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  098.993.M41

  ‘You look amazing,’ Drake said, unable to stop himself, as Keira entered the drawing room of the villa. To his surprise she smiled back, acknowledging the compliment, and turned slowly on the spot for his inspection.

  ‘Well, I look the part at any rate,’ she conceded.

  Drake nodded his agreement. ‘You’d turn heads in any salon in the hive,’ he said, quite truthfully. Lilith had evidently been working some alchemy peculiar to ladies’ maids in his absence, changing the young assassin’s appearance in some subtle fashion he couldn’t quite put his finger on, but wholeheartedly approved of. Her hair seemed fuller, framing her face in an artfully flattering manner, and carefully applied make-up smoothed her complexion, hiding the faint scars on her face. Her gown was low-cut, revealing just enough to hint at a great deal more, pale green threads worked through the white satin to create an effect like the first shoots of spring through an undisturbed snowfield, subtly echoing the colour of her eyes.

  ‘Yes. Well.’ Keira coughed, looking mildly embarrassed. ‘When you’ve quite finished staring at my body, maybe we ought to get on. Adrin’s expecting me in a couple of hours, don’t forget.’

  ‘I wasn’t…’ Drake began, before realising that he had been, and shrugging apologetically. ‘Sorry. It’s just been a long time since I’ve seen a woman quite so worth staring at.’

  ‘You shouldn’t say things like that,’ Keira said, her face and intonation hardening abruptly, and Drake belatedly remembered that she belonged to some puritanical cult that probably thought flirting with someone was the fast road to hell. Now he came to think about it, that was a real shame, not to mention a waste.

  ‘I’m sorry if I offended you,’ he said, as diplomatically as he could. ‘I just meant that you look exactly the way you should do to make this work.’

  ‘Oh.’ The girl was clearly struggling to believe him. ‘Then I suppose it’s all right.’

  ‘I’m glad you think so,’ Drake said, relieved. He smiled tentatively. ‘So, if we can just agree, in a purely objective way, that you look beautiful enough to pass for a genuine aristocrat, we can start on the protocol stuff.’

  ‘Do you really mean that?’ Keira asked, her tone softening, and Drake nodded briskly.

  ‘The sooner the better. I can’t tell you everything about noble etiquette in a couple of hours, obviously, but I can give you enough of the basics, and the fact that you’re an off-worlder ought to explain any minor faux pas. If anyone looks at you strangely, just make some off-hand remark about how they do things at the Lucid Palace on Scintilla, and watch them fall over themselves trying to imitate you for the rest of the evening.’

  ‘I meant what you said about how I look,’ Keira said, shifting her weight awkwardly from foot to foot, and Drake found it curiously difficult to look her in the eye. Every time he tried, she moved her head, although he felt certain that she was still observing every nuance of his expression.

  ‘Well, yes,’ Drake said uncertainly. ‘Adrin would have to be blind not to notice how attractive you are, any man would.’ For a moment, he wondered if he’d inadvertently insulted or angered her again, but to his surprise a faint flush of red was colouring her cheeks.

  ‘I don’t think of myself in that way,’ she said.

  ‘Well, you’re not a man,’ Drake replied reasonably, wondering how to move the conversation back towards the business of the evening. ‘But trust me, you’re something special. I thought so the moment I saw you.’

  ‘It’s nice of you to say so,’ Keira said slowly, as if needing time to translate his words from some arcane xenos tongue into plain Gothic, ‘but if you’ve got any ideas about, you know, sinning with me, forget it.’ She met his gaze at last, and Drake saw the cold eye of the assassin looking straight into his own. There was something else there too, though, a hint of confusion, and he nodded again.

  ‘I understand. For what it’s worth, I’ve never had the slightest intention of making a pass at you. I know it’s against your beliefs, and I respect your convictions, even if I don’t share them.’ He shrugged. ‘Besides, I can see how things are between you and Mordechai, and I’m not nearly stupid enough to put myself in the middle of that.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ Keira asked, the tightness of her voice growing again, along with the confusion on her face.

  ‘This isn’t really the time,’ Drake said, hoping to head off whatever was coming before it was too late. ‘We’ve got a lot of ground to cover before you go off to meet Adrin.’

