by Xenos (lit)
'Stay back and be ready/1 said.
The tavern was dark and crowded. Music and lights pulsed from the low roof, and the air was rank with the smells of sweat, smoke, hops and the unmistakable fumes of obscura.
My vox-drone was coming out through the door as I entered. It paused, delivered its message and then drifted away. A curt text informed me that the Scaveleur was not for hire.
Moving through the packed clientele, I located Tanokbrey. His rose-red jacket was of finest silk and his frizzy black hair was raked back into twists and tied with ribbons at the back of his head. He had a craggy, singularly unwelcoming face. His drinking companions were a pair of common crewmen in studded leather bodygloves.
'Master Tanokbrey?'
He looked round at me slowly and said nothing. His comrades fixed me with grim stares.
'Perhaps we could talk privately?' I suggested.
'Perhaps you could piss off/
I sat down anyway. His men seemed astonished at my action, and stiffened. All Tanokbrey had to do was nod, I realised.
'Let me start with an easy question/ I began.
'Start by pissing off/ he replied. He was now fixing me with a caustic gaze. Without breaking eye contact, I noted that his left hand was inside his coat.
'You seem anxious. Why is that?'
No answer. His men stirred nervously.
'Something to hide?'
'I'm having a quiet drink. I don't want interruptions. Now sod off/
'So unfriendly. Well, if these gentlemen aren't going to give us privacy, I'll press on regardless. I do hope I don't embarrass you/
'Who the hell are you?'
Now I didn't reply. My eyes never left his. 'Your high-anchor fees are delinquent/1 said at last.
'That's a lie!'
It was, and so was what I said next. It didn't matter. The purpose was to undermine him. 'And your manifest papers are incomplete. Gudran control may wish to impound your ship until the irregularities are cleared up/
'Lying bastard-'
'It's an easy matter. You made a run to Hubris that is not logged, nor is any cargo list filed. How will they calculate import duties?'
His chair scraped back a centimetre or two.
'Why were you on Hubris?'
'I wasn't! Who says I was?'
Take your pick. Saemon Crotes. Namber Wylk/
'Don't know them. You've got the wrong man, you miserable bastard. Now frag off!'
'Murdin Eyclone, then. What about him? Didn't he hire you?'
That brought the nod at last. An imperceptible motion of his head.
The crewman beside me lunged out of his seat, a compact shock-flail snapping out of his sleeve and into his gloved hand.
'Drop it/ I willed, without even speaking.
The flail sparked as it bounced off the table top.
It was in my hand a second later. I whipped it back across its owner's face and smashed him sideways off his chair. Then I snapped it round, crushed the left ear of the other crewman and laid him full length on the floor at the foot of the table.
I sat back down, facing Tanokbrey, the flail in my hand. His face as grey and his eyes darted now with panic.
'Eyclone. Tell me about him/
His left arm moved inside his jacket and I jabbed the flail into his shoulder. Unfortunately, I realised he was wearing armour under that silk.
He reeled from the impact, but his arm came up all the same, a short-snouted laspistol clutched in his fist.
I slammed the tablejnto him and his shot went wild, punching through the back of a nearby ruffian. The victim toppled over, bringing another table smashing down.
Now the shot and the commotion had got the attention of the entire tavern. There was general shouting and confusion.
I didn't pay it any heed. Tanokbrey fired again through the overturned table and I dove aside, colliding with milling bodies.
The merchant was on his feet, kicking and punching his way through the mob to the exit. I could see Betancore, but the mass of bodies prevented him from blocking Tanokbrey.
'Aside!' I yelled, and the crowd parted like hatch shutters.
Tanokbrey was on the walkway outside, running for the quay at the end of the street. He turned and fired. Pedestrians screamed and ran. Someone was pushed into the canal.
Tanokbrey leapt into a grav-skiff, shot the protesting hire-driver, pushed the corpse off the steering perch, and gunned the craft away down the canal.
Betancore's air-bike was sat on its kickstand to my left. I cranked the power and swept off down the waterway in pursuit.
'Wait! Wait!' I heard Betancore yelling.
