Hidden Depths Page 2

  ‘But you didn’t,’ Sprigg said, the first hint of nervousness entering his tone.

  ‘I didn’t,’ Amberley agreed, ‘because even cheese-mould like you can still be useful.’ The insult was carefully timed, and she waited for his reaction: sudden anger, swiftly damped down, flickering in the back of his eyes. Good. He wasn’t nearly as sure of himself as he was trying to pretend.

  ‘I’m not without influence,’ Sprigg said, trying to salvage his dignity, and imply a threat at the same time.

  Amberley waved a dismissive hand. ‘We’ll get on to your fellow conspirators after you’ve given us your contacts. Up to you how much screaming’s involved in that. But right now, you have another choice to make.’

  ‘A choice,’ Sprigg repeated, as though the words were in an unfamiliar language he was hoping to decode.

  ‘About how you’re going to be useful.’ Amberley paused, letting her words sink in. ‘You’ve got two options that I can see. Informant. Or servitor, if there’s enough left to make one after the interrogators have finished.’

  ‘You’re bluffing,’ Sprigg said, in the flat tone of someone trying desperately to convince himself, and pressed a button on the underside of the desk that he’d clearly, fondly imagined was concealed.

  ‘I’ll take that as a vote for servitor, then,’ Amberley said, drawing her bolt pistol.

  Pelton appeared at the door and grinned in a manner far from reassuring. ‘If you’re waiting for your guards,’ he told Sprigg conversationally, ‘they’re a bit dead at the moment.’

  The colour drained from Sprigg’s face, and he sagged back into the embrace of the overstuffed chair. ‘I can assure you of my full cooperation,’ he said woodenly.

  ‘Good.’ Amberley stood, re-holstering her sidearm, and walked around the desk, perching comfortably on the edge of it. As she leaned forward, Sprigg leaned back. ‘That wasn’t so hard, was it?’ The truth was, she’d never had the slightest intention of executing him; a man as well-connected as Sprigg would be far more useful as a long-term informant. But so long as he believed his life hung by a thread unless he cooperated, she saw no reason to mention the fact. ‘Now, the spirit stone. Where did you get your greasy hands on it?’

  The journey downhive had been swift at first, thanks to the funicular which connected the mid-hive to the spire. Now, however, they’d reached the most populous levels, and the palanquin Amberley had hired was moving so slowly through the crowd-choked streets that they probably would be making better time on foot. On the other hand, the liveried servitors carrying the thing fitted her cover, and were a constant reminder to Sprigg of the consequences of failing to deliver on his promises of cooperation.

  ‘If you’re lying to me,’ Amberley remarked casually, twisting the knife, ‘I’ll see to it that they don’t wipe your mind completely when they rebuild you into a sewer scrubber.’ The space beyond the palanquin’s curtains throbbed with sound, the ceaseless chatter of millions of voices and the never-ending rumble of the manufactories below.

  ‘This is the dealer I got it from,’ Sprigg assured her, his face a good deal greyer than when their journey started. ‘I do a lot of business with him.’

  ‘Legal business?’ Amberley asked, and Sprigg hesitated for a moment, his silence more eloquent than words.

  ‘Weapons,’ Pelton said bluntly. On the lower levels of the hive there were no peacekeepers, and what little law there was belonged to whoever could hire a bounty hunter, or control a strong enough gang to carve out a defensible territory.

  ‘Mostly,’ Sprigg admitted, ‘but there are other things. Food, medical supplies...’

  ‘Buzz, ’slaught, clinker...’ Amberley suggested, and Sprigg nodded again. All proscribed drugs, all fatal in the long term, all highly profitable.

  Amberley twitched one of the draperies aside, and looked out at the teeming market which occupied a vast hall illuminated by innumerable glow strips some ten metres overhead; a fair proportion of them were dark, others flickering in a manner she found vaguely ominous. Unbidden, the image of what this place would be like if the lights failed altogether sprang into her mind and she shuddered; thousands would undoubtedly die in the ensuing panic.

  ‘That looks like it,’ Pelton said, and indicated a large pavilion, decorated with garishly coloured bunting. ‘But I still think the stone came from off-world.’ He glared mistrustfully at Sprigg.

