‘If that’s the usual procedure, I suppose so,’ Keira said, beginning to feel irritated by the pointless formality. ‘I’m afraid I’m rather new to all this. On Scintilla we have voxes.’
‘Voxes. Quite.’ The messenger made a slightly strangulated sound behind his floppy lace collar. Then he bowed deeply from the waist. ‘By your leave, my lady.’
‘By all means.’ Keira turned towards the door, inexpressibly relieved to see her lady’s maid hovering there. ‘Lilith will show you out.’
Once she was sure she was alone, she vented her feelings by flicking a couple of the sofa cushions into the air with her toe, punching one across the room before it fell, and dispatching the other to the terrace with a spinning back kick. If Mordechai had known in advance what he was letting her in for with this warp brained scheme of his, she vowed, she’d… she’d… Well, she wasn’t quite sure what she’d do to get back at him, but she’d certainly take her time about it.
The Fathomsound Mine, Sepheris Secundus
098.993.M41
Horst strode briskly along the main corridor of the hanging mansion, Drake and Vex flanking him, his Inquisition rosette clearing a path through the household servants as effectively as a flamer through a snowdrift. Someone must have warned its owners of their approach, though, because neither betrayed the slightest surprise as the trio of Angelae threw open the ornate double doors at the end of the passageway.
The room beyond was opulent, more so than Horst had expected, given Drake’s appraisal of the mansion’s exterior, boasting the usual excesses of glass sculpture and soft furnishings, and he made a mental note to ask his colleague at the earliest opportunity if he’d noticed anything out of the ordinary. Not for the first time he gave silent thanks to the Emperor for the inquisitor’s foresight in adding Drake to the team.
‘I’m afraid you’ve come at a rather inconvenient time,’ the Lady Tonis said coldly, looking at the three men who had dared to invade her drawing room as though they’d just belched in the middle of a dinner party. She looked about thirty, but Horst knew from the records Vex had obtained that her appearance was the result of extensive juvenat treatments, and that her real age was well over twice that. Her husband had apparently opted to freeze the ravages of time a decade or so later than his wife, allowing enough grey to seep into his hair to impart an air of maturity and wisdom, and his face was still pallid with grief, making it look closer to his real age than his assumed one. Both were dressed in the formal oranges and yellows of mourning affected by the Secundan nobility. Drake had explained that the colours were supposed to reflect the flames of a funeral pyre, although in the case of the late Technomancer there had hardly been enough left to burn. ‘We’ve just returned from our son’s funeral, and we’re expecting the ecclesiarch to arrive for the vigil of mourning at any moment.’
Determined not to repeat the mistake he’d made with the secretary of the Conclave in Icenholm, inadvertently undermining his authority by addressing him politely, Horst merely nodded briskly in response. ‘Then we’ll do our best not to detain you any longer than necessary, but you must realise this is an important part of our investigation.’
‘Very well, then,’ Lord Tonis said, in tones of resignation, ‘but I don’t see why you found it necessary to come all this way just to ask us a few questions.’
‘Your son was a faithful servant of the Imperium,’ Horst said, ‘and the manner of his death is disturbing. That alone justifies the interest of the Inquisition.’
‘Disturbing how?’ Lady Tonis asked, exchanging an involuntary sideways glance with her husband. Horst’s investigative instincts were aroused. He was sure they knew something about their son, some secret they were keeping between them.
‘His mortal remains showed signs of daemonic possession,’ Horst said bluntly, hoping to shock them into some further betrayal, but both aristocrats had regained their composure, merely paling at his words in the manner most pious citizens would on hearing the most feared denizens of the warp referred to so casually.
‘Impossible,’ Lord Tonis said flatly, making the sign of the aquila regardless. ‘Our son was a faithful follower of the Omnissiah. You must have made some kind of mistake.’
‘That’s always possible,’ Vex said, his carefully modulated tone cutting through the awkward silence that followed, ‘but as yet we have found no alternative explanation.’
‘The thing is,’ Drake said, still leaning against the doorframe, where he was able to keep an eye both on the room and the corridor outside in case any of the household staff attempted to eavesdrop or interfere, ‘that sort of thing usually happens to psykers, not cogboys.’ He glanced apologetically at Vex as he used the mildly disparaging nickname for tech-priests, but his colleague, conscious of the part Drake was playing, seemed unperturbed by the insult. Horst noted the slip, but Lord and Lady Tonis appeared not to have, gaining the impression they were supposed to of an ill-mannered thug held barely in check by his superior.
