My turn again. This is another small, quiet piece, but there’s plenty of menace. I just imagined an unlikely conversation between two very different characters from the Ghosts books, then realised it probably was a conversation, and a relationship, that was far from unlikely after all.

 	Some of the stories in this book are from the Imperial perspective, and others see the Crusade through the eyes of the Archenemy. This is, I suppose, the still point in that vast storm where those two things meet. And it features two of my favourite characters.

 	This story is set nine days after the end of Salvation’s Reach.

 	Dan Abnett

 
 
    
You Never Know
Dan Abnett


 	The Highness Ser Armaduke, nine days out from Salvation’s Reach, 782.M41
(the 27th year of the Sabbat Worlds Crusade) 

 	‘Where are we?’ asked Mabbon Etogaur.

 	Sergeant Varl waited until the cell’s heavy, armoured shutter had finally closed behind him, then glanced around the tiny cell, his eyes narrowed in concentration, his lips pursed.

 	‘I can’t be sure,’ Varl replied, ‘but I think it’s the brig.’

 	‘Oh, Sergeant Varl,’ said Mabbon. ‘I had almost forgotten your rapier wit.’

 	Varl grinned. He slung his lasrifle across his back, then gestured with both hands, palms up, fingers flapping.

 	‘Up, pheguth,’ he ordered. ‘You know the drill.’

 	Mabbon sighed. He put his book down on the bare cot, and slowly rose to his feet from the metal stool. He raised his arms. Shackles clinked, dangling from his wrists. The chains around his ankles were secured to the deck by a steel floor-pin.

 	Varl reached forward to start the search. He hesitated at the last minute.

 	‘Play nice, all right?’ he told the prisoner.

 	‘Don’t I always?’

 	Varl started searching. Pockets, hems, seams, cuffs. He was meticulous. He was practiced. He’d done it many times before. 

 	‘Really, sergeant?’ said Mabbon patiently, arms wide. ‘Do you think, in the six hours since that cell door last opened and this pantomime last occurred, that I have somehow managed to obtain and conceal a weapon?’

 	‘You never know,’ said Varl. ‘You might have finally worked a splinter of metal off the deck plates. Or forced a screw out of the bed-frame and cunningly sharpened it.’

 	‘Oh, I wish I’d thought of either of those things,’ said Mabbon, looking up at the ceiling as Varl worked. 

 	Varl started checking the manacles and the ankle hobbles.

 	‘Or picked the lock of my shackles?’ Mabbon added.

 	‘You never know.’

 	Varl moved behind him.

 	‘You might have dismantled the bed and the stool,’ Varl said, ‘and ingeniously fashioned them into a lasweapon.’

 	Something akin to a smile passed across Mabbon’s scarred face.

 	‘You really overestimate my abilities, sergeant,’ he said.

 	‘Well, that was an exaggeration for illustrative purposes,’ replied Varl.

 	Varl came back round to face him.

 	‘Open,’ said Varl.

 	Mabbon opened his mouth. Varl peered in. Then he slid his index finger inside.

 	‘No closey-closey,’ Varl said. Mabbon said nothing. Varl ran his finger around Mabbon’s gums, around his cheeks, and under his tongue.

 	When he was done, Varl removed his finger. Mabbon closed his mouth. Varl moved to the side, and scrutinised Mabbon’s ear.

 	‘No autocannon concealed in there?’ Mabbon asked.

 	‘Ha ha,’ said Varl. ‘Oh, wait.’

 	‘What?’ asked Mabbon.

 	‘I think I see light shining in through the other ear,’ said Varl. Mabbon did not react to the quip.

 	Varl stepped back. 

 	‘All right. Sit.’

 	Mabbon sat. Varl began to sweep the room.

 	‘This really isn’t necessary,’ said Mabbon.

 	‘You know the drill. Standing order. A search every six hours.’

 	‘I know the drill,’ said Mabbon. ‘I have remarked on its pointlessness before.’

 	‘Yet, as you can see, we are still going to do it,’ replied Varl, busy.

 	‘And I am still going to remark,’ said Mabbon sadly. ‘I have reached a point at which I am prepared to both criticise and mock the practice.’

 	Varl was checking the cot.

 	‘Look, you know fething well,’ said Varl, ‘it’s not really shards of metal or sharpened spoons we’re worried about. You could get up to all sorts in here when you’re unsupervised.’

 	‘All sorts of what?’ asked Mabbon.

 	‘Badness,’ said Varl, gesturing vaguely. ‘Crazy Archenemy badness. Ritual shit. I’ve seen shit in my days, mister, and I know what’s possible. You could summon something.’

 	‘Summon something?’

 	‘Yeah,’ said Varl. ‘We could open the hatch and find you’ve conjured up some daemon-spawn of arsebag to sick on us.’

