“He is innocent,” I declared, blinking away the taste of blood from a Drill Abbots blow to the stomach in the courtyard of a world I had never seen. The Arbite was chained to an interrogation chair, a bolus of psychoactive nicosapine feeding into his jugular via an intravenous catheter. He had been stripped naked for the interogation and his scared body was a mass of coiled muscles. He let out an explosive breath that hazed the air with spittle before stumbling forward with a metallic clatter of restraints. Sweat dripped from the point of his nose, falling to splatter onto the dusty cobble stones. His lips moved in a Litany of Abjuration, banishing the Xenos, the Mutant, and the Psyker with a special emphasis on the last.
“Frak you…” Ortega muttered his tongue and mouth swollen from where he had bitten them. That had been careless, next time I’d have to remember to use a bit. I stood up, my skin chilled to ice from the prolonged mental intrusion into Ortega’s mind. He was hardened and trained, but it hadn’t taken Selenica long to remove the implanted blockers from beneath his scapula. Blood oozed from the dressings she had applied, inadequate to the trashing struggle he had pointlessly put up.
Clara leaned against the wall, hand casually on the butt of her heavy Hecutor 40. She was projecting an aura of dangerous calm but in my current psykically active state I could sense the unease that came with holding a member of the Adeptus Arbites. In theory our Inquisitorial status gave us every right to do as we pleased, but she was painfully aware that if Hadrian died our conditional status might be revoked and we could be in a world of trouble.
“You could.. have… just asked me,” Ortega mumbled. I turned to regard him, aware that in my leather storm coat, high boots, and severe hair I looked more the Inquistor than Hadrian did most of the time. My stomach churned at the thought of him. We hadn’t heard anything since he had gone into surgery.
“Yes but we couldn’t have trusted you,” I told him. The fact that an assassin had been on site so quickly and had known that Hadrian was an Inquisitor was troubling and Ortega had been the only one outside the team working his vox unit.
“Shall I release him?” Clara asked, her tone wary having seen me mental violate a member of the Lex Imperialis elite. Realistically she or Lazarus should be in charge, I was the newest member of the warband. I doubted it was the fact that I was Hadrian’s bedmate that had led them to defer to me. Rather I was in charge because I had acted as though I was and I appeared to have a plan. As so often in life, acting as though something were true made it so.
“No,” I replied, shaking my head. “Get a medicae, someone other than Selenica to see to his wounds and get him a sedative. He is going to crash pretty hard in a few minutes.” The mental intrusion I had conducted was extremely taxing and the load of drugs I had used to make it possible were going to be an unpleasant companion for Ortega for the next few days. I blinked my eyes, trying to separate his memories from my own. It wasn’t going to do me any favors either.
“Hadrian is going to make it,” Lazarus said from the interrogation room door. “He will need an augmetic kidney. I have already arranged for an appropriate unit.” I felt the icy hand in my guts unclench at his words and uttered a silent prayer of thanks to the God Emperor that I didn’t technically believe in. There was a touching hint of human emotion in Lazarus’s words, his care for Hadrian as evident from that slight slip as it was from his careful selection of augmetic kidney.
“Is he awake?” I asked urgently, Ortega and the interrogation momentarily forgotten.
“Unconscious, Selenica is looking after him now, she say it will be several hours before he wakes,” Lazarus said. I nodded saddened that he wasn’t awake for me to speak too but also obscurely glad. This whole mess was my fault and I needed to take steps to repair the damage.
“I need to go to the Hotel Imperial,” I declared, “Clara stay here with Lazarus and…”
“Whoa, whoa,” Clara interjected holding up her palms before her.
“You might have big Rosette energy right now Emm, but no one is going anywhere alone while we have snipers shooting at people,” she declared. The set of her jaw told me that arguing wasn’t going to do me much good.
“Fine,” I replied, holding up my palms in surrender, “Come with me. Lazarus and Selenica will stay with Hadrian.”
“I think we should consider bringing Lucius down from the Caledonia,” Clara said, “we have too many moving parts already and we don’t know what we are dealing with.”
“No, his mind is still too unstable, if we put him in the middle of all these people there is a good chance his rage is going to overpower him,” I told her.
“Hotel Imperial has plenty of security, as does this building,” I explained.
“What are you going to do at the Hotel?” Lazarus asked.
