by Various
‘Odd that he employed three men with the same background,’ Kara said. She could not bring herself to utter Molotch’s name.
‘Curious indeed,’ I agreed. ‘Carl, I don’t suppose you managed to identify the institutions that raised them?’
‘Throne, you don’t want much do you?’ Carl laughed. He beamed, like a conjuror showing off a sleight-of-hand marvel. ‘Of course I did. And they all came from the same one. A darling little place called the Kindred Youth Scholam.’
Nayl left the hotel room almost immediately and headed off to scare up some transport for us. For the first time in months, I felt my team moving with a sense of focus, so refreshingly different from the blunt-edged vengeance that had spurred them since Majeskus. Carl deserved praise. He had diligently uncovered a trail that gave us refined purpose once again.
We had been so squarely and murderously outplayed by the heretic Zygmunt Molotch. I had been pursuing him for a long time, but at Majeskus, he stopped running and turned to face me.
The ensuing clash, most of which took place aboard my chartered starship, the Hinterlight, left over half the crew dead. Amongst them, trapped by Molotch’s malicious evil, were three of my oldest, most trusted retainers: Will Tallowhand, Norah Santjack and Eleena Koi. Badged with their blood, triumphant, the bastard Molotch had escaped.
I had lost friends before. We all had. Serving the ordos of the Holy Inquisition was a dangerous and often violent calling. I myself, more than most, can vouch for the cost to life and limb.
But Majeskus was somehow a particularly searing blow. Molotch’s assault had been ingeniously vicious and astoundingly callous, even by the standards of such vermin. It was as if he had a special genius for spite. I had vowed not to rest until I had found him again and exacted retribution in full.
In truth, when I came to Sameter, I do not think I was an Imperial inquisitor at all. I am not ashamed to admit that for a brief while, my duty to the God-Emperor had retreated somewhat, replaced by a more personal fire. I was Gideon Ravenor, burning to avenge his friends.
The same, I knew, was true of my four companions. Harlon and Kara had known Eleena Koi since their days together in the employ of my former master Eisenhorn. Harlon had also formed a particular bond of friendship with the mercurial Will Tallowhand. In Norah Santjack, Thonius had enjoyed the stimulating company of a mind as quick and clever as his own. There would be no more devilish games of regicide, no more late-night debates on the respective merits of the later Helican poets. And Thonius was yet young. These were the first comrades he had lost in the line of duty.
Even Wystan Frauka was in mourning. Louche and taciturn, Frauka was an unloved, unlovely man who made no friends because of his untouchable curse. But Eleena Koi had been an untouchable too, one of nature’s rare psychic blanks and the last of Eisenhorn’s Distaff. There had been a relationship there, one neither of them ever chose to disclose, presumably a mutual need created by their shared status as outsiders, pariahs. He missed her. In the weeks after Majeskus, he said less than usual, and smoked all the time, gazing into distances and shadows.
Aboard the hired transport – a small, grey cargo-gig with whistling fan-cell engines – we moved west through the hive city. Carl linked his data-slate to my chair’s input and I reviewed his information concerning the scholam.
It had been running for many years, ostensibly a worthy charity school struggling to provide housing and basic levels of education for the most neglected section of Urbitane’s demographic. There were millions, nay billions, of institutions like it all across the Imperium, wherever hives rose and gross poverty loomed. Many were run by the Ecclesiarchy, or tied to some scheme of work by the Departmento Munitorum or the Imperial Guard itself. Some were missionary endeavours established by zealous social reformers, some political initiatives, some just good, four-square community efforts to assist the downtrodden and underprivileged.
And some were none of those things. Carl and I inspected the records of the Kindred Youth Scholam carefully. On the surface, it was respectable enough. Its register audits were a matter of public record, and it applied for and received the right grants and welfare support annually, which meant that the Administratum subjected it to regular inspection. It was approved by the Munitorum, and held all the appropriate stamps and marques of a legitimate charitable institution. It had an impressive portfolio of recommendations and references from many of Urbitane’s worthies and nobles. It had even won several rosettes of distinction from the Missionaria.
