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Serpents of Ardemis – Mike Brooks

About the Author

An Extract from ‘Rites of Passage’

A Black Library Publication

Serpents of Ardemis

by Mike Brooks

‘I never tire of this sight, Chetta,’ said Azariel.

Lady Chettamandey of the Navigator House Brobantis made her way to her husband’s side. She did so slowly, for her hip pained her, and she relied on her trusty cane of blackened tachydon ivory for support.

‘Neither do I,’ she agreed, looking out at the vista spread below them. ‘Ardemis is a beautiful planet.’

They were standing in the main viewing gallery of the Solarox, the flagship of the Novator of House Brobantis. Azariel had held that rank for twenty years, ever since his father had died, and he’d swiftly carved out a reputation as a skilled diplomat and a fearsome political enemy. Chetta had been by his side for decades, and they’d created two children together; although not without difficulty, since Navigator genetics were a tangle of uncertainty and unexpected mutation at the best of times. Now they focused their energies on building a legacy for their children to inherit.

And serving the Imperium. That, of course, went without saying.

‘No withering remark?’ Azariel said jovially. ‘No scorn? If I didn’t know better, I would have said that you were growing soft.’

‘I am not incapable of appreciating beauty when I see it,’ Chetta snapped. ‘My issue is that people too often confuse “beauty” with “something they have worked hard on”. This, on the other hand…’ She gestured towards Ardemis. It was truly a jewel hanging in space: a world primarily of ocean blue, glittering under the benign light of its local star and dotted with the verdant green specks of islands and archipelagos, with the single main continent lurking in the south. Even from orbit, Chetta could see the streaks of cloud trailing from the island mountaintops, and in the shallows she could make out the sweeping, pale shapes of the subsurface reefs created by millions of tiny life forms. And in the midst of one such reef…

‘Is that the Glasswater?’ she asked, pointing at a glinting speck of light.

‘It could well be,’ Azariel agreed, squinting. His human eyes were not so keen as hers, although the third eye in his forehead had lost none of its potency. That, however, would not be used unless he was guiding a starship through the swirling void of the immaterium, and as Novator, the need would have to be dire indeed for him to deign to bring his considerable ability to bear.

The vox chimed gently. ‘High lord, high lady – Governor Zellanin’s factor has given clearance to approach. Your shuttle is ready.’

‘Thank you, Anja,’ Azariel replied to the ship’s captain. He extended his arm to Chetta. ‘Just remember, my dear – the beauty of Ardemis conceals all manner of dangers.’

‘Oh, I know,’ Chetta replied, ignoring his arm and turning away to stump towards the turbo lifts. ‘Us, for starters.’

The skimmer flew low over the waves, its anti-grav motors kicking up a fine spray that was whipped away by the gentle tropical breeze. It was a sleek craft shaped like the local water vessels, with a keen prow and narrow hull. It bore little resemblance to the usual blunt-nosed Imperial vehicles, and in fact more than anything else it reminded Chetta of the aeldari spacecraft she’d seen battle against when serving as Navigator in the Pacificum Fleet. The likeness made her uneasy, although it didn’t seem to have any effect on Azariel. Her husband had always had a keen interest in the aeldari – one which he assured Chetta was purely scholarly, even down to the various artefacts he’d quietly collected.

Chetta didn’t care. The damned things had nearly killed her when they’d gutted the Blade of Macaroth. So far as she was concerned, they and everything they’d ever built or made could burn.

Ahead of her, however, was something far more impressive than any skimmer. Rising out of the waves was the Glasswater, the floating palace of Baron Archetuch Zellanin, governor of the Ardemis System.

It was a titanic structure, covering a considerably greater surface area than the main palace of House Brobantis on Vorlese, although it did not rise nearly so high into the sky. Most of its hull was strengthened crystalflex, allowing passengers to go below decks and view the beauty of the reefs, and the fascinating xenoforms that inhabited them.

‘Look,’ Azariel murmured, touching her arm. Chetta followed the pointing finger of his other hand and saw a grey-and-blue-scaled back breaching the surface of the ocean for a moment before it slipped back into the depths.

‘A great serpent,’ Azariel said. ‘The local superstition is that to see one is an omen of good fortune.’

‘Assuming it doesn’t eat you, I take it,’ Chetta grunted.

Azariel shrugged. ‘The locals consider it the best way to die.’

‘Well, I cannot be having with such foolishness,’ Chetta said shortly. ‘And I shall tell a serpent so, should the need arise.’

The skimmer’s pilot aimed for a small, dark hole in the Glasswater’s flank which, as they approached and scale became truly apparent, yawned wider until it was more than ample to accommodate their small craft. The pilot killed the engines and glided in, then braked with expert nudges of the retro thrusters to bring the vessel to a smooth halt alongside an internal dock, on which stood the welcoming party.

‘High lord, high lady,’ trilled the foremost man, as he made a bow. ‘We are so very honoured by your presence. I am Goodsire Tang, aide to his honour, the baron. Please, come aboard.’

Chetta eyed Tang as Azariel took the step from skimmer to dock in one stride of his long, thin legs. The aide was a slim man in form-fitting crimson livery, with a wispy moustache, and short dark hair that stopped abruptly just below the tops of his ears, leaving the lower sides of his head and the nape of his neck bald. Chetta had seen fighting men before, and from his stance and physique, she would have wagered her favourite shuttle on this man being a bodyguard as well as an aide.

