BLOODLINES
An Agusto Zidarov novel by Chris Wraight

FLESH AND STEEL
A Noctis and Lux novel by Guy Haley

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

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Contents

Cover

Backlist

Title Page

Warhammer Crime

UP IN ARMS

BRACELET OF BONES

BLOOD BALLOT

BITTER HARVEST

UNNATURAL CAUSES

LOOSE ENDS

CONFESSIONS OF FIRE

THE SIEGE OF ISMYR

SERVICE

About the Authors

An Extract from ‘Bloodines’

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.

UP IN ARMS

MIKE BROOKS

You can find better drinks in Urgeyena than in Davnan Pul’s club, but I wasn’t there for the liquor. I’d based myself in Pul’s when I first started making a name for myself in this part of Varangantua, and so that’s where I was to be found to this day. It suits me well enough, and I’m far from the only person conducting business there. Pul doesn’t mind – I buy drinks while I wait, and my employers buy drinks when they come to talk to me. In fact, I won’t talk to anyone unless they buy a drink first. Got to keep Pul sweet.

The club itself is larger than it looks at first, and ranges over a few different floors and mezzanines. It’s got dark, discreet nooks where people can grab a quiet drink or discuss a little business without being out in the open in front of everyone, but the main floor has brighter lumens overhead, so you can choose if you want to be seen. Most people aren’t there for anything other than a kick of alcohol to chase the weariness of a shift in the manufactorum, or maybe a bit of fun with whoever might be similarly minded, but that’s all for the best. You wouldn’t want an entire place where everyone’s cutting deals. You’d end up standing on each other’s toes.

I had a bottle of jeneza in front of me, but I was pacing myself. I was here to see if any business presented itself, not to get drunk. You might wonder why I’d choose to lurk in a bar where I have to pay for the drinks rather than spend time at home, but I do a lot of things for a lot of people, and sooner or later that’s inevitably going to rub someone up the wrong way. Best not to invite trouble to your door.

I don’t actually have a registered address anywhere in Varangantua’s arcane records system, thanks to a favour I did for an Administratum scribe. Deslan would get fired if his deception was found out, of course, but his gratitude runs so deep he’s prepared to take the risk. His son’s organs would have ended up on the black market without my intervention, after all.

We won’t talk about what happened afterwards to the organs of the thugs who’d snatched him off the street, but let’s just say I placed my shots carefully.

‘Sorena?’

I looked up, and didn’t bother to suppress my smile. Jarv Korden was a familiar face, and not an unpleasant one. I gestured at the empty seat opposite.

‘Good to see you, Jarv. Take the weight off.’

He didn’t move, and I felt my smile slip a little. Jarv was part of Targus Syndicate, a quasi-legal, semi-respectable conglomerate of money-spinning enterprises, with its fingers in more ration packs than a workhouse of orphans. However, the powerhouse of their operation was the munitions that Urgeyena churned out. The vast majority were destined for off-world, of course – mainly my erstwhile siblings in the Astra Militarum, or the security forces of the Imperial Navy – but Targus skimmed a percentage off the top and had become a big player by moving them on the streets. A whole lot of people wanted guns in Varangantua, and Targus could make that happen for a price.

Targus would be bad people to have mad at me, so I was a little concerned when Jarv didn’t take the seat I’d offered him.

‘Heard a disturbing rumour about you, Sorena,’ Jarv said. He had one thumb tucked into his belt and, other than his drink, nothing that looked like a weapon anywhere near to hand… yet.

‘What would that be?’ I enquired, casually switching my bottle of jeneza to my right hand and lowering my left so it brushed against my thigh. Pul didn’t allow guns in his club, but there wasn’t a person alive who could part me from my combat knife.

‘Heard you did a job for someone a couple of weeks ago,’ Jarv said. He was eyeing me, and not in the usual way – watching me, not looking at me.

‘I do a lot of jobs for a lot of people, Jarv,’ I told him, ‘and you know I don’t discuss details. But what’s got you worried?’

‘Word is that job meant Piotr Tarsh and three of his scummers aren’t walking around any more,’ Jarv said uneasily. He raised his eyebrows. ‘You doing hits now, Sorena?’

I sighed. ‘Sit down, Jarv.’ He didn’t move. I clucked my tongue in frustration, deliberately placed both hands on my bottle and nodded at the chair opposite me. ‘You wanna have this conversation? Sit. Down.’

He stepped closer, then finally lowered his arse into the chair and faced me across the table. His short dark hair was mussed upwards slightly, which suited him, and he wore a casual suit jacket with a hint of off-world style to it over a low-necked top that showed off his collarbones. His nose was very slightly crooked, and there was a small scar at the corner of his left eye. I’d never found out if those marks had come from his work for Targus or just from a street brawl, but either was possible. Jarv wasn’t afraid to get his hands dirty if needed, although from what I could gather, he took little pleasure in it.

‘My work hasn’t changed,’ I told him seriously. ‘I’m a fixer. I do jobs. If obstacles present themselves, I eliminate them. That’s the long and short of it.’

‘And Piotr Tarsh was an obstacle?’ Jarv demanded.

‘He made himself into one,’ I said bluntly. ‘I was moving cargo – don’t ask me what – and it seems Piotr wanted a piece of what I was carrying. That would have meant I didn’t get paid, so I took exception to that.’ I took a swig of my jeneza, relishing the dark, malty flavour. ‘I’m not a contract killer, Jarv. Never have been, never will be.’

That had been a dirty few minutes. A hail of gunfire, a screaming face as Cratton Tarsh’s only son tried to smash my window. I’d put a las-bolt through his head before I’d even realised who he was.

‘Piotr Tarsh tried to rob you?’ Jarv said incredulously.

I shrugged. ‘He might not have even known it was me. Besides, no one ever accused him of being smart, just nasty. We all know his sister got the brains.’ The Tarshes weren’t a respectable outfit like Targus Syndicate, but they were a damned sight more vicious. I’d been watching my back ever since.

Jarv rubbed his chin. ‘Well, that changes things, I guess.’

I raised an eyebrow. ‘It does?’

Jarv nodded. ‘Yeah. The barons wanted to hear your side of what went down. A few people would have been concerned if you’d become an assassin.’

I cocked an eyebrow. ‘Don’t tell me the high and mighties would be getting nervous about me.’

Jarv looked uneasy. ‘They didn’t get where they are by ignoring threats, Sorena, and if you’d started taking hit contracts, freelancer as you are… well, you might just become a threat. But it’s just business as usual?’

‘Business as usual,’ I confirmed.

‘Then maybe we can do business,’ Jarv said, and smiled for the first time that evening. ‘Got us a cargo that needs moving to Saltstone, plus one of us to take payment. A small load, but valuable.’

I nodded. Knowing Targus, it would be guns and ammo – I didn’t need to know exactly what. All I needed to do was get it from one place to the other without the Lex seizing it. ‘Anything unusually heavy?’

‘Not unless you count Mirea,’ Jarv said with a snort. ‘But no, she ain’t.’

I paused, my bottle halfway to my mouth. ‘Mirea?’

‘New girl,’ Jarv said. ‘She’s learning.’

‘And you figure the best way for her to do that is to come on a delivery?’

Jarv snorted a laugh. ‘Who better to learn from than the best?’

I grunted. ‘I’m not a babysitter, Jarv.’

‘She’s no baby,’ Jarv objected. ‘She’s not a data-scribe – she’s from my side of the organisation. She’s just new. She’ll see a bit more of the operation this way. Besides, would you prefer to take Ugan to make the deal?’

I grimaced. You could bathe Ugan Wrodin for a day in fresh water and cleansers and he’d still be oilier than a Chimera’s gearbox. Besides, it was Targus’ deal – if one of theirs was there, I didn’t have to barter on their behalf with whoever was buying, which was fine by me.

‘Fine, fine. I’ll take the new kid.’

In the five years I’ve spent in Varangantua, I’ve come to realise it has a real variety of shadows. There are the long, tired shadows cast during the day by its old red sun, and the dusty, forgotten shadows of the abandoned parts, home to vermin and old memories. There are the clean-edged, overlapping shadows cast by a multitude of different lumens at night, and the cloying, muffling shadows where secret business is conducted. Darkness is Varangantua’s natural state, and it’s where people like me thrive.

However, my least favourite sort of shadows are the ones that contain people holding guns, and when I pulled my Zalamar into the loading bay of the Targus warehouse in High Ledge, strong white lumens snapped on overhead that left a lot of darkness around the edges. The Zalamar was a monster – it had to be, to resist local hazards like acid rain, chemical effluent, bad roads and worse drivers – but its strength was in its engine, which a genius named Sevastian Dex had tweaked to the very limits of performance. It could turn a stray round or two, but it wasn’t armour-plated. I was illuminated, and I had an urge to pull on the pair of photo goggles I keep handy to see if I had company.

I resisted, because only a few seconds after the lumens lit up, Jarv appeared in my field of view followed by a cargo-servitor bearing several packing cases. If Targus had lured me here to take me out, Jarv wouldn’t be walking out into the middle of it.

He was trailed by a woman I assumed was the Mirea he’d mentioned, and I sized her up quickly. Medium height, medium build, with half her scalp shaved and the hair on the other half worked into a long braid that hung down past her shoulder. She had a chunky autopistol in a hip holster, and a swagger that suggested she wasn’t as confident as she was trying to seem. She was young, but not a child. That didn’t necessarily mean a lot, because I’d seen juvies pick up guns to defend their families, and grown adults who’d wet themselves in fear, but Targus weren’t the sort to tolerate dead weight. Despite my words to Jarv, if they were willing to let her represent them, she had to have at least some clue what she was about. Still, it never hurts to express some reluctance to your potential employer. It helps keep your prices high.

I popped the cargo hold, leaving the door to rise with a mechanised whine, then opened the driver’s door and stepped out. ‘Jarv.’

‘Sorena,’ he replied. ‘You all set?’

‘Wouldn’t be here otherwise.’ I looked past him. ‘You must be Mirea.’

‘Sure am,’ she said. Her eyes licked over me, sizing me up. I don’t look like much, but that’s sort of the point. I try not to draw attention to myself. Plasweave and synthleather over my armoured bodysuit, and to hide some of my more noticeable scars. Imperial Guard muscle, and hair so short it’s nearly my old military buzz cut. The Zalamar is the flashiest thing about me, and I’d tone that down if I could, but you can’t easily get that sort of performance out of a more standard-looking vehicle.

‘I don’t know you, so here are the rules,’ I told her bluntly, and watched her face fall. ‘My job is to get you and the merchandise to where you need to go. Once we get to the other end, that’s your responsibility. For as long as we’re travelling, you do as I say. If I say duck, you duck. If I say we’re stopping, we’re stopping. If we’ve stopped and I say we need to get back to the groundcar, you get back to the groundcar. You disobey me when you’re in my vehicle, you disobey your barons who hired me to get you there, because they know how I work, and they hired me all the same. You understand me?’

Mirea threw a questioning glance at Jarv, who looked steadily back at her. ‘I think Sorena asked you something, Mirea,’ he prompted.

‘I understand you,’ she muttered in my direction. ‘Anything else?’ she added a moment later, sarcastically.

‘Yeah. No lho-sticks – the machine-spirit doesn’t like it.’ I beckoned to Jarv’s servitor. ‘Follow me.’

‘Follow her,’ Jarv clarified to it, and it did so. He came around to the Zalamar’s cargo hold as well, but I held my hand up to stop him when he tried to pick up one of the crates. He laughed. ‘You don’t trust me, Sorena?’

‘Weight distribution is my job,’ I told him seriously. ‘I can’t have the car’s balance thrown off if I need to get creative.’

Jarv sighed. ‘You really are a pain to work with, you know that?’

‘Yup.’ I flashed him a grin. ‘It’s why I get the results.’

‘And we can’t argue with those,’ Jarv conceded as I began to load up. The rad shielding I’d installed on the last job had things fitting more snugly than it would have before, but a little less room to slide around is only a good thing when you’re running munitions. A knock or two should have been fine, but there’s no such thing as a guaranteed smooth ride in Varangantua, and sometimes I have to get creative.

‘Ready,’ I announced, closing up and heading back to the driver’s door, still shadowed by Jarv and his servitor. I jerked my head at Mirea. ‘You getting in, or what?’

‘Am I allowed?’ she sneered, but she skulked to the passenger door without me having to dignify her question with a response. The door clunked shut behind her, and I turned to Jarv.

‘I hate to be so mercenary,’ I said, completely insincerely, ‘but… my payment?’

‘Here you go.’ Jarv passed me a fat pouch, and didn’t even tut when I opened it to check it was all there. I prefer to deal in physical formats when the amounts are manageable. The odds of some lexator savant trawling through my accounts isn’t likely, but if it ever does happen, I’d prefer there to be as little obvious evidence of where my money comes from, and in what quantities, as possible.

I tucked the pouch away. ‘No speech about how good it would be for me to join Targus properly, instead of living my dangerous freelance life?’

He half smiled. ‘I know a lost cause when I see one. Drive safe, Sorena.’

I touched my index finger to my temple and flipped it towards him. I’d saluted a rogue’s gallery of bastards, incompetents and even one or two actual heroes during my time in the Astra Militarum, so I could spare one for a man whom I personally respected, in the Varangantua way.

By which I mean, everything could have changed by the morning.

I got back into the Zalamar, where Mirea was sitting somewhat sullenly.

‘Ready?’ I asked.

I didn’t wait for her to respond before I threw it into reverse.

‘You ever get bored, just driving?’ Mirea asked after we’d been underway for about thirty minutes. We hadn’t spoken until that point.

‘I don’t just drive,’ I replied. ‘But, no.’

‘You must be easily amused,’ Mirea declared, looking away, out of her window.

I snorted. ‘If you’re concentrating on driving all the time, you’re a crap driver. I only have to pay attention now and then.’

Mirea looked back at me. ‘That’s not encouraging.’

‘The driver’s trance is a real thing, kid,’ I told her. ‘Especially in a city like this. You get to the point where the lumens stop being individual points of light and merge into the pattern of the road. Once you can see that pattern, and recognise it, you learn to detect when something is wrong or out of place, in a way you’ll never manage if all you’re seeing is a myriad of individual vehicles.’

I could practically hear Mirea’s expression, despite not looking at her. ‘You’re kidding, right?’ she said.

I shook my head as I overtook a freight hauler. Say what you like about Varangantua, and I often do, but even the most crooked vladars know to keep the main-trans running clear and free. Trade is the lifeblood of this place, and trade can’t happen if goods can’t move. It’s the rest of it that’s the problem – the labyrinth of backstreets and half-forgotten subways, the alleys and the criss-crossing maglev lines.

‘My hand to the Emperor. You’ve got to see the pattern of a place. Once you have that, it’s better than a warning bell.’ I shrugged as I changed gear, the street-lumens flashing by over our heads. ‘That’s as true for a city as it is for a warzone.’

‘You’re telling me you were in a warzone?’ Mirea snorted.

‘It’s no great secret. Formund Forty-First Mechanised, the Armoured Scorpions. Got myself posted to being a Salamander Scout driver.’ I laughed. ‘I’m telling you, you learn to pull off evasive manoeuvres in those beasts over rough terrain, handling a thoroughbred like this on a street is like a walk in Palatyne Parkland.’

That quietened her down, and we drove on for a few more minutes in silence. It was going to be the best part of two days to our destination, Water’s Edge in Saltstone, and I had no objection if most of that was spent without talking.

‘Okay, so you were Guard,’ Mirea said, just when I was wondering if she might have dozed off. ‘What happened, you deserted or something?’

‘Nothing so mundane,’ I told her, checking the lights in the rear-view. ‘We’d just finished a campaign and this toff needed a driver. The colonel felt like currying favour, so he lent me out. The toff must have liked how I handled the car, because the next thing I know, a few palms have been greased and I’m no longer Corporal Sorena Varlon, Salamander driver, I’m now Sorena Varlon, chauffeur to a family rich enough to bribe the Astra Militarum when they want a new servant.’

‘And you left that life of luxury behind to drive munitions around?’ Mirea laughed. ‘Yeah, right.’

I grimaced. ‘Wealth don’t make you untouchable, kid. It helps, but it’s not everything. I never knew the ins and outs of it, but that family must have had enemies, because they went down hard.’

I didn’t mention the name of House Dukarr. I’d thought my life was set when a Navigator House decided it wanted me on its books, but someone somewhere in its ranks must have done something to attract the attention of His Imperial Majesty’s Divine Inquisition. I’ve been around the galaxy enough to know their sigil when it was being flashed at the gate guards. I stole the limousine, sold it for a stupidly low price, grabbed my things and bolted halfway across the city. On reflection I should have gone farther, but that was years ago now, and whatever business the Inquisition had with House Dukarr, it seems it never stretched to chasing down loose ends like me.

‘Nobles. Pfah.’ Mirea sighed. ‘That’s why the syndicate is such a good bet. We take care of our own. If the sanctioners take down one of our rackets, we strike out elsewhere.’

‘Oh, the syndicate does just fine,’ I agreed. ‘I’m not sure I’d want to be one of the bits that get taken down, though. You spend a bit of time in the Guard, you get used to the idea of people above you considering you to be an “acceptable loss”.’

‘That’s war,’ Mirea began hotly. ‘That’s totally diff–’

‘Throne, how new to this are you?’ I demanded. ‘You think you matter to Targus? You’re an expendable street-level asset, doing the dirty work while your barons sit at the fancy tables and talk supply contracts with the vladars! You’re gonna have to scratch and claw yourself a long way up the ladder before anyone there is going to give half a damn about whether you live or die.’

‘At least I’m loyal!’ Mirea snapped. ‘Is there any responsibility you haven’t run from? Does anyone even care–’

‘Shut up.’

‘You don’t get to–’

‘I said shut up,’ I snarled. ‘There are sanctioners behind us!’

That worked, and it was true to boot, although I wished it hadn’t been. Flashing lights had appeared in the rear-view – the bane of anyone in my line of work, or anything close to it. Sanctioners might be straight-up – which was bad – or they might be corrupt – which was potentially also bad, since it didn’t necessarily mean they’d be corrupt in your favour – or they could be lazy, which was probably the best option. There was nothing to say they were after me, so I slowed slightly and pulled over to let them pass, but as they drew alongside, the laud hailer started up.

‘Zalamar, pull over or we will fire!’

I spat a curse. The sanctioners’ Rampart was nowhere near the size of the Salamander I used to drive, but it was still substantially larger than my Zalamar, so I couldn’t just shunt it aside. There was no point me trying to outrun them on the main-trans unless I absolutely had to, either – the Enforcers don’t send their bullies out in any old pieces of junk. This called for finesse.

I rolled off the main-trans, and the sanctioners followed.

‘You can’t let them get the goods!’ Mirea protested.

‘I’m not going to let them get the goods,’ I snapped. ‘Throne, kid, who do you think you’re riding with?’

I’d slowed to take the turning, and to make the sanctioners think I was going to comply. More fool them – the only reason they wanted me to pull over was to make me into a stationary target, and I wasn’t playing.

‘Hold on,’ I told Mirea, and gunned the engine.

The Zalamar sprang forward, as Dex’s fine-tuning did its work. The sanctioners would have expected me to run straight away if I was going to, and were half a second late in following – enough for me to get a head start on them. I streaked away and swerved around a slow-moving Jujen Delta hauler, then slowed to match its pace and keep it between us and the sanctioners just as their vehicle-mounted heavy stubber opened up.

‘They’re shooting!’ Mirea announced, somewhat redundantly, then yelled in terror as the Jujen veered towards us, trying to escape the gunfire. I accelerated again, roaring past it and letting it swerve into the barrier between us and the oncoming traffic, then slid between a Grappia Nohk and a Shiiv Luxer. Each one instinctively steered away from us too, and I was running out of cover.

Luckily, we were coming up on an intersection.

‘Oh, Holy Terra!’ Mirea wailed, covering her face as I cut in front of the Luxer, causing it to slam on its brakes. I swerved to the right at the intersection, then slalomed left again and into the lanes of oncoming traffic heading for the main-trans, which did little for Mirea’s sense of well-being, judging by her cries.

‘Keep it down,’ I told her tersely, while vehicles veered right and left in front of us, their klaxons wailing like angered bull grox. ‘I need to concentrate.’

Most drivers, upon seeing another vehicle heading straight for them, will get out of the way. So long as I kept going straight, I was actually less at risk of collision than if I tried to weave my way through. The trouble was, I couldn’t go at full speed while trailblazing like this, whereas the sanctioners behind me could barrel after me at full tilt through the gaps I’d already created.

I saw the bulky shape of their vehicle wobble into view behind me, and knew a new hail of stubber shells would be coming my way in a moment. It was time to disappear again.

I had to time it perfectly, but that’s why I’m so good at what I do. I braked for half a second, then threw the Zalamar to the right again. We slid between the back of one vehicle and the front of another into a side street, and the crash I heard from behind me suggested that the one I’d just cut across had slammed on its brakes, then been hit by the one following it. I looked into the rear-view and saw them blocking the entrance to the street. Oh dear, what a shame.

A few moments later the sanctioners’ Rampart came through, ramming both of them aside, but at least we’d made some ground on the bastards.

‘You’re going to get us killed!’ Mirea screamed. Maybe she’d have been fine in a straight-up firefight, but she wasn’t handling this sort of stress well. Not surprising, really – she had absolutely no control over what was going on.

‘You complain more than my old colonel,’ I told her absently. I couldn’t easily outrun the Rampart on the flat, but my Zalamar could turn more tightly and accelerate faster after doing so – exactly the sorts of things that would give us an edge in these narrower streets. The trick was not to get caught on a long enough stretch that the heavy stubber could draw a bead on us.

I veered left again, just before the big gun coughed a spatter of shells into the space we’d just vacated. I was driving on reflexes alone now, swerving around piles of refuse and trying to avoid where overhead power lines had broken and dangled down.

‘Wall!’ Mirea shouted, pointing ahead.

‘I see it!’

A quick right turn, then another left even as I heard the smash of metal on rockcrete when the sanctioners took a corner too tightly. It wouldn’t slow them much – in these parts, the buildings would suffer more than their vehicle – but every collision bought me a little more time.

Even so, I didn’t have time to waste playing carnodon and sump-rat through these streets. I made one more right turn, accelerated hard, then threw the Zalamar into a spin.

A less skilled driver would have gone nose first into one of the buildings that crowded close on either side, but I adhere to the first rule of driving: know yourself, and know your vehicle. We executed a perfect one-eighty – although judging by Mirea’s scream you’d have thought the Zalamar had come apart – and I slammed us into reverse. The sanctioners’ Rampart would be coming into view at any moment, and I needed to be ready.

I carry an Accatran Mk II laspistol, a souvenir from my term in service, which has saved me from ravening xenoforms and angry Varangantuan thugs alike, but that wasn’t going to cut it here. For this, I was going to need the Lucius-pattern Mk 22c shotgun I keep in the concealed compartment in my driver’s door.

I snapped the cover open, grabbed the weapon and elbowed down the hatch in the door. It was supposed to serve as a window, if you were ever in the rare position of wanting to experience the outside world, but it was wide enough for me to push my upper body out of while keeping one knee on the wheel.

The Rampart swerved into view. I braced the Lucius against my shoulder and pulled the trigger.

Their armour plating would have laughed at my weapon, despite the manstopper rounds with which it was loaded. Their tyres, heavy duty though they were, were a different matter.

I got the front offside one with my first shot, and not a moment too soon. The heavy stubber rattled into life, but they were already slewing to their left, and they tracked a line of shots down the side of the street a moment before they crashed into a wall at a speed and angle that even their vehicle couldn’t ignore. They punched right through it and came to a halt partway inside the building, and I ducked back inside the Zalamar.

‘What,’ Mirea said shakily as I replaced the Lucius in the door, ‘the shit, was that?’

‘I don’t just drive,’ I snapped. I threw the Zalamar into another spin and accelerated again. ‘I’m sticking to the route – back onto the main-trans, and head for the Sybaran Tunnel. If they get on the vox then the Bastion might send gunships after us, but Zurovs won’t be able to see us from overhead if we’re in the tunnel, and once we’re out the other side it’s a new district and–’

‘Why were they after us?’ she demanded, interrupting me. ‘Did you tell anyone about this run?’

‘Of course I didn’t!’ I snarled. ‘Did you?’ I didn’t wait for her to answer. ‘Maybe they have an informant inside Targus. Throne, maybe someone saw my groundcar when I killed Piotr Tarsh and flagged it up to them! I wouldn’t have thought the sanctioners would have a problem with me taking him down, but if they think I’m a contract killer then–’

‘You killed Piotr Tarsh?’

‘Yeah, why? You had a crush on him or something?’

‘Who knows?’ Mirea demanded. ‘Does Targus know?’

‘There are rumours!’ I yelled as I accelerated out of the mess of streets and towards the slip road. ‘Jarv knows – I told him when he asked. Why does it matter?’

‘Because Targus just went into business with the Tarshes, that’s why!’

Only my long experience at driving even when under extreme pressure saved me from veering into something. ‘What? How do you–’

‘I overheard Jarv mention it. He didn’t know I was there – he never saw me–’

‘Shut up, shut up!’ I kept driving, but my mind was moving faster. Mirea had to be wrong, she had to be… but it was safer to assume she wasn’t. Had the sanctioners been set on me deliberately, a welcome gift to the Tarshes as revenge for Piotr’s death? No, they’d have arranged for more – Jarv knew I’d fight to protect the merchan–

The world abruptly ended behind me, louder than war and brighter than death.

I was upside down. I could tell that because the blood from where I’d bitten my lip was dripping into my nose. Old instincts flooded back as I snorted and sent a fine spray of red into the air, and I didn’t reach for my harness immediately. First rule of a wreck: never uncouple unless you know what you’re about to drop into.

I looked up – or down, now – but there were no obvious hazards. I glanced sideways and saw Mirea hanging there, her arms slumped loose, but she jerked back into consciousness almost as soon as my eyes came to rest on her.

‘Aaahhh! Wha–’

‘We crashed,’ I told her immediately. ‘You’re upside down. Stay calm, release your harness when you’re ready, and drop.’ I suited actions to words and uncoupled, dropping the short distance to land, somewhat crumpled, against the Zalamar’s roof. Throne, but my neck hurt! My heart was racing, and I was trembling from the dump of adrenaline into my system, but I was in one piece. Better than it might have been.

I stumbled out of the door and pulled myself upright, then froze in horror.

The entire back of my groundcar had gone. Only a few twisted fingers of metal remained, the rest having been blown outwards by a cataclysmic explosion.

We hadn’t made it onto the slip road. The explosion had taken us out before we’d got there, along with another vehicle behind us, which had veered into the barrier a few yards back. I could see the shattered windscreen, punctured in a dozen places by shrapnel, and suspected the driver would be bleeding to death even now.

Not my problem. I’d just lost my fucking groundcar.

I don’t panic easily, but I could feel its claws in me. We were isolated and obvious, and with no easy means of escape.

There was a thump from inside the Zalamar, then the door on the far side opened and I heard Mirea crawl out. She vomited on the street, just as a Marrus Grox came around the corner. It was a ground hauler, longer than my Zalamar, and rather taller and broader. Its cab could hold three people, and the separate cargo space behind could house perhaps a dozen or so more. Easily enough to pile out and take care of anyone still alive in the aftermath of an orchestrated crash.

The Grox began to slow. Ominous, or just gawping? I didn’t wait to find out. I drew my Accatran and aimed it at the driver.

‘Just keep going!’ I yelled. ‘Just keep going!’

I saw his eyes widen and his jaw drop as he registered the laspistol being trained on him, and he put his foot down and sped up again. The Grox roared past and we were alone again for a moment, save for the incessant rush and flash of traffic on the main-trans above and behind me, and whatever eyes were watching us from the shanties beneath its arches, or the dark streets opposite from which we’d just emerged.

‘Get up,’ I told Mirea, forcing the door compartment open and pulling my Lucius out again, along with an ammo belt for it, which I buckled around my waist. ‘Get up, or I leave you here.’

Her face appeared past the front wheel, wide-eyed and pale. She was supporting herself with her hands, and they were white-knuckled. ‘What happened? What’s going on?’

‘We’re moving, that’s what’s going on.’ I eyed the dark streets opposite, but I didn’t like the look of them. The sanctioners’ wreck was back that way, and open skies above the alleys for the Zurovs to peer down into. The shanties were the better option. A lot of eyes, it was true, but bodies to mingle with, and mouths that wouldn’t be rushing to spill info to any sanctioners who came looking. ‘This way. Come on.’

Mirea staggered around the front of the Zalamar after me, and we clambered over the safety rail and skidded down the weed-choked gravel of the escarp and into the deeper shadows under the flyovers. A few lights flickered ahead of us, and I fingered the coin pouch Jarv had given me. Shantyfolk didn’t tend to ask too many questions, particularly if you had money. Of course, there’d always be one or two who’d try to get their hands on your money through other means, but I knew I carried myself with confidence, and the Lucius would speak a lot louder than most of them wanted to hear.

‘What happened?’ Mirea demanded at my elbow. ‘Where are we going?’

‘Someone just tried to kill us,’ I told her. ‘And first of all we’re going to find some caffeine and some pain meds, and then we’re going to work out what to do about that.’

The refec-house was barely worthy of the name, seeing as how it had clearly been bodged together from whatever could be found that even remotely resembled building materials, but the grill – housed in a part of it that looked to me like it had once been a sanctioners’ Bulwark wagon, and how that ended up down here I had no idea – was hot, and the jejen fried on it was tasty, albeit with a slight taste of petro-chem. I bit into the flatbread, relishing the peppery flavour on my tongue.

‘Are you ready to start talking yet?’ Mirea demanded. She had a nasty bruise coming out on her left temple, but her eyes were alert.

‘You pissed anyone off in Targus?’ I asked. ‘Step on a baron’s foot? Leave a door unlocked and let a bunch of merchandise get stolen? Anything like that?’

Mirea scowled at me. ‘Of course not! Besides, I’ve only been with them for a couple of months.’

‘You related to anyone important?’

She snorted. ‘Downclave trash, right here. I’m already doing better than anyone else in my family.’

I nodded, and took a sip of my caffeine. It was black and near scalding, but it had a kick like a Yuvian Leaper. Just the way I liked it. ‘So you were just collateral damage when Targus tried to kill me as a present for the Tarshes.’

‘What?’ Mirea demanded. ‘Targus wouldn’t–’

‘Timer,’ I cut her off. ‘Timer in the packing cases. Makes the most sense. Jarv knows he can set a chrono by my driving – he gave the destination, and he knew the route I’d take. If we hadn’t been pulled over by the sanctioners, we’d have already been in the Sybaran Tunnel when that explosion hit. Enclosed space, high volume of traffic all around us – that’s a wreck neither of us would have walked away from. Throne, if I hadn’t put additional shielding around the trunk for the last job I did we probably wouldn’t be here now anyway, but the tunnel would have made sure of it.’

I saw her face empty as she considered what I was saying. She’d been a distraction, a Targus face sent along to make everything look legitimate. If they’d wanted me to do the deal at the other end, I’d have asked questions about the buyers, and they couldn’t know what connections I’d have to independently verify things. A new syndicate member though – tell them to go to a place and get paid in exchange for a bunch of weapons, they’re not going to ask too many questions. You don’t want to look like you can’t follow orders when you’re new.

‘Targus and I have done business before, several times,’ I continued, taking another bite of jejen. It actually hurt that Jarv had tried to kill me. I hadn’t thought I cared that much about our relationship, but apparently I did. ‘It would look bad for them to just off me when I’d done them no harm. An explosion when I’m carrying that sort of merchandise might be suspicious, but it’s plausible. They do the Tarshes a favour without obviously bloodying their hands, everyone’s happy. Except you and me, of course, but we’re dead by that point.’

Mirea hissed in anger, but I could see her adding it up and coming to the same unpleasant conclusion. She might have been a bit naive, but she wasn’t a fool. ‘Shit. What are we supposed to do now?’

‘The way I see it, you have three choices,’ I told her. ‘You can do your barons a favour by trying to kill me, although I have to say, I’m not sure how well that will go for you.’

She pursed her lips and stared at me. ‘Let’s assume for the moment I’m not gonna do that.’

‘Second, you can run and hide,’ I said. ‘You should be dead. You’re probably not important enough for Targus to make sure of it though – you were just here to make me think everything was in order.’

She swallowed. It obviously hurt her to realise how little her life meant to her higher-ups. Well, I’d tried to tell her.

‘Thirdly,’ I finished, ‘you can help me out, when I go after Targus and gut those fuckers.’

Mirea blinked. ‘When you what?’

‘I’ve got a decent life in this city,’ I said, taking a swig of my caffeine. ‘I’m good at what I do, and I get paid well for it. I can’t keep doing that if Targus want me dead, and I’m not the sort to run off with my tail between my legs. That’s bad for reputation. If it’s a choice between me or them, I’m gonna make it them.’

‘Leaving aside the fact you might actually be insane,’ Mirea said, taking a bite of her own food, ‘what about the Tarshes? They’re the ones who want you dead, the way I reckon it.’

I shrugged. ‘Old Man Cratton didn’t come after me himself. It looks like he asked Targus to do it. They didn’t have to say yes, so my issue is with them. If Cratton wants to continue the conversation after I’m finished with Targus, I’ll deal with him then.’

Mirea looked at me for a long few seconds. ‘You think you can actually take down Targus, don’t you? How? You’re just one woman with a shotgun. And maybe, if I’m feeling particularly suicidal, another woman with an autopistol.’

‘I’m a woman with a shotgun who knows a woman with an autopistol who’s probably seen more of how Targus works than I have,’ I said around the last mouthful of my jejen. ‘And I have a few friends.’

Mirea snorted. ‘What, there are other ex-Militarum types knocking around? What sort of friends can you have that will go up against Targus?’

‘I pick my friends carefully,’ I told her. ‘Some will help without asking questions, some will take offence to the fact someone tried to kill me, and some just enjoy causing trouble and don’t much care who they cause it for.’ I drained my mug of caffeine. ‘What’s it going to be?’

Mirea hesitated for a few more seconds, then sighed. ‘I want to meet your friends before I decide whether I want a part of this idiocy.’

‘Fine.’ I stood up. ‘We’ll take the mag-rail.’

Of course, if Mirea was privy to our plans and then decided she didn’t want in, I’d kill her. She wouldn’t go back to Targus with the information. But she didn’t need to know that.

The mag-rail was an old transportation system, designed to get workers from their habclaves to the plants and manufactoria for their shifts, but it linked up well enough that you could use it to get around Varangantua so long as you weren’t trying to get anywhere nice and didn’t mind spending hours in metal tubes that stank of sweat. Luckily for us, we were going to Vostoka, which is not nice, and also not a destination usually found anywhere in proximity to the word ‘luckily’. The mag-rail ran through it though, and when I say ran, I mean you got the impression it didn’t really want to stop.

The doors creaked open, and Mirea and I disembarked along with a motley selection of fellow travellers. It wasn’t near a shift change, so the mag-rail hadn’t been packed brimful with weary labourers, but that was a double-edged knife. A little extra cover might have been nice – it all depended on how much attention Targus were paying to their orchestrated accident, and whether they’d be watching for me.

‘You’re just gonna walk around with that?’ Mirea murmured.

‘What?’ I glanced down at the worn, stained cloth bag I’d bought from a confused shanty-dweller, in which rested my Lucius. ‘It’s in a bag, and I’m not leaving it behind.’

‘If we get stopped–’

‘You let me worry about that,’ I told her. ‘You know this area?’

‘I’m a Vostoka girl,’ Mirea replied. ‘Not this end of it, though.’

‘Well, it’s not far. Stick close, though – we’ve got a rough habclave ahead.’

Some of the gilded youths like to come down every now and then to see how their underlings live. They’ll hit up a topaz joint, try some paraja from a food stall, maybe go watch a few rounds of bare-knuckle at the Bruisehouse. They’ll have minders with them, to make sure none of the locals get uppity, and the minders pick the streets they’ll walk down.

They wouldn’t have walked down the street Mirea and I were on now. It didn’t have the bright hustle and bustle of the parts of Vostoka the gilded saw – it was quiet, the signs advertising businesses subdued, as though not wanting to attract the wrong sort of attention, and the windows watched hungrily. I could practically feel eyes on us.

I sighed, unbuckled the bag and pulled the Lucius out to rest it on my shoulder. It was grandstanding, but I hoped it would make anyone think twice about trying something. Vostoka wasn’t like the shanties. These were sanctioned slums – as opposed to unofficial ones, which were obliterated as soon as someone important enough got offended by their existence – and its residents had been assigned to it based on their occupation, not because they’d drifted in by choice. That made people a mite tetchy, and none too welcoming of outsiders.

It might have just been my imagination, but the sense of being watched faded a little.

‘Nearly there,’ I reassured Mirea, and pointed at a sign a little further up the street. ‘That’s our stop.’

She squinted at it. ‘Dex’s?’

‘Dex’s,’ I confirmed. ‘Best place in Varangantua to find a ride.’

‘And you need a ride?’ Mirea asked.

‘My groundcar’s been blown up,’ I told her. ‘You’re damn right I need a ride.’

Warm, yellow light spilled out from the door of Dex’s place into the street, and I walked in without knocking. Sevastian Dex was sitting at their desk, poring over a data-slate, between raised ramps on which sat groundcars of one sort or another, and in front of the walker cage they used to move heavy engine blocks and the like. I coughed to announce myself, and when they looked up, a grin spread across their bearded face.

‘Sorena! Long time!’ Their grin faded, and they frowned at the Lucius. ‘That gun means someone’s in trouble – opportunity it ain’t me.’

‘It ain’t you,’ I assured them, crossing the floor. I reached out and stroked their chin. They had a knack for listening to machine-spirits, and might’ve even made it somewhere in the Mechanicus, but opportunities like that don’t really come to Vostokans. Still, that suited me fine. ‘Didn’t I tell you I wasn’t going to be kissing you again until you lost that thing?’

Dex shrugged. ‘I gotta find some way of keeping my face warm at night when you’re not around.’ They looked past me at Mirea. ‘Who’s your friend?’

‘Mirea Scairns,’ Mirea replied. ‘And I ain’t keeping your face warm at night either.’

Dex raised their hands. ‘Just being friendly, nothing else intended.’ They looked from Mirea to me. ‘You look beat up, which I’m guessing means someone’s dead.’

‘Yup.’ I grimaced. ‘The Zalamar’s been wrecked too.’

Dex winced. ‘Oh, Throne. I’m sorry, Sorena. What happened?’

I sighed. ‘Targus Syndicate decided they wanted to end our business relationship permanently, but didn’t close the deal properly.’ I raised a finger before they could speak. ‘If the words “I told you so” are on your lips, Sevastian, you might wanna reconsider letting them out.’

‘Don’t call me Sevastian, you ain’t my ma,’ they replied sternly, then puffed their cheeks out. ‘Do you need me to say that I’m glad you ain’t dead?’

I shrugged. ‘It’s nice to know.’

‘Well, I’m glad you ain’t dead,’ Dex said. ‘What’s your play?’

‘I need you to give Barabuda a shout,’ I told them. Dex sat back in their chair.

‘So your play is to blow a lot of shit up?’

I nodded. ‘For starters.’

‘Uh,’ Mirea piped up from behind me, ‘is this Barabuda as in Barabuda Eigorova? As in, “Explosions” Eigorova? As in, one of Targus’ main rivals on the munitions front?’

I turned to her and grinned. ‘I told you some of my friends enjoy causing trouble.’

‘And he didn’t mind you working for Targus?’

I shrugged. ‘Business is business. But now I want the hardware to take Targus down, and Barabuda’s got a vested interest in me taking care of a rival for him.’

‘I’ll send The Kid for him,’ Dex said from behind me. ‘He’ll enjoy the run across town, I’m sure of it.’

Thirty-seven hours later, a fair bit of which Mirea and I had spent asleep, and in which time I’d also broken my promise not to kiss Dex until they got rid of their beard, a Shiiv Raxis hauler grumbled its way onto Evelight Via in High Ledge. It was a powerful, heavy beast, and I hadn’t asked how Dex had got hold of it so quickly.

‘You sure this is going to work?’ Mirea asked from beside me.

‘No,’ I replied. ‘But it’s our best shot.’ Mirea had decided she wanted to take a punch back at the people who’d so callously organised her death, and I was glad. She was still a bit annoying, but I liked her well enough, and it meant I hadn’t had to kill her. Maybe I’d even stay in touch with her afterwards, assuming we both lived.

‘Here they come,’ Mirea said. ‘Get moving.’

I was already feeding power to the Raxis’ drive, because I’d seen the door of the Targus warehouse rising. The nose of a hauler edged out – it would be carrying legitimate Targus merchandise, shipping off to the voidport to go fight the Imperium’s wars, not being sold on the streets for any ganger or bully to get their hands on.

But as these haulers came out, another one could get in.

The Raxis handled a lot differently to the Zalamar, but it still wasn’t as big as a Salamander. It didn’t have anywhere near the same sort of power to it, of course, and wheels aren’t the same as tracks, but it was close enough even under these circumstances. The second in the Targus convoy pulled out and around onto the road as I approached, and I braked, as though letting the next one out, then threw the controls into a hard turn.

The Raxis veered left, under the sign reading Goods Inbound. One guard dived out of the way, and another disappeared under the wheels with a scream and an ominous bump as the Raxis crashed through the lowered barrier. The loading bay which Mirea and I had left two days previously only had a few people in it, but they pulled guns and began firing as the Raxis roared in.

‘Left!’ Mirea yelped, but I’d memorised her descriptions of the warehouse’s layout and was already steering the Raxis in that direction. Someone had activated a security door, which was lowering across our path, but I gunned the engine and sent the hauler roaring forward. The door was made of linked horizontal metal slats rather than being a solid mass, which meant it slid neatly into the roof space but had considerably less strength to it. The Raxis clipped the bottom edge of it and roared on into a corridor.

It was narrow, and low, but Mirea had described the walker cages that moved goods from the main store to the loading bay, and Dex had worked out that the Raxis would fit down it. Not by much, mind you, but it would, so long as the driver was good.

I’m good.

Someone in our path raised a gun and panic-fired. I flinched reflexively as the windscreen crazed and cracked, but a moment later he was under our wheels with a barely audible double thud.

One more door. I put everything into the Raxis’ engines and concentrated on not clipping a wall before we got there. I didn’t.

The windscreen shattered on impact, but we burst through into the main munitions store. Tens, maybe hundreds of thousands of slates’ worth of skimmed goods: high explosives, ammunition, propellant and hardware.

I pressed the detonator and caught a momentary glimpse of Jarv’s horrified face in front of us before everything went white.

Mirea sat back and exhaled, looking at the vid-projector in front of us to which the signal had been broadcast. ‘How do we know if it worked?’

I put down the slave control system by which I’d been remotely operating the Raxis and cupped my hand to my ear. Barabuda, a brigand’s smile across his face, opened a window.

Faint booms rang out, distant and echoing. It was the wrong time of year for thunderstorms, but the Targus warehouse was going to be lighting up the sky just the same. Quasi-legal and semi-respectable or not, the sanctioners were going to have a lot of hard questions for everyone linked to Targus now they’d just detonated the equivalent of a decently sized bomb in the middle of Urgeyena’s High Ledge district. That, combined with the financial loss from losing such a core part of their business, would finish them.

I wasn’t done, though.

Barabuda had seen the explosives piled into the back of the Raxis as an investment, a small loss in order to take down a rival. He hadn’t gone along with my next request so easily.

‘That was business, Sorena,’ he’d said, flashing me a smile. ‘My purpose is achieved. This is personal to you, so it will cost.’

I’d needed all of the money Jarv had paid me to prise what I wanted out of Barabuda’s stores, but it was worth it. I had no intention of going into this under-equipped.

‘This is it,’ Dex said, rolling the Luxer to a halt. I was in the passenger seat; Mirea, The Kid – a wiry teenager with a stammer and an apparently natural affinity for engines whose proper name I hadn’t yet learned – and a guy called Rekkat whom I’d seen around Dex’s shop once or twice were all crammed into the back. ‘Residence of Tanid Targus, a man who I suspect is already having a very bad day.’ They looked over at me. ‘Are you sure you want to do this?’

‘Tanid will assume the warehouse was me,’ I replied briskly. ‘He’s already tried to kill me once for business. This will be personal. It’s him or me. Besides,’ I added, ‘letting people try to kill me is bad for my reputation.’

I opened my door and stepped out. Mirea did the same.

We were in one of the nicer, quieter areas of Havduk. This wasn’t the gilded’s paradise of Revenna, with its gated citadels and private parks, but then again, Tanid Targus wasn’t gilded. He was rich, but the shadows of those riches lay a bit too thick for him to be accepted into the true upper echelons. Tanid Targus wasn’t proper nobility – he’d got rich by killing people, instead of his ancestors having killed people, so his face was never going to fit in Revenna. It was Havduk for him, where the almost-haves and used-to-haves pretended they didn’t care about district boundaries, and that they were just as good as the aristocracy.

Their security wasn’t as good, though. These pseudo-manses with their wide grounds and artificial-climate domes might look the business, but they relied on intimidation as much as anything else. Oh, they had walls around them, and fancy locks on the gates to keep out thieves, but they weren’t really set up to repel a more frontal incursion.

I’m not subtle. Nobody is when carrying a brand-new Primus Mk VII meltagun. I suspected the gate might be alarmed in some fashion – I strongly doubted the wall would be. The other great thing about meltas is that they don’t actually make that much noise when you shoot them, unless the target is very wet and roars as all its moisture is superheated into steam. A rockcrete wall, however, just sort of gloops away.

‘Give it a moment to cool,’ I warned Mirea as the edges of the hole I’d just burned began to darken from a cherry red.

‘Yeah, I was going to,’ she said, eyes wide. I tutted. Civilians. It’s like they’ve never seen a tank-killing weapon fired before.

‘Go.’ I dived through the hole, landing somewhat clumsily but avoiding catching any of myself on the wall, then scrambled clear as Mirea followed me. I’d loaned her my Lucius, after some considerable soul-searching, mainly because I wanted her to have some punch with which to give me covering fire.

The front lawn of Tanid’s house was wide, with a pond in the middle, and dotted with shrubs and small trees. A U-shaped gravel drive ran up from each gate and met at the front door, and it was towards that door that I set off at a run. Mirea followed without any questions. We’d gone over the plan, such as it was without access to any specs. I burn our way in, we grab anything valuable and easily portable, and if Tanid Targus is in residence, we have a short and high-temperature conversation with him relating to his decision to have us killed.

Bold of me, you might think, to attack a rich man’s house with no backup except an unproven syndicate underling, but that’s because you underestimate the Astra Militarum. We’re not Space Marines, no – we’re only human. In the wars of the Imperium, our lives get spent without a second thought, but each one of those lives has been trained.

In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. In a city of amateur thugs, this Guardswoman will fuck you up.

The front door was thick security plasteel, cunningly formed and painted to look like wood, and it disintegrated in three seconds flat. That tripped an alarm – I just had to hope it was internal only. I didn’t see Tanid Targus as the type who wanted sanctioners swarming all over his property if something went amiss, but you could never tell.

We ducked through the remains of the door, and I slung the meltagun behind me to draw my Accatran in one hand and my combat knife in the other. Meltaguns are terrifying, but they take a moment to fire, and that’s a moment you might not have.

I ran through the small entrance hall, shooting dead a guard fumbling at his vox, and into the main atrium. A water feature bubbled merrily to our left, and a wide stair of gleaming white marble ascended to the second floor, where a balcony ran around three edges. It had undoubtedly been designed with aesthetics in mind, but it was a nightmare for an attacker – so many potential angles of fire to make the atrium a kill-box. I swivelled, laspistol raised and braced in case there was already someone aiming down at us, but the balcony remained clear. Just as well, since Mirea ran straight for the stairs.

Amateur. I’d despair, but people like her keep me in work.

I was halfway to the stairs when a stubber shot rang out from my left – a simple sidearm, but still capable of putting either of us down. Two of them, one behind the other. I dropped the front one with a las-bolt and made it to the shelter of the balustrade at the bottom of the stairs. The second man fired three times, throwing up chips of marble from my cover, but then yelped and dived into the fountain’s pool as Mirea’s shot with the Lucius caused the floor next to him to explode.

I took a moment to switch back to the meltagun, and a moment later the water was flash-boiling. He re-emerged, skin already bright red and scalded, and I used the Accatran to shoot him in the head.

‘Was that him?’ Mirea gasped from farther up.

‘Of course it wasn’t!’ I snapped. ‘Are you telling me you don’t even know what Tanid Targus looks like?’

‘Do I look like the sort of person who’d have met Tanid Targus?’

‘Fine,’ I muttered, hurrying up the rest of the staircase. ‘Just shoot anyone who isn’t me.’

The balcony had three different exits, one on each side and a main stretch leading back from the atrium. We chose that last one, on the basis that it looked the richest. I eyed the paintings on the wall, but I had no idea whether they were worth anything, nor who I’d sell them on to. Mirea crashed through one side door brandishing my Lucius, and when she wasn’t greeted by any shots or screams I poked my head around the jamb.

‘Dressing room,’ she said, hauling open doors to reveal rack after rack of tailored, expensive clothes. That wasn’t going to do us much good either, but then she pulled out a drawer to reveal jewelled cufflinks and finely crafted rings. ‘That’s more like it!’

‘Bag ’em,’ I told her, stepping back out into the corridor. The door on the other side led into a bedroom, but it had little in the way of personal touches and was pristine – a guest room, perhaps? A sculpture of amber-coloured stone as big as my head stood on a pedestal, but it looked heavy, and once again, I was no art critic. This place was annoyingly short on obvious valuables.

I stepped back out into the corridor and my training saved my life, because I was still leading with my gun and covering angles. That meant that I was able to draw a bead on the two armed servants who’d just appeared before they could react.

My Accatran spat, and a las-bolt flashed out to pierce the chest of the woman on the right, who screamed and fell. The man with her had an autogun, which would make a mess of both me and the corridor, so I ducked back inside the guest room. I heard him yell as he opened fire, and the wall between us thudded with impacts, but Targus had built his mansion well, since I got a quick shower of plaster dust and nothing more.

I waited for him to run dry. He was hosing on full-auto, so it should be any second–

Across from me, I saw Mirea lean out with my Lucius braced against her shoulder.

I opened my mouth to shout at her not to be so stupid, but the Lucius barked before I could do so. She fired three times, and the chatter of autogun fire ceased. When nothing replaced it, I looked out and saw the man on his back, a large hole blown in his chest and two more in the wall and ceiling beyond him.

Mirea looked at me with the wide eyes and fast breaths of someone unused to combat situations. ‘One out of three ain’t bad?’

‘It’ll do,’ I acknowledged, turning my attention to the final door at the end of the corridor. This, I assumed, was Tanid’s suite. If he was at home, he’d likely be here.

I didn’t bother trying the door. Instead I stood to one side, sheathed my knife and brought the melta out again, blasting it into superheated atoms.

A man screamed. I stepped into the doorway, laspistol in my hand, and aimed it at the figure clawing at the wall on the far side. I was about to put a las-bolt into him – I had no need for Tanid to realise who’d come to kill him, just to do the job and get out – but as his fear-filled face turned towards me I realised what he was doing.

‘Is that a safe, Tanid?’ I asked his frozen form.

‘Sorena?’ he gasped. ‘But you–’

‘Should be dead, I know,’ I finished for him. ‘Bad luck. But maybe you can buy your way out of this. Don’t stop opening that thing on my account.’

I was lying. He was dead anyway, but it suited me to have him open the safe rather than me take a melta to the wall and perhaps ruin whatever was hidden inside. He nodded shakily and went back to turning the dial. Click, click, click…

There was a ping, the section of wall beside Targus shot up into the ceiling, and something Astartes-sized barrelled out with the sort of instant fury that gets brought on by a sudden and massive dose of combat stimms.

I shot Tanid instinctively with my right hand, but my left was too slow to bring the melta up, and a fist the size of a Chimera’s gearbox slammed into my chest. I felt something crack, and I was thrown back clear out of the bedroom to land in a pain-wracked heap on the hallway carpet. Tanid’s monstrous bodyguard – human, but gene-jacked and hypno-conditioned, by my guess – followed, raising one massive boot to stamp down at me.

I bit down on the injector in my mouth and felt the sour, pain-dulling fire of my own stimms rage through me just in time to propel my battered body into rolling aside from a blow that would have surely crushed my chest beyond repair. I raised the melta, but that momentary fire delay cost me, because the giant kicked it clear of my hand and sent it clattering down the corridor. It reached down, and a giant hand enclosed my face and began to squeeze.

I panicked as agonising pressure enveloped my head, and I blind-fired upwards into its mass, but the Accatran would do nothing against this creature – certainly not quickly enough to prevent it from crushing my skull. I scrabbled desperately for my combat blade with my left hand and managed to draw it, but I doubted the monster would even feel it.

Perhaps I should have settled for the pyrotechnic display in High Ledge as my revenge.

My pulse was thundering in my ears, but I heard the Lucius bark four times as Mirea emptied the rest of its magazine into the creature, or at least at it. The thing bellowed, and the pressure on my skull relaxed as it whirled on this new, more dangerous threat. My head was swimming, a combination of the after-effects of the monster’s grip and my stimms trying to override my pain receptors, but I managed to stagger up and tried to focus on the brute’s enormous back. I could bury my knife into it, but I doubted the blade would reach anything vital.

Mirea screamed and slammed the door shut, as though that would help. The creature drew its massive fist back, ready to break through, and something at the base of its spine glinted.

The stimm inputs. Not much of a target, but better than nothing.

I lashed out, putting all the force I could bring to bear behind my knife. The combat blade, a Formund Scorpions ‘Stinger’, punched through the outer housing and penetrated into the circuitry within.

The brute stiffened. Its fingers twitched and it let out a low moan. It swayed on its feet, and as it slowly turned towards me I saw its eyes going red as blood vessels burst, and not only saw but also heard the hammering of its heart. The damaged regulator was dumping every single reserve it had into the monster’s system, triggering a massive overload.

With one last, wet thump, the brute’s heart exploded within its chest, and it dropped to the floor so heavily I thought for a moment it was going to go straight through.

‘Mirea?’ I shouted, then coughed as my cracked ribs complained at me even through the pain-numbing influence of my drugs. ‘Come out. It’s dead.’

The door cracked cautiously, and Mirea nudged it open with her foot. I was pleased to see she had the presence of mind to be reloading the Lucius.

‘Are you all right?’ she asked, eyeing me dubiously.

‘At the moment,’ I panted. ‘But these drugs won’t last forever. We’ll grab what we can from his suite, then get out of here.’

There was, annoyingly, little to take. Mirea prised three rings from the dead man’s fingers, and I took an amulet off a stand next to his bed, but the wall safe was only a decoy to unleash his stasis-bound bodyguard. I swiped a half-full bottle of amasec, and that was it.

Nearly it, anyway. There was a cogitator in one corner of the room, with a dataslug still in situ. I had no idea whether it would contain anything of value, but it was worth grabbing. I pocketed it.

‘Now we leave,’ I said, and Mirea didn’t argue with me. She even helped me along, as my ribs continued screaming at me in a muffled way. We would head to the machine yard and open the manse’s gates, allowing Dex to come in and take their pick of the stock – their price for helping. Me? I needed something to replace my Zalamar, and – with a quick paint job and ident change, courtesy of Dex – I figured Tanid would have something that would do the trick, but that would only take me back to where I was before this whole mess began.

A small bag of jewellery, three rings, an amulet, half a bottle of amasec, a dataslug of unknown worth and a bunch of cracked ribs?

Most times, revenge ain’t worth the price.

BRACELET OF BONES

DANIE WARE

The Bulwark boomed defiance.

Her back to its smooth, cold steel, Sanctioner Luiza Rakhil felt the thing judder. Tightening her grip on her autopistol, she took a glance round the vehicle’s side.

A short day had sunk to a heavy, thunderous evening. Rain squeezed from the air like sweat, scattered warm across her face.

Black smoke filled the road.

‘Rak?’ Petar’s voice came over the vox, coughing. ‘What’s your condition?’

‘Perfect.’ The snap of sarcasm was reflex, but he knew her well enough. He chuckled, the noise like a buzz saw.

‘You got a plan?’

‘We get the witness out of here.’

They were two hours from Bastion backup, pinned down like damned rookies, their mission dangling broken. Incoming rounds rained like hailstones, spanged back from the Bulwark’s metal. Sparks flashed furious, vivid in the poor light.

Somewhere behind them, electricity frazzled, a loitering promise of violence.

‘Bloody Teks,’ Rak cursed. ‘You’d think they’d quit.’

A stray round cut too close, and she snatched her nose back out of sight.

The Bulwark’s augurs had not seen the mine. Whether it was a well-planned ambush or a leftover from an earlier dispute, they’d rumbled straight over the top of the thing. Rak had felt the detonation like a heart tremor – the thumping impacts of shrapnel, the metallic crump as the track had tumbled loose…

The vehicle lay broken now, belly down in the puddles. It wasn’t quite dead, but it wouldn’t be long.

‘We need to move,’ Petar said. He sounded harried, wary. ‘Just give the word, and let’s go.’

Echoing his urgency, orders flickered in her iris uplink, a query for her progress, location. Castellan Gaspar, back at the Bastion, had picked her personally for this, told her she had his absolute trust – but he was still checking in. ‘I want that kid to Wharf Jora,’ he’d said, one rigid finger in her face. ‘You’re my best, Rak – this needs your eyes, your wit. Because the tide ain’t gonna wait for you.’

She flicked back her answer: On schedule. Only she, Petar, Vadim the verispex and the witness himself had made it out of the Bulwark. The turret gunner, Lev, was still inside, returning fire. They had an hour – less. If they reached that damned wharf, it would be nothing short of His blessing.

‘Lev!’ Rak barked into the vox. ‘We need to move. Make ’em keep their heads down!’

The turret clanked, shifting angle; the Bulwark gave a second full-throated bellow. Metal screeched and tore. There were shouts, a clanging tumble of scaff.

Readying herself, Rak took another glance. The smoke was thinning now, and there they lay – Larya and Damien, tangled in a pile, Tanja with her spiked blonde hair all soaked in rain and filth. Piling out of the tank, they’d borne the full brunt of the Teks’ assault.

Empty eyes stared skywards, flat glass reflecting cloud and accusation.

You’re my best, Rak.

A spasm of anger.

She took a swift look round, checking for their closest point of cover.

The Bulwark had stopped in a backstreet, winding, narrow, pitted with potholes. Speckling puddles glittered in crude sodium lumens. Reflected fragments danced – tall warehouses, looming to either side, their frontages rimed in salt like ghosts, their doorways like mouths, all black with threat. Rusting metal walkways swung from their upper levels.

Prayer banners, torn with age and cynicism, drifted in a thin and stinking breeze.

From the other side of the vehicle, Petar gave a sudden, savage curse.

‘You hit?’ She couldn’t lose him too. She needed him, couldn’t do this without him.

You’re my best…

‘Petar took a round, but it’s just a scratch,’ Vadim said. There was the faint metal rattle of the medi-kit. ‘Not going to slow us. Grab the kid, Rak, we’re wasting time!’

She glanced over her shoulder.

Behind her, under the Bulwark’s metal shelter, there was a shivering, black-clad figure. Dirty water soaked rich fabrics; his long pale hair was plastered to him with blood and sweat and rain.

He was hunched half forward, peering out at the sky. A slice of rising moon peeked back at him, a haze through the smog and pollution. He watched it, his blue eyes blurred with narc.

‘He lights our way.’ His voice was sing-song, oblivious and irritating. ‘Truly, we are blessed.’

Blessed, you little bastard. Rak refused to look at her downed squadmates. Of all the things we had to protect…

She swallowed her rage, strangled it. Somewhere in her heart, she was tempted to just leave him for the Teks – let them rip him limb from limb, let them cart him away to install their rusted, cult-obsessed augmetics, with or without his permission…

But she had a reputation. And she was going to finish this mission – for herself, for the lives this kid had already cost. For everything that this meant.

She would drag this useless, gilded pretty boy all the way to the wharfside, get him onto that safe ship by her damned self, if she had to.

Agitated now, she leaned out. The smoke was still thinning and the roadway oddly empty, the locals long fled. At its far end, the walkway that held the gangers was half destroyed, taken down by the Bulwark’s fire.

The Teks were still up there – she could see their red cloaks.

What were they waiting for?

It didn’t matter. Rak had to go.

Easing back, she grabbed the kid by his lapel. ‘You listen to me, you damned freak. When I say run, you run. You got that?’

He blinked, stared through her, nodded like some broken marionette. ‘I saw it,’ he said. ‘Pale, in the light. It was a sign.’ For a moment, he frowned, struggled to focus on Rak’s face. ‘He tells me… tells me I’m safe with you.’

‘Shut up,’ she told him. ‘And do as you’re told.’ In the vox, ‘Lev, keep firing – I don’t want them chasing us. Let’s move!’

She told herself that the vehicle and its gunner would be spared – that the Teks would ignore the Bulwark in their furious pursuit of the witness. But her instincts told her a different story – that Lev would be yet another valiant soul sacrificed in the name of justice.

They ran, heads down, the Bulwark still booming behind them.

