[Dark Heresy 02] - Innocence Proves Nothing

by Sandy Mitchell - (ebook by Undead)

  “Well, I won’t tell him if you won’t,” Voyle said. He glanced at the dome overhead, through which most of the planet was now revealed, only a faint sliver of darkness arcing across the easternmost limb of the world. “I’ll go and get the shuttle sorted out.”

  Nineteen

  Hive Sibelius, Scintilla

  259.993.M41

  “You might want to take a look at this,” Quillem said, taking a data-slate from his pocket, and trying to read the expressions on the faces of the Angelae surrounding him. Openly suspicious, for the most part, which hardly came as a surprise, only the techpriest seeming indifferent to his presence. “It’s a fairly comprehensive summary of our investigation so far.”

  “Thank you.” Horst took it, a trifle stiffly, and handed the device to Vex, who tore himself away from communing with the cogitator, and began to scan the files it contained with evident interest. “Hybris can cross-check it for anything which might relate to what we’ve discovered.” He picked up an almost identical slate from a nearby table, and handed it to Quillem. “You might find something useful here, too. Copies of all the reports I’ve compiled for Inquisitor Finurbi, brought up to date this morning.”

  “Much appreciated,” Quillem said, deciding that it wouldn’t be tactful to mention that he’d already read most of the material it contained. Context was everything, as Inquisitor Grynner was fond of pointing out, and it wouldn’t hurt to begin again from first principles in any case. They’d already missed the reference to the wraithbone, and there was no telling what else might fall into place from a careful rereading in light of the latest information.

  “You’re welcome,” Horst said, a trifle grudgingly, but clearly determined to make the effort. “I got Hybris to add a copy of the data we got from Vos as well. Perhaps your people can make more sense of it than we could.”

  “Dylar appears to have been collating rumours and reports of eldar sightings in and around the sector,” Vex said, glancing up from the data-slate Horst had handed to him. “Paying particular attention to the oldest and most exaggerated. Which would certainly fall under the remit of the Ordo Xenos.”

  “We’ll take a look at that too,” Quillem said, his interest piqued. “Maybe there’s a clue there to the origin of the wraithbone fragment.”

  “Recaf?” Drake asked, emerging from the kitchen section with several steaming mugs. To Quillem’s vague surprise the former Guardsman offered him one, along with his colleagues, and he took it, even though he didn’t really want the drink. It was the gesture which was important, consolidating the fragile alliance with a token acceptance of him as a part of their group.

  “Thank you,” he said, sipping the bitter beverage. There was little else to say or do here, and he’d depart as soon as he’d finished it. Inquisitor Grynner would be eager to begin analysing the fresh intelligence the Angelae had brought to the fledgling partnership, and he didn’t want to keep his patton waiting.

  “That’s interesting,” Vex said, glancing up from the data-slate Quillem had brought. “The freighter you boarded, the Eddia Stabilis, was owned by Diurnus Lines.”

  Quillem shrugged. “So are half the merchantmen in the sector,” he pointed out.

  The techpriest shook his head. “The actual number would be more in the region of thirteen per cent,” he corrected pedantically, evidently as incapable as most of his brethren of recognising exaggeration for effect. “So it could simply be a coincidence. Nevertheless, it might be significant that Diurnus also owns the Ursus Innare.”

  “Which brought your friends to Scintilla,” Quillem said. He took another swallow of the recaf, which seemed suddenly more palatable. “Possibly a coincidence, as you say. But one which might well be worth looking into.”

  Hive Tarsus, Scintilla

  259.993.M41

  The meeting Greel had arranged with his buyer took place in the most Emperor-forsaken part of the hive Kyrlock could imagine, close to the outer skin. At first, as they’d descended, he’d felt relieved, anticipating some respite from the suffocating heat; but the franchiseman had led him away from the cool of the shadowed interior towards the scorching wilderness of the desert itself. Now the interlacing infrastructure was porous enough for him to see the sere kilometres of windblown sand surrounding the single island of humanity, their altitude still great enough to discern the curve of the horizon in the distance.

