BLOODLINES
An Agusto Zidarov novel by Chris Wraight

FLESH AND STEEL
A Noctis and Lux novel by Guy Haley

GRIM REPAST
A Quillion Drask novel by Marc Collins

NO GOOD MEN
A Warhammer Crime anthology by various authors

BROKEN CITY
A Warhammer Crime anthology by various authors

SANCTION & SIN
A Warhammer Crime anthology by various authors

DREDGE RUNNERS
A Baggit and Clodde audio drama by Alec Worley

Contents

Cover

Backlist

Title Page

Warhammer Crime

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-one

Chapter Twenty-two

Chapter Twenty-three

Chapter Twenty-four

Chapter Twenty-five

Chapter Twenty-six

Chapter Twenty-seven

Chapter Twenty-eight

Epilogue

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Glossary

An Extract from ‘Bloodlines’

A Black Library Imprint

eBook license

It is the 41st millennium, and far from the battlefields of distant stars there is a city. A sprawling and rotting metropolis of ancient hives, where corruption is rife and murder a way of life.

This is Varangantua, a decaying urban hellscape, full of fading grandeur and ripe with squalor. Countless districts run like warrens throughout its cancerous expanse, from greasy dockyards and factorums to gaudy spires, decrepit slums and slaughterhouses. And looming over all, the ironclad bastions of the Enforcers, the upholders of the Lex and all that stands between the city and lawless oblivion.

To be a citizen in this grim place is to know privation and fear, where most can only eke out a meagre existence, their efforts bent to feeding an endless war in the void they know nothing about. A few, the gilded and the merchant-barons, know wealth, but they are hollow and heartless creatures who profit from suffering.

Violence is inescapable on these benighted streets, where you are either a victim or a perpetrator. Whatever justice exists can only be found through brutality, and the weak do not survive for long. For this is Varangantua, where only the ruthless prosper.

Consider then that the history of the Imperium is the twinned histories of the movement of meat and the movement of people. Amidst the stars, abroad, it is the story of predator and prey – man and beast. On worlds such as ours, colonised in ages past by brave and stalwart souls, we have learned harsh and necessary lessons:

That the masses of humanity share more in common with the humble grox than they would care to admit.

– Notes regarding Alectian agri-commercial productivity

PROLOGUE

He ran.

Mercutio Farentis ran as though his life depended upon it, as though every monster from the horror stories that old sailors carried back home from the deep void was at his heels. He stumbled as he ran, his haste making him clumsy – almost barrelling into a lumbering servitor as it dragged a stall out of its alcove. The construct’s owner yelled after him, shaking one grubby fist to the heavens. Mercutio barely noticed.

‘Just a little further,’ he mumbled to himself. ‘Almost there. Almost home. Almost safe.’ The words were a mantra, as repetitive as the pounding of his heart. The job was already ruined. The merchandise compromised. He had been stupid, so very stupid. Stupid and sloppy. The powers he served wouldn’t understand, could not and would not be satisfied with excuses.

And yet, in truth, that was not what terrified him. It was not the taint of failure or the gut-churning terror that his masters evoked. It was the presence that hunted him.

Buildings flew by in a blur of old stone and mouldering gutters. Iron gantries clattered above his head. The ever-present pulse of Varangantua took on a threatening rhythm, a heartbeat knocked out of tempo by primal animal fear. The lumens cast their long shadows, but he barely noticed them as speed stole them away, stretching them out like the things of a child’s nightmare.

Sweat sheened his forehead, pooling along his neck and shoulders. He could taste blood, bile and the acid sting of fatigue. He felt as though he had been running forever, reduced to a broken and weeping beast. Was he weeping? The back of his hand smeared away the tears and the sweat, making his eyes sting. Every shadow was alive, every corner threatened betrayal. He turned down a side alley, fingertips scraping over the bare brickwork of an ancient and ailing macro-abattoir. Blood stink soured the air alongside a raw, faecal stench that almost made him gag. He was so close he fancied that if he listened, he would hear the panicked lowing of prey animals and the thunk of the blades and bolts which would end them.

Then silence. A sudden, merciful quiet as the world caught its breath.

The rhythm and pulse of the city were a background thrum of eternal waking, transit and bustle, a world away from the here and now. He allowed himself the chance to breathe, and for the lactic burn in his muscles to subside.

They would be displeased. Recompense would have to be offered. It would cost him, Mercutio knew. He did not think he had it in him to pay their price again. To fail and be forced to give offerings in turn. There were only so many pounds of flesh that could be offered up to appease them. Still, he would go before them, and he would explain. He had been spooked. Interrupted. The package was lost, yes, and that was regrettable, but there were options–

A noise cut through the gloom.

Faint at first, the barest skitter of sound. Like claws against brick. A knife against a whetstone. He tensed at the sound. Such a familiar thing. A simple declaration of intent. He had done the same himself, had he not? When the fear had to be put to someone. It was a message. Panic gripped him – he could feel his lungs heaving, his stomach churning, his skin curdling and prickling.

‘Please,’ he whispered. ‘Please, don’t.’

It did not listen. It merely stepped from the shadows. Teeth glimmered in the sulphur light of the lumens, a too-white smile already streaked with crimson promise. The glittering blade it held mirrored its savage joy.

Slowly, deliberately, somehow gently, his fate edged forward to embrace him.

CHAPTER ONE

Reconsecration of Purpose

There was darkness, and there was pain – neither of which were new sensations to Quillon Drask.

The metal of the gurney was cold against his back, as uncomfortable as any apothecarion he had previously experienced. He realised now, at last, why he had taken so long to bring himself to this moment. The fear. The fear of being seen to be weak, or vulnerable, or simply being thought of as lax in his dedication to the job.

The darkness faded as he opened his eye. He could only see out of one of them, his left, and was staring at the plain grey ceiling of Bastion-P’s medicae wing. He found himself focusing on details that shouldn’t matter, the cracks and ridges of the ceiling holding his attention as surely as any cartorum. He felt as though he could reach out and he would be able to touch it, just a little, to dig his fingers into the stuff of it. That would be the drugs, Quillon, he thought, chiding himself.

‘Is–’ he tried to say, but a firm hand pushed him down hard against the steel. He could feel the augmetic implants in the fingers digging into him in warning.

Is everything all right? he had wanted to ask, but she ignored him. The chirurgeon was masked and gloved, a plastek apron crinkling against her torso as she moved. Her focus was absolute, even as her fingers pressed into his shoulder. He watched what he could see of her features as she worked, the sharp blue of her cybernetic eye, burning in such stark contrast to her dark skin and the pale green of the mask.

Her other hand was working, slowly easing the blade of a scalpel across the back of his eyeball, testing the iris’ embedded image lattice. A network of scars and tech nestled there, like a forgotten secret. Drask tried not to wince, not to think too hard about the fact that his eyeball had been drawn out of its socket – held on only by the stretched cord of his optic nerve.

Enucleation. The word came to him with a sick, sympathetic pop. The sort of word he had only seen before in reports, bound together in his mind with acts of utterly horrific violence. His breathing hitched as he willed himself not to panic.

‘Not much longer, Quillon,’ she said, with an almost maternal indulgence. ‘You’re doing very well. Everything seems in order with the implants – update and reactivation should be a fairly simple procedure.’

Drask tried to speak, but the words died in his throat. The migraine pain behind his eyes – behind his eye – spasmed and burned, flexing its invisible tendrils as it permeated his brain. He could feel the urge to vomit, the acid sting of it rising in his throat to meet the pain in his skull. He bit it back.

The web of suspensor wires bracing the orb tightened infinitesimally at his movements, the way a serpent coils around its prey. There were flickers of light across the clouded side of his vision, not sight resolving, merely the misfiring of nerve and machine. He did not blink. He could not. Instead Drask could only watch as the light returned. Stronger. Clarity came, and with it a word in place of imagery.

INTERFACING…

Drask heard the word, echoing in his mind in the bone-dry rasp of a servitor, but there was no voice. The machine-spirit of the iris implant was re-energising, connecting with the memetic systems-whisper of the dataveil. Functions that had long since atrophied were swelling once again into vital life, and his mind bore the trauma of the inload. His skin burned, itching with contradictory feedback.

‘Not long now, Quillon,’ she said from above him. Amelya Visarth looked down at him. He could sense the indulgent smile behind her mask, the gentle patronisation in her words. Perhaps it was to calm him, a little bedside manner, or perhaps it was for her own amusement. ‘You should be seeing the direct interface now.’ She looked away from him, at some distant screen, before looking back down at his sweating, strained features. ‘Talking isn’t a good idea, so give me a nod if you can see it.’

He nodded, and she nodded back, pleased. She drew the scalpel blade away from the socket and the nerve, and he stopped feeling its gentle pressure upon the base of his eyeball. It was an almost impossible sensation to describe, made all the stranger by the slow pulse of the wire cradle. Amelya turned away, and the wires began to retract at some typed instruction. He felt the wet suction as his eye was lowered back into place.

Vision returned slowly, from out of the darkness of the optical disconnect. It was blurred, at first. His eye had been kept misted, but even so it felt dry within its socket – till the involuntary flood of tears came. He blinked them away, and the iris implant responded to his blink-clicks avidly, starved from lack of use.

‘I’ll still never understand how you went so long on terminals alone, Quillon.’ Amelya shook her head as she spoke. He smiled, wincing at the pain behind his eyes. His face, his entire musculature, felt as though it was still struggling to readjust. His skull felt somehow heavier, though he knew on some intrinsic level that it was simply his imagination.

‘You’re one of the few people who actually use my given name – did you know that?’

‘You might have mentioned it before.’ Amelya placed her implements down, brushed her hands against her apron and leant back in to examine his eye. ‘Settling nicely,’ she said, clicking her tongue. ‘I know that it hasn’t always been your way, but a return to active duty was dependent upon you actively using the tools at your disposal.’ She looked down at his bare torso, at the long ragged scar across his abdomen. It had a sheen to it. A freshness. The cause of it, the much lamented cause… Amelya shook her head. Drask knew it hurt her as much as it did him. The sense of betrayal inherent in it. They had loved Alexius, each in their own way. Drask as a father, Amelya as a respected colleague and friend.

Alexius Voight had much to answer for, and had paid the price in the end. In many ways, Drask felt he was still paying for the sins and mistakes of the past.

Drask blinked, over and over, as the writing clarified and the tracery of lines resolved themselves into the iris’ interface patterns. Nests and webs of sigils unfurled, like incantations, and he shook away the overlay. Old habits, years old, from when he had first taken the implant, re-established themselves with the ease of breathing.

‘I think it’s working now,’ he said, not entirely convincingly. Amelya looked at him, sighed and shook her head. Her augmetic fingers cracked and whirred as they realigned. She took up the tools she had been using and placed them back on the tray with a frown.

‘If there are any complications, though, I expect–’

‘Of course,’ Drask said, cutting her off. ‘You’ll be the first to know if it starts to burn its way through the back of my eyeball.’

‘Quillon,’ she said. He could hear the caution in her voice. Even he knew where to draw the line with Amelya Visarth. ‘There are any number of complications that could arise from the implant, especially after so long a period of disuse. Visual distortion, pain, blindness, audiovisual hallucination. All I’m asking is that you are careful.’

‘I know,’ he said contritely. ‘I’ll be careful. But I trust your work. I wouldn’t want anyone else digging around inside my skull.’ Something flickered in his eye, an eagerly flashing rune – crimson and insistent. He chuckled a little. ‘Not that anyone else cares about my preferences. There’s a…’ He blink-clicked the symbol, and it unfolded out. ‘A case, already.’

‘Anything interesting?’ Amelya asked. Her tone was calm. Neutral. Drask knew her better than that, though. He could taste the interest, just beneath the surface. Amelya had always had a morbid streak. Even in Alexius’ day. Her passion for it was exceeded only by her knowledge, as though everything were a book to be read, or a body to be rendered apart. Everything was secondary to that quest for understanding. Her desire verged upon obsession, known and visible only to those closest to her.

Drask knew that feeling well, had felt it writhe beneath his skin, and he had learned it from the best. His gift, his knack – whatever names others threw at it – lay in seeing that hunger in others. Seeing where it thrived, or burned, or curdled.

He scanned the unspooling information as it flowed down his eye. He shook his head. ‘Nothing special. Homicide. Only blessing is that it’s up-district.’

‘A break from the worst of the cold then?’ Amelya chuckled. ‘Keep me posted. If there’s anything I can do to help, you know where I am.’

‘I’ll forward the body on to Bastion-P. Least I can do, considering…’ Drask waved his hand vaguely around his eye. Amelya shook her head and laughed softly.

‘I appreciate the meagre effort, Quillon. Throne keep you. His Hand.’

Drask did not nod, and he did not look back as he picked up his long black greatcoat and shrugged it on, hearing the reassuring crack of synthleather as it adjusted and moulded to his body. He raised a hand in a gesture that might have passed as a goodbye and then shouldered past the doors to the apothecarion chamber. It abutted the central mortuarium of Bastion-P, and he emerged into the gleaming chrome of that chamber. He could see his distorted reflection in the cryo-fixed drawers, his dark hair close-cropped and greying at the temples. His skin was ruddy despite the chill beneath the station. His eyes, pale blue, caught the lumen light of the mortuarium, and Drask could make out the ring of red-gold that marked the active iris implant.

That’ll take some getting used to, he thought with a soft chuckle.

Servitors trundled into the room, long mag-lifters stretched out behind them in place of arms as they heaved the unliving cargo into the room – waiting for Amelya or one of her acolytes to examine them or assign them a berth. They stared ahead, unthinking and unaware. If they noted their grey-skinned cybernetic reflections in the surface of the drawers, they gave no indication. As dead, for all intents and purposes, as the bodies they transported.

Who had they been? he wondered sometimes as he traversed the many floors of the Bastion. Whether cornered in technical areas such as this or watching from the sanctity of his desk space, he had watched them going about their business. Had they been sanctioners past their prime? Acolytes or helots who had failed to make the grade and ascend into the ranks? Or were they, as so many were, criminals themselves? Lobotomised. Reworked. Shaped for service eternal. Drask suppressed a shudder and moved past the cyborgs. They did not react, merely pivoted and laid their charges upon the examination tables with a hydraulic hiss of effort.

Drask scrolled through the case file again.

Quite a ways up-district, as it happened. The active location for the case was a few streets away from the outer quadrants of the Risyan Commercia. He had been considering taking the mag-trans, but at that much of a remove a groundcar might be the better option. Drask suppressed a sigh as he headed out of the mortuarium, up the cold granite stairs and into the bustle and never-ending tumult of the Bastion’s central hub. With any luck there would be a spare vehicle for him to requisition.

Before… He paused, catching the thought. Before the Silver Coin, he would have simply soaked the indignity, but the world was changed now. He was noticed again, and things were expected of him. And there were the wounds, of course. The ache of old scars across his stomach where the knife had bitten. Where the man who had been his mentor, who had been his friend, had tried to kill him.

The wounds ached even to think of it. An itching, burning whisper of memory and pain. By the end Alexius had been less than himself. He had become a thing, a ghoulish, broken reflection, and killing him had been a mercy. Such thoughts had haunted him since the incident. The barbed necessity of it.

‘I did all I could,’ he whispered, and the words were lost beneath the din of the Bastion. ‘I did my duty.’

CHAPTER TWO

The Hungry City

His luck held. That was new.

Drask sat behind the wheel of the groundcar, engaged the ignition runes and listened to it bark throatily to life. It was a standard probator-issue model, a boxy black Noxus. They left them in a near-permanent state of semi-neglect, the better to ensure that they blended in, but there was also a weary resignation to it. The dirt, slush and muck of District Polaris wormed its way into everything.

Make too much of an effort and it would be noticed. Too clean a car meant you had something to hide or something to prove, and neither was a desirable mask to wear on the ice-rimed streets of the southern district.

It would do the job, and that was what mattered.

Drask drew the car out of the squat rockcrete parking structure attached to the Bastion, past the pale green optics of the surveillance skulls. The servo-units bobbed, scanning each vehicle as it passed in or out of the warren of ramps and the crowded expanse of the vehicle hubs. If you knew where to look, you could see where the stubber barrels protruded from the faux stonework and statuary, where the heroes of generations long since dead would cut you down as surely as any street thug.

Confirmation runes flickered green, the threat of the guns passed, and Drask pulled out and to the right – away from the stocky, looming darkness of the Bastion, away from its squat tangle of support buildings and up towards the main transitways heading north.

Compared to other districts, Polaris was a sparse affair. Densely populated, as befit a city of Varangantua’s stature, but there were few lofty heights. The transitways rose above a grey plateau of buildings, docklands fattened with stored goods, the vast drum-and-shell storage tanks for promethium fuel, drab refec-houses and smog-wreathed manufactoria. It was a largely colourless expanse, sharing none of the light or heat or motion of the northern districts with their heaving commercia.

For all its atrophy, its wizened grey apathy, Polaris was a hungry district within a hungry city. The anaemic pallor of its ice-rimed streets and buildings belied the constant flow of resources and manpower beneath. A sleeping giant, some might consider, biding its strength.

Drask tried to keep his eyes on the road, to stop himself from looking out across the slate and sleet of the city. It was, to him, the image of a lichyard writ large, an abattoir of ambition. He hated the cold, and the climate’s bite, but it was home.

The grey waste began to break apart, increasingly so the further north he went. The buildings became more diversified, new organ systems for the arterial roads to snake between. A pyramid of green glass rose to his right, and Drask could see the scrolling neon of the chameleon-screens as they advertised.

VRANX AGRI-MERCANTILE

The intensity of the banner’s message was like a scream. Forced out. Imprinted upon the world. It was projected with all the brash boldness of Varangantua’s corporate culture. Warring merchant-combines, treating the city as their battlefield. He sighed gently, shook his head and turned off towards the next ramp.

Vranx A-M were big business in Polaris. Their shipments were too perishable for central city landing platforms, and so they offloaded here in bulk. Containers of gene-fixed grain and imported protein fluxes. They even brought meat, real grox – and other stranger, more rarefied flesh – not like the gutter leavings that others might flog in the myriad street markets that saturated the district. Some of that came from Genovska, though by no means all, and the fitful symbiosis sustained them. Polaris gave and it took, and Varangantua endured from those interactions.

As the groundcar moved down the ramp he lost sight of the monolithic edifice of the Vranx headquarters. The weight and glare of the corporate enclave lessened, and he could more readily leave the thoughts of duelling merchant-combines and their pervasive control behind.

There were more pressing threats ahead of him.

He parked two hab-blocks away from the scene and walked the remainder of the way. Drask had unbuttoned his coat, letting it fall open around him, shifting in the faint breeze. The cold was far less oppressive, helped by the bustle of nearby commercia. A small crowd had gathered to watch the proceedings, jostling, stretching to try and see past the wall of electro-barriers and the armoured line of sanctioners. Shock mauls sat at their hips, idle, even as fingers quested to the weapons’ handles with wary eagerness.

They had a job to do. Just as he did.

Drask reached into his coat and drew out his holo-seal, watching the sanctioners’ eyes as his credentials spooled out beneath the crowned serpent and death’s head of the Varangantuan Enforcers. ‘Drask,’ he said simply. ‘I’m told there’s been a homicide?’

‘Sir.’ One of the sanctioners nodded sharply, breaking off from his detachment to escort Drask through the cordon. The line shuffled along, securing any gap before it could be exploited. ‘Back here, sir,’ the sanctioner said. He was male, though the helm and armour obscured any other identifying details. He led Drask across the open expanse of a small square and then around the corner, under the looming shadows of steam pipes and industrial effluent stills. There was a clatter, a clunking pulse somewhere in the metal above as a pneumo-tube thundered past to whatever end.

And beneath all of it, all the foetid life of the city, lay the victim.

The body was face down in a pool of murky run-off from the nearby building, surrounded by a loose knot of sanctioners and verispex. The latter were grey-clad and the machine pallor of their calling had crept into their skin. The technicians’ ashen complexion gleamed unhealthily beneath the intense spot-lumens, and some of them gathered watchfully around the lamps that had been erected in the street, poised like carrion birds waiting for their turn.

Drask flashed his seal again, and the gaggle of verispex nodded appreciatively, aware now that their moment was approaching. The sanctioner who had accompanied him took off his helmet and spat to one side, prompting a flurry of alarmed cries from the technicians about ‘genic contaminants’. He looked relatively unbothered, turning to regard Drask with an easy smile. The man had a face built for recruitment posters. Tight-cropped dark hair and vibrant green eyes defined a face that had managed to avoid the worst of the southern chill. He was by no means tanned, but he lacked Drask’s wind-whipped redness or the drawn paleness of other inhabitants of Polaris.

‘What’s your name, son?’ Drask asked wearily.

‘Duren, sir. Sanctioner Indric Duren.’ He was eager, Drask noted, though not to please. There was a need there. Something desperate, ugly and ambitious. He had seen it before, when others had decided that they were in the presence of greatness and wondered how they might turn it to their advantage. It was almost a shame that Drask’s own currency was false weight.

‘Going to need you to see to the perimeter, Sanctioner Duren,’ Drask said without looking up. He could sense the man’s stance alter slightly. Stiffening, just out of sight. He turned to the waiting group of verispex and nodded. ‘Turn him over, please.’

They moved in close to the body as Duren skirted around them, glaring back occasionally at Drask. Two of the technicians took hold of the corpse with their gloved hands and heaved him over. The run-off dribbled from his face, leaving dirty smears down the skin – brown warring with red across his cold countenance. Drask wasn’t sure how much was the man’s own blood and how much had come from the abattoir’s drainage sluices. Everything stank of old death, drowning the new beneath its stolid weight, but Drask didn’t bother to cover his mouth or nose.

Discomfort and disgust, like pain, could be endured and overcome.

‘Throne…’ hissed a voice from behind him as the victim’s torso was revealed. Drask turned slowly, fixing Duren with a withering stare. That made the sanctioner’s features pale a little. His eyes flickered from the corpse to Drask and then back again, before he finally took the hint and moved back towards the patrol line.

‘What do we have here then?’ Drask asked, lowering himself down behind the verispex. The air was filled with a clicking refrain as they unfurled their tools – or allowed them to unfold from the implants within their hands, haptic tendrils extending hungrily – and began to catalogue the body.

He could understand Duren’s rasped reaction, looking at the body. The man had been savaged, more the victim of an animal attack than obvious human malice. Gouges in the flesh gaped wetly, and amidst the red, dripping ruin Drask could see the white of bone. Even there, whatever malicious force had done this had cut into the surface, leaving rents hammered into the ribs. There was no uniformity. In places it was clear that the blade, if it had been a blade, had merely scored and etched the bone, while in others there was evidence of sawing. Driven. Meticulous. Cracks spiralled off down the spars, into the bloody darkness. He could see the interplay of fat and muscle where it had not been so brutally cut through. Drask leant back on his haunches, sighed deeply and then rose to his feet.

One of the verispex turned to regard him, smiling as he did so. The man nodded down at the body. ‘Any preliminary thoughts, probator?’ He was older than Drask, though it wasn’t clear by how much. His greyish complexion blended with the lines of wrinkles that scored it. Drask was reminded of the statues of officers past which glowered down from the battlements of Bastion-P, time-worn and storm-weathered. The man’s gaze held him, both eyes replaced by whirring cybernetics – a common verispex augmentation – which clicked and clattered as they substituted focusing lenses.

‘Too early to tell,’ Drask admitted. ‘The level of brutality is significant… No real pattern to the wounds. You would almost think that it wasn’t the work of a man.’ He paused and scratched his chin. ‘Mutants, maybe. Or some sort of animal? Assuming it isn’t a trained beast, then it could have been something dredged up from the undercity. Vermin as big as cyber-mastiffs down there, so I hear.’ He turned and held out his hand. ‘Quillon Drask. I don’t believe we’ve been introduced.’

‘Sigmund Ronem, sir. Senior field technician. Did you have any requests for the processing of the cadaver?’ Behind the man a pair of servo-skulls had drifted in from the perimeter, their eyes flickering with green light as they ran active and passive scans over the immediate area.

‘Have it transferred to the Bastion’s primary mortuarium, into the care of Senior Medicae Visarth.’ He blink-captured a few shots of the body, panning across the wounds. Perhaps the implant has its uses, Drask mused. Images blossomed across his line of sight, rotated and shifted, before folding away for later scrutiny. He began to mentally record the details of the corpse, the man’s worn but well-appointed clothes, the tidiness of his hair and skin. Death had sullied him, but he had been young, seemingly strong, and had that look of well-to-do about him. From one of the nicer habclaves, more than likely. Ytrensc or Valov. The scuffed clothes seemed performative somehow, as though there simply to mislead.

Or as a predator’s camouflage.

Drask frowned at the thought, almost surprised at where it had arisen from. It could be targeted. Gangers, maybe. The body had a courier’s leanness. He took in the animal aspect of the man, sharp like a hunting canid. He almost expected that the teeth would draw back in a beast’s snarl, the fangs of the ghoulish dead.

It was not a monster, though the body lay unmoving in the circle of light cast by the lumen. Jumping at shadows. Imagining phantoms. Like some newblood, fresh out of training. He almost laughed at the thought of it.

Something caught his eye, a flash of white in the hands of the corpse. Drask went back down on his haunches and scrutinised the knotted fingers. Caught in the white-knuckled death rictus was some kind of material. A thin, fine white cloth. In the hands of the victim, it seemed out of place. Too high quality and too pure for such dreary surroundings and a seemingly grisly death. He waved Ronem over, drawing his attention.

‘Have you seen this?’ Drask asked.

Ronem crouched down and forced the fingers open. It had been barely visible, a mere flicker of white in the paling digits, tucked so deep it was practically buried in the man’s sleeve. He had been holding tight to it. Even in death.

‘Can’t believe I missed that,’ the tech muttered.

‘Have that collected, placed in a veriquary and delivered to my desk at the Bastion.’

‘Noted, sir. Shall we proceed with our catalogue and transit of the cadaver?’

Drask nodded. Ronem spun on his heels, raised his metal hands and clapped them together with a clatter. The eyes of the servo-skulls pulsed crimson, outloading their sensor findings to each of the waiting adepts. They moved in perfect unison, movements so precise that Drask could practically see the clockwork whirring and clicking underneath their skin, behind their eyes. Yet they possessed a human surety and a fullness of mind which would never see them truly mistaken for automata. The grey tide descended, intrinsically informed of where there might be evidence, and began to collect it. Metallic hands took hold of the barest hint of loose hair or fibres, while extruded pincers scraped at skin and clothing. Fine meshes brushed along surfaces, and the webbed silver strands reminded him, painfully, of the nest of tendrils which had so recently cradled his eyeball. An adept slowly prised apart the victim’s fingers and scooped up the cloth into the waiting mouth of a veriquary casket.

Ronem moved low, effortlessly weaving through the dance of his subordinates, and examined the chest cavity. He clicked his tongue as though confirming a suspicion. His optical augmetics clicked avariciously. ‘Probator?’ he called as he extended a fine pair of haptic tweezers from one digit and took hold of something in the body’s cavity. A crunch of bone echoed out as he drew back, a small fragment of metal seized in the machine grip. ‘I do believe we have a residual fragment of whatever implement was used to inflict such… unsightly damage.’

‘I’ll take that directly,’ Drask said.

Ronem pulled a veriquary casket from the folds of his own robes and deposited the gore-slicked fragment into it. He sealed it and handed it to Drask, who held it up to the light. A sliver of stained metal.

He gave it a shake and watched it dance within the casket, leaving smeared trails of blood along the interior. The tip of some slim, sharp blade had broken free, lodged in the bone, and had only been caught by Ronem’s keen eye.

He had no doubt it would prove useful and already had someone in mind who would be able to help with identifying it.

Drask turned away from the body and the predations of the eager verispex. His hand crept to the holster of his Tzarina autopistol as he looked around the crime scene again. He moved cautiously around the hive of activity, eyes cast low as he surveyed the sodden, mucky ground. He lacked the specialised senses, scanners and auspex sweeps of the techs, but the iris implant clicked and focused relentlessly, taking in imprints and impressions, cataloguing them for later perusal.

‘Be sure to forward on the ground topography scans,’ Drask said as he moved off. ‘I want to know how many men there were here, our friend included.’

‘By your will, probator!’ Ronem bowed his head. ‘We shall update the case file via the dataveil as and when is needful. His Hand.’

‘His Hand,’ Drask replied, almost as an afterthought. Whatever had done this, human or otherwise, it meant there was a monster loose within their city. A savage and terrible thing feeding upon the populace. The very thought sent a shudder through him. He willed himself not to look back.

‘What are you?’ he asked the empty air.

CHAPTER THREE

Empty Streets

Risyan was a vague tangle of streets sprawling away from the intersection of Castellan and Causeway. It was – or had been, at any rate – a major transit hub for Vranx goods along with the mercantile pursuits of other bonded guildsmen and combine shell holdings.

The streets had, in ages past, bustled with life and commerce. He remembered places like them from his youth, the eternal cycle of boom and bust that characterised an Imperial city such as Varangantua giving as much as it took. Some companies were greater than that cycle, though. He looked up at the faded banners above the storehouse doors, the words etched into the closed shutters. Merchant-combines like Vranx or Terashova swept through areas like Polaris, as rapacious as a fire through the forests of legend. Taking, shaping, breaking and remaking. All to feed their appetites. Barons and aristocrats swarmed the city, even in its dying districts, bleeding them for whatever small advantage they could wring out. Never truly moving on to new sport, though. Varangantua had become a warren of competing interests and incompatible hungers. Territory was guarded jealously and exploited down to the marrow.

His stomach growled in sympathy, and Drask looked down, almost surprised. He had been advised not to eat before the procedure, and had been in such a rush to get to the scene that he hadn’t had a chance to rectify the matter. He looked back towards the scene and the direction of his groundcar. There was time for a wider reconnaissance, surely, and perhaps a chance for some food.

A lifetime of odd cases and ravaged bodies had long since stripped him of a squeamish disposition.

Drask forged through the empty streets, chasing the flickers of distant neon on the abandoned windows, playing through the crime scene in his mind as he did. He resisted the urge to call up the buffered images as he walked, relying instead on his own direct recollections. Light began to filter into the streets as he drew out of the decrepit vistas of the old businesses and into the subtle environs of the commercia which clung to them like limpets. A few bedraggled figures hurried from place to place, gawping at the wares of sellers – grimy fingers tugged at crude necklaces or lingered over drab blankets. He ignored them, passing them without a word, leaving them lost in their own bleak worlds.

Eventually he found what he was looking for. The flashing sign of the refec-house was tucked between a heaving, badly maintained generatorium and a dilapidated two-floor shack which was laden with an assortment of garish, moth-eaten rugs. Drask shouldered his way through the narrow door to the eatery, made a show of rubbing his hands together and removing his gloves, and sat down in a corner booth.

He gestured an attendant over and ordered, watching the man trudge off – with barely more enthusiasm or vigour than a servitor. Drask considered the details of the case thus far as he waited for his food. A courier, if that was what the man had been, opened up a number of avenues. It could be a narco killing, in which case it was something that could easily be passed off to another probator, one more immersed in that side of Polaris’ bleaker trades.

But it won’t be, whispered the thought from the back of his mind. You don’t deserve a simple life of simple crimes, only the best for you. For your gift.

But why? The question haunted him. He had often considered how these things found him. Part of it was the echoes of Alexius’ attention – the training he had imparted, the insight he had provided. Drask had been an apt pupil, a vessel of knowledge and tradecraft, but tarnished by the depths of obsession. After that it had been the simple gravity of circumstance. Like had called to like. When he walked the streets of the city he couldn’t help but pre-empt its evil. He gazed down the longest, darkest streets, and they stared back.

Like calling like. Light and shadow.

He shivered despite himself, despite his coat and the refec-house’s struggling heat-cyclers. More often than not he heard his thoughts in his own voice, that chronometer-reliable mental monologue helping him to catalogue and control the near-constant deluge of thought, but sometimes…

Sometimes it was his voice. Alexius, reaching out from the shadows of memory – as he had been, not as he had ended. Not the ghoulish rasp of the monster he had become but the instructor he had been before. Merely memory, sharpened to purest instinct.

A clatter broke him from his reverie and he looked up. The dour-faced attendant had practically slammed down the pewter tray with his food. Drask looked at him, barely hiding his displeasure, and tossed a few slates onto the table in front of the man. The attendant scooped up the coins, nodded simply and then turned away to deal with someone else. Drask watched him. Tattoos wound up from the edges of his collar. A carrion bird perched upon a skull, one socket leaking blood drops and the other smeared with gunpowder. Gunsmoke Crow, Drask thought. One of the crews who worked the bullet lines in the munition.

Too often members of that coterie would tumble off the gunwagons and find themselves running amongst proper gangs. Chemysts, weapons experts, assassins… There was always a need for such people in the teeming underbelly of Varangantua.

Sometimes, though, they landed on their feet. Found honest work.

He reached out, opened the top of the rough-lacquered card container and began to spoon out the carb-reclaimed strings in their thick, oily, chem-tasting gravy. As he ate, sipping his mug of tepid recaff, he scrolled through the images he had taken. Watching them unfurl down his sight was still a strange sensation. He hadn’t quite mastered resolving detail, but the overview was useful.

Drask looked again at the body, its positioning, the puddling of the building’s tainted run-off, the muck and slush of the alley. He scrutinised the smudged outline of footprints, trying to trace the victim’s path, the likely approach or positioning of any pursuer, numbers… He sighed.

Knowing where people stood, where they fought and died, was one thing. To truly understand the lie of the land, the terrain, that was entirely another. He waved the attendant over.

‘Sir?’ the man asked, the bland questioning of someone who truly cannot be bothered. ‘Everything all right with your food?’

Drask smiled, shook his head and bit back his response. He could tell the man that the carb was overdone, the meat was obviously synthetic and the suspension had undoubtedly soured, but he held his peace.

‘You work here. I take it you live nearby?’

‘I… do?’ he replied uncertainly.

‘Then you know the sorts of people who come around here.’

The man blinked. His skin was Polaris grey, worn and weathered by a life in the southern shadows – further than most from Alecto’s weak star.

‘I might.’ He gulped. Collected himself. ‘You cartel? I don’t want trouble.’

‘There’ll be trouble regardless,’ Drask said. He drew his seal, flashed it at the man and savoured the bulging of his eyes with sudden alarm. ‘I’m a probator.’

‘Sir, I can assure you that this business is–’

‘Your business is shit, son.’

‘I–’

‘Hush now.’ Drask drummed his fingers against the rough wood of the tabletop. ‘I’m not here for you, or yours. What I want is a sense of what makes this place tick.’ He looked the man in the eyes, held his gaze and then took a sip of the recaff. ‘There’s been trouble, couple of streets over. You see anyone coming and going? Anyone look as though they’ve had a bit of a scrap?’

The man cast his eyes down. ‘No, sir. No one. It’s workers, mostly, that come through here. From the factorums, the slaughter floors, the loading docks. There’s the odd gang, of course, but where doesn’t have gangs? This side of the city especially.’

‘You got any names? They run narco?’

He looked around, uncertain, eyes alive with sudden fear. ‘I-I wouldn’t know anything about that, sir. I just work here. I just serve food.’ He drew a deep, gulping breath. ‘I need this job. Ain’t nothing been the same around here since the factorum closures. Half capacity now, they say. Spreading out the business, because there’s more business, but it’s everyone else who suffers.’

‘Not my problem,’ Drask said with a shake of his head. ‘The concerns of guilders and merchant-combines are far beyond either of us, friend. Even when you have a badge.’ He jammed his fork into the carb slurry, spinning the strings around it before raising it to his lips. He chewed thoughtfully. ‘What’s your name?’

‘Nathanael.’

‘Nathanael, who runs these streets?’

‘The Crimson Court have the old core industrials,’ Nathanael said, scratching at his chin. ‘Where the oldest Vranx holdings used to be. Down by the docks it’s the Ice Rats.’

‘Any trouble with them?’ Drask asked.

Nathanael shrugged. ‘They make overtures from time to time. Protection gambits, mostly.’ He rubbed nervously at his tattoo, like a priest would toy at a talisman. ‘They come and go. Most often the boss pays them.’

‘Did you notice anyone else in the area? Anyone out of place? Upclave types especially.’ Drask watched Nathanael’s reaction as the man blinked and hesitated. He sighed. ‘I suggest you unburden yourself.’

‘There was…’ Nathanael trailed off. ‘A bit of commotion with someone who looked out of place, an upclave type, like you said. Few hours back. Came tearing down through the main thoroughfare, out into the alleys. One end of the commercia to the other. Towards Risyan’s edge. Like all the gangers and worse were after him.’

‘And no one thought to help?’ Drask asked, despite himself.

‘This is Polaris,’ Nathanael said, and Drask could only laugh in response.

‘That it is.’ Drask paused. ‘Well, thank you for your candour,’ he said with a chuckle.

The man nodded quickly and turned to try and leave, hurrying back to the kitchens sheened with sweat. Drask smiled a little and pushed the tray to one side. When he got back to the Bastion he could check the body for gang affiliations: tattoos, brands; the subtle, hidden regalia of the underworld.

He stood, brushing down his coat as he did, and headed for the door. Drask wasn’t sure how the pieces fit together yet, but he had at least a better idea of what things looked like at street level.

‘Throne save us from places like this,’ he muttered.

He skirted out of the commercia and around, past the heaving warehouses that were still in operation. He ducked under the swinging cables of active cranes and had to wait more than once in the reeking alcoves of loading docks as a parade of loader-servitors trundled past, their hydraulic arms laden with crates of supplies. It was a stark and interesting contrast to the deader parts of the district. It put Drask in mind of the anaemic trees that populated Polaris’ sparse parkland.

The veneer of cold life, riven through with pernicious rot.

Dig too deeply, cut away too much, and the entire thing would collapse in on itself. There were plenty of others, probators and sanctioners both, who would often turn a blind eye to blights such as this. Little crimes. Small violations. It was easy to ignore the taint, and the seeping putrescence, until it bubbled up somewhere else. Somewhere proper. Where trade might be interrupted, or someone’s betters might end up offended.

Business like this didn’t interrupt the sad smear of life in Polaris unless it was dumped right in the middle of a corporate concern, or on the doorstep of some upclave notable.

He made his way back to the groundcar and waited before getting in. He drummed his fingers against the roof of it, thoughtfully watching the play of the digits against the metal, noting the patterns he left on the dirt-flecked surface.

It didn’t fit together. A place like this and a man like the victim. Drask thought about the cloth, the intensity of that clenched fist. A death grip, as though it had been the most precious thing to him in that moment. It had defined the man’s final moments, only to be reduced to yet more minutiae.

‘It’s never simple, is it?’ he asked the empty air. For a moment he almost expected a response. The dry, whispered mirth of an old ghost. There was only the rattle of the wind down the abandoned streets. He suppressed a shiver, drew his coat a little tighter about himself and got into the car.

‘I wonder if I’d like the quiet life, if I ever had a chance to enjoy it.’

CHAPTER FOUR

Chance Meetings

Drask trudged up the access stairwells from the vehicle bays, towards the main floor of the Bastion. The journey had been quicker than he expected, few groundcars on the road, especially as he drew nearer to the proscribed streets around Bastion-P’s squat bulk.

Most people that he passed turned their gaze away, deterred by the shroud of his reputation. By all accounts he was to be lauded for putting an end to the Silver Coin killer, but it was the how that unnerved people. That and just how intimately the crime had been entwined with his life, his history and his career. The odd sanctioner or fellow probator would nod at him, with a muttered ‘sir’, or ‘Drask’, but most kept their distance – as though he might be somehow contagious. Bad luck, they presumed, might in some way rub off on them. Infect them.

He rounded the corner and stepped out into the main hall of Bastion-P. Up another flight of wrought-iron steps, above the processing levels and on to the elevated gantries where the probators’ operational stations sat.

Drask dropped into the low chair, shrugged off his coat and rested his fingers against the claviboard of the cogitator unit. They were old, ailing models, struggling along despite the most ardent efforts of the tech-priests who skulked up from the depths of the generatorium levels. The text flickered in and out of being upon the screen, vacillating around grainy pict-representations. He scrolled through the dataveil uploads, checking each image in turn and annotating several of the grubby boot prints for further comparative analysis. He leant back, his head resting against the back of the chair, and raised his hands up to cradle his eyes. He felt tired. Worn down. He wasn’t sure if it was the morning’s fitful transits or the after-effects of the surgical intervention.

He pushed his hands up and through his hair, feeling the greasy texture of it between his fingers. When was the last time he had enjoyed the comfort of an ablutionary shower? The water ration at his hab was meagre, but he could have used the facilities here. Maybe later. When there was time, and not this twilight existence – pulled here and there by the eternal demands of service.

‘If I did that,’ he mused as he stood again, taking the opportunity to stretch, ‘then nothing would ever get done.’

He fished out the casket and looked at the blade fragment again. Here at his desk he finally felt he could examine it carefully. Not in the chaos of an active localis sceleris but here, amidst the certainty and sanctity of the Bastion. He leant closer as he examined it. The metal was thin, though not flimsy, and appeared to have been sharp. Keen enough to cut through flesh and muscle with ease, but it had struggled with the bone.

That spoke to a frantic assault, a frenetic engagement. Not with careful strokes that would have met the resistance and drawn back. This had been impassioned. An animal frenzy which had ended with the blade broken. A fine blade, by the look of it. It had the artful, almost graceful, strength of something intricate and well made. Far beyond the simple and direct artifice of street steel.

He replaced it in his coat pocket and returned his attention to the cogitator. He logged the evidence with another rattle of keys and then turned to leave. After he had seen the body, then he would get an opinion on the blade.

It was a chore to descend, once again, to the mortuarium levels. The chill crept back into his bones, in many ways more insidious than the external cold of the southern district. It was accompanied by the awareness of death, the presence and imminence of it. To stand on these levels, teeming as they were with cadavers, was to be reminded of one’s own mortality. There were no two alike – rendered inert in all the myriad ways life was capable of being snuffed out – and Drask marvelled at it. They had been workers, fathers, mothers, friends. Now they were nothing more than meat being processed. Dead and hollow flesh fit only for scrutiny. They had moved beyond mortal concerns, lost to the cold ravages of death.

Only the Throne endured beyond that veil. Only the Lex Eterna.

He pressed his hand to the security panel, feeling the prickling heat as his handprint was scanned, checked and catalogued. A wheezing mechanism forced its way out of the wall, opening and closing about his braced wrist as though making sure he was real, before it locked in place and the needles dipped to bite his skin. Machinery thunked and thundered behind the panelling as the sampler withdrew and a lumen flashed from crimson to green. The door hissed open, and he stepped inside.

‘Bring them through! Easy! Careful now!’ The voice rang out clear and loud as he entered the room. A gaggle of servitors were lifting bodies from temporary support berths onto the more solid mortuarium trolleys. The one speaking was not lifting, but was instead directing her subordinates. Drask blinked for a moment, and then raised his hand. He watched her turn, see him, and her eyes widen in surprise.

‘Drask?’

‘Hello, Oliar,’ he said, smiling gently. ‘I hadn’t expected to see you here.’ His eyes flickered to the insignia pinned at the grey collar of her robes. ‘And verispex secundus now. Well done, you deserve it.’

Oliar was at once typical of and strange for her breed. He had met many verispex down through the years, and they all possessed eccentricities which had bound them to their path. There were persistent rumours which dogged them, he knew, that the higher one ascended into their mysteries the less human they became. Deep beneath the Bastions, some whispered, the elders of the order waited. Slaved to the vastness of the logic engines, hubs in the great wheels of the dataveil, mechanisms eternally sieving information, as the cogs turned and turned and turned.

Just stories, of course, just talk.

‘A little borrowed glory from the Silver Coin affair.’ She laughed. ‘I had been meaning to check in, after your discharge, but the work never ceases. Circumstances, as ever.’

‘Circumstances, aye. Though they seem to bring us together as often as they force us apart.’

‘I’ll give you that.’ She nodded thoughtfully. ‘What brings you down here? Case?’

‘From early morning intake. Northern districts. Asked for it to be deposited here for my inspection and Visarth’s scrutiny.’

‘I think we might have your man,’ she said, smiling now. She wore the comingled grey pallor of verispex and Polaris like a veil of silver, in a manner that put him in mind of a saint’s state of grace. Fair hair was wound around the cortical implants dug into her scalp – which augmented her investigatory functions in ways that he wouldn’t pretend to understand – and her eyes were long since gone, replaced by a continually clattering array of lenses and cybernetic ocular implants.

Whatever her machine additions, though, she was still human. Still a familiar face. Still a friend.

‘Busy night then?’ Drask asked, gesturing to the ongoing offload behind her. There were at least half a dozen bodies, wrapped in their plastek corpseshrouds, faceless and still, upon the waiting trolleys.

‘It would appear so. I served as primary on one of the cases, and the rest were collated as part of the overall docket.’ She gestured back to the bodies. ‘The majority seem to be gang activity. The usual dockland territorial squabbles. Mine was seemingly a murder of opportunity. Extensive mutilation though. Yours?’

‘A rather savage affair, truly brutal blade work, motive as yet undetermined.’ He paused. ‘Extensive mutilation? What sort?’

‘Considerable attention paid to the torso.’ She led him over to the plastek-wrapped carcass towards the rear of the grim procession and drew back the shroud with a wet sucking sound. It had adhered to the body, held there by a sheen of blood. The cavernous wound in the chest yawned at him, shadows black in the depths of it. He couldn’t look away.

‘There’s never a dull moment, is there?’ she asked, only half jokingly, redolent with gallows humour. ‘You would think that the cold would deter the gangers, but sometimes it seems as though there’s so much blood on the street that it serves to keep them sustained. Violence is its own reward. It brings its own warmth.’

‘Perhaps, on some level, it does,’ Drask allowed. ‘Competition for resources, for territory, for money or power or prestige. The city is its own ecosystem, level to level, and all we can do is make sure we’re not the ones being devoured.’

‘Well, whoever this individual was competing with, they certainly got their fill.’ He looked at her as she stopped speaking, seeking greater clarity. She did not laugh now. Oliar’s face was set, neutral and unbothered, where other humans might have let their features wrinkle with disgust. ‘I told you the mutilation was extensive, yes? Preliminary examination suggests that a number of organs were removed, outright.’

‘Removed?’

‘The probators are assuming they were harvested for sale, possibly up-city. The victim was in good health, insofar as we can tell. I’ll need to do a full toxicity screen and genic probe, but there’s no obvious signs of disease state. He seemed healthy, hale and of a more robust social class than would be expected.’

‘Almost makes you wonder what a man like him was doing in a district like this. Polaris isn’t the most nurturing of cradles.’

‘No,’ she agreed. ‘Not a cradle, but there are plenty who would quite readily treat it as their own larder.’

‘Without and within,’ he said, shaking his head. He leant back against the wall, and his eyes flickered to the attendants as they moved the bodies. They were wheeling them out and through the double doors which led to the mortuarium proper. He shifted restlessly. Even through the coat, he could feel the chill of the tile and the discomforting suggestion of moisture clinging to it.

‘I should get going,’ he said, hesitating as he apologised. ‘Don’t want to keep Amelya waiting too long. She’ll probably fuss over my iris enough as it is.’

‘Ah! You got the implant reconfigured?’ There was a flare of interest in her own artificial eyes, the lenses clicking like insectoid mandibles, and she leant forward avariciously. ‘I’ve always wondered how it worked. That connection to the dataveil with so little augmetic intervention. How was the procedure? Invasive?’

He barely suppressed his wince. ‘I’ve had worse.’ He braced his hand against his stomach, fingers taut against the fabric of his shirt even as they sought to map out the scars beneath.

Feeling the blade again. The pain of it. The cold of it against the spreading warmth, and then that warmth leaving him. Flowing away, pouring out of him until it drowned him, dragging him under with cold crimson fingers.

He shook himself free of the memory. Sweat beaded his brow, suddenly chill in the processed air of the sublevel. Oliar reached for him, though whether to steady or comfort he wasn’t sure.

‘You all right, Drask?’

‘Fine,’ he lied. ‘Fine, thank you. I should be…’ He gestured to the waiting doors. The attendants had begun to move off as they had been speaking, pushing the trolleys away on their rattling wheels. ‘It was good to see you again. I look forward to watching your career progress.’

‘Too kind, Drask. Look after yourself, yes? There’s only so much trouble you can be rescued from.’

CHAPTER FIVE

Depth of Spite

The body from the industrial site lay face up, the plastek shroud pulled back. No modesty was granted, and the ravages of death had stolen whatever pride might have once been maintained in the human form.

Exposed, the wounds were even more gratuitous, the great slashes in the chest glimmering wetly beneath the spot-lumens. Trickles of blood had stained the pale flesh crimson. But beyond those initial injuries, ones that he had previously noted at the scene, there were more cuts. Precise surgical excisions. There were absences in areas which had previously been covered in clothing. He blinked, perplexed for a moment, aware that he was gawping.

‘Grisly, isn’t it?’ Amelya said, and shook her head. She brushed her fingers over her augmetic to clean it and then looked back to Drask. ‘I would almost go as far as to say that he’s done the bulk of the work for me. The incisions were already present.’ She clicked her tongue thoughtfully. ‘I would venture that they were made post-mortem. Likely stabbed high in the chest, here,’ she said, gesturing, ‘before being subdued and then… worked upon.’

‘So you didn’t remove…’ He gestured meekly at the corpse. ‘Those?’ The absences, the voids, were sporadic. There was one along the left forearm, and another on the right thigh. They had been cut cleanly, not with the reckless, hacking wounds that had brought the man down but with careful and considered motions. There was a hellish contrast there. The butcher and the surgeon.

‘I didn’t,’ she confirmed. ‘There is quite a disparity in the wounds. The initial frenzy gives way to a more nuanced and methodical approach.’

‘Trophy taking, perhaps?’ Drask asked. He knew that certain killers favoured surgical trophies, visceral reminders of their murders to be savoured and pondered over.

‘Perhaps,’ Amelya said. ‘It would explain the swift move from killing to carving.’

The cuts were down to the bone. He could see the grooves where it had been laboured over, sawn into, scored by constant and consistent pressure. Not the broken ribs and spilled-marrow horror of the chest cavity, but something exacting and considered.

‘Whoever did this…’ He paused, collecting his thoughts. ‘Whoever did this took their time. They killed him, brutalised him, and then they stripped him. Took their pounds of flesh, and then redressed the body in order to hide the obvious extremes of their crime?’

‘Perhaps. Concealment would be the obvious motivation. The mindset behind the removal itself though? Skin and meat, muscle…’ She looked at the carcass and clicked her tongue again. ‘Liver removed, portions of the lungs. The heart. Ritualistic, perhaps? As you said, a pound of flesh.’

‘An old symbol of vengeance, of a debt repaid – it could be that whatever activity he was involved in, this was intended to send a message to whomever he served.’

She hesitated. ‘That isn’t all, though.’

‘No?’

She stepped forward, braced herself and began to flip the body onto its front.

‘Curious,’ Drask breathed. His eyes drifted across the pale skin – scuffed and bruised in places from wear and tear or from the trauma that had led to his death – and settled upon the newly revealed absences. The muscular excisions were as nothing next to this. The flesh had been peeled back, and then great probing cuts had been made. He could see the interior cavity, slick and bloodied, and…

‘Empty?’ he asked, surprised again. This case was changing before his very eyes. Each new revelation felt like another nail in the coffin, as though to confirm his role in matters. These were the cases that seemed to find him, to seek him out. For all the work it brought him, for all that it had reforged his career, it was still haunting him. Looking at this case, as it unfurled like a toxic bloom, there was a suffocating darkness to it. The sort of thing that rumour insisted followed him like a cloud.

‘All but. As I said, there was extensive organ removal.’

His eyes widened with interest at the sudden implication. ‘There was another case brought in at the same time, by Oliar.’ He continued on, barely noticing whether Amelya nodded her assent or not. ‘Organ removal, she reckoned. Figured it was for sale… When I get a chance, I’ll collate the data on both those cases. Look for any linkages.’

‘A wise course.’ She bowed her head and tried in vain to hide her smile. ‘No one else brings me cases like this, Quillon. Not even…’ Visarth trailed off, cursing under her breath at her unthinking meandering into memory.

‘It’s all right,’ he said. Part of him wanted to reach out, to lay a hand on her shoulder and tell her that it was fine. That he was fine. That the old wounds, and the older, more painful memories, no longer bit at him. Even now, though, he could not bring himself to lie. The cold seemed more intense now, amidst the preservative chemical fug of the mortuarium, than it had just outside the doors.

Drask shivered and rubbed his hands together as he stepped closer. The brutal, almost random attacks that had characterised his initial thoughts and impressions were as nothing next to this. The calculated and considered actions of someone with an agenda. This killing had a purpose. A visceral, hateful purpose, but a purpose nonetheless.

‘So we have an opening gambit of precise brutality,’ Drask said, ‘which suggests the desire for a quick kill. Unlikely that the victim was killed where he lay. Instead I imagine he would have been dispatched quickly elsewhere and then isolated so the killer could go about his work.’

‘That would make sense, but what is his work?’

‘Something that requires intimate surgical knowledge. A removal in totality, very little spared. But there will be a reasoning behind it. If not for the simple pleasure of it then for some sizeable material gain.

‘Do we have an identification on the body yet? Anything that was on him, or that matches records under the Lex?’ he asked. There was little to hand besides the body. A few low-denomination slates, a hab key card of decent make, an aquila necklace worn smooth by years of fidgeting.

He was blink-clicking a number of points of interest, zooming in to the edges of the excisions, subconsciously comparing them with the initial murderous blows. It was too early to determine if it was the same weapon, but he saved them regardless. He picked up the fibres from the hand and examined them, turning them over in his palm. The cotton weave was smooth, not industrial-rough, a truly skilled piece of work. You never knew what could be key going ahead. Even the smallest, most innocuous piece of evidence could have value.

He had learned that, had been taught that, from the very beginning. Alexius had been an exacting taskmaster, but the lessons he had imparted had remained strong and kept Drask sharp.

‘We’re processing his dermal prints, any papers recovered from the body, and I’ve scheduled a sweep for subdermal identifiers,’ Amelya said. ‘If there’s anything intrinsic that identifies him then it’ll be sieved out before long.’

‘Any augmetics?’ Drask asked. ‘Gland work? Adrenal shunts?’ He leant closer. ‘Couple that with a blood analysis for anything street-level illegal. I want to know if he has an obscura problem. Gang marks, street brands, Militarum regiment ink?’

‘Nothing exotic so far. I’ll keep you posted.’

‘Thank you.’ He rested his hand against the edge of the table and gazed down at the body. ‘Bad business, this. I hoped it was something simple. A narco deal gone wrong that I could pawn off to someone who specialises in that sort of thing. It’s just my luck to always have the serials, the aberrants and the organ thieves.’ The last three words were practically forced through his teeth, punctuated by the drumming of his clenched fist against the metal.

