by Dan Abnett
The firedrums lit the evening with greasy flames. The air was heady with the autumnal stinks of blood, dung, fire, herbivore gas and baled feed. They pulled off the viaduct, parked the half-track in a rockcrete yard where other tracks had been left, and went looking for the slaughterbaron.
Inevitably, the livestock trade up and down the Angelus sub overlapped the pit-game business. Traders shipping a hold full of pachs might as well make some extra fees carrying more dangerous animals for the Imperial pits, and game agents in need of transport often hired stock traders because they already had a lot of the specialised holding equipment.
The beast-moots of Flint were primarily livestock oriented. Occasionally drovers brought a great plains predator to market for extra cash, but the commerce of the Western Banks was essentially about meat. Further up the line, out towards Lenk and the rip-worlds, that was where you found the specialist beast-moots, the ones held entirely for the pit-trade.
Even so, Flint's beast-moots were frequented by the game agents. Some were passing through on their way to Lenk. Others came to buy cheap meat-cuts for bait and feed: many of the pit-favourite carnivores grew too placid if cargoed in stasis, and a full grown taurosaur ate its own weight in meat several times over during six weeks live-haul. Some agents came to Flint to purchase big herbivores that could be goaded into violence for specialised bouts and others yet came because they were travelling as paying passengers on livestock trade ships and had no say where the shipmaster put in.
Baron Julius Karquin had ran Tusk Verge for sixty years. In his rich, off-planet robes and lime-clayed animal hide cloak, he seemed a man caught between two worlds, part businessman, part shaman. During the moot, he held court in one of the tusk-frame pavilions in the town centre.
An entourage of slaughtermen, tallymen and dynasts surrounded him, along with market advisors and record keepers. Distinguished far traders were admitted to his presence, many were greeted like old friends. Baron Karquin had done business with just about everybody.
There seemed small hope of getting close to him, certainly not without causing an altercation and revealing their authority. Already, from the wary behaviour of officials at the smaller moots, Thonius had realised the folk of the Western Banks did not take well to Imperial dealings. It was a free market, which depended on the good will of the rogue traders. The authority of the Throne was not welcome.
Kys tried to bribe a junior ledger-keeper for information, but it hadn't worked. The baron had great power here, particularly during the time of the moot. He wielded Imperial authority by proxy. During a moot, a slaughter-baron had more power in his town than the lord governor subsector.
Karquin's face was craggy, and his frame big, made bigger by the weight of velvet, chainmail and hides. His teeth were bad, his eyes hooded. On his head, he wore a circle-crown of bronze mounted with two polished rams horns, an ancient badge of office. The crown was mostly lost in his unruly black hair, so it appeared the horns sprouted from Karquin's own brow. He had four of his many bodyguards by his side at all times. They were big men, dressed in the high-button coats of the slaughterman guild, but their chainblades were designed for combat, not rendering. They wore bleached antlered beast-skulls on their leather caps. The bodyguards saw to it that none but the most important clients got close to the baron.
"We're screwed at this rate," said Madsen. Thonius didn't think he'd ever met anyone so pessimistic.
"Let's press the issue," suggested Kys.
"And get in a fight?" Thonius said.
Kys shrugged. Ahenobarb, just a big shape in the firelight, seemed to approve.
"There are ways!" Kinsky said sarcastically. He glanced at Ahenobarb and immediately the big man reached out to catch Kinsky as he fell.
"What's he doing?" Thonius hissed.
Kys took a couple of rapid steps backwards and covered her mouth in shock. The raw, unleashed surge of psi-power had taken her off-balance.
"Shit!" she gasped. "He's gone... left his body..."
"What?" Thonius said.
Kys pointed through the bustling crowd towards the great gaggle of people collected around Karquin on the baronial dais at the end of the hall. "I can feel him... hunting..." Kys said.
"Get him back here!" Thonius said to Ahenobarb.
"Kinsky knows what he's doing," Madsen said stonily. "If we leave this up to you, we'll be here all week."
"This is the inquisitor's operation." Thonius growled. "You three are here under sufferance."
