I nodded.
Her telekinetic grip on me relaxed slightly, enough for me to slide away from the balustrades pressing into my back and regain my feet on the floor. The redhead was scooping Lightburn to his feet, but keeping his arms pinned behind his back.
We started to walk towards the door. Kys was right at my shoulder, guiding me with her mind. Every time I walked even slightly contrary to her inclination, her mind tugged on me and set me straight. The redheaded woman came after us, bundling Lightburn along like a rabble-rouser arrested by the city watch. The Curst kept saying, ‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry.’
‘Can’t you get him to shut up?’ the redhead asked me.
‘There’s really been no evidence of it so far,’ I replied.
They walked us back into the dank main hall, under the watching eyes of the rotting group pictures on the walls. A breeze flicked and fluttered at the papers scattered across the floor.
He was waiting there for us.
He was just a box, a great metal box, partly like a throne, and partly like an iron casket. Like Kys, he was just as I had encountered him that night. I wondered if the coffin/throne symbolism was deliberate: the seated, dead master, all-powerful, but helpless.
The box hovered above the floor, held up by its gravitic mechanisms.
Kys put me in front of him and let me stand free. The redhead stayed back with Lightburn in a restraint hold, though the Curst had stopped struggling at the sight of the sinister floating casket.
‘You are Talon,’ I said.
‘You know me, then?’ replied the box. It was speaking out of a mechanical vox-ponder built into its casing. The voice was not entirely human.
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘I know you as Beta Bequin,’ the box said. ‘Is that your name?’
‘Yes.’
‘Alizebeth Bequin?’
‘Yes.’
‘You are an orphan raised in the Cognitae-run facility of the Maze Undue,’ the box said. ‘You never knew your mother?’
‘No, I did not.’
‘You are very like her,’ he said.
‘She really is,’ said the redhead from behind us.
‘Let that man go, Kara,’ said the box. ‘I don’t think he’ll trouble us. You won’t trouble us, will you, Renner Lightburn?’
‘No, sir,’ said Lightburn. The redhead let his arms go. He straightened up and brushed his sleeves.
‘That’s good,’ the box said. It hovered a little closer to me.
‘You called me Talon,’ the box said. ‘It is one of my names. The best of all is this. I am Gideon Ravenor. I am an inquisitor of the Holy Ordos. Do you need to see my credentials to believe that?’
‘No,’ I said.
‘You have led a complicated life, Beta,’ the box said. ‘Very little of what has been in it so far is what it seems. You have been acting all this time. Rehearsing for roles. Now it is time for the performance.’
‘I don’t know what you mean,’ I said.
‘It means that the Cognitae built you for a purpose, but you have much greater potential.’
I took a breath.
‘Are you asking me for my service?’ I asked. ‘Are you? Everyone seems to want something from me. Everyone. I seem to have so many uses. Will you have me infiltrate the Cognitae too?’
‘What do you mean “too”?’ asked the box.
‘I have been asked to do that already. I already serve the Inquisition, Gideon Ravenor.’
There was, for a moment, no sound except the steady drip of water through the cracks in the ceiling.
‘You mean Eisenhorn,’ said the box.
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘We were sure he had contacted you,’ said the box, ‘and presumably offered you a place in his retinue. He would find you useful. You are here on his business?’
‘On his authority,’ I replied, ‘the authority of the Inquisition, which I have spent my life believing I was serving. I suggest you talk to him. I know you are rivals, somehow. I do not pretend to understand your history. But you want the same thing.’
‘Which is?’ asked the box.
‘The Cognitae,’ I said. ‘And behind that, the King in Yellow. You both want the King.’
‘Has he told you why he hunts for the King?’ the box asked.
‘No,’ I said.
‘Would you like to know why I hunt for the King?’ it asked.
‘Yes. Tell me.’
‘Words and names are powerful things,’ the box said. ‘They give us control. They allow us to name, describe and subjugate the universe around us. The great written books of knowledge, the true grimoires and the codices, govern the very operation of this cosmos. There are books whose purpose is to end all life, and books made to create it. Words are power.’
‘“For a word was the very first thing”,’ I said.
‘Yes,’ the box agreed. ‘Just so. The Cognitae have made a particular quest, in my experience, of pursuing total power through words.’
‘So words are their grail?’ I said.
‘Yes. The words they seek are special. A special language. Constructive words. Destructive words.’
‘Enuncia,’ I said.
‘I’m impressed, yes,’ said the box. ‘Enuncia has long been one of their chief interests. They wish to gain the power to direct the whole of reality by the use of words alone.’
‘They’re not the only ones,’ I remarked.
‘Really?’ asked Kys. ‘What else do you know?’
I looked at the coffin-throne.
‘Finish what you were saying,’ I said.
‘It is my belief,’ the box said, ‘that the so-called King in Yellow is in pursuit of one word in particular. A word of vast power. If knowledge of a word conveys mastery of a thing or object or person, then this is the most potent of all. It will change everything we know.’
‘Just one word?’
