+I’m sorry for eavesdropping, and I know I should be resting, but I’ve come too far to stop now.+
‘Birds?’ asked Kys.
+Through the door, I met Orfeo Culzean. Remember him? We had a conversation.+
‘What kind of conversation?’ asked Kys.
+It doesn’t matter. We were in a field. I had no idea where, and he wasn’t going to tell me, but knew it was wherever he and Molotch had gone to ground. A planet somewhere, in affordable jump distance of Utochre, no more than a subsector or two away at most. There were birds, local flora, evening stars. Once I got here, and the excellent medicae Zarjaran made me comfortable, I started to go back through the records I’d made, comparing them to the Hinterlight’s extensive database. The asset of having a support chair with perfect recording systems is that you can store things in the most extreme detail, more extreme than a regular mind could remember. I compared star patterns, the cellular detail of crop husks, the patterning of small birds. It took a while, but ultimately, there was no doubt at all.+
‘Gudrun,’ said Kys.
‘We set off immediately,’ said Preest. ‘I could tell Gideon was in no mood to tarry.’
‘Oh Throne, you pinpointed Gudrun by some birds and corn husks?’ asked Kys.
+Every planet has its own specific and quite characteristic microculture. And, actually, I didn’t pinpoint Gudrun.+
‘What then?’
+I pinpointed the Upper Sarre provincial zone of Gudrun, within twenty kilometres of the Kell Massif.+
Kys started to laugh.
‘I knew you’d like that,’ said Nayl, grinning. ‘Now, it’s your turn. What happened to you?’
Kys looked at her empty glass and Halstrom refilled it.
Then she told them everything that had happened since they had broken free of the dying Wych House.
‘Any response from Carl or Ballack?’
‘Nothing,’ said Nayl grimly.
‘Not even a hint?’ Ravenor’s repaired voxponder had a slightly lower, droning quality. They were still getting used to it.
‘Wherever they are, they’re not answering,’ Nayl said.
‘We must tread carefully with Ballack,’ said Ravenor. ‘I’m not sure what he is yet, but he’s hiding something.’
‘Interrogator Ballack is beyond reproach,’ Angharad snapped from the back of the launch’s cabin.
‘No, he’s not,’ said Ravenor. ‘When I was waring him, I found a Black Dam block.’
‘Yes, you do like to ’ware people, don’t you?’ sneered Angharad. ‘Against their will.’
‘Shut up,’ said Kys. She had showered – for a long time – and was wearing clean clothes, Hinterlight crew fatigues that didn’t quite fit. She felt ungainly and unfeminine. She imagined that was how Maud Plyton felt much of the time. The thought of Maud made her tense. ‘Are you sure you’re up to this?’ she asked.
‘He shouldn’t be doing it at all,’ said Nayl.
‘Well, I am,’ Ravenor replied. ‘From what you’ve told me, I haven’t got time to sit around and heal. Mister Halstrom?’
‘Two minutes to dock,’ Halstrom called from the launch’s helm position. He had insisted on piloting them.
‘Thank you.’
Nayl, Kys and a nervous-looking Unwerth sat in the cabin behind him. Ravenor’s chair, repaired but still showing the marks of its damage, sat in the cargo space behind them. Angharad reclined in one of the rear seats. She was wearing her restitched armour, and Iosob had patiently rebraided her hair. None of them had any idea what they should do with the child housekeeper.
Evisorex lay in its scabbard across Angharad’s long legs.
‘A Black Dam?’ asked Kys. ‘That’s a Cognitae technique.’
‘It is,’ said Ravenor. ‘Our friend Ballack was concealing something, something big. It is possible he is the one hiding Slyte.’
‘Nonsense!’ Angharad spat.
‘I tend to agree with obnoxious sword-girl,’ said Kys. ‘It’s Zael. I have no doubt. He’d got to Frauka somehow, turned him. I know what went on aboard the Arethusa.’
‘I saw it, in all fair point,’ said Unwerth. ‘Psychic chaos, the breadth of the warp relapsed. If it wasn’t a daemon, I don’t know what.’
‘We’ll see,’ said Ravenor.
Halstrom guided the launch expertly into the Arethusa’s docking bay. Automatic systems clamped them in place and folded the hull doors, equalising pressure.