‘Quite true,’ Vex said. ‘Offhand, I can think of no other case where an acolyte of the Omnissiah was so afflicted.’
‘There you are, then,’ Lady Tonis said waspishly. ‘You’re digging out the wrong seam, and there’s an end of it.’
‘There’s no end of it until the Ordo Calixis declares so,’ Horst said. ‘At the moment this matter has been delegated to my colleagues and I, but if you prefer to discuss it with an inquisitor in person, we can arrange a meeting quite easily.’
‘That won’t be necessary,’ Lord Tonis said wearily.
His wife glared at him. ‘Harald,’ she said, her tone admonishing.
‘What’s the point?’ Lord Tonis said. ‘The boy’s dead. There’s nothing they can do to him now.’
‘Why would we want to?’ Drake asked bluntly.
‘Because he was a psyker,’ Lady Tonis snapped. ‘Satisfied?’
‘Not really, no,’ Horst said. ‘He was working in an environment where such a curse would have been immediately apparent, and he had been carefully assessed by the Inquisition before being assigned. No such taint was discovered at either stage.’
‘Then it worked!’ Lord Tonis said, glancing at his wife.
‘Evidently not well enough,’ Drake said, ‘whatever it was. But you’ve just admitted to harbouring a psyker, which is good enough for me.’ He glanced at Horst. ‘Shall we take them in? The Arbites at the Isolarium can hold on to them until the boss gets back, or we can bring in an interrogator from Scintilla.’
‘That might not be necessary,’ Horst said, watching the last vestiges of aristocratic arrogance draining from their unwilling hosts as the full realisation of the power behind them began to sink in. He leaned forward a little in his overstuffed chair, his posture one of polite attention. ‘If you could explain from the beginning?’
‘Gilden was cursed,’ Lord Tonis said. ‘Not that we realised at first, but when he got to his early teens, things started to happen. Small objects would seem to move around on their own, stuff like that.’
‘I’m surprised you noticed,’ Drake said sardonically, and Horst motioned him to silence. The constant movement of the hanging house was disconcerting, like being on a boat in a slow, steady swell, and the last thing his sensitive inner ear needed was another reminder of the fact. The short suborbital hop from Icenholm had been bad enough.
‘A hard secret to keep,’ Horst said, hoping to prompt them to continue, and distract himself from the vague feeling of nausea in the pit of his stomach.
‘You have no idea,’ Lady Tonis said, her tone still brittle, but mingled with the kind of relief Horst had heard many times before in the interrogation suite of a precinct house when some petty felon eventually decided to stop lying and begin to unburden his conscience. ‘Servants gossip so, and we hardly dared to see anyone in case they noticed something untoward. Our social lives were in tatters. We were at our wits’ end.’
‘You should have gone to the appropriate authorities,’ Horst said. ‘Had him tested and rated.’
>
‘And then what?’ The woman looked at him with cold contempt. ‘Hand him over to be penned up somewhere with the other freaks, waiting to be taken away by the Black Ships?’
‘It was your duty as citizens of the Imperium,’ Horst said.
Lord Tonis sighed heavily. ‘Some things are stronger than duty,’ he said. ‘I don’t expect you to understand, but if you ever find yourself with a child, a family, perhaps you might.’
‘Perhaps,’ Horst said, feeling an unexpected pang of regret at the thought as he spoke, ‘but that’s hardly likely.’
‘Then I’m sorry for you,’ the old man said, sounding as though he really meant it.
‘I assume that the Church of the Omnissiah offered an alternative course of action,’ Vex said, his voice as level as ever, ‘but I must admit to wondering how, precisely.’
‘We had a visitor from the Adeptus Mechanicus,’ Lord Tonis said. ‘A magos from the Lathes, looking for some highly specific materials. We were able to accommodate him, although they were difficult to obtain.’
‘No other holding in the Fathomsound could do it,’ his wife added, with an element of pride.
‘Quite so,’ Lord Tonis confirmed, before continuing. ‘The extraction took some time, and despite the obvious risks, we felt obliged to offer him the hospitality of our house.’