  ‘Which is why the others are checking out the starport,’ Amberley reminded him, although privately she shared his doubts. How an eldar artefact could end up on Ironfound in the first place, let alone find its way this deep into its principal hive, she had no idea.

  ‘I got it from Jeffon,’ Sprigg insisted. ‘He’ll tell you.’

  With a sudden jerk, the palanquin stopped moving, and the tech-smuggler scrambled out with almost indecent haste, averting his eyes from the servitors carrying it. A large, florid man, with an extravagant beard laced and plaited in the latest styles, hurried from the pavilion to greet him.

  ‘Arlen, you old rapscallion, it’s been far too long!’ Sprigg staggered under a slap on the back delivered with all the subtlety of an ork. ‘And you’ve brought a lady friend!’ He held out a large, be-ringed hand, to help Amberley descend.

  ‘Ah, yes.’ Remembering his part, Sprigg waved introductions, while Pelton jumped down and took up his expected station at Amberley’s shoulder. ‘Jeffon, this is Milady Vail.’

  ‘Clearly a lady of taste and discernment.’ The bearded merchant waved a hand in the direction of his pavilion. ‘I take it you’re a collector of curios from the underhive?’

  ‘Something like that,’ Amberley said, following him inside while Pelton took up station next to the entrance flap. Better that her conversation with the Guildsman went unheard by other customers. Sprigg took a hesitant step after them, then thought better of it, feigning interest in a display of carved finger bones on a rickety table outside.

  ‘I have an excellent selection of scrimshaw,’ Jeffon said, directing Amberley’s attention to a rack of similar pieces of better quality just inside the curtain. Most of the merchandise on offer appeared to have been handmade by skilled artisans making the best use of limited materials. A bright carpet of intricate weave covered the floor and several others were rolled up, awaiting inspection. ‘Or, if your interest is more in the fruits of the Omnissiah, I’ll warrant you won’t often have seen finer specimens of classical workmanship than these.’ He pointed to a shelf of ancient ironmongery, most of it so corroded as to be beyond identification. ‘And, of course, we’re famed for our hand-woven textiles, made with the finest spider hairs...’

  ‘I was hoping you could tell me where you found this,’ Amberley said, pulling the spirit stone from a leather pouch she’d placed it in, wary of its polychromatic glow attracting attention in the crowded streets. ‘Arlen said he’d bought it from you.’

  Jeffon nodded. ‘I remember that. Picked it up as part of a job lot from a scavvy gang at a deep level trading post. Not the sort of thing I usually carry, to be honest, but shinies always do well, so I thought I might take a chance on it.’

  ‘So you’ve no idea what it might be?’ Amberley asked, loading her voice with just the right amount of ingenuous curiosity.

  Jeffon shook his head. ‘You get all sorts of odd crystals down in the sump,’ he said. ‘Hardly surprising, when you consider what ends up there, reacting away in the pits. Don’t deal in them myself, but I can recommend a few gem cutters. All reliable, won’t palm you off with anything toxic.’

  ‘I’ll pay them a visit, then,’ Amberley said, conscious that the woman she was pretending to be would never contemplate venturing further downhive than this. ‘I don’t suppose you remember who the scavvies were, do you?’ she added. ‘In case one of the dealers has a contact who can ask if they found any more?’

  ‘The Dog Eaters,’ Jeffon said promptly, ‘from Ebon Flow. Widely connected. Lot of the middlemen know them.’

  ‘I’m sure,’ Amberley said, i
n the right tone of polite disinterest, while she absorbed this latest surprise. It seemed the stone really had come from the lowest levels of the hive, possibly even the sump. And the scavvies who’d found it must be a force to be reckoned with, if they really were able to eat dog frequently enough for the delicacy to become associated with them.

  She lingered a short while longer, buying a spider hair carpet that she thought would go well on the floor of her study aboard the Externus Exterminatus, before pushing her way out through the flap. As she re-entered the bustle of the market, she nodded to the hovering Sprigg, who took a couple of paces closer with the air of a gretchin running an errand for a large and hungry ork.

  ‘Will he be useful?’ she asked, reminding him again of the obligation he was now under. ‘For the network you’ll be running for me?’

