Penitent

by Dan Abnett

  He was of the silent XIX, the murderous Raven Guard. Like the Dark Angel and the proud Iron Hand, a loyalist, unless the old books lied.

  I heard him cry out, the sharp call of a carrion bird. It was he who had perched and pecked at the chimney of the muniment room. He sprang aloft, his great black wings carrying him off the terrace into the lowering sky, to meet the onrushing waves of grael stars, head-on.

  He left his companion to complete the killing on the terrace. His companion, the last of the six, was winged too, but his wings were bright, scarlet bones of shining psykanic energy. His armour was a lustrous, opalescent darkness: part midnight blue, part black, part Imperial purple, depending on how the light caught it. He made war with a vicious saintie, an ancient parrying weapon that I had found difficult to master. It was a rod, a short lance, with a spear tip at one end and a mace head on the other. In the mid-point of the haft there was a hand-grip covered by a guard loop. He whirled the thing, using the spear blade to stab and slash, and the mace head to break and shatter. With the guarded haft, he blocked and fended off any counter-attack. He wore no helmet, but his haggard face wore an expression of gleeful appetite. His hair was long, tousled and grey, his staring eyes black upon black. He was, I believed, a monstrous Night Lord of the VIII Legion Astartes, and a shunned traitor.

  The skills of all six were monumental, but they had become the focus of the raging fight. The hulking Iron Warrior was doling out the worst of the killing, and the graels’ priority had become to contain him. He was blasted by three graels simultaneously, and the surging rip of force threw him clean over.

  ‘Onager is down!’ the Dark Angel growled, a predatory rattle.

  ‘To him, Anchisus!’ Senefuru replied, and they both swung into the grael forces to cover the Iron Warrior while he regained his wits.

  ‘Now,’ snapped Mam Mordaunt to us. She made for the black iron hallway. This, while all forces were murderously engaged, was the moment to flee.

  Mam Mordaunt used her xenos weapon on full beam to disintegrate the knotted network of wrought-iron webs, and clear a path. Her shots destroyed, temporarily, the three grael orbs still held in the web trap.

  ‘Go! Go through!’ she yelled at us. Renner was already clambering through the smoking, mangled wreckage of the ironwork, heading for the darkened hallway beyond.

  I glanced back, and saw Tancredo, the Iron Hand, charging Mam Mordaunt. He had seen, despite the turmoil, her effort to escape. She shot him with the mauler, the extreme power of the pulse boring into his chestplate and throwing him backwards. I turned to follow Renner, then looked back, expecting to see Mam Mordaunt at my heels.

  But she was not. There was no sign of her. Tancredo was back on his feet, fuscina in hand, raging and looking around for a sight of her.

  She was gone. Her, and her satchel too. The only clue that she had ever been there was her xenos pistol, which lay, burned-out and ­blackened, on the carpet between broken mirror glass and shattered frames. Had he slain her somehow? Had a grael vaporised her and left no trace? Had the xenos weapon misfired and disintegrated her? It was an utter ­mystery, and I had no time to fathom it, not if I hoped to live.

  I stumbled out into the darkened landing. The uproar of the ­battle in the apartment was shaking the floor and the walls, and sifting dust and grit down from the ceiling above us.

  Renner, scared out of his wits, began to go down the stairs, but I grabbed his arm.

  ‘Up,’ I said.

  He looked at me as if I was mad.

  ‘Down is too slow,’ I said. ‘Trust me.’ Mam Mordaunt had told me of the faster and more discreet exit.

  If I could trust her.

  We ran up the stairs instead. We were on the second rising flight when we heard someone crash out onto the landing we had fled. It was the Iron Hand, hunting for us. Instinctively, I hugged back to the iron banister, and put myself between Renner and the Space Marine below.

  Could he read or sense a null? Could I mask the trace of Renner?

  Apparently I could, for at once he started down the staircase, his bulk shaking the whole frame of it. Then he stopped, and looked up. Right at me.

  As he turned and began to thunder back up, I heard him snarl into a communication link.