‘It’s certainly not the most straightforward or traditional,’ she ventured cautiously. ‘But, I dare say, it’s what you excel at, Quillon.’

‘Don’t. Just don’t. Please.’

‘You know I have to,’ she said, stepping around the table. The bright light caught the concerned motion of her eyes – both organic and augmetic. It danced across the wrinkled and bloodied plastek apron that she wore, and on the cold iron of her fingers. She was haloed in it, like a fiction or a figment, a maternal echo of other times, a relic of a brighter age. He paused, caught beneath her scrutiny, and considered that for a moment.

Sometimes, he wanted to say, I feel like we’re caught in the deluge. We’re all flotsam in the flood, circling the whirlpool. Ready to fall screaming down the maw. Not just you or me but the city. The world. And part of me wants that. I want the worst to come, because then there’ll be nothing else to endure. I won’t have to linger in this toxic shadow. I won’t have to dredge up the worst of humankind. There would be a peace.

He said nothing. She took his silence as an invitation.

‘You have a rare gift, Quillon. No matter how ignored or overlooked it might be when it isn’t useful. You have value, and you bring a necessary change. That means you have to look the darkness in the eye, let it scar your mind and your spirit, and for that I can only apologise. I can only offer what comfort I can, what advice I can, and otherwise I have nothing else to gift you with.’

‘No gifts here,’ he said with a sigh. ‘Only curses.’

CHAPTER SIX

Meditations

He paced when he was nervous. It was a bad habit he had picked up early in his career and never quite shaken off. A bad day, a stymied line of enquiry or shit from on high, and he would take to the streets to clear his head and work through his problems. He would walk for hours, no matter where in the city it ended up taking him. Breathing in the stale and sagging grandeur of the district, staring at the distant spire lights or watching the ships as they cut their way through the turgid oceans.

The half-light of the day or the distant starlight catching the waves just so, casting up the oil-slick rainbow of chem spills and frothing algal blooms, was its own comfort.

So he walked from Bastion-P and out into the city, along the Parade of Victory, which dominated the exterior, and into the city proper.

Polaris continued to wake, and Drask found he was now pushing his way through milling crowds beyond the sanctioner cordons. He passed beneath the unseeing eyes of statues, lord-generals and saints-militant, and ducked down a pedestrian rampway, off the main thoroughfares and their main transitways through narrow closes. He could smell meat cooking, wafting from the doorways of eating houses, duelling with the stench of human waste as it was cast from a second-floor window. Drask turned from it in distaste and covered his mouth, staggering down a set of steep steps.

The narrow wind of the streets carried him, inexorably, to the tilted, looming building that he knew as the Armoury.

It had a correct and proper name, of course, the Tlepsh Emporium of Fine Arms, but it had been known for as long as he had been a probator as the Armoury. It was a place of ill intent, set in less than salubrious surroundings. The fleeting glamour of the district’s main arteries faded away, to be replaced by the worn and sickly bones of the district where the inhabitants clung like limpets to the raw fabric of the city.

Drask moved up to the heavy door of the Armoury and pushed it open with a grunt of effort. The ceiling was low and the plaster was sodden through, filling the chamber with a fecund stink. Display cases lined the central chamber of the emporium, rendering it yet more claustrophobic. The light of the single sputtering lumen caught on the armaglass displays and their heavy iron fixtures, sending strange reflections about the small audience room.

Normally the back wall would be dominated by the self-proclaimed master weaponsmith’s office compartment and its easily sealed access windows, but Drask was surprised to notice the trio of angry juves crowded about it, holding one of the compartment’s hatches open with a crowbar forced into it.

For all that Weaponsmith Einar Tlepsh was skilled at creating and understanding weapons, he had little skill at wielding them.

‘Back!’ Einar shrilled, his voice rising like a clarion over the clamour. ‘So help me, I will end you!’ A shot rang out, striking the wall to the left of Drask’s head with a puff of plaster as it impacted against buried metal. The three juves turned almost in the same moment and glared at Drask, as though his sudden intrusion were the greater crime.

‘Easy, boys,’ Drask said simply. He drew his pistol.

The Tzarina’s sudden presence altered the room’s fitful dynamic. The three juves tensed, abandoned their attempts at forced entry, and rounded on him.

Simple sump thugs, Drask thought. They were all dressed in a uniform of red rags and smears of warpaint or the fading ink of tattoos. One had a trail of crimson teardrops down one cheek, each of them a life taken. The one with the crowbar pulled it free and turned it over in his fingers, readying to strike.

Drask allowed himself a smile and raised his gun, taking aim at the tattooed leader. ‘I wouldn’t recommend that you compound your mistakes,’ he intoned as he drew his seal out with as much solemn menace as his pistol.

The leader lunged for Drask. An ozone crackle filled the air as a jawsnapper went live. Drask sidestepped the clumsy blow, the sparking fist passing his head by mere inches. He fired once and the juve’s kneecap detonated in a shower of red leather and spurting flesh. The ganger screamed as he went down.

The crowbar swung for Drask’s torso, scraping across the flak-lined plates of the coat. Drask brought his own fist around and cracked the juve across the jaw. The crowbar fell from the ganger’s fingers as he grunted with pain, shaking himself as he reared back from the blow. He swung again, and Drask caught his hand at the wrist, twisting it savagely. He yelped and his knees gave way, dropping to the floor as Drask held him.

The last of the gangers stared at the ensuing carnage, eyes wide and blinking. His gaze darted from the ruin of his boss’ leg to the pitiful flailing of his opposite number. He held up his hands, showing they were empty, and then moved to stand against the wall.

Drask pushed his prisoner back onto the ground, letting him sprawl out, his red coat billowing out behind him like spilled blood. Drask shook his head, and his face contorted into a sneer. He jabbed a grubby finger at the ganger with his back to the wall. ‘Get your boss and get out of my sight. Next time you’ll all be in the ground.’

Red Coat staggered to his feet and, along with his cowardly companion, pulled the mewling ruin of their boss from the ground. Their leader was weeping now, real tears to match the blood tattoos that marred his face. They hobbled, an awkwardly conjoined trio, from the emporium. The door clattered shut heavily.

‘I would have preferred that you provide a solution which was a degree more permanent,’ came the reedy voice through the room’s concealed vox-emitters. Hydraulics hissed and discreet mechanisms whirred as the compartment unfolded, and Einar finally peered out.

He was not what most would associate with a creator and distributor of weapons, but the little man, knotted over on himself like a gargoyle, balding and seemingly malnourished, had a way of surprising those who underestimated him.

‘Perhaps, but if you leave a few alive then they’ll carry that fear back to their little friends,’ Drask said, chuckling. ‘Have times grown so hard that you were almost worked over by three of the Crimson Court’s dregs?’

Einar snorted derisively. ‘No such thing. I had the matter entirely in hand.’

‘Of course you did.’

‘I have been through quite enough without your attempts at wit, Drask!’ Einar chirruped. Drask raised his hands apologetically and the weaponsmith sighed. ‘Lean times, Drask, even for me. The kind that breed desperation and a degree of… resigned complacency.’ He looked down sheepishly. ‘I will ensure my precautions are more stringent in future.’ He dusted his hands off on his apron and looked back to Drask. ‘What brings you here, anyway? Not merely to save my life and livelihood, I take it? You were never the sort of man to augment his arsenal. Beyond the odd backup weapon, of course.’

‘I need advice,’ Drask said simply, and dropped the veriquary casket in front of Einar. The man’s eyes widened and he reached under the counter for a small pair of smith’s glasses. He folded down the magnifying lenses and leant closer.

‘Oh, I see…’ he whispered. ‘May I…?’ He gestured to the casket. Drask nodded and Einar opened it, tipping out the shard of metal. It hit the counter with a clang and Einar leant back down. His eyes were wide and urgent, his focus absolute. He took out a small metallic tool and scraped the dried blood away from it distastefully. ‘Oh yes, this is quite nice. Not gutter-forged steel like those reprobates would have used, oh no. This speaks to a pedigree. I would suggest it is a precision tool. This is near surgical, Drask. Medicae steel. High end, the kind of blade that would grace a guild baron’s guts or deliver another fresh dose of rejuvenat.’ He chuckled wetly. ‘Wherever did you find it?’

‘The usual,’ Drask said with a sigh. ‘A body, upclave type out of place. Maybe he was too flashy with his wares, like you, eh?’ Einar fixed Drask with a cold glare and Drask laughed. ‘I still can’t believe you would be so reckless as to let that happen.’

‘Do you want to know about your prize or not?’ Einar grunted, slipping the glasses off his nose. Drask nodded, and the little man continued. ‘Whether your killer got it from your victim or brought it himself, this is fine work. Any better and I would think it Mechanicus forged. There’s artistry in it, but no maker’s mark that I can see.’

‘Thank you,’ Drask said. He swept the fragment back into its casket and pocketed it again. ‘You can consider us even, in this regard.’

‘Oh, very gracious of you.’ Einar fussed behind the counter. ‘Far be it for Quillon Drask to hold anything over me. You’re a strange one, Drask,’ he muttered even as the probator turned to leave. ‘Too much of the street in you!’

By the time he returned to the Bastion, Amelya had amalgamated the data-loads and called for attendants to move the bodies into one of the larger examination berths.

He trudged into the large open space of the examination room. Smaller necropsy benches were placed around the edges of the chamber, and they had become like rocks for the grey flock of verispex to perch about. He spotted Oliar, raising his hand in acknowledgement, before he followed Amelya’s path to the central dais. Spot-lumens rotated to follow them, fixing upon the two tables, which lay side by side. On one was the victim from the industrial docklands, lying on his face and splayed out in all his red horror, while beside him was the case Oliar had spoken of.

They were a study in contrasts. Drask’s case had been savaged, and the victim had presented accordingly. Wide and staring eyes, the mouth open in surprised terror and outrage. The other was almost placid. The mouth and eyes sat closed. The exposed torso was riven with tight, thin lines where a keen and expert hand had delved, explored and removed.

‘What can you tell me?’ he asked. The flickering green lattice of a scanner grid descended, cataloguing and interpreting the physical evidence of the bodies – caching the information for later hololithic display. Cogitators began to chatter and burble at the chamber’s edge, gusting a sudden rush of machine heat into the room.

‘We were able to extrapolate secondary and tertiary genic transfer,’ Oliar piped up as she stepped forward. Whether by rank or her previous affiliation with Drask, she had clearly been nominated as the spokesperson of the verispex contingent. ‘Our initial analysis suggests a high probability of a genic match to your body.’

He tilted his head. ‘A connection? So they had some contact?’

‘It would appear so. You wanted to look for commonalities, and here we are.’

‘Close contact, then,’ Drask said, warming to the theme. ‘Two bodies with similar wounds. There’s every chance they were victims of the same crime. Not an unfair assumption.’ He paused. ‘Where did you say this body was found?’

‘The eastern end of the Risyan Commercia. Past Saint’s Arch and the Martyrfields. Where business becomes remembrance,’ Oliar said. ‘Why?’

‘Our victim was on the western end. I have a witness who claims a well-dressed individual was fleeing from one end of the commercia to the other, around about the time of the murder. Like something was chasing him down.’ He clicked his tongue as he processed the information, charting the cartography of the area in his head. ‘What can you tell me about our other victim?’

‘Hiram Tral. A peddler of religious tokens and relics along the Petitioner’s Row.’

‘A legitimate one?’ Drask asked. Oliar shook her head indulgently.

‘Throne no. He was reprimanded numerous times for minor deviance related to fraudulent wares.’ She forced a smile. ‘Who knew that Saint Tantalus had as many as twenty fingers? The cumulative charges eventually resulted in formal sanction, the confiscation of his existing sales permit for water-recyc and the mandatory donation of his teeth for the benefit of the local templum and the pilgrims attending therein.’ She reached down and demonstratively pulled back Hiram’s upper lip to reveal the gouged ruin of the man’s empty gums. Long since healed over. ‘A useful caveat to glean from the records, else we might have thought this part and parcel of our killer’s excesses.’

Drask nodded. A reasonable punishment, as far as they went. ‘And what about my victim?’

Visarth keyed her access codes into the cogitator bank and pushed a dataslug into place. The mechanisms warbled as she flicked the switches which engaged the projector array. Crystal lenses clicked into place, casting the emerald hololith into the open air above the bodies. The text resolved around a pict of the victim as he had been in life. Stern. Unsmiling.

‘Mercutio Farentis. No prior affiliations with gangs or organised crime that I can find,’ Visarth began. ‘Reasonable education, mid-city no less. Moved to Polaris for the purposes of gainful employment as a procurement executive for Vranx Agri. Beyond that it gets lost in corporate shuffle. I imagine he moved extensively, as is their way. Up, down, adjacently. Every combine man is drowning until he finds his level, as the saying goes.’

‘Stranger and stranger then.’ Drask tapped his finger against his chin as he circled around. He was aware of the odd dynamic exerting itself as he and Oliar both orbited the bodies. Like predators, pacing, aping whatever had laid Mercutio low.

Visarth scooped up a scalpel, turning the handle between her fingers as she advanced on the bodies. She had already made her preliminary inspection of Mercutio and so focused her attention on Hiram’s prone corpse. She eased the existing incisions apart, slowly working her hand into the wound in the abdomen. It parted without too much fuss, slicking her gloved hand in bloody effluvia. She clicked her tongue and turned back to them.

‘It’s as she surmised from initial inspection. The abdominal cavity has been violated, and it seems that a number of organ systems may have been compromised.’

‘Could you speak as to which ones?’ Drask asked. He was leaning forward, like a cathedral gargoyle, fascinated by the scene playing out before him. As much as he claimed to hate spectacles such as this, as much as he might try to avoid the cases which inexorably seemed to find him, there was a core of visceral curiosity.

There was no beauty, no wonder here, but instead the base interest common to all men. The sort that brought the crowds to the building’s edge, or the cordoned perimeter, when someone hurled themselves to their deaths. The yearning that drew pedestrians to a public martyrdom or the burning of a mutant hovel by the purgation squads. Holy spectacle.

It was undeniable. Most felt a guilty shiver at the recognition of it, but Drask knew it by the ripple of profane familiarity it generated.

The embrace of an old friend.

‘That’s odd,’ Visarth said, her features crinkling as her hand explored within the body cavity. ‘There’s something in here.’

‘Something foreign?’ he asked, stepping closer, and she nodded.

‘Must be. Feels different. Artificial.’ Her brows creased and she pulled. There was a wet slopping sound as something came free, unrolling as it did. A lumpen burden, slick against the metal. It was stained red and black, soaked through with blood and other fluids.

It was fabric. As tainted and sullied as it was, that was still clear. It had been stuffed into the body, in a great knotted bundle, before Amelya had yanked it free and allowed it to unfold.

Once, he imagined, it might have been pure. Pristine. Unblemished by the creeping ruin of the corpse.

Just like the scraps Mercutio had held tight in his grasping death grip.

They laid it all out, piece by piece.

On one side there were the scraps alongside their veriquary casket, pristinely arranged even in their torn state. On the other were the despoiled masses pulled from Hiram’s body. They were roughly analogous to the organs that they had been intended to replace – the bundle that corresponded to the bloody heft of the liver, the longer strips woven together in imitation of the lungs, the knotted lump that passed for the heart.

Just like the other body.

Ritual, perhaps, he thought again. Throne, but I hoped it wasn’t.

He took hold of the replacement heart, lifting it in his gloved hand. Or perhaps, he considered, it was some sort of regret. No. There was more to it than that. Not a spur of the moment killing, certainly, but to take this amount of time and effort – it spoke to a deeper need. A pathological requirement.

‘Quite the investment,’ he muttered to himself. If Visarth or Oliar noticed, they said nothing. They simply watched him turning the facsimile over and over in his hands. He spoke up. ‘It almost makes you wonder why someone would go to that tremendous amount of effort.’

‘Ritualistic connotations?’ Oliar ventured, as though reading his mind. It made him genuinely smile.

‘Potentially,’ Drask said. He placed the heart bundle down again, patting it gingerly before retracting his hand and flexing the fingers. He looked at them, red-spotted with blood, and clenched them into a fist. Ensuring, on some level, that his own blood was still pumping. He could hardly doubt it, with the thunder of his heart roaring in his ears.

‘Naturally, our next step should lie in identifying the fabric involved. There are very few places in the district where such talents are nurtured. I’ll check there, and assuming we find nothing then we make enquiries outside the district. Both victims are Polaris natives, however, which suggests at least some form of local connection.’

‘An astute assumption,’ Oliar said. Her eye-lenses clicked as they refocused, drawing back from their intent scrutiny of the cloth and realigning to consider Drask.

‘I’ll take the untainted sample with me and head over to the textile quarter. Someone there might have a lead on where it’s sourced from. It seems good quality, maybe bespoke work. That works to our advantage. If it’s distinct then it will have a pedigree, and someone will know what it is.’ He nodded to them. ‘Thank you both for your assistance. Contact me if anything else turns up with the bodies or the background data-trawl.’ He started to head to the door.

‘Quillon,’ Visarth interjected, grabbing his arm as he moved to pass her. Drask almost flinched away, his eyes suddenly alert – almost panicked. His trauma reared up, took hold of him, its fangs at his neck. He managed to restrain himself from reaching for his sidearm. That was a surprise, he realised. That was new… Perhaps he ought to seek guidance with the Bastion’s confessor.

‘What?’ he asked.

‘Don’t avoid me. Everything is all right, yes? You’ve been adapting well to the reactivation?’

He shrugged free of her grip, rubbing the back of his neck sheepishly. He had overreacted and doubtlessly everyone had noticed it. He was sure the eager gaggle of verispex would slink back to their duties, full of stories of the mad probator Quillon Drask and his nebulous Throne-damned issues. The old wounds and scars and ghosts that dogged his steps, making him jump at shadows.

‘I’m fine,’ he said. Too quickly – he knew it, and so did she. Her lips pursed and she nodded, looking away from him as though the very sight were painful.

‘All right,’ she said, drawing back her hand. ‘Take care of yourself, Quillon. As soon as you know anything more, send word, and we’ll collate it with our existing information. You’re not alone in this. Remember that.’

Oliar had been watching the exchange with reserved fascination and merely nodded in agreement.

‘I know,’ he said. He hurried to the door now. He passed through it without even a backward glance. If he looked back now, he did not know what would come to pass.

The corridor beyond had been empty for so long that the lumens had gone into power-conservation mode. They flared bright again at his intrusion, stretching out the shadows into long, dark talons. His own shadow was a stranger under such distortion. Like the gnarled and broken image of an older man.

Alexius had lost himself to vengeance and madness. He had plunged into the abyss and never come back. What had crawled up from the darkness had been a broken thing, less than a man, a monstrous simulacrum of the very killer he had been obsessed with. A haunted shell of a man that had killed until killed. Until Drask had killed him.

Until he had taken his place.

‘I’m never alone,’ Drask breathed.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Weft and Weave

The wan light of the distant crimson sun glinted off puddles of cold meltwater from the building’s generatorium and ductwork, or patches of ice that had not yet begun to thaw. Drask almost skidded on some of it, so eager to be out and away from the pressures within. He paused for a moment, stumbling over the thought, almost bursting into laughter.

From the pressures inside the building or himself?

He wasn’t used to this sort of turmoil. The sudden spasms of pain and torment, rising up from inside him. He had thought them left behind, symptoms of his wounding, echoes throughout his recovery and the almost spiteful parting gift Alexius had left him with.

Distrust. Suspicion. The persistent ache of comingled fascination and disgust. He saw what those feelings and inclinations did to others. How they responded to them, and so to him, with their guard forever up. Drask had long since resigned himself to never progressing, to being overlooked and miscategorised. He was a malcontent and an oddity to some. Others might have considered him a deviant… some species of monster in waiting.

He thought of the great carved words in the main hall of the Bastion, inscribed in ages long since committed to legend, not history: DEVIANCE AND DEFIANCE ARE THE SINS OF THE WEAK. FIDELITY IS THE STRENGTH OF THE JUST.

‘Words to live by,’ he muttered, ‘or words to die by.’ He drew his coat around him and pushed on, through the chill air and the gathering gale. He could feel the threat of rain looming over him but was determined to walk the distance anyway.

He needed the clarity it would hopefully bring.

The Silken Row was, ironically, a long winding strip of loom-houses and macro-weaveries that stretched throughout the substance of Polaris like marbled fat through meat. It had emerged out of utter necessity more than anything else, catering to the wider mega-metropolis of Varangantua but rooted in one of its colder districts.

As southern exploration and expansion had snaked their way to the poles, where the glacier hives lay dead and dreaming under sheets of ice, so the need for greater insulation had emerged. Explorers had given way to soldiers as the great armies of the Imperium were raised up from Alecto and Varangantua. Uniforms gave way to bedrolls, gauze, tents and all the varied paraphernalia of conflict. Military tithes had flowed forth from the old districts and out into the stars.

Some of the traffickers of materials along the Silken Row claimed descent from the First Landings, where their craft had been valued for numerous reasons – mostly ceremonial. As in many other places throughout the Imperium, the oldest institutions were often the strangest.

Drask wondered what effect Alecto’s cold soul had worked upon its colonists, in those days out of mind. From such seeds had cities such as Varangantua grown. The further they were cast from Holy Terra, the bleaker and crueller the cities and their people seemed. He had never truly been a pious man. He knew, in his heart and soul, that it represented a failing. How often had his father urged him to pay attention at templum, when he had paid attention to him at all? The dreams of a man who had never had the stomach for the Ecclesiarchy but had hoped that at least his son would live out his own stunted dreams for him. The cloying pressure of his father’s zealous urgings had left a cloud about the practice of religion for Drask. Of course, he believed in the ineffable glory of He of Terra, and wore the chain of an aquila about his neck, but he could not recall when he had last spent time in the halls of a temple.

My work is my church, and my duty is my faith.

The words bubbled up, unbidden. He wasn’t sure if he really believed them. It was one more prison for his psyche. Another cage for the nebulous gift he possessed.

‘What would you be, I wonder, without the work? If I hadn’t taken you, and shaped you, what would you be, Quillon? Where would you be? Who would you have hurt?’ Alexius’ grave rattle was back. Drask braced a hand against his stomach, ready for the sudden ripple of pain and discomfort from his scars, but the ache never came.

‘Maybe I’m growing as a person,’ he said to himself. The voice did not return, his mind did not parrot the dead to taunt or torment him. It fell, quiescent, beneath the maul of his will.

He turned his attention back to the streets. The low rumble of groundcars undercut everything. He could hear their burr, their pulse and the insistent wail of horns. Somewhere above, nestled in the superstructure of higher buildings, the mag-trans cars clattered along with their familiar rhythm. He could hear the levitation plates clicking and crackling as they realigned, just beneath the register of the carriages. The city screamed at him, blaring with a million voices, caressing and scarring his soul on a thousand different levels.

Bit by bit, the city flensed him away, layer by layer, and laid bare his raw and bleeding core.

He could have assigned sanctioners to do this work, the tedious, trudging footslogging that was typically expected of them, but there was something cathartic about getting back on the streets.

Above and about him, the buildings creaked and loomed with the pressures of timeless age. These buildings had been old, in places, when the Imperium was young – so the stories went. Ancient metal plating had been warped by the ravages of time, history scrimshawed into it with every crack and crevice. Hull plates from the oldest of the colonisation vessels, long since overgrown with the gothic excretions that typified the Imperium. The renewal of Terra’s dominance over the stars had changed Varangantua, just as the old cultures had changed the Imperium. It had become a melange of melding bloodlines and ancient ambitions. For all those who clawed their way up to the heights of the merchant-combines there were countless multitudes who were cast into the gutter and the grave as the city gave and took.

Meltwater vomited from the mouth of waiting gargoyles, dripping across the bare bone domes of the skulls of martyrs. Where makers’ marks once shone through, there was only the relentless demands for vigilance, purity and determination.

The reassuring blanket of cultural paranoia reigned. Others might wonder how they could ever be surprised, when their suspicions were cast ever outwards – desperate for any sign of deviation. Drask shook his head. He knew better, now.

The first halting steps of any investigation were always painful. Street vendors, their carts piled high with fragrant pseudo-silk weaves, turned their faces away – unwilling even to look at the evidence he had brought along. Too afraid of upsetting the protection racketeers who doubtless lurked around every corner in search of their cut. Each time he simply nodded, placed the samples back in his pocket and moved on.

Threads inevitably began to present themselves, slowly unravelling at his enquiries. There were some who were content to coo over the samples, eagerly pawing at the casket – desperate to twine their fingers around it, not knowing that a man had died doing the same. Such craftsmanship, though, they said, would only flow from one place. The name, repeated, over and over again. Eventually he began to lead with that. Pre-empting them, watching eyes flare with envy or resentment or even longing at the words.

‘The House of Grace.’

It was two streets along, and three up from where he last enquired. He made his way up the steepening streets, climbed badly maintained stone steps, until he came before the building. It was a looming structure, gangly and squint as though built on rough and unreliable foundations. In some places – be it building, city or world – wrongness was inherent. Inbuilt. By design.

There was little to mark it out as special. Beside the door a small brass plaque declared their credentials as A Purveyor of Traditional Wares. His eyes drifted from it and up to the gnarled encrustation that passed for a bell. Ancient wiring jutted from the plates as though in imitation of some deep-sea creature. He depressed the switch, and the shrill alarm tone rang out.

A series of clunks echoed from behind the door as bolts slid free, and it swung inwards with a hiss of pressure. Standing in the sudden void, silhouetted by the shadows of the creaking old structure, was the stooped figure of a woman. She was clad in robes of such blinding white that Drask thought he was imagining it. They had survived the mad rigours of the seemingly decrepit building without as much as a smudge or smear. Her feet were bare, blackened by the grime that had studiously avoided her clothing, and she padded forward uncertainly. It was only when she looked up, not at him but for him, that Drask realised his folly.

The woman was blind, or as near to it that it made no difference. Her hair fell down her back in a spray of silver, and she took a moment to push stray strands away from her wizened features. Her mouth creased into a smile.

‘Can I help you? Have you come to partake of the old bounty? Of the plenty and the promise which we keep?’ It was recited by rote. A mantra as much as it was an advertisement. Drask smiled and bowed his head. Even if she could not see him, there was something to be said for the politeness of the ritualistic.

‘I am Probator Drask with Bastion-P. I had some enquiries regarding your craft. Just some enquiries, you understand.’ He forced a personable smile. ‘If I could come in? Ask some questions?’

‘But of course,’ she said, and stepped back to allow him entry. ‘From the earliest days of the Landings, we have served and we have woven. Nothing more. Nothing less. We have done our duty as dictated by the First Families, the Founders, the Landers, Those Who Came Before.’ Her words became a breathy babble, the ramblings of the faithful.

Drask stepped inside. ‘I’ll need to inspect your records, ascertain who had access to your stock in the last few days and take statements. Would that be to your satisfaction?’

‘I will have to consult with the lanipendae,’ she said, chewing at her lip thoughtfully. ‘Follow me.’

He obliged. She led him up a wrought-iron staircase and into the belly of the ancient, crumbling house. Every step seemed to send clanking ripples through the superstructure, but only when he moved – her light tread did not jostle the bones of the building. She knew its secrets and its eccentricities, and she navigated them with a lifetime’s experience.

The sound of his footfalls faded and were swallowed by the roiling thunder of the looms.

They ducked through the interplay of the ancient and the inspired. The great wooden frames of the looms were stretched between pillars of stone and steel. The heart of the great building had been gutted, remade and expanded upon over the years. It had changed from a simple warehouse to a nest of activity, of perpetual motion and the clatter of the weaving work. He watched the great sheets of cloth as they were woven and attended, checked and measured and cut. The process was relentless, ceaseless, and as he moved through the midst of the workers he could see that they too were blind. Work so delicate and precise, in such low light and simple squalor, that they had long since lost the ability to see. Memory, ingrained into the very muscle, had taken the place of their sight, and so they continued to work. To serve the industry to which they had given everything.

As they moved through the throng, the workers avoided them with a preternatural awareness. Year upon year of experience, laid down like silt and now disturbed. Deep-water animals suddenly in motion at the passage of a predator, or more benignly, an interloper. Drask felt out of his depth, as though the world had changed fundamentally around him.

They passed through the constant storm of motion, through the tide of absolute focus. Up another flight of stairs, these ones carved from the same dark lacquered wood as the frames – just as ancient and drenched in history and human labour. The air stank of sweat and human exertion and the threat of a damp which never quite permeated its way through the walls.

‘This way,’ she muttered. ‘Just a little further. It’s quite the climb, and we don’t do it often, but needs must. That is what they say, is it not?’

‘It is,’ Drask said, and nodded. ‘What’s your name?’

‘I have the honour to be Serena. The forty-seventh child of that name.’

‘You kept count?’

She laughed a little. ‘We are more than the sum of our names or our experiences. Duty is more important than identity. So we are taught.’

He said nothing, instead taking the time to process the information. There was a decidedly cultish demeanour to the workers here, but it appeared to be one of the more benign species of Imperial cults. No aberrant beliefs or dark airs. They would have to be reported, of course, but it would largely consist of letting the Bastion know. Nothing punitive.

Various faiths flourished in the cracks of the Imperium, like the lichen that coated the exterior of the building. If anything seemingly malicious came of it, he would refer it to the proper authorities, keep them under watch and see what developed.

Serena paused before an old oak door ornately carved with bundles of fabric and oath-scrolls being handed down from on high. The bowing figures beneath the ostentatious representation of duty seemed as though they were poised to be crushed by it, rather than being bequeathed a gift or a holy task.

Everything in Varangantua is bladed, barbed or poisoned…

He shook the thought aside as Serena rapped at the door. A muffled voice called for her to come. She pushed it open, stood to one side and gestured for him to step forward. ‘Probator Drask, lanipendae.’

The woman who rose from behind a parchment-strewn desk, quill slipping from her fingers, was younger than Serena – more vital and seemingly more focused, and surprisingly sighted. Her robes were of a finer cut, trimmed with gold thread. Her hair was a close-cropped steely grey, rather than faded silver. She nodded politely and Serena slunk away, closing the door behind her.

‘I am Lanipendae Adella. What is this regarding?’

‘I’m afraid it concerns a homicide.’

‘And what business is common murder of ours?’ She seemed perturbed by the suggestion, even angry. Drask filed it away. Note everything. That had been the oldest and deepest instruction of his education and ascension to rank. Everything possessed value.

‘I believe that the case I am currently investigating has become entangled in your works.’ He reached into his pocket and pulled out the casket. He placed it down on the desktop, tapped it with one finger. ‘If you wouldn’t mind having a look at this?’

‘Our wares?’ She looked perplexed. ‘How could our wares be party to a murder? That makes no sense.’ She picked up the casket, as though wary that it would bite, hefting it in one hand and then juggling it awkwardly to the other. Judging it, perhaps. Adella leant close to it, confusion turning to scrutiny – as though a switch had moved fluidly from ‘spectator’ to ‘professional’. ‘Hmm,’ she said. ‘May I open it?’

Drask nodded and she opened the casket, fishing out the fabric and rolling it between her fingers.

‘It certainly seems to be our work, yes.’ She straightened and brushed her hands down the front of her robes. ‘Our wares are commonly reserved for the funerary rites of a very specific clientele. Much like the cultivation of our talents, our artistry hearkens back to the earliest days of settlement.’ Her tongue clicked as she sat back down. He could hear the crinkle of authentic leather as it responded to the sudden weight of her. ‘Was there a significant amount of it? Were they wrapped, as commonly the dead are enveloped before they are committed to earth or fire?’

‘These scraps were gripped in the hand of one victim. Another bundle of fabric was also found… inside another victim.’

‘Inside.’ She did not ask it as a question. A flat statement, steeped in confusion, almost afraid to know.

‘Within the body. I cannot give you more details than that,’ he said, pre-empting her questions. He watched her wince at the implications, and pushed on – through discomfort and disgust, in pursuit of the truth. ‘I don’t run in rarefied circles, lanipendae. I don’t provide for the scions of ancient family lines. All I’m interested in is if these fragments link with your work and what that means.’ He sighed as he drew his holo-seal and unfolded it for her. ‘By the auspices of the Lex Alecto I formally request access to your records pertaining to any recent sales of your fabric, and to interview any of your staff who might have had contact with any of our victims. Any connections which might be useful.’

‘I–’ she began, but he waved it away and she fell silent again.

‘Your compliance is appreciated,’ he said simply. It wasn’t often that he wielded the authority of his position so viscerally, preferring to slowly draw out the truth – as venom might be drawn. The ascent had wearied him. The rigours of the day clawed at him. Now, more than anything else, he yearned for simplicity. For the directness of being obeyed, respected and understood. If it took a modicum of fear to get that result, it was something he would use.

Drask tucked the seal back into his pocket and rested his hand upon the butt of his weapon, a subtle but effective show of force. Adella was unimpressed. She fixed him with her steely gaze, drew herself up and placed her hands upon her hips. He wondered how many gang members and extortion cartels she had stared down in the past, trusting in the potency of legacy to see off imminent threat.

Next to the street terrors of Polaris, it was no wonder that she did not take his threats seriously.

‘The records are not here,’ she intoned. ‘They are stored several floors below street level, in the undervaults.’ She looked down, peering as though she could see all the way – through stone and wood and metal – to the undervaults with their undoubtedly heaving shelves. The very thought of it showed in her eyes as a ripple of pre-emptive pain. ‘We will, of course, allow you access. If it…’

She paused. There was a sound rising somewhere behind them, up from the bowels of the ancient building. A distant rasp, blossoming into the crackle of ignition. Bells began to ring, lyrical and insistent, throughout the superstructure.

‘What–’ Adella began, before the first shudder of conflagration.

Of detonation.

‘Down!’ Drask screamed as he hurled himself forward. The plaster in the ceiling cracked. The door buckled, wood straining with the suddenness of impact. Something nearby had gone very wrong. Reality shifted with all the warning of an unfolding dream.

He looked at the smoke coiling under the door, and realised too late that the explosion had come from within.

CHAPTER EIGHT

The Beast in the Flames

‘We need to move,’ Drask declared as he made for the door. He wrapped his hand in the pocket of his coat and reached out, taking hold of the handle. He winced at the heat, even through the layers of artificial leather and flak padding. He braced himself and yanked it open.

Before them was a vision of hell.

Billowing thick black smoke filled the room. Drask could barely see even a few feet in front of him as it roiled and surged up through the narrow stairways and access corridors. The blackness was lit by the flickering orange and crimson of the flames as they leapt and crawled through the ageing structure. The fire was rapacious. Hungry. Alive in ways that humanity had yet to truly fathom.

They were trapped with it. Caught between its hunger and the walls.

‘We need to move!’ Drask repeated, this time more forcefully. Adella nodded, and hurried forward after him. He gestured for her to keep low and ducked down himself. The acrid reek of the smoke was in his mouth and nostrils. He held his arm up and across his face to try and repel it, even as Adella nestled deeper into her robes. He could hear her breathing, close in his ear, as they moved down and out into the central chamber, across the gantries and support platforms.

The gantries creaked in the sudden rush of superheated air. Some had become unmoored and clattered into the inferno, while others still held – too well drilled into the walls, or braced against steel and stone rather than wood. Great sheets of fabric had come loose, flapping like vast wings before they were consumed in one final apocalyptic flare.

Below, on other walkways, the sisters of the House of Grace fled like panicked animals. Drask pressed himself to the floor, watching them as they scattered. Some were lost, caught amidst the smoke and the fire. He could only watch as they stumbled and fell, tumbling into the deeper darkness or collapsing till smoke or debris obscured them. He pushed himself up, reaching back to feel for Adella.

It was as he did so, head half turned, that he saw the shape move.

At first he was convinced it was a trick of the erratic light, or slumping brickwork, but he caught another glimpse of it as it moved. A figure, a human figure, black against the smoke and rising flame.

‘I need you to go on ahead,’ he shouted. Adella protested, but he raised his hand. ‘You know this place. You know where your sisters will be. Get them out. I’ll be right behind you.’ Her eyes widened, her features streaked with soot and dirt, but she nodded and pushed on. She hugged the floor, crawling ahead and then out of sight.

Drask drew his autopistol. He forced himself onwards, not after Adella but down another walkway after the figure he had seen. An arsonist. The arsonist. One hand groped in the darkness, while the other held the gun up and ready. His iris implant was in constant motion as it sought to clarify the contradictory inputs of the whirling smoke. Ghost readings flared from the gloom, phantom read-outs that died as soon as they were born. His hand trembled, jerking one way and then the other as he sought to pin down his prey.

If it even existed. He found himself wondering if he had seen what he had wanted to see. Perhaps the implant was malfunctioning, or his overactive and addled imagination had created the illusion for him to chase.

He realised that the path he was following, this high up in the burning building, likely led to some sort of roof access. He let his empty hand drift out, brushing along the plaster of the walls. Everything stank of burning – the harsh tang of wood, the sharpness of superheated metal and the stink of burning flesh and hair from below. He spat and heard it sizzle on the ground. Drask was afraid that his next step would be his last. The floor could cave in beneath him at any moment, the entire building could destabilise, and he would fall. He would die here, unmourned and unremembered, just another victim of chance and capricious malice.

As though hearing his thoughts, the beast lunged forward out of the smoke. His iris blinked rapidly with sudden recognition as the figure came for him. He could see every detail, smoke clinging to it, every curvature and indent of its armoured bodyglove rendered glowing by refracted firelight. Where it caught the grooves of the helmet it picked out the details of a stylised bestial face, jaws drawn back into a snarl, given near-hololithic life by the trapped light.

Drask’s aim adjusted instantly and he fired. The shot went wide as his attacker, the arsonist, ducked to one side. Black steel fangs caught the light of the burning building, rendering it yet more infernal. They were closing the distance too quickly, lean muscles bunching as they hurled themselves forward. There was a flash of firelit steel against the black of the armour and the blade was in their hand, thrusting out towards his throat.

He pulled back, tried to fire again, but there was too little distance between them now. The enemy was inside his guard. He unloaded twice, watched stonework detonate in impotent vandalism, and then the attacker’s free hand closed around his gun hand, forcing it up. A firm grip encircled his own, forcing Drask’s finger down and emptying the magazine into the ceiling. Dust and detritus rained down on them, and his opponent became suddenly spectral – coated in a fine, faintly smouldering layer of dirty white. They shook themselves, stepping back momentarily as if the sensor suite of the helm were realigning.

Drask yanked his hand free, turned the gun over in his grip and slammed the butt into the side of the smooth helm. He drew back, swinging again. The blade came up and around, glancing off his coat’s padding. He snarled, fully surrendered to the most basic of human urges. This was the law of the wild, the way of the street – it was kill or be killed. He had committed lethal violence many times during his career, but he had never truly enjoyed it the way that others had. The last time had been Alexius…

He channelled that hate, the rage and the disappointment, the shards and pieces of a broken life. Of shattered trust and tarnished faith. He drove those feelings with every swing of his makeshift club. He heard something crack. Sparks flared from the side of the helmet as one of the lenses deformed. He struck again, and the entire eyepiece detached with an almost organic pop. The attacker reared back and Drask finally saw beyond the armour. A pale blue eye stared at him, wet with pain and red from the smoke. Drask was suddenly aware that the figure was definitively a man. He barely had time to process that before the man drove his armoured forehead into Drask’s face.

‘Fuck!’ he gurgled. He staggered back, hands locked to his face. He could taste blood, running down the back of his throat and clogging his nostrils. He shook himself. Tried to ignore the throbbing pain. He spat a thick gobbet of blood and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. He thought he could feel a tooth loosen.

Drask bit back the pain and forced himself onwards. The smoke was thicker now, swirling in the mad eddies of the dying building. The heat was cloying, prickling at his skin. He could feel sweat beading his body, soaking through his clothing. It was a miracle he hadn’t yet caught fire.

All he could smell was the acrid reek of the burning wood. He could taste it too, mixed with the coppery sharpness of his own blood. He coughed, spluttering as the smoke went for his lungs. His vision blurred to the extent that even the iris was flickering, sending erratic warning dialogues scrolling down his retina.

He tried to blink them away, almost panicking from the unfamiliar interface. It had been too long, and he had never liked it… Throne help him, he didn’t want to die with that thing pulsing away inside his skull. Counting down his last moments, the hour preordained, writ upon his soul only to be expressed through the incomprehensible mechanisms of technology.

His thoughts were racing, his heart pounding. He felt giddy. Perhaps it was the lack of oxygen. Was this how the mind reacted when it was near death? He tried to remember the last time he had felt like this. Sprawled on the floor of the old Hylath estate, Alexius’ blade lodged in the meat of his stomach.

He hadn’t died there. He wouldn’t die now.

Drask pushed himself forward through the smoke, following in the wake of his assailant until he barged out through a door and into the chill of the open air. He drew in great heaving gulps, bracing his hands on the sides of the door frame. Roof access. Smoke billowed up around him like the impossible exhalation of some draconic beast, or the fyceline breath after an artillery barrage.

He could hear clarions, drawing nearer. Drask looked around, panting like an animal, until the breath caught in his throat.

The man was still on the roof. Drask watched him at the edge of it, his graceful movements as he evaluated the available space. Drask saw him for the first time in his entirety, in the clear and open air. The black suit was armoured atop a black bodyglove. Plates sleek and shaped to his physique, etched with exaggerated musculature. The snarling beast’s head helm was all-encompassing, save where it had been broken, and caught the light with its dark metallic edges. Everything possessed a predatory sharpness. Lean and threatening.

Muscles bunched in the bodyglove as he broke into a sprint, bounding across the rooftop, even as Drask began to shout.

‘Halt!’ He slammed his spare clip home and fired. Too much distance, his prey too quick as he evaded each shot and hurled himself over the edge of the building.

Drask rushed after him, dodging around protruding chimney stacks as he tried not to slip in the puddles of melting snow, watching as the man hit the roof of the building opposite. He rolled across the slush-covered roof and then was up and on his feet. Drask looked down. There was a sudden rush of vertigo. A nauseous tremor that spread through him like an oil slick. He stepped back, unable to suppress the terror building inside him.

‘Nothing else for it,’ he breathed. He began to run. Where his prey had been swift and sure-footed, Drask was lumbering and wheezing. Ailing in so many ways. He threw himself forward and felt the lurch of sudden, desperate weightlessness.

He could already see that he wasn’t going to make it. The edge of the building passed by his eyes, so close that he could reach out and touch it. He braced himself for impact. His breathing became a frantic staccato of anticipated pain.

It came in a sudden metallic clatter. He felt pain scythe through his chest. His hands scrambled for purchase, closing around bars. He held on, knuckles white, and opened his eyes.

He was clinging to the escape scaffold that braced the building. He could feel the moisture on his palms, partly sweat and partly meltwater from the building. He gritted his teeth and heaved, pulling himself up.

He lay there, sprawled and panting, until the sanctioners found him.

CHAPTER NINE

The Context of Kings

‘We’re going the wrong way,’ Drask muttered. He was sprawled in the back of the Rampart, his head leaning against the groundcar’s armoured glass. They ignored him. There were two – one in the passenger seat and the other driving – but between the pain balms they had given him, the distance and their armour, he couldn’t pick out any true detail.

His only request had been that they bring him back to the Bastion, and they couldn’t even do that right.

Drask had sat and allowed the medicae to attend to his wounds – dressing errant burns and bandaging his chest. One of them was concerned that he might have broken a rib, but he chose to ignore the information. He waved it off, content that any later examination would prove it one way or another.

When the sanctioners had arrived, he had attempted to requisition their transportation. They had ignored that. Drask had raged, of course, but they had ignored that too, as surely as he had ignored the medical advice. It was only when he had requested that he be allowed to accompany them back to the Bastion that they had acquiesced. Even then it had only been after a drawn-out vox correspondence with someone higher up the chain of command.

He pushed himself back into the seat, head lolling, and tried to focus. ‘I said, we’re going the wrong way,’ he insisted. Louder now. One of them looked back. His mouth was set in a sneer beneath the visor of his helmet.

‘We’re going where we’ve been ordered.’

‘Not where I ordered.’

‘No. Not where you ordered,’ he said dryly. The vehicle trundled a little faster, made a series of sharp turns and descended into the labyrinthine streets of the district’s northern fringe.

Drask blinked. He pressed his hand against the glass and looked back at them. ‘Where are we going? And under whose orders?’

They practically threw Drask out of the vehicle.

He stumbled out, still confused, still aching, and staggered around to look back at it as it sped off. He cursed and threw up his hand in a vaguely obscene gesture. When he turned back he knew, suddenly and with absolute certainty, where he was. Not the exact location, but what it represented.

A blockhouse. There were, nestled throughout Polaris, a number of safe houses. These were either shelters for operatives in the field, watch posts to signal-scan or – more often than not – boltholes for the field interrogation of prisoners.

It wasn’t always possible to return to the Bastion, and so compromises had to be made.

Standing before the black iron doors of the blockhouse, Drask knew what kind of place it was. It evinced an aura of threat, of bloody ruin and the end of deviant lives. He had worked the knife himself in places such as this. When it had been needful to do so. They were places of excruciation. Of pain. Of judgement.

And what do you fear, more than judgement?

‘Shut up,’ he whispered to himself. He drew one halting breath and raised his hand to rap at the door. A buzzer sounded, and it slid open with the rattle of deadbolts disengaging. An armoured sanctioner waved him in, and Drask followed the man up and into the blockhouse with a wary glance. The fire had left him on edge, and now he found himself out of place, under scrutiny for reasons he hadn’t yet fathomed. It could be a trap. He could be in danger. Yet the only way was forward.

There were no lumens. Candles burned in iron holders, gripped tight as dead men’s hands. The flickering, inconstant light caught on stone steps. Oaths of purity and vigilance glimmered there, their letters picked out in silver and bronze.

He trudged up each one, stopping occasionally to catch his breath as he followed the sanctioner. He leant against the wall, feeling the coldness of the stone, drawing his hand back to flex his fingers. He was getting feeling back again. Somewhere, in the fight or the fall, he had hurt it. The dull ache was fading as he worked the blood back into it. He could feel the wax and wane of the pain balms and counterseptics that were circling in his system. Riding his bloodstream like well-intentioned parasites.

Morbid places, he thought, breed morbid thoughts.

The doors along the stairwell were all shut, bolted from the inside. His eyes drifted over them, with their doors of chill black iron, and he suppressed a shiver. Was it the thought of what those rooms had borne witness to? Or what their sealed apertures were guiding him towards?

Up, ever upwards, towards whatever and whoever awaited him. As much a prisoner now as any other who had been brought here, weak and in chains, to suffer the tender mercies of the chasteners.

There was a firmer hand in this matter. It was all too official. Too sanctioned to be random vendetta or professional rebuke. The timing, the immediacy after the fire, spoke of urgency. Something relating to his circumstances, reaching down like the very wrath of the Throne, like His hand itself, to intervene. At the top of the stairs was another door. This one sat unbarred and ajar. The sanctioner stopped to the right of it and gestured for Drask to enter. Drask steeled himself and stepped through.

Beyond the threshold was a simple interrogation cell. The walls were bare and it was lit by a single simple lumen. Two figures stood at the other side of a table. He recognised the first.

‘Marita,’ he stated blankly.

Senior Probator Marita Konstantus was of a similar age to him, though she had long since surpassed him in rank, but certainly wore it with more gravitas. She was stocky, solidly built and could handle herself in a fight. Pale green eyes glinted in the lumen light that caught on the tarnished gold of her hair. She smiled without warmth.

‘Drask. His Hand.’

‘His Hand,’ Drask said cautiously. ‘Who’s your friend?’ he asked, turning away too eagerly to face the other occupant of the cell.

He had a hawkish leanness to him, something which Drask noted and regarded as almost predatory in its intensity. It was a potency shared in the typical juvenat sheen which graced his features, that coiled and borrowed youth, glistening just beneath the surface like a serpent that had just shed its skin. He wore an expertly tailored black suit and leant upon a carved cane of gold and ivory. An affectation, Drask surmised quickly. A pretence. He had strength in his bones. A wilful fire. Men like this were hungry. That was how they ascended to the heights he imagined this man must have attained.

He was combine. Or nobility. Or both.

‘Show some damn respect, Drask,’ Marita snarled. ‘You have the honour of being in the presence of Lord Phemus Nach.’

Nach. The name hit him like a bullet. The scars on his belly twinged, crawling with anxious energy. The Nachs were old money and older blood. More established and more storied than the Hylaths had once been. A gilded line with fingers in dozens of enterprises. One of them, maybe even this one, had a seat on the Vranx council. Drask swallowed, stayed silent and nodded simply.

‘Phemus will suffice,’ he said, all false modesty. He extended his hand, let it hang in the air for a few moments while Drask scrutinised it coldly, and then let it drop to the head of the cane. Drask watched his fingers knot and tighten about it. A man who wasn’t used to being spurned. Not used to being told no. ‘It is my honour to make your acquaintance.’

‘I’m sure,’ Drask said, unconvinced. ‘What’s this about then?’ He gestured up and down his body. The coat scuffed and burn-scarred. His face bruised and battered. ‘I’m not sure if it’s obvious, but my night went royally to shit.’

‘That’s what this is regarding,’ Marita said. ‘The work that you pursued this evening, the resultant damage and whatever you can tell us about what happened.’

He looked from her to Nach and then back again. ‘This isn’t a standard debrief, that much is clear.’

Marita had the decency to wince. ‘No, it isn’t. Drask…’ She let her gaze drift across to Nach, to his too-easy demeanour and his flexing hands, and then back to Drask. ‘Phemus is here because his family were the primary patrons for the House of Grace.’

‘I see.’ Drask was hardly surprised that an old and powerful house maintained such contacts. He filed it away for later use.

‘I’m not sure that you do, probator. However, I would be most happy to illuminate you.’ Nach raised a hand to his mouth and coughed politely. ‘I am from old stock. Some of the oldest. First Landing families have an obligation to our district, and indeed to our great city, one that extends across many strata. I am a man who is privileged to bear the name of Nach. My father, and his fathers, were equally as blessed by name and rank. They carried it from the darkest times, from the ages before the Emperor redeemed Varangantua. Where He trod, so we are graced to live.’

‘So we are graced,’ Drask and Marita repeated, their prayers recited by rote.

‘Yes.’ Nach grinned emptily and tapped his cane against the dark stone of the floor. Drask followed its motions, not nervous fidgeting but considered and deliberate movements, and found his gaze drifting to the darker stains which marred the floor. He wondered, idly, if they’d even bothered to try and remove them.

This was a bad place. It was a bad situation. Beyond that, it was one that he didn’t entirely understand.

‘I don’t see what this has to do with the bodies we’ve found and the fire.’

‘The House of Grace is an ancient, storied institution,’ Nach continued. ‘Sorry. It was an ancient, storied institution. It had tended to the requirements of the nobility since time out of mind. There is not a generation of the Nach line which was not enveloped in their works. Bodies committed to the earth and to the flame as once they were committed to the void. Swaddled in sacred cloth. That is how long a pedigree I speak of, probator, when I deign to speak of it.’ He smiled, puffing himself up, pride apparent in every movement. ‘And now,’ he said sombrely as the smile faded, ‘now it is gone. Consigned, in its own way, to ashes.’

‘And while I am sorry for your loss… that was not my fault,’ Drask said firmly.

‘Oh,’ he said, as though the thought were new to him, waving his hand through the air. ‘Please. Do not concern yourself with that. I am sure that you did everything within your power to be of assistance. Lanipendae Adella was quite effusive in her praise.’

‘She was?’ Drask had thought for certain that the old woman would have hated him for leaving her. That perhaps she had been caught in the conflagration. ‘You’ve spoken to her then?’

‘I have indeed.’ Nach nodded. ‘Apparently you put your own safety at risk to ensure the upper levels were cleared of potential victims? And nearly died, throwing yourself from the building? Remarkable sense of duty in the midst of a catastrophic accident.’

‘Accident?’

‘Well, yes.’ Nach smiled coolly. ‘A tragic generatorum malfunction, we believe. I simply wished to take the opportunity to congratulate you for your loyal service in person. You have contributed to the salvation of Varangantuan history, probator.’

‘The sisters survived then?’

‘A truly remarkable number of them, considering the circumstances.’ He smiled again. A cold and utterly unwelcoming smile. A reptile’s comfort. ‘They’re being treated by a dedicated team of family medicae. I really must reiterate just how pleasantly surprised we all are by their survival. So often these events are simply the recitation of the roll of the dead. Only the other day there was a hab collapse, a district or two over, and that is such a terrible business at the best of times… but when there is legacy at stake, well, it becomes another matter altogether. Wouldn’t you agree?’

Drask nodded as though in thought. ‘Of course. The considerations of family, of responsibility and of money must be very weighty at your echelon.’ He forced his own smile. ‘I’m afraid I have some unfortunate news for you in that regard.’

‘Oh?’ Nach raised an eyebrow. Drask couldn’t tell if his confused interest was genuine or not. He pushed on regardless.

‘I didn’t linger up there to look for survivors. I stayed because I saw someone. Someone who was well equipped and well trained. They almost killed me.’ He paused and took the time to assess their reactions. To her credit, Marita looked genuinely shocked. She might hold a personal distaste for him, but he was still a fellow officer of the Enforcers. Nach was unreadable. His features were set as though in stone, the judgement of a statue.

Drask wasn’t one to sing his own sermon, but he knew people. He knew their quirks and their eccentricities. He could watch a man and intuit his tells and his weaknesses. Perhaps on some level Nach was aware of that. He gave nothing away. He was a simple foil, a mirror, for the probing intuition that was Drask.

Or perhaps you and he are too alike. Too similar. Too shared of purpose.

‘I was not aware of this,’ Nach said. There was genuine surprise in his voice. ‘Attacked, you say? In defence of the house and in service, if unknowing, to my family name? I can only apologise, probator, for your involvement in what is most likely the politics of the noble houses.’ Drask raised an eyebrow and Nach went on. ‘We are not without rivals. This smacks of opportunism – of some other power reaching out to oppose us. Vatrian or perhaps Malantrok. Lesser merchants of sickly houses. The very kind of men to throw legacy upon the fire.’

‘Always a danger in our line of enquiry, my lord,’ Marita put in. Drask scowled at her overly eager fawning. ‘It was not our intention to infringe upon the undertakings of your house or the–’

‘Oh, nonsense,’ Nach said, waving his hand. ‘Please. Think nothing of it. Suffice to say that I am embarrassed that such things have come to light amidst polite society. You are the upholders of the Lex, as we are merely all its servants. I am simply here to congratulate and to appreciate your efforts.’

‘The Lex,’ Drask said, ‘is the Lex.’

Nach blinked slowly as he watched the probator speak. Drask smiled. He noted the tightening of the man’s jaw. For a moment the resolve had slipped, as though it were an irritation to him to have his devotion questioned. Men such as that did not honour the law. They imagined themselves above it, and sadly they often were.

