by Dan Abnett
‘I see that now,’ she said.
He felt her remark was perhaps sardonic. He half-smiled anyway and drank some water.
‘Such an extraordinary level of detail,’ she added, scooping up more rice. ‘To plan it like that...’
‘I was taught to improvise. Leyla, I don’t mean to be rude, but I don’t think like you think. My mind doesn’t work like yours does.’
‘Really?’
‘I was trained from birth to utilise the full dynamic of my mind. Trained in noetic techniques that give me an edge. More than an edge. What would take another man a week to plan, I can do in a moment.’
‘Really?’ she repeated.
He enjoyed the hauteur in her voice. The scorn. She was tolerating him.
‘Really. Leyla, I’m not boasting or showing off. This is what the Cognitae does to a mind. Acute observation, for a start. The ability to read low-level, passive body language. The ability to notice and compare. To analyse. To predict.’
‘Prove it.’
He lifted his glass and smiled. ‘Where would you like me to start?’ he asked.
‘Oh, you go right ahead.’
‘How many buttons did the waitress have on her bodice?’
Leyla hunched her shoulders. ‘Six.’
‘Six. Correct. Good. How many were undone?’
‘Two,’ she said.
‘Well noticed. The top two?’
‘No, the top one and the bottom one. Her hips were wide.’
‘Again, excellent. Are you sure you haven’t had Cognitae training, Leyla?’
She snorted. ‘All you’ve proved is we both like to look at pretty girls.’
‘Dressed in?’
‘What?’
‘Dressed in?’
‘A bodice?’
‘The silk from?’
‘Hesperus.’
‘Good, but no. Sameter. The weave is tighter, and there is a rumpled quality, a rouching, to Sameter silk. And the buttons were made on Gudrun.’
‘Really?’
‘They were gold, and had a hallmark. As she leaned over...’
Leyla put down her glass. ‘You’re making this up.’
‘Am I? The man at the booth next to us. We passed him on the way in. Rogue trader, armed. Where was his concealed weapon?’
‘Left armpit. I saw the bulge. Got a blade in his right boot too, under the hem of the trouser.’
‘You are sharp.’
‘It’s my business to know.’
‘Was his moustache longer on the left or right?’
‘I... why does that matter?’
‘Shorter on the right, because he smokes an obscura pipe, and the hairs don’t grow so fast on the side he sucks the mouthpiece. You could see it in his mannerisms, with the lho-stick. A habitual rise and draw. Which means?’
‘He’ll be unpredictable. And jumpy. Obscura does that.’
‘Now you’re learning.’
‘It means nothing,’ she laughed.
‘The man by the window. Left- or right-handed?’
‘Right. He’s drumming the fingers of his right hand on the table top beside his cup of caffeine.’
‘Wrong. He’s watching the street crowd, because he’s waiting for a business partner he doesn’t know. His left hand is under the table, on the butt of his weapon. A Hecuter model, badly stowed. The right hand is a distraction.’
Leyla shook her head. ‘Should I go over and ask him to prove it?’
‘If you want to get shot. The barman. 19th Gudrunite Irregulars. A Guard veteran.’
‘Why?’
‘Tattoo on his left wrist. “Company of Angels”. The vets of the 19th took that as a tat after Latislaw Heights.’
‘You can see that?’
‘Not from here. But on the way in. And you–’
‘Me?’
‘You’ve eaten enough, you’re full. But you like the rice, so you keep picking at it, even though you don’t want it.’
‘It’s good rice.’
‘And you haven’t touched your wine in thirteen minutes. You keep playing with the glass, but you don’t drink, because you’re afraid that if you get merry, you’ll lose control of this situation. But you play with the glass all the same, so as not to draw attention to the fact you’re not drinking.’
‘That’s just nonsense.’
‘Is it?’ He looked at her. ‘You sit slightly sidelong to me, favouring your left buttock, because your right hip gives you pain. Old wound? An augmetic?’
She breathed out. ‘An augmetic.’
Molotch clapped his hands. ‘You dearly want to go back now, but you’re afraid of goading me, or having to force me. You want to make it seem like my idea.’
