Penitent

by Dan Abnett

  ‘The King Door is a dismal option,’ he said, ‘but it may be our only one. I will make preparations to investigate and, if possible, penetrate it. I would at least like to see it for myself. If you can, by any gentle means, extract more knowledge of it from your angel friend, then I urge you to do so. In the meantime, let us hope that Stanchion House provides us with a better route and better intelligence. Believe me, I pray it does.’

  ‘I will need to lead,’ I said. ‘If we are to make peaceful contact with Mam Mordaunt, it has to be me. She will trust no other of us.’

  ‘Except Thaddeus Saur,’ he said.

  ‘I doubt that,’ I replied. ‘And he should not be charged with such a vital task.’

  ‘I agree,’ said Ravenor. ‘I expected you to take lead, Beta. I hoped you would. Thus, I must acknowledge the formal capacity in which you work at my side.’

  The lone figure that had been approaching all this while was suddenly with us, as if he had transported the last few hundred metres in a blink while my back was to him. He nodded to the Chair, and then smiled at me. Then he held something out for me to take.

  I had never seen him before. I did not know him. And yet I did; I knew the smile as though it had been bestowed upon me several times before. In truth, it had been, I had just never seen it.

  The man was young, tall and strong, and very handsome. With his fiercely grey, fiercely kind eyes, high cheekbones and long black hair tied back, he reminded me oddly of the pict-book images of aeldari I had seen as a child. But he was human.

  ‘These are for you, Beta,’ he said. I knew his voice. It had come from his lips and throat and tongue out into the air, but it was the same as the one that had been speaking inside my head.

  I saw the things he held out to me. A small leather case, and a silver necklace.

  I took them from him. The necklace bore an amulet of wraithbone. All the members of Gideon’s warband wore one, for the psychoactive material facilitated his waring of them, should the need arise. It was a tool, an instrument of team operation, but it was also a badge of belonging that proclaimed membership of a small family. An odd family, but a family nevertheless.

  ‘Let me,’ said the young man, and gently clasped it around my neck as I held back my hair. His face was very close to mine.

  ‘For you, it is more a symbol than anything,’ the Chair said. ‘I would not choose to ware you, except in extremity, and I cannot ware you with your cuff inactive. As a pariah, even limited, I may not be able to function through you as fluidly as I can Kara or Kys.’

  I nodded, and let my hair fall back.

  The leather case was heavy. The leather was a fitted cover for a small, flat box of perfectly machined obsidian. I opened it and looked at the Inquisitorial rosette that rested on the blue silk cushion inside.

  Ordo Hereticus, Officio Thracian Primaris, Scarus Sector.

  ‘To act in my name, you must carry my authority,’ said the Chair. ‘Your trained ability is beyond doubt, despite its bastard origins. This is a discretionary field appointment. My choice, by my command, and temporary, of course.’

  ‘Of course,’ I said, smiling.

  ‘By which I mean, pending,’ said the young man.

  I closed the box and case, and slipped it into my coat pocket.

  ‘I will not fail you,’ I said.

  ‘Don’t worry about failing me,’ said the Chair. ‘It’s not me you’re serving.’

  ‘It’s not you I was talking to,’ I replied. The young man laughed.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said to both of them. I placed my hand, flat, upon the warm hull of the Chair for a moment, then turned and kissed the young man on the cheek. He grinned, bashfully.

  ‘I hope I haven’t broken protocol already?’ I asked the Chair.

  ‘I’ll allow it,’ the Chair replied.

  I became aware of music, the rising boom of martial bands. There was cheering, as though the whole city had woken up to celebrate my investment.

  Crowds now lined the boulevard, huge, roaring crowds. Streamers and banners flew. I had no idea where they had come from.

  ‘I have let some details slot back into place,’ said the Chair. ‘Not just the location, but parts of the things that were in it that day.’

  ‘Was this the day you became an inquisitor?’ I asked. ‘Did the crowds come out to cheer your election?’

  ‘No,’ said the Chair. ‘It was for something else. A Holy Novena. A great triumph, to commemorate a military victory. Crowds like this do not celebrate the election of inquisitors, Beta. Such matters happen in the dark, in private rooms. This was not the day of my appointment, but it was the day I became the inquisitor you know.’