‘Drask…’ Marita warned.

Nach waved her off again. He leant forward, and for a moment Drask was confronted by the wizened horror living within the man’s unnaturally young skin. The eyes held it. The years of calloused cruelty and pitiless ambition which had stripped away so much of what it meant to be human.

It reminded him of Alexius as he had become. That, though, had been an honest monstrosity. Not like this. Not in the way that the immensely wealthy had bartered away pieces of their souls in exchange for power and influence.

‘Not to worry, senior probator,’ Nach intoned sombrely. ‘Probator Drask is simply being direct. He has, after all, suffered quite substantially this evening. Yet more scars earned in service of Throne and Lex.’ Nach’s eyes flicked low, across Drask’s belly, and his tongue flickered across his teeth. As though he could see the scars beneath and smell the innards. Drask wondered how he knew. Who had talked. ‘You have suffered quite a bit already, have you not? The wounds inflicted during the apprehension of the infamous Silver Coin killer.’

Drask’s mouth became set, locked into a rictus smile, as his hands clenched and unclenched. ‘An internal, one could almost say need-to-know, matter,’ he replied. His eyes darted to Marita. She looked away. ‘One that was not for public dissemination or external review.’

‘Such things have a way of slipping out.’ Nach smiled as he spoke, flush with secret knowledge. ‘Amongst more select circles of Polaris society, perhaps even beyond, it is well known who was responsible for ending Sargas Hylath.’

So not quite as well informed as he believes. Drask bit back his smile. He nodded. Let Nach believe what he wished about the Silver Coin. Either way, he could not use it against him. After all he had been through, those wounds could no longer truly hurt him. There was no new pain, merely the persistent ache that living with them conveyed.

‘I suppose I have your gratitude for that as well?’ Drask asked.

‘After a fashion. The Hylaths were not well loved, or even liked, even before their scion was revealed as a deranged killer. I understand that some distant cousin has been found and dressed in borrowed finery… You cannot simply swaddle a grox in silk and think it a fine son of a noble line.’

‘Well I’m happy to keep matters interesting.’

‘You do, you most assuredly do.’ Nach laughed. It was a lyrical sound, one that sat at odds with his reserved demeanour. It was perhaps the most honest sound that Drask had heard him utter. ‘It does trouble me that our city is so beset by criminality and vice, probator,’ he said with a sad shake of his head. ‘These murders are unsettling, and I wish you every swiftness in solving them.’ He smiled coldly. ‘I shall take these revelations under advisement. If there is some conspiracy against me then rest assured that it shall be dealt with. We do not take kindly to interlopers in our affairs.’ He flashed a predatory grin, tapped his cane and moved off past Drask. Drask turned to watch the noble leave, shaking his head lightly as he did, before he moved off to follow.

The arrogance of the nobility, that a little richness of blood and pocket means you can settle your own affairs, far removed from the concerns of the law and the little men…

A hand grabbed him by the arm and spun him back around. He blinked angrily and found himself face to face with Marita Konstantus.

‘You have something to say, I take it?’

‘Don’t play clever with me, Drask,’ she snarled. Her mouth curled into a scowl. ‘You’re playing a dangerous game, with stakes that you do not understand, and it is going to bite you. Men like that will eat you alive the moment they think you’re no longer on their side.’

‘And you would know all about that,’ Drask shot back. He yanked his arm free and gestured towards the stairs. ‘You bring me here, after a night of horrors with dawn now breaking, and expect me to bow and scrape for some gilded bloody aristo? One who’s apparently well versed in our secrets! What sort of shit have you been whispering to him? Hmm? What precious little advantage have you been cultivating by pandering to his like!’ Drask slammed his fist against the table. It shook with his rage. ‘Why am I even here? So he can posture and preen? Scratch me behind the ears and congratulate me on a job well done, but not to worry! No, of course not – don’t worry, because he’ll take care of his own.’

‘I don’t think you understand quite what’s at stake here, Drask,’ Marita snapped. ‘But then you always had problems seeing the bigger picture.’ She spread her hands, grasping at the air as though she could in some way shape it to demonstrate her point. ‘The Bastion runs on the interest of men such as Nach, and life is made easier or much harder by their favour and attention. The castellan will not look kindly on any action that alienates them. I know you have your… issues.’

‘Issues!’ He laughed bitterly. ‘Issues? The Hylaths blighted my reputation to protect their verminous, murderous son. They destroyed Alexius, and the Nachs are no…’ He trailed off. Unwilling to remember, unwilling to revisit, and so he bit his tongue.

A scar is never truly healed. It always aches and itches and informs the present. Bleeding a little bit of the past every moment that it exists.

‘What he did was his own failing,’ Marita said. ‘It is not for the weak to serve. This job breaks them, chews them up and spits them out. In the past I’ve thought you weak. I’ve underestimated you and your gift.’

‘My gift?’ he scoffed.

‘Yes! Your gift! You may not appreciate it, Drask, but you have a gift. So many people sit on the sidelines and gawp at you. They can’t explain the leaps you make or the circumstances which surround you. There are plenty who would have you psy-screened and cortex-stripped until you were just another muzzled bloodhound sniffing after clues! Or burned like a witch. Cast deserving to the flames.’

‘I am sick of hearing about a gift that has brought me nothing but woe,’ he said. ‘It’s just another tool for others to use. You want to direct me in ways that advance your career. Make me the good little pet. Follow along with men like Nach. Alexius wanted to shape me to fit his own vision, and in the end, his dreams curdled. They killed him as surely as I did.’

‘Wake up!’ Marita shouted. ‘This is no longer a question of doing what is right or needful. It is not about what I want or what you want. It is about that man and his family. So when they tell us that we need to jump, we smile and we nod, we play our parts.’

Drask shook his head and turned away from her. ‘And what is our part in all of this?’

Her laughter, bitter and resigned, dogged his steps. ‘Whatever we’re told it is. We do our part. We play along and we hope that the storms that the powerful cultivate pass us over.’

‘And if I won’t do that? If I can’t hold my peace and ignore what Nach wants?’

‘Then I won’t be able to protect you, Drask,’ Konstantus said. ‘And the storm will find you regardless.’

CHAPTER TEN

Mega-predators

He stalked out into the cold and wan light of the city.

No one followed. Not the sanctioners, not Marita. Outside he still could not escape, as he found Nach idling. He watched the man lingering by the Dymaxion groundcar which had drawn up outside the building. He was smoking something expensive, something that was an order of magnitude rarer and more potent than lho. The strange spice scent of it drifted across the still air, then Nach smiled, the guards in their blue-and-gold brocade slipped into the vehicle with him, and he was gone. Off into the belly of the city.

‘I need to go home,’ Drask muttered. It had been a strange day and a stranger night. The weight of it pushed down upon him as he laboured towards the nearest mag-trans hub. After his abduction he had no faith left in Marita and her influence. Get into another groundcar with sanctioners he didn’t know and he would, undoubtedly, end up face down in the port. Just another body in the muck and murky surf.

‘No,’ he said aloud, ‘even she wouldn’t be that reckless.’

She was, at the end of the day, and despite her power, still just a small fish. Still an Enforcer, of course. He hoped there was still integrity despite her fawning.

Both of them possessed more in common than he might want to admit. They were the shoaling micro-fauna of the deep seas or the deeper void. Yet while they tumbled and danced, struggling to thrive or merely to survive, there were things like Nach abroad. Mega-predators. Made vast and unknowable by their wealth and their power. Bloated beyond caring for the tiny lives they destroyed in their passing.

The city was immense around him. Even a less developed, poorer district such as Polaris possessed the weight of the wider urban sprawl. He passed soaring walls, every inch covered with Ministorum scripts – nailed there by the faithful and the zealous.

FAITH IS THE BALM AGAINST THE INDOLENT SOUL!

GLORY LIES IN HIS NAME!

ONLY IN PAIN ARE WE MADE PURE!

His fingers itched to form the aquila, to abase himself before the penitents’ wall, as he had been taught in his youth. Memories arose, ripe with the scent of temple incense. It had never been for him, not truly, and while his father had been disappointed that he hadn’t taken holy vows, he had at least been mollified that his son was dedicating himself as a true servant of the Throne.

‘Not all battles are fought amidst the stars, my son, nor are they all struggles of the spirit. I’m proud of you.’

Proud, at least, that he hadn’t ended up as just another dockhand.

He shook off the nostalgia and continued on. The devotional tracts were steadily replaced by wanted parchments and banal commercial posters. Where the wall ended he was suddenly confronted with a chameleon-screen as tall as he was. It dominated the side of the street, casting golden light across everything in the immediate area.

At first it was such a vivid, transcendental shade of gold that he took it for an Ecclesiarchical screed, but then it resolved and he understood. A calloused hand, a worker’s hand, brushed its way through a field of glorious grain. It faded away to plain white, adorned with the words Live in His light, by His bounty. VRANX. The words were gone in another flutter of false colour, leaving only the horned beast logo, before it began to replay once more.

The promise of a better world could carry far in a district such as Polaris. Across its myriad sub-districts, from Aleph to Nul, Polaris cried out for that level of hope. Most of its citizens would never see beyond the confines of their district or the city, let alone some distant agri-world, but for a moment they could dream. They could walk those fields and feel the sheaves against their fingers.

In service they could know a degree of contentment, a sense of completion. That was the way of the merchant-combines, of Varangantua, of the wider Imperium. Succour through service. The potency of duty shepherding them to their fates. There were multitudes who lived like that. Bound in chains forged generations ago. Yoked to ideas of honour screamed from auto-pulpits or the prayer barges which wound their way down the shore.

‘We’re all chasing someone else’s ghosts,’ Drask muttered. He stopped for a moment, silhouetted in the repeating light of the chameleon-screen, and then headed on towards the mag-station.

It wasn’t a busy carriage. The hour was still too early, either for shifts ending or beginning, for there to be many riding the rails. He sat alone, gazing out at the city, and drummed his head against the glass. The carriage rattled and shook as it slid over ailing levitation plates. He could taste the ozone static in the air as it rose from the conduits below. Someone, anyone really, needed to give them a full maintenance scrub, but that was easier said than done this far south.

Varangantua was a body so vast that it frequently forgot that parts of it required flexing or attention. Those places, places like the untended habclave along Martyr’s Way and Macharius, tended to rot. They atrophied, though the ague was social rather than biological, and that putrefaction seeped into everything. The gangs looting the minor commercia, the murders in the habs, the illegal joy houses and the dealers slinging black ice.

All symptoms of city life. All consequences of people forced into close confines like Guardsmen into drop-ships.

He almost smirked as the car rattled past a set of huge adamantine storm shutters. Great bulwark walls of ancient and formidable make. They bordered many of the more deprived sub-districts of Polaris’ vast, cold sprawl. Sealable by Enforcer order in the event of severe civil unrest, or plague, or any other upheaval – pending more stringent response. Every so often they would be test-fired, sealing off a sub-district while it slept. The better to ensure ‘the continued and glorious rule of the Lex Alecto upon unyielding Varangantua’.

As a child he had always felt protected by those immense gates. They were the Emperor’s mighty hand, loving and protecting, yes, but also wrathful and punitive. Every child of the district knew that those gates could punish and control as ably as they shielded. He had looked up at those gates and wondered what sort of blessed men walked upon them, within their gatehouse of stone and steel, bearing the great weapons of the Emperor – so close to His beloved sight.

Now he knew.

He kept returning to the previous day’s events over and over. The mutilated horror of the bodies. The rush and roar of fire. The figure, black-armoured and well equipped. Nach’s cloying interest. It roiled within his skull, a leaden weight that threatened to drag him down.

But I need clarity, he thought. Concrete connections between the victims and the House of Grace. An examination of the merchant connections, Nach and Konstantus be damned!

The train clattered to a stop. There was a chime, and a voice clamoured through the interior vox. ‘Martyr’s Way! Disembarkation for Martyr’s Way! Remember, proud citizens – service is sacrifice! Toil is sacred! Offer up your daily bread and rejoice that He has provided!’

He hurried off the train and down the iron steps to street level. There had been another snow flurry in the night, and the road was covered in a thin layer of slush as it melted and ran. Men, machines or servitors had clearly been employed to keep the road clear – and they had pushed the filthy melting debris to the sides. He trudged past the knee-high muck, rounded the corner onto Macharius and found his hab-building.

It was run-down, slumping inexorably into total ruin, but it was home. His stipend covered it with a meagre degree of comfort, and he kept costs down by not maintaining a groundcar of his own, but even so, he knew he could do better.

He keyed in his code, pushed the door open at the alarm chime and began the slow ascent. Up the three flights of stairs to the faded door of his hab. He unlocked it, looked around and then entered the cramped space. Nowhere in all the wretched city was untouched by crime, but the attack on the weavery had unsettled him. His probator’s vigilance, verging upon paranoia, ticked away at the back of his mind.

Drask peeled off his coat and threw it over the nearby chair. He unclipped his holster, shrugged out of it and deposited it on the table. Finally free of its weight.

He sighed and stretched. He could feel every ache, every blossoming bruise, every wound the night had given him. He felt his way along the crumbling plaster walls, an old habit, and cursed as his fingers found yet another patch of spreading damp.

Buildings in Polaris were as vulnerable as people. They simply died by degrees rather than all at once.

He found the lumen switch and engaged it, then staggered into the hygiene-chamber. Drask scooped water onto his face, then cupped some in his hand, sipping the tepid fluid greedily. He gingerly removed his shirt and winced as he inspected his wounds. A heavy line of bruises stretched across his chest from his fall. He pushed at it experimentally and bit his tongue as the pain radiated through him.

He staggered back into the main room and surveyed its neglected squalor. The broken vid-projector which had ended up dying from lack of use rather than overuse, the battered wireless which he had sourced to replace it, the furnishings which had come with the hab. Everything carried the stink of old recaff and alcohol and the baked-in whiff of lho use. Old habits. For the most part. He crossed the room, pulled open the drawer of an old, battered desk and pulled out the bottle of amasec. He inspected it, swirling it, looking for grit and debris. Drask didn’t bother with a glass. Instead he worked the cork free, raised the bottle to his lips and took a deep draught.

‘Throne, but that’s good,’ he muttered. He had needed that. The spreading warmth of the alcohol swallowed the pain, drowning it down in its pleasant depths. Darkness was calling to him. He glanced at the chair and shook his head. Not tonight. Tonight demanded a proper rest. He staggered out from the combined refec-living area and into the dorm-chamber. He kept it a little tidier, the better to ensure he got at least some sleep, but it wasn’t much. The grime was kept at bay, and it didn’t stink of past indulgences, but it had still seen better days. One day he really ought to start investing back into it. A few simple creature comforts.

Perhaps that would make a difference.

He pulled the meagre blankets over himself as he lay down on the lumpen synthfoam of the mattress. He shivered, wincing with the pain more than the cold, and tried to settle.

The image of Phemus Nach crawled back through his subconscious, exaggerated and distorted. The smirking aloofness had curdled into a monstrous arrogance. His fingers, longer and thinner than they had been in reality, coiled about the cane’s head, as though cradling an infant’s skull. His teeth drew back in a grim and hideous rictus.

Drask forced his eyes closed. He let the shadows fall and the night truly creep in. He surrendered.

He was drowning. Drowning in tar-thick water, as dark as night and as cloying as the stink of burning flesh. He struggled but it was no use. It was everywhere. It was everything. He could feel it in the back of his throat and up his nose. It filled his ears and pressed in at his eyes till it was hard to focus. He tried to call up the iris display but it didn’t respond.

There was no light in the darkness, and despite this, somehow, he knew he was not alone.

Things moved in the darkness. Immense beyond reckoning. Mega-predators, he thought, panicked. Driven by the spasms of the prey-mind. The realisation that he could die and never even be noticed.

The darkness split as the beast reared up from the primordial depths. The black water, if it was in fact water, trembled about him. It shuddered inside him. He felt as though he was going to be sick. That desire died in his throat when he saw it. Transfixed by the majestic horror of it.

It resembled an immense beast of the ocean. Yet its hide was made of rockcrete and cold black iron, shedding scales the size of hab-blocks – that were hab-blocks. Lights burned along its flank in a rainbow of furious colours, neon smears like ganger graffiti, burning brands forged of fractured chameleon-screens. It rippled with black, soot-stained muscle and flexed upwards with great golden pincers.

Monstrous. So ancient and terrible that it possessed its own form of gravitational beauty. The way that distant stars were said to be horrific in their glory, the way that the preachers talked about the God-Emperor and the golden light of distant Terra. They said that light could burn the very eyes from the faithful and reach into their very soul, but there was no true light here. Only the bioluminescence of insanity.

He recognised it for what it was, though. He could see what the dimensions of the mega-predator were. He could name it, and as he tried to speak it, he realised his mouth was too clogged with the filthy water to say it, so he tried to scream it instead.

Varangantua! He thrashed and spasmed against the physics and the logic of dreams, but it made no difference. The great city-beast, the devourer-king made of stone and iron, bore down upon him. Drask threw up his hands to cover his face, as though by blocking out the sight he could avoid the inevitable crushing end, yet still it came on.

‘This city…’ breathed the voice at his ear, and he closed his eyes at last, knowing what was coming.

He opened them again.

‘This city eats men,’ Alexius said.

Drask blinked, looking around in complete confusion. The world had solidity now. Dimension. He was not alone in the infinite dark, beset by predatory dreams – he was sitting in Alexius’ office at the Bastion.

He caught a glimpse of himself in the armaglass of the windows. His youth, restored, the years a distant memory. Memory… in place of dreams. His mind was a strange thing, a roiling cauldron of contradictions, and now it used the past against him. As though the dreams of pain and death and stress had not been enough.

‘I have told you that many times before, of course, and you ignore it. The city isn’t kind, Quillon.’

‘I know that,’ he answered – as he had answered then – but instead of sitting and listening, he rose. The substance of the dreamlike reminiscence didn’t collapse. It held steady as he paced the chamber. He stopped before the bookcase to the left of Alexius’ desk and let his fingers drift along the spines.

In those halcyon days those tomes had seemed like something preternatural, like the magic text from a story, but they had only ever been notebooks. Handwritten records of his early observances and findings, stretching back down the long years of his scrutiny and service. Drask tapped the books and then turned back to look at Alexius as he had been. In his prime, not slowly corroded by the pressures of the Silver Coin case or the intrusion of selfish nobles; as he ought to be remembered.

‘It’s not simply about observation, boy,’ the older man had scolded. ‘You must cultivate the connections and the awareness befitting a probator.’ He sighed and stretched in his seat, looking at Drask with something between amusement and disappointment. ‘We ask ourselves, are we not part of the machinery of the Imperium? Mechanisms in our great city? Do we not then owe it to ourselves to work with the other apparatuses of Varangantua?’

‘Ours is the duty to keep the Lex Alecto. To serve it and to ensure that we act as both sword and shield for the benefit of all. To live for it, to kill for it and to die for it.’

‘And would you?’ Alexius asked, his voice reduced to a strange and sudden rasp. ‘Would you die for it?’

Drask turned and watched as the scene began to flow. Running like old, flawed wax. Alexius’ features twisted. They became diseased. Elastic. He grinned too widely, and the silver of his smile was mirrored in the flicker of his now cruel eyes and the motion of the blade as he closed the distance. Drask felt pain as the old scars reopened, as surely as if he were being gutted again, and his hands went low to try and stop the inexorable spill of his intestines. He tasted blood.

‘Boy…’ Alexius rumbled. He raised the knife again.

Drask awoke with a jolt, his hands gripping the sheets. His breath came in ragged, heaving gulps that threatened at any moment to dissolve into sobs. He clenched his fists tightly. He let go of the sheets, scrunched his eyes closed and then pushed up and off the bed.

He spared a glance for the wall-mounted chrono as he opened his eyes again. He had slept, a few stolen hours, at least. He resisted the urge to vomit. Or to weep. He had wasted too much already for the sake of old ghosts and dead memories.

Alexius wasn’t here. He couldn’t hurt him. The old man was dead. He had killed him himself. With his own sidearm. There had been a purity in that. A peace. It had been a reckoning for a part of his soul, and whether he had kept it or left it in the study of the Hylath estate was almost beside the point.

He had passed through fire. It was no wonder he was scarred and burned. Who could blame his mind for remaining on fire? Burning with the gift of inspired reason.

Drask pinched the bridge of his nose hard between his fingers and lurched for the hygiene-chamber. There was still time, if but a little, to wash the poison fear of the night away before he had to be at the Bastion.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Chasing Echoes

A little time was all it took.

The ride back to the Bastion was uneventful, though busier. Drask stared at the tired ranks of workers who occupied the other seats. He wondered what lives they led, what fates they were headed to. How many of them dredged the cold and stagnant waters for whatever life could be wrung from it? Which ones toiled in munitions factories or were indentured bondsmen of organisations like Vranx? He found himself scanning the uniforms, Imperial slate grey almost all of them, for the horned logo of Vranx Agri-Mercantile.

He found it, without fail, again and again. His eyes followed the branching curves of the horns, more antlers really, picked out in green or gold depending on rank.

Little fish. He parsed the thought guiltily. He had seen the manner of man that these workers served. Even if they did not know it. He couldn’t hold the shift-runner responsible for the actions of a man who was minor nobility. No matter how much he might resent the lingering taint of the Nachs’ attentions.

One of them, a man, broke his own reverie and looked back at Drask. Drask blinked in response and looked away, embarrassed to have been caught, even as the train carriage rattled to a stop. He got off and tried not to think of the long arm of Vranx. Or of Phemus Nach.

He hurried down the stairs and out onto the street. He tried to centre himself, to regain his calm, but he grasped at empty air. He locked his hands at his sides, letting them open and close as he hurried onwards into the waking city.

Clarions and alarms dogged his steps. For a city which never slept, Varangantua certainly did its share of graceless rousing. He crossed a street without looking and jerked his head around as a groundcar horn rang out. Drask raised his hand apologetically and moved out of the way. Quick as a startled felid. Soon he was within sight of the Bastion’s dour grey walls and under the gaze of its servitor-controlled guns or the patrolling servo-skulls. The eyes of the lobotomised and the dead followed him. They tracked his movements with fluid, hollow ease. He did his best not to look up. Not to draw the attention of the Bastion’s formidable defence capabilities.

He held up his holo-seal at the foot entrance, submitted to retinal scans and blood ciphers, before proceeding through the drab procession of security checkpoints. Sanctioners waved comrades past or stopped individuals for more thorough searches. A few civilians waiting in line were swiftly bustled into side rooms for further questioning.

Drask ignored it. He passed through the checkpoints and into the Bastion proper with the grace of the permitted and cut quickly across the main hall. It was a great stone-columned chamber threaded through with wooden benches and the continual clatter of keys as information was recorded and statements transcribed. Braced between two sweeping staircases, the hall was a rough oval of constant activity. A beating heart of intelligence and the churning crucible from which sanctioner squads departed – armour jangling alongside the rattle of security doors. Drask skirted around the commotion, climbed the flight of stairs and sat at his station. He idly blink-clicked and scrolled through the iris. Images bubbled up from their recall in a sudden flurry of gruesome close-ups.

More than anything he wished to set the information in context. He needed the Farentis and Tral files, side by side. To probe any existing commonalities. There seemed a world between the merchant functionary and the gutter conman, yet there must be something. He concentrated, still uncertain of the workings of the dataveil when it was this intermeshed, and instigated a full data-sync between his retained information and the existing double-murder case file.

Warning runes flashed across his vision.

> Incoherent Data Transfer. File not extant. Go in the sight of the Throne, and know the purity of adequate data hygiene.

He blinked to dispel the insistent scrolling messages. He could feel pain building behind his eye. Throbbing, pulsing with the crimson of the words, burning its way onto his retina. It was like his entire eyeball was on fire. Caught again in that nesting web of wires, only now they were white hot.

He rose shakily and made for the stairs. His gait remained uncertain and he bit back the pain, trying his best to seem unbothered and unhurried.

Down he went, down through the bowels of the building, down towards where he knew Amelya would be.

If this was her shift.

Drask burst through the double doors of the medicae annex, his head swivelling madly from side to side, looking for Visarth. He was momentarily aware of how ridiculous he must look. Half mad and feral, jaw locked in pain, his eyes flaring. He half imagined that others could see the crimson light, distending his eyeball as it pulsed like an alert flare. He cursed under his breath as he stumbled and slammed his midriff into one of the surgical stations. Sharp, glinting tools tumbled off the edge and clattered across the floor. He tried to speak but couldn’t. Locked in his own body, his muscles palsying, as he tried to get any coherent thought out. Drask could feel the saliva foaming at the corners of his mouth.

Visarth was already ranting as she strode into the central chamber. ‘What in the name of the Throne is going on out here? I swear I will have you cadets up on charges if you so much–’ She gasped when she saw him. ‘Quillon? Oh, God-Emperor.’

He tried to reach for her. His hands banged uselessly against the table. She pressed an auto-injector against his throat and triggered it with a hydraulic hiss. He felt suddenly cold. Numbness spread through him and his body stopped quaking. She caught him as he began to slump, helped him up to sit on the table and then turned to rummage in one of the chamber’s many drawers. He could hear the clanking of metal and the whine of something activating, but it was distant. As though heard from far away.

He was back in that cold black sea. That void of nothingness, crawling its way into his every pore, so dense that he couldn’t even scream.

‘Hold on, hold on,’ she muttered again and again. She looked down at him, features knotted in concentration, and pressed something against the side of his head. He had the impression of a lumpen thing of cold steel and clinging rubber. He felt suction pads lock home and the bite of tiny needles. Pain returned. Nerve-deep. Soul-pain that cut the brief respite of the anaesthetic to shreds and dived straight for the knot of agony nestled in his eye socket.

‘Not long now, Quillon,’ she breathed. ‘Throne, but I warned you – I warned you – to watch it. What have you done to the damn thing?’

He tried to respond, to force out even the most basic of replies, but still the words wouldn’t come. He felt as though his throat was closing, drowning on dry land, and was certain he could taste blood. Something in his head was primed to burst. He could smell burning.

‘I–’ he tried to say.

Darkness took him again.

He awoke with a pounding headache. Migraine-bright flashes cut across his vision as he tried to rise. A steady hand pressed down on his chest, holding him back, but he was too weak to truly struggle against it. His mouth worked slowly, woollen, as he tried to draw breath and speak.

‘Wa… wat…’

‘Water. Yes. Of course.’ Visarth’s voice was clipped with worry as she raised the cup to his lips. He sipped greedily, too quickly, gulping until he coughed and sputtered. He raised one shaking hand and wiped his mouth with the back of it.

‘Throne,’ he breathed, finally able to speak. ‘What happened?’

‘Something tried to kill you,’ Visarth stated flatly. He looked up at her. She was rattled. Her demeanour had shifted entirely, showing none of the usual bluster or keen interest in the gruesome details of the work.

‘Something?’ he husked in return. He forced himself up onto his elbows, wincing, and looked at her again. ‘Don’t you mean someone?’

‘There is, eventually, a someone. Yes.’ Visarth sighed. ‘There was a malignant data-geist implanted within the data-retrieval module of your workstation. It went active when you synchronised, and attempted to detonate your implant. In addition to that, it also scrapped the primary data-storage of your terminal with specific, targeted kill ciphers.’

‘There’s nothing left?’ he asked. He knew though. He felt it in his roiling gut. He pushed himself up and waved off her concern. He had to stand. He had to move. To lie still was to invite weakness and death. He had lain prone long enough. He had been prey for too long.

‘The case files are gone. Farentis, Tral. Any cross-linked files or queried information was also erased. Blitzed in the first data-strike.’ She sighed and shook her head. ‘I’m sorry, Quillon.’

‘They would have to have accessed my terminal, then,’ he said, brow furrowed. ‘We still have the physical copies though. The hard evidence. The bodies.’

Her gaze told him everything he needed to know.

‘You can’t be serious.’

‘There was a sweep earlier today. They had the senior probator’s seal and the signature of the castellan.’ She swallowed. ‘The requisition order called for all evidence to be turned over as part of a transition to a private investigation on the behalf of Lord Phemus Nach.’

‘That son of a bitch,’ Drask snapped. He slammed his fist into a table and watched the steel implements dance on their trays. ‘After all his empty words, he does this.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I met Phemus Nach last night. He had me brought before him like a whipped cur, and Senior Probator Konstantus helped him. Stood by while he smiled and wheedled and told me oh-how-important the work I was doing was. He pulled me out of the fire, quite literally, and took what I knew. He’s a bastard. An utter, shameless gilded bastard!’ He lashed out and knocked the tray to the floor. Visarth spared him a withering look.

‘What fire? We haven’t heard anything since last night. You said you were going to the textile district and then… we heard there had been some sort of an accident.’

‘It was no accident. I was getting somewhere. I’d narrowed down the fabric we found on the victims to a specific location – the House of Grace. The way the blind weaver-women spoke about it, it was some cornerstone of the old First Landing families. Funerary rites. That sort of thing.’ He flexed his hand. ‘Before I could see their records it was burned to the ground.’

‘Burned. To the ground.’ She did not make the words into a question. They hung as a blunt statement. ‘To kill you?’

‘I don’t think so,’ he said. ‘If someone wanted me dead, there were a hundred simpler ways to do it. Such a drastic course of action suggests that there was something concrete in those records. Something that was known to the assailant. Something that would definitively inform the next steps. They knew the investigation had begun, that bodies had already been found and that someone would be coming. They were there to destroy the evidence. If they managed to catch me in the crossfire it would have been serendipitous collateral. Now, as with the data-geist, it was convenience rather than an outright assault.’

‘An interesting way to put it,’ she allowed. ‘Yet whoever is orchestrating this has the means to not only burn down a building of some importance but to act with impunity in the heart of a Bastion. That speaks to resources. Influence. Access. To craft and direct such a thing, a potent piece of kill-heuristics, and smuggle it into our midst.’

‘And that leaves us with two possibilities. Either this is an outside party including us in its vendetta, one which seems to centre around Phemus Nach, or…’

‘Or?’

‘Or it is orchestrated and controlled by Nach himself.’ He paused. ‘The first victim we found. Mercutio.’

‘Farentis. Yes?’

‘He was a Vranx employee, you said?’

‘A procurement executive. Mid-rank. Nowhere near your lordling. All that was in the files, though. We’ve lost the specifics.’

Drask nodded and scratched his chin. ‘Could be some sort of internal spat. You know how it is. Corps and combines might as well be another world. When it spills out into the wider city, when people get hurt or killed, that’s when it becomes more than games for the gilded.’

Visarth knelt and began to scoop up the instruments Drask had knocked to the ground, placing them back on the table one after the other. She was silent as she did so. She sighed gently.

‘Perhaps this is a hint, Quillon. You’ve been given an opportunity to step back, to take another case. To move on.’

‘And you think I can do that?’ he asked. He picked up a scalpel, turning the handle over and over in his grip before idly slashing at the air. Visarth reached out and took hold of his wrist, indulgently lowering his hand. She shook her head.

‘I know that you won’t. I simply had to remind you. You…’ She trailed off. ‘You have too much of him in you to give up.’

‘Ah.’ He looked down and away from her. His fingers knotted into fists again. ‘There really are some shadows that you can’t escape from.’

‘Maybe you aren’t meant to move past it.’

‘What do you mean?’ Drask jerked back as though struck. ‘I have spent years trying to escape from the mere suggestion of his failure, before ever it was compounded by his fall.’ He laughed. ‘Alexius was like a father to me. He saw something in me, and he took the risk in nurturing it. Raised me up from a cadet into a probator of the Lex. He believed in me when I barely believed in myself. Every opportunity I have had, everything I’ve achieved, has been in his shadow. That’s a lot of weight in the best of circumstances. The Silver Coin affair? That turned a shadow into a pit. A morass. Every day I am fighting to show that I can still stand in the light. That I am not him. That even the suggestion of it is anathema to me.’

‘I know that the judgement of others has never sat easily upon you. It is the same for all, though I will admit that not many of us are forced to bear your burdens or so many borrowed grievances.’ She looked at him pityingly. ‘Have you considered prayer?’

‘I’m not sure that kneeling in the temple is the best use of my time at present, Amelya.’ He managed to hold back his bitter laughter.

‘He is not only present in the arch and dome of the temple, or the words of priests,’ she said quietly. ‘He is with all who walk His worlds and serve His will. On the lonely battlefield and in the gutter, He still dwells. Where men pray, He waits and listens.’

‘I’ll certainly consider it,’ Drask said with a resigned sigh. He let the blade slip from his fingers, enjoying the racket it made as it tumbled across the other sharp and gleaming implements. ‘Until then I’m afraid I’ll have to settle for having words with more mundane gods.’

‘Oh?’ She raised an eyebrow. It was clear that she was concerned about where he was taking this line of thought.

‘The best way to bring a beast such as this to heel is to put myself into its line of sight. Whoever they are, they likely expect me to stop. To step back. To at least take the time to breathe. I don’t intend to do that. I want to keep them guessing, whether they’re the enemy that is known to us or one in his orbit.’

‘And how do you intend to do that?’

Drask laughed. ‘I’m going to arrange a meeting with Phemus Nach.’

CHAPTER TWELVE

The Lair of Beasts

Up close, the pyramid which formed the heart of the main Vranx campus was a contradictory thing. It was utterly artificial, forged in ages past and maintained by rote, but it evoked a strangely organic sympathy in those who looked at it.

The vast glass panels caught the wan sunlight in strange ways and shone with the emerald of long-vanished forests, glittered with verdigris sheen and evoked the dazzling excesses of fungal blooms.

It seemed alive in a way that the surrounding district never could. The other buildings were brute, gothic, ornamented with the signs of their ruination. They bore graffiti, structural collapse and their grey pallor with some morbid pride. Like a pugilist’s scars, the brands of a fighter and a warrior, but they paled before the almost regal splendour of the Vranx spire. Where Bastion-P was squat and stocky, assured of its own might, there was a sense of strength in fragility about the headquarters. It did not merely project power. It reflected it.

Green-armoured security men held up gauntleted hands as he approached. Drask reached into his coat, calmly, and removed his holo-seal. The flare of his credentials registered in the black visors of their helms, and though he couldn’t see their eyes he knew they would be widening. Not in shock but with the tacit annoyance of their own authority being challenged. Their territory invaded.

He smiled his outsider’s smile and moved past them into the graceful glitter of the main reception hall.

It was a wide, open space, artfully presented and curated. As he entered, Drask passed a number of golden statues – tastefully Imperial renderings of the human form, lithely muscled – each in a different pose. From steady walking gait to outright running, they arced across the marble floors framing the main walkway to the reception desk in idealised human capering. Drask rolled his eyes as he passed them. Behind them loomed more colossal constructs, great stone statues of Imperial heroes upon whose shoulders cherubim rested – cooing and burbling before taking wing again.

For all their wealth and power, the merchant-combines only existed in the shadow of the Emperor’s will. Their gold and glamour were as nothing beneath the cold marble and iron of Imperial rule. The gilded statuary seemed almost comical in comparison, like a child’s errant toys.

Regardless, a single one of these golden statues was worth more than he, and the majority of the other inhabitants of the district, would earn or see in a hundred lifetimes.

The marble floor reared up to become a slab-sided desk. Uniformed attendants stood behind it, nodding and smiling to passers-by or dealing with enquiries. A woman, her dark hair impeccably coifed, smiled at him as he drew up. ‘Can I help you, sir?’ This close, he could see that below the waist she was borne up on a nest of cables and support pneumatics. Wedded to the very fabric of the merchant-combine as surely as any servitor.

He fetched his seal again. Without helms the discomfort was more pronounced. ‘I’m here to see Phemus Nach,’ he stated, and then hesitated for a moment. ‘If he is available.’

Her face crumpled as she stammered in response. Being confronted by an officer of the Enforcers had clearly not been on the agenda when the day had begun. Her fingers were a blur upon the runic keys set before her, and Drask was convinced he could see the data streaming down her eyes as readily as it must be on her vid-screen. She coughed, collected herself and fixed a smile as she addressed him.

‘I’m sorry, sir, but he’s indisposed until further notice. I can arrange for a future correspondence, but there are currently no opportunities for dialogue…’ She trailed off as she realised that he wasn’t truly listening. ‘Sir?’

‘Just direct me to where he is. Thank you.’

‘I’m afraid that is not possible, as I have already said.’ He saw her eyes dart to one side, seeking the attention of Vranx security. The officers in their plain green body armour, glossier and sleeker than anything the Bastion would use, looked over as though to intervene. Shock mauls hung ready from their belts, like ceremonial maces.

Drask smiled curtly and stepped back. He was about to turn and leave when her head tilted again. She frowned, processing, and then sighed with something approaching exasperation. She gestured sharply, and this time a guard did move off to attend her. A hand cradled a shock maul, just looking for the excuse.

‘Forgive me, sir,’ the woman said. ‘It appears as though Lord Nach will be available after all.’ She turned her forced smile towards the guard. ‘If you could show the probator up, Lucian?’

Drask followed Lucian up a series of stairwells woven through the outer structure of the vast building. As he ascended he could see the city sprawled out around him, lent a sheen of borrowed lustre from the tinted windows.

Up here it was easy to forget the privation and want that dwelt below. He already felt separate from the troubles of the chill district. The temperature-fixed air was warm and clear at the first inhale but had a chemical aftertaste which lingered unpleasantly. Like machine oil and old sweat. The lumens shone with a light the sun had never provided, like the warmer stars of more distant worlds. Perhaps Terra’s sun burned like this. Somewhere out in the infinite dark.

The stairway was a carved spur of marble, white in contrast to the black marble of the main hall. It had been sculpted to resemble nothing so much as bone, vast sweeps of ivory that led up into the heart of power. Evoking the beasts that had died down the generations to slake mankind’s ravenous hunger.

Lucian handed him over to two guards at the top of the ivory stairs, men in feathered helms and gleaming hauberks bearing ceremonial glaives. The simple opulence of the lower levels was replaced by masses of menials and clerks. Trays laden with parchment were held aloft in the iron hands of servitors or carried beneath drifting servo-skulls. The gentle burr of suspensor fields followed them as they hovered along their preprogrammed paths. Drask ducked through the midst of them. He rounded a corner, skirting around a cluster of workstations, above which an overseer intoned rubrics of productivity from his lectern, wielding a whip in his free hand as a bony finger traced its way along a line of text in a heavy book. Drask waved away a cloud of fragrant incense and found himself facing the stairs which led up towards the executive enclaves.

They nestled above the throng like a gilded secret in the heart of the vastness of the pyramid. Suspended on interlinking strands of silver, woven vast and intricate, they sat pristine and beautiful like a bird’s nest. Each office had walls of a pearlescent material which glittered under the persistent light of the lumens. To ascend the gilded stairway up to these levels was to cross over into another strata of existence. The skulls of noted barons and honoured servants glistened amongst the ornamentation, freshly oiled.

A set of double doors, their surface inlaid with a shimmering layer of platinum, opened as he approached. A sombre procession of barons, merchant-princes and attendants moved through the doorway and out to face Drask. They were robed or swathed in silks and ermine. Jewels and rings glittered on their fingers or hung from heavy chains around their necks. At the centre of them stood Nach, his face already curling in distaste as he spotted Drask.

‘Phemus Nach,’ said Drask.

‘Probator! This is certainly a surprise. I’m glad we could find the time for this meeting.’ The smile he flashed was dazzling, dredged up from the pits of his discomfort and swiftly weaponised. Drask could see the tightening of Nach’s jaw, the way his muscles clenched and tensed. He hadn’t expected to see Drask again so soon, and Drask took full advantage.

‘I had wanted to follow up on our conversation from last night.’ Drask smiled broadly. ‘Senior Probator Konstantus wouldn’t understand. She can be at once too close to things and too distant. She hasn’t been down in the muck of it all. Trying to make it right.’

‘Of course,’ Nach said quickly. He had recovered well. The other members of his council had moved off, looking back occasionally and smirking at perceived weakness, and now the political animal reasserted itself. Drask had no doubts that he had done some damage, that there would be internal ramifications, but right now that was secondary to his agenda.

‘If you’d come with me,’ Nach said, and guided Drask to an adjoining meeting chamber. He took a seat at one end of a long table of rich dark wood and gestured to a chair a few places down. Drask sat. ‘How can I be of assistance?’

‘As I understand, all of the existing records have been transferred to you? Those relating to the House of Grace and to our ongoing linked murder investigations?’

‘They have, yes.’ He projected an air of embarrassed deference. ‘Having consulted with my fellow councillors and considering that this could be an incursion by another combine, it was felt prudent that we resolve the matter… in-house, as it were. Personal security forces will avenge this slight and see to it that poor Mercutio is avenged.’

‘You knew the victim then?’

‘By reputation,’ Nach said. ‘He was a most useful implement for the organisation. So much of what we do is based around procurement. Around finding what is necessary for a specific task, or to fill a certain economic niche, and putting it to use. He, and those under him within his departmento, were facilitators.’

‘For the wares of the House of Grace, for example?’

He laughed and shook his head. ‘In a time of mourning, perhaps. We are not in a time of mourning. And even if we were, if some member of the noble line of Nach or any other founding family had found it their time to wear the white, then that would have been handled by family.’

‘Why the white cloth?’ Drask asked. Nach looked at him quizzically, as though a child had asked an impertinent question.

‘Since the earliest days of the Landings, since the First Families came down from the stars, they have been borne to their end wrapped in white. It is a gift from the faithful to those who are left behind. A sign of the sacrifice that is death amidst the spoil that life can be.’

‘A mark of respect, then,’ Drask said with a nod. ‘And yet we find it gripped in the hands of Mercutio Farentis and stuffed inside the body of Hiram Tral.’

‘I cannot answer that,’ Nach said. He tapped his cane against the ground in agitation. ‘The cloth is a specific symbol of our familial rites. It has, for the longest time, been a protected and proscribed material. For the use of notables alone, at the hour of direst grief.’

‘I would like to consult with your personal records. In the absence of our existing information’ – Drask forced a smile at that – ‘and with the House of Grace’s records lost to us, perhaps the records of House Nach can provide us with some clarity as to the disposition of the cloth.’

‘I am afraid…’ Nach managed a weary sigh. ‘I am afraid that will not be possible, probator. Our records are private. There are many incidental references to ongoing business concerns and mercantile interests. We cannot allow an outsider, even one bearing your authority, to simply peruse them at leisure. Now, if you were to make another appointment for… say, next week, then perhaps we could redact the records accordingly and allow you… limited access?’

Drask was about to respond when a lean, dark-haired youth moved into the chamber, whispering into Nach’s ear. Drask noticed the familial resemblance almost instantly. The hawkish line to the features. That predatory zeal. Nach nodded thoughtfully and then waved the younger man away.

‘Thank you, Toren,’ he said, and turned back to Drask. ‘My son, Toren, unfortunately informs me that my next appointment cannot wait. I appreciate your enthusiasm, probator – it does you nothing but credit. Going forward, however, I would ask you to be patient and to allow us our due process. In time, I guarantee you will have all that you desire.’

‘I understand,’ Drask said. He held up his hands. ‘I simply wished to know if there was anything else that I could do for you. Any other service I could provide. Any information that hadn’t yet been handed over. It wouldn’t do for us to offer you anything less than our very best.’

‘Thank you, probator,’ Nach said. He was already moving off alongside his son and out of the meeting room. The young man looked back at Drask, glaring protectively, as he placed a hand on his father’s back and ushered him away. ‘If anything else comes of this,’ Phemus Nach called back, ‘I shall not hesitate to bring it to your attention.’

He was gone. The younger Nach had acted more like a chief of security than an heir apparent. An almost possessive atmosphere had accompanied him, as though he viewed Drask as a threat, perhaps as a rival. Curious, but not uncommon. He imagined that the elder Nach must be grooming his son for some lofty perch within the combine. Such was the way of things. Favour was the only way to the top of the mountain.

Drask was leaving the chamber himself when a polite cough drew his attention. He looked over to the door of what he realised was the largest of the offices and regarded the woman who stood there.

She was unassuming, despite the undeniable power that she held, as though by denying her authority it might be all the more enshrined. It worked. She projected an unassailable sense of sheer momentum. She wore a simple green dress, with the only ornamentation the coiling silver bracelets which snaked up her arms.

‘Araceli Vranx,’ she said, though he already knew that without being told. Drask had never seen her in the flesh before, but a reputation such as hers trickled down into the marrow of Polaris. Her age was impossible to truly gauge, flush as it was with an elegant juvenat vitality that put Nach’s to shame, but grey had begun to creep into the gold of it. He crossed the short distance towards her. She held out her hand and he took it without hesitation. Her grip was strong, like coiled iron, and she broke the greeting swiftly.

‘A word, probator?’ She gestured into the office, and he crossed the threshold ahead of her. He heard the door close behind him.

The back wall of the chamber was dominated by a vast mosaic. Thousands of tiny tiles glittered against the paleness of the wall. Silver and platinum, lapis and opal, each component worked together to display an image of the wondrous past. Drask stared at the representation of a waiting world, with the vast sweep of ancient voidships hanging above it in stylised wonder. They did not seem truly Imperial. Instead they were relics of a previous, long-forgotten epoch. Araceli looked at him, noted his attention and laughed dryly.

‘Wonderful, isn’t it?’ She smiled as she stood behind her desk of rich, dark wood and gazed at the mural. ‘It was commissioned by an ancestor of mine to commemorate the First Landings. She had quite the fascination with the era… one that I do not hesitate to say that I share.’ She swivelled around to examine it. ‘Each time I look at it I find something else to wonder over. A new detail I hadn’t noticed before.’ She turned back to look at him. A cold smile played across her lips. ‘Do you enjoy art, Probator Drask?’

‘I find in my line of work there isn’t much time to dwell upon the finer aspects of culture, mamzel.’

How does she know me? Drask thought. She is a mistress of a merchant-combine and has her methods, of course, but she knows me by name. Has Nach been so careless as to let her know of his involvement? Or is this simply the omniscience that power brings?

‘Call me Araceli, please,’ she said with a laugh. ‘I am surrounded by flattering fools who endeavour day after day to praise me yet higher. Some candour is very much appreciated.’

She picked up a data-slate from the desk’s flat expanse and scanned it idly. Speaking without looking at him. He wondered if it was an affectation. Meant to remind him of his place. That her interest and her indulgence had limits.

‘It is a candour that I do not think dear Phemus appreciates. Throne bless him and keep him, but he is a stubborn man.’

‘I could not comment on what sort of a man he is,’ Drask offered diplomatically. She laughed in response and dropped the slate again. Her eyes glittered with playful amusement. Where he had felt as though Nach was actively set against him, Drask wasn’t quite sure where he stood with Araceli. What game she was playing or how many moves ahead she supposed she already was.

‘You have concerns, I imagine,’ she said. Araceli reached down and slid open a drawer. When her hand re-emerged it held a cigar in a delicate grip. She cut it, raised it and lit it with a simple match. She shook the match out and inhaled deeply, breathing out a plume of fragrant smoke. Drask remembered the burning building, the all-consuming fire everywhere around him, and shivered slightly.

If she noticed she didn’t show it. ‘You have concerns,’ she repeated. ‘The workings of a merchant-combine such as this are opaque to you. You do not know how they work and so you cannot account for them in your worldview. I understand this. We are monoliths. Giants. We stand and watch as men and women live or die for our merchant-combines. It is not a simple thing to accept. Some bear the weight of that responsibility with grace, as I believe that I do, while others… others are like unto Phemus and rage.’

She walked before the mosaic, from one end to the other, charting its history. She traced her fingers along its lines, settling upon a ship picked out in gold.

‘The Fortitude of Terra,’ she said with an indulgent smile. ‘Do you know the stories?’

‘I’m afraid you have me at a disadvantage when it comes to ancient history.’

‘The Fortitude, so they claim, was one of the first colony ships. The legends hold that in the times before the Emperor, it came out of the darkness and found Alecto. It was one of many ships seeking new homes and opportunities for humanity. But it was not an easy or uneventful journey.’ She chuckled darkly, enjoying some private musing. ‘In the blackness they were forced to hunt for meaning and purpose. I imagine it was a terrifying sensation. To lose everything which held you to your course and to blunder through the infinite void.’ For a moment her gaze clouded, as though she were seeing that ancient time. It reminded Drask of his own visualisation methods. The moment passed and she smiled again. ‘You ought to look into it. I think you would find it illuminating.’

‘Perhaps I will.’ Drask took a seat opposite. She turned on her heel.

‘Yes, of course,’ she said, and shook her head. ‘You have greater concerns than that.’ She paced back to her desk and scooped up the slate, then turned it and laid it before him. ‘On there you will find everything pertaining to Mercutio Farentis’ employment with our organisation.’

He skimmed the file, blink-capturing pictorial records for good measure. Each click was accompanied by a whisper of irritation. As though the nerves were still raw and the eye hadn’t yet settled in its socket. He swallowed the pain and resolved to ease off on its use until he could see Visarth again. He made note of an address. A reasonably affluent habclave along the coast, beyond the worst of the docklands. He filed it away and pocketed the slate.

‘You have my thanks. Nach was less than forthcoming with what physical records he had acquired from us and was reluctant to allow me access to the Vranx archives. I don’t think he necessarily wants me to continue with my investigation.’

‘Whether or not he does is immaterial.’ She drew deeply and smiled again. ‘I maintain a vested interest in how our Enforcers operate. The Vranx have been known to be quite generous in the past. Infrastructure contributions for the most part. Gifts which ensure that things move as efficiently as they can. The Imperium is a giving master, of course, but we do enjoy helping matters along. As I’m sure your castellan would tell you.’ Her features were neutral but her tone was ice. ‘I understand the value of the Enforcers and the remit of their authority. Phemus does not. He wants this handled like any other grubby little corp-war. I, on the other hand, value the input of the establishment. We can parcel off our concerns to a hundred jaegers, armies of sellswords and soldiers of fortune, and they might never share a fraction of the insight bred into those who live and work within our great city. Would you not agree?’

‘You make a convincing point.’ Drask forced a smile. He was humouring her. He still wasn’t sure where he stood with her. This could be the games of a bored noble or a genuine gesture of civic goodwill.

‘I thought so,’ she said. She stood and walked around the table, crouching so she was face to face with Drask. He wanted to pull back, to push away, but he stayed where he was. Her eyes were a piercing green, as rich and vibrant as any other facet of the building, and he felt them bore into him. ‘I need to know that I can rely upon you, Quillon.’

He didn’t ask how she knew his full name. Whether Nach had provided it or she had discovered it herself was immaterial.

He opened his mouth to respond and winced. Pain buffeted one side of his face. He could feel the muscles spasm, locking tight, and tried to shake it off. She tilted her head as she observed him in a manner not unlike a felid as it considers prey. He blinked away tears and focused on the text scrolling across his vision.

> Priority transmission. Attention of Drask, Q., probator rank. On advisement of verispex operative Oliar, S. Data appended.

The data unspooled across his sight and he cursed under his breath. ‘Forgive me, Araceli,’ he said, stumbling over the use of her forename. ‘I’m afraid I have to go.’

‘Of course. I hope I haven’t taken up too much of your time, Probator Drask. Think on what I’ve said, won’t you? I would very much like to revisit this conversation.’

I imagine you would. To prime your piece upon the board in whatever sordid game this is between you and Nach. Drask bit back the thought and hid it behind a smile, behind a veil of blithe acceptance.

‘Of course,’ he said. ‘Once my business is concluded, at your leisure, we can discuss… your concerns.’ He nodded numbly and rose, turning swiftly on his heel and heading back out into the bustle of the business. Dread hung over him. He was suddenly painfully aware of just how out of his depth he was. The interactions with the two opposing nobles were heavy, ripe with implications, even when compared to the looming threat of the message.

Around him was the clatter of keys, the dull droning compliance of servitors and the murmuring of the staff. Somehow that noise, and the feeling of Araceli’s eyes at his back, dogged his steps more than the pressing nature of the message.

There had been another killing.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Meat and Drink

After the subtle, understated presentation of the first two bodies, the third was a surprise.

No longer content to leave them where they fell, whoever had done the deed had conspired to make a show of it. When he arrived at the scene, Drask was confronted by a loose semicircle of verispex and sanctioners, gazing up at what remained of a human being.

‘Throne save and preserve us,’ Drask breathed.

Chains had been strung from the iron shaft of a lumen-pole and wrapped around the body. He was close enough that he could see the wicked barbs of hooks transfixing the flesh into place. Blood rimed the pole like rust. Even from a distance Drask could see that this wasn’t the first life to stain it. There was an ingrained taint, as if the echo and the essence of murder had seeped into the metal over time.

He thought of the macro-abattoirs near where the first bodies had been found. How the carcasses would have been strung up, drained of blood and suspended, in much the same way as this body had been.

Where that was a methodical and industrial undertaking, this was deeply personal. A more intimate and thorough mutilation than before. Below the waist there was nothing, merely a bloody and terrible void. Ropes of shredded skin and muscle hung down where once they had cradled organs. The intestines and other innards had been removed – and this time there was no cloth mockery left in their place. He looked down, checking if the viscera had simply slid free, but there was nothing save a slowly spreading pool of blood. They had escalated this time. The organs and the lower half of the body.

The body had been left on public display, just outside the mouth of a side street along the dockside. A stretch of languishing, half-shuttered commercial holdings and abandoned storage facilities.

He pushed through the crowd of observers and ignored the grunts and shouts of protest. No one had drawn nearer. Instead they stood back as though afraid of what might happen. There was a nervous energy in the air. As palpable as reactor radiation. He could almost hear the dosimeter click, as though he himself were merely an instrument, an implement for the detection of human weakness. A life lived as simply another tool. It didn’t matter whether it was at Alexius’ indulgence, or Konstantus’. Nach’s or Vranx’s.

The weight of such responsibilities could drag a man down. Force his face into the dust and muck of the city.

The maudlin thoughts were beneath him. He shook them off. He turned and was relieved to see Oliar, moving up to his side through the knot of sanctioners towards the body. She gave him a wan smile and handed him a pair of standard examination gloves.

Drask pulled them on with a snap, then squatted low and examined the dirt at the base of the pole. There were indistinct smears that might have been footprints, roughly the same size as those from the Farentis scene. He scowled. He wished he still had the images in the buffer, able to be recalled and compared. He settled for the imperfect tool of memory.

‘Perhaps not organ harvesting then,’ Oliar said from beside him. A servo-skull was hovering at her shoulder with its empty sockets gazing at the floor. Even the sacred dead were loath to take in the spectacle, it seemed.

‘I was just thinking that myself. Funny how so many find accord in the obvious.’ Drask shook his head. ‘So who found the body? It was clearly left to draw attention. I wonder if they had anyone in mind or if it was just idle showmanship.’

‘Dock worker finishing his shift and walking home,’ Oliar said helpfully. She looked up at the spectacle of the corpse. Blood was still dribbling down the post, where it hadn’t already congealed or frozen. An errant gust of wind set the body moving, and it rattled against the pole with the clatter of chains. Someone muttered a prayer under their breath. Another made the sign of the aquila.

