where is he?’
‘Lost. Long lost. Sorry. But I know the blade. Know it well. It cut me.’
An expression that he couldn’t read crossed Angharad’s face. She rose, holding the train of her overgown, and moved around the low table where the drinks and silver chocolate pot had been placed. She sat down on the couch beside him. She gazed at him. The golden buttons on her high-throated black gown came right up under her chin.
‘Where?’ she asked.
‘Where… sorry, what?’ he asked back.
‘Where did it cut you?’
‘Through the body, years ago. Right through me.’
Angharad leaned forward and kissed him. Her lips were wet and slippery.
She took him by the hand and dragged him up from the couch.
‘Going well so far,’ he murmured.
She kissed him again. Lips locked, they rocked each other back and forth, knocking into the table with their legs, shivering the glasses. His amasec spilled. Her mouth was inhumanly hot, her tongue rapid like a wet snake.
‘Here? Really?’ he mumbled when their kiss finally parted.
A smile licked across her mouth like a flame across parchment. She gestured at the white silk walls around them and the flickering silhouettes cast upon them, with a casual flip of her black-gloved hand.
‘The salon prides itself on privacy and discre
tion,’ she said.
‘But the walls are thin. Just silk—’ he began.
‘Are you afraid?’
He nodded. Then they both laughed. They kissed again, bumping into the couch and the table.
‘Throne!’ he gasped.
She pulled off his coat and yanked open his shirt, tearing the seams apart.
‘Where?’ she demanded.
‘Gut level.’ he replied, moving against her. She ripped his shirt down further to expose his torso, slick with sweat.
‘Where?’
‘There!’ he whispered, pointing to the thumb-length, dark scar on his knotted lower abdomen, just above his hip.
She dropped to her knees in front of him.
‘Oh, well now…’ he sighed, blinking.
She kissed the scar. She lingered. Her tongue slid on his flesh. Then she stood again to face him.
‘You’re stopping there?’ he gulped.
Something chimed. She took out her vox.
‘My master summons me,’ she said.
‘Throne, really?’
‘Really.’
She turned and picked up her hat. ‘You shouldn’t be alive,’ she told him. ‘Carthaen steel. You are one of a very select group, Harlon. What we call Wyla Esw Fauhn, which means “spared by the genius”.’
‘Will I see you again?’ he asked, feeling foolish and fourteen the moment he said it.
Angharad smiled. The smile was predatory and thrilling to him.
‘Always,’ she said. Then she pulled back the silk drape and vanished.
Nayl sat down. A servitor peered in through the drape.
‘What may I fetch for you, master?’ it whirred.
‘An amasec. A large one. And also a fresh shirt.’ he replied.
SIX
‘THE HOBBLED BASTARD was right, then,’ muttered Inquisitor Fenx. ‘You have to hand it to him.’
‘You do, you really do,’ replied Ballack.
‘Here all the time,’ Fenx continued. He slid down out of the halted carriage into the gloomy side street. ‘And we laughed at his hunch.’
‘Ravenor is old and experienced,’ Ballack said, clambering out to join Fenx. ‘What was it he said? He has faith.’ Ballack spoke the word as if it was dirty. ‘He knows his business.’
‘I will have to make my apologies to him.’ Fenx decided. ‘Glory Myzard will have to make her apologies too. Now I understand why he’s so highly regarded.’ Fenx looked at Ballack.
‘Provided, of course, that this is confirmed. This is confirmed, I take it?’ ‘The intelligence is immaculate,’ said Ballack. ‘Gathered from eight separate spy units, and corroborated by gene sensors. Molotch is here.’ ‘We have him cold?’ ‘We have him cold, sir.’
Fenx torched up the power to his black body armour. There was a whine, gathering in pitch. Green signal lights lit off around his high collar. He unshipped his bolter and racked it twice. ‘Bring them up,’ he ordered.
Interrogator Ballack nodded. The others dismounted from the waiting carriages. D’mal Singh and her gunhounds, Shugurth, Claudel, Mentator. ‘Where’s Angharad?’ Fenx asked. ‘On her way. She’s signalled.’
Fenx shook his head. ‘We can’t wait for her. Not with the target in sniffing range. We commence.’
‘We commence!’ Ballack called to the waiting figures.
‘Not like that,’ grumbled Tarkos Mentator, the old savant. He hobbled forward on his cane. ‘Not with firearms.’
‘What?’ Fenx spat.
Mentator shrugged as if in the most humble of apologies. He aimed a palsied hand at the dark building before them. ‘Your prey, sir, has made his nest in a house of generation. Public generation 987, to be accurate, serving the western district of Basteen. Quite apart from the power cells contained in this place, there are volatile chemicals held in suspension. Use of firearms would be a very bad idea.’
‘Because?’ Fenx asked. He caught himself. He was sounding stupid. ‘Because we’ll blow ourselves to hell, right. Thank you, savant.’ He holstered his bolter. ‘Muzzle your firearms!’ he ordered, drawing a short, curved sword.
Claudel put away her plasma pistol and pulled out two bloodletting sickles, one in each hand. Cursing, Shugurth patiently detached his cannon from his shoulder socket, put it back in the carriage, and hefted up a war axe with a long, knurled grip.
‘Guns, no!’ D’mal Singh instructed her whining hounds. Their weapon systems deactivated and withdrew. ‘Teeth, good!’ she said. They chomped and clacked their razor edged jaws, growling.
