Honourbound - Rachel Harrison

by Warhammer 40K

  ‘That’s because I was serious,’ Wyck says.

  He knows he has to eat what’s in that tin. The headache will only get worse if he doesn’t. It’ll get blinding, and when it gets that way he gets stupid, and after killing those men High Command sent, he really can’t afford to be.

  Awd laughs. ‘Come on now, Dav,’ he says. ‘You know we cannot choose what they are, but we can make them into something.’

  ‘You sound like you’re after my stripes,’ Wyck says. ‘Words like those.’

  Awd snorts. ‘Not likely,’ he says. ‘That is a headache I do not need.’

  Wyck can’t help laughing at his choice of words. It sends him dizzy, so he rests his head against the bare stone of the wall for a second. It is comfortingly cold. Wyck starts eating the protein mash. Like always, it smells worse than it tastes.

  ‘You know what I think?’ Awd asks.

  Wyck shakes his head, pushing his food around with the flimsy tin spoon. ‘No, but I would bet you’re about to tell me.’

  ‘I think you gave them all that spite because you feel sorry over Efri and Dal and Vyne.’

  Wyck stops pushing his food around and puts the tin down.

  ‘What?’ he says.

  Awd doesn’t take heed of the tone he gives that word. He just keeps eating his food and talking in between.

  ‘You weren’t there,’ he says. ‘When we said the words. You should have been. Don’t pretend that doesn’t put hooks in your soul because I know that it does.’

  Wyck stares at him. ‘I gave Jey and Haro all that spite because they looked like prey,’ he says. ‘Because they looked at me like I was going to mind them, or keep them safe.’ He shakes his head. ‘I needed them to understand they won’t find that here, or anywhere. That being of a squad doesn’t make you safe. It doesn’t mean anyone will mind you. It means that your kin will fight with you. Bleed for you. Die for you, even. It means you had better be worth it.’

  ‘Efri was worth it,’ Awd says. ‘And Dal. And Vyne.’

  ‘I know,’ Wyck snaps. Then he sighs. ‘I know.’

  ‘You should have been there,’ Awd says. ‘Crys is stung over it too, though she’ll never tell you so.’

  He nods over at where Crys lies flat out on her cot underneath the window, snoring. She never has trouble sleeping. Never has trouble with much of anything.

  ‘I should have been there,’ Wyck says. ‘You’re right about that. But what’s done is done. Guilt does no favours for the dead.’

  Awd frowns at him. ‘That’s what you say,’ he says. ‘But you are wearing that chain now all the same.’

  Wyck puts his hand to where the silver chain rests. He tucks it back inside his fatigues so that it is hidden. The comedown must be bad. He is bleary-eyed and shivering. An idea pushes up in his head like someone else put it there.

  Outside.

  He should go outside. The air will help.

  Wyck gets himself up off the cold floor by leaning on the wall.

  ‘Where were you, Dav?’ Awd asks. ‘What were you doing?’

  Fighting, Wyck thinks. Lying. Stealing.

  Killing.

  ‘Never you mind,’ he says instead, and goes to leave.

  ‘And now where are you going?’ Awd shouts after him.

  Wyck blinks, but his eyes stay bleary.

  ‘Never you mind that either,’ he says.

  Left with little option otherwise, Raine reaches out to one of the last people to still retain her trust.

  She sits cross-legged on the floor of her quarters and waits for the hololith link to be established. It is a secured line with theta-level encryption, bounced to the fleet in orbit over Laxus Secundus by the high-gain communications linkup established at the command camp. Even with those powerful transmitters, it still takes time, but Raine cannot trust the vagaries of an astropath, and she cannot go there herself. So, she sits and she waits, turning her timepiece in her hands.

  The link clicks live, and the image resolves, jagged and flickering. The woman that looks out at Raine has changed little since last they spoke. Even shaped from hololith light, her face is angular and hard and made more so by her years. Her hair is white and curled, held in place with silver pins. Her eyes are mismatched. One green, one blue. Not augmetic, but a natural asymmetry.

