by Dan Abnett
He waved a data-slate at me. I brushed it aside, and used a hand mirror to study the line of metal butterfly sutures in the wound in my cheek.
"What about the definite article?'
'I have over nine thousand marks with that connection,' he sighed. He began to read them from his slate list. 'The Pontius Swellwin Youth Academy, The Pontius Praxitelles Translation Bureau, The Pontius Gyvant Ropus Investment Financiary, The Pontius Spiegel Microsurgical Hospi-'
'Enough.' I sat at the codifier, typing in name groups. Flickering runes hunted and darted across the view-plate. Text extracts drifted into focus. I searched through them by eye, my finger resting on the scroll bar.
'Pontius Claw,' I said.
He blinked and looked at me. There was a half-smile of scholarly delight on his narrow face. 'Not on my lists.'
'Because he is dead?'
'Because he's dead.'
Aemos came over and looked across my shoulder at the screen. 'But it makes a sort of sense.'
It did. A kind of illogic that had the flavour of truth. The sort of spore an inquisitor gets a nose for after a few years.
The Glaw family was old blood, a thrusting noble dynasty that had been a main player in this sub-sector for almost a millennium. The primary familial holdings and estates were on Gudrun, a world that had already come to our attention. House Glaw was also a major shareholder and investor in the Regal Bonded Merchant Guild of Sinesias, so the codifier had just revealed to me.
'Pontius Glaw…' 1 murmured.
Pontius Glaw had been dead for more than two hundred years. The seventh son of Oberon Glaw, one of the great patriarchs of that line, he had suffered the fate of most junior siblings in that there had been precious little for him to inherit once his older brothers had taken their turn. His eldest brother, another Oberon, had become lord of the house; the second eldest had been gifted the control of the stock-holdings; the third had taken on the captaincy of the House Militia; the fourth and fifth had married politically and entered the Administratum at high level… and so it went.
From what I remembered of Pontius Glaw's biography, required reading as a trainee, Pontius had become a dilettante, wasting his life, his robust virility, charisma and finely educated intellect in all manner of worthless pursuits. He had gambled away a significant measure of his personal fortune, then rebuilt it on the revenues of slave-trading and pit-fighting. A ruthless sliver of brutality stained his record.
And then, in his forties, with his health ruined by years of abuse, he turned to a much darker path. It has always been suspected that this turn was triggered by some chance event: an artefact or document that fell into his hands, perhaps the strange beliefs of some of the more barbaric pit-fighters he enslaved. Instinct told me the propensity had always been within him, and that he was looking for a chance to let it flourish. It is documented he was a life-long collector of rare and often prohibited books. At what point might his appetite for licentious and esoteric pornography have spilled over into the heretical and blasphemous?
Pontius Glaw became a disciple of Chaos, a devotee of the most abominable and obscene forces that haunt this galaxy. He drew a coven around him, and over a period of fifteen years committed unspeakable and increasingly brazen acts of evil.
He was slain eventually, his coven along with him, on Lamsarrote, by an inquisitorial purge led by the great Absalom Angevin. House Glaw
participated in this overthrow, desperate to be seen to distance themselves from his crimes. It is likely this alone prevented the entire family from being pulled down with him.
A monster, a notorious monster. And dead, as Aemos had been so quick to point out. Dead for more than two centuries.
But the name and the connection of facts seemed too obvious to ignore.
I wandered up to the cockpit and sat with Betancore. 'We'll need passage off-world, to Gudrun.'
'I'll arrange it. It may be a day or two.'
'As fast as you can.'
I sent word to High Custodian Carpel, informing him of some, though not all, of my findings and telling him I would shortly be leaving to continue my investigations on Gudrun. I was reading through the confidential case records of Inquisitor Angevin when two Arbites brought Bequin to my gun-cutter. I had sent orders for her to be delivered into my charge.
