by Dan Abnett
Alizebeth left my side, pushed through the noisy crowd and stopped by his booth. A sheet of flakboard had been erected beside the booth's entrance, and on it were numerous hololithic pictures mounted for display: some miniatures, some landscapes, some family groups. Alizebeth studied them with feigned interest. The old man immediately leapt up off his chair, stowed the half-eaten pie behind the board and brushed the crumbs off his robes. I moved round to the side, staying in the crowd, watching. I paused to examine the caged birds, though in fact I was looking through their cages at the booth tent.
The old man approached Bequin courteously.
'Madam, good afternoon! I see your attention has been arrested by my display of work. Are they not fairly framed and well-composed?'
'Indeed/ she said.
"You have a good eye, madam/ he said, 'for so often in these countiy fairs the work of the hololithgrapher is substandard. The composition is frequently poor and the plate quality fades with time. Not so with your humble servant. I have plied this trade of portraiture for thirty years and I fancy I have skill for it. You see this print here? The lakeshore at Entreve?'
'It is a pleasing scene/
'You are very kind, madam. It is handcoloured, like many of my frames. But this very print was made in the summer of… 329, if my memory serves. And you'll appreciate, there is no fading, no loss of clarity, no discolouration/
'It has preserved itself well/
'It has/ he agreed, merrily. 'I have patented my own techniques, and I prepare the chemical compounds for the plates by hand, in my modest studio adjoining/ He gestured to his trailer. That is how I can maintain the quality and the perfect grade of the hololiths, and reproduce and print them to order with no marked loss of standard from original to duplicate. My reputation rests upon it. Up and down the byeways of the land, the name Bakunin is a watchword for quality portraiture/
Alizebeth smiled. 'It's most impressive, Master Bakunin. And how much…?'
'Aha!' he grinned. 'I thought you might be tempted, madam, and may I say it would be a crime for your beauty to remain unrecorded! My services are most affordable/
I moved round further, edging my way to the side of his booth until he and Alizebeth were out of sight behind the awning. I could hear him still making his pitch to her.
On the side of the trailer, further bold statements and enticements were painted in a flourishing script. A large sign read 'Portraits two crowns, group scenes three crowns, gilded miniatures a half-crown only, offering many a striking and famous backdoth for a crown additional/
I wandered behind the trailer. It was parked at the edge of the fairground, near to a copse of fintle and yew that screened the meadow from pastures beyond the ditch. It was damp and shaded here, small animals rustling in the thickets. I tried to look in at one small window, but it was shuttered. I touched the side of the trailer and felt Barbarisater twitch against my hip. There was a door near the far end of the trailer. I tried it, but it was locked.
'What's your business?' growled a voice.
Three burly fairground wranglers had approached along the copse-side of the booths. They had been smoking lho-sticks behind their trailer on a break.
'Not yours/1 assured them.
'You had best be leaving Master Bakunin's trailer alone/ one said. All three were built like wrestlers, their bared arms stained with crude tattoos. I had no time for this.
'Go away now/ I said, pitching my will through my voice. They all blinked, not quite sure what had happened to their minds, and then simply walked away as if I wasn't there.
I returned my attention to the door, and quickly forced the lock with my multi-key To my surprise, the thin wooden door still refused to open. I wondered if it was bolted from inside, but as I put more weight into it, it did shift a little, enough to prove there there was nothing physical holding it. Then it banged back shut as if drawn by immense suction.
My pulse began to race. I could feel the sour tang of warpcraft in the air and Barbarisater was now vibrating in its scabbard. It was time to dispense wim subtleties.
I paced around to the front of the booth, but there was no longer any sign of Bequin or the old man. Stooping, I went in under the entrance flap. An inner drop curtain of black cloth stopped exterior light from entering the tent.
I pushed that aside.
'I will be with you shortly, sir/ Bakunin called, 'if you would give me a moment/
'I'm not a customer/ I said. I looked around. The tent was quite small, and lit by the greenish glow of gas mantles that ran, I supposed, off the trailer supply. Alizebeth was sat at the far side on a ladderback chair with a dropcloth of cream felt behind her. Bakunin was facing her, carefully adjusting his hololithic camera, a brass and teak machine mounted on a wooden tripod. He looked round at me curiously, his hands still polishing a brass-rimmed lens. Alizebeth rose out of her seat.
