by Dan Abnett
'I don't agree/
Pontius's mood seemed to have brightened now we were engaged in debate again. The first step is the knowledge. An inquisitor must understand the basic traits of Chaos in order to fight it. In a few years, he knows more about the warp than most untutored cultists. Then the second step: the moment he breaks the rales and allows some aspect of Chaos to survive or remain so that he can study it and learn from it. I wouldn't even bother trying to deny that one, Eisenhorn. I'm right here, aren't I?'
You are. But understanding is essential. Even a puritan will tell you that! Without it, the Inquisition's struggle is hopeless/
'Don't get me started on that/ he chuckled. Then paused. 'Describe the taste of that amasec in your mouth. The quality, the scent/
'Why?'
'It is three hundred years since I have tasted anything. Smelt anything. Touched anything/
I had feared my gambit with the amasec and the opiate too obvious, but it had drawn him in. 'It feels like oil on my tongue, soft, body-heat. The aroma precedes the taste, like peat and pepper, spiced. The taste is a burn in the throat that lights a fire behind my heart/
The casket made a long, mournful sound of tantalised regret.
The third step?' I prompted.
The third step… the third step is the line itself. When the inquisitor becomes a radical. When he chooses to use Chaos against Chaos. When he employs the agencies of the warp. When he asks the heretical for help/
'I see.'
'I'm sure you do. So… are you going to ask me to help you?'
'Yes. Will you give me that help?'
'It depends,' the casket murmured. What's in it for me?'
I stubbed out the lho-stick. 'Given what you've just said, I assume your reward would be the satisfaction of seeing me cross that line and damn myself.'
'Ha ha! Very clever! I'm enjoying that part already. What else?'
I turned the glass in my hand, swilling the amber spirit around. 'Magos Bure is a talented man. A master of machinery. Though I would never release you from imprisonment, I could perhaps ask him for a favour'
'A favour?' Pontius echoed with trembling anticipation.
A body for you. A servitor chassis. The ability to walk, reach, hold, see. Perhaps even the finessing extras of sense actuators: rudimentary touch, smell, taste. That would be child's play for him.'
'Gods of the warp!' he whispered.
'Well?'
'Ask. Ask me. Ask me, Eisenhorn.'
'Let us talk for a while… on the subject of daemonhosts.'
'Do you know what you're doing?' Fischig said to me.
'Of course/ I said. We had taken over the security office in Cinchare minehead as our base. Bequin and Aemos had set the place straight and got it running properly, and Medea, Inshabel, Nayl and Fischig patrolled the area regularly. Bure had provided servitor-stalkers as additional guards, and a vox-uplink had been established with the orbiting Essene to forewarn us of any arriving space traffic.
It was late one afternoon in the third week of our visit to the mining rock. I had just returned from my daily visit to Glaw's cell in the Mechan-icus annex and I stood with Fischig by the windows of the office, looking down into the plaza.
'Really sure?' he pressed.
'I seem to remember him asking us the same thing when we sprang him from the Carnificina/ said Bequin, coming over to join us. 'Thanks to Osma and his ridiculous witch-hunt, we've been forced into a corner. If we can come through this successfully, we will redeem ourselves.'
Fischig snorted. 'I just don't like it. Not dealing with that butcher. Not promising him anything. I feel like we've crossed the line-'
'What?' I asked sharply. I had told them only the very sparest details of my conversations.
'I said I felt like we'd crossed the line. What's the matter?'
I shook my head. 'Nothing. How are the rest of the preparations going?'
I sensed Fischig wanted to have it out, but it was really too late for that. I deflected him with the subject change.
"Your magos friend is working. Nayl took him the blade yesterday and showed him your notes and diagrams/ he said.
The communiques are all written, encrypted and sealed, ready to be sent/ said Bequin. 'Just give the word, and Ungish will transmit them. And I have the declaration here/ She handed me a data-slate.