No time.
Tanokbrey's flight caused mayhem down the length of the busy canal. He drove his skiff into the jostling traffic, forcing craft to heave out of his way. Already the decorative golden filigree on the skiffs black hull was grazed and dented with a dozen glancing impacts. People on the banks and abroad on the water howled and yelled at him as he wrenched his way through. Where the street met a canal thoroughfare, he tried to extend his lead with a surge of speed. A fast-moving courier boat coming down the stream veered at the last moment, and struck the quayside with great force, sending the craft up over end, its hull shredding, its driver cartwheeling through the air.
I laced the air-bike through the disrupted traffic in Tanokbrey's wake. I wanted to gain height, and move to a level where I could coax more speed from the machine without fear of collision. But the vehicle's grav-plate had a governor unit that prevented anything more than three metres of climb. I had no time to figure out where the governor was or how to disable it. I aimed the bike between turning skiffs, water-buses heavy in the choppy canal, other darting air-bikes.
Ahead, I could hear the distant sounds of military bands.
Tanokbrey whipped out of a junction into the Grand Canal, and straight into the side of the afternoon's parade. A slow-moving river of
skiffs, military barges and landspeeder escorts filled the entire width of the waterway. The craft were full of jubilant Imperial Guardsmen and officers, thundering regimental bands and battlefleet dignitaries. The air was glittering with streamers and banners, company standards, Imperial eagles and Gudrunite carnodons. One entire barge bore a massive golden carnodon sculpture to which whooping guardsmen clung. Garlands fluttered from the barrels of a thousand brandished las-rifles. The walkways and bridges of the Grand Canal were choked with cheering civilians.
Tanokbrey's skiff smacked into the side of a troop-barge, and angry yells and jeers were loosed at him as he tried to turn. From the shore, the crowd pelted him with fruit, stones and other missiles.
Cursing back at the angry soldiers, he slammed his skiff round the rear of the barge, trying to force his way across the canal.
I was closing on him now, trying to avoid the displeasure of the mob. Hooters and sirens bayed at him from the parade boats as he jostled across their paths. A trooper from one barge leapt onto his skiff to waylay him, and Tanokbrey kicked him off into the water before he could get a good footing. That turned things even uglier. The noise of the booing and outrage was immense. The parade bunched up badly, and dozens of furious guardsmen pressed at the rails of their barges, trying to reach him.
He over-rewed the skiff to get clear of them, and struck against a raft carrying a company band. Several instrument players toppled with the impact, and the proud Imperial anthem they had been playing dissolved in a cacophony of wrong notes and broken rhythms.
Enraged troopers in a smaller skiff drew alongside him, and rocked his craft dangerously as they tried to board. He pulled his handgun.
His last mistake. I pulled up short, and landed on the canal bank. There was no point in pressing the pursuit now.
Tanokbrey got off two shots into the mob. Then twenty or more freshly issued las-rifles on a neighbouring barge opened fire, smashing him and his stolen craft to pieces. The drive unit exploded, scattering hull fragments across the churning water. A curl of black smoke r
ose above the banners.
The young conscripts of the 50th Gudrunite Rifles had made the first kill of their military careers.
TEN
A conflict of jurisdiction.
The House of Glaw.
Stalking secrets.
Long after midnight, I was attempting to sleep in my bedchamber at the Dorsay Regency. Bequin and Aemos had both retired to their own rooms hours before. Reflected light from the canal outside played a series of silver ripples across the ceiling of my twilit chamber.
'Aegis, rose thorn!' Betancore's voxed whisper suddenly tapped at my ear.
'Rose thorn, reveal.'
'Spectres, invasive, spiral vine.'
I was already out of bed and into my breeches and boots, pulling my leather coat over my bare torso. I went out into the apartment lounge with my power sword in my hand.
The lights were off, but canal reflections played in here too, creating a fluttering half-light.
Betancore stood by the far wall, a needle pistol in each hand. He nodded at the main door.
They were good and they were very quiet, but we could both see slight movement against the cracks around the doors, backlit by the hall light.
