The sirdar hurried on. Beyond the block of regular cells, there was an area reserved for more specialised containment. The notification mark on the page he’d torn out of Olort’s book matched a sigil scratched above the archway. Highest level securement.
He checked there was no one close by, then deactivated the screening field and stepped through the arch. The dank and rusted chamber beyond was octagonal. Each wall section was formed by a heavy hatch with a vox-speaker set into a large window of reinforced glass.
The hatch windows were dirty, but it was clear that each looked into a flooded cell. The sirdar peered into the nearest one. The fluid beyond the glass was murky green, drifting with fibrous scraps, like the dredged sediment of some polluted canal. There was a shadow in it. A human cadaver, rotting back to bone, floating like a revenant apparition. It looked like the corpse of a drowned mariner who had been in the water for a long time.
There was a similarly ragged corpse in the silted water of the next cell. The sirdar squinted in at it. The corpse within suddenly jerked its head and glared at him with rheumy, lidless eyes, its fleshless mouth snapping and chewing.
The sirdar recoiled from the glass. He could hear a scratchy, gurgling voice. It was coming from the cell’s vox speaker. He saw that cables were attached to the corpse’s temples.
These were stasis tanks, filled with nutrient fluid. The prisoners were held in suspension, their minds wired via augmetic links to vox-grilles that articulated their thoughts.
He moved to the third tank. The fluid suspension here was a little cleaner, as though it had only been filled a few days before. A drowned man drifted inside. His hair was black, his clothes the tattered fabric of Imperial Guard fatigues. Cables were fixed to his temples too. His flesh was bloodlessly white and shrivelled by long immersion.
‘Feth,’ the sirdar murmured. He knew the face. Time had passed, and it was older, but it was unmistakable.
He put his hand against the dirty glass.
‘Hello,’ he whispered. ‘Can you hear me? It’s me. It’s Oan.’
The figure inside stirred, as though it was twitching in a bad dream. A few oily bubbles broke from its lips.
The sirdar looked around. There was a control panel beside the hatch frame. He didn’t know much about stasis suspension. He didn’t know if abrupt removal would shock or damage the subject.
There was no time to debate it. He threw the switch that would open the sluices and drain the tank.
The fluid level inside the tank began to drop. The sirdar could hear it gurgling and flushing through the underdeck drains. The body inside was slowly revealed, losing its buoyancy and slumping into the corner of the metal vat.
As the fluid level dropped, the sirdar saw his own reflection in the glass, and took off his helmet. If the captive survived release, he wanted him to be able to see his face.
As soon as the fluid had dropped far enough, the sirdar opened the hatch. Excess water, stagnant and foul, sloshed out over his boots. The tank reeked of organic waste and bacterial processes.
The man inside was limp. Dead or unconscious. The sirdar grabbed him and dragged him out. His flesh was cold and extraordinarily colourless. The sirdar tore the cables out of his temples, leaving little bloodless punctures, and pumped at his chest. Brackish soup glugged out of his slack mouth and nostrils.
‘Come on,’ the sirdar whispered. ‘Don’t let this be hello again and goodbye.’
The man convulsed, and started to cough and choke. His eyes opened. He retched and spat out ropes of mucus and spittle while the sirdar supported him.
He looked up at the sirdar, blinking in the stale light. Some colour was returning, and his flesh began to show livid bruises from beatings and many minor combat injuries.
‘Oan?’ he asked, his voice made of nothing.
‘Hello, Brin,’ said Mkoll. ‘It’s been a long time.’
Mkoll locked his arms around Brin Milo, like a man greeting a son he’d thought he’d lost forever.
Thirteen: Up Into the Light
Luna Fazekiel had an excessively ordered and compulsive mind. It had been remarked upon, not always in a complimentary manner, and accounted for her career path into the Prefectus rather than a regular Militarum command.
When the Ghost companies and the retinue had arrived at the undercroft, an event that seemed like months ago to her, she had walked every centimetre of the cellars to learn the layout.