‘Now, look–’
‘You’re quite certain I don’t know that Orfeo instructed you to let me loose for a few hours. Orfeo thinks I’m going stir crazy. The idea was to let me walk around and blow off steam.’
‘Dammit, Molotch–’
‘Don’t damn it at all. Enjoy it. What could I do, do you suppose? What could I do, just sitting here?’
‘I don’t know.’
Molotch removed a tiny phial from his sleeve and put it on the table top beside the cauldro of rice. ‘Osicol Plague, in suspension. I took it from Orfeo’s personal kit. If I release it here, I could decimate the entire city quarter.’
‘For the love of– No!’
‘I won’t. There’d be no sense in that. But consider the options. The banker at the table to our left. He works at the city mint. He has a brooch on his waistcoat, before you ask. The sigil of the banking guild, and the office of coinage circulation. If I dropped the phial into his business case, he would find it and open it when he returned to his office. The mint would be contaminated, and would have to be sealed off for fifteen years. The local currency would crash, and bring the subsector economy down. Decades of damage. Or take that young man over there, the one in the private booth. He’s the second son of a minor baron, slumming it, but I know he’s in with the court crowd.’
Molotch produced a small medical injector from his pocket and put it down on the table beside the phial. It was full of clear fluid. ‘Suspension liquid. Inert and viscous, metabolised in six hours. I could go into the washrooms, load the plague solution into it, and bump into that second son as I came back. In a day or two, the entire royal house of this planet would be dead from contact plague. An ideal moment to stage a coup.’
‘But that’s just... just...’ she whispered.
‘Now you’re getting the idea,’ he said. ‘What about this? That drunk by the bar. I’ve been gently hypnotising him with finger movements since we came in. Allow me to prove it.’
Molotch moved his fingers. The drunken man lurched and tottered over to them.
‘What’s your name?’ Molotch asked.
‘Sire Garnis Govior, sir,’ the man wobbled.
‘And your job?’
‘I am chief under translator to the House of the Governor, sir.’
Leyla stared at Molotch.
‘And you thought I’d let you pick this bar,’ he smiled. ‘It’s a famous haunt of the Administratum classes. I noticed Garnis here because of his signet ring.’
‘This ring?’ the man asked, displaying it so abruptly he swayed.
‘The very same. You have face time with the governor, then?’
‘I do, sir, I surely do,’ the man said, wobbling.
‘So, if I asked you to strangle him the next time you saw him, setting off a local sector war that would bring in Houses Gevaunt, Nightbray and Clovis, you’d have no problem?’
‘None at all,’ the man assured Molotch. ‘Not a problem at all.’
‘You’d strangle the Lord Governor?’ Leyla asked.
‘Like a bloody shot. Like he was a bloody whelp. Yes, mam.’
‘But I won’t,’ said Molotch. ‘You can go now, Garnis.’
‘Thank you kindly,’ the man said, and staggered off.
Molotch looked a
t the wide-eyed Leyla. ‘Every opening. Every chance. Every chink. That’s what the Cognitae are trained to do. To look, to see, to find, to use. In the course of this delightful lunch, Leyla, I could have brought the subsector down three or four times over. Just like that.’
He flicked something away with his thumb. It landed on the floor of the bar and broke, oozing fluid.
‘Oh holy–!’ Leyla began.
‘Relax. It’s just the suspension fluid. The plague’s in my pocket. So, let’s consider the Inquisition.’
‘The Inquisition?’
‘Most particularly, the office of the ordos on this world.’
‘You can’t see that from here.’
‘Oh, I can. In the over-bar mirror. See?’
‘Terra, I hadn’t noticed that.’
He sipped his wine. ‘I can see the fortress of the Inquisition from my seat. Such a big fortress. Towering over the city. It was built by the Black Templars, you know? Long since vacated, but one day they might be back. Until then, the Inquisition uses the keep. It’s going to be a bloody fight the day the Templars return. Anyway, they’re flying flags. Several dark flags. What does that mean?’
‘Does it mean anything? They’re flying flags.’
