She looked at me with her remarkable eyes.
‘Feverfugue was always said to be one of the crossing points, one of the places where the harrowed paths and holloways actually penetrated through to the other side. That was why I bought the place. I have been searching for the transition point ever since, searching every room and trying every door in that endless maze of a house! For years! And now you just lead us there?’
I didn’t know what to say. It didn’t seem like we were in any kind of other world at all, though I have to confess I had no idea what being in another world might feel like.
‘You are saying,’ I began, ‘we are somehow in Queen Mab’s twin? The secret city?’
‘Yes!’ Alace Quatorze said.
‘But I wasn’t even trying to–’ I began.
‘Yet you did. See how talented you are?’
Teke the Smiling One stood in the doorway behind us. He was leaning against the door frame, arms folded, two golden ribbons fluttering from his waist harness. His pink and black armour, edged with delicate filigrees of gold, was as beautiful and ornate as a piece of jewellery. His smile was perfect.
‘Access to the Yellow King’s extimate bastion has long been desired by the Children,’ he said. ‘You have provided us with it. Within just hours of knowing you, Bequin… sweet Mamzel Bequin… you have already performed an extraordinary service for us.’
He stepped out into the darkness to join us. His huge armoured feet crunched upon gravel it was too dark to see. I heard the servo motors sigh and whirr inside the panels of his armour.
‘Perhaps you will lead us to the rest of the Eight? Or find the fastness location of the King himself. My master Fulgrim would very much like that. The King is more of a threat to us than anything the False Emperor can devise.’
I raised the sighting glass.
‘What can I see if I look at you?’ I asked.
I gagged, and almost vomited. I snatched the glass away and broke the view. Exposed by its lens, Teke was neither beautiful nor smiling.
‘Let’s go,’ Teke said, ‘just you and I. The others can stay here. I have no interest in them one way or another.’
‘Will you let them live?’ I asked.
‘I won’t kill them, if that’s what you mean.’
I took a deep breath, and then a step towards him.
‘Beta, don’t!’ cried Lightburn.
‘It’s all right,’ I said to him. ‘He can take me if he’ll spare you.’
‘Oh, he likes you, doesn’t he?’ said Teke, smiling at the Curst. ‘Do you want to bring him too, as your plaything?’
‘Spare them and I’ll come with you,’ I said.
Teke nodded and led me back into the house.
‘Wait!’ Alace Quatorze cried. ‘What about me? I arranged all this for you! I worked so hard to achieve it! I secured Feverfugue and the pariahs! How can you just–’
Teke looked at her disdainfully.
‘In one hour, without even knowing she was doing it, she has led us through the house-maze and found a backdoor to the City of Dust. How many years have you been trying and failing to do that, Glaw? How many?’
‘But–’
‘The Glaws were once something to be reckoned with,’ Teke smiled. ‘Pontius especially. I always did like him. Great achievers, by human standards. But you, Alace, you’re really not much. Just a rather sad footnote to the family line.’
‘No!’ Alace Quatorze cried.
I followed him into the candle-haunted hallway.
‘Where do we go?’ I asked him.
‘Back through the maze into Queen Mab,’ he said. ‘There I will summon my kin, and we will begin to plan our assault on the King’s extimate bastion through this unexpected and secret access. He will never see it coming. He will never expect that a precious product of his programme will be turned against him.’
‘I am not his product,’ I said. ‘I used to think I understood my place in the world, and the role that had been intended for me, but now I think I truly don’t belong to anybody. My destiny is not fixed. I am not the King’s, nor am I the Inquisition’s, and I am certainly not yours.’
‘Oh, I think you are,’ he replied. ‘You belong to the Emperor’s Children now.’
‘There’s only one thing I’m really certain of,’ I said.
He paused and turned to look back at me. His white smile gleamed in the candlelight.
‘What might that be?’ he asked.
‘Being outside,’ I said. ‘Just breathing in the air of a different world. I realised something.’
I looked straight at him.