  ‘Hail, Lord-Marshal,’ Raine says.

  Veris Drake doesn’t smile, but her eyes narrow in a way that is the equivalent on her face.

  ‘Severina,’ she says, chiding. ‘Such formality. One of the scholam’s many gifts to you, I am sure, but you know better than to speak so with me.’

  Drake has always had little patience for ceremony. Raine remembers the day of her mother’s remembrance service. The honorary banners and rifle salutes and devotionals. The rich, spiced incense smoke. She remembers Drake scowling.

  Ridiculous, she had said. Your mother lives not in the stitching in these flags, or the song of guns. She is her deeds. Her legacy.

  Then Drake had looked to Raine, that honest, untempered scowl still in place.

  She lives in you, she had said.

  Since then, Raine has considered Veris Drake a soul to trust, and she has proved it several times over.

  ‘Of course,’ Raine says. ‘Apologies.’

  ‘Now, my dear,’ Drake says. ‘The hour is late, especially to one of such a dreadful age as me, so tell me what could possibly have unsettled you enough to necessitate a theta-encrypted communication.’

  Raine looks down at the requisition form in her hand. The creases that fold across it that have worried at the ink. Faded and cracked it.

  ‘I believe that there is a corruption taking root in the Bale Stars Crusade,’ she says. ‘I believe that there is a faction within our ranks looking to seize power from the Lord-General Militant and from High Command, and that they are willing to kill to conceal it.’

  She glances up. The Lord-Marshal’s image destabilises for a moment, and when it resolves again, Drake has her fingers steepled before her face.

  ‘Who?’ Drake asks, her voice wintry.

  ‘I suspect that it is orchestrated by General Sylar, of the Kavrone Dragoons,’ Raine says.

  Drake laces her fingers and rests her chin on them. Her mismatched eyes are adamantium-hard. ‘Is that because Sylar is hateful and self-aggrandising, or do you have proof?’

  Raine tells her everything she knows. The landing sites. The live cargo. The guns and the psykers. The discrepancies in the records.

  Tula’s death.

  Drake listens throughout, with her scowl unchanging.

  ‘And you want me to take this to Serek, and the rest of High Command,’ Drake says.

  ‘Yes,’ Raine says. ‘I know it is a risk, but I did not know who else to turn to.’

  Drake waves her hand. ‘Risk does not concern me,’ she says. ‘As I said, I have lived to be dreadfully old. What concerns me is your lack of evidence.’

  ‘The records–’ Raine starts.

  ‘Tell you nothing,’ Drake finishes. ‘Only that there are excisions. I need whatever was cut out. I need documents and data. Otherwise it is just your word against Sylar’s, and whoever else he has managed to convince.’

  ‘And Tula’s death?’ Raine snaps. ‘What of that?’

  Drake’s face softens then, just for an instant.

  ‘It is regrettable,’ she says. ‘If he truly has been betrayed, but that too requires proof to persecute for. Anything else is suicide, if you will pardon me the use of the word.’

  Raine’s heart is thundering, and she has put more creases in that paper in her hand, but she knows that Drake is right.

  ‘And if I get you this proof?’ she asks.

  ‘Then I will speak with Serek as you ask,’ she says. ‘But not before. This is a political matter, Severina. You cannot solve it with you
r fists or the edge of your blade. You have to play their game, by their rules.’

  Raine wants to spit, thinking about it. She has always considered solving problems with a sword’s edge much the cleaner option.

  ‘Understood,’ she says. ‘Though their game feels unbalanced to me.’

  ‘It always is, by its nature,’ Drake says. ‘The odds are always stacked against the righteous. It is what makes us righteous.’

  Drake’s eyes narrow again, that approximation of a smile.

  ‘There is a Munitorum complex on Laxus Secundus,’ she says. ‘A lens through which the crusade’s information must travel, as it does on all worlds. That is where I would go, were I looking for errant records. After I had awaited the necessary passcodes to access the most restricted areas, of course.’

  Raine nods.

  ‘Thank you,’ she says. ‘Veris.’