‘I presume he noticed something,’ Horst said, hoping to nudge him a bit closer to the point.
‘He did.’ The Tonis patriarch nodded. ‘He was right in the room with us when Gilden’s curse manifested, and a flower vase started spinning in the middle of the table.’
‘We thought he’d panic,’ Lady Tonis put in, ‘but he didn’t. He just said it was interesting.’
‘If he was of sufficient standing in the light of the Omnissiah,’ Vex said thoughtfully, ‘he probably had an augmented cerebellum. That would have precluded an emotional reaction.’ His eyes unfocused for a moment, as he recalled something. ‘Technomancer Tonis was similarly blessed.’
‘Yes.’ Lord Tonis nodded. ‘Magos Avia suggested that a similar enhancement might save Gilden, by replacing the organic parts of his brain where the taint resided with augmetic cogitators, and we were desperate enough to try it.’
‘Such blessings are reserved for the Omnissiah’s anointed,’ Vex said, sounding either disapproving or envious, Horst wasn’t sure which. Perhaps it was a mixture of both.
‘Which is why he became a tech-priest,’ Drake said.
‘That’s right.’ Lady Tonis slumped in her chair, the body language of a woman her true age superimposed grotesquely on her artificially youthful frame. ‘When Avia returned to the Lathes, Gilden went with him, and that was the last we ever saw of our son.’
‘That’s not true, though, is it?’ Horst said. ‘He returned to Sepheris Secundus twelve years ago. You must have had some contact with him in all that time.’
‘We saw Technomancer Tonis,’ the woman said, ‘a half-mechanical parody of a man. But there was nothing left of Gilden, except for a few old memories that meant nothing to him. He came to the mine a few times to reopen Avia’s excavations and do some work down there, but after his first visit we avoided one another. Harald and I found it too painful, and he seemed to find our emotional displays…’ she groped for the right word, ‘…distasteful.’
‘Do you know what he was doing in the mine?’ Horst asked.
Lord Tonis shook his head. ‘Not a clue. The seams down there were worked out years ago. We offered him all the serfs he needed, but he declined, saying he preferred to use servitors. He brought them in and out himself, in an old cargo lifter.’
‘One final question, if you don’t mind.’ Horst glanced at his chronograph, reminding the couple that they had an appointment, and that whether or not they got to keep it was entirely up to him. ‘Who’s been blackmailing you?’
‘Who do you think?’ the woman asked, not even bothering to deny it. ‘Avia, of course. He had to bend a lot of rules to get Gilden treated quickly enough. That cost a lot of credits, and a damn sight more to keep him quiet about what he’d done afterwards.’ She smiled bitterly. ‘At least that stops now. The Inquisition knows what we did, so he hasn’t got a hold on us any more.’
‘That raises the question of what you’re going to do about it,’ Lord Tonis said quietly.
Horst shrugged. ‘Harbouring a psyker is both treason and heresy,’ he said, twitching his coat aside to reveal the bolt pistol in its shoulder rig. The two aristocrats stared at him, plainly terrified, and trying not to show it. ‘If it was up to me I’d shoot the pair of you right now, but my patron inquisitor may want to question you further. Consider yourselves under house arrest until you hear from us again or the Arbites arrive to take you into custody.’ He turned to Drake and Vex. ‘Come on. We’ve other matters to attend to.’
‘One thing still intrigues me,’ Vex said, pausing in the doorway. ‘Your son’s remains have already been disposed of according to the rites of the Church of the Omnissiah. Why are you having a second funeral?’
‘Because we’re not members of your heartless cult, and our son is dead,’ Lady Tonis said bitterly.
‘And because funerals aren’t for the dead,’ her husband added, taking her hand, ‘they’re for the living. But I don’t suppose you’ll ever understand that.’
‘Probably not,’ Vex agreed, following his colleagues out.
‘Why didn’t we just take them in?’ Drake asked, as they left the mansion and began to walk across the shuttle pad, his bootsoles ringing on the riveted metal surface. The wind was keen, making his coat flap like a banner, and threatening to nudge him off his feet.