Chetta huffed her way cautiously along the short gangplank that had been set out, for where her husband was at the upper extremes of the human form in terms of height and limb length, her bloodline occupied the opposite end of the spectrum, being unusually short and stout. Such was the lot of the Navigator: the ability to stare into the warp and read it without having the sanity blasted from your mind threw up unintended and unavoidable genetic consequences. At least she didn’t have scales, or feathers, or completely lack human eyes.

‘Mamzel DuVoir is one of our chamberlains, and she will show you to your quarters,’ Tang continued, waving a hand at a dark-skinned young woman with patterns shaved into her short hair, and a collar of similarly patterned black metal around her throat.

‘High lord, high lady,’ DuVoir said, with a bow of her own. She gestured to the sleek, six-wheeled groundcar behind her, which bore Baron Zellanin’s crest. ‘Your quarters are some distance, but we have provided transport, if it pleases you.’

‘It most certainly does,’ Chetta said with some relief, for her hip would not have relished a long walk. ‘My heartfelt thanks, young lady.’

DuVoir flashed her a smile that contained gratitude and, Chetta thought, just a hint of surprise.

The Baronial Ball took place every Terran year, and was the highlight of the social calendar across a dozen systems. However, there was much more at stake than just pointed gossip and the latest fashions.

‘I hear the KeWitts are making a serious bid for the outer system mining contracts,’ Chetta said knowingly, over her flute of damassine.

‘Oh yes,’ nodded Colonel Arvashin. She had retired from active service two decades prior, and had since carved out a small but profitable niche manufacturing nicomoss cigars. Much of the nicomoss in question came from an agri world owned by House Brobantis, although due to various legal fronts and registered owners who might not technically exist, the colonel didn’t know that. ‘Lord Serranay sought an audience with the baron as soon as we got underway.’

Chetta smiled. She had in fact been speculating about KeWitt, who’d been playing the Tarot cards close to his chest, but that was the nature of the ball. Everyone made their play for the various lucrative mining and production contracts on offer in the Ardemis System, seeking their turn with Baron Zellanin, who then awarded them as he saw fit. The process quite possibly allowed for easy bribery, but in Chetta’s opinion the baron just liked the excuse to throw an enormous party, get feted by some of the more important figures in the Imperium, and show off his home.

‘And the inner planet, Crona?’ Chetta asked innocently. ‘I hear some very interesting compounds can be extracted from its foliage.’

Arvashin’s face went quite still. ‘Oh, it’s a death world. The cost of replacing the workforce alone would swallow any profit.’

‘I’m sure,’ Chetta said. ‘Good luck to whoever tries it!’

‘Indeed,’ Arvashin agreed, with a slightly forced laugh. Her face brightened more genuinely as a group of three arrived and began helping themselves to the pastries next to which she and Chetta were standing. ‘Ah, Lord KeWitt! We were just talking about you!’

Serranay KeWitt was himself a Novator, but whereas Azariel dressed in sober, severe suits, where the quality of the tailoring was apparent only to those who recognised the sheer opulence of the fabrics used, Lord KeWitt favoured flowing robes in silver-trimmed purple, with a solid silver half-mask that covered his face from the cheeks up, leaving only two holes for his human eyes. The line of his jaw was strong and both his visible skin and his physique fell well within the realms of human normality, so his lineage was not immediately apparent. If he removed his mask and opened his pineal eye, however, any normal humans unlucky enough to meet its gaze would quickly lose their minds as they stared into the horrors of the warp that were reflected in its depths.

‘Were you, indeed?’ KeWitt said with interest. His voice was a pleasant baritone, and unaccountably put Chetta in mind of honey-laced amasec. ‘And what did I do to attract the attention of two such fascinating ladies?’

‘The colonel was telling me about your bid for the outer system mining contracts,’ Chetta said bluntly. ‘It’s an area of interest for you, then?’ She tried to make her tone of voice as bored as possible, as though it were meaningless small talk to her.

‘What about this system isn’t interesting?’ KeWitt responded. Behind him a young man, one of the two people who’d accompanied him over, rolled his eyes. ‘The reefs of this planet alone could occupy an entire clade of magi biologis for years. People talk of the serpents, and I’ll grant you that they’re impressive, but some of the microorganisms–’

‘How dare you?!’ the young man demanded, addressing a servant with a tray of glasses and momentarily drowning out the beginning of Lord KeWitt’s zoology lecture.

‘Your lordship?’ the servant asked, wide-eyed. Chetta recognised that expression: it belonged to someone who’d realised that someone far more powerful than them had decided they’d made a mistake, and that they could do nothing to stop what was coming.

‘Do you know what this means?’ the young man demanded, pointing at the turquoise sash he wore from his right shoulder to his left hip. ‘Well?’

The servant gaped. ‘I…’

‘It means,’ the young man continued, ‘that I am a viscount of Stregalia! And you presume to offer me a tray of drinks with your left hand?’

Chetta frowned. Stregalia was a small system, some way from Ardemis, with no customs she was aware of about the etiquette of offering drinks to its minor nobility with one hand or the other.

‘Outrageous!’ Colonel Arvashin snorted, turning on the servant the full power of a disapproving expression that used to quell mess hall fights in seconds.

The other of KeWitt’s companions, a lady in a dress that appeared at least eighty per cent black ruffles, actually reached out and tipped the tray. The glasses fell to the floor and shattered, spilling alcohol and shards of crystal everywhere. Heads turned nearby as the ugly sound rang out above the gentle music, and the servant found themselves the centre of attention.

