by Dan Abnett
‘I think Mamzel Tontelle is growing tired,’ said Gurlan Lengmur, stepping forward. He had an eye on the crowd, and saw the disquiet growing in his genteel establishment. ‘I feel this session is now at an end.’
‘I would hear the message first, sir,’ I said.
Lengmur favoured me with a poisonous look.
‘We have a code of decorum here, young lady,’ he said. ‘Mam Tontelle is becoming unwell.’
I looked past him at the voicer. Her gaze found mine. There was a blankness there, a vacancy. It was not Gleena Tontelle looking back at me.
‘The message is simple,’ she said. ‘In the name of all that is and all that will be, help me. Help me, before they detect this effort to–’
Two things happened, both at once. Mam Tontelle cut off, mid-sentence, as though her throat had closed or been plugged. She gagged, and stumbled sideways into Lengmur’s waiting arms.
Then the salon was bathed in light. It came from outside, on both sides of the building, shafting in through the windows that looked out onto the side lanes. To the left of the building, the light was pale green, to the right it was the hot orange of an elderly star. Both lights drifted outside, moving along the windows as though trying to peer inside.
An agitation gripped the room. People got to their feet. A few glasses were bumped over. Voices rose. The coloured ghost-lights burned in at us all, fiercely. Most present were mystified and aghast. But I felt at once that I knew what this was. Eisenhorn grabbed my wrist. He knew too.
The lights outside were graels, the abominable forces of the Eight that served the Yellow King. I had encountered one, and knew from that encounter that a grael’s warping power was terrifying.
And here, upon us, were two of them.
CHAPTER 3
Unexpected opportunities
‘Everyone?’ cried Gurlan Lengmur. ‘Let’s all move, without delay, out through the dining hall, and away from this room.’
Few present needed this direction. The air had taken on a chill like a winter morning, and specks of frost twinkled on the tabletops. With a rising clamour of alarm, the patrons began to hurry towards the dining hall exit, knocking into one another in their haste.
‘Stay still!’ Eisenhorn ordered, rising to his feet. Movement and panic might excite and aggravate the graels, but no one heeded him. He could have stayed the whole room by the use of his will, but he refrained. Such a display, I knew, might goad the graels even more. He shouldered through the patrons flooding past him, and made to take Mam Tontelle, who was now swooning, from Lengmur’s arms.
Before he could reach them, a tiny ball of orange light, like a willerwhip, flew into the room. It passed clean through the wall and circled the salon like a firefly that has flown indoors and cannot find a way out. It sped towards the stricken Mam Tontelle, struck her between the eyes, and vanished.
Mam Tontelle let out a shriek. She tore away from Lengmur’s support, fell headlong across the foot-stage, and began to writhe. The strings of pearls around her throat broke, and the stones scattered, wayward, in all directions, rolling and bouncing and pattering.
Then she issued a horrible, wheezing rattle, and died. She lay, sprawled and undignified, across the edge of the foot-stage. Lengmur uttered a cry of dismay. I was on my feet, my hand on my limiter cuff, ready to switch it off. I did not know if my blankness could nullify a grael, let alone two, but I was prepared to try, if it came to it.
However, the lights outside shivered, and then faded. Their work complete, the graels departed.
‘I would know, mam,’ said Gurlan Lengmur, ‘your name. And yours, sir.’
He had placed a tablecloth over poor Mam Tontelle. Most of his clientele had fled, and those that remained were dulled by shock, and drinking spirits to fortify their nerves.
‘Violetta Flyde, sir,’ I answered.
‘What was this business?’ he demanded. ‘This malice–’
‘I know nothing of it, sir,’ I replied.
‘She voiced to you, and you knew the business of which she spoke!’
‘I knew nothing,’ I said. ‘I was enjoying the show, and participating in the act as you encourage people to do.’
‘You dissemble!’ he snapped. His fashionable coiffure had become dislodged, and he batted away unruly strands that had flopped across his face. ‘You knew what this was–’
Eisenhorn loomed over him.
‘She knows nothing,’ he said. ‘Neither of us do. We were amused by the entertainment, and engaged with it.’
