+But you won’t be with us once we’re inside?+
+No, Patience, I won’t. That’s regrettable. Remember though, the Emperor protects.+
‘Well, if we’re ready and we’re all clear?’ Lucic said.
‘As crystal,’ said Ballack.
‘Let’s do it,’ Lucic said.
‘YOU UNDERSTAND NOW?’ the red-haired man asked.
Stine swallowed, and sat down hard. ‘The Inquisition…?’
‘Has enjoyed regular access to the House for decades, Stine, despite what the halls of Berynth believe. We just don’t advertise the fact. The House can be very useful to us. So, forget about keeping the ordos out. We’ve been inside for years. Concentrate your mind on this particular deal.’
The man stepped closer. ‘Stine?’
Stine started and looked up. He was still reeling from the revelation. ‘Yes,’ he murmured. ‘Yes.’
‘The people you’re about to deal with are the principal agents of a rogue inquisitor. Do you understand? A rogue. A criminal. A mass murderer. He is very dangerous. They are very dangerous. Their actions have led to the slaughter of thousands.’
‘Th-thousands?’ Stine echoed.
‘The disaster on Eustis Majoris eight months ago. That was their doing.’
Stine shuddered. His hall, Berynth, Cyto, the whole Helican sub-sector was still reeling from the great trauma that had afflicted the capital world of the neighbouring subsector. The economy was in spasm.
‘We’re close,’ said the red-haired man quietly, ‘but we need to get closer. We need them where we want them, so we can finish them. They’re too dangerous to live. Do you understand?’
‘I understand.’
‘Good. I’m counting on you. Help us with this, and it will go well for Stine and Stine. I might even forget your recent suggestion that your hall and others may have eliminated ordo agents in the past to protect your own interests.’
‘Throne, I didn’t mean—’
‘Shush, Stine. Clean slate. That’s what I’m authorised to offer you in exchange for helping us today. Do your part, give them what they want, and then forget anybody was ever here. Then the Inquisition of Mankind might forget about you too.’
‘Very well.’ said Stine, rising to his feet. ‘Very well. I’ll do it.’
‘Do what?’ the red-haired man asked. ‘Tell me again, clearly.’
‘I will make them believe they are in and that they are gaining access to the House through the proper channels. You can trust me.’
‘Trust you, Stine?’ the red-haired man laughed. ‘You deal in millions of crowns worth of precious metal and gems. The accumulation of wealth is all that concerns you. Men like you are cut throat and mendacious, hard as corundum. I don’t trust you at all, but I’m prepared to count on you this time. Do this, and do it well.’
Stine nodded. ‘You can’t be here.’
‘I’ll be in the next room. Through there,’ the red-haired man said. ‘If anything untoward occurs, I’ll be ready.’
‘Untoward?’
‘Nothing will happen if you do your job right. We don’t want it to happen here. I’m just saying.’
A burnished servitor approached.
‘They’re here.’ said the red-haired man. ‘Get on with it.’
Stine cleared his throat and walked slowly towards the door.
‘WHERE’S THE FACTOR?’ Kys asked. They were standing in Stine and Stine’s wood-panelled reception chamber.
Lucic looked around awkwardly. ‘I’m sure he’ll be along,’ he began.
‘We had an appointment,’ said Ballack.
‘The factor should be here to greet us,’ said Kys.
Lucic was clearly uncomfortable. Kys noticed he was showing too much of the whites of his eyes.
‘Lucic?’
The prospector shrugged an open-handed gesture. ‘I’m sure there’s no problem.’
Ballack looked at Kys. She nodded.
‘We’re leaving,’ she said.
‘No!’ Lucic cried. ‘No, no, just give him a moment, please.’
‘This stinks,’ said Kys. ‘Thanks but no thanks.’
‘Throne’s sake,’ Lucic hissed, ‘this is my reputation on the line. My career. Agenting is where the real money is. I can’t get by on prospecting alone, and if I blow this, Stine and Stine won’t ever touch me again, and they’ll spread the word to the other halls. I’ve put a lot into this.’
‘So have we,’ said Ballack.
‘Please…’ Lucic sighed.