Drask turned away from her and leant forward for a closer look at the body. He had been so captivated by the obvious butchery that he hadn’t noticed the sharp gouge across the man’s throat. A butcher’s cut. Full of contempt.

Slaughtered. That was the word it evoked. More thorough and savage than Mercutio’s injuries. Far more than the careful and considered way in which the killer had taken apart Hiram. The murder of Hiram had, by comparison, been an act of reverence. Of love. Drask closed his eyes at the sudden rush of realisation.

He opened his eyes. ‘There are species of grox, raised in up-city enclaves, that are waited on hand and foot. Did you know that? Their every need is tended to by teams of dedicated serfs. They want for nothing. At the end of their lives, at a time determined by their masters, the creatures are brought to slaughter.’

‘That’s… suitably tragic,’ Oliar said. Her nose wrinkled as she knelt down beneath the body. Scanning the immediate area for evidence. He realised that she didn’t truly understand. Neither, perhaps, did he.

‘They live their entire lives thinking that they exist in a state of grace, but the moment that higher powers determine that it is time they suffer, they succumb the same as anything else. I look at the world, and I’m not sure whether to envy that ignorance or fight against it.’

‘Does that have anything to do with the matter at hand?’ Oliar’s confusion deepened. Her ocular lenses clicked and realigned. ‘Not that it isn’t a thoroughly interesting aside, but I somehow doubt that it helps the victim.’

‘Just that life isn’t fair, Oliar,’ he said with a sigh. ‘No matter how secure you think you might be, the end is only ever a gasp away. You’re the one who flagged me for this case. I assume you had good reason to? Dramatic asides regardless?’

‘The commonalities speak for themselves,’ she said. She raised a hand and the servo-skull bobbed forward. A wash of green light swept over the scene and began to record the details as it found them. Drask followed the beam as it moved up and over the corpse. In the renewed light new details glistened wetly. ‘There’s the butcher’s cut across the throat. Removal of organs. Significant removal of skin, muscle and bone. This is a harvest. Not a simple street killing.’

‘I want precision scans of the lower torso,’ Drask ordered. He blink-clicked the areas of interest, struggling to ignore the persistent itch that came with the implant’s use. There was something… He leant closer. Darker, more bruised flesh that had caught the light just so. He looked at the arcing pattern of the wounds. ‘I think there might be bite marks there.’

Oliar cursed under her breath and looked up. ‘You’re certain?’

‘Take a look for yourself.’

Oliar rose. She winced as she pulled a pair of questing wires from the base of the servo-skull, writhing like mechadendrites as they sought interface. There was a click and a hiss before she tilted her head back and processed the data-inload.

‘Ah,’ she said. ‘Ah yes, I see what you mean. Highly suggestive of bite marks. We should be able to generate a hololithic comparator. A dental identifier would be a useful tool in narrowing down a suspect. Assuming that they have current medicae scans, we should be able to pinpoint a match. If they are human, of course.’

‘Whoever it is, they’re taking more risks. Becoming reckless. To become so engrossed in your crime that you actually sink your teeth into the flesh…’ He shook his head and leant closer, taking in the body from a number of different angles. Beyond the organ removal and the missing limbs there were other erratic cuts across the victim’s body. There was no hesitation.

No trembling self-doubt or meekness of mind. Just the urge, the desire, the need to kill. Burning through him like fire, like acid, like poison.

Drask swallowed hard and forced his thoughts down. It was getting harder to look at the work. He couldn’t look at it the same way as he once had. It had never been easy, of course, but now it clung to him. He moved from scene to scene, atrocity to atrocity, as though whatever he had picked up there stalked in his wake, whispered at his ear. He could feel it like a predatory weight. A shroud woven from screams and smoke.

He stepped back, blink-clicked a final few images of the hanging body and then gestured to the sanctioners.

‘Cut him down. Let’s get a closer look.’

A pair of sanctioners laid the body out.

The chain was industrial, thick and solidly constructed. There was no forge mark or identifier that Drask could see. The hooks at the end were brutal – designed to embed in flesh and to take the weight of a body pulling down upon it. Industrial chains, the kind that wouldn’t be out of place in a macro-abattoir. Viciously ridged and barbed, too visceral for dock work. Never designed to impale a human body, more likely grox and other carcasses. He let his hand drift along the chain’s length. Drask imagined what it would have taken to ram the hook through flesh. To hold the body steady as it was defiled. Displayed.

‘Not much blood,’ Oliar observed. The skull spun about her, illuminating the area with its sweeps of green sensor light.

‘Means the body was probably moved from elsewhere before being strung up,’ Drask said. ‘Less chance of being interrupted in taking it apart and getting what they wanted.’ He looked at the corpse again. An escalation, certainly. An overindulgence. There was normally breathing room with cases such as these, a cooling-off period which separated them from the senseless mania of a spree killer.

Drask drew a deep breath and let his mind flex around the details of the case. He looked at the place where the body had hung. He imagined–

The taut warmth of eager breath as the killer pulled hard at the chains. Not caring if they were seen, or so bold as to be unafraid. Muscles bunching with urgent enthusiasm. Showing off. Tasting blood between their teeth.

He let his breath go. The world started moving again, and he saw it with fresh eyes.

This exaggeration was deliberate.

It was performative. A pantomime.

It was not done because they had to do it. It had been a choice. To draw the eye. To focus the mind. As clear a move in the game as shuffling a regicide piece across the board. Drask sighed.

‘I think that this is a message.’

‘A message?’ Oliar looked confused. ‘You mean that personally, I take it?’

‘I do. Yes. A message sent to us by whoever orchestrated the killing of Mercutio Farentis. They want our attention. Enough distinction to draw our eye and pull our focus. Whoever did this wants us to know that they are in charge. They know what we are looking for and they are playing to that assumption. They may not want to be found, but by the Throne do they want us to know that they’re out there. This is a shot across the bow.’

‘You’re certain? That can only be an assumption.’

‘I am,’ he said quietly. ‘I feel it in my gut. After everything that’s happened in the past day, this can be nothing other than calculated.’ He stood up and looked around. ‘I want the scene pict-captured. Ensure we have a physical backup and transfer it to Visarth. If possible, have her ensure that the necropsy is done in seclusion. Secondary copies of everything. Gene-sweep everything here.’ His fingers tapped idly at the holstered Tzarina pistol.

Were they watching, even now? From some hidden spot? It was a city of a thousand eyes, and not all of them would be Enforcer controlled.

He looked around. It wasn’t as industrial as the initial dump sites, but neither was it entirely residential. A few shuttered commercia stared back sullenly. The higher windows were dark or covered by blackout curtains to hide the light. Ancient coastal precautions. He turned and looked out along the coast, towards the indistinct shadows of old defence guns. They were still maintained but had sat idle for generations. Raised for wars that had never come.

‘Drask?’ Oliar asked.

He waved her off. He skirted around the bustle of localis sceleris and moved off down one of the side streets. From the edge of the roadway where the body had been found, the street extended deeper into the press of buildings. He forced his hands into his coat pockets as he followed it down and away from the murder site.

‘Drask!’ she called again.

‘Give me a moment!’ he called back. ‘I’m getting the lie of the land!’

If the victim had been killed elsewhere and moved for this sordid display, then it would have been along a ratway such as this. Garbage and other detritus had accumulated along the sides of it, annealed together by half-frozen meltwater. The stink of it was worse than the stolid mass of the ocean and almost as unnavigable. He stepped over piles of rotting human refuse and the squeak and scuttle of vermin.

There were smears, here and there, crimson fading to brown. Caught on the edge of a wall, a frozen streak in half-melted ice. He blink-captured an image of each one. Droplets, dribbles, errant stains.

He drew his pistol.

It was a reassuring weight in his hand. After the fire, the data-geist and the taunting of a nameless killer, it was good to feel it. To have control. Perhaps it was simply paranoia, but he didn’t care.

He looked up. Scaffolds clung to the sides of the buildings, their platforms and stairways empty. No curtains twitched. No dark figures loomed from the shadows with murder in their eyes.

He almost laughed. Drask tapped the pistol against the side of his hip. Tap tap tap. The bustle of the crime scene drifted down the alleyway. If he focused he could still hear the rattle of chains, though they had already been cut. A trick of the night, perhaps, or his own fevered imaginings. He was intimately aware of the sound of his own breathing, heavy and loud in his ears, accompanying the thunder of his heart.

The shadows were like a living thing, coiling in the inconstant light of the city. He let his breathing steady and moved to turn back towards the scene, to Oliar and the others. He wasn’t sure what he had intended. What he had hoped to gain. Perhaps he had been deluding himself with the thought of simple answers. That if he merely cast forth into the darkness he would find his quarry. That answers were only a street away and that someone, something, was watching him.

He almost missed the signs as he turned. Looking back, letting his eyes drift across the walls, he might have mistaken it for simple graffiti. Gang scrawl was abysmally common in areas such as this. That was often garish and vulgar. Bright and ostentatious to draw the eyes of friend and foe alike, to distinguish themselves in the eyes of merchant-barons, to cow the simple minds of the populace.

The writing was not bright and stylised. It was not faded and corroded with age. It had been written in a steady hand, as precise as though it had been laser-etched. The ink itself was a dull reddish-brown where it had dried. Drask leant close and breathed deep. The toxic stench of the rubbish faded away to be replaced by the coppery tang of spilled blood. He wrinkled his nose in distaste. Only then did he take the time to read the words. As definitive and defiant as any chameleon-screen broadcast or temple oath.

FOR TO THE FAITHFUL THEY SHALL BE AS MEAT AND DRINK.

Drask stared at it for a long moment. He blinked slowly. The words were settling into his mind now. It was from no catechism or religious text that he recognised. He dredged through his memories of his youth spent with his nose buried in books such as that, and yet it didn’t register at all. His skin prickled with the same cultish apprehension that he had felt in the House of Grace. Of the subverted, suborned and tainted. The word heretical brushed across his mind, all knives and stink of pyres, but he dismissed it.

Such things were not for him to truck with.

His hands rose, shaking despite his best efforts, and formed the aquila. It was an almost involuntary motion, done by rote, a simple ward against fear and the encroaching dark.

‘Over here!’ he called. Heads snapped around at the other end of the alleyway. The clamour and thud of sanctioners’ boots began to echo down towards him as they came running. He heard the hiss of an engaging shock maul and the lesser, more nuanced crackle as someone activated a jawsnapper.

Drask holstered his pistol and gestured to the wall. He watched each face set in its own way. Confusion. Distaste. The human experience unfolding in half a dozen expressions, united by common blood and common cause. They were being taunted.

He turned and walked back towards the scene. Considering his options. Weighing the possibilities. There was still work to be done. But he would need some advice. A second opinion.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

The Weight of Wisdom

Drask moved into the cramped space of the messaging station and picked up the waiting quill. He scrawled two notes in his spidery hand and examined them both before folding them and placing them into the pneumo-tubes that waited expectantly to his right-hand side. He keyed in the first set of coordinates and sent the message capsule hurtling off into the tubes which veined the city.

It would arrive at the Bastion, marked priority for the attention of Amelya Visarth. It would relay the particulars of what he had been doing, his ongoing suspicions and where he intended to go eventually.

The second message was intended for an old informant, and would tell that individual precisely where he would be next.

He watched the tube rush away through the network of pipes, heard the solid, steady clunk and hiss of transit. More reliable and hard to intercept than a runner, and less traceable than vox or dataveil. He had faith that whatever messages he sent would not be intercepted. They would only be read by the eyes they were intended for.

Drask visualised them as they raced away, motes of light in the roiling nerves and iron bones of the city. In the vast scheme of such things, his actions were the merest ripples. He often wondered if that was enough. Each life was a candle in the darkness. Even a sprawling city such as Varangantua could only burn so bright.

What light did a world such as Alecto cast out into the void? How brightly did the Imperium burn? Drask had walked the streets of Varangantua long enough to see every stripe of void sailor, their haggard, tired eyes, and knew that the perils beyond the thin atmosphere, out past the light of their weak star, were just as pressing, if not worse.

There were less and less of them these days, it seemed, the void sailors. Drask had wondered at that for a while. Worlds lived and died on their trade traffic. Just as they lived and died on their faith, or their tithe status. The constants that ticked away behind the skin of the world. They were the concerns of governors, bureaucrats and the distant organs of the Administratum. Not a probator on his daily business, chasing murderers through the squalid streets and abandoned precincts of Polaris.

He was as far from the stars as he felt from his quarry.

Drask paused. He made another note on a spare piece of parchment, calling up the image of the odd religious graffiti to his iris as he did so. He transcribed the message. Even looking at it was tinged with its own sense of wrongness.

He left the booth and hurried off into the gathering dark. The streets were quiet, and yet he felt as though eyes dogged his every step.

The Cerasta sprawl formed a corner of the Polaris-Omega district and had served as Drask’s earliest stomping ground. The area where he had grown and first learned his place in the city’s mechanisms. In times of confusion, he knew, the familiar was often the strongest balm – and those thoughts drew him back here.

The old temple had been his local parish. The grey stone of it was typical, bearing all the weight and weathering that Polaris was capable of doling out. Squat, reliable Imperial construction. The skulls of long-dead preachers gazed out from its walls, cradled in marble and brass. Drask spared them a withering look. Their numbers hadn’t grown since his youth.

He pushed open the iron doors, fingers playing over their engraved messages of repentance and vigilance, and stepped into the nave of the church. It was sparsely populated, the few parishioners kneeling in prayer or tending to votive candles. Drask passed through a heady cloud of incense, coughing as he waved it away. He stood before the altar, gazing up and around at the faded finery of the old place. It had seen better days. When he had visited as a child, wide-eyed and in awe, it had always seemed so much bigger. To stand in the church and look up at the murals upon the ceiling, their tarnished gold representations of constellations dull even in the light of the electro-sconces, was to behold the unfolding heavens. As though sprung from His hand.

Drask shook off the thought and stepped forward. He was not a child any more. Not one to be cowed again by the grandeur of bygone ages. Now there was only the dull lapping of nostalgia. The memories colouring everything like the thin sunlight as it prismed through the glassaic of the God-Emperor triumphant. Light dappled the murals of military victory and long-dead heroes. Men and women fallen in defence of Varangantua, their bones and skulls ridging the murals in their ossuary embrace, were represented in the flush of glorious yet fleeting life.

‘Can I help you, my son?’ asked an unsteady voice. Drask looked up at the old preacher as he hobbled forward. His grey robes clung to his bones like binding around bundles of sticks. His lined, wizened features were set in a placid smile, and his shaven scalp gleamed in the low light. ‘You look like a man who seeks the guidance of the Throne. I–’ He paused and frowned. ‘Have we met? I could swear I know your… No. You’re the Drask boy, aren’t you? Quillon?’

‘You remember.’ Drask laughed. ‘It’s good to see you again, Preacher Welan.’

‘As it is to see you. It warms my heart to see you here. How fares the noble work of upholding the Lex? Your father, Throne rest him, had wanted you to walk the path of faith – but I told him, many times, that the Emperor sets down the road most suited for us. “For as we are but the flock, so He is the shepherd, and strong is the hand that guides us to our end.”’ He looked especially pleased with himself. ‘It grieved me deeply when we lost your father. He was well thought of by his community. I hope you know that.’

Drask forced a smile. His father had always meant well, but there had been a grudgingness to his paternal involvement. A resentment and a fear. There was nothing like a child, Drask had always thought, to put your own lack into perspective. So afraid that you will fail, or pass on your failings to another.

‘Thank you,’ Drask said. ‘I actually came with a question for you.’

‘For me? What can I help an officer of the Lex with?’

Drask reached into his pocket and pulled out the note. He handed it to Welan and waited, watching the preacher expectantly. The older man’s face contorted, racing through confusion and evident interest, before he handed it back.

‘I’m not sure what help you think I can provide, Quillon.’

‘You don’t recognise the verse?’

Welan shook his head. ‘I’m afraid not… Although…’ He looked momentarily perturbed. Welan looked around and then gestured for Drask to follow him. They passed through one of the doors behind the altar and into the private sanctum. Old, dusty bookshelves lined the chamber, heaving with religious volumes and piled high with vellum scrolls. Welan moved ahead, tapping his finger methodically along the spines of the books, until he settled upon a heavy tome. He grunted as he heaved it out and slammed it down upon the sturdy wooden table.

‘Here we are. Warnings and Lamentations of Pre-Imperial Settlement.’ He grinned wolfishly. ‘Not a forbidden text, you understand, but frowned upon. Allegory and metaphor abound, of course, but it has its uses.’ He flicked through the pages, drawing one gnarled digit along the lines of text. ‘It rang a bell, you see, your little verse… Ah!’ He tapped the page and gestured for Drask to move closer. ‘There you are. The voyage of the Fortitude of Terra.’

‘I’ve heard of this,’ Drask muttered. ‘Old stories from the foundation of the world.’ He thought back to Araceli and her extravagant office. The walls with their ancient yet living history. Her stories and her advice.

‘You ought to look into it. I think you would find it illuminating.’

And here, looking into it, he could see the past unfurling. Strange and elastic. Consuming the present. He leant close and examined the portion of the text that Welan had pointed out.

‘“And as with so many who crossed the sea of stars bereft of His hand and guidance, they were beset by woes. For the path of the righteous was not before them, and they were young in the ways of faith. In technology did they place their trust and in the weakness of men.”’ He paused and caught his breath before continuing to read. ‘“And they knew privation, as men should not suffer. There was no sustenance nor succour for them, and they became as savage beasts. They succumbed to weakness and to the Custom of the Void. And all who looked upon them knew horror at what they had become, for their kin were as meat and drink to them.”’ Drask’s mouth moved even after he had finished reading. Still processing the information. The weight of it. The implication. ‘This…’

‘Indeed,’ Welan said with a nod. ‘Heady stuff. They were dark times, darker even than these troubled times, before the galaxy knew the true light of Terra. Old Night. For every great undertaking of wonder or horror, spoken of in hushed words by the…’ He paused, his mouth curling into a sneer. ‘By the adepts of the Machine Cult, there were a hundred casual cruelties. Banal and mortal.’

‘The Custom of the Void,’ Drask whispered, almost to himself. ‘They mean…’

‘Cannibalism, yes.’ Welan shook his head disapprovingly. ‘Even now, amidst the stars those old rites are still practised. Should calamity descend upon a ship then the surviving crew will draw lots, to see who will eat and live, and who will die to feed their rapacious hunger. Some who sail the stars will tell you that there are devils between them that will turn a man’s soul. Sicken and twist it, until all he knows is hunger. Yet it is a human evil. The beast that wears a human skin is only ever a man.’

Drask blink-clicked an image of the page. His fingers trembled so intensely that he barely noticed the prickle of heat and pain as it rippled through his eye socket. ‘This has been… illuminating. Thank you, preacher.’ He bowed his head. ‘If it pleases you, I would take a moment to reflect. Here, in His sight.’

‘Of course,’ Welan said. The old priest hesitated as he looked at Drask. ‘Your father was a good man, Quillon. He loved you, in his way, and he loved the Emperor, beloved by all. Long I ministered to his soul, and I saw the despair that dwelt there.’ He paused. ‘I see the same thing in you. Not a despair, but a darkness. A malaise. Something eats at you, my son, and I hope that you find the strength here to banish whatever it is that ails you.’

‘Thank you, preacher,’ Drask said softly. ‘I… The job that I do. The work is bladed. It cuts at the soul and it…’ He trailed off. ‘It is hard to put the pieces back together. In recent nights I have seen things.’

Welan nodded sombrely. ‘I shall pray for you, Quillon.’ He placed his hand upon Drask’s back and led him out into the main body of the church. The few parishioners had already left. Perhaps they had felt slighted by the old man’s absence, bereft of his sacred light and wisdom, or maybe it was just the consequence of yet another shift change.

Drask nodded to the old man and then moved towards the back of the church. He took his place in the second-to-last row and knelt down. He pressed his head against the cool wood and let his mind drift. So much of what he had learned seemed contradictory, mired in old superstition and swathed in corporate agendas. By coming here, by consulting a man he had always considered well read and insightful, he had sought to cut through the knot of confusion.

If someone was trying to send a message to Nach, or to any of the First Families intertwined with Vranx, then it was a convoluted way to go about it.

What in the name of the Throne are you trying to prove? What’s your game?

‘Drask,’ a voice said. Drask lifted his head and turned. He smiled as he came face to face with Barnabas Rawl.

‘Barnabas,’ he said.

Rawl was a grizzled veteran of Varangantua’s tumultuous underworld. His skin was pale, crossed with a profusion of paler scars, and in places seemed to drown in a tide of black and red ink. He was an inksmith of some note, and his talent had colonised him as surely as he had laid down gangland honour marks and sigils of the Lex Alecto on both sides of the law’s coin. Beyond that, though, he had carved out a niche for himself as a broker of information – a source of grim and storied stability amidst the constantly shifting paradigms of criminality.

There were as many rumours about the man as there were eagles etched into his skin.

That he was a disgraced former sanctioner – or, Throne forbid, a probator. That he had come to Varangantua as ex-Militarum intelligence, or as the bastard scion of a dead noble house.

Drask had never dug deep enough to find out which of the claims had weight. He hadn’t, in truth, cared enough to. Rawl was a useful tool, an informant cultivated over years of labour, but he was not – at the end of the day – a friend.

Friends like Barnabas Rawl could slit your throat as soon as help you.

They had first met early in Drask’s career, early in both of their careers, when Rawl had been nothing more than a low-level trader in information. They had evolved together, achieving a strange synchronicity, a give and take which had informed their relationship and strengthened their reliance on each other.

‘I got your message, probator,’ Barnabas said with a tired smile. ‘I didn’t expect to hear from you. Not after last time. Not after the Silver Coin.’

Drask winced and Barnabas laughed softly.

‘You know I wouldn’t be meeting you if it wasn’t important,’ Drask said. ‘You’ve always been… useful.’

‘Oh, is that what we’re calling it now?’ Barnabas sighed. ‘And here I thought we were getting somewhere, Quillon. I thought we were friends.’

‘Not friends, no,’ Drask said, too quickly. ‘Never friends.’

Barnabas forced a scowl, though clearly remained in good humour. He tapped the wooden railing between them. ‘I was even going to offer you the best of my talents. Something commemorative, perhaps, or maybe something to cover up all those scars.’ He flashed his teeth in a smile of savage joy. ‘My own hands, no less – none of that servitor-driven work for you. Even with a well-calibrated instruction wafer, it’s still not the same as the old ways. The old ways are the best ways, after all.’

‘So they say.’ Drask shivered lightly as a chill flitted through him. The cold weight of tradition. ‘The truth is that I need your help. I’m not sure who I can trust at the Bastion. I need information about a specific individual. I need eyes on him, and I need to know where he’s going.’

‘And who exactly are we supposed to be watching?’ Barnabas kept his voice low, but Drask could already see the keenness in his eyes. The predatory gleam of a hunter scenting prey. ‘Someone interesting? Enough of a threat to put even you on the back foot? Can’t trust the Enforcers, but then when could you ever? Do you think they ever really trusted you?’

‘Beside the point,’ Drask replied. ‘I want you to look into Phemus Nach.’

Barnabas stopped. ‘Nach? You want us to watch one of the gilded? Have you finally lost your mind?’ He laughed and moved to rise. Drask grasped him by the arm.

‘I’m in deep, Rawl. Worse than before. This isn’t wandering down-district to question some lifesellers. This is–’

‘This is trying to fight the heavens. It’s trying to tear down the spires with your hands and your teeth. It’s pure and simple madness, Drask. It is the kind of cancer that eats away at a man, drives him mad and destroys him. You. Do not. Fight. That. Power.’

‘And I’m not asking you to.’ Drask sighed. ‘I need you to keep eyes on him. Watch, learn and report back. Make it so that it isn’t obvious Bastion work. Better he thinks it opportunistic street work or a rival corporate interest than that the Lex Alecto has come knocking. Throne willing, you won’t even be noticed.’

Drask did not know when he had first begun to make use of men such as Rawl. In the beginning, it had been the suggestion of Alexius. A different way to go about business, certainly, compared to the orthodoxy of his training. He knew others cultivated covert informants, but the practice was so mired in corruption… But who in Varangantua was not corrupt?

‘The city is too vast for a man to master it alone, boy,’ Alexius had said. ‘You will need able bodies and keen minds on the ground. It is control. Not compromise.’

Control. Not compromise. It seemed a hollow oath now, after everything.

Barnabas finally pulled his arm away. He looked past Drask, down the central aisle of the temple to the altar. Whether from the stained glass or the burning of the candles, the light caught upon the spread wings of the aquila hung behind the altar. The great two-headed eagle’s lone eye followed him. Ripe with the judgement of the past. He seemed almost to wither under its eye.

‘I’ll do what I can. You owe me for this, though. Not empty promises. You will owe me a debt, and it will be paid – do you understand me?’

‘I understand,’ Drask said. ‘And you will be compensated. You have my word on that. I simply need you to watch him. You have the men. You have the resources, and I know that you’ve done worse against worse odds.’

Barnabas dipped his head this way and that, weighing his options, before he laughed again. His teeth caught in the light, flaring momentarily bright, before his mirth faded. ‘I’ll get someone on it.’

‘Thank you,’ Drask said. He held up his hands. ‘That’s all I’m asking. Not to intervene. Not to go to war. Simply to watch him, figure out if he’s up to something and feed it back to me.’

‘You’ll get fed to something, all right,’ Barnabas muttered. ‘Just be careful, Drask.’

‘Is that genuine concern for my well-being?’ Drask asked with a laugh. ‘You certain you’re well?’

‘I don’t like to see any resource squandered,’ Barnabas said. ‘You’re useful, if nothing else, and we’ve done good work for each other down the years. Be a shame to see that go to waste because you reached too far.’

‘Well, I’m touched.’ Drask stood and turned to leave, moving past Barnabas and out towards the main doors once more. He brought his hands up and made the sign of the aquila across his chest. Old habits.

‘You never know,’ Barnabas called after him. Drask could practically hear his smile. ‘A fall might do you good. You’d do well down here with the rest of us!’

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

The Trap

Drask crossed the city again, leaving the echoes of Rawl and Welan behind him. They had been helpful, in their ways, but their knowledge burned. It scuttled across his skin and lodged within his soul.

The echoes of the past, indistinct and confusing. The promise of the future with all its dire threat. He knew it was a mistake to so deliberately provoke Nach, even through an intermediary, but it was a necessary evil.

His mind was a mess of competing ideas and theories. The first two bodies had been alike in the manner of their execution and connected by the white fabric. That same fabric had led him to the House of Grace and to House Nach as their primary patrons. Nach’s toying with him had brought him into the orbit of Araceli Vranx herself, a woman steeped in history and playing her own ineffable game. A game which had involved feeding him hints about obscure verses from worn tomes and drawing his attention to…

To what? Ancient history and dark legends. Whispered rumours and intrigues, parsed through the lenses of absolute power. She knew more than she was letting on, but he still wasn’t sure just how involved she was.

His thoughts trailed off. Welan’s revelations had compounded everything that he had already learned. Tales of long-ago cannibalism and the first settlers. Drask had never considered that the city was built upon such grim foundations. Death, certainly, and privation. This, though, was something darker, a taint upon the soul.

And another body. Another killing. More brutal, more exacting. More taken from it. Organs. Flesh. Meat. The implications were horrific. Yet those implications had led him here, at Vranx’s urging, to somewhere ostensibly far from monstrous.

Along the waterside, where cleanser servitors and intricate networks of pumps rendered the sluice into something resembling springs, lay the Tarask habclaves. Walls of pure white stone rose in a bulwark of purity and stylishly composed sculpture. The stone was carved with the names of heroes and far-off battles, inlaid with silver plates that spoke of the combine funds which had built it, and annealed together – as another plate helpfully informed – with the powdered bones of Imperial saints.

It retained a sheen of glamour, the suggestion of an earlier and more hopeful age. Drask hated it. As much as he hated his own run-down hab, it was at least honest in its ruin. In Polaris, a place such as this was fundamentally dishonest. A lie made of stone, engendered to give false hope to the teeming masses. With the right opportunities and choices, you too could live this life. You could climb the mountain of corpses that the combines left behind them and ascend to heights that were not truly gilded but at least dusted with finery.

Places where men like Mercutio Farentis had made their roosts.

Despite its engineered grandeur it lacked the security provisions of a more respectable habclave. Drask fished out his holo-seal and pressed it to the security panel beside the silvered gate of the complex. There was a lyrical chime and the gate juddered open. Drask stepped through, looking around at artfully curated topiary. Meagre holdings such as this would still have spent the water rations of a dozen low-hab families simply to maintain them.

If there were guards then none made themselves known. If there were auto-defences they were subtle. He could feel the machine-scrutiny of concealed vid-picters as they followed him, and yet no clarions sounded.

Indulgence like this made his stomach churn. The truly rich, the lords and the minor aristocracy, had wealth which rendered them more and less human. This interstitial stage of indolence was merely unbecoming.

Tarask was a complex of three or four squat white buildings set in a grid amidst the exterior extravagance. He checked his notes again and entered Tarask III through heavy dark-wood double doors, and ascended the stairs. He took them two, three at a time, eager to be done with it. Farentis’ domicile was only a floor up. Not the best light or the best view, but enough that a guildman of any stripe could enjoy it and yearn for more. The sort of dedication and devotion that such a state generated would spur them higher or see them dashed on the rocks of ambition.

Drask supposed that it had not been ambition that killed Mercutio.

He wondered what the man must have felt at the end. The fear. The pain. No fitting way for most men to die. He had seen death in its red horror and glory many times in his career. He had stood face to face with it, close enough to smell its charnel stink. It never truly abated, the smell of it – the kind of reek that clung to clothing and skin, seeping in to corrupt what lay beneath. The memory of it hung on him in a similar fashion. Nights spent scrubbing his skin until it reddened and bled, as though the stain of human life were on him. He woke some nights with the taste of meat on his lips and teeth, the feel of it under his nails, and he wept at the thought that he would never truly be rid of it.

In the cool, crisp air of the stairwell such thoughts were a world away. Not outside in the curated hedges or the water features which wove their way towards the sunless sea. They were thoughts of the abandoned industrial districts and agri-sectors. They played like smoke through his mind, like the burning of the House of Grace. Drask caught sight of himself in the windows which lined his ascent.

For a moment it was the masked face of the beast that stared back. Stylised and shaped, carved as though from wood. Solid and unmoving. Unyielding against the firelight.

He blinked. He stared back at himself. Pale and hollowed out. Not a monster. Merely a man.

He came to the landing and checked the door. It was locked, as he imagined it would be. He drew the tumbler-cracker from his pocket and placed it against the lock mechanism. It clattered into activity, a flurry of prying and invasive machineries, and then fell silent. There was a click and a chirrup of acknowledgement. The door slid open and Drask pocketed the device once more.

The hab-unit was twice as large as his own. Well appointed. The windows sat high upon the walls and cast weak pillars of light through the main habitation area. Drask paced through it and let his eye drift across the interior.

Matters had progressed too quickly for there to be any true investigation of the hab. Without Araceli Vranx’s intervention he might never even have known that it existed. It would be as though the man had simply been dropped, deposited, from somewhere impossible and far away. From the restless void beyond, perhaps.

Drask pulled his gloves from another pocket. Not the almost-medical kind the verispex wore but a crisp synthleather pair. Enough to avoid leaving any prints as he moved through the space. He imagined he might leave some residue, some genic trace, but it could not truly be avoided. When he was done he would report his findings and his presence. They could exclude him after that. Now, though, there was work to be done.

It was a clean and orderly space in which to live. A number of soft furnishings dotted the hab, each chair allotted a different and distinct function. One was placed beside a table that was piled high with documents and folders. He nudged one pile with an outstretched finger and watched them slide, tumbling open and disgorging their contents.

Like guts spilling. Like secrets unfurling.

He watched the parchments slide and skitter from where they had perched. Production reports. Quotas. Tallies. Webs of pattern revealed themselves in each document, tempting the eye, tantalising him towards understanding. Perhaps that was what Mercutio had been seeking in their midst.

He had been like a man sieving ancient streams in search of precious metals. Drawing out the gold from the base. He was forever seeking his advantage, analysing demand and bulk intake to find the next commodity which would be advantageous to the merchant-barons he served. Drask picked up one of the sheets and turned it in his fingers. Seeking the same insight. It did not speak to him. For all that he possessed an analytical mind, this was beyond him.

The divining of the soul. The thought surprised him, with its origins and its accuracy. What he did understand spoke of contracting markets and low yields from orbital trade. Desperation had been setting in.

What they did here was to draw out desire and want. Commodify and shape it. Package it and distribute it. Spread it across chameleon-screens and the shelves of commercia. Fatten the world on the dreams culled from its own unconscious.

Drask let the report fall back to the tabletop. There was something parasitic about the process. He wondered if it was the abstraction of it. As a probator, as a true servant of the Imperium, he was used to the idea of seeing the masses as simple numbers. There was a world of difference between simply seeing others as figures upon a tally, though, and reducing their human desires to something to be held, turned over in gilded hands before being displayed. Like the mural splayed across the walls of Araceli Vranx’s office.

A mural made of flesh and bone and blood.

He checked the cabinets throughout the hab, gazing into a life as he did so. He was beginning to understand Mercutio that bit better. He was not the grizzled street vendor who, Drask was now certain, Farentis had murdered, though he possessed a shade of the same hunger as Tral. Grasping and semi-feral. A beast in his own right, at home within the confines of a rockcrete jungle. His ambition had been a directed thing, though. Drask leafed through collated letters of recommendation, instances where Farentis had gone above and beyond in search of the next slim advantage. Others were his own copies of attempts to ingratiate himself with those above him. Pleas to Nach, to Vranx herself, to anyone who would listen. These were filed haphazardly, discarded with apparent spite. A proud man, then, as so many of the corporate echelons were. Someone who could not stand to see his efforts go to waste, clawing forever at the sheer sides of the corporate enclaves.

A man could climb and climb forever and still slip from the walls. Still fall and break.

Perhaps that was what had happened to Mercutio Farentis. Had his murderous streak been discovered by his peers? Judgement from on high would be appropriate. Even the most debased of aristocrats would hesitate to keep an indiscriminate murderer in their ranks. There were clades of hired killers and cultivated, meticulously cultivated, agents and assassins. Reliable souls.

Or maybe it had been the rigours of the job which had driven him to kill. Still, that wouldn’t explain the ritualised nature of the murder. Most crimes such as this, by men such as him, were crimes of opportunity or passion. Usually when a murder was planned out it was to ensure that there was no body left to find. Unless there was a reason to leave it. Shock. Personal satisfaction. This had been intentional. It was a message, cast out into the world, with no clear sign of who it was intended for.

This was the only material link to the man Farentis had been. Vranx had dangled it, the same way she had dangled the history book. Drask was desperate enough to chase it here. To see him as he had lived and breathed, erred and sinned, as a man.

If there was anything here that could clarify Farentis’ role, what had made him a victim or a perpetrator, then he would find it.

Drask pulled open a drawer and dug through yet more paperwork. Had Farentis been a meticulous record keeper then it wouldn’t have been an issue, but he hoarded almost for the sake of it. The detritus of a life lived in the shadow of the corporate spires.

He moved from the living area and office space into the dorm-chamber. It was surprisingly impersonal. Devoid of the touches that spoke of blissful habitation. The floor was carpeted in a pale weave of uncertain provenance. The bed was luxurious, at least to someone used to Drask’s level of comfort, though it seemed to have seen little use. Clothes hung in a wardrobe against the back wall, row after row of featureless corporate attire. Pressed and pristine like Naval dress uniforms. He pushed them aside, looking around for anything untoward. Nothing presented itself. Drask scowled.

He turned and surveyed the room again. He squatted down and then knelt, bending to look under the bed. Nothing. He got down on his knees and looked closer. There was a rough square of discoloured carpet. The edges of it were worn with constant use. He moved around the edges of the bed and reached under to the square. He pulled it back. Instead of the bare tiles beneath there was an alcove, a space carved into the structure of the building. He frowned and reached in, working the contents out of their place.

The box was black metal, heavy despite its small size, and lacked any form of lock. He traced his fingers along it. The metal was so precisely forged that it was hard to determine if there was even a way to open it. He felt around it, gloved fingers seeking purchase, until he heard a click. It opened with a hiss of escaping air.

Drask stood, placed the box on the bed and looked inside. There were more papers. Precisely sized to fit inside the box. Each one covered in Mercutio’s tight and well-ordered script. He followed the letters, his eyes widening as he read down lists.

Some of the terms were oblique, but others he recognised as the names of organs. He looked again. They were more than familiar. They matched the exact organs which had been missing from Hiram Tral. From Mercutio himself.

Perhaps the papers related to the organ trade after all. A side racket turned sour. He could have been killed in turn by his own. Mutilated to send a message to others. Perhaps the ritual nature had come about from guilt, tainted with the beliefs of the higher caste that Mercutio wished to emulate. Replacing the organs with the white cloth so favoured by the noble houses. Binding the bodies in the same funereal platitudes that the Nach family clung to.

‘Madness,’ Drask whispered to himself, ‘taints everything it touches. It twists and it perverts all it touches. Everything that exists around it becomes fuel for it. Pieces in the delusion.’ He picked up the box and began to walk out of the hab. He stepped back into the hallway and turned to head down the stairwell and out, back into the city, towards the Bastion.

Voices echoed up the corridor. Drask held the box tight and moved to one side. As he looked down he was surprised to see three men. Each of them was of a rougher cut than the habclave would usually have played host to. All black synthleather and gang marks. One had a crude steel ring in his nose and snorted bullishly. He could see the coiled snake of the Sump Vipers winding its way up the side of one of their necks. The leader, he assumed, by his ostentation. The man’s scarred features were surmounted by a scruffy mohawk of badly dyed green hair. When he grinned up at Drask it was with a profusion of metal teeth, many of them wickedly sharpened.

‘You,’ the man said, his grin widening. ‘You’re who we’re looking for.’

Drask held up his free hand and cradled the box closer to his body with the other. ‘I really don’t think I am,’ he said firmly. ‘And if you carry on with this line of thought, you’re going to find yourself in trouble.’ Drask began to move his raised hand to his coat. ‘I am going to reach for my–’

They were already reaching for weapons, their motions swift and practised but ultimately the product of instinct. Of street fights and gang wars. Drask had already been going for his gun, not his seal, and took hold of it. The leader was drawing his own snub stub pistol. He saw one of the other gangers pulling a blade, the edge of it glinting in the lumen light.

Drask drew and fired. The first shot from the Tzarina caught the leader in the shoulder and he staggered back. Drask could see blood through the man’s synthleather jacket. Rivulets of it ran down the creased material, even as studs and spikes from the jacket clattered to the floor in a rain of blood and torn fabric.

The one with the knife lurched forward, aiming to gut Drask with one swipe.

Meaner men than him had tried.

Drask slammed the box into his attacker’s face. He felt the impact resonate down his arm, the crunch of bone as it stove in the man’s skull. He brought his pistol around and fired. The shot took the reeling man in the gut and he crumpled in a pool of blood.

Nose Ring skirted around his dying friend and swung his own knife. It cut through Drask’s coat, pushing him back a step or two, and into his flesh, driving into his shoulder. Drask cursed. His arm was pinned by the blade, and he fired impotently. His first shot missed and Drask jerked his arm, firing again as the ganger stabbed at him. He could feel the pain seeping through him, muscles clenching as blood left them.

He gritted his teeth and focused before firing again. This time he caught Nose Ring in the shin. There was a bright burst of blood, then the white of splintering bone as the limb practically exploded at such close range. Drask brought his gun hand back and slammed the weapon’s heated barrel across the man’s eyes. The ganger screamed, clawing at his own face.

Drask kicked him down the stairs, over the body of his comrade, and stepped into the man’s wake. Their leader recovered, pulled his gun up and fired. The stink of fyceline filled the stairwell as the shot went wide. A bullet to the shoulder seemed to have thrown off his aim.

Drask strode through the line of fire before the leader had a chance to shoot again. He swung a reckless punch, knocking the leader back against the wall. He brought his arm up to the man’s throat and pinned him there, then pushed the pistol underneath his chin. Drask’s breathing was ragged. Forced. He exhaled as the rush of adrenaline faded. His heart stopped thundering.

‘Who sent you?’ Drask asked. ‘You tried to murder a probator. Who. Sent. You?’

‘I–’ he gasped.

Drask pulled the pistol to one side and fired into the ceiling. Flawless white plaster, now blackened and powdered, drifted down around them. He watched the leader gawp and struggle. He wanted to be away from Drask and the ringing in his ears, from the stink of gun smoke and the threat of death.

‘I don’t know. They didn’t tell me. They just gave us a where. Said you’d be here in the next few days. We’ve been running it in shifts. I just…’ He trailed off, laughed bitterly and then looked at Drask. The fear returned. ‘Got lucky.’

‘Lucky.’ Drask laughed. He slammed the gun hard against the side of the man’s head and let him drop. He spat to one side, clearing his mouth of dust and blood, and looked down at the unconscious thug. ‘You could say that.’

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Storm of Consequences

Drask winced as cold hands braced his arm and the needle pierced his flesh, slowly stitching the stab wounds shut.

Booking in the attackers from the stairwell had taken hours, but he had seen it through. The living first, and then the dead. The one survivor had been remarkably unwilling to talk. Drask had made certain to make notes for priority excruciation with the chasteners. He would see the inside of a cell eventually, but before that he would be viscerally interrogated. There were plenty of chasteners who owed Drask favours – who would make sure that it hurt. Even beyond that, there was the principle of the thing.

No one had any sympathy for those who raised weapons against the Lex. There was likely retribution from other Enforcers in the man’s future.

Eventually, with the matter well in hand, he had come down to the medicae levels to ensure the hand-off of the bodies went to plan, and he had run into Amelya. One look at his wounds, the wounds he had barely even registered, and she had forced him to sit and submit to an increasingly thorough inspection.

‘If you had wanted to spend more time here, Quillon, there are easier ways.’ Amelya laughed. ‘You don’t turn up for weeks, months at a time, and now it’s as though I cannot get rid of you. You certainly keep things interesting.’

‘It’s…’ He paused and hissed as she closed up the wound. It wasn’t the pain as much as the discomfort, the numbed, repetitive stabbing as she forced the needle through his skin and tugged the wound closed. ‘It’s not a choice that I would have made myself.’

‘I told you to be careful,’ she admonished. ‘But you don’t listen, do you, Quillon?’

‘I try,’ he said as he shrugged out of her grip. ‘What about you? Do you listen? I sent a message by pneumo-tube and asked Oliar to pass on other instructions.’

‘I received both,’ she said with a nod.

‘Excellent. So there are duplicates of the evidence from the latest scene?’

‘There are.’ She paused. ‘Though in processing it… certain irregularities have come to light.’

‘Irregularities?’ Drask’s eyebrow quirked. ‘What do you mean?’

She sighed and moved away from where he sat to work the mortuarium’s cogitator. The mechanisms rattled with every click and clatter of the claviboard, until a hololithic display flickered into life. He looked at it. An approximation of the dental scans from the body rectified themselves upon the projection. Human teeth were picked out in captured, curdled light. ‘These are the scans of the bite wounds on your most recent victim. You were hoping to use them as an identifier, and so I have compared them to existing medicae scans and standardised dental records.’

‘And were you successful?’

‘After a fashion,’ she said, and pressed another key. The image changed. It became the features, in life, of Hiram Tral.

‘I don’t understand,’ Drask said. He scowled in confusion. ‘Why are his details being called up?’

‘Because his teeth match the bite marks on your body.’

‘They… what?’ He blinked.

‘His teeth. They were taken as a punitive measure for his past offences. Used to form dentures for the ailing faithful. Those teeth. Those same teeth, in the exact configuration, were used to bite your victim. Either directly or by applied force.’

‘That’s…’ Drask trailed off, disturbed and sickened all at once.

‘It is certainly a unique signature,’ she breathed. Sometimes her demeanour scared him. The eagerness to commit to the truly macabre, to embrace it in a way that Drask was incapable of. Even Amelya’s interest seemed strained though. Perhaps it had finally careened into a barricade from which it could not recover.

‘So…’ Drask pinched the bridge of his nose as he processed the information. ‘We have Mercutio Farentis, Vranx guildman, who decides for some reason to murder Hiram Tral. To reverently prepare his body with ritual trappings of nobility funerals, harvest the man’s organs… only to be killed in turn by someone else. Brutally made an example of. His own organs and flesh harvested.’

‘Indeed,’ she agreed.

‘And now you’re telling me that Tral’s missing teeth, his pawned-to-pilgrims teeth, were used to leave bite marks in our third victim.’ He shook his head. ‘Without that one detail this death would be another brutal outlier. Nothing more. Why would whoever has done this take that risk?’

‘I’m sure you have some notion.’

‘They’re toying with us. It’s the only reasonable explanation. How would they even have known about the teeth?’

‘Perhaps Tral recovered his teeth through service or found the slates to pay for them. Or whoever had him killed had the means to hunt them down and include them in their game. It could be nothing more than sick sport, or it could be to show that there is a link. They want you to know.’

‘Could it have been personal?’ he wondered. ‘What do we know about the third victim?’

‘Samson Klarn,’ Visarth said, reading from a data-slate. ‘A dock foreman in the local area. Left his shift approximately three hours before the discovery of his body.’

Drask nodded. He looked to his side, where the box still sat. He swivelled around and opened it. ‘These notations all regard organ removal, and other miscellany that I can’t quite identify.’

‘Let me see.’ Amelya picked up one of the pieces of paper and scanned it quickly. Her biological eye widened. ‘The organs are recognisable, yes. The others are specific cuts of meat. The sort of thing you would see as grox are sent to abattoir.’

Farentis preying upon Tral. Someone else preying upon Farentis himself. And did the same person then turn their murderous urges upon Klarn? Each with its own minor variations. The first and second directly linked, but the third… Why the escalation? Why the sudden savagery?

‘And are there practical applications?’ he asked hopefully. He was almost certain that he already knew the answer.

‘You ought to look into it. I think you would find it illuminating,’ Araceli Vranx said in his mind, though it seemed an eternity ago that he had stood with her before the mural and beheld the Fortitude of Terra.

‘There was no sustenance nor succour for them, and they became as savage beasts. They succumbed to weakness and to the Custom of the Void,’ came Welan’s words, equally unbidden. Drask could feel the bile rising in his throat.

‘There’s no other use for those particular cuts beyond butchery. If those are the sections being sourced, it suggests a background in animal handling, perhaps an agri-worker of some description.’

‘This wasn’t just the means of killing and mutilating the corpse, Amelya,’ Drask said shakily. ‘This was an itinerary. As plain as any habwife setting out to the commercia. Specific requests, for specialised agendas.’

‘You can’t know that,’ she said. There was a tremor in her voice. Her hands clenched and unclenched involuntarily. She looked away from him and from the glimmering hololith. The light seemed even sicklier in the chill confines of the mortuarium.

‘Organs and flesh, those are the commonalities. No matter the outrages performed upon them, there are things that are being taken. Time and again. Heart, lungs, liver. Flesh.’

‘Quillon. You cannot be serious.’

‘Deadly,’ he said, with a gallows-humour chuckle. It was dry, forced through gritted teeth. ‘It isn’t a message. It isn’t simply murder. It is a harvest. It is something perverse and disgusting. It’s the only thing that makes sense.’

‘But this is…’ She looked around and her voice dropped to a whisper. ‘This is cannibalism. Even if it is mere symbolism. The idea… Men feeding upon other men the way we feed on cattle beasts. That Mercutio Farentis was killing to provide meat for one or more clients, to sate some monstrous hunger or absolute need?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then who killed him? What transgression could single him out for punishment amongst monsters?’

‘Perhaps he was reckless. He might have got on the wrong side of someone else. The fact that he was murdered, and that the killings have continued, proves that there are other agencies involved here.’ Drask swallowed hard. Even this deep in supposition, he could not imagine what could inspire such a thing. If he were the source of this foul indulgence, it made little sense to so decisively sever the hand that fed.

‘But who?’

‘Someone at Vranx, perhaps? I’ve made arrangements regarding Nach. If he’s involved then he will lead us to it, and if not, we can rest assured that he isn’t involved. Overzealous, perhaps, not necessarily well intentioned. But not a killer. Not a monster. That’s my feeling.’

‘Throne, we can but hope.’ Amelya shook her head. ‘This is bad business, Quillon. Whatever way it falls, this is bad business.’

‘I know,’ he said. ‘All we can do is follow the evidence. It won’t lie, and neither will we. No matter what happens, what comes to pass, we will hold someone accountable for this.’

A knock at the door interrupted their conversation. They both turned to look as the doors swung open and two armoured sanctioners trundled through. Hands on their shock mauls. Primed and ready for violence.

‘Probator Quillon Drask?’ one of them asked, her drawl bored and uninterested but entirely happy to commit should he step even a fraction out of line. He watched her fingers stroke along the eagle-headed pommel of the maul, before his eyes snapped up to meet hers.

‘That’s me.’

‘Excellent,’ she said. ‘We’re to escort you to the offices of Senior Probator Konstantus.’

They marched him up the several flights of stairs between the mortuarium levels and Konstantus’ office. Colleagues and strangers turned to gawk as he was led past. Whispers dogged his steps, as they always seemed to, but his guards paid them no heed. Their glares and the promise of their mauls was enough to keep even the boldest of onlookers at bay.

‘We were told to keep an eye on you,’ the woman said. Drask risked a look at her badge and then smiled.

‘Is that so, Sanctioner Varix?’ He watched her scowl at his use of her name. Her hand closed around the pommel of the maul again, like a nervous benediction.

‘It is. Warned by the senior probator herself to ensure your safe transit. It seems that you are very much in demand. No end to the reprobates and recidivists who would happily line up to see you ended.’

‘Not many of those hereabouts.’

‘The enemy is nothing if not resourceful,’ Varix muttered. ‘And ours is not to question why.’

‘Then I suppose I should be grateful.’

‘One way of looking at it, certainly,’ she agreed. Varix tapped a finger against her chin and then grinned widely. ‘That being said, she was also clear that if you should refuse us or otherwise misbehave, we have castellan-level clearance to render you insensible.’

‘I’m not sure what I should be thanking you for more, your candour or your restraint.’

‘Oh, it’s the restraint.’ She nodded. ‘There’s nothing I would like better than to crack you over the head a few times. Way the senior probator tells it, there’s the reek of the weird about you.’ She spat at his feet. ‘Always meddling in affairs outwith your authority.’ She patted the maul one last time. Seeking reassurance for her actions in its silvered icon. ‘I’d be doing the Bastion a service, and no doubt about that. I might even get a commendation for it.’

‘Good luck with that,’ he muttered as they drew up to Konstantus’ door. The two guards turned on their heels to stand at either side. Their armour was marked with gold and bronze about the shoulders and across the chest, seeming more ceremonial than functional. Accolades were etched into the plates, the deeds and achievements which had brought them to their role. Varix knocked and pushed open the door, before gesturing for Drask to head into the chamber.

Marita Konstantus sat at her desk and barely spared him a look as he entered. She held up a hand, and with the other she pressed an electro-seal against a document, then pushed it to one side. She audibly scoffed as she finally spared him a glance.

‘Drask,’ she said. ‘I had hoped that we might go a little longer before we were forced to speak again. Yet here we are.’

‘Not by my choice, senior probator,’ he said. ‘Believe me. After our conversation yesterday evening, I had little appetite for further conflict. I had the feeling that if I had it would have resulted in another, less cordial visit to a similar facility.’

She laughed. ‘You always were dramatic, Drask.’ She stood and stretched, rolling her shoulders, before skirting around the desk. She looked him in the eye. ‘If I wanted rid of you, there’s a hundred different ways I could have it done, and all of them would be sanctioned. The castellan would accept it as merely another operational necessity.’ The smile that graced her thin lips was cruel and cold. ‘You’re a useful tool, Drask, but there are dozens of other implements. They might not have your training, the esoterica of your upbringing, but we would make do. You are, and I cannot stress this enough, eminently replaceable.’

‘I understand,’ he said. He took a seat, trying his best to ignore her as she paced around him. ‘I have done all I can to do right by the investigation and to continue to serve the Enforcers and the people of this district.’

‘And that,’ she said with a sigh, ‘is part of the problem.’ She placed her hands on his shoulders, close enough to choke him if she wanted to. He tensed immediately. He found himself looking around the office, at the spartan walls and lack of any true personal effects. It was functional, utilitarian and utterly deserving of a senior probator. Especially one like Konstantus. He had always felt that individuals such as Marita lacked a sense of vision. To them the world was a simple thing, because they could hide from it in their sparse offices. Fortresses crafted from duty and determination. At her level it was easy to forget the stresses of the job. The long hours out on the old streets with a thousand blades and bullets at your back.

For a probator to be outright murdered was rare, but the streets of Varangantua bred strange confluences of the desperate and the depraved.

‘You were supposed to take the hint,’ she whispered. She drew back her hands and walked back around to take her seat again. ‘We have responsibilities–’

‘To the Lex Alecto,’ he said, the words drawn out like poison. His hands were clenched around the arms of the chair, locked white as he fought every instinct that he had. To simply keep his mouth shut and obey. To ignore his responsibilities. To give in. Sweat beaded his forehead. He wasn’t entirely sure whether it was the after-effects of the attack or the situation he now found himself in.

Pinned like an entomological specimen. Something that Visarth or Oliar would have nailed to a board or kept pickled in a jar somewhere. There was no warmth in Konstantus’ eyes. Not even morbid curiosity. Only disdain.

‘To the Lex, yes, of course,’ she snapped. ‘But what do you think keeps operations running here? Hmm? The Bastion does not run on warm feelings and hope. We are underfunded and undermanned. We struggle along like a wounded beast, praying that we make it to the next sunrise. The castellan courts corporate concerns and the charity of noble enterprise, and that comes with conditions, Drask. Chief amongst them being that you do not fuck with men like Phemus Nach!’

‘You think I don’t know that? I’m not an idiot, Marita. I am doing my job. What I was trained to do. What I have been commanded by the castellan and empowered by the Lex Alecto to do. That has always been my creed, and it has always been enough. What has changed now?’

‘It was to be dealt with as a personal matter. That was very clear. There is only so much that I can do to protect you.’

‘Protect me?’ Drask laughed. ‘From what? The consequences of doing my job?’

‘Precisely.’ She kept her tone clipped and cool. ‘In light of the shooting at Tarask habclave, which were legitimate kills, and pending excruciation of the remaining suspect, I am advising that you are being placed on a period of leave. Dependent on your own submission to interrogation about how you found yourself at Farentis’ hab.’

‘Araceli Vranx pointed me in his direction after someone had him scrubbed from the files.’ His barbed accusation failed to land. Instead she was laughing.