  The young man looked at the Chair.

  ‘It was the day I became him,’ he said.

  I looked around. There were petals in the air, blossom falling and whirling like snowflakes. We were in the midst of a vast parade that had just appeared around us. Marching regiments of Astra Militarum, war machines, gleaming ranks of Adeptus Astartes giants. The noise was deafening, a roar of marching feet, of mass cheering, of thundering engines, of drums and cymbals and brass and pipes playing the March of the Primarchs. My diaphragm shook. Overhead, low and fast, warcraft shrieked by in fly-past formation. The air vibrated with the noise and motion.

  The young man looked at me. Petals fluttered between us.

  ‘This is the Hive Primaris, Thracian Primaris,’ he said. ‘The great Avenue of the Victor Bellum. This day happened about one hundred and fifty years ago. That monument that rises behind us, whose shadow falls across us, that is the Spatian Gate. I want you to remember, as I remember, that the greatest danger can strike when all seems safe, and when harm is least expected.’

  He smiled again, but the smile was sad, or perhaps full of some longing. He looked into my eyes, and touched my cheek for a moment, then brushed loose petals off my shoulder.

  ‘It’s nearly time,’ he said. I could barely hear him above the howl of the warcraft flying by above. ‘I have to go now.’

  A fleeting shadow passed across us, something flickering overhead in the bright sunlight–

  And the Footstep Lane holloway was empty. The deserted quiet of early morning, with nothing but birdsong and the low golden sunlight of dawn.

  ‘I’ll see you in the house,’ said Ravenor, and the Chair turned away, floating silently back to the steps. I was left alone on the weed-fringed cobbles of the sunken street, with the weight of the rosette in my pocket.

  The third section of the story, which is called

  TRUE LEARNING

  CHAPTER 20

  Which is of the House of Webs

  The warblind gangs are not to be trifled with.

  Three of the warblind blocked my path, and I sensed at least one more step into the ruined hallway at my back, denying me retreat. From the scarified brands and inks on their shaven scalps, they were of the Marzom Cross killgang, the most notorious of the northern bands. They carried blades and, more, they carried bulk. Under the cake of filth and rags, they were all enhanced muscle and reinforced bones, the relics of their combat engineering.

  ‘I would pass here,’ I said, clearly and in the low dialect of the street.

  One uttered a growl in answer, the most coherent sound, I feared, he was able to articulate. I could smell the metallic stink of the aggression stimulants flooding their blood. The feral warblind of Queen Mab could never be reasoned with, but sometimes one could slip past them if one remained calm and quiet and made no abrupt movement, or if, by luck, they happened to be at the low point of their aggression cycles.

  Not these. There would be no talking, no reasoning. They were already twitching, synthetic hormones drenching their systems and rousing them to mindless rage. Their secondary eyelids began to flutter and blink: nictitating lids that had once flashed target lock displays onto their retinas. T
hese augmetics were long since broken, but the rising hyperstimms were triggering their military implants to fire up, as they had done lifetimes ago in the warzone. This hall was their warzone now. This life. A brutal life where there was only ever war.

  I gauged I would have time to move my right hand just once before they struck. To the gun at my hip, a heavy Tronsvasse Kal40 that Harlon had armed me with? Or to my cuff, which, when off, had rendered me blank to the warblind in the past?

  I made my choice, but it was academic anyway.

  Someone lunged out of an archway to my right, and slammed into the trio. A razor-edged severaka struck body mass with a crunch like splitting wood, and whirled a ganger clean off his feet in a spray of blood. The ganger rotated in the air like a dancer, bounced off the wall behind him, and crumpled, sliced open.

  Thaddeus Saur had only begun.

