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 rerunning diagnostic checks on the main console display to take his mind off the wait. Ravenor’s chair was just a silent shape, immobile.
Thonius had crossed to Frauka, and the two men were playing virtual regicide on a hololith repeater. Kys watched them. Thonius accepted another of Frauka’s lho-sticks and they carried on, smoking, playing, chatting quietly.
Frustrated, Kys paced up and down the main aisle of the bridge between the consoles for a while. She was so bored, she even stepped into the vacant Navigator’s socket to try it out for comfort.
‘Please, don’t do that.’ Halstrom called.
Kys looked at him.
‘Even on my watch. Twu is very particular about his socket.’
Kys sniffed and got out. ‘Aren’t we all?’
She wandered back to Halstrom.
‘You’re bored,’ he observed.
‘No. Oh, all right, yes. But edgy too.’
‘I know what you mean,’ Halstrom smiled. Almost involuntarily, he flicked up another screen display. ‘See that?’
‘Un huh,’ she said. ‘What is it?’
‘Haven’t the faintest,’ he replied. ‘Just a bunch of figures and runes. I keep punching it up, looking at it, but… no idea what it means.’
She looked at him. ‘You’re joking.’
Halstrom grinned. ‘Of course I am. It’s the atmosphere post-process chart. But the point is made. I’m just filling time. Is it always like this?’
‘What?’
‘Work. Your work. As a Throne agent I thought it would be exciting. Cloak and dagger stuff. We don’t get to sample it much, us in the crew. You’re down on planets, doing who knows what. We’re up at anchor, waiting. I got quite excited when the inquisitor said we were going out hunting in Lucky Space. But it’s… it’s not really what I imagined.’
‘Believe me, it often goes this way,’ Kys said. ‘Waiting, watching, getting jangly with nerves. Sometimes I think boredom is a more serious threat to us than heresy.’
Halstrom chuckled. ‘You must have devised coping strategies by now.’
‘Must we?’
‘Of course.’
‘You’re the ones who do the waiting usually,’ Kys reminded him. ‘What do you do?’
Halstrom waved his hand at the console display. ‘This, mostly.’
She sat on the arm of his throne. Behind them, Frauka won another game, and he and Thonius celebrated by lighting another pair of lho-sticks.
Kys looked back at Halstrom. ‘What else do you do?’ she asked.
‘We talk,’ he replied. ‘Reminisce. Preest is good at that. Her stories are wonderful. Have you heard any?’
‘No. I don’t know her very well at all.’
‘Magnus, the second helmsman, he’s good value too. I get all my jokes from him. We talk about our lives and where we come from and so forth.’
‘And it passes the time?’
‘Passes it fairly. We could try that, Mamzel Kys. I know nothing about you.’
‘I know nothing about you, Mr Halstrom.’
He sat up. ‘Mutual ignorance. I think that sounds like a grand place to start. You first, where were you born?’
‘Sameter, in the Helican sub.’
‘Ah, dingy Sameter. I know it well.’
‘You?’
Halstrom shrugged. ‘My family comes from Hesperus, but I was born on Enothis.’
‘That’s a long way away. In the Sabbat Worlds.’
‘Indeed. We travelled a lot. My father was in the Fleet, and I followed after him.’
Kys leaned back. ‘Into service, you mean? You were a captain once, weren’t you?’
‘Yes,’ he said. Absently, he switched the display to another diagnostic graphic. ‘But it’s my turn to ask. Is that your real name?’
Kys shook her head. ‘It’s my trophy name.’
‘What does that mean?’ asked Halstrom.
‘I thought we were taking it in turns?’
‘This is still my turn. What’s a trophy name?’
‘It’s one you get given when you’re a trophy. Terra, Mr Halstrom! You think Patience Kys is a genuine name?’
‘I did wonder. It sounded rather… how can I put it?’
‘Ridiculous?’
‘No, no… I was shooting for theatrical.’
Kys laughed. ‘My sisters and I were all given names. It was part of the game.’
Halstrom turned in his seat to look straight at her. ‘Game? I get the impression from your tone that this game was far from pleasant. It may be something you don’t wish to talk about—’
‘Correct.’