A gentle vibration of the handle told me someone was springing the lock. Betancore and I dropped back against the walls either side of the doors. We closed our eyes and covered our ears. Any forcing of the door would trigger the deterrent charges, and we didn't want to wind up blind or deaf.
The door opened a crack. No flash charges roared. Our visitors had detected and neutralised the security countermeasures. They were even better than I first thought.
A slender telescopic rod extended smoothly in through the crack. An optical sensor on the end slowly began to pan around, searching the room. With a nod to Betancore, I moved forward, took hold of the rod and yanked hard. At the same moment, I ignited my power sword.
A body crashed into the doors, dragged forward by my hefty pull on the spy-stick, and came tumbling in. I leapt in to straddle the body, but despite his surprise, he writhed away with a curse, and threw a punch. 1 had a vague impression of a tall, thickly built man in form-fitting leather.
We flopped over together, wrestling, overturning a couch and knocking down a candle-stand. My opponent had a good grip on the wrist of my sword arm.
So I punched him in the throat with my left hand.
He collapsed, retching, onto the floor. I got up in time to hear a strong voice say, 'Put the weapons down now'
A short, hunched figure stood in the open doorway. Betancore had both pistols trained on it, but was slowly lowering mem despite himself.
The figure had used the will. I brushed the tingle aside, but it was too much for Midas. The needle pistols thumped onto the carpet.
'Now you/ the figure said, turning its silhouette towards me. 'Disarm that power-blade.'
I seldom had an opportunity to feel the effect of psyker manipulation. The technique was different from the ones I employed, and the force of will was unmistakably potent. I braced myself for the hideous strain of outright telepathic combat.
'You resist?' said the figure. A blade of mental energy stabbed into my skull, rocking me backwards. I knew at once I was fundamentally outclassed. This was an old, powerful, practised mind.
A second stab of pain, cutting into the first. The man I had left choking was now on his knees. Another psyker. More powerful than the first, it seemed, but with far less control or technique. His attack seared through my skull and made me bark out in pain, but I blocked him as I stumbled back and stung his eager mind away with a desperate, unfocused jab.
The boiling psychic waves were rattling the windows and vibrating the furniture. Glasses shattered and Betancore fell, whimpering. The hunched figure stepped forward again, and dropped me to my knees with renewed mental assaults. I felt blood spurt from my nose. My vision swam. My grip on the sword remained tight.
Abruptly, it stopped. Roused by the disturbance, both Aemos and Bequin had burst into the room. Bequin screamed. Her psychic blankness, abruptly intruding on the telepathic maelstrom, suddenly blew the energies out, like a vacuum snuffing the heart of a fire.
The hunched figure cried out and stumbled in surprise. I drove forward, grabbed him and hurled him bodily across the chamber. He seemed frail but surprisingly heavy for such a small mass.
Betancore recovered his weapons and lit the lamps.
The man I had pulled through the doors was little more than a youth, big built with a long, shaved skull and a slit of a mouth. He was crumpled by the windows, semi-conscious. He wore a black leather bodyglove adorned with equipment harnesses. Bequin relieved him of his holstered sidearm.
The other, the hunched figure, rose slowly and painfully, ancient limbs cracking and protesting. He wore long dark robes; his thin hands were clad in black satin gloves. A number of gaudy rings protruded from the folds of the gown. He pulled back his cowl.
He was very old, his weathered, lined face wizened like a fruit stone. His throat, exposed at the gown's neckline, betrayed traces of the augmetic work that undoubtedly encased his age-twisted body.
His eyes blazed at me from their deep sockets with cold fury.
'You have made a mistake/ he said, wheezing, 'a fatal one, I have no doubt.' He produced a chunky amulet and held it up. The sigil it bore was unmistakable. 'I am Inquisitor Commo-dus Voke.'
I smiled. 'Well met, brother,' I said.
Commodus Voke stared at my rosette for a few lingering seconds, then looked away. I could feel the psychic throbbing of his rage.
'We have a... conflict of jurisdiction/ he managed to say, straightening his robes. His assistant, now back on his feet, stood in the corner of the chamber and gazed sullenly at me.
