by Dan Abnett
He looked round as we approached, discarding another clenching hand.
‘Shit,’ said Nayl, gazing at the long, wide beach of twitching hands. ‘Zeph’s dreams are so much freakier than mine.’
‘Zeph?’ I called out.
‘I can’t find it. Can’t find it. Can’t.’
‘Zeph,’ I said again.
‘What?’ he barked, turning to glare at me.
‘I wanted to ask–’
‘The answer’s yes,’ he said, and turned back to his sorting along the shoreline of wriggling fingers.
We finally located Kara Swole in a dressing room behind a thunderous wooden carnival hall in the backwoods of Bonaventure. Outside, barkers with brass voice-trumpets shouted the odds, and the crowd was roaring. Kara sat before the harshly-lit make-up mirror, her red hair pulled back in a lace strap as she white-powdered her face.
Short, supple, voluptuous, she turned in her camp chair as we came in.
‘Is it time already?’ she asked.
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘Time to go on?’
‘Yes.’
She came over to me and stroked my arms, tugging at my cuffs.
‘You were such a handsome man, Gideon.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Sometimes I forget… I forget what you looked like, back then. You haven’t come to me this way in a long time.’
‘That’s just what I said,’ said Nayl.
Kara’s face changed. ‘I’m dreaming, aren’t I?’
‘Yes, you are.’
‘We’re starting tomorrow, aren’t we?’
‘Yes.’
‘This is the dream where you come and ask me if I want to go on, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, it is.’
‘Even to the death?’
‘Even that.’
‘What about the others?’
‘Patience, Zeph and Carl are all with me,’ I said.
‘Me too,’ said Nayl.
‘Frauka and Zael?’
‘I couldn’t get into Frauka’s dreams if I tried… and I won’t get into the boy’s. It’s just us, the band. I needed to know you were still with me.’
‘Of course!’
‘Kara… Now’s the time, the last time. If you want out, say now.’
‘Are you kidding?’ she said. ’The show must go on.’
The following morning, ship-time, the Arethusa translated back into material space on the edge of the Eustis System. The old freighter had been so often repaired and rebuilt during its lifetime, that all clues to its original class and designation had long since vanished in the patchwork mess of its hull. Unwerth liked to think of it (and, by extension, himself too) as a rogue trader, but it was little more than a tinker ship, scraping a living in cheap trinkets and surplus perishables up and down the trade lanes.
From retranslation, we joined the busy in-system route, and finally picked up the services of a pilot boat which led us in through the overcrowded rafts of the high anchor harbours to a vacant dock. Berthing fees were twenty crowns a day, and we reserved the anchorage for a calendar month.
The stained globe of Eustis Majoris revolved slowly beneath us. The orbital harbours were superstructures of brass and steel, resembling in their structure and their glittering lights giant circus calliopes the size of continents, linked together in a loose string. More than ten thousand vessels alone clung at anchor to the scaffold-wharves around us. Some of the ships were private merchantmen, hauliers, trade-runners; others vast mass conveyance vessels from the noble chartered companies and the franchised lines. Rows of dull, grey Munitorum freighters suckled against raft-edges. Gold and crimson mission-ships of the Ecclesiarchy, splendid as ceremonial sceptres, dragged at the titanic chains that moored them to private, consecrated docking areas. In the distance, threat-black warships skulked in armoured pens separate from the main harbours. Near-space bustled with traffic: shuttles, service ships, mobile derricks, tankers, lighters, lift ships bound for the surface, taking the traders’ merchandise down to the markets of Eustis Majoris’s cities.
Apart from cursory identification, pilot ship dues and berthing registration, no one really noticed the Arethusa. Just another mangy, nondescript tramp limping in with ice on its pitted hull, trailing skeins of fuel vapour from where the pressures of the Empyrean had flexed and deformed its fabric.
Carl had come to me early, and described the plan that had evolved in his mind. I valued Carl most for his technical brilliance, but this scheme impressed me as much for its daring and audacity. As an operative, he was maturing.
‘There are risks,’ I said.
