Fenx fell back against the hub and slid down until he was almost flat on the floor. He opened his mouth and blood trickled down his chin. The light in his eyes went out and his face went slack.
Molotch turned from Fenx’s corpse as a wail of misery echoed down the aisle behind him. D’mal Singh stood twenty metres away, the gun-hounds at her side. She gazed at Molotch in anguish and hatred.
‘Murderer…’ she gulped.
‘Murderer…’ he echoed quietly, not for sense, but to practise the timbre of her intonation.
‘Kill, good!’ she snarled.
The gunhounds took off towards Molotch. They were heavy and powerful, their scrambling paws slapping on the deck, their iron claws scraping. Their razor jaws opened.
‘Kill, good…’ Molotch murmured, getting a true measure of D’mal Singh’s palate and tone. Gunhounds of this model were voice-controlled, specifically keyed to their owner’s voice pattern.
A voice pattern he now used, perfectly. ‘Down, good!’
Five metres short of him, the gunhounds skidded to a halt and lay supine, whimpering, resting their chins on their forepaws.
Molotch smiled. He saw the look of bafflement and horror cross the small woman’s face. Confused, she was vulnerable to the tone of command.
‘D’mal Singh,’ he called. ‘Mute.’
She opened her mouth to command her hounds again. No sound came out. She gaped, her jaw moving uselessly.
There was no time to enjoy her helpless state. Molotch felt a presence at his back, heard a heavy step. The ogryn. The ogryn was coming up behind him. He had a second or less to react.
Molotch threw himself forward between the gunhounds. The ogryn’s axe crashed down into the deck where he had just been standing. As he dived, he hurled the remaining sickle. Spinning, chopping through the air like a fan, the sickle flew in a horizontal arc and smashed D’mal Singh clean off her feet.
Her body landed on its back with a thump and a violent, loose-limbed bounce.
Shugurth howled, yanked his axe-head up out of the punctured deck, and charged. Molotch leapt up, rotating to confront him.
‘Kill, good!’ he ordered in D’mal Singh’s voice.
The gunhounds ploughed forward either side of him to meet the charging ogryn. They slammed into Shugurth with an impact that arrested his forward motion, and brought him down hard on his back. Then they were on top of him. To his credit, the ogryn didn’t cry out much, even though his death was drawn out and messy.
Molotch turned and walked away from the sounds of slavering chops and cracking bone.
‘You can come out now, Ballack,’ he suggested casually.
Interrogator Ballack stepped into the open. His sword and dagger were both drawn.
‘Well, aren’t you quite the psycho bastard?’ Ballack said, his longer blade rising to touch Molotch’s throat.
‘I am, I really am. You can put that away, Gall. We’re done.’
Ballack sheathed his sword with a nod. ‘Of course we are. That was just for show.’ He flipped his dagger over in his other hand and tucked it into its scabbard.
‘It’s all just for show,’ Molotch agreed. ‘You are quite treacherous, Ballack.’
Ballack bowed and smiled. ‘It is a matter of the most pleasant fraternal confidence.’
‘How did an alumnus of the Cognitae end up in the ordos?’ Molotch asked.
‘Where else could I do most good?’ Ballack asked.
‘You efforts are noted,’ said Molotch. ‘Now all that’s left is to make this look convincing.’
‘I’ll make the report, of course. The others died trying to bring you down.’
‘Naturally.’
‘You have a corpse prepared?’
Molotch nodded. ‘I left it over there,’ he said, pointing to their left.
‘And it will convince the most scrupulous tests?’
‘It will. Especially given the fact it will be extensively burned. A stray shot during the battle…’
Ballack smiled approvingly. ‘That will conceal a multitude of sins.’
‘Yours included.’ said Molotch. He brushed against Ballack so fleetingly, the interrogator didn’t understand what was happening until it had happened. There was a metallic clack as the handcuffs locked into place. Ballack suddenly found his left wrist cuffed tight against the casing of a turbine hub.
‘Molotch? What… what is this?’
‘This is goodbye, Ballack.’
‘Molotch!’ Ballack screamed. ‘Molotch!’