 	‘I am a soldier, Varl,’ said Mabbon. ‘An officer. I have commanded hosts of men. I am not, however, a warlock.’

 	‘You never know,’ said Varl. ‘We’ve only got your word for that.’

 	He picked up the book Mabbon had been reading and leafed through the pages. Then he shook it to see if anything would fall out. Nothing did.

 	Varl studied the spine.

 	‘The Spheres of Longing?’ he read.

 	‘It’s an intriguing read.’

 	‘Never heard of it,’ said Varl.

 	‘I’m improving my mind. I am trying to learn the mindset of the Imperium. To… understand and remember its ways.’

 	‘What do you mean, “understand and remember”?’ Varl asked.

 	‘To better assist you,’ said Mabbon.

 	Varl paused.

 	‘When you were a man–’ Varl began.

 	‘I am still a man,’ Mabbon said.

 	‘Not so much. When you were a man, why did you… I mean, how… How does a man become what you are?’

 	‘The blood claimed me,’ said Mabbon.

 	‘The blood?’ asked Varl.

 	‘Sergeant, for all the “stuff” you claim to have seen, I assuredly know that you have no grasp of what life is like in the Sanguinary Worlds. I was Astra Militarum once, just like you. Then the Archon took me, and the blood claimed me, and I became an officer in his Pact.’

 	‘Then the Sons. You change sides a lot, don’t you?’ asked Varl.

 	‘Every chance I get,’ replied Mabbon. ‘Every effort I make is to reclaim my humanity. To purge the blood. To make amends. To become again the person I once was. That is why I read. I am gradually remembering what it is to be a human of the Imperium.’ 

 	‘You say that like it’s a good thing.’

 	‘You never know,’ said the etogaur.

 	Varl pulled a face. 

 	‘You know the real reason this search drill is pointless?’ asked Mabbon.

 	‘Surprise me.’

 	‘It’s pointless,’ said Mabbon, ‘because if I wanted to escape, I would have done so by now. And I could have done. You do not have to search me, because I want to be here. I am willingly assisting the Imperium, because it is the only thing I have left in my life that means anything. I will not destroy that one last, fragile thing by doing something stupid or disruptive.’

 	‘Well, you would say that, wouldn’t you?’ said Varl. He took out a pack of lho-sticks, lit one and, after a pause, offered the pack to Mabbon.

 	Mabbon shook his head.

 	‘Whatever happens,’ said Varl, exhaling smoke, ‘I mean, whatever you do, you know things aren’t going to end well, right? Things are not going to end well for you at all.’

 	‘Things are not going to end well for anybody,’ replied Mabbon.

 	‘I’m just saying.’

 	‘Apart from some small measure of redemption,’ said Mabbon, ‘death is the only thing I have to look forward to.’

 	‘What’s that?’ asked Varl abruptly. He stepped forward, studying the wall.

 	‘What’s what?’

 	‘These scratches here. These marks. Did you do that?’

 	Mabbon hesitated.

 	‘Yes,’ he said.

 	‘With what?’ asked Varl, sharp.

 	Mabbon raised the heavy cuff of his manacles.

 	‘Why?’

 	‘I make a scar on the wall every time I am searched,’ said Mabbon. ‘You search me every six hours, thus I have some measure of the passage of time.’

 	‘What good is that?’ asked Varl.

 	‘I am no man,’ said Mabbon. ‘I am no thing. I have no liberty. No self-determination. No comfort. No knowledge of where I am or what I am any more. But I can at least know when.’

 	‘This is just a tally, then?’ Varl asked, touching the row of scratches.

 	‘Just a tally.’

 	‘Not the fethed-up markings for some ritual?’ asked Varl, looking at him sharply. 

 	‘No, they are not the fethed-up markings of some ritual,’ said Mabbon.

 	‘I’ll have to tell Rawne,’ said Varl.

 	‘I understand,’ the etogaur replied.

 	‘He’ll probably–’

 	‘Move me to another cell and have a servitor grind the wall-plate smooth again. I understand.’

 	Varl nodded.

 	‘Sorry,’ Varl said.

 	‘Thank you,’ said Mabbon.

 	‘For what?’

 	‘Sorry is the most human thing anyone has said to me in a very long time,’ said Mabbon Etogaur.

 	Varl stared at him for a moment. 

 	Then he turned to the shutter and banged on it.

 	‘Open two!’ he yelled. ‘I’m coming out!’

 	The shutter began to grind open. Varl looked back at the seated etogaur.

 	‘It’s 0417, day 18, 782. Just ask me. Just ask.’

 	‘And you’ll tell me?’

 	‘You never know,’ said Varl. ‘See you in six hours. You’ll still be here, right?’

 	‘You never know,’ replied Mabbon Etogaur.