‘Careless,’ the true culprit tutted. ‘That will come out of your wages, I’m sure.’ She sniffed. ‘Well? Aren’t you going to clean that up?’

Chetta ground her teeth. KeWitt had stopped talking in favour of swivelling on the spot to sniff disapprovingly at the poor servant, who was positively wilting.

‘No,’ Chetta snapped, ‘they won’t.’ She stumped past KeWitt and placed one arm around the servant’s shoulder, turning them away from their antagonist. ‘What’s your name?’

‘Anagy, milady.’

‘Well, Anagy, you go and find a different part of the hall to serve, and if anyone takes issue with that then you send them to speak to me, do you understand?’

Anagy nodded, hope warring with fear in their eyes.

‘Good,’ Chetta said. ‘Now, off you go. I’ll find someone to take care of this mess.’ Anagy hastened away, not looking back in case it was all just a cruel trick. Smart thinking, in Chetta’s opinion.

‘Excuse me!’

Chetta turned slowly and deliberately, partly to annoy the speaker but also to make sure she didn’t slip in the gradually widening puddle of alcohol, and stared up into the narrow, angry face of the ruffled woman.

‘Do you know,’ the ruffled woman demanded, mainly through her nose, ‘who I am?’

‘Yes,’ Chetta said.

Eyebrows rose triumphantly. ‘Well then–’

‘I said I knew, not that I cared,’ Chetta cut her off. ‘You’re Ganalyn Furova, the third daughter of her eminence Heda Furova of Naila Prime. You’re disowned and, the last I heard, damned near financially bankrupt. Morally, of course,’ she continued into Ganalyn’s increasingly horrified expression, ‘you were bankrupt long ago. I have absolutely no interest in your opinion.’

‘You’re disowned…?’ the viscount said, unconsciously taking a step away from Ganalyn.

‘And you,’ Chetta said, waving her finger under his suddenly alarmed nose. ‘Making up a reason to pick on a servant, just to avoid getting bored by the lord you’ve been toadying around? I’d slap you with my left hand, if I wasn’t worried about disinfecting it afterwards.’

The viscount’s nervous glance at Lord KeWitt wasn’t exactly an admission of guilt, but it was very close to one.

‘And colonel!’ Chetta continued, rounding on Arvashin. ‘I remember when you referred to Imperial nobility as “a bunch of lily-fingered popinjays who couldn’t find their arses with both hands and an auspex”! But now you’ll side with these bullies, and watch a governor’s daughter humiliate someone because she feels like it?’

Arvashin’s lips tightened so much they practically disappeared. ‘That conversation happened when we were drunk–’ she began, her voice quavering with suppressed anger.

‘When you were drunk,’ Chetta corrected her. ‘I’d expected the fighting women of the Galladian Ninth to hold their liquor better, in all honesty. And Lord KeWitt,’ she finished, turning to her fellow Navigator.

‘And what buried secret from my past are you going to unearth to discomfort me, Lady Brobantis?’ he purred.

‘None,’ Chetta told him. ‘I simply wish you to know that I agree with the young viscount over there – you have an entrancing voice, Serranay, but you are utterly dull. Good evening to you.’

She turned and stumped away from them, circumnavigating the dance floor towards the whole roast grox that occupied a table on the far side. As she did so, she touched her comm-bead, which was disguised as an earring.

‘What is it?’ Azariel’s voice asked her. ‘Was that glass I heard breaking, or just you shattering someone’s dreams?’

‘A little of both,’ Chetta grunted under her breath. ‘Arvashin’s bidding for the Crona contract – she practically froze when I mentioned it. For someone who can face down a hive fleet bioform without flinching, she’s got no nerve for trade.’

‘Good. We can outbid her easily, so long as we know to do so.’

‘And the KeWitts are definitely going for the outer system,’ Chetta continued. ‘Arvashin tried to head me off from her own intentions by dropping me in it with Serranay, and I’ve never seen anyone dissemble so fast. He had a complete biological spiel prepared, just to avoid talking about the asteroid belt.’

‘That’s more concerning. They could match us. We’ll need more details – he could even be luring us in to make us commit resources to a big bid on something he’s not going for at all. Any chance that you can dig further?’

‘Not with Serranay,’ Chetta snorted. She picked up a plate. ‘I may have told him that he’s utterly dull.’

‘Chetta...’

‘I know, I know, but he is. Even if I’m sure that it’s partially on purpose.’ She tried to balance her plate in the same hand as the one that held her cane, but it wasn’t possible, so she looked up to attract the attention of a nearby servant. ‘Excuse me, would you mind?’

‘Of course, milady,’ he said with a smile, quickly and efficiently using tongs to deposit two pinkish slices of roast grox and a portion of sliced capsi roots onto Chetta’s plate.

‘Thank you.’ She turned away from the table and surveyed the dance floor. ‘Any luck at your end?’

‘I’ll get my audience with the baron the day after tomorrow.’

‘Emperor save me,’ Chetta grunted. ‘I’m not sure I can stand making small talk for that long.’

‘We’ll need the time. I’ve seen at least five Ludanites here, including Gavrel Aurallan. They must have a strong interest in something for there to be that many of them poking about. We need to know specifics.’

Chetta grimaced. The Ludanites were a society of some sort, although even the best efforts of House Brobantis’ formidable intelligence agents had failed to work out the details. They claimed to be serving the Emperor, but didn’t everyone? On the other hand, she was fairly sure the Inquisition had investigated them and yet the Ludanites were still around, so presumably they couldn’t be any form of heretic. But there were a lot of them, and they seemed to have deep pockets, and they were cropping up more and more often in this sort of situation.