The information was useless to her now, and that troubled her deeply. She liked to have solid, verifiable facts to give her power over her circumstances. That was gone, and she felt her long-conquered anxieties rising.
The hallway she was following was long. She knew that no single hallway in the entire undercroft was this long or this straight. The environment had turned against them, buckled by the warp-aura of whatever stalked them.
Whatever it was that made the noise she had first heard at Low Keen, a noise that had lodged in her ever since and thrown her into a downward spiral of anxieties.
She led the way, controlling her breathing to avoid the onset of panic. Merity and Meryn followed her. Merity seemed alert, but Meryn was either traumatised, or unwilling to hide his usual, sullen nature. He had said very little about what had happened to him, despite her questions. People had died. His squad. Something had torn them apart.
Information – specific detail – was a tool that allowed for greater control. Meryn’s reluctance to help her with much compounded her sense that she was losing her grip.
‘You’re sure,’ she asked, ‘that we have only been down here an hour?’
‘Thereabouts,’ said Merity.
It was difficult to allow for that. It lacked sense, and wasn’t backed up by the evidence of Fazekiel’s own experience.
‘I’m not sure any more,’ Merity added. ‘I’m not sure of anything.’
‘Why did you come down?’ she asked Merity. ‘You came down to the undercroft. Why?’
‘I…’ Merity said. She eased her grip on the carbine. ‘Does it matter?’
Fazekiel looked at her.
‘You were working with the Lord Executor’s cabinet up in the palace, but you chose to come down.’
‘I came to find you,’ said Merity.
‘Regarding the Low Keen incident?’ asked Fazekiel. She was fidgeting with the front of her coat in a futile effort to wipe the stains off it.
‘Yes,’ said Merity. She was painfully aware of the way Meryn was staring at her, his eyes hooded. ‘Look, it’s hardly important right now, is it, commissar?’
Fazekiel turned to Merity and presented her with what she hoped was a reassuring smile. She was finding it hard to know what expression her face was actually wearing, or how much of her mounting terror she was betraying.
‘We don’t know what’s important,’ she said. ‘Things happened at Low Keen. The thing that attacked Yoncy and Elodie Daur. Mam Daur described a very distinctive noise associated with the attack, a noise I believe we have now heard. Yoncy was present at both places–’
‘So?’ asked Meryn.
‘I’m just assembling facts,’ said Fazekiel. ‘You said she was also present when your squad died. And we both saw her before the lights went out.’
Meryn said nothing. He looked at the wall. His breathing was too fast, too shallow.
‘I’m sorry,’ Fazekiel said to Merity quietly. ‘I… I am meticulous to the point of compulsion. I always have been. I like detail. I like to know the far side of everything. I suppose it is a weakness. An obsession. Detail gives me a sense of control.’
‘I’m sure it makes you a very good investigator,’ Merity answered. Merity was edgy and scared, and she could see how strung-out Fazekiel was. She didn’t feel reassured by either of the people she was with, though she was glad she wasn’t alone.
‘Detail freak,’ muttered Meryn. ‘Th
at’s what everyone says about you. Taking great pains and giving them to everybody else.’
‘There’s no need for that,’ Merity said to him.
Meryn glared at her. ‘We’re lost, little girl,’ he said, ‘and something out of a nightmare is hunting us. But yeah, let’s swap a few personal secrets and braid each other’s fething hair.’
‘In the face of an unknown threat, assembling reliable data seems sensible,’ said Fazekiel. ‘Do you have a better idea, captain?’
‘Give me a gun,’ he replied.
‘We only have two firearms,’ said Fazekiel.
‘And she’s a fething civilian!’ Meryn growled, indicating Merity with contempt. ‘I’m a fething serving officer in the Tanith First.’
He looked at Merity.
‘Give me the carbine,’ he said.
‘No,’ she replied.
‘Commissar?’ he said, looking for support.
‘What happened to your weapon, captain?’ Fazekiel asked.
‘Feth you. Both of you,’ he murmured and looked away. Merity could see how badly his hands were shaking.
‘Why did you come down here?’ Fazekiel asked Merity.
‘I just… I just did.’
