• THE VAMPIRE GENEVIEVE •
by Kim Newman
DRACHENFELS
GENEVIEVE UNDEAD
BEASTS IN VELVET
SILVER NAILS

THE WICKED AND THE DAMNED
A portmanteau novel by Josh Reynolds, Phil Kelly and David Annandale

MALEDICTIONS
An anthology by various authors

PERDITION’S FLAME
An audio drama by Alec Worley

Contents

Cover

Backlist

Title Page

Warhammer Horror

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

About the Author

A Black Library Imprint

A dark bell tolls in the abyss.

It echoes across cold and unforgiving worlds, mourning the fate of humanity. Terror has been unleashed, and every foul creature of the night haunts the shadows. There is naught but evil here. Alien monstrosities drift in tomblike vessels. Watching. Waiting. Ravenous. Baleful magicks whisper in gloom-shrouded forests, spectres scuttle across disquiet minds. From the depths of the void to the blood-soaked earth, diabolic horrors stalk the endless night to feast upon unworthy souls.

Abandon hope. Do not trust to faith. Sacrifices burn on pyres of madness, rotting corpses stir in unquiet graves. Daemonic abominations leer with rictus grins and stare into the eyes of the accursed. And the Ruinous Gods, with indifference, look on.

This is a time of reckoning, where every mortal soul is at the mercy of the things that lurk in the dark. This is the night eternal, the province of monsters and daemons. This is Warhammer Horror. None shall escape damnation.

And so, the bell tolls on.

TO: Adept Stavrophore Weschler

FROM: Adept Dyorak

SUBJECT: Ceocan

Honoured Adept,

Please find appended the report you requested.

Ceocan is a world on the galactic south-east fringes of Segmentum Tempestus. It is an inter-sector system within Sector Ephialtis, a sector primarily of interest for its use to the Adeptus Mechanicus. The system holds three separate asteroid belts, a gas giant, and a halo cloud rich in radioactive material. The resources of this system are of incalculable benefit to the wider Imperium.

The planet of Ceocan, however, isn’t one of those resources.

Officially classified as an ‘agri world,’ Ceocan exhibits a combination of traits which gives the false impression that it might be of some interest to an explorer, historian or investigator. The planet features a wide variety of biomes, each sparsely settled, with population centres invariably tightly arrayed around the production of foodstuffs.

Huge grain fields dominate the temperate areas. Thick, lush orchards yield fresh fruit by the ton. Seaweed and fish are harvested in bulk trawlers. Massive underground caverns produce fungus blooms which can crush an unwary harvester. All of this bounty is harvested by machines which are in turn powered by biofuel harvested from the massive grain fields.

Although the Imperial Tithe is high, the planet’s production is far in excess of their consumption. Even the poorest peasant has more than enough food to live on, and in fact tends to eat healthier, more lavish food than very wealthy hive worlders can boast. The luxury quality of the yields from Ceocan could satisfy the needs of the greediest of paradise worlds.

They don’t, though.

Instead, the food from Ceocan is used to feed the Adeptus Mechanicus crews that mine the asteroid belts, harvest the halo zone, and siphon the gas from Ceocan’s neighbour. The fine salt-encrusted fish, fresh ripe fruit and crisp earthy vegetables are all loaded up into processing hoppers in the Callistonian Haven, an orbital processing facility above the planet, and rendered down into a tasteless beige paste, which is then dried and cut into hand-sized bricks that are sent out to feed the tech-priests, lay servants and skitarii of the Adeptus Mechanicus.

This arrangement is slightly preferable to the alternative (bringing the ration bars for the Adeptus Mechanicus in-system with the empty cargo haulers returning after ferrying the system’s resources back to the galaxy proper), but only just: Magos Logisticos Smythen notes that the Adeptus Mechanicus ran projections and determined it was 2.7% more efficient to gain their food from Ceocan as opposed to having it brought in from off-world.

All further data has been appended. I’m sure you will find the report much like Ceocan itself: small, uninteresting and easily forgotten.

Yours in Service,

Adept Dyorak

1

The tolling of the church bells was truly breathtaking. Even through her haze of grief, Ashielle could appreciate the labour that had to have gone into the Toll of Mourning for her father.

All across Kostoveim, from cobbled streets to arched, embellished spires, the bells rang out for Governor Ruprekt Matkosen. Every bell in every cathedral, shrine and watchtower across Ceocan pealed at once, each rolling cry sounding perfectly in unison. After each ring, a brief pause followed to let the reverberations fade, to let each citizen of the planet appreciate the profound silence. Then the bells were struck again. Ashielle was grateful to the priests and clergy who had spent so much time coordinating the Toll of Mourning, ensuring that the timing of each ring was perfect as far as her ear could detect. She had never before heard the bells so coordinated. Even at the most sombre of state funerals, as long ago as she could recall, she could always remember hearing one cathedral out of sync. Of course, she’d never attended the funeral of a governor before. Very few of the people living on Ceocan had.

Certainly, none of those massed beyond the gates of the Augusta Korgana, the grand graveyard of the planet’s most venerated dead, had ever seen such a thing. Thousands of citizens had come out to pay their respects. It lifted her spirit to see so many people moved by their loyalty to Ruprekt, that they would face the cold, drizzling rain to stand in solidarity with her family. The noble families, the Adeptus masters, the other dignitaries whose stations and accolades demanded they be admitted inside the gates of the Korgana: they attended to be seen attending. They marched solemnly through the gravestones, cenotaphs and raised sarcophagi, shielded from the chill shower by wide, robust hoods, or beneath engraved and embroidered umbrellas held by numb and shivering servants. They bowed their heads to Ashielle, of course, mouthing platitudes or quoting bits of scripture which were meant to give her comfort. Always, of course, they maintained their dignity and composure, never allowing themselves to act as though this were anything more than a formality.

Beyond the wrought iron fencing, thinly threaded with rose canes, the populace of Kostoveim pressed in, clad in mourning black, their faces daubed with grey ashes. Their emotional displays were raw in their honesty, with many older serfs weeping openly and grasping at the Korgana fences, uncaring hands bloody against the thorns of the roses. When Ruprekt Matkosen’s body was drawn from the hearse, draped in its white shroud and adorned with the golden aquila, Ashielle could hear several voices from the gathered throng of commoners wailing in anguish. Truthfully, she drew more solace from their intense grieving than she did the perfunctory performances of the elite gathered near to her.

She remembered standing in the Korgana Ecclesiastia as a child, when the venerable Deacon Yasoven had passed. The pious had journeyed from all across Ceocan to pay their respects. The crowd hadn’t been half the size of that gathered for Governor Matkosen, but it was the largest state funeral she could recall. Then, as now, the gathered throngs wept and tore at their hair, the intensity of their mourning inversely proportional to their social rank. Ashielle had marvelled at the lives that the aged deacon had touched in his time on Ceocan.

‘He visited no great evil on their homes,’ her father had told her, ‘and placed no burdens upon their shoulders too great for them to bear.’ The planetary governor had seemed so tall and strong to her, as a child. His broad shoulders seemed stout enough to bear the grief of the entire household. Only she and Geordan were permitted to stand close enough to him to see the dampness beneath his eyes.

‘For most of humanity, that is all that is required for the foundation of a great leader. Given enough time, that simple basis can become the foundation of their whole lives.’ Ruprekt had given the slightest of nods then, to the crowd of wailing mourners. ‘After such a tenure as the deacon had, losing him is like waking to discover that a mountain has vanished, or a moon has fallen from the sky. They weep not because they have lost a friend or a loved one – instead they weep because a cornerstone of their world is missing, and now for them everything is uncertain.’ The governor turned his unyielding gaze to his two children, his marble grey eyes boring into them over his thick, bushy moustache. ‘The onus of stability falls to us. In this time of uncertainty, the governor must be the rock upon which the entire planet may anchor themselves. Do you understand?’

The enormity of the responsibility that might one day be hers had borne down on her, then. Geordan had reached out and taken her hand in his when Ruprekt turned away. She remembered smiling up at him, grateful for his support. She wished Geordan could be with her now, for she could use that manner of comfort again. Thinking of her elder brother brought a spike of grief of a different kind, one mixed with shame. His own funeral had been several days prior, and had been far smaller in scale, of course.

Ruprekt’s words had been prescient. If the deacon’s death was akin to the loss of one of Ceocan’s four moons, then Ruprekt’s had been as though the citizens had gazed up at noon and seen the sun explode. When the deacon had gone to the Throne, it had been a shock, but not an unexpected one. Deacon Yasoven had been nearing his fourth century when his body had finally failed. Ruprekt Matkosen had been much greater in importance than the deacon, and there had been no emotional preparation for his passing. The accident had seen to that.

As the bells continued their droning memorial, ringing out one toll for each of the one hundred and twelve years of Ruprekt Matkosen’s life, Ashielle felt a moment of true grief creeping into her throat. Hot tears threatened her eyes. She knew how the assembled crowd felt: Ruprekt should have governed them for decades to come. She was only thirty-three, far younger than anyone had ever thought Ruprekt’s heir would be when they ascended.

The mourners inside the iron barricades did not wail: they whispered. Out of the corners of their mouths and behind delicate fans, Ashielle knew they were murmuring. It wasn’t a sound she could hear; it was a sensation she could feel.

She spied the narrow shoulders of Langreve Oldemeier. He was leaning close – literally rubbing shoulders with Margreve Tianesh Bruisell. They huddled together, he in his jet-black suit with his raven hair, she in a charcoal mourning coat, the lace collar webbed across her throat, looking the very picture of young lovers sharing an umbrella on a rainy day. Ashielle knew better. Before he was the Langreve of his house, Uri Oldemeier had counselled Ashielle’s father to send her away to the schola rather than her brother, Hanrik. Despite her cherubic features and youthful complexion, Lady Bruisell was over one hundred and thirty, and Ashielle had heard her make remarks before, indicating her feelings that no one younger than a century should serve in any real leadership position. From a distance, their closeness could be mistaken for support and comfort in a time of sorrow, but Ashielle knew veteran politicians such as they would be whispering about some political manoeuvring which would benefit them both.

The bells ended, and a dreadful silence washed over the Korgana, drawing Ashielle back to the present. Deacon Phoebian placed a hand on the shroud covering Governor Matkosen. Former Governor Matkosen, Ashielle corrected herself. No one who spoke of Governor Matkosen was referring to her father any longer. Now that honour belonged to her, whether she wished it or not. The aged deacon held one hand out towards her.

Ashielle grabbed Hanrik’s hand and squeezed it for support as she stepped forward. Her brother allowed her to take his hand, but did not return her gesture. He seemed to have no need for her support, and no solace to give to her in return. If the gathered nobles and adepts were reserved, he was positively mechanical. The hooded saints carved in stone looming from the cenotaphs offered more succour than she saw in his unyielding face.

The other nobles she passed on her path to the deacon were no warmer. They had come to the Korgana dutifully, but like her brother, they had no comfort for her. Each of them offered kind words, of course, but not to lift her up or ease her burden. The heads of the planetary organisations, like Magos Crofeld, Adept Sheng and Master Trulanthion, attended because they had an obligation to do so. Like General Zhevan and the deacon herself, they came because they understood that the projection of stability they were obligated to show required them to be seen supporting her in this time of transition. The lesser nobles of the Grevenate offered her their verbal tokens as well, not that they had any desire to support her, either. Each hoped that somehow their paltry attempt at succour would be remembered when they came calling, as if they could buy political favour with a sad expression and a mumbled platitude.

Her servants followed behind her, but she gestured them away, taking a single umbrella from an elderly attendant, who released the handle from her icy fingers with relief. Ashielle held the canopy overhead and walked the final lengths to her father’s open sarcophagus alone. She collapsed the umbrella before kneeling on the prayer bench before the deacon. Let the mourners see her walking in the rain, enduring the cold and the damp for a few moments with no more protection than they had. From the street, she would be easy to pick out. Among the mourners, even those of means and noble bearing, she alone wore white, her pale gown and veil marking her as the head of House Matkosen and sole entrusted governor of Ceocan.

Deacon Phoebian placed her withered hand on Ashielle’s head, muttering whispered scriptures under her breath. In years long past, the spiritual head of the community would preside at state funerals, ritualistically serving as a conduit to pass the divine right of rulership from one liege to another. Now, of course, the action was entirely symbolic. The senior adepts had borne witness to her official ascension weeks ago, within hours of her father’s untimely passing.

Ashielle stood as Deacon Phoebian finished her liturgy, and drew the veil from her face. She let the cold rain wash over her features for a moment, taking a pause to appreciate the gravity of her last moments, symbolic or not, with her father’s presence. Then she placed her veil in Ruprekt’s sarcophagus, draped over his shrouded remains.

She stepped away, and the Ministorum servitors approached. They had the appearance of men, albeit hulking ones, naked save for a black tabard emblazoned with the image of the cathedral. Each wore a bronze mask, wrought in the shape of a bull’s head, to keep the public from seeing their slack-jawed, hollow-eyed visages. To the public they might be mighty, miraculous warriors of the church, but Ashielle knew their sorry nature. She knew, too, that little of human flesh remained to them, mostly pale skin stretched over their corded hydraulic musculature, and a lobotomised brain and spinal cord to coordinate the industrial machinery contained in their frames.

The two servitors lifted the lid of Ruprekt Matkosen’s sarcophagus, adorned with an image of the late lord governor kneeling in piety towards the Grand Cathedral, leaning against a sword, his forehead resting against the pommel. The servitors lowered the lid with a delicacy their forms would not seem to possess.

The sombre thump of the stone lid sliding home echoed in Ashielle’s mind. She would remember it more clearly than the tolling of the bells or the wailing of the mourners. That booming, earthen sound was the end of everything that had come before: there could be no denying now that she was the governor of Ceocan.

They came in ones and twos: the nobles and functionaries wishing her well or expressing a tearful reminder of how close they had felt to the late Governor Matkosen. Most of the words were hollow and meaningless, of course, but she smiled and thanked them nonetheless. More gratifying were the few nobles who seemed genuine in their grief. Paola Gavozny, who had been a fellow scholar at Trenkovi University with her when she had studied Artistic Legacy of Imperial Societies. Liana Chole, the daughter of Greve Chole, who Ruprekt had saved from bankruptcy with a generous loan which had become a gift, had honest tears in her eyes, which nearly moved Ashielle to the same. When the line of mourners finally came to Langreve Evanova, who had attended the capital’s elite schola with Ruprekt and with whom he had shared a fondness for aged amasec and fine Ystrodian cigars, the old man had become choked and unable to form a single word. He had just nodded, gripping Ashielle’s hand tightly, before his wife had put a hand on his shoulder and led him away.

There were a great many people who wished at last to express their condolences to her, now that they had an opportunity to be seen in public doing so. Lesser noble scions, heads of august and aged families, wealthy merchant captains: she knew all of them from years of careful briefings, which had been the subject of her renewed interest over the past few weeks. She knew which ones owed her family favours, which ones lusted for greater power, which ones were bound together by their own bonds of loyalty. So when a small man she did not recognise stepped forward, it was something of a mild surprise.

There were a great many aspects of the management of an entire planet to which Ashielle remained ignorant, and which she anticipated she would have to learn very swiftly in the coming days. Analysis of character was not one of those skills. Ashielle had met men like this before.

He had soft, gentle features and a round, chubby face. His hair was short, his nails clean. His clothes were tidy and neat, tasteful but not sumptuous. His jacket was short, offering no depths in which to conceal a weapon. He was heavier than was fashionable, although not so fat as to elicit comment. In short, every aspect of his being contributed to the general sense that the man presented no threat of any kind. Therefore, she concluded, he was an exceptionally dangerous man. Her father had taught her that only the most malevolent people cultivated such a well-manicured image of innocuousness. The stranger’s tinted, round-framed spectacles hid his eyes entirely behind mirrored lenses, which was perhaps the most damning trait of all. The eyes allowed a glimpse into the soul, and in Ashielle’s opinion, people who concealed them had something inside themselves they wanted to hide from those around them.

‘I don’t believe we’ve met before,’ she said.

‘We have not,’ the man replied. ‘I am Lostrovsky.’

Psycholinguistics had always been a passion of Ashielle’s. The idea that one could, through careful attention to one’s vocabulary and syntax, subconsciously influence actions or attitudes in a listener was an attractive one. There were days when she had her doubts as to the efficacy of its application, but she continued doing so anyway. At the very least, she reasoned, there was no harm in taking an extra moment to choose one’s words carefully.

‘What do you wish of me, Lostrovsky?’

The dangerous little man smiled. He had generous dimples that added to his harmless appearance, and he carefully presented his sad half-smile to show no teeth.

‘Nothing for myself, excellency. Rather, it is my mistress who would speak with you.’

Ashielle was intrigued, but it wouldn’t do to let Lostrovsky know that.

‘Who might your mistress be? One could consider it a grave insult that she doesn’t deign to make her requests of me in person.’

Lostrovsky shook his cropped little head. ‘My mistress is acutely aware of your excellency’s social station,’ he said. ‘She knows it would be improper for a supplicant of noble bearing to approach you on such an occasion. Hence her decision to employ a man of no particular house allegiance for this task.’ He made a humble gesture at his attire, as if to demonstrate his own inoffensiveness, in case she had missed it. ‘However, she did not want to pass up the opportunity to speak with you in this rather informal setting. Were you to seek her out here, in the Korgana, it would merely be a chance meeting at an event you were both attending already. Should she be required to seek you out, her attendance to the palace at Darcarden would certainly attract more notice than the two of you would wish.’

Ashielle had a sinking feeling she knew who Lostrovsky was referring to. Minor nobles made appointments to visit the governor at Darcarden nearly every day. There was only one ruling family whose presence at the governor’s palace would be worthy of comment.

‘Esilia Vaneisen calls a meeting? Now?’ Ashielle fixed Lostrovsky with an icy glare. Lord Ruprekt had mastered the bloodless stare, a skill Ashielle had tried to emulate. She had utilised the technique before, but this was her first time doing so with the authority of the title of governor behind her. She had never been sure if it was the threat that the title carried, or rather the confidence that it imparted, but Ruprekt had been able to chill a supplicant in their tracks with his gaze.

Lostrovsky was no street thug, but he seemed unnerved.

‘No, of course not,’ he said. ‘My mistress would never think of compelling your excellency’s appearance in her presence,’ he said, his tone making it clear that he was implying quite the opposite. Even without his practised delivery, she would have known the truth: Vicereine Esilia Vaneisen, coadjutor to the planetary governor, meant for Ashielle to attend her then and there. Better to clear up any misunderstandings about their relationship immediately, before the city could go back to the mundane routines of daily life.

‘So the impropriety might be mine alone?’ Ashielle said. She crossed her arms, fixing the unctuous Lostrovsky with a wicked sneer. ‘I think not. If Esilia wishes to speak with me, then she’ll simply have to take the hit to her pride.’ She made a flicking gesture with one hand. ‘You, on the other hand, should go before I have time to contemplate the audacity it would take not only to attempt to coerce a planetary governor, but to do so on holy ground.’

Lostrovsky bowed, a sheen of sweat visible on his forehead. Good. She hated the notion of ruling like a tyrant, but she was no one’s puppet.

The other dignitaries were less audacious. Most of them repeated the same sort of platitudes they had already given her. A few kept their words perfunctory and light, as though burying her father was just an unpleasant formality, and now they could all move on as if he had never existed. She reasoned that to many of them, he was merely a distant figure, with no more a personal relationship to them than the sun above. So long as the dawn came, she couldn’t blame them for not being as broken as they might have been. Their honesty was refreshing, if anything.

More than a few had gathered around Hanrik. She supposed she couldn’t blame them for that, either. The youngest of the Matkosen children was something of a curiosity, having been sent away at a very early age. For many of those in attendance, it was the first time they’d seen the returned son.

By the time she had made her rounds of the minor nobles vying for her attention, he had been surrounded by a small knot of mourners. Ashielle noted with no small amount of amusement that several of those eager to hear more about the estranged Matkosen child were eligible young women of the minor noble houses. Hanrik’s disinterest was clear to her from a mile away, but several of the sons and daughters of the minor noble houses preened and posed and tittered at his small talk anyway.

‘Governor Ashielle,’ he said when she approached. Ashielle smiled at his stiffness and formality.

‘Arbitrator,’ she replied. ‘Will you be so good as to accompany me back to Darcarden?’

Hanrik paused for a moment, clearly weighing the discomfort of his various options. The two of them had never been close. She had few memories of him. He had always been a private child. With two heirs ahead of him and no valuable allies to be secured with his marriage, the truth was that Hanrik had been a potential danger rather than an asset to Ruprekt Matkosen. She had been too young to remember clearly, but Geordan had told her that their father had spent weeks arguing the issue with the Grevenate. The custom was an archaic one, he’d said, and no longer required or wanted in the governing family. An industrial crisis in the southern provinces had arisen, however, and protecting the lives of his citizens had necessitated every ounce of political capital he could spare. As always, when forced to choose between family and duty, their father had chosen his obligations to his people. Ruprekt had needed to pull many strings to get his youngest son accepted to the schola progenium on Sorinoux, but he had done what was required of him.

‘I would be happy to escort you to the palace,’ he said carefully. His words were chosen cautiously so as to neither exclude nor include the possibility of staying in the palace itself. Ashielle smiled. Perhaps they had more in common than she had previously thought.

‘My lady?’

Ashielle was surprised when she turned to find Esilia Vaneisen behind her.

Many of the wealthy elite of the Imperium used their influence and fortunes to stave off the effects of ageing, often reversing their physical appearance to a visage of youth. Not so with the matriarch of the Vaneisen family. Vicereine Esilia Vaneisen, coadjutor of Ceocan, chose instead to wear her age proudly, as both challenge and threat.

Look here, her steel-grey hair boasted, I have borne the weight of years; I have seen decades of sorrow and treachery. Every furrow on her perpetually scowling face was a campaign ribbon declaring her participation in some deep-seated feud with another dignitary, now humbled and long forgotten. Like many institutions of the Imperium, she might be weathered and weakened by the passage of time, but her resilience had not failed yet, and was not likely to do so in the near future.

‘Will you excuse us?’ Ashielle asked the gathered courtiers. She gave her brother the dignity of a personal dismissal. ‘Hanrik, would you be good enough to wait in the carriage? I’ll be there shortly.’ Her brother frowned, but strode off towards her carriage dutifully, picking his way through the tombstones and mausoleums. The other courtiers, egos stinging, retreated to their various families, leaving the governor and coadjutor alone in the garden.

The Augusta Korgana, like most cemeteries on Ceocan, was laid out not in the neat ranks and rows that predominated on worlds of the Imperium. Instead, the raised headstones and monuments were arrayed along twisting paths that intersected and branched in a maze of loops and spirals. The mourning gardens situated amid the curving paths were oases of respite, where nobles could rest and reflect amid small patches of grave blossoms.

Ashielle seated herself on one of the stone benches, decorated with a bas relief of Saint Symion smiting the unbelievers at Loresk. She folded her hands in her lap and cocked her head. In private audiences between nobles, etiquette demanded that social inferiors spoke first. Among peers, however, the honour of speaking second was passed to the eldest participant. Esilia regarded her, silently. Ashielle recognised the trick for what it was. If she gave into the instincts of a young noblewoman to defer to the matriarch, Esilia would begin both the conversation and their entire professional relationship in a position of authority.

After a moment, the elder woman realised Ashielle had no intention of speaking first.

‘Poor thing,’ Esilia said, feigning a matronly concern. ‘Here I am, waiting for you to speak first. How silly of me to stand on formalities in your time of grief.’

‘Not at all,’ Ashielle said, placing a forgiving hand on Esilia’s arm. ‘I’m grateful for your slip. Why, if I had similarly forgotten myself it might have looked inappropriate. We are, after all, no longer peers.’

Esilia Vaneisen frowned. The elderly matriarch had clearly expected this conversation to go differently. In each of their previous encounters, Ashielle had given way to Esilia, accepting her barbs and her slanders with downcast eyes and accepting nods. In every previous meeting, however, she had been the second heir, not the lord governor.

‘My apologies, my lady.’ Esilia switched tone. ‘The working relationship I developed with your father was so close that there were times when we regarded one another as peers. I forget that we have not yet developed so close a bond. Perhaps when you have been governor for more than a short time, we can build such a rapport.’ Her words were kind but Ashielle knew what she meant: a reminder that she had been a veteran at planetary politics before Ashielle had even been born.

‘I hope that we can build a relationship that close between ourselves,’ Ashielle said, answering Esilia’s lie with one of her own. ‘In time.’ She was cognisant of the eyes upon them. The gravestones, decorated with the winding knotwork and images of Imperial saints, were rarely tall enough to obscure sight, and the lesser nobles that ambled their way through the winding paths of the Augusta Korgana were taking their time, casting surreptitious looks back to the mourning garden. The words between her and Esilia might be private, but everyone was making sure to take note of their conversation, all witnesses eagerly doing their best to discern some clue as to the context of the meeting.

‘Forgive me, my lady.’ Esilia bowed her head as if committing some egregious crime. More egregious than the ones Ashielle knew about, at any rate. ‘I had hoped to broach a sensitive topic. I know it is a rather unfortunate time, but we find ourselves in a rather unfortunate situation.’

Ashielle cocked her head again. ‘Oh?’

‘As my lady may or may not be aware,’ she said, ‘when your own father ascended to the throne, he was already wed, with your brother Geordan already on the way.’ She was on more comfortable ground now, educating a younger noble on events that she had personally witnessed, as if Ashielle couldn’t possibly have heard about the circumstances of her father’s coronation. ‘In fact, the governor’s throne hasn’t been without an heir for over three millennia.’

‘Two,’ corrected Ashielle. ‘You’re referring to the Reformation, when a plague epidemic killed half the nobility. You’re forgetting about the second Great Collapse. Lord Governor Windover died without producing an heir, despite his four successive wives.’ Esilia cleared her throat, but Ashielle continued without pause. ‘Of course, the Matkosens were the coadjutor family at the time, and Sadion Matkosen had a number of heirs. Governorship was transferred to the new ruling family without incident, and the Grevenate elected a new coadjutor from among their number.’ Ashielle’s face brightened. ‘The Netsullens, if I recall correctly, although I believe they married into a wealthier, if genetically stunted, family and changed their name. To Vaneisen, I believe.’

Esilia sat, her face as impassive as the stone angels carved into the mausoleums around them. ‘I believe that’s correct,’ she said. ‘Broadly, at any rate.’

‘The Netsullens had a bit of wealth, and were owed quite a few favours,’ Ashielle said, ‘but they lacked somewhat in prestige, didn’t they? Something about the business they were in?’

Esilia cleared her throat. ‘Quite possibly,’ she said. ‘Waste management has long been considered a disreputable profession, despite the immense value it has, especially on an agri world. For their part, the Vaneisen family had reached an… unfortunate state of being unable to continue their practice of marrying within their own line,’ Esilia said. ‘Too few cousins to keep going, I suppose. Fortunately, in this instance, as is often the case, uniting two noble houses provided the remedy to both their ills.’ She folded her hands in her own lap, and gave Ashielle a serene smile.

Ashielle smiled sweetly. This was the battlefield her father had trained her for. She’d never faced an opponent with as much clout as the Lady Vaneisen before, but she had learned from the best. She paused for a moment, staring at the pale white weeping lilies arrayed around a stone aquila in the centre of the reflecting garden.

‘Why, Esilia, do you imagine the example from your family’s history has some sort of bearing on current events?’ No matter how reasonable the request, she couldn’t afford to let Esilia Vaneisen deal with her on a level playing field. She had to keep the old woman off-balance, treated like a pauper begging for alms.

Lady Vaneisen looked around as if considering whether or not to continue. She had to realise what Lady Matkosen was doing, of course. By refusing to acknowledge what Esilia was implying, she forced the elder noble to spell her request out in ever more explicit, and ever more demeaning, terms.

‘Your father was ever a proponent of stability,’ Lady Vaneisen said finally, ‘and the current situation is anything but stable. As coadjutor, it would be my recommendation that you find a spouse and produce an heir as swiftly as possible.’ Ashielle had to hand it to her rival: framing her power play as part of her duties as coadjutor was a wise manoeuvre, which gave her requests the veneer of respectability.

Ashielle gave a small nod. ‘Of course,’ she said, ‘when matters of state permit, that would be one of my first priorities.’ Esilia looked pained, but Ashielle went on. ‘You understand, given the suspicious nature of the accident that claimed both my father and elder brother, the need to reevaluate our security measures before we allow an outside influence into Darcarden.’

The Korgana was beginning to empty. There was no reason to remain in the icy drizzle any longer, and most of the Grevenate families had begun to retreat to their own homes, to pursue their own petty interests.

‘We could, of course, offer our assistance in that regard,’ said Esilia.

‘Oh?’

‘Of course,’ the matriarch said. ‘We have a number of young men who would be suitable matches, I should think.’ She waved a hand and smiled as if they were old friends. ‘Such closeness between the regent and coadjutor families would be good for the political landscape, I believe. Unity is our best course in the wake of such tragedy, don’t you think?’

‘Oh, Esilia,’ said Ashielle, ‘not at all.’

The old woman looked as if she’d been slapped. ‘No?’

Ashielle shook her head and stood. The gesture wasn’t dramatic, but it was enough for anyone looking at their conversation to gather that she had rejected whatever offer had been put before her.

‘I admit to a certain degree of inexperience,’ Ashielle said, ‘although not as much ignorance as you apparently credit me with. It would take a great deal of ignorance, after all, for a house such as mine, with as solidified a reputation for honouring their obligations to the planetary populace, to marry into one such as yours.’

Esilia kept smiling, although her eyes were wide and furious.

‘Providing protection to the flesh peddlers, narcotics traffickers and extortionists of Kostoveim would be bad enough. But the rumours? The strife societies? The famed Black Mask balls your family hosts? And what happens to the… entertainment afterwards? My dear Esilia, even if only a fraction of the stories are true, the perversion would simply be too much to bear.’

She unfolded her umbrella and strode away, leaving Esilia Vaneisen fuming quietly on the stone bench in the graveyard.

2

‘I expected to see them buried together.’

Ashielle looked up at Hanrik, but her brother was staring out the tinted carriage window at the streets beyond. He’d barely said a word to her since arriving on-planet. He hadn’t even glanced at her since they left the Korgana.

‘Geordan couldn’t be buried in the Augusta Korgana,’ she said. ‘He never reigned as governor. I asked Deacon Phoebian if he could still be interred with our father, as he was the rightful heir, but she was adamant that it was against tradition.’ Hanrik might have been born to the ruling family, but she forgot that he had left so young there would be so many aspects of governance that would be alien to him.

Hanrik didn’t even look at her. At least he’d removed his helmet. Freed from the shaded visor and thick ceramite shielding, his face looked nothing like an arbitrator’s. Hanrik had inherited the same angelic features from their mother that she had, along with her ash blonde hair. His years among the Arbites had hardened his face, however. He had developed Ruprekt’s lantern jaw, and the questing stare of a veteran investigator. Only a small scar to the left of his chin marred his otherwise statuesque features.

‘I’m surprised you didn’t pull strings to get your way,’ he said.

She felt as though she’d been slapped, and the coldness between them intensified. Abusing her position for personal concerns would have been a betrayal of everything Ruprekt had taught them. He had to remember at least that much. Ashielle took a moment to let tempers cool. His words were meant to hurt her, to remind her that he had been sent away on just such an exertion of influence.

‘My relationship with the deacon isn’t strong enough to use for matters of pride,’ she said.

Hanrik looked away from the window finally. ‘Is honouring the dead a matter of pride?’

‘It is,’ she said. ‘The honour we give to the dead is not for their benefit, but that of the living. It marks finality to their lives and gives everyone a clear delineation of new beginnings.’ She shook her head, and deliberately softened her tone. Hanrik was her brother, not a wheedling member of the nobility looking for any sign of weakness to exploit. He’d always been closer to Geordan than he had been to her, or than he had been to Ruprekt. Even if he had no comfort for her, she would still offer what she could to him. ‘Geordan is interred in the family crypt, right beside mother. No dishonour has been done him.’

Hanrik said nothing, but returned his gaze to the window. The grey stone construction of the city rolled by outside. She supposed she couldn’t blame his inattention. Kostoveim’s monolithic buildings offered much to the visiting eye. Judgmental saints and warmasters looked down from their perches in pointed tympana. Facade fittings were narrow and high, drawing the eye ever upwards to vaulted roofs crowned by ridged spires. Grim-faced warriors and double-headed eagles carved in gleaming brass ringed the roof edges, small enough to seem distant, yet large enough that their imposing visages could still be seen from below.

‘There are more people than I remember,’ he said.

She was certain he had no great interest in discussing municipal statistics. It was an awkward comment, intended to fill an even more awkward silence. Ashielle nodded, staring out of her own window and reminding herself that Hanrik had not seen Kostoveim, or any other part of Ceocan, in over twenty years. Most of the satellite cities would be entirely new to him.

‘The population of Kostoveim gets larger every year,’ she said.

‘What do they all do? Their livelihood, I mean?’