'Gregor?' she asked.
The good lady is just sitting for a portrait, sir. It's all very civilised/ Bakunin peered at me, unsure what to make of me. He smiled and offered his hand. 'I am Bakunin, artist and hololithographer/
'I am Eisenhorn, Imperial inquisitor/
'Oh/ he said and took a step backwards. 'I… I…'
'You're wondering why a servant of the Ordos has just walked into your booth/ I finished for him. Bakunin's mind was like an open book. There was, I saw at once, no guile there, except for the natural money-making trickery of a fairground rogue. Whatever else he was, Bakunin was no heretic.
'You took a portrait of Lord Froigre at the fete held on his lands just the other day?' I said, thinking of the picture on the harpsichord back at the hall.
'I did/ he said. 'His lordship was pleased. I made no charge for the work, sir. It was a gift to thank his lordship for his hospitality. I thought perhaps some of his worthy friends might see the work and want the like for themselves, I…'
He doesn't know, I thought. He has no clue what this is about. He's trying to work out how he might have drawn this investigation to himself.
'Lord Froigre is dead/ I told him.
He went pale. 'No, that's… that's…'
'Master Bakunin… do you know if any other of your previous subjects have died? Died soon after your work was complete?'
'I don't, I'm sure. Sir, what are you implying?'
'I have a list of names/ I said, unclipping my data-slate. 'Do you keep records of your work?'
'I keep them all, all the exposed plates, in case that copies or replacements are needed. I have full catalogues of all pictures/
I showed him the slate. 'Do you recognise any of these names?'
His hands were shaking. He said, 'I'll have to check them against my catalogue/ but I knew for a fact he'd recognised some of them at once.
'Let's do that together/1 said. Alizebeth followed us as we went through the back of the tent into the trailer. It was a dark, confined space, and Bakunin kept apologising. Every scrap of surface, even the untidy flat of his little cot bed, was piled with spares and partly disassembled cameras. There was a musty, chemical stink, mixed with the scent of Penshel seeds. Bakunin's pipe lay in a small bowl. He reached into a crate under the cot and pulled out several dog-eared record books.
'Let me see now/ he began.
There was a door at the end of the little room. 'What's through there?'
'My dark room, along with the file racks for the exposed plates/
'It has a door to the outside?'
Yes/ he said.
'Locked?'
'No../
'You have an assistant then, someone you ordered to hold the door shut?'
'I have no assistant../ he said, puzzled.
'Open this door/ I told him. He put down the books and went to the communicating door. Just from his body language, I could tell he had been expecting it to open easily.
'I don't understand/ he said. 'It's never jammed before/
'Stand back/ I said, and drew Barbarisater. The exposed blade filled the little trailer wi
th ozone and Bakunin yelped.
I put the blade through the door with one good swing and ripped it open. There was a loud bang of atmospheric decompression, and fetid air swept over us. A dark, smoky haze drifted out.
'Emperor of Mankind, what is that?'
'Warpcraft/ I said. 'You say you mix your own oxides and solutions?'
'Yes/
'Where do you get your supplies from?'
'Everywhere, here and there, sometimes from apothecaries, or market traders or…'
Anywhere. Bakunin had experimented with all manner of compounds over the years to create the best, most effective plates for his camera. He'd never been fussy about where the active ingredients came from. Some-ming in his workshop, something in his rack of flasks and bottles, was tainted.
I took a step towards the dark room. In the half-light, things were flickering, half-formed and pale. The baleful energies lurking in Bakunin's workshop could sense I was a threat, and were trying to protect themselves by sealing the doors tight to keep me out.
