by Dan Abnett
‘My m-mind…?’ he sobbed.
‘You did it to yourself,’ she said, ‘for protection, and now–’
‘I r-remember it,’ he moaned.
‘There, you see?’ she replied.
‘I remember it all,’ he told her. His tears were so profuse they dripped from his jaw and chin, and spattered his oxblood bodyglove. ‘Eusebe…’
‘Hello again,’ she said, with a cold smile. ‘Collect yourself, please, Thaddeus. We–’
‘Eusebe,’ he wept, ‘I remember. I d-did not. I did not d-do it to myself. It was done to me.’
Mam Mordaunt flinched back from him, her smile utterly gone.
‘Oh shit,’ she said.
‘By whom?’ I asked. ‘By Gideon?’ Ravenor had similarly caused Renner’s mind to be edited.
‘Was it Ravenor?’ Mam Mordaunt demanded.
Saur shook his head. Tears flew out. He stared up at Mam Mordaunt, a pleading look on his stricken face.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘Please.’
Mam Mordaunt looked at him for a moment, then nodded. With chilling calm, she aimed her pistol at him.
‘Quickly!’ Saur said to her, looking her in the eye.
The xenos-tech weapon spat a brief beam of searing energy that passed through Saur’s chest, the chair back, and the floor behind him. It left a gaping, smoking tunnel clean through the man and the furniture a full thumb’s length in diameter. Saur’s corpse folded forward in the seat, his face on his thighs, the backs of his hands on the floor beside his feet.
‘Throne above!’ I exclaimed in shock. ‘Was that necessary?’
‘He was a plant,’ replied Mam Mordaunt, without emotion. ‘An unwitting one. His mind had been wiped and set to reinstall on certain circumstantial cues. My presence, for example. I just pray I silenced the poor bastard fast enough, before–’
‘I don’t think you did, mam,’ said Renner Lightburn quietly.
We all looked up. Through the long wall of green-tinted windows, we could see out across the balcony terrace and the wide city beyond. Stars had appeared in the hazy afternoon sky: small points of light, burning brightly. There were four of them, then five: one blue, two red, one yellow, one amber. They were rushing towards us across the city in loose formation, and at great velocity.
They were graels.
CHAPTER 22
In which the Eight descend
‘We’re dead,’ said Mam Mordaunt.
‘This is not my doing!’ I protested.
‘I know that, you foolish girl!’ she snapped. ‘The King was searching for me, and now he’s found me.’
‘What are they?’ Lightburn asked, gazing at their approach through the windows with horrid fascination. ‘Are they ships? The lights of ships?’
How could I explain a eudaemonic entity to him? How could I describe the merciless, implacable thought-form of a grael, its keening power, the etheric nature of its construction, the principles of the Eight? Any of that, to a man who had no knowledge of them, and scant experience of the warp? Could I say that it had been my intended destiny to become one? There was no point, and there was no time.
‘If they have our location, we must flee,’ I said.
Mam Mordaunt had already crossed to her quizzing glasses.
‘There is no opportunity,’ she said, surveying the mirrors’ images. ‘They come at us from all sides. I count twelve. One is already in the inner staircase.’
She looked at me.
‘There’ll be no fleeing,’ she said. ‘We must wish with all fervour that my defences are sufficient to the task.’
‘Are they?’ I asked.
Mam Mordaunt raised her xenos beam-gun and adjusted its setting.
‘I have prepared long and hard for this emergency,’ she replied. ‘The chances of him discovering my whereabouts were always high. So, I hope so. But he sends so many…’
‘What did you do?’ I asked. ‘What did you do that makes him hunt you so?’
‘I exist,’ she snarled. ‘I know his secrets, and I am free to speak them.’
The first of the graels had reached us. They floated in across the terrace, slow, like dandelion heads on the wind. Each was a tiny bright star. We could hear the hiss and crackle of them through the glass.
‘Renner and I have no means to fight them,’ I said to her.
‘You do,’ she snapped back. ‘Your black soul is some defence. Un-cuff.’
