At seven, Medea and I went to the reading room above the house's main library. I gave Kircher specific instructions that we were not to be disturbed. Most of the household had retired early to private study or relaxation in any case.
Psullus, the rabricator, was in the library, repairing some bindings that were fraying at the spines.
'Give us a while/1 said to him.
He looked unnerved. Infirm with a progressive wasting disease, he virtually lived in the library. It was his private world and I felt cruel ousting him from it.
'What should I do?' he asked cautiously.
'Go sit in the study, watch the stars come out. Take a good book.'
He looked around and sniggered.
My library was at the heart of Spaeton House, and occupied two floors. The lower level was divided by alcoves of shelves and the upper gallery was supported by those alcoves, giving access to further shelving stacks lining the gallery walls. Soft glow-lamps hung from slender ceiling chains and cast a warm, golden light all around, and the panelled reading lecterns along the centre of the ground floor were fitted with individual reading lamps that generated little pockets of brighter blue luminescence.
The place was comfortably warm, its atmosphere carefully controlled to guard against any excess humidity that might damage the stored books. There was a smell of wood polish, chemical preservatives, and the ozone whiff of the stasis fields that protected the oldest and most fragile specimens.
Once Psullus had gone, taking with him a copy of Boydenstyre's Lives, I led Medea up the brass staircase to the upper gallery and along to the heavy door of the private reading room at the far end.
At the door, Medea paused and took a Glavian needle pistol from her pocket.
'I brought this/ she said. 'It was also my father's, one of the pair made for him.'
I knew that well enough. Medea still carried the matched pistols in combat.
'Leave it outside/ I told her. 'It's never a good idea to attempt connection through weapons. Even friendly heirlooms like that. The sting of death attaches itself to them and you'd find that unpleasant. The jacket will be fine.'
She nodded and left the gun on a bookshelf near the reading room door. We went inside and found Vance waiting for us. The small chamber was candle lit, with three chairs arranged around a cloth-covered table. The last rays of sunset were glimmering in through the stained glass skylight.
We took our seats. Vance, a tall, stooping man with kindly, tired eyes, spread Midas's cerise jacket on the tablecloth. He had already been meditating enough to put him near to the trance state, and I gently guided Medea to a receptive calmness.
The auto-seance began. It is a simple enough psychic procedure, and one which I have used many times for investigation and research. Vance was the conduit, channelling the power of the warp. I focused my own mind-strength to keep us centred. From the point of transition, the room took on a cold, frosty light. Solids became transluscent and fizzy. The dimensions of the little reading room stretched and shifted impatiently.
Midas's jacket, now a wisp of turquoise smoke, was swathed in the aura it had accumulated over time, the echoes of its contact with human hands, human minds.
Take it/1 said. Touch it/
Medea reached out her hand warily and brushed her fingers against the edge of the aura, which bloomed and fluffed up at her touch.
'Oh/ she said.
We teased apart the psychic memories clinging to that garment until we found her father. Midas Betancore, pilot, warrior, my friend. We coaxed his phantom out of hiding.
It was no ghost, just the after-image he had left behind. An impression of him, his looks, his voice, his emotions. A distant hint of his rich chuckle. The faint odour of the lho-sticks he liked to smoke and the cologne he chose to wear. We saw him young, little more than a boy. We saw him in virile middle age, just a few years from his untimely death. There, at the helm of the gun-cutter, itself now just a ghost too, the Glavian circuitry inlaid into his hands marrying him profoundly to the craft's controls. There, steering a long-prow. There, watching the suns rise over the Stilt Hills of Glavia.
We tasted his grief at the death of Lores Vibben, but I had Vance pass along quickly to spare us the empathic pain. We clung to him through several exhilarating dogfights, sharing the joy of virtuoso manoeuvres and expert kills. We watched as he saved my life, or the lives of my companions, over and again.