Ballack had drawn a rapier and a matching poniard.
‘Commence,’ snapped Fenx, walking towards the building. ‘Bonus pay to the one who brings me Molotch’s head.’
THE CORPSE LAY face down in the dark on the cold steel decking.
‘Where did you procure the cadaver?’ Molotch asked.
‘It’s the inker you killed.’ Worna said. ‘We needed a body and we had one lying around. Not a great likeness, but then who knows what you look like any more?’
‘Will it suffice?’
Lucius Worna, massive and massively scarred in his chipped power armour, nodded. ‘I had it typed and matched to your gene, palm and retina. They won’t know the difference.’
‘End of story?’ Molotch asked the giant bounty hunter.
Worna smiled. ‘End of story.’
‘That sort of typing and gene-scripting costs dearly,’ Leyla Slade said.
‘It costs what it costs,’ Orfeo Culzean replied. ‘Are we all ready? Zygmunt, you know how this has to work?’
‘I know, Orfeo. I truly know. Consider this recompense for my mistake.’
‘I will. I do. But Ballack—’
‘Leave Ballack to me,’ Molotch replied.
Warning runes lit up on Leyla Slade’s auspex grid. ‘Door four and door seven!’ she hissed. ‘Here they come.’ She rose in one fluid movement from her cross-legged position on the deck and drew a stabbing sword. Lucius Worna moved forward beside her, a warhammer resting across his shoulder plate.
Molotch stepped in front of them. ‘May I crave a favour? From you, Lucius, and you, Leyla? May I do this?’
‘You’ll need support,’ growled Worna.
‘No, I won’t. But if I do, you won’t be far away, will you?’
Worna shrugged, a tectonic gesture of his powered plate.
‘Let me do this,’ Molotch insisted. ‘Let me enjoy this.’
‘Let him,’ said Culzean.
Leyla Slade grinned and offered the grip of her blade to Molotch.
‘I won’t need that,’ he said. He turned, and vanished into the shadows.
THE HOUSE OF generation was very large, with a high roof and deep pockets of darkness. The main body of the hall was lined with generator hubs throbbing in the half-dark. The light was violet, dim. Fenx’s team moved in, whisper quiet, spreading out between the aisles of humming hub units, slipping from shadow to shadow.
Bringing up the rear, Tarkos Mentator shuffled along on his cane. He let the others do the real work, the violence. He was only there to advise.
‘Bad place for a fight,’ a voice whispered in his ear.
‘It is,’ Mentator agreed lightly, then caught himself. He was suddenly terrified. Someone was walking along just behind him. Just a shadow, just a shape at his shoulder.
‘I am reminded of Purlingerius, in the third act. The choral requiem,’ the voice suggested. ‘What is it again? “A man must choose his final resting place, as befits his soul.” Quite magnificent.’
‘Ah, I see you know your Stradhal,’ Mentator answered timidly.
‘Know it well,’ the voice replied. ‘You like opera, then?
‘I do.’
‘So do I. Stradhal. Jevoith. Carnathi, apart from the awful final works.’
‘Oh, they are awful, aren’t they?’ Mentator agreed. Fear was almost choking him.
‘Are you afraid of me?’ the voice beside him whispered.
‘Yes, yes I am,’ Mentator a
nswered, ‘very much.’
‘You want to cry out to the others, don’t you?’
‘Y-yes.’
‘But you dare not raise your voice, do you?’
‘N-no.’
‘You know who I am?’
‘I… I can guess.’
‘I think you guess right, my friend. If you did cry out, well then… things would become very painful and awkward for you. But I’d hate for that to happen to a fellow appreciator of the operatic art. Why don’t we just walk for a while, side-by-side, you and me? We could discuss Stradhal some more.’
‘Well…’
‘That would be all right then, wouldn’t it?’
‘Yes.’
They walked on a little further.
‘I’m about to be attacked,’ said the voice calmly. ‘Try to remember not to cry out.’
Mentator nodded.
A shadow moved suddenly. Interrogator Claudel pounced on them from behind a turbine hub. Her sickles were swinging, flashing like ice in the gloom. They did not connect.
‘Claudel,’ Molotch said.
‘What?’ She faltered, robbed of action by the tone of command. His fingers stabbed into her throat and she died. Molotch caught her falling body and carried it down to the ground gently. He picked up her sickles.
‘Oh Throne, you have slain her!’ Mentator stammered.
‘Yes, I have.’
‘Oh Throne! Oh Throne!’ His voice started to rise. ‘Remember what I said,’ Molotch warned. ‘Fenx! He’s here!’ Mentator yelled. ‘He’s here!’
‘Oh dear me. I thought we had an understanding,’ said Molotch. The sickles flashed.
INQUISITOR FENX HEARD the savant’s urgent cry, cut off short. He ran back down the aisle of the turbine hall.
Claudel lay quiet and still on the decking, as if asleep. Behind her, Tarkos Mentator was curled in a foetal knot, his robes soaked black with blood.
‘Throne!’ Fenx growled. ‘How did—’
‘That happen?’ Molotch finished for him.
Fenx swept around at the sound of the voice, but his sword sliced into empty shadows. Misdirection was Molotch’s favourite game. He threw his voice well.
There was a blunt crack of bone. Fenx staggered backwards, bumping sidelong into the nearest hub. One of Claudel’s sickles transfixed his skull, the handle jutting up from the crown of his head.