“I need you to look into Ortega’s vox equipment,” I told Lazarus, deftly avoiding the question. “He noticed a slight staticy hiss that he put down to interference, but I’m not so sure.” Ortega himself might be just what he appeared to be, but I still wasn’t willing to give up on the idea that he had a role in what had transpired, even if it was unwitting.
“My Lady,” a diffident Administratum Drone said from the doorway. I looked up at him, noting that he was doing his very best to look at nothing and no one in the room. He was at least imaginative enough to be scared when Ordo operatives started working over an Arbite in his holding cell.
“Your air car has arrived.”
___
“I don’t like this Emmaline,” Clara said as I touched an ivory on the biblioquary. Inside the shimmering void shield, the articulated finger bones of a priest turned a page of the ancient manuscript. The Biblioquary resembled a lectern save that the book inside was completely enclosed in void shielding and the wood was inlaid with devotional verses in tarnished silver. Such devices were used for the handling of questionable books, those suspected of having a malign influence, but which for one reason or another, the Inquisition deemed worthy of study. This volume was from Hadrian’s library aboard the Caledonia and I had made some study of it during the months following the Baphometus affair. Hadrian had introduced such works to me slowly and usually under his supervision. The Journal of Saint Theresa of Availa wasn’t the most precious work he had shown me, but it was one that had captured my attention. According to the legend Theresa had been the head librarian of the Tyrarch of Vestebos, and he been ordered by that Tyrant to compile all the arcane lore in the famous Libracate Obscurus of that world ahead of the advancing Imperial crusade under Warmaster Siscus. According to the story, Theresa had pretended to comply, only to burn herself along with the books to prevent the Tyrarch from taking his blasphemous knowledge with him when he fled. The truth was somewhat more complicated. Ninety nine volumes were said to exist, scattered in secret libraries and private collections. The Inquisition had to date acquired six, usually when someone began reproducing and distributing them. This volume was one such reproduction, something Hadrian’s old master had acquired after participating in a purge. The books themselves had no numbers, though Inqusitor Kronos tersely identified it as ‘the seventh astral volume’ without further context.
“I know that you don’t Clara,” I said, fighting down the urge to raise my voice.
“But Hadrian is counting on us, the cult here already knows that it has been exposed. It is either going to shut down, or it is going to blow up. Both of those things are bad for us and for the Imperium. The only chance we have is to move quickly, and if you have a better option Id love to hear it.” Despite my best efforts my tone became somewhat hectoring. My worry about Hadrian, my own sense of failure, and the effort of reading the book were all wearing on me. As was my trepidation about what I was about to attempt.
“I don’t…. I just feel like maybe we are going a little too far,” she admitted. The fear in her voice nearly made me give the whole thing away. Clara wasn’t afraid to die, but she was afraid that what I proposed to do was worse than being cut down in a gunfight.
“You don’t have to stay if you…” I began, but she cut me off, laying a calloused hand over mine.
“If you are going to do it lets just get it over with,” she said.
_____
The Hotel Imperial catered to aristocrats. That meant that it had seen its share of strange revels. The decadence of the Imperial aristocracy was such that nearly any excess could be imagined and excused. I suspect that if the Gravemire staff had seen what was going on in the ballroom of the floor we had booked even that tolerance might not have been enough. In the center of the great marble dancefloor lay the assassin, his body covered in a thick viscous cocoon of oil which spread slowly across the white marble like the stain of corruption. Around him in an intricate and expanding spiral pattern hundreds of kilos of rocksalt had been poured out, weaving its way through a series of complicated interconnections to the very edges of the dance floor where they terminated at the bases of thick votive candles, each of which had been used at a funeral. The doorways and windows were laced with intricate latices of prayer ribbon, tied together with sprigs of sage and strands of my hair. Tribesmen from the Caledonia stood flanking each doorway, their eyes bound with blindfolds of sable velvet, each holding a silvered mace in one hand and a bronze saltzer in the other. Each man had been washed in salt water and had his heart and lips marked with sacred oils. Incense burned in a dozen places, filling the air with cloying perfume.
