by Dan Abnett
The thing was just an arm’s length from him.
Nayl fired.
The shot struck the figure in the forehead. The skull burst like a smashed vase. Bone shards sprayed in all directions.
Headless, the figure wavered for a moment. Electric-green energy patterns coursed and flickered around its frame.
Then they winked out.
The dead bones abruptly disarticulated and collapsed like rubbish tipped out of a bucket. They fell in a heap on the parlour floor where the figure had been standing. Thin smoke curled up from the mound of bones.
Nayl lowered the pistol.
‘Get Eisenhorn,’ he said.
TWELVE
The House of Sark
Early morning light speared in through the slit windows of the washroom on the second floor of the fortress. It was a grey day outside, but the storm had cleared, and the rain had eased back to drizzle.
Drusher was clean, but shivering. There had been no hot water to fill the tin tub, and it had taken a long time to scrub the fireplace soot out of his skin. He had a clean shirt, but his jacket and trousers were the only ones he’d brought along, and he had been forced to put them back on despite the dirt that had rubbed into the fabric.
Macks came in. She’d washed earlier, and her uniform looked clean, but her face was drawn and pale.
‘I brought you these,’ she said and held out a box of dressings for the burns on his hands.
‘Are you all right?’ he asked.
She looked away, then took a breath and busied herself applying salve to his palms and fingers. He held his hands out obediently. He wanted to say something, something about what had happened. And not just the horror that had overtaken them in the parlour. About everything. About their chance meeting twenty-seven years before, about their insane adventures, which, to him, included three oddly sweet years in Tycho City that had finally ended in a lot of shouting and slamming of doors.
As usual, and as then, his interpersonal skills failed him.
‘The Archenemy of mankind,’ she said eventually.
‘The what?’
‘That’s what it was,’ she said. ‘What they preach about, what they tell us to watch for. I never really thought… I never really thought it was real. But that, that was real.’
‘I’ve never thought about it much myself,’ he replied. ‘I know the edicts, the directives, but I’ve always found life quite challenging enough without believing in… in supernatural forces. I guess I’m like you. I never thought it was real.’
‘It’s what the ordos deal with,’ she said, unwrapping some dressings.
‘I always thought the ordos were autonomous secret police,’ he said. ‘You know, enforcing order, maintaining the Imperial Truth. All that talk of daemonic forces, just propaganda to keep us all scared and in line.’
‘Well, the Inquisition is here,’ she said, ‘so I suppose we’re dumb for not taking it seriously.’
‘Is it?’ he asked.
‘What do you mean?’ she asked.
Drusher shrugged his shoulders.
‘I’ve been thinking about things,’ he said. ‘About all of this. You said they needed me because I was the only magos biologis on Gershom. Not that I was the best, just that I was the only one–’
‘Oh don’t start over,’ she sighed.
‘No, hear me out,’ he replied. ‘This isn’t self-pity. I may well be the only magos biologis here. Good or bad. But think about the case. This Eisenhorn has a ship. A crew. Significant resources. Technical specialists like that Jaff woman. He hears about the case here from off-world. He knows one of the victims is this woman he claims to know. He comes here. That’s shift travel. A commitment of time and expense. But before he set out for Gershom, he knew the victim – all the victims – had been mauled by animals. That was an established part of the case. He knew he’d need an expert. So, I’m wondering, why didn’t he bring one?’
She didn’t answer.
‘I mean, the ordo must have plenty of specialists on staff,’ he went on. ‘Consultants they can call on at the drop of hat. But he didn’t bring one.’
‘Well, he thought he’d find one here.’
‘Yeah, a crappy one like me? If he got here and realised he needed specialist help, why didn’t he signal to the ordos to send someone? Someone really good?’
‘Like you said, Drusher, time. Time and expense.’
He shook his head.
‘I don’t buy it,’ he said. ‘He comes unprepared, and he makes do with a has-been like me. Don’t look at me like that. I know I’m no great shakes, Germaine. I’m not that deluded. But he makes do.’
