by William King
The voice was beautiful but muffled, as if the speaker wore a helm and their words were being forced out through a rebreather grille. There was something not at all human about the intonation. Was he looking at some sort of mutant, Janus wondered?
'Go ahead,' said Janus, 'take a seat.'
'Private business,' said the second cowled figure. Its voice was clearer and higher, and Janus was suddenly convinced that it belonged to a woman. Or a female at least. He was not entirely sure the speaker was human.
'This is as private as it's going to get,' said Janus. 'I don't know you. I am not going anywhere with you.'
The female said something in an alien language which sounded more like singing than speech. The other made a curt chopping gesture with his hand. 'Athenys, it is polite to speak in a tongue that all present can understand. We want no misunderstandings here.'
'Very well, Auric, I shall wrench my throat with their barbarous words.'
'Don't trouble yourself on my account,' said Janus. 'You want to talk business, talk business. You want to jabber at each other in bird speech, feel free.'
'Perhaps I should teach this rude one some manners,' said the female. She spoke to Janus directly. 'The One Who Sees requires respect, human. So do I.'
'When you start behaving like you deserve respect, I will give you it,' said Janus.
'A fair response, Athenys, now please restrain yourself. Forgive my companion, captain, she has spent too long walking the path of the warrior. Confrontation is her chosen means of communication.'
'But not yours,' said Janus.
'Only when necessary.'
Janus gestured again but the strangers did not sit. Janus passed his hand over the centre of the table and a control panel rose into view. He reached out and touched a stud upon it. Suddenly the background noise was cut off.
'I have activated the privacy field. No one can hear us. If they are very clever they might be able to read my lips, but as long as you wear those cowls and keep your backs to the room no one but us will understand a word you say. Is this private enough for you?'
'It will do,' said the taller stranger.
'What do you want?'
'I want a ship and a captain.'
'You are in the wrong place. I have no ship and my charter has been revoked by the planetary governor, pending inquiries into my financial situation.'
'I will rephrase that. I require a specific ship and a specific captain. I require you and your ship.'
'That might be difficult.'
'I understand that money can always change things here.'
'With enough money, anything can be arranged.'
'I have enough of your money.'
Janus laughed, not quite sure whether he was dealing with somebody who was either very naive or very clever. 'I am glad we are in the privacy field. It would not do to be saying such things too loudly in a place like this. There are some here who might start to think about ways of parting you from it.'
'Then I too am glad you were courteous enough to respect our privacy.'
'How much are you prepared to pay? I must warn you that there are some... administrative difficulties that must be overcome before my ship is allowed into free space again.'
'Whatever difficulties there are, I am sure they can be overcome.'
'Talk is cheap.'
The stranger shrugged, a peculiarly boneless gesture, and extended a black gauntleted hand. The fingers flickered open and Janus caught sight of something glittering there that almost took his breath away.
'Dreamstones,' he whispered. If those were real, they were worth a fortune. Perhaps enough to buy a new ship if he could not get the Star out from under embargo. 'May I see one?'
The stranger pushed one of the things into Janus's hand, in such a manner that it was hidden from sight. Janus felt a strange tingling when it touched his flesh. Ghostly fingers flickered up and down his spine. He seemed to hear the echoes of strange distant music in his head. Once, long ago in a far different place, he had touched a dream-stone. It had been the prize of his patron's famous collection, and it had felt just like this one. No doubt this was real, unless he was under some sort of a spell. There were collectors out there who would pay a rich man's ransom for this; sorcerers who would pay more. He started to slip it into his pocket, but the stranger gestured and without thinking, without any voluntary control over his own muscles, he returned it.
'I must come highly recommended.'
'You have the highest recommendation,' said the stranger. Janus could have sworn there was amusement in his voice.
'Who?'
'My own.'
Janus wondered whether to challenge the statement but decided against it. If this was a maniac, he was an extremely rich one, and he might as well listen to the man's proposition.
'What do you need a ship for?'
'To take me into the Eye of Terror. To Belial IV.'
Janus looked at the stranger. It was not every day you met a madman who sounded so lucid. 'You're insane,' he said.
'Be that as it may, it is where I want to go, and you will take me.'
'You think so?' Janus could think of no place in the universe he would rather avoid than the Eye of Terror. It was a place avoided by all the ships of the Imperium and any sane person, a massive turbulent cluster of lost star systems, cut off from the realms of humanity by awesome warp storms, inhabited by the most degenerate of all the worshippers of the Dark Gods of Chaos. A place mapped on all the old star charts with the legend: Abandon hope all ye who enter here. Before Typhon he might have considered the stranger's proposition. With the voices troubling him, and the visions haunting him, he would just as soon cut off his arm than go there.
'I know so,' said the stranger. 'I have seen it.'
'You're not doing anything more to convince me of your sanity.'
'Our destinies are intertwined, Janus Darke. Our life paths meet at this moment, as they were doomed to since the dawn of time. I will go to Belial and you will take me. Have no doubts on this score. You will take me there or the thing in your head will consume you and you will become a terror unto your fellow man.'
