by Dan Abnett
Like so many parts of Queen Mab, Galeside had fallen into disrepair in its sad afterlife. Abandoned, it decayed, and some parts of it were boarded off, for fear of structural collapse. The lower levels and old street-side markets were colonised by the poor and the homeless, the Curst and the warblind, forming a vertical slum that was, in general wisdom, to be avoided. Over the years since, the slum had sprouted upwards within the stanchion frame, through the addition of salvaged compartment modules that had been hoisted and stacked in place. Some of these were precarious indeed, barely supported by girder bracing or tension cable supports. Others were rudimentary things of ingenious if rickety design, improvised from scrap plate, flakboard and wood, strung along the horizontal beams like nests or hanging baskets. Gangways, suspended bridges and teetering staircases linked them together. Some said Stanchion House looked like a gnarled tree-stump overtaken by bark fungus, or some sprouting tower of propagating dwellings, where each chamber or module was a bud that germinated offspring on the beams around it.
For my part, I had always thought it resembled a child’s toy, a pile of assorted building blocks stacked carelessly and without skill or design within a cage of metal ribs. It could be seen – and indeed smelled – from many streets away, forever looking like it was about to topple down. On its uppermost levels, more than half a kilometre from the street, the port structures of cranes and derricks and anchor masts rusted against the sky. One old ship, known locally as The Lyre, still creaked and rotted in the topside graving docks, never to sail again, though I do not know if that is the vessel’s true name, or some colourful invention of city folklore.
The glimpse of Timurlin’s secret mistress that Gideon had shared with me had evidently looked out from the ruin’s south face, and from the highest possible vantage for it to have enjoyed that particular prospect of Saint Marzom Martyr. We had concluded that it must be one of the high apartments that had once served the gentry and the well-to-do. Accessing it from above was beyond our means, for we had no transport that could carry us up there. Thus I had led the way up to it from the street, braving the filth and lawless gloom of the stacked slum, and the treacherous nature of its construction.
Now this approach too seemed barred to us.
I did not like Stanchion House at all. It was a grim and squalid place, full of blind corners and illogical, makeshift architecture. The air was rank, and some of the lower halls had become choked with foul middens of refuse and decomposing waste. The walls were thick with grease and crusted dirt. Occupants scurried away from our intrusion like vermin, and we could hear voices and whispers in the darkness. The further up we went, the more unstable things seemed to become. Some modules swayed or shook as we walked through them, as though barely balanced or poorly suspended. In places, the deck or wall had rotted through to such an extent it would have been foolish to test them with our weight, and in others they had fallen away completely, presenting sudden and giddying views down to nest habitats below, or even all the way down to the distant streets. Cook-smoke filled some narrow passageways and stairwells like bottled fog, or plumed through derelict galleries on the penetrating breeze, like rancid djinn new-released from lamps.
I had expected to find the warblind here, for their gang territories included the whole district, but I had not expected to find them harnessed by means of bonding sigils to guard the place. Nor had I expected the route upwards to be so thoroughly warded against intrusion. My only consolation was that the manner and thoroughness of the defences spoke to considerable ability. Whoever hid in the upper reaches of the place was plainly a senior member of the Cognitae, or someone of comparable learning.
I stepped away from Renner and Saur as they began a sweep of the landing stage we had reached. We were perhaps a third of the way up the ragged bulk of Stanchion House. It was a bright, hazy day, with little wind, but at this height, the breezes and draughts moaned through chinks in the walls or broken window lights, or sighed between floorboards. Drop curtains and ragged tarps, strung up to further weatherproof the place, swayed and rippled. Clumsy totems of thread and feathers and bird skulls clattered in archways as the breeze stirred them, and crude wind chimes tinkled like handbells. The impoverished dwellers had made little windmills, bladed discs of paper, punched tin and plycard, that whirred and puttered along sills, driven by the draughts so hard that their rotating spokes raised a buzzing drone.