"Whatever," said Madsen and looked back into the crowd. Thonius stared too, but he could see nothing out of the ordinary. What was Kinsky doing?
"That ledger keeper, just behind Karquin, on the left," whispered Kys.
Thonius found the man. Pale, old, wearing long, lime-caked robes and a necklace of bulls' teeth. The old man had turned from a trencher of food and was leafing through the tanned skin pages of one of the massive ledger books. Each volume took two men to carry. They sat on ivory stands around the baron's dais. The ledger keeper speed-read each page he turned with blank eyes.
Abruptly, the ledger keeper backed away from the volume, blinking and disorientated. Kinsky lurched and opened his eyes.
"They're not here, but they were expected," he said.
"What?" asked Thonius.
"Captain Thekla of the Oktober Country is a regular visitor to this moot. The baron had prepared accommodation for him, and reserved several herd parcels that he believed Thekla would be interested in."
"So we are wasting our time here..." Kys began.
Kinsky grinned at her. "There is an interesting part to this. According to the records, the baron knew Thekla wasn't coming this season, because Thekla's apologies and regrets were passed on to the baron this morning by a stock trader called Bartol Siskind."
"Who is?"
"Master of the rogue trader Allure, and currently in the auction pens, bidding for flange-horn."
They spread out into the crowds and the firelit night. Moving into the shadows of a doorway, Thonius touched his wraithbone pendant and made contact.
"The Oktober Country isn't here and it isn't coming, but we've got a lead on another shipmaster it may have had recent dealings with."
+Details?+ Ravenor replied.
"Bartol Siskind, of the Allure. Kinsky got the information out of a local mind."
+I felt it from here. We will be asking Mr. Kinsky to be more circumspect. He is powerful, but also crude. An incident here would be regrettable. +
"Indeed," said Thonius. He glanced round. A couple of ragged drovers had just gone by, glaring maliciously at the off-worlder in the shadows talking to himself. "I'd better go. We're going to see what we can get out of this Siskind once we find him. You'd better recall Harlon and Kara to the ship."
+I will. Be careful, Carl.+
Thonius made his way through the crowd. Despite the gale off the sea, the night was warm. Four hundred thousand head of stock generated a significant amount of heat.
And smell. Already Thonius' favourite buckle-back boots were ruined from the dung swilling the streets. He wafted his kerchief in front of his nose.
Staccato shouts echoed from the vast bowls of the auction arenas. Bidding was in progress. Confident, experienced-looking shipmen in winter coats, cloaks or body armour leaned at the bone rail and held up numbered cards as a dozen of the hugest quadrupeds Carl Thonius had ever had the misfortune to smell were circled in the paddock below.
But there was another source of commotion, above the chatter of the crowd. It was coming from behind him, back from the direction of the baron's pavilion.
Casually, Thonius took up a place on the nearest arena's overstage. The man next to him was a brawny red-head in a bodyglove and heavy cloak.
"What's that about, do you suppose?" Thonius asked idly, nodding back in the direction of the pavilion.
The shipman scowled. "Some frigger brought a psyker. Got into the head of one of the baron's people. Karquin's gone frigging nuts, so the
whole moot's gonna slow right down until the fuss dies away." The man swore again. "I'm meant to be in Caxton in eight days with a hold full of sirloin," he complained.
"A psyker," said Thonius. "That's not good."
"Of course it's not good!" the shipman blustered. "Everyone knows they're banned from the moots! Moot-law. No psykers, on account of unfair trading. Always been that way. That's why the baron's got his warlock."
Of course, that's why the baron's got his warlock, Thonius thought. Of course, of course, and everyone knows that psykers are banned from the moot by ancient decree. Of course they do. Of frigging course.
He could hear Kys saying it. The stuff you know.
Well, it turns out this wasn't one of them. Come to that, he hadn't even seen a warlock.
"What the hell have you done?" the shipman asked him suddenly. Thonius started. Was the look of dismay on his face that obvious?
But that's not what the shipman had meant. He looked down, over the ivory rail, into the street. One of the baron's bodyguards was down there, chainblade in hand. Two ragged drovers were busy pointing out the man they'd seen talking to himself.
"Oh shit," said Thonius.