So compelling was the stranger's tone that Janus almost believed him; it was impossible not to. He sounded as certain as a man saying the sun was red, or that gravity pulled things down. Janus sat startled for a moment and then slowly a terrible truth rushed into his booze and drug addled mind. This stranger was privy to a secret he was prepared to kill to keep. He knew about the things in Janus's head.
'What did you just say?'
'I know what you are, Janus Darke, and I know how you came to be that way. There is nothing about you I do not know. Already we have had this conversation a thousand times. I have followed all the probability lines leading from it. I know that if you do not do what I wish then death, aye and worse than death, will come for you. The voices in your head will drown out your thoughts. The thing that waits behind the locked door in your mind will consume your soul. A hundred exits lead from this room into the future, Janus Darke. Ninety-nine of them lead to a place where your body is a shrivelled husk consumed by the daemons of Chaos. One of them charts a course to safety, and, believe me, I know which one.'
Janus felt himself teeter on the edge of sanity. This stranger in some strange way knew the truth about him. It was not possible. He had taken every precaution, had shielded himself from any who might detect him, or ran from those he could not. There was only one way that was possible.
'You're a psyker,' Janus spat. 'I could have the Inquisition on you in a moment.'
'I have heard you say this a hundred hundred times, and I have always given this same response: but you will not, will you, Janus Darke? For to do so would bring their attention to yourself, and like a cockroach scuttling from the light, that is something you wish to avoid.'
'I could do with less of the cockroach analogies,' muttered Janus. The stranger gestured towards the doorway.
'Go,' he said. 'Pass through that doorway,
and you will meet the Inquisition sooner than you would wish. One future that lies down that road ends in a dungeon where men's bodies and spirits are broken on engines of agony. And compared to your other futures the Inquisition's cells would be a mercy.'
This is not happening, Janus told himself. This is a trick, a trap. There has to be some way out. What does this strange creature want, what does he have to gain by doing this? He shook his head and grinned mirthlessly. When he had woken up this morning, he had had an ominous feeling that this was going to be a bad day, but he had had no idea exactly how bad it would turn out to be.
Kill him, kill him now, whispered the voices in his head. Kill them both! They are a danger to us. Janus slugged back all of the remaining powdered golconda in one long draft. That evil insidious whispering was not what he wanted to hear. The worst part of it was that the voice was his own, strangely mutated, steeped in aeons of sin.
'Look at him, Auric,' said the female. 'He is close to the Abyss. Are you sure he is the one you have forseen? He can only lead us to evil. The Great Enemy almost has this one in their clutches already.'
Auric shook his head. 'This one does not belong to him. Not yet, anyway. There is that within him that will resist, at least for a while, although he does not know what he resists, or why.'
'Nonetheless, they will have him. The signs are clear.'
'Unless we help.'
'Talk as if I am not here, why don't you?' muttered Janus. The voices seemed to be receding as the drug took effect.
'If you come with us, there is a way you might be saved,' said Auric. 'If you help me, I will help you. I know the nature of that which consumes you and will show you a way to overcome it.'
'Would that involve scourging my body on the autorack, and my soul with confession?' Janus asked cynically. 'Is this some new method the Inquisition uses to get to people like me?'
'Now you speak like a fool, human,' said the female. 'You know we are not from your Inquisition. If we were, we would not be speaking. Warriors would be carrying you off into captivity.'
Janus looked at her. The cowl had slipped slightly. He could see something of the features of the lower half of her face. Her chin was narrow and sharp, the lips wide and full, the teeth small and sharp and very, very white. There was more than the suggestion of inhumanity about that narrow face. She could be eldar, he thought. So could the other one.
'Will you help us, human?' she asked. 'Or are we wasting our time?'
'What will you do if I say no? Find someone else to take you into the Eye?' From Auric's manner earlier, Janus knew this was unlikely. For whatever insane reasons he might have, the psyker seemed to have decided that Janus was the only man for the job, and in a way he could be right.
Janus was perhaps the only man in the Freeport who would consider taking a ship into that zone of death.
There probably was no one else who would. Had someone on the Council guessed his secret and put these two strangers onto him? Maybe no psychic powers were involved, only convincing play-acting and ominous words.
Janus considered his options. There was absolutely no way he was going into the Eye of Terror. Of all the potentially suicidal decisions he could make, that was the most suicidal. But these people knew too much about him, that was for sure, and that gave them leverage.
On the other hand they seemed no keener on facing the authorities than he was. He needed time to think, and time to get sober, and most of all he needed money. If he was going to get his ship and his crew back, and get off Medusa, he most assuredly needed lucre. There was one easy way of getting that; best work his way round to it now.
'I need to know more about you,' he said.
'We are strangers here, like yourself. We have business elsewhere. Our business is your business, though you do not know it yet. That is all I can tell you for the moment,' said Auric.
'Got secrets to keep, eh?'
'Like yourself, yes.'
'Will you help us?' asked the female. She certainly did have a one-track mind, Janus thought. What was it Auric had said earlier about her being frozen on a specific path? Her manner suggested that was the case.