‘I believe that the King has spent many decades extending his reach into, and control over, extimate space. He is gaining access, by diverse and indirect means, to the immaterium. There are various places within the inconstancy of the warp where the word might be found.’
‘Such as?’ I asked.
‘Such as,’ said the box, ‘a place called the Planet of the Sorcerers. A place called Echolalia. A place called Sicarus. A place called Grammatika. Other daemon worlds besides. Also, a place known as the Black Library.’
‘And what is this one word he is searching for so furiously?’ I asked.
The box paused before replying.
‘The one, true name of the God-Emperor,’ it said.
I heard Lightburn utter an outraged groan. He made the sign of the aquila across his breast.
‘For a man to know the name of the Emperor gives him power over the Emperor,’ said the box. ‘The power of life and death. And that power, by extension, means power over the Imperium and over all of mankind.’
‘So you want me to help you get to him?’ I asked. ‘You want me to help you stop him?’
‘Yes,’ said the box.
‘But in a very specific way,’ said Kys. ‘You have already made the connection, you simply have to exploit it. Just you being who you are makes you the perfect tool.’
‘I can’t believe we’re doing this,’ I heard the redhead murmur.
I looked at her.
‘It’s the only way, but it seems so cruel,’ she said.
‘Kara is quite correct on both counts,’ said the box. ‘I am very sad it has come to this.’
He moved closer towards me. I could hear the soft hum on his lifter plates. I could hear the tiny sound of his coffin’s life support.
‘The most exhaustive predictive searches and auguries have been unequivocal,’ the box said. ‘The threat lies within the Inquisition. Within the Ordos. It is among us and embedded in us. We must find it and cut it out. You say that a rivalry exists between me and Eisenhorn. It is more than that. Far more. He was once my master and my friend.’
&nb
sp; There was a pause. The lifter plates hummed.
‘Gregor Eisenhorn is not an inquisitor. He does not serve the Ordos. He is a rogue and a heretic, and was named Extremis Diabolus nearly a century ago. He refuses to accept it. I have been charged by the elders of the Inquisition to return to active status and bring him down.’
‘No,’ I said.
‘You do not understand what he is, or what he is capable of,’ said the box.
‘And I don’t think you understand that you should talk to him,’ I replied. ‘You have misunderstood.’
‘Beta,’ said the box. ‘Under ordinary circumstances, I would be required to detain you forever, without hope of release. You are a pariah. You are the product of a heretic breeding programme. You are a more than valid target for suppression. But this is an extraordinary moment, and I have been given extraordinary powers. Because of what you are, because of who you are, you are the perfect agency with which to reach and bring down the heretic Eisenhorn.’
‘No!’ I said.
‘It is that or a life incarcerated,’ said Kys. ‘Sorry.’
‘I need you,’ said the box, ‘to use your connections to Eisenhorn, to exploit them, and to infiltrate his retinue. I need you to open up his entire operation, so I can bring him to justice at long last.’
‘You want me to befriend him and then betray him?’
‘I want you to serve the Emperor your god and do your duty in the name of the Inquisition,’ it replied.
‘He’s not the one you want!’ I cried. ‘He’s not the King!’
‘There is a very great possibility that he is,’ said the box. ‘And even if he isn’t, he must be stopped. He has been rogue for far too long.’
I started to protest loudly. Kys’s telekine force clamped my mouth shut.
Ravenor’s coffin-throne turn to face Kys and the redheaded woman.
‘Let’s give her time to reflect upon this offer,’ he said. ‘Kara, put her in one of the rooms upstairs. We’ll talk to her again in the morning. Kys, get rid of Mr Lightburn.’
‘Do I have to kill him?’ asked Kys. ‘He seems an honest man.’
‘No, don’t kill him,’ said the box. ‘Put a telekine spear through his cortex and blank out his short-term memory. Then dump him on the street. I don’t want him remembering anything about what has unfolded here.’
Lightburn cried out. He called out my name. Kys turned and escorted him away.
‘We will talk again,’ said Ravenor to me. ‘I hope you will consider what I have said. I look forward to working with you. I would be disappointed if you did not decide to.’
The coffin-throne turned and coasted away on its suspensors.
The redheaded woman walked over to me.
‘This way,’ she said. ‘Don’t give me any trouble.’
She led me down the hall and up a steep set of very dank stairs. Rainwater and slime had gathered in pools on the steps. Old carpet had rotted.
‘We’ll find you better accommodation tomorrow,’ she said, as if apologising. ‘This will have to do for tonight. He doesn’t tend to think much about physical comforts.’
I did not reply.
‘I want you to think very seriously about this when you’re alone,’ she said. ‘Please, Beta. You can help us. You can help the Imperium. You are being asked to make some very serious decisions about your future, and I don’t want you to make a mistake. Eisenhorn is dangerous. Very dangerous. He was my friend and I cannot side with him. Because of him, your poor mother died.’
We had reached an upper landing. A long, miserable corridor stretched away from us. It was one of the old ward wings of the hospital, a line of individual rooms like cells. This level of the building was no less dirty, dark and rain-seeped than the floor below.
I looked at her.