In her iris read-out, Rak flicked through the dossier, paragraphs and images flashing semi-transparent against the streets’ filthy backdrop. The kid’s name was Tevrat Kamber, spire-born, senior clerk to a higher family. And like so many of the idle wealthy, he’d strayed from his patch and down to the Dredge, looking for hope, perhaps, or for entertainment.

For something to pass the time.

Back at the Bastion, Gaspar had known more detail – Kamber was a regular user. He liked his narc and he knew the places to get it. He’d even been smart enough to take a bodyguard.

Hadn’t done him any good, poor kid.

Still running, low and fast while the Bulwark covered their exit, Rak stole a sideward glance at where Kamber reeled and stumbled, staggering like a three-day drunk. She snorted, silent – how was this their material witness? The crux of their case? Occasionally, he’d lift his arms to the heavy, low-slung sky, as if the Emperor Himself would come to his rescue.

‘He is with me! He will guard me!’

Yeah, she thought, but we’d better help.

‘Keep going.’ She poked him in the back. ‘You stop, I’ll be spiking you with worse than a bit of kwa.’

‘He chose me,’ the kid said, pausing to stare at the warehouses, their prayers fluttering ragged. ‘He took me there, He made me see her. Did you know that? I was only there because of Him.’

‘You were there,’ Petar growled from the rear, ‘to score your narcs, son. Now move.’ His voice contained the engine burr of stimms.

Behind them, shouts were rising.

They picked up speed, turning the corner, ducking further into the backstreets.

‘Petar,’ Rak said. ‘Still with me? I need you sharp.’

‘Oh yeah.’ He was limping, but too stimmed out to care – he had a voice like a knife in the dark.

And then, very suddenly, the Bulwark went silent.

Rak halted, blinking her iris to normal vision. There was a moment of thick, heavy quiet, a clarion from far away, the cough and roar of an engine. Then a single, violent detonation, rippling outwards like percussion and making the crumbling buildings shake. Metal crashed. Voices shouted. Fragments of glass fell like rain, tinkled like sparkles.

Kamber whimpered; Rak didn’t care. The bastards had got to the vehicle. Lev was gone.

‘Run!’ She snarled the order, and they lurched into motion, faster now. Boots splashed in puddles, rainwater scattered sticky-warm on their faces. Kamber reeled and sang hymns, Vadim snarling at him to shift.

More voices, jeers and cheers, now hard on their heels.

Shit.

Instinctively, Rak picked up speed. Another warehouse doorway, half filled with refuse. Another corner, heat-glow bodies slumped in the wet – they’d not been there long. Graffiti, gang marks and clumsy devotions, the fading colours of old murals. The savage maze of Water’s Edge stretched out round them like some damned labyrinth, all the way from Grimstone at one side to the Delta Depths at the other. Shadows lurked at every turn, only too happy to embrace…

Opportunities.

Too many threats. Rak, eyes everywhere, dared not slow down. Curse this spire pretty boy for his damned habits, for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, for seeing the deal he should never have seen. Curse him for the deaths of her team.

Curse herself for needing him this much.

You’re my best, Rak.

Back at the walls of the Bastion, there were myriad hololithic red lines that linked gangs to bars to benefactors, deals to dirty money. And this kid…

He was the missing piece.

He was the ace up their sleeve, the weight in their dice. He was the witness that turned those dotted lines of suspicion into the solid marks of proof.

And, blessed or not, he’d stumbled upon the arachnid at the centre of their web – the Lady Tasha herself, first daughter of the Valka family. Known for excessive appetites and casual, offhand cruelty, she’d been looking to lose a lover. And this kid had been right there…

In Rak’s iris, more questions. Gaspar was still checking up.

You reached Jora?

Half an hour, she told him.

She hoped she was right. More laughter, jeering, getting close now.

They reached the end of the roadway, and she paused, checking the area. Here, the warehouses finally petered out, slumping to decay and dereliction. Empty windows hid eyes without count; toppled walkways made metal shadows. Across the twin steel lines of a heavy servo-hauler, she was looking at the dockyards proper, at their towering heaps of rusting containers and the bright red points of bin fires.

The whole place stank like last week’s fish.

Behind her, Kamber was still singing. Pleading for His mercy, or some such.

‘Rak!’ The vox bark was Petar, making her look round.

At the glitter and buzz of backstreet augmetics, teasing, taunting, lingering at their backs.

A voice floated out across the half-light. ‘Kam-ber. We’re com-ing!’ It was sing-song, eerily metallic, edged with threat. ‘We know you saw us. We’d better take your eyes, pretty boy, so they don’t cause us any more trouble.’

‘Come and get them!’ Petar’s snarl was savage.

‘Oh, we will,’ the voice told him. ‘Don’t think you’re going to stop us, sanctioner. We’ll take yours too.’

Shit!

Rak chewed her lip, thinking. Kamber seemed oblivious, holding one hand out in front of his face, staring at his fingers. His nails were lacquered, as black as his coat.

‘I saw them,’ he said, suddenly smiling, like sunlight through clouds. ‘I saw them take the deal. She gives them her lovers for parts.’

‘We know, kid,’ Rak muttered. ‘We know. Vadim?’

‘He’s fine,’ the verispex answered, curt. ‘Let’s keep moving.’

‘I want an ambush point,’ Rak said. ‘Let’s get these bastards before they get us.’

‘Understood.’

Hands on weapons, they ran swiftly, out between the containers – massive valley walls of painted steel. Some carried numbers, or Mechanicus delineations; others were already rusting, crumbling to oxide and corrosion and tilting the layers above.

They creaked, menacing with motion.

It was cold in here, dark as doubt. Slants of rain-scattered moonlight crossed their paths like warnings. Rak ducked round corners, one after another – she knew the area well enough to keep heading for the wharf, though the stink was a powerful signpost. People forgot that the refuse they cast out in the morning would come back with the afternoon tide.

And worse things than refuse.

‘Kam-ber! Was your narc worth it? Run as much as you like – you know you can’t escape us!’

Another corner, another. A third, a fourth. Boots were clanging behind them now, loud in the metal jumble. And there were other noises, the bang of heavy claws, the sizzle of tools, the metal clicking of backstreet mechadendrites. Imitating the Mechanicus, the Grimstone Teks proudly wore bloodstained red cloaks, but their limbs and eyes were all installed at horrific backstreet ripper clinics. They traded in weapons, hardware, drugs – and they were an excellent way to get rid of people.

More voices, somewhere to their right.

‘Shit. What now?’ Rak’s curse was soft, and she paused at a corner, holding up a hand.

Over the vox, Petar said, ‘What you got? Trouble?’

‘There’s something else in here.’

He snorted. ‘There’s lots of stuff in here.’

‘Bear left.’

‘But that’s away from–’

‘I know where it goes,’ she snapped, then controlled herself. ‘Look for somewhere we can defend.’

‘You’re the boss.’

They ducked left, zigzagging ever faster, low and swift and wary, running like the entire gang were after them, multiple limbs outstretched.

Then, suddenly, there was light, and they reached the end of the containers, screeching to a stop beneath a huge many-legged platform and a vast crane rising over them, a skeletal shadow against the moon.

Behind Rak, Kamber collapsed.

He was laughing, the sound starting soft and scaling higher and higher, a howl of madness at the semi-clouded sky. Needing no orders, Vadim was already there, medi-kit out, sanguinator in hand. The shots to keep him moving had been prepped before they’d left.

But it was too late.

Kamber’s laughter had turned to sobs as he pointed at the graffiti – at the stylised red-cloak images that flanked them to either side. There were other marks – tentacles, metallic masks – but the meanings were clear.

They’d been herded into an area that the Grimstone Teks already controlled.

Shit!

Kamber said, ‘He’s here – He brought us here!’

Oh, they’d been brought, all right.

Behind them, metal echoes – something had scaled the steel walls, was running across the container tops, feet bashing loud. Augmetics, however heretically installed, gave these cultist bastards a decided advantage.

Rak and Petar exchanged a look, grabbed the kid and dragged him under the platform.

It wasn’t exactly cover, but it would have to do.

‘So.’ The voice was an announcement, a wheeze like a whir of cogs. ‘Luiza Rakhil. I’m honoured.’

She turned round, autopistol aimed.

From the shadows, a single figure came forth. He was easily eight feet at the shoulder, hunched over and scarlet-cloaked. And he moved wrong, as though he had more than feet beneath that ragged, grime-stained hem.

The Teks’ self-styled ‘archmagos’. He called himself Sarya.

His voice clicked and burred as he said, ‘The Omnissiah has spoken to me.’

‘Oh, really?’ Petar raised his pistol.

Rak could feel her partner’s anger, like heat at her back. It rose in her too, a sick taste in the back of her throat. This gang boss bastard had accounted for three members of her squad – four, with Lev. She wanted to shoot him herself. But they were outmanoeuvred, and the rules had suddenly changed.

You’re my best, Rak… your strength, your wit.

She needed to think.

‘Hand him over, Rakhil,’ Sarya said. The words rattled in his throat – he sounded like he had salt-lung. ‘You can’t fight us, sanctioner. There’s nowhere to run. You’re outnumbered, outgunned, and we’re faster than you.’ He grinned, his teeth all gold. ‘Gifted.’

She met his gaze, the lights in the backs of his still-human eyes. ‘You don’t scare me.’

‘Funny,’ he said. He oozed forward, massive and inhuman. ‘I scare everyone else.’

The rustlings and mutterings were the Teks, closing all round them. Kamber turned and turned, his expression haunted, trying to see them all. ‘You’re monsters,’ he said, his voice full of horror. ‘I saw you, I saw what you did with him. I heard him scream as you took him apart.’

‘Four members of my team.’ Rak stepped to meet him, glaring up at the still-human face. ‘You’re a slaver, a psychopath, and you’ve got your… fingers… in every kind of backstreet crime.’ Dripping rain shone like falling gemstones. ‘Valka was stupid, Sarya. She got herself seen. Seen trading with you. And I’ve got you bang to the Lex.’ She glowered at him, unafraid. ‘I’m bringing down her whole cursed network, and you’re coming right down with it.’

Sarya laughed, the sound tortuous. ‘You’re threatening me, Rak? In here? Right now, I can carve you up like yesterday’s dinner.’

‘Right now,’ Rak said, ‘the Adeptus Mechanicus have a trace on my location. And if I don’t make my meeting point, you’ll be answering as to the legitimacy of all those fancy augs.’

It was a bluff, but it made Sarya pause, his head tilting as if he were analysing her words. ‘Not a bad try,’ he said. Claws, and worse things, rippled under his cloak. ‘But you’re lying. If you had such influence, they’d already be here.’ He grinned, beatific and utterly cold.

Thoughts racing now, she checked round the rest of the gang. Young, most of them, men and women, their skin scarred and sweating pale, many of them clearly unwell. Their cloaks were patched and torn and thinning, their augmetics a horrific mess. But every one of them was armed, and they stared at her with a steady, chill fixation that made her skin crawl.

They could take her down in an instant, but they weren’t moving.

And that meant Sarya wanted something. He’d herded her here for a reason.

Her heart beat in her ears, a loud tattoo like hope. Whatever he wanted, it was an opening. One she intended to get her hands into and wrench wide.

She needed to speak to Petar, to Vadim, over the tight-beam vox, but she had no idea if Sarya could intercept the communications.

Hands of cards, and all unseen.

She’d have to do this blind.

The gang boss grinned wider, predatory. His teeth gleamed gold. ‘You know how this works, Rakhil.’ He shifted, offering glimpses of blades beneath scarlet fabric, then hunched further to look over and down at her, unholy lights in the backs of his eyes. He was huge, and he radiated cold like cruelty. ‘Hand the boy over and I’ll let you live.’ Still, that gold grin. ‘For as long as you can manage.’

Images flickered in his gaze: needles, pliers, saws. Screams sounded in her vox-bead, echoes like pleas for help. Kamber whimpered again. Her expression stone, Rak aimed the autopistol straight at the monster’s eye socket.

The rest of the Teks bristled, weapons aimed.

‘I don’t think so,’ Rak told him. She dared him, pushed for his answer. ‘You want the boy, you come and get him.’

‘Rak…’ Petar’s vox tone was all warning.

Sarya rattled his claws. Limbs shifted, too many limbs, limbs in the wrong places. His grin grew wider still, revealing circuitry in the back of his skull.

But still he made no move to attack.

She had the advantage, pressed it. ‘You’re that keen to cut something,’ she said. ‘How about we cut a deal. You know Valka’s done for. And you know I can’t let this go.’

The boss’ eyes narrowed, data flickered. ‘You really think you can take her.’ It was a statement, not a question. Catching himself up, he filled out the thought. ‘You’ve got guts of steel, Rakhil. You may even be worth your reputation.’

‘Valka’s made her last mistake.’ Rak matched his grin, pushed further, navigating by pure backstreet instinct. ‘But this doesn’t have to be about you, or the Teks. Or your deals, whatever they are. I just want her, her slave ring proven. I want her dirty slate uncovered. I want every contact she’s got – every last bastard with their hands in her damned silk purse.’ She drove the information home like a blade, needing him to respond, to understand. ‘I can’t count the lives she’s cost, and she’s laughed in my face every time. Mocking me, because she knows I can’t reach her.’ Her hand gripped her pistol, white-knuckled. ‘But she’s made her last mistake, and I’m going to tear her down. Topple her entire filthy dominion.’ Holding his gaze, she made him listen. ‘You can go with her or not, your choice.’

Sarya considered, his head tilted to one side.

The long flare of a lighthouse passed over them, and was gone.

As the scudding shadows settled, he said, ‘All right, Rak, you’ve rumbled my little game.’ A shrug of segmented shoulders. ‘Maybe there is something I want.’

Petar was spluttering in the vox, but Rak kept talking.

‘Tell me.’ Her gaze flicked round the gang, shadows of metal and scarlet.

‘All my deals, from the Gravel as far as the Myrden Edge, you’ll leave them alone. Everything.’

‘You know I can’t do that.’

‘Then we’re done.’ Targeters flashed in his vision. ‘You want something that big… you’ll give me something big in return.’

‘Listen to me.’ She stepped forward further, looking right up into the thing’s face. ‘We’ve waited years for this. Valka mocks the city entire. She plays one side, pays the other. She sits in her castle with its high walls, pushes her workers to death, lets her minions fight for her favours. And all the time, she’s got her network – her enforcers and assassins, her skulkers and slavers – that do her bidding.’ Her voice was a thrum. ‘And she’ll turn on you, sooner or later – you know she will. You’ll be just the same as all the others, another inconvenience. She’ll toss your bullet-riddled corpse to your own gangers, and they’ll break you down for parts.’ Still she didn’t release his gaze. ‘Help me, Sarya. Let me bring this whole thing down.’

‘He took me there,’ the kid said suddenly. He was trying to catch water on his tongue; wary of too many toxins, Vadim poked him to stop. ‘He knew. He sent me. I have been blessed with His knowledge. I am called to bring her to justice.’

Sarya eyed the narced-out kid, something moving under his cloak as if he tasted the air, somehow, tested the sounds for truth. Behind him, his gang were glancing at each other, lowering their weapons.

‘The Gravel to the Myrden Edge,’ he said. ‘And as far out as Prospect.’

‘That’s another entire–’

‘Make it happen.’ He gestured at his gang, as if the alternative should be obvious. ‘The Gravel, to the Myrden Edge, and as far out as Prospect. Immunity when Valka goes down. I don’t care about your Bastion, Rak – I’ve got my own problems.’ He shuffled, almost like a shrug. ‘You know how it is – my neighbours are getting noisy. And I need to shut them up. Preferably without your interference.’

‘I saw her.’ The kid was still staring, his face ecstatic. ‘She was cloaked, her face hidden. Full of money, like a sack. Wet slate, shining. Wrong place, like me. Doing her deal, like me. But she was there.’

Sarya turned to look at him, his head cocked, considering. ‘Perhaps the Omnissiah did bless you, Tevrat Kamber.’ He nodded, almost thoughtful. ‘Take you to the right place, at the right time.’

Rak twitched. ‘Don’t you start. This poor bastard was just out buying his fun. And there was Valka, in person. She was incognito, assumed she wouldn’t be recognised.’ Rak was still glaring. ‘But Kamber’ – a jerk of her head at the kid – ‘knew who she was.’

‘How?’ Sarya said. The boss had sunk to a more human height. As Rak watched, he put his hood right down. The back of his skull was smooth, metallic. Lights glinted at his ears.

‘He showed me,’ Kamber repeated. ‘Her face was covered, but she had a bracelet, a chain of fingerbones, all covered in silver. A relic, unique. Came far, far from Alecto, from a planet of cathedrals mighty.’ He focused on Rak, his face shining. ‘He made me recognise it. He took me there so I could recognise it.’ With solemn emphasis, he said to Sarya, ‘He and the Omnissiah are one. Do you trust Him?’

A drop of water hit his hand and shattered, glittering.

Back at the Bastion, Gaspar had told them the rest of the story, as best as he could. Valka and the Teks had been concluding their deal when sanctioners stormed the place. Valka had vanished, guards in tow – the Teks had barefaced it, denying everything. Arrests had been made, questions, cross-examinations… But without a witness, nothing could stick.

Until Kamber had told them the tale of the bracelet, link by link, bone by bone, every one shining in that interrogator’s magnesium lumens. By some remarkable fluke, by some turn of the dice, even by His blessing, the kid had seen the bracelet before.

And Valka, at last, was theirs.

All Rak had to do was get to Jora, to the boat, and on to the safe house.

‘Well?’ Sarya said.

She did not respond. A pool of quiet spread out beneath the latticework. The bodies of her friends stared blankly at the sky. They said, Do you know what you’re doing?

Feet and claws shuffled, distant voices begged for help. Far away, something big creaked in the wind.

Always, she told them.

She nodded, slowly. ‘All right,’ she said. ‘The Gravel to the Myrden Edge, and as far out as Prospect. And when you go after your neighbours, we’ll leave you alone. But.’ She smirked at him, underlining the threat. ‘You stray out of that area and I’ll nail your carcass to the wall myself.’

‘Ah, Rakhil,’ Sarya said. ‘There’s a reason why you’re the best.’

The crack of a rifle.

A single, sizzling red line.

And Sarya’s head exploded like a smashed egg.

Shit!

Grabbing the kid, Rak took cover behind the nearest upright. A split second later, a second sizzle blew dust from above his head.

Petar, swearing, grabbed Vadim and hit the deck. The gang whispered and shifted, pulling weapons, losing themselves in the moon-dappled metallic shadows.

And there, off to the left, as though they owned the city, a hit squad of lean figures strode into view.

They were grey-clad and helmeted. They carried lasrifles, also grey, top-notch kit. Rak’s heart was hammering. These were Valka’s goons, of course they were. And, with Sarya down, this whole mess could end here.

‘Luiza Rakhil,’ one said.

Another aimed his weapon at Kamber. Kamber looked back at it, eyes wide.

But the Teks had just lost their boss. And their augmetics may be backstreet, but they did the job. Not only that, but they were fast.

Even as Rakhil was aiming her pistol, one gunman went over, a crackle of electricity to the side of his face. Another raised his rifle, but he was too close. A red cloak landed on top of him, bearing him to the ground.

There were saws, and screams, and a puddle of spreading darkness.

‘Go!’

She didn’t see where the voice had come from. Grabbing the kid, shouting at Petar, she scrabbled into motion. Valka’s goons were good – she knew that of old – and they could open fire from any number of stealth positions. They could throw a single grenade and blow them to all the hells…

Glancing up at the crane, she hoped that they were not that stupid. If they brought that thing down, the weight and the collapsing platform would kill everything.

The thought was enough…

She moved.

Around her, more motion, more shifting grey forms. She ducked and weaved, keeping the pillars between herself and any incoming fire. Sight lines were poor; red streaks flashed, missed.

Petar, still swearing, returned a shot, but the grey figures hung well back and he did not have the range.

‘Don’t bother!’

Pistol still in hand, he concentrated on running.

‘The light…’ The kid was staggering, starting to sob. His voice was hollow, as grey as the sky. ‘The light is fading. Why is the light fading?’

‘Narc’s running out,’ Vadim commented. ‘Great timing. The Emperor has a sense of humour.’

‘Never mind,’ Rak told him. ‘Run!’

They ran.

Behind them, a cacophony of horror – the noise of serrated blades on bone was not something you’d mistake. There were cracks of superheated air, the rustling of claws. Screams, sharp as glass.

More grey figures, loitering in the half-light.

Running like a thousand void-born terrors were after her, Rak broke out from the shelter of the platform.

And stopped.

She could see the wharf, see the stacks of crates, see the black side of the ship that waited there in darkness.

It bore no name. It didn’t need one.

But the ground was open. They had to get from here to there without a las-shot taking them down.

Glancing at Petar, she saw that he’d had the same thought. Simultaneously, they counted, ‘Three… two… one…’

And they ran. Rak to the ship, Petar at the gunner, oaths to the Emperor on his lips.

Heads down, Rak dragging Kamber by his scrawny wrist, they ran. Ahead of them, the gangplank slid silently from the side of the ship. There was a figure waiting, as dark as the ship itself.

‘Go, go, go!’ Not sure if she meant Petar or the kid or herself, she barked the words over the vox.

Shot a single glance backwards.

Behind them, a single grey figure raised its rifle.

Took a shot, a streak of red in the dark.

And Petar went down, holding his leg and bellowing.

Rak had no time to stop, no idea if the Teks had dealt with the rest of them – she had to keep going. The ship would take Kamber out of Water’s Edge to a secure blockhouse. He would be held there until the time came to testify.

Her heart hammered louder. For a moment, she wondered at the kid’s strange, drug-addled conviction – maybe He really had put him there to witness, to see that bracelet, the signature jewellery that had given Valka away.

She reached the bottom of the gangplank, shoved the kid almost bodily up the slope.

The waiting figure said nothing. When she flashed her holo-seal, it simply nodded.

At the top of the plank, Kamber turned, almost like he would wave. He was silhouetted perfectly against the rectangle of the doorway – a single shot would have downed him, simple as target practice.

But the shot did not come.

The grey figure stood silent, watching.

Why didn’t he–

A sudden, ice-cold hand closed over Rak’s heart. She looked from the grey shape to the nameless boat and back, but the door was already closing, the gangplank being raised.

The engine gave a splutter and a roar.

The cold hand gripped her harder, crushing her heart with a horrific realisation.

‘Wait!’

Madly, she was banging, banging on the boat’s now vibrating metal hull.

‘Wait!’

Its side was black and sheer. She could no more have got it to notice her than she could have halted it by herself.

She stopped, panting, swearing.

Knowing.

You’re my best, Rak…

Behind her, the grey figure lifted a hand, smiled, and faded away.

BLOOD BALLOT

J S COLLYER

Nimmo didn’t like uncertainty. She’d spent years systematically eradicating it from her life. Every clank and groan of each cleansing vat around her, every gush and rush of odoriferous steam and slug of chem-cleanser in the thick, humid air, was as familiar to her as her own blood and breath. She knew her laundaria back to front, up and down. She knew the labourers that worked it, their families, their associates. She knew the run-down slums that surrounded it, the manufactoria that employed the inhabitants, the gangers that ran them.

She even knew the probator, to a point. He was married, no children. He was generally well regarded in the Bastion but, if played correctly, could be an asset rather than the persistent nuisance most of them were prone to be.

What she didn’t know was how she was going to handle the cause of this particular visit. And that sent ripples of irritation across her skin chased by something colder, darker. Something closer to fear.

She schooled her face so none of this showed as the probator repeated his question.

‘Have you seen the man or not?’

‘I’m sure I haven’t, Probator Caltro. We don’t get people like that round these parts.’

Caltro narrowed his sludge-brown eyes. ‘We’ve always had a good thing here, Nimmo. You keep me in the loop about the local goings-on, and I, well…’ His sharp gaze drifted round the cavernous, steam-filled chamber. ‘The business round here that doesn’t involve laundry doesn’t get looked at too closely.’

‘If I knew I’d tell. I always do, don’t I?’

‘Only when it suits you.’

‘Caltro, I’m offended.’

‘Upclaver or not, this guy merrily slaughtered a bunch of Reapers, including Karshan, with illicit tech. Now I can’t say I’m sorry to see the back of that particular pit-rat, but you know what it’s like round here, even without the gilded getting involved. Emperor only knows what the fallout will be. You wouldn’t have anything to gain, by any chance?’

‘Karshan and I were business associates, sir. Legitimate,’ she added firmly. ‘I deal with the laundry from his smelting plants. With him gone, I’m out a reliable stream of slate.’

Caltro looked far from convinced. ‘Fine. But if any of your people see or catch word about this guy, you send a message to the Bastion before you stop to think. Understand?’

She nodded. ‘Of course. You’ll be the first to know.’

After another lingering look, Caltro turned and strode away. His bulky outline was soon swallowed by swirls of steam. Nimmo waited until she heard the squealing of the entrance hatch before curling her hands into fists.

‘Get back to work,’ she snapped at the scrubbers gawking round the side of a cleansing vat, and they scurried away. Nimmo indulged in a moment of lengthy and imaginative swearing then turned on her heel and made for the rear of the laundaria. She stormed past lines of trollies piled high with dirties, stinking of sweat, grease, bodily fluids and a million and one other substances produced by the district’s manufactorum workforces. For once, Nimmo hardly spared a thought for the stench.

She checked the scrubbers were back out of sight then punched a code into an access pad. A hatch groaned open, the gateway to her second life. The chamber beyond was small and low-ceilinged but cleaner, better-lit and, thankfully, smelt less like a labourer’s armpit. She straightened her slump and shed her worn robe, hanging it on a peg near the door along with a dozen identical ones in similar states of carefully cultivated degradation. Despite the urgency making her blood boil in her veins, she paused to splash her face and hands clean in a washbasin. As necessary as the dirt was to blend in in downclave Vozan, she’d never been able to get used to it.

‘Darro,’ she barked. A thin, sallow-faced man hunched over a blinking array of cogitators blinked up at her, somehow managing to look nervous despite his eyes lacking any human components. ‘Check the masking in that robe. The old crow was blinking at me more than I like. And set a tail on him. I want to know exactly how much he knows.’

‘Yes, ma’am.’

She shoved open a door and stormed down the corridor beyond. Now she was out of sight she blinked to activate her iris and access her encrypted link to the underveil. The connection was jittery – it always was in the lower levels – but it had cost her far too much, both financially and in unpleasant favours, just to have it installed. She wasn’t prepared to think about what it might cost her to attempt to have it upgraded. She set it searching the encrypted underground data-dumps for any information being circulated about the Reaper attack and any possible links to her, setting some very strict filters. The underveil was a lot like Vozan in many ways. She knew it and the people in it well. What they wanted. What they needed. And, more importantly, what they were to each other and the info they shared. But she had learned the hard way that some corners of it were best avoided at all costs.

What little the scan had found by the time she reached her private study was fragmented and inconclusive, but she left it filtering as she pushed the door control, her belly flickering with unease.

Her study was the largest of the cluster of hidden chambers beneath the laundaria. A sizeable cogitator array took up one wall, framed by a tangle of encryption hardware that Darro’s predecessor had installed when she’d first wrested these levels away from the now extinct Caze Clan. The rest of the space was taken up with towering shelves of archivist bins, data-slates, reams of info-vinyl, piles of dataslugs and even, in the lockboxes with the heaviest seals, sheaths of handwritten vellum, some older than Vozan itself, too valuable to be trusted to the archives. A wealth of information. The heart and soul of her operation.

And there he was. Sat amongst it all, smiling, despite Elloi’s and Kara’s guns aimed at his head. His skin was smooth, unscarred and the healthy shade of someone who had access to good food, breathable air and what little sunshine reached the upper levels of Varangantua during the dry season. There were telltale scuffs on his clothing, a spatter of darkening blood up one sleeve, but the clothes themselves were tailored, simple, elegant. Expensive. She herself dressed simply out of necessity. But the way he looked at her, she may as well have been wearing rags held together with gut thread and filth. Only a Della-Tozeere could look at you that way. Like you were so far removed as to almost be a different species.

Elloi and Kara were managing to quarrel even with their guns trained on the stranger.

‘I know what you’re going to say, ma,’ Kara started as Nimmo entered. ‘But–’

‘In all the hells, Kara. What were you thinking, bringing an upclaver down here?’

‘He’s gilded, so what?’ Kara said. ‘He iced the Reapers. We need to find out who he’s working for.’

‘These people are untouchable,’ Nimmo said, cutting her off. ‘You’ve just made an even bigger mess for us.’

‘So what was I supposed to do?’

‘You should have asked me. Hells, doing nothing was better than doing this. If you’d even asked Elloi–’

‘I ain’t taking orders from your boytoy, ma.’

Elloi’s expression never flickered, but Nimmo’s jaw tightened. ‘At least he knows better than to go within a hundred miles of anyone like that.’ She jabbed a finger at the smiling stranger. ‘Now there’s eyes and ears turned our way. The old crow is already snooping round…’

‘This guy worked his way through the inner circle of the Reapers in one sweep. Karshan is dead, ma. Our info chain to the Topaz Quarter broken. And they think we sent him.’

‘Get out,’ Nimmo said, smacking the door command. ‘And keep your mouth shut. No one hears about this. No one.’

Kara glared. Nimmo glared right back. Finally, with a muttered curse so foul it could only have been learned from one of the base-ranked slum-runners, Kara stormed from the room.

‘Has anyone else seen him?’ Nimmo asked Elloi.

He shook his head. ‘Just me and Kara.’

‘Do you recognise him?’

Elloi frowned. ‘I don’t know his name. But he sure looks familiar.’

Nimmo’s heart sank. She closed her eyes and took a breath. She drew her pistol and shot Elloi between the eyes. Blood spattered over the wall and he crumpled to the floor, a look of bemused surprise on his face.

‘See what you did?’ Nimmo said between clenched teeth. ‘I liked him.’

‘If only we didn’t look so much alike,’ the stranger said, his cultured, knife-edged voice reminding her of the purr of a rippercat. ‘You let the girl go, though. Foolish.’

‘I don’t kill my own family.’

‘She’s not your family.’

Nimmo sneered. ‘More family than your kind ever were.’

‘Why, cousin. I’m offended.’

‘What do you want?’

His smile widened, revealing overly sharp canines. Cosmetic enhancement or the by-product of inbreeding, she wasn’t sure. ‘You must know why I’m here, cousin.’

‘Stop calling me that.’

‘Fair enough. Nakvania.’

‘That’s not my name.’

‘It’s more than your name,’ he went on smoothly. ‘It’s the identity scribed into the marrow of your bones. You can’t leave it behind any more than you can shed your skin. Though the fact that you tried to do both fills me with a shame so potent I can smell it.’

‘Tell me which cousin you are, right now, and I’ll kill you quickly.’

‘You won’t kill me.’

‘Bet your life?’ Nimmo said, clicking back the safety.

‘I’ll give you my name,’ he said. ‘In exchange, you will listen to what I have delved into this swamp pit, the smell of which I may never wash off, to tell you.’

Nimmo tried to read his face. Couldn’t. She lowered the weapon.

‘Icarus Della-Tozeere,’ he said, inclining his head. ‘At your service.’

‘Uncle Redregez’s by-blow. I should have known.’ She tapped the barrel of her gun on her lip. ‘Your mother was a servant. One of Aunt Xeenis’ body maids? Pensioned off after the birth only to die mysteriously before your first birthday. Same thing happened to my father. Funny, that.’

‘Yes, we have quite a lot in common. Which is why you should listen to me.’

‘Why did you kill those Reapers?’

‘To get your attention.’

‘That’s it?’

‘It worked, didn’t it? I tried voxing. Tried getting a meeting. But your intermediaries are instructed well. Apparently our name closes doors around here, which I am unused to. So you left me no choice.’

‘Why are you here?’

His face turned solemn. ‘The family’s future is in jeopardy.’

‘More so than usual?’

‘This is more than slate-flow complications. We are balanced on a knife-edge. And you, Nakvania, are being called upon to help.’

‘And why, in all the hells, would I want to?’

‘The visconte seemed to think I only had to mention the circumstances of your departure to remind you of your obligations…’ he said, watching her closely, but she held his gaze, unmoving, despite the nest of snakes that had hatched in her belly. ‘But as I suspected you may need a little more motivation, I took the liberty of compiling this.’ Icarus produced a dataslug from his pocket. Nimmo eyed it warily.

‘What is it?’

‘Evidence about the extent of your operation down here. I’m sure any number of your rivals, or the Bastion, would be very, very interested indeed.’

Nimmo scowled. ‘I don’t leave evidence.’

He smiled. ‘Your associate Karshan had rather a lot stored in his cogitator banks that would suggest otherwise.’ He shook his head. ‘What a shame. It’s almost like you can’t trust downclave gangers to keep their word.’

She raised her gun. ‘So what’s to stop me throwing both it and you in the furnace?’

‘The fact that you ask the question rather than shoot tells me you already know the answer.’

She ground her teeth. ‘You have another copy.’

‘You really have grown good at this, haven’t you?’

‘I learned from the best,’ she said coldly. ‘So what do they want from me?’

‘They want you to come home.’

‘But where are you going?’ Kara demanded.

‘Just away. There’s something I’ve got to take care of.’

‘Who is this guy, ma? What happened to Elloi? And why–’

Nimmo cut her off in a harsh whisper, aware of Icarus lingering in the study doorway, watching. ‘Kara. You have to trust me on this. I need you to get a runner round to the Reapers. Today. Use one they’ve dealt with before, one they won’t shoot on sight. Tell them this wasn’t us, but…’ She glanced at Icarus again and drew Kara out of earshot. ‘Tell them I’ll fix it.’

‘How will you fix it?’

‘I’m working on it… Remember, send a runner they trust. Arvo, maybe.’

Kara pursed her lips. ‘I’ll go myself.’

Nimmo’s stomach dipped. ‘That’s not a good idea.’

‘They’ll listen if I go. And it’ll prove you’re serious. You are serious, right?’

‘I’m serious,’ Nimmo said, squeezing Kara’s arm. ‘Just be careful. I’ll be back soon.’

Nimmo couldn’t forget the determined yet anxious look on Kara’s face as the hatch closed between them. Knowing Icarus was the reason, it was all Nimmo could do not to shoot him in the back as she followed him out of the laundaria.

Never again, she swore to herself, pulling up her hood against the pounding rain and following him to a sleek groundcar.

The arduous journey to Della spire was made even longer by the countless checkpoints and junctions they were stopped at. The driver showed the necessary documents with perfunctory replies, muttering to himself every time he had to open the window to the rain. Icarus stared ahead, unspeaking. Nimmo felt no need to break the silence. She gazed out of the window at the neon-lit transport artery, the clustered, grimy buildings and the hunchbacked unfortunates shuffling between the habs and work yards in the pounding rain.

The rain got clearer as they climbed to levels less choked with pollution, and soon the driver was steering onto smoother, emptier arterials with lighter traffic but even more checkpoints. Nimmo peered up at the glimmering spike of Della spire as its gargantuan shape loomed out of the rain, tall enough for the topmost levels to be lost in the rolling, leaden clouds. The thousands of lighted windows and portals glinted like specks of gold in a melting pot of ore.

She had believed – hoped – she would never set eyes on it again.

Her hab-unit was large for downclave Vozan. It cost her more per season than the rent on the laundaria and its outbuildings combined. However, the whole place could have fit neatly inside the south entrance parking pool of Della spire, with room to spare. Liveried servitors stood ready to scrape rain and dirt from the vehicle, refuel it and polish its black carapace to a void-deep shine the moment it was vacated. She scowled at the reminder that here, possessions were treated better than people.

She followed Icarus to an ornate mag-lift. He had to submit to retinal, fingerprint and blood scans before the doors opened. Eventually, the mag-lift purred to a stop, and they stepped into a vast, arched corridor. The still air was stale, despite the attempts made to improve it with scent sticks. Low light was provided by ornate candelabras set on pedestals in the alcoves. Each had the family crest, a coronetted skull ringed by a flowering vine, set in the base. Engraved underneath was the Della-Tozeere credo, Genus Mortis Tempus Infinitum. Death and Family are Unending. She allowed herself a snort as another servitor whirred towards them, its augmetic footfalls muffled by the deep, if worn, blood-coloured carpet.

‘This will take you to your chambers, where you can wash and change–’

‘They can take me as I am.’

Icarus looked Nimmo up and down and lifted an eyebrow. Her hand itched for a knife, but then he sighed and gestured ahead.

‘As you wish. The family are in the western solar.’

Nimmo weaved her way down the branching candlelit corridors, passing niches that had once displayed silver, gold, statuary and tapestries. Now all that remained were occasional servitors waiting for commands that would never come. She turned one last corner and stopped outside the doors of the western solar. She took a deep breath and brushed her unruly hair back from her face. She stopped herself and sent a narrow look over her shoulder to Icarus, standing silent and stiff at her elbow, but his face was unreadable. She faced forward again, lifted her chin and stepped through the open door.

The circular table in the centre of the room looked small in the middle of such a large and now otherwise empty space. Just seven of its thirty high-backed chairs were occupied. The occupants of those chairs were resplendent in ornamental robes in the house colours of red and gold, and wore enough bejewelled and engraved chains, headgear and cuffs to ease even a substantial cash-flow problem, at least temporarily. But God-Emperor forbid they should ever sink so low as to part with such heirlooms for slate.

Silence fell at her approach. A mixture of looks ranging from open astonishment to deep suspicion were directed her way. She refused to allow a servitor to usher her to her former place behind what had been her mother’s chair, next to that of her grim-faced stepfather. Instead she stood at the empty end of the table, glancing at each horribly familiar and unnervingly unchanged face one at a time.

‘This is really all that’s left?’ she said, pitching her voice to carry, pleased when it didn’t wobble. ‘What a sorry sight.’

‘And just what is she doing here?’ her stepfather growled.

‘Silence.’ The Visconte Commodus Della-Tozeere’s watery gaze was locked on her. She refused to look away, even though he could apparently still make her feel like a child caught sneaking sweetmeats from the refectorum.

‘Nakvania,’ he said. ‘You look… well.’

Her stepfather snorted. ‘She looks like the sewer rat she is, father.’

‘Dannion,’ Commodus warned, then smiled at Nimmo, thin lips drawing back from bloodless gums. ‘Granddaughter. This is somewhat awkward. For all of us. But we appreciate you coming.’

‘It’s not like you gave me much of a choice.’

‘Perhaps not,’ the visconte said, inclining a head that seemed too heavy for his neck. ‘But you didn’t leave us much of a choice either.’

‘This is simply unconscionable,’ said the thin, pinched-face woman next to her uncle Redregez, wrinkling her nose like she could smell Nimmo from across the table. ‘This is your grand plan, visconte? To count on her? This ingrate relinquished her name when she relinquished her honour. You can’t possibly be planning to–’

‘Nice to see you too, Aunt Xeenis,’ Nimmo put in. ‘I’m sorry I didn’t kill Icarus for you. I did try.’

Icarus, standing in the shadows behind his father’s chair, gazed at her implacably while his stepmother bristled.

‘This is the only way,’ the visconte stated. ‘We all know it. The Poltoratskis know it too. They’re just counting on Nakvania mattering as little as you think she does. But the Della-Tozeere name cannot be relinquished.’

‘Does someone want to tell me why I’m here?’

Commodus smiled at her again, though there was nothing close to humour in his eyes. ‘I take it you are aware that your cousin, Lord Zedere, has married into the Poltoratskis… and taken their name?’ Everyone around the table shifted in their seats. Zedere’s parents, sat to Commodus’ right, returned the poisonous glares sent their way with venomous ones of their own. ‘And, if that weren’t bad enough, has now made an alliance with my late brother’s side of the family in a bid to take over our business interests?’

‘The slate-brokers have talked of little else,’ Nimmo said drily. ‘But what has any of this to do with me?’

Her grandfather regarded her for a long moment in which she read many and unnerving possibilities in his eyes.

‘The question of the directorship of our promethium interests is to be settled by a blood ballot.’

Nimmo stared. ‘You can’t be serious.’

‘Deadly serious,’ Dannion said, weighing her up in a way that made Nimmo’s skin crawl.

‘No one has used a blood ballot in generations.’

‘They are legal and binding,’ Commodus stated. ‘Cast in blood, sealed by witnesses, sanctioned by the God-Emperor’s own Administratum.’

‘And the Poltoratskis have agreed to this?’

‘It will be honoured by all.’

‘Then you’re all as ridiculous as each other.’

Commodus was silent long enough for the family to shift their collective attention from him to Nimmo and back again, then continued like she hadn’t spoken. ‘Despite our efforts to draw them back into the fold, my brother’s treacherous brood are all voting for the Poltoratskis, of course. Slate is, and always has been, their sole priority. They have lost their respect for our name. To me, that should also mean that they lose their right to dictate its fate. But, as I said before, you cannot relinquish blood.’

Nimmo pinched the bridge of her nose and fought her tumbling thoughts into order. ‘And how many of them are left?’

Commodus’ thin lips pressed together. ‘Currently the vote is tied.’ The visconte got to his feet, the stiff way he moved betraying an age that wasn’t evident in his face. He leant heavily on a cane. It clacked against the marble floor as he came round the table, the noise echoing in the cavernous space. ‘A split result means months, perhaps years, of legal wrangling. They have the slate to haemorrhage on a protracted legal battle, but our resources would not last long. We would be finished. Disgraced. Reduced to nothing.’

‘Maybe the universe is trying to tell you something,’ she said levelly, but he lifted his pointed chin and went on like she hadn’t spoken.

‘With your vote in our favour, we will win, Nakvania–’

‘It’s Nimmo.’

The family glanced at each other, incredulity tightening their surgically enhanced faces. But Commodus just smiled again. ‘We made a deal, granddaughter. I nullified your betrothal to Benedict Tozeere, at some considerable cost–’

‘The man would sell his mother for a bottle of rezi,’ she said, unable to stop the emotion bleeding into her voice. ‘If you think I would have ever willingly stood by and let you do to me what you did to mother–’

‘I listened to your complaints,’ Commodus went on. ‘And I let you leave. In return, you swore to honour your connection to our name.’

‘I left the name behind,’ she said. ‘Before Icarus showed up, there has never been any connection between me and this family. I kept my end of the bargain. You can’t ask me to come back now.’

‘I’m not asking you to come back. Just to put your noble blood to good use.’ He looked at her appraisingly. ‘The ceremony is tomorrow. Do this for your family. One day, one vote, and all this will be over.’

‘You should listen to Zedere,’ she said, glancing round the empty, cavernous room with its peeling paint, scratched marble floor and empty bookshelves. ‘Allying with the Poltoratskis might be the only way you survive.’

Commodus’ lips pressed into a thin line. ‘And allow our name to wither and die? Hand over control of the promethium fields? Give up everything that makes us and our heritage part of Varangantua?’ He shook his head. ‘Not while I draw breath. And you, granddaughter, agreed to maintain the honour your name carries. If you do not vote, you disgrace us all.’

She drew a breath of her own and squared her shoulders.

‘Fine. I’ll vote for you. Then you’ll order him,’ she said, nodding at Icarus, ‘to destroy the information he has on me, and you will never draw me into any of your messes ever again.’

He heaved another sigh. ‘You pain me beyond words. But yes. Do this and we’ll allow you to return to your squalid excuse for an existence. The fact that this is your price perhaps proves that you belong there after all.’

Nimmo muttered one of the curses she’d picked up from Kara and was gratified to see Xeenis’ pinched features twitch, and then Commodus was summoning a servitor to take her to her room.

Nimmo stood in the middle of the vaulted chamber with every inch of her skin crawling. The red velvet duvet draped over the enormous bed was faded but free of dust. The russet carpet was spotless and the servitor alcoves were hidden by ornate engraved screens. The bedclothes were freshly pressed and the surfaces of the gilded fireplace and mirrored vanity gleamed. But the air was as still as the void. Empty. Dead.

She stood before the fireplace, staring at the life-size portrait of a hard-mouthed woman with dark hair and keen silver eyes, so like her own it was like looking into a mirror. One of the servitors made another attempt to assist her in readying for bed. As she waved it away, threatening deactivation, there was a knock at the door. The other servitor pulled it open before she could belay its inbuilt protocols.

‘Lord Icarus Della-Tozeere,’ it announced in wheezing vox-tones as Icarus stepped into the room.

‘What in all the hells do you want?’

‘I’ve just come to see how you are settling in.’

‘I’m guessing putting me in mother’s chambers was your charming stepmother’s idea?’

‘It was considered proper.’

‘Mind games don’t work on me. Not any more.’

‘I don’t understand you,’ he said after a pause. ‘Look at everything you’ve done in that world you call home. Imagine what you could achieve here, if you were only willing to take your place.’

‘Did Commodus send you here to say this?’

‘No,’ Icarus said levelly. ‘I came myself. I’m trying to understand.’

She examined him closely. ‘You really believe in it all, don’t you? That this, all this’ – she gestured at the ornate room – ‘is real? Is worth something? Has meaning?’

‘We are all born into something,’ he said. ‘What we do with that is up to us.’

‘Not in this family.’

He tilted his head quizzically, as if examining a peculiar species of sewer-lizard. ‘You are too blinded by your petty notion of freedom to appreciate what opportunities you have.’

‘I would say exactly the same about you,’ she said, watching him closely. She was sure something flickered in the back of his eyes, but whether it was doubt or pity was difficult to tell. ‘You’re different from the others,’ she observed. ‘Don’t you ever consider what other possibilities are out there?’

‘What would those be?’

‘You could leave. Like I did.’

He blinked. ‘I’m sorry?’

‘Stop acting dumb. I know you’re not.’

‘Failure to understand your reasoning doesn’t indicate a lack of intelligence,’ he said.

‘It’s over. Whether they win this vote or not. Have you seen the state of this place? Of them? There’s nothing left to preserve.’

‘Our name will live on.’

‘Stay and keep your name. Or come with me and have something more.’

A corner of his mouth turned up in an unpleasant smile. ‘There is nothing more. Here you are rewarded for loyalty. Respected. You mean something.’

‘And that’s why you have to stand behind your father’s chair, is it? That’s why they don’t even look at you when they’re deciding your future?’

He shook his head and turned to leave.

‘You think I didn’t know the visconte would come looking for me one day?’ she called after him. He paused at the door. ‘He never makes a deal he can’t take advantage of. Well, neither do I. I knew one day he’d come, wanting something. Needing something. And I knew I would be ready when he did.’

Icarus looked back over his shoulder. ‘You’re making a good show of having the upper hand, cousin,’ he said softly. ‘But the situation is simple. Do your duty and the visconte will allow you to return downclave. Then, and only then, will the dataslugs be destroyed. And we will all look forward to forgetting this sordid little episode.’

‘I’m giving you one chance, Icarus,’ she said levelly. ‘We could end this here. Tonight. Destroy those dataslugs. Consider coming with me, or don’t. But either way, take this chance to protect what you care about.’

‘Goodnight, cousin,’ he said, opening the door. ‘See you at the ballot.’

She lay awake for hours, staring into the shadows caught in the curtains over her mother’s bed, going over Icarus’ words and her own. She thought of her grandfather’s hungry eyes, the hateful looks of everyone else sat around that table.

Then she thought of Kara. She remembered the night she’d found her, living in an empty munitions crate behind the Caze Clan’s topaz lab. She was so thin Nimmo could see the shape of her skull through her skin. Her hair was patchy, her eyes wide with the sort of engrained fear you developed when you’d been scared every single day of your life. She was eleven years old but carried the weight of many more years.

Nimmo had seen countless unfortunates pushed to or over the edge since coming downclave. But when Kara had brandished a shard of broken glass in a shaking hand, ready to defend her crate, the one bastion of safety she had, Nimmo took pity on one who had been born in circumstances so totally different to her own. She took Kara home that night and had spent years building a world for both of them where uncertainty no longer plagued every waking hour.

But that haunted look had been in Kara’s face again when Nimmo left her behind.

Her anger flaring anew, Nimmo got out of bed, flicked on the desk lumen, dug some ageing parchment from the dusty drawers and started writing.

Dawn was just starting to relieve the dark when Nimmo dressed and slipped from the room. Deftly avoiding the compound’s few working security picters, she hurried along the echoing corridors and down server stairwells until she reached the towering, rusted doors of the Heritage Charity Chapel. Apparently, Commodus didn’t extend the use of the cleaning servitors this far into the spire, and, as expected, the chapel built exclusively for the use of the benefactors of the Della-Tozeeres’ charities had not seen active worship in decades.

She shivered in the stone-chilled air. Somewhere in the gloom an automaton choir was stuck in a jarring loop of the sixty-seventh exultation of His Unrivalled Divinity. Shadows cloaked the dark spaces beyond the wide columns, and the rows of benches appeared upholstered in velvet, so deep was the dust. The only light came from a flickering hand lumen somewhere in the shadows of the altar.

The sound of whispering silenced when she allowed her footfalls to be heard. She stepped around the altar and found a tall man and woman robed in the sombre Poltoratski silks of grey and black.

‘Lord Zedere,’ Nimmo said, ‘and Lady Herelia Poltoratski. Congratulations on your harmonious joining. How is wedded bliss?’

‘Cousin Nakvania,’ Zedere intoned, the derision in his voice thicker than jeneza. ‘So it really is true.’

‘Truer than His Word, I’m afraid,’ she said, holding herself still while her iris scanned them for weapons. When it came up clear, she wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or offended. ‘But you knew that, or you wouldn’t be here.’

‘We risked a lot just receiving your summons,’ Herelia said. ‘The only reason we came is because our family believes in cultivating multiple options.’

‘Whereas I think you should just slink back into the sewer and leave this matter alone,’ her cousin added.

‘When I heard you’d married a Poltoratski, Zedere,’ Nimmo said, holding her cousin’s stern gaze, ‘I thought perhaps I wasn’t the only one with sense. But you’re taking this ridiculous piece of pageantry as seriously as the old man, aren’t you?’

‘The fact that you speak of it as such just proves you’re not worthy to take part.’

‘Apparently I am. So. Let’s talk terms.’

‘Terms?’ Zedere’s mouth hardened and Herelia’s gaze narrowed.

‘I have a vote that could fulfil or end all your dreams of getting your hooks into Della-Tozeere Promethium Concern.’

‘I want to preserve this family’s heritage,’ Zedere growled. ‘Herelia and I can invest in new equipment, new business relationships. We can save our legacy and allow our family to see the next century. But Commodus is too stubborn to see–’

Nimmo rolled her eyes theatrically and Zedere fell into seething silence. ‘Let’s stick to the point, shall we? I will vote for your side, Zedere. For a price.’

‘What price?’

‘A position in your merchant-combine.’ The pair stared at her. She raised her eyebrows. ‘Is that so ridiculous?’

‘You left to get away from the business.’

‘To get away from the family,’ she corrected. ‘But I’m a pragmatist. And, as has been pointed out to me recently, I believe I could be a valuable asset.’

‘So what’s stopping you joining grandfather?’ Zedere said. ‘I know he offered you the chance to come back. If slate and a slice of the promethium business is all you want–’

‘That side of the family don’t like direction, opinion or change. I want a role where I call the shots.’

‘And you think we’ll be happy to just give you that?’ Herelia asked with her pretty lip curled.

‘If I vote for you? Yes.’

‘You must think we’re stupid.’

‘I hope not,’ she said, holding out the rolled sheaf of parchment. ‘Or you’re about to miss your best shot at getting everything coming to you.’

Zedere took the pages. ‘This is everything?’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Details of my proposed offer. I would rank below yourselves, and the Poltoratski elders and siblings, of course. But above everyone else. Log it with your record officia and we’re good to go.’

‘You expect to be ranked above our progeny?’ Herelia said disbelievingly.

‘You don’t have any.’

‘We will. One day.’

‘Good luck with that,’ Nimmo said, with a smirk at Zedere. ‘There’s a reason there’s not a generation below ours, you know.’

‘We will have children.’ Zedere pointed the rolled pages in Nimmo’s face. ‘And they will be above you.’

Nimmo raised her hands. ‘Very well. Add the clause if it’ll make you happy. But until that blessed event, I want a meaningful position in your new empire.’

‘And in exchange you’ll vote for us?’

‘I will.’

Zedere narrowed his eyes again. Herelia looked both thoughtful and wary. They unrolled the parchment and read in silence. The minutes seemed to stretch into hours. Zedere’s brow creased as he scrutinised the fine print, but Herelia’s expression never changed. When they were finally done, Herelia raised her head.

‘Very well. You have a quill?’

Nimmo suppressed a smile and withdrew a quill from her pocket.

‘Herelia, don’t you think–’

But Herelia took the quill, leafed to the last page and signed.

‘Both copies, please,’ Nimmo said levelly, and Herelia, jaw tightening, flipped through to the second copy and signed that too.

‘You next, cousin.’

Zedere glared.

‘Do it.’

‘Herelia, I don’t think–’

‘If there’s something in it for her, we can count on her. We win the blood ballot and get her connections downclave into the bargain.’ Herelia looked earnestly at her husband. ‘We always talked about expanding, spreading our security.’

‘The lady sees sense,’ Nimmo said.

Zedere hesitated, his fine-boned face pensive, then took the quill, signed both copies and thrust the papers back to Nimmo.

‘Pleasure doing business, my lord. You log that copy with your archives,’ she said, handing half the papers back. ‘And I do believe we’re all set.’

‘Just so you know,’ Herelia said as Nimmo turned to go, ‘I know this is the only way, but I’m not happy about it. If the world had any true justice, the likes of you would never come within a hundred miles of my family.’

‘Fortunately for me,’ Nimmo replied, ‘justice is as rare in Varangantua as honour among the gilded.’

She gave an exaggerated bow then returned to her chambers.

She sat at the desk with a slow smile, feeling lighter than she had since Probator Caltro had bustled into the laundaria the morning before. She pulled out her copy of the contract and read it through again, smiling at the spiky signatures of the Poltoratskis at the bottom.

She tucked the parchment away at the back of the drawer then paced the room, going over everything from every angle.

A summons blinking red in her iris made her jump.

‘Kara?’ she said, attempting to vox over their secure link, but her audio interface just hissed and crackled in her ear. She swore, blinked through several different connections, but they were all fuzzy. She glowered at the floor-to-ceiling windows, noticing for the first time the faint rainbow sheen of some sort of masking film, and hurried to the window and swung it open.

‘Kara? Is that you?’

‘Ma, where are you?’

‘Somewhere they block remote veil connections,’ she muttered. ‘Too many sordid secrets. What’s wrong?’

‘I’ve been trying to get you for hours. I’ve tried three different comm-stations. Ma, we’ve been rumbled.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘They didn’t even ask any questions, just opened fire.’

Nimmo could barely hear anything over the rushing in her ears. ‘Who?’

‘Enforcers,’ Kara said, voice low and harsh. ‘Someone’s tipped them off about my deals in the smelters’ district. They tried to get me outside the hab, but I got away. But they’re right on my tail–’

‘Kara,’ Nimmo said, cutting her off. ‘Get to Roo Boscoe’s place, okay?’

‘Who?’

‘He’s an old friend. Ask for him at the refec-house on the corner of the Indo District work yard. Tell him my name. He can keep you safe.’

‘But–’

‘Do it, Kara,’ Nimmo said firmly. ‘I need you to get a message to him.’

‘What message?’

‘Tell him to… plan for the end. Tonight.’

A pause. ‘What does that mean?’

‘He’ll know what it means.’

‘Tell me what it means.’

‘Kara–’

‘If you tell me just to trust you one more time, ma, Throne help me I’ll–’

‘I will. I promise I’ll explain,’ Nimmo said, feeling something threaten to crumble inside her. ‘When this is over. Now, just get to Roo’s, okay?’

Kara gave an impatient huff but Nimmo could detect the fear underneath. ‘Fine. But you’d better level with me soon.’

‘Roo can tell you some of it…’ she said, forcing the words out. ‘But I’ll explain the rest when I can. Now go. And, Kara…’

‘Yeah?’

I lied. I’m sorry. I love you. ‘Be careful,’ Nimmo said, and cut the connection.

Anger hot enough to burn through her fear flared in her veins. She flung open the door and summoned a passing servitor.

‘Where is Lord Icarus?’

The sound of its cogitators whirring went on for several moments, then there was a click. ‘Location, Lord Icarus Della-Tozeere… lesser library, east wing…’

She set off at a run. The endless branching corridors seemed to last forever. She had to stop at several junctions to get her bearings. She had never known this part of the spire well, and the dust and cobwebs and empty alcoves all blurred and merged together until she wasn’t sure if she was going in circles. Finally, she found the gallery that opened into the east wing, and was striding for the lesser library.

She shoved the creaking doors open before the waiting automaton footman could do it for her. Icarus sat with a yellowing bound copy of Tenets of the Lex Alecto open on the reading stand in front of him, a half-drunk glass of opalwine next to it, for all the world like he had nothing more on his mind than the vintage.

‘You ten-sided bastard.’

Icarus didn’t look up.

‘I know it was you,’ she said, drawing her pistol. ‘You tipped off the Enforcers. You broke the deal.’

Icarus finally looked up. His expression was vaguely bored, a little bleary with wine, but his eyes were dark. ‘Did you really think that we wouldn’t find out about your meeting with Zedere?’ He raised his eyebrows. ‘Do you really think that little of us? Of me?’

‘You followed me?’

‘I don’t need to tail you like some downclave spy. This is my home. My battlefield. You can’t outmanoeuvre me here.’

She blinked. ‘There was a vox-thief somewhere… in the chapel?’

‘There,’ he said, leaning back in his chair. ‘Your chamber. Most chambers, in fact. Virtually nothing happens around here without my knowing about it. You’re not the only one who understands the value of information, you know.’

‘And Commodus approves of that?’

‘He approves of me doing my job. He does not ask me how I do it.’ The gun started to shake in her hand. He eyed it warily. ‘Killing me won’t fix the problem, cousin.’

‘It would make me feel better.’

He sighed, drank more of his wine. ‘It’s hardly my fault that we need to resort to threats of violence to keep you loyal.’

‘Call off your dogs. Now.’

He pulled a piece of rolled parchment from his robe and unfurled it, heavy with seals and tight cursive script. ‘A written, sworn and witnessed statement that I was mistaken in my information about Kara Fenzine, along with a slate draft for enough money to compensate the Bastion for wasting their time. This will fix your problem.’ He pulled the paper back as Nimmo reached for it. ‘But it is worthless until the visconte signs it. And he won’t sign anything if you kill me.’

She raised the gun. ‘I can shoot you without killing you. Give it to me.’

He rolled it back up with a sigh and held it out. ‘You can keep it, by all means. But grandfather will not sign it until after you have voted for the Della-Tozeeres.’

Nimmo snatched the parchment and skimmed through it. She bit down on the inside of her cheek to stop anything showing on her face, then slowly holstered the gun.

‘This isn’t the end.’

‘No, I would say we’re back at the beginning again.’

Something in his voice made her look up. Something flickered in his eyes, but then it was gone, almost too quick to see.

‘Kara was right when she said the gilded don’t go round slitting throats themselves,’ Nimmo mused. ‘Why did you do that, Icarus?’

‘To get the evidence I needed. And so I would be brought into your presence.’

‘I don’t believe you,’ she said, watching him closely. ‘You did it because you wanted to. You wanted a taste of my freedom. Of my world.’

‘No one in their right mind would step within smelling distance of that world if they had a choice.’

‘You’re lying.’

‘Belonging is in the blood,’ he said, pouring himself more wine without meeting her gaze. ‘You can’t escape it. Even if you want to.’

She eyed him narrowly as he emptied the bottle into the glass then drained most of it in one. ‘Just do one thing for me, cousin,’ she said carefully. ‘The last thing I will ever ask of you.’

He set the glass down then, with a sigh, raised his eyes to hers. ‘What?’

‘Ask him what your mother’s name was.’

‘Why does that matter?’

‘Maybe it doesn’t. You decide.’

She resisted looking back as she left the library. Her back was sweating and her pulse thundering in her temples. She hurried round the corner and slumped against the wall. She suddenly felt old. Tired. Like she’d spent too long fighting.

Back in her chamber, the silence was now oppressive, like there was a person in the room, watching her. She felt sick and weary. She sat on the bed and stared at the wall, the contract with the Poltoratskis in one hand, the unsigned draft to the Bastion in the other, and tried to decide which felt heavier.

The day wore on and the wind picked up. Soon it was strong enough to make it sound like the spire was under attack. Lightning washed the air white every few seconds, to be chased by growls of thunder like the howls of a hungry beast. Nimmo stared out into it, dazed. She peered down into the rain-washed blur of downclave Vozan, wondering if Kara had found Roo, if Roo still remembered how she’d helped him out of a tight spot her first week downclave. She also wondered how many of her alliances were snapping like strained threads as word got round that Kara was a fugitive.

She made herself breathe, deep and slow, much to the consternation of the body maid now attempting to lace her stays.

‘This would be a lot easier if you shed the bodystocking, miss,’ the maid muttered.

‘Just get on with it.’

The woman’s thin lips pinched over the response she was too well trained to make, then she and an army of attendants began layering yards of heavy fabric over Nimmo’s head as the hour of the blood ballot approached. From the musty scent which couldn’t be completely disguised by freshener crystals, she knew either she didn’t warrant a new gown or, more likely, the Della-Tozeeres didn’t have the liquid slate for one.

Incense was burned, prayers were murmured and oil smeared across her forehead by an overweight priest under the influence of something that made him sniff and sweat. They touched her face up with cosmetics, tugged the snarls from her hair and wound it into ornamental braids. Her head was already aching by the time they brought out the towering, spiked headdress. The candlelight glinted off the skull crest, slashed through the middle to denote her status as a bastard. She remembered its neck-crushing weight but knew it would only hurt more if she tensed, so kept still.