SHE REACHED THE dark side street where Fenx’s carriages were parked. There was no sign of anyone around. The last message she had received had informed her that the team was deploying into the house of generation across the street.
Something was wrong. Very wrong. She was getting only a dead response from her body-to-body comm. A trickle of dead air.
‘Fenx? Sir?’
Vox static.
Angharad stripped off the rest of her formal black dress, tossed it aside, and cinched tight the straps and buckles of the form-fitting leather armour she was wearing underneath. Her clan armour. There was no time to find the cloak. She eased the Carthaen steel out of its long case.
She prowled across the empty street, the steel in her hands quivering like a diviner’s rod. Overhead, the stars were cold smudges of light in a purple sky. Two of Tancred’s moons were aloft, both claw shapes. Killing moons. A good omen, or a bad one, depending on who survived to see the following sunrise.
Under the eaves of the great building, it was as black as a cavern. She heard a distant sob from within, a stifled croak of pain. She pushed open the outer door and immediately smelled blood on the close air inside.
Evisorex smelled it too. Holding the long sword in a tight, raised grip, she stepped across the threshold and made her way into the turbine hall.
Silence. Darkness.
Ten seconds later, with a catastrophic roar, a tidal wave of boiling, golden flame blew out through all the windows and doors.
SEVEN
KARA HAD WALKED the long way around, through the recreational gardens where the gentlewomen of the city came in their long dresses and tall hats to sit under the trees and make civilised conversation, around the ornamental lake, and up through the patchwork of lesser shrines and chapel houses where the pilgrims queued. The temple of Saint Karyl sat on a shelf of dark volcanic rock at the western edge of Basteen, a white dome rising above the mosaic of red-brick buildings in the bright afternoon heat. Priests were calling the faithful to worship, and peddlers were hawking their votive trinkets from handcarts. Ritual banners hung limp against an indolent yellow sky.
She entered the temple through the western porch, and walked around the back of the vast church, relishing the stone cool. A small congregation was gathering at the altar rail, and their voices were muted echoes in the magnificent, spacious emptiness: motes of human life in a giant cave of stone.
She went through into the side chapel, a round chamber set off from the main body of the temple, where candles fluttered on a brass stand below high windows.
She knelt at the rail, and addressed a quiet prayer to the God-Emperor. It still seemed strange to her that she had found her faith again after so long. These days, she felt incomplete if she didn’t go to temple or make some devotion regularly. Belknap had reawakened the need in her to begin with, but it was more than that now. She touched the silver aquila he had given her.
‘Why here?’ asked Carl Thonius.
She hadn’t heard him enter. He didn’t seem to have footsteps any more.
‘Hello, Carl.’
‘Why here, Kara?’ He gazed up at the arched, painted roof of the ancient chapel.
‘Privacy,’ she said. It was a half-truth. Part of her had wanted to see if he could set foot in a place like this.
Carl smiled slightly. He looked directly at her with amused eyes. ‘Privacy?’
‘We need to talk.’ Kara said, rising to her feet.
He feign
ed confusion. ‘About what?’
‘Don’t, Carl,’ she said. He frightened her, especially when they were alone together. And he knew it.
‘About me, I suppose?’ he mocked. ‘It’s all “me, me, me” with you, isn’t it?’
‘We’re leaving Tancred,’ Kara said.
‘Yes, tomorrow. That’s what he told me.’
‘Our efforts here are done. We’re returning to Eustis Majoris. A new start.’
‘Of sorts. Why?’
Kara hesitated. ‘Carl, I love you. Like a brother, I love you.’
‘Only like a brother?’ Carl asked playfully.
‘You annoy me, and aggravate me, and most of the time I don’t like you, but I would die for you. So, yes, like a brother.’
‘Well, that’s nice to know,’ he said. ‘I love you too.’ He turned towards the doorway, as if to leave. ‘Are we done?’
‘I can’t do this any more, Carl.’
‘Can’t do what?’ he asked, halting, but not looking back.
‘Lie for you. Lie about you. Cover for you.’
