Kara Swole rolled over, rose and began to run across the beam towards the interior of the station.
It was the worst dream yet. Something liquid yet solid was pouring in under Zael’s hab door. It was black and it was stinking. Like his granna’s glue. Like her frigging mind-burning glue!
He tried to wake granna. She was asleep in her chair, snoring, When he shook her, his hands went into her flesh like it was rotten, flybown meat. Yelping out in revulsion, he backed away and grabbed his granna’s little effigy of the God-Emperor from the top of the cupboard. Zael held it out at the viscous horror spurting in around the door cracks into the kitchen.
‘Go away, Nove! Go away! Leave me alone!’
Something he needs to know…
He stifled a scream and–
Woke up.
Zael moaned and turned over in his cot. The cabin was dark, but he had left a light on in the bathroom. Its frosty glow spilled out across the gloomy space.
He was breathing hard. He wanted to call for Nayl, or Kara or even Kys, but he remembered they were engaged on some sort of mission. He wondered if he should try to contact The Chair. Nayl had advised him too, back at that place… what was it? Lenk?
He hadn’t. He hadn’t dared. He still didn’t really know what The Chair had brought him along for or why The Chair considered him special. But he didn’t want to spoil things. He didn’t want to give The Chair an excuse to ditch him.
And what was this? Wasn’t this excuse enough? Zael was having nightmares. His head was on wrong. After weeks, he was still witchy with come-down symptoms.
Zael sat up in the dark. He pushed his pillow across his knees and then leaned his head into it.
He wished, really wished, he could be a person like Nayl. A sorted out, in-control person. Or like Kara. Hell, even like Kys or Thonius.
Zael heard a sound from the bathroom. Like a block of soap falling from the rack, or a rubber ball bouncing in the metal drain-tray.
How could a–
He rose to his feet, holding the pillow in front of him like the most frigging pathetic shield in the Imperium. Water was hissing in the bathroom now, the shower head. Hot water. Steam gusted out of the cubicle, filming the glass door.
There was someone in there, inside the shower cube. Someone fogged by steam and water.
Zael swallowed hard. ‘Hello?’
‘Zael?’ The voiced echoed out over the rush of the shower. Zael heard someone spit out water to say the name.
‘Yeah. Who’s in there?’
‘It’s me, Zael.’
‘Who’s me?’
‘Frig’s sake, Zael! Don’t you know your own sister?’
Zael began to back away. ‘My sister… she’s dead. You’re not my sister..’
‘Course I am, little,’ said the misty figure behind the glass door. ‘Why do you think I’ve been trying so hard to find you?’
‘I don’t know…’ Zael murmured.
‘Everything’s joined, little. Everything’s linked. Space, time, souls, the God-Emperor… it’s all one big, connected everything. You’ll understand it when you’re here with me.’
‘With you? What do you want, Nove?’
‘I have to tell you something. Okay?’
‘What?’
The shower shut off abruptly.
‘Snatch me a towel, little. I’m coming out.’
‘N-no! No, don’t–’
The stall door opened. His sister stood before him. Fully dressed, soaking wet from the shower, haloed by steam.
And as burst and broken as she had been when they’d found her at the foot of the hab stack.
Zael simply blacked out.
‘Let’s circulate,’ Cynia Preest suggested. Her voice had a sly tone to it. She was enjoying this, and that pleased me. Bonner’s Reach seemed to have reawakened Preest’s enthusiasm for my hazardous occupation. For the first time in years, she was positive and engaged, probably because at last she had a proactive part to play.
We were standing in the stone entrance arch of one of the principle free trade salons. The scale of the chamber impressed me. It was bigger than the Carnivora, bigger than the interiors of some Ecclesiarchy temples I’d seen. A monstrous chamber hollowed from the planet’s rock, lit by huge biolumin tank-lights suspended in clusters from the faraway roof. The other end of the chamber was so far away I could barely see it.
Even through Zeph Mathuin’s enhanced optics.