She clenched her eyes shut as they clamped the contraption onto her head and screwed the tiny bolts into the receivers implanted in her temples. When she opened her eyes a complete stranger was staring back at her from the mirror.

No, not a complete stranger. She scowled at the portrait over the mantelpiece.

The priest and a pair of liveried servants escorted her as she made her way to the grand hall, where the ceremony was to take place. The tall, arching doors were visible ahead when she joined the end of a queue of people. The rest of the family were ahead, accompanied by their own, larger retinues. She scanned for Icarus but couldn’t tell which of the crowned and robed figures might be him. But then she glanced back. Her cousin stood looking small and pale-faced in his finery behind her. His headdress, like her own, was embossed with the slashed crest, and he stared out from its shadow with dull eyes. She tried to catch his attention but he refused to look up.

Nimmo’s stomach dipped as she approached the arched entranceway. But she lifted her head and stepped into the hall with her back straight and face set.

Music filled the air, along with the smoky cloy of incense. A dais was set under the largest of the hall’s stained-glass windows, which depicted some long-forgotten battle. On the dais was an altar draped in red-and-gold cloth.

Herelia Poltoratski sat in the first row with her parents, uncles and three older sisters. The next row held a number of overdressed strangers, representatives from the Vozan justicius by the sigil on their shoulder brooches, the official witnesses to the ceremony.

She shuffled forward until the column came to a stop. The music reached a crescendo and died away. An eerie hush fell as another, even fatter, priest waddled to the altar and began the lengthy process of blessing the event, the device and the dagger and calling upon the God-Emperor to witness the ceremony.

Nimmo’s heart raced. She stepped back, closer to Icarus, and whispered, ‘You asked him, didn’t you?’

He didn’t reply. She glanced over her shoulder. He was glowering. There were dark smudges under his eyes, like he hadn’t slept, and he looked pale.

‘What did he say?’

‘You know what he said.’

‘He never knew your mother’s name.’

‘She didn’t matter,’ Icarus said, though Nimmo thought his voice had changed. ‘Once I was born her usefulness was over. I’ve always known this.’

‘You put great stock in names,’ Nimmo observed. ‘You may have told yourself she didn’t matter. But don’t you think someone should have known hers? Recorded it somewhere–’

‘This won’t work,’ Icarus said. ‘Whatever I think…’ He paused, and Nimmo held her breath. The priest droned on. ‘The retraction papers will not be valid until the visconte signs them. Attempting to manipulate me won’t help you.’

‘It won’t help me, no. But it might help you.’

He blinked. ‘You make no sense.’

Her attendants were all absorbed by the priest, but she lowered her voice anyway. ‘Vote for the Poltoratskis.’

‘What?’

‘Free yourself from the family. You’ll never get another chance.’ She craned her neck. His lips were pale, his jaw set. ‘If they win, I can make sure Zedere holds to my agreement. I can make sure you have a place. Security. A future.’

‘It’s no use,’ he said. ‘There’s no way out. There never was.’

She stepped back in line, swallowing curses. Finally, the priest was done and a robed herald stepped to the front of the dais and unfurled a scroll.

‘The honoured and exulted Faustus Benedict Tozeere.’

Nimmo fought the urge to fidget as her ex-fiancé climbed up to the dais, heavy robes dragging behind his bent frame. She shuddered just watching him move, bringing to her mind as it always did the lumbering gait of an elderly bull grox. But she couldn’t help wishing she could see her grandfather’s face as this man he’d planned to have her marry approached the altar, preparing to vote against him. A pair of rheumy eyes scanned the crowd, then he lifted a silver dagger over his head. His amplified croak of a voice filled the chamber.

‘By my name, by my blood and by His Willing Hand, I make my will known.’

He sliced his palm. Blood welled from the cut, and he extended his hand so it dropped into a waiting basin. Then he pulled one of the two engraved levers on the side of an arcane apparatus wired into its underside. A flickering pict screen mounted on the wall shimmered and the cyphers on its display changed. One vote to the Poltoratskis.

The queue shifted forward. The herald boomed out each name and the remaining members of her great-uncle’s side of the family shambled up the steps and cast their votes for the Poltoratskis. Zedere was last. His gaze swept the room, then he raised the dagger, sliced his palm and cast his vote, bringing the Poltoratskis’ total up to eight.

Then it was the Della-Tozeeres’ turn. Their count ticked up. One. Two. Three. The visconte was the last in line before Nimmo. He held his hand high, bleeding palm facing the audience as his blood dripped into the basin, then pulled the lever. The total for the Della-Tozeeres rose to seven.

Nimmo finally dared a glance back over her shoulder. Icarus was staring at their grandfather. His face was pale.

‘The honoured Lady Nakvania Maryine Della-Tozeere.’

The rushing in her ears almost drowned the sound of the name she had not heard out loud in full since she was seventeen. Her skin grew cold. She took as deep a breath as her gown would allow and climbed up to the altar. The knife, wiped clean by an acolyte, lay next to the blood-spattered basin. Whispering had started up in the benches. She lifted the knife. She mumbled the words. She sliced her palm. She stared at the crimson cut, fire pulsing into her hand, then turned it over. Red drops splashed down. She reached for the levers. Her hand was shaking. She took a breath, closed her eyes and pulled.

With a high, sweet chime, the Della-Tozeeres’ count rolled to eight. Her uncles and aunts squared their shoulders and tilted their chins, too well bred to grin but too relieved not to react at all. One or two of them shot looks across the nave to where the Poltoratskis sat, grim-faced and glaring. Zedere’s fists were clenched in his lap. Herelia’s eyes burned hotter than chemflame.

Instead of allowing an attendant to show her to her place in the audience, Nimmo marched to Commodus in the front row. His eyes widened as she approached, and nervous glances and mutterings were exchanged by the rest of the family, but Nimmo ignored them all.

She withdrew the retraction statement from her sleeve and a quill and held them out. ‘Sign it.’

A slow smile spread over the pale lips. ‘After the ceremony, granddaughter.’

‘The deal was after my vote,’ she said, thrusting the document towards him. ‘I kept my word.’

‘Why the dreadful hurry?’

‘You care about your family,’ she said. ‘I care about mine.’

He surveyed her narrowly for a weighty moment then took the quill and signed the parchment. Her knees weakened with relief, but she was careful not to snatch the document back. She took it carefully, rolled it into a parchment tube and slipped it back into her sleeve.

‘Thank you,’ she said.

The visconte had opened his mouth to reply when his gaze shifted over her shoulder and his face went slack. Slowly, everyone else registered the pict screen, and a deathly silence filled the hall.

Icarus was behind the basin, his bloody hand still extended. The Della-Tozeeres’ total remained at eight. The Poltoratskis’ was nine.

No one moved. It seemed like no one even breathed. Then Commodus was on his feet and everyone else was following suit.

Nimmo drifted to the edge of the hall, her heart hammering, and slipped a blade from her sleeve. Icarus’ eyes sought her in the crowd, but he did not move. All eyes and gestures were turned his way, but the house guard, caught between Commodus shouting one thing and Zedere shouting another, hovered in the middle, uncertain. The justicius representatives appeared to be trying to sneak for the door, but Herelia bellowed to her own honour guard to cut them off.

Taking advantage of the momentary distraction, Nimmo sliced through her stays and skirts, stepped out of the ragged remains of the gown and pulled her pistol from her boot.

Redregez was now approaching with three of the house guard, his face murderous. Icarus drank him in for a long moment, his expression darkening, then turned his back on his father and made for the door.

Her uncle was almost on her. She checked to make sure Icarus was away then clambered up onto the deep sill of the nearest window, sent up one final prayer and shot out the glass.

Wind blasted in with rain and the roll of thunder, causing the guards to hesitate. Nimmo peered through the storm, scanning frantically. She was soaked to the skin in seconds, and cloying despair was threatening to close her throat when a steady humming, increasing in volume, could be heard over the snarling of the storm. Nimmo dived behind a bench just as the guards reached her, and then the stained-glass window over the altar burst inwards.

The world exploded in fire, flying glass, blood and noise. The roar of a gunship engine filled the air along with the sing and whizz of grapnel lines. They arced through the window arches, embedding themselves in stone, wood and bodies. Screams filled the air. Bulky figures in mismatched armour began pouring in, firing as they came. Nimmo raised her own weapon. She took out her stepfather first, putting the bullet into the back of his headdress before he could turn to see her approaching. Redregez and Xeenis were screaming, crushing themselves against the wall like they could claw their way through it. Nimmo took each of them out with several rounds to their chests.

More of the house guard poured into the room and opened fire. But they were careful, trying to preserve the lives of the nobles. The Reapers flooding through the ruined window had no such compunction.

Nimmo froze when she spotted Kara. She was shooting her way through the front ranks of the house guard and making for the panicking justicius representatives.

‘We need the witnesses alive, Kara,’ Nimmo muttered into her comm-bead. ‘Kill everyone else.’

Her daughter nodded, relayed her orders, and the firing gained in volume.

It seemed to go on for hours. Reality was reduced to nothing but screaming, the smell of blood and a hot, swirling mess of dust and debris.

Then, all at once, like a storm blowing out to sea, the firing stopped. Nimmo’s lungs were scoured with smoke. She’d wrenched her knee and was bleeding from bullet grazes across her shoulder and thigh. But the gratification surging through her veins, more potent than any narco hit, doused the physical pain.

The only people still upright were Reapers. The justicius witnesses were in a cowering bundle against the wall, guarded by three heavies. Nimmo blinked, trying to take it all in, then Kara was pacing towards her, her face hard under its mask of blood, with the huge form of Roo Boscoe limping along behind her.

‘You got the Reapers on board,’ Nimmo rasped, her throat raw. ‘Well done.’

‘As soon as they knew they’d get a pop at the family that killed Karshan they were all for it,’ said Kara. ‘And, well… I’m guessing they’re expecting to get some benefits out of you moving up in the world.’ Kara gave her a look. ‘But you knew that, didn’t you?’

‘I was going to tell you,’ Nimmo started.

‘When? Before or after you abandoned us to claim the family millions?’

‘That was never the plan.’

‘Plan for the end,’ Kara snapped, glaring at Roo then back at Nimmo. ‘You had something in the works all along. You were always going to come back.’

‘The plan was to take control,’ Nimmo insisted. ‘Because they would never leave me be until I did. I didn’t know how it would happen…’ She glanced at Roo then back at Kara. ‘I thought after the vote, I could take my place and lay some groundwork. Get us a strong position before… this.’ She scanned the destruction wanly. ‘I was going to explain everything to you before I made my move. But when they went after you…’

‘So what does this mean? What does all this mean?’ Kara said, gesturing around the destroyed hall and dead nobles.

‘It means they can’t hurt us any more.’

Kara looked dubious, not meeting her eyes.

‘I’m sorry,’ Nimmo said stiffly. ‘But you’ll understand one day. Soon, I hope. When you see what future I can give us now.’

‘I liked my old future just fine.’

Nimmo looked away, taking a moment to steady her voice. ‘I’ve got a retraction statement, signed by Commodus, that will get the Enforcers off your tail. When they get here, I’ll give it to them. Then you can choose your own path. Whatever that might be.’

Kara’s jaw worked, but before she could say anything else, an armoured figure called from over by the dais.

‘Ma’am. We got a breather here.’

‘So?’ Nimmo said, rubbing her aching head, wondering why she suddenly felt so empty. ‘Take care of it.’

‘He’s saying your name. Your real name. He’s calling for Nimmo.’

Nimmo limped to where the Reaper stood over a crumpled form in charcoal robes. Just enough of him was left for her to see it was Zedere. One eye was gone. One arm was gone. Blood darkened the front of his robes to black, but he sat propped against the wall, breathing hard, his remaining eye fixed on her.

‘We… had a deal.’

‘The deal still stands,’ Nimmo said coolly. ‘You won the vote. The Della-Tozeere interests are yours. Until you stop breathing, at least. I’m sorry about Herelia,’ she added, glancing at the heiress’ body sprawled on the floor at his feet. ‘If she’d kept a civil tongue in her head she might have been spared. I could have used her. But you were all well overdue a lesson in consequences.’

‘They’re… all gone?’

‘Looks like your company is now my company.’

Zedere coughed. Blood trickled from his mouth, but he managed a scowl with what remained of his face. ‘Grandfather would be proud.’

Nimmo shot Zedere through the forehead. Her cousin jerked and slumped forward, shock widening his remaining eye.

She looked up as the deep, sonorous notes of a bell began to ring deep in the bowels of the spire.

‘A distress bell,’ Kara muttered, stepping over Zedere’s body to join her. ‘The rest of the house guard and Enforcers will be here soon. So what’s the plan now?’

Nimmo examined her for a moment, fighting a small smile at the grudging expectancy in her daughter’s face.

‘Round up some of the heavies. Post the rest to guard this room and the witnesses. Then follow me.’

Nimmo kept her gun drawn as she led the way. Clusters of the house guard approached but halted when they took in her armoured band of followers. She led the winding way through the halls, ignoring servitors that scuttled out of their way and the ominous tolling of the bell, which got louder as she went deeper into the spire.

Reaching the doors to the western solar, she paused. The doors stood open. There was blood sprayed across the carpet and smeared on the wood. She stepped inside. A trail of blood marred the marble from the door to the table. She moved closer.

Icarus was slumped in his father’s chair, his eyes closed, his head lolling to one side. Blood trickled from his temples where his headdress had been ripped off. Larger stains soaked the front of his robes. His skin was grey, his lips white. She couldn’t see if he was breathing.

She approached cautiously, holding her hand up to halt Kara and her escort at the door. When she reached him, her chest tightened. He looked younger, his eyes closed as if he were just sleeping.

‘Icarus?’

He blinked his eyes open and drew a rattling breath. He rolled his head to look up at her, taking some time to focus.

‘Nimmo,’ he rasped. ‘They’re dead?’

She nodded. ‘What happened?’

His mouth turned up in a grim half-smile. ‘Xeenis… sent a guard.’ He coughed blood. ‘But I got away. You risked a lot, trusting me like this.’

She glanced back at Kara, hovering in the doorway, then back down at her cousin. She lowered her voice. ‘I gambled on you. It paid off.’

‘For both of us,’ he said, his smile weakening, his eyes losing focus. ‘At least I got to die my own man. Not many among our kind can… can…’

His eyes slid past her shoulder and darkened. His head dropped back against the headrest and his breath sighed out of his body. He lay still.

A shame. Even though he had fulfilled his purpose, Icarus would have been a useful associate in Nimmo’s new operation.

The tolling of the distant bell fell silent. Kara stepped up to her side.

‘The Enforcers are here,’ she said.

Nimmo lifted her head, strode to the end of the table and lowered herself into Commodus’ seat. She drew out the parchment tube containing the signed contract and retraction and laid it down on the table. A dispute between families, she would tell the Enforcers, hardly unheard of in the spires. And if they protested, she now had the slate to buy their leniency. Something stole through her like a powerful stimm, slowing her heartbeat. Clarity. Assurance.

Certainty.

‘I’m ready,’ she said.

BITTER HARVEST

DENNY FLOWERS

The oarsman cut the engine, trusting the skiff’s momentum to carry us the final stretch into the dock. I glanced to him, ready to offer my compliments on his skill, only to find dead eyes staring blindly ahead. He’d died at the tiller, that last course correction his final act. My gaze slid to his bloodied shirt. He must have taken a bullet in the crossfire. I hadn’t noticed.

I took his place at the helm, easing the vessel the last few feet into the factorum’s berth, the mag-lock securing us. I opened the skiff’s access port, glancing over my shoulder to the pews behind me. All had been occupied on our outward journey by the clan-siblings of the Khaadi, their numbers closer to a military unit than a band of thieves.

Now only four of them remained.

The elder, Nateo, tried to keep his expression impassive, still feigning control. But I could see the pain behind his emerald eyes, and the bloodstained dressings bound about his midriff. When he rose it was not unaided, his lumbering bodyguard Tzal supporting him with one hand and hauling a small casket of blackened metal with the other. That unadorned box was the spoils of our battle, bought in lives and paid in blood. The toll had been high, and the reward seemed small indeed.

Nateo glanced at me in passing, nodding by way of thanks. A magnanimous gesture for a Khaadi to bestow upon a lowly H’ownd such as I.

‘Secure the vessel, Glas,’ he murmured to me, teeth gritted against the pain, before he disembarked.

Sslay trailed him, empty-holstered, his weapon lost in the firefight. He looked nervous, fingers scratching idly at his wrist and the topaz-burns his torn undershirt could not fully conceal. His gaze lingered a moment, his eyes the same vivid green as Nateo’s, before he too disembarked.

Kiner was the last to rise. Shorter and leaner than the others, he stalked towards the access porch, fingers never straying far from his knife. His clothes were sodden and he was trying not to shiver. I’d requisitioned skinsuits to protect us from the arctic waters, but he’d refused his, claiming a true Khaadi did not need to shield from the cold. As he passed, his gaze fell upon the dead oarsman, a sneer marring his lip. He spat at the man’s feet before glaring at me, daring that I object. His eyes were not quite like his brothers’, the vivid green tainted with cobalt blue. I offered no challenge, letting his anger pass through me like sunlight through a window. My own eyes were grey and effuse as smoke, the photo-contacts bleaching them of colour. They revealed nothing, and neither would I.

He turned away, muttering an insult beneath his breath. I knew better than to respond. Despite his eyes having the telltale taint of mixed blood, Kiner embraced the Khaadi heritage as fiercely as any of them. Perhaps more so, for he had more to prove.

As he disembarked, my fingers glided over the vessel’s gene-lock, securing the skiff and powering down the unnecessary systems. Though damaged, the hull’s voltfield should still ward off auspex scans and most other surveillance technology. Likewise, thanks to our silent running, there was little chance anyone heard our approach, and even my photo-contacts struggled to pierce the sea mist. We would be safe for a time.

But once the tired rays of Alecto’s faded sun crested the waters it would be harder to mask our presence. The factorum was an old Khaadi property, long abandoned, but there were still a million eyes in Saltstone, and they reported across the district and beyond. Once a tattle-spy had marked us someone would come. The Enforcers, perhaps, or the casket’s rightful owners. Or maybe something more local, an up-and-coming gang deciding to make a name by finishing off a Khaadi clan.

Only one thing was certain. Dawn was coming, and by its light the Khaadi’s fate would be decided.

They were different men when we first met, Nateo standing proud at the head of two dozen clan-siblings, all clad in his livery, Tzal and Sslay beside him. Only Kiner stood apart, intent on the tapestry adorning the wall. Upon it was depicted the conflicts of the Khaadi ancestors, the images framed by vines whose ruby fruit slowly rotted as the story unravelled. Rumours claimed it was an original piece, crafted thousands of years ago. If so, it was probably more valuable than the room’s other contents combined, including Nateo’s clan-family.

None of the Khaadi acknowledged me, unconcerned by a lowly outsider, their sole focus the man ensconced behind a desk of polished onyx.

Lord Laqui Khaadi.

From a throne of leather and brass he glared at them, his hair swept from his face by a topknot, his own robes an iridescent purple spun with gold. His eyes, like all pureblood Khaadi’s, were a piercing emerald, though none of the supplicants would meet his gaze. Not when he was this enraged.

Few outsiders would see it. His hands did not shake, nor his nostrils flare. When he spoke, his tone betrayed no hint of malice. But there was a deliberateness to his movements, a stiffness in his posture. Those not astute enough to recognise the signs would not enjoy his patronage for long.

‘This is the third time you have come to me, beggar’s bowl in hand,’ he said, addressing Nateo as though the two men were the room’s only occupants. ‘The Khaadi are warriors, known by the venom in their eyes. But when I look into yours, I see only desperation. I find myself wondering why you cannot manage your own affairs.’

‘I plead forgiveness, Lord Laqui.’ Nateo bowed. ‘It is true I lack resources. But the opportunity presented could very well change that. In gratitude for your support I will, of course, double your rightful share of the profits.’

‘Twice a pittance is still a pittance.’ Lord Laqui shrugged. ‘Should I desire it, I could claim it all by right. Everything you have you owe to me. Do not forget that.’

Nateo nodded, bowing again. He was wise enough not to say more. Lord Laqui had long since outlived his clan-siblings and was now an Ancient, ruling over a score of clan-families. He had little interest in debate.

‘You require a vessel?’ he eventually asked.

‘Yes, my lord. Our target is an offshore promethium rig. Its security is manageable, providing we can get close without being spotted. We need a craft that will not fall foul to lookout or auspex.’

‘Merely that?’ Lord Laqui said with a dangerous smile. ‘A ship that moves unseen?’

‘The currents and sea mists already disrupt scans. We would need only–’

‘I know how to conduct a sea raid,’ Lord Laqui said, cutting him off. ‘Of course, in my time they were glorious battles that turned the waters red. I lost half my clan-siblings once, two of them true blood brothers. But we succeeded, and their names are preserved for all time. Remind me of your errand?’

‘We will be procuring bio-chems. Fifty caskets.’

‘For which your buyer offers fifty thousand slates?’ Laqui frowned. ‘A tidy sum for industrial waste.’

‘I gather the chemicals will be used to manufacture topaz or some other narcotic,’ Nateo replied, spreading his hands. ‘Either way, my buyer has the funds.’

‘Topaz? The Khaadi do not dirty their hands with such filth.’

A flicker. The one I would come to know, as Sslay stiffened just a fraction at the words. He was not the only one to betray himself, but Lord Laqui seemed not to notice, intent on Nateo.

‘True, my lord.’ Nateo bowed. ‘But our buyers are outsiders.’

No more needed to be said.

‘Very well,’ Lord Laqui said. ‘I will provide a vessel for this errand of yours. But your avarice has already cost me too many loyal Khaadi soldiers. You will gamble no more of their lives.’

‘Thank you, my lord,’ Nateo replied, though his eyes betrayed his smile. ‘Though I can assure you our ambush is meticulously planned. They only have token security, and once we are close their long-range armaments will be rendered useless. I have an operative on the inside and our attack will be swift and decisive. I do not anticipate casualties.’

‘Then you are a fool,’ Lord Laqui replied. ‘And a transparent fool at that. I know what you are hiding.’

Nateo didn’t move, but his expression was as brittle and transparent as glass.

‘Hiding?’ he said, not quite keeping his voice level.

‘None of your crew are trained to operate such a vessel.’

At the words Nateo visibly sagged, as though a great weight had been eased from his shoulders.

‘You are right, my lord. Once again you lay my soul bare.’

‘Cease fawning, it is unbecoming,’ Lord Laqui replied before raising his hand to me. ‘Glas?’

At the mention of my name I stepped forward, bowing first to Lord Laqui and again to Nateo.

‘This is Glas,’ Lord Laqui continued. ‘She and her team will operate the vessel under your command.’

My head was still lowered, but I could feel their eyes turn on me. Until that moment I had been ignored, of no greater importance than the furnishings or lumen fixtures. Perhaps they assumed I was a secretary, or their lord’s current smile-girl. It did not matter, for even the briefest glance at my eyes and attire would tell them I was no Khaadi. Having me captain their vessel must have seemed an insult, and a poorly disguised one at that.

‘Thank you, my lord,’ Nateo replied through gritted teeth. ‘I’m sure she is capable enough. But can we trust an outsider to–’

‘She is H’ownd,’ Lord Laqui said. They knew his meaning well enough. ‘H’ownd’ was a rough translation of an ancient concept, the original term referring to a tool that was unusually well suited to its function.

I bowed low, as though humbled by his words. There was, after all, no greater compliment a Khaadi could pay an outsider.

Nateo bit back a scream as Sslay dug into his gut, seeking the bullet. Tzal looked on, though whether he sought to guard Nateo from hidden foes or Sslay’s clumsy attempt at surgery I could not say. Kiner seemed disinterested, his back to them, intent on the factorum’s sealed entrance. But I knew he was watching from the corner of his eye.

My head was down, focusing on the control panel as I attempted to review the factorum’s schematics and reactivate its systems. I adjusted my photo-contacts, trying to decipher the faint pictographs buried beneath the grime. It must have been idle for some time – the control panel’s casing was pitted and encrusted with iridescent salt that stung my fingers and burned my nose. Still, the corrosive scent was mildly preferable to the stench of rotten fish entrails that permeated the rest of the warehouse.

Nateo choked back another scream as Sslay finally tore the round from his side. Tzal was immediately on hand, applying a pressure gauze to the wound. Sslay dropped the round on an upturned crate that acted as a table. Beside it was the sole casket we had escaped with, one of the fifty Nateo had assured Lord Laqui he would secure.

‘It’s bad,’ Sslay said, inspecting the bloodstained round. ‘It went deep and it’s not clean. Then again, given the extent of the bleeding, I’m not sure that matters.’

He was right. The pressure gauze was already stained red, struggling against the flow of blood. Nateo would most likely bleed out in a few hours, assuming sepsis didn’t set in. An ignoble death, though to my mind no less dignified than those of his siblings who had fallen on the promethium rig, caught between our unexpectedly well-armed prey and the sudden arrival of the Enforcers.

Sslay glanced to Nateo, who was trying to sit up. ‘Lie down, brother. Rest.’

‘Later,’ Nateo replied. ‘We need to patch up the boat and keep moving.’

Sslay shook his head. ‘You need a medicae. We should leave you at the nearest hospice. Say you got mugged or something.’

Nateo did not reply, instead rising shakily to his feet. With supreme effort he masked his pain, glancing at me.

‘Glas? Why aren’t you getting us seaworthy?’

‘I told her to get the factorum’s power systems running. Somewhere in this place there must be a functional vox-caster.’ Kiner did not turn as he spoke, his gaze intent on the factorum’s sealed entrance.

‘You do not give the orders, cousin.’

I tensed at the insult, expecting Kiner to lash out in response. But he merely glanced at Nateo, his tainted eyes blazing.

‘You are in no condition to lead us,’ he replied, his voice surprisingly even. ‘We need to call in allies, retaliate. We cannot allow Khaadi to be humiliated in this way.’

‘A little late for that,’ Sslay murmured.

‘Speak for yourself. I killed three of them. I wasn’t the one crawling in the dirt searching for his gun.’

‘This from the man who somehow dropped one of the caskets overboard?’ Sslay retorted. ‘Your clumsiness halved our profits at a stroke.’

‘I was being shot at!’ Kiner snapped. ‘Not sulking or trying to hold my entrails in place. Maybe if we had a few more Khaadi soldiers instead of you two and this Soyld it would be different.’

He jabbed his thumb in my direction, but I did not react at the word. ‘Soyld’ was another term for an outsider, and not one with positive connotations. It had been employed several times since we had fled the rig. I was blamed for the vessel’s voltfield interfering with our own vox-channels and slowing the ambush, despite my prior warnings. Then again, I was also blamed for the apparent failure of the voltfield to conceal our presence, and the subsequent bullet that would no doubt claim Nateo’s life.

‘We’re not getting any more soldiers,’ Sslay sighed, fingers straying to his wrist. ‘I can’t get a vox-channel. Can’t break into the dataveil either, otherwise I would have called a retrieval team. Bloody Saltstone – nothing works.’

‘Doesn’t matter,’ Nateo said, glancing to the casket on the table. ‘We finish the drop alone.’

Sslay and Kiner exchanged glances, their collective gaze flickering to the casket mounted on the table. It seemed an innocuous thing, an unadorned box almost a foot in length and cast from a blackened metal. But it had no keyhole, no obvious means of accessing the contents. The metal, though dull, was unknown to me. I adjusted the photo-contacts, viewing the object in multiple spectrums, but none could pierce the outer casing. Perhaps it was manufactured off-world.

‘Did you take a second bullet to the head?’ Sslay asked, tapping his temple. ‘We have no soldiers and no wares. You think your supplier will pay anything for one measly casket? More likely our pitiful offering will be taken without payment whilst we are swiftly dispatched.’

‘He’ll pay. One is more than enough,’ Nateo replied, almost keeping his voice steady. ‘Glas, get back to the boat.’

‘Stay where you are, Soyld,’ Kiner replied, addressing me despite his gaze being fixed on Nateo. ‘And do something about this stench.’

‘I could re-engage the cryo-units, but the insulation is compromised.’

‘So?’

‘It will get cold.’

‘The Khaadi do not fear the cold.’ Kiner smiled as I tapped the controls. ‘Besides, it might buy our wounded leader a few more moments of life. Or is it a few less? I’m no expert in cryotherapy.’

‘You’re not an expert in much,’ Sslay said with a shrug. ‘Shouldn’t you be out there scouting the area? Brooding in the shadows is your specialty.’

‘I already scouted whilst you were playing medicae,’ Kiner replied. ‘Saltstone has really gone to shit. The surrounding hab-blocks are torched, factoria too. I can only assume our sanctuary was spared because it already appeared derelict. That and the smell. What is that?’

‘Rotten meat,’ Sslay replied. ‘This place was storage for fissure-shark carcasses.’

Kiner grimaced. ‘Fish?’

‘It’s valuable stuff. Pound for pound, it sells for more than topaz.’

‘Well, you’re the expert there,’ Kiner said with a cruel smile. ‘To think, the Khaadi, once Alecto’s most fearsome warriors, are now reduced to peddling black-market fish. I feel there is a saying amongst our people, something about the stench of failure?’

‘We haven’t failed yet,’ Nateo said. ‘We can still make the drop.’

‘In that bullet-riddled wreck?’ Kiner sneered, jabbing his thumb in the direction of the docking bay. ‘It barely got us this far. No way we can make it out of Saltstone. We’re trapped.’

‘Unacceptable,’ Nateo snapped. But then he swayed, almost falling, grasping the crate for support. Sslay took his shoulder, trying to make peace.

‘Rest, brother,’ he said. ‘I will make the drop on your behalf.’

‘You think I trust you with narcotics?’ Nateo retorted, shaking his hand clear. ‘No, it has to be me. My contact knows me. He trusts me.’

He grimaced as he spoke, clutching his side.

‘You’re in no state to do anything,’ Kiner replied. ‘We need to gather other families, get them to pull us out so we can hit back.’

‘At whom?’ Sslay asked. ‘The Enforcers? The security forces protecting the cargo? Or do we just flail in all directions like a dying squid?’

‘Idiot,’ Kiner spat. ‘That wasn’t security, not with that kind of firepower. We were set up, probably by one of the other cartels. The Vidora, maybe, or the Zin Zin? Doesn’t matter – we go to war.’

‘We aren’t–’

The thunder of Nateo’s stub pistol silenced them. As one we turned to him.

His weapon was trained skywards, his other hand still clutching the crate. Beside him Tzal straightened to his full height. He was over seven foot, though whether naturally or due to gene-forging I could not say. His apparent muteness suggested the latter.

‘This is not a debate!’ Nateo snarled. ‘We will repair the boat and make the drop. Sslay, you oversee the H’ownd – get her to fix the ship. Kiner, set a perimeter. The last thing we need is one of Menem-Ba’s informants discovering we are stranded here. You have your orders.’

They did. But still they hesitated.

‘I still say we contact–’ Sslay began, but Nateo cut him off.

‘There is no one to contact. Did you not take Lord Laqui’s meaning? We are pariahs now. We triumph alone or we die alone. We four comprise the last of the clan-family. We must be as one.’

The oarsman’s corpse was heavy.

The dead always are. An illusion, of course, brought on by stiffening limbs. Still, I was breathing hard as I dragged the corpse to the waste-lock, binding a chunk of broken masonry around the legs before condemning it to the bleak waters of Saltstone.

Did I feel a great weight for a lost comrade?

No. Though H’ownd, he was an outsider, and I had been taught they had no value. But as I watched the body sink, I could not deny a sliver of regret somewhere in my soul. Not for his death, for that was his own. No, my regret came from our collective failure.

It was supposed to be easy. That’s what Nateo had claimed.

I turned away, inspecting the craft, its hull scored by bullets and tracker-rounds. Mercifully the voltfield had muted them, else the Enforcers would have already found us. Perhaps they still would, for it was unclear how they had spotted us in the first place, Zurov gunships suddenly soaring across the waters, clarions wailing as their weapons scored the rig. Their fire was indiscriminate, tearing through the security detail and what remained of the Khaadi. We had already lost half our number, the ambush unravelling before it was even sprung. Our approach had been silent, shrouded by the voltfield and clouded by sea mist. The Khaadi had braved the freezing waters, scaling the iron struts that comprised the rig’s legs. They moved to surround the central chamber, where Nateo’s intelligence told us the caskets would be stored. But they were still creeping into position when a shot broke the silence, tearing into Nateo’s side. As he fell, gunfire erupted across the rig, the sentries unloading at anything that moved. The Khaadi were exposed, unable to support one another. Most were cut down in moments. I could still picture Sslay crawling on his belly, Nateo trying to bellow orders through bloodstained lips and Kiner racing past him, a casket slung over his shoulder, his stubber blazing at shadows.

It was unfortunate, our leader felled by the first shot fired, his forces out of position and unable to return fire.

Most unfortunate.

Had a guard spotted a shadow? Taken a shot without consulting their team? It seemed unlikely – it was dark, and they may have fired on an out-of-position comrade. One would have expected a warning of some kind before the trigger was pulled.

Then there was the wound itself. I’d only caught a glimpse of it during the surgery, but the entry point suggested a small-calibre bullet. Not a sniper’s shot then. No, it would be a weapon that was only accurate at close range. An autopistol, perhaps. Or a stub-round.

I stepped through the access port, reactivated the skiff’s control panel and attempted to run diagnostics. There was too much damage to be certain of anything. The hull was scored by bullet holes and plasma burns, but most of this was superficial. It was a sanctioner’s bolt-round that had done the real damage. It had struck the propulsion unit as we’d fled, the craft’s machine-spirit struggling on a few miles before gradually slowing to a crawl. Still, the armoured hull was intact enough for the voltfield to function, muffling vox communication and deadening the tracker-rounds. The effect was amplified at sea, where the tides and mist masked motion and heat variance and prying auspex scans could be nudged into assuming we were part of the ocean’s currents. We had slipped free of the Enforcers’ net, though I suspect this was because their priority was securing the rig. Whatever chemical was concealed within those caskets must be valuable.

Footsteps.

I ignored them, head down, focused on my work. It was only when Kiner stepped through the access port that I glanced up, flinching as though startled. Our eyes met a moment before I bowed my head.

‘Where’s Sslay?’ he said.

‘He instructed me to run diagnostics whilst he took care of… something.’

‘What?’

‘I did not ask. It is not my place.’

‘No, your place is obeying orders. My orders. I already told you not to listen to that junkie. When he ducked out you should have come and found me.’

I hung my head, silent. He expected no response. A H’ownd would not contradict a Khaadi employer.

‘This wreck salvageable?’ he asked, nodding to the vessel.

‘No, it is immobile.’

‘That’s for a Khaadi to decide,’ he said. ‘Not that there are many of those left. Nateo is unconscious, making Tzal little more than an ornament. And Sslay…’

He sighed, taking the seat to my left. This was not expected. I risked a glance to his face. He was staring at nothing, his tainted eyes expressionless.

‘You know what Sslay’s doing?’ he asked. ‘You must have seen the way he twitched and scratched like an animal. Not that you’d tell me. You’re no Khaadi, but you have the sense to hold your tongue. Still, I assume you still have eyes?’

I nodded.

‘Speak up!’

‘Yes. I have eyes.’

‘Then you have seen the tapestry displayed in Laqui’s chambers?’

‘Yes,’ I said, taking a risk. ‘A priceless work.’ He did not admonish me for my unnecessary critique.

‘I presume you are ignorant of its meaning?’ he said. ‘It is an old story. A Khaadi farmer grows berries with the intent of making wine for his clan-sister’s wedding. All vines but one are perfect, but the last has a few buds that are tainted by black mould.’

A knife was suddenly in his hand. Perhaps he’d had it all along, tucked up his sleeve. The blade was blackened, an assassin’s tool.

‘The correct choice is obvious – cut the vine and cut your losses. But the farmer is greedy, and thinks he can save it if he plucks the tainted berries. But the rot spreads, and in time consumes his harvest. The wine is bitter, and serving it leads to a broken oath and violent recompense.’

He brandished the blade, using it to pick under the nail of his thumb.

‘The lesson is well known to any Khaadi Ancient. Better to cut off a rotten clan than risk its taint spreading. You understand?’

I nodded, as though hearing the story for the first time.

‘I’m no fool,’ Kiner continued. ‘I know what they call me behind my back, how they question my mother’s faithfulness. They say I have the eyes of a half-breed, that I should be grateful that I was raised as a clan-sibling. But I am as pure as any true Khaadi. I am not weak of spirit like Sslay, or broken of mind like Nateo. I know Laqui must be considering cutting this rotten vine, and I can only imagine Nateo’s failure will speed his hand. By now he is surely seeking a suitable blade.’

I gave the barest hint of a shrug, as though the action were involuntary.

‘This will end in violence,’ he said. ‘The chaos back there… Whatever we’ve stumbled into goes beyond what Nateo sold to us. Do you have a weapon?’

‘My pistol is empty,’ I said, truthfully enough.

He sighed. ‘As is mine. Nothing else?’

I reached into my pocket, withdrawing a rusted lump of metal that wrapped around my fingers. He regarded the knuckleduster with disdain before glancing to me, eyebrow raised. I bowed my head, embarrassed.

‘Weapon of last resort,’ I murmured.

He grimaced. ‘My fault for expecting more. Well, when they come, and they will, stay close to me. Perhaps I can get us both back to Laqui, where you will no doubt make your report on my brother’s failures.’

I nodded, but he was still looking at me. Tentatively I raised my head and met his gaze, allowing a hint of fear to mar my face.

He smiled, but his eyes were cold as polished loom-stone.

‘Go and find Sslay, tell him I want a report on his work,’ he said.

I did not wish to leave him alone on the vessel. But what choice did I have? A H’ownd would never question a direct order. So I bowed, rising and making for the access port. But as I passed he seized my wrist, pulling me close.

‘Don’t let his rot spread to you,’ he whispered, still brandishing the knife.

Nateo was either asleep or unconscious, sprawled on packing materials, the hulking Tzal standing over him. The bodyguard’s head snapped round as I entered, his broad face expressionless, before he returned to his vigil. Still, I knew he watched as I crossed the room, and there was a slight tension in his stance. He did not think me a threat, but that did not stop him treating me as such. He was well trained. Better than the rest, anyway.

I moved slowly, as though nervous. It gave me time to assess our status. Nateo’s skin glistened with sweat, despite the creeping cold now pervading the factorum, and his breath was slow and shallow. There was no sign of Sslay, and I’m ashamed to say it took me a moment to realise what else was missing from the room.

The casket. It was gone.

I glanced to Tzal. He would not have taken it unless instructed to. Perhaps Nateo had asked him to hide it? It was possible. Then again, if another Khaadi had taken it while Nateo was unconscious, would Tzal stop them? Or even notice?

I left him to his vigil, following the passage leading from the control room. The temperature fell rapidly, and I made some swift adjustments to my skinsuit. Still, I felt ice crystallise on my face as I approached the cryo-freezer.

There I paused, peering in.

The warehouse probably stretched for half a mile, but it was impossible to be certain with the cryo-units belching out clouds of snow and patches of dazzling frost forming on wall and ceiling. I had to adjust my photo-contacts just to make sense of the terrain – a blinding sea of white, broken only by the vast and rancid husks of meat hung from the ceiling.

Fissure-shark. I’d seen them in the water, ravenous shadows with blades for teeth. Their outer hide was tough, impervious to freezing temperatures. Even now they appeared almost pristine, untouched by decay. But my nose told a different story. Within that near-impenetrable hide they festered, organs liquifying and belching putrid gases that caused the skin to swell. Despite my earlier claims, reactivating the freezer unit had done little so far to combat the stench.

I pressed on until I reached the intersection. There I slowed, trying to remember the factorum’s layout. There were various processing sections, storage, as well as some utility spaces.

Where would Sslay have gone?

He could administer a dose of topaz anywhere. But if he had taken the casket, presumably he sought to open it? The lack of data-pad or keyhole suggested it was either gene-locked or had a more eldritch mechanism, perhaps triggered by a keyword or frequency. Accessing the device would require either an advanced cogitator or the application of extreme force. There were tools stowed on the vessel which could perhaps crack it open, but Sslay would not be aware of them.

So where would he go?

I turned left, heading for maintenance. I did not go far before I heard the dull shriek of tortured metal. I slowed, peering around the corner and into the maintenance bay. Sslay’s back was to me, the casket secured in an aged clamp. An arc welder scoured its casing. He was making little progress.

I lingered, unsure of the best approach. Kiner had ordered me to find Sslay, and that was justification enough to stumble across his enterprise. But I could not predict how he would react to my presence. He might attempt to silence me. I could return to Kiner, advise him what transpired. He’d spoken as though he sought an ally, though that alone made me suspicious. A Khaadi, particularly a half-breed, would be unlikely to partner with an outsider over his clan-siblings, unless he thought them irreversibly compromised. Or expendable.

Sslay cursed, slamming the arc welder down on the table, wiping his greasy hair from his eyes. He seemed agitated. The twitching had ceased but his eyes had a dull quality, and his mouth hung a little slack. It was clear he was using, and probably unstable because of it. But perhaps that also made him receptive.

My footsteps were suddenly heavy.

He tensed as he heard me, turning and brandishing the arc welder with attempted menace. Relief momentarily flashed across his eyes when he recognised me, before they settled into a grimace of disdain.

‘What are you doing here, Soyld?’ he snapped.

I flinched as though struck.

‘I beg forgiveness.’ I bowed. ‘Lord Kiner instructed me to find you. He wants a report.’

‘Shit!’ Sslay sighed, fingers digging absently at his forearm. ‘Well? Is the boat working? Can we salvage anything?’

‘I do not think so. But he wishes to hear it from you.’

‘Of course he does. The half-breed can’t trust the word of a Soyld, has to hear it from one of his betters.’

He was slurring. It was slight but telling.

I stepped forward, hesitant, opening my mouth to speak but seemingly unable to find the words.

He looked amused.

‘What?’ he said, beckoning me as though conversing with an anxious child.

‘Pardon, lord, but I believe the metal has been heat-hardened.’ I gestured to the casket. He glanced from it to me.

‘So?’ he said.

‘It would become brittle at lower temperatures,’ I said, nodding to a cryo-cell discarded in the corner. He followed my gaze, but took an age to make the connection. When realisation finally dawned he surged upright, seizing the cryo-cell and prising open its outer casing. The metal must have cut into his fingers, but he seemed not to notice. He was so preoccupied he did not hear the approaching footsteps.

I slunk back down the corridor, listening. They were close, scarcely a dozen paces from the turning. Sslay seemed oblivious, now tipping the liquid contents of the cryo-cell onto the casket. The metal hissed at its touch, the temperature plunging over a hundred degrees in seconds. Cracks carved their way across the metal.

I retreated two more steps. There were two, moving as one, the pace awkward, disjointed. I turned just as Nateo and Tzal rounded the corner, the former’s arm slung around his bodyguard’s shoulder. He looked half-dead, but still had his pistol in hand.

He spared me a glance and I cowered, an animal caught in a hunter’s sights. I reached out, pleading, but Tzal stepped in, sweeping me aside with a flick of his wrist. I rolled with the blow, though the force still sent me sprawling. I hit the floor just as Nateo fired.

The shot was aimed high, striking the ceiling above Sslay’s head and showering sparks. He lost his balance, tumbling to the ground. His head snapped up and he saw Nateo hanging off Tzal’s shoulder, his gun trained on his Khaadi brother while I lay prone at their feet.

‘Nateo,’ Sslay said. ‘You’re awake.’

‘You sound surprised,’ Nateo hissed. ‘What did you slip me?’

‘Just a little morpholox. Medicinal. For the pain.’

‘And where did you find that?’

‘Old medi-kit,’ Sslay replied. He was rising slowly, hands held high. Nateo took a couple of stumbling steps forward, the ever dutiful Tzal mirroring the movements. Had he woken his master to follow me? I found my respect for the giant rising. Even Lord Laqui might have approved of the bodyguard, as much as he approved of anything.

‘What have you got there, Sslay?’ Nateo asked.

‘Nothing,’ Sslay replied. ‘I mean, I have the casket, but was keeping it safe. I wasn’t sure you would awaken, and I–’

‘What the hell did you do to it?’ Nateo snarled. Sslay glanced to the fractured metal, scored as though by the touch of some terrible blade.

‘I… I didn’t–’ He glanced around in desperation, his gaze suddenly finding me cowering at Tzal’s feet. ‘It wasn’t my idea. She–’

The sudden hiss silenced him. Blue-tinted smoke billowed from the cracks in the metal. Sslay threw himself to the floor, covering his mouth with his hands, but the sound abruptly ceased, the casket’s outer casing peeling open, metal fractals flaying from its edge.

‘Idiot,’ Nateo spat. ‘If you have damaged it I–’

It was then that I saw the collar.

It was a simple thing: a band of polished silver, wide enough to be worn about the throat. Crimson threads were spun artfully through the metal, but the aesthetic was spoilt by the rear-mounted clasp, an ugly barb studded with stimm dispensers and tipped with rows of inward-facing needles. There was something off about the device, as though the parts were pulled from mismatched sources. Some I thought I recognised. Others were unknown to me.

Sslay was staring at the stimm-collar.

‘Don’t even think about it,’ Nateo warned, pistol cocked.

‘I wasn’t thinking anything. I’m just surprised,’ Sslay said with a shrug, his gaze unmoved. ‘You said we were stealing waste chems. This doesn’t look like waste anything.’

He was right. It was odd, for despite being clearly advanced tech, the device looked somehow unfinished. But the casket had been tailored for it, the inner fit perfect, a data-display showing ambient temperature and humidity readings.

It looked… experimental. A prototype?

‘It’s a combat stimm,’ Nateo said. ‘Still in development. I gather it has a high fatality rate, so keep your hands off.’

‘Do you take me for a fool?’ Sslay replied. ‘You think I will just stick any random junk into my body?’

‘There’s precedent.’

‘Yeah? Then should I name you a liar? Because there’s precedent there too.’

I could tell his words stung. Nateo tried to conceal it, but the pain made it difficult to mask his emotions.

‘I am the elder,’ he said. ‘There are matters I rule upon that do not concern you. Your job was to fix the damn boat. How is that going?’

‘It can’t be fixed,’ Sslay said, rising to his feet. ‘It’s dead. I told you that already.’

‘Not good enough,’ Nateo replied, raising the pistol. He fired, the shot going wide – I assumed deliberately. Sslay made a point of ducking as the bullet took a chunk out of the table.

‘I swear,’ Sslay said, glancing to me. ‘Ask the Soyld, there is no–’

Another shot blew a hole in the wall, inches from his face.

‘Fix it. Now.’ Nateo spat, his saliva veined with blood. Sslay did not reply, finding his feet and scurrying down the corridor. Nateo sagged slightly as he passed, and once Sslay had rounded the corner the elder Khaadi slid to his knees. Tzal was instantly beside him, raising him upright, Nateo’s legs barely brushing the floor. I still lay prone at their feet, seemingly forgotten, Nateo’s emerald eyes fixed on the broken casket.

‘Does Sslay speak true?’ he asked, addressing me for the first time. ‘Is our craft unsalvageable?’

I rose slowly, half an eye on Tzal.

‘No,’ I said. ‘There is extensive damage to the propulsion, and the vessel will struggle to get above a crawl, but it is seaworthy.’

He looked at me as if for the first time.

‘He lied to me?’ he said.

‘Or he doesn’t know.’ I shrugged. ‘He undertook little of the diagnostics. He was… preoccupied.’

‘What is our range? Can we get out of Saltstone?’

‘No,’ I lied. ‘But I can get us to one of Lord Laqui’s allies. They are within the harbour.’

He shook his head. ‘No, we must reach my contact. He–’

‘Your contact betrayed you.’

Nateo blinked, incredulous at the interruption. I pressed on. There was now little point in employing restraint.

‘The Enforcers were waiting for us,’ I said. ‘There were too many and they came too quickly for it to be a response to the gunfire. They were there to wipe both sides out. Your contact set you up.’

‘How could you know this?’

‘Lord Laqui knows everything,’ I replied. ‘He has been watching you for some time. He knows of your debts, and the choices you made to settle them. He knows of your intended betrayal and of your true prize.’

I saw his trigger finger tighten. It did not overly concern me. In his current condition it would be simple enough to relieve him of the gun. But Tzal was a complication. I tucked my hands into my pockets, sliding the rusted knuckleduster around my fingers, just in case.

‘You dare address me in this manner?’ Nateo said finally.

He did not deny my words, or react with incredulity. It said much. I resisted the urge to smile.

‘My apologies, but there is little time for etiquette,’ I replied. ‘You are dying and it is almost dawn. We must go now.’

His pistol was suddenly trained on me, the barrel pointed between my eyes. I did not blink.

‘You’re his spy then?’

‘His spy, and your ally,’ I said. ‘Because all Lord Laqui cares about is that.’ I nodded to the stimm-collar. ‘If you can provide it for him, all other crimes will be forgotten.’

‘But…’ Nateo stuttered, the gun lowering just a fraction. Was his voice breaking? The loss of composure was unexpected. Still, he was dying. Allowances had to be made.

‘You don’t think Lord Laqui has made difficult choices? Performed ignoble deeds? Bent the Ghaan code?’ I said. ‘Any Khaadi who reaches the rank of Ancient has been forced to make regrettable choices. It is heartbreaking, but necessary. That is the price of leadership. He understands this. He has been where you are now.’

I strode slowly to the table, retrieving the stimm-collar. It was surprisingly light. Nateo had lowered the gun, his gaze resting at his feet.

‘He’ll forgive everything?’ he whispered.

‘Lord Laqui has scoured Varangantua and beyond, chasing the faintest whispers of this device,’ I lied, as Tzal took it from my outstretched hand. ‘To have a functional stimm-collar is worth any price. Your indiscretions and debts are as nothing.’

‘Even working with the Enforcers?’

I stiffened.

In that moment he could have seen through me. But his head was lolling, eyes barely open, and by the time he looked at me my composure was restored, no hint of disgust marring my face.

‘Of course,’ I said. ‘He has done likewise when necessary. They are just another power to be managed.’

I’m not sure Nateo really believed me. But what other choice was there? He knew he was dying, and that his contact was unlikely to reward him for providing a single casket from a promised fifty. He must have thought trusting me gave him better odds of survival.

Particularly if, as I suspected, his contact was an Enforcer.

I knew something was wrong as soon as I stepped onto the vessel.

By this point Tzal had Nateo slung over his shoulder, the stimm-collar clasped in his massive fist. He entered first, blocking the access port with his bulk, and it was only when he made for the rear pews that I saw what remained of the control panel.

‘Tampered’ was the wrong word. It was as though an animal had torn it apart. My gaze darted from the console to the pew with the hidden compartment, where the vessel’s maintenance equipment was secured. It was open, tools spilling across the deck. Someone had ransacked it.

‘Get us moving,’ Nateo murmured, eyes half shut, breath laboured.

‘I cannot.’

‘You said it was working!’

I pointed to the console. ‘Not any more. Sabotage.’

‘Yes,’ said a voice. ‘There’s been a lot of that.’

It was Kiner, of course. He was seated in shadows at the rear of the cabin, the vessel’s maintenance tools scattered about his feet. I cursed myself for not seeing him sooner, too focused on Nateo. The elder Khaadi turned awkwardly, clutching his side, Tzal already on his feet. That worried me – he must have sensed something I had not.

‘Seems like our whole mission was a bit of a failure, doesn’t it?’ Kiner continued. There was something off about his voice. Not exactly a slur. More a hoarseness.

‘Kiner?’ Nateo murmured. ‘Where’s Sslay?’

‘Oh, we’ve spoken,’ Kiner replied. ‘Pathetic little stimm-head told me about your little secret. About how the merchandise we stole wasn’t what you claimed? Turns out we were after something a little stronger than topaz.’

‘That’s not important now.’

‘Oh, it’s very important,’ Kiner said, a smile stretching ear to ear. It was too taut, the skin drawn tight, the rictus grin of a corpse. His head tilted, and I saw a flash of silver under his chin.

No.

It couldn’t be.

‘You liked being king, didn’t you?’ Kiner continued. ‘Being the elder, your power granted by right of birth. Always thought yourself better than us.’

‘Better than a half-born.’

Kiner winced at the retort, clutching his chest as though wounded. Perhaps his hurt was genuine, though I could not tell with that smile. His whole face was stretched, his bloodshot eyes bulging, veins pulsing beneath the skin. I eased myself a little closer to the access port, feeling in my pocket for the band of metal and slipping it over my knuckles.

‘That’s right – half-born. Not a true Khaadi, right?’ Kiner snarled through his smile. ‘I hear the whispers, that my mother was faithless, that I carry my true father’s taint. Meanwhile you are always the golden child, even when squandering the lives of your clan-siblings, or plotting with a Soyld. Such rank hypocrisy. I always knew you were not a true Khaadi. Even Lord Laqui could see it. I knew what he wanted. That’s why I took a shot at you. I wanted to prove not all of us were beyond saving. But you had to turn at the last moment, didn’t you? We’d have won if you’d have had the good grace to die then and let me assume command. But you had to cling on, to fail us one last time. I figured I’d let you bleed out, deny you a warrior’s death. But that’s not enough now. I need you to know. I need to see it in your dying eyes.’

Kiner raised his head, and I saw it clearly – a band of veined metal adorning his neck, the rear clasp studded with needles that pierced the flesh.

A second stimm-collar.

For a moment I wondered where he’d obtained it. But of course, he’d been carrying a second casket when he reached the vessel. We’d taken his word that it was lost. That had been foolish.

Tzal had seen it too. He was suddenly charging forward, deceptively quick for a man his size, his massive hands grasping for Kiner’s throat.

Blood struck my cheek. I felt it before I saw the blow.

Kiner’s fist jutted from Tzal’s back, his punch having pierced clean through the giant’s chest. Tzal still clutched weakly at Kiner, trying to slow him even as his life ebbed. But the smaller man tore his fist from the gaping wound, tossing the dying bodyguard aside as though he were nothing.

Nateo raised his pistol but Kiner was on him in a heartbeat, swatting the weapon aside and seizing his wrist. I heard bone snap but saw no more. I was already running, slamming the access port shut behind me, ignoring the screams.

I darted into the factorum, punching in the lock code and sealing the door behind me. I doubted it would stall him long, not with how quickly he’d torn through Tzal. Ahead of me Sslay was struggling with an overstuffed bag. He glanced up.

‘You!’ he said, glaring at me. ‘Stupid Soyld, your damn ship was disrupting the vox-channels! Kiner figured it out. He was furious with you. I bet he’ll rip your–’

‘You disabled the voltfield?’

He blinked, surprised by the interruption.

‘Voltfield?’ he murmured. ‘You knew you were disrupting our vox?’

‘I was hiding us. The field negates the Enforcers’ tracker-rounds. But now they will be able to find us!’

His retort was drowned out by a deafening crash as something slammed itself against the factorum door. The ground shuddered, Sslay almost losing his balance.

‘What the hell was that?’

‘Kiner,’ I replied. ‘You recall the casket he lost overboard?’

‘Yes?’

‘It appears it was not so lost.’

The door shook at the second impact, its frame shuddering. This was unlike anything I had seen before. There were numerous stimm cocktails that could suppress pain and sharpen aggression. But I knew none that gave a man this kind of strength. It was like one of the old fables, where the God-Emperor’s chosen warriors, the Adeptus Astartes, performed feats of strength and fortitude unthinkable for a mortal man.

Until now, I’d thought them but stories.

A final crash. Though dented, the door held. It was the frame that gave, hinges tearing from the wall, Kiner emerging from the rubble. His face and chest were stained crimson, and for a moment I thought him injured, until I saw the bloodstained knife in his right hand. The other held what was left of the other stimm-collar, now crushed beyond repair.

Sslay took a hesitant step forward.

‘Kiner?’ he said. ‘Are you well, brother? Listen, we–’

Kiner’s hand was suddenly around Sslay’s throat, the broken collar discarded. He lifted him with one arm, face still torn in a rictus grin.

‘Little Sslay,’ he said, almost hissing the words. ‘Always filled with poison. It spills from his lips and pumps through his veins. How does it feel to look upon me? To see that I found godhood in the tip of a needle, when all you found was failure?’

Sslay could not reply, one hand scrabbling at his throat, the other clawing ineffectually at Kiner’s face. There was a sharp crack and his head snapped to the side, body hanging limp. Kiner discarded his dead brother, his gaze finally falling on me.

‘That just leaves the Soyld.’ He smiled. ‘Her little boat so full of tricks. Did you know your vessel was jamming our vox? Or are you just a blind pawn to Laqui’s whims?’

‘The Enforcers are on their way,’ I said as he drew closer. There seemed little point in running. He was too fast.

‘Let them come,’ he said. ‘I’ll kill them all, just like Nateo and Sslay. And you.’

He reached for me.

I stepped in, throwing a roundhouse punch, the pitted knuckleduster wrapped around my fist. He saw it coming a lifetime away, leisurely reaching out to catch the blow.

As he did so I flicked the hidden switch.

The jawsnapper flared, the force band delivering a violent surge of electrical energy. His hand spasmed, fingers outstretched, his whole frame shaking as the current coursed through him.

Yet he did not fall.

I slammed another punch into his face, the muscles contracting, his grin stretching till it split his lip, blood trickling from the corner of his mouth. His eye twitched. Perhaps he was trying to speak, but his vocal cords were unresponsive. Still, he somehow fought through it, his shaking hands reaching for me. It was impossible – his nervous system should have been fried. He should have been unconscious or dead.

My thumb slid over the switch again, releasing all the charge that remained. I aimed for the nerve cluster in his shoulder, felt a tingle run through my fingers as the jawsnapper flared one last time. Kiner’s arm spasmed and went limp, his right side suddenly unresponsive. I lashed out with my foot, striking behind his knee. He could not brace and fell to the floor as I glanced round, desperate for a weapon to finish him.

There was nothing.

And he was already rising, still brandishing the blade. I’d used everything I had, and it hadn’t even been enough to make him let go of the knife.

I ran. Not to the factorum’s entrance, where I would be at the mercy of Saltstone’s gangs. Instead, I headed deeper into the warehouse, the ground slick beneath my feet, arctic wind bleeding from the freezer coils. I adjusted the settings on my skinsuit, but it could not fully shield me from the gnawing cold.

I heard his voice behind me. Distant but closing.

‘Little Soyld?’ he called. ‘You’re an interesting one, aren’t you? Not at all what you seemed. Were you Lord Laqui’s spy? Or pet assassin?’

The deep freeze lay ahead of me. Inside it was a blizzard, the fissure-sharks’ hides encased in frost, great snowdrifts breaking the undulating tundra. I darted between the carcasses, trusting my footprints would be swallowed by the blizzard, my photo-contacts warning me of the ice concealed beneath the snow.

His footsteps were hammering down the corridor. He was nearly on me.

I froze, pressing myself to a carcass and peering between the rancid husks of meat.

He stood framed by the doorway. Besides a bloodied lip he seemed unfazed by my assault. But the vein in his temple was now swollen fit to burst, and his skin was slick with sweat. Whatever it was that flooded his veins, it was taking a toll.

Was he sniffing? Trying to follow my scent? It would be difficult with the cold – even the rotten fissure-shark meat could barely be smelt.

The footprints. He saw them, but already the snow pumped by the aged freezer coils was masking the trail. I took a chance, drawing my empty pistol and hurling it as far as I could. It struck one of the carcasses, his head snapping up at the sound. He darted towards it, slower than before, hampered by the snow and ice.

‘Come out, coward!’ he snarled.

But there was a tremble in his voice.

Not fear. Cold.

The sweat on his skin was beginning to freeze, despite his raging metabolism. I glanced to the carcasses and the frost encasing the gnarled hide. There had been insufficient time for the cold to penetrate deeper, and within festered a putrid mass of liquified organs.

‘Filthy Soyld scum!’ Kiner spat. ‘Face me! Face a true Khaadi warrior!’

I slowly rose to my feet, back braced against the carcass, reaching for the subdermal switch implanted in my temple.

I deactivated my photo-contacts. The room was suddenly blinding white, but I could just make him out.

‘The Khaadi are known by the venom in their eyes, half-breed!’ I roared, my voice echoing through the terraformed tundra. His head snapped up, his tainted eyes meeting mine. I could not be certain what he saw then, but his rictus grin was suddenly a snarl of hate. He surged forward, knife gleaming, howling like an animal. Nothing human should have moved with such speed. He was faster than any warrior I had ever known.

But quick and fast are not the same thing.

He could not see the ice that lay between us, and as he thrust he skidded, losing his balance. I threw myself aside, his knife slashing over my head and plunging into the carcass, his own strength and momentum burying his arm shoulder-deep. I was already rolling as his foot slammed down, cracking the ice and missing my head by inches.

As I scrabbled upright he tried to drag the blade clear. But his thrust had exposed the fissure-shark’s putrid entrails to the cold, the guts spilling from the wound and rapidly freezing around his arm, trapping him. Still he strained, the tendons in his neck taut enough to split the skin.

He would not stop. As I watched, the fissure-shark’s flesh swelled around the wound.