‘We’re good,’ said Halstrom, taking off his headset, unbuckling his harness and turning to look back at them.
‘Mister Halstrom, please stay here. Stand by to leave at a moment’s notice.’
‘Understood, sir,’ said Halstrom.
The others unbuckled their restraints and rose. They clambered down out of the launch’s aft hatch into the echoing docking bay. Nayl held a shotgun. Unwerth fumbled with a laspistol that Preest had lent him.
‘You may stay with the launch, if you like, Master Unwerth,’ said Ravenor as he floated down the ramp.
‘Thank you. I will deblige you, however,’ said Unwerth. ‘I want my ship back.’
They advanced towards the access way. The air, oddly fresh, smelled of cinnamon or fresh-cut grass.
‘Do you feel anything?’ asked Kys. ‘I couldn’t lock him down, but I was too afraid to try. You’re much stronger than me.’
‘Not today,’ said Ravenor. ‘I may have to rely on all of you. In answer to your question, Patience, not yet. I can feel something. I can hear...’
‘What?’ asked Kys.
‘Sobbing. You hear that?’
They turned down one of the Arethusa’s empty spinal corridors. The deck lights were still guttering.
Angharad pulled out her sword in a fluid movement. ‘Evisorex thirsts,’ she said.
‘I’m sure it does,’ said Ravenor. ‘I’ve got something, something very clear. It feels like... Wystan.’
‘How can you feel him?’ asked Nayl. ‘He’s a blunter.’
‘He’s compromised,’ said Kys. ‘I said he was.’
‘It’s Wystan,’ said Ravenor, ‘or, at least, it’s something that wants us to feel it’s Wystan.’
Kys shuddered. Unwerth looked up at her and calmly held her hand. She looked down at him, saw his nervous smile, and squeezed his hand.
‘How close?’ asked Nayl.
‘Very close,’ Ravenor replied. ‘The forward hold.’
They approached the hold hatch. Unwerth let Kys’s hand go and scurried forwards to key in a code. The hatch groaned. Tutting, Angharad strode up, put her shoulder to the hatch, and slid it slowly open with a grunt.
‘Gotta love her,’ said Nayl.
Kys snorted.
They entered the forward hold. It was empty, derelict. Packing cartons, pulped and shredded, littered the floor space.
‘I hear sobbing,’ said Kys.
They looked up.
Wystan Frauka sat on one of the iron cross beams high up in the hold’s roof. How he’d got up there, none of them would ever know. He was sobbing, every breath jagging out of him like a gasp. His upper lip, mouth and chin were wet with blood. It was dripping out of his nose.
‘I tried,’ he murmured. ‘I tried. Protect him you said, and I tried.’ He coughed, and blood sprayed from his mouth. Zael hung in his arms like a string-less puppet.
+Wystan?+
‘Yes, Gideon?’
+Glory, you can hear me?’+
‘Yes, Gideon. That’s... that’s really frigged up, isn’t it? I mean, I’m an untouchable, right?’
‘Not any more,’ said Ravenor.
Frauka sobbed some more. Blood dripped down onto the deck beside them.
+Is he awake?’+
‘What?’ asked Frauka.
+Is Zael awake?+
‘No. Yes. In his head, he is. He has been for a long time.’
‘I told them! I told them!’ Kys exclaimed.
‘Sorry about that, Patience, but if he’d known, he would have killed
him.’
‘Who?’
‘Slyte, of course.’
+Wystan...+
‘I had to hide for so long, Chair,’ said Frauka, hugging the limp body to his chest with both arms. ‘For so long. He was here all the time, and I didn’t dare look out. He’d have seen me. He’d have killed me as if I was nothing.’
+It’s all right.+
‘It’s not all right!’ Frauka barked. ‘I was scared. I was tired of hiding, but he was there all the time. Right there. You couldn’t hear me, Chair, or you didn’t want to.’
+I always wanted to.+
‘Huh,’ said Frauka. ‘Well, I woke up once he’d left the ship. When it was safe. I think I scared the crew a bit. I’m sorry I scared them.’
‘What the frig is Frauka babbling about?’ Nayl asked.
‘It’s not Frauka,’ said Ravenor, ‘it’s Zael. He’s channelling Zael.’
Nayl looked up at the figures perched in the rafters. ‘Zael?’