  Saur was a powerful man. I knew that much from years of training under him at the scholam. He had bulk and he had speed, but nothing like the enhanced mass or reflex of the warblind. However, Saur also possessed daunting skill, a honed finesse, which he employed with lethal precision. Big as he was, with his shock of dirty-white hair and his oxblood-red bodyglove, he seemed to slide like oil between his hulking opponents, yet each time he struck, it was with bone-fracturing force. The first ganger had not yet hit the floor before Saur had engaged the next, blocking a vicious blow with his left forearm – a second impact that sounded like a cleaver chopping root vegetables – in order to make a gap in his enemy’s untutored guard. The severaka came up through that space, driving hilt and blade-base into the ganger’s face and neck. There was a wet smack of meat and gristle. The ganger was hurt, but too stimmed to fall down. He swung again, raking with his dirty blade, but Saur went in under him, using a shoulder barge as leverage to flip the wounded ganger up and over, and slam him onto the ground on his back.

  There was no time to finish him. The third ganger piled into Saur, snarling. Saur, his crocodilian eyes hooded, blocked him twice, paused to savagely back-kick the second ganger who was beginning to rise again, then returned to the third once more, cutting him three times with successive sword thrusts.

  Saur was a master. Perhaps, of the people I had met in my life, only Harlon Nayl was his equal or superior in the trade of physical combat. Unlike Harlon, who cut loose with measured fury only when necessary, Saur relished his craft. After semi-imprisonment in Ravenor’s care, Saur was venting his frustration. I had seen this unfettered brutality in him only once before, the day he had killed Voriet in front of me, and begun the process by which my life would unravel.

  The fourth ganger, lurking at my heels, was about to launch forward now that violence had erupted, and I was ready to tackle him. But Saur, locked with the third and apparently not even looking, hurled his severaka sideways. The blade whistled past me like a javelin and staked the fourth ganger to the wall behind me.

  It was, I confess, a superb demonstration of skill. I fancied Saur was showing off, reminding me of his talents, reminding me of his seniority. He was, and intended to remain, my superior.

  He was now fighting the third ganger, unarmed. This seemed no disadvantage, nor did the ganger’s combat knives, nor the ganger’s greater size and strength. Saur ducked a hissing blade, then drove his fist into one of the wounds his sword had left. The pain response folded the ganger’s right side involuntarily, tilting him away. Saur grabbed the ganger’s left fist, twisted, and drove the combat knife it gripped into the ganger’s face.

  The ganger toppled backwards, his own blade buried to the ricasso between his eyes. Saur didn’t even watch him go down. He turned away, and stamped on the throat of the second ganger to finish the bout.

  He looked at me, the thin line of his mouth bent in a sneer. How I despised his stump of a nose, his small, heavy eyes, and his unruly yellow-white hair.

  ‘The way’s clear,’ he said.

  ‘Very accomplished, Thaddeus,’ I replied, knowing that he hated me addressing him as though he was an equal, ‘but also entirely unnecessary. They are dead, and therefore cannot provide us with any information.’

  ‘Information?’ he replied, with open disdain. ‘From the warblind?’ He retrieved his sword.

  ‘I don’t think they were here by accident,’ I replied. ‘I think they were left down here in the same way one might chain dogs in a yard.’

  I heard footsteps. Renner Lightburn came up the hall behind me. He was carrying a Mastoff assault-auto with a heavy bulk mag, another loan from Harlon’s cache. He glanced at the bodies and winced.

  ‘What happened here?’ he asked.

  ‘Thaddeus decided to show off,’ I replied.

  Saur was wiping blood and grease off his blade. He looked at me, sidelong.

  ‘Not at all,’ he said. ‘Close combat was called for. You won’t let me have a gun.’

  This was true. I had been reluctant to allow Saur to come to Stanchion House with me, but Gideon had required me to. Not providing Saur with a firearm was the only concession I’d won.

  ‘If there are more of these animals around,’ he remarked, ‘you’ll want me armed with more than a blade and my fists.’

  ‘I don’t want you full stop,’ I replied. ‘If I’d had my way, you wouldn’t be anywhere near this.’

  He shrugged, and I regretted the remark. I had seen the flash in his eyes. We had not told him who we expected our quarry to be. I had felt it too sensitive. Gideon had thought it a useful test of Saur’s conditioning and memory. If, and how, he recognised Mam Mordaunt, should we locate her, might teach us a lot about the manner in which his mind had been edited. My remark had let slip that we were seeking something or someone that might hold significance for him. Thaddeus Saur was not stupid. He’d noticed it.