‘The hell are you suggesting, Valentin?’ she asked.
‘I’m saying, maybe he’s not as connected as he wants us to think,’ said Drusher. ‘He and Voriet can flash all the badges they like, and pretend to be all sorts of important things, but what if this isn’t legitimate at all?’
‘You mean… you don’t think they’re from the ordos?’
‘I’m saying that’s possible. Or this whole thing is deeply unofficial. A… How do you people phrase it? A rogue operation. Sending for a high-level magos biologis would have raised flags. I don’t know if Master Eisenhorn is a real inquisitor or not, but I think what he’s doing here is strictly off the record.’
‘I think you’re paranoid,’ she replied.
‘After last night, aren’t you?’
She snapped the aid-box shut.
‘Well, it’s moot anyway,’ she replied. ‘The storm’s cleared. The up-link is re-established. I’m going to contact the area governor this morning. Establish an emergency situation and ask him to mobilise the Territorial Guard. If the Archenemy is here in Unkara, it needs to be contained, and this little group of ours isn’t up to the task.’
‘I don’t think Eisenhorn’s going to like that,’ said Drusher.
‘He can stick it up his arse for all I care,’ said Macks. ‘I’m Magistratum, and I have a duty.’
He smiled at her.
‘That’s what I always loved about you, Germaine.’
‘What?’ she asked.
‘You, being you. Never backing down.’
She grinned.
‘I did last night,’ she said.
‘Last night was different,’ he said.
‘Very,’ she replied. ‘You were very different. You faced that thing down. You saved me.’
‘I think that was Nayl.’
‘No, you kept it at bay. You didn’t stop trying. Not like you at all.’
‘Must be the mountain air.’
She suddenly hugged him tight and planted a long, loud kiss on his cheek.
‘Thank you,’ she said.
She walked to the door.
‘Oh,’ she added, turning to look back. ‘Nayl’s cleaning out the mess in the parlour. The bones and stuff, they’ll have to be quarantined. But there were some books you’d brought down from the library. I told Nayl not to move them without checking with you. I didn’t know if they were important.’
Drusher went down to the parlour. He felt uneasy returning to the scene of the horror. Daylight made everything seem very ordinary, but he could still smell burned sawdust and cold decay.
Nayl, wearing surgical gloves, was scooping the brown bones into a hazard waste sack.
‘Books,’ he said when he saw Drusher. He pointed to a side table in the corner. ‘Do you need them?’
‘I might,’ said Drusher. He walked over to the books and began to gather them up.
‘How did you kill it?’ he asked.
‘Head shot,’ said Nayl.
‘You made it look easy,’ said Drusher.
‘Nothing easy about it.’
‘I fired the riotgun at it multiple times. So did Macks. No effect. It somehow neutralised the force of the shots.’
‘Yeah, I heard you gave it a go. Good for you, magos.’
‘And that combat weapon of yours. You dumped some serious las into it.’
‘With no effect. Yet a single bullet…’
Nayl looked up at him.
‘That thing, magos,’ Nayl said. ‘It was an animation process. An energy form that had simply inhabited the dead bones. It was using them as a framework to move around in, to interact with the physical world.’
‘I saw a shimmer on it,’ said Drusher. ‘An aura. Like an afterimage.’
‘Right. So that energy form, it can just soak up kinetic damage from a pump gun, or the high-yield las expended from my weapon.’
‘And manipulate that energy to eat through doors. And people.’
‘Correct.’
‘But a single bullet somehow…?’
‘It wasn’t the bullet,’ said Nayl. ‘It’s what was written on it. Eisenhorn etched it himself and gave me a stash of them. A charm, if you like. Like an amulet. The charm broke the energy field and let the bullet do its damage.’
‘Well, I’ll take your word for that, Master Nayl. It sounds a lot like hocus-pocus nonsense to me.’