She stood in the crew-bay, frowning in the gloom, cuffed. She had dressed in a tawdry gown and a light cloak, but despite the cheapness of her garb and the discomfort she was in, her considerable beauty was plain to see. Good bones, a full mouth, fierce eyes and long dark hair. Yet, again, there was that air about her, that tone I had detected before. Despite her obvious physical attractions, there was something almost repellent about her. It was curious, but I was convinced I knew what it was.
She glanced round as I entered the crew-bay, her expression a mix of fear and indignation.
'I helped you!' she spat.
'You did. Though I neither asked for nor needed your help.'
She pouted. That air was stronger now, an unpleasant feeling that made me want to bundle her out of the cutter and have done with her then and there.
'The Arbites say they will charge me wim murder and conspiracy.'
The Arbites desperately want someone to pin the crimes on. You are unhappily involved in those matters, though I don't believe deliberately'
'Damn right!' she snarled. 'This has ruined me, my life here! Just when I was getting things together.
Your life has been difficult?'
She fixed me with a sneer that questioned my intelligence. I'm a pleasure girl, an object, it seemed to say, lowest of the low… how difficult do you think my life has been?
I stepped forward and removed the Arbites' cuffs. She rubbed her wrists and looked at me in surprise.
'Sit down/ I told her. I was using the will.
She looked at me again, as if wondering what the funny tone was all about, and then calmly took a seat on a padded leather bench along the crew-bay's back wall.
'I can make sure the charges are dropped,' I told her. 'I have that authority. Indeed, my authority is the only reason you haven't been charged or interrogated so far.'
'Why would you do that?'
'I thought you believed I owed you?'
'Doesn't matter what I believe.' There was sullen cast to her face as she looked me up and down. I found myself intrigued. Objectively, 1 was looking at a girl whose looks and vivacious spirit made her undeniably desirable. Yet I… I almost wanted to shout at her, to drive her away, to get her out of my sight. I had an entirely unwarranted and instinctive loathing for her.
'Even if you clear me, I can't carry on here. They'll hound me out. I'll be marked as trouble. That'll be the end of my work. I'll have to move on again.' She stared down at the floor and muttered a curse. 'Just when I was getting it together!'
'Move on? You're not from Hubris?'
This miserable shit-pit?'
"Where then?'
'I came here from Thracian Primaris four years ago.'
'You were born on Thracian?'
She shook her head. 'Bonaventure.'
That was half a sector away. 'How did you get from Bonaventure to Thracian?'
'By way of this and that. Here and there. I've travelled a lot. Never stayed put very long.'
'Because things get difficult?'
The sneer again. That's right. I'd stuck it out here longer than anywhere. Now that's all screwed up/
'Stand up,' I snapped suddenly, using the will again.
She paused and shrugged at me. 'Make your mind up.' She got to her feet.
'I want to ask you some questions about the men who employed you at Thaw-view 12011.'
'I thought you might.'
If you answer helpfully, I can cut you a deal.'
What sort of deal?'
'I can take you to Gudrun. Give you a chance to make a new start. Or I can offer you employment, if you're interested.'
She smiled quizzically. It was the first positive
expression I had seen on her. It made her more beautiful, but I didn't like her any better.
'Employment? You'd employ me? An inquisitor would employ me?'
'That's right. Certain services I think you can provide/
She took two fluid steps over to me and placed her hands flat against my chest. 'I see/ she said. 'Even big bad inquisitors have needs, huh? That's fine/
'You misunderstand/ I replied, pushing her back as politely as I could. Physical contact with her made the unnatural feeling of revulsion even
stronger. 'The services I have in mind will be new to you. Not the sort of work you are accustomed to. Are you still interested?'
She set her head on one side and considered me. You're an odd one, all right. Are all inquisitors like you?'
'No/
I ordered the servitor, Modo, to provide her with refreshment and left her in the crew-bay. Betancore was stood in the shadows outside the door, gazing in at her appreciatively.
'She's a fine sight/ he murmured to me as if I might not have noticed.
You forget Vibben so quickly?'