‘Araceli Vranx? You’re telling me that one of the most powerful individuals in the district, maybe even the city… what? Took pity on you? Threw you some table scraps to put one of her gilded favourites in the shit? It’s a power play, Drask, or it’s a game. It’s another world up there. The same as any other rigged gambit. You climb a spire like that and all you can see is the stars, and all you drink in are off-world concerns and mercantile monopolies. You lose yourself to it.’

Just like you lost yourself here. Far away from the requirements of the service. You could have been a solid probator, but you lost yourself.

Drask swallowed the thought, aware that the bitter aftertaste was in wondering whether advancement would have changed him. Without the taint and the shadow of Alexius’ failure or the litany of strange and savage cases, who would he have become? Would he be sitting on the other side of a desk such as this, casting down judgement and scorn like the Throne itself?

He liked to think he would be beyond such things. He thought of Preacher Welan and his father, the lessons they had tried so desperately to impart to him. He had faith. In his heart he knew that. He was a true servant of the Lex and the Throne. His methods might be unorthodox, but he had never fallen to corruption as others had. He hadn’t taken bribes or compromised his record of service.

‘I have done all that I can to address this case fairly and within the bounds of the law,’ he said. ‘I have suffered for that service. I have almost died twice in the last two nights. You expect me to walk away, having been through that?’

‘I do,’ she said with a nod. ‘No one is doubting that you have suffered, but your suffering is immaterial next to the demands of the Bastion. Polaris is an old district. It is one of the bones of the city, and yes, it has run to fat… but we are the ones who are supposed to hold the line and guard the gates. We are the ones who will be called upon when disorder reigns and they forget the provenance of the Lex. To do that we need support. We need good men, and Throne knows they are short on the ground. We do what we must to serve or we are nothing.’

‘Bowing and scraping to the will of the corrupt and the degenerate?’

‘Careful how you go, Drask!’ she snapped. He could see her hands knotting into fists, rage building inside her like a furnace ready to burst. Her eyes were narrowed, and they bored straight through him. On some level he knew he was pushing his luck, but Konstantus had made it clear that he had nothing else to lose. Not truly.

Her threats were never idle. If she wanted him gone, he would be gone, and outside the aegis of his own authority, he would be easy pickings for men such as Nach.

Mere meat for the beasts.

‘You’ll leave your sidearm and your seal here,’ she continued. ‘Once the preliminary investigation has concluded, we shall make a thorough examination of whether or not you shall be restored to active duty. Failing that…’ She trailed off.

‘Failing that, you’ll lobotomise me, make a servitor out of me, or just cast me out into the cold because you can’t be bothered.’

‘That may well be our decision,’ she said as she snapped up her quill again. She examined its point as though it were better to focus upon that than to dignify him with her attention. ‘There is no small amount of good will with you, Drask. You resolved a long-running investigation. You washed a stain from the reputation of this organisation – though one that will never truly be acknowledged.’

Drask tensed, his jaw set, but said nothing.

‘You will never be out from under my shadow. Not of my life, or my death, it seems.’ The voice whispered out of memory. Alexius would have loved this, Drask had no doubt, and he would never have stopped exploiting it.

‘You will be expected to be available for your own testimony,’ she continued, ‘and to remain external to ongoing investigations regarding these unseemly murders. You are, under no circumstances, to approach Phemus Nach or any member of his family. You should remain apart from any active components of Vranx Agri-Mercantile. Do not approach them. Do not speak to them. If you violate this…’ She pinched the bridge of her nose and shook her head. ‘I will shoot you myself. Am I clear? I will drag you down to the cells and I will put a bullet in you.’

‘I imagine that comes with a great deal of paperwork.’

‘You’d be surprised,’ she said. Her mouth twitched with the sheer joy the thought brought to her. ‘I’m a senior probator, Drask. If I want people to disappear, they disappear. No questions asked. No tears shed. Do you think that the friends you’ve made in the low places of the Bastion will come into the light for you? Visarth? Oliar? There won’t even be a concerned records clerk to worry who will take over your desk. It will be as though you never were.’

Drask drew out his sidearm and dropped it to the desktop with a clatter. He reached into his coat and let his seal fall beside the weapon. It was lighter, positively flimsy, but as it landed he felt the impact harder. He gazed at them for a long moment. Lapsed symbols of authority. Power he was no longer sure he wanted. ‘If there’s nothing else,’ he said curtly, and turned to the door. ‘Don’t worry, Marita, I can see myself out. I wouldn’t want to draw any of your manpower away from where it’s really needed.’

He couldn’t requisition a groundcar any more, and he had no mind to ride the mag-trans again, so he walked.

At some point he felt the dull pulse in his skull as the neural links to the dataveil shut down, reducing it to just another augmetic. He winced. Ignored it. Soldiered on.

Quillon Drask walked the long, cold roads beside the coast, under the idling, badly maintained guns which marked the coreward path to Bastion Square, down through the myriad tiers of docking sub-districts and receiver platforms. Vatragian, Ravamir, Geransk. All of them run-down and only partially used now. Haulers no longer drew goods from the north and fewer and fewer mega-trawlers brought home their catches. Other docks were thriving though. He slowed as he passed by Vranx Actuarial Primary, slowly spreading like mega-industrial cancer along the flesh of the shore, and watched the parade of green and gold.

An errant vitality in the grey and grime of Polaris. It seemed wrong somehow for that monopoly to be maintained. Held up on the backs of thousands upon thousands of workers and servitors, lorded over by men like Phemus Nach, while Araceli Vranx played her games across the city’s skin. She was the drumbeat. The pulse. The rhythm of the world. He was just another pawn on the board, blind to all other meaning, moved by hands greater than himself.

‘What is your game?’ he asked himself as he meandered home. The first of the night’s snows came down along the way, draping everything in a thin, clinging shroud of white. For a moment the city could dream of a purity it would never reach.

Drask chuckled at the thought. City light upon snow was as much brightness as he deserved. He looked at the reflected light from the chameleon-screens – the calls to prayer and greater devotion from the Ecclesiarchy, the ceaseless and almost desperate cries for men to enlist with the Militarum, the perpetual threat of press-ganging, and of course the endless flicker of Vranx advertising. Other, older boards had long since burned out, their promises of quality synthprotein burned into the screens like muted shadows. Echoes of the past.

This city eats men…

Alexius’ wisdom danced on the wind even as Drask realised just how shallow it had been. The merchant-combines and the nobles behind them, they were eaters of men, but the city fed on them as surely as it did upon individual citizens. The parade of lapsed boards was testament to that. A graveyard of mercantile ambition and dead men’s dreams.

There was no respite and no peace. No one was spared the ravenous hunger of Varangantua. Gold was no armour at all in these darkly lean times. From the loftiest spires and most gilded of palaces to the lowest street corners, there was delusion. They promised that production was up, that vigilance and austere resolve would see them through, but there were more desperate men on the streets every day. Castellans in their offices had the luxury of decrying it as the ‘laxity of the poorer districts’, the ‘scourge of Polaris’, but that ignored the pressures hanging over even men and women such as themselves. They ignored the doomsayers in the gutters who burned their own neighbours as heathen rabble. The food riots, the hab-purges.

Fewer men. Less materiel. Lines of trade and resupply that had grown erratic or ceased to exist. The necrosis spreading through the district like the ragged edge of a wound had not come unbidden. It was the natural consequence of the turmoil above and beyond Varangantua, and far above and beyond Drask’s level of responsibility. Distant wars, worlds away, where the devotional tracts insisted that mankind was fighting and enduring. Driving every enemy into the dust and standing yet taller and taller. That the Imperium fought and triumphed and Varangantua was kept safe.

He pushed on through the cold storm winds driving in from the turgid sea. The wind had risen, strong enough to stir the sludgy water into waves, and he watched as the squalls and eddies of the sea rushed in and drew out. There were stains, glistening petrochemical things, clawing at the rusted metal gantries and the steep stone sides of the docks. It was how he imagined the void to be. The muted ethereal colour against the darkness. Like lost souls, yearning.

He shivered, felt the cold properly for the first time, and forced himself onwards towards home.

Home had even less charm than before. It had never been a shelter from his work, not truly, and instead he had brought the tainted knowledge – the burden of understanding the bleaker aspects of human nature – back with him. Drask had cocooned himself with the worst undertakings that men were capable of. He had eaten and drunk amongst it, let it seep into his pores. It had tainted everything that he did. Very little of his life was not dedicated to crime or the pursuit of those who committed it. Friends had been few and far between – though outliers like Amelya lingered. Even that had been riven through with the confusion of their professional relationship, till she was suspended somewhere between almost a concerned mother and a dutiful colleague.

Was Barnabas a friend? Drask laughed the thought away as he ascended the stairs, stepping over the trail of dirt and slush that someone else had trailed in. One of the upper-floor families maybe. He had often heard them moving around, though the nature of his work made meeting in the corridors a rare occurrence. Drask was scarcely more aware of just how alone he was than when he was in a building teeming with other people.

The steps were steeper than he remembered. He could feel the years pressing down upon him. Devoid of the youthful hope which had propelled him forward under Alexius’ tutelage. It felt so long ago. Time was more than years. It was made relative and elastic by the deeds they contained.

And despite the years of training and the weight of his suspension, he knew he could not give up the chase. The allure of such a compelling case and the haunting details would not simply stop pushing him onward. It was lightning in the blood. Farentis and the corrosive revelations from his hab, as some sort of black market peddler of human flesh. Tral, whose defilement had not ended in death but in the insult of being used as a prop for Klarn’s murder.

There were layers and wheels of intrigue. Drawing him in. Keeping him fixated. Even without a gun and a seal, the case beckoned.

He unlocked and opened the door to his hab and stepped inside.

On the table a lumen had been set burning. Drask blinked and looked at it, at the long shadows that it cast around the empty room. His hand went, by instinct, for his holster and the gun which no longer occupied it. He hadn’t left it on.

He looked around the room, suddenly vigilant, and was aware of minor alterations. A chair a few inches from where it had previously sat. A glass on its side on a counter where it had previously sat upright. Grooves, like those that gloved fingers would make, traced in meandering circles in the thin layers of gathered dust.

It took him a moment to notice what else had been left behind. Sitting, perfect and pristine, upon the desk was a letter.

An envelope, sealed, waited.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Correspondence from the Abyss

Probator Drask,

You will forgive me the overly formal language, I am sure, as I am certain you will forgive the intrusion into your living quarters. Such as they are. I have walked this city as a wraith might, as a spectre, and have seen its many squalors, yet I fear I have never before encountered something quite as sad as the sorry state of your lodgings. Is this what the stipend of a probator provides these days? I have sat at your table, to leave you with my words, and I am disgusted by you.

Can you conceive of that, sir?

I have seen much and done more, yet it is the effrontery of your existence that offends me. So much chattel shares this city with us, and we are forced to watch you as you crawl and scuttle. You move through the veins of something greater than yourselves like ship’s vermin. Rats, waiting to flee, and we see you! Across the face of this world, you writhe and you gaze about with your dull grox eyes, and you do not understand! That is perhaps the worst thing about you. That there is so much bounty laid before you and you cannot imagine what to do with it. Vermin in the valves of an engine. Insects upon the head of a pin. We watch you dance… and we wonder at what sport you make.

How does it feel to know that you will never find me? You may have thought yourself close, but there was never any true danger in the game. Not even while the House of Grace burned. I expected you to run as it is in the nature of beasts to run. Have you seen grox in a stampede? There are few things like it. The dull, animal panic, blossoming into understanding, evolving as the fear takes them.

What will they see in your eyes when the fear takes you? I have wondered that for the duration of our game. I have not yet decided if I will leave your eyes still in your skull.

You cannot contend with the legacy of ages. With history as it is written. With the blood and flesh and hunger of generations. Others have tried and all have failed. I have watched and I have waited. You cannot imagine for how long. Tradition is the rod at our back and it is the cage that binds us. I have waited and endured for so long at the indulgence of others. Now, though, now is the time for masks to be shed. For fresh eyes.

My time will come. Red in flesh and sinew. It is already upon us. False prophets cannot rule the hearts of the faithful. Not with half measures and doubt. I will show them. I will break the cycle of mediocrity.

One day you will understand. You will see, for the first time and the last, and when you have been illuminated, then I shall grant you the greatest gift of all.

On the day that I eat your heart, you will know the city’s true face.

Drask stared at the letter for a long while after his first reading. He tried to read it again, but every word caught against his mind as though barbed. Bladed. They etched themselves into the meat of his brain and burned there. Toxic and indelible. As a boy his father had taken him to the conventional docks and to the limited sparse suborbital bulk-lander platforms that barely sustained Polaris. His mind felt scarred the way that rad-scarring rimed the hulls of the deep trawlers and the atmospheric burns pitted the flanks of the voidships.

He looked at the letter objectively now. Forced his rational mind to push through the sense of violation. The words were measured and considered. The penmanship was impeccable. It spoke of someone in the higher echelons of society, someone who could afford real parchment. Inked and sealed. Not foolish enough to leave a truly identifying mark but with a distinct vocabulary such as that it would be discernible with comparison.

Drask moved from room to room, checking every nook of the small hab. He opened closets, checked under the bed and then double-checked that the doors and windows were locked. He drew deep, heavy breaths of the stale air and tried to hold his nerve.

Drask choked down his bile and staggered to the hygiene-chamber. He stripped off his clothing, armoured and otherwise, and threw himself under a pulse-shower.

He scrubbed at his skin, fingers digging into the meat of his arms as he tried in vain to scour away the rancid, sick feeling of violation.

They were here. They were in my hab.

His fingers itched for a weapon, for some sense of protection, even in the enclosed space of the shower cubicle. There was no one in the hab. The rational part of him knew that, yet still the black-clad figure loomed in his mind – ready to strike from the shadows. Everything had become suspect. Distrustful and distrusted. He thought of the old autopistol, strapped to the underside of a refec-chamber cabinet. Backup. A reassurance he would need.

He sank down on his haunches, naked, and wrapped his arms around his legs. Drask slowly drummed his head against the slick tile until the pain eclipsed the building nausea behind his eyes. As though he could drive it away with the simple balm of agony. He could feel himself shaking. Not just from the cold water but from raw, animal panic.

He could almost see the blade glinting in the downpour, the water like a rush of silvered blood, as though he were back in the Hylath estate – back under Alexius’ knife. Old pain warred with the new. Each impact of his skull was a nail, hammered into the coffin of the past. He could feel his fear and his confusion and his hate clawing at the lid as he held it shut. As he held himself together.

He slammed his head against the wall again, hard enough to taste blood as he bit his tongue, and banished the toxin of thought. He steadied his breathing, forcing it from hissed gasps into deep, gulping draws of air. He could feel his heartbeat steadying, slowing and aligning with the timbre and rhythm of his thoughts.

‘I’m all right,’ he whispered. ‘I am all right. There is nothing here that I cannot overcome. Nothing that can hurt me. Nothing I cannot kill.’

Control returned, if not calm, and he forced himself up on unsteady legs. He braced his hand against the wall, slipping on the tiles as he pushed away, before staggering out and groping for a towel.

He could not, would not, surrender. There was still work to be done.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Legacy of Atrocity

Drask didn’t try to sleep. He couldn’t have even if he had wanted to. Instead he stared at the plain grey walls of the hab as though some detail would emerge from the calming monotony. Hours passed. An entire sleep cycle flitted away before his eyes as he pondered. Processed. Thought. He sat in his chair in the main living area of his hab, gaze fixed forward. Not looking down at the letter.

He choked back the anxiety that had unmanned him, burying it beneath layer after layer of perceived duty, and clenched his hands against the synthwood of the table. Everything hurt. Pain bled through him, but he wouldn’t compromise himself further by reaching for the bottle of amasec, or any other distraction.

There is still work to be done.

He internalised the words. A mantra beating in time with his heart, alongside the dull ache that throbbed within his skull. He could use it. He could put all of his hurts and woes to use and drown them in the work. That was how it had always been. If anything, he had drunk at home to suppress that atrophied and withered side of himself. The life unlived. The opportunities avoided. Connections never made.

Were they my failings? Drask wondered. Or simply your echoes and shadows cast upon and about my life? Where do my failings end and your legacy of curdled potential begin?

The laughing echo did not speak up in his mind. There was only the silence and the grey drabness of the hab, with all the welcoming grace of a funereal shroud. No matter his skill and ability, such as they were, he had limitations. Men could not converse with the dead. Could not interrogate them for their secret insights.

Drask paused. He blinked. ‘But I can,’ he whispered.

He rose unsteadily and lurched mechanically to one of the neglected storage units which lined the refec-chamber. Gingerly, he eased it open and reached behind the cartons and cans of protein-recyc and carb-bars. He felt leather against his bare hand and pulled.

The book slid free of its hiding place, its prison really, with an ease which belied its weight. It had a potency. In many ways he had long considered it more real than other aspects of his life. Once he had thought it a near-magical thing. Something which whispered secrets he should not have been privy to. The folly and the naivety of youth. There was nothing supernatural coded into its pages, merely the wisdom of the man who had been his mentor. The same man who had left him with the ragged scar across his abdomen.

Alexius Voight’s notebook sat uneasily in Drask’s hand until he walked back to the table and let it fall open there. The pages were soft, pale vellum, at odds with the dark wood of the table, inscribed with the thin, spidery script of the author. In some ways he did not consider it to be a book, not truly, and certainly not one that remained soft despite age. It was a blade to pare away the flesh of the now and reveal the glistening musculature of the past.

It was insight honed to a killing edge.

Or that was how he had seen it. Now he kept it hidden, tucked away out of sight and out of mind, not because he was afraid of someone else finding it but rather because it hurt to look at it. It hurt to think of Alexius and the times they had shared together. A taint ran through so much of his formative career, and what once others had merely whispered about had become a well of poisonous regret.

‘One thing to be the protégé of a failed obsessive,’ he muttered, ‘entirely another to be the by-blow of a madman and a monster.’

So he had hidden it from everyone, even Amelya, succumbing to shame and to the pain of the memory of his mutilation.

He flicked through the pages. Muscle memory guided his fingers to the passages which had concerned Sargas Hylath and Alexius’ meandering thoughts on the Silver Coin killer. Drask shunned them. The pain was still too intense, and besides that, they were useless to the task at hand.

Perhaps it was all useless. Digging through the past in search of secrets. Grasping after insight. Is that not what it means to be a probator? You taught me that. Now teach me again. Not the ghoul from nightmare but the friend and mentor.

The book was nothing of true note and nothing to fear. It was a standard Bastion-issue notebook. The cover was faded and worn by time, the pages dog-eared from constant reference, but still it emanated a power he could not explain.

The past had weight and strength enough to rule even the strongest of wills, and Drask’s had corroded over time. Even if he no longer reached for the bottle as a matter of instinct, ingrained as muscle memory, he still possessed weaknesses. Vices. Cracks in the moral armour of a man that inevitably compromised him.

Even the sturdiest of cathedrals can be brought down by rotten foundations.

His father had always enjoyed that one. Relishing the saying as though it excused the ruined life he had squatted in. Chasing the dreams of others or attempting to live his own dreams through those he thought he had power over.

Dangerous, Drask thought, getting lost in someone else’s dreams. Or levering power you think you possess against those who you would hold it over…

He traced his finger along the lines, reading at speed, entirely comfortable in following the terse script of Alexius’ notes. He had cast a wide net and a keen eye, always on the lookout for curiosities. For interesting cases. For patterns in the making.

‘Stare hard enough into the eyes of hell and you learn the games it plays. You can tell the difference between a fledgling killer’s first efforts and the prosaic crimes of passion. The aberrant shine, if you have the mind to note it, and eventually you can attune your mind to seeing them. That is why I collate so broadly, Quillon. That is what this is all about.’

There was dross there as well, of course, failed lines of enquiry and obsessive searches for meaning where there was none. A cross-section of Polaris, of Varangantua, as surely as a sliver of meat from the abattoir’s leavings.

His finger paused. Drask’s eyes widened as his faint hope blossomed.

Organs removed. Secondary mutilations inconsistent with…

He tapped under each word, following them from thought to thought.

Old crimes spiralled before his eyes. Alexius had been observant enough to notice the pattern. Once you did, it was hard to see anything else. A series of brutal killings, organs removed, culminating in a truly mutilated body left in Nul-sub.

You cannot contend with the legacy of ages. With history as it is written. With the blood and flesh and hunger of generations. Others have tried and all have failed. I have watched and I have waited. You cannot imagine for how long. That was what the letter had said. The ghoul who prowled his hab had put those words to parchment with care and determination. No matter if their mind was addled and rotten, or if not their mind then their soul – they had committed themselves to a course. One with a history. A legacy. This had happened before. For time out of mind.

Without the resources of the Bastion his ability to dig through the records of the past was limited but not non-existent. There were avenues available to him that his quarry would not have considered.

How much do they know of me? Enough to get in here. To understand me as a man, as a hunter of criminals and monsters. Do they know of Alexius? Amelya? Oliar? Throne, would they know of Barnabas and the arrangements he has made to surveil Nach and the other suspect members of Vranx A-M?

Drask thought about reaching for the parchment knife which he kept on the desk, to cut out the relevant pages from the journal to keep as evidence, but his hand came back empty from its quest across the tabletop. He looked down, almost surprised at the knife’s absence. Had he moved it? The blade usually lingered upon the desk, waiting to cut out pages from any physical notes or evidence that he procured, and had little utility beyond that. He would not have moved it. Would he?

He held his head in his hands. Drask’s breathing was ragged. His chest moved hard and urgent beneath his simple shirt. He felt constrained. He felt as though the world, the hab, the room, were a cage. Bars closing in around him. The jaws of an immense beast ready to snap shut. He choked back the poison thought, ready to rear its head, the dry and oft-repeated observation of Alexius. Like a stuck vox in his mind.

This city…

‘No,’ he said, and the words surprised him. He drummed his fists against the table as he stood. The knife was forgotten. Unimportant. He would fetch parchment, send another message to Visarth. He would try to sleep, and then he would go out into the city. He would range south.

He would find what he needed.

The edge of the district was like the edge of the world.

Polaris’ cold sprawl had – over time – incorporated many different industries. From the sprawl of its docklands and the dwindling trawler routes to the roving expeditions which pushed south for the frozen grandeur and buried reserves of the past. At the district’s edge, though, the mining interests began in earnest. Not the deepest or the most profitable, for they were elsewhere and owned by noble houses. By combines and cartels. These were the rough mines. The inconstant and shifting delving into the world’s crust had created a broken landscape. Deaths were common. ‘Accidents’ by and large, but there was a reservoir of spite beneath the surface of what had come to be called Slag-edge.

Nestled amongst it was the makeshift tavern of The Pit. It spoke of a time before, when it had been more than simply a place for miners to drown their sorrows. The walls were forged of old burnished steel and marked with the graving edges of picks, shaped by meltas and by hands long dead. There was a character carved into the very fabric of it. Something which spoke to those who had refused to die, who had struggled and endured for the dream of a better life.

One day I will leave this place, it said. One day I will walk from here with my head held high and a better life ahead of me.

Drask had seen more places in Polaris seeking that escape than he could count.

The Pit was no different. Low tables sat beneath an oppressively squat ceiling, lumens swinging on chains with the wire wound perilously around them, illicit spirits being brewed in makeshift vats and kegs. The ceiling was lined with old constellations, picked out by some vaguely artistic hand, traced into the false sky with fool’s gold and liar’s silver.

It was a place which honesty and integrity had long since left behind. That suited Drask and his purpose.

He sat at the bar, ignoring the dealers peddling black ice two seats along, and ordered a drink. The jeneza was reassuringly dark and heavy, as though mirroring the atmosphere within the tavern. He raised it to his lips and took a deep, long swig of it. Wiped foam from the back of his hand.

There was a comfort here, at the bottom of the world – he knew that. If Quillon Drask truly wished to he could let go. Relax. Lie back in the warm morass. He could surrender to the currents which tugged at him, and, inevitably, he would wash up somewhere like this. Varangantua was littered with the corpses of fallen and disgraced probators and sanctioners. What was the old saying? ‘The eagle wears two faces.’ He laughed into his beer, drawing the eye of the dealers – who obviously thought him too drunk, or mad, or otherwise compromised.

Perhaps he was. Perhaps Varangantua had finally taken its due. Eaten its fill.

He let his hand clench, balling into a fist, knocking it against the bar top.

‘No,’ he said, to himself this time. With surety and with purpose. ‘Not today. If that were the plan then I wouldn’t be doing this. Wouldn’t be here. This is not the end.’

‘It could, however, be the beginning of something pernicious,’ tutted a voice from behind him. He turned on his seat and smiled gently. Amelya Visarth smiled back. ‘I have it on good and professional authority, Quillon, that talking to oneself is an early sign of madness. I would hate to think that you were mad.’

‘No more than usual,’ he said with a shrug. ‘Sit, please.’

‘Happy to, though we are waiting on one more,’ Amelya said as she settled herself. Like him she was dressed plainly, in almost workmanlike dark, hard-wearing clothing. The thick coat was some variety of synthleather and contrasted hard with the simple medicae garb he was used to her wearing.

‘One more?’ he asked.

Before she could answer, Oliar appeared at her side, shouldering through the gathering crowd. She smiled and shook her head at the sight of Drask and then looked around. She waved a cloud of narcotic smoke out of the way, coughed politely and then took a seat beside Visarth. ‘She thought it prudent that I attend, owing to my evidentiary oversight of aspects of the case.’ She tilted her head. ‘I suppose I should thank you for that. The case has proven to be nothing if not… engaging.’

Drask nodded. ‘I’m glad you’re both here, at any rate.’ He gestured across the expanse of rough-hewn wooden bar. ‘Do either of you want anything?’

‘Oh, no.’ Amelya shook her head. ‘I shouldn’t.’

‘Nor will I,’ Oliar said. ‘Which leads me to ask, why here? There are any number of nondescript and out-of-the-way taverns and slum-dives we could have attended. What made you range this far south to a place of such obvious ill repute?’

‘History,’ Amelya said, and tapped the side of her nose. She noted Oliar’s quizzical look and chuckled dryly. ‘Quillon came here once before. A long time ago. Working a case with…’ She trailed off and sighed. ‘There are some shadows that we cannot get out from under. Worse still, I fear there are some shadows that certain individuals do not wish to step out of.’

‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘I have an overly sentimental view of the past. Of the man.’

‘A man so corroded by madness and obsession that it devoured swathes of his life and almost ended yours.’

Drask drew the notebook out of one voluminous pocket, placed it on the bar and tapped it with one gloved finger. ‘He still has his uses. His insights. The past cuts both ways, Amelya, and I intend to take full advantage while I am able.’

‘Oh for the love of the Throne,’ Amelya breathed. ‘Still carrying the damn thing around like a talisman. I expected better, Quillon.’

‘And I’m sorry to disappoint. It still has…’ He drew a deep breath as he contemplated his next words. ‘It still has use for me.’ He opened the book. His finger moved back along the lines, tracing paths that were familiar to him but foreign territory to his companions. ‘There. Alexius was tracking a seemingly recurrent spate of murders with associated organ theft.’ He tapped the page again as they both leant in to look. ‘Each time it occurred it was crushed from on high. Passed on with invalid reference numerals, assigned to one probator after another. Constantly pushed down the chain until top brass file it away with other unsolved illegal organ trades. Or rejuve dealers, some specialised form of cell-draining. Sometimes they even pin it on the narco-trade. Customised drug couriers with organ voids. Every time there’s an excuse for the same kind of case, with the same signatures. No one sees it, or if they do then they want to ignore it. Always with the same excusatory downward pressure. Every time with one eye upwards for the judgement that might come. Alexius saw it, though. Going back at least twenty years into his career. Every two years, a sequence of three to six crimes that end in an atrocity in Polaris-Nul.’

‘So now it’s a conspiracy? Some plot from the castellan and the senior probators? That will certainly help your case, Quillon. “Oh no, of course I’m not mad, your graces, there is merely a vast and all-encompassing scheme to…” To what, Quillon?’

‘Whatever it is, it’s rooted in the old stories of the First Landings.’

‘That’s history more than ten thousand years dead, Drask,’ Oliar interrupted. ‘The requirements of base reference alone would tend to the astronomical. You have a limited frame of information, a dilute suspect pool – one of whom is already upon the slab – and beyond that you have only speculation. You chase phantoms, attempt to pin down ghosts, and it pains me. It is a painful thing to watch, for a verispex.’ She shook her head. ‘I have balanced so much of my life upon the good and proper analysis of data. By taking evidence and examining it, putting it into the correct context and extrapolating solid theorems. And normally I can justify the logical leaps which probators take. You walk the minds of the depraved as easily as you stalk the streets of the city. You are fearless. You are half mad yourself. It scares me.’

‘Sometimes it scares me as well,’ he said. ‘But I am tired of being afraid of what I know and what I can conceive of. Alexius trained me to sharpen my mind into a weapon. To pre-empt and predict my opponents. To walk in the darkness with my will as a torch.’ He paused for a moment and let her catch her breath. When she did not follow on he sipped his beer again and sighed. ‘This isn’t just idle supposition. I’m not pulling it from nowhere. This is what makes the most sense based upon what I’ve observed. How they remain so many steps ahead of us. It all coalesced when I got their letter.’

Even in the bustle of the bar, Drask could sense when a hush had descended. He looked back at Oliar and Visarth, who were both staring at him with remarkably similar open-mouthed expressions.

‘Ah,’ he said with sudden realisation. ‘I hadn’t mentioned that, had I?’

‘Their letter?’ Amelya snapped. ‘They wrote to you? Just pneumo’d you a letter? Left it on your hearth’s stoop?’

‘On my desk,’ he muttered, burying his mouth back into his drink.

‘On your–’ Amelya was sputtering now, her rage building, as Oliar merely watched on. Lenses clicking as they widened their field of focus. The better to collate. The better, he was sure, to attempt to ignore Amelya’s apoplexy. ‘He has been inside your hab? For Throne’s sake, Quillon! You cannot simply accept this. You should not be here, telling us this – you should be back at the Bastion! Throw yourself at the mercy of Konstantus, enter into protective custody, and maybe this can pass you over. You can outlast this, and come the end of it you might still have a career… to say nothing of your life.’

‘That simple, is it?’ Drask asked. He shook his head and pushed the glass closer to the barkeep’s end. ‘Turn a blind eye to evil so that we might live? We took oaths to stand ever against such. There is the Lex Alecto and there is the madness beyond it. Criminality, recidivism, lawlessness. Beyond that, though, humanity is still ruled by its base passions. Greed and lust. The carnal longing for violence. We see them every day and we tolerate, we excuse… we put to use. You look at the blunt tools and sharp knives we use to hold the line, to bind like to like, keeping the dark at bay with the fire of rage and hate. Casting so much spite into the face of others.’ He held his head in his hands.

‘And I’m expected to play my part. I stand in judgement. I work the angles. It is up to me to make those leaps, to get into the heads of the killers and to stop things like this from happening again. I have feared it and wrestled with it for so long. I’ve seen it as a black mark, a brand, a stigma, but he showed me its use. It can be a scalpel, cutting to the heart of evil. In his prime, if nothing else, he taught me that. I wear the scars of his education as surely as I bear those of a failed disembowelling.’ He stifled a laugh. ‘And on and on we go. I am here to seek answers. To fathom truth. I need you to help me.’

‘For the love of…’ Amelya began and then trailed off. She gestured for the barkeep and ordered a drink, opalwine, and sighed as she took a long sip. The silence drew out, and Drask was about to speak again when she continued. ‘I will help you, Quillon. Even if we didn’t share our history of pain and loss, you’ve made it far too interesting to look away.’

‘An unfortunately common set of circumstances, as you well know,’ Drask said with a dry chuckle. ‘If I didn’t find myself enmeshed in these cases, I doubt that you would have stuck with me this long. Not out of sentiment alone.’

‘Consider it morbid curiosity,’ she said. ‘Some people sign up for the noble reasons you’ve espoused. Some do it for the power and the influence, or the pleasure they derive from the snap of bone against rockcrete and maul against bone. Me? I care about people, as you well know, but at the same time… there is a peculiar beauty in the ugliness of this city. She wears many faces. A hungry thing. A cruel and conniving beast, in many ways, but capable of such wonder. Such strange and terrible variety. That is what keeps me focused, what allows me to do my work and what keeps me interested in your work.’ She took another sip.

‘Thank you,’ Drask said, and turned to Oliar. ‘What about you? Are you willing to help me? Even if it means me working outside the Bastion’s remit?’

‘I will do my part,’ she allowed. ‘You have raised valid concerns that I would see addressed.’ Her eye-lenses clicked as she leant forward, rotating and realigning avariciously. ‘I will admit that you have piqued my interest. Especially considering what we found at the Bastion.’

‘What you found?’ he asked, looking from Amelya to Oliar and back again. Amelya had the decency to look sheepish as she put the glass down again.

‘You were right to insist that we preserve physical copies of the evidence. A data purge came down from on high not long after they took you away. Most of our files were moved, sealed or outright erased.’

‘Throne damn them,’ Drask muttered. ‘Was nothing spared?’

‘Some…’ Amelya rubbed her temples. ‘Much of the connective speculation which we had accrued had been pared away, but traces remained. I was able to continue my data-scry of the circumstances surrounding Hiram Tral’s teeth, for instance.’

‘What did you find?’

‘Surprisingly little. The teeth weren’t allotted to a specific pilgrim in the usual manner but were acquired as part of a bulk commission for “charitable purposes”. Nonsense, really,’ she scoffed. ‘Bound up in a sub-combine’s acquisitions request. The company itself only truly exists on paper. Beyond that it is undoubtedly some sort of corporate front. Whoever has put them to use is in command of vast resources. Unfortunately, given the circles that Farentis ran in, that means that any number of high-ranking Vranx executives could have a hand in the matter.’

‘That presumes,’ Drask said, ‘that it was actually someone from Vranx.’

Amelya hesitated. ‘There’s no connection to Vranx with the third killing. It suggests a crime of opportunity, or a motive we cannot yet understand. Klarn was a dock foreman. There’s no direct link to any of the other victims. Or anyone in the Vranx echelons.’

‘That we can see.’

‘You think otherwise?’ Oliar asked.

‘I do. Or, at the very least, I’m considering it.’ Drask tapped a finger to his chin and then gestured for another jeneza. ‘Corporate power plays are often awash in blood. The intrigues of the nobility are no different. There’s a symbolism at play. Something ancient and bone-deep. There was a book, Warnings and Lamentations of Pre-Imperial Settlement. Recommended by…’ He trailed off, unwilling to involve them with details any more than was necessary. Not now that he was a rogue element. ‘By a learned acquaintance of mine, though in truth the path was laid out by someone of a much higher social stratum. The book refers back to the First Landings here upon Alecto. The families that inherited this world came from those first ships. With all their ambitions and vices. All their failings. Poison such as that can bleed down the generations. It can consume entire lineages.’

‘You think there’s a commonality there? That these are the moves in some game of vendettas, millennia-deep?’ Amelya interjected.

‘I think that we play at the edges of deep power,’ Drask said. ‘Where the gilded walk, schemes blossom, and where they choose to kill… it is always in the shadows. They work to different logic there, on the other side of money and prestige.’

‘True,’ Amelya said as she swirled her glass and then drained the last of the contents. ‘Very true. I’ll keep working from my side with the limited information at my disposal.’

‘And I will continue to collate the genic and material evidence obtained by the verispex. I’ll ensure things continue to move, in as much capacity as I am able,’ Oliar cut in. ‘Sadly, there is still no solid evidence which connects any outside agency to Farentis’ death. The man was himself, undoubtedly, involved in the murder of Tral. Though that is, of course, now a mere formality for whoever receives the case.’

‘If anyone,’ Drask grumbled. He sipped his drink and threw down a few loose slates. The barkeep looked at them, then back at Drask, and grumbled under his breath as he swept up the coins in one hand. Drask ignored him. ‘These cases will vanish, as surely as any of those in the past. They will make it as though this never happened. Failing that, it’ll be just another casualty in the little wars the combines fight. An acceptable casualty for profit. And who cares? It was only a gutter-crawling conman, a dock foreman and a mid-level guildsman.’

‘A fair point, well made,’ Amelya said. She tried, and failed, to hide her smirk. ‘But if no one will care, and they’re going to hide it anyway, why bother?’

‘You don’t mean that,’ Drask said.

‘I may not, Quillon, but I’m asking it anyway. I have to. If you’re going to do this, it has to be for the right reasons.’

‘Because it’s the right thing to do.’ He looked from one to the other and then back at the rough wood of the bar. His eyes traced out the patterns in the grain, following the paths that nature and artifice had conspired to create. That was his gift. Seeing the patterns as they emerged. Chasing them down to their inevitable ends. It was what had kept him sharp down the years. Balanced on the knife-edge of ability. To follow but never to fall. To never be ruled by what he saw or what he found.

Drask braced his hand on the bar, spread his fingers out. ‘I can’t sit by while the gilded sidestep the Lex. I won’t. These crimes have gone on for too long and nothing has been done to stop it. So I will bring everything in my power towards stopping it from happening again. I will find the proof that we require and I will confront whoever is responsible with it.’

‘A noble goal,’ Amelya said. ‘But how do you intend to fulfil it?’

‘I have my ways. A few off-the-books assets.’ Drask chuckled and sipped his beer. ‘While you two continue your investigation I’m going to check in with them. Other than that, I have only one request.’

‘Of course,’ Amelya said. ‘Anything.’

‘I need a ride.’

CHAPTER NINETEEN

The Death of Faith

He had Amelya drop him near to his hab, but far enough away that she wouldn’t see his detour.

The streets had been quiet as the modest grey groundcar picked its way through them. A conservative model, entirely in keeping with the other subdued vehicles. Finery was a rare undertaking here. Even the holdings of the nobility had a faded, dulled grandeur to them. Like picts of palaces on distant worlds, atrophied by time.

He felt the disconnect as he waved off the car and turned to walk the cold and lonely streets. The harsh lumens rendered it all monochrome, a strained black and white at once familiar and alien. Drask made his way through the cold streets, past the morning crowds of vendors who were getting ready to run out their wares. So different from the dirt-smeared and downtrodden miners, their lives lived in the shadow of vast mechanisms that could – at any moment – end them utterly. To try and hock a meagre store of scrounged and scavenged food, or makeshift goods. Trinkets of bone hewn from the aquatic life of the poison oceans, rough-spun fabrics bearing Imperial aquilas and the geometric patterns common to the district. The colours ranged from dull greys to understated blues, reflecting the muted colour palette of life in Polaris.

Not much, but perhaps enough to earn a little extra slate and keep the sellers from the breadline.

In Varangantua there was often a shortage of honest work. What remained was an inconstant mixture of opportunities. Criminality and poverty were the twin ills that afflicted so many regions of the city. All that could be done was to weather the storms, seek out the chances when they came or succumb – drowning sorrows and disappointments in a dizzying array of vices. Drask had seen men out of their mind on topaz or black ice. Watched them drink themselves to oblivion like the sad echoes in The Pit. There was no hope for individuals such as that.

It was like swimming in the turgid oceans. Surrendering to the current was as good as death. Dragged down into the near-infinite blackness to become food for something else. Their sustenance was the surrender of another being. The end of one life, the continuation of another.

He shook off the bleak and hollow poetry of it.

Drask rounded the corner and gazed up at the Cerasta sprawl’s temple. Stolid. Grey. Squat. Its earlier reassurance lingered. He moved closer, noted the lack of any crowds – typical for this time of the morning – and pushed the door open.

Welan might not have the answers he needed, but the preacher was the closest thing to a savant that he had. Someone who knew his history and the tomes where it could be found. He had helped before, and the answers dredged from those books had anchored Drask’s thinking. He could help again. Drask knew it.

The interior of the temple was brighter than it had been earlier. Candles had been set burning at the ends of each pew, their crimson wax running down the wooden posts in thick fingers. It was untidy, a messy addendum at odds with Welan’s more straightforward décor. Drask’s nose wrinkled. Beneath the smoke and incense, other scents warred for prominence. Coppery and sickly sweet.

‘Preacher Welan?’ he called, advancing further into the temple. ‘It’s Quillon Drask. I had a few more questions about early Alectian history. Could you come out, sir?’

Something was wrong. He could feel it in his bones. His skin crawled. One hand reached for a gun that was no longer there, acting on well-worn instinct now rendered useless by circumstances. He cursed under his breath and kept going.

He saw the preacher when he passed a column halfway down the central aisle. He was sitting off to one side, as though politely tucked away, his back to Drask. He sat seemingly staring up at the altar, almost contemplative, perhaps in prayer. Drask quickened his pace, almost slipping as he passed over a patch of wet ground.

Spilled oil was his first thought, or perhaps a meltwater leak from the building’s cracked and ageing facade. Welan might not have noticed it. He could have tired in the attempt at cleaning it. The preacher was, after all, an old man.

Drask looked down.

Blood stained his boot. It had spattered the floor in an uneven puddle, trailing off into droplets and smears which led inexorably towards the slumped form of the preacher. Too cold. Too still. Too poised. Or, not poised, but posed. Drask felt his mouth dry as he drew closer. His hands were locked white-knuckle tight. He turned his eyes to the ruin that had become of Preacher Welan. His hand flew to his mouth instantly.

‘By all the grace of the Throne,’ Drask breathed.

He was not merely dead. He had been butchered. Mutilated with a dark precision. His eyes were black holes in his skull, still rimed with gore and fluids. His nose was gone, his lips pared back, and his throat had been cut. A butcher’s cut.

Blood had run freely down his robes, soaking through to the flesh beneath, and saturated the wood of the bench. Drask’s eyes dropped. Welan’s hands had been severed at the wrist and sat, separated by a gleaming knob of bone, on the pew in front of him. Each finger had been severed. Drask tried to keep his nerve as he looked, as he took in the complete and utter ruin that had been visited upon the old man. The absent eyes sat alongside the hands, and beside them was the ragged stump of a severed tongue.

It was an utterly exacting abhorrence. It had taken time, effort, solitude and something akin to love. There was a broken reverence to the action, and it sickened Drask to look upon it. Especially here. There was the sacred and the profane. The pure and the unholy. It was a deliberate blasphemy, carved into the world’s face, with all the ugliness and spite of a fanatic.

Drask stumbled back, his hand still locked at his mouth. He could feel his teeth grazing against his gloved fingers in response to the horror before him. He almost slipped and fell in the blood coating the floor. He reached out and grabbed for one of the posts to steady himself.

More than anything, he wanted to run. To scream. To raise the alarm. The human part of him struggled and raged against the bonds of duty. His training as a probator bade him stay. Stand. Observe. Even now his eyes were in constant motion. He accidentally blink-captured an image, and gritted his teeth at the sickening migraine flare that accompanied it. Congealing in the buffer as it failed to properly record.

It took him a moment to notice, at last, the final mocking details. He had been so fixated on the atrocious mutilation that he had entirely ignored what lay before Welan’s corpse. What sat pristinely placed beside the preacher’s brutally segmented hands.

The book.

Warnings and Lamentations of Pre-Imperial Settlement lay open, as though the preacher were about to intone a sermon from its pages. It seemed to have weathered the storm of violence with remarkably little damage. The pages were not torn or shredded, and it had mostly avoided the blood spray. There was only a line of crimson upon the pages where–

Drask’s breath caught in his throat. He looked at the object which held the pages open, which sat in the centre of the book and weighted it down. He recognised it. Even slick with vital fluids and partly clogged with flesh, he recognised it.

It was a knife. More than that, it was a knife he recognised. His knife. The parchment knife from his hab. The one he thought he had misplaced. Here amidst the slaughter.

Taken. Abused. Turned to a purpose that revolted him to even consider. As gruesome as the third killing had been, bearing the same crimson ruin and butcher’s hunger. Drask’s breathing came ragged and shallow as he contemplated it. It was a sharp enough blade for cutting parchment, but it would have struggled to cut through flesh and skin. He couldn’t imagine it scraping against bone, generating that teeth-rattling sound.

He reached out, his hand trembling, and then thought better of it. He leant closer and read the words on the page. He looked up, following the line of Welan’s dead and clouded sight. The aquila loomed over the altar, staring down as though sharing in the horror and disappointment. Its single eye was dull, hooded as though in shame.

There were words beneath it, scribed across the body of the eagle in blood.

FOR THEY ARE AS MEAT AND DRINK TO ME.

Drask stared at the words. Remembering them from before. From the Klarn crime scene. From the book. His hands finally broke their inaction and he scooped the book up, ignoring the clatter as the blade fell – end over end – and impacted on the bloody flagstones.

He ran.

Throne help him, he ran as though the killer were still there, as though the shadowed figure were at his heels. He remembered the black, looming presence as it had scythed through the smoke of the House of Grace. The rapacious killer. Haunting the darkness, the city and now Drask himself. He trembled at the thought. To be so laid bare that even the most fleeting of connections could be exploited. Welan had been an echo of his past, something more akin to a ghost of memory than a man, and yet their fleeting moment of reconnection had led inexorably to the man’s death.

The sick weight of responsibility was like a millstone about his neck. He did not want to look back at the broken body, the mocking ruin his enemy had made of it. The message burned into his mind and overwhelmed his senses. Drask was halfway down the central aisle when another stab of pain saturated his field of vision. He blinked, trying to dismiss it, and saw another – more decisive – communication.

> You are in danger. A.V.

He barely had time to process it. Drask kept running. He followed his instincts and moved swiftly down the aisle again. He dodged the pooled blood and hurried for the door. As he opened it and the chill of the air hit him, he almost barrelled straight into a shawl-swaddled woman waiting to enter the temple. She cursed at him. Drask sidestepped her, shouting an apology as he rushed away from the building. His throat ached. Pain, grief and terror all warred within him. Stealing his voice. Wounding his very soul.

The screams from behind him, from the temple itself, reached his ears a few moments later.

He stopped for breath and turned into a waiting alley. Drask let himself lean back against the clammy brick of the wall, drumming his head against the stone as he intoned to himself, over and over again, ‘Stupid. Stupid. So very stupid. I should have known. I should have been prepared. I should have done something!’ he snapped at last. He hunched over, feeling the pain in his guts and his lungs becoming too much. He braced his hands on his knees and then straightened, bringing his palms up and over his face. He let them cover his eyes and then slide into his hair. He let himself breathe. The pain, the acid burn of expended energy and overworked muscle, dissolved into a dull ache of exhaustion.

He had to move. To stay still was to be caught. To be caught was to die. He understood that now with absolute clarity. He was no longer in charge. He had no power. There was only the certainty of his place. As prey. As a victim.

He pushed off the wall and was starting to move further along the alleyway when they found him.

A fist caught Drask in the face. He felt arms grapple him, pulling him back, slamming him against the wall. He lashed out in turn, but he was outnumbered. Two men laid into him with their fists, and then one produced a black hood from the pocket of his coat. He pulled it up and over Drask’s head. Darkness took him.

He felt them move, shifting to take him by the arms. They dragged him from the alley, and all he could do was go limp.

All that was left to do was surrender.

CHAPTER TWENTY

Gilded Cages

He was unceremoniously bundled into a small space. The cramped compartment began to shudder and shake with the noise and motion of an engine, and Drask realised that he had been folded into the cargo compartment of a groundcar. He struggled, kicking out as he sought to understand the limits of his confinement.

Screaming would achieve nothing. He could bang and shout all he liked, but there was little chance that it would be heard. The noise of the city stole all sound and the apathy of its people robbed most interest.

Even if he drew attention, it was not worth anyone’s time or life to get involved.

Instead he waited. Drask tried to control his breathing. To stop the relentless racing of his thoughts. He did not know who had taken him. It did not strike him immediately as the actions of the sanctioners, though he could still end up in another cage like the safe house he had been summoned to.

It could be whoever was hunting him… His hands bunched into fists in the darkness at the thought. He might now be made example of. Taken apart. Displayed. The very thought of it made his stomach turn.

To be taken so quickly after the atrocity at the temple implied that he was being watched, followed. It suggested a carefully executed trap. For all he knew, he was on the way to whoever had been orchestrating the murders.

He could smell stale leather and old rot. It spoke to the state of disrepair of the vehicle, the lack of care administered by its owners. He turned left and then right, kicked at the walls. He lay prone again.

Drask knew he had to focus. To be ready. He couldn’t dwell on how many others had found themselves in this situation. Lying in their own filth, waiting to die, with only the weeping for company. How many of them had stumbled free only to see the waiting knives of their attackers? Had they even understood, in those final moments, what they had done to earn such a fate?

Not me. Not today.

He clung to the thoughts. A mantra of defiance. Others might have done the same in the same situation… He wondered, as his feet scraped against the edges of the compartment, how many stains were worn into the fabric. How many marks of resistance were gouged or scraped into the walls? The floors?

He was beginning to get lost in the thought of it, drowning in the implications, when the world shook again. The vehicle drew to a stop. He heard the muffled click as doors opened. The pounding of footsteps on rockcrete.

There was a click and the rear compartment opened again. He felt hands seizing him under the arms and dragging him up and to his feet. He was marched forward, trapped between the two muscular thugs. He felt the heavy, solid impression of a gun jabbing his ribs and surrendered to their direction.

They passed from the cold chemical stench of the outside. The persistent industrial grind and smog of Polaris fell away and were replaced by an incessant drumbeat. Music swelled up around him, a coiling and sinuous thing that undulated and danced in the air. The chem-reek was gone, replaced by a flowery spiced scent. Warmth enveloped him, and he could feel the strobing heat-flicker of lights as he passed under them. One of the men reached up and pulled the hood from his head.

Drask’s eyes widened. Of all the sights he had expected to grace him, this had not been one of them.

Lighting flared in garish displays of colour; pulses of warm tones dappled the air and then faded into the background hue. Everything glistened and glimmered with reflected, refracted light. His eyes darted, confused and enticed by sensory stimulation. So unlike anything outside, with its grey walls and dour cast, the eternal biting cold of the district and the dire hunger of the city. Of the world.

This was a world unto itself. A bubble of riotous excess and indulgence. Another gilded cage in which to shelter or to be entrapped.

It was, Drask realised, a joy house. Smile-girls flitted this way and that, attending to the needs of patrons. Drinks flowed freely and he could hear laughter – ribald conversation echoing from behind gauzy silk curtains. He had little opportunity to truly absorb his surroundings – the flashes of curdled opulence, of overly extravagant gilding and lithe murals. It was all surface detail, like a child’s impression of what finery should look like.

Drask had only walked the halls of power recently. The gold and glass of the Vranx headquarters had been like another world to him, but he was well trained enough to know deception when confronted with it. This entire place was a beautiful illusion for those with nothing to lose and everything to give.

He was shunted into a private side room, away from the eyes of workers and patrons, and forced into a seat. It wasn’t uncomfortable – plush, with the same fake-gold ornamentation creeping along the arms – but he struggled to relax regardless. He looked around, eyes wild and blinking rapidly before they found who sat before him. He frowned and shook his head.

‘What is the meaning of this? You absolute bast–’

‘Careful,’ Barnabas Rawl tutted. ‘Any more of that, Drask, and you’ll do yourself an injury.’

Drask dabbed at the wound on his head and winced. He shot Barnabas a look of utter disdain and then let his hand drop. He picked up the glass of tepid, brackish water which had been placed before him and sipped at it gingerly.

‘Did your men really have to be quite so rough?’ Drask asked eventually.

Barnabas laughed. ‘Well, we had to make it look good – and besides, we can’t be too careful.’ He sipped his own glass, the wine in it thick and crimson. It reminded Drask of blood, of the horror in the temple, and he felt his gorge rising. ‘After all,’ Barnabas continued, ‘you’re no longer a probator, are you?’

‘That’s right, isn’t it?’ Drask asked. He rubbed the back of his neck and stretched, trying to find his own level of comfort in the strange surroundings. ‘You seem very well informed, though I should expect nothing less of you.’

‘Not difficult,’ Barnabas said, laughing. ‘I mean, if we’re being honest with one another, Drask, then it’s very important that we be in possession of all the facts. You come to me precisely for that reason. Entertaining my eccentricities purely so you can get something from the arrangement. You profit from my…’ He paused and waved his glass in the air as he sought the right words. ‘My due diligence.’

‘You could say that.’

‘I could,’ Barnabas said, his tone suddenly curdling. The glass hit the tabletop with a solid thunk, and Barnabas fixed Drask with a gaze of pure spite. ‘And I do. Because you have not been honest with me, Drask. You have played me false in this, and that is something that I simply cannot abide.’

‘I have no idea what you’re talking about.’

‘Don’t you?’ Barnabas laughed bitterly. ‘I promised you that you would owe me a debt for this. I told you that men don’t fight the heavens. Iron doesn’t square up against gold. You said it would be fine. You assured me that he would think it was just rival corps, or low-grade street work. Your man, though, he has some tricks of his own…’

‘What do you mean?’ Drask leant forward, genuinely interested now. He sipped the water and held Barnabas’ gaze. ‘What else has happened?’

‘He’s wounded me, is what has happened. Your pet suspect. Lord Nach himself. We had men on him and a few of his acquaintances. At the first it was dull work. Nothing amiss, save how drowned he was in their vices and excesses. This’ – he gestured about him – ‘this pales in comparison to the kinds of exorbitance he goes to. Real food. Not recyc anything, not for his lordship. Men like that could drown in oceans of amasec and there wouldn’t be a single drop pissed down to us.’

‘But there was more than that, wasn’t there?’ Drask asked. Barnabas shot him a look, grinding his teeth.

‘Couldn’t get close to the offices, so I had two of my finest run interference. Eli and Anatoly. They are good boys, solid and dependable.’ Barnabas paused to toast the air and then downed the last of his wine. ‘They were on station between the offices and the estates. Fairly standard. They worked side roads and used lookouts to time their observations. Standard patterns. Until it wasn’t. They reported a number of visits to additional sites. One of them a fancy hall, tucked away in the back end of Nul sub-district. Kitted out like a clubhouse for the idle rich, they said. Too much heat around it for them to get a good look, but they were able to scout out others. Your man, Nach, he mostly stuck to the main hall. There was another prospect, though, a younger man. The son, they reckoned. He made a series of journeys to several places of low significance. Not extravagant. Not well advertised. Select properties. Often run-down and squalid. Fleeting visits, they said. In and out. Quick as you like. Only ever by himself. They figured one or more of them were vulnerable to a closer look. Made plans to do so.’

Barnabas tapped his finger against the side of his glass impatiently. Drask said nothing, content to listen. Men like Rawl were a great source of information. Not in the sense that he was an info-broker, a man whose surroundings spoke to a more pervasive command of resources than Drask had first thought, but in the way that men who had been slighted wished so desperately to let you know the how and the why of it. ‘I have been hurt,’ said the subtle refrain, ‘and it is your fault, and I will be compensated.’

And if not his fault, then someone else’s, some other terrible wrong that could be righted if only the sanctioners would help.

