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  ‘And if you keep back enough, and can find the right people, you can get off-world,’ Horst said.

  Kyrlock nodded. ‘So I’ve heard. Never had enough to try, nor wanted to, but there are plenty who do.’

  ‘And now you’re going to be one of them,’ Horst said. Kyrlock nodded again, and he turned to the others. ‘Vos and I have discussed this, and he’s agreed to go undercover. Given his reputation among the serfs, it shouldn’t take much to convince the right people that he wants to get off-planet, and has enough money to pay his way.’

  ‘No offence,’ Keira said, ‘but have you been warp touched or something? You’ve known this guy barely two days, and you’re already trusting him with an independent operation. What happens if he screws up?’

  ‘I won’t screw up,’ Kyrlock said, his face colouring.

  ‘I don’t doubt that,’ Horst said diplomatically. ‘The inquisitor recruited you, and that’s good enough for me, but just in case, I’m assigning you some back-up.’ He glanced at Keira. ‘Do what you’re good at. Don’t show yourself unless you have to, and keep any fleas off his back.’

  The girl shrugged. ‘Fine. Anything’s better than hanging around here watching my fingernails grow.’

  ‘And what’s my cover?’ Elyra asked mildly. Taken aback, Horst looked at her, and she smiled gently. ‘Carolus sent us here to see if there was more to this racket than just moving disgruntled serfs to another world, remember? If there are any psykers hidden among them, I’m the only one of us who’d know.’

  ‘A good point,’ Horst conceded. ‘But they’d know you too.’

  ‘They would.’ Elyra nodded. ‘Which might get us a lead to whoever’s harbouring the witches. If I could pass as one–’

  ‘No. It’s too dangerous.’ Horst shook his head. ‘You’d be risking far more than just your life.’

  ‘I’m a psyker, Mordechai. I do that every day, just by not dying. The Emperor has protected me so far, and I’ve no doubt he’ll continue to do so.’ She smiled at the younger woman. ‘Besides, I’ll have Keira watching my back.’

  ‘All right,’ Horst conceded reluctantly. ‘If you’re sure.’ He glanced at Drake and Kyrlock. ‘And if you can convince these two you’ll be able to pass for a Secundan.’

  ‘Shouldn’t be too difficult,’ Drake said, after a moment’s thought. ‘Not a serf, obviously, but someone from up here, a middle-ranking servant of some kind.’

  ‘Hardly the sort of person I’m going to walk into a drinkhole in the Tumble with, though,’ Kyrlock objected.

  ‘I’ve got the money for our passage,’ Elyra said. ‘You’ve got the contacts. Does that sound feasible?’

  ‘Maybe,’ Kyrlock admitted, rather grudgingly, Horst thought. ‘But we’ll have to come up with a really good story to explain how we met.’

  ‘We will,’ Horst assured him. ‘It’s what we’re good at.’

  ‘Fine. While you’re doing that, I’ll get some exercise with the sparring servitors.’ Keira stood, stretching sinuously, and glanced at Vex. ‘Can you set them up again for me?’

  ‘Of course.’ The tech-priest stood too, and began to follow her out. ‘If you could perhaps make some attempt to minimise the damage this time? Some of the components are difficult to come by in this system.’

  As they left, Horst sighed, and shook his head. ‘Is it me, or is she getting worse?’

  ‘Worse how?’ Elyra asked, as Drake and Kyrlock left the room too, commencing what sounded like an animated discussion of Secundan social mores and the most probable circumstance for a cross-caste meeting.

  Happy to let them settle on a cover story for Elyra between them, Horst shrugged. ‘Her attitude. She’s challenging every decision I make, and she keeps staring at me.’

  ‘Of course she is.’ To his surprise, Elyra chuckled. ‘What do you expect?’

  ‘An element of professionalism,’ Horst said, before the full implication of her words penetrated his shield of irritation. He looked at her curiously. ‘You mean you know what’s wrong with her?’

  ‘Some detective you are,’ Elyra said unhelpfully. ‘Just think about it. What is she?’

  ‘A graduate of the Collegium Assassinorum, an Inquisition operative, a Redemptionist zealot,’ Horst said, ‘which, from where I’m standing, adds up to a psychopathic pain in the arse.’