‘Of course. But as you said, we need to be able to operate freely without fear of detection. Even the best forged documents will show up as false if subjected to thorough Informium inspection. And we have every reason to believe that the people we’re dealing with will have access to such resources.’
‘So the perfect solution is to get the Informium itself to forge documents for us?’
He smiled. It was the smile he used when he was insufferably pleased with himself. ‘In a manner of speaking.’
‘You’ve planned this operation thoroughly?’
‘In all particulars. Timings, distances, codes. All the minutiae. Sir… I’d like to run the operation personally. I would regard it as an honour if you’d allow that.’
‘I see. Why, Carl?’
He fiddled nervously with a garnet ring on his right pinkie. ‘Three reasons. First, it’s my idea. Second… how can I put this delicately? Physically, you are our weakest link. The rest of us can disguise our appearances, but you do rather stand out. And your form is known to our enemies.’
It was something I’d been thinking about since we’d begun our journey back to Eustis Majoris. Because of the secrecy, I was going to have to rely entirely on my agents during this mission. I could not allow myself to be seen. It was a frustrating prospect. We were here, undertaking an extremely hazardous endeavour, and all because I insisted it should be so. Yet I was going to have to sit back and watch as they took all the real risks for me.
‘Very well,’ I told him. ‘I’m going to have to get used to being the least visible player in this game. You can run this.’
‘Thank you, sir.’
‘I will be watching, and helping, if I can.’
‘Of course. But there will be no need.’
He got up to leave my cabin. ‘What was the third reason, Carl?’ I asked.
He turned and faced my support chair squarely, as if he were looking me in the eyes. ‘Last year, I fouled up. On Flint, and later, when the ship was taken. I was the weak link then. I want an opportunity to redeem myself.’
We assembled in the main hold. Nayl had a lifter whining up to power. Kara, Kys and my blunter, Wystan Frauka, were loading the last of the equipment packs into the lifter’s cargo pod. Carl was nearby, talking quietly to the boy, Zael. Carl and I had agreed that Zael could play a part in this initial operation, and the boy was clearly excited by the role Carl was explaining to him.
I still had some doubts about Zael. He was very young and inexperienced, and displayed the beginnings of a potent psychic gift that he as yet did not understand. That rare quality of a mirror psychic, not active but passively reflective. I kept him with me to watch over that growing talent, to nurture it. But he was growing restless being on the sidelines all the time. Giving him a responsibility would boost his confidence and make him feel part of the group.
Mathuin arrived, escorting our prisoner. Feaver Skoh had been a game agent, a player in the Contract Thirteen cartel, and one of the men trying to kill us at Bonner’s Reach the year before. We’d captured him there, and much of what we knew was based upon things he had given up under interrogation. Both Nayl and Thonius believed there was nothing more we could get from him, and considered it a waste of effort keeping him with us. But he was our only resource, and I wasn’t about to give that up yet.
Incarceration and misery had shrunk him d
own. He was a shadow of the bruiser who had gunned for us in Lucky Space. His sandy blond hair had grown paler and thin, and a straggly beard covered his once jutting chin. He shuffled along in his manacles as Zeph led him to the lander. He was pitiful but, I sensed, not yet broken. He ignored everyone and said nothing, but he turned and fixed me with one brief stare before Zeph led him up the ramp.
The squat figure of Sholto Unwerth hurried over to me.
‘Are you all in the readiness, sir? Are you concupiscent for the rigours that may prevail?’
‘Yes, Master Unwerth.’
‘And you wish upon me to have myself stay positioned here?’
‘Yes, Master Unwerth. The berthing fees are paid in advance. Remain here with your ship. If we have not returned, or made contact with you by the time the prepayment runs out, you may leave and continue with your own business. With my thanks.’
‘Well, then, I bid you all formaldehyde and gross misadventure. Just the one singularly thing…’
‘Yes?’
‘In all these copious months, you still haven’t pertained to me what your business is.’
‘You’re right, Master Unwerth,’ I said. ‘I haven’t. And I won’t. For the good of your health.’
