Arrian nodded, not asking who it was that Fabius meant. ‘And if she will not see me?’
‘Do as you think best. Whatever the outcome – warn her of what is coming.’
‘And the Omega Protocol?’
‘Tell her.’
‘And if she resists?’
‘She will not.’
Arrian frowned. ‘Many of them will not wish to go. To leave behind all that they know – to flee to some hidden sanctuary…’
Fabius looked at Arrian. ‘They must. It is the only way I can guarantee their survival. And that is paramount, above all else. All I do now is in service of that goal. Whatever else comes of this, Homo novus must survive.’
He turned away.
‘My children must survive.’
Chapter Fifteen
Durance Vile
Oleander felt a lurch in his stomach as the anti-gravity generators fell silent and the barque fell away from its berth. A colony of spire-bats exploded away from the bay, screaming, as the barque’s own grav-generators kicked in with a thunderous moan. He straightened in his seat, watching as the docked cruiser receded.
Hexachires had remained behind for one last tilt at the windmills of the archons’ stubbornness. That left Diomone to escort Oleander back into captivity. The barque was one of several owned by their hosts. The crew wore the crimson of Peshig’s kabal, and watched their passengers with unconcealed wariness. The archon’s displeasure had filtered down through the ranks, and he wondered whether they planned some mischief.
From where he sat, he could see the jutting spires of High Commorragh. Some resembled serrated blades, while others put him in mind of metallic mountains. A few had been constructed to resemble their masters – immense towers with the faces of infamous kabalite warlords glaring eternally at one another across the only battlefield of consequence.
The city reminded him of a fascinating, if deadly, beast. Part of him longed to explore it. To seek out its dark heart and feast on the loveliness within. Many of his brothers had shared that yearning. To the fallen sons of the III Legion, it was a paradise glimpsed only by a few. Those who had seen it could speak of little else. He felt his pulse quicken.
‘He stirs,’ Diomone said, watching him. She sat across from him, accompanied only by a pair of wracks, both armed with hexrifles. The creatures seemed more intent on the crew than him. Then, Diomone could look after herself.
‘Apothecary, heal thyself.’ The words came out as a croak. He looked at her, studying the way she lounged in her seat. A picture of alien insouciance. But it was simply a mask. Diomone didn’t strike him as the insouciant sort.
She frowned. ‘A joke?’
‘Not a funny one.’
Oleander flexed his hands. The streets of Commorragh twisted about them as the barque descended. Winged shapes rose from crenellated eyries, and flying craft of all shapes and sizes filled the narrow canals between structures. This part of the city resembled nothing so much as a reef, albeit one of steel and stone.
‘I am surprised I am still alive. I thought he would kill me upon our return.’
‘So did I,’ she said. ‘And yet here we are.’
‘Yes.’
She was silent for a moment. ‘His position is tenuous,’ she said.
‘So I gathered.’
‘What has he said to you?’
‘And why should I tell you?’
‘You made your reasons plain earlier. Or have you already forgotten?’
‘No.’ Oleander’s hands twitched as he imagined ripping off her face and casting the bloody tatters to the wind. Instead, he contented himself with the view. There were fewer spires here, and the streets spread like a tangle of spilled intestine. A place of ruin and poverty, overcrowded and prone to outbreaks of violence. He heard the distinctive crackle of splinter fire as they descended past shuttered wharfs and isolated jetties.
‘Don’t worry,’ Diomone said. ‘It’s not meant for us.’
‘I know. Can you get this mask off of me?’
‘Why would I?’
‘A show of good faith.’
Diomone frowned. ‘That I have not killed you already should be evidence of that.’ She looked out over the rail.
Oleander followed her gaze. There were fewer streets now, only ragged gantries stretching over the broken abysses of the webway. Docking spires jutted out into the emptiness. Minor ports and private wharfs. Sleek cargo haulers slid into awaiting berths, as free-spinning sensor buoys bobbed on the soupy air.
‘I notice that he did not give you the pain-baton,’ he said.