Suddenly his arm was torn clear, accompanied by a torrent of blood and rancid fish guts. It erupted over him like a pressure cannon, the filth freezing as it struck his exposed flesh. He screamed, tearing at the putrid ice now encasing him, fighting against the cold. Suddenly he spasmed, his scream choked as he clawed at his throat, where the stimm-collar continued pumping its toxic payload. The cold must have finally reached it, the stimms beginning to crystallise as they entered his veins.

He stumbled, losing his grip on the knife.

I lunged, taking up the blade before it touched the ground. He threw an awkward punch, but his limbs were stiffening, his stimm-boosted strength unbound by the arctic temperature. I ducked under it, the knife slashing across his exposed throat, severing the windpipe.

There was little blood, the trickle that came freezing before it could flow. But I’d taken his breath and he folded slowly, lips still stretched in a snarl. I could see the hate slowly dying in his eyes, but there was insufficient time to let him expire. The knife slashed into his still-living throat, parting flesh from bone as I dug it in to the hilt. I did not want to damage the collar, and had to carve around the injector nodes, hacking away until his head hung from a thread.

Finally, I tore the collar clear, picking away the chunks of meat clinging to it. Beneath the bloodstains it once again seemed an innocuous thing, industrial jewellery cobbled from myriad sources. But there was something buried in the clasp, a capsule of silver that seemed to shine with an inner light. Though faded, it was adorned with a marking: a winged skull pierced by a sword’s blade. Beneath it was a faint inscription in High Gothic: Muneris Pignus Aeternae. I knew it from somewhere.

There was a beeping in my ear, the implanted micro-bead finally able to find a vox signal now that the voltfield had been disabled.

‘Glas?’

‘Lord Laqui,’ I replied. ‘My apologies for the vox silence. The situation became complicated and I needed quiet to untangle it.’

‘Unimportant. What did you uncover?’

‘Regrettably, the rot had taken hold,’ I said, glancing to the bloodstained knife. ‘I cut it clear.’

‘A shame, though hardly a surprise,’ Lord Laqui sighed. ‘A solo-sub is stationed half a mile from your location. I look forward to your full account, unless there is anything to report?’

My gaze slid to the stimm-collar.

‘Perhaps,’ I replied, tucking it into my slip pocket. ‘But I’d prefer we discuss it in person. We cannot be certain that no one is listening.’

He closed the channel without another word. I glanced over my shoulder, trying to take in the scene one last time. But without my photo-contacts all I could make out was the blinding snow rapidly enveloping Kiner’s corpse. I reached for the subdermal switch, and at that moment I caught my reflection in the ice.

Emerald eyes glared back at me, the irises tainted by flecks of crimson.

I looked away, tapping the subdermal switch. The photo-contacts restored my vision, rendering my eyes as grey as smoke. Once again, I was a mere H’ownd.

The Enforcers would be close – I had to pray the skinsuit would protect me from the waters long enough to reach the sub.

As I made to depart, I found Lord Laqui’s words coming back to me.

The Khaadi are known by the venom in their eyes.

But sometimes, it is better not to be known.

UNNATURAL CAUSES

JUDE REID

Martia Lyviska didn’t need a diagnostor to know the man in the bed was dying.

His future was laid out before him, clear as the spread of a diviner’s tarot. It was etched in the gaunt hollows of his eyes, his cracked, cyanotic lips, the rigid cords of neck muscle straining beneath his papery skin. It wouldn’t be long, either. Every case of grey lung ended the same way. When the air hunger became too great for his fibrotic lungs to satisfy, desperation would turn to limb-thrashing panic, and the attending Sister Hospitaller would administer the Emperor’s Mercy in the form of a large syringe of morpholox. The hospice provided care from the cradle to the grave, but they made no promises about the length of the journey.

‘Martia! So sorry to keep you waiting!’

The heels of Medicae Superioris Emilja Vermannen’s boots beat out a staccato rhythm on the marble as she approached, echoing around the hospice’s high vaulted ceiling. In the subdued lighting, the white synthweave of her tunic glowed like the halo of an illuminated saint, the gold staff and skull of the Officio Medicae gleaming on each immaculate epaulette.

‘Hello, Emilja. You’re looking well.’

Fifteen years had passed since they had attended the collegio together, but Emilja’s complexion was as youthful as when they first matriculated. The signs of microdosed juvenat treatment were subtle, but they were there if you knew what to look for – start early enough and you could avert the stigmata of ageing before they first began to show. Martia smoothed back the flyaway strands of her own greying hair and forced a smile onto her face.

Emilja kissed the air on either side of Martia’s cheeks. ‘How are you? How’s Issak? Keeping well, I hope?’

‘Not really.’ There was nothing new about her son’s condition, but that didn’t make it any easier for Martia to articulate. ‘I wondered – I’m sorry – I wondered if you could take another look at him. I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t urgent.’

Emilja waved an expansive hand. ‘I’m never too busy for Issak. Bring him in, I’d be happy to help.’

Martia glanced around the hospice. The level of bed occupancy was an accurate predictor of the current quality of the local air. ‘Looks like you’re full already.’

‘It’s never full for long. Think about it. He’d be in safe hands – you could visit every day.’

It was a tempting offer. Work would be so much easier knowing Issak was in the care of the Hospitallers, instead of her half-blind neighbour across the hall. She was on the cusp of agreeing when Emilja’s meaning dawned on her.

She wasn’t offering Issak admission for treatment and recovery. She was offering him a place to die.

Martia swallowed down the lump that had risen into her throat. ‘No, thank you.’

‘Sometimes we have to make difficult choices, that’s all I’m saying.’ Emilja’s voice was gentle, sympathetic, knowing. ‘Have you spoken to Alvar?’

‘No!’ The question caught Martia off balance, her reply sharper than she had intended. The thought of crawling back to Issak’s father made her want to vomit. ‘I can’t, Em. You know that.’ She glanced around the room and leaned closer, lowering her voice to a whisper. ‘I wanted to ask, is there… Could you arrange another course of regeneron for him?’

‘That’s not easy.’ Emilja shook her head ruefully.

‘Please. He was so much better after last time.’

The inhaled therapy was unsanctioned, ruinously expensive and illegal without special dispensation, but Emilja’s influence – and a small fortune in bribes – had been enough to secure Issak a short course. It had been worth every slate, its efficacy nothing short of miraculous. For a few months Issak had been his old self again, well enough to attend the local scholam and to celebrate his sixth birthday – but like everything else in the Thronegate, good things never lasted long. ‘I’ll find the slate somehow.’

Emilja’s expression hovered somewhere between frustration and pity. Finally, she nodded. ‘If that’s what you want. But if I’m honest with you, Martia, as long as he’s breathing the air in your clave, all you’re doing is buying time, and not much time at that.’

The cheap chrono on Martia’s wrist chimed. It was a relic of the time that Issak’s daily medication had only been required at four-hourly intervals. She glanced down at it, relieved by the interruption. ‘Sorry. I need to get to work.’

‘I’ll see what I can do. Let me know when you’ve got the slate together.’

‘Thanks, Em. I appreciate it, really I do.’

Emilja reached out a manicured hand and touched it to the crumpled sleeve of Martia’s overcoat.

‘Take care of yourself.’

Martia watched her friend leave. A small, unworthy part of her wanted to shout after Emilja, to point out that the price of a single juvenat treatment would be enough to cover the cost of Issak’s therapy with plenty to spare, but she bit back the words. She should be full of gratitude, not resentment. Emilja was already risking enough for their sake.

A choking sound from her left drew her attention. She turned to see that the grey-faced man was gasping, mouth gulping like a landed fish in the vain attempt to satisfy his failing lungs. At his bedside, the Sister Hospitaller’s lips were moving in a silent litany, her chapped fingers drawing up a syringe of colourless liquid from a blue glass vial.

Martia made the sign of the aquila and turned to leave.

Sanguinalia was still a full month away, but already winter had settled its clammy grasp around the Thronegate. The district had been built on a spur of reclaimed land, though Alecto’s south-western ocean was resolutely intent on reclaiming its stolen property. A perpetual salt wind filled the air with a pervasive damp that lingered all year round, seeping through roofs and walls, blighting everything it touched with mildew and decay. Martia pulled her cheap synthweave overcoat tighter around her shoulders and shivered.

The district’s name was a reference to the void-dock in geostationary orbit above it, the long-promised gateway to the stars that would bring prosperity to the people living beneath. Within weeks of its construction, the lie had become self-evident. The only thing that Providence Station offered was back-breaking labour in hazardous conditions, its ancient Slovo IV mass-transit conveyors filling the atmosphere below full of toxic particulates as they lumbered back and forth. No one would work on Providence Station if they had a choice, just like no one would live in the Thronegate if they had anywhere else to be.

She followed the broad boulevard down to Martyr’s Square, where the soot-blackened Bastion, the vladar’s palace and the Officio Medicae building glared at each other across the plaza. Completing the fourth side of the square, the offices of the verispex were unobtrusive by comparison, though anywhere else in the district, the marble portico with its gilded High Gothic inscription – Mors Mihi Lucrum – would have shone like a one-slate piece in a midden heap.

Martia headed for the rear entrance, used by tradesmen, junior mortuarium employees and the dead. Unusually for the time of night, the perimeter gate was open, and a ground transport was sitting inside with the engine idling, its tail close to the mortuarium’s roll-up steel door. She glanced up at the guard tower, the heavy gun turret barely visible in the gloom, and was dazzled a moment later by the beam of its rotating searchlight.

The groundcar had to be there on official business – there was no way the turret guard would have allowed it to enter without a permit – but something about its squat grey shape sent a prickle of unease down her spine. She took a hesitant step forward, the searchlight marking out time in indolent sweeps.

‘Hello?’

She was a few yards away when the driver’s door swung upwards. She stepped back, startled by the sudden movement, as a man stepped out of the vehicle, squinting as the tower’s light passed over him. He was middle-aged, his city-issue coveralls straining over a once muscular physique now turning thick around the middle.

‘Finally.’ The man spat out the stub of a lho-stick and ground it under his boot heel. ‘Thought I’d have to wait all night.’

Martia stared.

‘Delivery.’ He glanced down at the sheaf of papers in his hand, then offered them to Martia. ‘For the personal attention of the verispex.’

‘I’m not the verispex.’ The thought was so ludicrous that Martia almost laughed. ‘You’re lucky I’m working a few extra hours tonight. We don’t usually take admissions on the noctis-shift.’

She touched her seal to the control panel on the wall, and the metal door ground laboriously upward. The distinctive aroma of the mortuarium – sacred incense, preservatives and decay – drifted out into the chilly air.

‘Flyer got delayed leaving Providence.’ He sniffed, brushed lho-ash from the front of his shirt and opened the vehicle’s rear doors. Inside the vehicle was a human corpse, sealed in an opaque plastek shroud. ‘Some rogue trader shows up, jams the shipping lanes, everything grinds to a halt.’

‘Give me a minute. I’ll get a suspensor gurney.’

The driver shrugged. The yellow tinge to the whites of his eyes suggested his liver had seen better days. ‘For his personal attention, I was told.’

‘I’ll make sure he gets it in the morning.’

It was unusual for the verispex to take a personal interest in an admission to the district mortuarium – in fact, it was rare for him to notice the workings of the department at all – but Martia had too much on her mind already to care about her superior’s shortcomings. Once the body was transferred to the trolley and its courier had made a hasty exit, she pushed it to the elevator, closed the concertina door and pulled the lever to start the grinding descent to the dissecting chambers below.

One cadaver: male.

Circumstances of death: accident aboard void-station.

Martia flicked idly through the accompanying scrollwork as the mag-lift juddered down. The report was brief. That morning, fire had broken out in a compartment of the ship under repair – the Caveat Emptor, registered in the name of Lord-Captain Micah Picave – forcing an unscheduled depressurisation to prevent the blaze from spreading. This luckless individual had been the sole casualty.

Had he been dead before decompression? A glance at the shrouded body suggested otherwise. There was none of the classic posturing of immolation: back arched, arms drawn up in a pugilist’s guard, muscles cooked and contracted by intense heat. He had been spared death by fire, though she wasn’t sure if suffocation was much better.

The mag-lift shuddered to a halt. She pulled back the door and nudged the suspensor sled into the long tiled corridor. There were six dissecting chambers in total, all of them well insulated against heat and sound and fitted with a separate ventilation system to the rest of the building. No one wanted the grinding of bone saws or the stench of rotting tissue drifting into the lavish reception rooms upstairs. Each chamber had its own reclamation chute, through which human remains were dispatched to a sealed refrigerated container. Once the containers reached capacity, an automated transport would convey it to the city’s corpse-starch factoria for final processing. In the Thronegate, only the gilded were accorded the dignity of a grave.

She selected one of the cadaver drawers at random, transferred the body from the suspensor sled to the fully extended tray and stopped. There was something strange about the way the corpse had moved, a curious, fluctuant weight that suggested liquid had leaked into the shroud around it. Curious, she ran her hand along the cadaver’s flank, and fluid rippled beneath the plastek sheet. There were any number of reasons why a body might seep after death, but not usually so soon, especially not if it had been flash-frozen by exposure to the void.

Martia took a step away from the table. This was none of her business. These remains were for the verispex to deal with. No good would come of meddling in matters above her pay grade, but the temptation of the diagnostic puzzle was almost too much to resist. So much of her time at work was taken up with mindless, repetitive tasks – cleaning, filing, moving cadavers, cleaning again – but she had been a good diagnostician once, before circumstances had forced her into this dead-end job. Surely it wouldn’t hurt to take a look, to see if anything of her old skills remained, to feel the satisfaction of pitting her wits against a clinical conundrum again, even if no one else would ever know? Where would be the harm?

Quickly, before she could change her mind, she slipped on a pair of skintight examination gloves and unfastened the shroud.

At a rough estimate the cadaver was less than twelve hours dead, though the cooling of the tissues made it impossible to be entirely sure. He was naked, blood and effluvium pooled on the plastek beneath him, but that wasn’t what made the breath catch in her throat. He hadn’t died by smoke, or flame, or decompression.

What had killed him was the neat bullet hole between his still-open eyes.

Martia’s thoughts raced. A small-calibre solid projectile weapon had made the entrance wound, a ring of soot staining on the skin suggesting it had been fired at point-blank range. She slid her gloved hands behind the head, her fingertips sinking into a pulp of torn scalp, macerated cerebral tissue and shattered bone where the occiput should have been. Was this why the body had been marked for the personal attention of the verispex? But if this was a known murder, then why the story of death by decompression, and where, for that matter, were the probators?

She studied the corpse from head to toe. It had been stripped naked, a mortuarian’s Y-cut scoring the skin from clavicle to pubis, crudely sutured shut with black synthsilk. The shape of the abdomen was subtly wrong, as though more than the usual number of organs had been returned there after a hasty post-mortem examination. She worked a fingertip under the lowest loop of the suture until the loosely tied knot gave way. The stitching unravelled, and she folded back the abdominal wall like the covers of a textbook.

The corpse had been eviscerated – from the neatness of the work it had been done post-mortem. In place of the usual abdominal contents was an opaque plastek sack. Martia glanced at the door, gripped by a sudden unease. Someone had already dissected this cadaver, removed its organs and filled the space with… with what?

She opened the bag with an anatomist’s care. In the harsh mortuarium light, its contents gleamed like a treasure trove: ornate brooches and necklaces, miniature replicas of exotic, off-world firearms, a curved dagger so thickly encrusted with jewels that it seemed impossible it could ever have been intended for use. She hooked a finger around a fine gold chain and pulled out a plain gold reliquary case small enough to fit in the palm of her hand, repulsed and intrigued in equal measure. Any one of these treasures had to be worth more than she would earn in a lifetime.

Acid surged into her throat. It was years since the mortuarium had made her nauseous, but the sensation was as sudden and intense as it had been on her first day at the dissecting table. She reached the metal sluice just before her stomach emptied in the first of a series of convulsive heaves. She leaned against it, doubled over and retching, until all that was left to bring up was a trickle of yellow bile. Empty and aching, she leaned her head against the cool tiled wall, shut her eyes and fought to slow her breathing, skin clammy with cold sweat.

Someone was smuggling goods through the mortuarium. The verispex was surely complicit in it, his silence bought with a healthy share of the profits. If the body had arrived on time it would already have been sent on its final journey to the corpse-starch factoria, its contents unloaded and the vessel neatly disposed of. The thought of how many times the same scene might have played out before was almost enough to make her retch again.

The golden chain was still threaded through her fingers, its fine links gleaming in the sterile lumen-light. She tipped the reliquary case’s contents into her gloved palm: a signet ring embossed with a stylised corvid. The ruby set in its single eye blazed scarlet in a miniature conflagration. It was such a small thing. Valuable, certainly – not in the same league as the rest of the smuggled cargo, but enough to pay for Issak’s treatment ten times over. Amongst so many other priceless treasures, it might not even be missed.

Temptation glittered in her palm. She regarded it for a moment, returned it to its case, wiped down the metal exterior and hung the chain around her neck. Carefully, she threaded a long, curved needle with a fresh length of black synthsilk and began the slow, laborious work of returning the body to the state in which she had found it, identical in every detail.

Every detail except one.

Snow was falling by the time she left the mortuarium, heavy flakes that melted into a wet grey slush as soon as they reached the ground. One landed on her lip. She licked it away by reflex, and instantly her mouth flooded with the bitterness of promethium residue. The taste was vile, but it was something to focus on, something to distract her from the suffocating anxiety constricting her chest. The guilt was an iron collar around her neck, accompanied by an awful, irrational certainty that her crime had already been discovered. The sense of unease was so strong that she could almost believe she was being watched.

She retraced her footsteps to the hospice door and found it locked. She knocked hard enough to scrape her knuckles raw, then waited so long that she started to wonder if she’d even been heard. At last there was a shuffling sound from inside, and the door swung open to reveal the young Sister Hospitaller she had noticed the evening before. Had it really only been a few hours since she had spoken with Emilja?

‘Forgive me, Sister – is Medicae Superioris Vermannen still here?’

The Sister shook her head, her eyes heavy and red-rimmed. Martia felt a sudden pang of sympathy for a fellow noctis-shift worker. ‘She left after her rounds.’

‘Did she say where she was going? When she’d be back?’

‘The evening, I think.’ The Hospitaller shrugged an indifferent shoulder. She was younger than Martia, but already her face was drawn and weary, hopeless eyes deeply shadowed beneath the white wings of her headdress. Witnessing the slow death of hope every day would do that to you.

‘If you see her before then, I need you to pass on a message. Ask her to go ahead and book Issak’s treatment – tell her I’ve got the slate. Ask her to contact me as soon as she can – at home or at work. Please?’

The winged headdress nodded once. Dry-skinned hands crossed over the white-robed chest, fingers spread out like wings. ‘I will. He of Terra be with you.’

‘And with you, Sister,’ Martia replied, though the thought of the watchful gaze of the God-Emperor served only to tighten the constricting band of guilt about her throat.

In the Thronegate, just like the rest of Varangantua, the slums were never far away. The Kuja habclave was a maze of narrow alleyways, home to hundreds of densely packed bodies. It wasn’t somewhere she visited by choice, but in the last few months she had come here so often that she knew the streets by heart. Footprints suggested that she wasn’t the first to visit that evening, but that was hardly a surprise. There was no shortage of desperate people in this city.

A solitary lumoglobe burned inside, illuminating a figure stooped forward over a workbench. Martia knocked once on the heavy plasteel door. It swung open without a sound, and the woman at the bench looked up with mismatched eyes – one deep-set and dark brown, the other an ornately crafted augmetic.

‘Good evening, Mama.’ Martia was careful to keep her voice soft, her tone deferential. The old woman might look harmless, but the mere existence of her thriving pawnshop in a clave like this attested to both her resilience and her ruthlessness.

Mama Louhi placed the delicate piece of clockwork down on her bench and turned towards the door. Her wizened face brightened in recognition. ‘Back again? Slate runs through the fingers so fast, doesn’t it?’

Martia plastered a smile over her desperation, knowing it wouldn’t fool anyone. No one came to Mama Louhi unless they needed something badly enough to sell their pride along with whatever else they had to offer. ‘I’ve brought something that might be of interest to you.’

‘I do have many interests, that’s true.’

The old woman motioned to her to sit. Martia stole a glimpse of the cabinet on the far wall, the velvet cushion inside arrayed with gaudy jewellery, pocket-sized firearms and second-hand augmetics. There was no sign of her own pawned treasures: her grandmother’s betrothal ring, a necklace that Issak’s father had given her when they first met, the earrings that had been a graduation present from her mother. One by one they had slipped from her hands, relics of a drowned past that could never be reclaimed.

‘My son isn’t well.’ The smile slipped, and she didn’t bother to fix it. ‘Treatment is expensive.’

Martia drew the reliquary out from beneath her sodden overcoat and tipped the contents onto the table.

‘May I?’ Without waiting for an answer the old woman extended a gnarled hand and lifted the ring to examine it, light catching on the tiny ruby in the corvid’s eye. She rose, locked the door and closed the shutters.

‘Where did you get this?’

‘A family heirloom.’

The pawnbroker’s face quirked with amusement. ‘Don’t give me that groxshit.’

‘If you’re not interested, I’ll take it somewhere else.’

‘I didn’t say I wasn’t interested.’

Louhi lifted a bottle of expensive-looking Urgeyena slatov and poured two glasses. She knocked back the first and set the second in front of Martia in a cloud of pungent vapour. The old woman turned the ring through a full three hundred and sixty degrees, a lens telescoping outward from her augmetic eye as her attention settled on the engraved crest.

‘That symbol.’ She tapped the ring. ‘House Picave.’

It took a moment for Martia to remember where she had read the name – the rogue trader from the incident report, the one whose ship had arrived unexpectedly at Providence Station.

‘If I was the sort of person who asked questions,’ Louhi said, deftly fitting an array of tinted lenses onto her augmetic, ‘I’d be wondering how a rogue trader’s signet found its way into your hands.’ The lenses flicked up and down with dizzying speed, a tiny red diode flickering behind them. ‘Luckily for you, I’m not.’

‘I’m not looking for trouble.’

‘No one ever is.’ The machine-spirit in the augmetic eye let out a series of high-pitched chirps. Mama Louhi rotated the ring in between her fingers, the tiny corvid always facing her. The augmetic chirped again, then she put the ring down on the workbench so gently that there was no sound at all.

‘Take it and get out.’

‘I thought you were interested?’ Martia blinked, taken aback.

Louhi shoved the ring away, and Martia scrambled to intercept it before it could hit the floor. The old woman’s face had turned an ugly shade of grey. ‘I’ve been in this game long enough to know some things are fifty times more trouble than they’re worth.’ She stood again, opened the door, waited expectantly for Martia to leave. ‘You want my advice? Throw the Throne-damned thing in the river, try not to blow your head off doing it – and pray to the God-Emperor that no one ever finds out it passed through your hands.’

‘I don’t understand–’

‘That’s right. You don’t.’

The door slammed in Martia’s face. She stood stupidly on the doorstep, the ring clutched in her fist. Through the shutters she could see the silhouette of the old woman at her workbench, another shot of slatov already in her hand. Something about the ring had scared her – something more than the identity of its rightful owner.

Martia felt a tendril of that same fear caress her spine. She had been an idiot to think the ring was a simple piece of jewellery. Louhi’s reaction had said it all. There had been weapons inside the corpse – if this ring was one of them, then to be found in possession of it without a permit would be every bit as lethal as any shot it fired. She ran her thumbnail across the ring’s surface, feeling for any irregularity in the metal that might indicate a firing mechanism, but found nothing.

It wasn’t too late to put things right. Diurnus-shift would start in less than an hour, but she could still be back before the day’s work was properly underway. She could loosen a stitch or two from the body, slip the reliquary case back inside its grisly container and reseal the body bag in seconds. No one would suspect, and she could wash her hands of the whole wretched affair.

She hurried back towards the mortuarium, resolute in her determination to see the ring gone from her hands. Though the skies were still dark, the district was coming to life around her, preparing itself for the scant few hours of thin light that were the gift of Alecto’s dying sun. The snow had settled into a thick grey slush that clawed its way up her ankles as she walked. Her thoughts fell into time with the rhythm of her footsteps. Not far to go. Not long till it’s over.

A Bulwark hurtled down the boulevard with clarions wailing, sending a spray of freezing water into the air, soaking through her overcoat and trickling into her boots. She was still standing, half frozen with cold and shock, when a pair of Rampart groundcars followed it, their white-blue lights flashing. What could have happened to draw so much attention so close to the Bastion? She picked up her pace, pulse quickening to match. The sanctioners’ vehicles were heading directly for Martyr’s Square, parked around the magnificent front door of the verispex’s offices.

A cordon was already in place outside the building, two sanctioners in riot armour framing the doorway. One took a step forward and raised an autogun. ‘I’ll have to stop you there, ma’am,’ he said, his voice muffled by the visor of his helmet.

‘I work here.’ She fumbled the seal from her pocket. ‘Adjutor Tertius Martia Lyviska. I’m… supposed to be on shift.’

‘I’d thank the Emperor you were late for work, then.’ The helmet tilted to one side, and the visor slid upward with a soft hydraulic hiss. The face beneath was unexpectedly young, wearing an expression composed of equal parts irritation, curiosity and contempt. His teeth were stained yellow, the unmistakable stigmata of a heavy cotin habit.

‘What happened?’ The fear wrapped around Martia’s chest tightened its grip. She craned her neck to one side, straining to see what had happened inside the building. Blurry silhouettes moved behind the frosted armaglass door, too vague to make out any detail.

‘Your guess is as good as mine, doc.’ His companion shot him an irritated look, and he ignored her. ‘Looks like someone showed up, ransacked the place, killed anyone who got in the way and left. Whole building’s going to be cordoned off till the probators are finished. They’ll probably need to send to Polaris or Bastopole for a verispex.’

‘Why?’ She shook her head, trying to clear her foggy thoughts.

‘Well, the one in there’s not going to be much use in the state he’s in, is he?’ The sanctioner jerked his head towards the doorway. ‘Found dead in his office. Barely a mark on him, they said, but whoever did it turned the whole room upside down. Documents everywhere, cabinets broken open. Looking for something, if you ask me.’

‘Lucky no one’s asking you then,’ his companion said, without raising her visor. Through her helmet’s speakers her voice had a harsh, metallic ring. ‘And you should head back to your hab, adjutor. I expect the probators will have some questions for you once they’ve examined the murder scene.’

Heat rushed to her face, and she shoved her shaking hands into the pockets of her overcoat, fighting to keep the fear from her voice. ‘Certainly, sanctioner. Thank you.’

On the far side of the square, a dark grey Grappia Galo was drawing to a halt outside the vladar’s palace. A probator’s vehicle. It took all of her willpower to turn her back on the sanctioners, to walk at a leisurely pace, to ignore the voice in her head screaming at her to run. Whoever had been here had been looking for something. Something important enough to kill for.

The reliquary case burned against her skin like a convict’s brand.

‘Adjutor?’ The helmeted sanctioner again. Should she run? There was an alley only a few yards away, but the thought of the sanctioners’ autoguns was enough to stop her in her tracks. Instead, she turned, forcing a smile onto her face.

‘Yes, sanctioner?’

‘I’ll need to take your address.’

‘Suborbital clave, building one-oh-four, hab six-D.’ The truth came out by reflex before it could occur to her to lie. She risked a glance at the probator’s groundcar. The driver’s door was open, a man in a long dark overcoat unfolding from the seat. In minutes the probator would be at the building, with questions she had no means of answering. Cold sweat trickled down her back. She swallowed. ‘Will that be all, officer?’

The sanctioner nodded. ‘For now, adjutor. Stay safe.’

‘I will.’ She forced herself to smile, every muscle locked tight as she turned to walk away. At every step she expected a hand to clamp around her shoulder and wrench her back to face justice. The mortuarium had been ransacked, the verispex murdered, and if she’d been there an hour earlier she would have shared his fate. Her chest tightened at the thought. What would have happened to Issak if she hadn’t come home?

She managed to hide her panic until she had turned off Martyr’s Square, then stopped and rested her back against the brick wall of the alley. Think. Slow down and think.

Whoever had been in the mortuarium would have had easy access to its records. If they were looking for the ring – and what else could they be searching for? – they would know who had access to the building, where they worked, their next of kin. She sped up, icy water spattering her legs, soaking through the soles of her boots. The murderer could be there in her home already, tearing apart the hab and anyone inside. She imagined her neighbour lying motionless inside a splintered door, furniture overturned, Issak’s tiny body sprawled on the floor like a broken-limbed doll–

She broke into a run, heedless of the stares of the locals, and didn’t stop until she was through the rust-streaked door of her hab-block. She didn’t bother with the mag-lift, fear driving her up the stairs despite her burning lungs and aching legs, scanning the silent building for any trace of an intruder. The building’s door had been locked, the habs she passed intact, no evidence of bullet holes or plasma discharges. Surely that had to be a good sign?

Her mind’s eye was already conjuring up the splintered remains of the door as she surmounted the final flight, but the green-painted door with its rusty metal nameplate was exactly as she had left it a lifetime ago. The lock panel was glowing with its usual dull red light. She punched in her code and the door slid smoothly to one side.

‘Issak?’ Her voice was an unsteady whisper. ‘Are you awake?’

The hab smelled the same as it always did: reheated food, disinfectant and the faint tang of sickness that pervaded every room no matter how hard and long she scrubbed. She held her breath, straining her ears to catch the soft in-and-out rattle of Issak’s breathing. There was nothing but silence.

Something touched her shoulder, and she screamed and twisted away, hands flying up to shield her face.

‘Martia!’

It was a voice she knew. Her neighbour from the next-door hab. Issak’s babysitter.

‘Martia, what’s the matter?’

She fumbled along the wall until she found the lumen-switch and tapped it with a shaking hand. The hab flooded with grimy yellow light, illuminating a stooped figure, a lined face and a pair of eyes milky with cataracts.

‘Rakhel – I’m sorry.’ She took a deep breath, forcing down the ball of panic in her throat. ‘You startled me. Is Issak with you?’ It wouldn’t have been the first time that Issak had decided to sleep in Aunt Rakhi’s hab, the auto-nebuliser humming at his bedside.

Rakhel was shaking her head, but the expression on her weathered face was serene. ‘He’s gone already.’

‘Gone?’

‘For treatment.’ The old neighbour’s face creased into a gentle smile. ‘I’m glad for you both.’

‘When?’ Martia seized her by the shoulders, panic lending force to her grip. Rakhel tried to pull back, but Martia held her tight.

‘Not long – the medicae took him – I didn’t think…’

‘Did they say where?’

‘No. I thought… I thought you knew!’

Martia shoved her neighbour away and turned to search the hab-unit. The cupboards of the refec-chamber had been emptied onto the floor. Even the door of the radiation oven was hanging open. The dorm-chamber had been subjected to the same treatment, the blankets torn from the bed, clothes strewn on the rug, and worst of all, the dreadful absence of her son, raw as an open wound.

She sat on the edge of his bed and put her head in her hands. The verispex was dead, Issak missing, and all because she had been foolish enough to steal a piece of jewellery that someone powerful and dangerous wanted back enough to kill for.

A folded piece of parchment on the bedside cabinet caught her eye, one of the cheap sheets used for notetaking in the district’s hospices. She unfolded it carefully, and it released the faint smell of carbolic soap. The message inside was printed in bone-gall ink.

BRING IT TO THE MORTUARIUM. COME ALONE.

The medicae took him, Rakhel had said. She was half blind, her eyes ruined by long years of labour in the munitions manufactorum, but even she wouldn’t have handed Issak over to a total stranger. Issak had gone with someone he had known, someone he trusted.

Someone whose handwriting hadn’t changed since the Collegio Medicae fifteen years before.

Martyr’s Square was cordoned off with heavy sanctioner’s barricades when she returned, but she didn’t get close enough to see how many officers were guarding the front door. Instead, she took the alleyway to the rear entrance, convinced with each step that an unseen figure would unfold from the darkness and press the muzzle of a pistol to the back of her head. The perimeter gate hung open, the tower above in darkness, though the searchlight still spun its lazy arc across the grounds. Shouldn’t there be sanctioners patrolling the building so soon after a murder?

The building towered over her, the windows of the upper laboratoria empty as the eyes of a corpse. The rear door hung open, the hallway beyond in pitch darkness. She hesitated on the threshold, every muscle locked rigid, an insistent voice in her head telling her to run and not look back.

An icy line of sweat trickled down between her shoulder blades. She held the image of Issak’s sleeping face in her mind as she took one halting step inside, and then another. The mortuarium mag-lift was waiting, its door drawn back, the darkness within like the throat of a monstrous beast. She stepped inside, closed the door, pulled the lever and began her juddering descent, wishing she had brought a weapon. Too late for that now.

‘Hello?’

The mortuarium corridor was in darkness, the sole illumination emanating from the furthest dissecting chamber, the faint hum of a suspensor gurney niggling at the limit of her hearing.

‘Issak?’

Something moved at the end of the corridor, a sharp, tapping footstep followed a moment later by Emilja’s echoing voice. ‘He’s here, Martia. Give me the ring and you can have him back.’

‘I didn’t bring it. Once I know he’s safe I’ll tell you where it is.’

Emilja laughed. ‘You’re forgetting how well I know you. You always were a terrible liar. Hand it over.’

‘Where’s Issak?’ She pressed her back to the tiled wall.

‘He’s with me. I wouldn’t hurt him, you know that. I only want what’s mine.’

‘What about the verispex? Or that poor bastard you had gutted like an eel?’

She was close enough now that she could hear Emilja’s sigh of frustration.

‘I had nothing to do with what happened to the verispex. Someone must have found out about the cargo and decided they wanted it enough to kill him.’

‘And the dock worker?’

‘He’d…’ Emilja paused. ‘Some dispute up there got out of hand. His body ended up in the right place at the right time. He’d have been dead in a few weeks anyway. You know what life expectancy’s like up there.’ Her voice was gentle, authoritative, compassionate – a senior clinician delivering a difficult diagnosis. ‘I’m not proud of my part in any of this, but think of everything I’ve done with the slate. You don’t think the hospice runs on the funding it gets from the city, do you? Where’s the harm in making something good out of a bad situation?’

Martia reached under her tunic for the gold chain and pulled the reliquary case over her head. ‘I just want Issak back.’

‘I know. Put it on the floor and slide it down the corridor.’

Martia slid the case along the floor. It skidded to a halt in the pool of light outside the furthest dissecting chamber. Emilja stepped out of the darkened room one door closer, standing between Martia and the reliquary case on the floor, a laspistol in her hand.

‘Thank you,’ she said, and pulled the trigger.

The corridor blazed green with las-fire. Martia hurled herself to the floor, pain searing across the right side of her neck, the air sharp with the smell of sizzling hair. Emilja’s las-bolt had passed close enough for the blistering heat to cauterise a narrow second-degree burn an inch below the line of her jaw. She looked up to see Emilja raising the pistol again, the reliquary case still glittering on the ground behind her.

The empty reliquary case.

Martia uncurled her fist. The stolen signet ring lay in her palm, the corvid’s one eye regarding her with a quizzical air. If she was right, it might – might – hold the key to getting Issak out of here alive. If she was wrong, her life expectancy would be measured in seconds. She closed her eyes, offered up a quick, wordless prayer, and pressed the jewel as hard as she could.

She felt rather than heard the tiny click of the mechanism, then a dazzlingly intense beam of blood-red light erupted from her hand. One tiled wall exploded, filling the air with dust and smoke. The ring flew from her grip to clatter across the floor. She staggered to her feet as a sickly blue-green after-image danced in front of her eyes. Somewhere in the gloom Emilja was coughing, but the smoky air hid her from sight.

The eschar covering the burn on her neck cracked as Martia groped her way into the darkened dissecting chamber, razoring a line of agony down the already throbbing wound. She aimed herself towards the hum of the suspensor unit, relief flooding through her as she heard the soft, achingly familiar sound of Issak’s cough. He was there. He was alive.

She almost knocked him from the suspensor gurney as her fumbling hands found his shoulders, his face, the soft, downy curls of his hair. ‘I’m here. I’m here, Issak.’ He stirred as she lifted his dead weight into her arms, and she barely choked back a scream as he nestled his face into her burned neck. Emilja was moving in the corridor outside, scrabbling through the rubble, no doubt searching for the ring. Martia only hoped she had dropped the laspistol as well.

The mag-lift was only a few yards away. If she was quick, if the God-Emperor was willing, she and Issak could be inside before the air cleared, before Emilja could aim and shoot again. Martia readied herself to run – and then froze as a muffled impact struck the cage of the elevator. Something – or someone – had landed on top of it.

The scrabbling from outside the room stopped.

‘What in the warp? I told you to come alone, Martia. Did you… Did you tell the sanctioners?’

Martia held her breath. The sound of shearing metal echoed down the corridor, devastatingly loud in the silence. Whoever had arrived was ripping through the roof of the mag-lift, someone who had been waiting in the shadows outside the building. Someone who had taken care of the sanctioners patrolling outside.

‘I suppose you think you’re clever,’ Emilja said. Was that an edge of fear creeping into her voice? ‘But you’re not. You’re a fool, Martia. You always have been.’

The metal gave way with a final shriek, and someone dropped to the ground. Martia bit her lip hard enough that she tasted blood. There was nowhere to run. She kissed the top of Issak’s head, opened the nearest cadaver drawer – empty, thank the Throne, it was empty – placed him lovingly inside and slid it shut.

Martia pressed her back against the wall, wrapped her arms around her chest and waited.

One soft footstep, then another. Emilja discharged her laspistol again, the dust particles diffusing the light into a vivid green cloud.

Another shot. Another footstep. ‘Wait – you can have it! Here!’ Emilja’s voice was full of panic now. The footsteps stopped. ‘Here. Here it is. Take it.’

There was a soft hiss, followed a split second later by an impact so quiet Martia almost missed it, an exhalation of breath, long and slow, then the thud of something heavy hitting the ground.

A vox-unit crackled.

‘I have it, lord-captain.’ The voice was distorted and mechanical, the Low Gothic spoken with a heavy off-world accent. ‘Discharged, as detected, but otherwise undamaged. Threat neutralised.’ A short, derisive sniff. ‘Such as it was.’

Through the open doorway, she caught sight of a lithe figure in a close-fitting black bodyglove, the helmeted head a featureless mask. In one hand it held a needle pistol, the ornate grip shaped like the head of a ruby-eyed corvid.

Martia closed her eyes.

‘No, lord-captain.’ The intruder almost sounded disappointed. ‘No one left worth bothering with.’

Time stretched into a single endless moment.

When at last she opened her eyes, the mortuarium was empty.

Unsteadily, she pulled herself to her feet, lifted Issak from his hiding place and lowered him clumsily to the ground. His eyes had opened, but his gaze was fixed on a distant point that only he could see. He coughed, drew a deep, wheezing breath, then coughed again, his fragile body racked with the effort.

Martia’s relief was short-lived, eroded almost immediately by a creeping tide of despair. The ring was lost. Emilja was dead, all chance of affording Issak’s treatment gone. A new verispex would be appointed, ready to assume their predecessor’s role in the smuggling enterprise. Emilja would be replaced in the Officio Medicae – just another corpse chewed up in the city’s insatiable jaws. And worst of all, in a month or two Issak would be dead, his irreplaceable mortal remains rendered down for nutrients, and only his mother would notice or care.

Everything was hopeless.

She tilted her head back, staring past the rows of dissecting tables at the sterile tiled wall and the hatch of the reclamation chute.

The idea, when it came, was enough to bring bile into the back of her throat. The deed would be appalling, unthinkable, but what did she have left to lose? Didn’t she owe it to her son to risk everything on one final roll of the dice, a last chance at a future for them both?

‘You have a sleep, Issi.’ She bundled up her coat and tucked it around him, the same way she had swaddled him as a tiny baby. ‘We’ll go home soon.’

A tiny pinprick on Emilja’s cheek was the only trace of the weapon that had killed her. Her face was frozen in a rictus of agony as Martia lifted her onto the dissecting table, but her skin was as soft and smooth as a newborn’s. The juvenat treatment had fulfilled its promise. Emilja had gone to her death unblemished and beautiful.

Carefully, so as not to disturb her sleeping son, Martia laid out the tools of her trade, tested each in turn until she was ready to put scalpel to skin.

She had a message to send down the reclamation chute, and her old friend would deliver it for her.

Emilja owed her that much at least.

It was amazing what the application of enough slate could do, Martia thought, as she entered the offices of the verispex by the front door. The air inside smelled fresh and clean, the recent repairs complete and the freshly gilded inscription on the keystone possessed of a new and personal significance.

Mors Mihi Lucrum. Death enriches me.

She didn’t plan to stay long at work today. Issak was expected home later, and she wanted to be there to show him their new hab with its view of the sea, far from the mass-transit conveyors and their toxic exhaust fumes.

Her personal secretary nodded a polite good morning as she passed. ‘There’s someone waiting for you at the rear door, ma’am. Says he’s here to see you personally.’

She quickened her step, the old unease tightening in the pit of her stomach. The man was standing outside the door. His back was to her, but there was something familiar about the slope of the shoulders, the sagging midriff and the crumpled Thronegate-issue coveralls. Two corpses in the back of the vehicle this time, stiff in their white plastek shrouds.

‘Delivery for your personal attention,’ he said, and offered her a data-slate. The jaundice had spread from his eyes to tint the skin of his face a bilious yellow, and there was a fresh scribble of thread veins across his nose and cheeks. In a few months he’d be back at the mortuarium door, but not as a delivery driver.

‘Is everything in order, verispex?’

She looked from the driver to the corpses then back again. She forced herself not to think about what was inside. Her new life – Issak’s life – had come at a price, and there was no place in that life for regrets.

Martia Lyviska, newly appointed verispex of the Thronegate, took the offered data-slate and nodded.

‘Thank you. Everything’s in order.’

LOOSE ENDS

DARIUS HINKS

Gholl fought with all the grace of a collapsing warehouse. He looked a bit like a warehouse too. Broad and ugly. Shoulders like barrels. Face like blasted ferrocrete. As Tzava crossed his grubby, junk-crowded hab-cell, Gholl lunged clumsily, snatching an autopistol from a table, gripping it in his fat paw of a fist and loosing off a shot.

The rounds punched through the flimsy walls and out into the night, spilling shafts of gaudy light into the room from hoardings outside. Tzava kicked high, slamming her boot in the back of Gholl’s neck, sending him crashing into the table. It buckled, hurling bottles and filling the room with broken glass.

‘I remember when you were someone,’ said Tzava.

Gholl lurched to his feet and turned to face her, his cheeks flushed, his chest heaving. He raised the pistol again, pointing it at Tzava’s face. It looked absurd in his massive hand, like a toy. Tzava kicked it away, sending it clattering under a pile of mouldering food cartons and leaving him unarmed.

‘Do you remember? When I was a little girl, when even Zestan was young, he used to point people out to me, telling me the names of everyone who worked for him. Everyone who mattered in Paavo. He said you were one of his best men. One of the best men in the whole district. He said even the sanctioners were scared of you.’

Gholl tried to land a punch but Tzava caught it in her hands, yanked it down and brought her knee up into his diaphragm, stepping aside so that his bulk would not crush her as it fell. It made her genuinely sad to see how low the man had let himself slide. All that muscle turned to fat. All that hunger stifled by easy living. He was a spent force. She would never let it happen to her.

Gholl tried to climb back to his feet, but he was winded and his legs toppled beneath him, creating another explosion of cartons and bottles.

Tzava had not even bothered drawing her pistol. It was still strapped to her leg as she padded over to Gholl and slammed his head against the wall. He mumbled, slumped on the floor and blacked out. Tzava stared at him in disgust. Then she whipped some restraints from her belt and fastened his wrists and ankles. She rolled him onto a rug and dragged him through the doorway into the hallway outside.

A hollow-cheeked youth was opening the door to his room, and he started at the sight of Tzava, her face splashed with blood as she hauled Gholl down the hallway. She grinned cheerfully at him. Tzava was wearing a polished plasteel mask that looked like a theatrical prop. It was elongated and twisted in a permanent leer. She would have looked terrifying even if her bodyglove had not been splattered with blood.

The youth paled, fumbled a key and hurried into his hab-cell.

Tzava reached the end of the hallway, opened another door and dragged Gholl out onto a gantry. The hab-block was huge and they were dozens of floors up. A bulk hauler was rumbling overhead and its landing lights flickered over the abyss, revealing sodden figures in the streets below. Paavo’s endless bromine rain lashed into Tzava’s face as she fastened Gholl’s ankle restraint, stinging her skin with its acid cocktail, clogging her eyes with mucal gunk. She paused to strap a rebreather over her mouth then leant back against the wall, pressed her feet into Gholl’s side and pushed him over the edge of the gantry. There was a shriek of grinding metal, and for a worrying moment Tzava thought Gholl might pull the whole structure away. Then it steadied and she relaxed, looking down at him, swinging through the smog like a bound carcass.

Gholl howled as he awoke and realised he was hanging upside down over a two hundred-foot drop. ‘Let me down, you crazy bitch!’ He thrashed and grunted, struggling to free himself.

She raised an eyebrow. ‘Let you down?’

He stopped struggling. ‘Get me back up, then. Who the Nine Devils do you think you are? You can’t do this to me. Zestan will kill you when he hears about this.’

‘Zestan won’t hear anything about this, Gholl.’ She crouched down. ‘Unless you want him to hear what really happened to that last obscura shipment.’

‘What are you talking about?’

She smiled. ‘You look really angry now. Or is it just the blood rushing to your head. I imagine it’s quite unusual having anything happening in your skull.’

‘That shipment was taken by the Colobi brothers. Everybody knows that. And Zestan is dealing with them.’

‘Yes. So I hear. Sounds like a mess to me. Sounds like the kind of scrap Zestan would rather have avoided. Imagine if he found out the Colobi brothers had nothing to do with that stolen shipment.’ She triggered a small vox-recorder attached to her belt. Gholl’s voice spilled from the speaker, tinny and distorted but still recognisable. He was describing the location of a warehouse and the movements of the guards who watched over it. He was explaining how to get in.

‘That’s fake!’ bellowed Gholl, but Tzava heard panic in his voice.

‘I think it would be better for everyone if Zestan never heard about our chat, don’t you think?’

Gholl struggled again. ‘Get me back up!’

The gantry gave another squeal and Tzava backed away into the building. She had checked the structure beforehand and it seemed sturdy enough to hold him, but she was starting to wonder if she had misjudged it. Gholl would be no use to her if he ended up painted across the transitway.

‘I really wouldn’t do that again,’ she said when the noise had stopped. She crept back out onto the gantry and spoke into the rust-coloured drizzle. ‘Tell me what I need to know and I’ll pull you back up.’

‘You haven’t even asked me anything!’ Gholl had slipped a few feet lower. ‘Why are you doing this to me?’

‘I thought we were having fun, Gholl, but if you want to get down to business I will. You know about the job Zestan has offered me. You know what a big deal it is. I am to kill Arch-Confessor Khorze the moment he arrives in Varangantua. There can be no delays. No mistakes.’

‘He doesn’t tell me everything that’s going on,’ muttered Gholl.

She tapped the cable, causing Gholl to lurch again. ‘Don’t be modest. You’re his most trusted knucklehead. He never makes a move that you don’t know about. You’re always at his side. That’s why it’s so easy for you to stick knives in his back. You know he’s hired me to kill Khorze.’

‘What of it?’

‘Zestan seems to be under the misapprehension that I’m not enough. The word is that he’s put some other people on the same job.’

‘So?’

‘Well, aside from the obvious injury to my professional pride, I don’t want a mob of bungling amateurs on the scene, getting in the way and slowing me down. There are a lot of slates riding on this, Gholl. I’m sure you understand. I’m keen not to mess things up. So I need to remove any extraneous clutter from the equation. I need to clear the field so I can have a clear run at the arch-confessor.’

Gholl muttered to himself as he swayed under the gantry. His face was now as red as the rain.

‘Just tell me their names, Gholl. Then I can get you back up here and you can go back to getting older and fatter.’

‘You’re insane! You think I’m going to give out the names of the most lethal killers in Paavo? I’d be dead in hours.’

‘You’re quite happy to betray Old Man Zestan. How can this be any worse? Besides, if you give me their names, not one of them will survive the night. Perhaps I didn’t make myself clear. I don’t intend to politely ask them if I can have this commission to myself.’

Gholl shook his head, and even that small movement was enough to trigger another screech from the gantry. He strained to look up at her. ‘You won’t get away with this.’

She looked at him in silence, keeping her expression neutral.

‘Kellen!’ he finally snapped. ‘And Pulo the Rat.’

She tapped the cable, causing him to swing again. ‘I love chatting with you, Gholl, I really do, but I have to get these idiots out of the way before tomorrow morning. I’m reliably informed that there are four of them.’

Gholl took a deep breath. ‘Rolgau the Juicer and…’ He hesitated.

‘Spit it out. We’ve known each other too long to keep secrets, Gholl.’

Gholl shook his head and looked away. ‘Orthoptera.’

Tzava laughed. ‘Orthoptera?’ Then she realised Gholl was being serious. ‘What are you talking about? Orthoptera’s not real.’

Gholl did the best approximation of a shrug he could manage while hanging upside down.

‘Who’s the other assassin?’ Tzava had been quite enjoying herself until this point, but now her mood started to sour. She rarely lost her temper on a job, but she could not abide it when people underestimated her intelligence. ‘I told you, Gholl, I don’t have time to play games. I have to have these people out of the way before the ship lands tomorrow morning. Tell me who the fourth assassin is.’

‘Zestan told me the names, and the last one was Orthoptera. Drop me off this damned thing if you like, but it won’t change the truth.’

Tzava rocked back on her heels, trying to think. Gholl was too dim to play mind games with her. He must really think the assassin was someone called Orthoptera. ‘Then someone’s playing a trick on Zestan,’ she said after a while. ‘The only people who believe in Orthoptera are obscura addicts and children with too much imagination. Have you heard the ridiculous stories? They say he’s a harbinger of doom, come to purify Varangantua. They say he’s a spirit with bone-white skin and black eyes. A ghost who can walk through walls. Or that he’s a shape-shifter who’s been on Alecto since before mankind came here. Or he’s the last survivor of a long-forgotten xenospecies. And it’s all utter groxshit.’ She shook her head. ‘Someone’s heard the stories and is using that name as a joke. No. Not a joke. They’re using that name as a way to spook people. As a way to scare simpletons off so they can make this hit and get those slates without any competition.’ She stood up and shrugged. ‘No matter. I’ll just have to track down whoever it is. They’ll die just as easy, whatever they call themselves.’ She turned to leave.

‘Wait!’ cried Gholl. ‘I told you the names! Get me back up!’

She laughed. ‘Get you back up? How in the name of the Emperor would I do that? You weigh more than a grox.’ Gholl started to howl and curse but she held up a hand to silence him. ‘Don’t make yourself ill. If your information turns out to be good I promise to come back here with some friends and fish your blubber from the fumes.’

‘You can’t leave me here all night!’

‘All night? It sounds like Zestan’s not the only one who underestimates me. If you’ve given me the right information, I’ll be back here in a few hours.’ She looked down at him with an innocent smile. ‘So is there anything you’d like to tell me?’

‘Those are the names, damn you!’

She gave him a bow and then headed back into the building as Gholl roared another curse.

Zus Kellen scowled at Tzava. His expression was so ferocious that it took her a few seconds to realise his head was upside down. It had also been separated from the rest of his body. It was propped carefully on the top of an ammo crate at the far end of the warehouse Kellen called home. The warehouse was littered with munitions and dismantled vehicles, and it took Tzava a while to locate the other parts of him. All of them were scorched. There was acrid smoke drifting through the air, and as Tzava kicked one of Kellen’s disembodied limbs, she recognised the smell of a frag grenade.

She wandered over to the head and rotated it into an upright position. As she moved it, something tiny fluttered down to the floor. She thought at first that it was a leaf, but when she picked it up she saw that it was an insect wing. She discarded it and looked around. ‘Odd,’ she said. ‘You’re usually so careful.’ She frowned and looked at the bank of viewscreens mounted on the wall.

She had known Kellen for years, and one of the reasons he had survived for so long was that his warehouse was very heavily guarded. Pintle-mounted autoguns bristled from the walls, and it was usually impossible to enter without being given access by the sensibly paranoid Kellen. She wandered over to one of the flickering viewscreens and tapped a runeboard slung beneath it. Images danced through static as she scanned back through the footage. After a few seconds the screen flashed white. She paused the footage and scanned forward again, moving slower this time.

‘There you are,’ she whispered, leaning close to the screen as she reached the flash and paused a few seconds earlier. When she pressed play she was annoyed to realise that there was no sound, but she could see Kellen quite clearly, his head still attached as he worked on one of his vehicles, affixing a gun to the chassis. He paused and looked up, hearing something, then glanced at one of his wall-mounted viewscreens.

It was odd, watching ghostly footage of the man whose body parts were now scattered all around her. And from the timestamp, she saw that the footage was only about an hour old. The image was grainy and monochromatic, but she could see that Kellen grinned as he looked closer at the viewscreen and realised who was waiting outside. A figure entered and approached Kellen. Tzava squinted and leant even closer, trying to make out the figure in more detail. It was a short, thin man with a bald pate that gave him a monkish appearance. Kellen and the other man embraced. They were clearly well acquainted. They spoke for a few minutes, the small man handed Kellen a parcel, then they hugged again and the small man left. Tzava only caught a brief glimpse of his face. She paused the footage, but the blurry frame did not reveal any more detail and she did not recognise him, so she let the recording play on. Kellen waved goodbye as his friend left. Then he placed the parcel on a table and returned to his work on the vehicle. A few seconds later the screen turned white, and when the image returned it showed clouds of smoke that eventually cleared to reveal Kellen’s blasted corpse.

Tzava turned the screen off and looked around, half expecting the small man to be watching her from the still-open door. There was no one there, and she thought back over what she had just seen. The killer had looked very unassuming. She could spot a killer easily, even in a crowded room. Years of working as an assassin had taught her how to spot kindred spirits. The man that delivered the parcel to Kellen looked like he had never killed so much as an insect.

She turned to Kellen’s grimacing head. ‘You welcomed him in with a smile. You knew him. Someone sent a friend to kill you. Perhaps that man didn’t even know he was delivering a grenade.’ She shrugged. ‘Looks like your enemies finally found a way to reach you. You must have made a mistake. Got sloppy.’ She patted the head in a friendly manner. ‘Whoever it was has saved me a job.’

Then a less cheerful thought hit her. What if Kellen had been killed because someone had had the same idea as her? What if someone else was trying to thin the herd? The only way to find out was to move on to her next target. She thought over the other names Gholl had called out, wondering who to track down next. She had yet to look into who might be using the name Orthoptera, so she picked one of the others.

‘Pulo the Rat,’ she said, twirling her pistol with a theatrical flourish. ‘Your time has come.’

Most of Tzava’s contemporaries lived in peculiar places. It was an unfortunate downside to her profession that one always had to be wary of vengeful relatives, hunting for assassins long after the probators had lost interest.

Pulo the Rat dwelled in the abandoned tunnels beneath an old smelting works just a few miles from where Tzava had left Gholl dangling. His main defence against intruders was that the entire network of mines and galleries was completely unstable. Only he knew which shafts were safe to climb down and which walkways could still take a person’s weight.

Well, it was not quite true that only Pulo knew the way around his warren of tunnels. On a previous visit, when she was working with Pulo, Tzava had used the optical implant in her mask to record the route, and now, as she picked her way through piles of rusting cogitators, the way to Pulo’s lair scrolled across her retina.

There was a stablight fixed to the barrel of her autopistol, and it flickered through the darkness as she climbed over rubble and abandoned mine carts. Sump-rats scattered at her approach. Like many of Paavo’s hired killers, Pulo had spread rumours and lies about himself, trying to create a smokescreen of mystery and fear. There were even some who believed the stories of Pulo possessing rats and using them as his familiars to spy on his enemies.

Tzava was not so easily deterred. She waved her gun at the rats and hissed at them, sending them flooding back into the rolling shadows. There were people watching her from the darkness too – wretched, misshapen mutants, cowering in the ventilation shafts and caves, hiding their faces in deep, mouldering hoods. Tzava paid them no heed, and after a few minutes, she reached the plasteel door that led into Pulo’s dwelling.

Tzava paused. The door was unbarred and slightly ajar, and there was light flickering in the room beyond that looked like flames. She turned the stablight off and gently pushed the door with her pistol, peering inside.

Pulo was sitting directly opposite her. He was at a table that was spread for a meal. There were two sets of plates and cups and Pulo looked quite relaxed. He was dressed in the grubby furs he always wore, and his rusty augmetic hand was holding a cup of wine.

He was also dead. There was a neat black hole in his forehead and a faint wisp of smoke drifting from the wound.

Tzava realised Pulo had only been dead a short time. Perhaps a matter of minutes. She tensed, raising her pistol, but as she scanned the room, she could see no one else in there. The flickering light was coming from a filthy, crackling strip-lumen hung from the ceiling, and there was no sign of a fight. Pulo had welcomed someone into his home and then that person had shot him.

Tzava felt increasingly riled as she approached the corpse, still keeping her pistol raised. Who’s doing this? she wondered. Her earlier idea must have been right. One of the other assassins was clearing the field before the arch-confessor reached the hive. Which would make her a target. She was not afraid, just conscious that there was a new angle to factor into her plans. She walked over to examine Pulo’s wound.

As she touched the corpse it tumbled to the floor, and as it fell, something fluttered from the bullet hole. Tzava caught it as it flipped through the air, and she frowned in surprise.

It was an insect wing, just like the one she had found on Kellen’s severed head. She peered at it. The thing was beautiful – delicate and translucent and latticed with fragile veins. It was like a tiny stained-glass window. It did not seem to belong in a place as filthy and broken as Varangantua. It was too perfect.

‘What’s going on here?’ she said aloud, talking to Pulo’s corpse. ‘Why would someone plant insect wings in corpses?’ She turned it in her fingers, studying the intricate shapes, then shook her head. ‘This is not from Varangantua. It’s too damned natural. Wait a minute.’ She called up the word ‘Orthoptera’ on her mask’s lens. Images of insects scrolled across her eye, locusts, with wings just like the one she was holding. ‘I get it. Whoever is pretending to be Orthoptera is trying to spook me. Someone thinks I’m so dim I can be scared off with folk tales.’

She recalled the other remaining name Gholl had given her. ‘Rolgau the Juicer,’ she muttered, picturing the pompous little wretch with his bundles of syringes and vials of neurotoxins. He was famed as the greatest poisoner in the district, perhaps all of Varangantua. These kills did not really seem his style, but she had no other options. She still had no idea who the final assassin might be, but if she moved fast, she could get to Rolgau in time to catch them in the act.

She put the locust wing in her pocket and stormed from the room.

Rolgau the Juicer had no need to work. He killed for pleasure and had little interest in the slates it earned him. He was also a dreadful snob. His manse reared up from the surrounding hovels and brothels like a Terran cathedrum, guarded by soldiers in braided uniforms and framed by columns of white pseudo-marble that had to be scrubbed at the end of every day to rid them of Paavo’s filth. Rolgau was the distant relative of a noble, and he had used his connections to elevate himself from the masses.

If Tzava had tried approaching the grand portico that led to his front doors she would have been hurled back into the rain, but she had long ago acquired the schematics to Rolgau’s home and she entered it through the impressive network of sewers Rolgau had built when he moved in. She was grateful for her rebreather as she waded through the slop, but in truth, most of Varangantua smelt like a sewer. The tunnel was large enough for her to walk upright and her stablight lit the way, so it only took her ten minutes to reach the maintenance hatch she was looking for and climb up into the manse’s vast cellars.

It was nearly dawn by this point, but the house was silent. She knew from previous visits that most of the servants and guards would be asleep. This was the perfect time to strike.

She killed her lumen all the same and crept unerringly through the darkness, using the infrared lenses in her mask to pick her way between the crates and wine racks. She paused at the bottom of the stairs that led up into the house, taking a grenade from her belt. It would detonate in silence, but the toxins it released would incapacitate anyone not wearing a rebreather. She doubted she would have to use it, but she prided herself on never leaving loose ends. No one ever saw her at work and lived to tell the tale.

She climbed slowly up the stairs. Halfway up, her lenses revealed a beam of light that she would not have otherwise seen. She stepped carefully over the trap, used her autopick to open the hatch at the top of the stairs and peered out into a gloomy hallway. There was a single glow-globe in the ceiling, but someone had killed the light.

She scanned the hallway with the lenses in her mask. Something was wrong. The glow-globe should have been on and there should have been two guards in the hallway, barring the way to Rolgau’s rooms. She crept down the hallway, gripping her toxin grenade as she reached the next door, then lay down and peered through the gap underneath it.

‘Damn it,’ she whispered, before standing and shoving the door open. Rolgau’s guards were slumped on the floor in the next room. There was a pool of blood forming around their heads where they had been shot. Their guns were still in their holsters and there was no sign of a struggle. ‘How do you keep getting so close to these people?’ she muttered, staring at the guards. ‘Why does no one put up a fight?’

She thought back over all the times she had heard Orthoptera mentioned. She recalled a conversation she’d once had with a drunk. He had claimed that Orthoptera was a wyrd who could get close to anyone. That he made himself look like his victims’ closest friends, transforming his body through forbidden rites, fooling his prey so they welcomed him in with open arms, never suspecting the danger.