Three
Orfeo Culzean was a rare beast. His papers declared him to be a dealer and purveyor of antiquities, but that merely described the legitimate business he conducted to disguise his real work. It allowed him to travel widely through the sector, and availed him of opportunities to acquire curios and inspect the reserved collections of many museums and archives. His scholarship was highly regarded. He had not a single blemish of criminal activity on his record.
But Orfeo Culzean was a professional malcontent, a mercenary, a shaper of destiny. No warrior he – Culzean had never lifted a finger against another soul personally – his speciality was subtle and invidious. He made things happen. He was an architect of fate, one of the foremost expeditors employed by the Divine Fratery.
Culzean did not belong to the Fratery itself. He had no interest in being a seer, and bore no wish to sacrifice an eye or blister his skin. But it was he, and a few rare beasts like him, that the Fratery turned to when it wished to make its prospects into a reality.
Under normal circumstances, he would have been the most dangerous man alive on Eustis Majoris. But that winter, he was up against stiff opposition.
The Fratery had summoned him to Eustis Majoris, financed his passage, and paid for an exclusive suite at the Regency Viceroy in Formal C, at the heart of Petropolis. Two days after his arrival, the magus-clancular of the Divine Fratery cell active in Petropolis came to visit him.
The magus-clancular was called Cornelius Lezzard. He was three hundred and ten years old, infirm and raddled with disease, his crippled body supported in an upright exoskeleton. Two brothers of the Fratery escorted him. All three wore simple black suits with velvet hats. All three had moved their purple velvet eyepatches to cover their everyday augmetic optics, so as to do Culzean the honour of regarding him with their sacred, real eyes.
What those eyes saw when they entered the opulent suite was a portly man in late middle age, dressed in a high-buttoned suit of blue worsted, his thick, dark hair and beard perfectly groomed. He was sitting in a leather armchair, caressing a little simivulpa that played on his lap. As the fraters came in, he put the pet down and got to his feet. The silky fox-monkey barked and clambered up to perch on the back of the chair.
Culzean bowed slightly.
‘Magus-clancular, a pleasure to meet you again.’ Culzean’s voice was as soft and heavy as comb honey.
‘We look upon you, Orfeo,’ Lezzard replied.
‘Please, repatch yourselves. Let us not stand on ceremony.’
The two escorts replaced their velvet patches over their organic eyes, exposing their crude, glowing augmetics. One had to help Lezzard, who fumbled at his own patch with palsied hands.
‘It has been a few years since we last worked together on a prospect,’ Lezzard said. His voice had a tremulous, breathless quality. Tubes from his exoskeleton’s bio-support pack were sutured into his scrawny neck.
‘Indeed. On Promody. The plague was a thing of exquisite beauty.’
‘This prospect is many times more wonderful.’
‘I imagined it would be. The summons was… eager. As I understand it, this particular prospect is the Fratery’s chief current interest.’
‘It is. That is why I asked the Fratery masters to engage your services. Let me introduce my companions. Arthous and Stefoy, both able seers.’
‘Brothers,’ Culzean nodded. The men were typical of the Fratery: their faces scarred and twisted from the rigours of cult initiation, their hands worn and eroded from working the silver mirrors. ‘Will you take refreshment?’
‘A little wine, or secum liquor, perhaps?’ Lezzard said.
Culzean nodded. Nearby stood his watcher, a tall, muscular woman with short blonde hair and an anvil-hard face. She wore a tight khaki bodyglove with a fur trim. Her name was Leyla Slade.
‘Leyla?’
She retreated obediently to call for service.
Lezzard limped around the chamber, the pistons of his exoskeleton wheezing. Culzean had decorated the room with his own ornaments. Lezzard examined a few, chuckling from time to time.
‘Your collection grows, I see,’ he said.
‘People die all the time,’ Culzean replied lightly.
‘Indeed they do. But tell me… this key?’
‘It choked a child on Gudrun.’
‘Did it? And this paving stone?’
‘Once lay at the very top of the processional steps outside the templum at Arnak. The glass vial beside it contains some of the rainwater that made it wet and treacherous to an unsuspecting pilgrim.’