‘My name is Kara Swole,’ she said. ‘I wish to the Throne we had met under better circumstances. I would have liked to know you properly.’
‘My mother died because of him?’ I asked.
‘She followed Eisenhorn,’ said Kara Swole. ‘She was entirely loyal. But he had dabbled too far, and consorted badly, and had begun to exploit resources that no man should ever have touched. She died, Beta, simply because she stood at his side.’
‘What resources?’ I asked.
‘He harnessed daemons,’ she said.
‘That’s quite ridiculous!’ I replied. ‘I’ve spoken to him. He is strange, and he is powerful, but he is entirely sane and reasonable.’
‘Yes, he always seems to be, doesn’t he?’ she said. ‘I thought that about him for a long time. It is entirely his most dangerous aspect. When he speaks, even the most heretical ideas make sense.’
She opened the door to one of the rooms halfway along the hall. Inside there was a grotty bunk and a chair. The single window was barred inside and out by iron bands.
‘I’m sorry it’s not better,’ she said. ‘Sleep, think, reflect. By tomorrow, if you’re agreeable, we might be able to take you somewhere more pleasant and begin the process of briefing you.’
She left me in the small cell and closed the door. I heard it lock.
It was dark. A faint grey light came in through the barred window from the night outside, and that light was blurred and streaming by the rain. I sat down on the bed.
I had no idea what I would do. I had no notion who or what to trust. Just when I thought I was getting my bearings, the world inverted again.
I think I began to cry. I certainly sat thinking for a very long time. I doubted that the night would end.
‘Crying is good,’ said a voice.
I looked up.
‘Certain brain chemicals in tears relieve pain,’ the voice said. ‘So crying is good. That’s why you cry.’
I was not alone.
There was a man standing in the very corner of the room behind me, standing on the bed where it was pushed into the corner, just a pale figure in the deepest part of the shadows. He had not been there when I was locked in, I was sure of it, but I did not know how else he could have entered. The door was locked and the window was barred.
I leapt up and backed away from the bed. He stayed where he was, raised up above me by the height of the bunk. He was just a pale figure, a grey shade that vaguely resembled a man.
‘Who are you?’ I asked.
‘A friend.’
‘What sort of friend?’
‘A friend sent by a friend to help a friend,’ he said.
‘How did you get in here?’ I asked.
‘The same way as always,’ he said, doubtfully. ‘Was that a trick question?’
‘No,’ I said.
‘The real question is, how will I get you out of here?’ he said.
‘Did Eisenhorn send you?’ I asked. ‘Did Eisenhorn send you after me?’
‘Perhaps,’ the man said.
‘You’re the fifth member,’ I said, understanding. ‘The other specialist.’
‘Am I?’ asked the man. ‘Well, I suppose I am. It’s nice he thinks of me that way.’
He got down off the bed. Even in the more direct light of the window, he was still just a shade, a blur of twilight.
I heard footsteps running along the corridor outside. I heard the redheaded woman Kara bang on the door and call my name. She rattled the lock, but the door would not budge.
‘Oops,’ said the man. ‘Time to go. They’ve sensed me. We’d better leave.’
He raised his left hand and extended it towards the window. His hand began to glow softly with the most distressing light. It had no colour, but was all colours. It was a hue one could only mix up in a nightmare.
The bars inside and outside the window melted, and ran down the sill and wall like liquid tar. I heard them hiss and burn the wood and the floor. I could feel the heat and smell the scorching. The glass in the window turned to dust and blew away. Rain streamed in through the gap, turning to steam. More light flooded in now that the filthy window had evaporated.
The man turned to me.
/>
‘Ready?’ he asked.
I didn’t know what to say.
‘That’s better,’ he said. ‘Now there’s a little more light, I can see you properly. You are a pretty one.’
Kara was banging frantically on the door. I could hear her yelling my name, but all I could look at was the man.
‘Where are my manners?’ he said. ‘Hello, little thing. My name is Cherubael.’
Beta Bequin will return in the second volume of this trilogy, which is called
PENITENT
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
DAN ABNETT has written over forty novels, including the acclaimed Gaunt’s Ghosts series, and the Eisenhorn and Ravenor trilogies. His most recent Horus Heresy novels, Prospero Burns and Know No Fear, were New York Times bestsellers. In addition to writing for Black Library, Dan scripts audio dramas, movies, games and comics for major publishers in Britain and America. He is also the author of other bestselling novels, including Torchwood: Border Princes, Doctor Who: The Silent Stars Go By, Triumff: Her Majesty’s Hero, and Embedded. He lives and works in Maidstone, Kent.
A BLACK LIBRARY PUBLICATION
Published in 2012 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd., Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK
© Games Workshop Limited 2012. All rights reserved.
Black Library, the Black Library logo, Games Workshop, the Games Workshop logo and all associated marks, names, characters, illustrations and images from the Warhammer universe are either ®, TM and/or © Games Workshop Ltd 2011, variably registered in the UK and other countries around the world. All rights reserved.
A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library.
Cover illustration by Wayne England
ISBN 9780857879073
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