Triple shutters secured the holding cell. I waited as they opened in series. Vertical doors, then horizontal barriers, then an inner skin of verticals again, all sliding back into the recesses of the armoured frame. Then I moved through into the dingy cell.
Duboe looked up at the light and at me and groaned. He was tethered to the floor by a long chain that was fixed to his bracelet cuffs. The chain had enough length on it to allow him to lie on the straw pallet in the corner or use the chemical toilet. He was dirty and unshaven. A tray lay by the door, a half-eaten meal on it.
"You again," he said.
Me again. Get used to it, I thought. But for the information he might yet yield, most inquisitors I knew would have had Duboe executed by now. He was criminal scum, exploiting the systems of Imperial society just to corrupt it.
He was also a strange one. He had no discernible mind-talents, but parts of his brain were unreadable. I had interviewed him a dozen times in the six days since we'd set out from Eustis. His mind had become ever more impenetrable. It also seemed as if he had been getting stupider.
"What do you want me to confess to now?" he asked, getting up on his knees.
I made no response.
Duboe stood up, tired but somehow triumphant. "Okay," he slurred, "okay... I admit it. I'm Horus, reincarnated. I am the arch-enemy of the Golden Throne. I am-"
+Shut up.+
He fell silent and stared at the floor. To begin with, cavae-master Duboe had been quite forthcoming. He had owned up to his part in the narcotic trade, explained how he had abused his position as an importer to circulate contraband into the subculture of Petropolis. During our second interview, he had been quite forthcoming on the subject of his sources. A number of rogue traders who had dealings with the Imperial Pits supplied him with prohibited substances along with pit-beasts. The Widdershins secured him obscura and gladstones at a decent rate. The Fontaineblue brought in grinweed and yellodes. The Macrocosmae had been good for both. Duboe had been perfectly placed to distribute, thanks to his connections with the moody clans and the gamesters. I had already passed all three names on to my masters in the Ordos Helican. Others could deal with it..
It had taken longer to fox the Oktober Country out of him. That was where the flects were coming in from. Duboe finally sold out his contact, Feaver Skoh, and the complicity of the Oktober Country's master, Thekla. But he insisted he didn't know where Skoh and Thekla were getting the flects from. That was where the mind-wall went up.
I probed him for a moment. For the third or fourth time, all I got was a mysterious memory-echo... "Contract thirteen".
+Tell me about the Allure.+
He winced. "The what?"
+The Allure.+
He shrugged. "It's a ship. It does the Lenk run. It's brought me beasts a few times."
Hovering, I circled around him slowly. "Its captain... a friend of Skoh's?"
"No."
+Thekla, then?+
A shrug. "Yeah, Thekla. Old ties. Trader bonds. All buddies together. They're allies. That's how rogue traders work."
+Did the master of the Allure ever supply you with flects?+
"Siskind? No?"
+Did the master of the Allure ever offer to supply you with flects?+
"No."
I stabbed a mind-lance into Duboe's mid-brain and he swayed, in pain. It was like pushing a sword into wet paper. His mind seemed so... mushy.
+What else can you tell me about Siskind and the Allure?+
Duboe rocked. "Siskind is Thekla's third cousin. They're both related by blood to Lilean Chase."
I was momentarily stunned. Lilean Chase had been an abominable blight on the Imperium eighty years before. A radical of the Recongregator philosophy, she had forgone her ordo loyalties and founded the Cognitae school on Hesperus. There, for three generations, she had hard-schooled the brightest and best that had fallen into her clutches and formed them into sociopathic monsters, driven by a will to undermine the fabric of the holy Imperium. The Cognitae had only come to an end thanks to a purging raid led by Lord Inquisitor Rorken, now Grand Master of the Ordos Helican. Damn! Molotch himself had been a product of that deranged academy!
I became aware that my contact alarm was piping. I retreated from the cell and keyed the hatches to shut after me..
Medicae Zarjaran was waiting for me outside.
"What's the trouble?" I asked him.
"I'm concerned, sir, only for the prisoner's welfare," he said.
"And so?"
"Duboe's mind is fraying," he said. "He is dying. I'm afraid it's because of the repeated interrogations."