'Yes, I will help you, but it will take time to make the arrangements, and I will need money...' He gestured to Auric, indicating that he wanted the jewels. The tall psyker bowed his head in acknowledgement. There was a flicker of light and a shiver of sensation as he dropped one of the stones into Janus's hand. Janus licked his lips.
'Are you sure that is wise, Auric? He does not seem entirely trustworthy,' said the female. Sensible woman, Janus thought. Maybe I will take the proceeds and hire myself some assassins and get the rest of the gems off you that way. The plan had a certain appeal. Or maybe he would pay off his gambling debts to Fat Roj. The stone was certainly worth enough to get the Fat Man's hunters off his back. But not the other things... There was not enough money in the galaxy to get rid of them.
'He will do what he is paid to do, Athenys. Believe me. I know this. He may not think so now, but he will.'
Janus did not like the way their conversation passed over his head, even when they were being 'polite' and speaking his language. It reminded him too much of the way people talked about their pets. He was used to feeling superior to those around him, not being made to feel inferior.
'Our business is done for now,' he said. 'Meet me at the starport terminal in six hours and I will inform you of any further arrangements.'
'See that you do meet us, human,' said the female. 'Or you will have cause to regret this day.'
'I already regret it,' said Janus wryly, feeling the hard tingle of the stone in his hands and laughing inside. If he could just get a fraction of its value, he would be out of here, on his way to a place where these strangers would never catch him.
He glanced up to see if they had managed to read any expression on his face, but to his surprise, they were gone. He thought he caught the faintest flash of a white trimmed cloak vanishing through the doorway. Good riddance, he thought, wondering what the safest way to dispose of this loot would be. He grinned to himself: if anybody would have an answer to that, it would be Justina.
Time to go see her. Yes, yes, yes, whispered the voices in his head, but for once he managed to ignore them, knowing it was probably a mistake. He gestured for the nearest bargirl. She wriggled her way across the room towards him.
'Where's the boss?' he asked. She shrugged and ran a hand along his forearm, then leaned forward and whispered in his ear. Her breath was hot against his skin.
'Up the stairs, handsome. I am sure she will be waiting for you.'
THREE
THE HARBINGER OF SLAANESH
Justina's office looked like the hub of the successful business enterprise it was. Portraits of famous courtesans covered the walls. A glittering chandelier hovered over a massive circular desk.
Only by the presence of a faintly thrilling narcotic scent did it differ from the chambers of some of the famous merchants Janus had known. And even then not much from some of them.
Justina sat at her desk. One of the new girls massaged her neck, another manicured her long fingernails. She looked up when he entered, the door having opened to his discreet coded knock. 'Janus,' she said. 'This is an unexpected pleasure. I thought you were busy drowning your sorrows downstairs.'
Her voice was low, thrilling and pleasantly suggestive. The accent was closer to that of the high nobility than a street urchin who had clawed her way up from the gutters of Medusa. As a man who had painfully learned the accents of the Imperial upper classes the hard way, Janus could spot and appreciate the effort that had gone into that. It was one more thing they had in common.
'Business came up,' he said. 'Private business,' he added, echoing the strangers. Justina clapped her hands and the two girls retreated from the chamber. The owner of the palace unsnapped a fan and waved the air in front of her face languidly. The motion blew the narcotic perfume into Janus's nostrils. Justina was very good at those sort of tricks. She was a
lso very serious about money.
'I take it you refer to our two mysterious black-clad strangers,' she said. It was not really a question. Justina monitored everything that happened in the salons and bedchambers of her establishment via a network of televisor crystals. 'What did they want?'
'They wanted to hire my ship.'
'At least someone doesn't hold your last few voyages against you,' said Justina. She meant it as a joke but still it raised his hackles. He wondered how much of it had been artless. Not much, he guessed. With her everything contained a coded message; he was just not sure he had cracked the code yet.
'Where did they want to go?'
Janus felt a sudden reluctance to tell her, so he ignored the question and instead showed her the jewel. That got her attention. For a moment, something like shock, surprise and pure naked lust showed on her face, then her smooth visage returned so quickly he might have thought he had imagined the whole thing if he had not known her so well.
'Dreamstone,' she said, holding out her hand imperatively. Janus slipped the stone into her hand and then closed her fingers around it with his own. As always, he noticed how small her hands were. He could almost have held both of hers in his fist. She closed her eyes and took a long deep breath. 'Pure dreamstone,' she said.
'That was my surmise,' he said.
'Wherever it is they want to go, they are prepared to pay you well. I could dispose of this for... a considerable sum.'
'Such was my hope. How much?'
'Five thousand ducats. Possibly more.'
'Knowing you I will double that and double it again,' he said, his old mercantile reflexes taking over automatically. Negotiation was something he had mastered long ago.
'You know I would not cheat you,' she said coquettishly.
'Certainly,' he said. 'But I must make sure you are aware of the real worth of this treasure.'
It was a joke. No one would be better placed to appraise the worth of this stuff than she. She smiled appreciatively, but there was something sinister about her smile. 'I do not believe you can be truly aware of its value,' she said.