She shook her head, trying to clear her thoughts, refusing to be spooked. She stooped to examine the dead guards, unsurprised to find locust wings placed in their wounds.

She tapped the door with the grenade and it swung slowly open, brushing across the surface of a thick red carpet. The first room was an antechamber, dominated by a vast portrait of Rolgau in ceremonial attire, shaking hands with the local vladar. She rushed on, heading down a long gallery.

There was a clattering sound from the next room.

Tzava ducked behind a chair and pointed her gun at the doorway. She grinned. She was in time. The killer was still here. Finally, she could put an end to this irritating game.

There was another movement in the room. Then there was a loud thud, like a body hitting the floor, followed by a groan of pain and a scratching sound.

She edged down the gallery, holding her breath, keeping her gun raised in one hand and her toxin grenade in the other.

She had almost reached the doorway when Rolgau crawled through it.

‘Still alive,’ she muttered.

He halted at the sound of her voice and looked around, struggling to see in the gloom. His face was horribly white and he was clutching at his stomach. There was blood rushing out of him in waves, glistening in the candlelight as it poured through his fingers. He used his other hand to drag himself across the floor, gasping and groaning.

She moved slowly towards him, looking back repeatedly as she crept down the gallery, expecting Rolgau’s attacker to appear at any moment. As she came close to Rolgau she saw that his stomach was bristling with ornate metal syringes. There were dozens of them, and some were still half full, with luminous chemicals sloshing in the barrels. He had been murdered with his own poisons.

She edged past him, ignoring his outstretched hand, and rolled into the room, springing up with her pistol raised. She cursed. It was a bedroom. And it was empty. There was no one there. She was too late again.

‘Who did this?’ demanded Tzava, heading back out to Rolgau, being careful to stay away from the syringes.

He struggled to focus on her, but he seemed to understand the question. He frowned. ‘My father. He said… he said he needed… to talk to me… about something. And then…’ He looked at his stomach in horror. ‘My own father…’

Tzava shook her head, thinking again about the drunk who’d said Orthoptera appeared to his victims as someone they knew – someone they trusted. She was about to ask another question, but Rolgau started to convulse and she backed away, keen to avoid the toxins spilling from his stomach. A few seconds later, Rolgau was dead. His eyes remained open, fixed on Tzava.

Rolgau was a skilled assassin, and under normal circumstances Tzava would have been pleased to know he was gone, but each death made her even angrier.

‘Who’s doing this?’ she muttered.

She looked at the chronometer on her wrist. It was almost morning. In a couple of hours, the arch-confessor would be landing at the docks. She had to be in position by then. But she still had no idea who was killing her rivals or who the fourth assassin was. She would have to take her place at the docks and hope she could strike first. The whole situation felt shoddy. Unprofessional. Her pulse hammered in her temples as she thought of all the slates she would lose if she did not make the hit.

She noticed that one of the syringes was still full and sealed, lying next to the corpse, so she carefully picked it up and placed it in one of the pouches on her bodysuit. Rolgau’s poisons were potent, and she was sure she could find a use for it. She was about to leave when she noticed that Rolgau was holding something. She presumed it would be another locust wing, but as she looked closer, she realised it was too large for that. She used the barrel of her pistol to prise the dead man’s fingers apart.

A small piece of parchment fell to the carpet. She could see from the watermark that it had been torn from a piece of Rolgau’s official stationary. There were coordinates written on the paper in what looked like blood.

‘Damn you!’ she spat, forgetting to keep her voice down. ‘How dare you play games with me.’

There was movement in another part of the house and voices called out. She had alerted the servants. She had to move fast.

She looked across the room to a tall leaded window at the far end, then scrolled through the manse’s schematics on her retinal lens, working out where she was in relation to the exterior of the building. She nodded, blink-clicked at the paper to log the coordinates, then raced towards the window, firing as she ran. The window exploded and she leapt out through the storm of glass, bounding into the night. She landed on top of the portico and ran along its roof, before sliding down a column back to street level.

By the time lights came on in the gallery she was already sprinting away, robed in darkness.

‘Throne of Terra,’ said Tzava as she studied the crumbling building in front of her. The coordinates had led her back to the hab-block where Gholl lived. She had presumed the coordinates would be some kind of trap, but this was infuriating. She had been sent back to where she started. It was a joke at her expense. Someone was mocking her.

She spat a curse. Then she glanced at her chronometer again. She had less than an hour to get in place and be ready to take her shot at the arch-confessor. There was no time left to wonder who was leading her in this dance. ‘Could it be Gholl?’ she muttered. ‘Could he be the one using the name Orthoptera? Maybe it’s just another way he’s screwing Zestan.’

She clambered over a stack of broken pallets and up onto the corrugated roof of a warehouse, then leapt onto a heat pipe and clambered up the side of the hab-block. After a few minutes she saw the gantry that she had hung Gholl from. Just as she suspected, he was gone. Had he cut himself down somehow? Or was it someone else? She climbed faster, shimmied up through a maintenance hatch and entered the building on Gholl’s level.

The same youth she had seen earlier was just leaving his room, humming cheerfully to himself. He blanched at the sight of Tzava and headed back into his hab-unit, slamming the door shut behind him. She heard the sound of locks clicking as she passed.

Gholl’s door was shut and bolted, but doors rarely presented an obstacle to Tzava. She grabbed an autopick from her belt and pressed it against the surface of the door. The locks clicked and she grabbed her pistol as the door swung open.

Gholl was waiting for her. He was still bound and he was as dead as everyone else she had called on that night. His head was twisted at a revoltingly unnatural angle and his neck was clearly broken. She scanned the room down the barrel of her gun, but there was no sign of the killer.

She felt like screaming. Tzava prided herself on working to a carefully laid-out plan. She was precise. She never left loose ends. She was always in control. Until tonight.

Gholl was holding something in his hand. It was not a wing or paper, but something black and mechanical. She snatched it from his grip and then gasped in surprise. It was her vox-recorder. She glanced down at the empty clasp on her belt, baffled as to how it could have been taken from her. ‘What in the name of the God-Emperor is going on?’ she whispered, as if Gholl could answer her. Then she noticed that there was a light blinking on the device, indicating that there was a new recording. She stared at it for a moment, oddly hesitant to play it back, then clicked the switch.

‘He wants me to tell you something.’ The voice was panicked and strained, but it was unmistakeably Gholl. ‘He says you have to let this one go. He says he’s giving you a chance to back away.’ There was a muffled, scuffling sound and cries of pain before Gholl spoke again, sounding even more afraid. ‘It’s him, Tzava. He’s real. It’s–’

The recording became a fuzz of white noise then ended. Tzava played it back again, repeating the part where Gholl said ‘It’s him, Tzava. He’s real.’ An inexplicable dread flooded through her. Then she snarled and hurled the device at the wall, smashing it into pieces.

‘I will not be scared off!’ she cried, looking around the room. ‘You’re not giving me a chance, damn you. You’re giving yourself a chance. A chance to make this kill without competition from me! Well, think again.’ She glanced at her chronometer. ‘Still time,’ she said, then ran from the room.

Tzava sneered as she looked down at the crowds below. It was barely dawn but thousands had turned out to greet the arch-confessor. She was dragging herself along the guttering of a roof, several floors up, but she could still see how pitiful they all looked. Many of them were pilgrims with charcoal smeared round their eyes and the Imperial aquila painted across their foreheads, but there were also people from other walks of life: Administratum officials in heavy robes jostled against emaciated, half-naked factorum labourers who looked like they might keel over at any second. Banners streamed overhead proclaiming the omnipotence of the God-Emperor and His mortal ecclesiarch representatives, and mechanised cherubs whirred through the fumes with rusting laud hailers for mouths, blasting hymns and prayers through scented smoke.

It never ceased to amaze Tzava that however miserable their lives were, her fellow citizens always turned out in droves when a city leader passed through the district. They loved nothing more than to praise the very people who were killing them. Everyone she saw was wearing identical expressions of bliss as they swarmed around the buttress-laden mountain of a ship that had just docked.

As she crawled across the roof, Tzava made a mental note of where the sanctioners were positioned. It was clear that they had not expected quite such a big turnout for the parade, and many of them were busy trying to keep the chanting masses at a safe distance from the landing ramp Arch-Confessor Khorze would soon be emerging from. Tzava nodded, pleased. The busier the Enforcers were, the easier her job would be. There were rows of Ecclesiarchy troops too, wearing crimson robes and gripping ancient, scarred weapons, but Tzava had already made plans to deal with that particular problem.

She had picked out her spot days before, an empty waste-processing plant with an outlet pipe that would drop her behind the Enforcers and Ecclesiarchy guards and close to the landing ramp. She had clipped a silencer to her pistol and dressed in priestly robes. She had found, after many years of elaborate ruses and complicated set-ups, that the simplest plans worked best. Making a successful hit was all about confidence and nerve.

She reached the processing plant just as the crowds outside erupted into wild cheers. The arch-confessor must be emerging from the ship, she realised, but she remained calm. She had measured out the distances involved. She would reach her mark in plenty of time. She looked out at the crowd again, wondering if her rival was out there somewhere, mingling with the masses. Perhaps he was even one of the sanctioners?

She found the chute and slid carefully down it, emerging to a deafening wave of voices. The chute had got her behind the bulk of the Ecclesiarchy guards, but there was still a small group of Ministorum officials just ahead of her and a rabble of deranged-looking zealots. She nodded at them as she passed, making the sign of the aquila and mouthing prayers. None of them challenged her.

It was more than just the robes she was wearing. She had learned how to give herself an aura of belonging. She met their eyes with such confidence that some of them grinned, assuming they knew her.

She reached a quiet spot, a little way behind the landing ramp, where there were no priests or Enforcers, then relaxed. She was ready, in exactly the position she had planned to be in. From here she would get a clear shot at her target as he left the ship.

The din of the crowd swelled as the arch-confessor marched into view. He was a thickset brute with broad shoulders and the air of a retired pugilist, but he was draped in the most unbelievable finery. He probably had enough wealth on his back to buy half the district. But Tzava could not kid herself that she was about to kill him for moral reasons. She was going to kill him for the money. And she was going to kill him to prove that she was the best at what she did.

She stepped into position and took aim. It was only as she raised the autopistol that she realised something dreadful: she was not alone. She had stolen plans that detailed the whole parade area and this space was supposed to be empty, but someone was rushing towards her. She faltered, shocked, and before she could take the shot, the stranger knocked the pistol from her grip and sent it clattering across the floor.

She rolled clear and bounded back onto her feet, snatching a combat knife from her belt and coming face to face with a Ministorum lackey. He looked like some kind of lowly priest or menial, dressed in simple, threadbare robes, and he had the soft, plump look of someone who had never missed a meal in his life. But as she snarled and rushed at him, grabbing his throat, the man moved with surprising speed, bringing his knee up into her stomach and winding her.

Tzava fell to the ground, gasping for breath, her mind racing. Could this be her rival? This flabby youth?

Voices cried out in alarm as she tried to stand. Zealots had seen the fight and were rushing over, gripping flamers and chainswords. The crowd was howling so wildly that most people could not hear the zealots’ cries, but there were a few officials nearby who did and they rushed to join them.

Then something odd happened. As Tzava struggled to stand, the plump little priest took a pistol from his robes and began gunning the zealots down.

‘What in the name of the Golden Throne is going on?’ she gasped, finally catching her breath. The priest was now trying to save her life. She grabbed her knife and ran past him as he fired, cutting down another zealot. The zealots were shocked to see the priest siding with Tzava, but they quickly recovered and attacked. For a few ferocious seconds, Tzava and the priest fought with the zealots, stumbling and lunging and spilling blood as the crowd noise swelled around them.

Then, as the last of the zealots fell, the cheering died away, and Tzava howled in frustration as she realised the arch-confessor was being bundled back into the ship.

‘Quickly!’ gasped the priest. He was panting and bright red in the face as he pointed to a gap between some landing shuttles a few dozen feet away. ‘That way.’

She rounded on him, teeth bared and knife raised. ‘You cost me my kill, you little worm. Why would I follow you?’

He raised his gun and fired. She flinched, expecting to feel pain. Then she heard bodies thudding down behind her. He had shot two more zealots, but as the crowd began to disperse, people were starting to notice the fallen bodies and were running towards her, calling out commands and raising weapons.

‘I can get you out of here,’ said the priest, nodding at the gap between the landers. ‘I know a way. If we go now.’

She looked around for her gun but there was no sign of it. Without that, even she would struggle to get away from such a mob.

‘We have history, you and I,’ said the priest.

‘What do you mean?’ she demanded. He said nothing, and there were now dozens of militia troops running over. She decided to deal with this little wretch later on, once she was safe. She nodded.

The priest rushed off towards the landers, ran past them and then led her back to the processing plant she had arrived through. Auto-rounds whistled past them as they ran, but Tzava halted and glared at the priest.

‘This is your great escape plan? I could have got here by myself. The problem is getting through those angry crowds.’

The priest ran on as he pointed to a hulking shape in the darkness, covered by a filthy tarp. Then he pulled the tarp away to reveal a battered, rusting old groundcar.

‘That will never start!’ cried Tzava, looking for another escape route.

‘I came here in it,’ said the priest, dropping into the front seat and gunning the engine.

Tzava leapt in beside him just as it screeched off into the night, hurtling through a warren of empty transitways and backstreets, leaving the docks far behind. Tzava glared at the priest as he drove, itching to kick him from the vehicle.

‘What are you doing? Why did you help me get away? What’s going on here?’

He ignored her, bringing the groundcar to a juddering halt in a side street and stepping out into the miserable weather. The crowd that had gathered was splitting up, but the street was still thronged with people and noise.

To Tzava’s astonishment the priest started to walk away without saying anything. She grabbed him by the shoulder and turned him to face her. Then she backed away with a groan of disgust.

He was melting. As the rain washed over him it was taking his features with it, dissolving his face as if it were sculpted from dirt.

‘Who are you?’ she whispered.

As the priest’s features vanished, another face emerged, one with bleached-white skin and blank black eyes. ‘You know who I am,’ he said, turning away and trying again to leave.

Tzava gripped the syringe she had taken from Rolgau’s stomach and grabbed Orthoptera by the shoulder, preparing to jab the needle home. ‘What game are you playing?’ she demanded. ‘Why did you save me back there? And why did you leave without killing the arch-confessor?’

He said nothing, studying her with featureless, unreadable eyes, but she answered her own question. ‘You weren’t employed to kill the arch-confessor, were you? You were employed to kill us. The assassins. You were paid to make sure we didn’t reach him.’

Still he remained silent, but she saw a faint flicker of acknowledgement cross his face and she knew she was right.

She held the needle to his throat. ‘Why did you let me live?’

‘Don’t you remember me?’ he said.

She studied his face, and, to her astonishment, she realised that she did know him. He was older and his colouring had changed, but she knew this man. He was an important part of her past, but she could not quite place him.

‘Who are you? When did we meet?’

He rolled his sleeve up, revealing dozens of old scars and a faded tattoo. It was the badge of someone who belonged to an inquisitor’s retinue. An elaborate Thorian rosette.

‘That’s Inquisitor Ravin’s mark,’ she muttered, confused, recalling the first hit she had ever made. The day was etched in her memory by shame. She had made a mess of the whole job by letting one of Ravin’s guards live, knocking him unconscious when she should have killed him. She had never made the same mistake again. Having left a loose end once, she had sworn never to do it again. She laughed in disbelief. ‘You’re him. The one I let live.’

He nodded. ‘And now the debt is repaid. The balance restored. We’re even.’

She stared at him in disbelief. His expression was deadly serious. He had gone out of his way to try and warn her off, and he had even killed Ministorum guards just because of something that had happened over a decade ago – just because he felt he owed her a debt. He might even have forfeited his fee by letting her escape. The man was insane.

She threw her head back, laughing. ‘You let me live to restore the balance? Is that a joke? I thought you were meant to be–’ Her words stalled in her throat as she looked down again. He had gone, vanished into the sea of grinning faces.

Tzava pushed her way into the crowd, furious that such a deranged individual had cost her so many slates. She looked everywhere, trying to catch sight of his bone-white features, but it was useless. He could look like anyone by now.

‘Damn you,’ she whispered, secreting the syringe back in the pouch on her belt.

‘There!’ cried a voice. ‘It’s her!’

The crowd parted as zealots charged down the street, chainswords rattling and spitting.

Tzava leapt back into the groundcar and tore off down the side street, praying that it was not a dead end.

CONFESSIONS OF FIRE

GARY KLOSTER

Thaddeus was dead. The Weavers had killed him.

Lira moved with the mob, her thin arm caught tight in her mother’s grip. The crowd was a beast, a monster with a million shouting mouths and countless eyes flashing with flame, and Lira knew she’d die if she fell, crushed beneath uncaring feet, but she didn’t care.

The Weavers had wrapped a cord around her brother’s throat and pulled it tight, and she wanted to watch them burn.

‘I can’t see!’ Somehow her mother heard her in the deafening roar, and picked Lira up to sit on her shoulders. The crowd was packed into the square before the church, a building crouched like a black stone beast, its spire like a horn rising into the night sky. There was a clear space before the glowing maw of the church’s open doors, a stretch of stained rockcrete fenced off by wire and armoured guards. In that space, rows of steel frames gleamed in the light of a thousand torches. Strange bundles hung from their crosspieces, cord-bound forms that struggled and thrashed. People. People wrapped head to toe in thread, their gasping, howling mouths exposed. Beneath bound feet, more thread had been piled high, loose mounds of it that gleamed with the sheen of spilt promethium.

‘See them!’ a voice thundered over the square, spilling from a hundred laud hailers. ‘They name themselves Weavers? We name them heretic! They say they can read the future in the dance of threads on the auto-looms? They say they can change fate by shifting threads? We say they have no future, and their only fate is flame!’

‘Flame!’ the crowd shouted, thousands of hands raising torches high.

‘What fate the heretic?’ bellowed the laud hailers.

‘Flame!’ answered the mob.

‘What fate the heretic?’

‘Flame!’

‘What fate the heretic!’ The voice of the laud hailer was exultant.

‘FLAME!’ the mob howled, its thunderous voice shaking the windows. Lira sat on her mother’s shoulders, silent in that sea of sound, and watched as the torches began to fly. Thrown by the crowd, they arced through the air and landed among the bound figures and the fuel-soaked piles of thread. Within seconds, flames were shooting up, wrapping the Weavers in fire.

Screams echoed through the square and the crowd roared back. Over the laud hailers, angry prayers were shouted like curses, and the fire was roaring, its light flaring across the church’s facade. Lira tore her eyes from the twitching bodies, black and twisting, looking at the dark shadow of the church, and she saw Him. The man in the great stained-glass window that towered over the square. Lit by the raging flames, He looked at her, His eyes shining through the black clouds of smoke. Eyes sad and patient and wise, and when she looked at them, all the grief Lira had tried to lock away behind her rage suddenly broke free and she wailed. Her tiny body shook as she tipped back her head and howled her grief to the night, to the smoke and to the figure of the man in the Golden Throne who stared down at them all, His face fading as the fire burned itself away.

Lira Tarn stood atop the church’s high spire, the season’s first storm a black, thundering wall behind her, and stared down at all the God-Emperor had entrusted to her.

Black Falls was a sliver of the vast city, a tangle of factoria and habclaves built into the steep hills that loomed over the rest of Saltstone. A few million souls in a city of billions, on one barely significant world of the great Imperium of Man. All those people walking the wet streets below were but a fraction of a fraction of humanity, but they were hers.

They are His, she chided herself. The view and the storm were tempting her to heresy, but such delusions were easy to resist with a press of her fist into her hip, where a tangle of scars marked her. The sharp ache that came from her touch was a good reminder of her mortal frailty.

Behind her, almost masked by the gurgle of rainwater pouring out of the leering gargoyles that ringed the tower, there was a creak of hinges. Gallin, she thought, catching a whiff of something caustic. She turned, leaning on her cane, and looked at the man. He would have been nondescript but for the pockmarks that mottled the pale face barely visible in the depths of his black hood. The industrial cleaner the man used had eaten away his hair and was making a start on the skin, but everyone had their own path to purity.

‘I’m all right, dedicant. The storm has passed.’ She took one last look at the sprawl spread below her, her eyes lingering on the almost empty square that stretched before her church. What fate the heretic? Forty years later, and those words still thundered in her ears. ‘It’s safe enough for me to take in the air.’ And consider the past.

‘It’s not the storm that brings me, reverend mother,’ Gallin said, his quiet voice an apology. ‘Sanctioners have come to the church. There’s been a killing, and your presence is requested.’

The hab-block lay just beyond the river, whose grey waters tumbled down the black hills and powered the dams that drove the always clattering looms of Black Falls’ massive textile manufactoria. The huge building was one of the new hab-blocks that had been built sometime after the riots and fires that had ripped through the ward forty years ago. The graffiti painted on its walls was barely touched yet by salt or soot. Beside the block’s entrance, the charred skeleton cocooned in thread was clear and bright, as were the painted flames rising around it. Lira frowned at the image as she passed. She wasn’t the only one in Black Falls that remembered the day the Weavers burned. But she didn’t break stride, keeping up with the sanctioners that had led her here despite her cane.

She followed them through the maze of halls inside until they reached the killing site. Lira smelled it before she saw the other sanctioners that were waiting, a scent of smoke and charred flesh that rolled up her nose and into her brain, threatening her head with memory.

I can’t escape it today, she thought, and wondered, not for the first time, if coming back to this ward, to this city, to this planet, had been a good idea. But what was done was done, and here she was. Lira dug her knuckles into her hip, making the usual low throb of pain sharpen to a scream. The pain helped push the memory away. No time for old death. I must deal with the suffering of the now.

‘Who the hell’s this?’ A big man stood before the sanctioners, in the blackened doorframe that opened into one of the habs. He was dressed in a dark stormcloak, the clothes beneath too expensive for a labourer but too shabby for one of the ruling families. Beneath the coat, Lira could see a heavy autopistol strapped to his side.

‘Probator Natta?’ she guessed, and he scowled at her, his dark eyes ablaze.

‘You’re from the church.’ He glared at the sanctioners who’d brought her, big men who suddenly seemed nervous. ‘Why the hell did you bring her?’

‘You said the victim wanted her,’ one of them said.

‘Did I say I wanted her?’ He took a step towards the man, getting in his face and glaring, and Lira took the opportunity to step around him. ‘Hey!’ he snarled. ‘That’s a crime scene. Don’t touch anything!’ Lira nodded as if she were listening and walked into the apartment.

The place was an abattoir that had been set alight. Six bodies lay on the floor, each charred into a skeletal husk, except one. In the far corner, in a place the fire had barely touched, a woman lay on the floor. Her blackened skin wept red-yellow drops of fluid into the dirty carpet, and in the few places where it wasn’t burned Lira could see the marks of a knife, thin cuts that drew strange figures across her skin. Beside her knelt a young man, his attire similar to Natta’s. His pretty face was pained as he hunched over the body, whispering, ‘She’s coming, it’s all right, she’s coming,’ as if he could give comfort to the dead. Then the body moved, twisting in agony as it rasped out a horrible cough.

Lira was across the room in an instant. ‘Daughter of mine, I am here.’

A strangled sound emerged from a throat covered in bruises and burns. The woman’s face turned towards her – her eyes were ruined, cut by the blade that had marked her skin. But Lira knew she’d heard her.

‘You don’t need to speak. Listen, and hear His last rites, the gates to His blessed kingdom. Hear them.’ The young man pulled away, going to stand with Natta, who watched her without expression, arms crossed. She ignored them both and let the litany roll out of her, blessing the passing of a soul.

Later, when she sat in silence next to the woman, Natta finally came over.

‘Are you done? I have questions for the witness.’

Lira, finishing her own silent prayers for the woman’s soul, and for the souls of all the others dead here, didn’t answer.

‘Hey! I said–’

Lira opened her eyes. ‘I heard you, probator. Ask whatever you wish, but you’ll get no answer.’ She folded the woman’s hands over her chest, ignoring the way the burned skin tore beneath her fingers, and slowly stood.

Natta looked at the woman’s still face and swore. ‘Alive for that long, waiting for you, and not one word to us.’

‘She held on for what was important.’ Lira wiped her fingers on her robe and took a deep breath, then wished she hadn’t. This small room was filled with the stench of charred flesh, underlaid with some harsh, chemical tang. She didn’t recognise the woman’s burned face, but there were so many in her congregation. Whoever she’d been, her faith had been great, to hold to life this long with such wounds.

‘Your business might be souls. But bodies, especially murdered ones, are my business,’ Natta said. Lira half listened to him as she moved towards the other bodies.

The flames had charred them, but the ones closest to the woman who had survived were in a little better shape. Looking up at the ceiling, Lira could see the fire suppressors embedded in the soot-covered rockcrete. Most were broken or plugged, but the one in this corner had actually worked, a miracle which had kept this hab from total incineration.

‘Reverend Mother Tarn. Thanks for the help.’ Sarcasm thickly coated the probator’s words. ‘We’ve no more need of you. Please feel free to go back to your church.’

Lira nodded absently, her grey-black curls swinging. ‘Thank you, probator. But I’ll be staying.’ She knelt down beside one of the other bodies, ignoring Probator Natta’s growl as she began to quietly say her prayers of departure. When she’d finished, she reached down and touched the body, rolling it over.

‘Hey!’ Natta barked. ‘Don’t disturb the evidence.’

‘The divine human form,’ Lira said. As she thought, the skin on the back had been better preserved. She could see more cuts here, curved lines and intricate symbols slashed into the thin skin. They were quite well done, many reminiscent of Ecclesiarchal symbologies, but oddly perverted. Others she couldn’t place, though they looked familiar. She looked up from them, at the blackened apartment walls. In this undamaged corner, there were marks she could see through the thin layer of soot. There were more symbols, similar to those that had been carved into the victim’s skin, drawn on the wall in blood.

‘Body. Evidence.’ Natta loomed over Lira, kneeling on the filthy floor. ‘It’s our business. There are no souls here, reverend mother, just burned meat. None of this concerns the Ministorum any more.’

‘Oh?’ she said. Behind the probator, she could see a servo-skull drifting into the room, the picters set in its bone sockets meticulously recording. ‘Tell me something, Probator Natta. Did the other murders have these same symbols painted on the walls, or cut into the “burned meat”?’

‘How’d you know about the others?’ he growled.

Lira pushed herself up with her cane. ‘You just told me,’ she said, her voice bright and innocent. She patted the smooth curve of bone of the servo-skull as it drifted past, watching the probator clench his jaw. There was a certain entertainment in toying with the probator, but there was nothing amusing about those symbols. Lira had seen too many heresies begin with a subtle shift of orthodox beliefs, the trappings of the Imperial cult twisted into something terrible. So she stared at Natta, waiting for him to finally crack and answer her question while he stared back, clearly unwilling to speak. A silent stand-off that could have gone on for a long time but for the younger probator.

‘We found these same symbols with them too,’ he said. Natta glared, but the boy shrugged. ‘She’s with the Ecclesiarchy.’

‘Fine. You want to talk, you deal with her.’ Natta stalked out of the apartment.

The boy sighed. ‘Probator Natta is particular about his investigations. Doesn’t like to be interfered with.’ The boy’s words were precise, educated. A world away from Natta’s thick downclave accent, and Lira thought she understood where at least some of the conflict between the probator and his tertius came from.

‘It’s all right…’ Lira said, waiting for the young man to introduce himself.

‘Venn,’ he said. He waved at the bodies. ‘There’ve been at least four others like this. The symbols… Usually they’re not this clear. The fires before did a better job. But they were there.’

‘At least?’ Lira asked, and Venn shrugged.

‘Murders are common. Those marks aren’t.’ He looked at her. ‘Do they mean something to you?’

There was a lifetime of memories of blood and death and heresy in Lira’s head. Coming back here, coming home, was supposed to help her quench the fires of the past. Not reignite them. ‘I’m afraid they might,’ she said softly.

Whatever this was, it needed to end, before the people of Black Falls started to talk.

When Lira walked into the nave of her church the next morning, she found Gallin prostrate before the great stained-glass window that depicted the ascension of the God-Emperor to the Golden Throne, his hands full of tools.

‘Lumens flickering again?’ she asked, and then waved her hand at the dedicant as he scrambled to his feet to bow. ‘Don’t interrupt your work for that. Better the light shows on His face than you bend your back to me.’ The window’s image was simple, lacking the grandeur of so many others she’d seen, but Lira had loved it since she first saw it as a girl. The lumens illuminating it, though, were fickle, annoying things.

‘Yes, reverend mother,’ Gallin said, glaring at the lights. ‘Father Cravin always wanted to find the menial who did this and flog him.’

He probably would have. Her predecessor had a sinister reputation, even before his mysterious disappearance. Lira looked over at the confessional chamber on the other side of the nave, where a line of penitents already waited, a man with a misshapen face and an eyepatch at its head. Bartia Sowe. He’ll be good for at least twenty minutes. An uncharitable thought, considering how much that man had suffered, and how much he tortured himself for things that weren’t his fault. Still, she’d be in her booth a while.

‘Dedicant, there’s a young man coming this morning, a probator tertius named Venn. Please take him to my office and make sure he waits until I can speak to him.’

‘Yes, reverend mother.’ He frowned. ‘Reverend mother…’ he said hesitantly. ‘I’ve been hearing rumours. People whispering, about them murders the sanctioners called you to. People saying they weren’t just normal killings. That the bodies were mutilated.’

So it has started already.

‘They were killed with a knife,’ she said. ‘Mutilation enough.’

‘So… it wasn’t anything strange. Not…’ Gallin was having difficulty picking his words, clearly wanting and not wanting to say something. ‘Some people were saying it was something like the Weavers all over again,’ he finally said in a rushed whisper.

‘No,’ Lira said firmly. ‘Not at all.’

‘Good,’ he said, but his reassurance seemed uncertain.

Black Falls had burned once because of the Weavers.

When Lira finally returned to her office after confessions, Venn snapped shut the tome he was flipping through and put it back with the books and stones that filled the shelves of her office.

‘Reverend Mother Tarn. Finally.’ He was struggling to keep his words polite. ‘Natta’s called me back to Bastion-S, but that creature of yours won’t–’

‘What’d you think of the marriage manual of the Koleks?’ she said cheerfully. When he sputtered in confusion, she waved her cane at the book he’d put back, and the dark skin of his face went darker. She laughed. ‘You’ll make a fine probator, young man. Over five hundred books on these shelves, and you found the only one with dirty drawings.’ She sighed and sat behind her desk, her hip aching. The stool in the confessional chamber was a hard, unforgiving thing, like confession itself. Good for the spirit but bad for her hip. Metal jabbed her in the ribs, and she pulled out the heavy autopistol strapped under her robe and set it on her desk.

Venn focused on the gun, happy to change the subject. ‘Do you always go armed in your church, mother?’

‘The codes of this church demand that a blessed weapon be worn in the confessional chamber,’ she said. ‘The penance for some heresies can be harsh, and immediate.’

‘Have you ever…?’

‘Not in years.’ He frowned at that, his seriousness making her smile. ‘The files?’

Venn picked up a folder and handed it to her. It was thick with picts and scribed notes, and she began to flip through it.

‘I’ll be off then,’ he said, starting for the door.

‘This positioning,’ she said absently, ignoring his attempt to leave. She was staring at a pict of three bodies, charred almost to skeletons, their feet pointing towards a single central point. The bodies at the habclave had been arranged the same. ‘Is that the commonality that you’ve used to link these killings?’

He sighed. ‘Reverend mother. I think it’s a blessing that you are so concerned with these deaths. That you care what happens to the people of this ward. But I’m under orders to return to the Bastion as soon as I’ve delivered these files. Probator Natta was very clear in reminding me that you have no authority over my time.’

‘Not formally,’ Lira said, spreading picts across her desk, five gory illustrations of death. In each, the burned bodies were arranged in a circle, on their backs, feet pointed inward. Only the third lacked that pattern, because there was only one corpse. ‘You may leave this office with nothing but a glower from my dedicant. However…’ She looked up from the picts. ‘I assume your training has covered the delicate intricacies of power? How authority comes from many different angles?’

The boy frowned again, but he nodded.

‘Good! Let me add to that knowledge. I spent forty years as a missionary, spreading His good word to those who’d forgotten it on an unfortunate number of worlds. Over that time I dealt with many types of power, from civilised to savage, and in general I’ve had little difficulty. I am a servant of Him, interested in souls, not power. But at times in my work I have found it necessary to convey to those in authority an important truth. Never, ever, fuck with the Ecclesiarchy.’

He blinked at her, and she smiled. ‘I’m not threatening you. Not exactly. But these murders… There’s something here that bothers me, and I want to be involved. And when a member of the Ecclesiarchy wants to become involved in something, Venn, you’ll find it’s best to humour them. Tea?’

‘I…’ He sighed and took a chair. ‘Sure.’

Lira beamed at him, then rang the bell on her desk. Gallin poked his head in. ‘Tea please, good dedicant.’ When he shut the door, she tapped the picts and looked at Venn’s young face expectantly. Cute and intelligent, she thought. Too bad he’s thirty years too young. She tapped her hip, just enough to make the old injury twinge and pull her out of such thoughts. Sometimes the vow of celibacy was harder to bear than others.

‘The fire was really our first clue that they were linked,’ he said. ‘Arson as a cover-up is common, but having this many cases so close to each other made us suspicious. So we investigated, and found the… commonalities you were talking about. Bodies arranged in a circle, feet oriented towards a central point, and the symbols, carved in the skin and painted in blood on the walls.’ He pointed to the third pict, the one with only one body. ‘That’s how we were sure this one was another victim of the same killer. His unit in the hab-block was poorly ventilated. The fire burned out before it destroyed all the body, so we found the symbols carved into him.’

Lira found the close-up picts of the symbols carved into charred skin. Most were barely recognisable as cuts, but a few were preserved enough to see that they all matched.

‘Anything else?’ she asked.

‘Yes,’ Venn said. ‘Cause of death. Most of the victims had their throats cut by a large, sharp blade. But at each scene, one victim was strangled instead. When there was only one victim, they were strangled.’

‘Which implies that these killings are targeted at specific individuals, not at the households,’ Lira mused. ‘The ones with their throats slashed were probably collateral damage, dealt with quickly.’

‘Yes,’ Venn said. The boy seemed intrigued by the puzzle of the killings, which meant he’d probably be a decent probator someday, if he didn’t get himself killed first. ‘But what’s the connection? Other than them all being from Black Falls, we haven’t found any links.’ He pulled out a data-slate and tapped the screen, bringing up the victims’ records. ‘They didn’t know each other, didn’t work together, didn’t–’

‘That one,’ Lira said, staring at one of the green-tinted picts flashing by. ‘Who’s that?’

‘Varus Tosher. Labourer at factorum seven of the Carishander Complex.’

The man was older and plain-looking, but a dark mark covered one side of his face, a burn long healed. ‘I know him,’ she said. ‘He came to the church quite often. Or he used to.’ She frowned. ‘Show me just the ones that were strangled.’

Venn tapped at the data-slate until only five picts remained. Lira recognised Varus and the woman she had spoken the last rite to. She tapped those two picts. ‘They both attended this church.’

‘It’s the only church in Black Falls,’ Venn said.

Behind him the door opened, and Gallin came in carrying a tray. He set teacups before them both, along with a plate of carb-slabs that looked like they’d been carved from the black church stones. Lira suppressed a shudder and took a drink of her tea, staring over the rim at her dedicant.

‘Gallin. I know the church manifest was lost when Father Cravin left. How far along are we in rebuilding our listings of congregants?’ The fallout from her predecessor’s disappearance had caused Lira numerous problems, but the loss of the records was a serious irritation to her.

The dedicant winced. ‘Apologies, reverend mother, but not very far. May I ask why you need them?’

‘I’m trying to see if these people regularly attended the church,’ she said, waving at the records on the data-slate.

‘Ah,’ he said. ‘If you’d like, I could try and match their images to any captured by the picters that are in the sanctuary.’

‘Excellent idea, dedicant.’ She patted his scarred hand. ‘I’ll send you the picts.’ Gallin nodded, then withdrew.

‘Regular churchgoers?’ Venn asked. ‘What would that mean?’

‘Who knows? But it’s another clue.’ Lira tapped on one of the clearer symbols carved into one of the corpses. ‘Most of the marks cut into those people are based on symbols that the Ecclesiarchy uses, on planets that use alternative writing systems. They’ve been warped, altered, but I can still read them. Purity. Cleansing. Absolution. This killer has made a ritual, and they’ve based it on the tenets of my church. If they’re also using the members of my congregation to perform it…’ She tapped a finger against her teacup, sending ripples through the bitter brown draught. ‘Then I shall feel very personally and professionally angered by that.’

‘And the symbols you don’t recognise?’ he asked.

‘I have my suspicions,’ she said. ‘They remind me of times when I served alongside the Astra Militarum. There was one campaign–’

Venn suddenly raised his hand, going glassy-eyed as he stared at nothing. A point of light gleamed in his left eye as his dataveil implant forcibly activated.

‘Probator Natta. I’m needed.’

‘Another killing?’ she asked. When he did not respond, she nodded and stood. ‘Right. I’ll switch out of my vestments and we’ll go.’

‘He…’ Venn struggled a moment.

‘Specifically told you not to bring me?’ Lira smiled and started towards her chambers to change. ‘Too bad. Until this killer is found, he’s going to have to endure the torture of my company.’

The stench in the narrow alley was choking. The dozen plasteel cargo containers stacked haphazardly behind a row of repair shops were never meant for human habitation, but the poor and desperate had carved them into squalid habs. The only provision they’d made for sewage was a trench leading to the half-blocked opening of a storm sewer, and the odour was potent. But in this one container, the reek of sewage was blotted out by the smell of charred flesh and rendered fat, all mixed in with a sharp, chemical undercurrent.

Four people had lived in this tiny metal box. Now it was their crematorium. The killer had lit this place and locked its metal doors behind them, and the fire had fed on the air rushing in through the crude vents cut in the container’s sides. The whole box must have glowed like an oven.

But it was cold now, the ashes soggy with rain.

‘How long have these been here?’ she asked, lowering herself to squat beside one of the bodies, ignoring her hip’s complaint. A few of the bones had been shifted, moved by scavengers animal and human, but the familiar circle arrangement was still there.

‘A few days,’ Venn said. ‘We questioned the squatters’ – he waved to the people watching them from down the alley or on top of the other containers – ‘but they don’t like to talk.’

‘Neither does Natta,’ Lira said, peering closely at the corpse. The flesh was gone, but she could see a deep notch cut in the vertebrae of the blackened skeleton’s neck. There was a similar cut on the necks of two of the other bodies.

‘He spoke to me plenty,’ Venn muttered. The probator had hauled the boy aside when they arrived, and ranted and snarled at him for several minutes.

Gritting her teeth against a groan, Lira used her cane to pull herself up. ‘Probator Natta,’ she said. ‘Have you identified them yet?’

He snarled and finally spoke to her. ‘With all due respect, reverend mother, you don’t belong here.’

‘And yet here I am,’ she said.

Natta pushed back his coat, one hand tapping the grip of his autopistol, every bit of his body language a threat. But Lira just looked up at him, patient, until with another snarl he pulled a data-slate out of a pocket and handed it to her.

The names meant nothing, but Lira carefully examined the picts. She didn’t recognise most of them, but one woman was familiar. Even in low resolution, her eyes were striking, beautiful and sad in a rough, weathered face.

‘She’s one of my congregation,’ Lira said. ‘She was the one that was strangled, wasn’t she?’

‘Yes,’ Natta said, then scowled at himself for speaking. ‘He told you about that?’ The probator’s scowl turned towards Venn, who was doing his best to become invisible.

‘Venn’s been very helpful to me,’ she said. ‘And you, by keeping me out of your way.’ Maybe that will save the poor boy some trouble. ‘I believe these victims all attended my church regularly. At least the strangled ones.’

‘Good, pious citizens getting killed.’ Natta spat into the channel of sewage. ‘That’s damn well not going to help.’

‘Help what?’ Lira asked.

‘You don’t know what happened here, forty years ago,’ Natta answered. ‘You’re from off-world.’

‘Wrong, probator,’ she said. ‘Forty years spreading the word of the Emperor on distant planets and I’ve rather lost my Saltstone accent. But I was born and raised in Black Falls. I was here when the Weavers strangled their victims with threads from the factoria. I was here when the sanctioners used those same cords to bind the heretics in front of the church and burned them alive.’

‘You know how bad it was then.’

‘My brother, Thaddeus, was killed by the Weavers,’ Lira said.

‘My parents died too.’ Natta suddenly shook his head and swore, as if he regretted saying anything. Then he looked at her, eyes hard. ‘If you were here then, you should understand what I’m afraid of. The Weavers were wiped out, and these murders have nothing to do with them, but if there’s a hint of anything sacrilegious to these deaths… This place, these people, they remember that time. The fear, the death. If they think it’s happening again, there’ll be riots or worse. Do you understand why I don’t want you here?’ He jerked his blunt head towards the people watching them, watching her. ‘They see you here, a priest, and the rumours grow.’

‘An unfortunate possibility,’ she acknowledged. ‘But these killings are sacrilegious, and so I am involved. I’m willing to be more discreet, if you’re willing to be more helpful.’ Natta still looked unhappy, but then he’d never looked any other way, and he wasn’t arguing. ‘You sent me your data. What are your theories?’

‘Theories?’ Natta shook his head. ‘Damn few. There’s no witnesses, no physical evidence and no picts. All I got is the pattern-cut throats and strangulations, symbols, the arrangement, the fires. Whoever this is, they’re organised, methodical, careful and bloody insane. That’s a bad combo.’

‘The throat cuts,’ she said. ‘They’re precise. Do you think the killer could’ve been ex-Militarum?’

‘Very possibly,’ he said. ‘They killed a lot of people, very fast.’

‘There aren’t many that survive the Guard,’ she said. ‘But some of the symbols carved into the bodies are reminiscent of ones that are sometimes used in the Astra Militarum. Brotherhood marks, luck marks, pledges to the Emperor.’

He looked at her, and for the first time Lira thought he might be thinking of her as something other than a pain in the arse. ‘How do you know that?’

‘The Ecclesiarchy works alongside the Militarum on worlds that have lost their way. Certain… rituals are occasionally carried out among soldiers.’ She’d seen a lot of unsavoury things on those worlds. ‘But the symbols seem different too, corrupted, the same way the Ecclesiarchy symbols were.’

‘Those Ecclesiarchy ones. How common are they? Who would know them?’

‘They’re not common here,’ she said. ‘But nothing I saw was secret. Anyone who did a little study could know them.’

‘Still. A veteran scholar who knows your church.’ Natta nodded. ‘That narrows it down.’

‘It does.’ Lira looked back at the bodies. ‘Have you figured out what the killer is using to start these fires yet?’

‘Some kind of promethium,’ Natta said. ‘Why?’

‘There’s something I’ve smelled at both sites… I don’t know what it is. But it’s chemical, and strange.’

‘The only thing I can smell here is charred meat and shit.’ Natta shrugged. ‘I’ve got no slate to spend on analysis. Bastion is already on my case for taking too many sanctioners.’ He looked at her, then Venn. ‘Speaking of taking people, you grabbed my assistant fast, so how about a bargain. You can have him to help you with this, but you stay away from these scenes from now on, and put out word that the Ecclesiarchy’s part in this is done? We don’t want anyone getting the wrong idea about these killings.’

Lira looked at him, then at the crowd of gawkers that had gathered around them. They were already muttering among themselves and clutching their aquilas.

‘Agreed.’

Lira hobbled through the crowded market, nodding to those who nodded to her, whispering blessings over those who stopped before her, their heads bowed. It was so automatic, unconscious, it took her a moment to recognise Venn when the probator tertius fell in beside her, assuming he was another supplicant. But she blessed him anyway.

‘May His light guide you. Good morning.’

‘Uh, good morning, reverend mother,’ he said. ‘Your dedicant said you were out walking.’

‘It’s good to see people outside the church.’ It was. They could be such different creatures when they were outside those dark walls. They certainly are today. The crowd moved through the market square, looking, haggling, chatting, not that different on the surface than on any other day. But there was an edge to every interaction, an undercurrent. People bargained with the same gruff bluster and dry humour as usual, but when backs were turned, eyes went wary and suspicious. Knots of people gathered, arguing in quiet voices before breaking apart again.

And the people that stopped before her, asking for blessings, all too often had fear in their eyes.

Lira leaned on her cane, tapping her fingers over the familiar bumps of the saints carved in the dark wood. ‘Can you feel it, Venn?’

The boy was young, but he wasn’t stupid. ‘They’re afraid,’ he said quietly. The mass of people parted around them, like a flood around two stones. A priest and a probator, talking together. Lira saw the people’s eyes flicker over them as they passed, seeing them and jerking away, as if afraid of being noticed.

‘Perhaps we should go back to the church.’ It annoyed Lira that Natta might have been right in wanting to downplay these deaths, in trying to keep her away. A sin of pride on my part, she thought, digging her knuckles into her hip as she turned and started back, paying a little pain in penance.

‘Does the walking make your hip hurt?’ Venn asked, following. ‘My mother has a salve for arthritis.’

‘It’s not arthritis,’ Lira said. ‘I took a bullet on one of my missions, twenty years ago. Shattered that side of my hip, and I almost bled out.’ She shrugged. ‘My survival went some way to convincing the natives of the Emperor’s divinity.’

‘That’s…’ Venn seemed at a loss for what to say. ‘Good. I suppose.’ He looked sideways at her, tapping along beside him, smiling at those they passed. ‘You’re a complicated person, reverend mother.’

‘We all are,’ Lira said. ‘There are places in us all, unseen by most. Some are full of light. But most are not.’ They were leaving the market, moving away from the crowds massed before the booths that sold cold nutri-slush, out into the slightly emptier streets. She pushed back a handful of grey-black curls and considered what to say next.

‘Would you consider Probator Natta complicated?’

‘Exceedingly.’ Venn laughed. ‘Why?’

‘He’s trying very hard to keep me away from this investigation.’

‘Yes,’ Venn said, and waved a hand back towards the market. ‘You saw why. You can’t think he’s involved somehow?’

‘I’m trying not to make assumptions right now,’ Lira said. ‘If Natta wanted to do these killings, he could.’

‘No.’ Venn shook his head. ‘I know Natta. Is he a good man? No, not really. I’ve seen him look the other way sometimes, if the slate was right, or if it would be too much trouble for him. But he’s not some secret fanatic.’

‘His parents,’ she said, ‘were burned as Weavers.’

Venn’s eyes widened. ‘I didn’t know.’

‘His family were all Enforcers. The Bastion covered it up. But the church has its own records.’ Father Cravin didn’t take everything with him, thankfully.

‘I didn’t know,’ Venn said again. ‘I wasn’t born in Black Falls, but everyone in Saltstone’s heard the stories. It was bad here, wasn’t it?’

‘The Weavers went from a few superstitious labourers to a murderous cult in a very short time,’ Lira said. ‘There was talk that the entire ward would be purged, to stop their poison from spreading. In their fear, neighbour turned on neighbour, friend on friend, family on family. A lot of innocent people died the night of the fires. But it didn’t matter. The mob didn’t care – they just wanted to cauterise away the Weavers’ sin. People still remember. People still fear. I wouldn’t tell Natta that you do know, now.’

Venn nodded. He shifted his shoulders, as if trying to decide where to drop the weight of this new knowledge. ‘Knowing that explains some things about Natta to me. But…’ He shook his head. ‘I don’t think he’s a killer. Well, not that kind of killer.’

Lira cracked her cane hard into the rockcrete. ‘You’re probably right,’ she said, and he probably was, but the ugly current running through the market, through her church, through the whole ward, made her want to end this, now. She walked on, thinking, as a group of young gangers ran past them, making rude gestures at Venn. Lira absently waved a blessing after them. ‘Even if it isn’t him, it feels like there’s more to why Natta has been pushing me away.’

Venn shifted uncomfortably. ‘There is something else. The preacher who headed this church before you, Father Cravin. There were problems with him.’

‘I was told he abandoned his position,’ Lira said.

Venn nodded. ‘We were investigating a series of attacks. People severely beaten. Natta finally traced it back to Father Cravin. Apparently the reverend father had decided that the penances that he’d meted out during confession were insufficient and had been taking matters into his own hands. When Natta figured that out, he handed it off to the Ecclesiarchy.’

‘I bet he did,’ Lira said. What a damned mess. ‘What happened?’

‘The Ecclesiarchy told us they’d take care of it,’ Venn said. ‘But before they could, Father Cravin vanished. And that was that, but Natta…’

‘Lost what faith he had?’ Lira had seen that happen to many after a brush with the brutal politics of the Ecclesiarchy. Then she gave Venn a sharp glance. ‘A preacher dealing out harsh penance that vanished?’

‘Natta thought of that,’ Venn said. ‘But Cravin was well known here. Somebody should have seen him. And he lived here his whole life, never served with the military.’

‘It would be hard for him to hide,’ Lira admitted. ‘Unless he had help. If someone was hiding him…’ She suddenly brightened, smiling at Venn. ‘You’re a spy, aren’t you?’

Alarm flashed through Venn’s eyes, then vanished, smothered under feigned confusion. ‘What’re you talking about, reverend mother?’

She tapped him with her cane. ‘It’s all right. Smart, even, and I fully approve. Natta thinks I could be wrapped up in all this – hiding Father Cravin away, then covering up his terrible crimes. He let me borrow you so you could spy on me. Thinking I was trying to use you to spy on him.’ She laughed. ‘Such a tangle. The problem with all these delicate intricacies of power is that they end up tying themselves into knots.’ She sighed and shook her head. ‘Well, you can reassure Natta that I have no idea what happened to Father Cravin. It would be nice if we knew someone who did.’

Lira started walking again, leaving Venn to catch up. The boy was clever, but he’d have to work on being a better liar if he was to be a good probator.

They were almost back to the church, a little outside the square, when something in the street ahead caught her attention. The gangers that had passed them earlier were clustered around a tall middle-aged man with a misshapen face and a patch over one eye.

‘Heretic, heretic, what for the heretic?’ one ganger sang, laughing, as the group circled the man.

‘Fire and flame, fire and flame!’ they shouted. The young man leading the chant had an igniter, and was lighting scraps of refuse on fire and tossing them at the disfigured man. Lira quickened her pace, but kept her cane and feet quiet as she slipped up behind the ganger.

‘Fire and flame!’ he called as he lit another piece of garbage. But before he could throw it, Lira poked the back of his knee with the tip of her cane. The ganger yelped in pain and hit the ground, dropping the burning piece of refuse beside him. He rolled to look at her, eyes flashing with anger, but she used her cane to slap the lighter out of his hand, then pressed the tip into the hollow at the base of his throat.

‘What for the heretic?’ she said. Her foot ground out the little flame. ‘Flame. But for the rude and impudent?’ Lira raised her cane. ‘A thrashing.’

The ganger snarled at her, clearly ready to attack, but then he noticed her vestments, the symbol of the Imperial faith around her neck. And he noticed Venn standing beside her, his hand on his autopistol. The young ganger crawled back, rolled up and took off at a run with the others, pausing just long enough to hurl curses back at them. Lira was stepping forward to the unfortunate man.

‘Are you all right, Bartia?’

He nodded, his one eye streaming tears. ‘Bless you, reverend mother.’ His hands were twisting together. ‘I’m sorry you had to trouble yourself with them. You should have just passed by. Doesn’t matter what they do to me.’

‘It does, Bartia,’ she said. ‘It matters to Him.’ Bartia stammered at that, then backed away, bowing and scraping, clearly overwhelmed. She watched him go and sighed.

‘What was that about?’ Venn asked, taking his hand off his gun.

‘Bartia Sowe’s family were Weavers,’ she said. ‘He was just a child, so the mob spared him. Barely. Those were cruel days.’ And Black Falls still hasn’t forgotten the sins of his family. Neither has he. Shaking her head, Lira walked to the end of the block and out into the square that stretched open before the church, free of crowds and steel frames and fire.

On the other side of the square was the church, its great window gleaming. Below it, Gallin was sweeping off the steps, his bald, pockmarked head gleaming in the ruddy light of the red sun. Lira stopped, staring at him and thinking, then tapped her way across the square to him.

‘Gallin, you knew Father Cravin,’ she said, waving away his bow.

‘Very well, reverend mother,’ he answered. ‘He was the one I first confessed myself to, who told me to swear myself as a dedicant to this church and to labour at my own purification with the same vigour and tools that I use to clean this holy place.’

So using that horrible cleaning solvent wasn’t his idea. The reverend father was… creative in his penance. ‘Do you know what happened to him?’ Lira asked.

‘I know why he fled the church,’ he said. ‘The things he was doing…’ The dedicant looked at Lira. ‘Father Cravin believed that pain and fear were the armour of our souls.’

‘Can you think of anything that could help us find out what happened to him?’ Venn asked.

‘Well,’ he said, clearly thinking it through, ‘when Father Cravin left, he took all of his records, and many of the church’s, as you know. But he left a few scraps, including a few pages from his journal. Would you like to see them?’

Lira gripped her cane tight. ‘Yes, Gallin. Yes, I very much would.’

Lira stared out of the groundcar’s windows as they rumbled across a bridge spanning the filthy waters of the river. The rain was falling hard, but there were crowds of people standing together at each bridge tower. They had wrapped thread around crude effigies and were hauling them up to hang from the towers’ steel struts. There were other effigies already swinging in the wind, smoking and smouldering in the rain.

Venn saw them too. ‘It’s getting worse.’

‘People are afraid,’ Lira said. The memory of her fear, of her hate, as she’d stared at bundles like this, threads wrapped not around crude dolls but screaming men and women, flickered through her head, and she pressed her hand to her hip. ‘People do terrible things when they’re afraid.’

‘But you keep saying the Weavers are gone,’ Venn said.

‘They are.’ Lira watched the charred threads fall from the last bundle as they passed beneath it. ‘So who’ll be brought to the church square if the crowds begin to call for blood instead of thread?’

They were silent after that, until Venn stopped the car in front of the half-fallen remains of the warehouse that Cravin had described in the torn pages of his journal.

‘Wonderful place,’ Venn said, throwing a broken brick at the child-sized rat crouched in front of them. The animal dodged and vanished into a pile of mouldering cloth. They’d had to warn off a dozen rats already, and almost as many human scavengers, all upset to see their territory invaded.

‘Secret place.’ The warehouse had been donated to the church ages ago, then gutted by the Weaver riots. Cravin had taken further steps to hide its existence. ‘Back here.’ She moved to the black brick back wall. Lira frowned at the torn pages Gallin had given her, deciphering Cravin’s cramped handwriting in the dim light. She found what she was looking for, went to the wall and poked loose one of the bricks with her cane. There was a crude catch hidden behind it, and when she pulled it a hidden door swung out of the wall with a rattling groan.

Venn waved her back and pulled an autopistol from beneath his jacket, smaller and sleeker than the monster that Natta carried, but still deadly. He went to the door, pulled out a hand torch with his other hand and ducked through. Holding tight to her cane, Lira followed.

The room beyond was narrow and long and stank of ashes and old death. Venn’s light flashed around the space, picking out the symbols painted over and over on the walls, the mouldering stacks of food, finally settling on the charred corpse slumped at the far end of the room.

‘Damn,’ Venn muttered. ‘I knew this was too easy.’

Lira pulled her own torch out and flicked it on, moving over to examine the body. Fire and time had reduced it to blackened bones, but sifting through the char, she found a gleam of metal. A medallion, deformed by the heat, but the symbol of the Imperial cult was still clear on it. Identical to the one she wore. She set it back in the ash and took a deep breath. Then regretted it, coughing, as she breathed in the same chemical stink she’d smelled at the other burnings.

‘Is it Cravin?’ Venn asked, carefully moving around the room, searching.

‘Probably,’ she said. ‘So he’s not our killer, but probably one of their victims.’ She looked carefully at the vertebrae of the corpse’s neck. There was no sign of a cut. Strangled? Impossible to know.

Lira examined the symbols marked on the wall. They were done in paint, not blood, and similar to the ones she’d seen before, but not the same. ‘I don’t think our killer made these. The hand seems different, and the symbology…’ She frowned at them. These were very orthodox, the same as the ones she had been taught. The ones at the killings had been modified, as if the killer were adjusting them to fit some other pattern. And many of the symbols here weren’t used at the killings. ‘Was this a rival? Or a partner?’

‘Some partner.’ Venn was sorting through a stack of books piled by a wall. ‘I think I found your church records. Unfortunately, the mould’s got to them.’ He picked out one book and flipped through it. ‘It’s mostly raving about having to run. There’s a list at the end, of people he wants to see “judged”. Natta’s on there, and most of the local Ecclesiarchy, and someone he calls the deserter. Not me though.’ He frowned and shut the book. ‘Disappointing.’

‘Mmm,’ Lira said, still staring at the symbols. Purity, redemption, fire. Variants of those had been at each killing. Judgement, punishment, torment – those had not. What does this mean?

She spun, cane rising, when Venn dropped the damp book. His hand was raised as he stared at nothing, getting another message over his implant.

‘There’s a warning over the dataveil,’ he said. ‘We need to get back to the church.’

The groundcar, clarions blaring, whipped around the knot of people walking down the street, torches in their hands.

‘This isn’t a riot,’ Lira said. ‘This is a mob. Someone’s going to burn.’

‘Who? Why?’ Venn asked, trying to keep his voice calm.

‘That’s what we have to find out. Before it’s too late.’ Before the torches fall. Venn weaved the groundcar through the thickening crowd until he rounded a corner and slammed on the brakes. The street in front of them was packed, everyone trying to push into the church square. Alternating curses and prayers, Lira got out and started pushing through the crowd.

‘Wait!’ Venn shouted. He caught her shoulder and turned her, pointing across the street. There was another groundcar there, a Rampart, parked half across the pavement. Leaning against its hood and watching the crowd flow by was Natta.

Lira immediately changed her direction, pushing through the crowd to get to the probator.

‘What in His name is going on?’ she shouted over the roar. As she approached, Lira could smell the amasec on him, the alcohol reek so strong it almost made her eyes water.

‘Mystery solved, reverend mother.’ Natta grinned at her, the first smile she’d ever seen from him, and it was a bitter, nasty thing. ‘Our killer finally slipped up. Broke into a hab this morning and started cutting throats, but the last victim fought him off. Little battle-saint bastard, that guy.’ Natta pulled a flask from his coat and took a long pull from it. ‘Our killer ran, but he dropped his work tag and a bottle of promethium during the fight. Along with a brush for painting those symbols, its handle all looped around with thread.’

‘He was a Weaver?’ Venn asked.

‘His whole family was. The mob did them forty years ago, but they missed him.’ Natta looked out over the crowd, his eyes shining, dangerous. ‘They got so many others, but they missed that one-eyed bastard. They didn’t miss tonight though.’

One eye. Lira grabbed Natta by his coat, glaring up at him. ‘Bartia Sowe. Is that who you think did this?’

‘It was his tag on the floor,’ Natta said. ‘Good enough for me. Good enough for them.’ He waved his flask at the mob streaming by.

‘You have to stop this!’ Lira snapped. ‘Bartia’s no killer! These people are going to burn an innocent man!’

‘Are they?’ Natta said, his angry eyes focused on her. ‘It happened forty years ago. No one cared then. Why should they now?’

Natta pulled her hand from his coat, shoved himself back to slump against the windscreen. ‘Stop playing probator, reverend mother. Go to your church and do your real duty.’ He raised his flask and shouted, ‘For the heretic?’

The crowd streaming past shouted ‘Flame!’ in one great voice, and he tipped his flask at Lira, a mocking toast, and drank.

Lira whirled away from him, shoving through the crowd.

‘What are you going to do?’ Venn said. He moved next to her, holding his gun beneath his jacket. The people around them were a swirling mix of anger, fear and excitement.

‘Yell and beat heads,’ Lira said. ‘They can’t kill Bartia.’ The crowd was getting tight, and Lira was having a harder time forcing her way through. She used her cane to leverage between people, but her bad hip and the density of bodies were thwarting her. ‘Move,’ she shouted, but her voice was barely heard over the rumbling roar of the mob. Beside her, Venn tried to help, pulling and pushing at people until he grabbed on to the shoulder of a man equal his height but probably twice his weight.

‘Hey!’ the man yelled, spinning around. His ugly face was scarred from knife fighting. ‘You lookin’ to burn next, pretty boy?’

I don’t have time for this, Lira thought, sliding over to put herself in front of Venn. The big man saw her but seemed happy to punch through her to hit Venn. He swung, a strike hard and fast and obvious, and Lira turned her body, moving her head out of the way as she spun her cane up. The carved wood, hard as stone, made a crack as it slammed into the man’s wrist. Lira spun the cane back to smash down into the attacker’s kneecap.

The scarred man fell, thrashing, taking some of the crowd with him. Lira moved forward in the sudden space, Venn right behind. She couldn’t get far, but she managed to reach the square.

On the steps leading up to the great black shadow of the church they had thrown up a frame of iron. From those rusted beams a thousand threads hung and wrapped around Bartia’s arms and legs and torso. The little skin she could see through the threads was mottled with bruises, and the man’s arms were bent at broken angles. The mob had wound the threads so tight around his head they had cut into his skin, and even at this distance Lira could see the blood running down his face like dark tears. Piled at his feet was more thread, loose bundles taken from one of the factoria, waiting to burn. Lira tried to shove herself forward, shouting, but the crowd was roaring like a storm.