He snapped round at me, stung. 'That was low, Eisenhorn. I was just commenting/
You'll like her less when you get to know her. She's an untouchable/
'Seriously?'
'Seriously. A psychic blank. It's natural, and I haven't tested her limits. It's all I can do to be in the same room as her/
'Such a looker too/ Betancore sighed, gazing back in at her.
'Useful to us. If she passes certain requirements, I'm going to employ her/
He nodded. Untouchables were rare, and almost impossible to create artificially. They have a negative presence in the warp that renders them virtually immune to psychic powers, which in turn makes them potent anti-psyker weapons. The side-effect of their psychic blankness is the unpleasant disturbance that accompanies them, the waves of fear and revulsion they trigger in those they meet.
No wonder her life had been difficult and friendless.
'News?' I asked Betancore.
'Made contact with a sprint trader called the Essene. Master's one Tobius Maxilla. Deals in small units of luxury goods. Coming here in two days to deliver a consignment of vintage wines from Hesperus, then on to Gudrun. For a fee, he'll make room for the cutter in his hold/
'Good work. So we'll be on Gudrun when?'
Two weeks/
I spent the next hour or so interviewing Bequin, but as I suspected she knew precious little about any of the men. We gave her accommodation in a small bunk-cell next to Betancore's quarters. It was scarcely more than a box, and Nilquit had to remove piles of stowed equipment to clear it, but she seemed pleased enough. When I asked her if she had any possessions she wished to collect from the Sun-dome, she simply shook her head.
I was reviewing yet more piles of data with Aemos when Fischig arrived. He was dressed in his brown serge uniform suit and carried two bulky holdalls over his shoulder, which he dropped to the deck with a declamatory thump as he stepped aboard.
'To what do I owe this visit, chastener?' I asked.
He showed me a slate bearing Carpel's official seal. 'The high custodian grants you permission to leave to pursue your inquiry. Dependent on this…'
I reviewed the slate and sighed.
'I'm coming with you/ he said.
SIX
Divination by auto-seance.
A dream.
Joining the Essene.
I lodged A formal complaint with the high custodian's office, but it was simply for show. Carpel could manufacture serious problems for me if I tried to leave without his agent. I could do that, of course. I could do as I liked. But Carpel could delay me, and I didn't know how much co-operation from the elders and administrations of Hubris I'd need later if any part of this investigation led to trial.
Besides, Carpel knew I was going on to Gudrun, and he would plainly send Fischig there under an Arbites warrant to investigate anyway. On the whole, I decided I'd rather have Chastener Fischig where I could see him.
On the afternoon before our intended departure, I had Lowink prepare for an auto-seance. I doubted whether anything further could be learned now, but I wanted to cover every avenue.
As usual, we used my quarters, with the cabin-door locked, and Betan-core strictly instructed to prevent interruptions. I sat in a high-back armchair, and spent some quarter of an hour lowering my mind to a semi-trance state. This was an old technique, one of the first I had been taught when my abilities had originally been detected by the tutors of the Inquisition. On a cloth-covered table between us, Lowink laid out key evidence items: some of Eyclone's effects, some other pieces taken from Thaw-view
12011, and some from the processional. We also had the mysterious casket from the cryogenerator chamber.
Once he was satisfied I was ready, Lowink opened his mind to the warp, and filtered its raging influence through his highly trained mental architecture. This transitional moment was always a shock, and I shuddered. The temperature in the room dropped palpably, and a glass bowl on a side counter cracked spontaneously. Lowink was murmuring, his eyes rolled back, twitching and jerking slightly.
I closed my eyes, though I could still see my room. What I was seeing was a visualisation of our surroundings constructed by Lowink astropath-ically in the Empyrean itself. Everything shone with a pale blue light from within, and solids became translucent. The dimensions of the room shifted slightly, stretching and buckling as if they had difficulty retaining their coherence.
I took up the items on the table in turn, Lowink's projection enhancing their psychometric qualities, opening my mind's abilities to the signatures and resonances they carried in the warp.