Patience stepped forwards. +Zael? Hello? I need to know something.+
‘Hello, Patience. You’re pretty,’ said Frauka mindlessly.
+Thank you. Zael, if you’re not Slyte, who is?+
‘Ballack,’ said Ravenor emphatically.
‘Ballack’s nothing,’ said Frauka’s mouth. ‘Slyte’s been with us from the start.’
+Zael?+
‘Thonius Slyte. Thonius Slyte, Thonius Slyte,’ Frauka cackled.
Incremental terror filled Nayl, Kys and Ravenor simultaneously. Disbelief. Horror.
‘Watch above!’ Unwerth yelled out.
Frauka had slumped forwards, letting Zael’s body go. Both of them dropped like stones from the cross beam and plunged towards the hold deck.
+Kys!+
‘I’ve got them,’ she said.
Four
Carl Thonius climbed down out of the cargo-8 they had leased at Dorsay. His boots kicked dust up off the rural track. Behind him, Plyton, Ballack and Belknap got out of the vehicle.
They had parked under a stand of trees on a lonely country road. Evening was closing in across the fields. Ahead of them, two kilometres away, the sudden, grim bulwarks of the Kell Mountains rose like a threat. They were sheathed in mist and storm cover, almost invisible.
The country around was still and quiet. There was a soft breeze, and the evensong of birds heading to roosts in the woods. But there was a persistent ringing, buzzing sound in Carl Thonius’s head, like tinnitus. Carl started to breathe deeply, checking the rings on his fingers. One, two, three–
‘Up there? Is that the place?’ asked Belknap, shouldering the worn, ex-Guard issue lasrifle he had brought.
Plyton nodded. ‘I’m sure. The lander left the Allure in parking orbit and dropped at Dorsay field. Then it came out here.’
‘You’re sure?’ Belknap asked her, dubiously.
‘Magistratum skills, Belknap, trust me,’ she said. ‘I know how to ask around on the sly, and how to track a suspect vehicle. It came here. The flight path was keyed and logged at the field office.’
‘I don’t think they know we’re here,’ said Thonius. ‘If they suspected we were right behind them, we’d know it.’
He stared up at the almost invisible summit above them. ‘I am going to kill Zygmunt Molotch,’ he said in a whisper none of the others heard.
Belknap had crossed to the far side of the track and was playing his electro binoculars at the crags ahead. The lenses whirred and clicked. None of them had wanted him to come along: they all considered him a non-combatant. But he had insisted, for Kara’s sake, while there was still a hope. None of them could argue with that.
‘Big place up there,’ Belknap said, squinting through his field glasses, ‘like a palace. We’ll have to get closer for me to make anything definite.’
‘Then let’s get closer,’ said Thonius.
‘I still can’t raise the Arethusa,’ said Ballack, shaking his vox link. ‘What the hell’s up with that?’
‘Atmospherics,’ said Thonius. ‘There’s a storm coming in down the mountains.’
‘I couldn’t raise them in Dorsay either,’ said Ballack.
‘Atmospherics,’ Thonius repeated. ‘They’re all right, sitting pretty. What’s important is down here. Let’s spread out and scope the area.’
They fanned out. Plyton and Belknap followed the track down to fields. Ballack and Thonius followed parallel paths into the creaking woods. They could feel the pressure of the gathering storm. The boughs sighed and groaned as the wind stirred them. Leaves fluttered. The rot-dry husks of wind-felled trees attested to the power that local storms could develop.
Carl Thonius came to a halt in a sighing glade. The others were out of sight. He could see the mountains a little better through the swaying branches ahead of him than from the road. They were a black shape smeared in cloud. Behind them, the sky was clean and ochre, stippled with stars.
The buzzing had grown worse. Thonius realised his right hand was shaking. He forced it to be still. He had come to regret many things in these last days of his human life, and the strangest regret of all was that he hadn’t left his right arm in the cattle pen on Flint.
He had been trying so hard for such a long time, but he knew it was beating him. It was just a matter of time. The dark energy within him was like a grotesque pressure. He felt like an over-boiled kettle, rattling on a stove burner. At any moment he could burst.