  “Stay out of the sunlight,” Greel advised, ducking to avoid a dazzling beam. “This close to the shell, it’ll cook you to the bone.” That was probably an exaggeration, Kyrlock thought, but not much of one; Elyra had told him that only a few minutes’ direct exposure could be lethal. She’d apparently been here before, with the other Angelae, but had glossed over the details.

  “I thought it was supposed to get cooler further down,” Kyrlock grumbled, deciding it would be best to feign ignorance of everything he’d been told aboard the ore barge. If Elyra had decided to pretend this was her first visit, he didn’t want anyone wondering how he knew so much about the place.

  “That’s in the centre,” Greel said, with a trace of amusement at his apparent naiveté. “The outer skin goes all the way down to the ground.”

  “Yeah,” Kyrlock said. “I suppose it must. Lucky us.”

  “It is if we don’t want anyone noticing our business,” Greel said.

  Kyrlock shrugged. “That makes an awful lot of nobodies around,” he pointed out. To his surprise, even this hellish layer of the hive seemed to be home to an awful lot of people, wrapped, for the most part, in loose, hooded robes, apparently designed to protect them as much as possible from the lethal rays of the sun.

  “That’s why I chose this place,” Greel said, with surprising good humour. But then he thought he was going to make two big scores today, so Kyrlock supposed he was entitled to be cheerful. “No one will recognise us in these.” He held up a pair of the enveloping garments, plucked from a nearby street stall, and threw one to Kyrlock.

  “I suppose not,” Kyrlock said, struggling into it, while the franchiseman haggled with the stallholder, eventually parting with a handful of small change.

  There was no doubt about it, the loose fabric made him feel noticeably cooler, and he pulled the hood over his head gratefully. Greel followed suit, becoming almost indistinguishable from anyone else in the crowd thronging the souk, and Kyrlock resolved to watch him carefully; a moment’s inattention, and he could lose both his guide, and his only chance of contacting Elyra.

  His stratagem, it seemed, had worked: piquing Greel’s cupidity had prompted him to set up a meeting with her, in the hope of obtaining the jewellery she was carrying. Better still, the people she was with were apparently the ones interested in buying the data-slate he’d collected from Dylar, which meant that he’d done the right thing in passing a copy of its contents on to Horst. “Where to now?” he asked.

  “Just a few levels down,” Greel assured him, shaking the fine layer of gritty sand, which seemed to get everywhere here, from the folds of his voluminous garment. The two men began to move off together, weaving their way through the milling crowds, and Kyrlock began to feel a tingle of unease.

  “We’re being followed,” he said a few minutes later, sure that at least two of the cowled, anonymous figures surrounding them were sticking too close for coincidence.

  “I hope so,” Greel said, amusement colouring his voice. “You didn’t think I’d come down here without some backup, did you?”

  “I hadn’t thought about it,” Kyrlock said, shrugging, although it was far from true. “Planning’s your department.” He’d been hoping for a more visible show of force, though. When he spoke to Elyra, he wanted to be sure that no one could overhear them.

  Greel laughed. “I like your attitude,” he said. “You don’t give a rut about anything much, do you?”

  Kyrlock shrugged, a little awkwardly under the enveloping robe. “Not so long as I get paid,” he said.

  The brief exchange had taken them down two flights of s
teps, and across a small square of roughcast hovels, their bleached and sand-scoured surfaces indicating that they were exposed to the full fury of the sun for at least a few hours a day. They all looked pretty much alike to Kyrlock, so he was taken aback when Greel suddenly stopped in front of one, outside which a faded awning flapped in the breeze in a desultory manner.

  “In here.” The franchiseman vanished abruptly, ducking to pass through a narrow doorway, over which a blanket had been nailed to pass muster as a curtain.

  Kyrlock followed, trying to ignore the memories of his brother’s drinkhole in the Tumble, which had boasted a similar arrangement. It seemed his earlier impression had been correct: wherever you went in the galaxy, things were a lot more alike than you might think. As he let the curtain fall behind him, he caught sight of the figures he’d seen before taking up positions where they could easily cover the door.