"Medicae, I've gone easy on him. A dozen interviews, no more than that."
"I understand, but when Mr. Kinsley's sessions are added in-"
+Mr. Kinsky's sessions?+
I had forgotten myself. My frank mind-clause had quailed him. The short, olive-skinned medicae cowered back from me.
"My apologies," I said. "Please confirm... Kinsky has been interviewing the prisoner too?"
"Yes, sir," said Zarjaran timidly. "He and Mamzel Madsen, twice a day."
What the hell was this? I turned my chair automatically to roam up to the bridge and demand answers out of Preest. But Halstrom was standing directly behind me.
+Yes?+
"My lord inquisitor. I summoned you out of your interview. There's a... situation... down on the surface..."
Patience Kys shouldered her way through the massing crowds, thankful of the camouflaging flicker of the firelight, looking back and forth for Thonius.
+This is bad,+ she sent, but instead of Ravenor's voice she got the gruff mind-drawl of Kinsky.
+Yeah, it's bad. Get your ass in gear. We're leaving.+
+Where are you?+
+The ride. Get a move on.+
Gongs and what sounded like kettle drums were sounding out now from various parts of the torchlit town. The noise caused a stir, an agitation in the already unsettled moot crowds.
Everywhere she looked, slaughtermen were moving through the throng. The baron's bodyguards, their strength supplemented by regular meat-cutters from the rendering silos.
+Carl? Where are you?+
No response. She repeated the query using her pocketvox. Still nothing. She hurried down Tusk Verge's busy main street in the direction of the highway viaduct. Overhead, the night sky was underlit amber by the smoke and canfires of the town. A large, slender, sickle moon hung high in the west. A slaughterman's moon, it was called, announcing moot-time because it resembled both a butcher's stripping blade and a long ivory tusk.
Carl had told her that. The stuff he knew.
The drumming became more incessant. Then she heard a fierce, rasping whoosh. She looked round.
A blood-red full moon seemed to be rising above the town, rising fast. But it wasn't a ce
lestial body at all. It was a globe balloon, trapped in a thick woven net that stretched down beneath its spherical bulk to suspend an ivory basket. The rasping, whooshing sounds came from the brief, bright squirts of flame from the burner as it rose. The basket trailed a cable down to the ground. There was a man in the basket, a dynast drover by the look of him. His body was caked in white clay except for dark kohl rings around his eyes, and he wore a headdress of antlers. He had a bone rattle in each hand, and he shook them and pointed them down into the crowd.
Kys had seen this man before, in the barter-hall. The baron's warlock, his shaman. Evidently a psyker himself - Kys could feel her flesh goosebump - he had gone aloft to locate the interloper. The balloon rose no higher than ten metres. Its tether was fixed to a cart that the baronial bodyguards were wheeling through the streets to move their warlock bloodhound around.
Kys started to run. She reached the rockcrete yard where they had left the half-track. The three Petropolitan agents were already aboard, and Madsen had the engine running.
"Come on!" Kinsky called.
"Where's Thonius?" she asked.
Kinsky shrugged. "Like I give a damn. We've got to leave town now before things get ugly."
"We're not leaving him behind!" Kys said.
"You want to take the whole frigging place on?" Madsen called. "Look, I don't like leaving a body on the ground either, but frankly, sister, better him than all of us. The baron will have us ritually shredded if he gets hold of us. Shit, Thonius is probably already dead. Where will your precious inquisitor's mission be if we all end up as dog-mince?"
"Are you frigging well gonna get aboard or not?" Kinsky asked.
"No," said Kys. "And if you drive out of here now, next time I see you, I'll kill the lot of you."
Ahenobarb laughed. Madsen threw the half-track into gear. "You stay here, Kys, and there won't be any next time."
Kys stepped back as the vehicle lurched forward. It pulled a wide turn and then thundered away across the torchlit viaduct.
Kys watched it go and then turned back into the town.
Thonius started to run. He could see the balloon and the ghastly capering freak in its basket. More importantly, he could hear the shouts and cries in the crowd behind him as the slaughterman bodyguard pushed his way through to reach him.