Then let us resolve it/ I offered. 'Explain to me why you invade my apartments in the dead of night/
'My work brought me to Gudrun eight months ago. An ongoing investigation, a complex matter. A rogue trader had come to my attention, one Effries Tanokbrey. I had begun to close my net around him when he was scared into flight and got himself killed. Simple cross-checking revealed that a grain merchant called Farchaval had somehow been instrumental in that incident/
'Farchaval is my cover here on Gudrun/
'You see fit to play-act and hide your true nature?' he said scornfully.
We each have our methods, inquisitor/1 replied.
I'd never met the great Commodus Voke before, but his reputation preceded him. An intractable puritan in his ethic, almost leaning to the hard-line of the monodominants but for the fact of his remarkable psychic abilities. I believe something of a Thorian doctrine suited his beliefs. He had served as a noviciate with the legendary Absalom Angevin three hundred years before and since then had played a key role in some of the most thorough and relentless purges in sector history. His methods were open and direct. Stealth, co-operation and subterfuge were distasteful concepts
to him. He used the full force of his status, and the fear it generated, to go where he pleased and demand anything of anyone to achieve his goals.
In my experience, the heavy-handed, terror-inspiring approach closes as many doors as it smashes open. Frankly, it didn't surprise me to learn he had already been on this planet for a full eight months.
He looked at me as if I was something he had almost stepped in. 'I am discomforted when I see inquisitors holding to the soft, cunning ways of the radical. That way heresy lies, Eisenhorn/
That made me start. I consider myself, as I have reported, very much of the puritanical outlook. Staunch, hard-line in my own way, though flexible enough to get the job done efficiently. Yet here was Voke gauging me as a radical! And at that moment, next to him, I felt I may as well be the most extreme, dangerous Horusian, the most artful and scheming recon-gregator.
I tried to push past that. "We need to share more information, inquisitor. I'll take a guess and say your investigation somehow involves the Glaw family/
Voke said nothing and showed no respons
e, but I felt his assistant tense psychically behind me.
'Our work is indeed clashing/ I went on. 'I, too, am interested in House Glaw/ In short, simple terms I laid out the matter of Eyclone's activities on Hubris, and drew the connection to Glaw and Gudrun by way of the mysterious Pontius.
I had his interest now. 'Pontius is just a name, Eisenhorn. Pontius Glaw on the other hand, is long dead. I served with worthy Angevin in the purge that destroyed him. I saw his corpse/
Yet here you are, investigating the Glaws anyway/
He exhaled slowly, as if making his mind up. 'After Pontius Glaw's eradication, the House of Glaw made great efforts to distance itself from his heresy. But Angevin, rest his immortal soul, always suspected that the taint ran deeper and that the family was not free of corruption. It is an ancient house, and powerful. It is difficult to probe its secrets. But from time to time, over the past two hundred years, I have turned my eye to them. Fifteen months ago, prosecuting a coven on Sader VII, I uncovered traces which suggested that particular coven, and several other minor groups, were collectively being run by an all but invisible parent cult - a cult of great scope and power, old and hidden, stretching across many worlds. Some traces led to Gudrun. That Gudrun is the Glaw's ancestral home was for me, too much of a coincidence/
'Now we make progress/1 said, sitting down in a high-backed chair and pulling on a shirt Bequin brought to me from my chamber. Aemos poured six glasses of amasec from a decanter on the dresser. Taking one as it was offered, Voke sat down opposite me. He sipped, contemplatively.
His assistant refused the glass that Aemos offered and remained standing.
'Sit down, Heldane!' Voke said. 'We have things to learn here/
The assistant took a glass and sat in the corner.
'I hunt out a cabal controlled by a notorious facilitator/1 continued, 'a cabal set on performing an abominable crime. The trail leads to Gudrun and the Glaws. You do the same with another heretical cell-'
'Three others, in fact,' he corrected.
'Three, then. And you see the shape of a far greater organisation. From the facts as they stand, we are both approaching the same evil from opposite sides.'