I crossed the threshold into the dark room. Alizebem's cry of warning was lost in the shrieking of tormented air that suddenly swirled around me. Glass bottles and flasks of mineral tincture vibrated wildly in metal racks above Bakunin's work bench. Jars of liquid chemicals and unguent oils shattered and sprayed their contents into the air. The little gas-jet burner flared and ignited, its rubber tube thrashing like a snake. Glass plates, each a square the size of a data-slate, and each sleeved in a folder of tan card, were jiggling and working themselves out of the wooden racks on the far side of the blacked out room. There were thousands of them, each one the master exposure of one of Bakunin's hololiths. The first yanked clear of the shelf as if tugged by a sucking force, and I expected it to shatter on the floor, but it floated in the air. Quickly others followed suit. Light from sources I couldn't locate played in the air, casting specks and flashes of colour all around. The air itself became dark brown, like tobacco.
I raised my sword. A negative plate came flying at my head and I struck at it. Shards of glass flew in all directions. Another came at me and I smashed that too. More flew from the shelves like a spray of playing cards, whipping through the air towards me. I made a series of quick uwe sar and ulsar parries, bursting the glass squares as they struck in. I missed one, and it sliced my cheek with its edge before hitting the wall behind me like a throwing knife.
'Get him out of here!' I yelled to Alizebeth. The trailer was shaking. Outside there was a crash of thunder and rain started to hammer on the low roof. The hurtling plates were driving me back, and Barbarisater had become a blur in my hands as it struck out to intercept them all.
Then the ghosts came. Serious men in formal robes. Gentlewomen in long gowns. Solemn children with pale faces. A laughing innkeeper with blotchy cheeks. Two farmhands, with their arms around each other's shoulders. More, still more, shimmering in the dirty air, made of smoke, their skins white, their clothes sepia, their expressions frozen at the moment they had been caught by the camera. They clawed and tugged at me with fingers of ice, pummelled me with psychokinetic fists. Some passed through me like wraiths, chilling my marrow. The malevolence hiding in that little trailer was conjuring up all the images Bakunin had immortalised in his career, ripping them off the negative plates and giving them form.
I staggered back, tears appearing in my cloak. Their touch was as sharp as the edge of the glass plates. Their hollow screaming filled my ears. Then, with a sickening lurch, the world itself distorted and changed. The trailer was gone. For a moment I was standing on a sepia shoreline, then I was an uninvited guest at a country wedding. My sword hacking and flashing, I stumbled on into a baptism, then a colourised view of the Atenate Mountains, then a feast in a guild hall. The ghosts surged at me, frozen hands clawing. The innkeeper with the blotchy cheeks got his icy fists around my throat though his face was still open in laughter. I chopped Barbarisater through him and he billowed like smoke. A sad-faced housemaid pulled at my arm and a fisherman struck at me with his boat hook.
I began to recite the Litany of Salvation, yelling it into the leering faces that beset me. A few crumpled and melted like cellulose exposed to flame.
I heard gunshots. Gabon was to my right, firing his weapon. He was standing on the pier at Dorsay at sunset, in the middle of a inter-village game of knockball, and a harvest festival, all at the same time. The conflicting scenes blurred and merged around him. A bride and her groom, along with five mourners from a funeral and a retiring arbites constable in full medals, were attacking him.
'Get back!' I yelled. Barbarisater was glowing white-hot. Thunder crashed again, shaking the earth. Gabon shrieked as the bride's fingers ripped through his face, and as he stumbled backwards, whizzing glass plates chopped into him like axe heads.
His blood was in the air, like rain. It flooded into the ghosts and stained their sepia tones crimson and their pale flesh pink. 1 felt fingers like knives draw across the flesh of my arms and back. There were too many of them.
I couldn't trust my eyes. According to them, I was standing on a river-bank, and also the front steps of an Administratum building. The locations overlaid each other impossibly, and neither was real.
I leapt, and lashed out with my blade. I hit something, tore through and immediately found myself rolling on the rain-sodden turf behind the trailer.
Lightning split the darkness overhead and the rain was torrential. The storm and the bizarre activity around Bakunin's booth had sent the com-monfolk fleeing from the meadow. The trailer was still vibrating and
shaking, and oily brown smoke was gushing from the hole in the side wall I'd cut to break my way out. Inside, lights crackled and flashed and the phantom screaming continued. The warptaint was berserk.