  He passed no comment. Instead, he sheathed his sword and nodded towards a hatchway ahead.

  ‘We don’t need answers from the warblind,’ he said. ‘The place is guarded. Use your eyes, Bequin.’

  Like I taught you, was the unspoken end of that sentence.

  There were marks scratched into the frame of the old hatch. Sigils of disturbingly arcane design.

  ‘Witch-marks,’ I said.

  ‘Witch-marks,’ he agreed. ‘The way ahead is warded.’

  He turned, and rolled one of the bodies over with the toe of his boot.

  ‘And, you see here? The same kind of mark has been made on their flesh, and here, on the collar. Fresh scarification. They were dogs on chains, all right, and they don’t need to be alive to tell you that.’

  ‘You know these marks?’ asked Renner. Saur nodded.

  ‘From where?’ I asked.

  ‘I’ve seen them somewhere,’ said Saur. ‘I recognise them. Phantoms of the memories stolen from me.’

  ‘That all?’ I asked.

  ‘They’re Cognitae glyphs,’ he said, with a little reluctance. ‘The forms are older, from hermetic lore, but these are done in the way the perfecti are taught to make them.’

  I peered at the marks more closely, but I was disappointed. They in no way resembled the script in the commonplace book. This was another arcane alphabet entirely.

  ‘And their meaning?’ I asked.

  ‘These on the men, they’re glyphs of control. To keep them here, in this place, as sentries. Those on the doorway… I don’t know, but I wouldn’t want to step through that hatch.’

  ‘A pain door?’ I asked.

  ‘Maybe. Or worse.’

  ‘Can you counter them, Thaddeus, or undo them?’

  Saur shook his head.

  ‘I think I could have done that, once upon a time. I think I was trained in their use. But that skill’s been taken. I’ll not tamper with them, and I advise you don’t either.’

  He looked at me.

  ‘The Cognitae, eh? That’s who we seek here?’

  ‘You’re no fool, Thaddeu
s. You’ve worked that out already.’

  ‘Maybe. Who?’

  ‘You can work that out for yourself too,’ I replied. ‘Consider it a test. Any ideas?’

  ‘No,’ he said, and looked genuinely miserable. ‘I don’t even remember their names.’

  There were rare moments, like this one, when I felt pity for him. As a mentor of the Maze Undue, Saur had been a strong and bold force, and a senior, privileged member of the Cognitae. To have that all removed, the power, the knowledge, the authority; to be burned out and abandoned by those you had been loyal to, that was a bitter and ungrateful fate. I reminded myself that Saur was a killer, and had been a cruel mentor to me, and that thanks to him and his order, my life had similarly been stripped of meaning and truth.

  ‘Secure the area,’ I told them both. ‘Make sure there are no more warblind in the vicinity. I will consult.’

  Stanchion House stood in the north-western part of the city. In its former days of Imperial splendour, Queen Mab had been served by several towering starports and elevated dock facilities where, along with the shipyards, shiftships could make low anchor. Trade had thus thrived, and visitors had poured to the city in their millions, and proud regiments had embarked for war and foreign service.

  Few ports now remained. High Carlo was gone, torn down, and Anchor Gate was a sorry ruin. Marheight was a derelict spire that only the wind visited. Diminished in size, power and influence, Queen Mab was sustained now by only one port of significance, Queensport, which more than coped with subsector traffic. Stanchion House, as it is now known, had once been Galeside Port, one of the last to be decommissioned some forty years earlier. It was an enormous bulwark, a cube of girders and scaffold-work, that towered above the north-western quarters. During its long life as a working port, the inner frames of the scaffold structure had been filled with interlocking STC modules to provide accommodation, freight and service areas, and offices for the port authority, the Munitorum and the Administratum. I am told that those compartment units at the highest level, affording the best views of the fine city, were of luxurious appointment, and served as state apartments for visitors of wealth, for diplomatic envoys, and for merchant princes.