‘He’s probably hoping you’ll try and kill me,’ she said.
‘He does like letting others do the work for him.’ Oleander felt at the clasps of the helm. His skin was raw and had started bleeding again. ‘In answer to your question – he has told me precious little. He is obsessed.’
‘He is a fool.’
‘But not foolish.’
‘No.’ Diomone looked at him. ‘Your helm… I cannot remove it. But I can modify it.’
Oleander said nothing.
She leaned forward. ‘I have made a study of your pleasure-pain centres. I can wire the helm to deliver a jolt you will find invigorating, rather than debilitating.’
‘And in return?’
‘Kill him.’
‘Easier said than done.’ Oleander looked down at his hands. ‘When?’
‘Not immediately.’ She sat back. ‘I will go to the Synod first. Hexachires has ruled us too long, dragged us into too much foolishness. He will be given an opportunity to answer for his crimes. If that fails…’
‘Yes.’ Oleander sat back. He could feel the grav-generators struggling against unseen forces. Winds buffeted the barque, and even Diomone looked momentarily uncertain.
‘You agree?’ she asked quickly.
‘If the opportunity presents itself, I will do my utmost.’
‘That is not the answer I hoped for.’
‘It is the one you get. I have no guarantees that you will keep me alive afterwards. Or even that you will do as you say.’ Oleander smiled. ‘We must… trust in our own self-interest.’
Diomone almost smiled at that. But not quite.
‘I do not like you, mon-keigh. In fact, I think I hate you more than I hated Fabius.’
‘That is almost a compliment.’
Diomone sniffed the air and turned. ‘Ah. We’ve arrived.’ A moment later, the stink of rotting meat reached across the distance, and struck Oleander like a blow. The prow of the barque breached the chemical murk, revealing a fleshy stalactite jutting from the underside of the city.
The Tower of Flesh.
It was larger than the eyries of High Commorragh, stretching down into the dark reaches of the webway like an overturned mountain. A mountain made of meat and muscle, a leviathan of flesh and bone. It was a pallid bastion, clinging to its perch by wriggling sinews the length of a frigate. A web of ligaments stretched around it, snaring the many and varied spiked protrusions that lined the city’s belly.
The sheer wrongness of it struck him. He’d thought himself jaded to such horrors, for the Eye was full to bursting of nightmares. He’d seen worlds made from the bodies of dead monsters, and witnessed the tortures of the damned. But this was something else again. There was a cruel pragmatism to it. There was no joy there. It had been constructed by a mind more concerned with efficiency and practical application than pain and suffering – the mind of Fabius Bile. Somehow, that made it worse.
As always, the sight of it left him momentarily dumb.
Diomone sighed. ‘Beautiful. Whatever his flaws, Fabius knew there was beauty in efficiency. No artistic pretensions for him. There was a mon-keigh who had a proper grasp of bio-mathematics. If only he’d been a drukhari… ah.’ She shook her head sadly. ‘What a wrack he wo
uld’ve made. What a haemonculus.’
‘Hexachires seems to have felt the same way.’
Diomone glared at him. ‘Hexachires allowed his infatuation to cloud his judgement. I knew Fabius was trouble from the start. However interesting he might have been, it wasn’t worth the difficulties he caused us.’ She paused. ‘And is still causing us.’
The barque had slowed its descent. Bridge-like strands of muscle, connected to floating buoys, drifted all along the Tower’s length. The barque drew close to one, and slowed as the pilot guided the vessel into a berth. Docking clamps extended with a grating screech. Diomone rose and beckoned Oleander to follow.
‘Welcome home, Oleander.’
Hexachires stalked across the docking bay of the Tower of Flesh, gnawing his own fingers in frustration. The bay stank of spoiled meat, and the sound of insects rose from its rugose surface. Metal gantries had been spiked to its length, and a bloody ichor seeped from the connection points. These shivered as the barque that had transported him hither departed.