I did so, turning my limiter off. At once, the numb blankness of my pariah gene filled the apartment. Renner flinched. Mam Mordaunt curled her lip in distaste. I even felt myself, as though the many mirrors were reflecting the cold of my null state back at me.
Outside, the first graels fluttered back a little, sputtering and fizzling. Then they bobbed forward again towards the glass, seething bright as before.
‘What else?’ I demanded. ‘We have but firearms and swords, and they’ll be useless.’
‘The bureau,’ she replied, weapon in hand, her eyes not leaving the graels outside. ‘Top drawer. What little I have…’
I ran to the polished bureau. I heard a fizzling crack from the hall outside, like a voltaic discharge, as a grael brushed against the warded outer door, seeking admission. A second later, there came another electrical spit as it tried again, applying more power.
The bureau’s top drawer contained a few necklace charms and dog-eared notebooks, a drawstring purse of calfskin, a blondwood box that looked like a cutlery case, and two heavy, dark spheres of metal that I realised had to be frag grenades. They were old, and their dull casings were marked with a skull-and-cog motif. I put them in the hip pocket of my coat.
‘The charms?’ I called out.
‘Forget them,’ she replied. ‘Just trifles. The box, and the bag!’
On the balcony, the graels – four of them now – had begun to buzz against the windows. As they touched the glass, there was a fierce crackle and flare as the wards rebuffed them. The graels shivered away, then pushed again, banging at the tinted panes like heavy insects, gusting showers of firefly sparks as they ground against the witch-marked barrier.
I opened the soft purse, which clinked as I picked it up. Inside were a handful of smooth-polished vitreous pebbles, like sea glass that might be found washed up on a beach after years of soft tumbling by the tides. Each one was a lustrous tobacco-brown, and engraved with a precise hexafoil design.
‘What are these?’ I called out.
Mam Mordaunt was still watching the windows, ready to raise her weapon in a two-handed grip.
‘Flect missiles,’ she hissed back. ‘Projectiles. Throw them – carefully!’
I lifted the lid on the blondwood box. The interior was a shaped and cushioned pad of lurid pink satin. One shaped depression was empty, but the other nested a pistol, the twin of the chromed xenos-tech Mam Mordaunt clutched. I took it out. It felt disturbingly warm, as though it was a hot-blooded organism, and it was surprisingly light for such a carefully machined piece.
‘Renner!’ I called.
He was at my side.
‘You can shoot. Take this.’
He accepted it from me tentatively, cupping it like an egg or a porcelain figurine that would shatter if it slipped from his grasp. He elbowed the heavy Mastoff around so it was slung across his back.
‘You shouldn’t trust me with a piece like this,’ he murmured.
‘Just take it,’ I said. I had the purse in my hand, and took one of the glass pebbles out.
‘The beamer has no kick,’ Mam Mordaunt told Renner, ‘and it is absolutely accurate. But it is a beam weapon, you understand, Curst? It will discharge collimated energy all the while the trigger is depressed. So squeeze gently, in the name of all the Warped Ones, then lift! Pulse it with a light finger or it will shred the room!’
I heard Renn
er make a grunt of displeasure. He gripped the weapon, and held it out at arm’s length as though it might bite him.
‘This is xenos shit,’ he murmured. ‘A stranger-race gun…’
‘It is an Interex mauler,’ Mam Mordaunt replied, with little patience. ‘It uses kinebrach filament photonics. Just point it and shoot it, or you are no use to us!’
Six graels, each of a different incandescent hue, were now scraping and pushing at the windows. The glass shivered. Glowing coals of resistance flew from the balls of light and flurried out across the balcony terrace like sparks from a windblown bonfire. I could hear others, shrieking and scraping against the main door, and at the walls, and at the floor.
‘The wards will not hold,’ Mam Mordaunt murmured.
The witch-marks scribed on the sills and frames of the windows were already beginning to smoulder, spilling tufts of grey smoke into the air. The panes creaked and shifted. One grael, a malevolent acid yellow, swam backwards, and then rushed at the glass with furious intent. I heard the thump of the impact. There was a bloom of corposant, and a painful crack like lightning earthing, and the grael was thrown backwards again, shedding flecks of light. It seemed to simmer, hovering, to recover itself, then rushed the glass once more, with similar results.