It wasn’t like Hanrik to have a great deal of curiosity. She wondered if that was a trait the Arbites had instilled in him, or if he had some ulterior motive. In either event, if it bridged the gap between them, she would be happy to satisfy his interest.

‘The agri-camps are at capacity,’ she said, ‘but we employ all of them that we can. As the population booms, a growing service sector has started springing up. Of course, House Vaneisen is able to employ more of them than we are.’

Hanrik said nothing, but half-turned towards her.

‘The commercial districts they require are built by the Vaneisen holdings. Their leases are paid to Vaneisen landlords, their hab-rises owned by Vaneisen lieutenants. Every few decades, the population strains the city’s resources, requiring a new satellite city to be built. Vaneisen construction, naturally.’

To Ashielle, the imposing grey stone of Kostoveim inspired a mixture of emotions. The towering arches and columns were made of stone from Vaneisen quarries. The serfs of their house had mined the copper and tin to create the bronze reliefs that scrolled across the friezes and up the archivolts. The undeniable solidity of her capital city was a source of great pride, a constant reminder of the unshakeable foundations her dynasty had been built upon. At the same time, each graven saint was an unblinking harbinger of doom, a reminder that the coadjutor watched her at all times for the slightest sign of weakness or disloyalty. All the opulence and strength around her was coin in her enemies’ coffers.

‘It sounds like House Vaneisen’s fortunes continue to increase,’ said Hanrik. Which was the crux of the problem, of course. The more stretched her own house’s resources became, the more value was placed on the commodities the Vaneisens controlled.

‘So it would appear,’ Ashielle said. ‘And now, an unprecedented elimination in the line of succession. Why, if I had been taking that journey with them, then the only member of the family left would be you.’

Her brother sighed and turned back to her. For the first time, he seemed truly engaged.

‘My own oaths to the Adeptus Arbites would preclude me accepting the throne,’ he said. ‘But you knew that, just as, presumably, the Vaneisens do.’ He nodded, running the facts through in his mind. ‘You believe the carriage accident was intentional?’

Ashielle nodded. ‘The investigation is ongoing, but yes, yes I do. It’s not as though ascension through assassination is unheard of.’

Assassination had been a concern. The thought suddenly struck her that the people passing by outside the window had not grown up with hired murderers as an ever-present threat in their lives. None of them had been forced to wait on a bench, hands folded in lap, while melta bomb sweepers cleared the garden before they were allowed to play outside. None of them had ever had a meal suddenly swept away because a taster-servitor had tripped a secondary warning, nor had they sat trying desperately to maintain their composure while the household waited to find out if the servitor’s chem-analysers had returned a false positive or not. Unlike her, it was unlikely a single one of them had spent their sixteenth birthday lying in a medicae, having all of their blood flushed to remove a xeno-toxin introduced by a disgraced enemy of their parents.

‘Distressingly common,’ Hanrik said. ‘More common than I’d ever thought possible.’ His face might have been the legacy of their mother, but all of Ruprekt’s children had inherited his pale grey eyes and unyielding stare. He turned from her to stare back out of the window.

It had to have been terrible for him, she realised. As an arbitrator, he would have borne witness to the worst atrocities the galaxy had to offer. He would have had to shield himself with a level of callousness she could scarcely imagine. The life of an arbitrator would have taught him, either through instruction or hard experience, to trust no one. She wouldn’t be surprised if he had even pondered whether she herself had arranged their father’s death.

‘I can’t investigate father’s death, you know.’ Hanrik turned back to her.

She nodded. ‘I had rather assumed that would be the case. If they won’t allow you to be assigned to your own homeworld to avoid conflicts of interest, they’d hardly let you return here to begin an inquiry, would they?’

Hanrik nodded as well. ‘Just so. Has Idonell told you anything yet?’ He relaxed, and she realised that he must have been tensely anticipating her to request his assistance. She would have to tread very carefully with him, she saw. No matter. She had no intention of asking for her brother’s help. If she had gauged him correctly, he would help all on his own.

‘Not yet, but I doubt he intends to.’ Ashielle hadn’t met the arbitrator, not in an official capacity. She hadn’t even seen Judge Idonell for over a decade. Like all of his predecessors who had manned the lonely precinct of Ceocan, he had made his home in the orbital processing facility, the Callistonian Haven. With the bulk of the Administratum and Munitorum traffic occurring there, the few demands on his time saw Ceocan’s arbitrator inevitably in orbit more often than on the ground. The enforcers submitted regular reports to him, of course, and each of the enforcer captains – as well as the luminaries of the various Adeptus organisations – had the capacity to contact Idonell if they needed to.

‘The judge would never ignore you entirely,’ said Hanrik. ‘You are a planetary governor. He could ill afford to.’ Hanrik sounded like he was speaking from some form of personal experience, and Ashielle realised she didn’t actually know many of the details of his service. She wondered if he had come into conflict with ruling families, and resolved to ask when it was more convenient.

‘Of course not,’ said Ashielle, ‘but neither does he want to tell me something he knows I don’t want to hear. The judge is a veteran of the Imperium’s politics, after all. If he hasn’t been able to find any evidence that the crash was anything other than an accident, he’s more likely to keep the investigation open until he can ascertain how I’m likely to react.’

‘Or how best to present his conclusion in a way you’ll accept,’ said Hanrik.

Ashielle nodded. ‘He has intimated to Commodore Zelucan that there is no evidence of wrongdoing.’

Hanrik raised an eyebrow, but said nothing. Her brother knew as well as she did that accidents happened, even to very important people. Shuttle crashes were rare on Ceocan, but not unheard of. That her father and Geordan’s shuttle had crashed over the Pellucidian Sea did not help; it was lucky that any of the wreckage had been recovered at all.

‘You trust Zelucan?’ he asked.

Ashielle nodded. ‘I do,’ she said.

‘Whatever happened to General Renniver?’

It was Ashielle’s turn to stare out of the window. They’d reached the centre of the city, where the architecture began to grow ever taller. No more were the streets hemmed in by faceless grey stone walls. The core of Kostoveim was home to the oldest and most lavish buildings of the capital. Massive rose windows dominated the peaks of the buildings, and gold began to replace bronze for decorative elements. The side alleys and cut-throughs, rather than being choked with wooden construction and shanty towns, were walled off for use as gardens and private estates.

‘I had to let him go,’ she said. The idea of assassination had been a difficult one for her to swallow, but the aftertaste of paranoia it left behind was unavoidable. If her father and brother had been killed by deliberate sabotage of their shuttle, then it followed that someone on the governor’s staff had been the cause of the sabotage. Ashielle had almost been able to hear her father’s voice in her ear, reminding her that as unpalatable as her suspicions might be, her responsibility to the population demanded that she treat them with validity. Assembling a core staff that she could trust had to take precedence over the consideration of decades of service from those like Renniver.

‘I assume Zelucan has been doing his own investigations?’ Hanrik said.

Although officially a division of the Corps of Ceocan, in reality the High Service acted as the lord governor’s palace guard and personal militia. The commanding officer served under the title of ‘Officer of Reconnaissance,’ ostensibly a battlefield scouting position, actually a sort of minister of intelligence and espionage.

‘He has,’ she said.

Hanrik looked at her, and she could feel the judgement in his eyes. She knew how it looked. Removing an experienced officer like Renniver and replacing him with the former head of her own security detail smacked of favouritism. It was vital that the people charged with her safety were people she could trust, however, and thirty years with Commodore Zelucan had taught her that he was a man she could trust intimately.

‘After consulting with the tech-priests who were permitted to examine the wreckage, the commodore believes that a gravitic stabiliser failed mid-flight, resulting in an uncorrectable spin leading to a crash.’

Hanrik sighed. She smiled. As she’d expected, some habits were trained too deeply to be ignored.

‘For someone of the governor’s rank, pre-flight inspection is a requirement,’ said Hanrik. He shifted in his seat, opening his posture up. ‘The entire team would be suspect, but the enginseers would have specific assignments for who maintained and inspected which portions of the shuttle.’

Ashielle nodded. ‘They do. Although they were loath to reveal any of their order’s secrets, Zelucan was able to… persuade them to divulge that the affected component is one of the first things which is inspected. Although they were affronted by the very notion that it could be one of their number, they did also concede that were a heretic so inclined, the sabotage of the stabiliser would have been the work of moments, and easily concealed. They estimated a saboteur would have about twenty minutes between the component’s inspection and the governor’s arrival at the shuttle to commit their treason.’

Hanrik held up a hand to interject. ‘Stating the obvious,’ he said, ‘it would also follow that the saboteur would have to have plausible access to the shuttle. In other words–’

‘They would have to be someone that wouldn’t be out of place there,’ said Ashielle. ‘Like Lieutenant Norovika.’ Hanrik gave her that interrogative eyebrow raise again, and she continued. ‘Lieutenant Orvan Norovika – six years in the High Service. Known frequenter of gaming establishments throughout the shipping district. Parents both served as assistants to tech-priests in the arco-maintenance shrines.’

‘So, he has experience with the grain harvesters, which include anti-grav skimmers. He’s a known frequenter of gambling halls, and gambling debts are one of the prime methods of recruiting saboteurs. And no one would have batted an eye seeing a member of the High Service hanging around the governor’s shuttle.’ Hanrik nodded, his face softening for the first time since she’d seen him. ‘Sounds like a good suspect, sister. I assume you have him in custody?’

Ashielle frowned and crossed her arms. ‘I wish. Orvan Norovika was found dead in the gutter in the shipping district two weeks ago. He’d been stripped and robbed.’

Hanrik leaned back, staring out of the window again. His face was different, though. Before, he had stared at the passing facades and people with a slack expression, looking anywhere rather than engaging with her. Now, his eyes were still distant, but she could see the wheels turning behind them. He was deep in thought.

‘So, you think you’ve found your assassin?’ he said. ‘Degenerate gambler whose debts led him to be pressured by your enemies – presumably the Vaneisens – into committing treason is certainly a narrative that would satisfy most magistrates. Without a confirmation, it’s entirely circumstantial, although not unreasonable.’ He turned back, to look her in the eyes. ‘But you’re ignoring the other possibility.’

Ashielle stiffened. She’d been prepared for his experienced eye to see something darker than she’d considered, but a part of her dreaded who he might point the finger at.

‘Norovika was found in a part of the city known for its high crime rate,’ he said, ‘and I assume that crime has spiked there as the population has increased. A lone man being robbed and killed would hardly be out of the question.’ He sighed. ‘You should also consider the sad truth, which is that the technology on Ceocan has never been the best the Imperium has to offer. While the shuttles and security tech available to the governor might be cutting edge on this world, I’ve been to planets where even middle-class merchants command better resources.

‘The Adeptus Mechanicus has never had a great interest in placating the servants of the Imperium on Ceocan,’ he said. ‘Our world is a convenience to them, no more. Suffice it to say that the members of their brotherhood that they send to work planetside are somewhat short of their best and brightest.’

‘You cannot be serious,’ said Ashielle.

‘Of course I’m serious,’ said Hanrik, and Ashielle had little reason to doubt him. ‘I know that it’s painful to consider, but Governor Matkosen’s–’ he paused, ‘father’s death may very well have been precisely what Idonell thinks – an accident.’

‘It seems so awfully convenient, does it not?’ Ashielle said. She could feel the suspension on the carriage attempting to adjust to account for the inclination. The road was rising, which meant they had left the centre of Kostoveim and were nearing the highlands of the capital, the oldest districts where the wealthiest homes were located.

Hanrik hesitated, and nodded. ‘It does, I’ll concede.’ He stared out of the window, and Ashielle couldn’t tell if he was staring at the scenery or lost in thought again. ‘And you suspect the Vaneisens?’

‘They have the most to gain,’ she said. ‘Whether or not they were responsible, they now circle our house like carrion birds.’

‘Was that what your messenger was about?’

She nodded absently. ‘A go-between for Esilia Vaneisen.’

‘Any idea what she wanted?’ Hanrik asked.

Ashielle frowned. She had to remind herself that Hanrik hadn’t spent the last several decades knee-deep in the politics of Ceocan.

‘She had floated the notion of marriage between myself and Tanzeg Vaneisen to father on a number occasions,’ said Ashielle. ‘No doubt she believes that my position, being somewhat precarious, makes marriage to her son a more attractive prospect.’

‘Does it?’

‘Of course not,’ said Ashielle. She shuddered. ‘I can scarcely think of anyone I’d rather be married to less.’

Hanrik smiled for the first time since he’d been home. Ashielle laughed.

‘What is it?’ she asked.

‘Your revulsion,’ he said. ‘I think that’s the most honest reaction I’ve seen from you since before I left. I don’t remember Tanzeg.’

Ashielle shook her head. ‘Esilia’s oldest child,’ she said. ‘Officially he governs the family’s ancestral holdings in waste management.’ On Ceocan, a planet where agriculture was the primary industry, waste management and reclamation was a necessary, and lucrative, profession. ‘In reality, he governs the majority of the family’s criminal enterprises. Illegal usury, smuggling, gambling, unlicensed prostitution – trace any of them back far enough and more often than not the trail ends with someone in Tanzeg Vaneisen’s employ.’

‘Underworld scum,’ said Hanrik. ‘A by-product of any world with a civic government.’

‘If he were just an organising force on the criminal element,’ she said, ‘I might be able to come to an arrangement. But he’s a wanton sadist. He considers himself a master at breaking household servants, training them to difficult tasks with savage punishments. Supposedly he covers his unruly lieutenants in skin irritants and locks them in footlockers with shards of broken glass. The criminal gangs call it “the boo-boo box”.’

‘And the enforcers are not sufficient to the task?’ Hanrik asked.

‘They might be, if they were committed to it,’ Ashielle said. ‘But the wardens are the province of the Grevenate.’

In theory, the mustering and control of the wardens, the enforcers of Ceocan, being given to the Grevenate established a check on the authority of the regent and the coadjutor. In truth, each officer among the wardens was wholly the creature of whichever noble had sponsored their rise through the ranks. And the reins of those nobles were in turn held by the ruling families.

‘So, there are as many among the wardens that owe their fealty to you as there are who answer to the Vaneisens?’

No matter what she might think of Hanrik, he was no fool. Then again, she supposed the politics of Ceocan were likely not too difficult to parse out – the broad strokes, at least.

‘Have you brought the issue before Judge Idonell?’ he asked.

Ashielle paused to consider her words carefully.

‘Not I,’ she said.

‘But father did?’ Hanrik asked. He really was quite quick on the uptake.

‘Yes,’ she said, after giving some consideration to her wording. ‘Judge Idonell’s professional judgement was that the Vaneisens’ enterprises were limited enough in scope to constitute a local matter, rather than a violation of the Lex Imperialis.’

Hanrik nodded, his gaze distant. ‘Not atypical,’ he said. ‘Especially among sole arbitrators in charge of entire worlds or installations. Do you see his position as laxity?’

Ashielle smiled at Hanrik’s dogged refusal to speak ill of the senior arbitrator directly. ‘Not at all,’ she said. ‘I like to see it not as laxity, but efficiency – thus far, father and I have kept the corruption of the Vaneisens from affecting Ceocan’s tithe output. Since that is the only aspect of the planetary management which might affect the broader Imperium, it stands to reason that Judge Idonell’s attention is indeed better spent on the Callistonian. Given the continuous interaction between the various factions on board the facility, there is doubtless much to hold his attention there.’ She hesitated to speak ill of one of her brother’s peers, but also didn’t want to begin the renewal of their relationship by lying to him. ‘I suspect Judge Idonell is a man who values order above all else. So long as I continue to provide that, he will accommodate me to an extent, but I don’t see him putting himself out on my account, nor do I think he would hesitate to remove the governor under a charge of incompetence before the Throne if the political situation ever deteriorated that far.’

The carriage ground to a halt.

‘Which leaves you in a difficult position, I assume.’ Hanrik paused at the carriage door. ‘You perform your duties so well that you cannot get the aid you need.’

Ashielle smiled at his hesitation – conventional etiquette demanded he exit and offer her his hand, but social etiquette also dictated he wait to allow the governor to exit first. She laughed and slipped through the door.

‘For what it’s worth,’ Hanrik said as he stepped to the ground, ‘it’s an excellent capital.’

The sun had sunk below the rainclouds, although not yet below the horizon, allowing a brief moment of unimpeded light before the start of the chill Ceocan night. Throughout the city, the brass cornices and columns of the highest buildings reflected the dwindling light like polished mirrors, casting their red-gold glow onto the streets below. In the final moments of sunset, Ceocan was nearly as bright as midday.

‘It is at that,’ Ashielle said.

3

Ashielle was exhausted.

Not just tired. She’d gone to bed tired before. During the mandatory four years she had done with the Ceocan High Service at her father’s insistence, she’d come to know tiredness intimately. No, this was utter exhaustion. She sat in the huge wingback chair in her father’s bedchamber, too weary even to admonish herself that it was her bedchamber now, unable to summon the energy to even move to the bed.

She’d had her father’s bed, the ancient canopied monstrosity he’d shared with her mother, hauled into storage, and her own slightly-less-ostentatious furniture moved from the heir secundus suite lower in the palace. Some of it would have to be either returned or replaced eventually, but she had to draw a line somewhere. Her duties and daily tasks now revolved around stepping into her father’s skin in so many ways, but the assumption of his private trappings was something she couldn’t bring herself to do. The belongings in the bedchamber had been witness to his most intimate moments; the room had been one of the few places in which he was able to be himself, his mask set aside for a few seconds. The thought of stealing that for herself seemed too painful for her to face, not until the passage of time had been given the chance to dull her pain at least a little bit.

Dinner had been a welcome change from the sorrowful affairs of the day. The meal might have been a disaster had it not been for Drenata. Ashielle had dismissed almost all of the household servants until they could be thoroughly vetted by Zelucan. Zelucan’s people were working as swiftly as they were able, and had managed to clear several of the essential staff. Ashielle had made sure to move a few names up his list, including her personal carriage driver, Cheyster, and Drenata.

Ashielle had no clue how long Drenata had served the family. She remembered the old woman occupying a position of authority in the kitchens as far back as she could recall, and strongly suspected that her father had quietly footed the bill for at least one juvenat treatment for Drenata rather than lose such a skilled artisan. There were other chefs available who could produce larger and more sumptuous foodstuffs with greater presentation, but there was no one in the entire segmentum more capable when it came to making comfort food. Drenata’s skill at the hearth was surpassed only by her uncanny ability to properly remember people’s culinary tastes years or even decades after having met them, sometimes only a single time. Ashielle had been delighted to find jugged gren, a menu choice so stigmatised as peasant food that she could never allow it onto a menu for a formal function, as well as a curious fish stew she couldn’t ever recall having. To her surprise, Hanrik had told her it had always been his favourite as a child.

Hanrik had insisted on asking Drenata to dine with them, in defiance of tradition, but if it made her brother more comfortable, Ashielle approved. The commodore was wise enough not to bring up any suspicions regarding the governor’s death, so there were no major conflicts, but Hanrik had precious little to add to the conversation, save for expressing concern that dismissing so much of her staff might be dangerous for Ashielle. Zelucan assisted Ashielle in alleviating his concerns, laying out their plan for a swift and thorough vetting process. Hitting on an area of shared interest, Commodore Zelucan was finally able to engage him by discussing the investigations of the various staff members. By feigning interest in Hanrik’s expertise, Zelucan was able to draw the arbitrator out, and they managed to pass about an hour or so in pleasantly diverting conversation.

Still, as warm as the meal had been, and as welcome as Drenata had managed to make them all, especially Hanrik, Ashielle had reached the end of her reserves. This was the truly insidious part of death, she mused: for whom it affected most, an event which should have been a time of deep introspection and emotional self-indulgence was reduced to a litany of tedium. As if the endless decisions to be made, the never-ending tirade of false niceties, and the actual minutiae of running an entire planet weren’t enough, she’d found herself dealing with Esilia Vaneisen on top of all of it.

Ashielle groaned as she remembered the conversation with Esilia. As much as she wished she could just surrender to her bed, and let the leaden sleep of total exhaustion claim her, she knew that she needed to appraise Zelucan of the latest development. She lurched to her feet, found a pair of slippers and padded into the night.

There was a profound emptiness to the palace. All her life, Darcarden had been a veritable hive of activity. The halls of the palace had swarmed with servants, cooks, gardeners, menials, scribes, and enforcers there to protect the governor’s life. It had been easy for her to adjust to her father’s demand that she live as if she were always under observation, because for the most part, she was. When Zelucan finished his investigations, the palace would once again be a stellar system of activity, but it would be she that would be the sun at the centre of everyone’s world. Cooks, artists and consorts to provide her comfort; enforcers and the High Service to protect her person; scribes, priests and guildmasters to serve her. They would all rise and fall at her whim, their very lives dependent on her moods and favours.

It was a sobering thought, and against the frightening immensity of that impending reality, she found the emptiness of the palace to be soothing, in its way. The rooms seemed larger, devoid of people. Even the halls seemed like vast, vaulted tombs, silent save for her echoing footsteps. She thought of meandering her path to the outer courses of the palace, cutting through the servants’ quarters to greet them as she passed, but she discarded the notion. For one, the servants’ halls were a place of refuge for them. She had learned during her adolescence that no matter how much she cared for them, the labourers and maids didn’t appreciate her presence: the social divide between them always made them uncomfortable. Secondly, she found the idea of being alone in the palace to be delightfully exhilarating. She had rarely, if ever, been completely alone in her life, and the concept of total isolation filled her with a sense of thrilling dread.

The kitchens were dark, the last of the menials having gone to their rest some time ago. Ashielle had offered to move Zelucan to the formal quarters for the Officer of Reconnaissance, but he had politely asked to maintain his old office, connected by a short servant’s corridor to the kitchens. Drenata had long suspected the commodore of sneaking into her domain for surreptitious snacking during late working sessions, often muttering threats of graphic violence should she ever catch him. The kitchens, like everything under Drenata’s purview, were spotlessly organised, with not a thing lying out of place.

The servant’s door, standing ajar, was out of place. It was a little thing, but neither Drenata nor Commodore Zelucan were the type to leave a door hanging open. In the darkness, Ashielle fumbled along the sink for the first tool she could find with any real heft, and tucked it to her chest. Borrowing a knife or meat tenderiser might seem a little overly paranoid to anyone who saw her, but her father had always taught her not to ignore instincts, especially ones that warned her of danger.

The servant’s corridor was better lit, and Ashielle paused to see what improvised weapon she had selected for her defence. Her blinded hands had picked up one of Drenata’s kitchen knives. Decades old and wickedly sharp. Even in her panic, she had the absurd thought that if she didn’t return it before the morning, the old woman would have words for her that would be equally sharp.

She was surprised to see a servant coming from Zelucan’s quarters. He had his back to her, a small serving cart taking up much of the hall. Embarrassed, Ashielle tucked the purloined knife to her side before the late-night snack-bearer saw it. She cleared her throat softly to draw his attention.

The servant half-turned, then jerked his head back to his task.

‘Sorry, ma’am. I mean, sorry exc’llency.’ He hastily shuffled his cart a little further down the hall to allow her access to the commodore’s office.

She realised as soon as she stepped into the office that Zelucan was dead. There was no blood, and no signs of struggle, but still she knew. Commodore Zelucan lay with his head on his desk, one arm folded beneath his face as though he were merely resting. There was a subtle wrongness, however, a stillness to the scene that raised all immediate senses of alarm. She threw herself backwards, lest she be caught by the same assassin.

Ashielle slammed into the servant in the hall behind her. She heard his surprised grunt, even as the laspistol in his hand went off, missing the intended target of her head and going wide into the room. The heat was positively blistering: no wonder there was no pooled blood. There was no time to waste being surprised: the servant was the assassin. She smashed backwards with one elbow, and was rewarded with a grunt of pain and the sound of a pistol clattering to the stones. He shoved her into the door frame, and it was her turn to grunt in surprise.

‘Good reflexes,’ the killer said. As his voice whispered in her ear, Ashielle realised she’d heard it before. She’d smelled that same clean, soapy scent before as well, a distinct lack-of-scent that finally clicked with the soft, effeminate voice. ‘But you should have just held still. It would have been over quick that way.’ She heard the sliding metallic sound of a weapon being drawn behind her.

‘Lostrovsky,’ she snapped. In the split second the assassin paused at hearing himself identified, she struck. She spun, lashing out with the knife in her hand, slicing a deep line across the assassin’s face. He yelped in pain and surprise, clearly not expecting her to be armed. She pushed past him and tore down the hall.

The Vaneisens’ hitman had pushed his cart back down the corridor, blocking off the way to the kitchens. She spun on her heel and raced down the other hall, not caring what direction she fled in, so long as she fled away from the armed killer behind her.

‘There’s nowhere to go, excellency,’ Lostrovsky said from behind her.

Ashielle ignored the voice and kept running. She could hear him continue, no longer yelling but instead speaking too softly for her to hear. If he was having a conversation, it was over a vox-bead or other hand-portable comm system, despite such systems being illegal for the ordinary citizens on Ceocan. That meant additional assassins; at least one more.

The hallway opened into a small common area, where the cooks and menials could gather together. There were several such rooms throughout the servants’ run of the palace, nearly all adjacent to main rooms so that they could be used as staging areas for banquets and ceremonies. The hall continued away from the gathering place, but Ashielle ignored that in favour of the stone staircase leading up to the main floors. It had been years since she had run through these hallways as a child, but if she remembered correctly, she was in the Manciple’s Den, which abutted the Game Hall. Not the best refuge: the Game Hall had several antique fowling pieces on display between the mounted beasts, but hadn’t held any functional weapons since a Solstice Banquet two and a half centuries prior, when her great uncle Kylidian had shot and killed Denlo Oldemeier in a duel over a game of cards. Still, there was a private study off the Game Hall which would have a vox-unit she could use to call for help. No sooner had she started up the stairs, however, she heard the sound of another voice behind the door at the top.

The door rattled. Ashielle let out an involuntary gasp, and the rattling stopped.

‘Lostrovsky?’ The voice on the other side of the door was muffled, but the speaker had clearly heard her.

She fled back down the stairs, leaping from the edge to the ground. She could hear footsteps coming down the hall. The fireplace was her only refuge now. Counting herself lucky that no one had used the fire for days, Ashielle shoved herself into the chimney space. The passage was narrow, but there was just enough room for her between the hearth and the damper. Fortunately for her, the sweeps had been diligent in their duties before the death of her father, and the few remaining servants had apparently had little use for the Manciple’s Den, and there was only the thinnest build-up of soot above the hearth. She wedged herself in high enough to be hidden from view, and then froze.

She could hear Lostrovsky stalking through the common area. Her face, covered in ash, itched ferociously. Her arms were already throbbing from holding her own weight aloft in the chimney. The ridges where the brick pressed into her sides were beginning to bite, but she didn’t dare move. Even the slightest shift could betray her position, and the thought of being dragged from the wall by her ankles and shot dead, covered in filth and crawling across the floor, was intolerable.

Ashielle could hide, but she didn’t know how long it would take for forces she could trust to get back inside the palace. The Vaneisens couldn’t have turned everyone, or even most of her staff; if they had, they would simply have declared a coup and placed her under arrest. No, an assassination meant that they lacked widespread support. All she had to do was to escape the immediate attack and find help, and she could finally–

Hands grabbed at her legs, and Ashielle kicked out. The grip was like iron, though, and she found herself hauled bodily from the fireplace. She landed hard, stumbling into the side of the hearth, and her knife tumbled from her hand. Determined not to go down without every bit of fight she could muster, Ashielle pushed off the wall and rushed her attacker.

She brought herself up short as she realised it wasn’t Lostrovsky. She recognised Drenata’s hunched shoulders and gnarled hands and froze, her fist raised high.

‘It’s not safe, lady.’ Drenata had always had a knack for understatement. If she was at all concerned that the governor had nearly punched her in the head after being found hiding in a chimney, it didn’t show. The ancient servant turned and pulled her shawl about her. ‘This way. Come quickly.’

‘Out the Butcher’s Gate?’ asked Ashielle, recovering her kitchen knife.

Drenata shook her head. Her voice was like a whisper. ‘They’re out there, governor. Came in that way, killed Lavini’s little grandson on the way in.’

Drenata gestured towards a door with one angry hand. Ashielle realised the old woman was holding a large carving knife, even bigger than her own.

‘Stuffed him in a box hedge, even took his pistol.’

Ashielle shook her head, realising that Drenata was talking about one of the High Service, not an actual child.

The old woman produced her own key and unlocked the door. Behind them, Ashielle could hear someone pounding on the door of the Manciple’s Den. Faster footsteps sounded more distantly in the halls, and this time she was certain they belonged to her would-be assassin.

The hall beyond was pitch black, but Drenata drew a small luminator globe from her pocket.

‘Where are we going?’ Ashielle asked. She looked around for something she could improvise into a weapon, but as far as she could tell they were in a side hall that led to servants’ quarters. As far as she knew, Drenata’s own room was this way.

‘To hide you, governor. Until I can fetch Lord Hanrik, that is.’ Drenata held the luminator out, the knife hidden beneath the folds of her shawl. The way she held it, down and ready, the old maid could deliver a vicious jab to anyone closing in on her. Ashielle shuddered to think how close she had come to being gutted by her own servant without realising it. ‘There’s a coup afoot and I don’t know yet who among the military still keeps your faith.’

Ashielle shook her head. ‘It isn’t a military coup.’

Drenata, ever obedient, stopped and turned to regard the governor.

‘If it was, they would have tried to arrest us all, not have us murdered in our sleep.’

Drenata didn’t ask who was behind the attack, just waited patiently for the governor to explain as much as she wished. Ashielle could have simply issued commands to the elderly maid, but speaking aloud helped her to work through her thoughts. Her servant’s mention of Hanrik had been a good thought, but her brother had chosen to stay at the guest house: unattached from the palace and at the edge of the property. By the time someone fetched him and returned, the assassins would likely be gone, or else successful in their task.

‘The little fiend who killed Commodore Zelucan is one of Esilia’s creatures,’ she said. ‘He was in disguise, but he’s definitely working for the Vaneisens. I’m sure they’ve got some clever story waiting to explain my gruesome death, of course. He’s not alone, either. There’s at least two of them, so there’s no telling how many avenues of escape they’ve–’

She grimaced in the darkness, suddenly furious with herself. Escape! The escape tunnels. She knew why the thought hadn’t occurred to her – she had always been forbidden to go into them while her father was governor, and she had only had access to them for a short time. Still, it was something she should have thought of.

‘I confess I don’t remember the layout of these particular halls,’ Ashielle said, peering around a door jamb into a small bedchamber. ‘Can we get to the Draper’s Hall from here? The corridor near there has a side room that father always said led to an escape tunnel.’ She had never been in the tunnel, but if it was to be of any use, an escape tunnel had to remain of the utmost secrecy, so she understood Ruprekt’s insistence that no one but himself be allowed inside.

Drenata, ever faithful to her liege, led the way through the darkness. She paused at each intersection, peering around corners with furtive glances swift and subtle enough to avoid the notice of even the most keen-eyed observer, gesturing for her lady to follow when the route was clear or to backtrack if the old woman saw or heard another figure moving. Ashielle suspected they would have made better time if she’d had her own key; several times they were forced to divert around a quicker route because Drenata’s own key wouldn’t open a locked door. Nevertheless, the aged maid was true to her task, and Ashielle soon recognised the smell of sour hops from the Draper’s Hall.

Similar in size and purpose to the Manciple’s Den, the Draper’s Hall had seen more recent use: the coals in the fireplace were still glowing, and there was a small scattering of empty wine bottles and dirty plates on the stools around the room. Drenata tutted in horror at the mess, ignoring their peril for a moment to mumble something about lazy footmen, accompanied by a menacing waggle of her knife.

Once in the side corridor, Ashielle found what she was looking for easily. The door looked just like another servant’s door. The door handle, of course, went nowhere. Instead, it pulled open like a hinged cabinet to reveal a small genecode pad and screen. Ashielle silently hoped that the biolock’s machine-spirit wasn’t feeling obstinately loyal to her father, and pressed her thumb to the pad.

After a moment of spine-chilling suspense, the light flashed green. Ashielle breathed a sigh of relief. Then the magnetic locks surrounding the door disengaged with a deep, reverberating thump. She winced, and listened to hear if one of the searchers had heard the door. After a moment, she picked up the sounds of footfalls approaching rapidly.

‘Time to run, lady.’ Drenata squared her shoulders and stood between Ashielle and the direction of the approaching footsteps.

‘Come with me,’ Ashielle said.

‘No, lady.’ Her servant shook her head. ‘My old knees shan’t take any more running. So, go now before they catch up.’ She pointed emphatically with her knife, forcing Ashielle to step backwards. She realised her mistake, realised she’d stepped through the door, but too late to stop Drenata from slamming it closed. The magnetic locks slammed home with a resounding boom, even louder in the confines of the tunnel on the other side.

Ashielle cursed in language that would have appalled her father, although Drenata would have approved. If the old lady was smart, she would follow her original plan and find somewhere to hide. She could feel a panel on her side of the door, but it didn’t respond to her touch.