  Elyra chuckled again. ‘Not a bad list, but you’re missing out the most important thing.’

  ‘Which is?’ Horst was running out of patience with guessing games.

  Divining his irritation, Elyra shrugged. ‘She’s a teenage girl,’ she said. ‘Isn’t it obvious?’

  ‘Isn’t what obvious?’ Horst began, before, with a shock of horror, belated realisation suddenly struck. He felt his face flushing, to Elyra’s evident amusement. ‘Dear Emperor on Earth. You think she’s got some kind of crush on me?’

  ‘Of course she has,’ Elyra said tolerantly. ‘Why else do you think she keeps trying to attract your attention?’ An expression of sympathy passed briefly across her face. ‘Not that I suppose she realises it. Well brought up little Redemptionists tend to label that sort of feeling as sinful, and sublimate it in violence. She must be feeling really confused.’

  ‘She’s confused,’ Horst said heavily.

  Nine

  Icenholm, Sepheris Secundus

  095.993.M41

  ‘Thank you for waiting so patiently, my masters,’ the overdressed factotum said, bowing so low that the voluminous sleeves of his green and purple gown brushed the floor. Whatever the actual intellectual attainments of its members, Horst thought, the Icenholm lodge of the Conclave of the Enlightened certainly managed to give the impression of an institution dedicated to learning. The carpet beneath his feet was patterned in threads of blue and gold, forming a scale map of the Secundan solar system, and a softly glowing image of the galaxy had been worked into the glass wall opposite, illuminated by a hidden light source. ‘A member of the governing council will see you now.’

  Nodding in acknowledgement, Horst followed the man across the entrance hall, his feet sinking into the rich pile with every step. He glanced at Drake, but the former Guardsman looked appropriately impassive, the unfastened black overcoat he’d donned before leaving the villa billowing around him as he walked like a tightly contained storm cloud. Even if he’d never been here before, he had doubtless seen far greater ostentation in the royal palace, and was unlikely to be impressed. Horst had opted for sober tones too, a light grey rainslick and trousers, the coat open to reveal a hint of the shoulder rig containing his bolt pistol, which was buckled over a plain shirt in darker grey, the colour of iron.

  The functionary opened a pair of double doors, bearing stained glass images of some kind of steam engine that Vex would no doubt have recognised had he been here, and cleared his throat. ‘The Emissaries of the Inquisition, my lord.’ Horst had never heard anyone enunciate capital letters before. Unsure whether to be amused or impressed, he walked forward, almost colliding with the factotum as the garishly dressed man halted at the threshold and bowed across it. ‘The Honourable Abelard Poklinten-Grebe, Lord of the Miredank, scion of the Grimcrag dynasty, Secretary of the Minutes to the governing council of the Conclave of the Enlightened’s Lodge of the Golden Wing.’ Apparently exhausted by the effort of such a concentrated spray of capitalisation without any discernible pause for inhalation, the minion backed away, leaving the doorway clear.

  Horst stepped through it, finding himself in a large room full of scattered tables and data lecterns, into which the reflected radiance that illuminated the whole city was falling through a wide, yellow tinted window. Shelves of books, scrolls and data-slates filled the walls, rising to the ceiling three times a man’s height above his head. Drake followed, glancing around without any apparent sign of interest.

  ‘Please, just call me Abelard,’ a thin young man said, rising from one of the tables, which was covered with books and papers. No one else appeared to be in the room. His robe was patterned in y
ellow, orange, and purple, and Horst found himself wondering how often it induced a migraine in its wearer. He smiled ingratiatingly, displaying an equine overbite. ‘Simply can’t abide all that formal nonsense.’

  ‘It’ll certainly save a bit of time,’ Drake agreed, pulling a chair up to the opposite side of the table without waiting to be invited. Horst sat next to him, mildly irked that a raw recruit to the Angelae had taken the initiative, but he’d asked him along because of his understanding of the local mores, so there wasn’t any point in complaining about it.

  Horst glanced at the pile of books. ‘Early settlement history?’