Drask hated it. The sense of dependency. The entitled clawing at his attention. He had used Barnabas, true enough, and should have expected to be used in kind. To be made sport of. To be caught up in the gutter games of the criminal elements.

‘I haven’t heard from them in a day, Drask,’ he said simply. ‘That isn’t like them. That’s not how things operate. I hand down the word and it’s as though it came from the Throne itself. They don’t disobey orders. They don’t trot off and do their own thing. They know that there are expectations. That there are considerations that must be made. So they listen and they report in when it’s expected that they should.’

‘Well, I’m sorry for any trouble that might have come about because–’

‘No,’ Barnabas said. ‘You’re not sorry. I could put the blade to you – give me a few hours and we’d see just how sorry you were. You understand?’

‘I understand,’ Drask said. He spoke carefully. He raised his hands, palms out, and took a breath. ‘He’s fucked us, Barnabas. He’s wronged us both, lied to us and taken from us, and I swear to you that I will hold him to account. I will make amends for this. I will bring him to heel, and we will see justice done.’

‘Justice is for fools and dreamers, Drask,’ Barnabas said with a shake of his head. ‘Give me the honesty of vengeance, any day. I’ve seen men waste their entire lives away, waiting for justice. Justice has its own gravity, crushing those caught beneath the shadow of it. Revenge is sharp, immediate, and Throne knows… it’s honest.’

‘I can see your point, but I can’t agree with it. The Lex is there for a reason. Men like you might skirt it, you might take low advantage, but ultimately justice is the only force that matters. It’s the only constancy.’

Barnabas snorted. ‘For you, perhaps. For me, revenge is a far more satisfying substitute.’ He smiled coldly. ‘So you tell me, Drask, what do I have to expect? Am I going to see the men I’ve trusted to this task taken apart? Blood on the ice, bits of them nailed to the walls? Is that the constancy you’ve created for me? Because if it is, I want no further part in it.’

‘I don’t know,’ Drask said. ‘I wish I did. We’re all in over our heads.’ He sipped his water thoughtfully. ‘I have to ask, though… This is serious stuff – why bring me here of all places?’

‘Ah!’ Barnabas suddenly smiled. ‘I have a lot of boltholes and hideaways. I simply figured, why not somewhere like here? I bring you here, and if they’re still following your data-ghosts…’ Barnabas leant forward and tapped Drask sharply on the side of the head, by his ocular implant. ‘Then they would simply think you were blowing off steam. Taking a well-deserved rest.’ He laughed again. ‘Besides that, they owe me a favour or two, and the service isn’t terrible.’

Drask touched the side of his head and winced. He had almost forgotten about the implant. Still unused to its active state, even to the messages… He frowned, remembering the warning that had come through before they grabbed him. Had someone known this was coming? Or had they been referring to the set-up at the temple?

‘So what do you want from me?’

‘I thought it would be obvious, Drask.’ Barnabas smiled. ‘I want you to finish your case. I want you to find my boys, and, if the worst has come to pass, I want you to make sure Nach pays the price. I told you that you would owe me a debt – this is it. You bring them home, one way or another, and you make him pay. In return, I give you everything we have. I give you support – hells, I’ll even give you a gun. You just need to see it through.’

Drask pondered for a long moment. He took the opportunity to sip his water again and then nodded. ‘I’ll do it. I’ll bring Nach to task, and if I can, I’ll find your men. I do have requirements in advance though.’

‘Excellent!’ Barnabas remarked with a clap of his hands. ‘There is one last thing to take care of, though, on my end, I’m afraid.’

‘And that is?’

‘Well,’ he said, and raised his hands. He clicked his fingers, and the two thugs who had jumped Drask earlier re-entered the room. Drask was finally able to get a sense of their proportions, bulked with slab-grown muscle, marked with gang tattoos. Each with a broad, angry face, like the depictions of the Emperor’s Angels that adorned buildings. Macro-steroids and harsh living had shaped them both into grimly reliable weapons of the city’s underside. Drask almost flinched to look at them.

One of them held something, wrapped in black cloth.

He unwrapped it. Drask’s eyes widened. It was a shock maul. Regulation, clearly misappropriated from the sanctioners, but it had been partly disassembled. The plating had been pared away, like flesh from the bone, and revealed the quiescent silver of the power core. Drask looked up from it to the thugs, and then back to Barnabas.

‘What the hells are you playing at?’

‘I did say that bringing you here was a precaution… but that has limits. If you’re going to operate in the shadows then we need to put out the Bastion’s lights… so to speak.’ He flashed Drask a cruel grin and then nodded.

Drask felt hands at his shoulders, pinning him down to the chair. He heard the whine as the maul went live, sparking and squealing as it operated despite its mutilation. He could feel the thrum of it as it was lowered down towards the side of his head.

‘Don’t worry,’ Barnabas soothed. ‘This should work… and if it doesn’t go entirely to plan, don’t fret – they’re used to the odd scream here.’

He felt the prickle of near contact, the crackling discharge dancing from the raw edge of it to his skin. Like standing too long in bright, harsh sunlight, he imagined, or leaning too close to a spot-lumen. He could see the dreadful flickering lambency, could smell – or thought he could smell – the odour of burning meat. He gasped, struggling for breath. His hands opened and closed on the arms of the chair and he felt his captor’s hands tighten as he strained.

‘Now, now… Klaus, Wylem,’ Barnabas sighed. ‘Be gentle with him. He does have to keep on working, after all.’

There was a nod and a grunt. Drask felt the moment of true connection from the maul. Something detonated inside his skull. The right side of his head was agony. White hot. Blinded in a flare of crimson-tinged light. He couldn’t see anything. Not even the display. Lost in a sea of pain. His mouth worked, wordlessly, drawn out into an animal utterance of agony and loss.

Soon after he lost consciousness altogether.

It was some time before he awoke again. Or at least he thought so.

His reckoning of time was gone. Blasted away by pain and unconsciousness, worse than any hangover which had blighted his life and career in days gone by. Everything hurt. Agony radiated through his skull and down, conducted by his erratic nervous system to every corner of his body. His sight was blurry, his field of vision broken by intermittent flashes which made his right eye water almost ceaselessly. He looked around, caught a flicker of his reflection in the plain metal of a nearby table, and marvelled at the swelling which now blighted the right-hand side of his face. Red and ugly, a swirling pattern of inflammation, around the darkness of his eye. The pupil had dilated, almost taking up the entire orb – save for the areas which weren’t hideously bloodshot.

‘Fuck,’ he breathed. A chuckle met this utterance, and he sat up more fully. His compromised vision swept across the darkness of the room. ‘Who’s there?’ he asked. He was horribly aware of how timid and pathetic his voice sounded. All thought and pretence of authority was gone. He was at the mercy of his allies or his enemies. He was not sure which. Not yet.

A hulking silhouette hunched forward and smiled. His teeth were very white in the shadow. One of Barnabas’ men looked him up and down and then gestured to his compatriot.

Wylem and Klaus, Drask thought, dredging up the memory. He hadn’t been offloaded to an enemy, then. Not made example of. He was alive. For what it was worth.

‘What… what happened?’ he slurred.

‘You passed out,’ one of them said matter-of-factly. ‘That happens. I wouldn’t worry about it. You pissed yourself as well.’ He laughed a little again, a burst of private mirth. ‘That’s less common. I wouldn’t spread that one about too much.’ He pointed to a nearby table. ‘The boss left a change of clothes for you. Something a bit more fitting for your predicament. He’ll want to know you’re awake. Wylem, fetch the boss, eh?’ He slapped Wylem, and the man rose with a grumble, opening the room’s only door and stomping off out of sight.

‘I take it I’m not at the joy house any more?’

‘Nah.’ Klaus scratched at his broad chin. ‘Boss reckoned it were better for you to be moved. In case the Lex came sniffing. Nothing yet, though,’ he mused. ‘Maybe they just don’t give a shit.’

‘Wouldn’t surprise me. I’m not sure I’ve got enough friends in the right places to keep the canids from the door.’

Klaus chuckled. He was, it seemed, very easily amused. ‘Yeah, I can see how that would be. You’re…’ He trailed off. ‘Well, from what the boss says, you’re not an easy man to get along with. “Too much of the old man in him,” he says.’ He looked at Drask quizzically, as though he could unfurl the mystery by staring intently enough. ‘He know your father or something?’

‘Or something,’ Drask said.

Barnabas was one of the few people outside the Bastion who had an idea of Drask’s past with Alexius. Not the whole picture, of course, but beyond what other unaffiliated acquaintances knew. His needling hints had made it clear that he had some insight, beyond simply being aware that Alexius had been his mentor and friend. The knowledge seeped from him, it seemed, and trickled down to his functionaries. Drask wasn’t sure whether this spoke to a closeness between Barnabas and Klaus or if it was more to do with Rawl’s own talkative nature.

The door opened again and Barnabas stepped into the chamber, dusting off his hands on his knees at having touched the rust-flaked door. He smiled tolerantly at Drask, waved for Klaus to leave and then took the man’s seat. The door rattled shut, though didn’t lock, and he leant forward to scrutinise Drask.

‘Feeling better?’

‘Death warmed up,’ Drask groused. ‘You’re an arsehole – you know that, right?’

Barnabas laughed. ‘It’s come up, aye. Look. I’m taking a risk here. We’re both fighting the heavens. Punching up at the spires.’

‘Tearing them down with your hands and your teeth, you said before.’

‘The very same, the very same!’ Barnabas slammed his hand against the table that sat between the two chairs from which Drask had been observed. ‘Yet here we are. Spitting in the eye of the universe. Both of us on the same side. Never thought I would see the day that your eagle would turn its face.’

‘Don’t,’ Drask cautioned. ‘That isn’t what this is.’

‘Of course not.’

‘I’m going to hold him to account. Nach and any other bastard who hangs his banner with him.’

‘No doubt.’

‘And when it’s done, I will present that information, and I will bear whatever punishment comes with it. For the sake of the Lex. For the good of the city.’

‘I am certain that you believe that, Drask, and if it keeps you sane it is a fine talisman to cling to.’ He laughed. ‘You said you needed one thing before you helped me? Before we attempt the impossible and likely die in the shadow of golden gods… Well, you will, at any rate.’

Drask smiled his own cold smile. ‘I need you to introduce me to the Sump Vipers.’

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Amongst Serpents

Even for a man of Barnabas’ influence it took almost a day for the meet to be arranged.

Drask got the measure of the compound while he waited. It was a warren of tunnels and maintenance linkages which stretched under a sizeable swathe of the sub-district. From here Barnabas could travel to any number of his holdings and coordinate his brokerage of information.

Drask passed by dozens of info-taps hooked into coiled bundles of wiring and cables. Living men parsed it through cranial jacks, eyes flickering as though dreaming, and exorcised the information through their constantly moving hands – clattering it into runic keyboards or inscribing line after line of spidery text into rapidly filling notebooks.

In other rooms citizens came to divulge their statements. Antique recording equipment clicked and stuttered as they sold scraps of knowledge or paranoid snippets of information in exchange for food, money, favours.

And they were, if nothing else, reliable.

Such avenues of opportunity were all that some had. They were cracks in the foundations of the city where strange things had taken root, like fungus. Crawling lichens that, given time, could split the very stones. Yet Drask could not bring himself to hate it. He admired its efficiency. The odd and contrary purity it evinced.

Where there was need and want, too often, the city ignored it. It drank down such things, chewed them to nothing and spat up the ashes and bones. The city was a hungry thing, peopled by the insatiate. The desperate. The cruel. A game played out across a continent with the same ending. The same way it was executed across the stars.

Here, in the bones of the city, something like hope glimmered. Grime-slick and rotten through, but still a kind of hope, even if was barely skin deep. Even at the bottom there was opportunity. A chance to live, even thrive, feeding secrets into the city’s hungry underbelly.

He watched it for a while, sitting upon a low iron bench, and pondered the course his life had taken. His life had not been simple or easy, but he had possessed a surety of purpose. Before the Farentis affair had exploded to consume everything, he had always clung to the certainty of the Lex. That had been his compass. The truest faith he had ever borne had been in the certainty of Imperial law.

He had been mired in one outrage after another, each murder more grotesque than the last. All of them spiralling towards the inexorable truth. A trade in human flesh and organs and a killer fixated upon cannibalism.

He had found the book again, scooped up when he had been abducted and eventually delivered back to him, and had begun to leaf through it. It was not easy in the low light cast by the flickering vid-screens and the odd faulty hololith. The light of the underworld blanketed him as he immersed himself in the ancient dreams that had come from the heavens.

Its text was lyrical, steeped in the legends and the suppositions which had annealed around the past like coral growths. They formed strange patterns of syntax and language which rendered it almost mythic.

Great voidships, like deep-sea leviathans, crossing an ocean of stars in the days before the Emperor’s light. There were scarce details. The captain of the Fortitude of Terra, the one who had overseen the horrific privation which had accompanied them across the void, was called Vance. There was precious little detail about them, or how they had been. Why they had allowed such things to come to pass. Perhaps they would never know – the Imperial reckoners who had composed the text had not truly cared, save for where the follies of the past could be weaponised against them.

‘“And there was, in that time of hunger, a Great Hunt through the belly of the ship. And those who would not bear the fortitude of rule were consumed, that their betters might live,”’ he read. Drask could imagine it, playing out behind his eyes.

Madness and chaos and the hot stink of the darkness as they chased each other down, beneath engine stacks like the trees of ancient forests. Knives glinting in the shadows, teeth brighter still.

He blinked it away and forced it back. The settlers of Old Night had been foolish. They had been misguided. Though they had survived enough to build the world, alongside others of their ilk, they had ever been daubed in shadow. Until, much later, the illumination had come to Alecto. The world had sung, rejoiced, and the wan light they languished under had been judged as enough.

He was not a scholar. There was only so much he could take from the book, but he knew, he felt in his very soul, that this was a part of the greater mystery. Why else would it have been left for him? Why else would he have been pointed in its direction by…

Drask paused. He frowned. ‘Araceli Vranx,’ he breathed. ‘A.V.’ She had warned him. She had known. Somehow. Just as somehow she had managed to get the message to him. ‘But why?’ he wondered.

The games of combine-barons were as mysterious to him as the long-vanished past he found himself poring over. He was a world away from such labyrinthine concerns. Yet even as he clawed at the heavens, so the heavens were taking pity on him. As though he had a patron to save him from the worst excesses of the storm which had found him.

He thought of Amelya and Oliar. Hoped they had not been caught up in the same storm surge as he had. The last thing they needed was Konstantus breathing down their necks…

Drask paused. He swallowed hard. Worse than that, worse than all the consequences of the Bastion casting down on them, was the idea that his enemy was aware of them.

Just as there was Barnabas’ fear of his own men being taken apart, laid out as though on the slab and made examples of, so there was Drask’s own fear. Of his last remaining friends and allies. His last remaining anchors finding themselves beneath the knife of his adversary.

‘I almost wish I had your detachment,’ he breathed as he closed the book. ‘I wish I could shut off the pain and the doubt. Burn it all away till only the sharpness remained. What you do is loathsome, but there is a purity of purpose to it. Once I understand, once I have you brought to account… perhaps then it will end. Maybe there will be peace.’

‘Drask?’ a voice asked, startling him from his reverie. He looked up and made out the hulking shadow of Klaus. ‘Boss says it’s ready.’

They travelled through unfamiliar neighbourhoods in the squat bulk of an armoured groundcar. It was a bloated black predator as it growled down the wet streets, forcing other vehicles to manoeuvre out of its path – as though they could sense its urge to hunt and feast. Its power had an intrinsic weight to it.

Drask sat in the rear and adjusted his borrowed clothing. Another long, heavy coat, inlaid with makeshift flak padding, the black trousers and shirt. He felt nondescript and yet, at the same time, as though they were all so very obvious. Practically in uniform. He had never been aware of it as a probator, content to marinade in that quiet sense of power. Of being a face in the crowd, though knowing he was only ever a flash of a holo-seal away from revealing his authority. Men like Barnabas didn’t have that. They could wear signs of gang allegiance and display their weapons, but that didn’t account for their own sense of power. The brash, almost showy, subtlety of the criminal.

He watched people hurry a little faster at the groundcar’s approach, ducking into alleyways or shopfronts, feeling the predatory attention shifting over them and away. Drask could practically feel the relief bleed from these onlookers, even from within the sealed shell of the vehicle.

The groundcar pulled in down a narrow side street, under the arches of stone and wood with their old mould-mottled banners, and drew to a stop at a narrow courtyard. As Drask got out he could hear shutters being drawn, the rhythmic clatter echoing through the narrow space. He looked across the expanse of bare rockcrete, pitted here and there with wear marks or split where opportunistic plant growth had forced its way up and through.

The Sump Vipers had not come in force, and neither had Barnabas. There were three men on each side. Barnabas, Drask and Klaus on one. Their opposite numbers were who he took to be the leader of the Vipers and his two bodyguards. They were lean, where Barnabas’ men were stocky. Coiled-serpent tattoos wound their way up arms and necks. Parts of the leader’s anatomy were so covered in ink that it was as though every fibre of muscle were a writhing snake, waiting to sink its teeth into an enemy. He wore his blade and pistol openly, as though with relish. Drask tried not to stare at them. His own hand lingered in his pocket, aware of but apart from his holstered pistol. A stubby autopistol, weightier and more brutish than his own absent Tzarina.

Many of the tiny fangs on the leader’s tattoos were red, solid blocks of colour, and indicated that he had killed a man to earn them. The Vipers were not afraid to bloody their teeth. Not even remotely.

‘Johann,’ Barnabas said with a smile. He did not extend his hand but instead looked the other man up and down, as though weighing him up. ‘You’re looking well. Drug running must be more lucrative than I expected it to be.’

‘It is,’ Johann purred, ‘when it comes with some nice fat cuts of territory – and a few profitable side rackets.’ He looked at Klaus, sneered, and then looked at Drask. At that he scoffed aloud. ‘You running short on proper muscle? This one looks a little run-down.’

‘Not muscle,’ Barnabas interjected quickly. ‘An old friend. Owes me a favour, but I owe him one first. He’s the one that wanted the meeting.’

‘I see,’ Johann muttered, in a tone which indicated that he truly didn’t. ‘Speak your piece.’

Drask stepped forward. He cleared his throat. ‘You had a contract, out in the Tarask habclaves. A hit on a probator.’

Johann laughed. ‘You really think that’s a wise accusation to be throwing around?’

‘I think you’re desperate enough to take someone’s slates for it. They would have paid above and beyond, like money was no object to them. They would have doubled your asking price. Called it good faith.’

Johann was silent. His features had knotted with anger at being so readable, so predictable, so known.

‘I want to know who ordered it. Anything you can tell me.’ Drask paused, weighed his next words. ‘In return I’ll ensure the release of the member of your crew who was taken prisoner.’

‘Groxshit,’ Johann snorted. ‘You’re promising what you can’t deliver.’

‘I’m not,’ Drask said. It was a risk. A calculated risk. A wager of ability against ambition. If it came down to it, he would do his best. He would pay his debts. Even if it meant digging around in the muck. Soiling himself up to the elbows in filth. It would be worth it. ‘Whoever hired you wanted someone street level to do their dirty work. He wanted someone expendable. Your boys took a kicking, and the one in the tank… there’s a good chance he breaks. The sanctioners know what they’re doing. They’ll convince him only an eagle can keep away the serpents.’ Drask swallowed. His mouth felt dry. ‘And when they know your weaknesses, they’ll gut you. Tip to tail.’

‘You sound pretty certain about that,’ Johann growled. His hand had slipped to the pommel of his blade. Barnabas stiffened, but Drask held Johann’s gaze. Staring him down.

‘I know how they operate. I know what they’ll do. It won’t end well for you. Black ice and murder-for-hire are a blight. They will burn you from your corner of the city and they will string you up as an example to anyone else who wants to fill the vacuum you leave behind. This isn’t other districts. This is Polaris. The bottom of the barrel. The end of the road. Cold and bleak and unforgiving. That cuts both ways. So you work with me, or we let the hammer fall. And fall. And fall.’ Drask knew men like this. From the lowliest gutter runner or dealer, all the way up to the pinnacle of their own particular operation, they were all the same, ruled by primal totems of fear and aggression.

He had seen it before, when the riot cordons went out. Maul to shield like a tribal drumbeat, as though the sanctioners could make the streets shrink back by force alone. Some days, some dark days, it almost seemed as though they could. Drask had watched Zurov gunships sweep in, not even having to commit their guns, merely blanketing the crowds of rioters in their backwash. He had watched the mighty break the many, the proud against the populace, and he had thought himself on the side of the angels. The righteous. The just.

When necessary he could bear their fire as his own.

So it came down to this. Ideologies glaring at each other across the chill of a courtyard, borne in the eyes of chosen sons. He felt a poor match for the eagle’s talons and its golden lustre, when his opponent sat so easily in the skin of a serpent.

‘If I know anything about you,’ Drask went on, ‘it’s that you’re a loyal man. In your own way, of course. Loyal to those who display their loyalty to you. That’s why you meet Rawl under a flag of truce – because he has had his uses. That is why you’re still listening.’

‘Throne, but you talk a lot,’ Johann grumbled. He looked from Drask to Barnabas. ‘Does he ever shut up?’

‘It’s a work in progress, but it don’t seem likely.’

Johann laughed. ‘He’s got balls, if nothing else.’ He cracked his knuckles and stalked forward. Drask went very still. He could feel his heart pounding, rebelling in his chest as it tried to break out of his ribcage, but he managed to control his breathing. The thug loomed over him, tilting his head one way and then the other. Measuring him up, or maybe simply considering the ways he could take Drask apart.

‘You want the truth?’ Johann asked. ‘Guy who made the ask was high money, low attitude. He didn’t pay me the appropriate respect.’ He paused and chuckled. ‘Now, don’t get me wrong – neither do you. But Barnabas here is vouching for you. That goes a little ways to making you palatable.’ He looked back at Barnabas. ‘Though next time you bring new people around, you better tell me that they’re a fallen eagle. Next time your little friend might be losing both his faces.’ Drask stiffened at Johann’s knowledge.

‘There won’t be a next time,’ Barnabas and Drask both said, at almost the same time. Johann moved his hand away from his blade, tapping the handle almost for luck, before grinning broadly.

‘Glad to see we’re all of one mind,’ he said, shaking his head in bemusement. ‘I don’t think it was whoever you’re looking for who came to me. Middlemen are the rule. Too clean though. All black and green and gold.’ Drask said nothing, but he could imagine what logos the man had been bearing. ‘They didn’t want the Tarask job to be a slaughter. They wanted the offending party to be subdued and brought to them. No questions asked. Didn’t tell us he was Lex, though.’ He laughed again. ‘I’m not above putting a round in an eagle, but there’s something to be said for the status quo. Things being as they are suits me just fine. The less heat we bring down, the better.’

‘I appreciate your candour,’ Drask said.

‘Oh, don’t be too sweet on me. He cost me. Way I see it, you can hurt him. Make him bleed a little. If he pays for what he’s done, well then, it’s a win either way.’

‘We have a deal then?’ Barnabas asked. ‘An accord?’

‘We do. The Vipers renounce the claim against Tarask. He wanted the mark delivered to a safe house. An address in Nul. Drop him there, get paid and move on. Never became a concern, because they never got to bring him.’ Johann shrugged and then pulled a strip of parchment from his pocket. ‘This was the drop site.’

Barnabas looked at the parchment and nodded to Drask. ‘Matches one of our scouting locations.’ He turned back to Johann. ‘Thank you again. Your information will help us to run the bastard to ground.’

‘Good. Let me know how it goes. I want to see him strung up, if possible. That way I can spit on him as he hangs, whoever he is.’ Johann laughed his disconcerting laugh – too rich with human cruelty – and shook Barnabas’ hand. He did not extend the same courtesy to Drask. Instead he smiled and snorted. ‘Next time I see you it had better be with my man. Intact.’

‘I’ll do what I can.’

‘No,’ Johann said patiently. ‘Not your best. You’ll have it done or you had best hope I never see you again. No half measures.’

‘You have my word.’

The knot of men broke apart, each retreating to their own corners of the courtyard. Under the hanging shadows Barnabas leant across the front of the groundcar, shaking his head. He leant on his elbows, hunching close. Drask bent to listen.

‘A lucky move. Lucky for us. Narrows our field of focus and allows us a greater degree of access. We’ll get a group together and we can prise it open, brick by brick if we have to, and–’

‘No,’ Drask said.

‘No? What do you mean, no?’

‘We have a slim advantage. We know where they are and they don’t know we’re coming. So we send me in, alone.’

‘Are you insane?’

Drask laughed. ‘Probably? Anything goes wrong and I’ll signal you. We can’t have the whole weight of it crash down on them, neither you nor the sanctioners. We botch this and they go to ground. We lose whatever slim advantage of knowledge we have. I go in, alone. I know the kinds of things we’re looking for. I get what we need and I get out. Then you can do what you want.’

‘Hmm…’ Barnabas shook his head. ‘I don’t like it, Drask. I think you just want the weight of it on you. You want the responsibility. None of this is your fault.’

‘No,’ he said. ‘It isn’t. I owe it to the victims, though, and to everyone else who has stood by me and suffered because of this. I’ll bear that burden.’

Barnabas nodded. He scratched his chin and then sighed. ‘We’d best get you there then.’

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Larder

Barnabas dropped him a few streets away from the suspect location and then sped off into the chill grey of the night, leaving Drask with only his knife and gun for defence. The lumens at the street’s edge sputtered unhealthily. The sub-district was dying. Nul had always been in a bad way, its docks tending to less and less freight, vendors having less to hand. Here at the city’s edge there was the persistence of want, of privation, of society slowly failing.

The stars gave less and took more, but even then it was from the meat and marrow of the great city. Further north, the stable suborbitals fed materiel up and away. Polaris had always been a subsidiary of that process, a secondary delivery system – bringing petrochemicals and minerals up and into the city, or clawing back the produce of the sea. Even then there had been giants such as Vranx, pumping new vitality into them. That had limitations, though. The great districts of the city were not created equal, and even the mightiest of combines could only do so much to alleviate the strain.

As he walked, Drask wondered how Araceli Vranx saw the world – through its filters of crystalflex and gold. A world apart from his – as distant as the sun, or the yet more distant stars. There was as much material distance between himself and a woman such as her as there was between Alecto and Terra. Or so he imagined.

This is not where grace walks.

It was not uncommon in the lower strata of Polaris to see bodies in the street. Not yet picked clean by scavengers or reported to the proper authorities. There were countless homicides passed over for days or weeks because they were not called in, or because those around them were simply unaware of them, too used to their neighbours simply giving up and dying in the streets. Fuel rations were scarce, and so anything which could be burned was burned for whatever meagre heat it could generate.

First the work goes, he thought, and then the people. Soon there wouldn’t be enough for the Vipers to feed off or for Barnabas to exploit. Eventually all systems tended down towards collapse and calamity. When the criminals finally abandoned a place, that was when you knew that it was dead. A lost cause. Just another district of dust and echoes – as long forgotten and myth-shrouded as the glacier hives and the promise of their treasure.

Stories. Hopes. Dreams. All of them crushed down beneath the relentless march of progress and the requirements of the city, the world, the Imperium.

Sometimes, in his quietest moments of dread, Drask hated the entire edifice. The cold weight of it pressing down on him with all the relentlessness of gravity. Driving him into the muck and the filth till all he could see and taste was the shit and refuse of it. This world was killing him, killing all of them, by degrees. There might come a time when all that was left was for the city to snap the bones that remained and suck them dry.

Drask had long ago assumed he would be dead before he ever saw that day. A footnote. He would pass from this world and out of history, at the bottom of a bottle, at the edge of a knife or the point of a gun. Whether he died in dutiful service or in shame, he would still fall and falter long before the city or the world truly withered.

Perhaps when this was done, when his one last duty was discharged, then he could truly rest. Lie down and let it be over. His career might already be holed through, utterly beyond repair. Friendships, such as they were, lost or expended in the struggle. The thought of his life as it had been chafed at him. That was nothing new. He had felt the ache of dissatisfaction for longer than he cared to admit.

He was old. Before all this he had clung to his duty, but now… now he wanted to rest. He wanted it to end.

‘Too much pain,’ he muttered. ‘Too many scars.’ He reached for the gun and felt the reassuring weight of it. He could feel the knife strapped at his thigh as well. He was something of himself again. Reclaimed in the familiar embrace of weaponry. He did not enjoy the application of violence, having suffered so much of it himself, but it reminded him of who he was. Who he was meant to be.

There was a righteous fury bound up in the weapon. His fingers graced it one last time, for luck, and then he forced it into its holster. He moved out of the light of the lumens, skirting the edge of them beneath the black-and-grey sky – cloaked in the shadows.

The building was much less intimidating than he had expected. It had all the hallmarks of a fairly standard hab-block, though he was well aware that appearances could be deceiving. The many Enforcer safe houses throughout Polaris were equally unassuming. It maintained a carefully cultivated squalor – the kind of shabby disregard which would put all but the most curious off approaching it. Drask imagined that local children might tell tales about a place such as this. Undoubtedly a slew of local legends had sprung up around it. Where ‘the body’ had been found, where spirits lingered, where someone terrible lived.

Every city, every district, every neighbourhood had a building such as that. Around every corner and behind every door there had seemed to be monsters. It had doubtlessly been something, once, a fine building given over to conspicuous ruin. Every part of it seemed crooked and uncanny. The windows were the wrong size and tilted towards the street at odd angles. They caught the light in the way that made it seem as though things moved within. Drask shook his head at the naivety of such a thought. The only monsters he had ever had the misfortune of meeting had been men.

Alexius’ chem-ruined features twisted into their madman’s sneer. The knife, bloody and dripping, in his hand. ‘Boy…’ he whispered, from out of the void of memory and the hateful ache of regret.

Drask swallowed hard. He had never missed a drink as much as he did right now. He wanted to drown the past. To bury it beneath empty indulgence and revenge. He could feel his hands trembling in his pockets as he pushed himself forward. Along the road and over, working his way into the alleyways behind the building. If there was some sort of rear access, he could…

‘Ah,’ he muttered to himself.

The rear wall was eight feet of rough brick. Too high for him to climb, even if there had been hope of purchase. Drask scrounged around in the dark grime of the alley, dragging refuse containers to the far end. He winced and panted as he heaved himself up, first onto the container and then up and over the wall. He hit the ground with a thud, biting back his cry as his palms were scraped and bloodied. He cursed under his breath as he heaved himself up and moved, swiftly and quietly, to the rear door.

Locked.

He examined it. The door was heavy wood, reinforced with steel, but the lock itself was conventional. Not electronic. Not controlled access. A place for refuse to be dumped and for civic support to be administered. He reached down and pulled the knife from its sheath. Held it up to the meagre light, letting its edge glitter in the shadows. It had been some time since he had been forced to do things so… traditionally.

Drask forced the blade between the door and the frame and began to work it. He could feel the small amount of give, knew that if he pushed, and slid the blade just right, he could force the lock. Subvert it, work around it and not crack it outright. These rear doors were always old, badly maintained. Drask steeled himself as he worked at the lock, not knowing what to expect. He listened closely for movement. He didn’t know what was inside or if it would bring him any closer to anything resembling an answer. But he would be ready for it, no matter what horrors might await.

Red and glistening. Promise-smeared and yearning. It was a sickening thought. One which had played out across the city’s cruel expanse too many times. Now here he was, making his own entrance. Cutting his own mark into the city’s history of atrocity. For good and stalwart reasons, but still the sense of violation lingered.

The guilt. All too present on this side of the Lex.

Drask heard a click and the door slid open, creaking. It left a dragging trail in the dust that coated the floor. He waited for any sign of guards or lookouts, any kind of patrol, and then entered. He blinked as he stepped inside, his eyes adjusting to the change in the light.

The corridor he found himself in was in a state of nurtured disrepair. Everything had been left to moulder, yet seemed air-dried by long-standing ignorance and disuse. Drask paused, waited, and then moved into the interior space, letting the door close carefully behind him. If any had heard his entrance, they gave no sign. The building was quiet. Dead. A corpse which had been long forgotten and neglected. It didn’t seem like the sort of place Toren Nach would be caught dead visiting.

Dust covered everything in a thick shroud. He let his hand drift down, tracing his fingers through the muck. He shook it off. He advanced slowly, eyes low, staying alert to any movement within. The building creaked and shifted with his every step, as though unused to human habitation. Drask drew a breath, paused at the end of the corridor, then slowly rounded the corner. He still held his knife.

From the maintenance access he emerged into the lower foyer of a hab-block. Stairs wound their way up into the darkness, the walls glimmering faintly with dirty white tiles. The stairs were stone but unwashed and had clearly seen better days. The front door with its electronic access seemed in a slightly better state of repair than the rest of the chamber. He noted the disturbed dust that extended from the entrance to another door on the ground floor. He tried the door, heard the click and rattle as it opened, and pushed. This seemed strange. Too easy.

Another set of stairs extended down into the darkness of a basement.

Compared to the solid Imperial construction which reached up into the heights of the building, these were rickety. The wood was worn from years of use and the metal rusted from neglect. They had been well travelled, but poorly cared for. It put him in mind of a crude disguise, the rest of the building a mere cover for what lay beneath. Drask steadied himself on the support beam and tested his weight on the steps themselves. Despite their disrepair, they seemed sturdy enough and the smears of dust indicated that there had been heavy transit – and recently.

He descended.

It was like a mythic story, a hero delving into the deep darkness beneath the world, bearing only what meagre light he had available to him. Drask had no light. Sheathing the knife, he drew his gun and held it out in front of him, like a talisman against the shadows. The darkness was near absolute. His eyes struggled to adjust. The shadows loomed, black within deeper black, and he had to pause a number of times as he descended. Waiting, trying to maintain the quietness of his breathing, before moving off again.

His mind played tricks of what could be waiting in the darkness. Every slight variation of light and shadow seemed to him to be the black-armoured beast come again, slick with the blood of the preacher, stinking of offal and murder. The dark was like fire-blackened skin, roasted and overcooked, like the bodies pulled from the ruin of the House of Grace and the beast’s hunger. Drask shuddered to think of it. His fingers trembled and palsied around the gun’s handle, and that made him cling harder to it. He held it as though it were hope.

Be a man, Throne damn you. You are not a child to be afraid of the dark.

He had never known fear such as this. Not once in his entire career. He had not known it as he had closed in on what he thought had been Sargas Hylath but had turned out to be Alexius. Even beneath the mad eyes and cruel blade of his mentor, there had never been fear such as this. The sense of being utterly alone, outmanned and outgunned by the enemy. No support. No reinforcements. Only his own will.

Will against the darkness. A candle against the storm. Against the tide. Drask felt as though he were drowning in it. Falling into the void as though gravity had ended and he had lost his footing upon the world.

All of us alone in the dark, and then we die – then we die, and for a moment, just for a moment, there might be His light. Oh to see such a thing…

Again he dispelled the voices of the past with a thought. Forced them back into their cage of memory, a gibbet from which even Alexius’ shade could not scramble. There was none of the rough comfort that he had felt before, beneath the earth amidst Barnabas’ trappings. Here there was only the stinking breath of the deep.

And now, as he drew near to the bottom, the revelation of light. The door at the stairway’s bottom was tightly sealed, but a faint glow still permeated its edge. As he got closer he could see it, more the impression of a door than the door itself. The shadows abated a little, and he felt something of himself again.

Drask reached out and opened the door, advancing with his gun out ahead of him.

The room beyond was empty of people, a central chamber leading off to other rooms and passageways, each with their own closed doors. He stepped in and closed the door behind him.

Compared to the rest of the ramshackle building, the room seemed utterly out of place. It was well ordered, clean, with tables readied as though for clerks to attend to documents. No guards. That spoke to incompetence or arrogance. Drask stepped into one of the side chambers and looked around. There were a number of filing cabinets set against the wall. He checked them, jiggled the locks and then raised his gun. He brought it down hard enough to crack the ageing lock mechanism of the closest and the drawers slid open. He reached in and began to thumb through the papers.

Each sheaf of parchment was covered in line after line of precise script. There were dates and times, locations, physical descriptions of individuals. Not names. Descriptions. Cataloguing them. Height and weight. Observations of health and well-being. It was clinical in its assessments. Deliberate and precise. As sure and measured as any Vranx production line itinerary.

‘Cattle,’ he whispered. ‘They’re being treated like cattle.’

At first he had thought it was merely human trafficking, yet another slave racket on the side. He had heard rumours of abhuman trade on the fringes of the district, and worse beyond, but such things had seemed secondary concerns in the crime-blighted wastes of Polaris. The more he looked, though, the worse it seemed to become. Alongside the notes on the subjects were lists of components. Darkly, horribly similar to those he had found hidden in Farentis’ hab. Organs. Specific cuts of meat. He tried to look away but his eyes followed each line, each suggestion. The need for each was great – he could feel it emanating from the urgency of the writing. No longer ordered and precise but losing coherency.

He let the papers fall back into the drawer and moved back out into the corridor, towards one of the rearmost doors, thick and iron. There was no view-slit or window, only the marks of ancient tools and the crawling beginning of corrosion. It was not edged in shadow as some were. There was a crimson cast to the light from beyond it, shining around the edges as if from emergency lumens. They did not pulse, instead maintaining a constant red glow. Drask hesitated before it. He laid his hand on the heavy industrial handle, took a deep breath and pulled.

There was a solid thunk as the pressure discharged. The atmosphere shifted at the sudden alteration. Like stepping through a ship’s airlock. Like the old void sailor pioneers would have done. Drask’s breath caught and then he gagged. Throne, but how did I miss it before. The smell. The smell!

It wafted from the chamber in a charnel exhalation – an all-permeating stench of offal. It drifted at first and then hit him like a wave. The chamber’s red light bled out alongside the stink of it. Drask forced his hand up and covered his mouth, the knife trembling in his other hand, but still he staggered forward. The sheer musk and fug of it was so strong, so potent, that it formed a palpable miasma that misted around his feet – questing up for his senses with pinkish tendrils of condensate. The way temple incense crawled along the eaves of the old churches, or how void sailors spoke of fire in zero gravity. The relentless, seeking, grasping of something alive… or at least in some way animated. He swallowed his own bile. He could feel the acid of it high in his throat, cloying and choking, as the physical stink of the room tried to overwhelm him.

He was so focused on not vomiting, on controlling his body’s reactions to the smell, that he almost failed to notice the bodies.

They loomed from the chill mist of the chamber, a room he realised was an industrial cryo-unit. They hung from hooks, cruelly forced through the meat of their necks or shoulders. They were naked, wrapped in plastek, shrouding their mutilations. He looked upon bodies rendered heterogeneous in ruin. Limbs were absent, terminating not in ragged stumps but in clean and precise incisions. Abdomens gaped wetly where organs had been taken. Bone lay exposed where all the meat had been pared and peeled away. Men and women stared with the clouded eyes of the dead. Unseeing. Uncaring. He couldn’t hold their sightless gazes.

Human corpses reduced to butchered animals. To meat. Not in ones and twos. Not in small clutches of public murder victims. It was industrial. Coldly rational. As uncaring as a macro-abattoir.

Drask stepped back. There were at least a dozen corpses in various states of mutilation and exploitation. His eyes, forced away from the dead stares, found details – where the blade had cut and how deeply. If he truly paid attention, then he could almost certainly determine what sort of weapon had done it. He could estimate as to the handedness of the assailant, whether the body had been prone, even whether or not the wounds had been inflicted pre- or post-mortem.

As much as it horrified him, it entranced him.

Staring into the abyss had its allure. The sick and crawling sheen that had seduced Alexius. That had drawn so many into its murky embrace. Drask knew that the hearts of men were easily turned by dark intrigues, led astray by vices. He had watched men beyond count lose themselves in the depths of a bottle or the heights of stimms, and he had seen first-hand what obsession could do. How deep it could cut.

Was that how this began? A fascination that grew foetid and toxic? The past turned tumorous, misshapen and malformed until it consumes everything. The devouring beast of the malignant past, reaching up to catch us between its teeth. Breeding monsters in the dark. The things that were once men who can do this.

He swallowed down the rush of thoughts and words that he would not allow to leave his lips, keeping them sealed within his skull. He backed away, turning on his heel to put the sight of the hanging bodies out of his eyeline. He could not take the dull, accusatory eyes as they swept over him, haunting him. He could feel them burning into his back as he forced himself out through the door. Sealing it. Pressing his back against it.

His chest heaved as he pushed on the door. He made to move, to force his legs to carry him away from the scene of atrocity and onwards into the dark beneath the world. He couldn’t. He felt the familiar panic welling up inside him, as if the tendrils of mist had clawed at him. He felt the claws of anxiety close around his heart. His throat tightened. He trembled, and banged his head against the door. He bit his tongue hard enough that he tasted blood.

The oldest war of the human spirit played out inside him, curiosity set against horror and outrage. He had seen what he had not wanted to see. He understood that which was corrosive and ruinous to ordered thought. He slipped the knife back into its sheath, lest his fingers betray him and he drop it.

Drask closed his eyes, locked them shut and let the ragged breaths pass through him. He tried to regain his composure, to find himself again and to move off from the door. He finally pushed himself away and stood unaided, his breathing still laboured.

A clatter broke him from his torment and he looked up. A man stood before him, a tray laden with documents lying where he had dropped it, scattering papers all over the dirty floor. He stammered and reached as though for a weapon. Drask was faster. His hand was almost instantly on his sidearm, bringing it up and aiming it at the man’s head.

‘Don’t move,’ Drask snarled. ‘Don’t move an inch. Move and you’re dead. I shoot you. Right here, right now.’

‘You shouldn’t be here,’ said the man. His eyes were low, unwilling to fix upon Drask – perhaps fearing that if he saw his face, Drask would shoot him – and instead kept looking at the ground. The man was young, pale and drawn, as though under tremendous stress. More, Drask surmised, than simply finding himself under the gun. He was dressed in a grey uniform which had seen better days, wrinkled, worn and stained with sweat. Drask could see the badge of green and gold on the man’s breast, the horned symbol. There had been a guard after all. Someone keeping the place ready.

The man finally dared to look up at Drask and shook his head again. ‘You shouldn’t be here. There will be consequences. They’ll know – oh God-Emperor, they’ll know. Please, I–’

‘What are you talking about?’ Drask growled. He gestured with the gun for the man to sit. He crumpled into the chair, hunched over on the cold metal. He seemed more anxious and riven by panic than Drask had been.

Drask loomed over the man and kept the gun trained upon him. He took nothing for granted. This man was an enemy, of that there could be no doubt. There were no innocent wanderers in the hell Drask had found himself in. Only monsters and madmen would dare to roam here.

‘What are you talking about?’ Drask repeated. ‘Why are you here?’ The weight of his authority was gone, and so Drask relied on threat and bluster.

‘I was chosen for the honour. A rare honour. My family, we have served, we have served for many years and never been accorded it before… but I was. I was chosen by the lords to sit at their right hand and to do their will. To be their instrument and their aide. I will not turn from that. Is this a test?’ He blinked and looked momentarily hopeful. As though there were some new layer to this that he had intuited. ‘Is that what this is? A test? I can hold my peace, sir – I can keep my counsel.’

What in the name of the Throne is going on here? Drask thought. The man’s servile rambling had given him more questions than answers. It made his skin crawl just to listen to him.

‘This is not a test,’ Drask said. ‘I’ve come here seeking answers, and all I have found is horror.’ He gestured behind him with his free hand. ‘Do you know what is in that room?’ He gestured back to the chamber which held the corpses.

The man grew very still. He stopped trembling. He raised a hand to his mouth as though to wipe it, but instead covered it. Drask was struck by the impression that he was trying to hide a smile. ‘I do not…’

Drask shook his head. He didn’t believe him. ‘What is your name?’ he asked.

‘Kiral, sir,’ he said in a wet whimper. Drask had to swallow his irritation at the man’s simpering. He was a servant of evil men. He knew what went on here, had likely seen it with his own eyes and had a hand in it. Drask’s finger tightened on the trigger. The wet eyes looked from the gun to his face. ‘Are you going to kill me, sir?’

‘If I must, then I will,’ Drask said. The admission was a shock to him, but he had no doubt that he meant every word. ‘I have come here in search of your masters and of those taken by them. If you stand in my way, I will defend myself.’

‘Are you a sanctioner, sir?’ Kiral asked quietly.

‘What makes you ask that?’

‘I’ve seen…’ Kiral trailed off. ‘I’ve seen how the gangs can be, and the common citizenry. You lack the savagery of some and the resignation of others.’ He shrugged, seeming more relaxed. ‘You have an air, sir, of the Lex about you.’

Drask did not lower his weapon. He kept his eyes locked upon Kiral. ‘I am a probator,’ he said. He did not qualify his statement. Instead he watched as Kiral leant to one side, to peer around Drask at the sealed cryo-unit door.

‘It is a horrible thing to be confronted with.’ Kiral sighed. ‘It pains me that it is necessary.’

‘Necessary?’ Drask breathed. ‘How can you think it’s necessary?’

‘Acts that some would consider evil are done out of love,’ he said simply.

‘Love?’ Drask asked, aghast. ‘What has happened in that room has nothing to do with love. It is… obscenity.’

‘Those above us do so many things that we cannot understand. Generation upon generation, building up like the layers of a great city. Like the silt of the oceans building mountains. We have been told, as long as we have been alive, that we serve a greater purpose. We serve them, and through them we serve He of Terra. The will of the Emperor is done through the nobility.’

‘And you think this is the Emperor’s will?’

‘Of course.’ He looked at Drask as though it were the probator who was mad. ‘They bore the light from Terra in an age when the galaxy was lightless. From out of the dark they came, and they bore with them bounty. Sacred and hallowed. They have that grace still, as they have for generations beyond count.’ Kiral shivered. Not in horror but in rapture. ‘You cannot imagine what they have seen and done in His name, with His blessing. Why else would wealth and glory follow in their footsteps and attend them, were they not blessed by divine sanctity?’

‘This is not sacred. It is abhorrent. I cannot look at what is behind that door without being sickened to my stomach!’ Drask snapped. Kiral flinched. Drask felt the gun waver, his aim dipping, but if it went off it would still do damage. He could wound him, perhaps even kill him. Part of him wanted to. The wounded part of him that had broken at seeing Welan’s corpse, that had run screaming through the streets before Barnabas’ men found him.

Fear could rule a man. It could drive him mad. Turn him strange and feral and savage. Drask did not want that. He swallowed hard. If Kiral noticed his discomfort he at least pretended to ignore it. The other man veered from placidity to near-constant agitation. Drask wondered what was going through his head in those moments of perfectly poised calm, how he was assessing his situation. Drask knew that if it were him on the other end of the gun, he would have been working the angles and figuring out exactly when there would be a window for him to strike.

‘You wanted me here,’ Drask said softly. Kiral had to lean forward, waiting expectantly, and so he spoke again. ‘You wanted me here. Your masters tried to have me brought here.’

‘Ah, so you are the famous Mister Drask.’ Kiral nodded gently. ‘I had thought as much. The Tarask affair was badly handled, but deniability was important. If you died in a stairwell then it was important that our most honoured lord be seen to be apart from it… and that you were a victim of your own ambitions. Being where you should not be. Challenging your betters. Sweet Mercutio, he knew better – he knew his place, you see…’ He trailed off and sighed. ‘Dead now. Much lamented and missed. A victim of… well, if not of circumstance then of nothing less than malice.’

‘Your losses are not my concern,’ Drask said. ‘Only your excesses.’

‘Ah, but they are not excesses. The weak are preyed upon by the strong. This is simply the way of the world. As true in the council chamber as it is upon the plain. Alpha predators reign from on high and maintain their perches. All others die beneath their shadow. That is how it is in the world of beasts and men. There are those who hunt and those who are hunted. The strong set against the weak. Time and again. That is Alecto. That is Varangantua.’

‘This city eats men,’ Drask whispered, unbidden. Kiral’s eyes widened and his smile broadened.

‘Just so! You understand!’

‘No.’

‘Yes! Do not fight it. The realisation is hard at first. There are many sufferings that must be undertaken and overcome. I have earned my share of wounds in service, but they have been worth the pain!’

Drask lunged forward and pressed the end of the barrel against Kiral’s forehead. ‘Stop talking,’ he hissed. ‘You will not speak unless I tell you to do so.’

Kiral raised his hands and stopped talking.

‘Why are you here? What do you do here?’ Drask asked. ‘Be succinct.’

‘I was here to make the last of the arrangements,’ Kiral said. ‘Once that was done, once matters of state were taken care of, then I was to attend upon the master and his court.’

‘Matters of state?’

‘Of rule,’ Kiral said simply. He looked upon Drask with something approaching pity. ‘To settle the affairs of the worthy before the great feast and the hunt.’

Drask’s stomach churned. ‘Where?’

He gestured off to one side. ‘That door there. There is a tunnel which leads directly to the great hall. Therein the rites will be called, the past will be honoured and my lord will break his fast upon the better part of the offerings. All to the most exacting of specifications, you understand – nothing can be left to chance.’

He’s mad, Drask realised. Something broke in him a long time ago.

‘The bodies. The organs.’

‘Well, yes,’ Kiral said, again acting as though in disbelief. ‘Some must be taken fresh from those who walk their lives unknowing. Unrestricted livestock, untrammelled and without cage. They walk their courses through the world and acquire whatever subtle flavours life bequeaths upon them. The criteria are beyond me – I am merely a servant. Farentis, though, dear Mercutio, he knew how to judge the flock. He…’ Kiral trailed off. ‘He was an artist. I will miss him.’

‘I assumed you had him killed. Your master and his ilk.’

Kiral looked aghast. ‘The master would not do such a thing! He loved Mercutio as a son!’

‘Yet he’s dead. Mutilated in the same way he mutilated others. How do you explain that?’

‘I cannot,’ Kiral whispered. He looked down at his feet again. ‘The master loved him as a son, and yet… brothers can be jealous, can they not?’

Drask looked at him. ‘You mean Toren.’

Kiral swallowed. ‘It is not for me to speak ill of my betters. The weak are surpassed by the strong, as the aged give way to the young. In time Toren will be our lord.’

They are fraying. Not even the bonds of madness can keep them together now. Could Mercutio have been the first casualty? Drask could sense the febrile tension of the place. A powder keg ready to explode. A culmination of orgiastic indulgence as their world burned from within.

Drask took a moment. ‘If I follow that tunnel, I’ll find them?’

‘You will, but you will only find death. That is all that awaits interlopers. I have warned you – I pray that you will remember that when the time comes.’

‘You’re mad,’ Drask said with a shake of his head. Kiral laughed.

‘Mad? No. Not mad. Perhaps we are all mad and never knew it, until the stories drifted down from orbit. Perhaps then we realised our madness, yes? Or perhaps that was the moment when the galaxy turned sane?’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘There are stories. You must have heard them. Things are changing. Beyond our little world, the night is screaming.’

Drask was silent for a long moment. His aim wavered again.

‘Polaris is dying. Bit by bit. Drop by drop. No matter what we try to do, we cannot save it. The body cannot sustain all organs. Though great men try, and struggle, they cannot save all within its borders. Sacrifices must be made. You can understand that, can you not? How often have you taken life or stood by as it was taken? This is no different. This is the city as it should be, playing out as it was intended to.’

‘That’s…’ Drask paused. ‘That’s insane. They’re not making the city a better place. Not serving any greater good. They are selfish and hideous monsters.’

‘You cannot see or understand. You have not–’

‘You have lived so long inside this cesspit of an ideology that you see nothing else,’ Drask said. His voice was sad. It hurt to see a young man of promise warped by the perverse dreams of those who had come before.

Drask knew that allure well. The poison that had consumed Alexius could have trickled down into his veins. He could have been warped by his madness rather than shaped by his determination, his drive and his insight.

The men who go before us are mirrors, held up to us but often showing a dark reflection.

His attention drifted.

The gun wavered again. Drask turned his head at a subtle movement, quick enough to see the flicker of Kiral’s hand as it gripped something in his uniform pocket.

The blade was a flash of cold steel in the limited light, and Drask jerked back from it as it arced up towards his throat. Kiral hissed, his face twisted into a feral snarl of hatred and frustration. He swung wildly, cutting at the air as Drask ducked backwards.

Drask fired. The shot went wide as Kiral ducked under it, slashing again. Missing again. He was not a fighter. Not trained to kill. Drask brought the gun around again and slammed the handle of it into the side of Kiral’s face. Blood spattered it. He could feel it on his fingers, hot and sudden. Drask felt his anger swell and struck the gun against Kiral’s head again.

The wounded man drove in with one last burst of strength. A last attempt to kill him. Drask felt the impact as the knife scored across the jacket’s armour padding. He pushed himself inside Kiral’s guard. He lowered the weapon and jammed it into Kiral’s stomach. Drask pulled the trigger, felt the satisfying buck of the weapon and watched as Kiral’s eyes opened wider.

Kiral whimpered in pain and then collapsed to the floor.

Drask looked down at him. He looked at the gun in his hand and grimaced before forcing it into its holster again. He winced and hunched down, grabbed Kiral under the arms and began to drag him along the ground towards the cryo-unit. Drask could feel the tremor building as he moved the man’s still body. The only way was forward now. He couldn’t go back. He had no authority, no real evidence, and Welan’s death hung over him. Only closure could help him now.

He wondered if anyone beyond the door had heard the gunshot. Kiral had mentioned tunnels. Perhaps there was a chance it hadn’t been heard.

The only way was through. He had to see. He had to know.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Grim Repast

Beyond the other doorway, everything seemed to change.

Like a mask being removed, the artificial squalor fell away. The walls were clean steel and well-maintained brick. The marks where servitors had ground their way along the floor in order to deep-clean every inch of the walls were clear. Drask took a moment, just beyond the threshold, to savour the somehow cleaner air. It was a long corridor, leading onwards through the world’s skin.

No more of the stink of rot and rust or the disconcerting feeling that there was blood beneath his fingernails. Drask let his hands clench and unclench. He let out the breath he had been holding since shooting Kiral. If the man wasn’t dead already, he would be soon.

There was an alcove to his right, and Drask found himself examining its contents. A single crimson robe hung from a hook, and to its left, sitting upon a shelf, was an ornate lacquered mask. Drask picked it up, turned it over in his hands. It was not unlike the combat-grade mask which the beast had worn, yet of a much more conservative cut. He thought of it as almost civilian in its execution. It had the look of a beast of burden – a dull, flat, cattle-like face that gazed out at the world with absolute servility.

Entirely something which a man like Kiral would have worn. It radiated a sense of quiescent obedience that Drask could only find unnerving.

He sighed and shrugged off his coat. He pulled the robes from their hook and enfolded himself within them. The crimson fabric seemed of high quality, despite their obvious intent for a slave or a supplicant. He lifted the mask up and slid it on. It enveloped his head snugly. Drask could hear his own breath echoing in his ears. He turned and began to walk down the long corridor ahead of him.