But scratch any surface…
‘You’ll like this,’ said Carl. ‘The Prefect, he’s one Berto Cyrus. His official file is spotless and perfectly in order. But I think it’s a graft.’
A graft. A legitimate dossier that has been expertly designed to overfit previous records and eclipse them. Done well – and this had been done brilliantly – a graft would be more than adequate to bypass the Administratum. But we servants of the holy ordos had greater and more refined tools of scrutiny to bring to bear. Carl showed me the loose ends and rough edges that had been tucked away to conceal the basic deception, the long, tortuous strands of inconsistency that no one but the Inquisition would ever think to check, for the effort would be too labour-intensive. That was ever the failing of the Imperium’s monumental Administratum. Overseeing hives the size of Urbitane, even an efficient and ordered division of the Administratum could only hope to keep up with day to day processing. There was no time for deeper insight. If one wanted to hide something from the Imperial Administratum, one simply had to place it at the end of a long line of diversions and feints, so far removed from basic inspections that no Administry clerk would ever notice it.
‘He’s older than he pretends to be,’ said Carl. ‘Far older. Here’s the give away. Three digits different in his twelve digit citizenry numeric, but changed here, at birth-registry date, where no one would ever go back to look. Berto Cyrus was actually a stillborn infant. The Prefect took over the identity.’
‘Which makes him?’
‘Which makes him eighty-eight years older than his record states. And therefore makes him, in fact, Ludovic Kyro, a cognitae-schooled heretic wanted on five worlds.’
‘Cognitae? Throne of Earth!’
‘I said you’d like it,’ Carl smiled, ‘and here’s the other thing. Its implications are not very pleasant.’
‘Go on.’
‘Given the scholam’s throughput of pupils over the years, very, very few are still evident in the city records.’
‘They’ve disappeared?’
‘That’s too strong a word. Not accounted for would be a better term. The ex-pupils have dropped off the record after their time at the scholam, so there’s no reason anyone scrutinising the school’s register in an official capacity should question it. Pupils leave, sign up indentures, contracts, hold-employs, but then these documents lead nowhere.’
‘From which you deduce what?’ I asked, though I could see Carl had the answer ready in the front of his mind.
‘The scholam is a front. It’s… laundering children and young adults. Raising them, training them, nurturing them, and then moving them as a commodity into other hands. The fact that the pupils are known only by their scholam names means that they can be slipped away unnoticed. It’s quite brilliant.’
‘Because they take in anonymous children, give them new identities to provide them with legal status, and then sell them on under cover of perfectly correct and perfectly untraceable paperwork?’
‘Just so,’ said Carl.
‘What do they do with them?’ I wondered.
‘Whatever they like, would be my guess,’ said Wystan, glancing up from his tawdry book. I hadn’t even realised he’d been listening. ‘Those three we’re tracking, they ended up as hired guns, probably because they were handy in that regard. Strong guys get muscle work. Pretty girls…’
‘Whatever else we do,’ I
said, ‘we’re closing that place down.’
VII
The cell was a metal box and smelled of piss. The ginger-haired man opened the hatch and dragged Patience out. She tried to resist, but her limbs were weak and her mind muddy. The ginger-haired man still had his limiter off.
His name was DaRolle, that much she had learned, and he worked for a man called Loketter.
‘On your feet, darling,’ DaRolle said. ‘They’re waiting for you.’ He prodded her along the dim hallway. Patience didn’t know where she was, but she knew it was at least a day since she had been taken from the scholam by these men.
‘It’s Patience, right?’ the ginger-haired man said. ‘Your trophy name?’
‘My what?’
‘Trophy name. The scholam gives you all trophy names, ready for the game. And yours is Patience, isn’t it?’
‘Where are my sisters?’ she asked.
‘Forget you ever had any.’