  ‘Rut Adrin. What did you mean about Mordechai and me?’ Keira asked angrily.

  Drake sighed. ‘I just meant it’s pretty obvious how you feel about him, that’s all. I know I wouldn’t have a chance of competing, so I’m not going to try.’ To his astonishment, the girl sat heavily on a nearby sofa, and laughed so hard he began to worry that she was in imminent danger of choking.

  ‘You think I’m… that I feel… about Mordechai?’ She doubled over again, gasping for air, and Drake tried not to stare down her cleavage. ‘Danuld, that’s priceless!’

  ‘Well, I’m glad you find it so amusing.’ Drake sat too, on a convenient chair, and waited for the storm of hilarity to blow itself out. ‘Now, precedence. Normally a viscount would be further up the pecking order than a mere lady, but because you’re from off-world the obligations of hospitality supersede local distinctions of rank, unless you’re in the presence of a member of the royal family.’

  ‘So I’m top canid. Good.’ Keira wiped her streaming eyes, smearing Lilith’s artfully applied makeup, and tried to adopt a posture of polite attention.

  Feeling as though he’d just been doing handsprings in the middle of a minefield, Drake nodded decisively. ‘Almost certainly, although one of the Queen’s relatives is a member of the Conclave. If he’s there, you’d better try to avoid him, although given his reputation he’ll certainly do his best to spend some time with you. Under no circumstances should you agree to be alone with him.’ That would be all they needed, Keira killing a member of the royal family in outraged defence of her virtue.

  ‘Right, got that.’ Keira nodded too, brisk and businesslike. ‘Now, what about all these different kinds of fork they use? What’s the point?’

  Sighing heavily, Drake began to explain the complexities of place settings, wondering, with a trace of envy, how Horst and Vex were getting on in the depths of the Fathomsound.

  The Fathomsound Mine, Sepheris Secundus

  098.993.M41

  Despite its size, the diving bell felt distinctly claustrophobic, and Horst found himself hoping that the descent wouldn’t take too long. The air inside it was rank, thick with the smell of old sweat and desperation, mud, decay and damp. It was cold, too, which he hadn’t been expecting, his breath puffing visibly in the wan light of the luminators set into the domed metal ceiling, while chill droplets of condensation fell on him wherever he stood, like fitful raindrops.

  As the crane had lifted the vast metal construction from the dock it had oscillated wildly, both he and Vex keeping their feet only with difficulty, although Phyron had managed well enough. The motion had steadied somewhat after they’d entered the water, though, diminishing to a slow oscillation, which troubled his sensitive inner ear just enough to be mildly annoying. Occasionally a more violent movement shook the metal bubble, provoking an audible groan from the hull plates, although what caused them Horst could only guess at: cross-currents, perhaps, or maybe one of Drake’s leviathans chewing on the jumble of cables and air hoses that formed their only fragile connection to the surface. With a sigh of irritation, he forced such childish imaginings away. This was no time to be psyching himself into a claustrophobic panic attack.

  ‘Truly remarkable,’ Vex said, gazing at the featureless slabs of riveted metal enclosing them on all sides as though they were icons of the saints, and Horst shrugged, trying to look unimpressed. In his opinion, it wasn’t seemly for agents of the Inquisition to express enthusiasm, or anyth
ing else apart from grim purposefulness, in front of outsiders.

  Not that Phyron seemed to notice the remark, fully absorbed as he was in the business of piloting the bell. He stood at one end of the echoing metal space, on a small dais protected by a railing to which devotional scrolls, icons of the Emperor and sacred cogwheels had been fixed by wax seals, along with less identifiable items, which Horst assumed were intended to propitiate the more capricious spirits of the Fathomsound. Singularly unsuccessfully, it seemed, in the case of the late and unlamented Magger.

  ‘Three more fathoms,’ Phyron said into the speaking tube next to where he stood, one of the tangle of umbilicals linking them precariously to the surface world, ‘and left one.’ His eyes were fixed on a flickering auspex screen, marked in concentric circles, a single bright dot wavering two rings from the centre. As Horst watched, it shifted its relative position, the crane above moving to follow Phyron’s instructions, and drifted across to kiss the outer edge of the bull’s-eye. ‘Left again, one half, and lock off.’ Phyron breathed an audible sigh of relief as the glowing pinprick centred, and glanced up in the direction of the Inquisition agents. ‘Almost there, my lords.’