I tried my micro-bead.
‘Penitent wishes Talon,’ I said. ‘Aspirant pathway confounded.’
There was no answer, just a hiss of static, barely audible above the chatter of spinning vanes. I repeated the signal. Gideon had insisted we use the informal argot Glossia for communication, and Harlon had taught me the basics. Indeed, I had already learned some while in the company of Eisenhorn. Glossia was an informal cant that had originated in his service, and used oblique metaphors and pre-agreed substitutions so that brief, inscrutable exchanges could be made even on open channels. It also served to confirm the identity of an otherwise anonymous responder. I had thought it a little old-fashioned, and vulnerable to anyone with half a wit, but it was effective in its simplicity, and sidestepped the need for elaborate and often cumbersome vox-coding and encryption. In truth, I had been quietly delighted to have been assigned a keyword of my own.
‘Penitent wishes Talon,’ I repeated.
Still there was no response. I wondered if the haphazard structure of the edifice was confounding comms, or somehow reducing active range. I moved further down the makeshift hallway. Daylight spilled in ahead, from beyond a threadbare drape. I drew my sidearm, and held it braced, prepared for surprises. The rough boards groaned beneath my feet, and the windvanes chattered.
‘Penitent wishes Talon,’ I said. ‘Penitent wishes Talon, aspirant pathway confounded.’
I pulled the drape aside, and stepped through. A little alcove, littered with broken bottles, let out onto an exterior gantry suspended over the south face of the house. Built of reclaimed lumber, and strung to the nearest cross-beam by fraying steel cables, it wallowed gently in the soft breeze.
I was on the outside of the building. A better signal here, surely?
‘Penitent wishes Talon,’ I said.
The city lay below, far below, a vast patchwork of rooftops, chimneys, masts and steeples stretching away in the yellow haze of the afternoon. I could hear, on the wind, the distant drone of traffic, the sound of horns, the hollowed cries of street vendors and market hawkers at the Strange Square Commercia. It was a long drop. I could see the hazed shape of Saint Marzom’s to my right. The angle of view was wrong, and I was still far too low. I leant back against the wooden rail, and craned upwards. The ragged, rickety face of the old port’s south aspect soared above me, a cliff-face of suspended containers and decaying shacks against a sky that was trying to be almost blue.
I cursed to myself quietly, for we could not afford delays. I touched the wraithbone pendant around my throat.
‘Gideon,’ I said. ‘Gideon? Where in Throne’s name are you?’
Renner, Saur and I had been assigned to lead the ascent. Nayl and Kara were supposed to follow us in, with Ravenor and Kys bringing up the rear, once access was achieved.
‘Gideon? Penitent awaits, frustrated.’
Still no reply. I turned to go back in, then heard a whisper at the back of my head.
Penitent.+
‘Gideon? Where are you? What’s wrong with the comms?’
Nothing. Wait, please.+
I waited as instructed. Two minutes passed.
Penitent. The situation has changed.+
‘Well, we need you here. Our advance up the tower is blocked. The doorways have been warded, and Saur is either unable or unwilling to disarm them.’
Unfortunate.+
‘Indeed. We need your expertise.’
I’m sorry. The situation has changed. Something has come up, and I am unable to jo
in you.+
‘What do you mean? What has changed?’
There was another silence that seemed to stretch out unendurably.
‘Gideon? At least advance the support team. Nayl and Kara–’
I can’t. I need them both, and Skewer too. Circumstances have arisen that require my immediate attention. I need to pull the three of them back.+
‘Please explain. What is so significant that we compromise an operation after it is under way?’
I can’t send freely, Penitent, nor can I explain via vox. I am under observation. I think it best we consider the operation aborted. Withdraw to a safe place and await my further instruction.+
‘We are already in this, Gideon–’
I appreciate that. But if you cannot go any further, and I am prevented from assisting you, then we must stand down. If you wish to proceed, and you are able to, then do so, but I can’t render support. You will be on your own. I advise you to withdraw and wait. I will contact you again in due course.+
‘In due course? What does that mean? Gideon?’