He’d come close to bursting too many times. At Berynth, when he’d killed the man. Then again, by necessity, when they were trapped on the wrong side of the door and facing the hooked monsters. Letting slip his power had been the only thing that had saved them. At that moment, he’d been just a sliver of willpower away from letting go altogether. Such a terrible glee had filled him, and Throne, such temptation! To just give in, to let himself go to the turmoil inside his soul.
It would be so nice to let it stop. To cave in and surrender, and not have to fight any more. The buzzing would stop, the whispers, the pain.
Two simple thoughts kept him focused. One was that he was an Imperial interrogator. He had fought for that post, worked hard for it. The Carl Thonius part of him wanted to serve, wanted to prove himself true. How odd, he considered, that a man inhabited by a daemon might remain so devoted, give or take the odd little slip. Thonius had a dream, an ambition. He believed he had a power inside him that the whole Imperium could benefit from, but if he showed it to his masters before he could control it, they would execute him. They would exterminate him without hesitation. The buzzing in his head chuckled mockingly every time he dwelt on that ambition.
He could hear it again. Heh heh heh.
The other simple thought was that he didn’t want to die, Not again, not like before, on Eustis Majoris. He really didn’t. However much giving in might appeal, he did not want to die.
There was only one more option left open to him. It was up there, in the sulking mountains, Throne willing: Molotch. If Ravenor couldn’t help him nurse and control the entity lodging inside him, then the arch-heretic would find a way. Molotch had skills and knowledge, and Molotch was not bound by the moral constraints and edicts of the ordos.
He would face Molotch, and force him to give up his secrets. Then he would kill him, in an action of sweet vengeance for his beloved master.
And then... and then...
Thonius convulsed. He dropped to his knees. The psychic force of his seizure rocked the trees around him. Loose leaves swirled and fluttered.
‘What the hell was that?’ Belknap asked over the link. ‘Did anyone else feel that?’
‘Carl?’ Ballack called out through the woods.
Thonius threw up weakly, his last meal splattering across the track as oily liquid. Syncope overtook him and he fell on his side. His vision went. He could hear voices and buzzing.
‘Carl? Are you all right?’ Plyton’s voice echoed from far away.
Eat her, eat her now, eat her up, she’s so plump and delicious. Let go and let me go, Carl
. I want to be out. I want to be out–
‘No,’ he moaned. He had never felt so lost. His heart was empty. His soul was sloshing full of black poison. His body ached. His right hand twitched. A ring broke and pinged off. Fight it, fight it...
‘Carl?’
His vision slowly returned. Thonius sat up, bilious and swimming.
‘I’m all right, Maud,’ he said into his link hoarsely. ‘Just a bad case of ague. It’ll pass.’
Leave me alone, Slyte. Leave me alone. I won’t let you out, not again. I won’t. I will beat you.
He heard mocking laughter, thready and thin, at the back of his mind.
I will beat you. Molotch will know how.
He heard footsteps coming closer. They sounded like the padding footsteps of the fiend itself.
‘Throne, Carl, were you sick? Are you all right?’
It was Ballack.
‘I’m fine,’ said Carl Thonius, rising and wiping his mouth. ‘Ague. I always suffer from the ague.’
Ballack placed a comforting arm around Carl’s shoulders, and wiped Carl’s chin with his handkerchief. ‘You’ll be all right, my friend. Dry food and boiled water, that’s the best remedy for ague.’
‘The things you know,’ said Thonius.
They trudged up through the farmland towards the Kells. Light was fading fast, and a storm boomed out over the crags ahead of them. Ballack tried the link one last time.
‘Absolutely nothing from the Arethusa,’ he grumbled.
Now they were closer, Belknap fixed the crag with his electro binoculars.
‘A thousand-metre cliff. There’s definitely some kind of building at the top, a real sprawl.’
‘How does anyone get up there?’ asked Plyton.
‘They land by flier,’ said Belknap, lenses whirring. ‘I see a flier parked on the lip of the cliff. They’ve chained it down to weather out the storm. Oh yeah, I can see a winch too, on the east side of the promontory. Heavy duty. A big chain cage they can crank to bring up foot traffic from the fields. It’s on the left side of the cliff. See?’
He passed the field glasses to Plyton. ‘Like a hoist?’ she asked.
‘Yeah.’
‘I’ve done enough hoists for this life,’ she replied.