  ‘Two fugitives! Zephyr! Xarbia! The roof dock!’

  At which point, the grenade I had simply dropped, like a stone down a wishing well, and struck the step beside him. It was one of the two from the drawer that I had stuffed into my coat pocket. I had expected a blast that might consume the entire stairwell, so I shoved Renner before me, bodily, sprawling on top of him on the filthy landing.

  But the blast was not what I expected. Instead of belching flame, there was instead a soft gust of light. I thought the bomb’s mechanism had resoundingly malfunctioned.

  Tancredo, however, was not pursing us. He was still on the stairs, two flights down from us, rocking backwards onto one step and then forward onto the one above, over and over, the same exact motion. He was bathed in the pale flare of the erupting grenade.

  I heard his voice.

  ‘Zephyr! Xarbia! The roof–’

  ‘Zephyr! Xarbia! The roof–’

  ‘Zephyr! Xarbia! The roof–’

  ‘Zephyr! Xarbia! The roof–’

  The same precise intonation. The grenade, not an explosive munition, had been an ancient stasis bomb. The symbol on it must have indicated the enigmatic Machinekin of Mars, for only they, the books had hinted, had the means to manufacture such things, and only in ancient times.

  Such a thing, on detonation, emitted a tight-looped stasis field, in which the same moment of space-time repeated itself, ad infinitum. Tancredo would take that step and say those words for as long as the blast zone endured.

  I did not think that would be long.

  I grabbed Renner’s hand, and we ran up the staircase into the very summit of the ancient structure.

  CHAPTER 24

  Three killers

  We ran, frantic, pell-mell. The highest levels of the structure, directly under the port, were dark, dank places, half-open to the weather. The walls ran with slime and rot, and the hallways were littered with trash and debris. We passed old machine rooms, and secondary holding spaces where ancient packets of freight waited in cage pens, never to be claimed. We did not break stride.

  ‘I think,’ Renner panted, ‘I think you should hand it back.’

  ‘Hand what back?’

  ‘This life of yours,’ he replied. ‘Hand it back and ask for a replacement, for it is no good. It is broken and it is mad.’

  ‘I didn’t choose it, Renner,’ I snapped, pausing to decide which way to turn next.

  ‘Does anyone choose this life?’ he asked.

  Some did. I knew that. Gregor, Gideon…

  I had no time for his foolery. The place was a rotting maze. I was trying to recall Mam Mordaunt’s instructions.

  ‘Shut up,’ I said.

  I suggest you take the roof access into the port. One of the freight elevators in the nearest cargo hall still functions, despite the look of it. It will carry you to the street dock on Childeric Pass.

  ‘We’re looking for the roof access,’ I said. He gestured, and we started to run again.

  Remembering Mam Mordaunt’s words, I wondered again what had happened to her. Had she been destroyed or had she fled? If the latter, then by what means? I feared some misguided desperation, for desperation had driven her to summon the visitors as salvation. I was sure she’d brought them simply to provoke a terrible distraction that would allow her time to escape. But she had not followed us through the door, and how did one evade a charging Astartes of Medusa? Not by any sensible means. And if she had possessed another way out, why hadn’t she used it before?

  I reasoned that, whatever it was, it was even more unwise than summoning the visitors. Summoning them had seeme
d like a suicidal last resort, but perhaps there had been an even worse alternative, something unthinkable, that she had finally been unable to avoid.

  I shuddered at the idea. Where was she? And how does someone escape from a place with no exits? What dire thing had she done? I sincerely hoped, for the sake of her soul, that she was simply dead, for the notion of some infernal, death-be-damned decision was too chilling to contemplate.

  We followed a decayed serviceway, and found another flight of stairs that led up. On the wall, paint flaking, was Administratum signage listing security protocols and indicating port access.