‘Aurallan? Oh yes, there he is,’ she said quietly. Now she was looking for Gavrel Aurallan, she saw him quickly – a bony, earnest-looking fellow, with a pointed bald head that looked more to have risen up out of his hair than been revealed by the natural thinning processes of age. He was moving across the dance floor in a stately sweep with one of his… colleagues? Followers? Chetta wasn’t quite sure what terminology was appropriate. The measured precision of their steps was a front, though: each of them was scanning those around them as they moved, rather than staring into the face of their partner as tradition suggested.

‘How’s your dancing these days?’

‘Only marginally better than my levitating, as well you know,’ she snapped. ‘Why don’t you ask him for the privilege? At least you have two working hips.’

‘I’m not sure I’m his type.’

‘And you were never mine, but look how well that worked out for everyone,’ Chetta told him, and killed the connection. She hated dance floors. They reminded her that some people found spouses based at least partially on mutual attraction, rather than political necessity and genetic compatibility.

‘All for the good of the Imperium,’ she muttered, thinking of her children, Felicia and Ranovel. ‘All for the good of the Imperium…’

Another day had passed, and Chetta was quite thoroughly sick of syrupy alcohol, tiny pieces of finger food, and watching the graceful flourishes of those for whom dancing with a partner presented no physical barriers. Even worse, although she and Azariel had established that there were unlikely to be any notable competitors to their planned bids except for the KeWitts and the Ludanites, they’d had no success in discovering the details of what either other party might be intending. They returned to their suite in grim, frustrated silence.

‘If only you hadn’t–’ Azariel began, as they started to disrobe prior to climbing into the large, luxurious bed in which they would sleep on opposite edges. Chetta rolled her eyes, then frowned as something caught her gaze.

‘What’s that?’ she said, pointing, interrupting the start of her husband’s complaint.

‘A dressing table,’ Azariel said sourly. ‘I would have thought you’d become familiar with the basic concept.’

‘Not the table, you facetious pile of overlong bones,’ Chetta snapped. ‘The parchment! It’s not mine!’

Azariel came to stand by her shoulder, and looked down with her at the oblong of folded parchment nestled behind her powder brushes.

‘Curious.’

‘Indeed.’ Chetta reached out for it, but her husband put his hand on her arm.

‘Wait. It could be a contact poison.’

Chetta grunted. ‘If someone could place a poisoned parchment in here, they could apply the poison to something far less likely to arouse suspicion. My brushes, for one.’ She paused. ‘I need to remember that one. It could come in useful.’

‘Even so,’ Azariel said. He pulled thin gloves out of his pocket and donned them, then took up the parchment and unfolded it to reveal lines of handwritten Low Gothic text, with a hand-drawn pattern running along the bottom of the page. A signature?

Azariel squinted at it. ‘What is this?’

Chetta’s breath caught in her throat as she hovered her finger down the page. ‘Oh my.’

‘Oh my?’

Chetta smiled. ‘It’s exactly the information we need.’ She traced down farther. ‘Yes, yes, this all makes sense… Oh! Well, Aurallan has been a naughty boy, hasn’t he?’ She reached the last written line, and paused.

They look down on us, but do not see us.

‘We can’t trust this,’ Azariel argued. ‘We have no idea where it’s come from!’

‘Yes we do,’ Chetta told him, tapping the pattern. ‘Yes, we do…’

Sunset underwater was one of the most beautiful things Chetta had ever seen. It was worth coming all the way to Ardemis, worth even the mindless inanity of the Baronial Ball, just to experience the way the local star’s golden light filtered through the clear blue of the water and brought out the colour of the reef even more sumptuously in the few minutes before dusk began, when the world faded into shades of grey. She always made a point of coming to watch it at least once on every visit to the Glasswater, but on this occasion she had not picked her viewpoint at random.

A slight figure stood in front of a crystalflex wall, watching the natural display and bathed in its rippling light. Chetta moved up slowly alongside, not trying to hide the noise of her approach as she climbed the half-dozen steps to the viewing window.

‘Mamzel DuVoir?’

DuVoir looked around, and bowed her head in greeting. ‘High lady.’

‘I don’t like to disturb servants when they’re off duty,’ Chetta said, leaning on her cane. ‘I always feel you have quite enough to deal with the rest of the time. But I wished to express my gratitude, and it only took a few questions and one or two bribes to your inferiors for me to track you down.’

DuVoir’s browed creased slightly. ‘High lady?’

Chetta snorted. ‘I’m not a fool, DuVoir. If you’d truly wanted the note left in our suite to be anonymous, you wouldn’t have signed it with the pattern on your collar.’

‘That would have been foolish, I admit,’ DuVoir replied, turning back to look out at the water.

‘I cannot fault your information,’ Chetta continued. ‘It turned out that the baron was most displeased about Gavrel Aurallan’s indiscretion with the chambermaid–’

‘Indiscretion?’ DuVoir spat. ‘Please, high lady, your reputation is that of someone who speaks plainly. Call it what it was – a powerful man taking advantage of a servant who dared not refuse him.’

‘As you say,’ Chetta agreed. ‘And I must admit, it was foolish of Lord KeWitt to discuss the details of his planned bids within earshot, I presume, of one or more servants. But then again, as you wrote yourself, we look down on you, but do not see you.’

‘And the information was useful?’ DuVoir asked.