Then a torch arced up out of the crowd and bounced on the church steps. Then another, then a great bright flood of flame falling onto the stairs. Torches bounced and rolled and spread fire across stone polished by a thousand generations of worshipers, and those flames caught in the threads. Threads became a thousand lines of fire, and their light lit the front of the church, sparking off black stone and the stained-glass image of the Emperor, and for one moment Lira could see Bartia’s shadow, his dark image held between the outstretched arms of the God-Emperor.

And then the threads wrapped around the man caught and he burned, bright as a star.

‘No!’ Lira screamed, and she was striking with her cane, trying to smash her way through the crowd, fighting and cursing and praying, but Bartia’s screams were already fading as Venn wrapped his arms around her, catching her and pulling her away.

Later, so late the night had almost wrapped into morning, Lira sat in her office trying to ignore the stench of smoke and burnt flesh that still clung to her as she stared at the data-slate on her desk.

Images flashed across it, of men and women dead and burned, each one taken by the picter that hung outside her confessional. All of them had come to this church, confessed themselves to her, and then someone had strangled them, cut them and burned them in a ritual that profaned the Imperial cult and He of Terra. She flipped through them one more time, then picked up the slate and, with a scream of frustration, threw it across the room.

The sound of it bouncing off the bookshelves was loud in the silence, and her door flew open. Gallin must have been lurking right outside, and his eyes flashed from her to the slate and back.

‘Was my report…’ he started, uncertain.

‘Your report was excellent, dedicant,’ Lira said, making her voice calm even though she wanted to scream. This isn’t his fault. ‘Thank you.’

‘I’m pleased to serve, reverend mother.’ He hesitated in the doorway. ‘Do you need anything? Tea?’

Lira looked at his face beneath its hood, pale and scarred, and didn’t know whether to laugh or scream or sob. She just sighed instead. ‘Tea would be lovely. Thank you.’

He bobbed his head and left the room, and Lira stared at the slate. My people. His people, yes. But mine too, all of them, including Bartia.

Her hand moved across the desk and she flipped the switches on the side of the heavy black box of the church’s vox-transmitter, then punched in a code. On the vox-transmitter’s tiny screen, symbols scrolled, counting the alerts that were sounding in the distant Bastion. Six times. Seven. I’ll wait until ten. But she let it go, and on the fourteenth alert the symbols stopped moving and Natta’s voice, slurred with drink, echoed through her office.

‘I’ll talk to you once, reverend mother. Then we’re done. Understand?’

‘I understand that an innocent man burned tonight.’ Lira’s voice snapped hard and sharp. ‘I also understand that a murderer walked free. Someone that killed members of this church. You know that, don’t you, Probator Natta? That by letting this happen, you didn’t just kill Bartia, you let the real killer live.’

‘You wanna know what I know?’ Natta said, his voice dark with drink and cynicism. ‘Innocents die and killers live, and that’s how this whole miserable thing works.’ There was a sloshing sound, amasec being dumped into a glass. ‘I can’t stop that. You can’t stop it. The God-Emperor Himself can’t stop it. That’s how it is.’

‘Blasphemy isn’t going to help,’ she warned him.

‘What are you gonna do?’ he slurred. ‘Burn me like they burned Bartia?’

‘Or your parents?’

‘What do you know about my parents?’ he snarled.

‘I know that Bartia’s death won’t help them. Or you.’

‘No, reverend mother. I can guarantee you that that miserable bastard’s death will help me just fine.’ He was still angry, but his anger sounded as if it had gone cold, hard. ‘I’ll bet you that our killer watched the flames tonight, and if that doesn’t scare them into shutting down for a while, it’ll make them pack themselves up and move. But more important than that, it’ll settle the people of the ward down. They’ve had their blood and burning. Now they can go back to their habs and their work and start forgetting about this Weaver shit again. We all can.’

Lira opened her mouth to protest, but the vox-transmitter clicked, the probator cutting the connection, and Lira sat staring at the black box for a long time. Until she got up, leaning on her cane, and went to the slate she’d thrown. The screen was cracked, but it still responded to her touch, moving from one pict to another. These people were the children of the Emperor. These people were hers. The sin of pride, but she didn’t care. They were hers, and…

She stopped, staring at the screen. Beside the crack, in the corner of the pict of the woman she’d given last rites to, was a tiny line of text. A time and date stamp. The date was the day the sanctioners had asked her to come, the day all this had begun for Lira. She was killed a few hours after confessing to me.

Lira went back to her desk and got the data-slate Venn had given her. She set the slates next to each other, spinning through picts and reports. Each one fit the pattern. The victims had all come to her to confess… and soon after they had been strangled, cut and burned.

‘By His Throne and by His blood,’ she whispered. Then she reached for her vox and hammered in Venn’s code. The symbols shifted, but the vox stayed silent. Asleep, she thought. Of course. And what could he do with this information? What could she do? The killer had been here, in her church, stalking her people, but what…

There was a tap, then Gallin swung open the door. He blinked at her, holding the tea tray. ‘Are you all right, reverend mother?’

‘I’m sorry, dedicant, I’m just very tired.’

‘It’s been a terrible time,’ he said, bringing over the tray and setting out her tea. ‘But then it’s a terrible world, isn’t it?’

‘It is,’ she said, raising a hand to her face. The smell of the tea couldn’t mask the smell of the cleaner that Gallin used, and the way that harsh, chemical smell mixed with the faint scent of the burning was…

Lira froze, holding her cup of hot tea, breathing in that too-familiar stench.

‘Reverend mother?’ Gallin said softly. ‘Can I do anything else for you?’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Those carb-slabs you served with tea. Did Venn eat them all?’

‘I’m afraid he did.’

‘Ah.’ She looked up and smiled at Gallin. ‘Could I possibly trouble you to run out and get some more?’

Gallin glanced out of one window at the predawn darkness. ‘Of course, mother. No trouble.’

He turned and left, and the smell slowly faded. Lira waited until it was completely gone, then took her cane and got up, moving quickly.

She wouldn’t have much time.

Gallin’s chamber was in the bowels of the church, an alcove off the vast cellar where wheezing machines kept the building above warm or cool. His little corner of that dark, pipe-cluttered space was clean and almost barren. There was a narrow cot, some black robes hanging on pegs, a small trunk and a box full of the glass jars that contained the cleaner he used.

Lira picked one jar up and cracked it open, wincing at the smell. She resealed it and looked at the symbols inscribed into the glass, the logo of the merchant-combine that manufactured it, glyphs that advertised its use for cleaning, for purification. In their simple shapes she saw an echo of what had been cut in that woman’s skin. He’d combined these warnings with the cult’s symbols to make his own.

‘God-Emperor forgive,’ she breathed. She slipped the jar inside her robe and went to the trunk. There were only some underclothes inside, and a few religious texts. She flipped through them, then put them back, but as she did, something slipped out of one of them. A thin ribbon of silk, black with symbols stitched on it in gold. Symbols similar to the ones she’d seen carved into the skin of the dead. It was a luck ribbon, a prayer for blessings – like the kind she’d seen used by soldiers of the Imperial Guard, pieces of ritual folklore meant to ward the bearer from harm.

The Guard. She ran the ribbon through her fingers, feeling the worn roughness of its edges. In the journal Venn had found, Cravin had mentioned a deserter. What sin had Gallin confessed to, that Father Cravin made him a dedicant and told him to scrub himself with that caustic cleaner? Lira thought she knew, now.

She pocketed the ribbon and took one last look around, wondering if there was anything else. There was nothing in the cot, nothing behind the robes, but the wall they hung from was brick, and she ran her hands over it, searching, until she found one that felt loose. Lira pulled it out and found a catch, like on Cravin’s secret door. She pulled it, and a hidden door swung open. Holding her cane, Lira stepped cautiously into the space beyond.

And stopped when she heard the whine of a laspistol humming to life beside her head.

‘Reverend Mother Tarn.’ Gallin seized her cane and stepped back, the laspistol never wavering. He moved very quickly and very well. I always did complain about him creeping around, Lira thought. He tossed her cane down and flipped on the lumens. In the light, Lira could see a small room with religious texts stacked on the floor and symbols painted across the walls, the same as she had seen at the murder scenes. She could also see Venn, unconscious, trussed up tight in a corner. Blood marked the gag in his mouth.

‘Dedicant Gallin,’ she said, measuring the distance to him, to her cane. He stood in a loose, ready stance, and she was absolutely sure he could burn a hole through her chest before she got two steps. ‘You laid your hands on me.’

‘I know, reverend mother.’ The sorrow in his voice sounded sincere, but his eyes, for once, were not downcast. They were on her, watching closely as he waved her to a stool that sat near the door. It looked like the one from her confessional. ‘I’m sorry we have to start this way, but I don’t want this to get out of hand.’

‘Out of hand.’ Lira perched herself on the stool, staring at him. ‘Do you have something you wish to confess, dedicant?’

He looked at her and seemed… satisfied. But the laspistol never wavered.

‘Yes, reverend mother. You know what I did. Those that I killed. To these things I do confess, but I want you to know why.’ Gallin waved at his books with his free hand. ‘I want you to know that we’ve saved people, purified them and given those clean souls to Him. And we can do the same for so many more.’

Lira sighed. ‘Speak plainly, Gallin. Venn’s waking up, and it looks like he’s suffering.’

‘Not for long,’ he said, and the certainty of his calm smile was unsettling. ‘But you want me to be clear, so let me lay it all out simply. I was born and raised in Saltstone, not far from Black Falls. When I was a child, I was brought here to see the Weavers burned. It was a clarifying experience.’

The fires of the past take generations to cool, Lira thought. If they don’t flare up again.

‘Like you, I saw evil being confronted, burned, and I wanted to do that too,’ Gallin said. ‘But instead of joining the cult I joined the Guard. I was in for years. So many campaigns. Mostly putting down civil wars, fighting rebels and bandits on a dozen different worlds, but I saw horrors out there too. Xenos. Did you ever see an ork when you were out there, mother?’

‘Only in picts.’

‘Picts aren’t the same,’ he said. ‘They’re so much worse than you can imagine. I killed one with a knife once. I’m good with a knife. I got a medal for that, but I couldn’t get the stink of its blood off me for weeks.’ Gallin shook his head. ‘That’s the thing. I fought and I killed, and I killed and I fought, and you know what happened? They threw me in to fight again. There were always more orks, more rebellions, more, more, more. No matter how many I killed, no matter how many of my friends died. It was never going to end until I made it end, and so one day I saw a chance and took it. I’m not proud of it, but I deserted. Ran and ran, until I made it all the way home. But when I got here, after all that… I couldn’t live with myself, the things I’d done. So I came here, found Father Cravin and confessed.’

‘And he didn’t kill you,’ Lira said.

‘He almost did,’ he said. ‘He beat me, and I let him, but in the end he decided to redeem me. He gave me my penance to show me that purity requires pain. Father Cravin was a great believer in purity through pain.

‘He might’ve been a commissar,’ he said. ‘But Father Cravin wasn’t strong enough for the schola progenium. It took me a while to see that. Until after I’d helped to hide him in that place. That’s when I understood him. He was weak. He’d never been off-world, like us. He wouldn’t have survived out there. Cravin thought he was strong, but that was only because he liked to hurt the weak. Those that he was supposed to protect. Like we did.’

‘So you killed him.’

‘Yes. I killed him, and burned him, and in the flames I saw… Him.’ Gallin’s eyes glowed with the fire of fervour. ‘I saw Him, and He told me what to do. What He needed. He told me what to do, and He sent you. You’ve seen the evil that fills the space between the stars, and it made you strong. He sent you because you’re strong enough to help me do what must be done.

‘I read those books, watched your rituals, prayed, and I knew. If I took those that you’d purified, the ones that you’d made clean with your confession, I could send their souls to Him before they were sullied again. They’d feed the God-Emperor, sustain Him in His battle against all that is evil. That was my work.’ He looked at her, and his hands moved, fast. He tucked away the laspistol but pulled out a blade, long and keen as terror. ‘Our work.’

‘Our work,’ Lira said. He’d killed an ork with a knife like that, but the rage in her made her want to test his mettle. Not yet. Be sure.

‘It’s hard to understand, I know,’ he said. Gallin stepped back to Venn. ‘That’s why I took him. He works for Natta, but you like him. He can’t be so bad. So let me show you. Give him confession, and I’ll do my ritual. In the light of his burning, you’ll see the truth – I promise you that. You’ll see Him in the flames.’

Lira controlled her rage and shifted on the stool, one hand moving slowly, carefully. ‘He has to speak his sins.’

Gallin looked at her, cautious but hoping. His knife flashed, fast, and the gag fell away from Venn’s face. Only a tiny cut marred his cheek, a line of red against the brown skin, the pain just enough to awaken him from his stupor. Gallin might be insane, but he was good.

‘Reverend mother–’ Venn croaked, but she raised a hand, silencing him. Beneath her robe, her other hand moved a little more, taking hold of the jar of cleaner she’d pocketed.

‘Don’t be afraid,’ she said. ‘Just tell me your sins.’

‘Sins? What?’ Venn stammered, his eyes wide with fear and confusion.

‘Your sins, boy!’ Gallin glanced down at him, exasperated. ‘Tell her–’

Now. It was barely a distraction, but it was as much as she’d get. Lira flung the jar of cleaning solvent at Gallin. His knife cut through the air and smashed the jar before it could hit him. Cleaner splashed across Gallin’s robe and skin, and there was a hiss as the caustic fluid, undiluted, burned into his face. Unslowed by the pain, he advanced, but he was already too late. In the instant he’d taken to parry, Lira had thrown herself off the stool. She hit the floor and rolled, hip howling, but she had no time for agony. Her hand closed on the cane Gallin had tossed aside, scooped it up, and she rose, facing him.

The dedicant looked at her, his eyes sad behind the steel of his blade. ‘Reverend mother. Don’t disappoint me. Don’t disappoint Him. You can’t stop His will.’

‘Dedicant.’ Lira’s fingers clenched on the carved saints at the top of her cane. With a click, the carved wooden sheath slipped away, leaving a thin, gleaming length of adamantium. She twisted the cane’s handle, and with a crackle, a field of power ran down that length of gleaming metal. When it reached the tip, held just above the floor, it sizzled, and a chunk of rockcrete popped and shattered into dust.

Lira spun the power sabre up in her hand, shifting her body into the stance she’d built over the years which let her fight despite her hip. ‘I will stop you, and you will suffer. By His name, I say this.’

‘Reverend mother,’ Gallin said again, his eyes on her weapon, and her name was as much a plea as it was a warning.

‘Murderer. Heretic. Deserter.’ She snapped a strike at him, and he almost made the mistake of blocking it, twisting his knife out of the path of her crackling sword just before the field wrapped around its slim blade could break it. He dodged back instead, hampered by the small space. ‘Fool. Killer of the faithful. You know nothing of His plan.’

‘He spoke to me! He told me to give them release!’ The threat of her sword’s power field was keeping him back, but Gallin moved around her, his knife twisting through the air as he dodged her strikes.

‘Your own fear is the only thing that spoke to you, and all you ever gave was death, and pain, and horror.’ Lira’s hip was aching, and she was breathing hard. It’d been too long since she’d fought like this, and the years were a weight on her, but her faith helped. It helped a lot. ‘He wants their life. Their work, their prayer, their deeds, not their blood painted on a damn wall!’

‘No!’ There was anger wrapped in his denial, and when he slipped her next strike he moved in and swung at her neck, too quick for her to block. But he pulled the blow at the last minute, the point of the blade just grazing her skin instead of slitting her throat to the bone. ‘I do His work! I do good!’

She slid back, out of his range. Too close. This had to end. ‘You do not. You’ve come to me for confession, dedicant, and told me your sins. Now listen to my judgement. You’ve committed the sins of blasphemy, of heresy, of murder and of pride. You’ve imagined yourself an instrument of His will, when everything you’ve done was against Him.’

‘No!’ he said again, pain twisting across his face, and for just a second his knife dipped as he threw the protest at her. In that moment, Lira cast a silent prayer and drove her sword forward. He twisted away from it, but he was just a hair slow and the edge of the field touched his black robes.

The chemical-soaked cloth sizzled and popped, then exploded into flame. The fire raced up the blade of Lira’s power sabre, and it blazed before her like a holy weapon as Gallin’s robes caught and burned. The dedicant dropped his blade and screamed, hands flailing to smash the flames, but they roared over him. He howled and staggered, bumping from wall to wall before finally falling to his knees before her. His hood had fallen back, and she could see his eyes sizzling in their sockets as he turned his head, trying to find her.

‘Reverend mother!’ he croaked, and she raised the sword in her hand.

‘You have sinned against Him, Gallin,’ she said, and suddenly her anger was gone, staring at this pitiful, stupid thing dying in front of her. Why must our greatest sins be wrapped in what we think is virtue? ‘Now accept your penance.’ Her arm fell, and she barely felt it as the blade went through his neck.

‘Should I tell Natta?’ Venn asked. He sat in her office, rubbing salve into the raw wounds the ropes had made on his wrists and ankles. Lira sat at her desk, her cane leaning on her.

‘Do or don’t. It’s done.’ She picked up the cup of tea sitting cold on the corner of her desk and took a drink. It did nothing to wash away the bitter taste in her mouth. A heretic and a murderer, living under my nose in the house of the Emperor. And she hadn’t suspected a thing. Was she losing her wits in her old age?

Venn set down the ointment. ‘Thank you for saving me, reverend mother.’ Ragged as he was, eyes red with smoke and face haggard with pain, he was still handsome.

‘Only the Emperor can truly save anyone.’ She looked at her cane and remembered all the places she’d gone, the people she’d confronted. How many had she tried to save, how many had she killed, all in His name? Only He knew what the balance was on that ledger, and someday… someday she’d make her confession to Him, and hope He showed her mercy.

Venn stood. ‘I should go. Are you…?’

Lira made herself smile. ‘I’m fine, probator tertius. Go, in His light.’

He nodded and left, and she pulled herself up painfully to walk to the window. She saw him below, walking in the coloured light cast by the stained glass. How many times must I watch the guilty and the innocent alike burn? Without thinking, she reached down and dug her hand into her hip, making it flare with pain.

A sin of pride, to worry so about herself. She had given herself that night to His service, and serve Him she would, no matter what He asked of her.

Leaning hard on her cane, she turned and headed down to the empty sanctuary to kneel, stinking of smoke and death, and offer up her confession until the sun rose again and lit His patient glass eyes with fire.

THE SIEGE OF ISMYR

VICTORIA HAYWARD

In their memory. For His glory. Only in death does duty end.

– Bastion-V, memorial to the fallen

Sanctioner Captain Ania Kovak hated waiting. She wasn’t good at it, she seldom did it, and yet here she was being made to. And by provincial patrolmen of all people.

She ground her teeth and clenched her freezing fingers into fists inside her armoured gloves. The drab interior of the blockhouse entry hall where she and her lieutenant stood was barely warmer than the frozen wasteland of Ismyr outside. Ice-wind whistled under the door behind them. And in front of her, behind the steel custody desk, were the people making them wait. The blockhouse’s captain, Hanne Laukkanen. An older woman with cropped steel-grey hair, she leaned back against the wall, smoking a lho-stick, while one of her sanctioners slouched beside her and idly tapped at a data-slate.

Kovak could feel their disdain. They thought she was just a brash captain from a violent district who had arrived with a squad of armoured thugs to collect a single prisoner. That much was indeed correct, but they didn’t know who the prisoner was. How many deaths Lubek Daforn had caused, and how dangerous the gang pursuing her was. Once you wronged the Spyker Angels, they were relentless. Kovak and her squad knew that all too well. She swallowed and forcibly pushed the memories down. They were always there, raw and bloody. Always threatening to erupt, like her district. You could only push people so far, and the whole of Vorask was about ready to blow.

She reprimanded herself for overthinking. Sanctioners weren’t paid to think. This was a straightforward job, she told herself. She just had to get Daforn back to the Bastion. Then that woman would pay for her crimes, and Kovak would regain some much needed trust with the castellan.

She glanced up to see Captain Laukkanen watching her curiously.

‘This prisoner transport is urgent,’ Kovak said gruffly, unsettled by the older woman’s gaze. It was as if she could see right through her. ‘Can you hurry your patrolman?’

‘He won’t be long. This blockhouse is a lot smaller than the Bastion you’re used to,’ Laukkanen replied.

And a lot more decrepit, Kovak thought, eyeing the barely legible devotional tracts painted around the walls. A huge harpoon leaned in one corner, and the whole place stank of whatever fat they were rendering out by the rattling factoria on the frigid shore.

‘You’re not going to tell us what this is about?’ the pallid Enforcer at the desk asked.

‘No,’ Kovak said coldly.

He sat back, scowling.

‘Be patient,’ Captain Laukkanen said, idly rolling another lho-stick. ‘I’m sure we’ll hear about it on the vid-casts. It must be an important mission to bring these fine sanctioners in full assault gear all the way out to our little corner of Varangantua.’

She was smiling wryly, but Kovak detected an undercurrent of rebuke. It was poor form for her not to have briefed the captain here, but she couldn’t risk it. The information Daforn had was too important, and the reach of the Spykers was too great.

Something canid-shaped and metallic juddered out from behind the steel desk and stretched ponderously beside Laukkanen.

Kovak’s lieutenant, Antonov, barked out a laugh and gestured at the rust-bitten cyborg. ‘What’s that supposed to be?’

‘You mean Servo? It’s a cyber-mastiff,’ retorted the pallid Enforcer at the desk, spots of red flushing on his cheeks. ‘Never seen one?’

‘I’ve never seen anything looking like that that wasn’t scrap,’ Antonov replied.

‘It’s all right,’ Laukkanen said to her officer with a wry smile. ‘It’s true that out here in Ismyr our people are good but our equipment is lousy. Back in Vorask, I hear they have the opposite problem. The very best equipment, but…’ She let her sentence trail off.

‘Take that back,’ Antonov growled.

Captain Laukkanen raised an eyebrow. The hackles of the ancient cyber-mastiff rose, and its dim eyes flickered red as it sensed the hostility in the little entry hall.

Kovak felt Antonov stirring testily at her side, spoiling for a fight. The big man normally had a long fuse, but the waiting was getting to him too. Vorask had lost too many good Enforcers at the hands of the Spykers. Their dead had each been worth ten of the soft rabble that seemed to pass for sanctioners here. But protocol among ranks had to be observed.

‘Leave it,’ she said sharply to her lieutenant.

There was a long silence, punctuated only by the scream of the wind outside.

‘She tells me she’s an antiques trader,’ Laukkanen said idly, tilting her head to one side. ‘How many sanctioners did you bring again?’

Kovak stared stonily ahead. She wasn’t in the mood for small talk.

‘You don’t know what sort of antiques,’ Antonov growled.

Laukkanen looked momentarily interested.

Suddenly, the door behind the desk banged open, and a slow-moving older Enforcer escorted an elegant woman through. Even as a fugitive, Daforn was impeccable, her glossy dark hair curling in a slick wave over her shoulders, although her gold brocade skirts were dirtied at the edges from the filthy snow.

‘Hello, captain,’ she sighed as she saw Kovak. They had been close to arresting the woman enough times that she knew the sanctioner by sight.

‘She’s not cuffed?’ Kovak snapped, ignoring Daforn.

‘No.’ Laukkanen frowned. ‘We were told she was an informant rather than a prisoner.’

‘I am,’ the elegant woman said. ‘I’m claiming protection.’ Her gilded accent was already grating on Kovak’s ears. She repressed an urge to grip that slender neck and smash the hateful woman’s skull against the ferrocrete wall.

Antonov had used to joke that if you put Daforn in flak armour and gave her a stub gun she could pass for Kovak. They shared the same high forehead and aquiline nose – except Daforn’s youth had been bought with blood money. It had used to seem funny. But the squad didn’t joke around Kovak these days. Not any more.

Kovak snapped one half of a set of magnacles over the woman’s wrist and attached the other around her own. ‘You’re a prisoner until we get to Vorask.’

‘You know I voxed you?’ Daforn said incredulously.

‘Only when you ran out of options.’

‘And why is that beast pointing a gun at me?’ Daforn continued, gesturing with her free hand at Kovak’s lieutenant. ‘We’re on the same side now, aren’t we?’

‘We will never be on the same side,’ Kovak hissed, feeling her anger rising.

The pallid blockhouse Enforcer laughed from behind the custody desk. ‘Good luck, Mamzel Daforn. You’re in the hands of the Vorask heavies now.’

Antonov shot a massive arm across the desk and grasped the front of the Enforcer’s drab uniform, pulling the little man up to the implacable black armaglass of his helmet. ‘“Professionals” is what you meant to say, you jumped-up little customs prefect,’ he growled.

The man’s face was red, and he spluttered. The Ismyr cyber-mastiff growled through its time-worn vox-grille.

‘You’ll put my Enforcer down now,’ Captain Laukkanen said.

‘Do it,’ Kovak ordered.

Antonov released the man with a grunt.

‘Do remember that without my… customs prefects, as you call them,’ Laukkanen continued amiably, ‘you would have lost your informant. As you say, she only contacted you when we apprehended her. And provincial Enforcer though I am, I suspect that may have been a problem for you.’

Laukkanen was right. Daforn was their link between the gilded and the gangs, the only person who could give them the information they needed to take out the Spykers before the district slipped into chaos. Every day was bringing them closer to becoming another Spoil. Daforn would have slipped off-world, stowed with Ismyr’s tithe, had Laukkanen’s Enforcers not apprehended her.

Kovak nodded curtly. ‘Thank you for your assistance, Captain Laukkanen.’ Laukkanen was abrasive, but she had something about her, a sharpness the rest of the Ismyr blockhouse lacked.

The grey-eyed woman inclined her head and gestured for her Enforcers to open the exterior armoured door.

The heavy double doors groaned apart, and a howl of wind screamed into the entry hall, blasting a freezing swirl of snow inside.

The older Enforcer who had escorted Daforn said something in a local dialect that Kovak didn’t understand.

Laukkanen nodded and stepped out from behind the custody desk, squinting into the whiteness outside. There was a stiffness to her leg as she moved that suggested an old augmetic. ‘This is bad weather to fly in. Is your pilot competent?’

Kovak frowned at the apparent slight. ‘Yes.’

‘That’s not an insult. I mean, have they flown in Polaris conditions?’

‘She’ll get us out,’ Kovak said. ‘And we can’t wait.’

Laukkanen shrugged. ‘You’d better be quick. It’s only going to get worse.’

Kovak nodded and dragged a reluctant Daforn outside. The air was biting cold, and Kovak’s eyes streamed. Her bodyglove and flak armour may as well have not been there for all the warmth they provided – the wind felt as if it were cutting through right to her skin. The huge flakes of snow were swirling so thickly she could no longer see the frozen seas that surrounded the little peninsula, or the hill that led away from the blockhouse to the rest of Ismyr. It had been an ugly view – black grease staining the ice around the rusting sprawl of industrial buildings.

It was too open out here on the coast, Kovak thought. Varangantua shouldn’t have an edge. The point of the city was that it was everywhere, everything. People lived and died without ever seeing a horizon, and here she was, at the end of it all. No wonder the people in Ismyr were strange. She couldn’t wait to get back to Vorask – yes, it was too hot, it was too crowded, but it was the real city. It was alive. And the information Daforn had could bring it back from the brink.

Kovak tugged irritably at the chain linking her and Daforn. ‘Come on,’ she shouted over the wind.

They trudged out in the tracks made by Lieutenant Antonov. Thank the Emperor they had been able to set down the gunship close to the blockhouse. Laukkanen had been right about the weather. Unless they left now, they wouldn’t be able to.

As the transport came into view, Kovak voxed the pilot to spin up the engines. She felt a rush of relief as the Zurov’s engine growled into life. They were going to do it. They were going to bring the corrupt gilded down. They wouldn’t terrorise her streets any more, wouldn’t be able to kill the people they loved. Maybe she could finally put those memories to rest…

There was a sudden crump, and then the ice around Kovak blossomed into fire. She rolled below the explosion, yanking down the prisoner chained to her wrist. She pressed herself and the other woman face down in the freezing snow, for enough agonising moments to escape the death kiss of shrapnel from the explosion, but not so long they became another target.

A glance told her that the transport had been completely destroyed. She ducked her head down as a ruptured engine screamed, the plasma explosion scattering a further shower of debris. Kovak swore, her mouth filling with snow. She could hear the thrum of engines overhead. The snow was coming down too thickly to visually identify the craft, but it didn’t sound like a Zurov and it wouldn’t be long before their attackers circled round to survey their handiwork.

She gathered the freezing cuff chain around her wrist, pulling Daforn towards her as Antonov emerged from a nearby drift. ‘Come on,’ she yelled.

Kovak led the dash back to the blockhouse, and Daforn scrambled after her, tripping over her filthy skirts.

The sanctioner glimpsed a shadow moving through the drifts of white and pulled out her autopistol.

A snow speeder blasted out of the storm, spraying a shower of ice as it wheeled round to confront the escapees, the rider raising a weapon.

Kovak took aim at the ganger’s helmet, but before she could shoot, her cuffed arm was yanked abruptly behind her, dragging her backward into the snow. Something diffuse and metallic-sounding screamed past them, right where their heads had just been.

‘What was that?’ Kovak gasped.

‘Monofilaments,’ Daforn said grimly, loosening her grip on the chain linking their wrists. ‘Not even the blessed Emperor Himself could put us back together if that had hit us.’

Daforn was as untrustworthy a criminal as you could find, but a dealer to the unscrupulous gilded of Varangantua knew her business as far as exotic weaponry went.

Kovak voxed her lieutenant. ‘Maintain caution. Illicit weaponry suspected. Cover me while I get the informant back to the blockhouse.’

‘Understood,’ came the growled reply.

Protect the informant. That was all that mattered. Kovak unchained the magnacles, then unclipped her flak armour before helping Daforn into it. As far as Vorask was concerned, only one of them needed to survive this, and it wasn’t her.

‘On my mark, we run,’ she said.

Daforn nodded.

Kovak could hear the whine of the snow speeder behind them, closing on Antonov.

‘Go,’ she said.

They ran as quickly as they could, their movements cumbersome in the freezing, fresh drifts of powdery snow.

A crump and a blast from behind them told Kovak that Antonov had hit the fuel tank of the speeder. She smiled with grim satisfaction.

A sudden, rushing shick caused her to glance back. She wished she hadn’t.

Kovak had never seen a human body burst. She only had a momentary glimpse of the flying viscera that had previously been her lieutenant before the monofilament cloud completely enveloped him and there was nothing left of the man but a red smear across the snow.

A cold slash of horror sliced across Kovak’s heart. You lost another one. You failed them again.

She gritted her teeth and struggled on through the storm, keeping Daforn close. She was sure that she could hear more engines over the whine of the wind. Visibility was dropping further, and she was soaked to the skin from the freezing snow, but at least it was serving to obscure their position.

Then she heard the unmistakable crack of an Enforcer’s shotgun ahead.

Through the flurries she caught a glimpse of four of her squad firing into the storm. Their targets were hidden in the screaming blizzard, but from the sweep of the Enforcers’ fire it seemed they were moving rapidly. More snow speeders, Kovak thought. The bastards are better prepared than us. She cursed her own impulsiveness. She had persuaded the castellan to let her squad go immediately, to leave as soon as they heard that Daforn had been apprehended.

‘Kravitz,’ she yelled over the howling wind. Her sergeant turned.

‘Captain?’

‘Cover me while I get Daforn inside. Rojansky.’ She indicated the nearest Enforcer. ‘With me.’

Daforn was limping now, her muscles unused to strenuous exercise, and fatigued by the cold. Kovak half carried her the last few steps.

The reinforced doors to the blockhouse slid open as they reached them, and they were confronted with a rank of shotgun muzzles.

Laukkanen gestured to her Enforcers to lower their weapons as Kovak and Daforn stumbled in out of the snow. ‘What’s going on, Captain Kovak?’

‘Gang ambush. Call the Bastion for backup.’

Laukkanen shook her head. ‘Not in this storm. The long-range vox is down.’

Kovak swore.

Sergeant Kravitz appeared in the doorway, grim-faced, broad shoulders heavily dusted with snow. ‘Captain, Maksim is hit. He’s not going to get up again, but Fyodor won’t leave him.’

Fyodor had been increasingly hard to handle since the latest round of recriminations from the Spykers. He’d always been volatile, but unlike the others, who buried their losses, he wore his like a flaming brand. But against an unknown force, Kovak needed every trooper she could get.

‘Protect the prisoner at all costs,’ Kovak said, and gripping her shotgun, made to step outside.

Kravitz stepped forward. ‘Sir – he won’t listen to me. And after the raid…’ The sergeant trailed off and gave Kovak a meaningful glance.

‘I’ll make him listen,’ Kovak said grimly, and stepped outside.

After the raid had become a common phrase among the squad. There had been a before, and now there was after. An after where half of the squad had been killed trying to stop the illegal trafficking of workers uphive for Throne knew what hideous purpose. And the ones who had ordered them were the depraved circle of people Daforn drank amasec with. In her fury, Kovak had gone in hard. Too hard, and too quickly. It had been rash. Everyone knew it, but nobody blamed her. She had since been punished enough, because everyone knew what had happened after the raid. They knew what Kovak had found in her hab.

Focus, Kovak reprimanded herself. Raking her gaze across the oppressive blankness of the snowstorm, she took a moment to locate Fyodor. He was limping towards her from the left, about thirty yards away, dragging Maksim with him. The man he supported flopped, hardly able to move at all. Kovak swore to herself. Kravitz had been right. Maksim wasn’t getting back up.

Kovak pressed her comm-bead. ‘Fyodor, that man is dying. You need to leave him.’

‘No,’ came the blunt response.

Kovak swore. She could hear engines. ‘Fyodor, they’re coming. You can’t help him, but you can help me protect Daforn.’

‘Daforn can go fuck herself,’ Fyodor responded, before he terminated the vox-line.

‘You idiot,’ snarled Kovak, raising her shotgun as two snow speeders came into view, converging on Fyodor. She blasted three shots into the chest of one rider, sending them flipping onto their back, their vehicle shooting off out of control and smashing into the blockhouse wall.

The other rider was pulsing lasgun bursts at Fyodor, the red beams strafing through the blizzard, illuminating the falling snow in their path.

Suddenly, she saw Maksim jerk from Fyodor’s grip, a slash of red spurting from his leg. Another shot, this one certainly fatal. That was the pump of arterial blood.

Kovak fumbled for her vox. ‘Fyodor, come in. Get back to the blockhouse now.’

Fyodor’s vox crackled. ‘He’s still alive. I’m not leaving an injured man.’ Kovak could see him attempting to lift the stricken Enforcer up.

‘Fyodor, he’s dead,’ Kovak shouted over the vox. ‘You can’t save him.’

Fyodor ignored her. Howling in anger, Kovak picked off the rider who was circling back round to take another potshot at him. She could see shadows behind the two Enforcers, moving rapidly but probably out of her range.

‘Fyodor?’ Kovak shouted. His vox was dead. The idiot had turned it off.

Grimacing, Kovak shouldered her shotgun, aimed then squeezed the trigger.

The injured Enforcer’s head burst in a cloud of blood. Fyodor fell away from his beleaguered comrade in shock.

Kovak let off another few rounds, now aiming for the encroaching shadows. A burst of flame told her she had hit the fuel tank of at least one speeder. The stricken vehicle skidded into view, emerging from the snow screen. The black-clad rider was hurled towards her, arms pinwheeling. Kovak grimly observed the glint of gold around the neck and arms as the figure fell. The Spyker Angels had found them.

The explosion shocked Fyodor into action, and he started pelting towards her.

Kovak shouldered her shotgun and started back towards the blockhouse. Another one of her men dead. She had three sanctioners left, and a dilapidated blockhouse full of hapless Enforcers to save her district. Vorask wouldn’t get another chance. Daforn falling out of favour with her gilded masters and asking the castellan for protection had been the last chance to break the chain – a ray of hope from Him. Kovak couldn’t squander it.

Kovak strode into the entrance hall to find the Ismyr Enforcers barricading the ground floor of the decrepit building, pulling ballistic shutters down over the narrow windows facing out of the front of the blockhouse.

Daforn huddled behind the custody desk, a coarse synthwool blanket draped around her shoulders. Fyodor crashed through the doors behind Kovak in a swirl of wet snow.

‘Is that everyone?’ Laukkanen asked, grim-faced.

Kovak nodded, and two Enforcers barred the door. The entry hall was dingy now, the weak light dampened by the ballistic shutters.

Fyodor’s face was inflamed with rage and the cold. ‘What the hell do you think that was, Kovak?’

‘Show some respect to your captain,’ she replied sharply.

‘How can I respect you when you just shot one of your own men?’ Fyodor yelled, spittle flying from his chapped lips. Kovak could smell the sour tang of death from where she stood.

‘Watch your tone, sanctioner,’ she said, standing her ground.

Fyodor continued to rant. ‘You’re mad. Broken, not fit for command. They broke you and now you’re killing us.’ He started to advance.

Snarling, Kovak spun on her heel and slammed her forehead up into Fyodor’s face.

The man fell back, swearing and clutching his bleeding nose.

‘I said that’s enough,’ Kovak said. She felt something brush against her leg. The Ismyr cyber-mastiff was standing at her side, metallic hackle-spikes raised, staring intently ahead, baring its adamantium teeth at Fyodor.

The man sullenly wiped his bloodied nose on his sleeve.

‘Listen,’ Kovak said. ‘I trained Maksim from his first day on the force. If I could have saved him, I would have.’ Her jaw clenched. ‘But I know a kill shot when I see one. He did his duty – now you need to do yours. There is too much at stake.’

‘Perhaps we should discuss that?’ Laukkanen said, throwing open the battered interior doors to the heart of the blockhouse.

Kovak nodded. ‘You,’ she said to Fyodor, ‘help our comrades barricade the blockhouse. And you two’ – she gestured to her other two sanctioners – ‘guard the informant.’

Kovak followed Laukkanen through the double doors, the cyber-mastiff trotting creakily at their heels.

‘In here.’ Laukkanen gestured to a small room on the left. It wasn’t what Kovak expected in this shabby place. It was located where the captain’s office always was in the template design of a blockhouse, but it was scrupulously tidy and smelt of incense. The plaster on the walls had flaked, but the small shrine in the corner was free of dust and the devotional candles were lit. The only furniture was a cheap, extruded table and chairs, and a metal trunk against one wall. A pict display showed a flickering cycle of surveillance images of the blockhouse. The cyber-mastiff slumped down in a corner on a knotted rug.

Laukkanen sat behind the desk, a lit lho-stick pinched between her fingers. She looked at Kovak, who was still standing. ‘So, Captain Kovak. You’d better tell me why my blockhouse is under siege.’ The woman spoke with control, but Kovak detected an undercurrent of anger.

‘Because the information Daforn has could bring down their entire operation.’

‘Are all the gangs in Vorask this well equipped?’ Laukkanen said. It was an accusation rather than a question.

‘No,’ Kovak exhaled. ‘Castellan has suspected for a long time that the Spykers are gilded-backed. We don’t know who they are, but they have been pulling strings for years. Protecting the Spykers, using them as a private army to extort the district.’

Laukkanen took a drag on her lho-stick and pulled an ashtray towards her. ‘So we torture Daforn. Get the information now. Give them her body and they’ll leave us alone.’

‘You don’t understand what they’re capable of,’ Kovak said coldly, her mind involuntarily taking her back to that day.

‘Make me understand,’ Laukkanen said.

Kovak refocused on the hard face of the older captain in front of her.

‘You need to know that they won’t stop. The Spykers have been sent by the gilded to eliminate the secrets Daforn holds in her head. Even if we hand her over, they’ll destroy us to make sure.’

Laukkanen grunted. ‘You’ve seen the condition of this blockhouse. You’ve seen the Enforcers I have here. They may not be Varangantua’s finest, but certainly they don’t deserve to die. Why should I take a risk I know we can’t survive for your district? Why shouldn’t I just hand Daforn to them?’

Blood surged to Kovak’s head. Her mind flashed to an image of her hab. What she had found on the floor there, bloodied, unmade. ‘For the Lex,’ she said aloud, emotion catching her words. ‘For our oaths and the city, and because if we don’t, we don’t deserve the title of sanctioner.’ She leaned forward, gripping the edge of the desk, knuckles white. ‘And because if we don’t, we’re no better than them. Because if we’re not the Lex, we’re the criminals.’

Her words hung in the air for a moment. Laukkanen’s face was inscrutable.

‘We just need to hold out until we can call for backup. There must be a way. I can bring in a murder of Zurovs to take them out,’ Kovak urged.

Laukkanen took a last drag of her lho-stick then stubbed it out. She looked Kovak in the eye. ‘What happened to your squad?’

The question came like a gut punch. ‘You mean Fyodor?’

‘I mean all of you. You’re on edge. Strung out. Unstable. The slaughthead’s behaviour, at least, I can explain.’

Kovak looked at the captain. Laukkanen was watching her, one hand absent-mindedly rolling the extinguished lho-stick until the filter loosened and it unfurled. There was something familiar about the motion that she couldn’t quite pinpoint.

‘The whole district is on the edge,’ Kovak said. ‘I’ve lost half my squad in the past two months. And the Spykers don’t just kill Enforcers. They kill anyone close to them.’ Her face worked. ‘Like I said, they don’t stop.’

Laukkanen leaned forward. ‘And you didn’t stop.’

Kovak shook her head. ‘I’m a sanctioner. We don’t.’

‘And we’re not going to stop now.’ Laukkanen nodded. ‘If you can make good on the Zurovs, we might just survive this. There’s a way we can get a message out. Possibly.’

‘Why didn’t you mention that before?’ Kovak frowned.

Laukkanen shrugged. ‘I had to know if it was worth it. And it’s not an ideal option. There’s an undersea cable line we can use, but we’ll need two Enforcers to crawl half a mile through a drainage tunnel from the cells to get to it. One of mine to punch the transmission, and one of yours to hold a gun.’

Laukkanen stood, slightly stiffly, and saw Kovak notice her awkwardness. She flashed her a lopsided grin. ‘They don’t make augmetics quite as badly as they used to, captain, but in any case, I’d still advise you against ever getting old, or blown up.’

Kovak held the door open as they re-entered the corridor. ‘I’ll bear that in mind, captain.’

The cyber-mastiff, Servo, trotted out in front of her, metal claws clicking against the polished rockcrete floor. Kovak noticed that one side of its body was dented and blackened. It had probably seen more action than most of the Enforcers here, she thought.

‘And captain,’ Laukkanen said from ahead. ‘Make sure you pick someone reliable. But also someone you can do without. This is unlikely to end well.’

Kovak and Laukkanen emerged in the entry hall to find that the steel custody desk had been pushed up against the front door.

The hunched, older Ismyr Enforcer entered the hall from a door on the left. Kovak caught a glimpse of a long custody room with desks stacked against the windows behind him before the door swung shut.

‘Report,’ Laukkanen said.

‘We’ve seen gangers around the perimeter. No attacks yet.’

‘They’re scoping us out,’ said Kovak. ‘How many?’

‘A least a dozen on this side. The visibility on the pict surveillance is poor.’

Laukkanen nodded. ‘Maintain watch. I want someone posted here and on the upper level.’

‘Where’s the informant?’ Kovak asked.

‘Your sergeant has her in the archive.’

‘Move her to my office,’ said Laukkanen. ‘Keeps her close, but puts another set of plasteel doors between her and them. If you agree, captain?’

Kovak nodded.

The Enforcer made as if to leave, but Laukkanen stopped him. ‘Tell Jakko to report to me. I have a task for him. And…’ She glanced at Kovak.

‘Rojansky,’ Kovak said, the name feeling like a condemnation, sour in her mouth.

Kovak’s trooper pushed her way through the door first, all youthful swagger and bravado. Behind her followed Laukkanen’s Enforcer, a nervous young man whose ill-fitting uniform billowed around him.

‘You’re going to the shore cable line, about five hundred yards through the drainage culvert,’ Laukkanen explained.

‘Tell the Bastion that the Spykers have burned our transport and half of our unit, and they’re packing contraband heat. We need backup now,’ said Kovak.

‘Send a flare up when you’ve sent the message,’ said Laukkanen. And collapse the culvert at your end if you’re discovered. We can’t risk them coming back down the tunnel.’ She made the sign of the aquila. ‘His Hand.’

‘His Hand,’ the young man replied, his Adam’s apple bobbing nervously.

Kovak gripped Rojansky’s shoulder and looked her Enforcer in the eye. ‘Succeed, and then return. I need you here.’

Laukkanen’s comm-bead buzzed as the two Enforcers left the entrance hall. She listened for a moment. ‘Understood,’ she responded, then turned to Kovak. ‘There’s activity outside.’

Kovak and Laukkanen entered the long custody room to the left of the entrance hall. The older Enforcer was hunched over a pict display by the front wall which showed a grainy vid-feed from outside the front of the blockhouse. A tall Ismyr Enforcer stood beside him, and he turned as they entered.

‘Report, Linberg,’ Laukkanen said.

‘We have visuals on gangers ranged out across the front of the blockhouse.’

Kovak squinted at the screen. ‘Looks like they’re scoping the entrances.’

Laukkanen nodded. ‘Jensen should have eyes on them soon from the tower.’

There was a sudden flash of weapons fire on-screen, and they saw a black-clad figure drop down into the snow.

‘They’re moving out of range of the defence tower, but that’s knocked them back.’

‘Out of range?’ Kovak frowned. ‘Don’t you have a lascannon up there?’

Laukkanen laughed bitterly. ‘Believe it or not, captain, the Ismyr blockhouse hasn’t been considered a priority for upgrades and repairs. Your side of the city swallows up ordnance faster than you can fire it. I doubt our friends in the Munitorum ever thought we’d have an urgent need for a functioning power pack.’

The door at the far end of the room opened, and Kravitz escorted Daforn inside.

‘I hope you’re taking me somewhere warmer,’ the woman said peevishly.

The old Enforcer laughed. ‘This is spring in Ismyr, my lady.’

Daforn ignored him, addressing the captains. ‘And you’ve not offered me anything to eat or drink. You’re supposed to be protecting me, not torturing me.’

‘There’s a water dispenser in the corner,’ Laukkanen said, gesturing to it.

Daforn made a face. ‘Amasec too much to hope for? You must have some rezi here, at least.’

Kovak ground her teeth. ‘Fetch the prisoner some water, Kravitz.’

Daforn folded her arms. ‘I can’t say I’m impressed with all this. I thought you were supposed to be professionals.’

‘Maybe you should have been arming us rather than the gangs,’ spat Kovak.

Daforn opened her mouth to respond but was interrupted by the old Enforcer. ‘They’re coming back,’ he shouted. ‘More of them, lining up.’

Kovak’s instincts sent a twinge through her guts, and she gripped her shotgun.

‘Step away from the window,’ she called to the Enforcer.

‘The ballistic shutters are down.’ He gestured at the metal blinds.

‘Move! That’s an order!’ Laukkanen shouted.

Any combat-experienced sanctioner would know the gang wouldn’t risk an attack unless they knew they could breach the shutters. They would also have known that ballistic shutters couldn’t stop armour-piercing rounds. But this Enforcer wasn’t combat-experienced. And he was too slow. Even as he started moving, an expression of puzzlement on his face, a volley of fire tore through the shutters like they were cheap vellum. The rest of the Enforcers dived to the ground, even as the felled man was still falling, blood bubbling from his slack mouth.

Captain Laukkanen had pushed Daforn to safety behind a stack of desks, Kovak observed with relief as she hit the blockhouse floor, gripping her gun as she rolled.

Bullets roared into the blockhouse through the windows, battering against the ferrocrete back wall.

Kovak’s sergeant, Kravitz, was positioned by the end window, aiming the barrel of his grenade launcher around a pillar. He frowned through a cloud of dust thrown up by the bullets.

Kovak belly-crawled across to the pict surveillance. She could see figures fanning out in front of the blockhouse, staying just out of the observation tower’s firing radius.

‘There are two further to your left, Kravitz,’ she shouted. The weapon barked out a hollow thump as it barrelled a frag grenade through the shattered glass, and two of the figures on-screen were blasted backwards, sending the others scurrying back into the blizzard.

Kovak sat up, panting, and stared around. Her ears rang in the silence. Ferrocrete dust hung in the air, and the ballistic shutters lay twisted and destroyed. The Spykers had come prepared. Better prepared than they were. Clambering to her feet, she felt glass crunching under her boots. The freezing wind whistled through the empty window slots, snow already blowing in.

‘Everyone fall back from the windows,’ she called. ‘Captain Laukkanen, where is the most defensible point?’

There was no reply.

‘I think she’s been hit.’ Daforn’s voice came from behind the desk.

Kovak rushed round to find Laukkanen clutching her belly, blood oozing from between her fingers. The cyber-mastiff stood next to her, whining mechanically, tail between its legs.

‘It looks quite bad,’ Daforn said conversationally. ‘Shame. She was rather dashing.’

‘Shut up,’ Kovak snarled. ‘Sergeant Kravitz, help me get the captain into her office. I’m assuming command. I want guards patrolling all floors. You – Linberg, was it? Get me a medi-kit.’

The tall Enforcer nodded.

They carried Laukkanen down the corridor, using one of the battered metal ballistic shutters as a makeshift stretcher. Daforn took the lead with a sour look on her face.

The medi-kit Linberg brought her was basic – too basic. But then, there wasn’t a medi-kit on Alecto that could fix this damage. Kovak had seen enough injuries to know that. Laukkanen knew it too.

She shuddered as Kovak jabbed a pain blocker into her side then flooded the wound with a vial of counterseptic. Kovak packed the raw cavity with gauze and pressed a wound patch over it. If she could keep the woman alive a little longer, it would be worth it – she was of more tactical value than the rest of the Ismyr Enforcers put together.

Laukkanen held Kovak’s gaze with her grey eyes. ‘How many did we lose?’ she croaked.

‘One. Your man,’ Kovak replied. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘And me,’ Laukkanen said matter-of-factly. ‘You know the truth of it. And there aren’t enough Enforcers to defend this blockhouse.’ She coughed. ‘But there are two prisoners in the cells. Petty criminals, but they can handle a hunting rifle. Use them. You’ll need everything you’ve got.’ She lay back, exhausted. The cyber-mastiff stood alert at her side, eyes glowing red.

Kovak’s comm-bead buzzed.

‘Captain.’ Fyodor’s voice crackled, his tone still bitter. ‘We’ve just seen a flare go up.’

Kovak breathed a sigh of relief. The two Enforcers had made it – and called for backup. Help would be on the way from the Bastion. It had taken her squad just over three hours to get to Ismyr from Vorask – with the weather as it was, four hours seemed a safe estimate. They could hold out, as long as the Spykers didn’t get in.

‘There was a blast shortly after,’ Fyodor continued.

‘What?’ Kovak said, her mind jolted with shock.

‘After the flare went up. There was an explosion.’

Kovak’s heart sank. So Rojansky wouldn’t be coming back. Another one gone, another Enforcer dead on her watch. Focus, she scolded herself. ‘Tell Linberg to pull the prisoners out of the cells and post them as sentries. We just need to hold out until the Zurovs arrive.’

‘There’s another option.’

Fyodor’s tone riled her. ‘What?’

‘Give them what they want. The criminal. There’s no point keeping her alive if it means us all getting killed.’

‘The mission is to protect the informant at all costs. Don’t make that “suggestion” again.’ Kovak terminated the vox-line.

‘Did I hear that correctly?’ Daforn asked, face pinched.

‘Stay here,’ Kovak said. ‘Keep an eye on the captain. If she’s in pain, give her one of these.’ She gestured towards a pain blocker.

‘Thank you,’ Daforn said stiffly.

‘For what?’

‘Protecting me.’

Kovak looked at her in disgust. She didn’t believe for a moment that she was sincere. The gilded woman’s expensive cosmetics had run down her face, and a few tendrils of hair had come loose. ‘I’m not protecting you. I’m doing my job. The castellan wants the information you have – I’m bringing you to her.’ She hesitated for a moment, then pulled a sidearm from the office weapons locker and pushed it across the captain’s desk to Daforn. ‘Do you know how to use this?’

Daforn looked at the stub gun with disdain. ‘Theoretically, yes. I’ve procured and sold far more complex weaponry, and I like to know my business.’

‘But could you use it?’

Daforn touched the worn handle of the weapon. ‘I think so. If it was life or death.’

‘Good.’ Kovak believed that, at least. She couldn’t trust Daforn, but she could certainly rely on her putting herself first. Without looking back, she strode out, towards the cells. She met Linberg in the corridor halfway, accompanied by the two prisoners.

‘Are these the poachers?’ she asked, looking the dishevelled pair up and down.

Linberg nodded. ‘Kimmi Varass, bile scraper, and Barne Hagen, blubber renderer. They killed an ice-whale calf out of season,’ he said with disgust.

Kovak looked blank.

‘Full grown, we can harvest fifty tons of blubber to be processed into rations for the tithe.’

‘So your crime is stealing from the Emperor?’ Kovak said, staring the closest poacher in the eye, playing up her Vorask accent. Everyone knew the district was rough, and she would use that to remind this poacher that she was a world apart from the soft local Enforcers.

He mumbled something and dropped his gaze.

‘You’re fortunate to have a chance to redeem yourselves, citizens,’ Kovak said. ‘Follow me.’

There was a sudden volley of fire from the direction of the tower. Kovak touched her comm-bead. ‘What’s going on?’

The Ismyr Enforcer named Jensen responded. ‘They’ve driven a halftrack around to the front door. It’s got a plasma cannon on it, and it looks like it’s shielded. It was throwing out green light under shotgun fire.’

Kovak swore. After their initial foray, the gang had obviously decided the blockhouse’s defences were weak enough to justify mounting a full-frontal assault. They were going to blow their way in. ‘Arm these two and wait here,’ she commanded Linberg, before jogging back to Laukkanen’s office.

She banged the door open. ‘Daforn, did you see that?’

The gilded woman’s eyes flicked up from the surveillance pict display. ‘Yes.’

‘What’s the shield they’re using? I don’t recognise it. Is it one of yours?’

‘No.’ Daforn regarded the grainy image with a practised eye. ‘But if I was a gambling woman, which I am, I’d say it was a Zhareesi mesh field. Very rare.’

‘I don’t need to know what it is, just how to penetrate it.’

Daforn tutted. ‘You Enforcers are all philistines. If it’s loud and leaves a big hole, you’re happy. It takes rather more refinement to appreciate an antique.’

‘Daforn,’ Kovak snarled.

‘Bullets and energy weapons won’t work. The mesh contracts around high-energy projectiles. You need something slow.’

Laukkanen coughed from where she lay on the floor. ‘The harpoon.’

‘What?’

‘We confiscated it from the poachers’ ship. If it can take out an ice-whale, it can take out a vehicle.’

‘Throne,’ Kovak muttered, pushing her way back into the corridor. Vorask’s finest reduced to using a glorified fish hook. Still, you used what the Emperor gave you.

It took four of them – Kovak, Linberg and the poachers – to drag the weapon up to the second floor, but they made it. The ballistic shutters were still intact up here, for all the good they had done on the ground floor. Kovak had them position the harpoon above the front door so they could fire downward. This meant they were inside the mortuarium, which although empty made the civilian poachers nervous.

At Kovak’s command, Fyodor began exchanging fire with the gangers to occupy their attention. From her vantage point on the second floor, Kovak could see there were about a dozen black-clad Spykers on and around the halftrack. They laughed from behind the rippling green light of the shield as bullets thumped softly into it and dropped into the snow.

She turned her attention to the harpoon. It was a huge projectile, housed on a wheeled trolley, six feet long and as thick as her wrist. She touched the cruel barbs at the end. Each was tied down with a length of wire, tensed for the moment the charge loosed them into their victim.

‘It’s ready,’ one of the pungent poachers said in her lilting Ismyr dialect.

‘Good.’ Kovak nodded. ‘I’m going to pull the blind away from the window, and then one of you will aim the harpoon to the left of the plasma cannon and skewer the generator. With any luck it will take out the halftrack too. Ready?’

The woman nodded, cocking the firing pin.

‘Don’t miss,’ Kovak said, and tore down the shutter.

Almost immediately, they heard shouts from outside as the gangers spotted the movement and began to fire. The woman pulled the trigger and the great harpoon gun bucked as it discharged its bolt. She fell sideways as a deep boom and the scream of shrapnel confirmed they had hit their target.

The rising whine of superheating promethium fuel told Kovak they were about to breach the engine. ‘Stay down!’ she yelled, ducking behind a ferrocrete pillar before the engine erupted, strafing debris through the second-floor window.

None of those gangers would have survived. They were bringing their numbers down, slowly. Kovak breathed out and edged around the pillar to peer past a ballistic shutter. A black crater dirtied the snow outside the blockhouse, with fried gangers lying around the epicentre.

A scream came from behind her.

One of the poachers was crouching next to the harpoon gun, cradling the shattered remains of his comrade’s head.

‘Throne,’ swore Linberg in horror.

‘Consider it redemption,’ said Kovak grimly, picking her way across the brain matter spattered across the mortuarium floor.

They walked to the window and stared out. Greasy smoke still rose from the wreckage of the halftrack, but the flames had already been extinguished by the wet snow.

Linberg appraised the scene. ‘Looks like we’ve taken out about a dozen. That’s good.’

Kovak grunted. ‘That depends on how many there are.’ The sight of the poacher’s ruined head had affected her more than she had acknowledged. Again, her mind took her back to that night. To the sight that had turned her stomach, made her retch, which filled her with shame, because of who the figures in the dorm had been…

‘Captain – look.’

All around the hill on the east side of the blockhouse, shapes were appearing, half visible through the falling snow. There were vehicles, at least three halftracks and a dozen snow speeders. And Emperor only knew how many others there could be, surrounding the other side of the blockhouse.

Through the broken glass of the windows, they heard the distorted crackle of a vox-amplifier from out on the hill.

‘Ismyr blockhouse,’ it boomed mockingly. ‘You are outnumbered and outgunned. This isn’t your fight. Hand over the informant Lubek Daforn and we will leave you alive.’

There was a brief pause, before two dark shapes were thrown down the hill from one of the halftracks. They tumbled through the snow, leaving streaks of red as they fell, until they tangled to rest on the ground outside the blockhouse.

Even in the diminishing light of dusk, Kovak didn’t need a monocular to see what they were. She knew their methods. Had seen them before, too close to home. She tried very hard not to think about it.

‘In case you can’t recognise them,’ the voice boomed over the vox-hailer, ‘those are your former comrades. This demonstration is particularly intended for those of you not from Vorask, who may be unfamiliar with us. This is not your fight. Hand over Lubek Daforn, or suffer the same fate.’

‘Throne. Rojansky and Jakko,’ Kovak muttered, and strode towards the defensive tower. ‘Come on.’ She snapped her fingers at the kneeling poacher. ‘Go and find the others. They’ll give you a post to watch. Unless you want to be flayed too.’

Three hours until backup.

Linberg jogged to keep up with Kovak as she headed for the tower, with the surviving poacher following slowly behind.

‘Is this normal in Vorask?’ Linberg asked.

‘It’s not uncommon.’

Linberg shook his head. ‘If the gang has that much power, I can see why you’re hell-bent on stopping them.’

Kovak halted and looked him in the eye. ‘And you? The Spykers said it. This isn’t your fight. Can I rely on you?’

Linberg clenched his fists. ‘They made it our fight when they shot our captain. Yes, sir – you can rely on me. What are your orders?’

Kovak nodded. The man was sincere. ‘Get the lascannon in the observation tower working. See if you can wire it into the blockhouse’s power supply.’

‘Jensen’s good with his hands.’

‘Fine. I’ll send him up. You get to work.’

Kovak found Jensen on the middle floor of the blockhouse. He was staring out of one of the ruined windows at the two skinned corpses, already frozen into unwieldy positions.

‘You’re to fix the lascannon in the observation tower,’ Kovak said briskly.

Jensen turned slowly to look at her. ‘Even if we can, that won’t stop them.’

‘You’ve got your orders,’ Kovak said firmly.

‘Fyodor was right. You’ll get us all killed,’ she heard him mutter under his breath as he walked away.

She was about to reprimand him when a strange shuffling noise drew her attention. Frowning, she crept down the stairs towards the entry hall, autopistol out.

‘Shut up,’ she heard someone mutter. It wasn’t one of her sanctioners.

‘They’re going to kill me,’ she heard Daforn reply.

‘I don’t care,’ the other voice said.

‘You think they’ll let you live? They’re going to kill you too.’

There was a thumping sound, and a gasp.

‘Next time you speak, I’ll knock you out. Understand? Now be quiet while I get this door open.’

Kovak padded rapidly down the final steps. She swung round the corner, autopistol raised. Daforn was standing awkwardly, with the poacher’s knife to her throat. The man had his back to Kovak and with his other hand was trying to unlock the front doors. Kovak shot him directly in the head. He barely had time to take a final breath before he slumped against Daforn, brain matter spilling from his shattered cranium. Daforn shuddered and pushed the corpse away.

‘I thought I gave you a gun?’ Kovak said.

Daforn didn’t reply.

‘What happened?’

‘I couldn’t do it,’ Daforn snapped, crossing her arms defensively.

