‘Standard rules, Vevian. One per player. Open choice. Body weapons only, although I’ll allow a gun per pawn for jeopardy work. Guns are not to be used for taking the quarry, as I have no need to remind you. Gunshot death or disintegration voids the game and the pot goes to the house.’
‘Observation?’ asked a thin man in grey robes.
‘Servo-skull picter, as standard. House will supply eight. You’ll each be allowed two of your own.’
‘Will she be armed?’ Boroth asked.
‘I don’t know. Would you care to chose a weapon?’ Loketter asked Patience.
‘What is the game?’ she replied.
More laughter.
‘Life, of course,’ Loketter said. ‘A weapon, Patience? DaRolle, show her.’
The ginger-haired man walked over to a varnished hardwood case set on a side table, opened it and revealed the numerous polished blades and exotic killing devices laid out on the velvet cushion.
‘Choose, darling,’ he said.
Patience shook her head. ‘I’m not a fighter. Not a killer.’
‘Darling, if you’re going to live for even ten minutes, you’ll have to be both.’
‘I refuse,’ said Patience. ‘Frig you very much, “darling”.’
DaRolle tutted and closed the case.
‘Unarmed?’ Boroth said. ‘I’ll take the wager, Loketter. In fact, I’ll double you.’
‘Fourteen taken and offered,’ Loketter announced.
‘Taken,’ said a man in pink suede.
‘I’m in,’ said the bearded man Loketter had called Vevian.
Four of the others agreed too, opening money belts and casket bands and tossing piles of cash on the low, dished table at Loketter’s feet. In ten seconds there was a thousand times more money in that baize bowl than Patience had ever even imagined.
‘Begin,‘ Loketter said, rising to his feet. ‘Pawns to the outer door for inspection and preparation. Drones will be scanned prior to release. I know your tricks, Boroth.’
Boroth chuckled and waved a pudgy hand.
‘The game will commence in thirty minutes.’ Loketter walked over to face Patience. ‘I have great faith in your abilities, Patience. Don’t let me down. Don’t lose me money.’
She spat in his face.
Loketter smiled. ‘That’s exactly what I was looking for. DaRolle?’
The ginger-haired man grabbed Patience by the arms and marched her out of the room. They went down a maze of long, brass tunnels and finally up some iron steps into what seemed like a loading dock or an air-gate.
‘Go stand by the doors, darling,’ he said.
‘What happens now?’ Patience asked.
‘Now you run for your life until they get you,’ DaRolle said.
Patience put her hands against the rusted hatchway, and then pulled them away as the hatch rumbled open.
She didn’t know what to expect when she looked out. Beyond the hatchway, the shadowy wastes of the slum-tracts stretched away into the distance.
‘I won’t go out there,’ she growled.
DaRolle came up behind her and shoved her outside. Patience fell into the dirt.
‘Word of advice,’ called the ginger-haired man. ‘If you want it, anyway. Watch for the Dolors. They use the shadow. Don’t trust black.’
‘I don’t t–’ Patience began.
But the hatch slammed shut.
Patience got to her feet. Gloom surrounded her. A hot, stinking wind blew in through the nearby ruins, smelling of garbage and city rot.
Somewhere, something whooped gleefully in the darkness. A lifter rumbled overhead, its lights flashing. When she turned, she saw the immensity of the hive filling the sky behind her like a cliff, extending up as far as she could see.
She started to run.
VIII
There was something wrong with Prefect Cyrus’s face: a blush of burst blood vessels that even careful treatment with a medicae’s dermo-wand had failed to conceal. He was trying to be civil, and was clearly impressed by his visitor’s apparel, but he was also put out.
‘This is irregular, I’m afraid,’ he fussed as he led them into a waiting room where Imperial teachings were writ in gold leaf on the darkwood panels. ‘There are appointed times for inspection, and also for apprenticeship dealings. Take a seat, won’t you?’
‘I apologise for the difficulties I’m causing,’ Carl replied. ‘But time is rather pressing, and you came highly recommended.’
‘I see,’ said Cyrus.
‘And I have… resources to make it worth your while.’