  ‘Jeffon? Of course.’ Sprigg looked as though the ork had just licked its lips. ‘He’s got contacts all through the hive.’

  ‘Fine.’ She glanced at Pelton. ‘Let him live for now,’ she instructed for Sprigg’s benefit, and returned her attention to the merchant, wondering if he could possibly turn any greyer. ‘I’ll expect something useful from the pair of you when I get back.’

  ‘That means we’re going deeper, doesn’t it?’ Pelton said, reading her expression with the ease of long practice, and Amberley nodded.

  ‘All the way to the bottom,’ she confirmed.

  Ebon Flow was a typical underhive community, perching just above the sump on the lip of a chasm too deep for sight to penetrate by the feeble illumination of the speckling of lights across the vast cavern roof, each glimmer marking the location of a hamlet or hivestead.

  The journey to reach it had been no more eventful than Amberley had anticipated, which was to say that since entering the underhive they’d only been attacked three times by gangers, once by wandering redemptionists, and on a handful of occasions by specimens of the local wildlife hungry or stupid enough to pounce on armed humans. She supposed the trip would have been easier if they’d joined a caravan and left the fighting to the guards, but news travelled fast in the underhive and the presence of strangers would be noted far in advance of their arrival. In the end she’d judged it best to make their own way, confident of her associates’ ability to defend themselves.

  An ability she was hoping wouldn’t be called for now, as flickers of movement in the pervading shadows danced in her peripheral vision.

  ‘I make it eight of them following us,’ Pelton remarked quietly.

  ‘Ten,’ Yanbel corrected, his augmetic eyes glittering with reflections from the scattered camp fires and flickering lamps around and within the hovels. Most of them clung to the sides of a steep, broken slope, which rose up from the wide, clear ledge bordering the precipice. Beyond, the glossy black wastefall which gave the place its name thundered into the depths. The tech-priest uttered a squeal of binary, communing with Amberley’s data-slate, and icons appeared on the screen, pinpointing the positions of their stalkers.

  ‘Thank you.’ For a moment she regretted leaving her suit of power armour behind, missing its sophisticated tactical display and array of sensory augmentations, but it would have been impossibly cumbersome in some of the confined spaces they’d had to squeeze through. Not to mention pretty much guaranteeing that everyone they met would flee in terror before she had a chance to converse with them. ‘Can you tell if they’re armed?’

  ‘I think we can safely assume that they are,’ Mott interjected, ‘given that the chances of survival of anyone without a weapon in an environment this hostile would be on the order of three per cent in any given year.’

  ‘That high?’ Zemelda asked sarcastically, and Amberley waved her to silence.

  ‘This looks like their leader.’

  ‘Fear walks behind her,’ Rakel put in, apropos of nothing that Amberley could see. The woman facing her was of indeterminate age, swathed in an intricately patterned blanket which looked so similar to the ones in Jeffon’s pavilion that it had almost certainly come from the same loom. She wore a helmet of beaten metal; after a moment, Amberley identified the lumps and ridges protruding from it as the limbs and body of a stylised spider, skilfully wrought in the same material. The decoration was scratched and dented in several places, mostly where a skilled opponent would strike in an attempt to stun or kill the helmet’s wearer. The woman carried a crossbow, loaded and drawn, but kept it pointing down and away from the approaching Inquisitorial retinue.

  ‘If you reach for a weapon, you die,’ the woman said, and Amberley believed it; or, at least, believed that the woman believed it. Quite a lot of people, and not a few things, had tried to kill Amberley Vail over the last few decades, and all had found the job a good deal harder than it looked.

  ‘We’re peaceful,’ Amberley assured her, keeping her hand well clear of the bolt pistol at her waist. If necessary, she could take the spokeswoman down with the digital needler in the ring she habitually wore, and achieve total surprise. No doubt the lurkers surrounding them already had the group in their sights, but would be too stunned after such an unexpected reversal to react quickly enough to avoid becoming targets themselves.

  The woman’s mouth twitched, in what might have been a smile. ‘You won’t last long down here, then,’ she said. ‘What brings you to Ebon Flow?’

  ‘Glowing stones,’ Amberley said. She reached slowly into her pack, and held up a standard Munitorum ration bar. ‘We’ll be happy to trade for information.’