Nothing.
‘Gideon? Speak to me. Gideon?’
I waited a full ten minutes, but no further word came. I could not conceive of what might have distracted Ravenor so. If it was a new and more promising lead, he would have simply summoned us back. I reviewed his words in my mind, and reflected how careful they had seemed. He had expressed only basic things, with few specifics. No mention of our location, or his, and he had used only the key words of Glossia – Penitent for me and Skewer for Kys – rather than personal names. He had been guarding his words and the degree of content. Under observation, that’s what he’d said.
But by whom? Clearly someone with both the technical skill to monitor comms and the psykanic ability to eavesdrop thoughts. Why else would he have masked identities in Glossia, even when sending? Perhaps old habits, the accustomed reliance on Glossia in the field. But his thoughts had not only been tight and guarded, there had been a background wash of… something. A distinct and deliberate sensory mood intended to convey meaning wordlessly. High-function psykers can do that, framing an emotional context around their communiqués, as one might alter the font style of a written message to communicate urgency or affection.
His sends to me had conveyed the tight-lipped feeling of tension. Of apprehension. Perhaps even anxiety.
If he had been cornered or surprised by an adversary, then who? As the God-Emperor is my witness, we were not short of such in Queen Mab. Enemies, and friends of enemies, lurked in every shadow. I composed a quick list of the most likely, headed by the graels, and by the Cognitae perfecti. Then I thought of another. Even now, all this time later, I am reluctant to write their name here. I was thinking of the ones Gideon had called ‘the visitors’, those who had stalked us in the muniment room and had been led by a voice from ancient Tizca. They placed specific and unholy significance in the power of true names, for their title alone had drawn them upon us.
Was it them? Had they returned? Was that why Gideon had avoided using our names, for fear of marking us out to them?
Of course, I would not learn the answers to these questions for a while, so I will state what happened next simply as it was known to me then. On that precarious wooden gantry, I considered my options and tried to allay my fears. The mission was derailed, but not yet impossible. If I withdrew, it could only be to shelter, for I could not locate Gideon to help him, and our chance to secure our target might vanish forever. To continue alone and unsupported, however, would take lateral thinking.
And greater risk.
I made my decision. I holstered my pistol, and reached into the pocket of my leather coat.
‘Lightburn?’
‘Where are you?’ Renner answered over the link.
‘Close by. Talk to me.’
‘Well, we’ve swept the galleries here. No more warblind, but three more doorways guarded by those damn symbols. We think every staircase up from here is protected.’
I took the phial out of my pocket: one of Kara’s pretty little scent bottles borrowed and repurposed.
‘Renner, I’m going to make the ascent from here, alone.’
‘What?’ he said.
‘You heard. Stay put, and keep an eye on Saur. We have no backup. Don’t ask me why. If you can find a safe way of advancing, follow me up, but otherwise stay where you are until I signal again.’
Lightburn began to protest in no uncertain terms. I deactivated the micro-bead, and silenced his reproachful voice.
I unscrewed the phial and held it up, open. I had half-filled it with my own blood before the wound I had taken from Timurlin had been dressed. I had no wish to keep cutting myself, though the drops in the little bottle had become cloudy and turgid. I hoped, though not fresh, they would suffice.
I heard the heavy beat of wings almost at once.
Comus Nocturnus landed on the gantry before me. He alighted with great care, his huge bulk barely disturbing the precarious ledge, and crouched with his great wings furled behind his back. He did not speak. I saw there were what seemed to be two or three tiny specks of blood on his chin and at the corner of his lip. I did not want to know why, but his eyes were fierce-bright, and I feared the angel had begun to lapse again, sliding back into the predatory madness that tormented him. I turned off my cuff.
The angel sighed, and the pent-up tension fled from his shoulders.