‘Most certainly,’ Chetta replied. ‘The Ludanites’ bids were summarily rejected, and the society themselves are now out of favour here. A bold stance for Archetuch to take, even as planetary governor, but he has always struck me as a fair-minded man. Meanwhile, my husband was able to successfully outbid the KeWitts in every way that mattered, and we have been awarded every contract we applied for.’ She shifted her weight on her cane. ‘All in all, the most successful Baronial Ball we have attended thus far.’

‘I am glad,’ DuVoir said.

‘So why us?’ Chetta asked. ‘Why House Brobantis?’

‘Not House Brobantis, high lady,’ DuVoir said, frowning. ‘You. Anagy’s account of how you stood up for them made the rounds very quickly. Others have reported similar interactions. You treat servants with respect.’

‘It’s kind of you to say so,’ Chetta grunted. ‘I am perhaps somewhat sharper with my tongue than I should be, at times.’

‘So I’ve heard,’ DuVoir said, a slight smile quirking her lips. ‘However, reserving your ire only for those beneath you is the preserve of bullies, high lady. Whereas you are known to dispense with it freely and equally in every direction.’

‘Hah!’ Chetta snorted. ‘Yes, possibly true. Much to my husband’s frustration.’ She looked sideways at the young woman. ‘What’s your background, DuVoir?’

‘I was educated at the Tzudyk Scholam, high lady,’ DuVoir replied smoothly, as though she’d been expecting the question. ‘To forestall your next question, I lacked the martial sensibilities to make a good candidate for the Adepta Sororitas or the Commissariat, and showed too much imagination to be a good fit for the Administratum. A chamberlain to a planetary governor appeared to be my best hope in life.’

‘But not any more?’ Chetta prompted.

DuVoir sighed. ‘High lady… I can only find so much satisfaction in overseeing the stocking of the governor’s pantries, arranging his schedule, and recruiting staff. I feel I would have much more to offer the right employer.’

‘I imagine that you would,’ Chetta agreed. ‘You appear to have a knack for intrigue, the courage to see it through, intelligence and, if I may say, a good judge of character.’ She tapped her fingers on the head of her cane, considering. ‘I could use an aide with such capabilities.’

‘An aide?’ DuVoir said with a slight gasp, turning to face Chetta. ‘High lady, that would be–’

‘Difficult,’ Chetta interrupted her. ‘Highly complex, delicate situations, with a steep learning curve. If you’re not up to it, I’ll find another, and fast. Plus, you’ll have to put up with me at my worst.’

DuVoir nodded, her expression determined. ‘I’d expect nothing less, high lady. It’s a risk I’m prepared to take.’

‘Marvellous,’ Chetta said with a smile. ‘Then we’ll have to talk to the baron and see–’

‘Lady Brobantis!’

The voice of Serranay KeWitt was now not a purr but a roar, and it echoed around the viewing chamber as he stormed towards them with his purple-and-silver robes flapping. The upper part of his face was still hidden by his mask, but there was no mistaking the angry set of his mouth.

‘Lord KeWitt,’ Chetta replied, turning to face him. She quickly scanned their surroundings, but there was no sign that he’d brought any flunkies with him. ‘My condolences on your failures.’

‘Enough of your smirking platitudes, you venomous hag!’ KeWitt thundered. ‘You think I don’t know of your underhanded dealings with servants? Your conspiracy to bring ruin on my house?’

‘Come now, my lord, I suspect you’re exaggerating,’ Chetta scolded him, picking her way down the steps to meet him on the open floor of the chamber. ‘We both know that a failure to win an Ardemis contract isn’t going to make a dent in your house’s finances.’

‘As ever, you know less than you think,’ KeWitt sneered at her. ‘Finances aren’t everything, Chetta. I do not take such meddling lightly, and nor should you!’

He reached up and removed his silver half-mask, and revealed his warp eye.

‘DuVoir, close your eyes!’ Chetta snapped, clawing off her diadem. A large stone of onyx sat in it and completely obscured her pineal eye from the view of others while it was in place, but she wasn’t going to leave herself undefended against such naked aggression. She didn’t open it yet, though: she would not be the one to initiate hostilities if she could help it.

‘Serranay, consider yourself!’ she said urgently. ‘No matter how justified you feel, this will not go well for you! Remember that I am Brobantis by marriage only – my bloodline is Dacastos!’

‘A ruined house of fools,’ KeWitt sneered, and his lid began to open to reveal the dark horror of the warp eye beneath. Chetta could meet its stare with her own, but to do so would be to engage in a duel that could lead to incapacitation, or even death for the loser.

‘I agree,’ Chetta told him. She had no sympathy for those who had married her off for political gain, especially since they’d subsequently squandered it. ‘But while my kin were certainly fools, have you ever heard of a Dacastos being defeated in a duel? It’s about the only thing we ever excelled at.’

KeWitt hesitated. In truth, Chetta was bluffing: Dacastos had tended to avoid duels, where possible. However, that did mean that there were very few notable defeats that could be easily called to mind, and she could see KeWitt’s uncertainty.

‘The Novator of House KeWitt accosting the spouse of the Novator of House Brobantis will not help you,’ she added. ‘If you truly wish to avoid ruin, then walk away.’

KeWitt exhaled hard through his nose, but he nodded. ‘Perhaps I was hasty.’

‘We need say no more about this,’ Chetta assured him, trying to calm her racing heart.