A flight of marble stairs led down from the archway into the floor of the salon. Below us, hundreds – thousands, perhaps – of figures were gathered informally, drinking, talking, discoursing, trading. On our level, side galleries swept away around the walls of the hall. Looking up, I saw further tiers of galleries, twenty or more, circling the chamber all the way up to the ceiling.
The side galleries, enjoying a view over the salon’s main floor, were for private negotiations. There were booths spaced regularly around their circuits, softly lit, where traders dined together, gamed, and indulged. A quick muster of my mind, boosted as it was by the amplifiers on the Hinterlight’s bridge, told me some various booths were vox-screened, some pict-opaque, and most of them were psi-shielded. A trader entering a booth could activate discretionary barriers to keep his commerce private.
We went down the steps into the throng. Preest hovered her way down like some monarch on her archaic floater carriage. It was a business to keep the canopy decorously unfurled above her.
I switched my mind from side to side, like a broom, sweeping up scraps of detail from the scene. Preest was in her element, confident, happy in a way that surprised even her.
Nayl was tense. A passing taste of his mind told me he didn’t like it. I could hear a repeating mantra circling in his thoughts… way too exposed… too many angles… no cover… way too exposed.
+It’ll be fine.+
He glanced at me. His expression was hidden by the visor of his blast helm. I glimpsed his eyes.
‘Very well,’ he said, reluctantly.
+What’s the trouble?+
‘Nothing, boss. Nothing.’
We proceeded onto the floor of the salon. I took a selfish moment to enjoy this brief stint of physicality. I relished the body I was waring: its power, its strength, its mobility. Zeph was almost too easy to ware, one of the key reasons I had employed him. Waring others was often traumatic to both me and them, but Zeph Mathuin gave up his corporeal form without any negative resistance. I borrowed his flesh like a man might borrow another’s coat. When the time came for us to change back, neither of us ever suffered any consequences more serious than fatigue.
On we moved, through the jostling, chattering floor space of the salon. On every side, rogue traders chatted and bartered with others of their kind. Bodyguard cadres sat around low tables, getting drunk while they waited for their masters and mistresses to finish socialising. Races mixed. I saw eldar, of a craftworld unknown to me, resplendent in polished white armour, engaged with a fat human ox in furs riding on a lifter throne. Nekulli hunched and chattered around a trio of methane breathers who were tanked inside bizarre viro-armours that glistened like silver and exuded noxious odours. A bounty hunter in full body plate strode past us, trailed by his servitor drones. To my left, a kroot cackled and barked. To my right, a trader whose body was entirely augmetic chortled a mechanical chortle as the shapeless ff’eng he was dealing with cracked a joke. The trader was exquisite: his body parts and face were machined from gold, his dental ivory set perfectly in gilded gums, his eyes real and organic.
Some abominable form of opal-shelled mollusc hovered on a lifter dais and fluttered its eye stalks and elongated mandibles at a rogue trader in a red blastcoat. As we went by, I saw that the rogue trader was human except for his transplanted feline eyes. Something humanoid but not human, an elongated figure in a white vac-suit, its skin blue, its neck serpentine, blinked its large mirror eyes at a monthropod and its larvae. The monthropod and its kin curved their tube forms backwards and clattere
d their mouthparts to pay homage.
Forparsi drifters in gowns embroidered with stellar charts examined the product examples of jokaero technology. A human trader with mauve skin-dye studied an outworld prospector’s gem samples through a jeweller’s lens. I saw guildsmen amongst the rabble. The Imperial merchant guilds were supposed to limit their activities to inter-Imperium commerce, but it was well known they had no desire to see the potentially vast profits of the outworld markets go only to the free venturers and rogues.
Everywhere, tenders went to and fro. Some were girls, some boys, many were xeno-forms. They scurried to serve drinks and provide other diversions.
Preest held out a hand and stopped one, a handsome, hairless youth.
‘What is it your pleasure, mistress?’ he asked. ‘I have some of glad and some of grin and also fine sniff-musk.’
‘Three amasecs,’ Preest said. ‘Make them all doubles.’
The tender scooted off.