The tunnel was short, and opened not into an escape route, but a vault. The walls were lined with tables, each stacked with a profusion of junk in no particular order. Bits of art were scattered through the chamber along with stacked furniture, piled books and folded uniforms. Luminators in the wall came on automatically, the machine-spirits dutifully responding to her presence. She had no idea such a vault had even been here, but there was no time for satisfying curiosity. She immediately began searching for either a weapon or another way out.

The room seemed to be stocked with items of no particular importance, or even value. She recognised a portrait leaning against one wall as being of General Terresant, executed for heresy a few centuries prior. She saw a few pieces of jewellery she remembered from her childhood as being gifts from a rogue trader, gifts that her father had confiscated after a number of the trader’s other buyers had been sanctioned for possessing xenos artefacts.

A vault of heresy, then. Nothing too egregious, she’d wager, but the sort of things a planetary governor might need to hang on to in case the Inquisition ever came calling with probing questions about past events. At the same time, not the sorts of things one wanted to display openly. She found a lasgun with an Astra Militarum uniform from an unrecognised regiment, but the power pack was cold and dead.

‘Assassins! Invaders!’

The piercing shriek cut through the gloom, audible even through the thick stone between her and the hall. Ashielle recognised Drenata’s voice, but she had never in her life heard the woman so loud. She heard faint noises of a scuffle, followed by a loud bang against the door. She froze, wondering if they had already heard her, or if she had yet gone undetected. She could hear muffled voices in the hallway, but only make out part of their conversation.

‘We knew there was a possibility of tunnels.’

‘I can get through this, my lord. If I may suggest, a departure? The entire endeavour would be for nothing if the wardens or the High Service were to find you here when they arrive.’

She recognised Lostrovsky’s voice. His unseen companion said something she couldn’t make out.

‘I can escape covertly, my lord, although not if I’m accompanied by another.’

The other voice grumbled something, and she could hear them depart. After a moment, she heard the faint sound of beeping beyond the door, and her blood ran cold. Lostrovsky was assaulting the genecode pad itself to circumvent the lock! His wickedness had already been evident, but that he was skilled not only as an assassin, but in the ways of perverting the works of the Adeptus Mechanicus? Tantamount to sorcery.

Ashielle turned back to ransacking the room. There had to be something. She knocked books and scrolls to the ground in her haste, certain there had to be some method of salvation hidden in the room. Finally, she knocked aside a stack of handbills (over a century old, advertising a play titled The Last Revel of X’amot by Reimgold of Valgaast) and saw her rescue: a small door set in the corner. The door was tiny, and easily overlooked. It barely came up to her chest, and was no more than half a yard wide. In no place to be picky, Ashielle threw her weight into the table blocking the door. She shifted it just enough to access the portal. The tiny door had no lock, only a corroded metal knob that she feared would snap under the lightest pressure. To her great relief, the mechanism stood true, and slid free easily. The door still refused to open. She checked the hinges, confirming it should swing inwards rather than out towards her, and began putting gentle pressure on the door.

Behind her, the magnetic locks disengaged with a scream of protest. Desperate, Ashielle threw her shoulder into the door. It squealed, and shifted just a little. The door from the hallway boomed open behind her, and she threw herself onto the escape hatch again. This time, it fell open with a groan and a small shower of rust. She heard the sound of a laspistol firing behind her, and slammed the door shut, trusting its heavy weight to protect her against gunfire. A bang and a bloom of heat on the metal proved her trust to be well-founded.

She pressed her shoulders into the door, noticing as she did so a rusty bolt mechanism. She slid the bolt home just in time to see the door rattle in its frame.

‘The longer you make me chase you, the more painful this is going to be,’ he said. Here, finally, the façade dropped, and she could hear the real Lostrovsky. His voice rasped, the softness and sophistication gone. Here was a killer who had clawed his way from the gutter to the halls of power. His true voice revealed him for what he was: a predatory animal draped in the guise of a man. Ashielle refused to engage.

The hallway beyond the door was little more than a landing, with a narrow stone staircase beyond that, curling down into darkness. The air was heavy with the smell of moisture and rotten stone. She held her luminator out, but the light it cast was swallowed up by the immense darkness. The door behind her rattled again, and she took a first trepidatious step on the staircase. The stone neither crumbled nor slipped, and she continued on.

The staircase was narrow, the walls close enough to brush her shoulders, and barely taller than she was. This was not the sweeping, vaulted architecture of the Imperium with its soaring, complex construction that drew the eye upward to reflect on the divine. This was something far older. The dry fitted stones and narrow spaces spoke to Old Ceoc construction, from the time when the Empire of Mankind had forgotten about their planet. There were alcoves cut into the walls at shoulder height, filled with moss and cobwebs. In times long past, they would have held flickering candles to illuminate the passage, and the skulls of trespassers, their brows engraved with scrimshawed warnings to any who would repeat their folly.

The air turned cool quicker than she would have expected, the warmth of the palace soon left behind. Beads of moisture ran down the walls this far down. Beneath her feet, the path had become less sure than it had originally been. She could feel the damp squish of moss, and the occasional shift where the surface of the stone had been eaten into sand. Her own footfalls were swallowed up by the darkness.

Sites of Old Ceoc civilisation were rare. The Ceoc culture that had existed before Reunification had shunned the Imperial Creed, and was considered heretical. Even possession of Old Ceoc artefacts was a crime. At irregular intervals of a century or century and a half, some small ruin of Ceoc culture would be found: spiralling pre-gothic carvings in a weathered sandstone cave, vine-shrouded foundations of a long-vanished stone building, or a piled stone cairn atop a remote seaside cliff. These had inevitably set off a flurry of activity, with the Administratum removing the artefacts of the forgotten past and the governor relocating anyone whose property had contained the redacted history.

She padded down the staircase, listening to the echoes of distant, squeaking rodents, and wondered how this site had gone unnoticed for so long. She couldn’t have been the first governor to open the little door. The mechanism might have stuck, but it had moved too smoothly to have gone unused since before the Matkosen ascension. If her father hadn’t used the door, her grandfather certainly had. What was the original purpose of this hidden place? And why had Ruprekt felt the need to lie to her about it?

The staircase ended, and Ashielle groaned. The hallway in front of her branched and, holding her illuminator aloft, she could see the passage in either direction curving away, further branches barely visible in the gloom, moisture beading along their mossy walls.

A damned maze. Of course. The Old Ceocs had loved their mazes. They had built their cities and their dwellings like labyrinths, and constructed elaborate puzzle paths outside their largest homes. The capital ran much more sensibly, in a defined, grid-like pattern based around large avenues running east to west. The tradition had survived in part, however, and most of the nobles kept at least a small maze on their property to show (or to pretend to show) a connection to the planet’s past. Many of the oldest cities on the planet were still laid out in the branching, spiralling patterns her forebears had preferred before the Imperium came.

Far away, Ashielle heard a metallic shriek. Her heart leaped. Lostrovsky had figured out a way to force the little door, or soon would. Swallowing her fear, and forcing herself to maintain a calm footing rather than race into the darkness, she turned to her right.

Fortunately for her, after a harrowing Reunification Day ball that had left her crying in the grounds’ maze as a child, Geordan had showed her the trick of defeating virtually any maze with an external entry and exit.

She put her hand on the right wall and began walking. She passed the first branch, keeping her unbroken contact with the wall. The stone was damp, rough. She trailed her fingers along the wall as lightly as possibly, knowing that Lostrovsky would be able to track her if she left trails in the moss and mould that grew there. The path was slick now, the stone uneven and worn by the ministrations of the centuries. She was too far to turn back now, and she kept her course, headlong into the darkness.

The wall curved inward, and she followed it. Ashielle imagined she could hear Lostrovsky in the maze with her, and realising how it might give her away, she stashed her luminator in her pocket. She took each step carefully, reaching out with a tentative toe tap before committing her weight to the irregular floor. The wall shifted and turned, but she kept to her course. Geordan’s trick might take some time, depending on the layout of the maze, but it was infallible, and she had to trust it.

That assumed, of course, the maze was wholly natural. Like the population at large, the Imperium intended her to be entirely ignorant of the practices of heretics. Like most with her wealth and station, of course, she knew more than she was supposed to. Whispered legends among the wealthy and the learned hinted that the ancient Ceoc peoples might have dabbled with warp sorcery before the coming of the aquila. Could her father, her entire family, have conspired to keep a haven of such sorcery secret from the world they governed?

Just as she was beginning to despair, convinced she had found a dark and twisted labyrinth, the solution of which would open a portal to some nether hellscape, she came out of the maze tunnel and into an open room.

The ground beneath her feet looked uneven, like natural stone. Ashielle paused, scanning the floor, and realised she couldn’t see any seams in the masonry. For all she knew, at some point the ground had transitioned to smooth stone. Of far more interest were the trophy racks.

She had seen illustrations of Old Ceoc trophy displays, had even seen a recreation in the museum in Pennenvost, but had never thought she would see an authentic one, much less several. Standing waist high, the wooden rails served as a set of primitive shelves, which could be used to display bones or weapons from fallen enemies. They were believed to have been placed on borders to warn away attackers. She’d never heard of them being buried like this, as though they were some form of grave goods. The ones in front of her had a few scraps of what might have once been banners or pennants, or could just as easily have been enemy scalps – the degradation was too great to tell. Several weapons that looked like they were fashioned from bones also decorated the trophy racks.

Her circumstances precluded any kind of detailed examination of the artefacts. The bone weapons looked worn and dulled by the centuries, and she doubted any of them would have survived even a cursory swing. She tapped an experimental finger to a curving sickle (she shuddered to think what sort of beast was large enough to produce a bone so big it could be carved into such a weapon) and was unsurprised to find it brittle to her fingertip.

The trophy racks were arranged in the room to impede progress through it, but she threaded her way through easily enough. Stacked against one wall was a rotting skeleton, although the flesh and whatever clothing it had been wearing were so far gone there was no way to tell if it had been laid to rest here or entombed by some past governor. She hoped the former.

The tunnel opened into another worked room. The room may very well have been a natural formation when the ancient architects had begun their work on it, but it had clearly been modified by the touch of human hands. Limestone stalagnates dotted the room irregularly, each carved by master artisans into whirling columns of fire. The columns were hollow, the bases blackened. The stone ‘flames’ wrapped over and under one another, turning each stalagnate into a massive lantern that could be lit from within. Bas reliefs climbed the walls, framing a huge stone archway.

To her surprise, the large arch led nowhere. It was merely a ring of stone set into the wall, with the floor sloping up to the bottom portion of its curve, as though a pedestrian could walk right through it. In the centre, however, was a recess of perhaps three feet, then nothing but solid stone. She tapped her fingers along it, trying to see if there was a catch or seam. The interior seemed to be nothing but natural stone, pitted by water damage. The outer ring was a different story. There was trailing moss which had grown into the cracks, but the structure of it appeared completely undamaged. It was made of some material altogether different to the limestone around it. The ring looked pale beneath her luminator, and when she touched her fingers to it, it was painfully cold. She snatched her hand back, and swore that the spots of the stone where she had touched were brighter, as if they had retained some of the warmth they had stolen from her.

All along the length of the stone ring were strange carvings she couldn’t quite place. They were a strange combination of simple geometric shapes and jagged lines, and put her in mind of primitive pictograms, although they conformed to no human alphabet she knew of.

The phrase ‘no human alphabet’ leapt out, highlighting itself in her mind, and she turned away from the wall carving. She felt an itch between her shoulder blades, as if some unseen eyes were following her. Far away in the darkness, she heard the scream of the tormented latch finally giving way. The arch was no longer relevant; she needed to find a way out immediately.

The large room was covered in stonework showing the primitive deities and myths of the Old Ceoc, but there were no exits. There were no alcoves, no hiding places. After all her running, she was trapped. She tightened her grip on the kitchen blade, and steeled herself against the rising despair. Maybe she could still conceal herself, lie in wait, ambush Lostrovsky.

Ashielle lifted the luminator in front of the archway, checking to see if there was a place she could hide within the alcove. As she peered at the corners of the alcove, she spied something she hadn’t seen the first time, wedged into a corner. She lifted her luminator, and stifled a scream.

Wedged in the edge of the space behind the stone ring was a corpse. The body in the arch was far better preserved than the bundle of rags and bones in the trophy room. The cadaver’s sex was indeterminate, but it had evidently mustered the composure to die with dignity, for its emaciated form was hunched into a crouch, its back to the wall. Dried, blackened skin stretched taught over knobby bone. She had never seen a creature so gaunt and withered.

Then it opened its eyes.

She would have screamed, if her mouth had been capable of sound. The eyes glowed red, like dying embers in a neglected campfire. Their destructive power was long past, banked almost to the point of obscurity, but promised danger to the unwary.

Impossibly, the thing stood. Its bones should have creaked with the weight of ages, its skin should have cracked and flaked away, but somehow it moved as part of her knew it always had: all sinuous undulation and oily grace.

‘Abomination,’ she whispered. She stood frozen, unable to accept what she was seeing. She knew she should run, strike out, do something, but all her training and discipline failed in that moment. She was like a game animal, frozen in terror as the baying of hounds closed in around her. How had such a thing come to be beneath the palace? Surely her father couldn’t have known about this… horror.

‘No.’ The voice didn’t seem to be speech, not quite. It echoed in her ears, seeming to come from everywhere at once, as though the creature was speaking through the darkness itself. It reached out for her, and she flinched, but its hand stopped short at the threshold of the alcove. The crystals set into the wall glowed dimly.

‘What… what are you?’ she demanded. The question came as a matter of instinct, her mind compelling her to talk her way out of a situation she surely could not fight. Her hands were shaking with terror, and she could hear a quake in her voice that repulsed her.

‘Your kind had many names for mine, once.’ The thing stood tall in front of her. She knew, in the animal part of her mind, that she should run. There was nowhere to go, though, and she knew that just as surely.

With no other option, she met the creature’s stare with one of her own. There was a tension to the monster, a primal tightness that reminded her of beasts she had seen caged. No, not caged. Leashed. The thing appeared to be standing straight, but it was straining, leaning forward, unable to move past the edge of the stone ring.

‘You’re trapped,’ she said. The realisation brought the tiniest bit of reassurance. The thing was dangerous, alien even, anathema to mankind, but the knowledge that it was restrained allowed her higher reason to come creeping back, abating the paralysing fear enough for her to function.

‘Yes.’

From the darkness, she could hear Lostrovsky’s footfalls splashing into the puddles at the base of the staircase, and a profane string of curses as he, too, saw the maze he must navigate.

‘Is there another way out of here?’ she whispered. She hardly expected a reasoned reply, but the situation was desperate.

‘Not any more,’ the creature said. The imprisoned thing did not mimic her hushed tone. She prayed that Lostrovsky couldn’t hear the sibilant hissing of the shadows. It stared at the knife in her hand, then back through the darkness over her shoulder, as if it could see through the shadow and through the stone itself. It looked back at her. ‘The other comes.’ There was no threat in its words, merely a statement of bare fact.

Ashielle could hear Lostrovsky cursing and shuffling in the maze. As cunning a beast as he was, apparently the labyrinth was more of a challenge for him than it had been for her. She searched the room again, ignoring the creature behind her. There was no place to hide. No alcoves, no corners. She couldn’t duck behind one of the stalagnates, even. They were too thin, and carved through with so many openings that the assassin would see her in an instant.

‘Do you need me to stop him?’

She turned back towards the imprisoned thing. It stood there, staring at her. Limp strands of white hair clung to it like trailing ferns.

‘What did you say?’ she asked. She recoiled as the creature reached a hand out again, and this time she could see the runes on the pale stone ring throb with pale energy.

‘I still give honour to the ancient pacts,’ the creature said.

‘The ancient pacts?’ She looked at the room again, seeing it with fresh eyes. This was no shrine to the worship of foulness. It was a cage, built by the Old Ceoc rulers. An oubliette. ‘What pact is that?’ she asked. ‘What do you get for your service?’ In business, politics, or foulest sorcery, nothing came for free.

‘Flesh and blood,’ it said. ‘The key to all great endeavours.’ It ran one hand along the wall of its prison, as close as it could get to the stone ring. ‘In times long past, each new ruler to inherit the mantle of the ancient pact would anoint their gate with a sacrifice.’

Ashielle scowled in contempt. The very notion was appalling. There could be no further discourse. Living sacrifice was the mark of the most blatant heresy. Only the Master of Mankind was revered enough to take the souls of humanity.

‘I have no one to sacrifice to you,’ she said, ‘nor would I be inclined to do so even if I had.’

In the darkness, its face split wide, revealing a grin of tiny sharpened teeth that shone impossibly white.

‘You misunderstand,’ said the thing. ‘The pact is sealed with a token offering of your own blood and flesh.’

Through the darkness, she heard the electric flash of a lasgun firing, and the clatter of falling bones. Lostrovsky had navigated the maze. She looked down at the knife in her hand.

She was aghast. Was she really contemplating such a thing? To unleash a warp-tainted monster on her enemies, in defiance of all that was holy? It was heresy to even think of such a thing, let alone to actually do it. To compound that, there was no surety the creature would be held to its word.

She saw Lostrovsky’s luminator stabbing through the darkness, and knew she had no choice. Trying to fight Lostrovsky would be suicide. Dying alone, forgotten in this oubliette, would accomplish nothing but the delivery of her own planet into the depraved hands of the Vaneisens.

She put one hand on the wall, her fingers splayed out, and steeled herself. She’d never suffered any truly grievous injury before, and her hands shook at the thought of mutilating herself. There could be no room for doubt, though. Her father, her grandfather, the line of governors stretching back millennia wouldn’t have so carefully concealed and maintained a tool that didn’t serve a purpose. That couldn’t be controlled.

Ashielle shut out the drawn hissing sounds from within the ring, the wooden clattering as Lostrovsky picked his way through the trophy racks, and the hammering of her own terrified heartbeat. She placed the knife carefully at the lowest joint of her index finger, took a deep breath, and threw her weight onto it.

The pain was unbelievable. Agony like nothing she had ever encountered in her life lanced through her hand like a cold sheet. She reeled, feeling her vision fading, and forced herself not to succumb to shock. She looked down, and nearly fainted when she saw her finger, severed less than halfway through. Blood was gushing down her hand. She could see little yellow fat deposits glistening in the wound. With a desperate surge of adrenaline, she slammed the butcher knife down and finished the job.

‘The ring,’ the creature hissed. Its voice was thin and high. She slapped her hand onto the pale stone ring. The cold shock snapped her back, numbing her arm from her mutilated finger to the elbow.

Ashielle saw the blood soak into the ring. She heard the hiss as the runes around its length flared to life. She saw the circle of light cross over her and the stone ring, as Lostrovsky came into the room. She heard his cry, and tried to turn, waiting for the shot that never came.

There was the sensation of motion, but no sound, no rushing of wind. Just an icy chill that she could feel in her bones, and the feeling of the creature from the cell surging past her. Lostrovsky’s pistol flashed, but hit nothing save shadows. The assassin lurched to the side as if struck, and his luminator fell away, shattering on the stone floor. The only light was the muzzle flare of Lostrovsky’s laspistol, as the assassin fought desperately for his life, capturing the scene in a series of snapshots.

Flash: she saw Lostrovsky backed against an alcove wall, the creature stalking him, crouched and feral.

Flash: the creature in mid-leap, Lostrovsky trying to retreat, his back already against the stone wall.

Flash: the monster on top of Lostrovsky, holding the assassin’s arm out by the wrist, preventing the pistol from being brought to bear, its mouth opened wide to reveal rows of identical, tiny, triangular teeth.

Ashielle lowered her shoulder and rushed out of the dungeon. There was no way to see, no light at all. She could hear Lostrovsky’s screams, undercut by wet gurgles and the thick, wet sound of tearing meat. One shoulder against the wall, she stumbled through the darkness, blind and helpless. She screamed again. She screamed in pain, she screamed for help, but mostly, she screamed to try to drown out the noises behind her.

But no matter how loud she screamed, she could still hear them.

4

The Basilica Grevenator always made Ostap feel small and insignificant. Then again, it was meant to do so. The architect had intended for visitors called before the Grevenate to be reminded of their insignificance, and to be struck immediately with a respect for the scope of the body they stood before.

Guests, those called to give testimony, or other officials of the planetary government were seated within the Occurriam, the open section of the grand meeting room which sat below even the ground level. Wealthy merchants, generals, foreign traders, all were expected to descend the two steps into the Occurriam to acknowledge their obeisance to the governing body of Ceocan. Unless they were being called for criminal testimony, those in the Occurriam were still furnished with elegantly padded chairs and functional mantiswood desks, to show that the resources and generosity of the Grevenate extended even to the lowest citizens allowed in their presence.

The rectangular perimeter of the ground level was seated with alcoves for the greves. Each greve occupied their own large area, furnished with desks topped by white-veined marble that rested on legs shaped like curled raptors’ talons. Each alcove was decorated in rich fabrics that showed the family colours of the greve who was stationed there. Between each alcove, huge columns, carved from polished black basalt supported by steel cores, rose from the pure white marble floors to support the level above. Each column was crowned by a gold aquila, its wings stretched to either side, as though bearing the weight of the next level on their mighty pinions.

The second level was open, ringing the same perimeter as the first, so that the langreves who presided there could look down upon those below them. The langreves were fewer in number than the greves, and so their alcoves were much larger. Their desks bore signets of their house arms, each carved from a single large piece of precious material such as silver, jade or crystal. Amplifiers in their alcoves allowed their words to be broadcast in booming volume to those below them. The aquilas which perched atop the columns of the second floor were larger and more fierce than those of the greves, with barbed talons and fearsome screeching faces.

The third floor, the domain of the margreves, was more impressive yet. Below each alcove hung a banner depicting the arms of their house. The arms on the titanic desks of the margreves were intricate embellishments of their usual family crests. The aquilas atop the third tier columns were the biggest yet, clutching clusters of ripe fruit and bundles of broken swords in their fierce claws. Their alcoves were more sizeable still than those of the langreves, as large as small amphitheatres. Even with the massive size of their alcoves, the smaller number of margreves left space between their seats of power, which contained enormous marble tablets to bridge the gap. Covered in sculptures in high relief, they showed the glorious servants of the God-Emperor of Mankind triumphing over His many enemies.

The dome of the Basilica Grevenator yawned above the tier of the margreves. Pendentives rose from the rectangular walls to support the circular walls of the dome. Low relief images sculpted into the pendentives showed a line of forms, each depicting one of the militant forces in service to Him upon the Throne. A sister of the Adepta Sororitas, a soldier of the Astra Militarum, a pilot of the Aeronautica Imperialis – each had their place in the line with the Adeptus Arbites, the Adeptus Astartes, and others Ostap couldn’t name, all staring down in judgement and readiness at the assembly below. Above them, the great dome stretched, covered in a vast fresco of Holy Terra as seen in transit across its home star. The great sphere, painted so as to appear to be curving out towards the viewers beneath, had been painstakingly rendered in vibrant shades of blue and green, a reminder of the life that had once thrived there before growing and scattering across the galaxy. Golden beams, decorated with hammered leaf and meant to represent the glittering light of Sol, arched down from the ceiling to meet the pendentives.

It was a building that meant to send a message: to remind those who did not belong that they were insignificant, and to remind those who trod its halls that they were mortal, merely tiny threads in a tapestry larger than any of them. It was an august structure meant to enforce, by its very atmosphere, mindfulness and gravitas for the important proceedings which took place within.

At the moment, though, it was in the grip of madness.

‘A complete annihilation!’ bellowed Langreve Oldemeier. ‘We stand upon the cusp of an utter destruction of the ruling line!’

The assembled ruling nobles were in turmoil, yelling to be heard over one another, breaking into side squabbles and ignoring Trentshat’s Tenets of Decorum entirely. The terrifying sight of the Grevenate occupying their alcoves was a useful one for cowing witnesses and guests into submission, but when the members met without outsiders present, they used the closer quarters of the Occurriam, where they could speak, or scream, face-to-face.

‘The line of succession remains clear.’ Greve Prytsak pounded his desk to be heard over the din. ‘And Lord Governor Ashielle remains alive and healthy! This very meeting borders on treason!’

A robust man, his was one of the youngest houses, whose business was seated firmly in the service industry, namely orvox herding. Although his house was regarded as essentially an adjunct of the Matkosens, since their industry was entirely subservient to that of the governing family’s, Grigor Prytsak was more than willing to use his beefy frame and booming voice to command the respect that his elitist peers might be reluctant to grant him based on his title alone.

‘I would remind Greve Prytsak that ensuring the safe succession of the lord governor’s office is within the demesne of the Grevenate.’ Ireina Vaneisen smiled sweetly. ‘A fact the more experienced members of this body are well aware of.’

A titter of laughter swept through the crowd of lords and ministers. The Vaneisen daughter’s mockery brought a moment of peace to the proceedings, which she was quick to capitalise upon.

‘There is no thought of treason here,’ she said. ‘The collected company here thinks only to safeguard the security of the planetary government.’

Although, technically speaking, Ireina was not the head of her house, neither was Ostap. Conducting the work involved in running an entire noble family, and the commercial concerns that had seen the family elevated in the first place, as well as participating in the planetary governance was an unreasonable expectation for many of the family heads. The members of the Grevenate were therefore empowered to name a minister to sit in their place and speak with their voice. As Vicereine, Esilia Vaneisen was entitled to a margreve’s seat, and usually delegated that seat to her daughter Ireina.

Bearing the honour of that delegated responsibility was something Ostrap and Ireina had in common. The only thing, he hoped. Ostap’s own family, dominant in the cart and carriage trade, were located on Ceocan’s smallest continent, far from Kostoveim. His father, Greve Ollan Fomynko, had little interest in the politics of the capital. Like more than a few of the lesser greves, he considered the position of so little importance that he hadn’t even bothered to send his eldest child. Ostap was the third Fomynko child, and the distant capital had been a banishment.

Greve Fomynko wasn’t alone in his feelings. In the Grevenate, the vote of each noble was weighted by the tier they occupied. For the base greves of the lowest tier, there was often a feeling of having little real voice in the chamber.

‘Is Lord Governor Matkosen truly well?’ asked Tianesh Bruisell. The elderly matriarch rarely participated when the Grevenate descended into screaming matches, preferring to wait until things had quieted before making her opinions known. ‘We have been given word that she has survived, but has she deigned to make a public appearance since the attempt on her life?’

Ostap bristled. Margreve Bruisell was a frequent critic of the palace, and could always be counted on to support the coadjutor. In the week since someone had attacked Ashielle Matkosen, Tianesh had lent her support to any argument that implied the governor was too unwell to lead.

Which was by no means a new development. Before the assassination attempt, the lords loyal to the Vaneisens had tried to undermine Ashielle’s autonomy by suggesting that without an heir she was unfit to govern. Propositions had included passing resolutions to require her to choose a partner, or naming the coadjutor heir to the throne temporarily until such time as Ashielle had produced a child. None had got past the point of opening arguments, but the fact that the lords who counted themselves as Vaneisen allies had been emboldened enough to even discuss such matters spoke to how much fear was running through the Basilica Grevenator following the death of Ruprekt and Geordan Matkosen.

Ostap Fomynko had never counted himself among the Vaneisen allies, nor among the more numerous greves whose loyalties shifted with the winds, in accordance with whatever benefited them most at the time. Very early in his career, he had made the mistake of using his position as his father’s minister to edge in some legislation which benefited his family, and authorised the sale of carriages to a stone shipping concern to replace their horse-drawn wagon teams, the animals and carts of which had been in a state of serious decrepitude. Unknown to him, those wagon teams had been supplied by Tanzeg Vaneisen. The drivers who had attempted to deliver the Fomynko carriage fleet had met with disaster, waylaid on their journey and killed to the man, the carriages looted and burned. It was a wrong that Ostap had not forgotten, and he had spent every day in the Grevenate since then dedicated to spoiling the works of the Vaneisens and anyone beholden to them. It had earned him few friends, but those families loyal to the Matkosens had noticed his zeal, and his family’s fortunes had increased as a result. The Matkosens in particular had, after the first few years of his service, replaced their entire carriage fleet with Fomynko models, a service that had only increased his loyalty to them.

‘She isn’t required to,’ Ostap said. Now that the chamber had returned to something approaching normalcy, he could be heard. His arguments were often overshadowed by the louder, more boisterous lords and ministers around him, just as he was usually overshadowed in life. Ostap was a man of small stature and small presence. He had a keen mind for details, and was quite skilled as an administrator, but he lacked the charisma of the leaders he was surrounded by. He had long ago given up trying to cultivate a bold or magnetic appearance, and now merely went about his business in the conservative robes of a professional clerk. He’d cropped his hair short and no longer neglected the crystal spectacles he required to see anything up close. But if he had got their attention for a moment, he was going to use it.

‘Group Captain Barrin, acting head of the High Service, has testified that she is alive and on the mend. Her official statement of the attack, sealed with her own signet and delivered in her handwriting, has been seen by every member of this body.’ Ostap stood, feeling his anger rise. How dare they? ‘She fought off her attacker by hand, and was grievously wounded in the process, yet still manages to answer our missives, still manages to authorise the shipments to the Callistonian Haven. In one night, she shed more blood for the government of this world than most of the members of this assembly.’

There was a roar of outrage, but he raised his voice, fury giving him an edge that he usually lacked.

‘The lord governor has endured more personal tragedy in a single month than anyone here. She has lost her lord governor and father, her beloved sibling, and several of her most trusted personal servants.’ Ostap pointed emphatically skyward. ‘And yet,’ he yelled, ‘she continues to serve! How shameful would this body be if we look upon such strength and question her fitness?’

The yelling began again as he sat, with some lords cursing him and others echoing his words. Ostap could barely even make out individual arguments. He could see the faces of lords like Tianesh Bruisell, Uri Oldemeier and Lagaret Gavozny, though. The faces of the staunch Vaneisen supporters were pinched and angry, mouths clenched in silence. Their votes weighed more heavily in the chambers of the Grevenate, but not so heavily that they could overcome the mass of lower-tier greves, and those greves were energised, having seen their lord governor rise triumphant from disaster. They would not turn on her.

At least, Ostap reflected, not for now.

Tanzeg held one hand out. A bustling servant wiped the smear of vitiberry paste from the cuff of his dining robe. Returning his hand to his data-slate, he flipped through the news idly.

‘The Grevenate is rallying behind her,’ said Esilia. She folded her newsprint and dropped it to the table. With the matriarch as coadjutor, the Vaneisens were more than capable of receiving sector news, at least that which was available to the astropaths aboard the Callistonian. What constituted news to the general plebian public of Ceocan, however, was still distributed by primitive folded newssheets.

Tanzeg never bothered to read them. There was rarely anything of importance there. If there was, he certainly already knew about it some time before the sheet printers had got hold of the rumours. Not that he needed briefing by his contacts in order to know all about how the lesser greves had rallied, eager to show their support for their liege in the two weeks since the failed attempt on Ashielle Matkosen’s life.

‘Nothing boosts the public’s confidence in a ruler like seeing them survive an assassination attempt,’ said Ireina. Esilia gave her younger child a wan smile, and Ireina wriggled like a puppy that had been told that indeed, it was the good girl.

Tanzeg studied the freshly cleaned cuff. The vitiberry paste had better not stain the rich fabric. He glanced up to make a note of which serving girl had wiped the glob away. If the robe didn’t clean properly, he intended to have her whipped each time it came back from the cleaner. Acutely aware of his mother’s cold fury, he finally looked away from his wrist. The two women stared at him over the breakfast table.

Esilia didn’t even have a plate in front of her. He didn’t know why she bothered taking breakfast with them any more; she scarcely ate a thing. Like the truly elderly, she seemed to subsist on nothing but boiled oats and spite. He’d long since outgrown any expectations of her dying of natural causes before his second century, and resigned himself to inheriting his family’s fortunes in a few decades, if at all. There were still plenty of diversions to be had in the meantime.

Until she expired, of course, Esilia still insisted on her children dining with her regularly, preferably over an early morning meal in the Solaria Atrium so she could fill them in on their roles in whatever her latest conspiracy happened to be.

He had long thought that their dining atrium matched his mother’s temperament perfectly. The ceiling, open to the sky, and the delicate paintings on the walls and supporting columns, surrounded them with constant reminders of their own wealth and good taste. The atrium was at the centre of their manor, however, surrounded by the upper floors on all sides, impervious to espionage or casual observation. The perfect place for the planning of subterfuge. Tanzeg loathed the Solaria Atrium. It had been built by their grandfather, a paltry imitation of a larger and more elegant atrium in the Matkosens’ summer home in Trenkovi Bay. Faizal Vaneisen had intended to prove that anything the Matkosens could accomplish, he could as well, but to Tanzeg’s eyes it was merely a cheap copy.

‘So?’ Tanzeg, rolling his eyes at Ireina. ‘What of it?’

Most nobles preferred to have children who were as insidious as they were, to serve as willing partners in their machinations. Others chose instead to raise the most vapid, loyal pawns that could still manage to string two words together without drooling, in order to ensure their rule for as long as possible without fear of being usurped.