‘But still,’ he shrugged. ‘If it’s a name that you were given against your will, why would you keep it? Why don’t you go back to your original name?’
Kys thought before she answered. Her face went serious. ‘Because it keeps me sane to remember where I’ve been. And I made a promise, a long time ago, that the name wouldn’t be forgotten.’
‘Oh,’ Halstrom said.
‘I think that makes it my turn,’ Kys said. ‘Why aren’t you a fleet captain any more?’
Halstrom sat back and closed his eyes. ‘I think your ground rules established that there are some things we don’t wish to talk about.’
‘No fair!’ Kys said, slapping him harmlessly on the arm. ‘You can’t dodge the question.’
‘They’re pretty,’ Halstrom said. ‘Are they a recent acquisition?’
He was pointing at the glittering fish scales looped over her throat stud.
‘Thank you. Yes, they are. I picked them up on Flint. But you’re avoiding my question again.’
‘I know,’ he began. ‘I don’t like to talk about—’
Halstrom broke off. There had been a quick, choppy, blurt on the ship’s intervox.
Suddenly sharp, he leaned forward.
‘What was that?’
‘You tell me,’ Kys said, rising to her feet. Frauka and Thonius were still playing their game.
Another blurt came across the speakers A scared voice, indecipherable, cut up by the intercom channel switching on and off.
‘What the hell…’ Halstrom muttered.
‘Where’s it coming from?’ Kys asked.
‘Just checking,’ said Halstrom, running his fingers over the keys. Another blurt sounded. A frantic scratching and a low moan, broken by the switching click of the system.
‘Someone’s trying to use the intervox. Fumbling with it…’ Kys reasoned.
‘I’ve got the source,’ Halstrom told her. ‘Cabin eight fifteen.’
‘Zael,’ she sighed. ‘I bet the little freak is having another nightmare.’
‘We should—’ Halstrom started to say. But Kys was already striding away towards the hatch.
‘Relax,’ she called over her shoulder. ‘I’ve got it.’
‘DAMN.’
‘What’s the matter, Harlon?’ Ravenor asked. Nayl backed up from the rail, looking round. ‘What?’ Ravenor asked again from Mathuin’s mouth.
‘We’re being scanned again,’ Nayl said. ‘I think someone’s taken an interest.’
Behind them, the pict-opaque field dropped and Preest emerged. The manhound looked up at her as she strode past.
‘Anything useful?’ Ravenor asked her.
‘Indeed. Let’s move.’
Preest stepped up into her carriage and started sliding it forward. Ravenor and Nayl took up the canopy poles and muddled it into position.
As they moved away along the gallery, Unwerth appeared from the booth. ‘Mistress!’ he called out after them. ‘Mistress, are you concumplished that no exhilarated trade may partake between us? Mistress? I am most heartless in my disabusement!’
‘Ignore him,’ Preest said.
‘Fine,’ Nayl said. ‘I could even kill him, if that would help.’
‘No ne
ed,’ she whispered. They moved down the stairs into the throng of the salon floor. ‘Master Unwerth has been most useful.’
‘Go on,’ Ravenor said.
‘The Oktober Country is here. Unwerth has been pestering everyone, and tried it on with Thekla earlier today. Attempted to get Thekla interested in the useless gee-gaws in Unwerth’s cargo. Thekla gave him the brush off. See, I told you a dunce like Unwerth would be useful.’
‘I’m impressed. What else?’ Ravenor asked, keeping his voice low.
‘I asked him about flects, of course. Unwerth went coy. It’s way out of his league. But he knew the basics. The cartel meets in the second salon. That’s through here. And the man to speak to, according to Unwerth, is a merchant called Akunin.’
‘Akunin? Anything else?’
Preest paused and looked round at Mathuin’s face.
‘You seem to want the world from me, Gideon. Haven’t I just done terribly well?’
‘You have, Cynia. And I’m grateful. But we don’t know anything about this Akunin. Agents of the Throne can’t just march up to people and demand to be cut into the flect trade.’
‘No, they don’t,’ Preest admitted. ‘But rogue traders can. You’ve got the currency orders, Harlon?’