Lengmur glowered at him.
‘I have never known her work like that,’ he said. ‘Such specificity, and one you recognised.’
‘Cold reading can fish out anything,’ Eisenhorn told him. ‘My wife believed the letters corresponded to the name of a maiden aunt, who died when she was one hundred and nineteen.’
‘You see, then? This malevolence does link to you,’ Lengmur exclaimed.
‘But no,’ I said. ‘My… dear husband is incorrect. My aunt died aged one hundred and eighteen. We had hoped she would make the next birthday, but she did not. I admit I was taken with the poor lady’s words for a moment, but the specificity was not there.’
‘Let the girl be, Gurlan,’ said a man as he joined us. It was the heavyset individual I had noticed earlier near the painting of the Tetrachtys. He was a bulky, slabby man, and his eyes were somewhat hooded, suggesting he had been drinking from an early hour. ‘You can see she’s shaken,’ he said. ‘And she had no part in this. No more than any present. I had a friend with those very initials, and he once lived at Parnassos 119. I’m saying it could just have easily applied to me.’
‘But you didn’t speak up, Oztin,’ Lengmur replied.
‘Because I’ve seen Gleena’s act a dozen times, bless her toes, and I know it’s all a farce,’ the heavyset man replied. He looked down at the cloth-covered body, and sighed, making a half-hearted sign of the aquila. ‘Poor old girl. It was ever just a parlour trick.’
‘Not tonight it wasn’t,’ said Lengmur. He shrugged. ‘This is ruination,’ he said. ‘The salon’s reputation will be in tatters–’
‘I think the reverse, in fact,’ I said. ‘Your customers have fled for now, but come tomorrow…’
‘What are you saying?’
‘I’m saying, sir, that people come to this quarter, and to your fine establishment, to taste the mysteries of the shadowed world. And, for the most part, I feel you serve nothing but mumble-jumble. Play-acts and diversions. Now, this is a tragic occurrence, but word will spread. Lengmur’s will be known as the place of real mysteries and supernatural happenings. Fear won’t keep customers out. Not the customers you like. It will bring them in, despite themselves, and your reputation will be enhanced.’
Lengmur stared at me.
‘I would advise your suppliers to bring you food and wine in larger quantities than usual tomorrow,’ I said, ‘to meet with demand. You might also sell apotropaeic charms on the door, to reassure the timid, and spice your establishment with the prospect of genuine manifestation.’
Lengmur gawped. The heavyset man bellowed with laughter.
‘I like this young lady!’ he chuckled. ‘She’s not wrong, and she has a canny grasp of your business. Apotropaeic charms indeed! Now that’s the thinking of a true promoter. A killing to be made from a killing, yes?’
He laughed again, a rich, booming laugh. Lengmur scowled.
‘You’re obnoxious as always, Oztin,’ he said. ‘I can have you barred.’
‘Again?’ the heavy man asked.
Lengmur turned smartly, and stalked off. ‘The Magistratum has been summoned,’ he declared over his shoulder. ‘I must await their arrival.’
‘Well, that’s my cue to withdraw,’ the big man announced. ‘I’ve no truck with the Magistratum. We could lose the night answering questions.’
&
nbsp; ‘Especially with your reputation,’ I said. He grinned, and held out his hand.
‘My fame precedes me, does it?’ he asked.
‘It does, Mr Crookley,’ I replied, shaking his hand. I had known it the moment Lengmur had used the name Oztin. This was the infamous poet-rake. My earlier identification had been correct.
‘I know a place down the street,’ he said. ‘If you’d care to join me, and avoid the impertinent fuss?’
I looked at Eisenhorn.
‘My apologies, sir,’ Crookley said, holding out his hand to Eisenhorn. ‘I meant you both. Oztin Crookley.’
‘Daesum Flyde,’ Eisenhorn replied, accepting the handshake.
‘Will you join me?’ Crookley asked.
Eisenhorn nodded.
‘I have no wish to be here any longer,’ he said. I was sure he did wish to stay, but the imminent arrival of the Magistratum would be an inconvenience.