Whenever Tanzeg looked at Ireina, he couldn’t escape the feeling that their mother had tried to hedge her bets with the best of both worlds. While he was capable of his own plots, or serving as an able second in his mother’s schemes if he was forced to, his younger sister had no such capabilities. Esilia had raised him to lead, but kept his clay-headed sister in the wings in case Tanzeg’s reach exceeded his grasp, and Esilia was forced to have a suspicious ‘accident’ befall her heir.

Such thoughts might be abhorrent to many parents, but his mother had always valued pragmatism. Unlike the hand-wringing Matkosens, sending their excess heirs off-world to become Arbites, the Vaneisens had always been the more practical family. He and Ireina had had an additional three siblings, all of whom had perished tragically young.

‘So?’ Esilia said. His mother’s face, normally so impassive, contorted into a brief moment of rage before she regained her composure. He sneered at her lapse. ‘So, strengthening her position doesn’t exactly work in our favour.’

He snorted. ‘A brief surge in public opinion is “strengthening her position”, now? How terrible for us.’ Tanzeg put a hand to his head as if feeling faint. ‘Oh no! Whatever shall I do! Suddenly my rival is armed with the favour of peasants! What a nightmare!’ He rolled his eyes, and took a sip of his recaff. ‘The loyalty of our specialists is a greater asset than any warm feelings the masses may have for our dear leader,’ he said.

Esilia glowered at him.

‘Speaking of our specialists,’ chirped Ireina, ‘I haven’t seen Lostrovsky for some time.’ She beamed, glancing around as if Tanzeg’s toady would materialise in accordance with her wishes. Not that Tanzeg or his mother would ever have dreamed of allowing a lowborn gutter cretin like Lostrovsky into the Solaria Atrium.

Tanzeg loathed Ireina. Despite being in her early eighties, she had pushed the vanity of juvenat treatments and cosmetic surgery to extremes bordering on the ridiculous. She had frozen her age in her late teens, with her frizzy hair and loose splatter of freckles (most assuredly dyed in – no Vaneisen had ever had such blemishes naturally), puppy fat curves and beaming, wide-eyed stares.

His mother caught his eye, and Tanzeg cleared his throat. He picked up the newssheet and examined the headlines disinterestedly.

‘Lostrovsky will be away for a while,’ he said. Which was true. After all, if the little shit had been captured alive, he would already have spilled his guts, and all of the Vaneisens would be in custody at that very moment, or at the least fleeing for their lives through black market channels. More likely, he had been killed trying to finish the job on that miserable Matkosen girl, or otherwise had failed and escaped Darcarden and gone to ground. Tanzeg wasn’t sure which of those options left the least possibility of Lostrovsky’s involvement being traced back to him.

‘It might behove you to keep tabs on him,’ said Esilia, carrying on the pretence of innocence. ‘It would be a shame if a valued creature like that were acquired by another party.’

Tanzeg stared intently at the newssheet, sipping his recaff slowly.

‘Indeed,’ he said.

5

‘Have we made any progress on finding the assassins?’ Ashielle’s expression remained commanding even whilst propped up against the headboard of her four-poster. She folded her hands in her lap and glared. Her medicae may have insisted on bed rest, but she would be damned if that would stop her from ministering to her affairs.

To encourage her to rest, her servants had kept the thick maroon drapes of her bedchamber closed, casting the room back into darkness. The rolling rainy season was continuing apace, of course, so even throwing the curtains wide did little to illuminate the room. Even at midday the sky was an oppressive grey, the threat of another thunderstorm always hanging in the air.

Her servants had done their best to encourage her convalescence, no doubt at the medicae’s direction. The spiral-carved posts of her bed had been hung with allium flowers to soothe. All her accoutrements of business had been neatly tucked away in the drawers of the thick-legged work desk. The directions she’d laid out for the modifications had been fulfilled in record time. The baroque paintings her father had preferred had been removed and replaced by pieces from her own collection, as if the dolorous landscapes she’d collected would somehow heal her own scrapes and bruises faster.

None of it helped, of course. That very morning she had woken from sleep convinced she could see burning red eyes watching her from the shadows, hidden in the gloom of the canopy above her bed. She’d lain there, frozen in terror, watching the eyes stare back at her, until full wakefulness had come and she realised she had only dreamt them.

‘No, ma’am.’ Group Captain Barrin lacked his predecessor’s ease in her presence. He stood stiffly, his hands folded behind his back, as if on parade rest in front of a superior officer. Technically, of course, she was, but it was a stiffness she wasn’t used to from the High Service. Fidal Barrin wouldn’t have been her first choice for Zelucan’s replacement; he had been recruited into the Ceocan Air Corps from the wardens and had very little military experience. Worse, she didn’t know him personally at all. Group Captain Barrin had done his service entirely on the southern continents before transferring to the High Service. Barring the presentation of his service honours (which the governor and his children always attended), neither of them had seen the other before her father’s death. Commodore Zelucan had trusted Group Captain Barrin implicitly, however. He was the first staff member the commodore had investigated and cleared, before naming Barrin as his second-in-command.

‘You’re investigating the Vaneisens?’ Ashielle had no doubt as to who had been behind the attack on her, but it wasn’t as though she could acknowledge such publicly. Lostrovsky’s body was the only evidence tying the coadjutor family directly to the assassination attempt, and the assassin’s corpse was still lying somewhere in the cavern below Darcarden. Without presentable evidence, she might have been able to have a common citizen arrested and disposed of, but an entire noble family couldn’t be vanished overnight without some kind of inquiry. The Vaneisens had too many in the Grevenate that owed the coadjutors their loyalty, and they would make her life difficult if their patrons were to be persecuted en masse.

Barrin nodded. ‘Yes, ma’am. The Lady Vaneisen was in the company of several representatives of the Grevenate at the time of the attack. And Ireina Vaneisen was seen in the company of half a dozen young men until the early hours of the morning. Only Tanzeg’s whereabouts remain unaccounted for. As he was the only member of the inner family we considered a suspect, this doesn’t give us any new revelations.’

‘How so?’ said Ashielle.

‘Lady Esilia’s physical infirmity makes her unsuited to midnight assassinations, ma’am. And the detailed elimination of four of the High Service along with the meticulous nature of this operation led us to discount Ireina Vaneisen as well.’

‘But you’re sure Ireina’s alibis check out?’

‘I am, ma’am. We confirmed her presence at the… house of ill repute with several independent witnesses, including those not… intimately connected with her.’ He coughed and glanced away from her. ‘From what I can see in Commodore Zelucan’s files, she isn’t one to have the wherewithal to orchestrate such an action.’

Ashielle smiled a little at his awkward formality. ‘Don’t discount her so readily,’ she said. ‘Ireina Vaneisen may be the most dangerous of the lot.’

To his credit, Group Captain Barrin didn’t contradict her or show any signs of doubt openly. ‘My apologies, ma’am. Our records show a consistent pattern of behaviour going back years.’

Ashielle sighed. ‘No doubt, group captain. Her cow-eyed debutante routine has been carefully polished over the course of decades. It is, however, a façade. She’s as sadistic and cunning as anyone else in her family.’

Barrin nodded. ‘Once again, my apologies, ma’am. There was nothing about this in Commodore Zelucan’s files.’

She straightened in the bed. ‘I think you’ll find that there’s a great deal which is not in the files that you’ll be expected to learn, group captain. Above a certain social stratum, there are some things which cannot be entrusted to paper, at least not to those papers which one’s subordinates will have access.’

Barrin nodded again. Ashielle sighed.

‘In that regard, ma’am, I’d like to look at bringing in a specialist team to try to seek out the assassin below the palace.’ He shifted slightly. Ashielle wished he didn’t insist on maintaining a military posture in her presence. She and Zelucan had been close enough that he could be relaxed around her, and she found the group captain’s stiffness to be mildly contagious.

‘Absolutely not,’ she said. ‘As it was in the time of my father, the chambers beneath the palace are to be kept locked, and entry into them forbidden.’

This was a sore spot with them. The group captain had been pressing to investigate the tunnels ever since she had been found in the buttery, her dressing gown soaked with blood and cavern filth.

‘I understand your trepidation, ma’am, but the investigation would greatly benefit from–’

‘There’s nothing else to say on the topic, Group Captain Barrin,’ she said. The friendly tone was gone now. She needed to make certain there was no ambiguity. ‘I commend you for your diligence in this regard, but those tunnels are condemned not for secrecy, but for safety. The substructures they lead to are unstable and dangerous in the extreme.’

The story she had given them had been as close to the truth as possible: beneath the palace she had discovered the ruins of far older structures. That in itself was not terribly shocking. It stood to reason that the governor’s palace had been built on a site of ancient rulership or significance. While it was true that the ruins gave way to natural cavern formations, she had given them a rather more fanciful account of their breadth and decrepitude. Barrin knew too that her would-be assassin was dead (or presumed dead and subsequently entombed behind locked doors). In the version she had imparted to her subordinates, however, the killer who had been pursuing her had fallen into a chasm.

She’d been quite incoherent when they found her, barely able to maintain consciousness. The medicae had concluded her weak state was due to the blood loss from her attack coupled with the cold environs below the palace. They’d asked about her injuries, of course. Her arms were covered in raw scrapes where she had been drawn from the chimney. There was a fading bruise high on her head where Lostrovsky had struck her. She’d declined to discuss the attack in detail, and had simply told the medicae, Barrin and her brother that she had suffered her injuries while fending off her attacker. She knew that explaining the specifics of any of the wounds would mean explaining them all, and she hadn’t been able to concoct a specific lie about her missing finger.

‘Are preparations for the ball in place?’ she asked, to forestall any further questions about the caverns.

He nodded stiffly. ‘Indeed. Is her excellency quite certain I can’t convince her to postpone? Or at least to limit the size of the guest list?’

Ashielle’s eyes narrowed, and she fought down the urge to throw something heavy at the group captain. She reminded herself that providing for her security was his job, after all.

‘Quite certain,’ she said. ‘Our staff is reduced, group captain. Our family reduced in size and influence. If I am to maintain my office, and, quite frankly, my life, I must present a strong and stable image to the Grevenate, lest any of them begin to court some foolish notion about placing the coadjutor on the throne. That means the Devotional Banquet must proceed.’

Normally the highlight of the Ceocan social calendar, the Devotional Banquet was a holdover from the days of planetary warfare, when rulers would invite their officers and subordinate chieftains to swear renewed oaths of fealty, and to renew their own vows of stewardship. It had evolved into a ceremony to celebrate and form alliances, where inter-house marriages were proposed and new business ventures cemented. To Ashielle’s mind, the proximity to Ruprekt’s death made this year’s banquet a ghoulish procession of those anxious to see how she was settling in to her role. She would be expected to mediate disputes and settle grievances, and all eyes would be on her for the slightest slip.

‘And my brother?’ she asked, keen to move on.

‘Reporting events here to Judge Idonell aboard the Callistonian Haven, ma’am.’ The group captain hedged for a moment, as if uncertain to offer his personal observation. ‘I believe he may also be attempting to feel out the judge’s feelings regarding the Vaneisen family and their involvement with the assassination.’

‘He and I have already discussed that matter,’ Ashielle said, ‘and I suspect he’ll find little has changed, with no tangible evidence to present. Still, there’s no harm in him trying.’ Despite her insistence that she didn’t need as much rest as those around her believed, she was growing weary. ‘If there’s nothing else in the immediate, I would take my rest.’

Group Captain Barrin nodded, saluted crisply, and left her bedchamber with a sharp twist of his heel.

She stared into the corners of the bedchamber for some time. The sconces in the wall glowed, turned up to their maximum setting, but still there were shadows that couldn’t be banished. She gazed at the darkness beneath the feet of her cloak wardrobe, wondering if some thing lurked beneath, peering back at her.

Ashielle sank into the pillows, no longer concerned with appearances now she was alone. She pulled the soft duvet up to her chin and stared unblinking at the walls. The governor’s bedchamber was surprisingly devoid of ornamentation, with plain walls and worn wooden floors. Her own sleeping quarters had been much more lavish as a child, with cabbage roses engraved in silver set into the wooden columns, and an expansive starscape painted across her ceiling, depicting whirling comets, brilliant nebulae and burning stars. The bedchamber she had taken over from her father was no peasant’s hovel, but it had also clearly not been designed or decorated with the thought or desire that the governor spend a great deal of time there. The art pieces the servants had hung during her recovery were the only personal touches to the décor. Ashielle knew if her circumstances had been different, if she had been relegated to bedrest only a month ago, she would have gone mad just sitting in that room.

It seemed like every day brought the same thing, now. When her aides and her underlings came to her, she could rouse herself, could scrape her mind together into some semblance of functionality, but as soon as they left, she fell apart like a marionette with the strings cut. She found herself staring into space for hours. Some days she realised she had skipped several meals in a row. Although she always allowed her maids to turn down her lights when they believed she was going to sleep, she always turned them up again as soon as the room was empty. When she did sleep, she did it with the room fully lit.

That was when she could sleep, which was rare. The image of Lostrovsky’s terrified face, frozen in the laspistol flash, kept haunting her. The sound of his screams echoing off the stone walls followed her into her dreams. At her best, in the middle of the night she insisted to herself over and over that there had been no other choice, no other way to survive. In the terrible light of each dawn, with the cathedral bells tolling out across the city, she knew better: she was damned.

She sighed. There was too much at stake for her to continue this way. Millions of people across her planet were dependent on her, heretic or not. She knew that she needed to pull herself together, that she couldn’t lie in her bed, trapped between fear and regret forever. She had to rise, to prove to her enemies that they could not defeat her.

Ashielle pulled the duvet over her mouth and nose, leaving only her eyes exposed. She stared at the wall to her side, her eyes unblinking.

Tomorrow. She would rise tomorrow.

Across Kostoveim, unseen eyes watched from the shadows. The flowing, rushing form was too swift and too ephemeral to be spotted by mortal eyes, but its effects could be felt by the exceptionally sensitive. But it watched them nevertheless, a thousand scenes of mundane torment spread before it like a feast before a prisoner starved.

In the corner of a glazier’s storefront it found the craftsman’s apprentice huddled in a corner, tears staining the boy’s face, his ribs still aching with the dull soreness of the drunken beating his master had given him. The thing in the shadows loomed over the boy, close enough to smell the salt on the child’s cheeks, before moving on in search of more varied prey.

Screams of agony drew it to a flakboard home in the oldest part of the city. A rich aura of pain emanated from a candlelit room, where the shadow found a cluster of humans attending a woman in the throes of childbirth. From the shadowy corner it stared, its thin, black lip curled up in revulsion. There was pain here, true, and fear aplenty, but it was spoilt by a flood of joy and hope as well. It drew a deep breath, savouring what sustenance it could take from the corrupted offering, and then was gone.

In the shrouded alleys, it paused to watch a man being gutted over a gambling debt. Even after the knife-wielding perpetrators fled into the night, it lingered over the fallen victim, drinking the man’s agony as he tried to crawl across the cobbles to some imagined safety. The victim was sotted, his senses dulled by drink, so his fear and pain were only a fraction of what they might have been.

After centuries of starvation, the pricks and stings of the city were a joy and a hideous curse to the shadow. Each new sufferance was burning, crimson relief: a draught of wine to a man dying of thirst. Yet each sip was torment. Almost better to have nothing at all than to have too little. Centuries had passed with only floating wisps of sustenance, and now it was forced to accept a trickle when a flood was demanded – was there for the taking before its very claws.

Down the alleys it flickered and flowed, back to the palace. Back to the place of its imprisonment. Back to the site of its freedom.

The scuttling guards took no notice of it. Why would they? To them it was a shadow on a moonless night. It was as much a part of the background as the stones of the wall, as the paintings of governors past that had hung there for centuries. It paused as it passed the strutting figure of the major-domo. Shadowy fingers extended, stroking the air just behind the marching man’s exposed neck. The soldier paused, feeling the chill run up his spine, and turned. The shadow flowed as effortlessly as sin, flattening against the wall as the soldier’s gaze fixed on the empty hallway. It thrilled at the spooky chill which emanated from the major-domo, who turned back to his path and marched on, his stride slightly quickened by the unexplained sense of dread.

So little, it knew, but soon there would be so much. The teeming, filthy herds of humanity had grown fat during its long incarceration. The air was choked with the stench of their sweat, their heaving breath, their bleating, braying voices. It was a world of prey who had forgotten that predators even existed.

The shadow flowed once more into the master bedroom where its patron slept fitfully. It knelt by her bedside, its burning eyes staring at her slumbering features. Only a mild unease floated from her now. In the first nights of its freedom, she had been plagued by the horrors she had witnessed, the churning nocturnal terrors occasionally driving her to wake screaming. Time had salved her wound, as it did, but the shadow knew that was inevitable.

The air held the thinnest scent of a far richer taste, however. The taste of remorse was one of the rarest in the world. More than a pain of the body, it was a pain of the soul. Only a spark, now, but the human gently slumbering in the bed, her mind only occasionally stirring with the faintest notions of what she’d unleashed, held the potential for a far grander feast to come.

If there was one building on Ceocan that dwarfed even the governor’s palace for both size and ostentation, it was the central cathedral in Kostoveim. The massive church had been built in the low-lying central portion of the city, as the focus of the Great Reconstruction. Building materials had been brought in from far away to construct the house of worship. So high were its vaulted ceilings that the carmine roof tiles were visible at any point in the city proper. The central tower rose high enough that travellers could use its illumination as a navigation point during stormy nights.

The governor’s carriage threaded through the wrought iron gates. Several of the penitent brigade moved to close the gates behind her. Despite its size and grandeur, the cathedral of Kostoveim was too small to warrant protection from the Ecclesiarchy’s trained militants. Instead, its defence was seen to by the volunteer penitents, those citizens of Ceocan who pledged their lives and service to the Ministorum in exchange for sustenance and shelter. Ashielle noted with some discomfort that she had never seen so many penitents before. Even as a child, the notion of accepting a penitent’s habit had been seen as an act of desperation, something only accepted by former criminals or outcasts. Now, the cathedral had them employed not only as guards and sentries, but menials and servants.

The façade of the cathedral had been commissioned and completed after the Great Reconstruction, and had been intended to send an ironclad message: a reminder that the attentions of the Imperium might wax or wane in their intensity, but the presence of Him upon the Throne was eternal. The grand doors had been made from a lustrous grey metal that had never shown signs of abrasion, corrosion or degradation in the millennia since their installation. The rose window above them was large enough to fly a landing craft through, and studded with basal crystal panels in a dizzying kaleidoscope of colours. Images of great men in ancient power armour flanked the rose window, their war-plate decorated with the ultima. At the apex of the façade, the Emperor of Mankind stood in profile, His noble gaze cast to the east. In the middle of the night on Reunification Day, His gaze into the night sky lined up with the direction of Holy Terra, His graven visage seeing the distant star that mortal eyes could never discern in the blackness. Behind Him, the great aquila spread its bronze wings.

The thoroughfare was blocked to carriages beyond the great entry, forcing visitors beyond that to proceed on foot. The blockade was topped by a statue of Saint Sebastian, his unforgiving visage graven in black marble shot through with veins of gold. The pilasters of the façade were embellished with images of the lesser saints, elongated to fit the proportions of the fake columns. Ashielle was surprised to find the deacon waiting for her near Sebastian Thor’s stone feet. Petty displays of power were common among high-ranking luminaries, and she had come with every expectation of being made to wait, or at least being escorted inside and treated to a display of Phoebian’s power and resources.

Instead, the deacon met her at the narthex of the great cathedral. A small flock of attendants crowded around her. Most of her entourage consisted of lower-ranking clergy, but near the back Ashielle could see two or three scarred, dead-eyed faces she imagined were still being diligently sought by enforcers in some part of the world or another.

‘Your eminence,’ Ashielle said. One of the attendants slid a stool in front of the deacon, and Ashielle lowered her knees to the cushioned surface.

‘Your excellency.’ Deacon Phoebian held her hand out to the young governor, who dutifully bent her knee and brushed her lips across the adamantium aquila on the deacon’s finger. At an official state function such as her father’s funeral, the governor would not normally be required to genuflect. Since she was the one calling on the deacon unbidden, it was customary to offer a show of deference to the Ministorum.

‘Did I call at an inopportune time?’ Ashielle asked, regarding the deacon’s entourage. She dismissed her own guards with a flick of her fingers. Sullenly, both men stepped back to stand guard over the carriage. A small spike of pain lanced through her hand as she stood, and she rubbed the silver cap on the end of her missing finger.

‘Hardly,’ said Deacon Phoebian. ‘I was just out taking my exercise. I thought a little walk along the Saint’s Arcade would afford us the time to talk to your satisfaction.’

Of course, such a venue would also offer the elderly deacon a plausible excuse to end the conversation at any time by claiming fatigue. Clever, Ashielle realised.

‘What can I do for you, excellency?’

Ashielle fell in with the deacon, uncertain of how candid she would be able to be if the deacon’s followers accompanied them the entire way. To her relief, the hangers-on fell away immediately. The deacon set off down the arcade with a measured stride that belied her frail frame. The stone arches of the arcade shielded them from the sun.

‘I wanted to talk to you about history, your eminence.’ Ashielle didn’t want to dance around the topic, but at the same time she wasn’t going to put all her cards on the table at once, lest the deacon suddenly reveal a fanaticism deep enough to impugn even a governor.

‘In what regard?’

‘What do you know of Ceocan’s history, prior to the Great Restoration?’

The deacon nodded. ‘I thought that might be what you wanted to discuss,’ she said. ‘Was there anything specific you were curious about?’

Ashielle smiled. Getting herself out of bed had taken an extreme act of will. In her mind, it had been easier to take her own finger off. But now that she was in the moment, matching her own wits against another woman of high station, she found her drive and confidence returning.

‘I’ve been reading through my father’s notes,’ she lied, ‘and I came across a mention of a town in Garenvos. Specifically, a construction project that unearthed an Old Ceoc burial mound.’

The deacon nodded again, a contemplative expression on her face. Ashielle had to admire the old woman for her ability to keep up the ‘wizened sage’ act. She would be willing to bet her last coin that Phoebian had never heard of any construction project in Garenvos. There was money on whether the deacon even knew which of her ministers was in charge in Garenvos. Phoebian was playing it the way she would have, though, had Ashielle been in the deacon’s position.

‘What I mean to ask is, do you know why the Old Ceoc are so feared?’ Ashielle did her best to project a little trepidation into her voice. If the old woman wanted to play the role of a learned scholar, she was happy to act the part of a wide-eyed student.

‘The Old Ceoc are not feared, child.’ The deacon beamed, clearly thrilled to be back in a familiar authoritative role, now that she believed she had a clear idea of what the governor wanted. ‘The forces of the Emperor laid low the heretics in their midst, and freed the population that had laboured beneath profane rule for so long. The dangers of the Old Ceoc are gone, never to return. True children of mankind never fear such base heretics, of course. We pity them as we cleanse their corruption.’

Ashielle smiled, hesitated, then nodded. ‘Of course,’ she said, meeting the deacon’s gaze and then looking away. ‘I just meant, why are we so vigilant for the relics of their culture? Surely any remains of their society should be preserved as monuments to our success? My father taught me that war trophies of the Emperor’s faithful are sacred, and that it was heresy to destroy them.’

The deacon stopped walking and laid a patronising hand on Ashielle’s shoulder.

‘Fear not, my child. It is well that Ceocan has one so pious as you to steward her.’ Phoebian resumed her pained shuffling. ‘You speak true, but for those of such elevated positions as we, there is a higher duty. We must protect the hearts and souls of the lives entrusted to our care. So foul were the perversions of the Old Ceoc, that even to know of their existence could corrupt the living.’

‘You speak of… dark powers? Of sorcery?’ Ashielle made the sign of the aquila.

Deacon Phoebian turned and regarded her, glanced around as if fearful of being overheard, and then nodded gravely.

Ashielle dropped her gaze, feigning terror. A month earlier, unearthing a secret history of sorcery on her world might have been genuinely horrifying, but the discovery of the vile creature such sorcery had been meant to contain had adjusted her standards for horror somewhat.

‘The very thought fills me with dread,’ she said. ‘The thought that someone might unearth some heretical ritual, that I might have apostates working foul magics within the population I am sworn to protect…’

‘I’m not surprised,’ the deacon sighed. Ashielle clamped down on her shock. How much did Phoebian know?

‘How do you mean?’ Ashielle said, carefully.

‘Preacher Larrichan told me your father made similar inquiries after his ascendancy,’ Phoebian replied. ‘It stands to reason that there are a number of sensitive matters that only a planetary governor is trusted enough to deal with.’

The deacon paused, leaning her hand against one wall of the cathedral, looking for all the world like nothing more dangerous than a winded old lady.

‘Do you recognise this image?’ she asked.

Ashielle had ceased paying attention to the decorations, and refocused on them. Between the pilasters of the wall, adorned with their grotesquely stretched saints, the walls of the arcade had been decorated with marble reliefs.

It depicted the soldiers with the ultima, the same ones that stood guard over the cathedral doors. Ashielle had seen similar figures on the gates of the Korgana Militant. They hefted mighty bolters and huge swords, and were locked in fierce battle with twisted, abstract forms.

‘I assume the larger figures are Adeptus Astartes,’ she said, although she had never seen such a being in life or image. ‘Fighting monsters of lore.’

‘Indeed,’ said the deacon. ‘The forces of the Reunification.’ Phoebian pointed to another figure, rising above the others. It looked smaller in frame than the angels of death that it led, and had a spindly frame with a long, forked beard. ‘Led by Aleandru the Confessor.’ Deacon Phoebian made the sign of the aquila. ‘Great men, who sacrificed much, including many of their own lives, to leave their legacy to us. To you in particular.’

Ashielle nodded, as if seeing the wisdom of the deacon. How disappointing. She had been hoping the deacon would have some more concrete notions on opposing the forces in league with the Old Ceoc.

‘I shall not fail to honour it,’ she said.

‘If you are plagued by fear,’ the deacon said, ‘keep tight to your legacy.’ She reached out with one aged hand to tap the bas relief of Saint Aleandru. ‘Particularly the rod that Saint Aleandru gave to the first governor of the Reunified Ceocan. The same rod he used to smite the unholy.’

Ashielle smiled, honestly this time. ‘Is it the same rod of office that was passed down to me?’

Deacon Bettonara beamed as the student got it. ‘The very same, Preacher Larrichan tells me.’

Ashielle bowed again.

‘Your eminence,’ she said. ‘You’ve given me much to strengthen my spirits.’

6

Ostap was, quite simply, outmatched.

‘Our duty as an assembly is to the people of Ceocan,’ he said, ‘not just to the wealthy of Kostoveim.’

Those who had been called before the Grevenate, the witnesses and experts arrayed in the Occurriam, could scarcely hear him. That was fine; his words weren’t meant for them. The audiovanes in his alcove picked up his words and transferred them to the alcoves of all the other members. He could have activated his amplifier if he’d so wished, but this particular issue did not involve any members of the public, and Minister Fomynko didn’t feel the need for grandstanding.

Margreve Bruisell had no such discretion. ‘Just so, as Minister Fomynko says.’ The margreve’s voice boomed from the amplifiers, echoing in the open space of the Basilica like a roll of argumentative thunder. ‘We must think of the citizens of Ceocan, but that includes those of our own city! If we allow the Tupykamin evacuees to settle in Kostoveim, it will create a drain on local resources. We have our own unfortunates to care for, after all.’

Tianesh’s alcove in the third tier was on the wall above his own, preventing Ostap from looking at her directly. The holoscreen built into the top of his desk displayed the face of each current speaker, however, reminding all of the lords who held the floor and allowing them to see one another, albeit in a scratchy blue-and-white colourshift.

‘I remind Lady Bruisell that this assembly speaks on behalf of all of Ceocan. The evacuees are “our own unfortunates”.’ Langreve Evanova was one of the few voices from the upper tiers who could reliably be counted on to support the ground level, especially when the issue concerned the Matkosens and their agenda or legacy. ‘We have already received an affirmative response to the missive we drafted to the palace. Lord Governor Matkosen stands prepared to authorise emergency food allotments to the displaced through her own holdings. Their care and feeding will pose no burden to the citizens of Kostoveim.’

Despite Lord Evanova’s support, Ostap could see the currents of discussion, and knew it would be a difficult battle to get the evacuees cared for. Burrowing vermin had destabilised large portions of the cliffs the city of Tupykamin had been built on. When the worst of the rainy season storms had begun to crash into the coast, the city had suffered a series of disastrous rockslides, displacing over half of the city’s population. Nearly two thousand of the evacuees had journeyed on foot to Dnisiv, but Controller Norshynka, the executive administrator of Dnisiv and a man thoroughly bribed by the Vaneisens, had turned them away.

There just wasn’t any profit to be had in taking the Tupykamini in. They were a population of fur-trappers and deep-sea fisherfolk; this far inland they were nothing but unskilled labour, at least as far as the lords were concerned. The fact that they were on foot, with nothing but the clothes on their back, trekking through the most violent weather of the Ceocani year seemed to be irrelevant to them.

‘We can all appreciate the lord governor’s magnanimity.’ Minister Zborov’s voice was all oily charm. ‘Indeed, in the area of personal generosity, her example is a paragon of selflessness many would do well to take heed to.’ He never bothered with the amplifiers, as though his words were for the Grevenate alone. If he had a question to ask a witness, he merely mused it aloud to his colleagues, who never failed to relay it to the citizen being questioned.

Ostap wagered that Zborov was perhaps the most influential member of the Grevenate who was not themselves a lord, and was one of the only ministers not connected to their lord by blood. Margreve Jorgen Yulanski had appointed Zborov to his vital clerical position nearly sixty years ago after a vicious argument with Lord Ruprekt, after which Jorgen had not voluntarily set foot in Kostoveim again. The bitter old patriarch had even refused to come to Ruprekt’s funeral, sending his youngest daughter in his stead.

‘However,’ Zborov continued, ‘has Lady Ashielle offered to open her palace to these displaced villagers? Has she ordered soldiers to clear houses so that she might have room to house them?’ Minister Zborov was one official Ostap hated hearing from. No matter what the issue, the man could be counted on to say the right thing while doing the wrong thing. ‘Living quarters for these evacuees are also needed, and not within the lord governor’s province to provide, on this scale and at this time, as much as it might pain us to face this truth.’

‘Three thousand of the townspeople fled Tupykamin when the cliffs gave way.’ Greve Inzigo Hodyuk looked appalled by the tone of the conversation thus far. ‘Norshynka’s people only reported little more than two thousand when they were denied refuge in Dnisiv and sent into the maw of a stormfront. Our latest report estimates only sixteen hundred remain. Are we to sit by and do nothing while the storms scour these people from the face of our planet?’ Greve Hodyuk was young, but a fierce populist. Ostap wasn’t particularly surprised. Her family were lumber merchants from Trenkovi Bay, where the hard work of logging required the nobles who ran the business to work right alongside the men and women who laboured for them. It bred a lessening of the class divide that crossed the rest of Ceocani society.

‘And why would you think that these people have perished?’ Ireina Vaneisen’s voice crackled from the amplifiers, and hidden within his alcove Ostap grimaced, grateful his colleagues across the chamber were too far away to make out his facial expression. ‘I’ve seen no pict-steals of drifts of dead bodies. The tech-priests of the Pellucidian Troposec monitoring station have not contacted us with reports of corpses raining from the heavens. There are many isolated and unincorporated communities of agrarian workers across the continent. Is it not more likely these refugees have taken shelter with friends or family among those, than the wild and baseless claim that they are dropping dead in droves from exposure to a little rain?’

She was skilful, Ostap had to give her that. Greve Hodyuk tried to respond to Ireina’s barbs, but was drowned out by the laughter of her colleagues. This wasn’t the first time he had seen this dance, and he knew it wouldn’t be the last. Ireina knew that the best way to lead the greves by their nose was to appeal to their treasury, while belittling and patronising any opposition.

‘We do, of course, have adequate accommodation for the evacuees,’ Ostap said, when the jeering had died down. ‘The Roveik district currently has several hab-blocks which are sitting vacant, more than enough to house the remaining sixteen hundred refugees. Or we could let them take their chances on trying to find a pair of farmers with grain silos large enough to house a thousand people.’ There was a murmur of laughter from those on his side, but Ostap could measure the laughter and see the eventual outcome.

‘The Roveik district has been slated for demolition,’ Margreve Bruisell boomed. ‘It has already been redistricted for a new warehousing facility, which you yourself voted for, if I recall.’

‘What I recall,’ Ostap said, ‘was that the demolition was scheduled not to begin until two years hence. Ergo, there’s nothing preventing us from housing the evacuees there.’ He smiled. He wasn’t going to win, but neither did he intend to let the Vaneisens and their supporters perform their villainy without being called to task for it. ‘Nothing, that is, save for the statutes of usury, which would prevent the Vaneisen family from collecting rent from temporary tenants of those properties. Nothing except for the fact that none of my esteemed colleagues from the upper tiers can see an easy way to exploit these displaced citizens for their own profit.’

The chamber roared with a dozen officials speaking at once. The amplifiers were programmed to accept and respond to primacy and seniority, but so much input at a single time overwhelmed them, reducing the Basilica Grevenator to a cacophony of thunderous voices all melding into a single chaotic storm. The remaining citizens in the Occurriam doubled over, their ears covered. Only the sonoblative generators in the alcoves prevented the members of the Grevenate from being deafened. After a few moments, the primacy filters finally managed to kick in.