‘Me too,’ said Nayl. ‘But if hocus-pocus nonsense works, you go with it.’
‘It sounds like this thing was created,’ said Drusher. ‘I mean artificially manufactured. And let out.’
Nayl rose to his feet.
‘You figured that out, did you?’ he asked.
‘The cold store door was unbolted,’ said Drusher. ‘Macks said so. The thing didn’t eat its way out, and that’s the only way it could have opened the door. So it follows that someone made it and let it out for a reason.’
‘There’s the makings of an investigator in you yet, sir,’ said Nayl.
‘What was the reason?’ asked Drusher.
‘To kill us all,’ said Nayl. ‘That’s my bet. Because maybe we’re getting too close to something. What happened last night could have happened any night in the weeks since we arrived. But it happened last night. So something happened yesterday that took us all a step too close to the truth. And you know what happened yesterday, magos?’
‘No, what?’
‘You got here,’ said Nayl.
‘That’s not a very cheery notion,’ said Drusher.
‘Shall I tell you why I think there’s more to you than meets the eye?’ asked Nayl. ‘Why I think you’ve got that something that marks a good investigator? You don’t ask the stupid questions.’
‘What would they be?’ asked Drusher.
‘Well, since we’ve been talking, you haven’t once asked what it was.’
‘I presumed there wasn’t a word for it,’ said Drusher. ‘Or if there was, it would be part of a concept that was meaningless to me as a man of science.’
‘That’s pretty smart,’ said Nayl. ‘And you haven’t asked who let it out.’
‘Because I think you’d have told me if you knew,’ said Drusher. ‘Or it’s classified, and there’s no point asking in the first place.’
Drusher carried the small clutch of books back up the stairs to the library. They weren’t significant, just essays on wildflowers and ornithology. He’d borrowed them to ease his mind, to refresh his thoughts with something familiar and reassuring. But they belonged in the library, so he was going to put them back there. You didn’t borrow a fellow naturalist’s books and not return them. Even if that fellow naturalist was thirty years dead.
He heard hammering from the basement. Macks’ deputies had been ordered to seal the cold store.
The library was empty. The plastek sheeting on the windows rustled in the breeze. He started to slot the borrowed books back onto the shelves. The last one was the book of migration patterns in the Karanine area. It had been the most interesting, clearly one of Fargul’s favourites. The old man had filled the margins with pencilled annotations, remarks drawn from his observations of the seasonal influxes and exoduses. Those little jottings had been what Drusher had found most comforting. The marks of a man who had happily spent years wandering the hills in all weathers, witnessing the patterns of nature, noting unusual sightings, rare specimens and the most likely sites for the observation of particular species. The handwritten notes gave Drusher a sense of kinship.
He flipped through the pages one last time, before putting the book away, relishing the constant delight expressed in Fargul’s notes. How the crosshammers always congregated along the same stretch of river each year before beginning migration, gathering in such numbers the trees were bowed with them. How the forests rang with call-and-response in spring when the exhausted redbeaks searched for their life-mates to reunite after the arduous voyage back. How the returning charhoops flocked at the pass in early summer, swarming and mobbing in huge clouds before continuing on up into the hills…
Drusher paused. He read the note again. Surely…
He flipped through the pages and speed-read some of the other annotations. The same thing, several times. Could it be that simple?
He put the book down and began to skim along the spines of the shelves. Geographic history… The origin of place-names…
He pulled out a volume or two and put them aside when they proved useless. He lighted on another and tried that instead. There it was. The text confirmed his idea.
‘Holy Throne,’ he murmured.
He took the geographic text and the annotated book, and turned to hurry out. He stopped.
He’d just noticed another book, tucked away at the end of the shelves.
‘I’m sorry, that’s simply not appropriate, marshal,’ Eisenhorn was saying. He was sitting at the table in the main hall and looked more robust than he had the night before. Sleep had restored him, at least in part.