  ‘Good,’ Horst said, trying not to let the relief he felt at hearing those words become too evident in his tone. He must have succeeded, because the supervisor’s attention returned immediately to the task at hand, without so much as a glance in his direction.

  ‘Keep paying out,’ Phyron said to the speaking tube, studying the runes flickering at the bottom of the auspex screen intently. ‘Another six fathoms should do it.’ A few moments later a metallic clang echoed through the confined space, as though the thick hull surrounding them had just been struck by a gigantic hammer, and the supervisor smiled thinly. ‘Contact,’ he reported to the surface. Two runes on the auspex screen turned green. ‘And we have a hard seal.’

  ‘Which means what, exactly?’ Horst asked, his ears still ringing.

  ‘That it’s safe to disembark, my lord,’ Phyron said. Horst took a step towards the hatch in the wall they’d boarded the bell by, and Vex laid a restraining hand on his arm.

  ‘I believe that exit is only for use on the surface,’ he said, pointing to a section of the floor from which chains rose to a hoist on the ceiling.

  Phyron nodded diffidently. ‘Quite correct, my lord Magos.’

  Vex, Horst noted with wry amusement, didn’t bother to correct his sudden elevation several degrees up the Mechanicus hierarchy.

  ‘Access to the mine is through the ventral hatch.’ He pulled a lever, and a thud like a handful of bolts being withdrawn reverberated through the confined space. A moment later he activated the hoist, and a slab of metal as thick as the length of Horst’s forearm rose into the gloom above their heads, admitting a slow trickle of water, which seeped towards the arbitrator’s boots like blood from a clotting wound.

  ‘How do we get inside then, swim?’ Horst asked irritably, staring at the rectangular pool of water thus revealed.

  ‘That won’t be necessary, my lord,’ Phyron assured him hastily, lowering the slab of hull metal to one side. Abandoning the hoist controls, he splashed into the pit, which proved to be no more than knee deep, and groped around below the surface. A moment later he straightened, tugging at something, and the water abruptly vanished, disappearing down a square hatch no more than a metre wide, which the supervisor had lifted bodily out of the way. ‘Will this do, or would you prefer to use the cargo lift?’

  ‘That will be fine,’ Horst said, calculating the time it would take to unship the slab of hull plating, reattach the chains to the retaining bolts at each corner of the thick metal plate, which he could now see almost filled the space below the rectangular hole in the floor of the submersible, and lower the whole arrangement into the mine below. No doubt that was how the trucks full of ore were lifted into the belly of the diving bell at the end of every shift. He pointed to a number painted on the wet metal surface. ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘Shaft number five, my lord.’ If Phyron thought the question strange, or idiotic, he gave no sign of the fact. ‘The one you were interested in.’

  ‘I see,’ Horst said. He’d assumed that the whole mine was interconnected in some way, but evidently it wasn’t, the bathysphere they’d descended by the only form of access to any of the individual workings. That would make this the perfect place to hide something illicit, as well as the perfect trap. Judging by Vex’s expression, he’d just come to the same sobering conclusion.

  ‘Do you wish me to accompany you, my lords?’ Phyron asked, his evident trepidation or recent immersion in the freezing water making his voice tremble as he spoke, it was hard to be sure which. Possibly it was a combination of the two.

  Horst shook his head. If anything happened to the diving bell they were all as good as dead, and he was rutted if he was going to take the risk of leaving it unattended. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Stay here. Make sure everything’s ready in case we have to leave in a hurry.’

  Phyron nodded eagerly, unable to hide his relief. ‘By your command, my lord,’ he said, bowing.

  Horst turned to Vex, but the tech-priest was already moving, dropping through the hatch with barely restrained eagerness to see whatever it was that Tonis and the mysterious Magos Avia had concealed in the depths. The square of darkness in the hatch plate suddenly glowed orange, and the tech-priest’s voice echoed up from below.

  ‘There’s a luminator down here.’