Despite the light and the clean air, Drask still felt as though he were drowning in the thick darkness beneath the city.

This was not the meat and bones of Varangantua – he was in the very marrow of it. Winding through the city until it finally found its secret heart. Beneath the corpulent weight of such a thing, of such power, he could understand how men such as Kiral had become enmeshed in it. As much a part of it as they were of their combine or corp. The Imperium bred tame hegemonies, power structures yoked to it across the gulf of systems and stars. Such things could be subverted by greedy and jealous powers. The sermons always said to be wary, of the alien, the mutant, the heretic. The forces which would tear down their world in tides of blood, fire and recidivism.

But what if they do not want the world? What if they are content to wait? Worming their way through the flesh of the city like an infection? How do you kill that which has grown root and branch with the very tree of command?

Drask’s stomach turned – as much from the thought as from the anxiety of his predicament. He kept his hands ahead of him, linked beneath the voluminous sleeves of the robes. They worried at each other, as constant as a mourner’s hands, wringing together. All he could do was see how far he could get.

There was fear in him now. Rising, hot and urgent. It had not been there when he fought Kiral, nor when he killed him. Then there had been the hard edge and fire of adrenaline, the sort that carried sanctioners through the streets. It was the instinct and the urge which lay behind every riot shield and shock maul – and beyond that, to every holo-seal and sidearm.

He was at his most alive as a hunter of men. A breaker of criminals. A hard and unflinching object which prised back the skin of the world and looked beneath. He was no arbitrator, though, nor a part of any of the shadowy organisations which rumour insisted existed above them. Quillon Drask had lived a small life of meagre means before these events had overcome him, of note only for the trappings of failure and the taint of expectation.

That he would falter. Break. Fall.

How long had he fought against Konstantus’ sneers or the distrust of the castellan? With only fair-weather friends to keep him steady. The ghosts of the past dragged at him as surely as the concerns of the living. Both of them were all that kept him going, day to day. He had often considered that his life might simply end. He might open the wrong door and a blade or shot would find him. He would be the victim of an assassination, as the beast might have exacted upon him in his hab.

No.

He realised he did not wish to die. He had come too far for that. The disdain of his colleagues hadn’t dimmed his fire, nor had Alexius’ knife, nor any of the myriad horrors he had faced. He had looked into the face of murder and madness without blinking.

He fought for a city where men such as the ones he faced could be held to account.

The corridor seemed to wind on forever, though with a direction and purpose that other labyrinthine systems lacked. A direct simplicity. One direction, a slow shift from the plain to the sublime.

Drask felt as though he had been walking for hours, head bowed in false obeisance. The light and finery grew more intense. The walls here were disguised by thick red-and-black curtains of silk and velvet. The iron and steel gave way to gold and silver. He was aware that he was advancing into the enemy’s heart, a heart revealed more and more to be gilded. For all the grotesquery he had endured, all the horror of the murders and the twisted larder he had uncovered, he had not expected it to be swathed in such splendour. He was in danger. He knew that. Whoever dwelt beyond had power and savagery beyond him. He might not be able to stop whatever was transpiring. It wouldn’t stop him from trying though.

When he dared to cast his eyes up, he saw that here the curtains had been drawn back, revealing walls marked by murals and friezes. They were uncannily similar to the stylised representations of the past in Vranx’s office. He wondered how enmeshed she was in all of this. She had helped him, yes, but she was as tied to the First Landings as Nach. Founders blood flowed in her veins. Perhaps she was just as monstrous.

He looked again at the murals. The ships descended from on high as a worthy people inherited their new-found world. Some of the figures were picked out in lapis, platinum and ostentatious jewels. They strode amidst the others, who were clad merely in gold and silver, and handed down gifts to favoured acolytes. These, he surmised, were the officer caste of the vessels. Those who had been forced to enforce the direst of solutions to their problems.

If there was any cultural conscience, it was not represented here. The officers were depicted almost as generous gods, and the remaining crew were willing supplicants. No matter that the source of their salvation could only be abomination.

Drask became aware of the texture changing beneath his feet. Where before it had only been bare stone, now it was a finely polished marble – laden with the petals of some delicate and exotic flower. Drask tried not to imagine the value of what was being crushed beneath his boots, even as the scents rose to tease their way through the mask. Not artificial in the slightest. True-grown plants, spun up from actual genetics. The extravagance was galling.

He bowed his head as the corridor finally terminated. The door was real organic wood, inlaid with bronze and iron. A guard stood before it, his stance relaxed, almost bored. He was masked with the visage of a snarling hound, wrought in black and gold. His shifting body language betrayed his frustration as he beheld Drask.

‘You’re late!’ he snapped. ‘Get inside. The festivities are poised to begin and they want everyone on hand for the feast. You’ll be disciplined for this if you don’t get moving!’ He gestured with one gloved hand, and Drask bowed his head again, apologetically, as he pushed past. He moved swiftly and decisively, the better to further his disguise of belonging. The guard seemed not to care, as though he had grown so jaded or confident that old precautions had fallen by the wayside.

The door opened with a click.

Drask beheld what lay beyond it.

It was the apotheosis of indulgence. Everything he had seen of late – the above-average habclaves of Tarask, the rarefied elitism of the Vranx offices, even the curdled finery of the joy house, were as nothing next to this.

They were still underground. The chamber was a vast ringed terrace, set around great stages where a feast had been prepared. Each table heaved with dishes, perfectly, artfully presented meals upon silver trays. Golden goblets sat filled with rich and exotic wines. Other red-robed servants attended to the needs of milling nobility, who were dressed in black, with flashes of gold or green. Jewellery, overwrought and subtle, glimmered around wrists and wound its way up arms. Pendants and chains hung from around necks. Emeralds glittered amidst the gold with a strange, off-putting uniformity.

Everything was designed for a single purpose, shaped for one night of indulgence and revelry.

Drask noted everything. The way that certain attendees moved, the precise manner in which they wore their jewels or gestured. He had to rely on his common memory as he scrutinised their features – which mask they wore, what their colours were – and found himself missing the use of the iris implant. He had barely thought of it since Barnabas’ makeshift deactivation, but now he would have killed for the ability to effortlessly retain information. To record evidence.

Who would believe me otherwise? he thought as he moved around the edges of the chamber. He was still marvelling at the scale of it. Immense, a feat of macro-engineering which had hollowed out the earth and replaced it with a veritable palace. The great earth-moving mechanisms which normally plumbed out the southern mine holdings would have been put to shame by the precision of the work.

Each surface was worked with gold and marble, veined through with precious ouslite and lit by burning braziers. It was the opulent hall of a governor buried beneath the skin of Polaris, intended for the revels he now bore witness to.

The bacchanals of the wealthy and the depraved stretched out all around him. Every gleaming surface reflected a new excess, a new outrage, a new atrocity. Laughter coloured everything, dancing in the sanguine torchlight, and he pressed in against the walls to avoid attention. He was fortunate that most of them seemed content to ignore him. The disdain of his betters was better camouflage than anything else he could have provided for himself.

Hands still locked together beneath the robes, Drask continued to circle the chamber. He noticed doorways leading off to the sides and staircases which wound their way down towards the centre. Drask paused at the top of one of the sets of stairs, flexing his hands and taking up a silver platter which had been left to one side of the platform.

A drunken patron staggered past him, giggling as she placed an empty glass upon it. ‘Careful with that,’ she slurred. ‘I’ll be needing another before long. Do run along now.’

Drask bowed his head and began to walk down the stairs, deeper into the heart of madness. He had seen too much and yet not enough. The more he learned, the more chance there was of holding them to account.

The lights were stronger near the centre of the room. The braziers were replaced by long bronze trenches filled with burning coals, making them shimmer. They curved away from the edges of the chamber in great organic sweeps, leaving just enough space for three men to advance shoulder to shoulder towards a central dais. It was carved of black stone atop ancient pitted metal. Hull plating, he realised. Grooved and graved with ancient marks of re-entry. Broad enough to bear battle tanks in parade formation. At the back of it a throne reared up, carved from the same black stone and ancestral metal.

He did not allow himself to progress that far. Instead he moved off to the side, towards a doorway where more of the red-robed servants were gathering. He looked back towards the dais in time to see a figure ascend to it.

The black-robed figure moved with a surety and swagger that Drask instantly recognised. Even cloaked and masked, rendered into a dark and horned figure with only his pale mouth exposed, Drask knew Phemus Nach.

There was no shame in him. He strutted before his throne, holding court like a primitive king. He plucked up a goblet from another passing tray and sipped from it thoughtfully.

‘My friends!’ he called out. Subtle vox-emitters in his robes caught his voice and cast it out about the chamber. As one, the servants went to their knees, and Drask hastily followed suit. ‘We gather now as we have gathered in years past, and as our ancestors gathered in generations long since gone.’ He raised his goblet in a toast. ‘We remember the sacrifices which have brought us to this moment, and the honour that we do to our ancestors.’

Drask felt his jaw tighten as he forced his eyes to the ground. He swallowed back the urge to simply rise and shoot him. He could picture the burst of blood as Nach’s head exploded, staining the throne with bone and brain. To put the monster down.

There would be no justice in it, but revenge could be its own reward.

‘We all give thanks to the trials which brought us here. They nurtured us and made us strong when we were weak and starving. We endured. We survived because we were worthy and we did what no others could do. That is a thing of beauty. We honour the bounty. We bear the fortitude.’

‘We honour the bounty,’ came the response from every pair of lips. ‘We bear the fortitude.’ It was the unity and cohesion that Drask expected of temple services, not this nest of vice and depravity. This was different, not merely a corrupt indulgence or a weaponised piece of history, as he had once thought. Here in the heart of it, it became clear.

A cult. Throne of Terra, they’re a cult.

How many long generations of madness and self-delusion had it taken to convince them that this was righteous? He had no idea. The first horrors would have clawed at the psyches of the settlers, but to carry it this far forward in time and intent… That spoke to a deeper, more ruinous madness.

The cults he knew from the streets of Polaris were anaemic things by comparison. Street preachers with their own twists on the Imperial creed who sometimes drummed up support amongst the poorest and the lost. Heresies born of privation, suppressed and punished and burned out. There were always rumours of older things, wound through the fabric of the city like a snake, but this was different. Darker.

Many of them wore the horned emblem of Vranx, but he noted a profusion of noble crests and brooches upon their robes. Nach. Vatrian. Malantrok. First Families, all. Bound together by the hateful legacy of a ship of the damned like the Fortitude.

Drask wondered what had changed in their madness. What had necessitated the murder of Farentis and the killings which had followed it. Were they finally succumbing to whatever fitful insanity propelled them onwards? Had Farentis simply wronged them? Betrayed them? Given in to an attack of conscience?

Nach lifted a long, sharp knife from the table set before his throne and examined it, checking it for quality. He stepped forward and lowered the blade, taking the time now to examine the meal laid before him.

It was beautiful. That was perhaps the worst thing about it. It was artfully composed, a labour of love for whichever gourmand had prepared it. Every detail was precise – the exacting cut of jointed meat, the drizzle of rich crimson sauce, the scattering of real organic vegetables. Such a thing would have cost a fortune, Drask’s entire stipend and beyond. He fancied he could almost smell it from here, the scent of it closing the distance.

He remembered what it was. His mouth, which had threatened to water, went dry. He almost heaved. His entire being recoiled at the recognition.

Human flesh.

Taken from the unwilling. From those who had suffered in the cages a mere corridor away. Preserved in the chill of a larder until needed. So they could be prepared, changed, warped into the delicacies that were all around him. For any stalwart soul it was an unthinkable proposition. It was a last resort, something to be feared and despised.

Nach pressed the blade to the meat and pushed. It slid effortlessly through the flesh, paring off a thin sliver. He raised it to his lips, savouring the taste of it, before gulping it down with gluttonous need.

At that signal, all the attendees began to eat. Drask could hear the scrape of cutlery against plates and trays, before the chamber erupted in a frenzy of consumption. The sounds of lips smacking and moans of delight resonated around him, underscored by the laughter of Nach.

‘Feast, my friends! Gorge yourselves on this night of nights, for we do not know when the dark and the cold shall abate! Break your fast and know that I shall be your guide, your provider and your shield!’

Drask moved away from the central chamber with weary disgust. He maintained his servile posture and made towards a passageway out of the main chamber.

Another drunken guest stumbled over and scrutinised Drask quizzically. ‘I don’t know you,’ he slurred through his mask. ‘Do I know you? I expect better service than this – you ought to know better. If I had my way…’ The man continued to rant as Drask turned this way and that. He reached out and snatched another goblet from an unattended tray, practically forcing it into the inebriated noble’s hand.

‘That’s better,’ the man gurgled. ‘Be about your business.’

The corridors leading away from the feasting hall were as well appointed as the rest of the chamber – though moderately more restrained. The gilding was lesser, the murals less intrusive.

Perhaps, Drask mused, it was to remind the servants of their place in the grand scheme of things. The areas he now walked were likely the domain of those who considered themselves his betters. More restrained majesty. Not a grand display like the main chamber but a more inhabited grandeur.

Even they knew better than to feed upon their slaves, though…

Or do they?

Kiral had been convinced that Nach and the others would never have turned upon Farentis. Yet he was dead, his body exploited for the same dire end as Hiram or any of the others. He might have failed them in some way, some slight or disappointment that Kiral was not privileged to know, but the certainty of the servant had affected Drask.

What had been different about Farentis? What had changed? Was someone working against Nach from within?

I thought I knew what I faced… I have no idea. I am lost in the darkness, with only the mad for company. What do I do? Where do I go?

He drew as deep a breath as he was capable of. For all that he was grateful for the mask which hid his features, it took time to adjust to the limits of breathing. He thought of the masks worn by the nobles of Nach’s cabal – easier to breathe through, certainly, but less useful for hiding identity. Of course, he thought, it simply comes down to those in power having to eat… and those who lack it expected to go without.

He turned from the main path, determined to find more evidence, and stepped off into another chamber to his left. He had no idea how much time he had left. Kiral could be discovered. He could make a wrong move.

The room he found himself in had all the trappings of a museum. Plinths dominated it, carved from deep black stone, and on each was a glass case or flickering stasis field. Unguarded. Able to be accessed and perused by any of the visiting notables.

He gazed at the undulating blue light of the stasis fields, the bubbles of trapped time, the past preserved… close enough to touch. Drask’s hand rose, as though to touch it, and he snatched it back. He was not sure if there were any alarms or security mechanisms, but could not take the chance.

Instead he walked between the rows of displayed history. He wondered how many others had, in their time, paced these halls and drunk in the glories of the past. Even monsters had their sense of history, their respect for what had come before. In some ways, he imagined, these men and women must have more of an understanding of it. The rituals they practised were not hollow recitations of past events. For all its ghoulish trappings, it was the truth they had chosen to embrace.

The nobility of monsters sat in contrast with the brutality of the beast, of the butcher. Like two sides of the same coin, conflicting strains of the same dread disease.

He hurried from exhibit to exhibit, seeking answers. Seeking a way to make sense of the madness. A uniform, pristine and well maintained, sat in a glass case against one wall – laid out on a bed of satin, as though it were a body lying in state. The markings spoke of another age, worlds away from the Imperium of Man and its statecraft, yet utterly familiar. He marvelled at the trappings of the past and how little the overall ethos had changed.

He moved on, turning to look at the central object – a slab of ship’s hull, hovering in its suspensor-mounted stasis field – taken from the ancient hulk itself. A thing that had crossed the void of space, even in part. The fragment was taller than Drask, melta-cut into an obelisk of dark, heat-scored metal, aglow with reflected light and so potent that it seemed to possess its own gravity. The weight of history.

Drask did not like to think of his world’s past. Certainly not as a near-living thing. Here, face to face with it, it was harder to ignore.

‘The past is full of ghosts,’ he whispered. Some of them closer and more potent than he might want to admit. Even here he could feel Alexius almost at his heels. Meandering through the exhibits, fingers drifting over and through them. The memory, the ghost, the ghost of memory… Drask shrugged it off and turned from it. The tut of bemused disdain failed to materialise.

He thanked the Emperor for that small mercy.

To be haunted and pursued by the embodiment of an idea was a symptom, he knew, of his tamed and directed pathologies. The weaponised awareness that he wielded to such effective ends within the Bastion cut both ways, devoid of any true hilt.

His mind was a barbed labyrinth, not unlike the maze he now traversed.

Beyond the hulking shadow of the old ship, he found a number of exhibits which formed a gallery. The pictures were truly ancient, printed on fragile and crumbling paper, held in their own stasis fields of particular strength and stability.

Next to the impressive might of a slab of ship’s hull they seemed tiny and insignificant – yet their fields were clearly of a greater quality. These trinkets meant something to the degenerates who whooped outside. Drask wanted to know why. He leant closer, parsing every detail available to him.

They were varied, certainly. Men and women of a mixed civilian and military bearing. By and large they were candid shots or prepared picts which had the sheen and order of propaganda. One of them, a broad landscape shot, showed a group of settlers gathered in a line, fit for the parade ground. He let his gaze drift along them, taking in each face and matching it with the ranks and names noted at the bottom.

T. Nach, First Officer.

Drask’s eyes widened. Their roots were truly old then. All the way back to the beginning, just as he had surmised. The potency of the Nach name, forever bound up with the founding of the world. Etched into the soul of the city. No wonder then that men such as he thought they were above reproach and the reach of the Lex Alecto. He followed the distance between the name and the face with his finger. His ancestor shared some resemblance to Phemus Nach. The proud aquiline features. The ingrained disdain. A face built for rule and judgement, even then, before such things were laid down.

The next face along made Drask pause.

Where the visage of Nach’s ancestor was similar to the man himself, the face to its right was horrifically familiar. He blinked and leant closer. The stasis field was not constant nor uniform, rippling with frozen time and the variation of preservation. For a moment he thought that the light, the interference, the very weft and weave of reality, might have misled his eye. It was the same, though. No matter how much he moved, the face – the impossible face – still looked back at him.

She looked younger, true enough, but it was no mere resemblance. No trick of the image or of memory. Araceli Vranx stared back from out of the mists of time. Younger. Stronger. Her proud demeanour was unchanged, though altered by genuine mirth. Not an act, the camouflage necessary to thrive atop the gilded pyramid of a merchant-combine. She seemed truly happy to be there. Amidst friends and colleagues. He dropped his gaze to the titles along the pict’s edge until he found the corresponding marking.

A. Vance, Captain.

‘What in the name of Terra is this?’ he breathed. He couldn’t look away. Transfixed, held by the impossible image as the ramifications spilled through his mind. He struggled to even conceive of it. The sheer scale of time involved. It would have to be a relation, a descendent, gifted with some quirk of genetics which made her resemble her forebear.

But there was something about it. Something in the bearing and the eyes. As he stared at it, he remembered the woman he had met at her office. Her polite but insistent interest in the case. Her scolding rebuke of Nach and his ways. There had been an awareness there. An understanding. For a second he had felt as though he faced a kindred spirit, someone who saw the world as he did – even if it was in some small and limited way.

He could not correlate that with this ancient figment. A phantom made of memories. And yet…

‘She told me to investigate the Fortitude and to look into the past,’ he breathed. ‘She put me on the road to Tarask and Farentis’ sins.’

More than that, he thought. A.V. The warning. That had been her. Reaching out – but had it been to warn him about Barnabas or whoever had killed Welan?

He was hunched forward, his face pressed almost against the stasis field. He could feel the low pulse of energy, the crackle of it as it danced avariciously against his skin.

Drask turned from the display. The stasis cages for the individual images were narrow, hiding the bulk of their mechanisms within the smooth, black walls of the chamber. It took a lot of money and resources to make an unwieldy technology such as that seem sleek and effortless. He glanced down and noted the bulky mechanical envelopes which sat alongside the stasis windows.

Some sort of mechanism for removing the images, he surmised. He looked from them to the image. He considered his options. He reached down, plucked up one of the mechanical envelopes and pressed it to the waiting gap in the side of the aperture. It clicked, hissed, burbled and chimed in binharic, and then a green lumen flashed to life on the envelope’s side.

Drask withdrew it. The picture was no longer in the stasis field, which was now merely a flickering blue void – made lesser by what had been taken from it. He pushed the stasis envelope into the pockets of his robes before finally leaving the repository of history to its dry and empty slumber.

The more he explored, the more he became aware of the scale of the maze-like warren of passageways which fed and attended the central chamber. He kept his head low and trusted in whatever authority his mask and robes conveyed to protect him. Cultists staggered past him, too swept up in their own revels to trouble him, or moving into shadowed rooms and alcoves to indulge in hidden vices and pleasures.

Most of what he passed were useless rooms where attendants waited, heaving refec-chambers where the grotesqueries were prepared, and languid suites where the guests could inevitably recline and indulge further.

He ignored them. Each new room was merely a decorative flourish upon the horror unfolding behind him. None was an exit or a means of escape. There was only more of the same. Repetition. Mockery. As though not a single one of them cared. They might stay here forever, indulging, ignoring the world beyond.

Kiral had spoken of the screaming void beyond Alecto. In a palace of bleak wonders, these men and women could outlast any storm.

Drask would not stand for it. He moved on once again. The finery of the other corridors dimmed and diminished, and he stopped in front of a door of much rougher construction than the others. It was heavy and metal, bolted with numerous slide locks.

He glanced back. He was alone. Drask tugged at the first bolt and then the next. One by one he unlocked the door. It opened with a heavy creaking, and he slipped in quickly.

He had not expected to see any more overt horrors.

In the centre of the sparse chamber was a cage. Inside the cage sat a man. He looked up as Drask entered and struggled to rise from his prone position. Drask could immediately see why. Even if the chamber had not been locked and the man had not been caged, it would have been a struggle for him to escape.

His right arm had been removed at the elbow. Recently, Drask judged, as he looked at the red-and-black staining of the man’s bandages. The prisoner spat to one side and cursed weakly. His voice was ragged from screaming, his eyes red from weeping. He was muscular, well built. Such signs of emotional wear spoke to the extent of his suffering. Drask swallowed deeply, readying to speak.

‘What do you want?’ the victim slurred. ‘Is it time, then? Is that it? You said I’d be free, if I had the mettle for it… you bastards. You shits!’ he snapped. The rage and frustration boiled over, and he rocked as he raved. Drask could barely stand to look at him. ‘Go on. Say something. Spout more of your insane nonsense. Tell me what an honour this is.’

Drask reached up and pulled the mask off. He took a deep breath and managed not to gag at the stink of the chamber. Human waste and exertion rose in a thick, heavy tang, permeating everything. ‘I’m not here to offer you up to them,’ Drask said. ‘I’ll help you, if I can.’

‘Who are you?’

‘I’m a…’ Drask shook his head. There was no point in semantics now. ‘Right now all that matters is getting us out of here.’ He paused and advanced on the cage. He pulled experimentally at the door and it creaked open. He looked at the man inside, who merely offered a resigned shrug.

‘They didn’t expect me to get very far, and this hell is their domain.’

‘What’s your name?’ Drask asked. Now that he was closer, he could appreciate the details that defined the prisoner – beyond his mutilation. A younger man, though worn by life on the city’s streets. His hair was blond and his skin Polaris pale. Haunted green eyes stared up at him from a strong face, resilient despite its suffering.

‘Anatoly,’ he said. ‘My name is Anatoly.’

Drask forced a smile. ‘Barnabas’ man?’

‘You know Rawl?’

‘I know him. In a way he’s why I’m here. We thought you were dead.’

Anatoly winced and looked down. His stump flexed. Blood swelled beneath the wrappings and began to run. Drask had heard combat veterans speak of the strange disconnect that lingered after the loss of a limb, how they could still feel it twitching…

‘Better–’ Anatoly began, and stumbled. ‘Better that I had, I think.’ He looked down and grimaced. His entire face warped with grief and pain. Drask could not imagine what he had been through, here in the darkness and the sickness. It was suffering that would have broken one of the Emperor’s Angels, much less street muscle like Anatoly. Yet his proximity to the feast suggested a grimmer fate yet to come. Kiral had spoken of a hunt… Were men like Anatoly to be the prey?

‘Don’t think like that,’ Drask said. ‘You’ve come this far. You survived. That isn’t nothing, nor is it for nothing.’ He swallowed hard. ‘There are… worse things below. You did not meet that end, and you should thank the Throne that you did not.’

‘Eli…’ Anatoly said, his voice breaking. ‘He succumbed early. He was always the stronger, but he died. They took him apart. Mounted him on a hook. They laughed while they did it.’ Anatoly’s remaining hand bunched into a fist. Drask could feel his own rage building.

‘And they will pay for their crimes. Help me to make them pay.’

Anatoly was silent for a long time, and then he nodded. ‘All right.’

‘Do you remember how you came here? If there’s a way up and out?’

‘From below,’ Anatoly said. ‘Through the tunnels, from the other building. Old and run-down. They caught us while we followed the lordling. We fought. Like daemons, we fought. Too many of them, though. Lords and their tame hounds. The younger one took a special sort of joy in it… The black hound. The beast.’

‘The beast?’ Drask breathed. ‘Black-armoured?’

‘His master’s hand. A proper sadist. Hard as iron and just as cruel. He rejoiced in it, more than any of the others. They might just treat you as meat, try and disconnect, but him… He lived for the torment of it. He acknowledged that you were a man, just enough that he could salt the wound.’ Anatoly swallowed hard. ‘The others tried to restrain him, to treat me with the disdain men reserve for grox. I saw one of them, with the bearing of a lord, try to talk him down. That he shamed the family and dishonoured the old ways. If anything it made him crueller. He did what he did because he could, and he revelled in it. He called it the true way.’

The air had grown close between them. Urgent with the pheromone reek of anger and fear. The panicked animal smell Drask recognised from mob gatherings. Sharper here, worked to a fine point by Anatoly’s suffering and the hands which had dealt it.

A true way. The thought was slick and sickening upon Drask’s mind. Perverse creeds bred mutations and malignancies. Something yet more horrific was readying to tear itself free from the cocoon of Nach’s cult. Drask hoped they would be gone before it did.

‘We will get you out of here,’ Drask said. He turned and looked back at the door. ‘Just a question of figuring out how…’

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Survival of the Fittest

Drask waited by the door, ear pressed against it as he listened for movement, holding up a hand to stop Anatoly from advancing alongside him.

He moderated his breathing, drawing long breaths and holding them, like he imagined Panthera snipers, the sanctioner elites, would do. He clung to what little tranquillity he had available to him – the better to turn it into a cudgel if necessary.

What came next would require focus. Holding his nerve. Maintaining what little control he still had over his circumstances.

‘We’ll have to be quick,’ he said. Anatoly nodded. The man was, if not broken, heavily subdued by his ordeal. He was content to wait and to obey. That was good. That afforded more control. Rendered the situation more likely to succeed.

For the first time since Drask had arrived, he felt certainty. A clarity of purpose which had long since left him, or at the very least been allowed to atrophy.

And all it took was a weapon in my hand and a life dependent upon me… It almost made him laugh. This is duty. Come what may, I have done mine.

He might die here, unremembered, unmourned, but to die in service of the Imperium and its citizenry was the greatest of honours. From the lowliest of thralls to the mightiest servants of the Throne, they were all bounded by that singular dream. To die in service. To make a difference simply by having served Him.

The preachers, for all their exaggerations, said that such individuals found their way to the right hand of the Emperor. Men like Welan and his father had clung to it while men like Nach had ignored it. Or worse than that, perverted it.

‘I can’t hear anything,’ Drask said. Even the distant revels were muted here. It seemed too early for the corrupt affair to be winding down. ‘We move out and to the right. I came from the other direction. If there’s an exit then it’s likely around that way, up and out. We go quick. We immobilise anyone in our path. Up and out. That is the way. And if there is no way, we make one. We find the sanctioners. We bring the wrath of the Throne down on this place.’ Drask paused. ‘Is there any way to contact Barnabas once we get out? Any secret channels?’

Anatoly nodded. ‘I have a way.’

‘Then that’s our goal.’

‘Sounds about right.’ Anatoly sighed. ‘Though I don’t know how much help I’ll be.’

‘Never mind about that. The important thing is that we get you out of here. Up and out. Remember that. We go up and out.’

‘Up and out,’ he whispered in turn. His lips kept moving, repeating the utterance silently. Mantras had a power. Drask was content to leave Anatoly with that one. He checked the weapon again, the old discipline creeping back in, raising it to the light. He was still unfamiliar with the gun, its weight and power, the difference in grip. A heavier autopistol than the more reliable Tzarina. An old Castor pattern, practically a hand-cannon.

‘We go out,’ Drask said again. ‘Which way did you come in?’

Anatoly gestured in the same direction that Drask had indicated earlier, getting a clearer sense of their bearings and their plan.

‘And then we skirt the main chamber. Their numbers seem low, so we’ve got that working for us. I think they’re distracted by the spectacle. That’s our advantage. We make as little racket as we can, and we go.’

Now or never.

He pulled the door open and ducked his head out into the corridor.

Empty.

He gestured for Anatoly to follow, and they moved out together into the chill of the corridor. The suddenly cold and relatively sterile air was a release from the close confines of the cell. The previous din was gone now. Not muffled or muted: utterly absent.

Drask chose to ignore it.

They advanced along the wall, following it as it curved around towards the right. Compared to his first foray into the passageways, there were many more closed and outright locked doors. The glimmer of ostentation was creeping back into their surroundings. The walls as they progressed became adorned with creeping golden vinework, rendered in mosaic tiles. The coiling artwork made the passage feel yet more claustrophobic. Drask ignored it as best as he was able. He paused at doors and listened, then moved on. Their progress remained swift, smooth and quiet. Shuffling along the stone of the floor to muffle their footfalls, they slowly edged out, always moving to the right and gently upwards on a gradient. The floor was sloping, curving upwards around the exterior edge of the great chamber. He could hear the almost tribal pulse of the gathering through the stonework, ebbing and flowing as they moved. The passageways seemed to orbit the main chamber – great, sweeping corridors which linked top to bottom in opposing arcs. He checked the doors as he passed them but found them locked. He kept trying – looking for any obvious sign of an exit. A staircase or other indication of steeper ascent.

Nothing presented itself.

Anatoly’s hyperventilating dogged their steps, but Drask felt an unusual placidity descending upon him. There was a release in such circumstances. An understanding that matters had already degraded. A freedom that felt like falling. Whether he learned to fly or hit the ground, there was a beauty in that release.

The previous clawing anxiety seemed to have fallen away, forgotten in the heat of the moment. The crawling pressure of knowing that he had been stalked like prey was absent here, in the beast’s lair, replaced by the essence of survival. The necessity.

He was about to move again when the silence was broken.

When the screaming began.

He did not want to go towards it, but as the screaming spread, it was as though Drask had no choice.

His feet moved independently of his mind, driving him forward with almost no care for Anatoly staggering behind. Part of him rationalised it – if there was a distraction, a commotion, then there would be a way to escape. One way or another, they could find what they were looking for.

Such thoughts did not prepare him for what confronted him.

All the figures in the room were facing inwards towards the centre. Some of them were rushing down the stairs. Not simply the servants but the nobility as well. The cultists hurried in their near-heedless flight down the stairwells, seeking safety about the dais.

When they moved, their robes trailed them like the passage of spectres. Corpses trailing their burial shrouds and grave dust. Drask could trace their path through the crowd by the wake of billowing black fabric. The multitudes were thronging forward towards the dais, towards Nach, like a shoal of fish seeking to escape a predator. Some of them almost tripped down the stairs to be trampled underfoot, but the others continued to rush ahead. Drask pressed himself against a pillar and stood, watching their piteous madness.

It made it somehow easier to spot the sleek black figures amongst them.

They moved like a hunting pack through the body of indolent cultists, occasionally thrusting their faces forward in bestial challenge. Each face was not a face. They were helms carved in the sharp lines of hunting beasts. Drask knew their kind well. The greatest of them had haunted his dreams and followed at his heels for too long.

It was as he had feared. They were truly breaking apart now. The guards and more lethal members of the cult had flocked around their bestial leader, drawn to the darkness as insects to the light. That was why there had been so little scrutiny and security. They were readying themselves for this civil strife. Raising their bloody banners at last.

He exhaled as he watched. All backs were to them, but he was transfixed by the progress of the hunters through the flock. Even Nach had risen from his throne, glaring into the throng with the disdain of a man who is not accustomed to challenge.

‘What is the meaning of this?’ he asked. His dry voice lacked the previous air of religious command. He was simply an old man, his words amplified only by technology and the acoustics of the chamber. ‘You would dare?’

‘I would dare.’ The challenge was simple, and Drask easily found its source. The speaker raised his arms in a gesture of primal triumph and moved out from the crowd, away from his armoured devotees. Drask was not surprised to see the beast walking abroad once again. A nightmare caged in armour and shadow.

The beast reached up and unclipped the facets of his snarling helm. Drask watched as it came apart, breaking into two interconnected halves like the delicate cracking of porcelain. Drask recognised the hawkish features almost instantly. They were so horribly familiar. So very similar to Nach’s own, after all.

Toren Nach looked up at his father with a sneer upon his lips. Everything noble in him, even amidst such human degeneracy, had curdled. Sour expectation bled from every pore. He was a man who had been indulged every step of his life and still wanted more. That was the core of it, but Drask could tell there was more. His hands were constantly in motion, opening and closing as he approached the throne, as though they could not stand to be empty or idle.

‘This has gone on too long,’ Toren said. He spun on his heel, showed his back to the seat of authority and paced before the assembled crowd. Even in their fear and confusion they could not look away. ‘You hide in the shadows, skulk beneath the streets, and you think yourselves masters of the city? You are a joke, long since played out.’ He laughed. ‘Half measures. That’s all any of you are.’

‘Enough, Toren,’ Nach said wearily. ‘You’ve made these points before. What would you have us do? What we do here honours the past. It’s a sacred undertaking. I know that such things may be lost on you… so intent upon the kill that you ignore our history. The very things that have kept us secure down through the generations. You would squander that on, what, the thrill of the hunt? That cannot sustain us.’

‘I don’t expect it to sustain us!’ Toren snapped. The other armoured warriors pushed up beside him and lent their voices. ‘We should live as kings. We should hold the city by the throat. You deny us that. You refuse to see. To understand. Not like I have.’

‘I have already told you, my son, I will not indulge your delusions.’

‘Not delusions! Truth!’ he snarled. ‘You dabble at the surface and think it profound. I’ve peeled back the skin of the world and seen the sinews that flex there. I’ve tasted the heart of it, while you toy with your morsels. I have done and dared more than any of your mewling sycophants. The parasites who cling to you and who wish that they had been there in the world as it was. I spit on them. You hold them to your breast, more concerned with what they bring you than what use they could actually be. I will tear the masks from our faces and the veils from our eyes. We shall rise! We shall thrive! I have seen the carrion kingdom that awaits us! I have killed without restraint and without care.’

‘Enough,’ the elder Nach said, and gestured for an attendant to restrain his son. A man in red robes moved to intercept.

‘No.’ Toren moved in a blur of sudden activity. There was a burst of crimson and the servant fell back, grasping at their throat, eyes wide as they struggled and gurgled through their own blood. Drask wasn’t sure where the blade had come from, but it was suddenly present – horrifically apparent. The scarlet edge danced in the air, tracing patterns that drew the eye. Fascination clouded the faces of a number of the attendees, pulling them away from their slavish attention to Phemus and onto his son. ‘Is it not beautiful?’ Toren breathed. ‘Mercutio died like that. Weak and afraid. Mere prey. That is what I have taken from you.’

‘Everything you are is owed to me,’ Phemus said. His voice shook with the words. ‘Not simply you, my son, but all of you. I have kept us together. I have kept us strong. I maintained the oldest rites when others forgot, and ensured that there was meat upon every table. What have you done, hmm? You are a hound, gnawing at the bones I throw to you and wondering why others do not snap them open and gorge on the marrow. You think yourself privileged and so you do not question what you lack. You would have us hunted through the streets.’

‘I would exalt us!’ Toren snapped. ‘I have seen the world beyond this moment. A world of plenty. A feast unending.’

‘My son,’ he said, and sighed. ‘This is not our way. Nor is it what I intended for you. Throne willing you would have led our family and enterprises into the next generation – your mind open and your heart full. Alas, you grub in the ashes and dishonour my faith in you. You would drag us all into the light of scrutiny and it would burn us.’

‘Your weakness,’ Toren spat, ‘is why Mercutio is dead. He would not listen either. It was… a pleasant thing, to make an example of him. We can be so much more than this.’

Phemus was silent for a long moment and then leant forward. There was blood in the air now. His calm, bloodless demeanour was tense, taut, like the imminence of violence. His supporters bristled in the crowd, equally agitated. The milling sea of black and red was constantly in motion, blood and rot hemmed in by tarnished gold. Plates and cutlery lay forgotten, save where knives had been taken. Hands closed around them possessively. The fear of their use was almost as strong as the fear of their absence.

Drask watched. The rot within was worse than he had imagined. Toren’s posturing was not empty. He had turned his armoured warriors to his cause, men slick with the gore they had once only yearned to spill. It was in the air. Men and women were watching with rapt interest – not as though it were another turn of the wheel or play of the game, but as though it stirred something primal within them. It sickened him to see it.

He had never believed that the nobles were the best of them, that they would sit at the Emperor’s right hand, but he had believed that they were better than this.

Eventually Phemus spoke. His words were halting. Even from this distance, with only the amplification to carry them, the emotion was clear. The hurt. The loss. The anger. ‘You. You did that? Why? He had done you no wrong. His entire life was dedicated to our service. Your service! And you betray him in turn?’

‘Not betrayal, father,’ he laughed. ‘Never betrayal. I did him homage. It is not enough to merely farm your herd and pick off those whom you deem worthy or beneath notice. No, we must be hunters of men. To walk the streets and leave them red with blood. To take your due and to feel it, warm and wet between your teeth – that is freedom. Power.’

‘No more of this!’ Phemus bellowed. He lunged forward, knife in hand, gesturing across the void between them. ‘Do you think this will go unpunished? I will burn you from the history of our family. You will be forgotten. Scorned. You will wish you had been given the chance to die in exile rather than to end in shame and ignominy. You think you are a hunter without peer, but we have many who are just as skilled. As you were and as Mercutio was.’ He nodded, and a number of the robed figures moved off from the sidelines, blades readied. Robed hunters, an indulgent warrior elite but warriors nonetheless. The armoured knot drew closer together, black plates glistening and clicking as they closed ranks. Toren grinned, bearing his too-white teeth in a bestial goad.

Drask had seen enough. He began to move around the edge of the chamber itself, staying close to the walls. The emerging fracas drew all attention towards the centre. Shouts and admonitions echoed from below. He could hear the first grunts of pain. He dared a look, just enough of a glimpse to see black-clad figures tussling amidst the brightness of the torchlight. Blades already red with blood glittered through the air in their murderous arcs.

We need to move. Right now. We need to get out of here, and then we bring every last sanctioner, every last man of Barnabas’ retinue, and we burn this place to ashes. We seal them in their nest and we burn them, we crush their bones to powder beneath our boots. Every last one of them.

The clashing cultists were bloodied and breathless. The combat had unfolded inexorably, experience against enthusiasm. Dozens of the robed attackers had already fallen, accounting for only one of Toren’s armoured hunters. Drask watched as Toren pulled his blade from the chest of another of his father’s acolytes, threw back his head and laughed. The hot copper stink of blood was everywhere. It saturated the air and stained the killers’ skin. Drask could feel the mad heat of the moment. The bacchanal breaking apart into a crucible of combat. This was what he had always feared. To be alone in a place of madness with the world turned upside down. To be cradled in fear.

‘Come on,’ he whispered, and grabbed Anatoly by the shoulder, forcing them both to move quicker. He didn’t want to overburden the other man, or to send him sprawling. ‘Keep moving. The next door along. Anything is better than being here.’

No luck could last forever, though.

There was screaming, much closer now, and of surprise and alarm rather than pain and outrage. He turned, suddenly confronted by masked faces gesturing sharply in his direction. He pushed Anatoly behind him, keeping him between his back and the nearest door. His hand found the gun in its holster again and drew it, brandishing it in wide sweeps of his arm. The red-robed servants jerked away.

‘Keep back! I will kill you. I swear to the Throne, I will end any of you who comes near me!’

For all that they were fanatics led by madmen, it seemed very few of them wished to die. They kept their distance, occasionally looking back down at the unfolding chaos below, awaiting the intervention of their betters.

‘I need you to move to the door, Anatoly,’ Drask said as he edged back. As the other man moved, Drask retreated, his eyes locked on his pursuers. Only when they were through the door did he finally turn away and start to run.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

The Hunt

Drask ran.

The corridors became a blur. Faces stared down from portraits, year after year of pinched and drawn renditions, former luminaries of the cult. They wore their history proudly, exalting it above all other things. Details merged, indistinct, as their headlong flight upwards continued, but Drask was certain he spotted the sharp features typical of the Nachs, spread across the parade of ages.

‘Keep moving!’ he snapped. Anatoly needed no encouragement. He knew what their pursuers were capable of. Drask kept looking at his wounds, at the ruined stump of his arm. He had suffered, perhaps more and worse than Drask had any idea of. He wondered what else they had done to break him – to dehumanise him and reduce him to simply an object to be used and exploited. As faceless as a grox. Mere chattel.

Now, as they ran, Anatoly was recovering who he had been. He moved with speed and determination, the momentum which would have defined him as a street-runner and fighter. The old instincts rose to the surface. His demeanour shifted. Even suffering, there was still fight in him.

The going was becoming steeper. They had moved up through stairwells and access corridors, guided only by the desperation of their flight. Finery bled away and was replaced by stoic functionality. It became less a riot of indulgence and more standard Imperial. They were getting close to the surface.

The moment that windows broke the gloom, small and high on the drab walls, aglow with lumen light from outside, he knew they had a chance to survive. Whatever was happening below, the discord had allowed them to access the surface with no interruptions. He knew it would come, though. Whatever security forces the cult possessed were below, but the moment Nach learned of their presence, of their escape, they would be pursued. Hunted.

All that was left was to get Anatoly to the street and into the hands of the sanctioners or to raise Barnabas. If he could get him as far as a checkpoint, a safe house, there was hope.

The thoughts chased him from the darkness, hot and malicious. He almost couldn’t believe it. The killings. The arson. All in service to this madness. Horror compounded upon horror, for an end so utterly selfish that it rendered it both repugnant and ridiculous. All of this, to reign in hell.

‘Do you remember any of this?’ Drask asked, panting, as he allowed himself to stop for a second. He looked at Anatoly, but the other man shook his head.

‘They brought me through the tunnels from the other location. Never been up this high. Haven’t seen any of this.’

‘Worth a shot,’ Drask said with a sigh.

‘You said,’ Anatoly wheezed, ‘up and out, you said. We keep moving up until we find a way out. We’re so close now.’

‘We are. Just a little further.’ Drask tried one of the doors, a heavy, deep-set security door at the side of the chamber they currently occupied. He reckoned it to be a secondary exit. A maintenance hatch or supply access-way.

The door was locked. Drask pulled at the heavy release catch. He beat his hand against the metal. It was cold, inert, and pressing his bare skin against it, he could feel the weight of circumstances. This place was a cage, a prison, a livestock pen.

He raised the gun, turning it over in his hand, and shot the lock. It burst apart in a shower of shrapnel.

A clarion was sounding nearby. At first he thought it was resonating from below them, an alarm finally triggered, but the more he listened, the more certain he was that it was coming from outside. The sound was familiar. An echo from the past he couldn’t quite place. He shook it off.

Drask forced the door open with a rattle of releasing hydraulics. He could taste the cold, chemical air of Nul sub-district again. He laughed despite himself. It took all he had not to fall on his knees and weep with relief.

One step at a time. One foot in front of the other.

‘Come on!’ Drask shouted, dragging Anatoly along at his side. They rounded the corner and emerged past the edge of the building. Through the steel gate set into the high stone walls and out into the streets.

They were empty. The streets were abandoned, derelict. Out in the open air and beyond the compound’s walls, the clarion was louder. It didn’t come from the building they had just escaped from but from all around. Broadcast into the open air so that all could hear it.

‘What’s going on?’ Anatoly asked. He inclined his head.

The horizon was vanishing.

Drask stared, open-mouthed, as the distant lights of the wider city began to fade. The ground shook, even this far away. ‘No,’ he whispered. ‘No, no, no.’

The great storm shutters were drawing closed. The entire sub-district was being sealed off, swaddled in adamantium. Even at this distance, Drask fancied he could see tiny figures moving on the walls, sanctioners hurrying to secure the district lock. The air was clear. There was no storm. Yet the district was sealing itself. They had escaped one prison only for reality to contort into a new one.

‘A drill?’ Anatoly asked.

Drask shook his head. ‘We need to keep going. We can’t be here.’ He looked around frantically, then grabbed Anatoly by the shoulder and moved him bodily along, into the warrens of alleyways that stretched through the city.

Into the hunting ground.

Whoops and cheers followed them.

Some were the braying imitations of animal calls. Others were purely human exultations. All were accompanied by the dire music of groundcar engines and even the clatter of metallic hooves upon stone. A wild hunt given form and voice. Unleashed upon the world with all the pomp and ceremony of uncaring gods.

How long has this been going on? A district seals itself away and they call it an accident, a test fire, a state of emergency. Lock them in their homes and give the streets over to the mad. And if there are bodies on the street afterwards, who cares? Who cares when the sanctioners are well compensated? You call it merchant-combines settling scores, noble families playing out their vendettas, and you fail to see it for what it is.

Drask shook his head. He was tired. So very tired. Every part of him wanted to stop, to give up and collapse. The world seemed constantly in motion. No matter what advantage he wrung out, there was always a new catastrophe.

This is trying to fight the heavens. It’s trying to tear down the spires with your hands and your teeth. It’s pure and simple madness.

Barnabas had said that. He had been right. Drask hadn’t wanted to admit it or see it. He had set his sights on Nach, and everything else had ceased to matter. He had ignored Oliar and Visarth.

‘Keep moving,’ he said again. If there was nothing else, there was that mantra. He had a duty – to Anatoly, to Barnabas, to the city. Nothing could take that from him.

Even by Polaris’ bleak standards, Nul-sub was a crumbling ruin. The alleyways they cut down were piled with refuse and slick with waste run-off and meltwater. The stink of the city was everywhere about them. The city at its worst. A place where no one would care what came to pass and they could both die, alone and forgotten.

‘REMAIN IN YOUR HABITATION UNITS. THE EMPEROR PROTECTS. BY ORDER OF THE LEX, REMAIN IN YOUR HABITATION UNITS.’

The announcement had begun alongside the din of the clarions, blaring out from concealed vox-horns. Now it was a smear of white noise, perpetual background that had risen to drown out the advancing cheers of the hunters.

They cut out of one alley, across a main thoroughfare and into another winding passage. Steam billowed from nearby venting, obscuring their progress, but Drask could hear the pursuit drawing closer. Blades scraped against stone in crude acts of psychological warfare.

‘Wait!’ Anatoly called. He rushed to a nearby communications panel and the thick nest of cables which jutted from it into the ground. He pressed his wrist against the wiring, adjusting implanted nodules beneath the skin, nestled in the bone, as though broadcasting in some secret code. Drask thought of the labyrinthine complex he had been held in with Barnabas. The wire ciphers and code taps.

Lucky they only took the one arm, Drask thought.

Anatoly turned from his work, his face ashen, as though invoking this last secret means of communion had physically drained him. His eyes went wide. ‘Behind you!’

Drask wheeled about and raised his weapon.

The figure had materialised from the smoke behind them. Masked and robed, it had the look of one of the more moderate of the dilettantes, yet it moved as though wracked by an almost desperate madness. He couldn’t tell the gender of the figure as it advanced, tracing its blade along the brickwork. Blood drooled from beneath its mask. They were wounded already, just another casualty in the unfolding coup. Everything was tipping about them, the precarious balance between depraved civilisation and outright insanity finally toppling into the abyss.

Drask fired. The bullet took the masked figure low in the chest, barrelling them over. Without the armour of Toren’s faction it was an easy kill. He watched the cultist flop and spasm on the ground, gurgling pitifully before they finally fell still. Drask turned to run.

They weren’t safe here.

‘Do you even know where we’re going?’ Anatoly asked.

‘Of course I do,’ Drask said. ‘We head for the district’s edge. There are men on those walls. Even if they’re mad enough to indulge in this blood sport, they won’t attack us within sight of the walls.’

‘Unless they’ve already bought those men.’

‘True…’ Drask allowed. ‘A risk we have to take.’

‘There’s always Barnabas. If he got the message…’

‘You think it worked?’

‘Not sure.’ Anatoly shrugged. ‘Never had to use it before. A subtle augmetic, he called it. Method of last resort in case we were captured.’

The wall blew out to the side of Drask’s head and he cursed. He spun and fired blindly. Return fire slammed into the brickwork around him. He barely had time to pull Anatoly behind cover.

There were two of them, dressed in matching black robes and with eerily similar vulpine masks. One he took to be a man and the other a woman. Their robes were torn, streamlined for the hunt, revealing more of their blood-smeared bodies. They reloaded and fired again.

Their hunters’ rifles bucked in their hands, hammering the heavier-calibre rounds into the wall Drask and Anatoly now cowered behind. Drask was on the ground, crouched low. He pushed up and fired. The man went down, the shot catching him in the neck, and the woman sprinted closer. He could hear her stunted screams, rage boiling through the mask as she fired and fired. Again and again, until the weapon clicked dry. Drask raised his pistol and pulled the trigger. The snarling visage detonated in an explosion of shattered flesh and lacquered metal. She dropped.

‘Nice shooting,’ Anatoly said. Drask shook his head. He didn’t want praise for this.

‘This is just about surviving,’ he said. ‘It’s us or them, and I have no intention of letting it be us. We can do this.’

‘I’d settled on dying in that cage, or as soon as they let me loose. If we take a few of them with us, that’s all the better.’

Drask wasn’t sure where they were. The procession of streets and side streets had begun to blend together. The sparse residential habs were locked and shuttered. The occupants were used to the firing and test-firing of the sirens. Even in places such as this, they knew what was expected of them.

Other, darker rumours forced them inside. The tales of what befell those who lingered outside in the cold dark, of the things waiting in the shadows.

Gilded monsters preyed upon the people. Beyond accountability and without restraint.

They drew out of the alleyway and were confronted with fresh horrors. Another robed body lay ahead of them, a blade jutting from its neck. The mask had been pulled away, leaving the man’s pallid face staring heavenward. Blood had pooled around him. Drask could see where bite marks already sullied the flesh on the opposite side of the neck and face.

‘What the hells do we do now?’

‘We’re making progress,’ Drask said. ‘A few more streets and we’ll be within sight of the walls. We just need to get the attention of the sanctioners up there.’

They crossed the broad, open expanse of a highway – empty now – constantly looking around for any signs of pursuit. Whoops and screams split the din of the sirens. Drask could hear laughter too, subdued and sinister, echoing below the clamour. He turned.

Three of them were advancing along the main-trans, their bestial masks twisted with their mirth. Their laughter was broken, corroded, and they staggered like drunkards. They wore no robes – instead they were clad in the same armoured bodygloves as Toren.

The only grace was that they had no guns. Their blades were poorly maintained, filthy even before they had started to kill their fellows. They were blood-spattered and streaked with thicker gore. Strips of skin hung from them as trophies. One was dragging a length of chain topped with a thick barbed hook, the leavings of an inhuman abattoir. Perhaps they had been held in reserve for Toren’s moment of ascension, or had indulged so deeply in their cruelties that they had lost all sense of human restraint.

‘He will pay handsomely for your heads,’ one crooned. ‘When we’ve had our fun, we might even deliver you.’ He laughed in great, braying gulps and raised his knife.

Drask checked his gun. Three rounds remained. He almost laughed himself. Fitting odds. He raised it and took aim. ‘Not one step further,’ he said. ‘He’s not yours.’

They laughed.

Drask fired.

The first bullet knocked the attacker with the chain off his feet, sprawled on his back like a basking reptile. Drask didn’t wait for their reaction. He charged into their midst. His knife was in his other hand. He ducked under the first slash and drove it into the second man’s side. He felt a blade catch him in his shoulder, piercing the now soiled robes he hadn’t had a chance to remove. Blood soaked through them. Pain made his breath catch in his throat. He pushed the blade harder, until the other man buckled to his knees. The third was already closing in, ready to finish him.

Anatoly hurled himself into the third attacker, barrelling him to the ground. The knife skittered across the rockcrete, almost to Drask’s feet. He ducked, snapped it up and drove it into the second man’s throat. He pushed the dead weight aside and hurried to where Anatoly had the other man pinned with body weight alone. They were struggling; the armoured figure had begun to pound at Anatoly. Drask snarled as he forced the pistol against the back of the helmeted head and fired.

The man’s head snapped forward, blood pouring from his faceplate, before he fell still and silent. Drask helped Anatoly up and staggered over to the first of the assailants, still struggling on his back. He was gasping through his helm, gulping for air. Even with the armour, a shot like that would have winded him. Possibly broken something. Drask glared down at him.

‘You,’ the man wheezed, ‘cannot. Stop the–’

Drask ignored him. He knelt down, took hold of his black-clad head and slammed it hard against the rockcrete. He heard something crack or snap. The body went limp.

Drask exhaled hard. ‘Thank you,’ he offered simply.

Anatoly winced. The right-hand side of his face was bruised and scraped. ‘The least I can do.’

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Judgement

They passed beyond the warrens of narrow streets and silent habs, past the disused manufactoria and the empty warehouses, and on to the expanse of empty and abandoned waste ground near the sub-district’s edge.

It was dead land. Useless and condemned, cordoned off as a buffer zone between the walls and the outermost buildings. Anti-vehicle pits and obstacles lined it, carved from rockcrete or rearing from the ground in spiked steel protrusions.

From here, across the mile of churned earth and broken masonry, Drask could see the panning of the spot-lumens.

He leant against a cold rockcrete stanchion and squinted across the no-man’s-land that lay before them. ‘I need you to run.’

‘What?’

Drask looked to Anatoly. ‘I need you to run. You need to go. This is your chance. You make a break across the cordon and I’ll hold them at bay.’

‘You can’t be serious.’

‘I’d much rather not, but here we are.’

‘You’re insane.’

‘So I’m told.’ Drask laughed bitterly. ‘I’ll lead them on a merry hunt. You’ll get close enough to draw the attention of the wall guards. The sanctioners will have to do something about your wounds, if nothing else.’

Anatoly nodded. ‘Thank you.’

‘Don’t thank me yet. Just go. If you see Barnabas… if the message gets through and he finds you, tell him everything. He’ll be able to make this right. He can consider this the end of our mutual debts.’ Drask had no idea if Barnabas had even received the message, if he was on his way, if there was any hope at all. The mention of it was enough, a flicker to guide Anatoly. To see him safe.