Carl Thonius turned, slowly. He stared at her. He looked as if he might be about to burst into tears.
‘But you promised,’ he said. There was such a plaintive tone in his voice.
‘You made me promise. That’s different.’
‘There was no compulsion. I didn’t pressure you.’
‘You did. You have, and I can’t do it any more.’
Thonius licked his lips and cleared his throat. ‘Really?’
‘Really.’
‘What are you saying?’ he asked.
‘I can’t lie to Gideon any more. I can’t keep lying to him, to any of them. I owe them all too much to keep doing that. You asked for time, just a little time to beat this yourself, and I gave you that. I shouldn’t have done, but I did. I can’t give you any more. We have to tell Ravenor… have to tell Ravenor.’
His voice diminished to a tiny whisper. ‘Just a little longer. A tiny bit longer, I beg you. Please. I have been working, researching. I have found things, charms and incantations. I have found wards and bindings that—’
‘No, Carl. It’s not fair on me. Actually, it’s not fair on you either. He can help you. If I tell him, he can help you.’
‘He’ll kill me, Kara,’ Carl said softly.
‘No.’
‘He wouldn’t have a choice.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘He’d kill you too,’ Carl said.
There was a long silence. Plainsong began in the main chapel outside.
‘What did you say?’ she asked.
‘Don’t be naive,’ Carl said. ‘You’ve known all this time and you’ve kept it a secret. You’re tainted too. He’d kill you. He’d have to. He couldn’t trust you, ever again.’
‘You’re wrong,’ she said. ‘Wrong on both counts. He’d help you, and he’d understand my position.’
‘Would he?’ asked Carl, sarcasm straining his voice. ‘Let’s review… Inquisitor Ravenor’s own interrogator has become the vessel of a warp-thing, and not just any warp-thing, but an apocalyptic daemon of infamous prophecy. But Ravenor doesn’t know, even though the secret has been right there, for months, in front of his nose. And, wait for it, the only other person who knows is one of his most trusted and oldest friends. Unless that story ends with “…and the moment he found out, he executed them both” it’s not going to sit well when Ravenor is brought before the High Elders of the Inquisition Helican. I mean, is it?’
She shook her head.
‘Do you want to die, Kara?’ he asked.
She took a step back.
‘That wasn’t a threat. I’m not threatening you. Throne! I just asked the question…’
‘No, Carl, I don’t, but I want to do what’s right.’
‘So do I,’ he said. He was scratching at his right hand – the hand – as if it was starting to bother him. So many rings wound around those fingers. Kara watched him, her heart rate rising. That hand…
‘It’s hot in here,’ he said.
‘No, Carl, it’s quite cool.’
‘I’m hot.’ He walked across to the chapel’s stone basin and washed his face in the holy water. She was amazed the water didn’t spit and boil on contact with his right hand.
‘I’m tired,’ he said, once he was done. ‘I understand what you’re saying, because I’m tired of it as well. The deceit. The fear. And, for me, the pain. It hurts, you know.’
‘I’m sorry it does.’
‘Every morning, waking and remembering, every night praying the dreams don’t come. And they always do.’
‘Carl—’
‘Listen to me. If I am… cursed, Kara Swole, if I have evil ticking away inside me, then what kind of evil is it? It’s been months, and I have controlled it. I have contained it. There has been no outburst. No one has died. And I beg you to remember, on Eustis Majoris, the thing inside me… it helped. It defeated Molotch. Kara, it took the sickness out of you. It saved you.’
‘I know.’
‘Then what?’
‘I have to—’
‘No! No, no! Listen to me! I’ve thought about this a lot. I think it’s… a blessing.’
‘Please, Carl, don’t try to turn this—’
‘Listen to me!’ he hissed. She closed her mouth. ‘Sorry,’ he smiled. ‘I didn’t mean to snap, but I really have thought about this. To begin with, it was a problem. A dirty, nasty secret. I thought I would die. All I wanted to be was free of it. Free of… Slyte.’
‘Don’t say that word.’
He shrugged. ‘Sorry. Again, sorry. Come closer.’
‘No, Carl.’