We listened at a dinner table while he made the company roar and clap with an outrageous tale well told. It made all three of us laugh out loud. We saw him, in silence, studying a regicide board and trying to fathom out how Bequin had managed to beat him again. We watched him, through a blizzard of coloured streamers, take his bride to the altar of the High Church at Glavia Glavis. I glimpsed myself, alongside Fischig, Alizebeth and Aemos, in the front pew, cheering and ringing our ceremonial bells with the rest of the congregation.
That's my mother!' Medea whispered. The veiled woman on Midas's arm was stunning, exquisite. Jarana Shayna Betancore. Midas always did have such good taste. Jarana lived still, far away on Glavia, a distinguished widow and director of a shipwrighting firm. 'She looks so young/ Medea added. There was a note of sadness in her voice. She hadn't been back to Glavia to visit her mother for many years.
Then, almost as if we were intruding, we saw Midas and Jarana embracing on the shores of Taywhie Lake. Midas was beside himself with happiness and excitement.
'Really? Really?' he kept asking.
'Yes, Midas. Really. I'm really pregnant/
I looked at Medea, saw the tears in her eyes.
"We should stop now, I think/1 said.
'No, I want to see more/ she said.
"We should/ I advised. I could tell that Vance was getting tired. And I knew it wouldn't be long before we stumbled into memories of Fayde Thuring and the last hours. 4Ve should stop. We-'
I was cut off by the sudden shrilling of my communicator. I cursed loudly. Kircher had been told: no interruptions.
The sound shattered the seance at once. The blue light flashed and vanished, and the room returned to normal with a sudden lurch that blew out the candles and cast us painfully out of the warp. Vance slumped forward, breathing hard, in distress. My head ached with a sudden piercing pain. Medea pulled the jacket towards her across the table and buried her head into its silk folds, sobbing. The walls were sweating.
Damn Kircher. Seances shouldn't be broken like that. Any one of us could have been badly damaged by the abrupt termination. As it was, we were all emotionally dazed.
I got up. 'Stay here/ I said to them both. Take a moment to recover.' Vance nodded feebly. Medea was lost in her own storm of feelings.
I went outside and pulled the door closed, breathing hard. Yanking the little hand vox from my pocket, I keyed the 'respond' rune.
'This had better be good, Jubal/ I said hoarsely.
Static crackled back.
'Jubal? Jubal? This is Eisenhorn.'
Nothing. Then a quick blurt of frantic words I couldn't make out. Then static again.
'Jubal?'
From somewhere distant, on the other side of the house, I heard a trio of muffled cracks.
Las-fire.
I snatched up Midas's needle pistol from the shelf where Medea had left it and ran for the library door.
EIGHT
The fall of Spaeton House.
For our lives.
Sastre, loyal Sastre.
The halls of the house were quiet, with the lights dimmed, but I could smell burning. I hurried down a carpeted crosswalk, arming the needle pistol. Thirty rounds and a fully charged cell. 1 had no reload.
Tiny red lights were winking on the security monitor dials recessed into the walls at regular intervals. I went to the nearest one, opened the cover and was about to press my signet ring into the reader when I heard movement.
I raised the gun.
Two maids and a houseman ran into view and yelped when they saw me.
'Stea
dy steady!' I cried out, lowering the gun. This way, come on!'
They ran up to me and cowered behind some ornamental plant stands.
'What's going on?'
They were too scared to answer at first. I saw that the youngest of them was the new girl, Litu. She looked up at me with terrified, tear-pink eyes.
'Litu? What's going on?'
'Raiders/ she said, her voice breathy with panic, 'Raiders, sir. Just minutes ago, there was suddenly this great big bang from upstairs, and then shooting. Men running around, with guns. I saw a man dead. I think it was Urben. I think/
Rocef Urben. One of my security detail.
'He had all blood coming out of his face/ she stammered.
The raiders, Litu. From which direction?'
'From the west, sir,' said the houseman, Colyon. 'From the main gate, I think. I heard Master Kircher say they were coming from the stable block too.'
'You saw Kircher?'