It was a carta extremis formally declaring Quixos Heretic and Extremis Diabolus, naming his crimes and given in my authority. It was dated the twentieth day of the tenth month, 340.M41. There was no location of issue, but Aemos had made certain all the other particulars were phrased precisely according to High Imperial Law and the statutes of the Inquisition.
'Good. We'll send that in a few days/1 knew that the moment the carta was published, my agenda would be known. The scheme I was embarking on might take years to complete, and all that time I would be hunted. I really didn't want to stir things up so soon.
'How much longer will we be here?' Bequin asked.
'I don't know. Another week? A month? Longer? It depends on how forthcoming Glaw decides to be/
'But you've got things from him already?' asked Fischig.
'Yes/ Not too much, I hoped.
I walked through the empty streets of the minehead for an hour or two that evening to clear my mind. I knew damn well that I was choosing a dangerous path. I had to remain focussed or I risked losing control.
Once I'd got the upper hand with Glaw, I'd been playing with him during those early conversations. His talk of the line, his three-step description of the corruption that awaited an imprudent inquisitor… that was nothing new to me. I had indulged him so that he might feel superior and smug. Any inquisitor worth the rosette knew the perils and temptations that surrounded him.
But it didn't stop his words from cutting me. Every puritanical Corn-modus Voke was a potential Quixos. When Glaw said that the line was often crossed without it being recognised, he was right. I'd met enough radicals to know that.
I had always, always prided myself on my puritanical stance, moderate and Amalathian though it might be. I deplored the radical heresies. That's why I wanted Quixos.
But I worried still. I considered what I was doing to be risky, of course, but also pragmatic given my difficult situation. To destroy Quixos, I had to get past his daemonhosts, and that required power, knowledge and expertise. And I could no longer turn to the Holy Inquisition for support. But had I crossed the line? Was I becoming guilty of sins that could so easily escalate into radical abomination? Was I so obsessed with bringing Quixos to justice that I was abandoning my own principles?
I was sure I was not. I knew what I was doing, and I was taking every precaution I could to manage the more dangerous elements 1 was employing. I was pure and true, even now.
And if I wasn't, how could I tell?
* * *
I climbed an observation mast that rose above the mine settlement and lingered for a while in the caged glass blister at the top, looking out across the town's skyline to the ragged blue landscape of Cinchare, and the gliding stars beyond it. Shoals of meteors burned bright lines down the sky.
There was a noise on the stairs behind me. It was Nayl.
He put away his sidearm. 'It's you,' he said, joining me in the blister. 'I was patrolling and I saw the tower door open. Everything all right?'
I nodded. 'You fight dirty sometimes, don't you, Harlon?'
He looked at me quizzically and scratched his shaved scalp. 'Not sure I know what you mean, boss/ he said.
'All those years, bounty hunting… and I've seen you fight, remember? Sometimes you have to break the rales to win.'
'I suppose so. When all's said and done, you use whatever works. I'm not proud of some of my more… ruthless moments. But they're necessary. I've always been of the opinion that fairplay is overrated. The bastard trying to skin you won't be playing fair, that's for sure. You do what you have to do.'
The end justifies the means?'
He raised his ey
ebrows and laughed. 'Now that's different. That kind of thinking gets a man into trouble. There are some means that no end will ever justify. But fighting dirty, occasionally, is no bad thing. Neither's breaking the rules. Provided you remember one thing.'
Which is?'
You have to understand the rales in the first place if you're going to break them.'
Apart from my daily visits to Glaw in the annex, I also spent time with Bure. He was labouring in his workshops, assisted by servitors and his tech-adepts. He had thrown himself totally into the tasks I had set him. Though he never said, I think he saw it as returning with interest my efforts in the battle with the Lith.
He had also listened without alarm when Aemos and I had related the history of the recent past. It felt like a confession. I explained the carta out against me, my rogue status. He had accepted my innocence without question. As he put it, 'Hapshant wouldn't have raised a radical. It's the rest of the galaxy that's wrong.'
That was good enough for him. I was quietly moved.
One day in the sixth week of our increasingly prolonged stay, he called me to his workshop.