‘Indeed,’ smiled Cyrus. ‘And your name is?’
‘I’d prefer not to deal in names,’ Carl smiled.
‘Then perhaps I should show you out, sir. This is a respectable academy.’
Sitting cross-legged on the old couch, his fur-trimmed mantle turned back over his shoulder to expose the crimson falchapetta lining, Carl Thonius beckoned with one gloved hand to Kara, who stood waiting in the doorway. Kara was robed and cowled like some dumb servitor, and carried a heavy casket. As she approached, Carl leaned over and flipped the casket lid open.
‘Lutillium. Twenty ingots, each of a weight of one eighth. I’ll leave it to you to calculate the market price, Prefect.’
Cyrus licked his lips slightly. ‘I, ah… what is it you want, sir?’
‘Two boys, two girls. No younger than eleven, no older than thirteen. Healthy. Fit. Comely. Clean.’
‘This is, ah…’
‘I’m sorry, I’m being very direct,’ said Carl. ‘I should have said this before. This is a matter of the most pleasant fraternal confidence.’
‘I see,’ said Cyrus. Carl had just used one of the cognitae’s private recognition codes, by which one graduate knew another. ‘I’ll just see what’s taking those refreshments so long to arrive.’
The Prefect bustled out of the room and hurried down a gloomy hallway to where Ide was waiting.
‘Bring the others in,’ Cyrus whispered to him. ‘Do it quickly. If this is on the level, we look to earn well. But I have a feeling.’
Ide nodded.
In the waiting room, Carl sat back and winked at Kara.
+The Prefect’s suspicious.+
‘Really?’ Carl said softly. ‘And I thought I was bringing such veracity to the part.’
+Get ready. Nayl?+
Harlon Nayl grunted as he drove another crampon into the crumbling outer brick of the tower’s side, and played out his line to bring him closer to a ninth floor window. A terrible updraft from the stack-chasm below tugged at his clothing.
‘Ready enough,’ he replied.
+Harlon’s in position. Carl? You can do the honours.+
‘Thank you, sir,’ he whispered. ‘It’ll be a pleasure.’
Cyrus came back into the room, smiling broadly. ‘Caffeine and cusp cake is just on its way. The cake is very fine, very gingery.’
‘I can’t wait,’ Carl said.
+They’re closing in. Four now arriving at the west door. Three on the stairs behind Kara. Two more approaching from the floor above. All ex-Guard. Armed with batons. And I read at least one firearm.+
Carl rose to his feet. ‘Oh, Prefect? There is one other thing I did want to say.’
‘And that is?’ asked Cyrus.
Carl smiled his toothiest smile. ‘In the name of the Holy Inquisition, you motherless wretch, surrender now.’
Cyrus gasped and began to back away. ‘Ide! Ide!’ he screamed.
Kara hurled the casket and it slammed into Cyrus’s midsection, felling him hard. He grunted in pain and several of the heavy ingots scattered across the floor.
+Move!+
Kara threw off her drab robe and flew forward as the first rigorist came in through the doorway. Guns were forbidden in the scholam, but that didn’t prevent this man from carrying one. Weapon scanners around the entry gate screened visitors for firearms. But lutillium, apart from its monetary worth, had value as a substance opaque to scanners.
Rigorist Ide raised his handgun as he came in. Kara, on her knees, reached into the fallen casket and produced the Tronsvasse compact hidden between the layers of ingots.
‘Surprise,’ she said, and buried a caseless round in his forehead. The rear part of Ide’s skull burst like a squeezed pimple and he fell on his back.
She got up, shot the sprawled Cyrus once through the back of the thigh to make sure he wasn’t going anywhere, and swung to face the door. The next two rigorists burst in on Ide’s heels, batons raised, and she shot out their knees. Thonius winced and covered his ears.
In the hall outside, the other rigorists backed in terror from the sound of gunfire. Then a shaped charge blew out the casement behind them in a blizzard of glass and leading, and Harlon Nayl swung into the hallway. He had a large automatic pistol in his left fist.
‘Any takers?’ he asked.
One ran, and Nayl shot him through the heel. The others sank to their knees, hands to their heads.