  “You’re still here, then,” he said, nodding to Elyra and Voyle, who were seated at a roughly carved wooden table in the middle of the room. There was no sign of whoever normally lived here, if anyone actually did; perhaps the Franchise just kept it for clandestine meetings like this one.

  “Not for long,” Elyra said, and Voyle shot her a warning glance. “So let’s make this quick.” She took a small cloth bag from the recesses of her robe, and spilled the contents onto the table. Flickering lamplight flashed from the facets of gemstones, and gleamed dully from their settings of precious metal. She smiled sardonically at Greel, who stared at the small heap of jewellery as if hypnotised. “I haven’t got time for you to fence them and pass back a percentage. You buy, and sell them for whatever you can get. Do we have a deal?”

  “Depends on the price,” Greel said, tearing his eyes away from the glittering hoard, not quite able to conceal his avarice. “I could front you maybe ten, possibly twelve thousand. That should give me a reasonable return on my investment.”

  “Add a nought to that, and maybe we’ll talk,” Elyra said, starting to scoop the jewellery back into the bag.

  Greel shook his head. “I know this hive. I could get fifty for a stash like that, and not a throne more. Twenty-five.”

  “You could get twice that without breaking sweat,” Elyra said, and scowled. “Which would be a neat trick in itself in a hellhole like this. Do you think I just fell off the tree?”

  “I think you just arrived from off-world,” Greel said, trying to sound reasonable. “I don’t know what contacts you had on Sepheris Secundus, or wherever you were before then, but this is my turf, and I know what’s possible. One wrong move trying to shift merchandise like this, and I’ll have the lawdogs down on me like fleas on a dreg. I can’t get more than fifty, and I’m not sticking my neck out for anything less than twenty off the top.”

  “I’m sure you can live with ten,” Elyra riposted.

  Greel hesitated, his indecision almost succeeding in looking genuine, then nodded. “All right, forty K it is.”

  “Has a nice ring to it,” Elyra agreed. “You’ve brought cash?”

  “Not that much,” Greel said.

  “That needn’t be a problem,” Voyle interjected, having watched the negotiations with undisguised amusement. “We still have to reach an arrangement about the merchandise you’re selling. If you deduct your forty thousand from the price we agree, I’ll give Elyra the cash myself, on your behalf.” He glanced at Elyra, apparently sharing some private joke. “I presume you trust me that much, at least.”

  “I guess so,” she said, shrugging. “It’s not like I don’t know where to find you.”

  “Where is that?” Kyrlock asked, and Voyle and Elyra both stared at him, her feigned suspicion no less convincing than his genuine one. Kyrlock spread his hands. “All right, stupid question. Forget I asked.” He smiled at Elyra. “So, now you’re rich, any chance of that demiscore you still owe me?”

  “Reckon so,” she conceded, playing along effortlessly, and rising to join him. Greel immediately slipped onto the stool she’d vacated, and began negotiating with Voyle about the data-slate in hushed and urgent tones. “I’ve probably got a few thrones on me somewhere.”

  She pulled out a purse, and extracted a handful of coins with an easygoing smile. As she pressed them into his hand, she palmed a small piece of paper from somewhere up her sleeve, and added it to the money.

  “Thanks,” Kyrlock said, tucking the cash away without looking at it.

  “You’re welcome,” Elyra said. She might have been about to say more, but never got the chance; Voyle and Greel were rising from the table, their own deal evidently concluded to their mutual satisfaction.

  Greel glanced at Kyrlock. “Come on, we’re leaving.”

  “If you say so,” Kyrlock agreed, with a last look back at Elyra. As the curtain fell across the narrow doorway, and the glare and noise of the hiveskin souk burst around him again, she was already turning back to Voyle.

  “Stupid bitch,” Greel said, with some amusement. “I can get a hundred and fifty for this stuff easy.” Then he glanced at Kyrlock, an incipient challenge. “Oh, I was forgetting, she’s a friend of yours. You have a problem with that?”

  “Why would I?” Kyrlock asked. “You’re the one paying me, not her.” Then he shrugged, his fingers closing around the little stash of coins in his pocket, and the tightly folded note. “Besides, I got what I came for.”