‘My utmost apologies!’ Stine cried, hurrying into the chamber towards them. ‘I am so sorry to have kept you waiting, even for a moment. A servitor was meant to summon me, and he was waylaid. A thousand pardons!’
Lucic looked sidelong at his clients. ‘We’re all right,’ he whispered.
‘Are we?’ Kys mouthed at Ballack. Ballack nodded.
Lucic turned to the beaming factor. ‘Dear Factor Stine,’ he said with a forced grin, ‘not quite the seamless greeting I had led my friends here to expect.’
Stine bowed. ‘Oh, of course not, my dear old good friend Hiram. I will have the entire servitor complex rebooted. The lapse in decorum is unforgivable. I hope I can make amends? Refreshments, perhaps?’
‘Always welcome,’ said Lucic, regaining his composure. ‘May I present Master Gaul and Mamzel Kine?’
The factor came forward, and bowed to each of them in turn. ‘A genuine pleasure. My dear old good friend Hiram has always brought the most distinguished emptors to Stine and Stine.’
He looked directly at Kys. ‘My lady,’ he said, ‘I fear I was most awfully impolite to you on the occasion of our last meeting. I hope you will forgive my rudeness. We have to be so careful these days, and I quite misjudged you.’
Kys bowed back. ‘Factor, I apologised then, and I apologise now. I should never have come to you so bluntly, without proper introduction.’
‘Least said, soonest mended.’ Stine replied with a cheery gesture. ‘Let’s begin again fresh. Now… a little amasec, perhaps. We have a last few casks of the Fibula ‘56, which I would keep to myself, truth be told, but I positively can’t offer you anything less magnificent. And some birri truffles wrapped in nap leaves, and some local shellfish, I think. The scallops are prepared fresh by the hall’s chefs, hoisted from the sub-ice ocean farms just three hours ago.’
‘The scallops or the chefs?’ asked Kys.
Stine brayed out a laugh. ‘The scallops, naturally! My lady has a fine sense of humour!’
He clapped his hands and directed orders to the waiting servitors.
‘Shall we go in?’ he ventured. ‘I have objects to show you.’
They followed him back into the show galleries. His performance had begun.
Kys had heard it all before. To Stine’s credit, it wasn’t the same. She had to admit the factor was good at what he did.
He stopped in front of a glass display of exquisite peridot and moonstone settings, in full flow, fluently describing every facet and cut.
Stine stopped suddenly and turned to them with a smile. ‘Forgive me for babbling. I get quite carried away. I ought to be telling you about the history of Stine and Stine. Sometimes, I forget myself. I am so enamoured of my hall’s work, I get quite incoherent.’
‘Does that interest you at all?’ he asked.
‘I think I speak for both of us,’ said Ballack, ‘when I say that coherence interests us a great deal.’
+PATIENCE?+
+Hello. We’ve got it. We’re just leaving.+
Lucic led them out onto the promenade. With a final bow, the factor bade them adieu. ‘An excellent choice,’ he said, kissing Kys’s hand.
‘I hope so,’ said Kys.
‘It’s been a genuine pleasure spending this time with you,’ Stine said, his performance drawing towards its curtain call.
‘You’ve been most obliging, sir,’ Ballack said to the factor with a bow.
‘If I can be of any further service,’ St
ine gushed.
‘My thanks again, as ever,’ said Lucic. Stine bowed for the thousandth time, and backed away into the hall.
Kys looked at Ballack. ‘We’re clear?’
‘We’re clear.’
‘Thank Throne that’s over,’ Kys muttered.
‘Let’s keep walking,’ Lucic advised. ‘Come on now, briskly. I’m uncomfortable with you carrying that around in a public place. Even on the Promenade St Jakob, there are unscrupulous elements.’
That was the three hundred and ten thousand crown horolog piece that now occupied Ballack’s case. Kys and Ballack trailed Lucic down the promenade.
‘What happens now?’ Kys asked.
‘Depends. How quickly do you want it to happen?’ Lucic asked.
‘Quickly, the next few hours.’
Lucic nodded. ‘Good. It’s better that way. The cue Stine sold me for the House has an expiry date. The House moves.’
‘We understand that.’
‘Fine. So long as you do. Two hours then, in underboat pen seventy-two. We can make the exchange there. How many people will be in your party?’