‘Good lads,’ Nayl said. He took a neural disruptor from his belt in his right hand and walked over to them, cracking each one comatose with a fierce zap from the blunt device.
In the waiting room, the air threaded with gun-smoke, Kara turned to face the opposite doors as other alerted rigorists crashed in from the stairs. Knill led them, and didn’t even blink at the sight of the small woman with the handgun. He flew at her.
‘Ninker!’ she complained, and shot him. The round penetrated his torso and didn’t slow him. He crashed into her and knocked her flat.
Souzerin and another rigorist named Fewik were right behind Knill. Fewik knocked Carl over with a blow from his baton, and Souzerin raised the battered bolt pistol that he carried since his days in the commissariat. He fired at Kara, but managed only to blow off Knill’s left foot and his left arm at the elbow.
Nayl appeared at the opposite door and yelled a warning that Souzerin answered by lifting his aim and blasting at the doorway. Brick chips and wooden splinters exploded from the jamb. Kara reached out from under Knill’s deadweight and shot Souzerin up through the chin. The rigorist left the ground for a moment, then crashed back down dead. Nayl reappeared and put a round through Fewik’s back as he turned to flee.
Nayl helped Kara out from under the half-dead brute.
‘Nobody help me up then,’ Carl complained.
Panic had seized the scholam. I could feel it, breathe it. Hundreds of children and young adults, terrified by the explosions and gunshots. And a deeper panic, a deeper dread, that emanated from the minds of the rigorists and tutors.
I hovered towards the main gate, Wystan at my side, and ripped the ancient doors off their hinges with a brisk nudge of my mind. Inside the entrance way, half a dozen tutors and rigorists were running towards us, hoping for a speedy exit.
+I am Inquisitor Ravenor of the holy ordos! Remain where you are!+
I don’t think they understood the manner of the command, though several involuntarily defecated in fear as the telepathic burst hit them. All they saw was a lone man approaching beside a strange, covered chair.
+Now!+
My psi-wave threw them all backwards violently, like the pressure blast of a hurricane. Windows shattered. They tumbled over, robes shredding, flying like dolls or desperately trying to grip onto the floor.
Wystan lit a lho-stick. ‘What I like about you,’ he said, ‘is that you don’t muck around.’
‘Thank you.’
I had switched to vox-ponder and now I activated my built in vox-caster. ‘This is Ravenor to Magistratum Fairwing. Your officers may now move in and secure the building as instructed.’
‘Yes, inquisitor.’
‘Do not harm any of the children.’
IX
I had expected to find many things within the scholam: evidence of abuse and cruelty certainly, damaged souls, perhaps even answers, if I was lucky.
I had not expected to find traces of psyker activity.
‘What’s the matter?’ Kara asked me.
+I’m not sure.+
We moved down the long hallways, past the frightened faces of pupils herded along by the Magistratum officers, past whimpering tutors spread against the old walls as they were patted down for concealed weapons. The traces were slight, ephemeral, fading, like strands of gossamer clinging to the brickwork. But they were there.
+There was a psyker here.+
Kara stiffened.
+Relax. He… no, I believe it was a she. She’s not here anymore. But she was here for a long time and she left only recently.+
‘When you say a long time, you mean?’
+Years.+
‘And when you say recently..?’
+Days, maybe less.+
We explored the tower. For Kara, this was a curious process. She could not see or feel, taste or smell the traces that were so evident to me. She just followed me around, one empty room after another. I could sense her boredom and her frustration. She wanted to be with the others, active, rounding up the last of the scholam’s inhabitants.
‘Sorry. This must be tedious for you,’ I said.
‘It’s fine,’ she replied. ‘Take your time. I can be patient. Patience is a virtue.’
‘Indeed.’ We entered a large dining hall in the upper reaches of the tower. The traces were strongest and freshest there.
‘Telekine,’ I said. ‘I’m in no doubt. A telekine, raw but potentially strong.’
‘We have to find her,’ Kara said. ‘If this damn place really was grooming subjects for the cognitae, she could be a lead. A direct connection to a cognitae procurer.’