Anatoly nodded, and ran out into the open space and towards the walls. Drask watched him go, never looking back, until he was a distant smear across the grey-brown slurry of the cordon.

‘And now we wait,’ he said. He let himself recline against the anti-vehicle barricade. He could almost close his eyes and rest. It would be over if he did, one way or the other. It was almost tempting. He felt the pain radiating through his shoulder, the wet trickle of blood down his side and back.

There would be justice, if he had the will to seize it.

One bullet.

One chance.

Drask closed his eyes and waited.

The groundcar drew up just beyond the barriers, and Phemus Nach exited without fanfare. Whatever supporters he had were either dead or still at large elsewhere in the district. It had been chance alone that they had spotted Drask. He bade his driver wait and once again checked his firearm.

He advanced upon the wounded probator, smiling cruelly. He had removed his horned helm and instead allowed himself to breathe the unfiltered air of the district. He chuckled as he drew close. ‘You made for good sport, boy, I’ll give you that… but I should still have killed you earlier.’

‘So why didn’t you?’ Drask asked. He winced as he sat back up, hand still in his pocket. ‘You and your son had every opportunity.’

‘Ah, would that I could have. She had other plans for you, I think. No matter now. You’ve come too far. Seen too much. Such actions have consequences.’

‘She?’ Drask asked.

‘You don’t know?’ Nach laughed. ‘Of course you don’t. You have no notion of what you’ve blundered into. Favour can only carry you so far, Drask. Now good men are dead by your hand.’

‘And Toren’s.’

‘He will pay for his transgressions in good time.’ Nach moved closer. He brought his gun up and pointed it at Drask’s head. Drask struggled to raise his own weapon. He bit back his pain and stood unsteadily.

‘It doesn’t matter if you kill me,’ Drask said, laughing dryly. ‘You’ll have to deal with him before he does the same to you. Look how many you’ve already lost.’

‘Acceptable losses.’ Phemus shrugged. ‘None of that matters now. Not now that I have you.’ He laughed. ‘I ought to thank you, in a way. You have made for an entertaining evening, but nothing will change. Nothing will end. We have endured worse than this and we shall continue on until time’s ending. We bear the fortitude of ages.’

‘Just kill me,’ Drask said. ‘Better that than having to listen to you justify yourself and all this… monstrosity.’

‘You wound me.’ Phemus actually sounded hurt. ‘All I have done has been for the sake of tradition. I wouldn’t expect you to understand. A middling little man of low birth. Shunned even by your own. Do you know what Konstantus thinks of you? She told me. You’re nothing. Washed up, half mad, drunk on the past.’

‘I’ve done my duty.’

‘Duty? Oh, how quaint. You protect the Lex and wield it accordingly. I have the weight of history upon me. As it was for my father, and his father before him. All the way back to the beginning.’

‘All the way back to her.’

Phemus laughed. ‘Ah, now you begin to understand. Perhaps that is what she sees in you, that naive ability to correlate extraneous information coupled with the tenacity to pursue it.’

‘Please,’ Drask said. ‘Enough talk.’

‘I couldn’t agree more,’ Toren Nach said. Phemus turned at the voice, too slowly, and met Toren’s blade head-on. He gasped at the sudden violation. Eyes wide. His free hand clawed at Toren’s armoured shoulder, fingers seeking purchase before falling away.

Toren twisted the blade, leaning in so he could watch the light vanish from his father’s eyes, and then let him drop. His breathing was laboured and Drask couldn’t tell whether it was from exertion or the emotional strain. He let out a ragged sigh and looked at Drask. Blood streaked his features, slicking his hair with the sheer volume of it. Anointed in the life of his enemies, his father’s men. In places it was clear he had worked it there with his fingers, like tribal warpaint.

When he smiled, his teeth were pink with imbibed blood.

‘He was your father,’ Drask whispered.

‘He was a fool.’

‘He may have been.’ Drask let himself laugh as he spoke. ‘But smarter than you.’

‘Watch your mouth,’ Toren growled.

‘Could have killed me, didn’t. Could have taken power without a bloodbath, chose not to.’

Toren gestured with the blade, cutting the air as eagerly as he wanted to cut into Drask. ‘Be silent,’ he snarled. ‘I will end you if you don’t cease your gibbering. I want to hear you scream, Drask, but even my patience has limits.’

‘I’ve had enough of listening to you and your father. Both of you are broken in different ways.’

‘I am not broken! I am–’

‘Illuminated, yes. You might think that, but to everyone else your flaws are readily apparent. Your father is dead. Now you’re in charge of the Nach family name and the harvest.’

‘And I will make the ancestors proud. I will remake everything. It shall be a work of crimson glory, and all will marvel at it. I will raise us up to reign like ancient kings. They shall sacrifice in my honour. Spires of skulls. Rivers of blood. A bright and crimson dawn.’

Drask laughed. ‘You will grind your sad little order into the dust. You who has no restraint, who cares only for the hunt. Polaris is dying now, but you will be the one who wraps his hands around its throat and chokes the last life from it. You will amount to nothing.’

‘I said, be–’

‘You will destroy thousands of years of history, millennia of tradition, and when all is said and done…’

‘Silence!’

‘No one will remember your name.’

Toren bellowed with inarticulate rage and threw himself forward. Drask pulled back, ducking out of the way as the blade scraped across the rockcrete pillar. He weaved to the right and slammed the grip of his gun into the side of Toren’s head. He had one shot. He wouldn’t squander it. He would find his opportunity and take it.

Toren reared back, growling like an animal. He switched his blade from hand to hand, blinking away tears of pain and rage. They were alone now. The schism had become a slaughter, each side too involved in their own bloody gratification to notice or care that their leaders were missing.

Toren drove in again.

Drask tried to move, too slow this time. He felt the blade tear the robes, intent on driving into his flesh.

The blow never connected. He blinked, looked down and relaxed. He could hear the electric fizzle of the stasis envelope in his pocket as it cracked, impaled on the knife. Something flashed briefly, brightly, and they both shuddered at the momentary disorientation of the discharge. Toren staggered back, muscles spasming as the shock of it shot along his arm, his face contorted in pain and anger. Drask brought his gun up and fired.

Toren roared in pain. He went down, hitting the ground and rolling almost instantly onto all fours, then sprang forward. Drask felt the blade bite into his calf and drag down towards his ankle in an explosion of pain. He stumbled and fell. He felt the empty gun slip from his hand, skittering away across the rubble, away from the melee.

Toren’s voice was high and breathy as he screamed and raged. ‘I’ll kill you! I’ll kill you! I’ll open you up and spill your life’s blood! Blood! Blood for–’

Drask dragged himself through the mud. He could taste the fecund stink of it, rich and loamy next to the copper tang of Phemus’ blood. He could feel it between his fingers, the wet caress of it as he tried desperately to pull himself away from Toren’s wrath.

The blood-drenched figure of Toren dug his knife into Drask’s leg and pulled himself up and over. He twisted the blade as he levered his weight against it, eliciting another tortured scream from Drask. Blood-rimed teeth flickered in a monster’s joy. Toren could scent victory. Drask could see it in his eyes. The man wanted to kill him, as a symbol, as a sign of triumph. If he bore Drask’s head and the head of his father back to the cult, his place would be secured. None would question his supremacy.

Something else danced there, behind his eyes. The mania which dwelt there was malignant. Faith and tradition turned cancerous under the ministrations of Toren and his ilk. Every part of the man had been pared back to sharp angles, till it almost seemed like blades of bone forcing their way through his face. He was a lord of meat and sinew now, a zealous, hungry thing of blood and bone.

Whatever he had become, Drask understood its fundamental wrongness. A sickness beyond Phemus’ crimes, rendering them banal in comparison. To know it was to know madness. To surrender to it would see all the world drowned in blood.

Drask wouldn’t allow it.

His body contorted as he drove his elbow around, up and into the side of Toren’s head. The blow knocked him away, allowing Drask to wriggle free. He lunged forward towards the corpse of Phemus, ignoring the pooling blood and the unseeing stare. He groped through the sludge about the body, even as the knife opened him, again and again. The pain scissored up his spine, coiling into his nerves like fire. The sharpness of it was almost something he could cling to.

His hand found the fallen weapon. He tightened his grip around it just as Toren grasped his shoulder and flipped him over. He stared into the bloodshot eyes of the man who would kill him. In the failing light he was rendered as a study in black and scarlet. Daemonic as much in seeming as in deed.

‘I made you a promise,’ Toren slurred. ‘I told you that I would show you the true face of the city and that I would eat your heart when you saw it.’ He laughed his broken laughter. ‘Do you see, Quillon Drask?’ he asked. ‘Do you see it?’

Drask thought, momentarily, of Alexius. For a second he was back in the desiccated manse with the chem-ruined ghoul of his mentor looming over him. The same charnel stink and blood-soaked madness. Drask allowed himself a smile.

‘Yes,’ he breathed. ‘I see.’

He pulled the trigger.

The first bullet caught Toren high on the armoured cuirass and bore him backwards and up. Drask fired again. It hit him in the neck, severing his carotid in a rush of blood. His face had enough time to contort, to twist into a grimace of pain and confusion, before the next bullet found it. And the next. And the next. Drask pulled the trigger, again and again, until the chamber was dry, until all that was left was the hollow clicking and the utter decimation wrought upon what remained of Toren Nach. Blood and brains soaked the soil, littering the rubble with bone fragments amidst the human slurry.

Drask collapsed backwards. He could feel the gouting wounds in his leg and back. All warmth and vitality was flowing from him, rushing out into the cold and dead air, staining the ground.

Perhaps this is how I was always meant to die. The circumstances seem fairly intent on playing out.

He wanted to laugh. To curse his fate. The pain wouldn’t let him. It had become everything. The sheer pull of it reduced the world to a knot of growing darkness, a simple blur of black and white. Losing all colour. All hold upon him.

It was cold here, at the end of the world. At the end of the city. He had thought that more than once, he was sure. How cold it was in the southern city.

He felt the wind pick up. Something wet hit his face, and he felt the mud and blood begin to run. He could taste it, sharp and stinging on his lips. Rain. Even chem-tainted and toxic, it felt like a blessing. Drask tried to open his eyes. He tried to draw another breath.

Sudden light cut through the gloom. The breeze had become a gale, driven to unnatural levels. He finally managed to open his eyes and see.

The light was beautiful in its purity. As saints were meant to be when they descended from on high. Filled with His divine radiance.

Barnabas. The thought came almost from nowhere. He doubted Anatoly would have had the time to be found and to summon them. Perhaps the message had got through. Perhaps the bastard had sent for help, in the end. He wanted to laugh, but couldn’t.

Drask gawped, near blinded by the rush of light and heated air as the first of the Zurovs swept in overhead, before the darkness finally took him.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Through the Fire

It was not as easy a recovery as before.

Though the circumstances seemed mirrored, the jest of cruel fate, it was a far less kind convalescence within the walls of the Bastion.

He did not see Visarth or Oliar. Not even Konstantus. Instead he was attended at all times by a black-uniformed officer of the Adeptus Arbites called Gelert. He was quiet, self-possessed, and noted everything that Drask managed to rasp in a small black notebook. He was direct and to the point. Despite himself, Drask could not help but like him. He knew, though, that this man was his interrogator, in some way his gaoler. Gelert was only absent when the most stringent of medical procedures were required.

As they progressed, as he healed, Drask found he could breathe cleanly again. He was flooded with antibacterials, swathed in counterseptics and inoculated against pain. He had long since lost track of time in the bowels of the Bastion, but he reckoned that several days at least had passed.

‘Tell me again,’ Gelert said. He scratched an unshaven chin and looked Drask straight in the eye. He passed a small metal cup of water to him, almost as an afterthought. Drask took it, weighed it thoughtfully and then sipped.

‘I told you,’ he said. ‘I was investigating–’

‘Had taken it upon yourself to investigate.’

‘Had taken it upon myself to investigate the man who violated my hab and killed Preacher Welan, Mercutio Farentis and countless others.’

‘So you claim,’ Gelert said. His manner was direct. Quiet and barely restrained, with an edge of violence. He held an awareness of his surroundings which dwarfed Drask’s own. Drask did not doubt that this man was aware of every potential point of egress into the medicae chamber, the nearness of every makeshift weapon and the swiftness with which Drask could approach either. Or could have done were he not restrained. He was shackled to the chair he now sat in, just as he was otherwise shackled to the bed – and dosed with morpholox. Beyond that, he did not have the wish to fight the man, or any of them.

‘You have the bodies. You have the sworn statement of Anatoly. He did make it to the wall, yes? You’ve mentioned that before, I’m sure.’

‘We do have the bodies of the Nach father and son, yes, and we have put your associate to the question as well.’

‘He is not my associate. He was a prisoner. A sacrifice. A–’

‘Delicacy?’ Gelert enquired. ‘He told quite a tale, did your Anatoly. Cannibals in the dark, men who wore the faces of beasts. Redemption from nowhere.’

‘Is he all right?’

‘He lives, for the moment. A most interesting man. Have you ever seen combat, Quillon?’

Drask bristled at this use of his forename, but pushed past it. ‘Not personally, no.’

‘Not personally. Of course. But this is the Imperium, yes? Everyone knows someone who has seen combat. Everyone knows someone who has suffered. My father, Throne rest him, would tell me stories of the unending wars beyond our world. How everyone knew a veteran who had fought for the Throne and had suffered. He told me that when a man is grievously wounded, even unto the point of death, most of them simply give up. To lose half their limbs, so suddenly and so brutally, is such a shock that the body simply gives up. Your friend, acquaintance, associate – whatever you choose to call him – he suffered a drawn-out violation. For all that his body endures, his mind bears just as many scars. A wounded mind often creates pleasant figments in order to protect itself.’

‘You think he’s lying?’

Gelert snorted. ‘Oh, quite the opposite.’ He smiled mirthlessly. Drask was struck by the darkness of his uniform and his hair against the clean white of the medicae chamber. His sheen of ruddy vitality was reflected on the tiled walls and metal cabinets with far more dynamism than Drask’s own subdued pallor. Drask took another sip.

‘So why am I still here?’

‘As much for your own protection as to protect others from you,’ Gelert said with the same hollow smile. ‘If any of what you have said is true, any number of surviving agents could seek your death. Men and women of power and prestige. Watch them dance while you can. It is not often that a man of your station will ever possess such power over the nobility. Nor cause such significant realignment in the ranks of an active merchant-combine.’

‘You mean Vranx?’

‘I do. Vranx Agri-Mercantile has suffered quite the string of deaths and disappearances. You can almost corroborate your tale simply by watching for the gaps left in the roster. The mamzel who runs it has been quite helpful. Most forthcoming. She seems simply grateful that the predations of a… how did she phrase it… a ruinous and evil cabal within her ranks has been excised. She asked me to convey her strictest sympathies.’

‘A kind gesture.’

‘Quite kind. It isn’t often that the heavens smile back at you. You should cherish that feeling. It could be all that protects you in the coming days.’

‘Ominous,’ Drask acknowledged with a slow nod. He winced as he did. He sipped the water again, swirling it in his mouth before swallowing. ‘Is it really that bad?’

‘It could be far worse. Araceli Vranx has vouched for you and opened up the corporate offices of the suspects – apprehended and otherwise – to the attentions of… outside agencies. A noble gesture, and one which has generated considerable goodwill towards your case. As has the statement of the senior probator.’

‘Konstantus?’

‘She was very eager to relay how Phemus Nach had insisted on handling matters relating to the murder in a more personal capacity. As she explained it, he had insisted that it was unregulated corporate warfare. A pleasant fiction compared to what you uncovered.’

‘Nach.’ Drask swallowed. ‘He was a monster.’

‘He was. The world is peopled with monsters. Sometimes they prowl the streets, and other times they bear cities upon their shoulders. That does not make them admirable – far from it. It simply makes them all the more difficult to stop.’

Drask said nothing.

‘You need more time to think,’ Gelert said. He smiled and rose from his seat, tucking away the notebook and dusting his hands on his thighs. ‘I’ll be back. You should rest. Consider what we’ve discussed.’

When Drask slept it was not without dreams.

He had always been plagued by nightmares but had thought that the narcotic balms of the medicae would have lessened them at the least.

The dreams that found him were sharpened, cut into strange and vivid shapes by the chems and trauma, his mind roiling as it tried to process any semblance of coherency from the mess.

Pain saturated his spirit and scarred his mind, though they had robbed it from his body. He still felt the phantom echoes of it, the dry, whispered memory of it. It made him think of Anatoly and his own stolen sensations.

The thoughts bore him down into the suffocating darkness of the dream. And then. And then…

There was light. The flickering, inconstant light of the feasting hall. The long tables were gone, reduced to broken ruin, all save for one. It stretched out from the base of the throne, the wood black against the infinite darkness, catching the torchlight upon its edges like dancing witchfire.

He knew those who sat about it in their sparse peopling. Oliar and Visarth were opposite each other, midway down the table, gazing at him with concern. Konstantus sat towards the other end of the table, with Gelert opposite her. They seemed to be exchanging pleasantries, though he was too far away to hear their words. Tension dwelt there, between their words and false smiles – he could read that much.

At the end, at the throne where Phemus Nach would once have sat, Araceli Vranx watched him from behind steepled fingers. He watched the firelight dance and die in her eyes, glimmering wetly in her still face. Her expression seemed fixed. Everyone else seemed alive, moving, breathing and speaking, while she sat statue-still.

It hurt to look at her, he realised. He tried to pull his gaze, to tear his eyes away, but he could not. He was caught. Transfixed. Forced to watch as her lips peeled back into a sneer, as the carefully constructed facade cracked and fell away. She was rotting before his eyes, becoming dust and desiccation and a crawling tide of grave worms and cankerous growths. He forced his eyes shut before he had to watch as hers burst asunder.

He woke, sweat-sheened and whimpering in the cold darkness. The only noise beyond his own breathing was the stabilising chirruping of medical observation systems, purring along with the slowing rhythm of his heart.

Drask sighed. He knew now what he had to do.

‘I am told that you struggle with the legacy of your mentor and the crimes which he committed,’ Gelert said. Drask bristled at the statement but said nothing, content to listen. ‘You feel judged by his undertakings and the perceived taint that accompanies them. How has that made you feel?’

‘Suspect. As though my work and my accomplishments were not of my own merit but judged by the flawed metric of another. I earn what I achieve.’

‘That is important to you?’ Gelert asked. He made notes again as he spoke. His eyes, pale blue like slivers of glacial ice, flickered from the page to Drask’s face almost constantly. ‘You wish to be seen as a man who makes his own choices and achieves by virtue of his own insight and discipline?’

‘I do, and it is, yes.’ Drask paused to take a sip of water. ‘All I’ve ever sought to do is my duty.’

‘You’ve made that very clear. Your dedication is expected. It is all the Emperor asks, that those who toil in His service do so with an open heart and a safeguarded mind.’

‘I have erred in neither.’

‘You would have me believe that, yes,’ Gelert said. ‘Lesser men would have broken before now. We have been having conversations, but those conversations have a way of undoing others. You have responded ably. Though in my experience, that too can be an illusion. A caul of goodwill upon the face of treachery.’

‘One has to be accommodating in the presence of the Adeptus Arbites.’

Gelert nodded simply. ‘These matters have generated the need for that oversight.’

‘It was that or…’ Drask caught himself. ‘Someone higher.’

‘It would not do well to think of any higher authorities,’ Gelert said firmly. ‘Is there anything else you would like to say in your defence, Quillon?’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I throw myself upon your mercy, the mercy of the Bastion and the generous offer of support extended by Vranx Agri-Mercantile. I acknowledge that I erred in the execution of my duties and continued to pursue them even after being stripped of the authority to do so.’

‘I thank you for your… candour.’ Gelert smiled stiffly. ‘In this undertaking did you receive any outside aid? Any help that led you to that place, at that moment?’

Drask paused, hoping it did not seem like a hesitation. ‘No. No one.’

‘It is our understanding that you invoked the aid of two of your colleagues within Bastion-P.’ Gelert consulted a note in his book, but Drask knew he already had the names to hand. ‘Oliar and Visarth?’

‘That is correct.’

‘What task did you set them to?’

‘I wanted them to investigate linkages with the older cases. Anything which would expose the crimes and their involvement with the Nachs. I had a… suspicion that these were not murders committed in isolation.’

‘I see.’ He closed the notebook and smiled coldly again. ‘You will, of course, face an internal tribunal on these matters, but my assessment is clear in this regard – you have exposed a heinous and terrible thing. You did so at great personal cost and the endangerment of your own life. I will be adding notes to that effect to your file.’

‘I…’ Drask paused and swallowed hard. ‘Thank you.’

‘As I understand it, there will be much thanks to go around. Mamzel Vranx is advocating much the same. She looks forward to discussing it with you personally, I am sure.’

‘I look forward to that,’ Drask said. He forced a smile. Despite the bravado, he was not yet sure how he would react in the presence of Vranx. He paused, weighing his considerations, before he began to speak again. ‘Did you find any of the survivors? From Nach’s…’ He trailed off, unwilling to voice the hateful word – cult. ‘Organisation?’ he finished uncertainly.

‘Some,’ Gelert said. He put his notebook in his pocket and folded his hands together. He too, it seemed, was taking exceptional care in what he said. ‘Some have been subjected to standard excruciation and interrogation. Those who you cited as members of Toren’s particular creed, though, will require a more specialised examination. Put them from your mind and focus on your own ordeals to come.’

Drask swallowed again, lost for words. ‘Thank–’

‘Please, do not thank me, Quillon,’ Gelert said. ‘I have done only as you have. I have done my duty. Duty is a powerful thing, and, in some cases, the Imperium needs eager and erstwhile sons to uphold it. The patience for such indulgences has limits, though.’

‘I know.’

‘I’m not sure you do, Quillon.’ Gelert sighed. ‘But you will, in time.’ He rose and crossed the distance from his chair to the door in a few long strides. He turned about and looked back at Drask. ‘Good luck to you. I fear you will need it.’

‘His Hand,’ Drask muttered, his gaze downcast.

‘There was one more thing…’ Gelert said, almost as an afterthought. ‘In the robes you were wearing we found a stasis capsule. Rather impressive technology. It seemed to have been broken in your struggles. Of the contents, only dust remained.’ He paused. ‘You don’t happen to know what was inside, do you?’

Drask was quiet. ‘No,’ he said finally. ‘It must have been in the robes when I took them. I didn’t want to risk… moral contamination by looking too closely at anything related to the cult.’

‘Of course. A wise choice, I think, given the circumstances.’ Gelert nodded. ‘I wish you well, Quillon Drask, though I have a feeling we will meet again.’

With that, he was gone, and Drask was, once again, alone.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Masques

Konstantus was the first to visit Drask following his intense debriefing. The words poured from her in a rush of bile and recrimination. Castigating him for his stupidity and his presumption. He took it. It was his penance, after all.

‘Only fools and madmen do what you have done, you damned petulant idiot!’ she snapped. ‘Did you honestly think that you would come out clean from this? That you would survive with anything resembling your life intact? What were you thinking?’

‘I wasn’t,’ Drask said. ‘If I’m being honest, I wasn’t thinking. I was reeling from being dismissed, my hab had been violated, and someone known to me was murdered. Murdered in a way designed to frame me for the crime. I did not kill Welan. Oliar and Visarth can testify as to my whereabouts immediately before the body was discovered.’

‘Discovered, as we now understand it, by you. Before the report of you fleeing the scene in distress was registered by a citizen.’ She laughed and shook her head. ‘I won’t lie, Drask – it was looking bad for you before we found you amidst a nest of bodies in Nul, with a street-runner lacking an arm corroborating that you saved him from a living hell of… cannibal nobility.’

‘As I have said. Worth remembering that I’m not the one who was so eager to do Nach’s bidding that I ignored all protocol and decency.’

‘Careful, Drask,’ she said. There was steel in her eyes. ‘I did what, at the time, was my best judgement. Nach has power. Vranx has power. That power has been wielded over the Bastion in both their favour and ours since time out of mind. We needed them. Would that a district, let alone a city, could run on the Lex alone – but they do not. I don’t think you’ve ever truly understood the things that have to be done so that you can continue to play out your heroics.’

‘I’m aware of what must be done, I’ve just never wanted any part in it.’

‘I’m afraid you no longer have that luxury,’ Konstantus said with a laugh.

‘What do you mean?’

‘The Lady Vranx is being most generous in her support and transparency. She considers you to be a most wronged party in all of this.’

‘A view you do not share.’

‘A view I most assuredly do not share, Drask.’

He pushed himself up, propping himself higher on the bed.

‘Regardless,’ Konstantus continued, ‘unless we wish for matters to turn against us, we are forced to engage you with an open and even hand.’

‘I’m flattered.’

‘Don’t be snide, Drask,’ she growled. ‘There will be consequences to what you have done – do not doubt that, no matter what friends you may have cultivated in high places. I am, however, sympathetic to your cause. In a limited capacity, at the very least.’

‘Big of you to admit.’

‘If nothing else, I’m content to see Nach’s influence expunged. Not to say that Vranx’s direct intervention is more welcome, but it feels… different.’

‘I can imagine,’ Drask said carefully. ‘She has a higher sense of power to her. Something more entrenched. Something older.’

‘Quite,’ she said. Drask’s insinuation found no purchase. A good sign, he mused, if nothing else. ‘She wants to meet you, as I understand it. To hear from your own lips what terrible things Nach did and what damage this means for her reputation. Very eager to assure us that she had nothing to do with these matters and that she had cooperated fully with you.’

‘She did,’ he admitted. ‘She was actually most helpful. I look forward to discussing matters with her further. I’m sure her corporate insight will prove most useful.’

‘Is that right?’

‘I think so,’ Drask said. More than anything else, he wanted to look the woman in the eyes and see what dwelt there. Before he had merely thought her bored and vapid, morbidly curious in the same way Amelya was, but now… knowing what he did, he wanted to see her in the flesh. To see if she still walked as a mortal woman walked, through the fires and calamities of the world. ‘Is there anything else you require of me?’

‘No,’ Konstantus said, narrowing her eyes. ‘Nothing immediate. You’ve been debriefed. We are continuing to collate the relevant evidence. You will be held here for a time, but I am reasonably convinced that you are in no state to pose a danger to yourself or to others.’ She ran a hand through her short blonde hair and sighed. ‘Do not make me regret that assumption.’

‘You won’t. You have my word, Marita.’ He nodded. ‘We’ve never seen eye to eye, and I could never do what you do… but I respect the work that you have done. You’ve earned your way to your position. My own career…’ He laughed dryly. ‘That has suffered at the hands of fortune and ill acquaintances. The old man’s ghost.’

‘The old man’s ghost,’ she agreed. ‘And if not his ghost then his shadow. You have worth, Drask. We could do with keener minds…’ She trailed off. ‘My part in this will suffer just as much scrutiny. There is a reckoning coming, one way or another, and very little we do will stop that from coming to pass.’

‘If you could,’ Drask risked, ‘I would appreciate it if I could see Visarth and Oliar.’

‘That can be arranged, certainly.’

‘After that I think I will be ready to speak with Mamzel Vranx.’

‘Of course.’ Konstantus stood and dusted off her hands. ‘I always hated it down here. It felt like every time I came it was to sign off on another probator or sanctioner who got themselves killed.’ She frowned. ‘Responsibility cuts, Drask. It cuts in more ways than you would think a thing capable of. It never gets any easier.’

By the time they were allowed to see him he had been unchained from the bed and allowed to sit up in a chair. Cold and shivering against the metal seat, clad only in his thin medical gown, he endured it, just as he weathered their indulgent smiles and frustrated scowls.

They were a study in contrasts, Oliar in her verispex grey, looking particularly put upon and anxious, while Visarth wore her medicae whites. She shook her head at the sight of him, and he worried she was ready to clip him about the ear. No blow came, though.

‘You stupid, stupid man,’ she hissed. ‘Do you know how worried we’ve both been?’

‘I know–’

‘You don’t know!’ Visarth groused. ‘I ought to…’ She laughed bitterly. ‘To hear that you were missing, and perhaps a fugitive from the law, and that then you had been found half dead and surrounded by Nach family corpses. Can you have any idea how stressful that was?’

‘I’m afraid I didn’t give it much thought, on account of avoiding death all the while,’ he said dryly. ‘It’s good to see you too, Amelya. And you, Oliar.’

‘It was nice that you took me into consideration,’ she said. Her head dipped in a faint nod. ‘In terms of who you wished to see, I mean.’

‘It almost wouldn’t feel right for me to wake up in a medicae ward and not have either of you telling me all about the mistakes I’d made to bring me here,’ he said, laughing. Drask felt his breath catch in his throat at a sudden stab of pain and stopped laughing.

‘That was once before,’ Oliar said. ‘Hardly a significant precedent, but I take your meaning.’ She poured him another glass of water from the metal pitcher. ‘Try not to overexert yourself. You will need your energy.’

‘I know. I will. Thank you.’

‘What happened out there?’ Visarth asked quietly. ‘They confiscated everything we had assembled in your absence. We had records which could be matched to Alexius’ journals regarding the crimes. Definitive cases of organ removal and mutilation culminating in a horrifically maimed body recovered in Nul-sub. We were chasing down the buyer who was used to acquire the teeth, comparing genic samples from the bodies to see if we could generate a match, but there was nothing. Our queries were ignored or rerouted. We felt we had only a framework, a mere skeleton of a case, but the Arbites took it all.’

‘We did all we could,’ Oliar put in. Even now, her eye-lenses were whirring and resetting, adjusting as they strove to capture every last detail – as if fearing they would never see Drask again. ‘Even our institutions are possessed of limits, it would seem.’

‘I have no doubt that you both did what you could,’ Drask said. ‘Your evidence seems to have been convincing, or at least to have offset their suspicions.’ He exhaled. ‘It was… hard, out there. I struggled and I suffered. I lost people. I watched some die, or saw the aftermath of their deaths. Some of them deserved it. Some did not.’

‘But you got him, in the end. Nach, that is,’ Visarth said. ‘And it was as terrible as you imagined it to be?’

‘It was everything I feared and worse.’

‘Throne,’ Visarth muttered. ‘And there will be sanction?’

‘Of some sort. They haven’t been especially forthcoming on my punishment. That will largely depend upon Araceli Vranx.’

‘The one holding the monster’s leash?’

‘I wouldn’t go that far. By all accounts she has been… eager to help with matters.’

‘I’m sure she has. Intent on saving her own neck and her profit margins!’

‘We shall see,’ Drask said. Whatever else came to pass he had no intention of allowing them both to suffer in his wake. ‘I’ll be attending upon her as soon as possible. I just wanted to make sure you were both all right, and that nothing had unfolded against you in my absence.’

‘Thank you, Quillon,’ Visarth said, pre-empting Oliar. ‘We are safe and we are well. We endure, as will you.’

‘That is all I wished to know. I wanted to make sure I saw both of you before anything else came to pass. I might not come out of this as a probator. I may not even survive it. If I do not, I simply want you both to know that it has been an honour to serve with you.’

‘As it has been with you,’ Oliar said. She bowed her head again.

Both women rose.

‘Throne keep you and guide you, Quillon.’ Visarth said.

A day of solitude passed.

Restless nights faded to anaemic days. He was no longer interrogated, only observed. He took what little sustenance they provided and endured their scrutiny – certain that they expected him to try and end his own life with the sharp edge of something.

Drask was allowed to dress in plain black trousers and shirt, devoid of insignia or rank. He was led from the medicae wing under armed guard and transferred into the armoured hulk of a Rampart. They chained him to the metal bench, gunned the engine and roared off and out of the Bastion’s vehicle bays. Past the panning defence weapons systems, up and out onto the transitway.

It seemed like an age since he had guided his own sanctioned groundcar from the bays and cut across the city, chasing the case which had inevitably brought them to this moment.

It was a swift journey. The armoured groundcar would have accepted few challengers to its dominance of the road. They rattled to a stop and the engines wound down. Once again he was unchained, and led out of the vehicle and towards their destination.

The great glass-and-gold pyramid of the Vranx headquarters reared up before them. Drask no longer felt the awe he had previously known in its shadow. The recent horrors and revelations had rendered it something strange and dark. A broken reflection of his previous impressions.

They moved through the lobby, up one of the priority elevators and out onto the executive floors once again. His escorts paused, discussed their intent with security and then moved off with Drask between them. They paused at the doors to Vranx’s office and took up guard posts at either side. They nodded to Drask. He pushed the door open and stepped inside.

She stood silhouetted by the weak sunlight and the determined efforts of spot-lumens, transformed into something bright, shining and numinous by the actions of nature and technology. She smiled pleasantly enough and finished pouring two glasses of amasec.

‘Drask, please come in,’ she said, and gestured with her free hand. Araceli Vranx resealed the bottle and placed it to one side. ‘Drink?’

‘Thank you,’ he said. He scooped up the glass and nosed it appreciatively. ‘Though I probably shouldn’t.’ He gestured down at his body. ‘Between surgery and drugs, I’m not sure it’s the best of combinations.’

She seemed to consider that for a moment. Her face wrinkled from forced levity to an almost bemused interest. ‘Well, we must simply see what happens then, mustn’t we?’

He sipped at the amasec, unsurprisingly a most refined and potent vintage, and then placed it down again. ‘You wanted to see me, mamzel?’

‘I did. I wanted to offer you my most sincere condolences on your suffering. Had I known that Phemus Nach was embroiled in such… depravity, well, I would have reported it to the relevant authorities. Your organisation has access to all of their holdings and all of our relevant information. I will do whatever is within my power to rectify this wrong.’

‘I am sure that the Bastion will be gratified to hear that, but I do not think it will do me much good.’

‘Oh, we will see about that.’ She raised her glass and tipped it with a knowing smirk. ‘I foresee you having a long and accomplished career, Quillon. May I call you Quillon?’

He ignored the question. ‘A long and storied career owing to your patronage, dependent upon your whim?’

‘That would be one way of seeing it, I suppose. Though an unkind one, I fear.’

‘You’ll forgive me, mamzel, but the wounds are still fresh. Inflicted at the hands of your associates – men who answered to your beck and call. The weight of such attention would chafe me, for the moment.’

‘Entirely understandable. I am, however, your friend in this.’

‘You are?’ he asked, with a bark of surprised laughter.

She looked at him coldly and rose, turning her back to him to stand before the glass windows of the chamber. ‘There are very few people who surprise me in this world, Quillon. Such a sensation is to be savoured. You have done me a service and you have honoured the legacy of those who have come before – the ships which crossed the gulf of space to deliver humanity here. Where others paid it lip service with atrocity, you redeemed that glorious past.’

‘When ships go astray,’ he began carefully, ‘it is most often because of the failings of the captain. The same, as I understand it, is true for industry.’

She turned at his words. She blinked. ‘That is… a fair observation. Yes. Captains can often lose sight of what truly matters. Or they defer to the wrong authority. They put trust in the wrong person.’ She leant closer, bracing her hands on the desk as she stared him down. ‘Is that what you’re worried about, Quillon? Putting trust in the wrong person?’

‘Who are you?’ he breathed.

She laughed. ‘That isn’t an easy question, Quillon. I’ve been many people down through the years. I’ve danced from role to role, face to face. In some regards I’ve forgotten who I was back then and merely embraced who I am now. A mother of progress. A guardian of the future. An interested third party.’

‘None of those are answers…’ he said, forcing his voice to stay even.

‘No. They’re not. Yet they are, to all intents and purposes, the truth. Was poor Phemus too talkative come the end? No. You’re more certain than that… The museum then?’ She shook her head. ‘He did love clinging to the past.’ She looked up to the wall mural. ‘I’ve always been a fan of maintaining a healthy distance. Surface details to be acknowledged but never slavishly obeyed.’

He blinked. ‘It’s true then. You’re… Vance?’

She laughed. ‘I have not heard that name in, well, a literal age. Vance was a naive girl, sharpened by circumstance. She took her chances in leapfrogging through time. Stasis preservation, attended by trusted retainers. Then rejuve when the occasion called for it. I’ve walked this city since time out of mind, and I have taken a special interest in aspects of it. Nurturing them. Watching them grow. Seeing what breeds true in the dark. Midwifing the future.’

‘And that includes Phemus and his atrocities? All the horrors orchestrated in generations past?’

‘They… were a stunted branch of the human tree. Too in love with sacrifice. Sanctity. Do you know what I have learned in my years, Drask? Only survival is sacred. Nothing more. Nothing less. We plant seeds, we watch them grow, but as in the garden, so in life – many will be lost in the tumult.’

‘I could reveal all of this,’ he said haltingly, though he knew he was bluffing. ‘I could bring this to the Bastion. Higher than that, even.’

‘You could, perhaps, Quillon, but who would believe you?’ she asked. ‘I expected better of you. You are a man on a knife’s edge, waiting to fall. You could be destroyed with a few well-placed words. Yet I would preserve you, like an insect in amber. Why do you think that is?’

‘Sport? Some deviant whim? To have power over me?’

‘Nothing so callow. You interest me. That’s why I lent you my aid. You were conveniently placed to deal with the Nachs and their schism. You were dogged and determined in the face of insurmountable odds. That is something that I wish to remain in the world. I want to see what you become, while all around you is change and chaos.’

‘Why?’

‘Because I love this city, Drask,’ she said, ‘this Varangantua.’ She sipped her drink and placed the empty glass carefully to one side. ‘I have loved it since I first helped to raise it up from the dust, through the haze of hunger and madness. I will love it until death finally claims me. If that is by your hand then so be it, but I fully believe that the fates have greater things in mind for both of us.’

He sat, silent and still, clenching and unclenching his hands. He exhaled and looked at her but could say nothing.

‘Then we have an understanding, such as it is. A pleasure to see you, Quillon. Do bear my regards back to the Bastion when you are able.’ Her smile was a serpent’s grin, devoid of warmth and sincerity. ‘And do close the door when you go, won’t you?’

EPILOGUE

His hab was like a foreign world to him now, after his trials and betrayals, and he did not settle into it easily.

Drask paced the small space of it, let his eyes drift from the drab walls to the sparse furnishings, and sat down at his desk. He breathed the long, slow breaths he had been taught to practise in his medicae cell and braced himself against the synthwood.

He was alive. That was what mattered. That was more than some others had. Under the eye of a malevolent power with all the resources of a major merchant-combine, suspected by his colleagues, constantly afraid of putting his allies in the shit…

Lesser men might have broken. Even Alexius, as history had proven, would have shattered under the strain. Drask was not his old mentor, though. He was his own man. He had his own insight, his own method and his own plans.

Drask reached into a drawer and rummaged for a moment before he found what he was looking for.

It was decades old, but he always knew where to find it. Not hidden away as a curiosity or embarrassment, as one of Alexius’ notebooks had been. This book was empty. This book was his. A gift from Alexius, so long ago now, but never used. He had taken notes piecemeal, on scraps of paper, or he had procured other notebooks. There had been something sacred about it, and then it had only been a source of shame.

Drask opened the cover and plucked up a writing quill. With great care he inscribed a single word at the top of the page.

Vranx.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This book had a long journey from concept to completion, and arguably began life as an email request for a short story that I received while on a bus in Northern Ireland. I want to thank Nick Kyme and Richard Garton-Wills for taking the chance on Quillon Drask, Chris Wraight and Guy Haley for being such trailblazers in what Varangantua is and can be, and everyone else who continues to add to this wonderful tapestry of a city.

To my wife, Anne-Sophie, for her constant support, and to my friends Gareth, Mark-Anthony, Chris, Daniel, James and Sean – you guys are everything good in the hobby, and make me want to be a better writer.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Marc Collins is a speculative fiction author living and working in Glasgow, Scotland. Grim Repast is his first novel for Black Library. He is also the writer of the short stories ‘Ghosts of Iron’, ‘Respite’s End’ and ‘Champions, All’ for Warhammer 40,000, and ‘Cold Cases’ for Warhammer Crime. When not dreaming of the far future he works in Pathology with the NHS.

GLOSSARY

BASTION, Enforcer stronghold and base of operations, usually one per district

BLACK ICE, Illegal narcotic

BULWARK, Enforcer armoured wagon

CASTELLAN, Bastion commander

CHASTENER, Special Enforcer ‘interrogator’ deployed to coerce information out of prisoners

CLAVIBOARD, Data input device, effectively a runic keyboard

CORPSESHROUD, Used to cover up murdered citizens to obscure them from public view

CYBER-MASTIFF, Cybernetic canine, principally deployed for search and retrieval but also as a companion

DATAVEIL, System of city-wide comms/archive files, accessible to anyone with an iris augmetic

GILDED, Slang for the aristocratic class

HABCLAVE, Urban district

‘HIS HAND’, Common greeting between Enforcers, referring to the Emperor’s holy will and judgement

HYGIENE-CHAMBER, Bathroom

JOY HOUSE, Den of iniquity where patrons partakeof the pleasures of the flesh

LOCALIS SCELERIS, Effectively the area where a crime is committed and any evidence collected therein

MACRO-ABBATOIR, Huge-scale meat processing plant

MAG-TRANS, Magnetic transport route

MORTUARIUM, Medical facility where corpses are stored and autopsies conducted

PNEUMO-TUBE, Message canister used to communicate throughout the city

PROBATOR, Detective rank

PROBATOR-SENIORIS, Experienced detective of high rank

RAMPART, Enforcer armoured groundcar

REFEC-HOUSE, Common eatery

SMILE-GIRL, Effectively a courtesan, a harlot

SYNTHLEATHER, Cheap, synthetic material

UP-CITY/UPCLAVE, Referring to better quality habitation and overall standard of living in the city

VERIQUARY, Evidence canister or casket

An extract from Bloodlines.

Down, down below, down under the flyovers and the transit arches, down to where the lumens floated on wheezing suspensors and the windows were steamed with condensation. People packed in on all sides, some high on topaz, some exhausted, all smelling of euphoria.

She breathed it in. She let her fingers graze along the rockcrete of the close wall, feeling its coldness against the wet heat of the night. She looked up, and saw the smear-glow of private club entrances, vivid in neon. She heard the rumble of turbine traffic overhead, and the hiss of groundcars on damp asphalt.

She’d taken it. Topaz. It was as good as she’d hoped – she was giddy, enjoying the freedom. Every face she looked at was one of a friend, smiling back at her, rouged, whitened, darkened, flared with photoreactive pigments, glittering with augmetic baubles. Music thumped away, spilling from the open doorways of the sanctioned haze dens, threatening to drag her in, smother her in the heat and the noise.

She could have walked along that street forever, just drinking it in. She liked the smells, overlapping one another, competing like jostling suitors for her attention. She stuck her hands in the pockets of her overcoat, pushed her shoulders back, slipped through the crowds.

She didn’t know what time it was. The deep of the night, for sure, a few hours before dawn. It didn’t matter. Not any more. That was the point of freedom – make your decisions, stupid ones, good ones, get out, do your own thing.

A man lurched into her way, grinning and drunk. He shoved up against her, and she smelled his breath.

‘Hello, young fish,’ he slurred at her, swaying. ‘Come to swim with me?’

He had plastek-looking hair, too clean, too sculpted. She kept on going, sliding past him, out into the middle of the street. The press of people swept him away, giving her more faces to gawp at. Fireworks went off in the sky, dazzling, smelling of chems, picking out high arches overhead engraved with skull-clusters and fleur-de-lys finials. Commercia chameleon-screens flashed and whirled, spinning pixelated images one after the other – a woman smiling, a man gazing at an altar, a Navy drop-ship wheeling across a starfield, troops in uniform marching under a crimson sky on another world.

For the first time, she felt a spike of danger. She had walked a long way, away from the friends she had come with. She had almost forgotten about them entirely, and had very little idea where she was.

She looked back and saw the plastek-hair man following her. He was with others, and they had latched on to her.

Damn.

She picked up the pace, skipping on her heels, darting to the street’s edge, to where the grand avenue, scarred with twin steel ground-tracks, met another one, cobbled and glinting, that ran steeply downwards.

If she hadn’t taken topaz, she’d have stayed, by instinct, with the crowds, where the press of bodies provided its mute kind of safety. But it got darker quickly, and the lumens faded to red, and the old cobblestones underfoot got slippery. The beat of the music felt harder – dull, like the military dirges they transmitted every evening over the communal prop-sets.

Down, down, down.

She felt a bit sick. She shot a glance back and saw that they were still coming, only jogging now, four of them, all drunk on jeneza or rezi or slatov. They all had those sharp, fake haircuts, smart dress, clean boots. Defence-corps trainees, maybe – officer-class, full of entitlement, untouchable. She’d come across the type so many times before. Hadn’t expected to find them down here – perhaps they liked to slum it from time to time as well, to skirt against the grime for fun, see whether it stuck to their uniforms.

Just as she began to worry, someone grabbed her by the arm. She pulled back, only to see a girl smiling at her, a girl her age, pale emerald skin, orange hair, a metal serpent-head stud in her cheek.

‘Come on,’ the girl said, her irises glittering. ‘I saw them too.’

She followed her. She went down a narrow passageway between two big hab-blocks built of dark, crumbling prefab slabs. It soon smelled of urine and old sweat, of drains and discarded carb-bars. As she wound further down the alley, the noise of the men’s footfalls, their laughter, faded. Perhaps they’d gone straight on past. Perhaps they’d never really been that close.

It got hotter. She felt the boom of the music well up from under her, around her, as if the walls themselves were vox-emitters. She needed a drink. For some reason she was very thirsty.

The girl brought her to a door – a heavyset door in a blockwork wall, one with a slide panel in the centre. She activated a summon-chime, and the slide opened, throwing out greenish light from within.

‘Elev in?’ the girl asked.

‘He is,’ came a man’s voice.

The door clunked open. Warm air billowed out, and music came after it, heavy, thumping music. She felt it move through her body, make her want to get going, to get back to that place she’d managed to reach a while back, where everything was forgotten save for the movement, the heat, the heartbeat of escape.

The girl pushed her inside. They were at the head of a long flight of plastek-topped stairs. The walls were bare cinder blocks, the floor sticky with spilled drinks. It was hard to hear anything at all over the music, which seemed to be coming from everywhere at once.

‘Down,’ said the girl, smiling at her again, encouragingly.

They went together. Soon they were in a bigger chamber, one full of bodies moving, throwing shadows against lumen-scatter walls. What had this place once been? An assembly chamber? A chapel, even? Not now. The light was lurid, vivid, pulsing in time to the heavy smack of the music. She smelled sweat fighting with commercial fragrances. She smelled the acrid tang of rezi. There was a high stage with murals half-hidden in a haze of coloured smoke, men and women dancing on platforms surrounded by kaleidoscopic lumen flares. The floor was jammed, crushed with damp bodies in motion. It was hard to breathe.

‘Just keep moving,’ said the girl, taking her by the hand.

They somehow threaded through the crowds. A drink was passed to her and she took it. That made her feel better. She started to look for the source of the music. Faces swelled up out of the dark, flustered and glowing, all grinning at her. They were nice, those faces, and interesting, with their slim metal exo-frames and their holo-halos that waved and flashed like prisms. Where had they all come from? Did they work in the manufactories she had heard about, during the drab day? Or were they all the sons and daughters of the gilded, writhing down here until they collapsed into narc-induced sleep? They were like exotic beasts, feathered, horned, wrapped in silks and sequins, coming in and out of the flickering shadows, fragments of strange bedtime stories, moving in unison under old gothic arches.

She danced for a while. The girl seemed to have gone, but that was fine. She thought back to the past, to the rules that had kept her in her chamber every hour, all the hours, at her studies, learning the catechisms and the rotes, and wanted to scream out loud for the joy of being free of it. Her limbs moved, clumsily, because she had never been able to do this before, but she learned fast, and the topaz made it easier.

They pressed around her, the others – reaching out for her hair, her arms. She lost track of time. More drinks appeared, and she took them again.

And then, much later, the girl came back. She led her from the chamber of lights and heat, and down some more narrow, slippery stairs. That was a relief, for she was getting tired. It would be good to rest, just for a moment. Away from the music, it was cooler, and she felt the sweat patches on her shirt stick to her skin.

‘Where are we going?’ she asked, and was surprised to hear how the words slurred.

‘Time out,’ said the girl. ‘I think you need it.’

It was hard to follow where they went. Some stairs went down, some went up. At one point she thought they’d gone outside, and then in again, but she was getting very tired and her head had started to hurt.

‘Do you have any water?’ she asked.

‘That’s where we’re going,’ came the reply. ‘To get some.’

And then they were through another heavy door. She had the impression of more people around her, though it was very dark, and increasingly cold. They went down yet more stairs, a well so tight that it scraped against her bare arms, even though she wanted to stop now, just sit on the floor, clear her head.

Eventually they ended up in a narrow, empty room with bright overhead lumens that hurt her eyes. She really wanted a drink.

A man was there, one with sallow skin, a tight black bodysuit and collarless shirt, a knotwork tattoo just visible at the base of his neck.

‘What’s your name?’ he asked, pleasantly enough.

‘Ianne,’ she replied.

‘Ianne. That’s unusual. I like it. Are you having a good time?’

‘I could use a drink.’

‘Fine. Come with me, then. We’ll get you something.’

By then, the girl seemed to have gone. She felt hands on her arms, and she was heading down again. The lumens were turned down low, and she struggled to make anything out.

She had the vague sense of being surrounded by people again. She heard a noise like breathing, in and out. She shook her head to clear it, and saw metal shelves, many of them, all with glass canisters on them. She saw tubes, and she saw machines that had bellows and ampoules and loops of cabling. She saw the padded couches, in rows, running back into the dark, and it looked like people were sitting on them.

She felt a lurch of worry. There was no music. It was quiet, and cold, and she didn’t know the way back out.

‘Where am I?’ she asked.

They found a chair for her. It was a recliner, but it was hard and uncomfortable. She thought she should struggle then, but it became hard to think about anything clearly. She felt something wrap around her wrists.

‘Where am I?’ she asked again, more urgently, suddenly thinking of all those catechisms, and the rules, and home, and its certainties.

A face loomed up out of the shadows. She didn’t recognise this one. It was a hard face, with hollow cheeks, and the smile it gave her made her feel suddenly panicky.

‘You’re Ianne? Just relax. You’re in the right place.’

She tried to kick out, but something had tied her ankles down. She looked up, and saw a collection of needles hanging over her, glinting in the cold light. Fear welled up fast, as if she would drown in it.

‘Get me out.’

‘Don’t worry about a thing,’ said the man soothingly, reaching up for one of the needles. It was connected to a slender tube, which looped down from a bag of clear fluid. ‘It’ll all be fine.’

‘I want to get out!’ she cried, starting to struggle.

‘Why would you want that?’ the man asked, tapping the needle and preparing to insert it. He looked up and down the rows on either side of her. Her eyes had adjusted. She could see that the other couches were all occupied. No one lying on them was moving. ‘You’ll do so much good here.’

He set one of the machines running. The device beside her started to whirr, with a thud-tick-thud that sounded like some monstrous heartbeat.

‘Wh– what are you doing?’ she asked, her throat choking up with a thick sense of horror.

‘Just relax,’ he said, reaching over her. ‘I say the same thing every time. This is a place of dreams. So I’m going to give you something now. Something good. And after that – believe me when I say this – you’re going to live forever.’

Click here to buy Bloodlines.

WARHAMMER CRIME

A BLACK LIBRARY IMPRINT

First published in Great Britain in 2021.
This eBook edition published in 2021 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

Represented by: Games Workshop Limited – Irish branch,
Unit 3, Lower Liffey Street, Dublin 1,D01 K199, Ireland.

Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.
Cover illustration by Amir Zand.

Grim Repast © Copyright Games Workshop Limited 2021. Grim Repast, Warhammer Crime, GW, Games Workshop, Black Library, Warhammer, Space Marine, 40K, 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.

A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN: 978-1-80026-602-5

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.

See Warhammer Crime on the internet at
blacklibrary.com

Find out more about Games Workshop and the worlds of Warhammer at
games-workshop.com

For my brother, Jamie, my oldest partner in crime.

eBook license

This license is made between:

Games Workshop Limited t/a Black Library, Willow Road, Lenton, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, United Kingdom (“Black Library”); and

the purchaser of a Black Library e-book product (“You/you/Your/your”)

(jointly, “the parties”)

These are the terms and conditions that apply when you purchase a Black Library e-book (“e-book”). The parties agree that in consideration of the fee paid by you, Black Library grants you a license to use the e-book on the following terms:

* 1. Black Library grants to you a personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable, royalty-free license to use the e-book in the following ways:

o 1.1 to store the e-book on any number of electronic devices and/or storage media (including, by way of example only, personal computers, e-book readers, mobile phones, portable hard drives, USB flash drives, CDs or DVDs) which are personally owned by you;

o 1.2 to access the e-book using an appropriate electronic device and/or through any appropriate storage media.

* 2. For the avoidance of doubt, you are ONLY licensed to use the e-book as described in paragraph 1 above. You may NOT use or store the e-book in any other way. If you do, Black Library shall be entitled to terminate this license.

* 3. Further to the general restriction at paragraph 2, Black Library shall be entitled to terminate this license in the event that you use or store the e-book (or any part of it) in any way not expressly licensed. This includes (but is by no means limited to) the following circumstances:

o 3.1 you provide the e-book to any company, individual or other legal person who does not possess a license to use or store it;

o 3.2 you make the e-book available on bit-torrent sites, or are otherwise complicit in ‘seeding’ or sharing the e-book with any company, individual or other legal person who does not possess a license to use or store it;

o 3.3 you print and distribute hard copies of the e-book to any company, individual or other legal person who does not possess a license to use or store it;

o 3.4 you attempt to reverse engineer, bypass, alter, amend, remove or otherwise make any change to any copy protection technology which may be applied to the e-book.

* 4. By purchasing an e-book, you agree for the purposes of the Consumer Protection (Distance Selling) Regulations 2000 that Black Library may commence the service (of provision of the e-book to you) prior to your ordinary cancellation period coming to an end, and that by purchasing an e-book, your cancellation rights shall end immediately upon receipt of the e-book.

* 5. You acknowledge that all copyright, trademark and other intellectual property rights in the e-book are, shall remain, the sole property of Black Library.

* 6. On termination of this license, howsoever effected, you shall immediately and permanently delete all copies of the e-book from your computers and storage media, and shall destroy all hard copies of the e-book which you have derived from the e-book.

* 7. Black Library shall be entitled to amend these terms and conditions from time to time by written notice to you.

* 8. These terms and conditions shall be governed by English law, and shall be subject only to the jurisdiction of the Courts in England and Wales.

* 9. If any part of this license is illegal, or becomes illegal as a result of any change in the law, then that part shall be deleted, and replaced with wording that is as close to the original meaning as possible without being illegal.

* 10. Any failure by Black Library to exercise its rights under this license for whatever reason shall not be in any way deemed to be a waiver of its rights, and in particular, Black Library reserves the right at all times to terminate this license in the event that you breach clause 2 or clause 3.