  The Emperor’s Justice, Scintilla System

  259.993.M41

  “They’ve encountered Karnaki?” Jorge Grynner raised an eyebrow. “A most intriguing development. I never expected them to attempt to obtain access to the archives of the Ordo Malleus.”

  “But a logical one,” Quillem pointed out, “given the number of times they’ve encountered daemons in the course of their investigation.” Catching his patron’s eye, he corrected himself hastily. “Or what they believed to be daemons at the time. Karnaki seems less than convinced about that.”

  “Well, the warp and its denizens are his area of expertise,” Grynner said, musingly. “I’ll be interested to hear what else he thinks they might have been.”

  “No doubt he’ll let us know as soon as he’s sure,” Quillem said. “I could contact him, and ask for an interim assessment, if you like.”

  “Let’s give him a little longer to complete his researches. He’s somewhat reclusive, and tends to resent what he sees as unnecessary interference.” Grynner picked up the data-slate Horst had given the interrogator. “This information Kyrlock intercepted, regarding the eldar, is quite remarkable. Considering its compiler didn’t have access to most of the sources we do, it’s surprisingly comprehensive.”

  “I’ll have it cross-referenced against the standard texts,” Quillem said. “Is there anything in particular the analysts should be looking for?”

  “There are a disproportionate number of references to the legend of the Voidwraith,” Grynner said. “He appears to be attempting to deduce its location.”

  “But the Voidwraith’s just a myth,” Quillem objected. “A dead craftworld, abandoned by the eldar, drifting through space for aeons… The whole idea’s patently absurd.”

  “On the face of it,” Grynner agreed. “Nevertheless, if you wouldn’t mind asking Castafiore to drop in for a word, I’d like to hear his opinion.”

  “Of course,” Quillem said, trying to mask his reluctance, and knowing full well that it would be a wasted effort: Inquisitor Grynner was well aware of how little he’d relish speaking to the ship’s Navigator. Like every other member of the Navis Nobilite, Jaquamo Castafiore was arrogant, opinionated and treated everyone outside his precious guild as little better than orks with pretensions to culture. Quillem could already picture his reaction to being consulted about a children’s story, and braced himself for the coming storm. “I’ll see that he’s informed.”

  “Thank you,” Grynner said, his attention already absorbed by the words on the slate’s tiny screen.

  Hive Sibelius, Scintilla

  259.993.M41

  As Keira
entered Vorn’s apartment, laden with supplies from the market, she was immediately struck by how quiet it seemed. Instincts honed on the belly of Ambulon, and refined by the Collegium Assassinorum, kicked in, and she lowered her burden silently to the floorboards. The street clothes she wore effectively concealed her knives, and she drew two, feeling instantly more comfortable with the weight of their hilts against her palms.

  There was no one in sight. Vex’s cogitator was dark and deactivated, and the only trace of Drake’s presence was the scattering of empty recaf mugs which generally marked where he had been. She had joked once that she was able to track his movements by them, but it might actually be possible, by using the residual heat of the dregs to assess how long each one had been there.

  She began to move warily into the main living area, as stealthily as if she was stalking a target.

  “What kept you?” Horst asked, emerging from the kitchen area, and she relaxed at once, slipping the blades back into their scabbards.

  “You weren’t getting worried, were you?” she asked, beginning to wonder if the others had gone out to search for her.

  Horst shook his head. “After your little escapade in the Tricorn, I’d expect you to come back unscathed from the Eye of Terror. With Abaddon’s head in a bag.”

  Keira grinned, acknowledging the compliment. “I stopped off at the chapel down the street,” she said. “I must have lost track of the time.”

  A faint expression of puzzlement crossed Horst’s face. “I didn’t think Redemptionists went in for chapel,” he said.

  “They don’t. More the blood, fire and damnation stuff,” Keira said, vaguely surprised to hear her own flippant tone about matters she used to take so seriously. But something had changed in her, and she hurried on, reluctant to analyse them too much. “But I’ve been in there several times. It feels… I don’t know. Welcoming.”