Bakunin appeared, looking desperate, with Alizebeth close behind him. He put his hands to his mouth in shock at the sight of me torn and bloodied.
"Where is it?' I snarled.
Third shelf up, above the workbench/ he stammered. The green bottle. I needed tincture of mercury, years ago, years ago, and an old woman in one of the villages gave it to me and said it would do as well. I use it all the time now. The emulsions it mixes are perfect. My work has never been better.'
He looked down at the grass, shaking and horrified. 'I should have realised/ he muttered. 'I should have realised. No matter how much I used, the bottle never emptied/
Third shelf up?' I confirmed.
'I'll show you/ he said, and sprang to the trailer, clambering in through the hole I had smashed.
'Bakunin! No!'
I followed him inside, tumbling back into the jumble of landscapes and the maelstrom of screaming ghosts. Just for a moment, a brief moment, I saw Aen Froigre amongst them.
Then I was falling through another wedding, a hunting scene, a stockman's meeting, a farrier's smithy, the castle of Elempite by moonlight, a cattle market, a-
I heard Bakunin scream.
I deflected three more deadly hololith plates, and slashed through the thicket of howling ghosts. Spectral, as if it wasn't there, I saw the workbench and the shelves. The green bottle, glowing internally with jade fire.
I raised Barbarisater and smashed the bottle with the edge of the shivering blade.
The explosion shredded the inner partition wall and lurched the trailer onto its side. Dazed, I lay on the splintered wall, sprawled amongst the debris of glass and wood.
The screaming stopped.
Someone had called the local arbites. They moved in through the crowds of onlookers as the last of the rain fell and the skies began to clear.
I showed them my credentials and told them to keep the crowd back while I finished my work. The trailer was already burning, and Alizebeth and I threw the last few hololith prints into the flames.
The pictures were fading now. Superimposed on each one, every portrait, every landscape, every miniature, was a ghost exposure. An after-image.
Bakunin, screaming his last scream forever.
HERETICUS
For Mark Bedford
BY ORDER OF HIS MOST HOLY MAJESTY THE GOD-EMPEROR OF TERRA
SEQUESTERED INQUISITORIAL DOSSIERS AUTHORISED PERSONS ONLY
CASE FILE 442:41F:JL3:Kbu
Please enter your authority code >
Validating…
Thank you, Inquisitor. You may proceed.
To Gregor Eisenhorn, a communique
Carried by Guild Astropathica (Scarus) via meme-wave 45~a.639
triple intra Path detail:
Origin: Thracian Primaris, Helican Sub 81281 origin date:
142.386.M41
(relayed: divergent M-12/Ostall VII)
Received: Durer, Ophidian Sub 52981 reception date: 144.386.M41
Transcript carried and logged as per header
(redundant copy filed buffer 4362 key 11)
Author: Lord Inquisitor Phlebas Alessandro Rorken Master of the Ordo Xenos Helican, Inquisition High Council Officio, Scarus Sector
My dear Gregor,
In the name of the God-Emperor, and of the Holy Inquisition, greetings.
I trust the elders of Durer have welcomed you in a manner befitting your status. Hierarch Onnopel has been charged by my officio to ensure that you are provided with all requirements for the long task ahead. May I take this opportunity to express my gratitude to you again for agreeing to conduct this Examination in my stead. My health, so it would appear to everyone but me, is still a matter for concern. My physician clucks over me night and day. They have changed my blood a number of times and talk of further surgery, but it is all for naught. I am healthy and sound and would be on the road to recovery but for their coddling. Indeed, I would be on the road to Durer too but for that.
Yet it seems a quack from the Officio Medicae has authority over even one such as I. The work I have done to bring the heretics of Durer to trial must be finished in my absence, and I can think of no surer hand than yours to steer the business.
I write to you for two reasons – apart, that is, for expressing my thanks. Despite my efforts, Sakarof Lord Hereticus has insisted on sending two of his own delegates to the Examination: Koth and Menderef, you know them both. I'm sorry, Gregor, but you must tolerate them. They are a burden I would have spared you from.