‘Inside my glove, mistress,’ Nayl said.
‘Well, unbutton and make ready. We’re about to do business.’
THE DOOR OF Zael’s cabin was shut, but not locked. Kys slid it open and looked into the dark.
‘Zael? Zael, you freak? What are you playing at?’
She heard a moan from over by the shower closet.
‘Zael? Are you all right?’
Another soft moan.
Kys stepped inside the cabin and reached for the lights. She pressed the activator, but nothing happened. Were they broken? Blown?
Kys advanced into the darkness, her eyes adjusting. She could hear sobbing. The air was warm and damp.
‘Zael? Where in the name of frig are you?’
Something moved in the gloom at the sound of her voice. She flinched, but it was just a body coiled on the floor.
Kys reached down and found Zael. His breathing was fast and shallow. From the smell of it, he’d wet himself.
‘Zael? It’s me. It’s Patience. Get up.’
Zael just twitched.
‘Come on, you trigger. We have to get you cleaned up.’
She picked him up, and steered him towards the shower stall. Zael began to scream and thrash.
Kys slammed his quaking form up against the wall and held it in place.
‘What’s the matter with you?’
‘Don’t make me go in the shower. She’s in there. She’s in there. She’s all bloody and broken.’
‘Who is? Zael, what are you talking about?’
‘Nove.’
‘Who the frig is that?’
‘My sister.’
‘You told me your sister was dead,’ Kys said.
‘She is,’ Zael wept. ‘Go in there and see for yourself.’
Kys let him slump. She walked towards the shower stall. The only light in the cabin was welling out from behind the glass.
Kys realised she had no weapon on her at the same moment she realised there was no reason for her to be armed. The boy had suffered a nightmare. That was the end of it. Why was her heart beating so fast? Why was she so scared?
The fish scales. She thought of them at the very last minute. They were sharp, easy to TK. Mr Halstrom had admired them. She mind-lifted them off her throat stud and hovered them in the air.
This was stupid. The boy had been dreaming. There was nothing in the stall.
She took hold of the door handle. The scales were circling in the air.
She opened the door. Inside the shower stall was—
Nothing.
Kys sagged and breathed out. The scales flew back to her throat and fastened themselves again around the top stud.
‘Shit, Zael. You nearly had me there. I really thought…’
She looked round and saw the boy was crawling towards the open cabin door.
She bounded across to him and grabbed him by the hair. He squealed. ‘Listen! You actually scared me then with your game!’
‘It wasn’t a game!’ Zael whined. ‘It was a message.’
THEY ENTERED THE second salon. It was as busy as the first. At a question from Preest, a Vigilant pointed them up towards a booth on the third gallery.
They climbed the stairs. Almost at once, it was obvious the third gallery was quiet, almost empty.
‘I don’t like it,’ Nayl whispered.
‘Oh, do shut up,’ Preest said.
The booths they were passing were vacant, as if they had been cleared.
A tender hurried past. ‘Akunin?’ Preest called out. ‘Where do I find Master Akunin?’
‘Gone!’ the tender cried, and in another moment, so was she.
‘I think it’s time to split,’ Nayl said.
‘Agreed,’ Ravenor said. ‘While we still can.’
Two figures stepped out of a booth ahead and blocked the gallery. One was a nekulli, armed with a traditional saw-toothed lance. The other was a human in head-to-toe battleplate, polished a deep, silvery blue. He had a falchion in his right hand.
‘About face,’ Ravenor hissed. They turned.
Three more figures stood behind them. One was a man of heavy build with sandy-white hair. To his left stood a kroot with a billhook; to his right, a man in chequered leather armour, wielding a boarding axe.
The man with the sandy-white hair was wearing the camo-armour of a game agent and held a huntsman’s hooksword. He looked familiar, very familiar, to Nayl. For a second Nayl thought it was Feaver Skoh. But this wasn’t the man Nayl had seen in the cavae of the Carnivora. Nayl had a good eye for faces. This man was a brother or close kin. A dynasty of xeno-hunters, that’s how the Skohs had been described.
‘What is this?’ asked Preest. Ravenor could hear the tremor in her voice.