  From below us, the tumult of open warfare continued to resound. The whole building shivered every few seconds. There were crumps of explosions and other lesser detonations. Through gaps in the walls and through the windows we passed, we could see fierce flashes of light coming from below, each accompanied by a powerful vibration, and some of them hurling scraps of debris and flame out into view above the city. A huge plume of brown smoke was rising from the upper south face of Stanchion House. Mam Mordaunt’s apartment lair was undoubtedly ablaze and devastated, and the fire was spreading to adjacent properties and the floors above and below. I could also hear sporadic chatter now: deep, shuddering bursts. That was definitely bolter fire. Attacked by swarms of graels, the Astartes visitors had resorted to their ranged weapons.

  It was a conflict far beyond my mortal means, a clash of demigods and supernatural spirits. I could not predict the outcome, though I feared the forces of the Yellow King would triumph through numbers. But part of me wished the visitors would be victorious. I had seen the harm they had been able to inflict. In my mind sat vivid memories of the graels they had maimed and killed. I could not forget the sight of the crimson grael that Tancredo had speared right in front of us. I could see it crawling, broken, on its hands and knees, ichor pouring from its chest wound like wet oatmeal. With reason, I had been terrified of the graels, but that thing, even without face or features to convey expression, had been in hideous pain. I thought of its host vessel, wherever that vessel was: a pariah like me. Had he or she been crawling too, slowly and painfully dying from the mortal wound of sympathetic psychomagic? I winced at the savage tragedy of it. Had it been someone known to me, a friend or fellow from the Maze Undue? In another life, it could have been me. Renner was wrong. My life was broken and mad, but I would never exchange it for fear of ­getting something worse.

  In that, I believe, my philosophy differed from Mam Mordaunt’s, even though she had raised me to follow her mindset. Impulsive desperation is not your friend. Some choices are worse than death.

  I feared we were on our own. Mam Mordaunt was gone, who knew where? And I could not make contact with Gideon on the link or by the wraithbone pendant. As we ran up the abandoned stairs, I opened Kara’s perfume bottle in the hope that I could call the angel back to our side, but he did not appear. I wondered if even the likes of him would hesitate from approaching a site so fraught with violence and psychomagical wrath. He had escaped the King once: the scent of the King’s graels, in such a multitude, and raging Astartes, would probably keep him at bay. The phial went back into my coat hastily, unstoppered, leaking its clotted, useless contents into the lining of the pocket.

  Our way was slow, impeded by the wards Mam Mordaunt had left to guard the upper approaches. Almost every door and hatchway was bonded with a witch-mark. Renner nearly rushed through the first we came to, but I stopped him just in time when I spotted the scratched hexafoil. I went through first, protected by the moldavite charm she had given me, then tossed it back through the doorway to him, so he could put it on and follow me safely. We were obliged to repeat this relay pantomime several times, and our advance became a crawl.

  This gave them time to find us.

  We were caught in the final assembly hall, just in sight of the large roof access hatch. The hatch was jammed open. Beyond it, I could see the glowering sky and the rusted landscape of the roof docks. We began to sprint, but something landed in our path.

  The Night Lord rose out of his crouch and smiled at us. His wings of skeletal red light were spread wide, and beat slowly like a billowing cloak. The black-on-black eyes fixed us with a terrible, hungry gaze.

  ‘You should not run,’ he said. His voice was a brittle, icy hiss, the one I had heard at the side door of the muniment room. ‘You belong to us. You are chattels of the College. This was the deal.’

  ‘I made no deal,’ I replied, stricken with dread.

  ‘Your mistress did,’ he hissed. ‘Where is she? She does not answer her name. You will tell us where she is hiding.’

  Renner was carrying the xenos pistol in his hand. He simply jerked it up to shoot the monster.

  Or tried to. The Night Lord was immeasurably faster than any human reflex. He snapped out with his saintie, just a blur, and the mace head smashed Renner’s hand, hurling the pistol out of his grip and high into the air. I heard it clatter to rest in a distant corner of the hall.

  Renner dropped to his knees in agony. The bones of his hand were broken. He clutched it to his chest, moaning with pain, his eyes screwed shut.