‘Excellent,’ Crookley declared. ‘We’ll all go together.’ He turned, and raised his voice to the clientele nearby. ‘We’re repairing to the Two Gogs. Are you coming? Aulay? Unvence?’
‘I’ll come, if you’re paying,’ said the man with the ink-stained hands I had before taken to be a rubricator.
‘Unvence?’ Crookley called. The elderly man with the gangling arms and legs stood up and nodded. Eisenhorn and I exchanged quick looks.
‘That’s Unvence?’ I asked.
‘Yes,’ said Crookley. ‘Lynel Unvence. You know him?’
‘No,’ I answered. ‘I just thought the blind fellow sitting beside him was Unvence.’
Crookley shook his head.
‘Him?’ he said. ‘No, that’s his mad friend Freddy. Freddy Dance.’
CHAPTER 4
A conversation
My mentor and I had achieved our evening’s objective, that of locating the missing astronomer. I wondered if it might be time to lie low again, but Eisenhorn intended to press on. He believed the night might yet have more to reveal.
As we followed Crookley’s stragglers, a rowdy band, down the street to the Two Gogs, Eisenhorn sent quick psykanic messages to the rest of the team, all of whom were close at hand and shadowing us. To Nayl, Medea and the lurking Deathrow, he issued instructions to stay on us and identify Fredrik Dance, who was with Unvence in Crookley’s company. He was to be watched from this point on, and tracked so that we might question him later. To the daemonhost, he sent an order of collection, which I did not fully understand until later.
Then we walked, following Crookley’s revellers, but held back so we would not be overheard.
‘Is there more to be learned?’ I asked.
‘I doubt it, but we’ll stay with Dance until Nayl and the others confirm acquisition,’ he replied. ‘It’ll be useful to make a friend of Crookley, I think. He knows everyone in these circles, and can open doors we might find barred to us.’
‘Do you mean “friend”?’ I asked.
‘Euphemistically,’ he replied.
‘Ah,’ I said. ‘Because I didn’t think you made friends.’
‘I make them well enough,’ he replied. ‘I just don’t seem to be able to keep them. Watch Crookley. He’s odious and dissolute. His mind is a lascivious mire. But he might be useful.’
‘Does he know anything of the King?’ I asked him.
‘No more than any of them,’ Eisenhorn replied. ‘I read the name in his thoughts, and in the thoughts of his entourage. But the King in Yellow, King Orphaeus, is a local myth. I doubt there’s a soul in the city who hasn’t heard the term at some point. It’s folklore to them. They do not consider it real in any way. Crookley and his hangers-on are far more interested in the half-baked esoterica they meet to discuss, imagining themselves illuminated initiates of secret lore.’
‘What’s this with Unvence and Dance?’ I asked. ‘It’s not like you to read incorrectly.’
‘I can’t explain it,’ said Eisenhorn. ‘Perhaps my insight was fogged and confused. Some psi-field precursing the graels.’
‘And there’s the real thing,’ I said. ‘Two graels. Right upon us. How did they find us?’
‘They didn’t. They found the voicer, to silence her. We weren’t their quarry, which is why we’re still intact.’
‘But she was a hoaxer. Surely–’
‘I agree, Mam Tontelle had little or no psykana in her.’ There was a puzzled look upon his face that I found unsettling, and his eyes flashed violet. ‘Perhaps just enough to make a career from her fakery. No, Beta, that was possession. Something jumped into her. It used the vantage of her compliant mind to speak to us.’
‘To us?’ I asked.
‘Lengmur was right about the specificity. Those details were offered up, and only a few would know them. You, most of all. They were given to prove the veracity of the message.’
‘Which was never completed.’
‘The graels shut down her voice,’ he agreed, ‘but it was a message for us.’
‘A request for help? From whom?’
‘I don’t know,’ he said.
‘Lilean Chase?’
‘Don’t be foolish.’
‘Then Balthus Blackwards, if he lives yet? Or perhaps his family? He knew the particulars of the book.’
‘Perhaps.’
‘But why?’ I asked. ‘He’s no friend of mine.’