  ‘Good,’ Horst said. If the worst came to the worst, at least they’d be able to see what was trying to kill them. With a last glance round at the interior of the bathysphere, which suddenly seemed a lot more inviting than it had done, he jumped after his friend.

  Fourteen

  The Tumble, Gorgonid Mine, Sepheris Secundus

  099.993.M41

  ‘He’s here,’ Mung said, poking his head briefly round the curtain screening the storeroom from the bar, through which the sound of voices and the smell of lho smoke had been drifting for some time. Elyra stood slowly, shouldering her pack, and trying to ignore the firecrackers of crepitation that the movement seemed to detonate in her bruised and aching muscles.

  Kyrlock had been sitting at a crate in the corner of the taproom for some time already, and glanced up briefly to nod a greeting as she emerged from the storeroom. He was talking to a man dressed in the same rough garments as most of the mine workers she’d seen, although they seemed both cleaner and better cut, and his hands weren’t so ingrained with the ubiquitous dust as those of everyone else within sight. His hair was red, and thinning slightly, and as he looked up to follow Kyrlock’s gaze and nod affably at her she could see a scar on the side of his face where his liege lord’s tattoo had been crudely removed.

  ‘You must be Vos’s friend,’ the man said as Elyra sat between them, easing her pack into her lap, where she could grab the laspistol at the first sign of treachery. Her gifts would protect her just as effectively as the gun if necessary, of course, but revealing them would effectively end the mission, and she would only use them as a last resort. He held out a hand. ‘Emyl Kantris, at your service.’

  ‘Elyra Yivor,’ she replied, shaking it firmly, and Kantris smiled, evidently forming a favourable opinion of her.

  ‘Vos tells me you jumped from the city,’ he said casually. ‘Not something you do every day.’ His expression was open and genial, but his eyes remained guarded, scrutinising her visible injuries carefully.

  ‘Once was enough,’ Elyra said flatly, and Kantris smiled, turning back to face Kyrlock.

  ‘You’re right, she doesn’t give much away. But I’m a busy man.’ He emptied a cracked glass of whatever Mung served his customers, and signalled for another. The bartender scurried across to refill it, and then retreated hastily, his shoulders hunched a little, as though trying to fend off the dangerous knowledge of what might be going on around the makeshift table. ‘What do you want?’

  ‘To get off-world,’ Elyra said. ‘Vos says you can fix
it. If you can, let’s talk terms. If you can’t, just say so, and we can stop wasting each other’s time.’ She reached out and took the drink from in front of him, draining the glass in one, preventing herself from choking by a considerable effort of will. One thing she’d learned long ago in her career as an Inquisition agent was that self-assurance, or the appearance of it, was the key to dealing with lowlifes like Kantris. Any sign of weakness on her part would be ruthlessly exploited.

  ‘I might be able to fix it,’ Kantris said, all pretence of affability gone. ‘But it’ll cost, and the people I need to talk to are going to ask questions.’

  ‘Good for them,’ Elyra said. ‘Vos told you why I’m running?’

  Kantris nodded. ‘You were rutting some lordling and his wife found out. She’s not the forgiving type. That about cover it?’

  ‘More or less.’ Elyra made her voice hard, as though suppressing anger at his bluntness. ‘She’s vindictive enough to have me killed, if that’s what you mean, and who’s going to make a fuss about an assistant clothier? She’s probably hired a replacement already.’

  ‘I’ll need more than that,’ Kantris said. ‘Names, for a start. If one of the highborn’s really gunning for you, the risk goes up, and so does the price.’

  ‘The marquise de Granbie,’ Elyra said at once, confident that the profile of the non-existent noble house Vex had seeded in the Icenholm infonet would be proof against any scrutiny Kantris’s associates could subject it to.

  ‘I’ll check it out,’ Kantris said, a little too casually. He turned back to Kyrlock. ‘And you want to get your feet on the star road too, I take it.’

  ‘Probably best,’ Kyrlock agreed. ‘I can go to ground in the Breaks again easily enough, but the Guard’ll shoot me for sure if they ever catch up.’ He took another swig of his drink. ‘Dunno what’s out there, but it can’t be any worse than this.’