‘I overestimated you,’ Kovak said, searching the dead man’s pockets. She recovered the stub gun and held it out. ‘Before you take this, I need to know that you will be able to use it.’

Daforn nodded sullenly. ‘I won’t make the same mistake again.’

‘Look at me,’ Kovak commanded.

Daforn met her gaze.

‘You need to know that you’re going to use it before you raise it. You never aim a weapon unless you are willing to kill. Do you understand?’

Daforn reached out and took the gun. ‘Yes.’

A shotgun muzzle rounded the corner, followed by Fyodor.

‘You can stand down, Fyodor,’ Kovak said. ‘The informant has been secured.’

The sanctioner kept his weapon trained.

‘Fyodor,’ Kovak said calmly, ‘you can put your gun down.’

The man was sweating, eyes wide, pupils expanded with chem-flare. ‘I saw what they did to Rojansky.’

‘That’s why we need to stop them, Fyodor. We can use what Daforn knows to do that.’ Kovak started to move her hand across to her autopistol.

‘Put your hands on your head,’ Fyodor snapped.

‘This is insubordination. Stand down now, Enforcer,’ Kovak yelled, hoping an order would snap him out of it.

‘Hands on your head,’ he screamed, urgently waving his weapon.

Kovak slowly raised her hands to her head. He was too unstable to negotiate with.

‘He was right,’ Fyodor hissed, indicating the dead poacher. ‘We should give her to them. Once she’s dead, she can’t do her gilded ringmasters any more favours.’

‘It’s not about what you or I think, Enforcer,’ she said softly. ‘We have orders.’

Fyodor shook his head. ‘You’ve lost perspective, Kovak. I can see it, the others can see it.’ He adjusted his grip on his shotgun. ‘It started after they came for your family.’

‘Stop it, Fyodor,’ Kovak growled.

‘They should have taken you off the squad,’ he continued. ‘But they didn’t. So I’m going to need to put you down.’ He levelled the barrel of his gun at Kovak’s head.

There was a crack of weapons discharge. Kovak flinched and screwed her eyes shut, ice gripping her guts.

Nothing happened.

She opened her eyes. Fyodor was in front of her, gaping like a fish, a jet of crimson spurting from his throat. He toppled sideways.

Daforn stood behind him, shaking, both hands wrapped around the stub gun, which still smoked.

Kovak exhaled heavily. ‘Not a bad shot. Shame he was an Enforcer, but under the circumstances we’ll overlook that.’

Daforn still trembled as Kovak steered her back to the captain’s office. It was the first time she had almost seemed human.

Kovak glanced inside when they arrived. Laukkanen was still conscious, but sweat beaded her forehead.

‘Shoot the next person who comes in that you don’t recognise,’ Kovak said to Daforn.

Laukkanen propped herself up awkwardly. ‘Give me a gun.’

Kovak inclined her head. ‘Captain. I appreciate the gesture, but you’re–’

Laukkanen held her gaze, eyes bright. ‘Even half-dead I’m still a better shot than anyone else here. Get me some stimms and a smoke and I’ll keep her safe.’

Kovak handed over her own shotgun wordlessly.

Laukkanen inspected it. ‘Well maintained, captain. It will do.’

Something clicked in Kovak’s thoughts. A series of little tells that had niggled at the back of her mind. ‘I should have known when I saw you field-strip that lho-stick. You’re military, aren’t you?’ She frowned. ‘Nobody else has it drilled into them to hide their traces like that.’

‘Not quite. Panthera. And are you sure you’re not a probator, captain?’ Laukkanen said with a wry smile.

‘Just a sanctioner.’ Kovak grinned. Her vox-bead buzzed.

‘Sir, there’s something you should see at the observation tower.’

‘On my way.’

Kovak made to leave, but Daforn stopped her.

‘Captain,’ she said quietly, still holding the gun. ‘Does it ever become easier?’

‘What?’ Kovak paused in the doorway.

Daforn looked up. Kovak realised her eyes had been cosmetically enhanced. That shade of lilac didn’t exist in a normal iris. They were artificial, like the world she lived in. Had lived in until now, at least.

‘Does it ever become easier to kill a person?’ Daforn asked flatly.

Kovak laughed bitterly. ‘You tell me.’

‘What?’

‘The things you sell, the lies you’ve told. What did you think they were doing, if not killing people?’

Daforn’s face was blank.

‘I was fourteen. When I first killed another person.’ Kovak smiled humourlessly. ‘He had broken into our hab. I was younger than most. Older than some. People like you can pretend death isn’t a part of your lives. The rest of us can’t.’

Kovak left the woman standing in the doorway. Her mind was on other things now. She only had three Enforcers left. She and Jensen would have to be on constant patrol now there were so few defenders.

Her comm-bead buzzed again. ‘What?’

It was Kravitz. ‘Captain, we think they’re going to–’

There was a deep boom from outside. All of the lights in the blockhouse went out. Kovak swore and pulled a lumen-stick from her utility belt. She ran towards the observation tower and took the stairs up two at a time.

Two grim faces turned to her as she entered the observation platform, pale against the gloaming and backlit by a fire raging in the distance.

‘Report,’ she commanded, staring at the soaring flames.

Kravitz spoke. ‘They’ve blown up the ward’s thermic generator. All of Ismyr is without power, including us.’

‘Thousands of people are going to start freezing very soon,’ Jensen said.

Kovak noticed his knuckles whiten as he gripped the edge of the wall.

‘The lascannon won’t function without power,’ Kravitz added.

‘How are our ammo supplies?’ Kovak asked.

‘Minimal.’

‘Share out what’s left, and hold them off as long as we can. Now get to work.’

Two hours until backup.

Kovak pulled their defences back to the second floor, sending Laukkanen and Daforn to the second-floor refectorum, a drab, windowless room. There seemed to be far fewer gangers visible than before, which worried Kovak. What were they doing? It was getting intensely cold now that the power had gone down. The kind of cold they never had at home in sweaty, chaotic Vorask.

Kovak shivered. She couldn’t feel her feet any more. They must have pulled away to sabotage the thermic generator, she thought. But they should have returned by now. They must be planning something…

She tweaked aside a ballistic blind to look out into the near darkness. The only light outside now was coming from the raging inferno of the thermic generator half a mile away.

That was an unintended blessing from the Spykers – the emergency lamp-packs inside the blockhouse were old and dim, providing barely any illumination.

A flicker in the dark caught her eye. There were shadows moving, silhouetted against the dancing flames. Frowning, Kovak raised her monocular. The shapes were blurry, but she could just make out figures pushing large objects from a nearby industrial building.

‘Jensen?’ she voxed.

‘Yes, captain.’

‘It looks as if the Spykers are moving something from near the thermic generator.’ She squinted. ‘There are already a couple of two-tracks on the way down. Any ideas?’

Kovak heard him swear.

‘That’s the refinery. They’re loading barrels of pure promethium.’

Kovak watched as one of the two-tracks started to drive down the track that wound round to the blockhouse. They were moving slowly but steadily. She stared through the jagged glass of the ruined window. This wasn’t what she was trained for. An enemy you can’t punch or shoot. But she just had to hold out a little longer…

There was a sudden boom from the other side of the blockhouse, where Jensen was stationed. The vox gave a terrible scream of static and went dead.

Kovak breathed in sharply. Could the gang already have moved a load of promethium down? She sprinted in the direction of the sound, thanking the Emperor it was on the opposite side of the building to where Daforn was. Black smoke billowed from a crater where the staircase had been. There was no sign of Jensen. Kovak coughed as she approached, and drew her autopistol.

A black-clad shape suddenly emerged from the smoke, laser sights flaring from its helmet. Kovak blasted two rounds into its chest and the figure fell back. Another two rose up behind it, weapons raised.

Kovak twisted sideways to avoid the slash of las-bolts pulsing past her and dived behind a metal table.

A bolt shattered a lamp-pack behind her. Kovak swore and returned fire.

A lucky shot hit one ganger’s las-cell and the power pack erupted, the flare momentarily whiting out the attackers’ auspex masks. Kovak took advantage of their momentary blindness and felled the pair with a round of rapid shots.

But there were more Spykers emerging from the ruined stairwell now. More than she had bullets to kill. Kovak pressed her comm-bead. ‘All Enforcers report to the north-west side of the first floor. The Spykers have breached the walls. I repeat, the Spykers have breached the walls.’

Kovak gritted her teeth and fired off another few rounds before her autopistol clicked empty. She threw the empty gun hard at an incoming Spyker, clocking him on the skull. Then she pulled out her shock maul and whipped it around his neck, crushing his vertebrae.

She felt a sudden sensation like a hot punch to her left leg and a burning in her calf that knocked her off balance, her maul flying from her hand. She swore and pushed the maimed Spyker down the stairwell. The loose body dropped onto the ganger who had just shot her, knocking them screaming down the ruined wall.

Kovak’s leg was numb, and clumsy. The pain would come later. Dropping to her knees, she scrambled over to a group of felled Spykers and groped for a weapon. Her fingers had just reached the casing of a lasgun when a las-bolt blasted right past her hand. She snatched it back from the smoking floor.

She saw with horror three lasgun muzzles rising over the edge of the stairwell as the smell of blasted ferrocrete filled her nostrils.

Then half a dozen shots rang out in quick succession from behind her – the familiar crack of an Enforcer’s shotgun.

There was a series of screams from the gangers who had been rising up the stairwell as they fell back. Kovak turned to see Sergeant Kravitz advancing, weapon blasting. He stormed towards the edge of the stairwell, gun readied to take out the next wave.

‘Are you hurt?’ he asked.

‘Not enough to stop me fighting.’

Kravitz smiled grimly. ‘We end it here, captain. For the ones we lost.’

She nodded. ‘For the ones we lost.’

Then, through the smoke, dimly lit by the distant flames, a fist-sized object arced up through the gap where the wall had been. Kovak and Kravitz both knew what it was. Kravitz was closest. Even as it fell, he was grim-faced, running towards it.

‘No!’ Kovak screamed.

‘Finish the bastards,’ Kravitz yelled as he landed, smothering the frag grenade with his body.

Kovak pressed herself against the floor and clamped her hands over her ears, tears of fury streaming from her eyes.

The grenade erupted. Kravitz’s flak armour smothered the worst of it, but the blast still screamed shrapnel shards across the chamber. Kovak was just outside the kill-zone, but felt splinters of fragmented ceramite slash her bodyglove.

She clenched her fists. Her entire squad was dead. Everyone she cared about was gone, taken by the Spykers. Now that they had breached the walls, they would come for Daforn. And it would all have been for nothing.

Kovak stopped suppressing the memory that had been squatting in her mind like a ghoul. It unfurled, like blood blossoming in water.

Her mind’s eye returned to her hab on that night. The night after her squad had blown the Spykers’ uphive trafficking operation. She saw herself enter the dorm and find the two bodies there, skin peeled away like the petals of a rare flower. In her memory she looked at the faces of her wife and son, denuded of their flesh, leaving visible the terrible, beautiful, raw mechanics of muscle and bone that had animated them.

Anguish crushed her, forcing the breath from her lungs, and she curled on her side in silent agony. They’re dead. They’re all dead.

But you’re not, a little voice said at the back of her head. It’s not over yet. You need to get up, sanctioner. You have orders.

The Spykers may have broken Kovak, but they hadn’t extinguished the animus of the Lex in her heart. It held the pieces of her together now, like a steel band wrapped tightly around something broken.

Kovak took a shuddering breath. Her orders were to protect Daforn, at any cost. She pushed down the grief inside herself that threatened to grow into something that would consume her. Get up, and do your job, she told herself. There will be more of them coming. Yes, it was personal – it had always been personal. But it had been for all of them. The job, the city, the district. It got into your blood. Was your blood.

She felt her leg where the bullet had penetrated. The bone was intact, and she’d know about it if an artery had been hit. But there was an exit wound big enough for her thumb to fit into, and the pain was beginning to stab through the shock. She thanked the Emperor that, despite the damage to her bodyglove, the fabric had meshed tightly over the wound, stemming the flow of blood. She fumbled out a pain blocker from her armour webbing and hissed as she stabbed it into her leg. Gingerly, she placed her palms on the ground and, grimacing, levered herself upright. The pain blockers had kicked in, but she knew she was going to pay for this later.

One hour until backup.

Kovak limped to one of the narrow windows and frowned, her vision hazing. There was a large hauler moving down from the refinery now. ‘Throne,’ she muttered. The Spykers were doing what they always did when they met resistance. Throw more firepower at it until it was destroyed. If a halftrack’s worth of barrels had blown open a side wall, an entire hauler would immolate them all.

Something banged into her hip. Kovak flinched, then saw in surprise the cyber-mastiff standing at her side, looking up at her with glowing red eyes.

‘You wouldn’t have left Laukkanen if she was in danger, would you?’ she said to herself.

She rested her hand on its metal skull, worn smooth with time, and limped back to the corridor with it by her side. Daforn was the only thing that mattered now.

Kovak entered the refectorum to find Laukkanen standing, cradling a sniper rifle. The woman was pale, but she stood by herself.

Laukkanen’s mouth twisted into a half-smile at Kovak’s evident astonishment. ‘I had a small supply of satrophine left. Something we used to use in the Panthera at times like this. I thought you probably needed every trooper you could get.’

‘That’s true enough. We held them off when they breached the walls, but now they’re bringing a hauler down with enough promethium to level the blockhouse.’

Laukkanen pursed her lips. ‘You’ve caused them enough trouble that they’ve decided to simplify things. An elegant, if brutal solution.’

Kovak nodded. ‘If I could get out to the vehicle, take out the driver…’

‘And if you fail, they’ll still have a full hauler of promethium. But if we can ignite the promethium before they get too close to the blockhouse…’

‘How?’ Kovak asked.

‘I was a sniper. I can blow the barrels. I have some explosive rounds I’ve been saving for just this sort of occasion. They’ll be moving slowly because of the ice, but I’ll have to leave now to catch them in time.’

Kovak limped across to Laukkanen. Her face was beaded with sweat, but she held Kovak’s gaze steadily.

‘Are you sure you can do it?’ Kovak said.

Laukkanen tightened her fingers around her weapon. ‘I don’t have much time left, but I wouldn’t tell you I could if I couldn’t. And,’ she said, smiling humourlessly, ‘as the only person with a sniper rifle and the skill to use it, I’m your only option.’

Kovak nodded.

‘You should take cover. The hill will deaden the blast, but that’s still a lot of promethium.’

They descended the dark stairwell together and came out into the half-light of the entrance hall, passing the bodies of the poacher and the traitor Enforcer already freezing in the cold.

Kovak helped Laukkanen move the desk away from the door. The pict surveillance showed the way was clear, the Spykers’ attention focused elsewhere. Who but a madman would walk out of the front door when certain death lay outside?

Laukkanen pulled down her snow goggles and slung her rifle over her shoulder. As she triggered the door release, the cyber-mastiff creaked to her side, red eyes glowing in the darkness. Freezing flakes of snow whirled inside, kissing Kovak’s cheek with ice.

‘Aren’t you going to leave us the canid?’ Daforn said petulantly.

The cyber-mastiff growled mechanically, baring its adamantium teeth at the informant.

Laukkanen turned to Kovak. ‘Emperor be with you.’ She made the sign of the aquila. ‘I don’t think He is quite finished with you yet, comrade.’

Kovak stepped forward and gripped her shoulder. ‘By His will. It was an honour, captain.’

Then Laukkanen was gone, into the cruel night.

Kovak sealed them in, the metal doors slamming together with heavy finality.

She pushed the metal desk back in front of them, with Daforn’s reluctant assistance.

Kovak’s comm-bead buzzed.

‘Captain, are you there?’ Linberg’s voice crackled.

‘Yes. And thank the Emperor you are. Report.’

‘I’ve been under assault here, but the gangers pulled out – I thought I was the only one left.’

‘I have Daforn. We’re in the entry hall. We need to take cover – Captain Laukkanen is about to blow a hauler of promethium out on the hill.’

‘Understood. The stairwell in the corridor behind you is solid ferrocrete.’

Kovak started moving, gesturing for Daforn to follow. ‘We’ll meet you there.’

‘Wonderful,’ said Daforn venomously. ‘I’m left with Varangantua’s finest. One maimed sanctioner and one fish farmer.’

Despite herself, Kovak laughed coldly. ‘We reap what we sow, mamzel. Your kind hollowed us out – now you expect us to save you.’

‘I don’t want to die here,’ Daforn blurted angrily.

Kovak looked at her. The woman was scared. Really scared. Possibly for the first time in her life. It must be easy to take risks when you can never fail. To have grown up in a world without consequences. The face of the woman in front of her was twisted in fear, the similarity in her features like a strange mirror to her own calm visage. Would I have been like her, if I had lived her life? Kovak thought.

‘By His will you won’t,’ Kovak replied. ‘But it won’t be because you deserve to live.’ She looked away. ‘It will be for the rest of us, if He grants it. Now move.’

Thirty minutes until backup.

They had only just made it to shelter when the blast came. All of the remaining windows in the building blew out as the above-ground concussion roared around the site of the explosion. Barrels of promethium screamed as they ruptured in sequence. Laukkanen’s aim had been true – and just in time. Had the hauler made it any closer to the blockhouse they would have been finished. As it was, the building still stood.

Kovak ducked her head back around the door to see the entrance hall lit up eerily orange by the dancing flames outside. She felt a strange sense of bittersweet elation. Out of this destruction would come salvation for Vorask. But out there somewhere was Captain Laukkanen, dying alone in the snow. Kovak imagined her laying down her rifle, with only the cyber-mastiff for company in the cold darkness of her final moments. Vorask would not forget her.

‘Captain Kovak.’ Linberg appeared behind her.

‘She did it,’ Kovak said quietly. ‘I don’t know how, but she did.’

‘She’s always been the best of us,’ Linberg said with pride.

‘I underestimated you. All of you,’ said Kovak. ‘Every Enforcer here is a credit to the city.’

‘Do you really think the informant can save your district?’ Linberg asked.

‘Without her testimony, it will fall. We won’t be able to uphold the Lex.’

‘And without the Lex, we don’t have anything,’ said Linberg. ‘I don’t think I knew what that meant until today.’ He suddenly froze, then tilted his head. ‘Do you hear that?’

Kovak frowned. ‘Hear what?’

Linberg moved stealthily across to the window, silhouetted by the inferno beyond. He glanced out, then turned and ran back towards Kovak and Daforn.

‘Go,’ he hissed. ‘They still have enough barrels from the halftrack to blow another hole in the wall.’

So they had reverted to their original plan. The remaining Spykers were planning to infiltrate the blockhouse.

‘Can’t we shoot them?’ Kovak asked.

‘Not without igniting the barrels. They’re already up against the side of the blockhouse. Go! We can barricade ourselves in the cells.’ He slung a couple of lasguns from fallen Spykers around his neck and offered his shoulder to Kovak, who took it gladly, wincing as she limped back to the stairwell as quickly as she could.

There was a bang and a crash from behind them.

‘Throne,’ Kovak snapped. They had broken in already. Ferrocrete dust blew down the stairs after them.

They raced down to the underground cell block. It was even colder down here, and their breath hung in clouds, illuminated by dim emergency lumens. A dozen tiny cells ran along the back wall, each with a metal door of its own.

Linberg ran ahead and wheeled open the great, heavy hatch door to the cell compartments. ‘Get in,’ he shouted.

Daforn darted inside, and Linberg pushed one of the lasguns into Kovak’s arms as he jostled her in.

‘It was an honour, captain,’ he said.

Kovak turned, frowning in confusion. ‘What are you doing, Linberg? Get inside.’

He swallowed. ‘Tell them Ismyr did its duty. Don’t forget us, sir.’

And he slammed the hatch.

‘No,’ Kovak yelled, banging her fists against the solid steel door, but she could already feel the handwheel spinning on the other side, then the grind of him scrambling the combination lock. She pressed her forehead against the cold metal. Linberg had sacrificed himself for them.

Kovak listened, pressing one ear against the door. She heard the muffled scream of the incoming Spykers’ lasgun fire and the responding bark of Linberg’s shotgun. Something smashed heavily against the door.

‘He’s charging them?’ Daforn said in disbelief.

‘He’s out of bullets,’ Kovak said grimly.

There was a last, furious blast of lasgun fire before everything fell silent.

Rescue due.

It was very quiet in the cell block.

‘Well,’ Daforn said flatly. ‘The rescue Zurovs are supposed to be here now.’

Kovak’s jaw tightened, and gripping her gun, she faced the entry hatch. The Spykers were already clanging on the outside, looking for a weakness. A strong enough plasma weapon would cut through, eventually.

‘They’re not going to make it in time, are they?’

Kovak swallowed. All of those people, they couldn’t have died just for her to fail. The Emperor couldn’t let this happen.

‘They’ll be here soon,’ Kovak said, her voice tight. ‘It’s in His hands now.’ She kept her eyes focused on the worn metal of the hatch door. As soon as the first Spykers came through, she would destroy them. Perhaps Linberg had taken down enough of them for her to finish the job. Perhaps.

‘The worst thing is,’ she heard Daforn say from behind her, ‘you’ve been trying to keep me alive, and they only want me dead. Much easier.’ The woman laughed maniacally. ‘Isn’t that ironic? They just want to see a body.’

Kovak was only half listening. She was flexing her trigger finger, mentally preparing for the moment that door blasted open.

‘You never answered my question earlier,’ Daforn said.

‘What?’ Kovak said distractedly.

‘About whether it gets easier to kill.’

Kovak adjusted the stock of the gun. Her shoulder hurt and her leg ached, and she wished she had more pain blockers.

‘Captain?’

Kovak frowned. ‘Does it get easier to kill? No. But it’s not difficult. Not when killing is the same as staying alive. And that is the reality the Spykers have made for us.’

Even through her blast-injured ears, Kovak heard the click of a stub gun from behind her. Her spine prickled.

‘And are you afraid of dying, captain?’

Captain Ania Kovak closed her eyes, and it felt as if time slowed. ‘No,’ she whispered.

Daforn spoke quietly, the stub gun aimed at the captain’s head. ‘I want you to know that I regret this, captain, truly I do. But all they want to see is a body. And I’d rather offer them yours than mine.’

But Kovak wasn’t listening. She could see her family, as they had been in life. She could see their faces, feel their hands in hers. She felt a strange euphoria. Her service was done. There were no more decisions to make, there would be no more pain.

Daforn fired.

The fires were burning low by the time the Zurovs arrived at the Ismyr outpost in Polaris. The pilot of the lead Zurov whistled as they hovered over the wreckage and looked down at the destruction picked out by his searchlight. The ground around the blockhouse was blackened. Bodies and blasted vehicles were scattered around, already freezing where they lay.

‘Copoka to Voron,’ he said into his vox. ‘Any sign of the gangers?’

‘Voron to Copoka,’ the other flyer replied. ‘We have a Zurov in pursuit of one flyer. There are two remaining on the ground, with one scuttled sanctioner transport.’

‘Understood,’ the pilot responded.

He turned to his co-pilot. ‘Castellan’s going to be disappointed. It doesn’t look as if there’s anyone to recover.’

‘How many people were down there?’

The pilot shrugged. ‘Our squad, and however many other people were stationed in that.’ He gestured at the ruin with a gloved hand.

‘Hang on.’ The co-pilot leaned forward. ‘Pin the light on the east corner.’

The stablight swung round and illuminated a woman in an Enforcer’s uniform, standing with her hands above her head beside a ruined section of blockhouse wall.

‘We have a survivor.’

‘Emperor’s teeth!’ The pilot shook his head. ‘Is that Captain Kovak? How did she make it out alive?’

Smoke swirled around the small, dark-haired figure far below them as they pulled in closer, their vector-thrust engines kicking up little flurries of dirty snow.

‘He of Terra must have plans for this one.’

Lubek Daforn watched, expressionless, as the descending Zurov’s stablights dazzled across her face.

SERVICE

JONATHAN D BEER

The cargo hauler rumbled beneath the rising gate of the Saladie-XV manufactorum. A pair of rotary cannons embedded in the walls swung aside as it passed, the servitors hardwired to the guns’ targeting systems responding with rote obedience to the codes transmitted to their lobotomised brains through the manufactorum’s vox-net.

The hauler’s ten massive wheels crunched over the frozen gravel between layers of razor wire, under the watchful gaze of a quartet of overseers. Two dozen such vehicles arrived at the Saladie-XV every hour, and every second lost was multiplied down and down the chain of operations, to become lost slate for which they were held responsible.

The driver followed the marked path between stout rockcrete barriers, heading for the manufactorum’s primary loading bay. As was typical for so many of Varangantua’s sprawling fabricatoria, security at the Saladie-XV was comparable to a Munitorum ammunition depot. The massive complex was encircled by layers of defensive fortifications. Over twenty thousand workers passed through its checkpoints at the start of each shift, watched by some two thousand guards on permanent retainer to the executors of the Trismodine Consortium.

The driver brought the transport to a standstill beneath the arching canopy of the loading bay. After cycling down the fifty-ton machine’s primary, secondary and tertiary engines, he reached carefully under the main console and pressed a precise sequence of commands. Then he heaved open the cab’s door and dropped to the ground. He made his way over to the overseer’s offices as required, but begged the need of the lavatoria and ducked inside.

The hauler’s fuel cells exploded three minutes after its driver had disappeared into the factorum’s warren. Razor shards of red-hot metal scythed through the loading depot, cutting down hundreds of indentured workers. Secondary explosions, ignited by a string of pre-planted charges, worked their way up the conveyor junctions to atomise sixteen thousand tons of material stacked for export and sunder the delicate machinery that had assembled it.

Over three thousand serfs and skilled labourers died in the initial explosions and subsequent fires, though the loss of life was inconsequential when weighed against the commercial and logistical impact.

The parts produced by the Saladie-XV manufactorum supplied fifteen industrial operations classified as majoris or higher throughout Korodilsk, as well as hundreds of smaller enterprises in the neighbouring districts of Dragosyl and Setomir. An interruption of production measured in hours was enough to disrupt the supply chains of thousands of finished products, from the charge packs of las weaponry to prefabricated housing units.

It would be days, perhaps weeks, before the factorum could resume its operations. The loss of revenue for the Trismodine Consortium would be substantial. The loss of reputation, however, for the consortium and their backers, the Valtteri, would be catastrophic.

Lady Miesha Chessa Tsvetanora closed the doors to her manse with a soft click. She turned, placed her hands on the narrow balcony’s stone balustrade and looked out at the frozen beauty of her estate. She wore a fur-lined evening gown, and a pair of glowing heat emitters bathed the balcony’s narrow ledge with warmth as a ward against the air’s keen chill. Soft light from the mansion’s interior cast her silhouette out into the snowy garden. She sighed deeply, releasing the tension of the day’s trials into the darkness.

Lady Miesha did this most evenings before she retired, seeking a moment’s peace alone with the tranquillity of her compound.

It was often hard to come by. She was the hereditary executor of the Callor-Tsvetanora Industrial Concern and director of the Valtteri. These two positions had often combined to make peace an elusive commodity throughout the eighty-six years of her life.

The executrix reached into a pocket of her gown and withdrew a slim lho-stick and an igniter. The igniter’s blue flame formed a pinprick of light in the frozen twilight, and Lady Miesha considered it as she drew a deep breath into her lungs.

There was nothing else for it – Borias Noldyr would have to die. The young consuasor was overambitious, grasping and indiscreet. One flaw could be forgiven, perhaps even accommodated. All three made him a liability, and Lady Miesha had no patience for anyone who threatened the stability of her organisation.

She clicked the igniter’s emitter closed and straightened from the balustrade.

The doors’ glass panes broke with a brittle snap as a pair of las-bolts passed through them. Each shot struck Lady Miesha in the back, both lancing through the old woman’s heart. She collapsed onto the balcony’s smooth flagstones, still caught in the gentle warmth of the heaters overhead.

Though she was already dead, a third shot clicked through the shattered plex, bursting her skull and melting the memory spools and extravagantly expensive augmetics contained within to slag.

A review by the Valtteri’s securitors and, some time later, the probators of Bastion-J, revealed that the manse’s picters, trip-sensors and other embedded security all failed to capture a single glimpse of the assassin as they entered and exited the expansive estate. None of the servants could shed any light on what occurred, even under the most intense excruciation.

The lurch of his groundcar drawing to a sudden stop roused Carolus Ignatov from his indolence. The justicius pushed himself up onto one elbow and looked blearily through the vehicle’s tinted plex, expecting to see the burnished gates and steelthorn perimeter hedgerows of his estate.

He frowned, and attempted to lever himself upright. He was somewhere in Setomir’s expansive finance district, surrounded on one side by crowds of cloaked usurers and hurrying asset brokers, and on the other by a steady tide of passing groundcars.

Ignatov gripped his cane and rapped its end against the partition that separated him from his driver. ‘Telep? Why have we stopped?’

His chauffeur glanced back at him, before climbing out of the vehicle and disappearing into the crowd.

‘Telep?’ Ignatov said, more in confusion than alarm.

In the same moment as the driver stepped out, the passenger compartment door opposite Ignatov was pulled open and a tall, dark-skinned man climbed into his groundcar. He wore the tapering robes of an Administratum clerk and held a long-barrelled needle pistol in his right hand. The intruder settled back into the seat’s rich leather and trained the weapon on Ignatov’s heart.

‘What’s this? Who the hell do you think you are?’

‘You are Justicius Senioris Ignatov.’ The man’s voice was low and even, betraying no hint of class or geographic dialect.

The justicius’ reply was a long, loud stream of barked curses.

The man ignored his invective and tossed a slim folio into his lap. ‘Open it.’

‘Go to hell!’

The intruder raised the pistol’s aim – Ignatov thought for the briefest moment that he could see directly down its barrel. The justicius lifted the manila parchment’s cover with one heavily ringed hand.

Within the innocuous folder was a pict of his daughter at play at her scholam, and another of Natai’s bodyguard, lying face up in a pool of blood. Between the two images was a lock of black hair, bound in a white-gold clasp.

Ignatov’s fleshy features had passed out of fury into despair.

‘Tomorrow morning,’ the man said, ‘you will sentence Jahrol Dulka to Servitude Imperpituis.’

For fifteen years, Carolus Ignatov had received an annual payment far in excess of his judicial stipend. In return, he had commuted sentences, rendered evidence inadmissible, protected the Valtteri’s agents and allies from the proper weight of the Lex, and improperly applied it against their enemies.

Jahrol Dulka was a flesh smuggler, a murderer and much more. He had only been brought before Ignatov due to the overwhelming and exigent evidence found by the Enforcers, evidence that even the vitiated criminal processes of Varangantua could not ignore.

He was also a man under the inviolate protection of the Valtteri.

If he sentenced Dulka to be lobotomised into a slack-jawed servitor, Ignatov would be signing his own death warrant.

‘N-no. You don’t know what you ask,’ he stammered. But the man was already leaving, admitting a burst of sleet and freezing air as he opened the groundcar’s door.

The heavy steel slammed shut, leaving Ignatov with the lock of his daughter’s hair and his mounting horror.

The Valtteri did not exist, in any official sense. The name did not appear on the Alecto Administratum’s rolls of incorporation, nor did any organisation by that title directly claim ownership of any assets. If pressed for a description, a Varangantuan bureaucrat of suitable rank might call the Valtteri a collective of commercial entities, an alliance of dynastic leaders and executive officers providing mutual aid to better meet the ever-growing demands of the Imperium on Alecto’s finite resources.

They were a cartel, in short. Varangantua was ruled by such groups, insofar as any one force could be said to control the impossible vastness of the continent-sized cityscape.

The directors of the Valtteri were not, in the strictest terms, the masters of a criminal organisation. The vast majority of their income came from legitimate sources. Contracts with district vladars to supply materiel to meet their tithe demands. Rents from land holdings spread throughout the eastern reaches of the city. The continuous movement of slate from the pockets of the millions that thronged the streets of the Spoil and its surrounding districts to the tills and lockboxes of a thousand shops, storefronts and commercial enterprises, to the coffers of the merchant-combines, and finally into the groaning accounts and vaults of the Valtteri themselves.

Of course, all that they had was protected by means that extended well beyond the bounds of the Lex, but this hardly differentiated the Valtteri from any of the lesser merchant-combine collectives and dynastic holdings that snapped at their heels. Any organisation of their size and power generated envy and fear in equal measure, and plenty of enemies.

As the winter months of Alecto’s hostile climate descended on the city, one such enemy was waging a shadowy war against the cartel.

Everywhere, their assets came under fire. The physical security of manufactoria, storehouses and transport convoys was bypassed. Individuals whose safety should have been inviolate were assassinated, or else delivered into the bewildered hands of the Enforcers. Vladars, Administratum officials, justicii and the Valtteri’s myriad bought and paid political allies turned against them, blackmailed by unseen agents who knew things that they should not.

As a bitter winter closed in, the Valtteri were under attack. And they were losing.

It had rained in the night, and the steps leading up to Melita Voronova’s office shone with the promethium-slick sheen of toxic chemicals suspended in frozen water. Melita picked her way up, a gloved hand gripping the rail. She would have to remember to clean the glove – the corrosive substances that laced each drop of rainwater would eat through the cheap synthleather given half a chance.

Melita reached her office’s heavy steel door. Its sea-green surface showed the scars of more than one attempt to batter it open. She checked the small display screen inlaid into the brass vambrace clamped around her left forearm. Then she took a deep breath and keyed her access code into a discreet port beside the door. The battered metal swung open with only a slight complaint of stiff hinges.

‘Get out,’ she said to the darkness.

The figure waiting for her made no move to leave.

Melita stepped inside, leaving the heavy door open. Freezing air swirled in, carrying a flurry of grey snowflakes that drifted between Melita and the intruder.

‘I said, get out.’ Melita’s gloved hands balled into fists. She was a young, slight woman, but she was seized by a potent, barely suppressed anger.

The figure leant forward. He was sitting at her desk, his back to the complicated collection of machinery installed upon and around it. ‘It’s good to see you, Melita.’

‘I can’t say the same,’ she spat back.

It had been six years since she had last seen Mirislav Kohut in person. He had been standing just behind her parents, his eyes full of concern, as they bundled her into the back of a groundcar intended to take her away to the care of a distant relation.

Kohut didn’t appear to react to her anger. ‘You don’t seem surprised to see me.’

‘I had some warning,’ she said. She tapped a rune on her vambrace, and a metallic thunk resounded from the far corner of the dark room. Kohut’s head snapped towards the sound.

A chromed servo-skull detached from its charging cradle and glided forward on an invisible cushion of contragrav. Its ruby-red ocular sensor switched to full gain for a moment, bathing the office in crimson light. Its lower mandible had been removed, and the barrel of a needle gun jutted out from beneath a row of gold-plated teeth.

‘You still have Oriel?’ Kohut asked, sounding sincerely surprised. The servo-skull stopped, hovering off to Kohut’s right, forcing him to look at either Melita or her sinister guardian. ‘I would have thought the beastly thing would have broken down years ago.’

‘What do you want?’ Melita had no interest in reminiscing. It took all her self-restraint to not have the silvered skull shoot him dead where he sat.

Kohut turned back to her. ‘I want to save your life.’

Melita said nothing, her mind racing. Kohut stared back patiently. He had the same knowing eyes, the same neat goatee, though it was now scattered with grey. An elegant ochre cape fastened at his throat emphasised his narrow shoulders and slim frame. He looked very much like how she remembered him – the sage counsellor, always at her mother’s elbow. Uncle Mirislav had been her parents’ adviser for as far back as she could recall, and had been a constant presence amid the rotating series of tutors her parents had paraded in front of her.

Until he had decided that the Valtteri cartel could afford to pay him a stipend in closer accordance with his abilities.

‘What are you trying to save me from?’ Melita asked finally.

Kohut smiled. ‘Can we at least shut the door?’

Keeping her eyes on him, Melita reached out and flicked on the overhead lumens, and pushed the door closed. She settled back against the wall, as far from him as possible. ‘Talk. But first, get out of my chair.’

Kohut inclined his head in a mocking sign of deference. The wall opposite Melita was in fact a jumble of cogitator stacks and brass pipes from floor to ceiling, and so he stood beside her desk, hands clasped like a petitioner before a vladar. They each looked at one another carefully, Kohut weighing how best to begin, Melita fighting back a wave of memories and the hot, bitter pain of betrayal.

‘Have you heard from Elen Forser recently?’ Kohut asked suddenly.

‘What? No…’ Elen was an info-broker, like Melita – a specialist in the acquisition of information from those who had it and its sale to those who wanted it. She and Melita were not exactly friends – they had been at odds too many times for that – but they moved in the same circles.

‘Tobias Korese?’

‘No.’ Korese was another info-broker based in Dragosyl, and a persistent thief of Melita’s clients.

‘The Morlis?’

The Morli brothers were dead, sent to the crematoria-fields not two days earlier after a bloody and very public hit on the refec-house they had used as a front for their operation.

‘You’ve made your point.’ The analytical portion of her brain was working furiously, but she couldn’t move past the implications of what Kohut was saying. ‘Elen’s dead?’

Kohut’s lips twitched into a sympathetic smile.

And presumably Korese as well. It did not take a great leap of logic to connect these killings and Kohut’s presence in her office. Melita’s eyes narrowed. ‘The Valtteri are coming after info-brokers.’

Kohut nodded. ‘Indeed.’

‘This is about the manufactorum explosion?’ Melita had been monitoring the fallout from the Saladie-XV disaster carefully – she was doing a brisk business connecting grey-market suppliers of suddenly scarce machined parts with merchant-combines desperate to meet their production quotas. The cartel’s loss of face had made her own profiteering all the sweeter.

‘And the rest.’ Kohut sniffed. ‘They have suffered a number of setbacks in recent weeks that have not yet reached the public sphere.’

‘They?’ asked Melita, giving the word an acerbic bite.

Kohut threw up his hands. ‘Holy Throne, this is not the time for–’

‘No, you said “they”, like you’re not one of them.’ Melita could feel herself flushing. ‘Like you didn’t sell yourself to the Valtteri for a pat on the head and a tidy stipend. Like you didn’t sell them my parents–’

‘I don’t care what you think I did,’ Kohut said. ‘You should care about what I’m doing now. If you don’t listen to me, the Valtteri will kill you, and I won’t be able to stop them.’

‘Why?’

‘Why do you think?’ replied Kohut, in the manner of the tutor he’d once been.

‘No, I mean, why do you care about stopping them?’ she asked bitterly.

‘God-Emperor preserve me, you haven’t changed!’ Kohut started forward, making Oriel lurch to keep him in its sights. The man stopped moving, wary of agitating the servo-skull, but he pressed on. ‘Do you know what I’m risking? Do you know who’d be standing here if it wasn’t me? Someone who would not hesitate to kill you, and who wouldn’t be put off by Oriel or any other little tricks you might have lying around.’

They glared at one another for a long moment.

‘So why are they knocking off info-brokers?’ asked Melita.

Kohut sighed. ‘Because they’ve been compromised. Whoever is behind these attacks has cut through their security like it doesn’t exist. Nothing is safe. The directors are a hair’s breadth from killing each other, assuming that one of them has turned against the rest. A cipher-knife, a damned good one, in service to a rival organisation is the only explanation they have that doesn’t lead to all-out civil war.’

Melita briefly imagined what a civil war within a cartel of the size and power of the Valtteri would mean for everyone caught in the middle.

‘And so they’re willing to kill off anyone with the skills to do something like this, in the hope that they catch the actual knife among the bodies of the rest of us. If there even is one.’

Kohut shrugged. ‘Yes.’

Melita absorbed this with what she thought was remarkable equanimity.

‘So why did they send you after me?’ she asked after another pregnant pause.

‘They didn’t send me – I asked for the job,’ Kohut replied. Melita arched an eyebrow. ‘In deference to our… history, or so I said. They think I’m out hunting for you now. And they will, for the next two days, at most. After that, I’ll not be able to stall them, and the securitors will dispatch someone with more experience in the field of murder and dismemberment.’ He said this with a grim smile, as though it would disarm the dire threat his words contained.

Melita nodded. ‘So why?’

‘Why what?’

‘Why do you care about sparing me from their mob-handed justice? You came here to give me a two-day head start on them. Why?’

An inscrutable expression played across Kohut’s face. ‘Because I owe it to your mother,’ he said finally.

Melita’s hands twitched. ‘You want to think very carefully about what you say next.’

Kohut’s face contracted into something close to a snarl. ‘You have no idea what your mother was to me. Or your father. And I have no interest in enlightening you. If you wish to cling to your anger to the point that you’ll die just to spite me, I can’t stop you.’

‘So, what?’ said Melita, refusing to be chastened. ‘I’m supposed to run? Uproot everything I have and flee into the wilderness?’ Not, she knew, that there was much to uproot.

Kohut subsided. ‘You could run. Although that would likely mean a death sentence for me.’

‘Hardly a deterrent,’ Melita put in.

For a moment Kohut looked sincerely hurt, but he continued. ‘You could run. Or you could use these two days to save yourself.’

‘How?’

‘By finding out who is actually behind this.’ Despite Oriel’s threat, he took another step towards her. ‘You’re a skilled broker, Melita – it’s why you’re on their hit list. You can identify the real threat and stop anyone else from being caught in the net.’

Melita made a show of considering his words. ‘You’re telling me I should do in two days what the entire apparatus of the Valtteri cartel cannot?’

‘I didn’t say it would be easy.’ Kohut smiled, seized by a sudden fervour. ‘But if you can, you’ll have more than demonstrated the value you could offer to them.’

Melita blinked, blindsided by what she’d just heard.

‘Do you mean… Are you trying to recruit me?’

When Melita was born, Voronova Atmospheric Shipping had been a modest trans-orbital haulage combine running out of the Dragosyl voidports, and the front for a small but highly profitable smuggling organisation. It had been her mother’s family operation, running back four matriarchal generations, but under the combined leadership of her mother and father it had become increasingly successful. Too successful, as it turned out.

When they began to take up more of the market share for illicit shipping than the Valtteri were willing to allow, the threats began. VAS shuttles were sabotaged, or briefly impounded by bribed voidport inspectors. Members of their household staff were murdered. Melita’s uncle had been picked up by the Enforcers on charges of evading his tithe dues and given a ten-year sentence in the frozen polar promethium wells. The message had been clear.

Melita’s mother, a proud and haughty woman in whose veins ran the blood of thieves and alley fighters, had struck back. The storm that followed – the ruthless brutality with which the cartel had descended – had robbed Melita of her family and her future.

‘Are you seriously suggesting I should sell my service to the fucking Valtteri?’

‘I think it’s the best chance you’ll ever get to be something more than… this,’ Kohut said, with an unsubtle glance around her dishevelled office. ‘You’re an intelligent, gifted young woman, Melita. You always were. But you’re damned stubborn, and it’s going to get you killed if you don’t learn how to bend.’

Melita sneered. ‘Says the man so bent he takes the slate of those that murdered my parents, and who sent him to murder me.’

‘Fine,’ Kohut snapped, his patience finally worn through. ‘You have a choice. You don’t have to like it, but you have it. I’m giving it to you. Remember that.’

He crossed to the door, Oriel rotating silently to cover him at each step. He threw a dataslug at her. ‘This has all the details of the attacks to date. I’ll do my best to give you the two days. Do with them as you will.’ Kohut wrenched open the door, letting in another gust of frigid air. ‘You know how to reach me. Or, at least, I’m sure you can find out.’

He stalked out of Melita’s office. The wind slammed the heavy steel shut behind him.

Melita stared after Kohut for several minutes.

Her escape bag was stashed in a locker built into one leg of her desk, but she put it from her mind. She wouldn’t run.

For one thing, the Valtteri’s reach extended throughout the city – there was nowhere she could go and not find their agents waiting. The few allies and favours she could call on were all situated within a mere hundred miles of her office.

For another, she would rather lose a limb than abandon her equipment. Each cogitator, analytical engine and data-loom had been painstakingly acquired over the past four years; each hardline connection that burrowed into the city’s data-trunks had been established at crippling expense and effort. Melita’s skills as a cipher-knife and info-broker were highly transferable – the machinery needed to use them was not.

No, there was no question of abandoning what she had spent years creating. In just as painstaking a manner as gathering her equipment, Melita’s efforts to carve out her place within the tiers of the Spoil’s hierarchy had been long and tortuous. After years of grit, pretended confidence and no small amount of double-dealing, she had positioned herself outside the networks of fealty that held the squalid region together. She was a free agent, beholden to no one. She could act as a true intermediary – Melita was as close to an honest broker between parties as anyone in the Spoil could reasonably expect.

If she ran, the best she could hope for would be to fall into the orbit of some cartel, gang or criminal enterprise. Prostituting her services to one fool or another, and bound to serve their agenda. To be subject to their whims, and their failings.

Melita frowned. Kohut had thought that his suggestion that she could impress the Valtteri, could demonstrate her value to them, would be an inducement to take his advice. She could have spat, if it weren’t her own floor she would have fouled.

Melita’s business was information. She had heard about the seemingly random attacks on Valtteri facilities, and out of professional curiosity had looked into the string of criminal judgements and political diktats that had exposed whole swathes of their operations. She had taken a particular pleasure in seeing the all-pervading cartel suffer, and wished whoever was behind it the best of fortunes.

She swore, suddenly and viciously. The backlash against Melita and her competitors was entirely predictable, in keeping with the Valtteri’s approach to dealing with threats – she knew that better than most. For the gilded and powerful, collateral damage was merely the price others would bear.

She had a choice, as Kohut had said. But she would not run, and six years ago she had sworn she would not become one more victim of the Valtteri’s indiscriminate wrath.

From its vantage point near the ceiling, Oriel’s ocular sensor tracked Melita as she walked over to the tiny refec-station built into an alcove of her office and flicked on the caffeine box’s drip-feed. Then she headed to her desk, sat down heavily and drew a cogitator’s brass-bound input console towards her.

Eighteen hours later, Melita gave up.

She abandoned the console and shoved herself back from the desk. She rubbed her eyes with the heels of her hands and reached for a mug of recaff that had long since cooled. Half a dozen others, in various states of emptiness, had gathered together in one corner of her desk for solidarity.

The Valtteri were being hunted by a ghost. That was Melita’s working theory – their evil deeds had finally found them out, and a malevolent spirit had fallen from the void to punish them for their sins.

It was as good an explanation as any. After a full day of cutting into data-vaults and merchant-combine archives, trawling through thousands of reports and transcripts of interrogations, and even sifting through the raw binharic of half a dozen hardened information manifolds, she was no closer to identifying the Valtteri’s assailant than when she had started.

Whoever was orchestrating this was a master of Melita’s craft. With each data-bunker she had broken into, her respect – her awe – had grown. They had left no trace, no hint of their presence in any of the systems Melita cracked. She knew she was leaving evidence of her hunt – it was unavoidable, due both to the need for haste and to the technical reality of machine-code. No one, save perhaps the kryptolexigraphs of the Adeptus Mechanicus, could cut as cleanly as they had.

But somehow, they had. Each of the attacks on Valtteri assets had been meticulously constructed. They had penetrated the most elaborate webs of security, created vulnerabilities that should not have existed and seeded incredible chaos in their wake. After the first few hours, Melita had stopped wanting to catch the knife merely to save her life – she instead wanted to beg them to teach her their secrets.

She turned away from her desk, looking around for the first time in hours. It was dark – she had worked all through the day and well into the night. Through the bars outside her narrow windows, she could see snow falling, each thick flake illuminated by the red glow of her servo-skull’s eye as it patrolled back and forth.

As she often did when deep in a cut, she had let the vagaries of Oriel’s programming send it bobbing to and fro around the confines of her office. Melita told herself that it was for security – she regularly became so engrossed in a problem that she needed the gentle hum of its powercells as an external stimulus to keep at least part of her awareness rooted in the physical world. But, deep down, she knew that she used the skull in the same way the gilded kept felids and other domesticated creatures.

She ought to get some sleep. She’d taken a tab of cortex a few hours before to keep herself going, and it wouldn’t be long before the stimm’s down-swing kicked in. From past experience, she knew it would be better to sleep through the worst of it.

One of her cogitators burbled. Fresh text began to unfold, line by staccato line, down one of her secondary imagifers.

Melita looked between the small cot that was tucked against the back wall of her office and the green glow of scrolling text. She sat back down.

It was the result of a query she had slipped into the Setomir municipal transit authority’s manifold some hours earlier. She had been investigating the testimony of one of the household servants interrogated in the aftermath of the Tsvetanora assassination, who apparently thought she had been followed to her transit stop by a medium-yield cargo hauler on her way to the director’s compound four days before the attack. The Enforcers, to their credit, were evidently pursuing this same lead, but their report had not yet been uploaded to their nexus in the dataveil, and her contact inside Bastion-J had not yet responded to her call for information.

The query had yielded the vid footage from a traffic monitoring station that overlooked the transit stop in question. Her eyes aching and attention wandering, Melita duly scrubbed through the footage to the approximate timestamp and watched it through. Sure enough, a bulky cargo hauler did rumble into view. It halted at the crossroads, then drove on. It was entirely innocuous, as far as Melita could see.

She was about to give up, but as the vid ran on and the hauler receded into the distance, something about it tugged on a memory.

She switched to a different cogitator and brought up the vid-reel she had extracted from outside the perimeter wall of the Tsvetanora compound, and cycled to a timestamp just two days before the assassination of Lady Miesha. She ticked the vid forward carefully, then stopped.

The same hauler was there. Midway through the day, it had pulled up to the kerb, lingered for several minutes and then set off again. No one had got in or out of the boxy transport.

Melita pulled both vid-feeds into a single imagifer and ran them side by side.

She had been wrong. They were different vehicles, but through the grain and distortion of the two frozen vid-feeds they were easily mistakable as the same.

Melita felt a crackle of electricity track its way up her spine. She had no idea whether the similarity between the two vehicles was significant, but years of experience had made her sensitive to these moments. It had made her trust that these transient flashes of insight would, if pursued, lead to something tangible.

She edged her chair back towards the desk and looked between the Setomir transit record, the witness testimony and the two blurry images of the haulers.

She set down the mug of recaff, thoughts of sleep abandoned, and started digging again.

She surfaced after five more hours, head pounding and body shaking.

Melita stood on unsteady legs. Her forehead was a bar of hot agony. Each beat of her pulse pushed a fresh stab of pain into her brain. All the strength had drained from her limbs – she had to lean against the wall as she worked her way over to the refec-station.

Worst of all, she smelt like a sewer. Cortex, like many stimms of its kind, couldn’t be broken down by the human body in the same way as tabac and other recreational drugs. Melita’s shirt and breeches clung to a greasy film of sweat that reeked like the inflow pipe of a water-treatment plant.

But it was worth it – she had a lead. It was thin, incredibly thin, but it was a start. She had identified closed-top cargo haulers in proximity to subjects related to four of the recent attacks on Valtteri property and personnel. It was a different vehicle each time, but they were all of a similar size and tonnage, and despite the vehicles’ ubiquity on the streets of Varangantua they had all appeared to linger in spots where they stood out.

What it meant, she couldn’t begin to guess. The haulers had not actually been present during any of the strikes that had a definite time locus. Possibly the cipher-knife, whoever they were, was using the haulers as a transport for vox-thieves and other surveillance tools.

Melita let out a long sigh that turned into a painful, full-body shudder. She didn’t care any more. A full day at her equipment, attention split between half a dozen cuts and read-outs and reports, had burned her down to a nub. Plus the cortex’s comedown, of course.

She pulled open the refrigerator unit and pulled out a plastek bottle of purified water and a slim injector, then collapsed onto her cot, her back propped against the cold brick of the office wall.

Limp fingers managed to remove the bottle’s top on the third try. She gulped down half the water in one go, coughing as the cold liquid shocked her throat and chest. She let the bottle slump into the crook of her arm, then fumbled the chrome-plated injector into place against her wrist.

She had to rest, just for a minute. There would be time to run down the hauler lead, whatever it might mean, but for now she had to let her body recharge. She needed something to force her mind to let go of the problem. The injector clicked.

As the warm flush of sleeper rolled through her body, Melita set Oriel to alert her with an electrical jolt from her vambrace if anyone approached her office. Then she let herself slip into a narcotic stupor.

The smell woke her.

‘Oh, Throne of Terra.’

She had vomited on herself sometime during her drug-induced slumber. An awful mixture of masticated carb-bars and caffeine had dried onto her front.

Pale sunlight was pouring through the window slits in bright shafts that hurt Melita’s eyes. She checked the time on her vambrace – pre-noon, but not far off it.

Melita shifted position. She had been lucky to have passed out while sitting up – she had known more than a few sleeper abusers to choke to death on their reflux while in the grip of a hit. Then she felt a dampness about her legs, and cringed. ‘Shit.’

She looked down. The water bottle had tipped over, soaking the cot’s sheet. Better that than the alternative, but it was a waste of water, and slate.

At the second time of trying, Melita levered herself to her feet. She tottered over to the office’s door and checked that it was still secure, then pulled her soiled shirt over her head and threw it onto the cot.

The dim cone of light from Oriel’s eye panned over her, and she glared at the hovering skull. ‘Shut up.’

Despite her grim state, she felt better. Her headache was still present as a dull, background throb, and she was ravenously hungry, but otherwise the worst of the cortex had passed.

While she cleaned herself up as best she could with the sink in the ablutions chamber and one of the spare shirts she kept in the office, Melita considered what she knew, and what she should do next.

She couldn’t go to the Valtteri with a half-formed hunch that nondescript cargo haulers had been trailing members of their organisation. They were liable to shoot her for wasting their time, quite apart from their decision to indiscriminately murder anyone in her line of work.

After changing into fresh clothes, rinsing out her mouth with another bottle of water and forcing a pair of sickly-sweet carb-bars into her aching stomach, Melita slumped back into her chair. The cold synthleather accepted her like an old friend.

While the cogitators were warming up, she reviewed a data-slate on which she had noted everything of importance, which was very little. She had nothing else to go on besides the hauler lead, although she had diligently pursued that as far as she could. The model of vehicle was the same in every case, but no picter she had been able to access had caught a glimpse of the drivers. Each hauler was registered with a different freight firm or private citizen – two were even the property of Valtteri-affiliated merchant-combines.

A mixture of luck and persistence had given her one solid data point. Through painstaking effort, Melita had been able to follow the progress of one of the haulers she had linked with the Tsvetanora assassination through the streets of Korodilsk and the Spoil. She’d had to cut her way into over forty individual surveillance networks to do it, from Korodilsk’s central traffic-monitoring system to individual hardwired picters standing sentry over storefronts, scrubbing the footage as she went. She had almost lost it as it went deeper into the Spoil, but fortunately it had stuck to the main thoroughfares controlled by the Har Dhrol, who were more organised than most gangs when it came to managing their territory.

Her equipment finally worked its way up to operating capacity, and each of her imagifers buzzed into life. At the top of her feed was a message, blinking with electronic urgency. Melita sighed and flicked it open.

Predictably, it was Kohut, emphasising in graphic terms how little time she had left and the risk he was taking on her behalf. Another strike had taken place overnight.

This one had been an assassination attempt on the fourth son of Vojta Sobol, the vladar of Setomir. Before the assassin had taken his own life, he had made it plain to the terrified aristocrat that he was acting on the instruction of the Valtteri’s directors. It was clearly a set-up, but even so it was an extremely high-profile and effective attack on the Valtteri’s standing within the community of the gilded.

She read Kohut’s message again. She didn’t bother to draft a reply.

Melita had exhausted every other avenue of investigation she could reach from the confines of her office, and she had nothing substantial with which to keep the threatened cartel from killing her the next chance they had.

There was nothing else for it. She would have to go out to the Spoil and look for herself.

‘You look like shit,’ Edi Kamensk said by way of greeting.

Melita didn’t reply. She had bound her greasy hair up into a short tail and washed the previous day’s grime from her face, but there was little she could do to conceal a cortex hangover, and she had no interest in making the attempt.

Edi sniffed. ‘Throne above, and you smell worse. I’m not letting you into Katuschka smelling like that.’

Katuschka was Edi’s pride and joy, an old Dymaxion Model 34. He stood beside the groundcar, looking across its polished roof at Melita. The street outside her office was busy with late-afternoon bustle, and the sleek vehicle drew jealous glances from several passers-by.

‘I’ll pay for the valeting,’ said Melita. Her headache had started to gather in strength again, and she was not in the mood to be out on the street on a winter’s day any longer than she had to. She had pulled on her groxskin gloves and a worn overcoat, but the waterproofed synthcloth was too thin to offer any decent protection against the biting wind.

In his spun-polymer jacket and thick gauntlets, Edi did not appear to feel the cold. ‘Do I get to know where we’re going, and why?’ Edi Kamensk spoke in the gruff, battered tones of a life spent on the streets, breathing Varangantua’s polluted air and self-medicating with lho-sticks and cheap alcohol.

Melita flicked the loc-ref from her vambrace over to the Model 34’s machine-spirit and tugged on the passenger door release. ‘I’ll tell you on the way. Now get in.’

Edi shrugged, and released the door’s latch as he sank into the driver’s seat.

Melita keyed Oriel’s controls, and the silver servo-skull glided towards her. She had clamped a lattice of wires and thin brass bands over her upper arm and left shoulder, secured with straps drawn tight across her chest and back. It was a framework of her own design, a poor imitation of an unpowered exoskeleton. The haughty magi of the Mechanicus would, no doubt, have been appalled, but the lattice allowed Oriel to interface directly with Melita’s vambrace without the lag of vox-connection. The servo-skull settled on her shoulder with a loud clunk. Melita climbed into the groundcar’s passenger seat, ignoring Edi’s malignant glare.

‘Do we need to bring that thing along?’ he asked, scowling.

‘Just drive.’

Edi shook his head, but woke Katuschka’s engines. The groundcar pulled away smoothly from the kerb.

‘A little irritable today,’ Edi observed.

‘So would you be.’ Melita relayed the situation she had found herself in as Edi drove through Dragosyl’s busy streets.

Despite putting up a good front when she had to, Melita was no fighter. Even if she had been, her short stature and innocent face didn’t intimidate many of the Spoil’s gangsters, or do much to impress her few upclave clients. For this reason, Melita often worked with a number of private bodyguards, street-blades and other muscles for hire.

Edi Kamensk had been a sanctioner with Bastion-J for thirty-two years, and when he had retired he’d simply swapped his bluejacket’s shock maul for a more discreet jawsnapper. Over the past four years, Melita had come to rely on him almost exclusively. This was in part due to her frustration with the deficiencies, as she saw them, of so many of his fellow mercenaries, but mainly because of Edi’s continued patience with her choleric, self-destructive behaviour.

Melita occasionally wondered at the source of that patience. From her thorough digging into his background, she knew Kamensk had been married for most of his time as an Enforcer, but that no children had resulted from the union. Although, if he’d been looking for a surrogate daughter, he’d made a catastrophic mistake in choosing Melita.

‘I’d have run,’ said Edi, offering his taciturn judgement on the whole affair once Melita was finished.

‘Well, you’re smarter than me,’ replied Melita, staring out of the groundcar’s window.

‘The Valtteri are out of your league, girl. They have every castellan in the Bastion in their pocket, and more besides. And whoever’s out to get them are likely another set of gilded bastards with no compunction about crushing an inconvenience like you.’

‘We are judged by the quality of our adversaries,’ Melita said offhand. Then she felt a weight settle in her stomach. That particular fragment of the Primarch Guilliman’s wisdom had been one of her mother’s favourite sayings. She had used it in reference to the Valtteri just as glibly.

‘I’m just saying, there aren’t many ways this ends well for you.’

Melita said nothing, and sank lower into Katuschka’s heated synthleather.

As a favour to Edi, Melita had set up the Dymaxion with a vox-caster that broadcast a rotating set of Administratum officials’ credentials, allowing them to speed down the via favora unchallenged, avoiding the worst of the district’s notorious traffic.

The streets quickly shed the pretences of civilisation as they passed into the ill-defined border between Dragosyl and the Spoil, until finally they crossed the Kerysk Bridge over the Rustwater and they were abandoned entirely.

Edi sat up straighter as they crossed the bridge, letting the Model 34 find its own way towards Melita’s loc-ref. Melita noticed his left hand did not leave the butt of his Sulymann Engager, a massive hand-cannon that he holstered in the groundcar’s central console. As an Enforcer, Edi had rarely passed beyond the marches of the Rustwater and the Chimneys, in deference to the carefully maintained treaty between the gangster-lords of the Spoil and the castellans, justicii and vladars of the encircling districts. As a private citizen and bodyguard to those whose professions were, at best, semi-legal, he had become more familiar with the warrens and haunts of the crumbling territory.

Melita quietly patted the outline of her own sidearm, an expensive snub-nosed Mons-pattern laspistol that was tucked into a shoulder sheath beneath her coat, and watched the decaying brickwork and rusting metal flash by.

‘How do we get up there?’

Melita and Edi stood at the base of a derelict hab-block. Or, at least, Melita assumed it was derelict – she couldn’t imagine anyone living in a building that was entirely missing its eastern wall.

As the remaining shards of sunlight were settling beneath the smog bank, they had reached the last known position of the hauler, an overpass on the edge of Har Dhrol territory. Lacking any other ideas on how to proceed, Melita had begun scanning the local frequencies as they drove up and down one ruined street after another. She had reasoned that any organisation with the ability to pull off the kind of cuts she had been searching for would have ample electronic security for their base of operations.