‘…and is precisely the sort of grandstanding nonsense that perpetually bogs this chamber down in battles of folly!’ Langreve Oldemeier fumed, his face visibly flushed in rage even through the static-laden holodisplay. ‘A displaced workforce numbering in the thousands? With no means of supporting themselves, quartered in a pauper’s tenement and fed on the welfare of the public? All of us, or at least all of us with the wisdom of more than a scant few years, know this to be an ingredient list for a disaster of cataclysmic and generational proportions!’

‘Order is the assigned task and the appointed command,’ intoned Margreve Ulika Wynovok, a woman whose insufferably false piety grated even on her allies, ‘and by idle hands are the labours of heresy performed. I cannot in good conscience vote on measures that would see a district of destitution added to my city, with the residents therein condemned to a life devoid of opportunity and doomed to criminality.’

Ostap tried to speak, to argue, but Lady Gavozny cut him off.

‘Too right,’ she said. ‘We must all surely recognise that, despite the unfortunate circumstances of their plight, those citizens from Tupykamin are served better, in the long run, by relocating to somewhere other than the capital. With that said, by the authority of the Basilica Grevenator, I call this issue to vote.’

Ostap sighed as the lights across his desk began illuminating, indicating the votes of his colleagues. He tapped the icon to indicate his assent, and realised it was never a good sign when he could identify which of the tiny lights was his: one of the few green icons overwhelmed by a sea of red ‘decline’ votes.

He cast his eyes upward, to the relief images of the Imperium’s militant defenders. The soldier of the Astra Militarum caught his eye, as it had done so many times before. He had never stood shoulder-to-shoulder with such august warriors, of course. He had not knelt in a sandbag fortification as mankind’s enemies came slavering forward, determined to fight once again a battle that was almost certainly a foregone conclusion. More and more, however, he felt that his service in the Grevenate gave him, if not an equivalent frame of reference, then a modicum of empathy for those doomed to perish in a losing battle their honour would not let them walk away from.

‘Great Throne on Terra,’ Ashielle whispered. She’d had no idea a human could hold so much blood.

Her would-be assassin had made it out of the labyrinth and to the base of the tight spiral stair. Or perhaps he had been dragged there. Ashielle stood on the staircase and marvelled at the scene. She didn’t even reel in horror; it was as if the carnage was simply beyond her mind’s ability to process. Blood, dried and tacky, covered every surface, as if it had been applied not by arterial spray but with a painter’s brush. The corpse, or the bulk of it, lay with limbs askew. The headless remains were so discombobulated that she couldn’t begin to guess which stumps had been arms and which had been legs. Lesser portions of meat lay scattered about the torso, foundations for splinters of gleaming bone and tattered strips of dangling skin. Of Lostrovsky’s head there was no sign.

She held her torch aloft. In the thin electric light of the mounted luminator globe, she could just make out the edge of the maze. She sighed and picked her way across Lostrovsky’s remains.

The thought had occurred to her to seal the basement away. If the creature possessed the capacity or intent to go on a killing rampage it surely would have done so by now, after all. Either it was gone, returned to whence it came, or else it was unable to leave. That second thought was sobering, and had given her pause.

In the end, she couldn’t stomach the thought of sleeping in her father’s room, walking by his portrait’s unforgiving gaze and wearing the leaden weight of his ring on her hand without living up to his example to her. She had a responsibility, not only to everyone living in Darcarden, but to all those who would live there in the future. She could no more leave such a dangerous creature running loose than she could leave a live grenade lying in a hallway.

Her plasma pistol did a great deal to alleviate her anxiety, of course. She wasn’t certain what manner of thing had torn Lostrovsky to pieces, but it was a rare beast that could withstand a full burst from such a weapon. If the deacon had spoken true, then the rod of office tucked in her belt was proof against such blasphemies.

The circular maze was as frightening as it had been the first time, with its walls as narrow as the sides of a sarcophagus and the vague sense of dripping water somewhere in the darkness. She only needed her navigation trick in part, however. A few of the passages she recognised as dead-ends. The thought of the creature wandering lost through the labyrinth occurred to her, but if that was the case she would have to come up with an alternative plan. Wandering away from the route through the maze, alone in the darkness, wasn’t a plan she fancied going through with.

Emerging from the maze solved one of the mysteries: the location of Lostrovsky’s head. The assassin’s visage stared at the mouth of the labyrinth from the remnants of one of the trophy racks. The killer’s face was contorted in an agonised scream, the little round chin extended and warped in a way Ashielle would have thought impossible. Her family had been avid hunters at one point, and the mounted specimens of dozens of animals lined the upper levels of Darcarden. She had always noted in her youth the difficulty of capturing life and emotion in the dead eyes of a trophy creature. Lostrovsky’s murderer had no such difficulty, and in fact was a true master of the craft: the assassin’s eyes were still bright and clear, wide with terror and wet with torment. Even when he had been prepared to snuff her life, those eyes hadn’t betrayed a flicker of emotion to her, but here before her she read a world of pain.

Ashielle was shaken from her reverie by the bone-chilling realisation that the assassin’s face was still moving. A chill touch crept down her spine, rooting her to the foetid stone floor as she watched the eye rolling in its skull. Just before she began to scream, she realised the dead eyes had not been animated by some unholy means; a large drop of blood had merely welled up in the socket, and finally spilled from the eye. She shook herself, breathing deep and willing her hammering heartbeat to slow. She didn’t know how long she had stared into Lostrovsky’s dead face, but by the time she had calmed down, her joints were stiff and her fingertips cold. She clutched her pistol tighter and stomped past the spiked head to the main chamber.

Something was different. Ashielle held her luminator out, trying to determine what was amiss. There were bloody streaks on the ground, evidence of Lostrovsky’s terrified and ultimately doomed struggle for life, but it was more than that. There was a brick lying loose on the ground that hadn’t been there before.

There was a passage, or at least the beginnings of one, leading away from the trophy room in the opposite direction from the oubliette chamber. Scratch marks covered the dirt there. Several other stones and bricks had been dislodged to form a loose pile at the bottom. The creature had been busy. Beyond the damage the creature had inflicted, she spied a vertical shaft, too narrow for anything larger than a rodent to squeeze through. The flow of air told her that it went all the way to the surface. Could the creature squeeze itself through such a passage? If it could travel through the shadows, as she’d seen, she wouldn’t be surprised.

The oubliette room held an even more disturbing labour. The geometric runes ringing the stone circle had been cleaned, the cobwebs and dust brushed away from the smooth white material. Each rune had been carefully daubed with a thin coat of blood.

‘You like my little display?’

Ashielle spun, trying to pinpoint the voice. She snapped her pistol up, ready to threaten the creature, only to find the passage behind her occupied by nothing but damp moss and the echo of her fearful breathing. She realised that even the chittering of rodents was absent, and had been since she had ventured through the secret door. The quiet was so total, she began to fear she had imagined the voice.

When she turned back to the stone ring, her gaze was met by the hellish pits of the creature gazing back at her. The coal-eyes she had seen locked away before were more intense now, the spark brighter and deeper. The brilliant orbs were so hateful she could have sworn they would burn her if she got close enough. She had no idea how it had moved past her without making a sound. The inhuman face was no more than an arm’s length from her own, close enough to pounce before she even raised her weapon. She shuddered to think how long it had stood behind her, studying her, while she had been menacing an empty passage. The thing stood watching her, but its easy stance didn’t fool her. She knew it could move with the speed of a marshlion if it wished.

‘The grunting, painted barbarians that used to call these caves home were fond of planting those ridiculous little trophy displays to ward us off.’ The voice was smoother, richer than it had been before. Ashielle swallowed, her mind suddenly unable to focus. She couldn’t have shot the thing if she wanted to. This wasn’t what she’d been expecting.

‘The trophies, the labyrinth,’ she said, aware that she needed to regain the social footing, ‘they weren’t for intruders from the surface, were they? They were supposed to intimidate and obstruct your people.’ She successfully resisted the urge to turn her head to the stone ring, but her eyes flicked towards it anyway.

The thing let out a horrifying sound: a hollow, echoing click that reminded her of a primitive trying to start a fire in a cave by slamming rocks together. The monster’s shoulders juddered slightly, and she realised with a start that it was laughing at her.

‘Yes,’ it hissed. ‘Your kind has always clutched desperately at talismans they think will protect them from us.’ It shifted its gaze to her pistol. As if to demonstrate its point, the thing broke away from the shadows and stalked back towards the stone ring, turning its back fully to her. It was as if the darkness swallowed it up. Its form became faded and indistinct. She tried to focus on the ashen grey hair, but after a moment that too was gone in the gloom.

‘Why are you still here?’ Ashielle asked.

‘I cannot leave,’ came the hissing reply. It seemed to echo throughout the room. Ashielle felt a creeping dread up her spine. She knew the thing was trying to unnerve her. She had no intention of playing its childish games.

‘I find that hard to countenance,’ she snapped. ‘I think you could be out of the palace and gone from Kostoveim before anyone even realised you had been here, if that was your wish. So why remain?’

The eyes snapped open again, no more than a handful of paces from where the creature had vanished. It stood in front of the stone ring upon the wall, one hand lifted to trace the runes. It gazed at her over its shoulder, the red eyes now taking on a hateful hue they had not seemed to possess before.

‘Palace, city, river or caves – they’re all still here.’ It turned back to the stone ring. ‘And I cannot leave here until I am bidden to do so.’ The creature turned back and cocked its head. ‘As it has ever been, the emissary serves the pleasure of the chieftain.’

Ashielle scowled. ‘Explain.’

The creature clack-laughed at her again.

‘You bear the signet on your hand,’ it said. ‘You wielded the knife that made the offering of flesh and blood. You gave life to reconsecrate the pact.’

Ashielle’s eyes narrowed. ‘So, are you bound to my bidding, then?’

The red eyes flared briefly.

In the space of a blink, the thing crossed the distance between them. It stood close enough for her to smell the dry, rotten odour of its skin, like a den of hibernating reptiles. Its arm moved like a striking serpent, snatching her rod of office from her belt. The fiend held it up between them.

‘No,’ it said. For the first time its tone was not jovial or restrained. She could feel a galaxy of contempt in that word.

‘In what way do you serve my pleasure, then?’ Ashielle knew she had the upper hand, at least for the moment. As fearsome as the creature was, it was prevented from harming her, either by sorcery or necessity.

The thing growled with a voice like a drowning gurgle. The eyes burned steady now, and along its black skin she could see a series of heliotrope runes glowing faintly. Here was the truth of it, the cultured and easy demeanour a thin mask. Beneath lay a predator, alien in thought and body.

‘Call my name,’ it hissed. The cadence and lilt were still alien, but the anger and arrogance were unmistakable no matter the language. ‘Make your offering of flesh and blood. Of life. And the darkness shall descend where you command, leaving only whom you wish.’

‘And what is your name?’ she asked.

‘Jaezubiel.’

There was no discordant hiss, no pop of displaced air, no dramatic device to signal the fiend’s departure. It was just gone.

Tanzeg slammed the door to the carriage. The previous night had been positively vexing.

The wardens had arrested his primary apothecourier in Kostoveim earlier in the week in a raid that was so well coordinated it had to have been instigated by inside information. Try as he might, Tanzeg had been unable to determine who the rat had been. His suspicions had already led to him questioning several of his bagmen, two of them to the point that they would no longer be able to serve his enterprises.

He’d tried to work out his frustrations by visiting his favourite gentry’s club, home to one of Kostoveim’s infamous ‘strife societies.’ Amid the tang of aged amasec and a pall of rich smoke, the wealthiest degenerates of Kostoveim would gather together to dine and drink in luxury, surrounded by fine art and finer consumables. Under cover of darkness, the most desperate of the city’s poor were brought in and enticed to fight for the pleasure of the viewing elite. Sportsmanship and righteous challenge were nowhere to be found; the strife societies operated to turn a profit and provide the audience with entertainment. The rules were irrelevant, the lives of the competitors valued less than beasts, and the terms of each match subject to change at a moment’s notice with the offer of enough coin.

Even this had failed to assuage Tanzeg’s mood, however. Normally the bloodshed at his behest perked him right up, but nothing seemed to relieve his stress. He had even opened his own purse to up the violence, first paying to have two bare knuckle brawlers armed with meat cleavers. When their brutal dismemberment of one another failed to satisfy, he’d intervened in another match, paying to have a recurring fighter’s legs broken before his bout. Even the boos and wails of his fellow nobles as they watched the crowd favourite beaten to death by a pair of half-starved street performers could not alleviate his ire.

This night didn’t appear to be shaping up any better. His date for the evening shivered on the carriage bench next to him. The women’s bench occupied by his mother and sister had a heavy down quilt to warm the legs on chill nights, but none of the Vaneisens would ever have let a common companion sit with nobility. It was only in the interests of time that they allowed Tanzeg’s companion into the carriage at all. If they’d been attending a soiree closer to the Vaneisen villa, his mother would have insisted he make Marysia walk.

He’d tried to self-medicate to take the edge off, of course. The new supplier he had found for rekanine capsules had proven to be slightly too good at his job. The high had been intense, but had lasted far longer than Tanzeg was used to. The sun had been creeping over the horizon before his heart had slowed enough for him to be able to get any sort of sleep at all, and what little he had managed had been light and easily disturbed.

And now he had the unenviable task of the governor’s ball. Few things were less attractive than spending an evening listening to tired string music and feigning deference to the pretentious child who ruled Darcarden. Of course, there was no experience so loathsome that it couldn’t be made more miserable by the presence of his mother and sister.

Ireina and his mother stared at him as he adjusted his coattails on his carriage bench.

‘Are you finished with your little temper fit?’ Esilia said. For the governor’s ball, she had chosen an outfit of Anzellian batsilk. The fabric of the gown itself was woven so tightly it looked as though it could be liquid. Her decorative shawl was a far looser weave, like a finely woven fisher’s net laid over her bared shoulders. Her hair had been bound with a series of batsilk threads, their gleaming silvery finish contrasting against the steel grey of the matriarch’s head.

Tanzeg said nothing, only slouched in his seat. He had chosen a rib-belly coat over a padded duellist’s vest and riding breeches. His creamy white outfit, trimmed with gold and odobenid bone, was the height of expense and ostentation.

‘Whatever has got into you?’ asked Ireina. She gazed out of the window idly.

Tanzeg slammed a fist against the back of the carriage. If the driver didn’t get moving shortly, he was apt to throw the man to the street and drive them himself. He’d done it before.

To many of the ruling families in Kostoveim, an autocarriage was the pinnacle of wealth and status. Few could afford them, and only the governor could afford to run one for mundane tasks. The Vaneisens had always preferred horses. Like his father and his grandfather, Tanzeg could wax poetic about the pride of Ceocan’s animal husbandry, about the dangers of automation, or the superiority of the horse to the autocarriage. It was all too common to meet a petty noble full of pride over their family’s new acquisition, and Tanzeg enjoyed injecting a bit of humility in their lives. In truth, his preference came down to the fact that he couldn’t whip an autocarriage.

‘He’s embarrassed because his security was breached,’ said Esilia.

Tanzeg’s eyes narrowed. How had she known? Ireina pursed her lips quizzically.

Their mother went on. ‘One of his little narcotic houses was raided, and not by the enforcers. He’s spent the better part of the last few days trying to figure out who did it.’

Tanzeg realised that his mother never spoke with such confidence about matters she was ignorant of. If she was putting his business on display, it was because she already knew who had betrayed him. It didn’t take him long to come to the obvious conclusion.

‘You?’ he asked, turning a wicked eye to his mother.

Ireina giggled. Esilia ignored her son’s outburst and her daughter’s taunts.

‘Clearly it was warranted,’ she said. ‘You’ve poisoned your mind to powder – how else could your utter failure be explained?’

Tanzeg forced his face into a bitter, crazed grin.

‘You underestimate me, mother. I’m wounded that you think your own son wouldn’t turn a setback to his family’s advantage. We haven’t been arrested, which means Lostrovsky wasn’t taken alive by the governor’s forces.’

Ireina waggled her decorative fan dismissively. ‘And yet your minion has yet to make himself known, either. Which suggests he didn’t make it out alive.’

‘Too right.’ Tanzeg nodded, reached under his jacket, and produced a slim control unit. ‘It would be a shame, then, if his corpse were to be discovered in the governor’s palace.’

Ireina leaned over to her mother. ‘He fitted the assassin with an iso-tag,’ she said.

Esilia continued to look unimpressed. ‘Which is all well and good if the Matkosen child was foolish enough to keep a rotting cadaver lying about her drawing room for a month after shooting him dead. What are we to do if the body has been removed?’

‘The device tracks the radionuclidic signature of the tag,’ Tanzeg said. ‘All I need to do is begin at the last place I left him, and I should be able to track Lostrovsky all the way to his final resting place. At the very least, to the site of his death, which should be able to produce evidence of his demise.’

Esilia scowled. ‘There will be a great deal of security.’

Ireina laid an obsequious hand on Esilia’s arm.

‘Please, mother,’ she said. ‘I can think of no task that Tanzeg has more practice or talent for than skulking about a lady’s home unwanted and unnoticed.’

She made not a sound, but Tanzeg caught the hitch in Marysia’s breath as she bit back a snort of laughter. He wasn’t sure if his escort’s laughter was at his expense, or because she knew things his sister did not. His pride compelled him to believe the former.

‘That’s why I brought a professional,’ he said. ‘After all, what was it you always said about craftspeople?’

‘Artists,’ corrected his mother, absently staring at the curtained window. The windows of their carriages were always heavily draped. All the better to remind themselves and the world around them that there was a wall around the family, an eternal separation between them and the common person. ‘An artist is only as good as their tools.’ She turned and cast a critical eye on Marysia. ‘And you are a useful tool, are you?’

Marysia’s face betrayed nothing, but Tanzeg could feel the brief tension in her. He knew she wanted to say something sharp, but wisely refrained.

‘I should think so, ma’am. Good enough to do my job and remain silent about it afterwards,’ she said. Tanzeg was glad Marysia hadn’t tried to make some snide comment or witty boast. Real professionals never did, in his experience.

‘And you can do your part?’ he asked his sister.

Ireina nodded. ‘The Grevenate knows that having a ruling family as weak as the Matkosens invites nothing but disaster. Ashielle succeeds now only by walking the most perilous of balancing acts. The nobles need only the flimsiest of tangible excuses to back our installation as the governing family.’ She smiled sweetly, in a way that made Tanzeg distinctly uneasy. He’d seen that smile before. In their youth it had usually heralded him being punished for a crime he hadn’t actually committed. In adulthood he had learned it came before far more nefarious turns of fortune.

‘You have an agent within the Matkosen household, don’t you?’ He had tried for months to plant a solid traitor within the governor’s household, or else to flip a loyal supporter. How had his sister got her hooks into the governor’s people? And how highly were they placed?

‘She has a prospect,’ Esilia snapped, stealing the momentum from her daughter’s gloating. ‘So far that seems to be all either of you have. And we cannot build a legacy on ifs and maybes.’ Esilia smiled for the first time since Tanzeg had got into the carriage. ‘How do we build our future?’

Tanzeg grimaced and slumped in his seat. As much as he hated Esilia, she was right. In many ways he supposed he and Ashielle had a great deal in common. Both of them had been shaped by their parents, moulded to fill a certain role since before their birth.

‘We build our future in the shadows,’ he said. ‘We do not build with them.’

7

Jaezubiel watched the human breathe.

There was no one else in the room to see it, but it clung to the shadows, drawing them about itself like a cloak, out of habit. The chamber was small, but warm, and smelled faintly of herbs. The old woman, her frame bent and gnarled, slumbered fitfully beneath layers of woven blankets. Someone had laid out a thoughtful, if useless, bouquet of wildflowers across the crone’s stomach.

It had never seen her face before, but Jaezubiel knew this woman. It knew her intimately, in fact. Just as a man stranded on a darkened plain would fixate upon a light source so faint he would never otherwise notice, or have his ear drawn to the sound of a pin drop when locked in a mausoleum, so Jaezubiel’s incarceration had sharpened its senses. Locked away in its oubliette, it had been able, after a time, to sense the hurts of those far overhead.

It had never been a replacement for devouring the pain of someone close at hand – or, Muses forbid, those pains caused by its hand – but it had sufficed. The pain of those who dwelled in the palace had been its crust of bread, the trickle of water down the wall of its cell that had sustained it. Like that life-sustaining trickle, it had lapped at such pains, savouring every minute drop. Sharp, sudden pains, even very intense ones, were often gone so quickly that there was nothing of them to consume by the time Jaezubiel had felt them.

It was the familiar pains that had been the best. How many times had this woman scrubbed stones with fingers swollen with arthritis? How many times had she bent on her scabbed and creaking knees to clean a forgotten pantry, a shelf that no one would see, in a labour which would never be appreciated? How many times had she sat sipping lukewarm tea because her teeth were too thin and worn to bear the brunt of a hot drink?

The thing of shadow loomed over the bed, inhaling the rich scent of the woman’s discomfort. Even in slumber her ancient limbs pained her. Her head ached, the bones soft and yielding where the butt of a pistol had cracked them. What few thoughts remained to her were fearful, resentful and agonised. Jaezubiel clicked a soft laugh to itself. It was funny, it thought. It had spent so many years lamenting that it had only her to feed on, and when it was finally released, with an entire city of torments to delight in, it was to her it returned. Her pain was a flavour it had only tasted from afar, and now that it was so close, it was a welcome delight beyond anything it could have imagined. A thin and simple meal, but one that had teased its senses for nearly a hundred years.

Empathy was unknown among its people. Among the freezing, lightless void of its home, where every shadow hungered and the griefwyrms cawed their mockery of the dead, feelings that warmed the soul called out like a beacon to the predators of the realm. And in that realm, everything was a predator. Jaezubiel couldn’t construct any true sympathy for the bed-ridden old woman. Still, it felt a closeness to her. She had been a familiar, if distant, presence for many years. Empathy might be beyond its remit, but selfish possessiveness was not. It pained it that she could no longer serve its needs. The thought that she might perish, and not at its hands, sparked a cold anger within it.

With one blackened talon, Jaezubiel stroked the withered, sunken cheek. The thin flesh twitched at its touch, and the old servant moaned in her sleep. Jaezubiel’s lips parted over its seed-pearl teeth, and it faded back against a wall. There might yet be a way she could serve it, it realised.

It was the minutiae that dragged a leader down. Ashielle’s father hadn’t told her that. He hadn’t needed to; his example showed it to her every day. For every major decision, every crisis, there were a hundred thousand matters of trivia. She hadn’t been governor for a month before she lost track of the number of routine approvals, denials and authorisations she had signed or notarised.

Hanrik sighed as he scanned the bookshelf in her office. Behind her desk, Ashielle smiled. How many times had Ruprekt heard a similar sigh from one of his family as he sat behind that desk, buried beneath a mountain of bureaucratic incidentals? More than she could count, Ashielle would wager. That’s what had made him an excellent governor. He had never shirked, never faltered, never knocked off early with a scheduled task undone to go fowling or play with his children. Rain or shine, ill or healthy, he had done his duty.

‘The crowd is already amassing for your banquet,’ said Hanrik. ‘Drenata must have been very busy.’

Ashielle glanced up from her paperwork. Her brother had eschewed the arbitrator armour for the evening, instead going with a quilted slashed doublet and matching hose in a soft blue-grey colour. The style was unconventional, probably Sorinouxian, but his outfit was civilised enough. By luck or design he’d chosen a colour that matched their house’s. She noted he had even found a decorative holster for his autopistol, with the Matkosen arms embossed in silver.

Ashielle winced. She realised she’d forgotten to tell Hanrik what had happened to Drenata.

‘Unfortunately not,’ she said. ‘Drenata is still recovering.’

Her brother turned, not quite comprehending. ‘Still recovering?’

She nodded. ‘The injuries she suffered during the assassination attempt were more severe than was at first believed,’ she said. ‘I’ve had her made comfortable, but my medicae tells me she’s suffered severe brain damage, and that it’s unlikely she’ll ever wake.’ The notion of providing Drenata with the best care available had never been in question. Unlike so many other issues she’d dealt with, she didn’t have to ask what her father would have advised her to do. Drenata had given the bulk of her life in service to the governor’s household, and making sure she was cared for was the least Ashielle could do to honour her service.

Hanrik grimaced and turned back to the bookcase. Few on Ceocan had welcomed him back, Ashielle knew. Having one of the few who had opened their hearth to him taken away had to sting. She supposed that her brother had been so treated throughout his life that he probably considered the feeling typical by now. Drenata had always had an extra moment to spare for the wellbeing of the children in the palace, but Ashielle was beginning to suspect she had doted on Hanrik.

‘It’s a shame,’ he said. ‘It would have been nice to see a friendly face. Or at least feel their presence.’

‘Should I take that to mean that Judge Idonell will not be attending?’ Ashielle smiled as Hanrik turned back to her, to show her brother she was teasing him. ‘Or does that mean your meeting with him went less than spectacularly?’

Hanrik straightened his belt, frowning. She wondered if he realised how much he looked like their father in that moment. She knew that look: the stern, patrician glare as he tried to fight back a decidedly unprofessional comment.

‘Judge Idonell will not be attending,’ he said. Ashielle could tell he was fighting himself on whether or not he should say more to her. A quandary of duty to his position against duty to his family. If voicing a negative opinion of his superior gave him this much difficulty, how much worse might it be if he was forced to intervene professionally?

Ashielle signed one of the documents in front of her. A routine authorisation for grain shipments to the Callistonian Haven. The key to getting men like Hanrik and her father to open up was to give them an out.

‘I’ve yet to meet him, of course,’ she said. ‘In my preparations for the possibility of his attendance this evening, I’ve had to rely on father’s notes.’ She shuffled the request to the other side of her desk, studiously avoiding Hanrik’s sudden gaze. ‘He seemed to be of the opinion that Idonell had no interest in the goings-on of Ceocan.’

Hanrik cleared his throat and shuffled uncomfortably. There it was: confirmation of all she needed to know.

‘With regards to what matters, or rather, that is, in the broader sense of the Imperium at large,’ Hanrik said, caught between honesty and offending a planetary governor, and his own sister to boot, ‘the Callistonian takes up a greater portion of attention than, or rather, the affairs of–’

‘A relatively minor world?’ Ashielle offered. ‘Relative to the Imperium as a whole?’

Hanrik visibly relaxed. ‘Quite.’

Ashielle signed the last of the documents and pushed back from her desk. ‘Hanrik,’ she sighed, ‘I’m not as self-deluded as the council of nobles. I may not have been educated on Sorinoux, but I have enough awareness to know that Ceocan is only a very small part of the Imperium as a whole. I’m sure the judge has more than enough to occupy his time on the Callistonian.’

Hanrik shook his head. ‘It isn’t so much that, but the Callistonian is where the bulk of traffic comes through. I know it looks like a slight, but if anything, it’s a credit to father’s administration that the arbitrators need pay so little attention to the planet.’

Ashielle gave herself a last check in the mirror before leaving. She allowed Hanrik to open the door for her, but made sure it was she who locked the door. After the intrusion, she couldn’t trust anyone.

‘So, in your opinion, what is the likelihood of the arbitrator being drawn in to a power struggle?’ she asked as they walked.

Hanrik kept his eyes forward. ‘Very small,’ he said. ‘Idonell has managed to stay out of the politics of the noble houses for decades, and has every intention of keeping it that way. So long as the tithes keep coming and whoever occupies Darcarden continues to give him a plausible veneer of stability, he isn’t going to get involved.’

‘You seem like you disapprove,’ said Ashielle. Hanrik grimaced again.

‘It’s not my place to approve or to disapprove of the judge’s methods of operation,’ he said.

‘But if it was?’

Her question brought her brother up short. He stopped walking for a moment, weighing whether to be honest with her or not.

‘If I were in Judge Idonell’s position,’ he said cautiously, ‘I might be more inclined to pay greater attention to the goings-on of Ceocan.’ He started walking again, refusing to look Ashielle in the eye. ‘Of course, my superiors would rightly question whether my interest was motivated by personal spite. Which is why I would never be allowed to serve on Ceocan.’

That was as it ever had been. The truth was that the political warfare of Ceocan was relatively small time. She knew that on worlds like Sorinoux, the monolithic bulwarks of the ancient Adeptus organisations ground against one another in titanic clashes, struggles that might leave thousands or even millions dead as a result of a petty dispute between rival functionaries. Ceocan had none of that. Their sole arbitrator cared little for the world. The Adeptus Mechanicus and the Administratum both considered the Callistonian Haven to be their primary concern, and kept the bulk of their forces there. The Adeptus Astra Telepathica did not even have an office on Ceocan, apparently considering the world too insignificant to bother with a standing contingent of sanctioned psykers trained to send and receive interstellar communication. Her household staff had the only assigned astropath on the entire planet, although she knew a few of the wealthier noble houses were able to afford private astropaths of their own.

She was glad that Hanrik was walking with her. The halls of Darcarden had begun to change their tone for her. Where she had once drawn strength from their immensity, the upswept arches reminding her to lift her head, the ancient stone foundations that had borne her people for millennia lending strength to her feet, she now walked them with trepidation at best. The vaulted ceilings were never completely lit; how could they be? Each darkened hallway she passed was a potential hiding spot. Each shadowy recess was the home for an imagined set of lurking eyes.

Her unseen stalker watched her from the shadows, she knew, and in Darcarden, there was nothing but shadows to hide in.

‘I’m afraid I simply must slip away, ladies.’ Tanzeg smiled at the simpering noblewomen vying for his attention. ‘My companion needs a little air, and what sort of escort would I be if I didn’t accompany her?’ He prodded Marysia to move, smiling all the while.

His companion smiled and curtseyed. A skilled actress, Marysia did not give away the slightest clue that she didn’t belong to this world. Her skilful cold reading of the guests allowed her to navigate conversations about art, politics and finance with practised ease. She gave no reason for any of them to believe she was anything other than a new-money merchant’s daughter or distant cousin of one of the Grevenate, in Kostoveim for the ball, and infatuated perhaps with the eldest Vaneisen scion.

Tanzeg led Marysia through the side halls, tugging at her arm insistently. This was why he had brought her: no one would question a spoiled son of privilege stealing away to a side room with his lady friend. Governor Matkosen was busy receiving official supplicants, and the rest of the guests were too busy plotting to stab one another in the back to care. Tanzeg found the narrow staircase down into the footman’s hall where he had pursued Ashielle with Lostrovsky. He would have been capable of blustering his way through any mundane servant challenging him, but none did.

‘Wait here,’ he said to his companion. Marysia had served her purpose, and while she was useful, he certainly didn’t trust her.

He reached into his duelling vest and produced his iso-tracker. The piece of tech was ancient, but faithful yet. The screen flickered to life and began cycling through tracking arcs. He heard the sound of footsteps coming down the hall, but didn’t break his cool. Holding the iso-tracker low against his leg, he used his free hand to pull a lho-stick from his breast pocket, and lit it while leaning against the wall. After a moment, a pair of servants came around the corner, carrying a tray of finger sandwiches between them. Tanzeg ignored them.

After they were gone, he checked back with his iso-tracker to discover that it had returned a hit. Not only that, it was close. Tanzeg smiled to himself and set off down the hallway. The iso-tracker was as eager for its task as Tanzeg himself was. Other nobles might eschew performing their own labour, and for menial tasks Tanzeg was no different. When it came time to enact the malevolent schemes of his family, however, Tanzeg preferred to act himself. The last time he had visited, Lostrovsky had tried to convince his employer not to accompany him into the palace. Then, as ever, Tanzeg had insisted on being part of the action. When it came to the inflicting of pain and the snuffing of life, men like Lostrovsky were mere functionaries. Tanzeg was an artist.

The cold, whistling servants’ corridors were the things of dreams. The Vaneisens’ palace had servants’ corridors as well, but they were small, tight and functional, with plaster walls and no embellishments. Darcarden had been built in a much older time, and its support structure showed it. The buttresses arcing overhead put to mind the ribs of a great beast, its long-deceased corpse turned to the purpose of a new generation now living in its shadow.

The heat of the great halls could never penetrate these side corridors, not completely, and they held a palpable chill. The small fireplaces of the footman’s parlours, where servants could rest and take their meals, would alleviate the cold somewhat, but even then, the air was crisper here than in the rest of Darcarden. He grinned wolfishly. Without someone tending to them regularly, the walls and floor would become slick with condensation. A film of moss would grow over the whole length. Great arachnid webs would dominate the arches overhead. If Tanzeg had ever needed any proof that he and the holier-than-thou woman upon the throne were cut from different cloth, then these corridors proved the question beyond a doubt. When these halls were his, he marvelled, what a spectacle they would be!

The iso-tracker led him to the door where he’d bludgeoned the old maid, which wasn’t a surprise. At one point the door had been bound shut by a lock of staggering complexity, a technological marvel the likes of which he’d never before seen. The digital screen of the device was blank, its machine-spirit dead and gone, no doubt at Lostrovsky’s hand. Tanzeg ran a finger along the exposed guts of the device.