Loketter, the man in red, was waiting for them in a richly appointed salon at the end of the hallway. There were other men with him, all distinguished older males just like him, sitting around on couches and buoy-chairs, smoking lho and sipping amasec. Patience had seen their type so many times before at graduation suppers. Men of wealth and status – mill owners and merchants, shipmasters and guilders – and Patience had dreamed of the day when one of them would select her for service, employment, a future.
How hollow that seemed now. For all their grooming, for all their fine clothes and fancy manners, these men were predators. The scholam which she had trusted for so long had simply been their feeding ground.
‘Here she is,’ smiled Loketter. The men applauded lazily.
‘Still in her scholam clothes,’ a fat man in green said with relish. ‘A nice touch, Loketter.’
‘I know you like them fresh, Boroth. Her name is Patience, and she is a telekine. I’m not sure if she realises she is a telekine, actually. Do you, my dear? Do you know what you are?’
Loketter addressed the last part of his question at her. Patience flushed.
‘I know what I am,’ she said.
‘And what is that?’
‘Trapped amongst a bunch of perverts,’ she said.
The men laughed.
‘Oh, such spirit!’ said Boroth.
‘And pretty green eyes too!’ said another man, swathed in orange furs.
‘The wager is seven thousand crowns per half hour of survival,’ Loketter announced.
‘Very high,’ said the man in furs. ‘What is the area, and the jeopardy?’
‘Low Tenalt,’ replied Loketter, and several of the men laughed. ‘Low Tenalt,’ Loketter repeated. ‘And the jeopardy is the Dolors. Although, if she’s nimble, she might make it to Pennyraker territory, in which case the wager increases by another hundred and fifty.’
‘How many pawns?’ asked a tall, bearded man in a selpic blue doublet.
‘Standard rules, Vevian. One per player. Open choice. Body weapons only, although I’ll allow a gun per pawn for jeopardy work. Guns are not to be used for taking the quarry, as I have no need to remind you. Gunshot death or disintegration voids the game and the pot goes to the house.’
‘Observation?’ asked a thin man in grey robes.
‘Servo-skull picter, as standard. House will supply eight. You’ll each be allowed two of your own.’
‘Will she be armed?’ Boroth asked.
‘I don’t know. Would you care to chose a weapon?’ Loketter asked Patience.
‘What is the game?’ she replied.
More laughter.
‘Life, of course,’ Loketter said. ‘A weapon, Patience? DaRolle, show her.’
The ginger-haired man walked over to a varnished hardwood case set on a side table, opened it and revealed the numerous polished blades and exotic killing devices laid out on the velvet cushion.
‘Choose, darling,’ he said.
Patience shook her head. ‘I’m not a fighter. Not a killer.’
‘Darling, if you’re going to live for even ten minutes, you’ll have to be both.’
‘I refuse,’ said Patience. ‘Frig you very much, “darling”.’
DaRolle tutted and closed the case.
‘Unarmed?’ Boroth said. ‘I’ll take the wager, Loketter. In fact, I’ll double you.’
‘Fourteen taken and offered,’ Loketter announced.
‘Taken,’ said a man in pink suede.
‘I’m in,’ said the bearded man Loketter had called Vevian.
Four of the others agreed too, opening money belts and casket bands and tossing piles of cash on the low, dished table at Loketter’s feet. In ten seconds there was a thousand times more money in that baize bowl than Patience had ever even imagined.
‘Begin,‘ Loketter said, rising to his feet. ‘Pawns to the outer door for inspection and preparation. Drones will be scanned prior to release. I know your tricks, Boroth.’
Boroth chuckled and waved a pudgy hand.
‘The game will commence in thirty minutes.’ Loketter walked over to face Patience. ‘I have great faith in your abilities, Patience. Don’t let me down. Don’t lose me money.’
She spat in his face.
Loketter smiled. ‘That’s exactly what I was looking for. DaRolle?’