‘I’ve remembered what the word was,’ I said.
CHAPTER 35
Which concerns a convergence
I spoke the word.
The force of it struck Teke and hurled him away from me. He looked surprised for a moment. Then he vanished in the astonishing shockwave of fury that followed the pronouncement, and crashed through several walls. They splintered and shattered like glass.
I didn’t know how long he’d stay down for. I doubted he was dead, though the word would have slain a lesser being. I felt utterly spent, as if saying the word had sucked all the vital energy out of me. I doubted I could say it again for a while, if at all.
‘Renner! Hurry!’ I yelled.
He ran to me and we started to flee. Shadrake and Lucrea came after us. Of Mamzel Quatorze, there was no sign.
‘She went away,’ Lucrea said. ‘She ran off into the night outside.’
The other night. The extimate night.
‘Did you not want to go that way too?’ I asked Shadrake.
He shook his head. He was scared. He had seen many things in his corrupted life, but something about the darkness outside had been too much for him. I think he was crying.
I used the sighting glass again, and tried to follow my way back through the labyrinthine structure of the house. Perversely, it was harder to do it deliberately than it had ever been to do it by accident.
After some twenty or twenty-five minutes, we reached a hallway that I felt sure I recognised. It was very hard to tell if we had crossed back. It was even harder to tell if we had ever crossed over in the first place. Everything seemed too fantastical and made up of lies, though when a being like Teke the Smiling One tells you something, you tend to lend it some weight.
The house had fallen very silent. The screaming had stopped, and so had the sounds of branches brushing and raging at the roof tiles. Most of the candles were burned low and guttering. I felt certain that most of the servant staff, woken by awful, sympathetic nightmares, had fled the place.
Our pace slowed. The quieter it grew, the more cautious I became.
‘Did you hear–?’ Lucrea said suddenly.
‘What?’
‘Like children…’ she began.
I quickly imagined the ghastly laughter of children that had accompanied the grael manifestations, but that was not what she meant.
‘Like children playing,’ she said. ‘Scurrying around. Little feet and–’
I pushed on, suddenly concerned. I threw open doors and drew back heavy drapes.
‘What are you looking for?’ Lightburn asked.
‘I think they’re here,’ I said.
‘Who?’ asked Renner.
I pointed. A diminutive figure had stepped out from behind one of the drapes and stood glaring at us.
‘Look now!’ Shadrake said. ‘A child! Hello, child. You must be lost, you poor thing.’
It was the girl doll from the emporium. She was still missing her bun of human hair, and from the expression on her painted wooden face, she still blamed me for this bitter loss.
‘Shadrake!’ I cried, but he was already reaching for the doll, his addled perception truly mistaking it for a lost child.
There was a brief flash, and the artist screamed. He staggered backwards, the fingers of his right hand falling off, blood jetting. The doll’s toy knife had severed them in one vicious stroke.
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Shadrake was screaming and bleeding wildly. The doll took a step forwards.
‘The Blackwards have found us,’ I said.
‘Screw the Blackwards,’ Lightburn replied. He aimed and fired his revolver, blowing the doll back against the wall. The impact splintered its torso and sheared off its right arm. It fell on its side, its mouth clacking.
‘Where’s the other one?’ I cried.
Revolted by the doll, Lucrea ran forwards and grabbed the stricken thing. She hurled it away from the screaming artist, and sent it tumbling along the top of a polished varwood console. The impact spilled over the candles there. In a moment, the twitching doll had caught fire. Its clothes burned. Its paint peeled. Its wooden framework began to blaze. It jiggled and trembled wildly. It struggled to its feet, and then fell still on the console top as flames overwhelmed it.
I wondered how Lucrea could have seen all the things she had seen that night and been most dismayed by a doll to react with such revulsion. I supposed it was because a doll was something she could still understand and graduate a response to. Everything else was abstract nightmare. I also believe it had, by then, been some time since her last consumption of any substances, and paranoia was accompanying her fretful withdrawal.