Through undeserved good fortune, she had found an active internal vox-net, apparently centred on an old warehouse not three minutes’ drive from the overpass, and in the direction the hauler had been travelling.

They had circled the area once and then climbed out of the conspicuous Dymaxion. Edi had set his precious Katuschka to drive a random pattern until called for, deeming it much safer than leaving it stationary and unaccompanied anywhere in the Spoil. Even so, he had given the machine a fond, concerned look as it drove off into the twilight.

Now, they stood at the opening to an alley, both on edge, looking for a way to get up onto the rooftops so they could approach the warehouse from above. Behind them, Oriel rotated slowly, sensors alert for any suggestion of a threat.

Melita was staring up at the open face of the building. Tiny, ruined domiciles had been cracked open and exposed to the elements. Their contents, if the unfortunates who had lived here had ever had any possessions, were long since lost.

‘We could just try the door,’ said Edi.

They walked back out to what was, nominally, the front of the building. Edi glanced up and down the street, then squared himself up to the block’s fibreboard door and slammed his heel against its face. The flimsy material burst under the impact.

They made their way up the hab-block’s stairwell, Edi leading with his hand-cannon drawn. The stench of human misery was everywhere, strong enough to make Melita gag. As they climbed she was certain she saw movement, and heard hushed voices behind the paper-thin walls. She felt a twinge of guilt – with all the misfortunes heaped upon whoever called this place their home, she regretted adding fear to them, even for a moment.

They reached the roof, oriented themselves and set off towards the warehouse.

They clambered from building to building, jumping when they had to, though in most cases each structure leant so close to its neighbour that they could merely step across the gaps.

More than once, Edi held up a hand. They froze, Edi scanning the rooftops to see who else was with them. Either no one was there or no one thought it wise to accost them.

As they neared the warehouse, the reach of its vox-net became strong enough for Melita to access it directly. Sat in the lee of a cold chimney stack, she started cutting.

Without any of her equipment to aid her, she could only draw on the limited computational power of Oriel and her vambrace to augment her own deft touch. But, to her surprise, these appeared to be enough – despite the sophistication of the operation that was attacking the Valtteri, she was able to cut her way through the buffers and logic traps without significant resistance.

‘Is this the place?’ asked Edi after Melita announced her success.

Melita was sceptical, but they had invested too much time to turn back now. ‘Let’s hope so.’

With access to the vox-net in place, she set about undermining the building’s security.

Edi reached out with a fist-sized lump of metal as they crept towards the door. The lock-cycler magnetically clamped itself over the tumbler, and as it started clicking Melita called up the first of her preprogrammed subversions of the warehouse’s security. Edi gave her a sharp nod as the cycler finished its work. She ran the routine to disable the door’s several alarms, and in the same moment Edi carefully pulled it open. He slipped inside, the enormous Engager gripped in one hand.

Melita became sharply aware of the sound of her breathing. The faint hum of Oriel’s contragrav pump. The occasional shouts, screams and crashes from the street below. The silence seemed to amplify everything. The cold was making Melita’s hands ache, but she dared not even move them for fear that the flexing groxskin would make a sound.

One of Edi’s gauntleted hands emerged from the doorway, beckoning her. Melita crept over, slipped the lock-cycler into her pocket and went inside.

They were on a gantry overlooking a small loading area. The metal catwalk ran around grey perimeter walls and crossed the open space at intervals. Loops of chain hung from pulleys mounted on wheeled cranes that ran the length of each gantry, all of it seized and coated with rust.

A picter was pointing directly at the door through which Edi and Melita had entered, but her subversion code was at work, feeding the picter its own memories.

They made their way across the gantry, each step raising a jarring clatter from the chains that held the walkway aloft. Melita had to force herself not to flinch at each click and crunch of metal links.

The gantry led to another door on the far side of the loading area, which also yielded to the lock-cycler. Beyond it, the walkway projected out over an empty storeroom that stretched away beneath them.

Like most industrial spaces in Varangantua, the warehouse had clearly served numerous functions, each one imprinting something on the building’s bones. They walked above the crumbled remains of internal walls, built, demolished and rebuilt again as necessity demanded. In the centre of one stretch of rockcrete was the frame of an enormous trip-hammer. Its pneumatics had been stripped away, leaving the massive iron head and arm to rust on its pivot.

Melita sent Oriel flying out into the empty air, extending its sensoria to the fullest. She pointed past Edi’s shoulder. ‘Thermal bloom, three hundred yards.’ He nodded, and they pressed on carefully.

They passed over disused offices, collapsed storage containers and the flaking remnants of a dozen industrial works, all stripped of working parts or recyclable sheet metal. It was unusual for anything useful in the Spoil to remain discarded for long – all-pervading poverty ensured that anything that could be repurposed would be.

They were approaching the far wall of the storeroom when Melita’s vambrace clicked – Oriel had detected sound and movement from the chamber ahead. Melita tapped Edi on the shoulder and they both froze, praying that the residual jangle of chains would not carry down to the warehouse floor.

A shutter separating the storeroom from the next space suddenly crunched into motion, a rotating motor pulling each plate up onto the spindle with a horrible racket. Three men ducked beneath it, followed by a servitor once the shutter had risen sufficiently.

The leading man was of average height but stood as broad as an ogryn, all neck muscles and hunched posture. He walked like an abhuman too, shoulders rolling beneath a heavy synthleather jacket, each step hammering the ground like it had done him an insult. Barely restrained violence bled from him, as was evident by the way his companions cringed away from his every gesture.

They passed directly beneath Melita and Edi, consumed in conversation, and headed away down one of the warehouse’s side passages.

‘I know that man,’ whispered Edi after they were out of sight.

‘Old friend from the Bastion?’

Edi shook his head. ‘No. Well, yes, but a different division. Name’s Jorg Rakove. Worked with him on some big deployments. He got out a year before me.’

Melita logged that for later. Oriel had captured picts and vid of each man – with luck, she would be able to extract the audio of their conversation.

With another drawn-out clatter, the shutter from which Rakove and his men had emerged began to descend.

Edi and Melita were about seventy yards from the warehouse’s far wall, still motionless on the suspended gantry. There was no door or way through to the room beyond at their level, and the thermal bloom lay directly ahead. They looked at one another, and then broke into a kind of shuffling, muted run.

Edi led them down a flight of stairs that was fixed to the rough rockcrete wall, Engager held ready and eyes on the corridor into which Rakove and his companions had disappeared. Melita felt terribly exposed as they reached the open floor, and quickly ducked under the rattling metal shutter. Edi had to awkwardly roll through before the bottom plate struck the ground.

He rose to find Melita grinning. In front of them were five medium-gauge haulers, drawn up in a rank.

They were in another loading depot, this one much larger than the one through which they had entered. Away to Melita’s right, the space narrowed to a grey rockcrete passage just wide enough for two of the haulers to drive side by side.

Melita glanced at her vambrace and confirmed that one of the vehicles’ engines was the heat source they had been approaching. Evidently the three men had just returned from doing… what?

Edi suddenly grabbed her arm and pulled her into the shadow of the closest hauler.

At the rear of the depot, opposite the accessway, a set of poured-rockcrete steps with a corroded handrail led up to what Melita presumed was once an overseer’s office. The room was faced with a set of windows, the plex broken in several places. A pair of figures stood with their backs to the cracked panes.

Melita and Edi waited, uncertain of what to do next. Above them, neither figure moved.

Oriel hovered close behind Melita, which prompted a thought. She had Oriel drift slowly up from behind the hauler’s cab, careful to remain concealed, while she looked through its ocular sensor via the small screen of her vambrace.

The two figures remained perfectly still. Playing a hunch, she overlaid a thermal imaging filter. She grinned and nudged Edi. ‘They’re servitors,’ she mouthed. Their body-heat readings were significantly lower than unadulterated humans’.

She gestured up at Oriel, then at the office. Edi shrugged in reply. They had come this far.

Melita tapped a brief sequence into her vambrace, and the guardian servo-skull glided forward. It stopped a few yards from the rear wall, to one side of the broken windows. Both servitors appeared to be oblivious to its presence.

Oriel approached a void in the broken plex. Its needle gun spat twice in rapid succession, then the skull spun quickly and fired twice more.

Nothing happened, which was as Melita had hoped. A significant portion of Oriel’s hollow skull was taken up by magazines of crystallised neurotoxins, which were fed by autoloaders into its needle gun. The brittle darts could incapacitate or kill, depending on her command. Though it was hard to judge the efficacy of sedatives on the physiology of servitors, Melita hoped that merely tranquilising the cybernetic slaves would allow them to investigate the overseer’s office and still make a stealthy retreat from the warehouse.

Edi dashed from the cover of the hauler to the base of the steps. The servitors did not appear to react. He made his way up, hand-cannon raised. Melita crossed the loading depot and followed him up.

They stopped on either side of the doorway, looking inside. Neither servitor had moved, and they appeared to be slumped forward, limbs slack.

Melita stared. Both forearms of the nearest servitor had been amputated at the elbow and replaced with what looked like high-capacity autopistols. Craning her head, she could see that the other had had the same crude alteration.

Edi drew her attention to the more important feature of the room. ‘What the hell is that?’

A transparent hemisphere of plex was mounted on a stainless-steel trolley, the kind found in every medicae facility in the city. A set of thick polymerised hoses ran from metal junctions in the plex to a set of ventilators and other machines stacked against one wall, besides which was another doorway that presumably led deeper into the warehouse.

A body, terribly pale, lay inside what Melita could not help but see as a glass coffin.

There were picters in each corner of the room, all fixed on the gurney. She checked her vambrace and, after quickly cycling through the list of connected systems, gave Edi a tense nod. They, like the others, were in the thrall of her subversion code.

They forced the lock and stepped inside.

The coffin’s occupant was a boy, naked except for the shackles that bound him to cleats attached to its metal bottom. His head was shaved and his skin was pale, almost translucent. A wicked-looking agony-collar was clamped around his neck. Melita thought he looked about fifteen or sixteen years old, Terran standard, although his wasted flesh made that a rough guess at best.

A slightly overlarge parietal bone, exaggerated by his shaven head, made it clear why he was restrained and drugged into somnolence.

Edi said it first. ‘Emperor protect us. It’s a damned psyker.’

Understanding dawned all at once, like an opaque crystal suddenly ghosting into transparency.

The Valtteri’s assailants, whoever they were, had a psyker, someone who could pull the secrets from someone’s mind. No wonder there were no traces of cutting in the data-vaults Melita had cracked – they had simply bypassed them altogether and gone straight to the source. Melita realised she had been right, in a way – they had evidently been driving the restrained psyker around the city in the haulers, putting him into proximity with those whose heads contained the knowledge they needed to wreak havoc on the Valtteri’s operations.

Edi thrust out his Engager like a talisman, but Melita put her hand in front of its muzzle.

‘Stop! He’s just a boy.’

‘It’s a Throne-damned psyker! We should kill it.’

‘No! He’s all the evidence we need.’ Melita spoke without thinking, but realised she was right. If they could smuggle the boy out of the warehouse and get him to the Valtteri, she would have given them all the proof they needed and defanged the threat to their operation at the same time.

‘Then we kill it and take the corpse!’

Melita looked up at the former sanctioner, his face contorted by a terrible blend of horror and fury, then down at the unconscious boy, bound and collared. He had been enslaved by whoever had set up this place, and was evidently being tortured into using his unnatural abilities for their ends.

She gently but firmly pushed Edi’s gun hand down. ‘We’re taking him with us. Alive.’

Melita studied the controls for the coffin and gingerly adjusted a few of them. A slight hiss started from one of the machines, and the read-outs showed the intermix of gases changing.

She watched the gauges fall. When the system registered that the last of the anaesthetic had been purged from the chamber, Melita started disconnecting the hoses.

As she released the final connection, the boy’s eyes snapped open. He looked up at Melita, and he screamed.

Pale lips pulled back from teeth in a rictus of indescribable pain, but no sound escaped the inch-thick plex. His hands scrabbled at the clear glass, but they were constrained by cuffs that did not permit him to reach the agony-collar locked around his throat.

Edi jerked back from the coffin, levelling the hand-cannon. Melita quickly stepped between him and the psyker.

Tears ran down the boy’s cheeks, and still he screamed. Melita tapped the plex urgently and placed a finger against her lips. He stared up at her, and slowly stifled his pain. His eyes were overlarge and an unnervingly pale grey. She couldn’t meet his stare, and instead concentrated on releasing the coffin’s latches.

She heaved open the lid, grunting with the effort. An unpleasant cocktail of smells wafted from the coffin – the medical tang of the equipment combined with the rank odour of the boy’s unwashed body.

‘You need to come with us,’ she said, enunciating each word quietly but carefully.

The boy could not move to respond, but Melita saw understanding in his eyes. She leant into the coffin, reaching for the collar’s clasp.

‘Voronova…’ Edi breathed, but she ignored him. Her fingers found the clasp. She gripped, twisted, and the ghastly device fell away from the boy’s neck.

Melita saw something move in the reflection of the plex, and then bullets started streaming past her head.

Slack-jawed and still in a state of semi-paralysis, the servitor took an unsteady step forward and fired. The spray of bullets ricocheted from the coffin’s thick plex between Melita and Edi. Melita flung herself to one side.

Edi’s Engager roared, two monstrous blasts that rang from the cell’s walls. Melita covered her ears without thinking. Each shot punched a ragged hole in the servitor’s grey flesh, and it flopped backwards in a crumpled heap.

‘Run, girl!’ Edi fired again as the second servitor twitched, hammering a burst of solid shot into the floor. Oriel spat a pair of lethal darts into the lobotomised creature for good measure, and it crashed to the floor, a puppet with its strings cut.

Melita leapt to her feet and immediately staggered into the gurney. The report of Edi’s hand-cannon had felt like a punch to her head, shaking her senses.

She looked up to find that her face was barely inches from the psyker’s. He looked at her through the plex, eyes wide, and she looked back.

‘Melita, let’s go!’ shouted Edi.

She reached over the coffin’s lip and started pulling at the stiff fibres that bound the boy to the gurney. ‘We have to take him with us.’

Edi grabbed her shoulder. ‘Are you insane? We need to get out of here.’

‘Help me!’

The door beside them was wrenched open, and Edi whirled from her side. He fired through the opening, not caring at what. Whatever it was fell back, making an awful gargling sound.

Melita reached into her coat and pulled out a matt-grey multi-tool, and began slicing at the psyker’s bonds with its blade extension. The boy said nothing, but continued to stare at Melita in mute appeal.

Edi clicked open the huge chamber of his hand-cannon, discarded the shell casings and inserted fresh rounds. ‘Melita, come on!’

‘I can’t leave him.’ She continued sawing at the bonds.

Indecision gripped Edi for the span of three heartbeats. ‘Shit!’

He pulled his own knife from a sheath at his boot and cut through the remaining restraint. He reached past Melita and hauled the thin youth from the coffin. Melita tried to help him down, but the boy writhed away from both their grips.

As he struck the floor, the door beside them flew back on its hinges, slammed aside by a grey-skinned servitor with an enormous autogun for an arm. Melita and Edi leapt apart, the old sanctioner loosing a shot from the hip.

At their feet, the boy staggered up and took off, plunging down the steps to the loading bay.

‘Fuck!’ yelled Edi. ‘Get after it!’ He fired again before turning to give chase.

The boy was halfway across the depot before Melita and Edi reached the door, racing away on unsteady legs. They both leapt over the railing and gave chase, Oriel following overhead.

The shutter to the warehouse began to clatter open as the boy hurtled past, letting in the sound of men shouting and canids barking. Edi grabbed Melita’s hand and pulled her into the space between two haulers, still running. Someone lying beneath the rising shutter started firing. Bullets struck the cargo transports’ massive tyres.

They chased after the psyker as he fled down the accessway, and were in turn pursued by his captors. The rockcrete tunnel curved right and sloped downwards. Several times the psyker slipped, bare feet cut and slick with blood.

Melita heard metal striking rockcrete, tearing at it, and she glanced over her shoulder.

Two enormous canids were charging after them. Their muzzles had been replaced with appallingly sharp metal jaws, their back legs with huge augmetics which hurled them down the curving tunnel. They barked as they ran, monstrous sounds pulled from children’s nightmares. Melita had no breath to scream and simply tried to run faster.

The accessway’s curve became sharper as it funnelled into a single lane. The cyber-mastiffs’ snarls were close behind, and at the corner Edi turned and fired at the nearest beast. The shots went wide.

Melita spun at the sound of gunfire and pulled her laspistol free of its sheath.

Oriel spat a handful of darts that bit into the lead canid’s haunches. It stumbled but didn’t fall. Edi fired again, and this time the massive shells found their mark. The cyber-mastiff collapsed, its front quarters blown free in a welter of blood.

Heedless, the second cyber-hound raced closer. Edi’s Engager clicked empty.

The mastiff’s muscles were coiled bundles beneath taut black fur. This was what it was bred and built for – to run down fleeing prey and clamp its metal jaws to flailing limbs, to worry its hamstrung targets until the handlers could catch up and restrain what was left. Cyber-mastiffs were a valuable tool in the arsenal of the Enforcers – the irony of which, in the moment, was lost on Edi Kamensk.

He thrust his free hand into a pocket. It came out sheathed in a burnished metal band. The jawsnapper’s emitter crackled into life in the same moment the cyber-mastiff leapt at him. His fist met the canid’s steel-wrapped muzzle with a crunch of crumpling metal and a bellow of pain from Edi.

The weight of the canid bore him to the ground. Melita’s stubby laspistol cracked and Oriel’s needler flashed. Melita’s first shot missed, but the second took the canid in the centre of its skull. She kept firing, fear firmly in control, until she had blasted its jaw free and its iron-shod claws stopped sparking on the rockcrete.

A desperate cough emerged from beneath the bloody fur. ‘Get this thing off me.’ Edi struggled beneath the awful bulk of the dead mastiff. Melita grabbed a leg, recoiling at the heat radiating from it, and levered the canid off her bodyguard. He climbed to his feet, cradling his left arm.

Las-bolts flitted past them, and they both turned to run.

The tunnel ended twenty yards ahead in a heavy iron gate.

‘Shit!’ Edi leapt into cover behind a pillar, and Melita dropped down after him, her brass lattice scraping against the stone.

The psyker was there. Both Edi and Melita fell back in surprise and fright, and the naked boy cringed away from them. Bullets ricocheted inches from Melita’s head and she rolled back behind the rockcrete stanchion.

After another fearful glance at the boy, Edi and Melita stood up and fired blindly down the tunnel.

‘Can you get this open?’ Edi shouted over the blaze of gunfire.

Her laspistol emptied its charge. She thrust it into her shoulder sheath and began working furiously at her vambrace. Beside her, the psyker pressed himself into the damp rockcrete, hands pressed to his eyes, as though willing himself to disappear entirely.

Edi and Oriel traded shots with their pursuers, who were now at the bend in the tunnel, but the weight of fire was far from even. Las and solid rounds hammered past them to strike the gate’s face. A pair of bullets struck Oriel, leaving black tracks in its chrome surface. The servo-skull loosed a steady stream of needles in reply, indifferent to the danger.

‘Get the gate open, Melita!’

‘I can’t.’ Her carefully threaded access had been lost – evidently someone had found her connection, or simply reset the warehouse’s vox-net.

‘The code is Cu-6-Beta-47.’

Melita and Edi both turned to stare at the psyker, who looked back at them with wide, frightened eyes. His voice had been soft and oddly high, and it took Melita a moment to recover.

She climbed to her feet and punched the alphanumerics into the gate’s pad. The heavy metal began to rise.

Melita felt something brush past her. She turned in time to see the psyker stumble through the hailstorm of fire and into cover on the far side of the tunnel.

‘Stop! Just stay there!’ Melita pleaded.

The fire redoubled as whoever they were fighting saw that their captive’s escape was near. Edi fired the last rounds from his Engager and pushed Melita towards the gate in preparation to duck under.

‘Wait!’ she shouted. The psyker scrambled under the gate.

‘Melita, go!’ Edi shoved her head down and started rolling himself. Melita scrabbled on all fours and emerged into a gust of freezing air and driving snow.

She looked around. The psyker was gone.

‘Where is it?’ shouted Edi as he climbed to his feet, pulling Melita bodily away from the still-rising gate. ‘Where is it?’

‘I don’t know!’ Melita screamed back. She felt suddenly bereft. Everything they had just been through was for nothing without the psyker. ‘Where’s the groundcar?’

The sound of roaring engines echoed from the faces of the crumbling buildings. Katuschka sped towards them, and Edi and Melita ran to meet it. Melita turned back to see Oriel fly out of the tunnel, sparks raining from its ruptured chrome, then head after them.

The groundcar slewed to a stop. The doors swung open at Edi’s command and they dived in, Oriel slipping through behind Melita a second before she slammed the door. Edi floored the accelerator.

‘Throne on Terra.’ Melita gripped her seat’s armrests as the Dymaxion’s wheels spun on the icy asphalt. Its tyres found their purchase and the groundcar burst into motion, leaving the warehouse and its lobotomised security in its wake.

They drove in silence, retracing their route out of the Spoil. Shapes appeared and flew past in the darkness. Melita sat stock-still, her muscles refusing to untense. Her breath hissed in and out through clenched teeth.

She looked over at Edi. She had never seen him so angry – his grip on the Dymaxion’s steering column looked tight enough to buckle the polished metal.

‘I need to make a call to my old castellan,’ he said suddenly.

‘What? Why?’

He glanced at her, anger and disappointment clear to see. ‘For my entire career, my job was to put those things down. I’ve put habclaves under cordon for months. I helped purge entire blocks on the strength of a rumour that one was inside…’ He trailed off for a moment. ‘And now I’ve actually seen one. I touched one…’ He took his hands from the steering column to make the sign of the aquila across his chest. ‘And you let the damned thing loose!’

‘We’ll find it,’ Melita said quickly, caught between shame and a reflexive defensiveness. ‘Oriel recorded everything. We’ll find it.’

Edi drove on, ignoring her unconvincing promises. As they finally rattled over the Kerysk Bridge, Melita forced herself to speak. ‘You can’t go to the castellan.’

‘What?’ Edi asked angrily, turning from the road to her.

‘You can’t speak to him, not yet. I need time to get clear of this first.’

‘While that witch has the run of the city? Those things are like lice – they burrow into the deepest recesses and they fester and breed.’

‘He’s just a boy,’ she said quietly.

Edi growled. He actually growled, a guttural rumble of restrained anger. ‘There was a time I’d haul you into the Bastion for saying that.’

‘“Innocence proves nothing,”’ Melita quoted bitterly, her own temper rising.

‘You’re damn right, girl!’ the old sanctioner roared in reply.

‘They’re going to kill me, Edi.’ Melita was not proud of the tremor she allowed to enter her voice. ‘I had two days to find him, and even though I have, there’s every chance the fucking cartel will just shoot me out of spite. If I bring the Enforcers into this as well…’ She trailed off. ‘I need to get clear of this. Just give me a day. Please.’

Edi’s white-knuckled grip on the Dymaxion’s steering column did not weaken. It was a long, long time before he finally spoke.

‘Fine.’

The nightlife of Dragosyl was in full flow by the time they returned to her office. Melita waited for a break in the crowd, then climbed out. She looked back at Edi through the open door.

‘Edi… thank you.’

The old sanctioner glanced up at her, his expression softening slightly. ‘Do you want me to stick around?’

‘No, I’ll be fine.’

He nodded. ‘I’ll be in touch. Be careful.’ He pulled away without waiting for a reply.

Melita watched him go, then pulled herself up the steps to her office.

The dark, empty space beyond the steel doorway yawned wide, seeming to suck the last of the energy from her bones. The smell of vomit from the soiled clothes on the cot was a subtle, stomach-churning tang in the air.

She seemed to sag, all at once, and almost collapsed against the door. An adrenaline comedown was nothing compared with the after-effects of a dose of cortex, but she still felt strung out, her nerves firing at every sound from the street. Her hands had started shaking sometime during the drive, and she couldn’t get them to stop.

Without really thinking about it, Melita crossed to her desk, flipped open a small metal container and picked up a charged cotin inhaler. She put the plastek emitter to her lips and sucked in a deep breath.

She stood there for a moment, wobbling on exhausted legs, letting the cotin haze roll over her.

The brass-bound consoles were waiting for her, and Melita felt another wave of tiredness crash into her. Despite what she’d said to Edi, and despite the looming threat of the Valtteri’s justice, she couldn’t face the prospect of slumping back behind her machines and the inevitable chaos that would unfold from contacting Kohut.

She pulled Oriel’s lattice from her aching shoulder and let it fall to the floor with a metallic crash. She ordered the servo-skull into its charging cradle and set its memory spools to exload onto her primary data-loom. Then, inhaler in hand, she left her office, slamming the steel door behind her.

Melita trudged up to the hab-tower’s wide steel-and-plex doors and punched her resident’s number into the keypad. The doors swung open, letting her into the austere, brightly lit lobby.

Towers like the Seviro filled a very specific niche in the hierarchy of the city’s habitation provision. Each domicile in the narrow thirty-storey building was a tiny one-person pod, of sufficient size to give someone a place to sleep and somewhere to keep whatever possessions they could fit into a single built-in storage unit. They catered to the stratum of society who disdained the collective squalor of most hab-blocks and the forced intimacy of gated habclaves but who lacked the wealth for anything more opulent, and whose lives were almost entirely lived outside their homes.

It suited Melita nicely.

Her empty stomach lurched as the mag-lift carried her to her floor. The rear wall of the elevator was made of thick plate glass, presenting a fine view of the district’s sprawl as she rose into the night sky. Lights in every hue and tone speckled the silhouettes of hab-complexes and commercia precincts, joy houses and chapels. Hundreds of chameleon-screens blazed in the darkness. In the distance she could see the Arelon starscrapers and the lumens that dotted the thin gondola cables strung between the three imposing megastructures like arachnid silk. She took another pull of cotin. Looking at the city like this, with all the grime and detail concealed by distance and darkness, it was almost possible to mistake it for somewhere beautiful.

The mag-lift slowed to a stop, and Melita padded out and along the carpeted hallway.

As she walked, it slowly dawned on her that she could hear music. It was a familiar piece, full of brisk viols and triumphant brass. She went further down the hallway, and the music grew louder.

It was coming from her pod.

It had been a long and exhausting few days, and the cotin had done its work, encasing her senses in a warm cocoon. Melita reached her door and unthinkingly keyed in her access code.

The door slid open. The psyker looked up from her bed, eyes wide and unblinking.

Her cotin high evaporated like mist. She fumbled for her laspistol and drew it on the second attempt. She ducked inside her hab, slapped the door controls to close and waved the pistol at him. ‘You shouldn’t be here,’ Melita said, pulse racing. It was the first and only thought that came into her mind. He couldn’t be here.

A thick shirt, much too big for him, was draped over his shoulders, and he had found some breeches to cover himself. He was still barefoot, and a mixture of melted snow and watery blood from his lacerated soles stained the pod’s smooth polymer floor.

‘My name is Alim.’ He had a soft, small voice that Melita could barely hear over the music. She reached out and shut off the audio player, then jerked back upright, standing as far from him as she could within the tiny domicile.

The boy’s grey eyes followed her movements. A ring of bleeding weals encircled his neck – the mark of the agony-collar Melita had removed.

‘My name is Alim,’ he said again. He stayed sitting on the edge of her bed, hunched into a cringing posture, both hands raised slightly before him. ‘The music. It… it helped.’

‘How did you know to come here? How did you get in?’

He looked down at his feet. Of course, she realised, no doors were barred to him – he must have clawed the domicile’s location and door code from her mind while she had been freeing him from the warehouse. Though how he’d got here before her, she could only guess.

‘I stole a groundcar,’ he said in answer to her unspoken question.

Melita went pale, but fought for calm. The boy was no kind of physical threat – his ribs showed beneath pale, wasted flesh – but he was a psyker. A witch, to be abhorred and feared.

‘I’m Melita,’ she said carefully. ‘But I suppose you know that already.’

He looked up, nodding quickly. A look of strange eagerness overtook his expression. ‘Melita Veruschka Voronova. You like the song that was playing. You danced to it at your family’s balls. Your parents are dead. Their names were–’

‘Stop it.’

‘Eumenides and Arelis.’ Alim stopped as suddenly as he had begun. The chastened look returned immediately. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said quietly. He ticked and twitched every few seconds. ‘It is– It was what they had me do.’

Melita’s skin crawled. Though she had felt nothing, the knowledge that he had pawed through her thoughts was deeply unnerving. ‘Well, stop it.’

The boy seemed to age before her eyes. ‘If I could, I would.’

An unexpected swell of pity briefly eclipsed her panic and revulsion.

‘You know, you and I do a similar job,’ she said, to fill the silence. ‘I’m a cipher-knife. An info-broker. I break into secure places to get information people want.’ Quite apart from the thundering rush of fear, Melita felt a momentary stab of professional jealousy. Alim’s powers, as awful as they were, made her talents as an info-broker utterly redundant.

Alim looked puzzled for a moment, then something like a small smile bloomed. ‘You do what I do, only slower.’

Melita frowned. ‘Yes, that’s how I’d put it.’

‘Sorry,’ said Alim.

Melita’s frown deepened.

‘What do you want from me?’ she asked.

‘I don’t…’ Alim started to answer, then trailed off. ‘I…’ His mouth opened and closed. He seemed to have trouble articulating his own thoughts. He was evidently more comfortable repeating the extracted secrets of others.

‘This is where I would be safe,’ he said finally.

Melita had a flash of insight. This was her place of safety, a refuge entirely detached from the rest of her life, and he had pulled that feeling from her mind in their brief moment of connection in the warehouse. She barely used the pod, often going days without coming back to the cramped domicile. She actually preferred to sleep in the worn comfort of her office’s cot. The pod was a place to retreat to when she needed to break from her present. A sanctuary in which she could pretend her life had not taken such a dramatic turn from its intended path.

A sanctuary that had now been violated.

‘I’m sorry,’ Alim said again, but Melita wasn’t listening. Her mind had recovered from the shock of finding the boy waiting for her, and now it was racing.

Association with a psyker was punishable by summary execution – merely sharing a room with Alim would be enough to condemn her under the Lex.

She could hide him, try to smuggle him out of the building, but it was too late. Half naked and wild-eyed, his passage through the Spoil would have been recorded in a dozen ways. His bulbous skull would be clear as day on the Seviro’s pict-feeds.

There could be Enforcers on their way as they spoke.

Melita hadn’t run from the Valtteri when Kohut told her they would kill her. She had not been able to countenance abandoning all that she had made, but this was different. She had already lost everything – Alim’s presence in her hab had seen to that.

She had to run, but now she would be running from the hounds of the Lex, and for no less a crime than consorting with a witch. She would be hunted the length and breadth of Varangantua. His existence, and her soft-hearted decision to free him from the warehouse, had damned her.

She had to go to the Valtteri. That was the only choice she had left. She could give them Alim, and in exchange demand that they protect her from the Lex’s sanction.

Alim had been watching her in silence, but the moment the thought formed in her mind he leapt from the bed and lunged for the door controls.

His bony shoulder caught Melita in the chest and knocked her back. She rebounded from the pod’s wall and wrapped her arms around him, and they both fell to the floor. Melita struck her head as she went down, and the laspistol fell from her grip.

The pod’s interior was barely wide enough for one person to stand in, let alone two struggling bodies. They clambered over one another, fighting more for their footing than to hurt each other. The boy made it up first and groped for the door’s panel. Melita kicked him, catching the back of his knee. Alim thumped into the door’s heavy plastek. Melita snatched up her fallen laspistol, and as she did her finger found the trigger.

The bolt struck Alim in the back of his thigh, and he arched like a flexing spring. He twisted as he fell, mouth opening and closing soundlessly, lips forming the shape of his pain. He struck the floor, hands scrabbling at his wounded leg.

He looked up at her, pained innocence etched into his face.

‘I’m sorry,’ Melita said, still struggling to rise. ‘I’m sorry. I need you.’ She was babbling, desperation controlling her thoughts. She made it to her feet, her pistol held out in front of her but weaving violently. ‘The Enforcers are probably already coming. I can’t be caught with you.’

The stricken boy looked up at her, tears in his eyes. ‘I can’t go back. Please.’

Melita’s free hand opened and closed, nervous energy bleeding from every limb. ‘I won’t give you back to them. Whoever they were. But the Valtteri… I need their help. To get free of this,’ Melita said, pleading with him. It was suddenly vital for him to understand why she had to trade his life for the cartel’s help. ‘You shouldn’t be here.’

‘Kill me.’ Alim sighed, as though a great weight had settled on his fragile chest, but his gaze did not waver. ‘You saved me before. Do it again, please.’

Melita blanched.

‘You cannot send me back,’ he said. ‘This is… It will be better.’

‘Better than what?’

‘Life.’ The weight of unspoken misery in Alim’s eyes was enough to bring tears to Melita’s own.

‘No,’ she said angrily, pushing down the wave of sympathy. ‘No, we can fix you up, and the Valtteri…’ She stopped. Would they be any better than whoever had been using him before? Was there anything in his future but another cell? A different hand cinching shut the agony-collar?

But she couldn’t kill him. He was just a boy, for all his appalling power.

‘You don’t know what it’s like,’ he murmured. Then Alim looked up at her. ‘You don’t know.’

Dread gripped her. Melita thrust out her hand. ‘Wait–’

Their eyes met, and Melita screamed.

She runs through the street, blood and tears streaking her face. The blood runs from the cut on her scalp where a thrown stone struck her. The tears flow because she knows she is a freak. She knows that they are right to hate her.

Their fear is a bitter thing, rank in her mouth, a fog in her brain. Even as she runs from their curses and their stones she cannot escape their loathing, a venomous pall that turns her sight black. She stumbles, falls to the ground. Tears the skin of her palms. Cries at the pain, but pulls herself to her feet.

They will never stop hating her, and she can never stop running.

Another boy has found the hab-block’s basement where she has been sleeping. He is bent double, halfway through the broken view portal. He has frozen – he did not see her when he first peeked inside.

He is hungry; his eyes do not leave the hunk of discarded carb-bar she pulled from a refuse container earlier that day, and she can feel the hot, feverish pain of his empty belly. She breaks the sticky bar in two and holds out one half.

The boy drops through the portal and charges towards her, teeth bared and dirty fists balled.

She is curled within a rotting heap of packing material, her holed blanket pulled tight about freezing limbs. The ghosts of other people’s thoughts colour her dreams, but sleep is the closest she ever comes to finding peace.

A hot red shape flickers in her mind, then grows. It tastes sour, and she stirs.

A plastek noose drops over her head. She awakens, but too slowly. The noose tightens.

She shouts for help, but no sound comes out. And who would help her?

Something thunders into her head, and the world goes dark.

The interior of the cargo hauler rattles around her as it bounces over the uneven road surface. She shakes with it, the restraints around her forehead, neck, chest, wrists, thighs and ankles transmitting every vibration to her body. She feels almost none of it – her mind is far afield, fleeing the needle-sharp goads in her flesh.

‘Tonya Sobaleski’s son is stealing from her. She knows his topaz addiction is getting worse.’

‘The passcode for the Merandr sixty-seventh hab-block is Alpha-76-Mu-24. It will be changed in three days.’

‘If he touches her again, I’ll bleed him.’

She speaks a nonsense stream of truths, torn from the minds she passes. A brace of auto-quills set up in the hauler’s interior record every word.

The goads’ ache grows – they will only relent when she finds her target. She forces her witch-sense wider, desperate for the respite that will come with obedience.

The agony-collar’s touch is a searing brand. The slightest motion sends sparks of torment through her whole body. The servitor closes the final seal and leans back from her containment unit. Jorg Rakove, master of her prison, looks down at her naked form, but he does not see her. He does not see a person, or even a tool. He sees a beast, chained and collared.

‘Shut him down,’ he commands. The servitor does not respond, but flicks a set of switches on the console beside her. In the moments before the anaesthetic gas takes hold, her hands claw at the thick plex that encloses her. The collar’s bite is the last thing she feels.

‘Stop.’ She forced the words between gritted teeth, from lungs that seemed to spasm in her chest. ‘Please stop.’

But the ice-sharp images and blood-raw sensations continued to pour from Alim’s abused psyche into the exposed matter of her mind.

Darkness smothers her.

It is not merely a blackness formed from the absence of light, although there is no light – she can hold a hand up to her face, close enough to brush her brittle eyelashes, and yet she sees nothing. But this darkness goes further, extending beyond her common sight to stifle her inner eye.

She sees, and hears, nothing.

No voices speak their secrets into her head. She can sense no candlelight flickers of nearby minds. For the first time in her entire life, the world is silent.

It is sickening. The yawning void of it screams at her, deafening in its emptiness, until she starts to scream back. She cries aloud until her throat is sticky with blood, shrieking gibberish sounds in a futile effort to stave off the chasm of silence that envelops her.

There is one sensation. The metal beneath her moves with almost imperceptible tremors. She presses her face to the deck, desperately drinking in the inconstant judders and pulses travelling through the cold plate. It reminds her of the shudders and buffets of the cargo hauler’s passage through the streets, but on an impossibly greater scale.

And then there is light. A slim blade, a dagger to her atrophied retinas, that grows into a narrow shaft. She looks up from the deck, cowering and wretched in the beam of aching white.

An armoured figure stands over her, looming in the doorway. She sees it with her watering eyes, but to her witch-sense there is nothing at all. No soulfire burns within the mail-clad chest. No voice whispers thoughts past the fortress of her helm.

Agony races through her veins, and unquenchable horror grips her heart. As her limbs are racked by spasms and her stomach empties, her body seeking to expel the poison that invades her mind, she finally knows the truth of her life.

Though there can be an end to the darkness, there will never be an end to the pain.

Melita opened her eyes. She met Alim’s pleading stare and pulled the trigger. The pistol’s crack was amplified by the pod’s confines.

The psyker’s tortured memories – his horrifying prophecy of his life to come – vanished in an instant. Melita gasped, drawing in a ragged breath. She closed her eyes again and felt relief beyond measure at seeing nothing more than the kaleidoscopic colours of her own eyelids. Her body ached with the phantom pains of a life she had not lived.

Slowly, achingly slowly, she forced herself to look at him.

Alim lay crumpled on the floor, blood and brain matter leaking from the remnants of his skull.

Melita retched, vomiting up a bilious mouthful of fluid that burned her throat. She spat, and the gobbet landed in the spreading pool of Alim’s blood. She lurched back. Her knees struck the edge of the bed, and she sank onto the mattress’ pliant foam.

She sat in silence, paralysed by indecision and the horror of what she’d done. What he had asked her to do. Alim’s blood was violently red against the sanitised white of the domicile’s walls – Melita could not tear her eyes from the crimson pool as it slowly spread across the floor towards her.

She lifted her feet onto the mattress before it touched her boots, and the movement was enough to jar her into action.

Melita looked around the hab. She had few possessions that really meant anything to her, besides the equipment in her office, and what little she had was in this tiny domicile. A child-sized set of Voronova Atmospheric Shipping coveralls, hung carefully on one wall. An ugly plastek cube containing the first logic engine she had constructed. A pict of her parents, looking sternly out of a silver frame. Everything she cared about could be picked up and carried at a moment’s notice.

Alim’s broken body lay between her and the door, but that was okay. He would be coming with her.

Melita’s fingers found the vox-rune on her vambrace.

‘Edi, it’s me. He’s here. Or he was. I need your help.’

They stood in another warehouse, this one crammed from wall to wall with immobile conveyor systems, loading carts and polymer-wrapped pallets halted midway through their journey from the production line to their destinations. Freezing rain struck the sheet-metal roof far above with a snare’s beat, the only sound within the cavernous space. A part of Melita’s mind reflexively attempted to calculate the cost of pausing the operation of this building for an entire night in order to allow their brief meeting.

Mirislav Kohut stood a few paces in front of her, his face drawn with concern, or possibly just the lateness of the hour. Edi was behind her, hand close to but not touching the handle of his Engager.

The cold, still air should have helped keep her alert, but with each passing moment Melita felt another enervating wave crash over her, threatening to make her totter.

‘Are you all right?’ asked Kohut as she took a fractional step backwards. She said nothing, treating the question with the contempt it deserved.

A dull chime sounded from somewhere on Kohut’s person, and he turned.

A pair of huge Shiiv Hegemon groundcars, bulky machines that bore more than a passing resemblance to the massive Bulwark wagons used by Enforcers, entered with engines roaring through one of the wide transit passages that led in and out of this part of the warehouse. The vehicles ground to a sudden halt, and a brace of Valtteri heavies climbed down from their doors. Each one was bulked out by thick flak armour and had matt-grey autoguns half concealed beneath black coats.

After the few seconds needed for the bodyguards – former planetary militia or other military veterans, she was sure – to verify the security of the space, the driver’s door of the lead Hegemon was thrown open and a lean figure in a dark suit leapt out.

‘Who’s this?’ Melita asked quietly.

‘Tomillan Vasimov,’ replied Kohut. ‘A senior securitor for the organisation.’

Vasimov marched over to them, mirror-polished shoes clicking on the rockcrete. Black hair was brushed back from a thin, severe face. His high cheekbones, sharp nose and pointed chin gave Melita the impression of being advanced upon by a stooping avian predator.

Alim’s body lay between her and Kohut, covered by a sheet pulled from Melita’s mattress. Blood spotted the sheet’s surface. The man did not wait for an explanation, but dropped to one knee to twitch aside the linen shroud.

Melita did her best to ignore the securitor’s dispassionate inspection. He finally gave a non-committal grunt and straightened up, wiping his hands on the folds of his coat as he did so.

‘This was it?’ he asked into the stilted silence. His hostile eyes roamed over Melita’s face, looking for deception.

A tired ‘Yes’ was all the reply Melita could muster.

He held her gaze for several seconds, then turned and gave a brief nod to Kohut. He spun on his heel and walked away, with half of the Valtteri thugs following him back to the Hegemons like loyal canids. The others evidently waited to take possession of the psyker’s remains.

Melita watched Vasimov go. Even in her overstressed and exhausted state, she felt a strong swell of hatred for his ostentatious disdain, the calculated demonstration of power.

‘So, that’s it. Welcome to the Valtteri,’ said Kohut, forcing a smile as the securitor’s groundcar took off with a squeal of tyres on rockcrete. ‘I’ll make the call to Bastion-J and ensure that the incident at the Seviro is expunged from any records. You’ll have to leave the pod, obviously, but the organisation can take care of that.’ Vasimov’s attention had evidently set Kohut’s nerves alight – Melita dimly realised that his life, as much as hers, had been on the line, given that he had ignored his orders to kill her.

‘And don’t think you have to give up any of your other business,’ he continued. ‘You can pursue any sidelines you want, as long as they don’t conflict with the interests of the organisation…’

Kohut carried on, but Melita had stopped listening. Vasimov had left the sheet drawn back, exposing Alim’s pale skin and gentle features. A red hole was burned into his forehead. Melita knelt down and tugged the linen carefully back into place.

‘Melita.’ Edi put a tentative hand on her shoulder. She shrugged him off and straightened, forcing into place the hard, blank expression with which she faced the world.

‘What were you saying?’ she asked Kohut.

‘I said, once the Valtteri let you in, there’s no going back. Are you in?’

‘Right,’ she said absently.

‘I need to hear you say it,’ Kohut pressed.

She looked down again at Alim’s body. Faced with either death or servitude, the psyker had chosen to deny his tormentors to the last. The discovery that she lacked that kind of bravery had birthed a hard, bitter knot in her stomach.

Melita straightened and looked up at Kohut, who had finally stopped talking.

‘Yes. I’m in.’

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Mike Brooks is a science fiction and fantasy author who lives in Nottingham, UK. His work for Black Library includes the Warhammer 40,000 novels Rites of Passage and Brutal Kunnin, the Necromunda novel Road to Redemption and the novella Wanted: Dead, and various short stories. When not writing, he plays guitar and sings in a punk band, and DJs wherever anyone will tolerate him.

Danie Ware is the author of the novellas The Bloodied Rose, Wreck and Ruin, The Rose in Anger and the short story ‘Mercy’, all featuring the Sisters of Battle. She lives in Carshalton, South London, with her son and two cats, and has long-held interests in role-playing, re-enactment, vinyl art toys and personal fitness.

J S Collyer is a science fiction writer from Lancaster, UK, whose short fiction has featured in several online publications and printed anthologies. Her first novel, Zero, part of the Orbit series, made it into Northern Soul Magazine’s Best Reads of 2014. She enjoys writing stories that are larger than life, but with down-to-earth, relatable themes and characters.

Denny Flowers is the author of the Necromunda novel Fire Made Flesh, the short story ‘The Hand of Harrow’ and the novella Low Lives. He lives in Kent with his wife and son.

Jude Reid lives in Glasgow with her husband and two daughters, and writes in the narrow gaps between full-time work as a surgeon, wrangling her kids and failing to tire out a border collie. In what little free time she has, she enjoys tabletop roleplaying, ITF Tae Kwon Do and inadvisably climbing big hills.

Darius Hinks is the author of the Warhammer 40,000 novels Blackstone Fortress, Blackstone Fortress: Ascension and the accompanying audio drama The Beast Inside. He also wrote three novels in the Mephiston series: Mephiston: Blood of Sanguinius, Mephiston: Revenant Crusade and Mephiston: City of Light, as well as the Space Marine Battles novella Sanctus. His work for Age of Sigmar includes Hammers of Sigmar, Warqueen and the Gotrek Gurnisson novels Ghoulslayer and Gitslayer. For Warhammer, he wrote Warrior Priest, which won the David Gemmel Morningstar Award for best newcomer, as well as the Orion trilogy, Sigvald and several novellas.

Gary Kloster is a writer, a stay-at-home father, a librarian and a martial artist – sometimes all in the same day, seldom all at the same time. He lives among the corn in the American Midwest and his short fiction can be found in Analog, Apex, Clarkesworld and others. For Black Library, he has written the Necromunda novella Spark of Revolution, and a number of short stories.

Victoria Hayward is a trained historitor who spent her youth serving as an acolyte in a Games Workshop store. She writes about black holes and the palaces of despots in her day job as a science communicator and her favourite corners of the 40K universe are those occupied by the Inquisition – which is all of it. She resides in Nottingham where she keeps birds and practises printmaking.

Jonathan D Beer is a science fiction and alternative history writer. Equally obsessed with the 19th century and the 41st millennium, he lives with his wife and assorted cats in the untamed wilderness of Edinburgh, Scotland.

An extract from Bloodines.

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.’

Chapter Two

Agusto Zidarov crept along the metal walkway, keeping his body low, his Tzarina autopistol held out straight ahead of him. Sweat pricked under his flak jacket. It was hot. It was dark. All things considered, he really didn’t want to be there.

‘How close?’ he breathed into the comm.

Brecht took a while to answer. ‘Backup incoming. Ten minutes.’

Too long. Zidarov blinked an enhancement to his augmetic iris’ visual filters. The view ahead shifted fractionally – from dirt black, to near dirt black.

The walkway was elevated, threaded through and around huge machines. He could feel the power terminal’s heat convertors working underfoot, the filtration units straining overhead. High up, in the gantries and the pipework, amid the rust and the stench of oils, the valves and the processor coils, there were just too many places to hide, too many places to die. Every other corner had a burst seal pushing steam into your face, or a clattering heat vent making your eyes water.

He clutched the grip of his pistol, narrowed his eyes, kept moving.

‘I don’t have a fix on you,’ Zidarov said.

‘I’ve got one on you,’ Brecht replied. ‘I’m coming your way.’

‘Hurry up, then.’

Brecht didn’t move fast often. Zidarov hoped he would this time. It was the least he could do, in the circumstances.

He reached an intersection. The walkway branched into two, one left, one right. Below him, glimpsed through the thin metal grid, he could see ironwork devices belch and grind. Beyond that was a rat’s paradise of tubes and conduits. A few lumens blinked down there – tiny red points amid hissing clots of darkness.

Something moved, and he whirled to face it. Just a spinner valve discharging. Zidarov felt his heart beating quickly. He was breathing too hard. This was sanctioners’ work – they had the armour, the weapons. He had his sidearm, basic flak-cover, a probator’s holo-seal. That counted for something, a lot of the time. Right now, it felt like not much worth having.

He checked his iris. The subdermal ocular implant – a combined dataveil-link and tactical retinal display – cycled and clicked, giving him an updated estimate of the target’s trajectory. It was based on heat patterns only, and down here they weren’t exactly reliable.

By rights, he shouldn’t even have been there. He’d responded to the call from Brecht, whose case this was, as a favour. They both should have waited for a sanctioner squad, but Brecht didn’t want to lose the target. That decision felt like a bad one. Almost as bad as splitting up, trying to cover the exits, before realising just how many of them there were in a huge place like this.

He took the right turn, edging along the fragile railing, ignoring the long drop on either side. Up ahead, he could see a bulkhead with a rusted cog-and-skull etched on it. Beyond that was a heavy iron hatch-plate with a misted-up viewport. The hatch was open, and a faint light bled through the gap.

‘I think I’ve got him,’ Zidarov breathed. ‘How close?’

‘One level up. Believe me, I’m running.’

Zidarov crouched down, edging carefully towards the door. He could hear something from the far side – more than one pair of boots. Brecht’s quarry was close now: Yuri Glav, a mid-league gunrunner, an unstable narc user who’d eaten up the sparse goodwill of both the enforcers and his customers and whose productive career in Urgeyena, one way or another, was coming to an end. Clearly he still had a few people willing to work with him.

Zidarov heard another hatch clang open. The faint light flickered out, and he heard bootfalls running down an enclosed corridor. They were making a break for it, trying to reach the far side of the machine chambers, get to a mag-train or a ground transport.

He shuffled forward, shouldered the hatch open and swung into the chamber beyond, tracking with his autopistol. The cramped space was empty, but the portal on the far side was open. Zidarov ran for it, ducking down as he plunged into the corridor beyond. The lumens were strobing in there, and it all smelled like burned metal. He could hear clear movement up ahead now, echoing down the shafts. They were running, going for broke.

He ran after them, ducking through another hatch before breaking out again. A big chamber opened up, its far end exposed to the night air and whistling with gusts of hot, dusty wind. Lines of struts marched along on either side, holding up a cross-hatched roof of heavy girders and pipework. Tracked loader-vehicles stood in their berths. The deck was high up, and the exposed vantage revealed the distant outline of massive cooling towers, backlit by flares from the gas nozzles. Everything smelled of ash, dust and chems.

At the chamber’s far end, a fuel tanker waited in a loading bay, cab doors open and engines already gunning, poised to trundle off down a long ramp towards an elevated viaduct. A transit-servitor, its back broken, lay in a pile by the wheels. Glav, a scrawny man dressed in a loose red jerkin, had already jumped down from the footplate to unscrew the tanker’s fuel line. Two more figures – big bodyguards, torsos bulked with stimms, one carrying a crackling electro-maul, the other a short-barrelled shotgun – lumbered towards Zidarov. The shotgun cracked out, and Zidarov scrambled for cover. He skidded behind the heavy body of a goods lifter, wrenching his shoulder against a jutting door handle, hearing the bullets ping and clang from the steel.

He swivelled back to his knees, shoved the Tzarina through a gap in the lifter’s segmented tracks, and fired back. Four rounds went straight into the shooter’s chest, puffing out plumes of blood as the man jerked and reeled. Zidarov jumped to his feet as the second bodyguard rushed him, swinging the maul in heavy lunges. More shots hit, winging him in the shoulder, then knocking him back, sending the maul bouncing over the lattice floor.

Zidarov slid fully out of cover, trying to draw a bead on Glav. By then the skinny gunrunner had disconnected the fuel line, spraying promethium all across the deck, and was sprinting back to the cab. Zidarov shot twice, sending both rounds wide and kicking sparks along the tanker’s hold.

‘Probator, Bastion-U!’ he roared. ‘Stand down, citizen!’

Glav leapt for the cab, getting one boot back on the footplate. Zidarov fired again, hitting him in the back. Instead of a wet impact, though, the bullet tinged off a hard armour-piece hidden under the jerkin. Glav staggered forward, missing his handhold and tumbling to the floor. As he did so, he managed to squirm round, bringing his own gun to bear. For a hideous split second Zidarov saw it aimed squarely at him.

Then Glav’s head exploded in a mist of red, followed immediately by the report of another gun firing. The gunrunner’s body slumped to the deck, twitched, then didn’t move again.

Brecht edged out of the open access hatch, his autopistol held two-handed, a look of studied concentration on his face.

Zidarov exhaled. ‘Holy Throne,’ he swore. ‘You really did run.’

The tanker’s engine was still growling. The discarded fuel line was still pumping, swilling the deck with liquid promethium. Brecht stowed his weapon, splashed over to the valve and wrenched it closed. He was panting hard, his jowly cheeks flushed. He was a big man, dark-skinned, with a receding hairline and a frame that was a fair bit more substantial than it had been when he’d joined the enforcers. The flak jacket made him look even bulkier.

Zidarov wasn’t much better off. His heart was still hammering. A pool of sweat had collected at the small of his back.

He looked down at the trio of corpses. The bodyguards were just hired muscle, but Glav knew some things. It would have been better to bring him in. Still, it was Brecht’s case, and he’d been the one to end it.

He climbed up to the tanker’s cab, reached for the controls and stilled the engine. Then he clambered down, getting his breathing under control, and looked over at his fellow probator.

‘Worth the trouble?’ he asked.

Brecht nodded, covered in sweat. He was looking down at Glav’s body. ‘Guess so. One more out of commission.’

‘I thought you wanted to take him in?’

‘I did, but he was going to shoot you.’

‘I don’t think he’d have hit me.’

‘No, he was good. He’d have shot you.’

Zidarov holstered his pistol. ‘Thanks, then, I guess.’

‘My pleasure.’

In the distance, Zidarov heard the thud-thud of a Zurov turbine-gunship coming in. That would be carrying a hastily scrambled sanctioner squad from a response-garrison – six hardened troopers, stuffed with noctis-gear, blind grenades, autoguns, matt-black body armour – all expecting to have a live target to go after.

‘They’re going to be angry, aren’t they?’ Zidarov said.

‘Yes, they are.’

‘Then I guess I can leave you to talk it over.’

‘I guess you can.’

Zidarov started to walk away.

‘Listen, though – thanks,’ Brecht called after him. ‘I owe you.’

‘I’ll hold you to it.’

‘Any time.’

‘Yeah. Sooner than you think.’ He reached up for his shoulder, sore from where he’d wrenched it. ‘Right now, I’m going home.’

A few hours later, he woke up again. His body ached. He still smelled of chems.

It took him a moment or two to realise that he was back in his hab. He reached out, eyes still closed. The thick coverlet slipped down his forearm a little, and he walked with his fingers, searching.

Milija stirred, shuffling deeper into the mattress.

‘Go to the hells,’ she murmured.

He opened his eyes. His hand found her forearm.

It was still dark. A little grey light bled around the window frame where the shutters didn’t quite touch the sill. The chrono by the bed glowed with a red, semi-dormant lumen bead.

‘Morning,’ he said.

She grunted, half-lost in sleep, and shook his hand from her arm. ‘Where were you last night?’

‘Work.’

‘Hmm. Of course.’

He watched her for a little while, blinking his own sleep away. Then he drew a breath, and smelled the dorm-chamber – rough synthwool blankets, fresh polish on the rockcrete floor, the sweat of the night.

Home.

He shuffled down the bed, pushing the blankets off, making the frame shake. Milija turned over, nuzzling into a bolster, her brown hair falling over her face. Zidarov swung his legs over the foot, grabbed a robe from its peg on the wall and pulled the plasweave fabric around his night-tunic. He stood, then padded heavily from the chamber and into the hallway beyond, closing the door behind him carefully.

It was still quiet. The ground traffic outside made the air thrum, just as it did at all hours, night and day, but you zoned that out after a while. He walked down a narrow hallway, passing picts of Milija and Naxi stuck against flaking plaster walls. They needed to repaint those walls – they hadn’t been done since they’d been assigned the hab-unit and moved in, years ago, just after Naxi had been born. Just needed to find the time.

He reached the refec-chamber, and flicked a lumen on with a finger gesture. The sodium tubes flickered into life, exposing battered food-prep surfaces, a row of storage boxes, a plastek table with four stools. He activated the caffeine box and it gurgled and clattered. He opened a store and pulled out two carb-bars. One was plain, the other flavoured with fructose syrup. He put both in the heater and flicked the timer for ten seconds. He retrieved a mug of hot caffeine from the box, took out a plate and placed the carb-bars on it.

He went over to the table and sat down on one of the stools. He took a sip of caffeine, slurping against the heat. He activated the vid-projector set into the far wall, the one that he’d installed himself, the one that only worked half the time and that Milija kept asking him to replace.

Its old-style curved lens shimmered jerkily into life, casting a white-yellow light over the dark room.

‘…Sub-District Commissioner for Hygiene Ertile Vom, visiting district facility U-Fifty-Six yesterday, congratulates the workers on their improved output during the up-season. She observes that this shows the benefit of recent revisions to the quota targets, and underlines the wisdom of…’

Sub-District Commissioner for Hygiene Ertile Vom looked well fed. Zidarov watched her waddle down the production lines, her outline blurry on the phosphor-bead screen. So, output at the manufactoria was up again. Always seemed to be going up, year-on-year. A miracle of efficiency, they must be by now.

Zidarov let the projector prattle on, and chewed his carb-bars. The caffeine was treacly like unrefined promethium. He felt it slip warmly through his body, jerking it awake. The carb-bars were good. Good enough. As long as he didn’t think too closely on how they were made.

He stretched, rolling his shoulders in turn, trying to loosen muscles that never seemed to properly unclench. The old scar across his chest pulled a little – always a reminder, a twitch or a tweak to let him know it was still there.

The vid-feed moved on to a review of commodities output from the major ports. Those were going up, too, despite all he’d heard about the interstellar trade volume being moribund for months. Brecht had told him a few months back he’d seen classified Navy material talking of a major rupture in the warp lanes, something that had got even sector command scrambling to respond, but then Brecht, for all his undoubted sharpness in many ways, had always been a little too fond of believing in conspiracies. He hadn’t mentioned it again. Maybe he’d made it up.

Zidarov finished his caffeine, then went back to the unit to make a cup for Milija. He’d leave it for her on the hotplate, as usual, for when she woke up.

Then it was time to link his iris to the dataveil. He activated the line threaded under his cheekbone, and felt the itch as it filled up with stored content. He reviewed it, piece by piece, blinking each update away in turn. The runes hovered briefly in front of him, projected in lurid green as if thrown out by a lithcaster, though the entire thing was internal, fed direct to the image lattice scored across the back of his eyeball.

Most of it was routine – Vongella siphoning stuff down to the probators, things she didn’t want to handle herself or refer up to command. It would all be noted and referenced and, when time allowed, something might be done.

One entry caught his attention.

> 456aa78-X, incident record: Udmil Terashova, Terashova Combine [file, detail] PJv

The ‘P’ code suffix indicated that a probator was required to attend. The named subject hadn’t been brought to the precinct, so that meant an outside visit. Zidarov scrolled past it – this was one he’d happily pass to Brecht, just to pay him back.

> Castellan directive: Zidarov, A: assigned

His heart sank. Damn. He stowed the remainder of the comm-feed in his iris’ storage – it would have to wait.

He got up, put a carb-bar in the heater on low power for Milija, and headed for the hygiene-chamber. The pulse-shower worked on the first attempt, which was a bonus. He washed the chem-filth off, shaved, gargled with antisep, checked the red lines under his eyes. He looked into the blotchy mirror, and saw a heavyset man looking back at him: early forties, short dark hair, sallow complexion. The scar on his chest was livid under the single white lumen. His stomach wasn’t quite as slab-solid as it had been, even a couple of years ago. It had got bigger, too.

He padded back down the hall and into the second dorm-chamber. That had once been Naxi’s room, and still had her old hardcopy picts pinned to the walls – defence force recruitment posters, most with the chiselled features of young male recruits looking steely and determined in pressed dress uniforms. A few report cards from her old scholam lay on the bedside table in a clear plasfilm file, plus a handwritten letter from a classmate. On the far wall, looking incongruous amid all that, was a dark metal strongbox. Next to it was a rack holding flak vests in a row. Beyond that was a wardrobe alcove containing civilian clothes – jackets, boots, a dark-brown half-length synthleather coat.

It always seemed a shame to keep all his gear in there, mixed up with Naxi’s old things, but it cleared some space in the main dorm-chamber, and even a probator’s stipend didn’t stretch to a three-dorm unit in a decent residential habclave.

He punched the access code into the strongbox and withdrew the Tzarina again. He checked it over, then got dressed, clipping the flak-panels closed under his open-necked shirt and jerkin. He reached for his jawsnapper, a brushed-steel knuckleduster with an impact-reactive kinetic field, and stowed it. He pulled on his coat, and holstered his pistol.

It was still dark outside. It would be dark for another hour or so until the red sun rose. He thought of Milija, sleeping still, grabbing an hour of rest before her own duties took her off into the city.

I could sleep, he thought. I could stay here, with her, and sleep.

But then he was out of the hab’s front door, into the internal corridor where dozens of other identical doors remained locked shut, just like every other one of them on every other level. He headed for the elevator shafts, his stomach grumbling, muscles aching, scar tissue itching.

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 Micha McMahon.

Sanction & Sin © Copyright Games Workshop Limited 2021. Sanction & Sin, 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: 978-1-80026-603-2

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.

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