  ‘You’ll need to be happier than that,’ the woman said, relaxing almost imperceptibly. ‘About five times happier.’

  ‘Three,’ Amberley said, taking out another two bars, ‘and four more if we find what we’re looking for.’

  ‘Fair enough,’ the woman said, taking the food, and sniffing suspiciously at it. Satisfied, she threw the three bars into the shadows, where they were snatched out of the air by scurrying children. ‘Dog Eaters are the ones you want. But they went over, two, three days ago.’

  ‘Went over where?’ Pelton asked, then followed the direction of her gaze to the brink of the precipice. ‘Oh.’

  The woman shrugged. ‘You can wait, see if they come back this way.’

  ‘Kind as your offer is,’ Amberley said, ‘we’ll go after them.’ The scavvies could climb back out of the sump in a score of places, and likely as not would head for the nearest trading post to dispose of whatever they found rather than return straight here anyway.

  ‘There’s a hole,’ Rakel said suddenly, shivering violently. ‘A hole in everything.’

  ‘We’d noticed,’ Zemelda told her, kicking a loose pebble over the lip of the drop. It must have hit bottom somewhere, but the never-ending roar of the wastefall swallowed any echoes it might have made.

  ‘I would advise caution,’ Mott said, following Amberley along the narrowing ledge. ‘Judging by the topography, I would estimate the sump floor to be at least a kilometre beneath this position.’

  ‘Let’s hope there’s a ladder then,’ Amberley said, trying to sound as though she was joking.

  There wasn’t a ladder, of course, but to Amberley’s relief a well-worn trail began at the end of the ledge, descending into the depths in a series of outcrops which formed a rough, irregular staircase. At this depth it was hard to tell if they were bedrock or unimaginably ancient rockcrete; in either case, they were surfaced with loose grit that slipped a little under every footfall, a sensation Amberley found faintly alarming until she grew used to it. Fortunately the route seemed sufficiently well established for someone to have riveted additional hand and footholds to the stone or rockcrete, and even Rakel found the going reasonably easy.

  ‘Undoubtedly the reason for the settlement,’ Mott said when she remarked on it. ‘Ebon Flow would have begun as a waystation on the path to the sump, and prospered as scavengers passed through it in both directions. Eventually some, such as the Dog Eaters, would have made their homes there–’

  ‘Which way?’ Pelton interrupted, as the rout
e forked. The main path was clear, continuing to descend ahead of them, while a narrow, crumbling ledge, barely wide enough to stand on, meandered away into the darkness, more or less on the same level.

  ‘I vote down,’ Zemelda said. ‘That’s not even a path.’

  ‘I concur,’ Mott agreed, ‘merely a topographical anomaly creating the illusion of an alternative route.’

  ‘Wait a moment.’ Amberley shone her luminator along it. ‘There are scuff marks. Someone could have gone that way.’

  ‘There are footprints on the path too,’ Pelton pointed out. ‘Whole ones, not scratches which could just as easily have been made by falling rocks.’

  ‘Good point,’ Amberley conceded. Every moment they hesitated, the Dog Eaters would be moving further ahead.

  She shone her luminator down into the depths, hoping to see some further sign of the scavvies’ presence. A pale reflection glimmered, the light striking back from a miasmal swamp of toxic sludge, while deep shadows mottled the cliff face, shifting eerily in the beam’s penumbra. She swept it outward, following a trail of stepping stones across the mire until they disappeared beyond its range. ‘We’ll need to watch our step. That looks deep enough to drown in.’

  ‘Indubitably,’ Mott agreed. ‘Given the rate of flow, probable evaporation and most likely extent, I would estimate an average depth of between ten and twelve metres...’

  Amberley stopped listening; if the savant had anything really germane to add, he would have said it first. She turned, resolved to continue the descent, and brought the luminator beam up the side of the cliff face, checking the downward route one last time. A huge area of the vertical wall seemed to be rippling, and she flinched, anticipating the rumble of a landslip – then the true reason occurred to her, and she drew her bolt pistol.

  ‘Run!’ She was taking her own advice even before she finished speaking. The shadows she’d noticed before were moving, scuttling up the cliff face almost impossibly fast. She nailed one with the luminator, confirming her worst suspicions. ‘Spiders!’