Horst shrugged. ‘People start asking questions about where they’ve gone and the next thing you know every lowlife on the planet’s running for cover screaming that the Inquisition’s coming, which klyboes Elyra and Vos’s operation. They’ll keep until we’ve dug out the traitors we’re really after.’
‘If you say so.’ Drake shrugged too, clearly far from convinced. ‘You’ve been doing this a lot longer than I have.’
‘Some aspects of their story still strike me as anomalous,’ Vex said. ‘Like this Magos Avia. If he really exists, and agreed to nullify Tonis’s psychic abilities, why engage in prolonged blackmail afterwards? Acolytes of the Omnissiah have no need of money, the church provides everything they require.’
‘I wondered about that too,’ Drake said, raising his voice a little as a second shuttle began circling the pad, waiting for theirs to make way for it. ‘I think we should take a look down this hole of his.’
‘My thoughts exactly,’ Horst said, tapping his comm-bead. ‘Barda, are you ready to lift?’
‘As soon as you’re aboard,’ the young pilot confirmed, ‘and I’m getting a transmission from Icenholm. Patching it through.’
‘Mordechai?’ Keira said in his ear a moment later. ‘This warp-brained idea of yours has just gone klybo. Adrin’s made contact already, and he wants to meet me tonight. No way I’m passing for an inbred parasite that soon without some serious coaching.’
‘Fine.’ Horst thought rapidly. ‘Don’t panic. I’m sending Danuld straight back with Barda, as soon as they’ve dropped Hybris and me at the mine. The two of you should be able to nail your cover story before this evening.’
‘We’d better, or I’m just going to have to kill everyone in the room and let the Emperor sort them out.’ Keira paused for a second. ‘And for your information, I am not panicking!’ The channel went dead before he could muster a reply.
Horst turned to face Drake. ‘Did you get that?’
‘I did.’ Drake nodded sombrely, a hint of amusement in his eyes. ‘You want me to go back to the villa and teach Keira how to be a lady, while you and Hybris go looking for Emperor knows what at the bottom of a shaft used by a daemon-possessed tech-priest in a mine that’s supposed to be haunted.’
‘That’s about the size of it, yes,’ Horst said. ‘Any other questions?’
Drake nodded
again. ‘Any chance you’d consider swapping?’ he asked.
Thirteen
The Fathomsound Mine, Sepheris Secundus
098.993.M41
‘There they go,’ Horst said, completely superfluously so far as Vex was concerned, as the shuttle rose from the landing pad at one end of the gently rocking raft. The tech-priest nodded nonetheless, recognising the phrase as just another example of the redundant input most of the unaugmented seemed to rely on for reassurance in times of stress.
‘Almost three minutes ahead of my most probable estimate,’ he agreed instead, watching the bright flare of the shuttle’s afterburners ignite like a flaming star against the overarching darkness of the cavern roof a kilometre or more above their heads. ‘We seem to have been most fortunate in our choice of pilot.’ Few others he had met would have been sufficiently attuned to the mood of the shuttle’s machine-spirit to have risked invoking the extra thrust until it had risen above the lip of the hole in the roof through which they had descended into the depths of the Fathomsound, dropping almost vertically downwards from the dangling house invisibly far above them. Barda had judged the manoeuvre to a nicety, and as they watched, the pinprick of light elongated to a streak, bouncing up and out through the ragged circle of grey sky in the stygian blackness above.
‘He shows promise,’ Horst agreed, the matter clearly of little interest to him at the moment. His face was pale in the light of the luminators scattered around the deck of the mining platform, the faint pallor no doubt a result of his unfortunate propensity to motion sickness. He glanced around at their surroundings with evident distaste. ‘Guess this must be the way.’
Without waiting for a reply, he set off across the gently rocking surface of the landing dock towards a handful of ramshackle buildings, apparently erected from whatever materials had happened to come to hand in the course of the job. Even in the half-light, Vex was able to make out flakboard, crudely sawn planking and cretecast slabs, and that had just been in the walls of the nearest structure, a two-storey edifice illuminated by a few flickering electrosconces hanging from brackets below the roofline. It was the largest and most impressive of the buildings, and the tech-priest was hardly surprised to see a heavyset man in drab clothing hurrying down a ramshackle staircase that leaned against its patchwork wall like a drunk clinging to a pillar for support, apparently intent on greeting them.
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