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  ‘We could try extrapolating its course,’ Pieter said, sitting forward on the lip of an overly upholstered armchair, and trying to look attentive. The inquisitor’s personal quarters aboard the Emperor’s Justice were as unostentatious as their owner, the floor thickly carpeted, and the bookshelves lining the walls of dark, polished wood. For the most part, the small suite of rooms was fastidiously tidy, only the desk behind which its owner sat cluttered with data-slates and neat stacks of paper. ‘There can’t be that many systems this far out they might have been making for.’

  ‘Assuming their destination was actually in a stellar system,’ Grynner pointed out mildly. ‘Nevertheless, I have asked our Navigator to look into the possibility.’ He sighed. ‘I must say, though, I’m far from hopeful.’

  ‘So what’s our next move?’ Pieter asked. ‘The wraithbone’s vanished, and we haven’t a clue where it was going. We can’t even be sure a Faxlignae cell was really behind the smugglers.’

  ‘An operation of this size, involving interdicted xenos artefacts?’ Grynner asked, his air of surprise more a rhetorical trick than an accurate reflection of his state of mind, Pieter thought. The inquisitor smoothed thinning grey hair in no need of straightening, and confirmed his pupil’s assumption with a wintery smile. ‘The list of organisations capable of coordinating such a thing is rather short, Pieter. I think we can safely infer their hand in this.’

  ‘Didn’t you once tell me we should never assume anything we can’t prove?’ Pieter asked, without thinking. Grynner’s smile took on a tinge of genuine warmth.

  ‘Quite right, my boy. Nevertheless, it’s the only working hypothesis we’ve got.’

  ‘All right,’ Pieter conceded. ‘We got a positive lead on a Faxlignae operation, which ought to have led us right to them. What went wrong?’

  ‘Something quite unforeseen,’ Grynner said, looking thoughtful. ‘The Deathwatch Librarian reports having felt traces of some violent psychic event when he first boarded the vessel, which certainly seems likely given the state of the bodies you found. Perhaps that was related to the presence of the wraithbone, if it was ever aboard at all. Or perhaps the substance was removed by whoever took the shuttle, and we should be looking for a powerful psyker or two.’

  ‘What would psykers be doing aboard a Faxlignae vessel?’ Pieter asked. ‘We know they’ve been scavenging xenos tech across half the segmentum for more than a century, Emperor knows why, but they’ve never shown any interest in psykers before.’

  ‘That is a conundrum,’ the inquisitor conceded. He nodded thoughtfully. ‘And one we’re not really qualified to unravel. Not without some assistance, anyway.’

  ‘What sort of assistance did you have in mind?’ Pieter asked. By way of reply, Grynner rummaged for a moment among the collection of data-slates on his desk, before activating one. The face of a man that Pieter had never seen before appeared on it.

  ‘Carolus Finurbi of the Ordo Hereticus. A good man, as witch hunters go.’ Grynner nodded thoughtfully, lost for a moment in some private memory. ‘We’ve shared information before, and he may be in a position to help us in other ways too.’ The mild, blue eyes turned abruptly on his apprentice. ‘Remind me, Pieter, where did we pick up that unfortunate vessel’s trail?’

  ‘The Scintilla system,’ Pieter said. ‘Scintil VIII void station, to be precise. In the Calixis sector.’

  ‘By all means, let’s be precise,’ Grynner said dryly. ‘Carolus maintains a network of agents throughout the Calixis sector. If anything pertinent to our investigation involves rogue psykers at large there, it’s quite likely he’ll have some useful information for us.’

  ‘I’ll contact him at once,’ Pieter said, rising from his seat.

  ‘Good.’ Grynner breathed absently on his spectacle lenses, and polished them again. ‘You may need to be patient, however. He tends to be somewhat elusive.’

  One

  Forest of Sorrows, Sepheris Secundus

  Calixus Sector. 087.933.M41

  ‘Join the Guard and see the galaxy,’ Drake said bitterly, pulling his cold weather camo cape around him a little tighter. Thin flurries of snow danced through the trees surrounding him, the dark clouds scudding above the branches, which waved in the wind like questing tentacles, promising a real blizzard before morning. He shivered, the formless sense of foreboding that had been muffling his soul from the moment the platoon had been deployed here intensified by the biting cold and the constantly moving shadows.