‘The Inquisition doesn’t suppose anyone understands their protocols and heraldry. Black flags above their fortress. Just for show. Just for threat. But I have made it my business to understand and monitor the way they signal to one another.’
‘So? I can barely see the mirror from where I’m sitting.’
‘I’ll tell you what it means. The flags are the black crests of Siquo, Bilocke and Quist, symbols the Inquisition identify with respect and honour. They are flying ceremonially. There are envoys in residence. Several high-ranking envoys. Actually, you can tell that simply by the number of weapon ports they’ve uncovered. Someone important is here.’
‘Meaning?’
‘Meaning, Ravenor’s here, as we feared, and they’ve decided to rein him in. Which is good news for us.’
There was a sudden, brutal crash. Voices around the eating house rose in alarm. Garnis had slipped over in the pool of suspension fluid and brained himself on the edge of the bar rail.
He was dead.
‘Let’s go,’ said Molotch.
They rose and picked their way out of the eating house, moving around the crowd that had gathered around Garnis’s misfortune.
‘That’s nine, ‘ Leyla whispered. ‘I thought you only wanted eight?’
‘I did, but I’m not stupid. This one isn’t ritual. This is a ninth to ruin the pattern. The ordos are sharp and clever. They would have seen a pattern of eight except for this.’
He bent down in the edge of the crowd and picked up a small piece of the broken glass phial Garnis had slipped on.
‘A present,’ he said. ‘A deodand for your master.’
‘I’m sure he’ll love it,’ said Leyla Slade. ‘Wait,’ she added.
He paused. She licked her right index finger, reached out, and wiped away one last lone speck of blood from his face that she’d missed earlier.
‘Thank you,’ he said.
They stepped out into the bright day and the bustling crowd swallowed them up.
Two
At her master’s mind-whispered instruction, Patience Kys opened the courtyard gates to let them in.
She didn’t move from her seat on the stone bench. One nod of her head, one blink of her green eyes, and invisible hawsers of telekinetic power drew the heavy timber doors open. The lower edges of the doors scraped slightly on the ground, and lifted a small cloud of dust from the dry cobbles. The doors made a juddering, rumbling sound as they swung in. Fierce patches of yellow sunlight invaded the quiet shade of the courtyard through the opening gates.
Nayl, Thonius and Plyton came out of the house to watch the arrival.
Nayl’s expression was unreadable. The skin of his shaved scalp had caught a touch of sun. He wore a tight grey bodyglove reinforced with articulated ceramite plates around the shoulders, neck and torso. He stood at the top of the house steps, in the shadow of the entrance archway, adjusting his gloves. He made no attempt to conceal the Hecuter Arms Midgard holstered on his left hip.
Maud Plyton emerged to stand next to him. She had taken to wearing Navy surplus fatigues since quitting the Magistratum. Today, she had chosen a one piece, zip-front flight suit of shabby khaki, heavy-laced combat boots, and a white undervest. The unflattering fit of the unisex clothing accentuated her large, slightly thickset frame, a build that contrasted sharply with the very delicate pinch of her features. She wore her dark hair cropped short, a Magistratum regulation she had found it hard to abandon.
Carl Thonius, slender and trim, wore the bottom half of a black bodyglove and the high, patent leather boots of a ceremonial cavalry officer, complete with rowel spurs that clinked when he walked. On his upper half he wore a purple tail coat with gold trim. Open, the coat framed a rectangle of scrawny white chest and washboard stomach above the glove’s waistband. His long fingers were covered in rings, and his hair was dyed black and roughly chopped into a mane. He was a long way from the fey, fussy, impeccably dressed dandy who had first joined the inquisitor’s company a decade before.
‘Do we know who it is?’ Nayl asked him.
Carl shook his head. ‘Not a clue.’
Across the yard, Kara and Belknap emerged from another doorway. Kara was short, voluptuous, her bright red hair stridently clashing with her lime green vest and white pantaloons. Belknap, dressed in simple black combat trousers, was a slim man of average build, his hair short and unremarkably brown, his face unexceptionally ordinary except for a sleepy glitter of intense wisdom and reassurance in his eyes. Those eyes had seen a lot, as a battlefield medicae. They would see a whole lot more as the private physician to an inquisitor’s warband.