‘Honour must be satisfied, however,’ KeWitt continued. ‘Your underhanded tactics were only to be expected, but to have been betrayed by the servants of my host…’

He turned away from her and began to stalk towards DuVoir, who still had her hands over her eyes.

‘Serranay,’ Chetta said warningly, but he paid her no mind.

‘Such insolence cannot be borne,’ KeWitt growled. ‘You think I am too much of a dullard to remember who might have heard my words, girl? I fear your master would not take my complaints seriously. Look at me.’

‘Serranay!’ Chetta shouted.

‘Look at me!’ KeWitt bawled at DuVoir. He began to ascend the steps, reaching out his hands to seize hers and pull them away from her eyes.

‘I cannot be having with this foolishness,’ Chetta muttered, and thumbed the activation rune on her cane. Hidden power lines flared into life and her walking prop was momentarily transformed into a shock maul, which she swung clumsily at the back of KeWitt’s legs.

The blow struck home, and stunning power coursed through the robes of the Lord of KeWitt and into his body. He stiffened, let out a strangled yell, and fell backwards. The fall was an ugly one, and uglier still was the way his head cracked on the edge of a step. He landed in a twisted mess of limbs and cloth, and didn’t move.

‘Ah.’ Chetta moistened her suddenly dry lips with her tongue. ‘That is… inconvenient. DuVoir, are you certain you wish to take up position as my aide?’

‘Yes, high lady,’ DuVoir said, cautiously lowering her hands.

‘Good,’ Chetta said. She reached out with her cane and flicked away the fold of robe that obscured Serranay’s face. It revealed sightless eyes, and a skull that had been stoved in on one side. Ruin had come to Lord KeWitt sooner than even he had feared. ‘Then I welcome your suggestions on what to do with… this.’

DuVoir gasped, her hands flying to her mouth as she saw the freshly made corpse. For a moment, Chetta thought she was going to shut down completely. Then DuVoir swallowed, and composed herself.

‘There’s a waterlock,’ the girl said, pointing. ‘Just beyond those doors. Divers use it, but not at this time of day. It’s too dangerous, due to the serpents.’

Chetta raised her eyebrows. ‘You’d best get on with it, then.’

The body of Lord Serranay KeWitt drifted out into the gathering gloom, his robes floating around him like vibrant seaweed.

‘You handled that well,’ Chetta told DuVoir.

‘You don’t pass through a scholam without seeing a few bodies,’ the younger woman replied, slightly distantly. Chetta nodded.

‘Are you claustrophobic?’

‘I… No, why?’ DuVoir asked, frowning.

‘We would have been leaving soon anyway, but I think we shall have to move our schedule along,’ Chetta said. ‘And there will be no opportunity to discuss with the baron about you leaving his employ. Happily, I have a great many clothes with me, many of which I could leave behind. If you can fit into a packing case for the time it takes to get out of here and to our shuttle, that should dispense with any uncomfortable questions about why you’re coming with me.’

DuVoir hesitated, then nodded. ‘It’s not how I anticipated beginning my new employment, but that sounds workable.’

‘It’s probably only going to get stranger,’ Chetta advised her. She frowned. ‘I assume you have a first name?’

‘DeShelle, milady.’

‘Very well then, DeShelle DuVoir.’ Chetta took one last look out of the window, and turned away. ‘Let us be on our way, before anyone starts asking difficult questions.’

She set off, wincing as her hip jolted with every other step. DeShelle DuVoir followed, one step behind and one to the side, exactly where an aide should be.

Behind them both, the huge, dark shape of a serpent loomed up out of the murk. There was a flash of fangs, a rush of bubbles, and the body of Serranay KeWitt disappeared for good.

About the Author

Mike Brooks is a speculative fiction author who lives in Nottingham, UK. His work for Black Library includes the Warhammer 40,000 novel Rites of Passage, the Necromunda novella Wanted: Dead, and the short stories ‘The Path Unclear’, ‘A Common Ground’ and ‘Choke Point’. When not writing, he works for a homelessness charity, plays guitar and sings in a punk band, and DJs wherever anyone will tolerate him.

An extract from Rites of Passage.

They were forty-seven hours out of Necromunda when the warp shock took hold.

Chettamandey Vula Brobantis jerked awake from cloying dreams of roaring giants and blood-flecked axes as the Solarox shuddered violently, the entire starship spasming like some mighty aquatic beast impaled by a hunter’s harpoon. She rolled to her right, ignoring the pain in her shoulder, and reached out with her left hand to slap the lumens on. Pale light sprang up at the gesture, as torches held aloft by bronze images of Terran saints illuminated her private chambers. The rays glinted dully off the gilded surfaces of her dressing table – built of wood from a planet liberated from the savage aeldari – reflected from the gilt-edged mirror presented to her as a gift by Admiral Venuza of the 19th Pacificum Sector Fleet, and got tangled in the folds of black Azantian lace that hung around her huge, pillar-cornered bed. The bed that until a matter of days ago, she’d shared with her husband of forty-three Terran years.

But then there had been that unpleasantness with the rogue House Goliath pit fighter on Necromunda, and the life-voyage of Azariel, Novator of Navigator House Brobantis, had been abruptly and quite dramatically truncated, courtesy of an extremely large edged weapon. Chetta actually missed him a little, despite the fact that she’d orchestrated the whole thing. She’d had to kill the fighter concerned to ensure her involvement didn’t come to light, but no one seemed to doubt that she’d opened her warp eye and blasted his mind into fragments in self-defence.

Well, it had been self-defence, after a fashion. There was no question that Chetta would have died, if he’d been allowed to live and had suffered from loose lips.