The ginger-haired man grabbed Patience by the arms and marched her out of the room. They went down a maze of long, brass tunnels and finally up some iron steps into what seemed like a loading dock or an air-gate.
‘Go stand by the doors, darling,’ he said.
‘What happens now?’ Patience asked.
‘Now you run for your life until they get you,’ DaRolle said.
Patience put her hands against the rusted hatchway, and then pulled them away as the hatch rumbled open.
She didn’t know what to expect when she looked out. Beyond the hatchway, the shadowy wastes of the slum-tracts stretched away into the distance.
‘I won’t go out there,’ she growled.
DaRolle came up behind her and shoved her outside. Patience fell into the dirt.
‘Word of advice,’ called the ginger-haired man. ‘If you want it, anyway. Watch for the Dolors. They use the shadow. Don’t trust black.’
‘I don’t t–’ Patience began.
But the hatch slammed shut.
Patience got to her feet. Gloom surrounded her. A hot, stinking wind blew in through the nearby ruins, smelling of garbage and city rot.
Somewhere, something whooped gleefully in the darkness. A lifter rumbled overhead, its lights flashing. When she turned, she saw the immensity of the hive filling the sky behind her like a cliff, extending up as far as she could see.
She started to run.
VIII
There was something wrong with Prefect Cyrus’s face: a blush of burst blood vessels that even careful treatment with a medicae’s dermo-wand had failed to conceal. He was trying to be civil, and was clearly impressed by his visitor’s apparel, but he was also put out.
‘This is irregular, I’m afraid,’ he fussed as he led them into a waiting room where Imperial teachings were writ in gold leaf on the darkwood panels. ‘There are appointed times for inspection, and also for apprenticeship dealings. Take a seat, won’t you?’
‘I apologise for the difficulties I’m causing,’ Carl replied. ‘But time is rather pressing, and you came highly recommended.’
‘I see,’ said Cyrus.
‘And I have… resources to make it worth your while.’
‘Indeed,’ smiled Cyrus. ‘And your name is?’
‘I’d prefer not to deal in names,’ Carl smiled.
‘Then perhaps I should show you out, sir. This is a respectable academy.’
Sitting cross-legged on the old couch, his fur-trimmed mantle turned back over his shoulder to expose
the crimson falchapetta lining, Carl Thonius beckoned with one gloved hand to Kara, who stood waiting in the doorway. Kara was robed and cowled like some dumb servitor, and carried a heavy casket. As she approached, Carl leaned over and flipped the casket lid open.
‘Lutillium. Twenty ingots, each of a weight of one eighth. I’ll leave it to you to calculate the market price, Prefect.’
Cyrus licked his lips slightly. ‘I, ah… what is it you want, sir?’
‘Two boys, two girls. No younger than eleven, no older than thirteen. Healthy. Fit. Comely. Clean.’
‘This is, ah…’
‘I’m sorry, I’m being very direct,’ said Carl. ‘I should have said this before. This is a matter of the most pleasant fraternal confidence.’
‘I see,’ said Cyrus. Carl had just used one of the cognitae’s private recognition codes, by which one graduate knew another. ‘I’ll just see what’s taking those refreshments so long to arrive.’
The Prefect bustled out of the room and hurried down a gloomy hallway to where Ide was waiting.
‘Bring the others in,’ Cyrus whispered to him. ‘Do it quickly. If this is on the level, we look to earn well. But I have a feeling.’
Ide nodded.
In the waiting room, Carl sat back and winked at Kara.
The Prefect’s suspicious.+
‘Really?’ Carl said softly. ‘And I thought I was bringing such veracity to the part.’
Get ready. Nayl?+
Harlon Nayl grunted as he drove another crampon into the crumbling outer brick of the tower’s side, and played out his line to bring him closer to a ninth floor window. A terrible updraft from the stack-chasm below tugged at his clothing.
‘Ready enough,’ he replied.
Harlon’s in position. Carl? You can do the honours.+
‘Thank you, sir,’ he whispered. ‘It’ll be a pleasure.’