  Drake waves her away again. ‘Gratitude can lie with ceremony as far as I am concerned,’ she says. ‘Just keep your eyes open, my dear. I promised your mother I would watch for you, and I would hate for this terrible business to make a liar of me.’

  It is late when Fel and his Duskhounds return to the wing of the scholam where the squad are billeted. Late enough to be early. There are only a few hours left before the sun rises. Before the Healer’s Ward and the Sanctum of Bones.

  ‘Something is worrying at you, captain.’

  Tyl looks exhausted. There’s a bruise starting to close her right eye from one of her deaths in their training games. She’s not the only one who is hurting. In the end they managed to kill him several times over between them, which had been the point of doing it.

  To make sure that if they had to work without him, just as a three, then they could.

  ‘What makes you say that?’ he asks her.

  Her mouth quirks in a try at a smile.

  ‘Because I know you,’ she says. ‘Because you have that look about you that you get when you think overlong on something.’ She gives up on the smile. ‘Because you disappear on the nights we don’t fight and you never say to where, or why.’

  Fel can’t find it in himself to be surprised that she has noticed. No matter how quiet he might be, Tyl has always been watchful. She’s the best marksman of the lot of them with a longshot. There’s a part of him that’s proud of her for noticing, even if he can’t explain where he goes.

  ‘It’s nothing to speak of,’ Fel says.

  ‘That doesn’t mean it’s nothing at all,’ Tyl says. ‘It means it’s important enough for you not to say.’

  He won’t lie to Tyl, so he’s left with only one choice.

  ‘Which means you should stop asking,’ he says.

  Tyl holds up her hands, palms out. It’s a deference. A show of no weapons. Fel can’t feel surprised at that either. The lot of them are made for it. The want to obey is instinctual, like throwing up an arm to block a strike.

  ‘Right you are, captain,’ she says.

  She turns away to leave.

  ‘Cass,’ he says.

  She looks back at the sound of her given name.

  ‘There is something that I do need to tell you,’ he says.

  ‘What’s that, sir?’

  ‘I am making you my second.’

  Tyl blinks. He knows she is thinking about the fact that it was Rol’s place before.

  ‘Not Myre,’ she says. ‘Or Jeth.’

  ‘No,’ Fel says. ‘You.’

  Tyl is a good choice because she is quick and fierce in all things. Quicker than him, sometimes. But it wasn’t speed or fire that won her the place, it was what she just did and said. Because she was the one to notice when he goes, and because she had the heart to ask him about it, even if he can’t give her an answer.

  ‘Thank you,’ Tyl says. ‘I won’t let you down.’

  Fel nods. ‘Just remember what I told you,’ he says.

  Tyl salutes the old way, with her hand closed over her heart.

  ‘Eyes and ears,’ she says. ‘And hearts.’

  And then she does go, leaving him in the corridor alone. Fel waits until she rounds the corner and he can’t even hear her whispersteps anymore, and then he looks again at the mark left in chalk on the face of the door to his quarters. Three short strikes, and underneath them three words written in a familiar hand.

  Duty. Honour. Faith.

  Wyck finds his way out into the rain and sleet and keeps walking until he’s well out of the muster yard’s floodlights. It’s pitch dark, save for the city burning in the distance. He hears fighters scream overhead, though he can’t see them. The icy weather doesn’t really help with the shaking, and now that he’s here, he can’t remember why he thought it would.

  ‘I was not sure that you would hear it.’

  He flinches and turns at the sound of the voice. Lydia Zane looks like a drowned ghost, standing there with the rain ringing off her witch’s crown. Droplets hit the surface of her silver eyes without making her blink.

  ‘Commanding others is not my strength,’ she says. ‘But your mind is open and closed in equal measure.’

  Wyck realises what she is saying. That coming outside was a poor idea after all, because it wasn’t his in the first place. He starts shaking worse, and pulls his knife.

  ‘You did this,’ he says. ‘You put witch-words in my head.’

  ‘I needed to speak with you,’ Zane says.