'It was a bit mad, sir. I heard him as he ran past/
I looked around. The smell of burning was getting stronger and I could hear more shots.
'Colyon,' I said, 'do you have your house keys?'
'I'm never without them, sir/ he said.
'Good man. Go along here to the east porch and then get yourself and these women into the gardens. Head for the orchards. Hide. Got a comm?'
'Yes, sir/
'If you don't hear from me in the next twenty minutes, try and get all three of you off the property. Look after them, Colyon/
'I will, sir/
They ran off. I fitted my ring into the monitor and authorised access. The little wall unit lit the air with a small diagnostic hologram. Incredibly, it stated that all security systems, all detectors, all perimeter shields, were shut down. They'd been shut down at source, using an authorised command code.
How in the name of hell?
'Jubal?' I tried the vox again. 'Anybody? This is Eisenhorn. Respond/
The hand vox answered this time. A man's voice, hard like stone. 'Eisenhorn. You are dead, Eisenhorn/
I went down through the staff quarters. It seemed like everyone had fled. Doors were open and a few chairs were overturned. Half drunk cups of caffeine, still steaming. A half-finished game of regicide in the butler's pantry. A pict-unit still playing a live broadcast from the arena at Dorsay. A fallen lho-stick burning a patch in the carpet.
I stamped out the embers.
Through a door into the west landing I found Urben. He was dead all right. He was sprawled with his back arched in the doorway. Laser fire had blasted him open.
I was bent over him when I heard footsteps.
Three men came in through the other side of the landing, but I only saw two of them. They were moving fast, with the fluid confidence of trained killers. They were wearing combat armour made of rubberised mesh, their faces hidden behind grotesque papier-mache masks, the kind you can buy in Dorsay's market for the carnivals. They had cut-down las-rifles.
They fired as soon as they saw me, their shots striking the doorframe. 1 barely had time to dive into cover. I heard the pip and chatter of their microbead communicators.
One, sporting a gilded carnodon mask, moved in, running low, as another in a mermaid mask gave cover.
From the doorway, I fired the needle pistol twice and put two tiny holes through the carnodon leer. The raider folded up and crashed to the floor, his knees buckling under him.
The mermaid fired again, repeatedly, and I switched to the other side of the doorway.
Cease! I commanded, using my will. No reaction. They were psy-shielded.
Someone had prepared.
I crouched and fired up at the chandelier. When it came crashing down, the mermaid dived to the side and I caught him squarely with three needles, any of which would have been a kill shot. The mermaid thumped backwards heavily and brought a console table over as he fell.
I moved through the door, not realising the third one was there. His shots grazed my shoulder and knocked me down hard.
There was a very loud bang.
I looked up.
'Gregor?'
It was Aemos.
'Gregor, I think I've jammed your bloody gun/ he said.
I got up. Aemos was standing in a nearby doorway, fiddling with my bolt pistol. The third, unseen raider had made a clotted dent in the plaster-work.
'Give it to me/ I said, snatching the bolt pistol and freeing the slide.
Thank you, Aemos/ I added.
He shrugged. 'It's most perturbatory/ he said. 'Guns and me, we don't seem to get on and I always-'
'Aemos, hush! What the hell's going on?'
We're under attack/ he said.
'I need a little more than that, old friend/
'Well, I know little more, Gregor. Boom, we're under attack. No warning, no nothing. Men everywhere. Lots of running around and shooting. We thought you were dead/
'Me?'
They hit the study first. A grenade or something/
'Damn! Come with me. Stay close/
We went upstairs. Skeins of smoke drifted through the air. I had the needle pistol in one hand and the boltgun in the other. At the top of the stairs we found two members of my house staff. They had been shot against a wall.
'Oh, that's terrible...' Aemos murmured.
It was. Someone would pay dearly for this outrage.
The door to my study was open and the smoke was issuing from inside.
'Stay back/ I whispered to Aemos and lunged in through the door.
The room was a mess. A missile or ram-grenade fired from the lawns had blown out the main windows and turned the desk and chair into kindling. Cold night air breezed in through the shattered casement and wafted the smoke from the burning rug and shelving into the house.