Several merchants made formal approaches to Preest, but she politely expressed disinterest to each after a few words had been exchanged. One, however, was especially persistent. He was a mutant or a hybrid, unnaturally short and wide, a dwarf by human standards. His hair flew back behind him in a great crest. His thick chin sported a shaved-back goatee. He was dressed in a dark red bodyglove armoured with suspended metal plates. His bodyguard – a single, unimpressive elquon manhound with dejected eyes and heavy, drooping jowls – accompanied him.
Approaching Preest, he turned her a deft bow.
‘Do I have the habit of acquainting Shipmistress Zeedmund?’ he said. Though he was making an effort to affect a tone of high-born class, he could not disguise the common twang in his voice, nor the fact that Low Gothic was not his native tongue.
‘I am Zeedmund,’ said Preest.
‘I am most audible to meet you,’ said the little master. I tried to scan him, but realised he was wearing some type of blocker. ‘Mistress, what say we chivvy us up some appendable tenders, attire ourselves some disgustable comestibles, and revive to a private booth for interculation?’
Preest smiled at him. ‘Why… would we do that?’
‘It has been brought to my apprehension by the Vigilants that you are in the marketplace, so to speak, for suggestive retail propositioning. In that rearguard, I am your man.’
‘Really,’ Preest said. ‘Who are you?’
‘Milady, my mamzel… I am Sholto Unwerth. Do not be deceived by my diminutive stature. I may not stand tall, but I cast, so to speak, a long shadow. And that shadow is entirely made up of trade.’
He said the last with emphasis, as if we should be struck with wonder at his pitch. We were, though it’s fair to say not for the reasons he hoped.
‘Do you want me to get rid of him?’ I heard Nayl whisper to Preest.
Unwerth heard him too. He held up a hand, the chunky fingers splayed. ‘Now, now. There’s no need for musculature.’
Nayl glared at him. Unwerth tugged his own earlobe. ‘I miss nothing, eaves-wise. Ears as sharp as pencils, me. No, no. All fair. If Mistress Zeedmund here finds me an abject increment in her affiliations, and wants no more of me, all she has to overtake is a word in my general. A simple ingratitude from her, and I will be, so to speak, out of your air. Without any requisite for shoving, slapping or harsh language. On the however hand, if what I have so far expleted trickles her fancy, I would be most oblate to dispell some more, at her total inconvenience, on the subject of what I have pertaining in my cargo hold.’
‘A moment, Master Unwerth,’ Preest said.
‘By all means, have a sundry of them,’ he said.
Preest turned to Nayl and me. ‘He’s just the thing. Trust me on this. I know how places like this are. Can’t you just smell the desperation? He’s so hungry for trade, his tongue’s going to be a lot looser than most around here.’
‘It’s your call,’ I said.
‘Just hang around and look bored,’ Preest said.
‘Not a problem,’ Nayl growled.
‘Master Unwerth,’ Preest announced, turning back to face him. ‘I would be delighted to discuss potential trade opportunities with you.’
He looked stunned for a moment. ‘Really?’ he mouthed. Even his manhound temporarily lost its dejected expression. Unwerth recovered fast. ‘Well, I’m ensconced by your cordium. It quite inflates me. Let us revive at once to a booth and digress in private.’
He became quite animated, leading us through the crowd and up one of the marble staircases to the first gallery. As he went, he summoned tenders and made a great show of ordering up a handsome dinner. We followed. As it turned to fall into step with us, the manhound gave me a long-suffering shrug that quite warmed me to it.
Unwerth found a free booth and pulled himself up onto one of the seats. Preest stepped down off her carriage and sat opposite him. Already, tenders were arriving with trays of sweetmeats, savouries and drinks. The manhound went to sit down beside its master, but Unwerth glanced at it sharply and hissed, ‘Not on the furniture, Fyflank!’
Rebuked, it curled up on the floor outside the booth and began to scratch its neck lugubriously with a hind-claw, causing a slapping ripple to travel up its overhanging jowls.
One of them – Unwerth or Preest – activated a pict-opaque field, and Nayl and I were left outside to guard the carriage. We leaned the canopy poles against the wall. The manhound looked at us, then settled its chin on its paws and began to doze.