  ‘Bit of a passion of mine,’ the aristocrat admitted, looking faintly embarrassed. ‘To understand where we are, we need to know where we’ve come from. I’m working on a short monograph, arguing that the initial settlers of Sepheris Secundus were far more socially integrated, only developing the current feudal system as the population grew too large to manage in any other way. Hierarchical systems are everywhere in nature, so it’s only to be expected that human society mirrors this.’ He began to rummage in the stack of books. ‘If you examine Kallendine’s Benefits of Tyranny–’

  ‘We’ll try not to keep you from your researches for too long,’ Horst said, recognising a hobby horse being mounted, and hastily seizing the reins before it could canter away.

  Abelard coloured slightly, and reluctantly turned his attention to the business at hand. ‘Quite so.’ He looked from one man to the other, as if registering their presence for the first time. ‘My fellow scholars and I are eager to assist you in your enquiries, of course. May I ask what brings agents of the Inquisition to our doors?’ He spoke lightly, although Horst was sure he could detect an undercurrent of apprehension in his voice. Even an aristocrat wasn’t immune from the jurisdiction of the Inquisition, however much he might wish to seem unintimidated by them.

  ‘We’re investigating the death of someone we believe may have been one of your members,’ Horst said smoothly, observing the young man’s equine features pale slightly. ‘The circumstances were sufficiently unusual to excite our interest.’

  ‘Unusual how?’ Abelard asked, with faintly studied ingenuousness.

  ‘It got our attention,’ Drake said. ‘That’s all you need to know.’

  ‘Yes. Yes, of course.’ A pale sheen of sweat was beginning to gather on the fop’s pasty face, and he cleared his throat nervously. ‘I didn’t mean… How can I help?’

  ‘You can confirm that Technomancer Tonis of the Adeptus Mechanicus was a member of this lodge,’ Horst said. ‘That would be a good start.’

  Abelard nodded, his long face flopping on his elongated neck. ‘Yes. Yes, he was.’

  ‘You seem very sure of that,’ Drake said evenly. ‘Do you know all your members personally?’

  ‘We don’t have that many tech-priests.’ Abelard smiled weakly. ‘They tend to make an impression, as you can imagine. I can find out the last time he was on the premises, if you like.’

  ‘Please.’ Horst inclined his head courteously, and the young man rose from his seat. The former arbitrator found himself wondering, for a moment, whether he was about to make a run for it, but Abelard simply tottered over to one of the library stacks and ferreted about in it, before returning with a data-slate ostentatiously ornamented with gold filigree.

  ‘Here we are. Our members sign in on arrival.’ He paged down the pict screen, squinting a little at the miniscule font. ‘He spent quite a lot of time here in the library, but then I suppose that’s what you’d expect. His kind don’t have much use for the dining facilities or the members’ lounge.’

  ‘I imagine not,’ Horst conceded. He hesitated, just long enough to suggest that his next question was spontaneous, rather than planned in advance. ‘Did he have any particular friends here?’

  ‘I wouldn’t know,’ Abelard said, a little too hastily. ‘We all tend to mind our own business in the Conclave, stick to our studies, that kind of thing.’

  ‘I don’t suppose you’d have any idea which records he was consulting?’ Drake asked.

  ‘Not really,’ Abelard admitted. ‘Tech-priest stuff, I suppose. He did have a bit of a thing about archeotech, I remember, come to think of it, kept snaffling history texts I was after, but he always put them back when he’d finished with them.’

  ‘I see.’ Horst nodded, as though this new information confirmed something he already knew, although he didn’t see how it was going to get them any further along. The young aristocrat might know a little more about Tonis’s cronies than he’d seemed willing to divulge, but getting it out of him looked like being a long and tedious process. Horst already had him pigeon-holed as an idiot, though a conscientious and well-meaning one. That probably accounted for his position on the governing council, someone who would get on with the dreary necessity of administration without asking awkward questions or attempting to shape policy, or, for that matter, notice anything out of the ordinary, however blatant it was. Horst had lost count of the number of complacent halfwits he’d encountered over the years who’d said something like ‘but he seemed so nice!’ or ‘well, it’s always the quiet ones, eh?’ in precisely the faintly distracted tone of Abelard’s voice when some damning piece of evidence against an associate was finally shoved under their noses.