The Solarox bucked again, and Chetta frowned. The Navigator for this segment of the voyage was Vora, a scion of one of the minor branches of House Brobantis. He wasn’t scintillating conversation, but he was highly competent at the business of guiding starships through the screaming, roiling mass of malignant energy that constituted the warp, else he’d have never been selected to pilot his Novator’s personal ship. For the Solarox to be acting like this either meant that Vora had steered them extremely carelessly into a warp storm an order of magnitude worse than any Chetta had ever experienced first-hand, or…

She keyed her bedside vox-set. ‘Captain Arqueba.’

There was nothing but the faintest of crackles of an open line for a few seconds, and then Anja Arqueba’s voice replied.

‘Lady Chettamandey.’

‘What’s going on?’ Chetta demanded bluntly. ‘I haven’t been tossed around this badly since taking fire from an ork cruiser in Tennyson’s Reach.’

‘We’re… not certain, my lady.’ Anja’s voice was as clipped and professional as always, but Chetta had known her for over a decade, and could hear the tension in it. ‘We’re still in the warp, and the Geller field is holding, but we’ve lost all communication with Lord Vora. We’re steering blind.’

Chetta swore, and rolled out of bed. ‘Have you got a reading on his vitals?’

‘No, my lady. As I said, we’ve lost all communication.’

‘Either that, or the links are working just fine, and he’s dead.’ Chetta sighed, running through the possible scenarios in her mind. The ravages of the empyrean could scour a Navigator’s skull clean of sanity, but one of her kind actually dropping dead mid-voyage was less common, although not unheard of. Heart failure, perhaps? Or possibly a fit, or some other madness that had caused him to tear himself from his throne and the machines that monitored him? ‘I’m heading up there. Prepare a team.’

There was of course one other possibility: that something unholy had manifested out of the shifting currents of the warp and was even now eating Vora’s soul. It was unlikely, but possible. However, leaving the ship blind in the immaterium was as good as a death sentence for everyone on board anyway. Chetta had calculated the mathematics of risk in her head and come to the same conclusion that she had so many times in the past.

If you wanted something done right, it was best to do it yourself.

‘Yes, my lady,’ Anja acknowledged her, and that was an end to the conversation. Chetta shrugged her way into a heavy robe and belted it securely, then eased on the diamond-encrusted slippers Azariel had gifted her for their tenth wedding anniversary.

The Solarox rocked again, and spilled Chetta sideways into her dressing table. She steadied herself on it, wincing at the jolt to her knee and ankle joints, and made a mental note to dispose of it as soon as she could get away with doing so. Collecting relics linked to the aeldari had been one of her husband’s few real vices, and the damned things made her decidedly uncomfortable.

The next jolt nearly sent Chetta tumbling backwards onto her bed again. She gritted her teeth, and took up her cane of blackened tachydon ivory from its resting place. She needed it some days more than others, but she’d be damned if she was going to try to make her way through a warp-tossed starship without it.

‘I cannot,’ she muttered, stumping towards her cabin door, ‘be having with this foolishness.’

The Solarox was not a large ship by the standards of the Imperial Navy vessels Chetta had served on, but nor was it a tug. Even using the express elevators, it took her several minutes to get to the forecastle, by which point her joints were protesting bitterly and her mood had worsened significantly. She’d been met along the way by the team Captain Arqueba had assembled at her instruction: a dozen Brobantis armsmen and women in midnight carapace, armed with suppression shields and combat shotguns. Thus flanked, Chetta approached the Navigator’s chamber: a heavily shielded, ingrowing barnacle in the ship’s structure, its external walls encrusted with pipes and power cables, and dotted here and there with readouts attended to by the Solarox’s crimson-robed tech-adepts. One of them looked up at the tap-tap-tapping of Chetta’s steel-shod cane on the deck.

‘High lady,’ the adept buzzed in greeting through the voice-synth that had replaced their vocal cords. It was an alteration most likely made by choice rather than necessity, but Chetta didn’t regard the Adeptus Mechanicus’ habit of replacing their body parts with machines with the same distrust or disgust as many humans did. There were many days when she’d have given her right hand for artificial hips, knees and ankles, but for the moment she was still stubbornly determined to stick with her natural body, despite her regular disagreements with it.

Besides, Chetta knew well what it was like to be regarded as a disgusting aberration. Navigators might be essential to the functioning of the Imperium, but that didn’t prevent the ill-informed and overly superstitious from regarding her and her kin as heretical mutants, rather than the finely tuned results of countless centuries of jealously guarded gene-lore.

‘What is the Navigator’s status?’ she asked, eyeing the chamber warily. The walls weren’t coated in frost, which was something – the very worst manifestations of the warp tended to drop the local temperature to something approaching a Valhallan summer.

‘Insufficient data to be certain,’ the adept replied simply.

‘Your best estimate?’ Chetta said. She’d learned long ago never to use the word ‘guess’ around the initiates of the Martian priesthood, since it tended to upset them.

‘There are no indications of abnormal atmospheric conditions within the chamber,’ the adept told her. ‘Readouts suggest a steady temperature of nineteen point two five degrees Celsius, with humidity at thirty-two per cent. However, we have no readings for pulse, respiration or brain activity. The probability of these monitoring mechanisms all failing at once while others are unaffected is approximately seven per cent. Ergo, I believe it is reasonable to assume that Lord Vora has expired.’

‘Marvellous,’ Chetta muttered. ‘The viewing shields?’