There were three more raiders inside, ransacking the bookshelves and trying to force open the file store. A man with a clown mask was raking precious manuscripts, slates and scrolls out of a climate-controlled case into a sack. Another in a serpent mask was repeatedly kicking the display case in which Barbarisater was stored, trying to rupture it. A third, sporting a grinning sun, was attacking the armoured sleeve of my file bureau with a crowbar.
They all turned, reaching for their weapons.
Throne, they were fast! I had the drop, but they moved like lightning. The serpent actually managed to loose a burst at me that went over my diving head before I felled him with a bolt-round. His body hit the armour glass cover of the sword case and left a streak of gore down it as it slid off. The clown was slower, and his torso was punctured by needle rounds before he'd dropped the sack. He just fell over, his mask crumpling as it struck first one shelf edge, then another, then another on its way down to the floor.
The sun face threw the crowbar aside, and dived behind the rains of the desk even as I was rolling out of the end of the dive and re-aiming.
His blurt of las-fire met my hail of bolts and needles. I swear that at least two of my bolt rounds were exploded in mid-air by his laser shots. But the needles went clean through the desk and clean through him. He lolled back, dead.
I got up and walked towards the destroyed end of my study.
That's where 1 found Psullus. I'd sent him here just a few hours before. The burning pages of Boydenstyre's Lives were littered around. He'd been sitting at my desk when the missile had taken out the window bay.
'Dear Emperor... Aldemar...' Aemos was bitterly shocked at the ghastly sight.
I was simply furious by then. I pushed the needle gun, now virtually spent, into my pocket and grabbed more bolt clips from the shelf by the window.
'We have to get out of here, Aemos,' I said.
He nodded dumbly. I picked up the sack that the clown had been filling and handed it to Aemos. 'Fill it/1 said. 'You know what's valuable.'
He hurried to obey.
I typed security codes into the cases containing Barbarisater and the runestaff. The armour glass covers purred open.
Outside, there was a shrill
whining noise and the beams of searchlights crossed the lawns and the orchards. My attackers had air cover.
One final necessity. I opened my encoded void-safe and took out the ancient, wretched copy of the Malus Codicium. I tucked it into my coat, but Aemos had seen it.
'Come on!' I said.
'One moment/ Aemos replied, tugging a last few scroll cases into the sack and then hoisting it onto his back.
'Now, I'm ready/ he said.
I went to the door, boltgun in one hand and Barbarisater in the other. The staff was slung across my back. I could hear a fierce bout of shooting from below, a serious firefight.
My loyal friend Jubal Kircher wasn't going without a fight.
'Follow me/ I told Aemos.
It had only been a few minutes since the comm-alarm that had disrupted the auto-seance. Already that tranquil encounter with the shade of Midas Betancore seemed like ancient history.
The house was on fire. From the east wing, flames leapt up into the cool night and filled the air with fluttering ashes and cinders. We cowered behind a wall in the yard outside the kitchen, and got a look out across the back lawn. Three heavy speeders had landed there, crouching like glossy black insects on their extending landing claws. Their side hatches were open and cabins empty. A fourth, and then a fifth, passed low overhead, searchlights sweeping down as they riddled the back of the house with cannon fire.
Five fliers. Each one was capable of carrying a dozen armed men. That meant a small army was assaulting Spaeton House. Someone wanted me and my staff eradicated. Someone wanted my precious secrets and trinkets looted. And someone had enough money and influence to make those things happen.
In truth, the house's auto-defences should have easily held off the attack, even an attack of this magnitude. Inquisitors make enemies. A fortified residence is an occupational necessity.
But Spaeton House had been broken wide open. Its screens, void shutters, lock-outs, motion detectors, sentry servitors, gun-pods... everything had been inert when the attackers arrived.
They were mercenaries, I was sure of that. Highly trained, highly motivated, utterly ruthless. But who had bank-rolled them, and why?