  The Night Lord licked his lips with a dark, pointed tongue and tutted.

  ‘Try not to be an idiot,’ he said. He swirled the saintie, another blur, and brought it to rest smartly, upright against his right shoulder, his left hand low at his hip, fingers spread. The first position, or ‘closed guard’ in all the treatises on saintie form. I had never got the knack of it.

  The Night Lord took a slow step towards us. I tried to pull Renner to his feet without taking my eyes off the menacing Astartes.

  ‘I don’t know you,’ he said. He took another step closer, then suddenly recoiled, as though he had encountered a revolting odour. He had come close enough for the full measure of my blankness to affect him.

  ‘I do know you,’ he murmured, correcting himself. ‘The blacksoul wretch. The pariah girl who cast us from the room last night.’

  His saintie moved as a blur again, and stopped with the spear tip extended at my throat, as if he meant to chuck me under the chin with the blade. Seventh position, caution and restrain. I did not move.

  ‘Are you Ordo?’ he asked, in his brittle-glass voice. ‘Are you Ordo, girl?’

  ‘What would it matter if I was?’ I replied. ‘I do not think your brotherhood heeds the command of the Ordos.’

  ‘Very much not,’ he said. The blade at my neck did not waver. ‘But I am interested. Interested in who you walk with, who you serve, and how you come to be in the company of Zoya Farnessa.’

  Again, the name. It almost amused me. She had cheated them, and left them no hook to catch her with.

  ‘You pursue her with great diligence,’ I said.

  ‘She is valuable.’ He sniffed. ‘Information. Precious secrets. The vulnerabilities of the Orphaeonic Tyrant. So begin with your name.’

  ‘I know yours,’ I said boldly.

  ‘Do you indeed?’ he replied. He kept the spear tip to my throat, but brushed his long grey hair back from his face with his left hand. The fingers were long, like claws. His black eyes gleamed with magpie curiosity.

  ‘I know the name of your company,’ I said, ‘that which summons you out of the very air. And I know yours too.’

  It was a fifty-fifty chance. I remembered the looping words Tancredo had spoken in the stasis field.

  ‘Zephyr,’ I said.

  He frowned, disappointed.

  ‘Or Xarbia. It’s Xarbia.’

  The Night Lord chuckled, and spun the saintie into sixteenth rest position across his shoulder.

  ‘Sadoth Xarbia, once a lord of midnight,’ he said, with the warmth of an ice floe, ‘now of the Collegia Immateria.’ He executed a mocking bow, but the resting saintie was ever a nanosecond away from third position, slicing sweep.

  ‘I cannot imagine why you would stand with the likes of
the Iron Tenth,’ I said.

  ‘I imagine there is much of everything you find unfathomable, pariah-girl,’ he replied.

  I had Renner upright. He was shaking with pain, but I kept my arm around him to steady him. This was possibly our chance. I had manoeuvred the Night Lord into giving me an edge.

  ‘You will let us pass unharmed, Sadoth Xarbia,’ I said.

  His black-on-black eyes widened in surprise. He began to shake with bewilderment. Then he burst out laughing, a sound like icicles raked on tin.

  ‘Did you think you had my name, and thus power over me? Power to command me?’ he asked through his mirth. ‘Sadoth Xarbia is not my true name. It has no force in it. No one gives their true name. Sadoth Xarbia is but the name I was given when I was inducted into the Collegia at the first degree through the rite of proposition.’

  I tried not to let my disappointment show.

  ‘And your fine institution boasts only the six of you?’ I asked. ‘Just a meagre six fellows?’

  His face fell.

  ‘There were more once,’ he hissed. ‘Time, and war with the Tyrant, take their toll. Few of us remain, but our bond is ancient. It was born from the ashes of Isstvan.’

  ‘Yet… you are peculiarly composed in opposition,’ I said.

  ‘Opposition?’ he scoffed. ‘We can scarcely bear the reek of each other! But we are, all the same, blood-sons, are we not? Brothers born of one bastard line.’