  His companion shrugged. ‘You can. It’s up there.’ He pointed to a thin strip of clear sky, beyond the trees and the ominous bulk of the snow clouds, in which a few stars twinkled in a desultory manner for a moment or two before the roiling darkness overhead obliterated them. Drake scowled at the faint pinpricks of light, as though they were somehow responsible for his frustration and slowly numbing feet.

  ‘Thanks, Vos. You’re a real ray of sunshine, you know that?’

  Vos Kyrlock shrugged, and hefted his precious chain axe, checking once again that the mechanism was still free and unfrozen. He carried his standard issue lasgun slung over his shoulder, as dutifully as any other Guardsman, but the close combat weapon was his pride and joy. It hadn’t taken his instructors long to realise that he’d never attain anything more than basic competence with a ranged weapon of any kind, but his natural aptitude for brawling was quite exceptional. Drake, on the other hand, was quite the opposite, his instinctive affinity for las weapons already honed by years of service in Queen Lachryma’s household troops, the Royal Scourges, the nearest thing to a properly functioning Planetary Defence Force to be found on Sepheris Secundus.

  The two men were completely different in most other respects too. Drake was thin, blond and wiry, his perpetual air of simmering resentment manifesting in a kind of nervous energy, which made him seem on edge even when he was relaxing, and Kyrlock was tall and barrel-chested, hair the colour of dying embers, whose sardonic manner kept most of the people he came into contact with firmly at arms length. To their mutual surprise, they’d become friends almost as soon as they’d met. Satisfied with the condition of his favourite weapon, Kyrlock shrugged. ‘We’ll be out there soon enough.’

  ‘That’s what the recruiter told me,’ Drake said bitterly, ‘six rutting months ago.’ He ducked under a low branch, and almost tripped on a tree root concealed by the snow. Kyrlock followed, sure-footed in the dark woodlands, his bulk gliding between the shadowed trunks without disturbing so much as a twig. Drake swore colourfully as the branch he’d ducked under brushed against his helmet and deposited its load of snow down the back of his body armour.

  ‘At least you had a choice,’ Kyrlock reminded him. ‘Most of us just got told to volunteer.’ It was rare indeed for the mining world of Sepheris Secundus to be tithed for an Imperial Guard regiment. The labour of its countless serfs was vitally important to the economy of the entire sector, and their poor standard of health made them, for the most part, useless as soldiers. However, the increasing number of skirmishes and raids around the Eye of Terror in the last few years had imposed its own demands.

  Something big was coming, that much was clear, and the sectors closest to the bleeding wound in the fabric of reality had begun to prepare for the worst.

  Drake laughed bitterly. ‘Stupidest decision I ever made,’ he said. ‘I should have stayed in the Scourges, like my father and grandfather did.’

  ‘Without any hope of promotion or advancement?’ Kyrlock asked, having heard the story innumerable times before.

  Drake’s face darkened under the wan starlight. ‘That’s right. Just because my mother was a chambermaid: mutant rutting snobs. At least in the Guard you get promoted on merit.’

  ‘Well, that’s us guaranteed an aquila apiece,’ Kyrlock said, referring to a company commander’s badge of rank.

  ‘Assuming they ignore your criminal record,’ Drake retorted, tugging the barrel of his lasgun free of a bush that had far too many thorns. ‘What was it you did again?’


  ‘Smuggling firewood into the Commons,’ Kyrlock said cheerfully. ‘Easy for a forester. I was going in and out of the Gorgonid all the time with timber for pit props and the like. No problem sticking a few sacks of twigs and offcuts on the truck. You’d be surprised what people will pay for good kindling.’ A nostalgic smile appeared on his face for a moment. ‘Or barter. There were a couple of habwives who…’

  ‘Had husbands who told the overseer,’ Drake interrupted testily, catching his shins on a trailing tree root. Kyrlock nodded, unabashed.

  ‘Rather petty minded of them, I thought. Anyhow, the Baron needed able-bodied men to meet his Guard quota, and didn’t want to lose his most productive workers. So here I am, instead of hanging for tithe evasion.’