The others battered and knocked, fizzling with malicious energy. Where some pressed with steady effort, the green tint of the glass began to bleach out, leaving pockmarks of clear glass through which hard, slanting beams of pale daylight began to spear the apartment.
The yellow grael struck at the barrier again. Another, fury-red, commenced the same approach, throwing itself at the glass with repeated indignation. More bleached spots appeared in the tinting, more rays of sunlight lanced into the room. The red grael impacted again, and this time the glass began to bubble, as if heated. Small cracks had begun to figure the panes. Three of the witch-marks on the frame caught fire, and started to dance with fierce little flames.
I caught Mam Mordaunt casting a look my way. She didn’t speak. Her eyes were everything. I saw her anger, her fear and her blame. This was a doom she had evaded for months, since the fall of the Maze, and now it had found her because of me. I had brought this to her door, unwittingly perhaps, but most assuredly. And my bold claims that the Inquisition would protect her were worthless.
A violet grael flew at the windows, met resistance in a seething fluorescent halo for a second, and then broke clean through, sailing into the apartment, leaving a molten-edged hole the size of a fist in the glass behind it. It came at us, moving with shocking speed. Mam Mordaunt aimed, both arms straight, one eye closed, and fired. The searing pulse from her beam-gun struck it dead centre.
The grael expanded for a moment as it absorbed the massive energy load, like a billion-year time-lapse of a star growing swollen with age. Then it burst like a supernova.
There was a smack of shockwave as it did so. I recoiled, and felt the heat of it on my face. The grael blew apart, showering sparks of violet light in all directions. I saw some land, on furniture, on carpet, sizzling like firecrackers.
There was no moment of respite. The other graels, and there were nine outside now that I could see, redoubled their efforts on the breached glass. The yellow and red graels struck together, with raging force.
The windows exploded in at us. There was a hurricane rush of wind, and a blizzard of flying glass. I shielded my face, and felt shards cut at my coat and rebound off my raised arms.
Mam Mordaunt stood her ground, unflinching. Flying glass had cut her face in three places, drawing trickles of blood. Another fragment had sliced the bodyglove open across the outer curve of her left thigh, gashing the skin beneath. I saw the bright blood with great clarity. Cold daylight now bathed the room, replacing the cool green mood. I could smell the air from outside, the sharp, cold scent of the wind over Queen Mab.
She fired a second time, another tight pulse, and clipped the yellow grael before it could reach her. It spun away, wild and damaged, bleeding fans of sparks like a Saint Katarina’s wheel. It hit the end wall and detonated, bringing down several of the quizzing glasses.
Renner fired too, aiming for the red grael. His first pulse from the unfamiliar weapon was tragically imprecise. It missed the grael entirely, and speared through the window frame and out into the sky. Renner yelped in dismay, the red grael rushing towards his face. Mam Mordaunt switched sideways and fired, tumbling the grael away from him with another clipping shot. Trailing energy, it veered and tried to steady itself. Renner re-aimed and shot it almost point-blank. Like the violet grael before it, the red one burst like a sun flare and showered writhing worms of neon-red power in every direction. The detonation threw Renner off his feet, and he crashed into the bureau.
I saw a third, an emerald-green orb, flying at me like a meteor. I tried to duck – a hopeless effort, I recognise in hindsight – but it swung away from me at the last moment, as if violently repulsed by my null aura. It rolled backwards in the air, crackling in a frenzy as it summoned more power to renew its attack.
Without conscious thought, on impulse alone, I flung the glass pebble in my palm at it. And I praised the God-Emperor of Mankind for making Thaddeus Saur, at whose mean hands I had been schooled and coached for many years, practising the skills of the throw-knife, the chakram, the shaken, the zaer, the francisca and the whirling iron in the alley-ranges of the drill until such skills had become instinctive muscle memory.