‘What delightful apostasy were you up to?’ he whispered. To defile a relic of the Mechanicus? He’d known Lostrovsky was a bloodthirsty little pervert, but hadn’t realised him capable of such blasphemy.

Tanzeg scanned the hallway in either direction. He heard the sound of distant echoes, but that was to be expected. There was nothing immediate. He pulled his set of lockpicks from his jacket and went to work on the lock. It was a monster. Ashielle’s archaic and irreplaceable biolock may have been destroyed, but she had at least been wise enough to replace it with a formidable, if wholly mechanical, replacement. The lock-and-chain were too thick to even consider cutting through, even if he’d had tools to do so, but Tanzeg was one of the wealthiest people on Ceocan, and one of the many toys his fortunes had supplied him with was a set of crystalline lockpicks of surpassing craftsmanship. He didn’t know where they came from, only that the smuggler who had sold them to him had later been arrested aboard the Callistonian Haven for possession of xenos artefacts. What he did know was that they had never failed him, and seemed to amplify his own perception and dexterity when he was using them.

The lock gave way eventually, as every obstacle eventually did for Tanzeg. He was only mildly surprised to a find a hidden storeroom behind the door. The portrait of General Terresant gave him pause, and he idly examined the room’s contents. A low table held a small brick of obscura, a trio of gladstones in a woven basket, and a tiny shard of red glass wrapped in tissue paper.

Now there was a surprise. As straight-sown as the Matkosens were, it seemed that even they had a taste for the illegal. He moved through the room, examining the contents in greater detail. A uniform from the traitorous Haradni Militarum officers that had tried to infiltrate the Callistonian Haven during the reign of the first Matkosen. A watercolour from one of the Encidious Enclave, an infamous group of artists executed for heresy in centuries past. A collection of tokens bearing the sigils of the T’au Empire.

He sighed. Nothing really interesting. His own hideaway cellar had far more… eccentric artefacts. Still, the presence of such a vault could cause a great deal of concern for the new governor if he were to find a way to reveal its existence. He thought about pocketing one or two items to blackmail her, but dismissed the thought out of hand. Nothing here was so offensive that it would warrant a real investigation, nothing so egregious that it couldn’t be explained away as a heretical item that had been confiscated and then forgotten about. Tanzeg turned his attention back to his tracker unit, which showed the isotope trail from the slave tag passing through the wall of the vault.

Shifting the table aside revealed the hidden door, and Tanzeg almost laughed.

He produced the luminator globe from his pocket and made his way cautiously down the staircase. A vault of heresy wasn’t so shocking. He’d have been more surprised not to find one in the home of a ruling family, although the lower-class greves could hardly boast any heresies worth speaking about. A hidden dungeon, though? That was something far more interesting.

His experienced nose detected the scent of offal long before he reached the bottom of the staircase. He recognised the distinct squelch as his boots left the stairs and sank into something gelatinous at the bottom. He lowered his luminator-globe to his knees, curious as to what could be scattered about down here.

‘Well, that’s interesting,’ he said. He recognised Lostrovsky’s silly little spectacles, the lenses smeared with a thin, greasy film. The rounded end of a tibia protruded from a slab of rotting meat a hand’s breadth away. He scanned the ground slowly, mentally accounting for most of his servant’s remains.

How delicious. He’d suspected the Matkosens had some sort of dark secret from the outside world, but this was beyond his wildest expectations. To the warp with what his mother wanted: if Ashielle was capable of this, he would be willing to play the long game. He’d shift tactics, present a more charming front, but he would find a way to win her heart. He held his luminator aloft and set off through Lostrovsky’s remains. He was curious what Ashielle had done with his assassin’s head. He couldn’t begin to guess what she could have used it for, but he found the very idea that she had absconded with it more interesting than anything else she’d ever done.

The labyrinth was intriguing. Fortunately, Lostrovsky had left a trail for him to follow. Most likely unintentionally, as the trail consisted largely of the assassin’s own blood, but the Vaneisen heir could overlook that. It looked as though Lostrovsky might have been worth his hiring fee after all.

If there was anything that Ashielle truly appreciated about the Adeptus Mechanicus, it was their devotion to efficiency. Where all her other dutiful citizens had come with fawning assurances of loyalty or unctuous attempts to hitch their fortunes to her own, the representative of the Priesthood of Mars had been blunt, curt and dryly technical.

‘Would you think less of me if I confessed I didn’t understand a word of that?’ Hanrik asked. He kept his voice low, but Ashielle couldn’t suppress a smile. ‘I caught something about oceans and mining, but that was about it.’

The ball guests might look as though they were paying attention to their food, or to the music, or to one of her many artistic displays, but all such distractions were merely blinds that hid the true object of the guests’ attention: the governor herself. Ashielle knew that all eyes were on her, judging her, trying to determine what direction her administration might take.

The sensation of being a stranger in her own home wasn’t new to her. The ballroom was packed with members of the Grevenate and their families, as well as various adepts, luminaries, and other citizens wealthy or influential enough to merit an invitation. Coronations and state funerals were sombre affairs, laden with gravitas and ceremony, but the Devotional Banquet following the installation of a new lord governor was a true celebration, and for many a once-in-a-lifetime event. The crowd was arrayed in their finest, with most nobles dressed in garments that cost more than any of their servants would make in their entire careers. Fine silks, neotex collars and triphidian feathers were on display, along with materials more exotic yet, all crafted by the most elite tailors and haberdashers on the planet.

If the reception was to be her introduction to the nobles of Ceocan, her chance to make an opening statement, she had decided early it would be a declaration of conservative plenty. The Colonnadium Mecenate, the enclosed columned hall that surrounded the Darhaver Ballroom, had been refitted with the finest art pieces the Matkosens owned. Paintings, weavings, furnishings and sculptures from the breadth of the planet, many older than the noble houses represented in attendance, were on display for all to admire. Her chefs had not crafted any new or bizarre dishes, had imported nothing from off-world, and had designed no titanic displays of culinary theatre. Instead, the food she had served showcased the entire palette of Ceocan cuisine, from hearty Kostoci steak to salted Pellucidian fish pastries. Two separate instrumental ensembles, staged at opposite ends of the ballroom, alternated music in a variety of styles popular throughout Ceocani history.

Despite being surrounded by those anxious to get her measure, she drew some small comfort having Hanrik by her side. He was a supportive presence: distant for twenty years he might have been, but he was nonetheless a family member she had known from childhood, who shared her blood and at least the core of her values. At the same time, his presence had a transient quality that added to his safety – he wasn’t going to be staying for more than a few days, so he had no worth to any long-term plans of potential rivals. It was a strange combination that ultimately made him more comforting and trustworthy than anyone else around her.

‘I got most of it,’ she said, watching the magos amble away. ‘He asked for us to divert fishing in the northern ice bays while his teams conduct a mineral survey. At least the Priesthood of Mars is direct in their approach. This will probably be the only time Magos Crofeld sees me all year unless I summon him, which the governor generally only does if there’s an emergency. So, logic dictates he make any request he has now. To tell the truth, I prefer the directness.’

The next supplicant was already approaching them. Ashielle sat apart from the dancers and diners, upon a raised dais of ebbulite marble, the stone’s natural luminescence dulled to a faint yellow glow by the centuries that had passed since its mining. Those who wished to speak with her had to ascend the wide, shallow steps and ascend to her level, to address her as she sat in the great padded seat which served as her throne. Blood-red velvet atop ferenwood dredged from the Trenkovi bogs. Age had darkened the wood to a glossy black. The tree that had provided the wood had been extinct before humans had set foot on the planet, preserved and petrified in the moss-choked mud for thousands of years. The specific trunk that would one day become the throne of Ceocan would have sprouted, grown and died when the skies and oceans of Holy Terra still ran blue.

Margreve Lagaret Gavozny was a woman Ashielle had never personally met, but had heard much about. Paola and Ashielle had, during many long conversations at university, confided their personal opinions of their own family members to one another. Paola’s father had been, like Ashielle, the second child of the ruling member of his house. Unlike Ashielle, his elder sister had survived, and had become margreve shortly after Hanrik’s birth. The Gavoznys had made their fortune in chemical processing, most specifically dyeworks, although they had expanded as the years had rolled on. From what Paola had told her, her aunt Lagaret was a single-minded woman, who had never let loyalty, mercy or empathy get in the way of lining her family’s coffers.

‘Lord Governor Matkosen,’ said Lagaret as she reached the last stair. ‘We thank you for your generous hospitality. May I present my own daughter, Quelevea Gavozny.’

The Margreve Gavozny was a stout woman, short and thickly muscled. She did no manual labour that Ashielle was aware of, and instead had perfected her strong physique only for herself. From what Paola had told her, the margreve had been a successful bare-knuckle brawler in her youth, and was not above using her physicality to intimidate some of the idle, perfumed nobles with whom she had business dealings.

In many ways, Quelevea was the opposite of her mother. Her hands were folded in front of her, her gaze lowered timidly. She was small and withdrawn, and when she mumbled an echo of her mother’s thanks, her voice shook with fear.

‘So lovely to have you both,’ said Ashielle. ‘May I offer you a sweet?’ She gestured to the servitor standing next to her, holding a tray of ice-cold cubes of shivering Marcorellian gelatin. The servitor, like all the others navigating the crowd with trays of food and drink, was a pinnacle of cybernetic craft. The flesh was clean and dressed in Matkosen servants’ livery, the artificial components oiled, maintained and silent. The slack faces had been covered by porcelain masks made to honour the faces of long-serving former employees of the palace. They were particular points of interest for the guests. The works aboard the Callistonian Haven absorbed most of the servitors produced on Ceocan, and the agri-works took the majority that remained. Most noble houses could afford only a single servitor, and many had none at all.

‘You’re most gracious, my lord, but no.’ Margreve Gavozny had a grim half-smile. Ashielle wondered what manner of game the woman was playing. ‘It is my daughter who has a request of you.’ She turned to Quelevea. ‘Don’t just stand there, child. The lord governor has a busy evening.’

‘So sorry, your excellency.’ Quelevea seemed unsure what to do with herself, and made do with a curtsy. ‘However, I’m old enough now to enter into holdings of my own.’

‘I see,’ said Ashielle. She smiled and leaned forward, trying to relax her posture to be as unintimidating as possible.

‘There is, ah, significant demand for our family’s goods,’ the young woman said, eyeing her mother uncomfortably. ‘However, my elder family members have the demand sufficiently covered.’

Ashielle understood the girl’s plight: she didn’t want to earn her mother’s disapproval by spelling out the naked truth. Fortunately, she was up to date on the economics of Ceocan, and already knew that the Gavozny fortunes were stable, but had no room for expansion at the moment. The expanding population required housing, not fabric dyes.

‘Did you have something in mind?’ Ashielle asked. The traditional holdings of a noble family were the most common occupation for its members, but by no means the only one available to them.

Quelevea nodded. ‘Yes, excellency. I have a partner, my betrothed, Theole Arclaven, who is a vintner by trade.’ The name wasn’t familiar to Ashielle, which meant the partner wasn’t a member of any of the ruling families. Quelevea was a third child, however, which meant her family would have no concerns allowing her to marry outside of her class.

Ashielle saw the trouble, however, and the trap Margreve Gavozny believed she was laying for Ashielle. The family trades associated with each noble house might not be a requirement for them, but they were protected industries, by law. Food production was the undisputed territory of the Matkosens. Vineyards occupied a legal grey area. Some court rulings had found them to be classified as food or beverage enterprises, and thus the province of the Matkosens. Others, particularly the smallest and most elite, had been ruled as artistic endeavours, and thus belonging to no house as a default matter of law.

To make matters even more tricky, all the best land for the growing of vitiberries was prime arable land, and thus owned by the Matkosens unless otherwise granted. If Ashielle wanted to help Quelevea Gavozny, she would need to give away a portion of her own land, and cede a business enterprise that could arguably be considered hers, to a noble house that did not operate in her favour. If she refused, she could be seen as petty, holding on to a small scrap of land she wasn’t using, and undermining the empathetic and reasonable image she had cultivated for herself.

‘What a lovely idea,’ Ashielle said. She looked Margreve Gavozny in the eye. ‘I believe I could, conditionally, spare a few square miles outside of Trenkovi Bay. Say, fifteen?’

The eyes of the Gavozny women widened in shock. No vineyard of that size had ever been classified as an artistic endeavour before.

‘What conditions?’ Lagaret asked, her eyes narrowing in suspicion.

Ashielle smiled. ‘Taxes paid at trade rate, until such time as the value of the property has been repaid. In addition to standard tithes and taxes, one per cent of your daughter’s production by vintage, to be diverted to the palace.’ She nodded at Quelevea. ‘We must keep our own stocks plentiful, after all.’ Turning back to Lagaret, she added another clause, as if as an afterthought. ‘And the labourers, both seasonal and permanent, to be recruited from a city of the governor’s choosing, in perpetuity. You can begin with, we’ll say, three hundred workers from Selpergam.’

Margreve Lagaret nearly laughed out loud. The terms were quite generous, but more to the point, they did nothing to harm the fortunes of the Gavozny family. They would, however, bode poorly for the Vaneisens, who had already accepted contracts to build additional housing in Selpergam, some of which would sit vacant now that a few hundred workers would be moved to another continent.

‘Thank you, your excellency,’ Quelevea gushed. Ashielle gave her a gracious smile and a wave as the young woman’s mother guided her down the dais and away into the crowd. Another petty trap of her enemies averted. At least that one had been relatively easy.

Hanrik grimaced as they watched the crowd, waiting for the next guest to approach. ‘They all want something. It’s all so… avaricious. I thought the evening was supposed to be a show of loyalty to you.’

She smiled again, this time openly and genuinely. The parade of supplicants had begun the moment she walked into the ballroom, and would likely continue through the night.

‘And most of them demonstrate that loyalty with pretty words and trivial gifts,’ she said. ‘Then, of course, they reason that they should immediately capitalise on that loyalty before I have the opportunity to divine whether or not they’ve truly earned it.’

The gifts meant little to her, save for those rare few that were personal and meaningful, like the embossed book of neo-legalist poetry that Paola had delivered earlier. That was the image she had attempted to convey. From the food to the music to the artwork, to the grand architecture of Darcarden that she had laid open to the Grevenate, it all spoke to the same message. The massive, arched ribs of the ballroom, the ancient throne, the goods both fine and mundane from every reach of her planet, told everyone present that nothing was beyond her grasp. It was no accident that she had chosen the Darhaver Ballroom for her Devotional Banquet. As the highest point of the palace’s northern side, the glass windows of the Colonnadium Mecenate offered a stunning vista of the palace to the south and east, and the rolling countryside to the north. To the west, the entire city of Kostoveim lay before the viewers, the lights stretching to the horizon to blend nearly seamlessly with the stars of the night sky.

The message, she hoped, was clear: this is a person who has everything. Not through ostentation, but through completeness, venerability and reliability, she showed that her means were as close to infinite as mattered on Ceocan. Her wealth so vast as to make her unbribable. If she had to make a single statement to begin her reign, she would make it a declaration that she could not be bought, for there was nothing she did not have, and little she could not afford to give in service to her world.

‘That’s appalling,’ said Hanrik, drawing her thoughts back to the conversation at hand.

‘Does it really work differently on Sorinoux?’ asked Ashielle.

‘Sorinoux is a shrine world,’ he said, ‘so the influential elite tend to be members of the Ecclesiarchy, and a little more focused on maintaining an appearance of pious loyalty.’

She might have hoped to continue the conversation for a while longer, as much to postpone the inevitable torrent of personal requests as to hear more about her brother’s new home, but Barrin’s arrival ended that. The group captain’s stern expression told her it was not mere social formality that brought him out.

‘Ma’am,’ he said.

‘What is it?’

‘One of the visitors was observed discretely sneaking into the servants’ corridors off the main room,’ he whispered.

Aware of how many eyes were upon her, Ashielle smiled as though he had told her something charming and innocuous.

‘Whom?’ she asked.

‘Tanzeg Vaneisen, and his guest.’

The thought of Tanzeg Vaneisen sneaking through the halls of her palace was disturbing enough, but the notion that he might have a greater agenda concerned her even more.

‘Where was he spotted, Fidal?’ She smiled and leaned in as if laughing at a private joke.

‘By the Draper’s Hall, ma’am.’

Inside, she fumed. Tanzeg creeping off into the shadows for a covert liaison with whatever woman he’d bribed into accompanying him she could see as being mere coincidence, but the same footman’s hall she’d nearly been cornered in? Her father had had a saying: When conspiracy goes abroad, coincidence is the mask it wears, and she was beginning to see the wisdom in it.

‘Then we should go and see if there’s anything he needs,’ she said as she stood.

Hanrik stood as well, confused. ‘A runaway guest? Does that warrant your personal intervention?’ he asked.

How much she could reveal to Hanrik still weighed upon her. To tell him everything, Jaezubiel and all, might be more than he could handle. He was an arbitrator, after all, and she couldn’t trust the bonds of blood to take precedence over the oaths he had taken. Still, she might need his assistance if things were to go too far awry.

‘The Draper’s Hall is the closest point to the corridor where I was attacked,’ she said. ‘If my assassin, or those who hired him, were to return to the scene of their attack to destroy evidence, or to ensure none remained, that’s the route they would take.’

Hanrik nodded, and she was grateful that his assistance required no more explanation than that. Her brother gestured for Fidal to lead, and the three of them made their way through the crowd, Ashielle responding to all inquiries about her departure with a smile and an off-hand comment about a minor domestic issue that required her attention.

She thought about summoning her guards, but she couldn’t simply have Tanzeg arrested. Not without cause, at any rate, and slipping away from a ball to stink up a side hallway was hardly grounds for a charge of high treason. Arresting Tanzeg, or even his whole family, wouldn’t give rise to much ire in the general population, but the Grevenate members who owed loyalty (coerced or otherwise) to the coadjutor family could cause her no end of grief.

To her dismay, they didn’t catch Tanzeg doing anything untoward at all. She half-expected to find him attempting to force his way through the cellar door when they arrived, but to her displeasure he was coming her way, with a woman by his side whom Ashielle didn’t recognise.

‘Ah, excellency,’ he said, his voice slightly slurred. ‘What a pleasant surprise.’

The hallway, already uncomfortably narrow, felt crowded with the sudden tension that filled the air. Tanzeg’s guest stiffened, her gaze shifting from the arbitrator, the group captain and the governor. Ashielle felt a twinge of empathy towards the poor woman. It was clear she wasn’t one of the aristocracy, despite her gestures to the contrary. Whatever Tanzeg needed her for, Ashielle doubted the woman had expected to become trapped between the lord governor, a member of the Adeptus Arbites, and one of the planet’s most powerful crime lords. She admired the woman’s composure; she had seen people crumble under much less pressure.

‘My evening’s been full of surprises,’ Ashielle said.

‘Mine as well,’ Tanzeg replied. ‘These old buildings are just full of them.’

‘Not usually, one would imagine, in the wine cellar,’ said Hanrik.

‘I wouldn’t know,’ said Tanzeg. ‘As her excellency has the wine cellar locked behind a rather impressive anchor chain. I suppose such precautions are required when one’s own servants can’t be trusted.’

‘Yes, unfortunately Darcarden seems to play host to a significant number of treacherous types these days,’ she said.

‘Quite.’ Hanrik’s voice had taken on a tone that Ashielle had never heard before, yet seemed somehow familiar. ‘Where were you headed in such a hurry, Mr. Vaneisen?’ The voice was cold and immutable. If ceramite spoke, it would sound like that.

Tanzeg held up his hands. Ashielle wondered how many times that boyish grin and innocent demeanour had got the Vaneisen out of trouble. If he was angry at having his title dropped, he didn’t let it show.

‘My apologies, Lord Matkosen,’ he said. ‘Finding a hidden room locked in such a fashion is something I’ve learned to treat with alarm. Having grown up on Sorinoux, you might be unaware, but it’s not uncommon for ruling houses on Ceocan to have secret rooms with all manner of decadent perversions hidden away from prying eyes.’ He winked at Ashielle. ‘Not that I imagine her excellency is involved in any such wickedness, of course, but such heavy defences on such an innocuous area understandably set off alarm bells for me, you understand. I thought it might be better to withdraw with all haste.’

Ashielle narrowed her eyes. His attempts to throw suspicion on her were ludicrous. He suspected his man Lostrovsky had been lost somewhere in this area, but if he hadn’t gotten through the door, then there was no way he’d ever be able to prove it.

‘Withdrawal seems the best course of action,’ said Hanrik. ‘If you and the young lady have business pressing enough that you need to leave, I’d hate to keep you here.’

Ashielle struggled to keep her face grim while the smile faded from Tanzeg’s face, as the older noble tried to work out if he had been politely dismissed or subtly threatened. The woman beside him seemed relieved to have an out.

Tanzeg’s mask finally reasserted itself. ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘You know how it is when a relationship is exciting and new.’ He paused. ‘Or I’m sure you will.’

Hanrik stepped aside, inclining his head towards the way back. Tanzeg flourished his arm elaborately for his companion, and swept past them. As he brushed past her in the narrow hall, Tanzeg locked his eyes with Ashielle and grinned. It wasn’t a smile of a knavish troublemaker weaselling his way out of a punishment. It was a look of a man genuinely trying to be charming. Ashielle was revolted.

At the top of the stairs, once they’d left the servants’ corridors, Tanzeg’s escort seemed to overcome her timidity.

‘Oh, your excellency,’ she gushed, gesturing to one of the tapestries hanging on a nearby wall. ‘I’ve never seen such a magnificent piece. Could I trouble you for an explanation of its origin? I confess that my knowledge has failed me on this example, and I’m told you’re quite the authority on post-Resurgence artefacts.’

Ashielle favoured the woman with a gracious smile.

‘Of course,’ she said. ‘This piece depicts the triumph over Warlord Ngosh at the Bethterrian Divide. It’s one of the few physical portrayals of an inquisitor not sanctioned by the Inquisition. Of course, Inquisitor Hechevarra is deliberately shown with an appearance wildly different than his true image…’ She continued to draw on, the young woman nodding and interjecting questions in a perfect display of feigned fascination.

She had to commend the woman’s skill. Ashielle hadn’t even seen the signal that must have come from Tanzeg to command her to create a distraction. As a con artist, her talents were impeccable. The specific information she was able to cite (gleaned from Ashielle’s own contributions to the conversation) made her seem like an avid art history enthusiast. If the woman hadn’t mistaken a pre-Solarian piece for post-Resurgence at the top of the discussion, Ashielle might not have had any reason to doubt her counterfeit knowledge.

‘If I can beg your forgiveness, your excellency, I was hoping to show my companion the lovely western view.’ Tanzeg interjected, politely taking the woman’s arm, the picture of courtly decorum. She nodded and thanked Ashielle as she was led away. Ashielle sincerely hoped Tanzeg wasn’t placing the woman in danger. She knew Jaezubiel wasn’t the only monster she’d allowed to walk into the halls of Darcarden.

8

Jaezubiel drifted from shadow to shadow. Perched atop a bronze image of a weeping saint, it stared down into the crowd of humans in the Colonnadium Mecenate. A few swayed unartfully to the pained string music. To the human senses it was no doubt sublime, but compositions of harmony and rhythm were anathema to creatures like it.

A blink, a heartbeat, and it was behind a corpulent man draped in pale furs. From his proximity to others, Jaezubiel guessed the other humans smelled nothing but the stocky man’s mild perfume. Crouched in the shadow, Jaezubiel could drink in more, much more. Beneath the rancid floral perfume, it could smell the musty shroud of ages, the reminder that this fur cloak had lain unused for many years. Beneath that, however, Jaezubiel could smell blood. It could taste the fat from the ursine creature’s blubber. It could smell the oily tang of the skinning knife that had harvested the pelt. Most importantly, it could feel the creature’s shock and pain as the spear had been plunged into its body, the prideful outrage that any puny prey animal had dared to sharpen a stick and come after him. Jaezubiel felt a shiver run down its spine as it felt the vengeful fury that had possessed the beast in the moment of its death, and there, just there, at the very edge of its senses, it could detect the tiniest hint of the hunter’s own heart, cold and prideful with the knowledge of what it had done.

Jaezubiel came back to its senses, crouching in the shadow of a credenza, and seethed to itself. The perfumed flesh offered no great arousal – the fur cloak smelled of great pain and pride, but the wearer was soft and simpering.

In the space of a glance, it was gone. Skulking behind a tapestry. Creeping beneath a table. Perched atop a ceiling support. On the field of battle it would stick to the deepest shadows, creeping slowly with its brethren, but here, far from the bright-eyed gaze of the terrified or the dull, alert stare of the jaded veteran, it could move with impunity. It might as well have been moving openly among them, as free as it was.

It didn’t have the psychic puissance of its more refined cousins, but the shadows revealed to Jaezubiel what its mind itself could not take. It could smell their fears, could feel their little discomforts, and could taste their unspoken malevolent urges.

It paused behind the old woman in silver. Here was a familiar scent. The nightfiend leaned in close, savouring the odour of hate, and shivered as the old woman stiffened. Not quite astute enough to sense its presence, but almost.

This was the smell from the ancient manor. The one with the decaying wards. Her children and lesser relations bore the ripe scent of blood and bruise; they were hands that were no strangers to blade and bludgeon. The matriarch was something altogether different: in her it sensed a mind full of barbed points and venomous edges. A wicked mind.

It could always reveal himself to her. There was nothing stopping it from showing itself to anyone it chose, from saying what it liked. It might not be able to effect its will on the cattle of this world with claw, blade or flame, but it could wield a canny word better than anyone else. If it wished, it could betray the young signet bearer who had freed it to this wizened doer of evil. Its brethren would regard it a fool for not doing so.

Although it was a master of arts profound and profane, and witness to secrets so perverse that humans had no vocabulary to describe them, its long incarceration had shown it that there were still skills it had left to learn. In particular, the eternity of insensate imprisonment had taught it patience and foresight.

The cruel and vicious little family of murderers in the lesser position would be more satisfying in the short term, certainly. They would shed enough blood that it and its kind could indulge in a feast of agony. A little patience, a little planning, however, offered a far greater reward. With a gentle touch and the right enticement, this world could offer a bounty of torment that would replenish itself for eons.

Jaezubiel stared at the cold, cruel face of the old woman. It might be satisfying to see her work, but it would be vastly more rewarding to work its arts upon her. As jaded as she was, she too had much still to learn about the infliction of pain.

‘I’ll have someone sweep for listening devices or infiltration tools, ma’am.’ Group Captain Barrin looked to Hanrik, who concurred with a nod.

‘No,’ Ashielle said, patting Barrin’s arm absently, ‘I don’t think that will be necessary.’ She forced a laugh. ‘If we launch an investigation every time a Vaneisen slinks away from their responsibilities for some tawdry dalliance, we’ll never get any work done.’

Group Captain Barrin laughed along with her, although she noticed Hanrik’s stern visage, which gave her pause. She had never before seen him operating as he would in a professional capacity, and the experience had been chilling. Her brother was naturally taciturn and composed, but the Hanrik who had questioned Tanzeg Vaneisen with the voice of ceramite was like a different person. His gaze, his voice, his posture; she realised she had been seeing Hanrik as her little brother, and had not adequately understood the man he had become. She had a better perspective now, and knew that allaying Hanrik’s suspicions needed to remain a priority. If he were to turn the full power of his training and intensity to questioning her, it could be calamitous.

‘I appreciate your excellency’s position,’ Barrin said. ‘I would be remiss in my duties, however, if I did not at least attempt to investigate what Lord Tanzeg was doing down here.’

Ashielle bit back a sharp response. Barrin was proving to be an effective choice as Zelucan’s replacement, but his professionalism was currently an impediment.

‘Your diligence in this regard is noted, group captain, but I think it is unwarranted. The cyber-hounds would have detected if anyone had brought explosives inside, so we know he did not leave a bomb. If Tanzeg were foolish enough to have planted a listening device, then he did so in the most inept place possible, for there are no conversations of importance taking place in the Draper’s Hall.’ She paused, as if considering the evidence. ‘If his behaviour is indeed suspicious, I would think it more likely to be a distraction than anything else. If you want to go and make sure he gets back without incident, I’ll let my brother escort me back to the ball. If you believe his conduct is worthy of further action, then let us check in with the High Service on patrol, and perhaps call in those who are currently off-duty.’

Properly mollified, Barrin nodded and faded into the crowd to execute her commands.

Ashielle looped her arm through Hanrik’s to guide him back to the ballroom. She didn’t have the years of experience with Hanrik that she’d had with Ruprekt or Geordan, but she didn’t need a close relationship to read his mistrust. Her mind was racing. She needed to allay his suspicions as quickly as possible.

‘I’d like to take a look at the door he was trying to get through anyway,’ Hanrik said. She followed him back to the servants’ corridor, nodding as if she shared his concerns.

The icy chill of the servants’ corridors deepened the further they ventured. The age of the palace, even its side passages, had been something Ashielle could be proud of. They were a reminder that her home, and her entire reign, was built on old bones that had endured the ages without failing. Now, however, she saw them in a different way. She knew the darkness that her power had been founded in, and could not shake the feeling that the cold and silence of the side corridors spoke to a dark, malevolent aspect of the palace’s history that could never be permanently erased.

Hanrik glanced over the unassuming door, looking for anything out of the ordinary. He held the lock in his hand, looking at the thick chains with the hawkish gaze of an investigator.

‘It looks like there’s been some damage here,’ he said, gesturing to the door panel.

Ashielle disliked lying outright, but like any other social skill, it was one her father had drilled into her from a young age.

‘It’s a biolock, isn’t it? A few of those in the palace are damaged, from the time of father’s ascension,’ she said. ‘Some of the biometric locks refused to accept father’s bioreadings. Commander Svergei was in charge of the security transition, and you remember how he was. A loyal and effective man, but a bit of an ambull in a ceramic shop.’

Hanrik regarded her for a moment, as if wondering how efficient an ambull ceramicist would really be, then turned his gaze back to the lock in his hand. After a moment he let the lock and chain fall. Ashielle smiled as he stepped away, and offered her arm to him.

‘Do you know what’s in there?’ he asked. As aggravating as his persistence was, she admired his tenacity. She reflected that if he brought such dedication to his duties, his superiors probably valued him greatly. She had no doubt his career within the Adeptus Arbites would make her and her descendants proud, but only if she managed to draw him away from his current focus first.

‘Old decorations,’ she said. ‘I believe.’

He gave her a quizzical look.

‘I’m pretty sure it’s where they keep furnishings and ornaments that are of moderate value, but no longer in fashion or are in need of repair. Those Truvian feather-quilts that were in vogue for a year or so? They’re in there, although I think mother may have given one of them to Lady Lozarev after her daughter passed…’

She kept chattering away, gently guiding Hanrik back towards the ballroom. Keeping up an endless stream of small talk was second nature to her, but inside her mind was racing. If Tanzeg didn’t have anything concrete on her, then she needed to figure out how to get something concrete on him.

‘If you don’t mind my asking,’ she said, ‘what did you and Tanzeg discuss while I was educating his companion on the finer points of historical tapestries?’

Hanrik shook his head. ‘Nothing at all,’ he said. ‘He just took one of the serving napkins to wipe his shoes with.’ He gave her a quizzical stare. ‘I didn’t consider it suspicious at the time. It’s not an uncommon behaviour.’

He was right. The most fastidious (or elitist) of aristocrats and their servants sometimes chose to wipe their shoes off after trekking through servants’ side halls. Even Group Captain Barrin did. That was why she had trays of serving napkins stationed throughout the Colonnadium.

‘Why? Do you think it was abnormal in some way?’

‘Oh, no,’ Ashielle said, waving her hand dismissively. ‘I just wanted to make sure he didn’t take the opportunity to purloin one of the Marcorellian furnishings.’ She laughed. ‘I wouldn’t put it past him.’

Hanrik nodded, a half-smile finally returning to his face. As a small child, she knew, he had been convinced that someone was going to steal his mother’s collection of Marcorellian silver, and had spent many social engagements keeping a wary eye on any guest who ventured too close to the glass cabinet they were kept in. The reminder of their earlier years seemed to do what her airy pleasantries had not, and put him back in the mindset of her little brother.

‘If you see Group Captain Barrin,’ she said, ‘would you have him come and find me?’ She seethed, trying to wrap her head around what she should do.

‘More security issues?’ asked Hanrik.

‘No,’ she said. ‘I just want to introduce him to some of the other nobles, see how he comports himself. If he’s to become lord-consort, it would be to everyone’s benefit if he can navigate social scenes without embarrassment.’ When possible, it was always best to hide a lie firmly inside the truth. She had intended to vet Barrin’s social skills, and he was on her short list for a potential lord-consort.

Hanrik stared at her in puzzlement.

‘I hadn’t realised you had any sort of feelings for him,’ he said, as they re-entered the ballroom.

The second musical arrangement had begun a slow, Pellucidian bolero, a song of love lost and found. The slow, mournful notes of the stringed ensemble were perfectly chosen for the high arched ceiling of the ballroom. The acoustics of the room favoured the sad, romantic music. Many of the guests shuffled slowly together across the dance floor. Many more strolled along the windows in the lower light of the Colonnadium Mecenate, enjoying private conversations in the picturesque atmosphere.