  ‘Lucky us,’ Drake said. Kyrlock’s liege lord hadn’t been the only one who’d seized the opportunity the Guard tithe presented for ridding himself of the most troublesome malcontents among the workers he owned, and the undisciplined rabble he’d found himself surrounded by had been a stark and unwelcome contrast to the Scourges.

  ‘Could be worse,’ Kyrlock agreed. ‘Quite like home, really.’ An anxious expression flitted across his face for a moment. ‘Do you think they have trees on other planets too?’

  ‘I hope not,’ Drake said, neither knowing nor caring. Kyrlock looked as though he was about to take issue with that point of view, but before he could reply, the short-range vox receivers in both men’s helmets hissed.

  ‘Drake, Kyrlock, where the rut are you?’

  ‘Just completing our sweep, sergeant,’ Drake replied crisply, ignoring his companion’s derisory hand gestures. Neither had a particularly high opinion of Sergeant Claren, who owed his rank to his former civilian occupation as an overseer in the mines rather than any grasp of military matters, and who, both suspected, must have done something to irritate an officer in order to have been seconded to this bleak and desolate outpost. That had certainly been the case with them, and, so far as they could tell, most of the misfits and troublemakers in the fledgling Secundan 3rd had been assigned to the same platoon, and sent down here almost as soon as the regiment had been officially founded. Drake, with more experience than most of how the military mind worked, tried not to ruminate too much on the various ramifications of the word expendable, although it was hard to see what sort of enemy they might be expected to face in this desolate wilderness.

  ‘Good,’ Claren said, from the warmth and comfort of his command Chimera. ‘Wyler’s got frostbite. You can take over his sentry post.’

  ‘We’ll be right there,’ Drake confirmed, cutting the link abruptly before Kyrlock could comment verbally. ‘You son of a mutant,’ he added, sure the sergeant couldn’t hear him.

  ‘Well, it could be worse,’ Kyrlock said philosophically.

  ‘Could it?’ Drake turned, and led the way back towards the outpost. Stark and forbidding, it loomed against the night like a small fortified hill, studded with lights, which somehow failed to reveal anything other than an oppressive sense of greater darkness beyond them. The great metal gates hadn’t been opened since the Imperial Guard platoon had arrived and set up their camp, insulated survival bubbles for sleeping and a larger one for messing in, although he’d seen a few shuttles arrive and depart beyond the ramparts. All had been devoid of insignia.

  Now and again, men would appear on the walls, their uniforms similar to his, although their armour was grey and their fatigues dark red. That had been a real shock. On Sepheris Secundus, red was the colour of the royal family, and for anyone not of the bloodline, or in their direct service, to wear it was almost an act of treason. Many of his comrades, particularly former Scourges, had been incensed by that, but Drake had found it strangely exciting, a reminder that a wider galaxy existed beyond this world, with exotic customs of its own. He had no idea who the strange soldiers were. They’d ignored all attempts to hail them, and after a few days the guardsmen had given up trying to attract their attention.

  ‘Sure it could,’ Kylock said, producing a bottle of something from beneath his camo cloak. ‘Claren won’t be out checking up on us on a night like this, will he?’

  ‘I doubt it,’ Drake agreed, his spirits lifting for the first time since coming on duty. He glanced up at the blank grey walls of the fortress. ‘It’s not as if anyone’s going to break in there while our backs are turned, is it?’

  The Citadel of the Forsaken, Sepheris Secundus

  087.993.M41

  By the time Drake had made his fate-tempting remark, and he and Kyrlock had begun trudging back through the snow towards their newly assigned sentry post, it was already far too late to prevent an intruder from gaining access in any case. The intruder had been there for some time, although none of the people who saw it, worked alongside it, or exchanged pleasantries in the corridors or over a bowl of reconstituted protein in the commissary with it knew it for what it was, seeing only the face and form of an old friend or colleague. Now, at the appointed time, it made its move.

  ‘Having trouble?’ a junior tech-priest asked, slowing his pace a little, eager as always to discuss the minutiae of the Omnissiah’s bounty with a fellow initiate. The intruder shook its head, withdrawing it from the inspection panel it had opened.

  ‘Nothing serious, Brother Polk. A faint arrhythmia in the primary heat exchangers, I fancy.’ The intruder stood politely aside, making the sign of the cogwheel. ‘Do you hear it too?’

