by Dan Abnett
In fact, it was difficult to shut Kowitz up. As the butlers refilled his cup, he rattled on, identifying the other parties of guests. House Glaw had interests on worlds throughout the sub-sector, and regular banquets such as this oiled the wheels and kept mings moving.
Eventually, I managed to hand Kowitz off to Aemos, the only man I knew capable of out-talking him. The two fell to complex discussion of the sub-sector balance of trade.
I kept a close eye on the head table. Urisel Glaw, a bloated, thick-set man in bejewelled ceremonial battledress, was giving Gorgone Locke plenty of attention. I watched Urisel closely. There was something about the man, not the least that his wide, puffy face and slick, lacquered hair made his resemblance to portraits of his infamous ancestor Pontius uncanny. He drank unstintingly, and laughed a wet, loose laugh at the ship master's jokes. His fat, powerful fingers constantly pulled at the braided collar of his uniform jacket to ease his wide neck.
Lord Oberon was a taller, leaner man with generous, cliff-like cheekbones rising above a forked goatee. The familial characteristics of the Glaw line were plain in his physiognomy, but he was more regal and distinguished, and lacked the dissolute languor of his younger sibling. Lord Glaw spent the night chatting happily with his off-world cousin, a bumptious young cretin with a whooping laugh and flamboyant courtly manners. But his real interest seemed to lie with the quiet ecdesiarch, Dazzo.
I took note of the ship master too. Gorgone Locke was a raw-boned giant with hooded, sunken eyes. He had long red hair, tied back and
beaded, and his jutting chin was peppered with silver stubble. I wondered about his ship, and his business. I would contact Maxilla and make enquiries.
The banquet lasted until past midnight. As soon as was polite, we retired to our rooms.
The Glaws had given us a suite of rooms in the west wing. Outside, the wind had got up, and was making plaintive sighs down the old chimney flues and open grates. Rain pattered against windows, and doors and shutters twitched and knocked in the drafts.
Heldane was alone in the suite's sitting room when we came back. He had several data-slates open for study on a table and looked up as we came in.
'Well?' I asked him.
He and Betancore had run sweeps of the immediate wing whilst we had been dining. He showed me the results. Most of the rooms were spy-wired with vox-thieves and a few pict-sensors, and there was a complex infrastructure of alarm systems. Heldane had set up a small jammer to blind the spy-ware in our suite.
'Comparisons/ he said, showing me an overlay of two charts on a data-slate. 'The green areas show the parts of the buildings my master gained access to during his visits.' Voke had been obliging enough to supply me with reports of his inspections.
We can overlay in red the results of the sweeps your man and I have managed to make this evening.'
There were considerable discrepancies. Voke may have opened every door he could find, but this showed me ghost areas that he had not gained access to because he hadn't known they were there.
'These are cellars?' I asked.
'Underground rooms, certainly' said Heldane. He had a soft, sickly voice that seemed to seep from his slit-like mouth. 'Adjoining the wine vaults.'
The drapes billowed in as an exterior window opened. Betancore, his hooded black bodyglove wet with rain, climbed inside. He pulled off his grip-gloves and boots, and unstrapped his equipment harness.
'What did you find?'
Dripping and cold, he took a glass of spirits Bequin brought him and showed me his scanner pad.
'The roof is lousy with alarms. I didn't dare probe too far, even with my jammers and sensors. There are rooms under the east wing that Inquisitor Voke didn't know about. A network of tunnels seems to link them to the west wing under the courtyard.'
I spent a few more minutes running through the details, and then went into my room to change.
I put on a heat-insulated bodyglove of matt-black plastic weave with a tight-fitting hood and supple gloves. Then I strapped a webbing harness around my torso and filled the integral pouches with a compact scope, a set of multi-keys, a folding knife, two spools of monofilament wire, a
tubular torch, two jamming units and a scanner pad. I secured my vox-unit's earpiece under my hood, buckled an autopistol into the rig strapped across my chest, dropped two spare clips into a thigh pouch, and finally placed my inquisitorial rosette in my hip pocket.