‘No,’ said Kys. ‘We have our own transport arranged. You meet us.’
‘That’s not how it works,’ said Lucic.
‘It is now,’ said Ballack.
‘No, no,’ said Lucic. You’ll screw this up!’
‘It’s how we want it,’ said Ballack. Adjust. I’m sure you’re capable. Boat pen sixty-one, two hours from now.’
‘Then I’m coming with you,’ said Lucic.
‘No, you’re not,’ Ballack smiled.
‘You want to use your own damn transport, fine!’ Lucic snapped. ‘But I’m coming with you. You’ll need me. Cue or no cue, the House will blank you if you arrive in an unauthorised transport. You need me still.’
‘You can get us in?’
‘All part of the price. You have to take me along.’
Ballack nodded. ‘Pen sixty-one. Two hours.’
‘I’ll be there,’ said Lucic, and strode away into the crowds.
‘What do you think?’ Kys asked.
‘I think he’s rotten to the core,’ Ballack replied, ‘but he’s all we’ve got. We have to ran with this.’
Patience Kys sighed. ‘Like we had to run with Stine of Stine and Stine. I know. I still wish I could have killed the obsequious bastard, though.’
STINE OF STINE and Stine walked slowly back into the hall’s main chamber of display and sat down heavily in the chair behind the simple wooden desk.
‘You did good,’ said the red-haired man, emerging from the shadows.
‘That’s all very well,’ Stine grumbled.
‘Here’s your reward,’ the red-haired man said.
A man much larger than the red-haired man plodded out of the shadows. He was wearing heavy power armour, but he made very little sound. He handed a weapon to the red-haired man. The red-haired man activated the blade. It made a shrill, grating whine.
‘Chainsword,’ said the red-haired man lightly.
He raised the whirring weapon, and swung it at Stine. Stine was too astonished to attempt any evasion. The chainsword struck him on the left arm just below the shoulder, and carried on through, slicing him laterally across the upper chest. Stine’s head and shoulders, like a statuary bust, flopped backwards over the chair back, and his arms, severed at the top of the biceps, dropped leadenly onto the ground. The top half of the chair’s back rest, severed along with the upper part of Factor Stine, hit the floor too. Upholstery padding fluffed into the air like thistledown. Pressurised arterial blood squirted from the factor’s anatomically cross-sectioned body in shuddering jets and spattered noisily across the top of the wooden desk.
The red-haired man stepped back sharply in order to avoid getting splashed. He deactivated the chainsword and handed it back to the larger, armoured man beside him.
‘No one leaves Stine and Stine alive,’ he said. ‘Make sure of it.’
‘No one?’
‘End of story.’
‘No problem,’ said the armoured man. He reactivated the chainsword so it was buzzing in his fist and clicked his link as he walked away across the chamber. ‘All teams, attention. Deploy, and execute everyone in the building.’
EIGHT
THE UNDERBOAT NAYL had leased left pen sixty-one three hours later. It was a chisel-nosed grey tube of steel and ceramite twenty-four metres long, with a quiet cavitation drive along the centreline and two heavy-bladed propulsion fans fixed ventrally in cage nacelles.
It descended into the oily murk of the pen, lit up stablights on its prow frame, and purred out through the pen mouth.
The pen’s sea doors opened into a long, square-cut channel of blue ice and then out into the open water beyond the subframe of the giant hive. They passed gigantic foundation struts and derricks, brown with tar and mineral deposits that jutted down through the ice pack and disappeared far below into the black deeps. A few bulk capacity underboats went by along the same channel, inbound to the hive, laden with ore. Their stablight rigs were lit up like the lures of abyssal fish.
There were nine people on board the craft: Ravenor, Thonius, Ballack, Kys, Plyton, Nayl and the Carthaen, along with Lucic and the pilot servitor Nayl had leased along with the boat.
‘Quite a crowd you travel with,’ Lucic commented to Kys when he joined them at the pen quay.
‘Names don’t matter,’ Kys replied.
‘I wasn’t asking for any,’ Lucic told her, though his gaze lingered on Ravenor’s support chair. Lucic had come dressed in dirty work clothes: a faded, patched bodyglove, furs and a quilted coat. He also carried a grubby shoulder pack.
‘Weapons?’ Ballack asked him.