It lay beneath the main chapel of the annex and was two storeys deep, a veritable smithy alive with engineering machines and apparatus the purposes of which baffled me. Steam-presses hammered and banged, and screw-guns wailed. Quite apart from my own projects, there was much work to do repairing the annex and the translithopede. I walked down through the swathes of steam and found Bure supervising two servitors who were machining symbols into a two-metre long pole of composite steel.
'Eisenhorn,' he said, raising his bright green eye-lights to look at me.
'How goes the work?'
'I feel like a warsmith, back in the foundries of the forge worlds, when I was flesh. The specifications you have asked for are difficult, but not impossible. I enjoy a challenge.'
I took several sheets of paper from my coat pocket and handed them to him. 'More notes, taken during my last interview with Glaw. I've underlined the key remarks. Here, he suggests electrum for the cap piece.'
'I was going to use iron, or an iron alloy. Electrum. That makes sense.' He took my notes over to a raised planning table that was littered with scrolls, holoquills, measuring tools and data-slates. Pages of notes that I had already provided him with were piled up, along with the psychomet-rically captured images Ungish had drawn from my mind of the Cadian pylons, Cherubael, Prophaniti, and the ornaments he had worn.
'I'm also pondering the lodestone for the cap. I considered pyraline or one of the other tele-empathic crystallines like epidotrichite, but I doubt any of them would have the durability for your purposes. Certainly not for more than one or two uses. I also thought of tabular zanthroclase/
"What's that?'
A silicate we use in mind-impulse devices. But I'm not convinced. I have a few other possibilities in mind.' It was a measure of the trust Bure showed me that he felt he could mention such Cult Mechanicus secrets so freely. I felt honoured.
'Here's the haft/ he said, showing me to the etching bench where the two servitors were machining the decoration of the long pole.
'Steel?'
'Superficially. There's a titanium core surrounded by an adamantium sleeve under the steel jacket. The titanium is drilled with channels that carry the conductive lapidorontium wires.'
'It looks perfect/ I said.
'It is perfect. Virtually perfect. It's machined to within a nanometre of your measurements. Let me show you the sword.'
I followed him to a workbench at the far end of the smithy where the sword lay on a rest under a dust sheet.
What do you think?' he asked, drawing the cloth back.
Barbarisater was as beautiful as I remembered it. I admired the fresh pentagrammatic wards that had been etched in the blade since I had last seen it, ten on each side.
'It is a remarkable artifact. I was almost unwilling to make the alterations you requested. As it was, I wore out eight adamantium drill bits on this side alone. The hardened steel skin of the blade around the solid core has been folded and beaten nine hundred times. It is beyond anything we can manufacture today/
I would owe Clan Esw Sweydyr for this weapon, as I already owed them for Arianrhod's life. I should have returned it to their care, for it was part of their clan legacy and usuril, or 'living story'. It was mine to safeguard,
not to take, and certainly not to deface this way. But face to face with Pro-phaniti at Kasr Gesh I had learned two things. Indeed, that monstrous thing had told them to me. Pentagrammatic wards worked against dae-monhosts, but they were no stronger than the weapon that bore them.
To my certain knowledge, there were few finer, stronger blades in human space. I would make my peace and apologies to the clans of Carthae in time, fates permitting.
I went to touch it, but Bure stopped me. 'It is still resting. We must respect its anima. In a few days, you can take it. Train with it well. You must know it intimately before you use it in combat.'
He accompanied me to the door of the forge. 'Both weapons must be blessed and consecrated before use. I cannot do that, though I can ceremonially dedicate their manufacture to the Machine God.'
'I have already planned for their consecration,' I said. 'But I would welcome your ceremony. When I go against Quixos, I can think of no more potent a patron god to be looking down over me than your Machine Lord.'
'We will be leaving in a few days/ I told him.
The casket was silent for a while. 'I will miss our conversations, Eisen-horn/
'Nevertheless, I have to go.'
'You think you're ready?'
'I think this part of my readiness is complete. Is there anything else you can tell me?'
'I have been wondering that. I cannot think of anything. Except…'
'Except what?'