  Wyck laughs, despite the cold and the shaking and the fear locking his limbs.

  ‘No,’ he says to her. ‘You think what we did gives you that right? It doesn’t. Not now. Not ever.’

  Zane tilts her head. ‘Listen to me,’ she says. ‘It is important.’

  ‘Listen to you,’ he says. ‘You are lucky I don’t cut you. Crawl back to your cursed circle and stay away from me.’

  Zane snarls. She moves fast. He tries to stop her, but finds himself frozen as Zane puts her cold, clammy hands on either side of his face. Images flash in front of his eyes.

  Black ironwork.

  Flame and fury.

  Razor edges, snapped teeth. Oil-slick water.

  The blade of a knife, ready to bury itself in his back.

  In his back.

  The images disappear. Zane’s hands fall away and she steps backwards as Wyck falls onto his knees and violently throws up what he’d managed to eat onto the gravel of the muster yard.

  ‘Now will you listen?’ Zane says.

  Wyck spits on the ground. He is shaking so completely that he can’t get to his feet. He looks up at her.

  ‘I truly hate you,’ he says, through his chattering teeth. ‘Do you know that?’

  Zane shakes her head. ‘You are welcome,’ she says, flatly.

  ‘What?’

  She tilts her head. ‘Death means to take you tomorrow,’ Zane says. ‘I thought to let you know that you should take care for knives at your back.’

  Knives. At his back.

  Wyck shudders and blinks his bleary eyes. When he does, he sees something else that she showed him, printed in the darkness made by his closed eyes. Machines. Cables. Zane stuck through with wires inside a metal casket.

  ‘Going by the casket, it wants the same for you,’ he says.

  That makes her laugh bitterly. The sound of it turns his stomach again, but there’s nothing left to throw up.

  ‘No,’ she says. ‘That is not death. That is something much worse.’

  Wyck gets to his feet, finally, slowly. The rain feels like a pulse outside his body.

  ‘Worse,’ he says. ‘Than death.’

  ‘Yes,’ Zane says. ‘That is why I called to you. Why I brought you out here.’

  She puts her hand into her robes and takes something out of them. In the darkness, it takes Wyck a second to realise what he’s looking at. He almost laughs.

 
‘You made yourself a blade,’ he says.

  ‘Next time they come for me, I will not be found without teeth,’ Zane says.

  ‘And what, you want to know the secret of using one?’ Wyck asks her.

  She nods. That’s when he does find it in himself to laugh. It’s all ridiculous. Delirious.

  ‘Your spells,’ he says. ‘How do you use those?’

  She frowns. ‘It is instinctual,’ she says. ‘A reaction. And calling them spells is ignorant.’

  Wyck shrugs. He doesn’t much care to know what they really are. ‘A blade’s the same,’ he says. ‘Instinct. You cut them so they can’t cut you. Fast and deep. No hesitation.’

  Zane looks down at the blade in her hand. It looks as though it is made from wood. Wicked and jagged. He has to hand it to her, it looks as though it’ll leave a nasty wound.

  ‘That is all?’ she asks.

  ‘That’s all,’ Wyck says. ‘Killing isn’t hard to do, no matter how it’s done.’

  It’s the truth. He’s never found the act a hard thing to do. It just happens. Instinct, like he said. It’s the after that’s the problem. The nightmares and the ghosts. The blood all over his hands.

  Zane is looking at him with that tilt of her head. He hates that look, like she’s looking right through to his core.

  ‘I see,’ she says.

  And before he can ask her exactly what she sees, she turns and walks away into the darkness.

  Raine waits by the red-painted words in the old scholam’s upper corridor at the stroke of three. The scholam bell is loud and doleful, still set to ring time, even with no progena to hear it. Wind howls from the end of the corridor, through the open embrasure that serves as a window. It tugs at Raine’s coat, and makes the candles lighting the corridor flicker, casting dancing shadows. Raine can’t bring herself to put her fingers to the worn spot on the wall where the word ‘faith’ is painted like she did when she met with Fel before. Not now.