This was an endeavour that risked discovery. The rosette would be my joker, to be played if it became necessary.
I went back into the sitting room and laced on the grip-gloves and grip-boots that Betancore had been using.
'If I'm not back in a hour, you can start to worry,' I told them.
Outside, blackness, rain and the assault of the wind.
The outside wall of the great house was soaked and old, the limewash crumbling in places. I had to test every move I made to make sure the overlapping teeth of the grip-pads on my hands and feet were secure.
I moved along the side of the house, feeling my way, until I was able to crouch on an outcrop of guttering. I'd taped Betancore's data-slate to my left forearm for easy reference. The tiny backlit screen showed a three-dimensional model of the building, and an inertial locator built into the slate moved the map and kept my current location centred.
Over the downpour, I heard feet crunching gravel two storeys below. I clung to the bricks and tapped off the slate so that the screen glow wouldn't give me away.
Two men from the house militia huddled in foul-weather capes passed below me, lit by the windows on the ground floor. They took shelter in a doorway porch and shortly after that I saw the flash of an igniter or match. Presently, the cloying odour of obscura drifted up to me.
They were almost directly below my perch and I didn't dare move until they were gone. I waited. My joints were going numb from the cold and from the hunched position I had been forced to adopt simply to stay on the gutter.
The rain grew still heavier and the wind swished the invisible trees of the steep woods behind the house. I could hear the men chatting. An occasional laugh.
This wouldn't do. I was losing time and the feeling in my legs.
I focused, drew in a calming breath and reached out with the will.
I found their minds, two warm traces in the cold below me. They were soft and blurred, their responses undoubtedly slowed by the opiate effects of the obscura. Difficult minds to plant strong suggestions in, but vulnerable to paranoia.
I drove in with the will, toying gently with their anxieties.
Within seconds, they started from the cover of the porch, hissing animatedly at each other, and headed off at a trot across the yard.
Relieved, I moved down the wall, bracing my weight against a jutting window ledge as I found footholds around a down-pipe bracket.
On the ground, I hugged the shadows of the west wing, and moved down the yard. Betancore's careful reconnaissance had shown up laser
trips around the gatehouse, and others that extended from the edges of the border beds to the basin of a fountain in the yard. Though I could not see them, they were precisely marked on the slate, and I simply stepped over each in turn, all except the last, which ran at waist height and which I ducked under.
My goal was the launch hangars on the far side of the rear yard. The sweeps had shown up an access point to the cellar network there. Betan-core had located others, but they were all in private areas of the house, or in staff sections such as the scullery, the cold store and the meat pantries.
The shutter doors of the launch hangars were closed, and the lights off within. I gripped my way up the outside stone, and up along the shallow tiled roof. At the summit of each hangar roof was a metal box-vent designed to expel exhaust fumes. With my folding knife, I prised a louvred metal panel away and slid into the duct, feet first.
The short metal funnel of the duct was open below me and I looked down at the top of a parked launch. A short drop and I was crouching on the ba
ck of the vehicle in the dim garage.
I got off the craft and went around behind it. A small wall-hatch led through into a servicing workshop, which then opened into a parts store. The ferrocrete floor was spotted with oil, and I had to move carefully in the dark to avoid knocking into obstructions such as lathes, tool-trolleys and dangling hoist chains.
I checked the slate. The access-way was at the rear of the parts store.
This door was taking itself much more seriously. A tamper-proof ceramite seal, a tumbler alarm and a keypad for entry-codes.
1 sighed, though I hadn't expected this to be easy. I would need to tape a jammer to the latch to avoid tripping any alarm or access signal. Then it would be a job for the scanner to search and configure a usable code. Ten minutes' work if I was lucky. Hours if not.