‘To find me. You had something to tell me regarding the Low Keen incident?’
‘It doesn’t matter now. It’s not important.’
‘You were in a meeting with Gaunt’s tactical cabinet, ma’am,’ said Fazekiel. ‘It must have been important to tear you away from that.’
‘I remembered something, that’s all,’ said Merity. She kept flicking her eyes in Meryn’s direction, trying to show she didn’t want to speak in front of him, but the commissar was too weary and anxious to notice the hint. Merity had always disliked Meryn intensely. She wasn’t about to throw suspicion his way. Not in front of him. So, she thought she’d heard his voice outside the shower block? So what? How did that matter even slightly now?
Meryn had turned to stare at her, listening intently.
‘What did you remember?’ he asked. There was an edge to his tone. His eyes were bright and unblinking, like a snake’s.
‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ she said.
‘It might be important,’ said Fazekiel. ‘It might relate to this.’
‘It doesn’t,’ Merity insisted.
Fazekiel sighed, and turned to start walking again.
Meryn stood for a moment, staring at Merity. When she went to walk past him, he whispered, ‘Careless talk, that’s always a bad thing. Rumour, gossip. Don’t want people getting the wrong idea, do we?’
Merity blanked him and kept walking.
They’d only gone another few metres when they heard the sound again. The saw-blade, screeching somewhere close by. It was like the shriek of an animal. The lights flickered.
‘Feth this,’ Meryn whispered. ‘Give me the gun.’
‘No,’ Merity replied. It was the only thing making her feel remotely safe.
‘What I think,’ said Ayatani Zweil, ‘is that darkness follows the light.’
‘Is that so?’ Domor replied. They sloshed, knee-deep, along the flooded hallway. Domor had his straight silver in his hand, for all the good it would do.
‘Yes, oh yes, Shoggy,’ Zweil replied earnestly. ‘Like a shadow, you know? Imagine a candle.’
‘All right.’
‘The candle’s lit, you see? So there’s light.’
I’m familiar with the fething principles of candles, Domor wanted to scream. He didn’t. The old priest was scared. He’d been talking non-stop for the last twenty minutes. Domor wanted him to shut up. He liked the old man dearly, but he longed for silence. He wanted to be able to hear things coming.
He sighed to himself. And then what? he wondered. He looked around at the half-lit gloom, the reflections of the low-power lamps flickering on the rippled surface of a waste water flood that was still rising.
This was going to be a grim old end. Not at all what he’d ever imagined. Domor had always known for sure he would die in the regiment. He was resigned to that. He’d come close often enough, including the occasion that had robbed him of his eyes and left him with the buggy optical augmetics that had earned him his nickname.
But he’d always pictured the end as a glorious one. On the field of battle, a valiant stand at Gaunt’s side. A noble death. Maybe there’d be wreaths afterwards, and a bugle call or a gun salute.
But those days were gone. Life was changing. Gaunt was high and mighty now. He’d never stand in the line with his boys again. The glory days and noble ends of the First and fething Only were memories. Reality and the future was a colder place. He had to reimagine his own destiny.
And he couldn’t ever have imagined this. Not this. A stinking, unwitnessed end in a sealed fething dungeon that shifted around him like a living thing, like a sorcerous labyrinth in the old-time myths. And a nightmare monster, straight out of those same childhood stories, coming for him, sniffing at his heels and tasting his tracks.
‘So, the candle’s lit, and there’s light,’ Zweil was saying. ‘But the candle casts a shadow too, doesn’t it? Doesn’t it?’
‘Yes, father.’
‘The shadow’s only there because of the light,’ said Zweil.
Domor glanced at the old man. ‘Is it?’ he asked. ‘Or is the shadow still there when the light goes out, and we just can’t see it because it’s dark?’
Zweil frowned. ‘Shit me sideways, boy,’ he exclaimed. ‘That’s some deep philosophy there.’
‘Sorry.’
‘No, I’ve just got to factor that into my thinking…’
‘No need.’