‘I don’t.’ She shrugged. ‘Not any strong ones, at any rate. But he’s healthy, loyal and competent. His service record is exemplary, and his family is well-positioned enough to avoid embarrassment, but not so well that they would pose a political threat.’

‘You would think that his position as Officer of Reconnaissance would preclude his service in that regard,’ said Hanrik, ‘although I admit I’m not the most well-versed in protocols of this nature.’

‘It’s not unheard of.’

The Matkosens turned to see Esilia Vaneisen and her daughter swooping out of the crowd of those near the side of the ballroom. Ashielle wasn’t particularly surprised; she had never before seen Esilia Vaneisen dance.

‘Lady Vaneisen,’ Ashielle said, inclining her head politely. Hanrik bowed respectfully to the matriarch.

‘A number of governors have been wed to military officers, including the heads of their own High Service,’ the old lady said. ‘Typically, the consort will officially resign their post, although in practice they tend to take responsibility for the administration of the High Service after marriage, thus continuing their office in fact, if not in title.’

‘Should we be expecting a wedding invitation in the near future?’ Ireina asked. She sipped coquettishly at her flute of wine.

‘I don’t think so,’ Ashielle said. If Esilia’s daughter thought she could embarrass her, she had another thing coming. ‘Or did you mean I should be expecting one? Your brother and the young lady he brought seemed quite taken with one another. I scarcely even recognised her. Is that one of Lord Bruisell’s daughters?’ She held up one hand, as if struck by sudden inspiration. ‘If they’re serious, we should all have a drink together. Wouldn’t that be delightful. Where is she?’

She needed to find out how much Tanzeg knew about what had happened to Lostrovsky. She knew he was involved in the assassination attempt, but she still couldn’t have him arrested without some form of definitive proof. If she could corner him, she might be able to draw out how much he had gleaned. With any luck, she could also find some charge to have him arrested on, something the Grevenate couldn’t hold against her. Ireina glared at her, while Esilia smiled graciously. Ashielle was grateful that Hanrik had enough sense to keep quiet.

‘Unfortunately, she and Tanzeg decided to leave early. They made their goodbyes some time ago.’ Esilia smiled grimly. ‘He said something about a moonlit stroll back to our manor.’

Why would he have left early? Were the Vaneisens still planning an attack? They couldn’t be, or Esilia wouldn’t have endangered herself by staying here. No, Tanzeg had left his mother and sister behind deliberately. Whatever purpose he’d had in the side hall was already completed. If he was on foot, there was little chance she would find him. Ashielle swallowed back panic. She needed to get out of there, but she had locked herself into a conversation.

‘Did you mention you were looking for Group Captain Barrin, ma’am?’ Hanrik leaned into her field of view, pointing through the crowd to where Fidal was directing one of his subordinates.

The flood of relief could have carried her away. She squeezed Hanrik’s arm affectionately. Was it possible he was more politically astute than she’d given him credit for? No matter if he’d been giving her an intentional out or just aligning with her goals through a happy accident: she was grateful for the assistance.

‘Why thank you, Hanrik.’ She favoured the Vaneisens with a gracious smile. ‘If you’ll excuse me, ladies.

‘Group captain,’ she said, approaching from Barrin’s other side. She put one arm through his, and leaned in conspiratorially. She guided the group captain out of the ballroom, conscious of the eyes upon her. To his credit, Barrin accepted her arm graciously, but didn’t lean in or become overly familiar.

Once in the hall, beyond the sight of prying eyes, he pulled away from her and straightened, ever the picture of duty and professionalism.

‘Ma’am?’

‘Exercise discretion, but I need you to find Tanzeg Vaneisen. Immediately.’ She had no time to explain to the group captain, but he didn’t seem to require any. He nodded, executed a crisp spin, and strode down the hall.

The moment he was gone, Ashielle was off. Smiling, nodding, she weaved her way through the crowd of nobles, edging around to the same door they had come in. Something was eating at her, a nagging instinct that Tanzeg had not had his con artist distract her for no reason. If she could figure out why, it might give her an idea of what the Vaneisen had been up to.

The tray of serving napkins, set out for any guest who might feel the need to use them, remained where it should have been. Ashielle looked around the base of the high table it had been placed on, but found no evidence of a used specimen. After a moment, she pulled one of the napkins down and, pinching it between thumb and middle finger, (even she had been surprised at how quickly she had adapted to the missing forefinger) dropped it onto the floor. Nothing happened immediately, so she drifted around the Colonnadium, keeping an eye on the discarded cloth, exchanging pleasant small talk with any noble who came close enough to require a response.

Ostap was ready to be done with the banquet.

The lord governor had left her dais, either on business or to mingle with her guests, so there was little chance of an audience, and if he were honest with himself, even less reason for one. The receiving of guests at the Devotional Banquet was traditional, but by no means required, and no one ever expected a lord governor to sit and listen to every single guest. The event would last days if that were the case.

Ostap could afford to be a little more efficient. He had an advantage over Ashielle Matkosen, in that no one actually wanted to talk to him. So his conversations with many of the langreves and margreves had been delightfully short. Their family members, on the other hand, were frequently keen to converse with a member of the Grevenate that would deign to speak to someone who was not a member of that august assembly. So he had passed the hours listening to the eclectic musical arrangements, perusing the governor’s vast collection of art pieces, occasionally dancing with an elderly matron, and engaging in an endless stream of conversations that were by turns odd, wheedling or frightfully tedious.

If he served long enough in the Grevenate (and given his family’s opinion of the governing body, there was every chance he would serve there until his death), then some of these secondary family members might eventually be named ministers or even lords of their houses, and might be more favourably inclined to an outspoken greve they remembered fondly from social engagements in the past.

This was only a secondary interest to him, however. His primary goal at such events was always to find other family members like himself. The hangers-on, the superfluous children, or the administrative assistants who were sidelined by their houses for having the wrong pedigree or for being politically inconvenient, but whose views and goals aligned with his own. Ostap wielded only a little power in the grand scheme of things, but he sometimes found it within his purview to grant assistance to such potential allies, and he knew that if only a few of them were ever in a situation to repay him, their intervention might one day prove to be the critical support he needed in a future endeavour.

Still, the whole evening had begun to wear him out. Forcing himself to pretend to be civil with the likes of the Bruisells and Wynovoks left him feeling hollowed out and depleted, as though he’d just run from one end of the city to the other. He’d even smiled and played nice with the two Vaneisen siblings, both of whom had reacted to his presence as though he had retched on their shoes. He would have loved nothing more than to depart early and retire to the small villa his family had on the edge of Kostoveim, to pass away the remainder of the evening with a small glass of amasec, a long Ystrodian cigar and a thick book. There were, however, still many forgotten siblings and hideaway cousins to meet, attempt to charm and try to ingratiate himself with. He just needed a moment to himself, to pull his mind back together. When one of the musical ensembles began playing the lively horns of ‘The Call of the Grainier,’ and most of the assembled wealthy elite began shuffling to the open floor like grinning fools to participate in the popular Kostoci dance, Ostap took the moment to slip from the ballroom into the Colonnadium Mecenate, eager to steal a few seconds of respite.

In a corner of the columned hallway, he found a small display of paintings with only a lone guest, staring quietly at the art on the wall. Her back was to him, and Ostap scarcely even glanced at her. He turned instead to gaze out the window, across the dark forested hills east of the palace. Swooping vorhawks glided over the trees, their serene flight paths a calming sight.

‘Tedious, is it not?’ Ostap didn’t want to engage the woman in conversation, but thought it might be rude to stand behind her and say nothing at all.

‘The paintings?’ she asked, her voice coming from over his shoulder.

‘The people.’ He allowed himself a wry chuckle.

She laughed briefly as well. ‘I might agree, but if I did I suspect that some of the guests might take offence, hearing such truths from their host.’

Ostap’s head wheeled around. Lady Ashielle stood in the same place she had when he had entered, her head turned to look at him. He felt his face flush immediately, and cursed himself for his wagging tongue.

‘I, ah, meant no disrespect for her excellency or the company she chooses to invite to her palace,’ he stammered. ‘I merely sought to diffuse any possible tension with–’

‘You’re quite all right,’ Lady Ashielle said, kindly interrupting his rambling before he spun himself into an anxiety-riddled wreck. ‘You’re neither the first introspective aristocrat to be bored by the pretension of these social events, nor shall you be the last. It’s Minister Fomynko, is it not?’

‘Ostap, excellency.’ He bowed.

‘I confess, I needed a break myself, Ostap.’ Lady Ashielle gestured towards the array of paintings on the wall next to her. ‘Many pieces in my collection were added precisely for the calming effect I find they bring. Are you a collector?’

Her calm and friendly demeanour did much to assuage his earlier panic. Ostap studied the paintings she had been viewing. They were irregularly sized, each portraying a different landscape, in a variety of seasons and with a variety of foreground subject matter.

‘I am not,’ he said, ‘although the stroke and composition leads me to believe these are by the same artist.’

The lord governor nodded. ‘Indeed. By Endekamp. Very ably spotted, Minister Fomynko.’

Ostap continued to look at the paintings. There was something about them that nagged at him. He leaned forward, hoping somewhere in the back of his mind that he didn’t look too pretentious in front of Lady Matkosen.

‘Are these meant to be the same property?’ he asked.

Lady Ashielle beamed a radiant smile at him, as though she were a tutor and he a prized pupil. ‘Quite correct, Ostap. Most viewers fail to make that connection. May I ask what led you to this conclusion?’

Ostap pointed to one of the paintings. ‘This tree, here,’ he said, ‘is the same as this one, in this larger piece over here. It’s a decade or more apart in time, and you’re seeing them from different angles, but you can clearly see that the primary fork is the same, and in the latter painting you can make out a large knotting in the lower trunk, where the spike that held the “No Trespass” sign from the first painting was eventually grown over.’

Lady Ashielle laughed, a genuine laugh this time, not the politely reciprocal mirth she’d used before.

‘I’ve never noticed that particular detail,’ she said. ‘But yes, the paintings were all made on the Vorskiv Estate, over the course of about twenty years.’ She placed a gentle hand on his shoulder. ‘The collection is called Reaping Season. You really do have a wonderful eye for detail, Ostap. Any idea what the thrust of the work is?’

He shrugged. ‘There, excellency, I am at the mercy of my scholastic ignorance. If I were to guess I would say that it pertains to the inevitable degeneration of individual elements, despite the persistence of the collective. The Vorskiv Estate still stands, as it has for hundreds of years, despite the buildings, plants and people dying and fading away. Even the landscape changes, but the estate itself remains. Possibly meant as a metaphor for the Imperium as a whole.’

‘A more complete and concise explanation of Endekamp’s Reaping Season I have never heard,’ Lady Ashielle praised. ‘If you weren’t so valuable in the Grevenate, I would insist a place be made for you at Trenkovi University.’

‘Your excellency is too kind,’ Ostap said. He crossed his hands behind his back, uncomfortable with Lady Ashielle’s praise. ‘I’ve accomplished quite little in my time, unfortunately. Truthfully, I’m just a bottom-tier minister with a chronic inability to keep my mouth shut. Any gains we make on your behalf are largely the result of Langreve Evanova or Margreve Aleitovich.’

‘I daresay you sell yourself short, minister.’ The lord governor turned her head to look at a napkin that had been discarded on the floor. Ostap realised she’d glanced at the same piece of detritus several times. As if realising she was fretting, she turned back to give him her full attention. ‘I understand you were the one who thought to use the orvox futures financing to block the Vaneisens’ reappropriations last year. Ryvan Aleitovich might have sponsored the resolution, but it was your insight that made it possible.’

Ostap merely nodded. That was supposed to have been a secret. He had provided the legal chicanery that Margreve Aleitovich needed to prevent the Vaneisens from allocating government funds to their own corrupt contracts, but he hadn’t thought anyone but himself and the Aleitovich family were aware of it.

‘Such diligence has paved the way,’ she said, ‘for more than one dutiful minister to find themselves named with their own title and holdings, eventually.’

Ostap laughed nervously. ‘Your excellency is most kind, as always, but it seems unlikely we shall see another lord named to the Grevenate for some time.’ Naming a new greven of any rank required unincorporated population centres to have grown large enough to require representation in the Grevenate, and there were few current prospects for that. Most unincorporated populations were on the decline. ‘Unless one of the current families were to be destroyed entirely – a tragic prospect that no one wishes to see pass. Not to mention, of course, that I am ineligible to be named a lord, being currently unwed.’

Lady Ashielle sat on one of the benches that lined the edge of the hall. Ostap wasn’t sure if these, too, were unique pieces of art meant to be observed rather than used, but the lord governor waved him to sit as well.

‘I had not realised,’ she said. ‘I had assumed you had a wife already. I’m certain that if you were so inclined, many of the women from the Kostoci families would be delighted to be wed to a new greve.’

Ostap couldn’t quite tell if she was teasing him or not, but opted for casual self-deprecation anyway. ‘Her excellency flatters, of course, but the truth is that I am a bitter man, possessed of a compulsion towards quarrelsomeness, who commands no vast wealth or impressive skill, and spends his free time being frightfully dull. These qualities might make a loyal lower-echelon politician, but they are not enticing commodities in the market of romance.’

Lady Ashielle nodded. ‘Truthfully, you describe a great many of the grevens, while leaving out their avarice and boorishness, which places you at the head of the procession to many. Does your family not consider it worthwhile to arrange a pairing for you?’ Such arranged marriages were quite common, Ostap knew. Ruprekt and his bride had never even met one another before their wedding day, he’d been told.

‘Alas, they view such an endeavour as a wasted effort. With multiple siblings before me, there would be little point, I suspect.’ A higher tier noble could offer an arrangement for him, of course, but there were even fewer nobles who would wish to have him as a relation. ‘Though truth be told, I find myself rarely interested in those I meet. At least, in a romantic fashion. Potential matches who share my loyalties and similar interests to mine are… well, relatively rare, and usually interested in those who are far more interesting.’

Lady Ashielle raised an eyebrow. ‘I’ve seen you in the company of several eligible young women this evening,’ she said. ‘You mean to tell me you haven’t an interest in any of them?’

Ostap looked away. ‘Ah, no.’ He rarely found himself in situations where he was conversing with someone as a friend, and found the discussion of personal topics to be somewhat embarrassing. ‘Not really, I should say.’

‘Not really?’

‘I was captivated by the young lady accompanying Lord Vaneisen,’ he confessed, ‘but she is, of course, accompanied, so there isn’t much future there.’

Lady Ashielle nodded. ‘I met her briefly. She seemed to have quite the mind for details. Not unlike yourself.’

Ostap shrugged, and realised he had become flushed. ‘I, erm, I suppose so. Lord Tanzeg had no particular desire to speak to me, but she engaged me for a few minutes about classical Trenkovi literature. I was fairly surprised to find another so versed in the topic.’

Lady Ashielle smiled again, as if he had confirmed something she suspected. As the up-tempo music in the ballroom began to die out, replaced by the slow swelling of a Navoschi dirge-ballad, Ostap spotted a quietly trundling servitor headed in their direction.

‘In any event,’ he said, suddenly mortified that he had been so open with someone who had neither the need nor desire to listen to his life’s story, ‘I have business remaining yet, and I’ve occupied far too much of your time already.’ The lord governor was standing as well. Ostap hurried towards the ballroom before he humiliated himself further.

‘Thank you for discussing the displays with me,’ she said as Ostap edged away, uncertain of how to disengage graciously.

‘Of course,’ he said, bowing. ‘And I thank you for giving us the option to experience the complete set of such a magnificent collection.’

‘Oh, it’s not a complete set,’ the governor said as Ostap turned to depart. He turned back, not quite knowing how to take his leave without causing offence. ‘What makes Endekamp’s Reaping Season so special is that it cannot ever be complete, by definition. Before his death, he took the most popular piece from the set, Glass Shards on a Lakeside, and burned it. A permanent reminder that while the collective entity may endure despite the loss of its constituent elements, those elements were nonetheless unique and precious, and incapable of being brought back once they had been destroyed.’

Ostap pursed his lips and nodded. The cleaning servitor bent and retrieved the napkin, then turned and began retracing its steps. As if the removal of the cloth had reminded her of something, the governor’s face shifted to an expression of businesslike objectivity, quite apart from the engaged empathy she had shown him.

‘We do share one thing in common, Minister Fomynko.’ Ashielle nodded and began walking away. ‘We both have urgent business to tend to before we will be able to rest this evening.’

9

Ashielle paused to wish Ostap a pleasant remainder to his evening and hurried to follow the porcelain-faced servitor. The automaton walked slowly through the Colonnadium, eventually turning off into one of the servants’ corridors. It would have been easier to simply open the door next to the tray of napkins and toss the cloth down to the footman’s parlour, of course, but servitors had limited cognitive ability, and could not override their base directives. In this case, a pre-determined location for refuse or soiled cloth.

The servants’ corridors on this side of the palace were no warmer or more inviting than the ones off the Draper’s Hall. This particular corridor was more shrouded in dust, leading Ashielle to believe her servants rarely had occasion to use it. The servitor finally reached its destination, and cast the napkin onto a small but growing pile of rags. She stepped to the side as the servitor turned and returned to the banquet.

The pile appeared to indeed be dirty pieces of cloth for laundering. Fortunately, there were only two other serving napkins present, one of which was stained with Kostoci gravy. She prodded the other, which was crusted with some form of glutinous mud. She picked it up by one of the unsoiled corners, and sniffed it gingerly.

No, not mud. The coppery tang of blood was unmistakeable, as was the wretched odour of rotten stone and human offal. Ashielle dropped the cloth, her face growing cold. She forced herself to breathe, to control the racing of her heart. She needed to find Hanrik. Or Barrin. She swiftly retraced her steps through the cobweb-strewn side hall to the Colonnadium Mecenate. She was just about to call a servant to fetch the group captain and her brother when the folly of that plan hit her.

If Tanzeg revealed what he had seen, there would be an investigation. One that she could never talk her way out of. The discovery of Lostrovsky’s corpse, murdered by xenos hands at her direction, would seal her fate. She paced back and forth between the art pieces, grateful for the lively Kostoci rigadon being played in the ballroom, which seemed to have drawn nearly all the guests back.

Ashielle paused and forced a deep breath through her body, and re-centred her mind. She stared at the muted colours of Endekamp’s Reaping Season, and considered her options. The stub of her missing finger pained her as her anxiety grew, and she rubbed it with her thumb as she thought.

Tanzeg Vaneisen had seen too much. Lostrovsky’s remains on his shoes proved he’d been through the doorway, into the secret rooms of heresy hidden beneath Darcarden. No matter what he had or hadn’t seen, he couldn’t have failed to notice enough to ensure her execution if he were to make it public. The act of killing Lostrovsky itself was a matter of self-defence, and the minor artefacts in the uppermost room would be unlikely to condemn her. The ritual room of the Old Ceoc, however, and Jaezubiel’s oubliette, would be a different story. Should her involvement with the monster be discovered (which it almost certainly would be, if Lostrovsky’s remains were brought to the attention of the authorities) then there would be absolutely no chance of her maintaining her title, and precious little chance of escaping her predicament alive.

There was no way to capture him. Not before he made it back to his home, where his danger increased exponentially, as he would be among his own, and there was no telling who he would let know about what had happened. In fact, every second that passed increased the danger of him telling someone else what he knew.

There was only one course that remained open to her.

No. What was she thinking? It was heresy even to consider consorting with the xenos again. She berated herself for her weakness. Ashielle knew what she had to do. It might be a greater risk, but she would just have to command the High Service to raid the Vaneisen manor and arrest Tanzeg. It would be risky, and would create political backlash, but if she acted with haste she could keep a veneer of respectability. She made to go and find Barrin, and wondered if she should arrange a distraction for Esilia and Ireina before issuing the order.

The thought of a distraction reminded her of Tanzeg’s partner, and brought Ashielle up short. The poor woman obviously hadn’t realised the extent of what Tanzeg had been getting her into. Her knowledge of art might have been feigned, but her initial apprehension in Ashielle’s presence had seemed genuine. What would become of her if Ashielle did not intervene?

Nothing pleasant, she knew. Tanzeg might keep the woman alive, for a little while at least, to bolster his own story. If the Vaneisens intended to move against the Matkosens in the ultimate, however, the woman would be a witness: a liability that had to be extinguished. She doubted the girl would last that long, though. If she was putting herself in the nefarious mindset of a Vaneisen, then their plans were better served by the companion’s death. Once the Vaneisens went public with their accusations against the governor, the nobles would begin dividing their loyalties. If the only other witness to the Vaneisens’ discovery of evidence of a xenos killer in the palace were to then be found dead, it would convince a critical mass of the Grevenate beyond a shadow of a doubt as to her guilt. Idonell wouldn’t need to act, an inquisitor wouldn’t need to be reached: the lesser noble houses would unanimously support her removal. The military would support her, of course, but the wardens owed their loyalty to the Grevenate, and combined with the standing forces of the noble families, she wouldn’t stand a chance. Which would leave countless people vulnerable.

For a moment, she couldn’t help but wonder what her father might have done. He had known about Jaezubiel, hadn’t he? It seemed almost inconceivable to her that he had not. She could not foresee any situation dire enough that her father would have committed heresy. By the same token, she could not imagine a situation in which Ruprekt would not have done everything in his power to protect people like Marysia and Quelevea from the depredations of the Vaneisens.

Her father had also never been in a situation as dire as her own, that she knew of.

She licked her lips, glancing around to make sure there was no one else in the hall with her.

‘Jaezubiel?’ she whispered. From behind her, she felt a growing chill as the shadows deepened.

‘Yes, your excellency?’ Whatever language the thing spoke, she could discern its mocking tone in her mind.

She steeled her gaze. She was no trembling supplicant; she was the commander-in-chief, and whether she understood the mechanism or not, this thing was under her command. Its own thoughts about the arrangement were irrelevant. Ashielle turned, giving the monster an imperious glare.

Jaezubiel was examining a painted black-figure vase, feigning deep interest in the artefact. In the flickering light of the attending hall, she could see it more clearly than she ever had before. Its skin was black. Not dark or dusky. No, the thing was a velvety black, whose body looked soft and satiny because it didn’t reflect enough light to look hard or slimy.

‘Did someone other than me enter the labyrinth this evening?’ she asked.

‘Yes,’ the creature hissed. It jerked its head to the side, examining from a different angle the vase’s parallel lines of suffering saints being tormented by the mythical skitterlings. Its white hair drifted languidly, lighter or finer than human hair to float so ethereally.

‘And you just allowed him to leave again?’

Jaezubiel lifted its head from the urn to fix her with a gaze of mock innocence. Its lipless, sinister face spoiled the effect. Nothing with eyes so malevolent could ever have held true innocence. Whatever it was, it had been born in sin.

‘I cannot act unbidden,’ it hissed. ‘By the ancient pacts between our people, I am bound by the crystal chains. Only with a sacrifice of flesh and blood can I be free to act on your behalf.’

‘Another finger?’ she asked, dryly.

‘No, excellency. Your blood and flesh have already been sacrificed.’ Light rippled through the pinkish-purple runes on its flesh, as if an unholy heartbeat had quickened. ‘It must be another, this time.’

‘I’ll not create a cult for you,’ she said. She would sooner perish than allow that. How long would it be before some enterprising cultist decided they didn’t need her? What if someone else lacked the wisdom to deal with a creature as nefarious as Jaezubiel? No, that wouldn’t do at all. ‘If you want a legion of followers making sacrifices to you, you’ll have to look elsewhere.’

‘Oh, no,’ Jaezubiel said. It crouched low, the hellfire red eyes glaring at her behind the curtain of gauzy white hair. ‘Not a willing sacrifice.’ It crooked a finger at her in a beckoning motion. ‘You are the holder of the covenant. You are the only one who can offer blood and flesh to the darkness.’ Jaezubiel’s head wound to the side like a serpent sniffing the air. ‘And your own flesh, of course, has already been offered.’

Ashielle frowned.

‘I see,’ she said. So, this was the creature’s game. If she wanted to stop Tanzeg, she would have to take a life. Ashielle turned from the Colonnadium, moving through her receiving hall. She could feel Jaezubiel’s malevolent gaze watching her as the creature flitted from shadow to shadow, following her as she went.

The portraits of the past governors were like a judgmental tribunal. They stared down at her from the wall of the receiving hall, their imperious stares condemning the actions she was contemplating. How could she even countenance such a thing? Would Lendallia or Stendoz Matkosen have condoned her actions? Kuzmov Windover had burned a trader for offering him xenos goods; how could she walk through the palace he had reigned in and consider such corruption?

Ashielle’s mouth tightened. She could consider it because there was no other option available. The governors upon the walls were dead, their stern gazes nothing but paint, and their judgement existed only in her mind. She could do what had to be done because she was the only person with the power to do so. The governors of the past had built the oubliette that imprisoned Jaezubiel, and while she did not know how many of them had laid eyes upon the wretched creature, it was a certainty that many of them had to have known. Jaezubiel was not just her secret: it was a secret that had belonged to all of them, stretching back to the time of the Reunification. It was a tool that had been kept in waiting, until such a time as the palace might need it.

Past the receiving hall, deeper into the palace she walked, not to any specific destination, but rather to stay in motion as she thought. She walked past the well-lit parts of the palace, and into the places where the halls were dim and the shadows fell long across the marble floors. She need not bow to the cruel whims of the creature. There was no requirement to take a life needlessly. There were soldiers in her employ, criminals in the cells of the wardens. Neither option sat well with her. Both would take too long to arrange, and both would involve making someone suffer and die for the fiend’s enjoyment.

Ashielle stopped as a thought occurred to her. She discounted it almost at once, being too wicked even to consider. But as she walked, it occurred to her again, and seemed less wicked the more she mulled it over. It wasn’t as if Jaezubiel were going to eat the soul of whomever she killed, after all. Surely, He upon the Throne was more powerful than a loathsome alien, no matter how frightening, and would take the spirits of the pious unto Him.

Yes, she realised. She began walking more swiftly, now with a firm destination in mind. She did know of a life she could take that would involve inflicting no suffering whatsoever. One that would, in fact, end someone’s suffering.

Marysia’s lie was gnawing at her. When she had accepted Lord Vaneisen’s assignment, of course she had known it would involve deception. That was her speciality. But she had assumed the task would be to stir jealousy in an ex-lover, or to act as Tanzeg’s collaborator to defraud some other aristocrat. At worst, she thought she’d be distracting one of the High Service while her client replaced some artwork with a cunning forgery. Colluding against the lord governor herself had not been in the contract, and though she was far from a loyal citizen, she couldn’t shake the notion that lying to the Holy Emperor of Mankind’s chosen speaker for her planet was a serious transgression.

Marysia – who would positively die if any of her peers or clients were to learn that her real name was Thora Rede, named for Saint Sebastian Thor, whose piety and diligence she had spectacularly failed to live up to (according to her mother) – was a veteran of the streets. She’d fought off crooks with nothing but a springblade and her bare hands. She’d defrauded priests and greves with her deceptive talents. Once she’d even convinced a particularly dull-witted boat of fishermen that she was a senior adept of the Administratum. She’d been bold enough to steal from nobles and criminals alike, and smart enough to evade the wrath of all of them so far, even if that sometimes meant racing blind through dark alleys and leaping over flakboard fencing to escape the wardens.

So she was no stranger to an underhanded enterprise. She was not, however, comfortable with the scheme she’d become embroiled in at the governor’s ball – nor the current traipse through the gloomy streets of Kostoveim. Lord Vaneisen hadn’t told her they’d be walking all the way back to his manor – assuming he was telling her the truth about where they were going – and she was beginning to feel like someone was driving knives into her feet with every step. She’d dressed for a banquet, not a hike, and was starting to lose feeling in her toes.

Of course, there was no telling how long the journey was going to take. Tanzeg was used to riding in carriages, and had no experience walking the streets of the city, especially its back alleys. They were already wandering far afield of the quickest route back to the Vaneisen manor.

‘I think we might have missed a turn,’ she said. Closer to the palace, she hadn’t had much to worry about, but the further they moved into Kostoveim, the more likely they were to run afoul of lowlifes who wouldn’t be swayed by the power of the Vaneisen name.

She knew he was riled the moment she said it. He stopped, and she could almost feel the temperature in the alley plummet. Tanzeg turned to glare at her, his jaw clenched in rage.

‘What did you say?’ he said. His words were calm. She knew better, though. She was treading on the thinnest of ice. Her friend Karine had warned her long ago not to take an appointment with a Vaneisen, and for the millionth time she wished she’d listened. She’d seen this kind of maniacal calm before.

‘I think one of the street lights might have been out,’ she said, hastily trying to put the blame on someone else, ‘you know how inefficient the street-workers are.’

The lordling stepped closer, his hands balled into angry fists. His nostrils flared, his jaw clenched and unclenched. Marysia knew the Vaneisens had a reputation for cruelty and violence, but the families of the Grevenate were usually too weak-willed to do their own dirty work. It occurred to her that whatever dark business he had been about in the palace, she was a witness to it – a witness that might need to be silenced, in Tanzeg’s eyes. This was real, and she had a sudden realisation that there was a serious possibility she wasn’t going to leave this alley alive.

‘You think I don’t know where I’m going?’ he hissed.

Marysia started edging her hands lower, creeping towards the hidden springknife in the cuff of her jacket. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, desperate to stay alive. She might be able to outfight Tanzeg, but a murder of the coadjutor’s son was the last thing she needed the wardens seeking her for.

‘Sorry, what?’ he said, enraged.

She’d thought at first he was trying to intimidate her, or that he might be hysterical on rekanine, but the truth dawned on her that Lord Tanzeg was just unhinged.

‘Sorry, what?!’ he screamed. The veins in his neck bulged, and saliva flew from his mouth. She was afraid to make a move for her knife lest it provoke him to actually attack her. ‘Sorry, what? Sorry, what?!’ With every repetition, he took another threatening step towards her.

‘I don’t understand,’ she pleaded. Marysia was a veteran of the streets, but she had never seen anything as frightening as Tanzeg Vaneisen.

‘He wants you to use his title.’

The alley was as silent as the grave, but she could hear the voice nonetheless. Marysia looked around in panic. There was no saviour for her, not in this part of town. The only unknown left was how badly things were about to go for both her and Tanzeg.

Tanzeg had abandoned any semblance of sanity. His eyes were wide, his lips drawn back in a feral snarl. Marysia realised she hadn’t imagined it: the temperature in the alley had dropped. The air was freezing. Tiny spicules of ice had spread across the cobbles, creeping from the edges of the alley where the shadows were deepest.

‘He wants you to call him lord or baron or whatever grand laurel he’s draped about himself,’ the shadows whispered. ‘He demands you debase yourself with the labours of your own tongue.’

Both she and Tanzeg spun, trying to locate the source of the terrifying emanations. She saw it first: a pair of burning red slits that opened directly behind Tanzeg’s back.

‘How pathetic,’ the voice hissed, now horrifyingly real. Tanzeg’s eyes widened as he heard the physical voice. Marysia could see a ripple of electric violet squiggles across the thing’s skin. She was only seeing it because it wanted her to see the end coming.

Tanzeg reacted with lightning speed: Marysia had turned away to look at the creature, and felt an iron grip on her shoulder from behind. She flipped her springknife and jammed it at his leg even as he pushed her forward, thrusting her in the monster’s direction.

‘Take her!’ Tanzeg yelled.

She tried to right herself, but she was falling, almost horizontal from the force of Tanzeg’s shove. She writhed anyway; she would rather snap her own ankle, her own back, before she touched that thing.

The impact with the creature never came. She passed through where it had been standing, felt the shadows rushing past her, even felt a hand – dry and so, so, cold – pressed against the small of her back redirecting her trajectory, and then the shadows around her were empty.

When she looked up, Tanzeg was trying to escape. He favoured his right side, however, and Marysia saw a stain of red down the leg of his elegant trousers. She had wounded him with the springblade, now lying discarded on the cobbles, after all. Realising the futility of flight, Lord Vaneisen drew his blade and engaged the creature, which she now saw clearly for the first time.

The angular jaw, the mouthless face, the gauzy hair: it was a creature born of nightmares. It was the dark skitterling come to life. It flickered in and out of view, vanishing one moment to reappear behind its quarry the next. In its hands, it wielded two weapons: a small sickle no broader than her hip, and a straight, wickedly serrated sabre, both the creamy off-white of flensed bone. Its broad, flared breeches flapped and pooled like a performer’s skirts. A horrendous croaking, clicking sound accompanied its attacks.

Tanzeg was no stranger to the blade. He might even have been able to defend himself against a street ganger or two. Still, his attacks came nowhere near the monster. The thing evaded the lord’s blade with ease, stepped around Tanzeg’s defences to shred the duelling cloak as effortlessly as snipping a flower, and moved away with the footwork of a trained dancer. Marysia realised that the clicking sound wasn’t a product of the creature’s attack: it was a mocking laugh. The sudden realisation, that additional cruelty of knowing the thing was only toying with Tanzeg, solidified the horrendous scene, making reality from the nightmare.