I pulled off my grip gloves so I could more easily manipulate the tools, and paused. An idea struck me. My mentor, the mighty Hapshant, had lacked psychic skills of his own. A dyed in the wool monodominant, Emperor love him. But he had been a firm believer in gut-instinct. He told me a servant of the Emperor could do worse than trust a flash of instinct. In his opinion, the Emperor himself placed such feelings there.
I tapped the word 'daesumnor' into the pad. The lock cycled and the door opened.
A clean, warm, well-ventilated staircase, significantly newer than the main structures of the estate, took me down into the cellar system. There was a caged lamp every three metres down the wall. By the chart and my estimation, I was some ten metres underground, moving beneath the east wing. I removed my hood to hear better.
'Daesumnor' opened another hatch, and I entered a long hall with hatch-doors along one side. One stood open, and I could hear voices and smell smoke.
I edged along, and skirted the hatch so I could peer in.
'… secured with two weeks,' a voice was saying.
'Said that month ago!' another snorted. "What's the matter, you trying to inflate your fee?'
The room was some kind of lounge or study. Books and slates were racked with archive-like precision in wooden stacks along the walls. Soft light glowed from pendant lamps, and also from a number of sealed, glass-topped caskets in front of the shelving. They reminded me of the protective, controlled environment units Imperial libraries used to display especially ancient and valuable texts.
The room was carpeted, and as I craned round, I could see four men sitting around a low table in throne-like armchairs. One had his back to me, but from the folds of his coat falling over the chair's arm, I was certain it was Urisel Glaw. Facing him, sitting back in his chair, was the ship master, Gorgone Locke. The other two I didn't know, but I had a feeling they'd both been at the dinner. They all had glasses of liquor and one of the unknown men was using a water-pipe to inhale obscura. Various objects lay on the table between them, some wrapped in velvet, others unwrapped and displayed. They looked like stone tablets, old relics of some sort.
'I'm just trying to explain the delay, Glaw/ Locke said. 'They're a difficult enough culture to deal with at the best of times.'
That's why we pay you,' Glaw said with a scoffing laugh. He leaned forward and toyed with one of the tablets.
'But we won't stand much further delay. We've invested a great deal in this matter. Time, funds, resources. It's meant holding back or cancelling other enterprises, some of them very special to us.'
"You will not be disappointed, lord,' said the man with the narco-pipe. He was dressed simply in black, a slightly built, bald individual with watery blue eyes. 'The archaeoxenan provenance of these items speaks for itself. The saruthi are serious about their offer.'
Urisel started to reply and got to his feet. I ducked into cover and then moved away down the hall. Eyclone's code opened the door at the end and I crept through into a wide, circular vault. Two more hatches of regular pattern led off to either side. Ahead of me was a larger archway protected by a force screen instead of a door.
I backed into hiding alongside this opening as someone cancelled the force screen from inside. A figure stepped out, turning to raise the screen again. It was Kowitz.
I took him from behind, an arm locked around his throat to silence him, another hand pinning his right arm. He gurgled and struggled. I twisted him round and slammed his head against the doorframe.
Kowitz went limp. I dragged him in through the open force-portal. A control on the inner wall raised the screen again.
The chamber was long with a low ceiling. The climate-controlled air was dry. I realised it was a chapel of sorts, a stone-floored, rectangular nave leading to a shape that seemed to me an altar. The room was otherwise
bare of features, even seats or pews. Light glowed from recessed lamps in the roof. Leaving Kowitz on the floor, I strode down the length of the chapel and took a closer look at the altar.
It was two metres high, black, fashioned from a single piece of obsidian. The glassy stone seemed to glow with an internal light. On top of it was a jewelled prayer box about thirty centimetres square. I lifted the lid carefully with the blade of my knife-tool. In a bed of velvet lay an intricate sphere. It looked like a jagged lump of quartz, the size of a clenched fist, inlaid with gold circuits and complex woven wires, like an oversized uncut gemstone in a bizarre, ornate setting.
I spun around at a sound from behind me.
Kowitz, blood dripping from his dented forehead, stood pointing a laspistol at me. His face was pale, angry, confused.