‘Unless you mean it euphemistically, there are no friends here,’ he said. ‘No clear enemies either. Everyone is neither or both.’
‘This much I realise from being in your company.’
He looked at me as if I had scolded him, or wounded him somehow. If you have not met Gregor Eisenhorn, and I can think of no sane reason why you would have, it is perhaps difficult to picture him. I don’t mean the look of him, for that is straightforward: a strikingly tall man of powerful build, despite the fact he has been ravaged by age and injury. He wears, most times as that night, a long, heavy coat. His back and legs are braced by augmetic frames of metal, and there are other signs, such as neural plugs that reach up from under his collar and insert into the base of his skull, that he has weathered much. He never told me how he came by these injuries, or if they occurred all in one dire moment or were the accumulated results of a long life walking a dark path. I suspect the latter.
I mean more his demeanour. He is frightening, and intimidating in the size of him, but there is often a melancholy that laces his grim, obsessive deportment. More than once, I felt sorry for him. Sorry that he had to be him. Whether by choice or happenstance, he had committed to a life that would never set him free.
I have known him laugh, usually in the company of Nayl or Medea. It was rare, but it happened. Medea told me, confidentially, that since the mission to Gershom twenty years before, he had been able to smile sometimes, something he hadn’t been able to do for many years. She implied this was due to the correction of some neurological palsy, a paralysis, but I sensed there was more to it than that. Something happened to him on Gershom, a world quite far away. Something that made his eyes gleam with that odd violet hue.
I don’t know what this ‘thing’ was. Again, the truth was veiled from me, and only alluded to. But it set him on his path to Sancour. He was already chasing the Cognitae by then – he had been for years – but Gershom narrowed his focus. Whatever transpired there located for him the hiding place of the King in Yellow, and threaded together the bare elements that we knew: the King, the City of Dust, the eudaemonic forces of the graels that served the King as familiars, known as the Eight; Enuncia, and the connections to Chase, the Cognitae, and their infernal works of extimate engineering.
It also led him to me. It was by then clear that the forces ranged against us believed nulls, such as myself (which is to say untouchables or ‘blanks’, who are naturally psi-inert), to be vital instruments in whatever Great Work they were engaged upon. The Cognitae
indeed, under the guise of the Maze Undue, had reared a whole school of them.
But I was clearly more than just one of these instruments. Eisenhorn had learned of me, on Gershom, before I was ever born. He had come to find me and, I think, protect me. I was, it had been confirmed, the clone or cloned daughter of a dead woman also called Alizebeth Bequin. She had been a null too, and had served with Eisenhorn. Medea implied they had been especially close, perhaps even in love, if such a human concept had any meaning to a man as generally inhuman and closed as him. Eisenhorn had a mission to complete on Sancour, perhaps the last and greatest of his life, and I was part of that, but I was also a second mission. He intended to watch over me, not because I was part of the Great Work, but because I was me.
I reflected earlier in this narrative on why I had chosen to side with him at this time, when there were many good reasons not to, not the least being the company of daemons and Traitor Astartes that he kept. This was it. He cared for me. Others did: Medea, poor Lightburn, and perhaps Nayl. But Eisenhorn cared for nothing and no one except his duty, so this spark of humanity seemed more significant, more true.
I wondered if it was because I reminded him of his lost Alizebeth, for many had remarked how like her I was. Sometimes I even wondered if he felt I was somehow a surrogate daughter. There was no other bond of affection between us. I am as certain as the sky is blue that he did not see me as a substitute for his lost love, his Alizebeth miraculously reborn and returned to him. There was never anything like that. I suppose, for a time, he was the closest thing to an actual father I had ever had, though the distance between him and an actual father was somewhat further than the distance between Sancour and Holy Terra.
My brief meeting with the man Ravenor had added one more piece to the puzzle of Sancour. He claimed the King in Yellow was trying to rebuild the lost language of power known as Enuncia. This language was something Ravenor had spent most of his career pursuing. The King wanted Enuncia so it could allow him to govern the very operation of the Universal Reality. And, most particularly, he wanted to learn a single word that would grant him unrivalled power: the one, true name of the God-Emperor of Mankind.