An awful, rasping sound filled the air like distant thunder. He sighed in pleasure as the noise enfolded him in its comforting rhythms. The Tower was in constant agony, feeding its inhabitants with its pain even as they carved new runnels in its quivering innards.
Peshig had been depressingly resolute. So had the others. For such long-lived creatures, many drukhari were incredibly short-sighted. Some of it was his own fault. The tinkering he’d done to them, the tweaking – he’d made Salar and Avara and, yes, Peshig as well, imprudent and ambitious. He’d never considered that it might come back to bite him.
‘Or perhaps I never wished to consider it,’ he murmured. He stroked the contours of his mask, feeling it as if it were his own skin. His own face was little more than a memory. He couldn’t recall the last time he’d seen it. Considered or not, the deed was done. He had to adapt or perish. The story of his race in a nutshell.
For the moment, however, he was home, and that was enough. Everything smelled of rotten meat and his bare flesh was kissed by the humid air that sat thick in the spongy corridors. The floor beneath him was solid, but hideously soft and striated with pulsing veins. The walls too were marked with them, dark runnels branching in a thousand directions. From the inside, it was clear to even the untrained eye that the Tower of Flesh had been grown, rather than constructed. There were no joins, no sutures, no scars save those inflicted by the myriad dangers of its precarious perch.
The walls and corridors were buttressed with thick knots of brambly bone, as hard as ceramite but impossibly flexible. Webs of neural matter stretched across the ceilings or crept along walls like untended vines, and he could see flickers of cerebral activity in their opalescent lengths, like sparks from a dying fire. The internal corridors were made from hollowed-out bones, and the gantries and walkways of the open areas were crafted from muscle tissue and ligaments. The air throbbed with heat and there was a distant, quaking thud like the rhythmic beat of an immense heart.
Wracks and slave-creatures were everywhere, carrying out the whims of their masters. Haemonculi gathered in ventricles to debate the merits of their discoveries with one another, or test the strength of some new slave-form against a variety of obstacles, both living and otherwise. They stopped to watch him as he passed. He felt their gazes follow him, and heard snatches of murmured conversation.
He wanted to stop. To confront them, to shriek his rage to the rafters. They didn’t understand, the fools. They hadn’t seen what he’d seen, had no vision. But instead, he ignored them, as a proper master must.
Let them talk. Let them mutter and plot and scheme. They would fall silent when he finally had Fabius in hand. They would choke on their mutterings then. He would see to it personally. Sometimes he wished the Thirteen Scars were a more orderly coven, like the Black Descent. There, the secret masters imposed their authority in unquestionable fashion. But the Scars were younger – more raucous. Debate was their meat and drink.
That was initially what had attracted him to their ranks. The other covens were so hidebound, so narrow-minded. He’d hoped to find like minds. Then, later, he’d hoped to mould them. To shape the coven in his image, much as Fabius had done with his followers. He ground his teeth, annoyed with himself for making the comparison.
He came to a wide, cloacal archway. He extended his hand, and a polyp of meat stretched from the archway to meet it. It enfolded his hand with a wet inhalation, and quivered. Then, it released him with a plop and retracted. The archway convulsed and split, permitting entrance.
The chamber beyond was of an irregular shape, branching off into strange eddies of space. It resembled an aortic valve, if somewhat distended. There were great mangroves of muscle tissue that stretched through the interior here and there. The webs of tissue contracted, and the aperture sealed itself behind him with a squirming sound.
Safe in the confines of his private lab, he allowed himself a soft sigh of discontent. ‘Oleander?’ he murmured. No answer. He wondered if something had happened to his pet – or perhaps to Diomone. Either would satisfy him at this moment.
Something laughed.
He thrust his hand into his coat and snatched his splinter pistol free. He swung the weapon about as the targeting sensors woven into his mask scanned his surroundings. Nothing revealed itself.
‘Veilwalker?’ he said.
Silence.
He activated the sensory-cilia that studded his coat and allowed them to taste the air, searching for any sign of the intruder. There was a greasy pall, such as he had not detected since the last Dysjunction, hanging over everything. Something was here, or had been here. Something not of Commorragh.