'Step away from the Pontius, scum/ he said.
ELEVEN
Revelations. The noble sport. Pacification 505.
This was no place to be trapped. I dug into my reserves of concentration, and without any physical movement, struck him clean between the eyes.
A psychic goad like that, especially at close range and with a clear line of sight, should have felled him like a force hammer. Kowitz didn't even blink.
'Don't make me repeat myself,' he said, raising the weapon so it pointed at my head.
The room was psychically shielded, it had to be. Either that or something was leeching psychic energies out of the very air.
There's been a misunderstanding, Kowitz,' I said. 'I went for a walk and must have taken a wrong turn.'
It was pretty lame, but I wanted to keep his responses engaged and his mind busy.
'I don't think so/ he hissed. He was groping behind himself with his free hand, trying to find the control panel for the entrance. There was an alarm stud on it.
I waited. At any second, he was going to glance round involuntarily to help his fumbling.
When the gesture came, I threw myself forward and down, pulling my autopistol.
He looked back with a cry and fired, but his aim was too high and the shot flared off the end wall.
From a prone stance, I punched two shots through his left collar bone, and threw him back against the force door, which crackled at the impact.
Kowitz collapsed face down on the floor and blood began to pool around him.
I reached the door control. An amber rune was flashing. The bastard had managed to press something. I hit the force door deactivator.
Nothing.
I punched 'daesumnor' into the key pad.
Nothing.
I realised I was in deep trouble.
I guessed that Kowitz had hit an alarm that locked everything out. That was what prevented me from opening the door.
Urisel Glaw and several of his house militia appeared outside the shimmering force door. I could see them peering in and shouting.
I backed from the doorway and snatched up Kowitz's laspistol. When the door opened, I would use both guns to take down anything that tried to get in.
Then something psychic, dark and monstrously powerful rushed into my mind from somewhere behind me and I blacked out.
A face was looking down at me as I came round. A handsome face with blank eyes. The face started to say something. Then it combusted and melted away, and I realised it was just a dream. And I awoke properly, into a world t
hat was nothing but pain.
'Enough. Don't kill him,' said a voice. Another voice laughed, and a tremor of acute agony peeled through my forebrain, lungs and gut.
'Enough, I said! Locke!'
A mild, disappointed curse. The agony receded, and I was left with numbness and throbbing background pain.
I was spreadeagled, my wrists and ankles bitten by the manacles that locked me to a massive hardwood cross. They'd taken my equipment, harness, hood, earpiece, and everything else except the leggings of my bodyglove and my boots. What could only be dried blood caked my lips, mouth, chin and throat, and fresh blood still drooled from my nose.
I opened my eyes. A meaty fist was holding my inquisitorial rosette in front of my face.
'Recognise this, Eisenhorn?'
I spat blood.
'Thought you'd wile your way in among us and then produce this crest and make us all cower in fear?'
Urisel Glaw took the rosette away and peered down into my face.
'Doesn't work that way with the House of Glaw. We're not afraid of your kind.'
'Then you… are very foolish indeed/ I said.
He slammed my head back into the cross with an open-palmed blow to my forehead.
"You think your friends are going to help you? We've rounded them all up. They're just down the cell-block yonder.'
'I'm perfectly serious,' I said. 'Others know I'm here. And you really don't want to be messing with a servant of the Inquisition, no matter how much at your mercy you think he is/
Glaw hunched down in front of me, his hands steepled. 'Don't worry. I don't underestimate the Inquisition. I'm just not afraid of it. Now, there are some questions I'd like answers to…'
He got up and moved back. I saw the filthy stone of the cell-chamber we were in, a double-locked hatch up in one corner at the head of a flight of stone steps. Lord Oberon Glaw and the obscura pipe-smoker from the library room stood at the foot of the steps, watching intently. The ship master, Gorgone Locke, sat astride a dirty wooden bench near by. He wore some strange apparatus on his right hand, a glove of segmented metal that ended each digit with a needle-like spike.