The lights around the engram sphere twinkled. 'Except this. Apart from everything you've learned from me, the secrets, the lore, the mysteries, you must know that going after this foe is… dangerous/
I laughed involuntarily. 'I think I've worked that much out already, Pontius!'
'No, you don't know what I mean. You have the determination, I know, the ambition, I know that too – you have the knowledge, we assume, and the weapons too, we hope – but unless your mind is prepared, you will perish. Instantly, and no ward or staff or blade or rune will save you/
You sound like… you care if I lose/
'Do I? Then consider this, Gregor Eisenhom. You may deem me a monster beneath contempt, but if I do care, what does that say about me? Or you?'
'Goodbye, Pontius Glaw/1 said, and closed the cell hatches behind me for the last time.
I will record this thought now, because I feel I must. For all that Pontius Glaw was… and for all that came later, I cannot shake my bond to him, though I try. There, in the cell on Cinchare, and a century before in the dim hold of the Essene, we had spoken together for hundreds of
hours. I had no doubt that he was an unforgivably evil thing, and that he would have killed me in a second during those times had he been allowed the chance. But he was a being of extraordinary intellect, wit and learning. Admirable in so many, strange ways. But for that tore, Aaa's tore, back on that spring day on Quenthus, his life may have been different.
And if it had been different, and we had met, we would have been the greatest of friends.
We had stayed on Cinchare for three months. Too long, in my opinion, but there had been no way to speed the preparatory work.
We celebrated Candlemas in the little chapel of the Ministorum off the plaza, lighting candles to welcome the new Imperial year, and lighting ofhers to commemorate the town's dead. Aemos and Bequin read the lessons, for all of the Ecclesiarchs were amongst the remembered dead. Bure and his tech-adepts worshipped with us, and he hovered to the choir rail under the great statue of the God-Emperor to lead us in the devotional prayers.
I was fretful and edgy. Partly because I was anxious to get underway now, but also because of t
he lore in my head, the mysteries to which Glaw had introduced me. So much, so much of it dark. I knew I was a changed man, and that change was permanent.
But I considered that a year before – just a year, though it felt much, much longer – I had been a helpless prisoner in the bleak Carnificina, and Candlemas had passed me by before I had realised it.
I was not that man any more either, and that change had been nothing to do with Pontius Glaw's whispered secrets. For all the darkness swilling in my head, it was better to be here, strong and ready, fortified, in the company of friends and allies.
There was no choirmaster to play the organ, so Medea had brought her father's Glavian lyre, and played the Holy Triumph of the Golden Throne so that we could all sing.
That night, we feasted in the refectory of the Cult Mechanicus to honour the start of 341.M41. Maxilla, who remained on duty aboard the Essene, sent a banquet to us on a shuttle, along with servitors to wait upon us. One of them reported that a vast storm of meteors had swarmed across the sky at the stroke of midnight, lighting the night side of Cinchare with their fires. Nayl growled that this was a bad omen, but Inshabel insisted it was a good one.
I suppose it rather depended which part of the vast spread of the Imperium you came from.
The others spent the next two days packing up and making ready to leave, but Aemos and I attended the dedication ceremony in the cimeliarch of the Adeptus Mechanicus annex.
Machine Cult servitors chanted in a modulated binary code and beat upon kettledrums. Magos Bure was clad in his orange robes with a white stole over his shoulders.
He blessed the weapons he had made in turn, taking one then the other from the two tech-adepts who stood in attendance.
Barbarisater, the pentagrammatic power sword, lifted to the light that speared down from the eyes of the Machine God's altar. Then the runestaff, Bure's masterpiece.
He had fashioned a cap-piece for the rune-etched steel pole out of elec-trum in the form of a sun-flare corona. In the centre of it was a human skull, marked with the thirteenth sign of castigation. The skull was the lodestone, carved by Bure himself into a perfect facsimile of my own skull, as measured by radiative scans. He had tried and rejected over twenty different tele-empathic crystals before finding one he trusted would be up to the task.