‘Just tools of the trade,’ Lucic replied, offering up the pack so Ballack could wand it.
Lucic chose to ride up front with Nayl and the pilot. From the main passenger trunk, a Spartan space with drop down seats, they could see forward into the pilot house through the open hatch. Instrumentation glowed below the gloomy forward ports. Lucic was sensible enough not to attempt conversation with Nayl. Once they had reached open water, Nayl handed him the grey case containing the very expensive timepiece. Lucic looked inside briefly, put the case with his pack, and accessed the navigation punch-box on the instrument panel. He entered a nineteen digit code. The cue. Screens blinked and rolled as graphics redrew and remapped. Then a spidery red chart came up, with route and way-marker graphics overlaid in white.
‘That’s some distance,’ Nayl said.
‘Eight hours minimum,’ said Lucic, ‘provided we don’t encounter any holdups.’
‘Holdups?’ Nayl asked.
‘Ice-falls. Sub-currents. That’s probably the worst we might get, this season of the year.’
‘There’s worse?’
‘There’s maelstroms. Believe me, if there was any chance we’d run into one of those, we wouldn’t have left the pen.’
Nayl pointed to the nav display. ‘Is that the House?’
Lucic shook his head. ‘The House is currently sitting ’neath side about forty kilometres south south-west of that. The chart resolution’s too large to show it. That’s Berynth Eighty-Eight, one of the deep water mining rigs, sitting in a two-kilometre hole it’s made for itself in the pack ice. That’s our excuse for heading out that way. We’ll divert when we reach Eighty-Eight.’
The others made themselves comfortable in the passenger trunk. Plyton leaned by one of the small armoured port lights, craning her neck to see up and out. They were three hundred metres down, and the water was black and clear like glass, but above them, it graduated into a green twilight.
‘Creepy,’ she murmured.
Angharad glanced at her.
‘All this water on top of us. The pressure. The cold. Even if you could reach the surface, there is no surface. Just a roof of ice.’
Angharad shrugged and looked away. Little seemed to impress her.
‘The whole ocean’s covered in pack ice,
right?’ Plyton asked.
‘The whole thing,’ Ravenor replied, ‘apart from a few anomalous breaks. In most places, the pack is five or six hundred metres thick. Quite a roof.’
Plyton grimaced. ‘A fine time to discover I’m claustrophobic,’ she said.
‘You’ve travelled in the void,’ Angharad said. ‘Compared to that, this is nothing.’
‘It’ll kill you just as fast,’ said Plyton. ‘Besides, we can all have our own private fears, can’t we?’
‘I do not have private fears,’ said Angharad. That made Plyton laugh.
‘Any life out there?’ Plyton asked.
‘Algae. Aggregated bacteria. Phytoplankton. There may be no sunlight, but the moon’s excessively active. A lot of thermal venting.’
‘Anything bigger than that?’
‘No. There are rumours, but no.’
‘Cold,’ said Plyton, glancing back out.
‘It’s deep, too,’ Ravenor said. ‘The ocean floor depth varies, but in some places it’s technically immeasurable.’
‘Immeasurable?’ asked Plyton.
‘Abyssal.’
‘What do you mean, immeasurable?’
‘I mean it’s so deep, any instrument sent down to sound it is crushed by the extremity of pressure.’
‘What about auspex? Modar?’
‘That deep, that cold, that pressurised, the water starts to behave in very strange ways. It doesn’t give up its secrets. You were right, Maud. In some ways it is much, much more dangerous than the void. The deep ocean of Utochre may be one of the strangest places in the Imperium. Which is probably why the House is here.’
‘Are you telling me this to reassure me?’ Plyton asked, slightly pale.
‘One can face one’s private fears better if one understands their limits, I always think. I was giving you the best information I could.’
‘That below us is a freaky abyss that we don’t understand and could never escape from?’ Plyton asked.
Ravenor was silent for a moment. ‘I probably shouldn’t have opened my mouth,’ he said.
He moved across the cabin to where Kys was sitting.
+Just so you know, we’re out of contact. The vox isn’t making it through the water and the ice, not even via a relay at the hive. Something – the ice I think, but I don’t know why – is bouncing psychic transmission. We can’t talk to Kara.+