The game agent smiled. ‘This is the end of the line.’
At the far end of the gallery behind the game agent and his comrades, Ravenor could see Vigilants gathering, forming a cordon. No one was going to intercede on their behalf. As far as the Order of Vigilants was concerned, this was private business, and would be concluded privately, as per the weapon-laws of the Reach.
+Go.+
At the single word, Nayl and Ravenor/Mathuin began to move. Mistress Preest’s aristocratic canopy went clattering over as they up-ended it and drew the weapons concealed within its hollow poles. Stave-swords, with handgrips as long as their thin, straight blades, slithered out into their hands.
Nayl went straight for the game agent, who bellowed and lunged to meet him. Stave-blade encountered hooksword with enough leverage to send the hunter stumbling sideways. But the man in chequered armour and the kroot were right behind their boss. Nayl dummied left out of the swooping downward path of the boarding axe, and smacked the pommel of the stave-sword sideways into the side of the man’s head. He cried out and fell down on one knee. Then a scything blow from the kroot’s billhook ripped a chunk out of Nayl’s quilted coat. The coat was lined with wire-mail, and severed metal loops and scads of downy quilting shredded into the air. Nayl leapt backwards out of range of the kroot’s next swing, doubled round to slam-kick the chequered fighter in the face before he could get to his feet again, and came up facing both the kroot and the recovered game agent as they rushed him together.
Ravenor moved the other away, taking on the nekulli and the bounty hunter in the polished blue battleplate. Ravenor’s stave-sword parried three vicious strikes from the man’s falchion, two off the blade and one off the handgrip base. The nekulli tried to flank him while he was occupied, but Ravenor broke to his left, swinging the stave-sword round in a two-handed, overhead slice that described an arc of almost three hundred and sixty degrees. The nekulli staggered back, wobbled and collapsed, his throat slit.
With a furious exclamation, the man
in plate charged in, hacking with his sword. His skill and speed were both considerable. Ravenor parried and deflected the rain of blows with a fluid, switching combination of single and double-handed grips, rotating the stave-sword like a quarter staff.
Nayl had never tangled with a kroot before, though he’d had sight of them often enough to know what one was. Rumour said they were a mercenary race or a slave-kind, serving some technologically advanced species beyond the Imperial fringes, a species that only a few rogue traders had ever encountered. Despite its size – it towered over him – and its odd, jerky movements, it was formidably fast and seemed to possess unerringly acute senses. With its crude billhook, it managed to smash aside every clean stroke he made against it. It stank terribly of musky, rancid sweat. It would have been match enough for him, but he still had the game agent circling in from the right.
The kroot landed another rending blow that ripped into Nayl’s armour coat. He staggered backwards, wrong-footed, and the game agent slammed in, his hooksword striking across the side of Nayl’s helmet.
Nayl went sprawling. His buckled helmet bounced off his head across the gallery floor.
‘Harlon!’ Preest yelled. The mistress was no fighter. She was caught, petrified on her carriage, between the two melees.
The kroot pounced forward onto Nayl and chopped his billhook down. Nayl rolled, leaving the tatters of his coat behind, pinned to the gallery deck. He leaped to his feet in time to meet and block the game agent’s sword, turning its blade aside with his blade and bringing the end of the long handgrip round and up hard into the agent’s face.
Bone broke, blood spurted, and the agent tumbled backwards with a raging curse. But the kroot was surging in at Nayl from behind.
‘Nayl! Nayl!’ Preest screamed exasperatedly. She jumped off her ornate carriage and aimed the actuator wand at it. It moved away from stationary with a rapid acceleration, hurtling forward half a metre off the floor.
Nayl began to turn at the sound of Preest’s voice. He was stripped down to his bodyglove, and that would not withstand a direct hack from the kroot’s razor-sharp weapon.
The unmanned lifter carriage, travelling at nearly thirty kilometres an hour, struck the kroot from behind and bowled him over. He tumbled awkwardly, emitting a strangled squawk, and went sprawling. Nayl came in, plunging his stave-sword down, blade-first, and impaled the thrashing avian to the gallery floor.