‘Where’s the other one?’ I repeated, yelling now.
Lightburn hunted around. Shadrake was too busy trying to collect up his missing fingers.
I spotted the boy doll. He emerged from behind a side table. His face was still bright red from the dye that had covered him in the commune’s pigment room. He took one look at us, and ran towards the door.
‘Stop him!’ I yelled.
Lightburn and I gave chase. Lucrea came behind, trying to calm the wailing Shadrake and staunch his blood loss.
‘Don’t leave us here!’ she cried. ‘Come on, Constant. They’re leaving us behind!’
‘My hand. My bloody hand!’ Shadrake howled.
The boy doll, Red Head, ran away down the next hall, his tiny shoes clattering on the tiled floor. The Curst tried another shot, but missed.
‘What is that thing?’ he asked in alarm.
‘Something we have to stop!’ I replied, running on. ‘It can’t tell them we’re here!’
‘Too late for that,’ said Balthus Blackwards.
We skidded to a halt. We had reached the main entrance hall of Feverfugue, and was standing just ahead of us. To either side of him stood two of his bodyguards. Red Head ran up to them and hid behind Blackwards’s legs.
‘I need a weapon,’ I said to Lightburn.
‘No, you don’t, you can just share my gun,’ he replied sarcastically. I wondered if I had the word back in me again, but it felt as if I did not. I retained a sensation of being empty.
‘You really are proving to be quite troublesome,’ said Balthus Blackwards.
‘And you are proving to be quite reckless,’ I replied. ‘Whatever you feel you can gain from this, in terms of money or favour, I can assure you it was not worth following me here. This is a cursed place, and there is danger here you cannot begin to imagine.’
‘I am protected,’ said Blackwards.
‘Those sell-swords will not stand a chance against what lies in this house,’ I replied. ‘You will not be taking us to your clients.’
‘I will not have to,’ he replied, and casually clicked a small vox-pulser. I felt an ultrasonic tingle.
A nasty blue-white light bloomed beside him, twinkled and expanded. As it grew, a second light did the same the other side of him. They were teleport flares.
They bloomed, they swam, they shimmered, and then they fused into solid, concrete forms. A stink of ozone filled the air as the light faded.
Scarpac the Word Bearer stood on Blackwards’s left. Another of Scarpac’s host stood on his right.
‘My clients will come to me,’ said Blackwards.
The Traitor Marines surged forwards to seize us. Though their speed was equal to that of Teke, their movement was markedly different. They were brute fury, like tanks or charging aurochs. Teke’s had been the fluid grace of a serpent.
Lightburn and I turned and ran from them, yelling at Lucrea and Shadrake coming up behind us to do the same. I lost my grip on the sighting glass and it fell to the floor. There was no time to go back for it.
Lucrea saw the menace at once, but Shadrake was too far gone with pain and distress to react fast enough. Scarpac simply punched the artist out of his way. He punched him aside and did not even break stride. The impact of the huge fist was so great, however, that blood and tissue spattered the wall, and poor Shadrake was neither in one piece nor alive when he hit the floor.
There was another blistering flash of light, and a third Word Bearer materialised in our path. We were boxed between the three of them.
And suddenly, we were caught by Teke the Smiling One too.
I cannot say where he came from, except, perhaps, the shadows. He howled a death-song as he ran at the three crimson brutes. His golden longswords slashed the air.
The nearest Word Bearer turned, the one most recently arrived. He began to raise his boltgun, but Teke was right on him. The warrior of the Emperor’s Children, resplendent in pink and black, put one long golden blade clean through the Word Bearer’s shoulder, taking his arm off entirely. The boltgun fired twice as the hand went into spasm, and the shots blew vast holes in the wall behind us, and peppered us with grit. Teke’s other sword cut through the Word Bearer’s helm diagonally, removing a section equivalent to about one-third. Blood and brain matter burst into the air as the head came apart. For good measure, Teke kicked the dismembered Word Bearer out of his way.