I followed Harlon to the gallery rail and we looked out across the salon.
‘This is taking a long time…’ he said.
‘I never expected this to be quick,’ I replied. ‘Or easy. I have faith in Cynia. We take her skills as a pilot for granted. It’s about time we made use of her skills as a trader.’
‘Maybe. Kara okay?’
‘Yes. I can sense her. She’s in and moving.’
‘That’s something.’
He was about to say something else when there was a sudden commotion on the salon floor below us. The manhound raised its head sleepily. Nayl and I straightened up from the rail for a clearer view
A fight had broken out. The crowds of merchants drew back to give it room, peering at the action. In a few scant seconds, Vigilants had appeared, swords drawn, and formed a cordon around the fracas. I expected them to stop it, but they didn’t. They simply kept the crowds at bay. It seemed that any physical dispute was allowed to find its own resolution, provided those involved stuck to the station rules about weapons.
There were four combatants: a slender human trader with a mane of frizzy white hair, dressed in a long, grey blastcoat, his two skin-gloved bodyguards, and a big brute wearing carapace armour that looked as if it had been made from mother-of-pearl. The armoured man was bare-headed. He had a stripe of bleached hair running across his scalp and his face was threaded with old scars. His nose and ears were just nubs of gristle. He was swinging a power maul in his left hand.
The trader, screaming out to the crowd and the Vigilants for sympathy and help, was trying to stay out of the actual clash. His minders had drawn short swords and wore buckler shields on their left wrists. The armoured brute took one out almost at once, leaving the man twitching on the deck, his body crackling with dissipating electrical charge. The onlookers clapped and whistled.
The other bodyguard flashed in, stabbing with his sword and deflecting the maul with his buckler. The sword made no dent whatsoever on the pearl armour. Ducking under a final, desperate stab, the armoured man swung the maul in hard and connected with the minder’s face. The minder slammed backwards, turning an almost complete backflip. He was dead, of that I was certain. The electrical charge of the maul was enough to incapacitate, but the physical blow alone had crushed his skull.
More approval from the crowd.
His bodyguard down, the trader turned and tried to flee. The Vigilants pushed him back into the open. As the armoured man came charging towards him, uttering a bellicose yell, the trader frantically reached int
o his blastcoat and pulled a revolver.
One of the Vigilants turned and broke from the cordon with stunning speed. His sword whistled down in an elegant slice and severed the trader’s hand at the wrist. Hand and gun hit the deck and bounced.
A half-second later, the power maul had laid the trader out. Holstering his maul in a leather boot across his back, the armoured man grabbed the trader’s convulsing, sparking body and held it up with one hand, the frizzy white hair pulled back to reveal the man’s face to the crowd. With his other hand, the armoured man raised a warrant slate that displayed a hololithic picture of the trader’s face.
The crowd began to boo and jeer, returning to their business. The cordon broke up, and the Vigilants gathered up the fallen bodies.
‘Bounty hunter,’ Nayl said.
‘Yeah?’
‘You saw him flash the warrant. This place is crawling with hunters. They’re looking for absconders and evaders. My guess is they locate them here and then either pick them up once they leave or… if they’re bold like Worna there… take ’em down in public.’
‘You know him?’ I asked. It was silly question. Nayl had been a bounty man himself for many years. He knew the industry, and its more notable players.
‘Lucius Worna? Of course. Been in the game fifteen decades. Piece of shit.’
‘And there are others around?’
‘Everywhere. We’ve been scanned at least six times since we came in. Hunters check everyone out. They never know who they might run into in a place like this.’
I was alarmed. I hadn’t noticed. Waring a body like Mathuin, I expended a lot of my power simply controlling the form. It deprived me of the full scope of abilities I enjoyed in person. Suddenly, I felt vulnerable. I understood Nayl’s worried state.
This was a dangerous place.
The solar flashes were coming so frequently now that Halstrom had dimmed the bridge screen resolution. He remained seated in the mistress’s throne, running and re-running diagnostic checks on the main console display to take his mind off the wait. Ravenor’s chair was just a silent shape, immobile.