Most were dull and blunt, with no trace of resonance. Some had wispy tendrils of auras around them, relics of passing contact with human hands and human minds. Eyclone's vox– device buzzed with the distant, unintelligible whinings of ghosts but gave up nothing.
Eyclone's pistol stung my hand like a scorpion when I touched it – and both I and Lowink gasped. I had a brief aftertaste of death. I decided not to touch it again.
His data-slate, which Aemos had yet been unable to open, was dripping with a sticky, almost gelatinous aura. The thickness of the psychic residue betokened the complex thought processes and data that had adhered to it. It gave up nothing, and I became frustrated. Lowink amplified my scrutiny and at last, as a whisper, I landed the word, or name, 'daesumnor'.
The final item for inspection was the casket. It resonated brightly with flickering bands of warp-traces. Our contact with it was necessarily brief because of the exhausting strength of its halo.
We probed, opening what seemed to be three levels of psychometric activity. One was sharp and hard, and tasted of metal. Lowink averred that this was a relic of the intellect or intellects that had crafted the casket. An undeniably brilliant but malevolent presence.
Beneath that, colder, smaller, denser, like a lightless collapsed star, lay a heavy, throbbing trace that seemed to be locked in the heart of the casket's machine core.
Around both, fluttering and swooping like birds, were the vestigial psychic agonies of the dead from Processional Two-Twelve. Their plaintive psychic noise rippled through our thoughts and sapped the emotional strength from us both. The dead souls of the processional had left their psychic fingerprints on this device that had been instrumental in their murder.
We were about to step back and end the seance when the second trace, the cold, distant, dense one, began to well up to the surface. I was
intrigued at first, then stunned by its gathering force and speed. It filled my head with a nauseating, intolerable sense of hunger.
Hunger, thirst, appetite, craving…
It rose from the depths of the casket, wailing and yearning, a dark thing tearing up through the other trace energies. I glimpsed its malice and felt its consuming need.
Lowink broke the link. He slumped back in his seat, panting, his skin dotted with the stigmatic blood-spots o
f an astropathic augury taken far too far.
I felt it too. My mind seemed cold, colder even than the ministrations of Dormant. It seemed to take a very long time before my thoughts began to flow freely again, like water slowly thawing in an iced pipe.
I rose and poured myself a glass of amasec. I poured one for Lowink too as an afterthought. Neither of us ever came away from an auto-seance feeling good, but this was signally worse than usual.
There was danger,' Lowink husked at last. Vile danger. From the casket.'
'I felt it.'
'But the whole seance was unseemly, master. As if distracted and spoiled by some… some factor.
I sighed. I knew what he had felt. 'I can explain. The girl we have aboard is an untouchable.'
Lowink shuddered. 'Keep her away from me.'
I passed the word 'daesumnor' to Aemos in case it assisted his work on the data-slate and rested in my cabin to recover. Lowink had gone back to his tiny residence under the cockpit deck. I doubted he would be useful for much for a goodly while.
I gathered up the evidence items, re-bagged them and locked them in the cutter's strongbox, all except the casket, which was too big to fit. We kept it bagged and chained in a tarpaulin locker aft. As I hefted it up to return it to the locker, I felt the aftershock of its aura, as if we had woken something, some instinct. I considered this to be the imagination of my stung mind working overtime, but I completed the task only when I had buckled on a pair of work gloves.
Betancore joined me shortly afterwards. He had gone through Vibben's effects and found no will or instructions. Now we needed her cabin to house Fischig, so we placed her belongings and clothes in an underseat storebin in the crew-bay and together carried her wrapped body to the cot in the medical suite. I locked the door as we left.
"What will you do with her?' Betancore asked. 'There's no time to arrange a burial here now.'
'She once said she came with me to see what the stars were like. That's where we'll lay her to rest.'
Then I slept, turning fitfully despite my exhaustion. When sleep finally came, the dreams were cold and inhospitable. Murderously black, back-lit