Kara was right. Amongst their many crimes, the cognitae prided themselves on recruiting and retaining unlicenced psykers for their own purposes.
‘Go and find Carl for me, Kara,’ I requested. ‘I want to get him working on discovering who this psyker was and where she might have gone.’
‘Because of the cognitae link,’ she nodded.
‘Yes, because of that,’ I replied. ‘But even if no link exists, we still have to find her. An unsanctioned psyker, lose on Sameter. That cannot be permitted. We must track her down. And dispose of her.’
X
‘I’m sorry,’ Carl Thonius said. ‘Sir, I’m very sorry.’
The device was very small, no larger than a hearing aid implant.
‘I should have searched him right there, but with all the shooting and screaming.’
‘Don’t worry about it, Carl,’ I said.
‘I think I will, sir. Everything’s blanked.’
The device was a trigger switch, coded to Cyrus’s thumb print. An advanced piece of tech. Down on the floor, helpless from the wound Kara had delivered to his leg, Cyrus had plucked this device from his pocket and activated it. And the scholam’s entire data archive had been erased.
‘Can you recover anything?’ I asked.
‘It’s a fairly comprehensive wipe. I might be able to recode the last few days worth of material. The stuff most recently processed might still exist in the codification buffer.’
‘Do what you can,’ I advised. Privately, I was annoyed with his lapse. But we had, with the assistance of local law-enforcement, rounded up dozens of tutors and scholam elders, including Cyrus himself. And who could say what the poor pupils themselves might be able to tell us?
Besides, it was hardly surprising. Carl was so poor in circumstances of violence. I don’t believe he had ever fired a shot in anger, though he performed well enough in weapons drill.
‘I’ll get to work, sir,’ Carl said. ‘I’m so very sorry–’
‘So you bloody should be,’ Nayl snorted.
‘Enough, Harlon!’ I rebuked. ‘Carl is my interrogator and you will address him with respect.’
‘I’ll do that,’ Nayl replied, ‘when he earns it.’
‘Do what you can, Carl,’ I said. ‘But remember, your priority is to find out all there is to know about the unsanctioned psyker they had here. Who she was, where she went. She has to be fou
nd and dealt with, quickly.’
‘Yes, sir.’
As Carl moved away, the senior magistratum approached. His enforcement officers, clad in black and silver, were still clearing the scholam floor by floor. I could sense his unease. He was an experienced criminologist, but he’d never had his entire station house requisitioned to assist the Inquisition before. He was terrified of screwing up. He was terrified of me.
‘Problems?’ I asked.
‘A few scuffles, sir. You’d rather taken the wind out of their sails.’
‘I want all the children to be given medical checks, and then safe-housed until statements can be taken from them all. Inform the Administration that welfare assistance will be required, but not yet. No one is to be rehoused or re-homed unless they’ve been examined. Why do you frown?’
The magistratum started a little. ‘There are over nine hundred children, sir…’ he began.
‘Improvise. Ask the local temples for alms and shelter.’
‘Yes, sir. May I ask… is this an abuse case, sir?’
‘Indirectly. I can’t say more. The staff I’ll interview here, now. I’ll need some of your men to assist in guarding them while the interrogations are underway. Once I’m done, I will file charges, and you can begin to process them.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘I’ll start with the Prefect.’
A magistratum first-aider had patched Cyrus’s leg wound, and they’d shackled him to a chair in one of the refectories. He was in pain, and very frightened, which would make it easier to extract information.
Cyrus stared at me as I rolled in to face him. Nayl followed me in, but sat his ominous bulk down at the far end of the long table from Cyrus, a threat waiting to happen.
‘I… I have rights,’ Cyrus began. ‘In the eyes of Imperial Law, I have–’
‘Nothing. You are a prisoner of the Inquisition. Do not ask for or expect anything.’
‘Then I’ll tell you nothing.’
‘Again, you are mistaken. You will tell me everything I ask you to tell me. Harlon?’
From the far end of the table, Nayl began to speak. ‘His name is Ludovic Kyro, Cognitae-trained, wanted on five worlds for counts of heresy and sedition…’