‘How is your mind?’ I asked.
‘Better now,’ he replied. ‘The open air pleases me, and the freedom… But the fury is never far away. I thought I had out-flown it, but it lingers and sometimes…’
‘Sometimes?’
‘Sometimes I forget who I am, and time blacks out.’
‘You are Comus Nocturnus,’ I said.
He nodded. ‘And you are solace, null.’
‘There is blood upon your face,’ I said cautiously.
He frowned, and raised a giant, marmorial hand to his mouth.
‘Oh,’ he said.
‘Should I be concerned?’
‘Pigeons,’ he said, ashamed. ‘And I caught a raven over the churchyard yonder. My thirst is hard to–’
I raised a hand to quiet him.
‘Are you still mine to command, Comus Nocturnus?’ I asked.
He nodded. ‘Of course.’
‘Then I wish to ascend,’ I said to him, pointing up at the stack above.
He rose fully upright and towered over me.
‘That can be done,’ he said.
Without hesitation or ceremony, he took me in his arms. I was swallowed in a tight embrace, but it had none of the fury with which he had enfolded me on the steps above the King Door. There was barely a moment to review the wisdom of my request, or to prepare myself. His arms firmly around me, he slid from the gantry.
We fell. Wind clapped at my ears. The world rotated around me, fisheyed and panoramic, an inverted curve of horizon, diagonal steeples, the carpet of the city rushing up with such aggressive speed I closed my eyes and buried my face in his chest. I may have involuntarily uttered some yelp, or a word frowned upon in polite company. Then we were no longer falling. I heard the crack of inhuman wings as they beat and ploughed the air. I felt the huge power of the muscles in his chest, his sternum and his flanks moving like a seismic flow against me. I clung to him, regretting everything.
We had weight again, gravity dragging upon us, but confounded by his wings. We tilted and soared. Sunlight flooded my clenched eyelids. I felt the heat of him, the tight power of his cradling arms. I smelled the un-scent of his white flesh, like the powder smell of fine travertine or ouslite in a cold temple.
The wind was in my face. I opened my eyes. Beyond the clenching curve of his monumental chest, I saw the face of Stanchion House flashing past, a descending whirl of windows and walls, jetties and balconies, cables and beams,
scaffolds and girders. I couldn’t breathe, the wind was buffeting with such force. How did he breathe?
How did he ever come to the ground again when this freedom was his?
We climbed above the summit of Stanchion House, higher than the whole world. I glimpsed the ruined landscape of the upper platforms, the rusted barrens of dead ships, cranes and freight yards. I saw the corroded bones of vessels that had once plied between the stars, and rows of disintegrating Militarum drop-ships waiting where they had been left on flight decks like fossil birds in a museum case. Beyond that, the whole bowl of the world and sky. I could see Queen Mab entire, every edge and limit of it, as only the God-Emperor may regard it from the height of His Golden Throne. Then we dipped, weightless again, inverted, and swooped in beneath the lip of the high yards, into shadow and out of the sun, soaring between bulk girders and around the oiled columns of hanging chains so vast in scale they could have dragged the world. They hung dead, like the stopped pendulums of giant clocks. Another burst of wings, and we shot forward, an acceleration that prompted another helpless yelp from me. In we swept, under a low and mighty arch of cast iron, across the tops of close-riveted containers, through a gap in adamantine bracework.
And then he set me down.
I stepped back, finding my balance, remembering my own weight. He looked at me with an enquiring frown. I could not help but laugh.
‘Why?’ he asked.
‘I fancy I will not do that ever again,’ I said.
‘Did I hurt you?’
‘No, Comus. It was an experience I doubt I shall ever get to repeat. I am a creature of the ground, not the sky, like you. It is… unnerving and terrifying. But I also see the joy of it.’
The angel nodded slowly.
‘It is the only escape I know,’ he said, ‘apart from you. The sky, and you, null. The only companions I can trust. Is this the place?’