I entered from the southern door. It was actually slightly to the south east but such specifics matter less than the intention in such proceedings. I was naked save for a long golden chain which had been wound seven times around my body. I had been bathed as the men and anointed with oils. I had the crematorium ashes of a man I had killed on my eyelids, in this case provided by the unfortunate cultist who had been ripped apart by the servitors. I paused as I entered, allowing the blindfolded tribesman time to close the entrance with the prayer ribbon and herbs. Clara walked beside me. She was dressed in an armored body glove and held a pistol in one hand and sword in the other. She looked more than a little uncomfortable but did not complain, the time for such objections come and gone. I knelt down and lifted a small silver gong and striker from the ground. I struck the gong and then began to chant, walking forward at a measured pace. Each time a verse ended I struck another peel from the gong, my feet traveling the path of the spiral marked out in salt. The candle flames guttered and lowered as I moved forward, though they never quite extinguished. Clara followed in my wake, silent and uneasy. All around us the shadows darkened, seeming almost to move and coil as the struggled against the feeble light of of the candles.
It took perhaps ten minutes to reach the center of the spiral. By then I was glowing with a faint witchlight that seemed to cling to me like steam on a cold day. The oily corpse lay on the marble, a black void against the white stone. The autorifle lay beside him, surrounded by its own ring of salt. I stopped in place and raised my hands, the sudden cessation in my low chant ringing like a bell around the vast ballroom. I closed my eyes and focused my will, reaching out with both hands as I struggled with the currents of the Immaterium.
“Awake!” I commanded in a thundering voice. Every candle flame in the room suddenly flared to the size of a grapefruit. Wax spattered in all directions, splashing several of the tribesman. They remained stoically silent as instructed, their feral world origin serving me far better than would a similar group from less superstitious beginnings. The candle flames flared in weird asynchrony for a few seconds and then the salt touching them caught fire, beginning to slowly burn inwards, tracing the spiral in fire like a trail of slow burning gun powder.
The oily corpse sat up, eyelids flying open to reveal wide and horrified blue eyes. The corpse thing screamed and threw itself at me. I was ready for it and managed to avoid flinching by a massive effort of will. The body struck an invisible barrier and recoiled collapsing to the floor and beginning to sob. The droplets of oil continued, spattering my naked body with loathesome slick splotches of filth.
“What is your name?” I asked the weeping corpse. The corpse sobbed and hacked, bringing up lungfuls of the oil which had drowned it in great sprays.
“You have murdered me!” It raged, “you have damned me!”
“You have damned yourself. What is your name?” I demanded mercilessly. It scrambled to its feet and lunged, crashing once more into the invisible barrier.
“You will join me in the flames for this blasphemy witch! She Who Thirsts will suck the marrow from your living bones for eternity, She will…
“What is your name?! Thrice I ask and done!” I thundered.
“Jogar Carden!” the corpse screamed, the words ripped unwillingly from its throat.
“Emmaline,” Clara said in a low urgent voice, “the flames.” The fire was almost halfway around the spiral now, burning inward like a Saint Catherine’s wheel on Ascension day. I didn’t respond to Clara, I didn’t dare take my attention from the dead man. Sweat was running down my brow from the effort I was expending, mixing with the oil droplets to run down my clammy body.
“Who sent you to kill Hadrian Drakos?” I demanded. The corpse screamed though more in desperation than anger.
“You can’t let me go back, you can’t let me go back to the torment,” he pleaded.
“Who sent you to kill Hadrian Drakos?” I repeated.
“Please, you cant let them have me, for the Emperor Sake…”
“Who sent…”
“The Under Council!” the corpse shrieked, unwilling to be compelled a second time.
“Where can I find them?” I demanded.
“Emmaline,” Clara repeated her voice trembling as the fire seemed to accelerate towards us, a trick of the spiral more than a real effect but no less frightening for that.
“Save me and I will tell you, save me and I will…”
Time was very short now, the binding would only last as long as the salt burned. There was nothing I could do for this heretic, nothing I could offer him, not even oblivion.
“Where can I find them, I need to know before the flames…” The crack of the autogun was deafening in the acoustic space of the ballroom. The corpse flew backwards, spraying a great gout of oil from an exit wound in the back of its now ruined head. I sagged to my knees as Clara lowered the oily autogun, its barrel still smoking. The light had returned to normal, less than a foot of unburned salt between the center of the spiral and the smoking ruin of the binding spell.
“Is it over?” Clara asked, though from the tone she already knew the answer. I sagged to the floor, toppling over to lay on the oily floor. I felt stained, but not from anything as common as machine lubricant.
“It is over.”