  ‘Perhaps you should try to remember some names,’ Drake said quietly, ‘because if you’re more afraid of them than you are of us, you’re making a very big mistake.’ His facial muscles twitched, in something that wasn’t quite a smile, and suddenly the amiable young aristocrat was leaning back in his chair, glancing dumbly at Horst like a hound hoping for a biscuit but prepared for a kick.

  Surprised, but too practised not to show it, Horst nodded sympathetically. ‘My associate isn’t the most tactful of men, but he is quite correct.’ He smiled in a rather more friendly manner. ‘I’m sure you’ve heard a lot of wild stories about the people we work for, haven’t you? Things no one with a modicum of common sense could possibly believe.’

  ‘That’s right, I have.’ Abelard laughed, in a slightly forced fashion, whinnying through his nose in a manner that reinforced Horst’s initial impression of equine characteristics. ‘Absolutely ridiculous, some of them.’

  ‘They’re all true,’ Horst assured him. ‘Barely scratching the surface, in fact. So if you’re protecting anyone, for any reason, it really is in your best interests to think again.’

  ‘I’m not, really.’ For a moment, Horst thought the etiolated young man was about to cry. ‘I only knew Tonis by sight. He was in some kind of study group, but a lot of our members are. I couldn’t tell you who else he was working with, honestly. These things are always so informal.’

  ‘What do you mean by a study group?’ Drake asked flatly.

  Abelard looked confused for a moment. ‘Well, a group of members with an interest in common sometimes exchange information, study a subject together. That’s why we call it a–’

  ‘I see.’ Drake cut him off, nodding curtly. ‘So you can’t tell us who else might have been in the group with him.’

  ‘Not as such, no,’ Abelard admitted. ‘They would have been on the premises at the same time, of course, but so would a considerable number of our other members. Not every member of a study group attends every meeting, and now and again someone else attends one out of curiosity, or to make a presentation.’

  ‘But you said everyone signs in when they arrive,’ Horst said, surprised to find himself playing the sympathetic role again. ‘That means we could narrow down the list of people we need to speak to by looking for the names of those who happened to be here whenever Tonis was.’

  ‘I suppose you could, in theory,’ Abelard said, looking distinctly unhappy at the prospect, ‘but it would take an unconscionable amount of time.’

  Catching a furtive look the young man cast at the pile of papers on the table between them, Horst finally understood the reason for his reticence. He hadn’t been attempting to protect anyone, just avoid a l
ong and complicated administrative task that would take him away from his precious, and almost certainly completely pointless, research.

  ‘I have a friend who thrives on such challenges,’ Horst said, reasonably accurately. Vex would undoubtedly have found it more fun if he had to break some complicated cipher to get at the raw data first, but he should be able to produce an initial list of suspects almost at once with little difficulty. ‘If you could provide us with the attendance records for, say, the last three years?’

  ‘Of course.’ Abelard positively beamed with relief. ‘That would be no trouble at all.’ He handed the data-slate to Drake, who looked at it as if it might suddenly explode. ‘You’ll find everything you could possibly need on there.’

  ‘Thank you for your cooperation,’ Horst said. ‘We’ll return the slate when we’ve finished with it.’

  ‘Not at all,’ Abelard said, with a dismissive wave of the hand. ‘We’ve got copies of everything, and if you can’t trust the Inquisition, who can you trust?’

  ‘Right, we’re done here.’ Drake stowed the slate in an inside pocket of his overcoat, revealing the heavy calibre revolver he’d selected from the warband’s small but comprehensive collection of weapons, now supplemented by the two Guard-issue lasguns. It was a good piece, a 9mm Scalptaker from the forges of Gunmetal City, and Horst’s growing respect for the man had risen still further as he’d watched him make his choice, picking out the most solid and reliable handgun available in preference to any of the flashier alternatives.

  The young dilettante flinched at the sight, as if half-expecting Drake to draw it and shoot him, now that he was no longer useful. Then, reassured as Drake turned away, he pulled his chair in closer to the table again. ‘If you see one of the servants on the way out,’ he said, his attention already returning to his books, ‘send one in, would you?’ He glanced at Horst as he spoke, but it was Drake who responded.

  ‘Order your own damn drink,’ he said brusquely, striding out without a backward glance.