His spinal tendrils twitched as they carried him slowly through his laboratory. ‘Is that you, daemon?’ he purred. ‘Oleander isn’t here, I’m afraid. Only me. But I can be just as good a conversationalist, I assure you.’
It was the daemon. He was certain of it. There were traces of warp-matter on the air. Particles of non-being. Daemons were not a common occurrence in Commorragh, but one occasionally slipped through a crack in the ancient defences and nestled in some forgotten part of the city. They were never strong things, more along the lines of ethereal vermin. Dangerous, but only to the unwary.
But this one was something different. He’d thought at first it was simply attached to Oleander, much like a parasite. But the more he’d considered Veilwalker’s warning, the more he’d wondered whether or not it wasn’t something more. A spy, perhaps.
‘Is that what you are, little daemon?’ he said, out loud. ‘A spy? Did Fabius send you to keep an eye on me, hmm?’
No answer.
‘She’s gone.’
Veilwalker’s voice scraped the air and caused him to whirl. She sat atop a nearby bio-tank, balancing her staff on two fingers.
‘Why was she here?’ Hexachires growled. He wasn’t quite aiming his pistol at her, but he didn’t lower it either.
‘As you said, she was spying.’ Veilwalker leapt down, and he backed away. ‘I warned you, oh Lord of Knives. Count Sunflame’s allies–’
‘Oh, be silent,’ Hexachires snapped. He turned away. ‘I cannot take another variation of this same inane story of yours. Not right now.’
‘Why, Hexachires… you seem unhappy.’
‘Unhappy does not begin to cover it, clown.’ He holstered his weapon. ‘I am abandoned by my servants, whispered about by my peers and now spied on in my own chambers. And for what?’
‘For the story,’ Veilwalker said.
‘Damn your story, and damn you.’ Hexachires rounded on her. ‘You promised me Fabius – where is he? I do not see him. All I see is you. Mocking me.’ He leaned close, glaring at his own reflection in her mask.
‘You will have him. And you will have your servants. But things must progress as foreseen, or else all becomes frayed and uncertain.’
‘Wh
at do you mean?’
Veilwalker laughed. ‘There is more to this than you perceive, oh Lord of Knives. There is more to a tale than what is told.’ She paused. ‘Shh. Listen.’
Despite himself, Hexachires did. He heard the faint clop of hooves, and soft laughter. When he looked back at Veilwalker, she was leaning uncomfortably close to him.
‘It is a game, you see. Push and pull. They push, we pull.’
‘Pull what?’
‘You. Him. Someone else.’ She stepped back, spinning her staff. ‘All will be well, Hexachires Ulthiliad. I will see to it.’
‘And what am I to do?’
‘Wait. Prepare.’ She looked around. ‘He made this, didn’t he?’
‘Yes.’
‘It moves, doesn’t it?’
Hexachires smiled slowly as he realised what she was getting at.
‘Yes, yes it does.’
Chapter Sixteen
Abasement
The palace, Arrian reflected, was neither large, nor gaudy.
Instead, it was a fortress. A bastion-in-progress. As he was escorted into its heart, he took note of the defensive preparations being undertaken. Bulwarks and barricades rose, as unnecessary outbuildings were pulled down by rope and muscle. Scavenged weapons emplacements were erected so as to provide overlapping fields of fire.
The renegade Gland-hounds had been busy over the past months, securing the loyalty of half a dozen mutant clans and beastkin tribes. Now those creatures worked side by side with Igori’s followers to establish a worthy redoubt.
It was almost a shame it was all for naught.
The Gland-hounds who escorted him were young. They had likely been children when Igori’s packs had gone into exile. Now they were rangy killers who studied him even as he observed them. There were six of them, all armed to the teeth. They were tense. Ready to leap, if he gave them cause. Eager to do so, even. He found a certain amount of satisfaction in that. Killing Space Marines was what they had been bred for, after all.
Manflayer - Josh Reynolds Page 24