‘Forgive me,’ one of the fraters – Arthous – said, ‘I don’t understand.’
Culzean smiled. ‘I collect deodands,’ he said.
Arthous looked bemused.
‘A deodand,’ Culzean said, ‘is an object that has directly caused the death of a person or persons. This tile, from the roof of an auction house on Durer, which cracked the skull of a passing magistrate. This ink pen, whose filthy nib poisoned the blood of the Administratum cleric who accidentally speared himself in the buttock. This thunderstone, falling like a missile from the open sky onto a herdsman in Migel County. This apple, sealed in a plastek block to preserve it – you notice the single bite mark? The poor woman was allergic to the juice.’
‘Extraordinary,’ said Arthous. ‘May I ask… why?’
‘Why do I collect them? Cherish them? You know what I do, Frater Arthous. I engineer destiny. These objects fascinate me. I believe they contain a vestige of some outer force, some happenstance. Each one crude, and of itself worthless, but empowered. I keep them by me as charms. Every single one has changed a person’s fate. They remind me how fickle and sudden fate can be, how easily twisted. ‘
‘They’re the source of your power?’ Stefoy wondered.
‘They’re just a collection of things,’ Culzean said. ‘All of them yearn to shape the future as completely and as fully as I do.’
Leyla Slade returned, with a tray of hot secum in drinking kettles. She served the men as they took their seats under the tall windows of the suite. The simivulpa scurried playfully under their chairs. Outside, the rain lashed the grim, high stacks of the city.
‘Tell me about the prospect,’ Culzean said, sipping from his drinking kettle’s spout.
‘How much do you know, Orfeo?’ Lezzard replied.
Culzean shrugged. ‘The Fratery’s seers on Nova Durma have seen something in their silver mirrors. A prospect that is – and I understand this is almost unheard of – almost one hundred per cent likely. Something will occur here, on Eustis Majoris, before the end of the year. A daemonic manifestation. It will shake history. Its name will be Slyte.’
‘A decent appraisal,’ the magus-clancular replied, as Stefoy helped him suck f
rom his kettle. ‘Arthous, the rest.’
Arthous leaned forward in his seat, and put his kettle down. He stank from the sores on his body, but Orfeo Culzean was too well-mannered to register distaste.
‘The name, expeditor, will indeed be Slyte. Perhaps the name may be Sleet or Slate or–’
‘Slyte will do,’ Culzean said, raising a hand. ‘What I don’t understand is this. I was told of an almost one hundred per cent certainty. Why in the name of darkness do you need my services?’
‘The key word, sir, is almost,’ Stefoy said. ‘In the last few months, our brother-seers on Nova Durma have reported a clouding.’
‘A clouding?’
‘The prospect is becoming less certain. As if fate is twisting against it. We need to confirm fate’s path. Make it certain again. Make it true. The prospect was seen to occur between the start of 400 and the end of 403. That time is almost on us now.’
‘I see,’ said Culzean. ‘Now, does this prospect have a focus?’
Arthous reached into his suit pocket and produced a sheaf of crumpled parchments. ‘These are the transcripts made by the seers. The focus is named here, you see. A person called Gideon Ravenor.’
‘Ravenor?’ Culzean said. ‘The writer?’
‘He is an Imperial inquisitor.’
‘Yes, but he writes too. Various essays, treatises. All rather fey and ponderous to my taste, but well thought of. This Ravenor’s the focus?’
‘Him, or one of his close associates,’ Lezzard nodded.
‘Curious,’ Culzean said, taking the parchments and studying them.
‘The Inquisition is already alert to this prospect,’ Stefoy said. ‘They have attempted to thwart us. One agent in particular, Ravenor’s old mentor, the inquisitor, Eisenhorn.’
Culzean looked up. ‘Eisenhorn? That old bull? Now he I’ve most certainly heard of. Where is he in this picture?’
‘He attempted to warn Ravenor of the prospect on Malinter last year. We were unable to stop him, though it seems Ravenor himself did not believe the warning. Eisenhorn was later tracked down and slain by our brothers on Fedra.’