Patience Kys, tall and feline, rose from the bench at last and joined Kara and Belknap. In her dark brown bodyglove, she seemed all legs. Her black hair was hanging loose, but as she walked, she reached up with her hands, gathered it, and twisted it into a neat tail that she secured with a silver pin.
‘Brace yourselves,’ she said. ‘I smell trouble.’
The envoys entered the courtyard. First, an outrider on a long, low, powerful warbike, its engine issuing an indignant splutter that resonated around the courtyard walls. Then, one after another, three Chimera carriers, like monolithic stone blocks, their track sections clattering and squealing. The carriers were finished in a matt grey, as if they were supposed to be incognito. As if a trio of thirty-eight tonne armoured vehicles could be incognito. Their turbines grumbling, they drew up on the lower part of the courtyard, side-by-side. Six psyberskulls droned in with them, and took up hovering stations, like dragonflies.
A second outrider, low on his machine like the first, brought up the rear. This second bike raced around the parked carriers, and halted, revving. The rider put one foot down and sat up.
In a line: bike, carrier, carrier, carrier, bike.
+Close the gates.+
Kys nodded, and obliged. The gates rumbled shut.
The carriers shut down their engines. Exhaust fumes drifted away, up and out of the yard.
‘Leave this to me,’ said Nayl.
‘Why?’ asked Carl.
‘Look at my face. Am I about to take any shit?’
Carl smiled and nodded. ‘No. And I like that about you.’
Nayl looked at Maud. ‘Got a piece?’
‘I thought they were friends?’
‘No such thing, girl. Go get a piece and stay inside behind the door.’
Maud looked back at Nayl, waiting for the punchline. Then she realised he was serious and disappeared back into the house.
Harlon Nayl left Thonius on the steps and stomped down into the sunlight. He walked towards the line of vehicles. The hovering psyberskulls whirred and buzzed, bobbing slightly, as he came into range.
The two outriders had killed the engines of their
warbikes and rocked them over onto their stands. Both dismounted. They were clad in matching scale-armoured bodygloves, smeared in dust, which made them look like extensions of their matt-black and bare-metal bikes. They removed their helmets, yanking free the skeins of wires and plugs that linked them to the weapon-systems of the bikes.
The rider on the left was a young male, tall and slightly built, with long white hair that shook free and loose the moment his helmet was off. He looked at Nayl. He had the most distressingly blue eyes.
‘We greet the master of the house, and humbly thank him for this audience,’ he said. His voice was soft and clear, like rainwater.
‘The greeting is returned,’ said Nayl. He flicked his eyes up at the hovering psyberskulls. ‘A little too many guns around for this to be cordial.’
The young man smiled broadly. ‘I apologise,’ he said. He took a control wand from his hip pocket and waved it. With a low murmur, the skulls deactivated and sank to the courtyard floor. ‘That was rude. Just a precaution, you realise.’
He pocketed the wand, hung his helmet on the antlers of his bike and walked towards Nayl.
‘Interrogator Gall Ballack,’ he said, extending a hand the moment he’d peeled the glove off.
‘Nayl,’ said Nayl, shaking the hand.
‘I know,’ said Ballack. ‘I have studied the records. I’m an admirer of your work. Where’s Ravenor?’
‘By that, I suppose you mean Inquisitor Ravenor?’ Nayl replied.
Ballack pursed his lips and nodded. ‘Presumptuous of me, and lacking respect. Of course, I meant Inquisitor Ravenor.’
‘He’s inside.’
‘My senior has come to speak with him.’
‘Perhaps your senior would like to get out of his tank and come in, then,’ said Nayl.
Ballack snorted a laugh. ‘You know, Harlon, I think she might just do that.’
There was a series of pneumatic clanks, and the boarding hatches of the Chimeras began to open. Over in the shadows, Kys jerked her head at Kara, and the pair of them slipped away into the house. Belknap, slightly at a loss, stayed put.
The second outrider had taken off his helmet. He was a she. A very tall she with long braided, beaded hair.