My pebble – a flect missile, as Mam Mordaunt had called it – hit the emerald grael squarely.
I have both heard and read of a device known, in the vernacular, as a psyk-out or psykanic negator. They are rare things, most usually made in the form of a hand-bomb or grenade. It is said the immortal Custodians make them, laced with dust brushed from the armrests of the Golden Throne itself, though that is quite fanciful, I’m sure, for why would there be dust on the Emperor’s throne? Whatever, such devices deliver a potently negative anti-psyker charge, in effect a violently concentrated burst of the very essence of the pariah state I naturally radiate.
The flect missile seemed to create precisely that savage effect. As it struck the grael, the grael did not explode as the violet and red ones had, nor did it shower the area with disintegrating sparks. It simply distorted and folded in upon itself with a pop, like the sound of a cork blown from a bottle, that shattered the flect into dust. From that sudden implosion, the grael re-formed, as if from a pucker in the air itself, but now it was dull and colourless, without any trace of emerald green. A milky, lifeless sphere, it simply dropped to the floor, and rolled across the carpet, inert and cold as a doorknob. Without hesitation, I stamped on it, as I would stamp on some venomous insect, and it shattered like spun sugar under my heel, crushed into an ugly smear.
Another grael, this one vivid blue, buzzed past me, and I dodged aside as one might avoid a persistent hornet. I plucked another flect from the bag. For a moment, I thought we were gaining ground.
But just as Mam Mordaunt blew another grael out of the air with her xenos mauler, I saw that both the yellow and the violet graels, which I had believed obliterated, were re-forming. They rolled across the wide rug, glittering as they coalesced and spun with restored fury, and quickly became as bright as stars again.
However, they did not rise into the air. They grew instead.
The glowing orbs began to stretch and morph, as though they were losing cohesion, and then sprouted tendrils of energy up into the air. In just seconds, each had transformed from a bright sphere into the life-size shape of a human figure. Each was tall, vaguely masculine and powerful, and perhaps naked, though there was no detail to them and no features. They were human shapes, three dimensional, made of crackling violet and yellow light.
Another moment, and there was a red figure too, and an emerald-green one. Other graels, entering through the shattered gap of the windows, or carving the air around us, dropped to the floor
and reassembled as human forms.
The grael figures stepped towards us, closing on us from three sides. They were silent except for the sizzle of their forms. Their footfalls singed the carpet.
I dragged Renner to his feet, and both he and Mam Mordaunt opened fire. Their pulsed shots punctured approaching forms, scattering them like flashes of sunlight on metal. But as quickly as they were burned down, they began to reshape, tatters of coloured energy that writhed on the floor, and melded and then repeated the slow, tendrilled growth into human form.
We were backing away from them, almost unconsciously, retreating towards the black iron gate of the hallspace. I think we had all reasoned that escape was our only option, however hopeless that was.
There was an explosive crash behind us. Other graels had finally overcome the wards of the apartment’s main entrance, and blown that door asunder. They rushed in, three of them, still in orb form – one crimson, one lime, and one the deep blue of woad – coming at our backs. Escape, by any means, was a vain fancy.
I turned, raising a flect, to fend off the trio racing up at our heels. But Mam Mordaunt, firing a snap-pulse that vaporised another figure, yelled out a word command. It was a word that I did not know, though the very sound of it made me shudder with discomfort – yes, even on top of the fear and adrenaline already churning the very fibres of me. I am sure it was a word from the arcane language called Enuncia, for even as I heard it I could not then remember it.
The gate slammed behind us, and the ironwork cobweb patterns of the hall’s arcade began to move. The metal twisted and flexed like soft liquorice, and lashed out, trapping the three graels in moving cobwebs of black iron. The web motif of her hallway had not been mere decoration. Caught within the creaking, twisting net of iron, the three grael orbs blazed with angry light, and started to push and burn against the enclosing bars. But as their forms touched a bar, or attempted to pass between them, there was a sharp, voltaic report, like the slap of a horsewhip, and they were flung backwards, as though they had been stung with a cattle prod.