  ‘I’m not sure,’ Polk admitted, stepping forward to look inside the hatch, the joints of his augmetic legs hissing slightly as they came to rest again. ‘But then your hearing is greatly superior to my own, as is your understanding of the Omnissiah’s infinite generosity.’

  ‘You’re too modest, my friend,’ the intruder urged. ‘Do you not feel the faintest of tremors in the casing?’

  Polk reached out with a mechadendrite, caressing the revealed piping with its tip. A faint expression of doubt flickered across the portions of his face as yet unreplaced by metal. ‘Perhaps,’ he said at last. ‘Do you require assistance in rectifying the anomaly?’

  ‘I believe not,’ the intruder assured him. ‘The matter seems trivial enough, but it should be corrected if we are to be true to the Omnissiah, whose perfection is reflected in all things.’

  ‘Of course.’ Polk made the sign of the cogwheel again. ‘Then I shall leave you to your devotions.’

  ‘And I to yours,’ the intruder replied, ‘which are no doubt more pressing.’

  ‘Perhaps they are,’ Polk admitted. ‘An imperfection exists in the auspex arrays.’

  The intruder nodded as though unaware of the fact, in spite of having taken some time to ensure just such a state of affairs. ‘Then it should be rectified forthwith.’ It was mildly irritating that the subtle sabotage had been detected quite so quickly, but it had covered its tracks well, and had no doubt that Polk would be unable to complete his repairs until it was far too late. It waited until the young tech-priest had passed out of sight, and resumed working on the systems behind the panel.

  Icenholm, Sepheris Secundus

  087.993.M41

  ‘Thank you all for returning so promptly,’ Inquisitor Carolus Finurbi said, looking from one expectant face to another. The air was cool here, high in a discreet quarter of the planetary capital favoured by the minor noble houses, but not unpleasantly so. The reflected light that bathed the suspended city struck through the stained glass wall of the villa, which his team had rented as a base of operations shortly after their arrival on Sepheris Secundus. Little puddles of colour blemished the floor and furnishings where the light had acquired the hues of the decoration it had passed through, mottling the hanging tapestries and the floor cushions on which he and his operatives sat. The use of the material for almost everything was a local custom that he hadn’t expected. Even the bedrooms and balnearea were walled with the stuff, privacy ensured only by the density of the pigment infused with the glass. ‘I gather your enquiries have had little success.’

  That much w
as obvious from their body language. He knew this particular team of his Angelae, the informal name his network of operatives had adopted, better than most, having recruited all of them personally, and felt uncomfortable about reading their minds unless he had to. Today, there would be no need for that, though. Their disappointment hung heavy in the air, like the scent from the perfumed candles in the intricately wrought glass holders which the house servants had placed next to the open doors leading to the balcony. The gentle breeze from outside spread the perfumed smoke throughout the room. As he’d expected, Horst, the generally acknowledged leader of the group, spoke for them all.

  ‘I’m afraid you’re right, inquisitor.’ The former arbitrator shrugged as he spoke, his dark hair taking on a momentary tinge of yellow as the movement of his head took it through the penumbra of the halo of some minor local saint embedded in the glittering wall. ‘You can’t move on this Emperor forsaken rock without hearing rumours of some Chaos cult or other, but every time you try to chase them down they just evaporate. Either they’re incredibly well organised and connected, or…’

  ‘They simply don’t exist,’ a melodious voice chimed in. As it spoke, Carolus could feel its echoes, warm and intimate, caressing the surface of his mind, and smiled at the psyker across the room. Elyra Yivor returned the smile, her violet eyes meeting his gaze for a moment. Her unspoken thoughts echoed in his head. There’s something else, isn’t there?

  All in good time, he returned, holding eye contact for an instant longer. The blonde woman’s smile stretched a little, and Carolus found some pleasant and intimate memories rising to the surface of his mind. The years had been kind to her, he thought, even without juvenat treatments.

  Flatterer, Elyra sent, savouring the memories too. I was never that beautiful, or athletic.

  You were to me. A faint haze of regret drifted over his thoughts. But you were right. It would never have worked out between us. Our duty to the Ordo Hereticus always came first.