Zweil paused, scratched his head, and then scooped the skirts of his ayatani robe up out of the water and wrung them out. He kept doing that. Domor wasn’t sure why. As soon as he’d wrung them out, Zweil would simply drop them back into the water and keep going.
‘Well,’ said Zweil. ‘That’s what I think. The darkness follows the light, you see? Like a… like it can smell it.’
‘Uh huh.’
‘Opposites, light and dark, each needing the other to survive. To exist.’
‘Right.’
‘Can’t have one without the other. They can’t be separated.’
‘I’ve often thought that,’ said Domor, not really listening.
‘So we’re in this shit,’ said the old man, ‘we’re in this awful, awful shitty shit-balls mess, because she’s here.’
‘Who?’
‘Haven’t you been listening? Her. The Saint. My beloved Beati.’
‘Oh.’ Domor paused. ‘I thought you meant Yoncy.’
‘Yoncy?’ The old man asked, puzzled. ‘Why would I mean Yoncy?’
Domor shrugged.
‘Well, Shoggy? Why did you think I meant her?’
Domor shook his head. ‘Yoncy’s odd,’ he said. ‘Odd follows her around. Haven’t you ever noticed that? And this thing we keep hearing, it sounds like whatever it was came for her at Low Keen. I heard it, father. It sounds the same.’
‘I dunno, Shoggy,’ said Zweil. ‘That’s a terrible thing to think about a little girl.’
‘She’s not a little girl,’ said Domor. ‘She’s… look, I love Kolea. He’s my brother. Dalin’s a good boy. Solid and brave. And Tona, well, she’s done a hell of a thing, raising them. But Yoncy… I’m not the only one to think it. Elodie, she gets freaked out by her. Even Gol.’
Zweil thought about this for a moment, then started to laugh loudly.
‘Shhh!’ said Domor, in alarm.
‘You think Yoncy’s coming for us?’ Zweil laughed.
‘No, I don’t.’
‘Yoncy. Hnnh! Yoncy? I’ve heard some notions in my time–’
‘Well, you just said it was the Saint.’
‘No, I didn�
��t!’ said Zweil sharply. ‘I said the darkness is here because of her. She’s light, Domor. The light of the Throne. Just so magnificent. And the darkness is drawn to that. The shadow of the warp, you see? She’s the candle–’
‘I get it.’
‘–and the warp, see, that’s the–’
‘I get it. The Archenemy, the Ruinous Powers, they’re here tonight because she’s here.’
‘In the palace,’ Zweil nodded. ‘I can feel her presence, calling to me.’
‘So we’re not the targets?’ asked Domor. ‘We’re just in the way?’
‘I suppose so. The darkness has come for her. She’s strong, and she’ll fend it off, but I hope she’s got loyal soldiers at her side.’
‘She might not even be here yet,’ said Domor, sloshing forward. ‘There was no announcement. No ceremonial welcome–’
‘Oh, she’s here. I told you, I can feel her–’
Zweil fell silent.
‘Father?’
Domor looked around. Zweil had stopped, deeply pensive.
‘What’s the matter?’
‘I can feel her,’ said Zweil. ‘I can feel her close by.’
‘So you said.’
‘No, Shoggy. Think about it. I can feel her. And I thought, well, that’s nice and reassuring. A comfort. But I can feel her. Like a lodestone feels true north.’
‘What?’
Zweil turned abruptly and began splashing off the way they’d come.
‘Father? Father!’
‘Come on, Shoggy!’ Zweil called back. ‘I was stupid, is what it is! It was right before my eyes and I missed it.’
‘What was?’
‘I can feel her call,’ Zweil said emphatically. ‘Goodness, Domor. Don’t you listen? Keep up. She can lead us out of here. I only have to listen, to let myself feel. Then follow. Be her pilgrim, her imhava, just as I’ve done my whole life. Follow her path. Go to her, wherever she’s calling from. Let her guide me out of the darkness and up into the light. You too, of course.’
‘We’ve been that way,’ Domor protested.
‘We’ve been every which way,’ Zweil replied. ‘There’s no sense to this place any more. The warp’s seen to that. We just follow the light. What?’
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