Voriet and Jaff sat with him. They had been reviewing data-slates together. Nayl and Betancore stood nearby. All of them were looking at Macks, who was standing at the far end of the long table, Garofar at her side.
‘Well, tough,’ said Macks.
‘Marshal, I’d watch your tone,’ said Voriet.
‘I think what I’ll watch, interrogator,’ replied Macks, ‘is the welfare of the Imperial citizens in this province. The Archenemy is abroad. I saw its handiwork with my own eyes. I am going to contact the governor and declare an emergency, and I’m going to ask him for military support to–’
‘We can deal with this, marshal,’ said Voriet. ‘That’s why we’re here. This is our specialty. Leave it to us to make the decisions. Don’t hinder us by complicating the situation.’
‘I have authority in this province,’ said Macks.
‘An authority superseded by the ordos,’ replied Jaff.
‘Let’s allow the governor to make that distinction,’ said Macks. ‘He can overrule me. He may urge a Territorial mobilisation anyway, to support your work. And, of course, he has the authority to request immediate clarification and authorisation from the Office of the Inquisition on Brallant.’
‘I can’t allow that,’ said Eisenhorn. ‘This matter is complex and sensitive. What you’re suggesting will delay things and potentially place more people in harm’s way.’
‘Are you asking me not to?’ asked Macks. ‘Or telling me not to? Or are you going to actually stop me doing it?’
‘Cooperation would be the ideal remedy here,’ said Eisenhorn.
‘I think that’s good advice,’ said Drusher as he walked in. He dumped the three books on the table. ‘I think it’s very good advice, and I think we should all take it.’
‘Magos, please,’ said Voriet. ‘This is a private briefing. The marshal’s already interrupted and she was just about to leave–’
‘You recruited me to serve as an expert advisor,’ said Drusher, pulling out a chair and sitting down at the table. ‘Well, I have some expertise to share. I think if you’re really interested in the most efficient resolution of this matter, we could all start to cooperate. You’re keeping Macks and me in the dark, and I don’t want any more crap about things being classified. Let’s start sharing, shall we?’
Voriet and Jaff glanced at Eisenhorn. As ever, he was unreadable.
>
‘What do you have, magos?’ Eisenhorn asked quietly.
Drusher waggled his finger.
‘No, no,’ he said. ‘You show me yours and I’ll show you mine.’
Garofar snorted. Macks elbowed him.
Eisenhorn sat back. He drummed his fingertips on the tabletop thoughtfully.
‘Want me to clear the room, sir?’ asked Nayl.
‘No, Harlon,’ said Eisenhorn. ‘Take a seat, marshal. You too, deputy Garofar. My interrogator was just delivering new material. Now the storm’s passed, the up-link is re-established. Voriet?’
Voriet looked at him anxiously.
‘Sir, are you sure that–’
‘Your report, please, interrogator.’
Voriet cleared his throat and activated his data-slate.
‘Draven Sark,’ he said reluctantly. ‘The local annals have no listings for anyone of that name, so it appears that Draven Sark was never a resident of, or visitor to, Gershom. However, he is in the Subsector Census. Current age two hundred and fifty-one standard, whereabouts unknown. A very high-ranking and respected magos medicae in his day. His grandfather is an interesting figure, a senior recollector in the Administratum. His name was Lemual Sark, and he secured his footnote in history four centuries ago through his research on Symbol Iota, which led to a breakthrough in the battle against a virulent pestilence known as Uhlren’s Pox.’
‘Also known as blood-froth, or the Torment,’ said Jaff. ‘It was a pandemic. Sark’s work was crucial in containing–’
‘I am familiar with the case,’ said Eisenhorn. ‘Sark was able to confirm that Uhlren’s Pox was not a natural contagion or a xenos plague, but in fact a weapon deliberately bio-engineered by a servant of the Archenemy.’
‘Really?’ asked Macks.
Eisenhorn looked at her. ‘That detail has been classified and withheld from the general population, marshal. I have just un-classified it. So Draven Sark is a descendant?’