Scarpac was waiting to meet him, his cursed blade drawn. They clashed with a fury, raking and cracking at one another with their swords. Scarpac, for all his brutish manner, was impressive. With his one, heavy blade he managed to fend off the lightning-fast strikes of Teke’s pair. The other Word Bearer tried to risk a shot at the warrior of the Emperor’s Children, but dared not hit his commander. He put up his bolter, drew a sword, and joined the battle. Now Teke was fighting two of them off, a golden sword fighting each one.
I had never seen combat of such a pitch. It was too fast to follow. The transhuman reactions and speeds were appalling. Their matched strengths were such that every blow, including every parry, produced a concussive shockwave that pummelled every human in the vicinity. It was titanic, in as much as it was like something from the most ancient proto-myths. It was like the warfare the gods engaged in before man was ready to be created.
It was like a glimpse of the terrible war of wars that had riven the stars at the time of the Heresy, the monumental War of Primarchs, because of which the galaxy had burned.
‘While they are busy,’ I urged, and Lightburn and I ran back down the hall with poor Lucrea in tow. She was crying almost hysterically.
We were ready to face Blackwards and his men. Anything was better than the superhuman carnage being wrought in the chamber behind us. It was shaking the very foundations of Feverfugue.
But in the hall, there was no sign of Blackwards, his doll or his bodyguards. The front door to the house stood wide open, and we could see the dark driveway and the monstrous blackness of the trees outside.
‘I don’t understand,’ I said.
‘They fled,’ said a voice. ‘They saw the error of their ways and they fled.’
I turned to look at the speaker. I recognised the voice. It was a very particular voice that had special significance for me.
I simply could not believe I was hearing it.
She was standing in the doorway, the night framing her red habit and her starched white wimple.
‘Hurry, Beta dear,’ said Sister Bismillah. ‘We can’t stay here.’
CHAPTER 36
Ordo Hereticus
‘Sister?’ I stammered.
‘Hurry. Hurry now, Beta,’ she said. ‘Come, my child. There is no time to delay. Bring your friends.’
Sister Bismillah smiled and h
eld out her arms to me. I hurried to her.
‘What are you doing here?’ I asked, embracing her.
‘My job,’ she sighed. ‘My appointed duty. Which is a thing that I have been very lax about.’
‘What?’ I asked.
‘I have watched over you for years, Beta, since you were tiny. It was only meant to be a temporary function, but I stayed on permanently once we realised who you were.’
Now I was properly confused.
‘What do you mean?’ I asked.
‘I mean I spent two decades keeping a safe eye on you,’ said Sister Bismillah, ‘and then in one night the Maze Undue falls and I lose you.’
She embraced me again.
‘I thought you were dead, Beta. I love you like a daughter, and I thought that my negligence had led to your death. We have been looking for you ever since.’
‘Who is “we”?’ I asked.
She promised that answers would follow. The frightful war between the Traitor Marines was splintering the plaster and threatening to burst through into the main hall. Some of the heraldic gesso plaques were falling off the walls and shattering on the hall floor. Sister Bismillah led us outside, her arm around me. Lightburn followed, comforting the sobbing Lucrea.
Outside, it was cool, and the very depths of the night. A wind stirred the ancient woods, but it was just a hushing sound. It was so dark we could not distinguish sky or ground, or trunk or branch. Behind us, the ghostly frontage of the house was just visible. From inside came terrible sounds of violence and pulses of light.
Sister Bismillah had us follow her away from the house into the woods.
‘There is a clearing,’ she told me, as if this explained everything.
‘It was Sister Tharpe,’ I said to her. ‘She was the one. She infiltrated the Maze Undue, and brought its doom down on us.’
‘She was an implant agent,’ Sister Bismillah agreed. ‘Just like me, I suppose. She was set upon one function and I upon another. I blame myself. I should have seen her for what she was. Amusingly, she had no idea who I was. We fooled each other. Did she hurt you?’