‘Come closer.’ he insisted, gesturing with his left hand. ‘I won’t hurt you. I couldn’t. That’s the point. I’m not excusing my state, but what if it’s more than just a curse?’
‘I don’t know what you mean, Carl,’ she said, stepping slowly towards him and looking into his eyes. He was crying for real now. Tears ran down his pale cheeks.
He held out his left hand to her and she took it. He pulled her, very gently, close to him. ‘What if this is a rare thing? Something we’ve never seen before? I have a daemon in me, but it is subdued. Imagine that! Subordinate to my will. I own its power, but I am not in its thrall. I can use its power.’
‘You’re fooling yourself,’ Kara whispered.
‘What if I’m not? What if I have the fury of a daemon at my disposal, the insight of the warp, but remain pure and true? What a transcendent asset would that be to mankind? What a miracle! Think of the secrets we could learn! I could be something our species has waited millennia for. A man with the mastery of daemons. A rational man with true insight into the warp. Kara, the Imperium would change. The warp would no longer threaten us as such an implacable—’
‘Carl! Carl, please! How many other men have thought the selfsame thing? Slow or fast, the warp is always poison. This is basic to our understanding. I applaud the fact you’ve kept it contained for so long, but you can’t keep it in forever.’
‘I don’t want to keep it in. Kara, I feel, I really feel, that this is a momentous thing. A daemon slaved to order. An ancient enemy, turned against the darkness. You must give me more time.’
‘No, Carl—’
‘More time! I can do this! I have mastered it and I can formulate that mastery so that others can do it too. We can change all creation, Kara. For the good of mankind, we can change thinking and change action, and banish forever our fear of the dark.’
‘It’s too late, Carl.’
He sighed. He bowed his head. ‘Throne, you’re right,’ he said in a very quiet voice. ‘Of course you’re right. I’m a fool. Forgive me for all of this. Forgive me for putting you in this situation. You’re right.’
‘Carl—’
‘I’ll tell him. I’ll tell him myself. Will you let me do that? Please?’
‘Of course.’
‘I’ll come clean. Make him understand it was me all alon
g. I’ll protect you. Just let me be the one to tell him.’
‘All right. Yes. When?’
‘Tonight,’ Carl said. He smiled sadly. ‘Oh, Kara, the stuff you know.’
He pulled her close and they embraced in silence for a long time.
‘So, tonight?’ he asked.
‘Tonight, what?’
‘That’s when I’ll tell him.’
‘Tell who what?’ she asked.
‘I’ll tell Ravenor all about it,’
‘About what?’
‘Now, you see?’ he grinned. ‘Isn’t that better?’
She laughed. She wasn’t sure why. ‘What were we talking about?’
‘Faith,’ he said.
‘Oh, yes.’
‘Faith gives us purpose, and a mind without purpose will walk in dark places.’
‘That sounds familiar. Is it a quote?’
‘I just made it up.’ Carl said.
‘We should go back. It’s late.’ Kara said.
‘We should. I’m glad we had this talk, Kara. You were right to keep it private.’
He took her by the hand and led her towards the door.
Patience Kys was standing in the doorway. ‘This is nice,’ she remarked.
‘What are you doing here?’ Kara laughed.
‘I was looking for you both. Your comms are off.’
‘Sorry,’ said Kara, adjusting her link.
‘How long have you been there?’ Carl asked.
‘Long enough to wonder if Belknap should be worried,’ Kys replied.
Kara laughed again. ‘Carl just wanted me to show him where I made devotion. I think there are stirrings of faith in our friend here.’
‘Fancy,’ said Kys.
‘It’s true, it’s true,’ chuckled Carl. ‘I’ve grown slack of late, and I’ll never make inquisitor without a good record of temple attendance. Kara was just guiding me. I needed a little spiritual focus.’
Patience Kys nodded. ‘Don’t we all? There’s been a development.’
‘What kind of development?’
‘The kind you wouldn’t believe, but Ravenor has to tell you himself. He’d hate me if I ruined his thunder.’
They walked towards the doorway. ‘What’s that?’ Kys asked.