‘Still open, high lady.’

‘Whatever happened must have happened fast, then,’ Chetta said, more for the benefit of the others around her than anything else. She looked sideways at the sergeant and pointed at the outer blast door in front of them. It appeared ludicrously solid, but it wasn’t a Navigator’s frail frame that it was intended to contain. ‘Remain here, and shoot anything that comes out of that door unless you’re absolutely certain that it’s me.’

‘And if we think it’s Lord Vora, high lady?’ the sergeant asked.

‘Shoot it anyway,’ Chetta grunted, walking forwards. ‘It’s the only way to be sure.’ That had happened once, on one of her first voyages. Old Scara had ridden them through a warp storm, then when the time came to hand over to the next shift and he’d emerged from the chamber, something – some thing – made of torn flesh and jagged bone spurs had started to claw its way free from his skin. Three ratings had died before someone had managed to turn a heavy bolter on it, and even then it had nearly got to Chetta to open her throat with its teeth before it had finally been brought down.

She barely thought about it, these days. She’d seen far worse inside the chamber.

The first blast door slid aside and Chetta stepped through it, then gathered her robe around her as it slid shut behind her. She’d never yet had an item of clothing get caught, but it remained a tiny, irrational fear of hers, one that not even all her years of starfaring could shake.

The blast door in front of her opened, and Chetta took a cautious step into the Navigator’s chamber.

It wasn’t a large space, for a Navigator was required to do very little in there that involved any form of physical activity. It was dominated by the throne: an imposing seat of metal and animal leather, utilitarian yet menacing. Chetta absent-mindedly tugged her robe well clear of the closing second door and scanned the walls and ceiling. They were largely bare metal, and she could see nothing out of place there, no gibbering creature of malice and shadow waiting to spring the moment her attention was diverted. With that precaution taken, she stepped forwards cautiously to inspect the throne’s occupant.

Vora Brobantis was slumped in the seat, and quite definitely dead, if the trails of blood leaking from his nose and ears were anything to go by. Chetta prodded him suspiciously with her cane, but he didn’t spring up and try to murder her while screaming warp-riddled heresy.

‘Thank the Emperor for small mercies,’ Chetta muttered. Vora was dead, sure enough, but at least it looked like he might stay dead. Such things were never entirely certain, when the warp was involved.

With those details taken care of, Chetta turned to the side of the chamber she’d studiously been ignoring so far, and opened her third eye to gaze upon the warp.

The warp; the immaterium; the empyrean – all names that humanity had conjured and tried to apply to the roiling, boiling, raw energy that lay over and under and around the material universe in which the flesh and blood and bone of their species existed. It was a lexical effort to apply order and definition where there was none, the notion that by naming something it could be understood, perhaps even tamed and mastered.

The problem with that was that regular humans were blind and blunt, little more than mewling infants adrift in a hostile universe that would swallow them without mercy or compunction should they trail so much as a toe in the waters that bore them. Only Chetta and her three-eyed kin could look into the face of the warp and see anything of meaning; only a Navigator could hope to do such a thing and survive with their mind intact, and even then it wasn’t certain. The key to Chetta’s genetics lay many millennia in the dim and distant past, even further back than the rise of the Emperor and the formation of the Imperium itself. Perhaps, somewhere on Holy Terra in the most secure vaults of the Paternova, the most senior of her people, lay the true nature of the Navigators’ history. Then again, perhaps the knowledge was lost, along with so many other secrets.

Chetta frowned at the warp, trying as ever to make sense of what she was experiencing. Colours without name exploded and whirled, then died in starbursts of melting hues. Sounds chased each other past the viewport, then returned to sink their claws into it. The shifting, kaleidoscopic light momentarily turned every shadow in the chamber into a face, familiar but unplaceable, screaming in agony. She winced as a stabbing pain assaulted her forehead, seeming to reach right through her third eye and into her brain, twisting at its substance with ephemeral claws.

‘All quiet, then,’ Chetta snorted. She reached behind her, and her grasping fingers encountered Vora: still dead, she was delighted to find. She hauled him out of the throne and onto the floor with a grunt of effort, then forced her knees to raise her up so she could take his position. The throne, recognising that it had a new and living occupant, subtly extended its biometric devices to begin monitoring her vital signs.

‘Captain Arqueba?’ Chetta called, activating the vox.

‘High lady?’

‘Vora is dead,’ Chetta said, ‘but I’m a jokaero if I can work out why. The warp isn’t exactly calm, but this wouldn’t have bent the mind of a green acolyte.’ She frowned, drumming her fingers on the throne’s arm. ‘You’ll have to cope without direction for a little while longer. Something took a swipe at us, and I’d like to know what it was.’

‘As you wish, high lady.’

Click here to buy Rites of Passage.

A Black Library Publication

First published in Great Britain in 2019.
This eBook edition published in 2019 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.
Cover illustration by Neil Hodgson.

Serpents of Ardemis © Copyright Games Workshop Limited 2019. Serpents of Ardemis, GW, Games Workshop, Black Library, The Horus Heresy, The Horus Heresy Eye logo, Space Marine, 40K, Warhammer, Warhammer 40,000, the ‘Aquila’ Double-headed Eagle logo, and all associated logos, illustrations, images, names, creatures, races, vehicles, locations, weapons, characters, and the distinctive likenesses thereof, are either ® or TM, and/or © Games Workshop Limited, variably registered around the world.
All Rights Reserved.

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ISBN: 978-1-78999-241-0

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.