She screamed.

The creature spared a glance her way, and Lord Vaneisen saw his opening. Tanzeg retreated back, pulled a pistol from the depths of his jacket, and opened fire. He only got a single shot off with the holdout stubber, which slammed into the creature with no apparent effect.

The nightmare eyes flared with outraged fury, and its head snapped back towards Tanzeg. Marysia felt her face and head flare with pain; it was as though every injury she’d sustained since she left the ball had been inflicted anew.

Blue fire flickered at the creature’s claws, and the shadows closed over its body, as Tanzeg fired another wild shot. He had no time for a third. The monster appeared again, snapping the flame from its fingers to engulf Tanzeg’s hands.

The Vaneisen heir’s agonised wail was beyond anything Marysia had ever heard in her life. Limned with crystal blue flames, the skin of the noble’s hands paled, then dimmed to blue, then blackened and died, all within the space of time it took her to draw breath for another scream. She tried to stand, but panic stole her balance, and she found herself scrambling like a deer on an icy lake.

‘You consider yourself a master of torment?’ the nightmare hissed, looming over Tanzeg. The noble knelt on the cobbles, his face contorted in pain, unable to tear his gaze away from the dead, blackened claws at the end of his arms. Marysia had seen frostbitten corpses dug out of alleys during the depths of winter, but never had she seen such a condition happen so fast.

‘Would you trust a vintner who refused to imbibe?’ the creature asked, its hellish gaze snapping up to Marysia. Fixed by its stare, she opened and closed her mouth, not comprehending any answer she could give that would spare her. Fortunately, it required none. The monster lashed Tanzeg’s back with the serrated sabre. Marysia was certain it could have severed the lord’s spine and ended his pain in a moment if it had wished, but the slash merely sent a fan of blood spraying across the alley.

‘Would you trust a chef who would not sample his wares?’ the creature crooned. Tanzeg spun on his knees, his face crazed. Marysia had seen that face before, on cornered rats refusing to die without a final bite. The thing flickered a step, and the little sickle hooked under Tanzeg’s arm. Another spray of blood, and the arm dangled uselessly.

‘Have you felt the sting of the scourge, the salt-cured leather rending your flesh to the bone?’ the shadow-thing laughed. ‘Have you crawled on needles, knelt on grains of rice? Have your limbs been stretched until your bones broke?’ Marysia could do nothing but stare, wide-eyed, as the thing capered above Tanzeg’s form, claws slicing down to send up spurts of blood, blades flashing in to gouge and nick the man’s flesh. ‘Tell me, mighty noble, how can you be a master at giving that which you refuse to receive?’

Distantly, Marysia heard the sound of the cathedral bells tolling the hour. Their rich chime was like a cleansing charm, a purifying call from the Throne itself that shook her from her horrified reverie. Suddenly aware of where she was, Marysia reached a hand behind herself to crawl away.

The creature moved without moving. One moment it was carving up Tanzeg’s back with delicate flicks of its hooked fingers, the next it was standing over her. The features were gaunt and sharp, without any softness or blemish. Up close, the eyes blazed with a fire that was as deep as it was evil. They weren’t eyes; they were pits. Every mote of light this thing had stolen was contained in those depths. She could see, as her soul started to fall into that gaze, the truth: inside this creature hatred had been compressed, transformed into emotive cold fusion. Its soul was a battery of wickedness, which would fuel the rune-marked shell it wore for a million years if necessary.

‘You might want to leave,’ the thing whispered. When it spoke aloud, its smooth chin split to reveal a hidden, lipless mouth filled with tiny, sharp seed-pearl teeth. Its breath smelled like stepping on dung in the depths of winter, full of the certain knowledge that beneath the cold there was the richest of foulness. ‘I have so many wondrous lessons to share with him.’

Marysia scrambled to her feet and ran into the darkness.

Ashielle ran a hand over her stomach, smoothing her gown and calming her nerves. She made the sign of the aquila, and turned away from Drenata’s bed. Necessity and equivocation had not made her task easier.

The other servants had loved Drenata. Her bedchamber had been tended to with the greatest of care. There were a dozen small trinkets, herbal charms affixed with wax seals meant to invoke the Emperor’s blessing, laid on the old woman’s dresser. It had been cleaned from top to bottom, removing any speck of dust that might have remained. Ashielle had seldom seen a fire in the palace that had been better tended, allowed to neither burn too hot nor dwindle too far.

A sharp rapping at the door failed to arouse any apprehension in her, which she found strange. She had felt such trepidation as she had come to the servant’s quarters that Drenata had occupied for so long. If anyone had rapped on the door a few moments earlier, while she was doing what she had known needed to be done, she would have been filled with panic. Now, however, as the bells rang out from the cathedral, she felt only a sense of relief.

She opened the door, not terribly surprised to find Hanrik behind it. A sentiment his own expression didn’t echo.

‘I hadn’t realised you were here,’ he said.

Ashielle straightened herself. ‘One of the servitors delivered a summons,’ she said. ‘I came as soon as I heard.’

Hanrik pushed past her into the room, denial etched across his face. However, the truth before him could not be refuted: Drenata lay peacefully on the bed, eyes closed, her hands folded in the sign of the aquila across her chest.

‘No,’ he breathed, kneeling at her side. ‘How could this happen?’ He looked back at Ashielle angrily. ‘She was resting comfortably only earlier today!’

Ashielle shook her head. She wished it could have been anyone else behind that door. She’d known Hanrik had a special connection with Drenata, and had planned to break the news to her brother gently. To find out this way, to come expecting to see his friend only to find her gone, was more painful than he deserved.

‘Her body was weak,’ she said gently. ‘The chances of her waking again were never good.’ She placed a hand on Hanrik’s shoulder. ‘But we made her comfortable, in the end, and allowed her to pass peacefully in her sleep.’

Hanrik’s eyes were cold and distant, staring only at the recumbent form of the old maid, and the soft, silken pillow her hands rested on.

‘Yes,’ he said, his words steeped with numbness. ‘Taken in her sleep.’

10

A tincture of aoifemint and eucalypt sat on the steps to hide the stench.

Ashielle panned her luminator around the floor, looking for body parts that had escaped her notice. She spotted an organ near the bottom of the steps, and added it to the barrel. She should have disposed of Lostrovsky’s body as soon as she realised it was still beneath Darcarden. It had been a foolish mistake to leave it; there was no problem that went away on its own.

The newest remnant joined the others with a flop and a squish. The black, rotted flesh was studded with a bone of some kind, but Ashielle couldn’t immediately recognise what part of Lostrovsky’s body it had come from. Most likely part of his forearm. When she’d started the distasteful task, she’d tried to focus on the mechanical work, to disassociate the pieces from what they had been. Her mind, it seemed, was incapable of that, and kept reminding her of what she was looking at. After so long, the stench had become unbearable. Ashielle had broken the tincture, scattering the fragrance over the remains and smearing it thickly across her upper lip. The body’s rank presence could never be ignored, but it overloaded her senses enough to let her work.

She swept the luminator around again, wiping her forehead on the sleeve of her apron. The boots, gloves and apron had all been stolen from Drenata’s trunk, as Ashielle didn’t think she had anything that would be appropriate for the task in her own wardrobe. She had originally resolved to clean every possible trace of Lostrovsky’s presence from the labyrinth, but within an hour her back and knees were screaming in pain, and she quickly revised her plan. There was no way she could make the heretical tomb safe to bring anyone down into, anyway. She focused on gathering the body parts: if nothing else she wouldn’t have to tromp through Lostrovsky’s stinking carcass every time she came down here.

‘It’s not all here,’ she said, staring into the barrel. There simply weren’t enough of the larger bones, even accounting for the profusion of smallest pieces that she couldn’t place.

‘Of course not.’ Jaezubiel’s voice came from behind her, as always, but this time she refused to give it the satisfaction of spinning in disorientation. ‘Where do you think these came from?’

She spared a glance at the fiend. It was holding its pair of blades aloft. The curved, smooth form of the small sickle she’d seen before, but the long serrated sabre was new. Neither weapon had a handguard, merely leather wrappings around their lowest ends. Ashielle stared at the weapons for a moment before realising they had been formed from Lostrovsky’s bones. No wonder the sabre lacked a handguard: the assassin’s femur would have been too small to carve one out.

‘How grotesque,’ she said. The shredded skirt the creature had been wearing had grown: newer, darker strips of material had been added, crudely stitched together to form a pair of large, billowy pantaloons. It was decorating itself with the flesh of its victims.

Correction: her victims.

Whether soldier or specialist, her father had always made it clear to his children that the assets they employed were still their responsibility. Instruments of command, he’d called them, and his lesson had been clear: a commander bore the responsibility for the actions of their instruments. Just as a soldier couldn’t blame a murder on his firearm, a commander could not shirk the blame for the actions of their instruments of command.

Not that her hands would have been clean even if she had ignored her culpability in the murder of her attempted assassins. Drenata had been beyond help, she knew that. Still, she hadn’t realised how long it would take, how long the old woman would fight for breath that the pillow would never let her draw. Limbs that had lain dead and withered in sleep had suddenly come alive again, thrashing weakly against Ashielle’s weight. In her dreams, she could hear Drenata crying out beneath the pillow, but she was certain that the old woman had been silent at the end.

‘The limits of the fine and the melodic have been defined long ago,’ Jaezubiel said. ‘The only true artistry that remains is in the realm of the grotesque and the profane.’

She couldn’t deny the impact its display had created. One of her tutors had once defined art as ‘a purposeful display that created emotional or intellectual resonance.’ Tanzeg’s murder had indeed resonated across the city. At every winehouse, alehouse and bordello across Kostoveim, taletellers claimed to have been the first upon the scene, the first to find Tanzeg Vaneisen’s remains. No two of them seemed to be able to agree on the method of his execution or display, but these stories never let truth stand in their way, and tales of Tanzeg’s flensing, quartering or dissection continued to be repeated throughout Kostoveim.

‘A public display attracts too much attention,’ she said. ‘Your exhibitionism does nothing to serve my ends. Since you cannot, or will not, rein it back, I might as well seal this chamber off entirely.’ She stood and stripped her gloves off, casting them into the barrel.

Jaezubiel’s glittering red eyes stared at her for a moment.

‘You have what you want, do you not?’ the creature asked. It seemed genuinely puzzled. ‘Your enemies plotted and schemed against you. I could have swept the matriarch’s son away, true. I could have wrapped him in my embrace, taken him to the darkness, and let the shadows swallow his screams. If I had, would you be the stronger for it?’

The creature drew itself forward, its voice a buzzing hiss.

‘Now she and her house quake in fear of you. You, who leave your slain enemies strewn about the streets, daring any who would challenge you to step forward and wager their life to the deed.’ Jaezubiel clicked in its throat, and Ashielle realised with a cold shiver that it was being absolutely sincere: it believed with all its dead heart that Tanzeg’s brutal murder and dismemberment had been for the best. ‘Fewer of your subjects will die this way. Even your own blood will look upon your works and despair once he has the measure of the truth.’

‘My own blood?’ Ashielle’s attention snapped back to Jaezubiel.

‘Yes,’ the creature whispered. ‘Your brother, of course. Even now, he stares at renderings of your enemy’s ravaged figure, marvelling at my creation.’

She clamped the lid on top of the bio-barrel. The vacuumiser hissed as it extracted the air inside. Ashielle studied the valve as if monitoring it carefully. She needed to think.

She found Hanrik in Geordan’s old room. He was bent over their older brother’s desk. It was an antique rolltop, its sides covered in intricate carvings of ripe fruits, twining vines and leaping fish. In addition to the sheaf of drawers it housed, there was a veritable army of concealed compartments, hideaway shelves and small swinging doors.

‘I hadn’t realised the servants had put you in here,’ she said. She hadn’t set foot into Geordan’s room since his death. There was no art or elaborate decorations in her older brother’s quarters. Instead, his bedroom had been fitted with floor-to-ceiling shelves throughout. Most were neatly packed with books on law, religion, military history and governance, but many had been given as space for tools such as sextants, magnoculars and astrolabes. It painted the picture of a man who had devoted his life to preparing to rule an entire planet, determined not to be caught unawares by any aspect of his destined career. She wondered if there were any personal interests that Geordan had eschewed in his doomed study for a role he would be cheated out of.

Hanrik didn’t bother to look up. She wondered if his habit of not making eye contact when he was conversing was born from an erosion of social niceties after living with the rough men and women of the Arbites for so long, or if it was a deliberate affectation to aggravate and wrong-foot those he spoke with. Either way, she knew the best course of action was to ignore it.

‘The staff put me in the guest house initially,’ said Hanrik, ‘but I asked them to move me after the attempt on your life.’ He spared her a glance. ‘And it seemed that my childhood room had been converted for someone else’s use. There were paintings of sailing ships all about.’

‘Metrianne,’ she said. ‘One of our tutors. She had a fondness for them. I hadn’t realised father gave her your old rooms.’

She prided herself on taking more of an interest in the minutiae of the household than other nobles did. How had she not known that their father had renovated Hanrik’s old quarters? Was it possible she’d gone decades after he’d left without even once going to his old living space to remember him? Or had she seen the changes at some point, and then forgotten about them? Both possibilities were disturbing, but neither so disturbing as the uncertainty that she didn’t know which was true.

There were a handful of data-slates on the desktop. A number of books lay beneath them, open to various places. There were even a few loose reports, although Ashielle couldn’t make out what they pertained to.

‘What are you working on?’ she asked.

Hanrik looked up from the desk, finally.

‘Judge Idonell asked me to assist with the investigation into Tanzeg’s murder,’ he said.

‘I didn’t think that was allowed,’ she said.

‘Under normal circumstances it wouldn’t be,’ said Hanrik, ‘but Idonell has the authority to authorise my involvement anyway.’ He cleared his throat. ‘The judge felt that my name and background would give me insight into this crime that the wardens might lack.’

It took Ashielle a time to parse that together.

‘The judge doesn’t actually want a real investigation, does he?’ she asked. ‘He just wants a pat answer so he can file the incident away as “resolved”, and he thinks you’re the perfect catspaw to cover up the murder of your family’s rival.’ She snorted. ‘He might even think he could use this to hold over you at a later point in your career.’

Hanrik’s eyes dropped back to the data-slate in his hands. He could lie with his face, but his fingers tapping on the edge of the slate betrayed his perturbance.

‘I have no intention of falsifying or throwing an investigation,’ he said. ‘I cannot lawfully refuse his order to conduct this inquiry, but should I be challenged on the ethics of my conduct, then no one is going to be able to look at the record and say I did anything less than my duty.’

Ashielle smiled in spite of herself. She knew that her brother’s determination was an incredible danger to her. At the same time, it was only his devotion to the ethics of his office which poised his blade over her neck. The schola could separate him and attempt to re-educate him, but at the end of the day he was still a Matkosen.

‘You seem quite busy,’ she said. ‘Did you want the use of a full office?’

‘I enjoy working at Geordan’s old desk,’ he said.

They all had. The desk had been their grandfather’s. Ruprekt had tried to use the monstrosity when he became governor, but the entire thing had been overwhelmed with trivial correspondence, notes, personal books, and the paper effluvia of a century’s worth of use. After their mother had given him a new bloodteak desk, imported from Espandor at great expense, for an Ascencion Day gift, he had ordered the old governor’s desk incinerated.

Geordan had intervened, begging their father to allow him to use the desk as his own. The three of them had spent days cleaning it out. She remembered going through each drawer and slide, discovering doodles, economic or legal reports annotated with scrawled profanity, and hidden scraps of notations that offered an insight into the grandfather they’d never known in life. Each note, every confusing piece of correspondence was like a treasure to them. Ashielle couldn’t recall many other times all three of them had been so unified on the same task.

‘If you like, when you get settled in a permanent position, I can have it sent to you,’ she said. She regretted it immediately. She’d only meant to do something nice for her brother, but his look of disgust was profound.

‘No,’ he said, regaining his composure. ‘I’d rather it stayed in the family.’

Of course. He’d helped to clean that desk, helped Geordan and her to restore it. The ancient wooden behemoth might last centuries yet. It was perhaps his only tangible contribution to the Matkosen legacy. How had she thought he would want it removed from Ceocan? What a foolish thought.

‘Of course,’ she said. ‘Would you be kind enough to bring me up to speed?’

Hanrik heaved a great sigh.

‘Currently, I’m still going over the, ah, forensic evidence,’ he said, handing over a data-slate.

It showed a series of images of the alley where Tanzeg had been found. Hanrik had dramatically undersold the gravity of the situation.

Tanzeg was on his knees, leaning forward, his arms stretched behind him. Cords or bindings of some type stretched away from his wrists to secure him to the nearby walls. His back was bared, not just of clothes, but to the bone. Ashielle realised the cords that bound Tanzeg were made from his own twisted flesh. Pieces of meat and various organs had been piled in a pyramid before the Vaneisen heir, as if he were bowing before a sacrificial altar made from his own body. His head was stretched back, mouth agape as if screaming to the open sky. A springknife had been embedded into the crown of his head, the somehow unbloodied steel gleaming in the flash of the picter. It was as though he had been anointed, not with holy oil or water, but with the blade pressed into his bone.

‘What kind of monster would desecrate a corpse in this fashion?’ said Ashielle, to fill the silence. She was suddenly acutely aware of Hanrik’s gaze on her as she studied the data-slate.

‘Who said he was a corpse?’

Ashielle felt her gorge rising. ‘What do you mean?’ she whispered.

‘When we found him, Tanzeg Vaneisen was alive.’ Hanrik shook his head when she met his gaze, misinterpreting her sudden panic. ‘Don’t fret, he’s gone. He perished before a medicae could arrive.’

Ashielle studied the pictures again. Her skin felt cold. There was a growing pit in her stomach. She had thought she was prepared for the consequences of her actions, but this was beyond anything she had anticipated.

‘Do you know what Tanzeg was doing in the servant’s corridors?’ Hanrik asked.

Ashielle turned away from the data-slate to look at her brother again. His eyes were stone. For the briefest of moments, she thought to throw the data-slate at him and run. How could she have been such a fool? If Hanrik had even the barest glimmer of competence, he had to consider her a suspect in Tanzeg’s murder.

‘You think I had something to do with this?’ she snapped. Her anger was entirely hypocritical, but it would suffice. She slammed the data-slate onto the desk. ‘That’s ridiculous, Hanrik!’

‘Is it?’

She crossed her arms. ‘Yes. I don’t have anyone in my household, have never had anyone in my household, capable of, of,’ she gestured to the data-slate, ‘of that! And you know damn well I couldn’t have done it myself.’

‘That’s right,’ said Hanrik. ‘You were with Drenata, while Tanzeg was being murdered.’ He left the accusation hanging in the air.

Ashielle felt a cold fury creep over her. Even as she reeled at the accusation, a coil of guilt tightened in her belly. She was his own blood, and his trust in her should’ve been absolute.

‘Drenata was my dearest servant, too,’ she said. ‘Don’t think for a second I wouldn’t trade anything to have her back.’

Hanrik’s face had gone cold. She recognised that look from when he had confronted Tanzeg the previous evening. ‘Do you know anything, anything at all, about the murder of Tanzeg? The death of Drenata?’

‘No,’ she lied. ‘Nothing beyond what I’ve told you.’

‘Are you certain?’ he asked. ‘As a planetary governor, there is a wide latitude given to you. Given the immense pressure you must be under, with the danger from your enemies and the loss of Ruprekt and Geordan, it might be that something got out of hand.’ His face softened. ‘I only want to help, if you’ll let me.’

The hard voice, the voice of ceramite, had seemed to her to be like a different person the first time she’d heard him use it. Now, looking into his eyes, she realised it was still the voice of Hanrik. The voice of her blood.

She wanted to ask him if he was asking as her brother, or as an arbitrator, but in full truth she was afraid of what the answer might be. If she were to allay his suspicions, she would need to do it quickly. Ashielle knew the correct course. If she wanted to manipulate Hanrik, she would need to offer him what he had been denied: the acceptance of his family.

‘Hanrik,’ she said. ‘Throne of Terra, how you must be hurting to say such things. I had no idea you and Drenata were so close.’ She softened her expression and relaxed her stance. Her empathy was a better shield against his distrust than outrage. His own posture relaxed, if only a little.

‘We weren’t, I suppose,’ he said. ‘But she was kinder to me than anyone else. She treated me like a human being, instead of a resource to be expended or an inconvenience to be dealt with.’

‘I can’t imagine how much her loss must pain you,’ said Ashielle. ‘But I swear to you I had nothing to do with her passing.’

Hanrik stared at her for a long moment, as if weighing the truth in her words. No, not quite. Measuring her sincerity. Finally, he looked away.

‘Very well,’ he said.

Ashielle wished she could tell him everything. He would be shocked, certainly. Maybe even offended. But the words choked in her throat. He was a servant of the Emperor. His devotion to the Throne would come before his devotion to his family. Ruprekt had seen to that when he’d sent the boy into exile.

Of all the many legacies Ruprekt Matkosen had left her, Hanrik’s enmity was the one that Ashielle found herself cursing him for.

Ashielle strode through the halls of Darcarden as fast as she was able without breaking into a sprint. She dared not even swear aloud lest Hanrik hear and have his suspicions heightened. She stowed her fear and anger, and kept her face as still and resolute as one of the busts of governors past studding the hallways.

Only when she had reached her own rooms and slumped into the spindle chair in front of her vanity did she allow herself a hiss of fury.

‘Does something perturb?’

When Ashielle looked up, she could see the two pinpricks of hellfire near the gauzy shadows of her curtains.

The curling purple runes suddenly filled her with a dread they had not before. When she had first seen Jaezubiel, imprisoned in its oubliette, it had been terrifying, yes, but that had been the terror of the profane. No matter its origin, it was an affront to humanity, fit only to be purged by the Inquisition.

The killing of Lostrovsky, too, had been horrifying, but again the shock was mundane and classifiable. It had been the brutal attack of a wild animal, a shocking and feral act to be sure, but no worse than what might have happened if a marshlion had got hold of the assassin.

The murder of Tanzeg had been something else entirely. There had been a level of astonishing savagery there that was beyond comprehension. At the same time, she had recognised the intricacy of the braided flesh, the deliberateness of the posing. Not just the staging, but the murder itself, had been carried out with a malign sophistication that boggled the mind.

‘What a foul and wretched thing you are,’ she said into the mirror.

‘Thank you,’ said Jaezubiel. ‘Your own capacity for cruelty surprises me, too.’

Ashielle turned in her chair.

‘Don’t lump me in with you, creature.’ She cut herself short. Drawing the attention of the household was the last thing she wanted. She had no doubt the shadow-thing would vanish the moment the door opened, leaving her staff to suspect her sanity was floundering. ‘I’m nothing like you.’

‘Aren’t you?’ The curtains ruffled, and Jaezubiel was across the room, staring at her small bookshelf. ‘The night you commanded me to slay the princeling, you had a palace full of enemies. Every house that wished you ill had sent representatives to pledge their false loyalty to you. You could have seized any of them.’ Jaezubiel turned from the bookcase, a slim volume of art history in its clawed hands. It gave her a savage grin, tiny teeth shining in the darkness. ‘You could have taken one of the servants or soldiers of your foes. But when you had to make a sacrifice to our pact, it wasn’t the blood and flesh of your enemies you reached for, nor even for a soldier pledged to your service. Your hands reached first and instinctively to a trusted retainer, a woman who had given you a mother’s care and devotion.’

‘Don’t distort my actions,’ Ashielle said, stabbing an accusing finger at the monster, ‘and don’t try to interpret them through your own base and twisted lens. I didn’t revel in her suffering, I ended it.’

Jaezubiel chuffed its clicking laugh. ‘You can lie to your reflection, oh lady, but you can’t lie to me.’

Ashielle sneered. ‘I wouldn’t expect a basal creature like you to understand.’

‘Oh?’

‘I have the responsibility for the preservation and welfare of every life on this planet,’ said Ashielle, ‘and the moral authority to decide how and where those lives will be spent in the execution of that duty.’

‘What a vain and haughty thing you are,’ said Jaezubiel.

‘I don’t need your taunts,’ said Ashielle.

‘Of course not,’ the thing said. In the blink of an eye it had crossed the room again to lean against a chest of drawers, staring intently at the book it had taken from the case. ‘You must be far too busy to exchange barbed comments with a creature like me. What pressure your brother’s investigation must be putting on you.’ The malevolent eyes came up again to regard her with a vicious wink. ‘What raw and aching wound in his life compels him to throw himself into his work so, I wonder?’

‘Get out,’ Ashielle hissed. No sooner had the words left her mouth than the bedroom was empty again. The book Jaezubiel had been holding tumbled to the ground.

Jaezubiel was right, however. She hadn’t realised how close Hanrik had been to Drenata, although who could tell if the old servant had returned his affection? No matter the truth of the situation, his attention to his duty had suddenly become quite inconvenient for her.

It had been wrong to use the creature to kill Tanzeg, she saw that now, but what options did she have? The ethical choice was to turn herself in, to reveal her crimes so that the public could maintain faith in the system.

How viable an option was that, though? Where would that leave Ceocan? If she turned herself in, no matter which authority she placed herself in, she had no future. Any sane or just system would have her executed for heresy, dereliction of duty and failure before the Throne. Even in the most unlikely of scenarios where she was able to plead her case and secure some sort of leniency from the most merciful arbiter of fate imaginable, she would still be forced to abdicate her throne. Which would, of course, leave Darcarden in the hands of the Vaneisens.

What then? Would the pleasure gibbets and the boo-boo boxes of whispered urban legend suddenly become state sanctioned? From the merchant captains who came through to take on or deliver supplies to the Callistonian Haven, she had heard horror stories of the wider Imperium, barbarities she’d sought to keep from her people. If the Vaneisens were to rise to power, such iniquities would be visited on the populace not out of some notion of necessity, but simply because the governing family enjoyed them.

She reminded herself of those who had already fallen victim to the Vaneisens’ treachery. Ashielle went through her mind, listing the sons and daughters of the lesser noble houses, forcing herself to recall their faces. Each and every one of them might face their own personal Lostrovsky, an assassin sent to threaten or remove them if their parents or family proved an inconvenience to the Vaneisens.

No, the path was clear: she could not yield, not now. She had already committed too much, come too far, to surrender to the evil of the Vaneisen family. The only option remaining to her now was to forge on.

Not with Jaezubiel, though. Never again. One of Ruprekt’s earliest lessons had been to acknowledge one’s limitations. Prideful ignorance of a weakness would lead only to failure. She had fooled herself into believing the evil that Jaezubiel represented wasn’t hers – she had neither summoned it nor bound it beneath Darcarden. It was not she who had made the ancient pacts with the creature. She had only used the resource which had been presented to her, after all, to save her own life. She had deluded herself into thinking she could control it.

Jaezubiel wasn’t a tool, though. It wasn’t an attack falcon, or some form of animal that could be set upon an enemy and relied upon to do its job. It was a serpent, it was a grenade – it would strike the hand which wielded it as surely as it did her enemies. The moral course demanded it be removed – banished to the hell that had spawned it, or slain. After it had been destroyed or locked away, then she could focus on the Vaneisens again. Her brother would be dissuaded simply enough, his investigation easy to run aground when there was no longer a monster for him to find.

Ashielle moved through the room, setting thought to deed immediately. She tucked her brush back into her armoire, straightened the curtain where the fiend had been standing. Methodically, she moved through the suite of rooms, removing every trace of its passing.

The book it had left upon her bed drew her attention as she lifted it to return it to the case. It was open to a reproduction of a mid-Resurgence diptych, Canthor’s Between Glory and Ignominy. Ashielle sat on the bed, studying the pages more closely. Like most Resurgence-era work, it showed servants of the Imperium going about their appointed duties, flanked on either side with vast scenes of metaphorical recompense. To the right were pious and dutiful figures being elevated and beatified for their service, bathing in the indirect but paternal light of Him on the Throne. To the left, the figures of the impious and the false were punished for their failure, sawed in half by grim-faced inquisitors or splayed out on a number of appalling torture devices.

What drew her attention was not the diptych itself, which was a rather unremarkable piece, but the background of the left panel. Among the vicious torturers and the wailing damned, black, vaporous creatures with red eyes and clawed hands cavorted.

Skitterlings. Again she found Jaezubiel studying, or perhaps admiring, the ancient art which depicted the Ceocan boogeyman.

Ashielle shelved the book and summoned her secretary. She had an appointment which needed to be made.

11

The Basilica Grevenator was a building designed to break people. No matter who you were, Ostap knew, appearing before the Grevenate was a humbling experience. The towering verticality of the columned walls, the array of fearsome aquilas and sigils of august families, the massive dome that crowned it all: it took a monumental ego to stand within such a structure and not feel the least bit reduced by comparison.

Down in the Occurriam, the lowered height gave a person the perspective of being on their knees, the thunderous voices the impression of being held immobile before an oncoming storm. Even the most welcome and friendly witness was intended to be brought low, constantly reminded of the power and the dignity of the assembly.

Ostap had seen lesser men and women broken by the Basilica Grevenator. He had seen generals and void captains made to feel fear, to shake in their place and apologise for their own ineptitude. Those unused to power and prestige crumbled utterly, bowing and weeping, confessing their crimes and complicities as if they had been threatened by the Throne itself.

He was somewhat surprised, then, to see Group Captain Barrin comporting himself so well.

‘As I have already told the Grevenate,’ Barrin said, ‘the investigation is yet ongoing. The High Service is not prepared, at this time, to reveal the details of said investigation.’ What impressed Ostap most was that the group captain made none of the mistakes common to those who appeared before the Grevenate. He didn’t raise his head or turn to try to identify the specific speaker addressing him. He also didn’t try to raise his voice and yell to be heard by those in the highest tiers. The group captain seemed aware that the lords and ministers in their alcoves were perfectly capable of seeing his face via their desk slates, and that his words were likewise transmitted to them. No doubt Lady Ashielle or Commodore Zelucan had prepared him for the duty.

It was more than that, however. The group captain had a dignity that many in his place did not. He stood with confidence, hands behind his back, giving his testimony in clear, sincere language.

‘That is insufficient, group captain.’ Tianesh Bruisell was infamous for her dogged insistence. Ostap had rarely seen someone stonewall her so excellently. ‘When the wardens agreed to coordinate their investigation with the High Service’s, it was under the explicit understanding that there would be a sharing of information.’

‘And when our investigation turns up information which merits being shared, rest assured that it will be.’ Fidal Barrin would no doubt make the Lady Matkosen a capable lord consort. Ostap had seen the filings for service records come through on the group captain’s name the day previous, while the lesser greves had been going through the tedious paperwork and bureaucratic filings that preceded the Grevenate sessions. Service record requests on an officer were a reliable indicator of that person being transferred to another service branch, or retiring. Since the group captain was too young to retire, and was already heading the most prestigious position his rank and experience could qualify him for, the only conclusion Ostap could come to was that the group captain was going to be given special dispensation, which most likely meant a marriage. Ostap would hardly have bet his title on it, but the pieces all fit.

‘Group captain, do you not see how this action could seem suspicious to those of the Grevenate?’ Uri Oldemeier asked. ‘The wardens did not ask for the assistance of the High Service.’

‘Nor do they have to,’ said Greve Darmodi Chole.

His voice boomed as thunderously as the margreves in their marbled alcoves far above him. A century and a half of Ystrodian cigars had necessitated the replacement of much of Darmodi’s lungs and throat with artificial replacements, and the greve had paid a handsome amount of currency to ensure that his surgery would never see him silenced, adding vocal amplifiers that let him shout loud enough to rattle structures if he so chose. Many of the old man’s other organs had begun to fail him and he had difficulty walking, and so rarely bothered to attend Grevenate assemblies.

‘But the High Service has always worked hand-in-hand with the wardens in the case of an assassination of a member of the Grevenate,’ Chole continued. ‘The extensive records and countermeasures that the High Service keeps on assassination-related crimes makes them a highly focused and valuable ally in such situations.’

Ostap smiled. It had been over eight years since he had seen Darmodi Chole in the Basilica, and it gladdened him greatly. The oldest serving member of the Grevenate, Darmodi was one of the few lords Ostap had met who seemed to come from the same school of thought as the Matkosens with regards to civil obligation. On a more personal note, Darmodi seemed to come from the same school of thought as Ostap himself when it came to not shying away from fights he knew he wouldn’t win. Ostap had heard stories that, even well into his third century of life, Greve Chole had closed out many Basilica assembly sessions by speaking continuously, refusing to cede the floor in order to prevent an unscrupulous lord from bringing some particularly noxious issue to vote, his augmetic respiration letting him drone on until every other greve had given up and gone home.

‘Quite right,’ said Group Captain Barrin. ‘Major Kotrynn has expressed great gratitude for our assistance thus far.’ He nodded to the alcove where Greve Chole sat.

Ostap knew that if Darmodi Chole had returned to the assembly, it was an important sign. These were tumultuous times, and the elderly rogue of House Chole had no intent on sitting out and missing the excitement.

‘Lies!’ shrieked Margreve Wynovok. ‘This was no assassination, it was a threat, an execution!’ To Ostap, it seemed Ulika had forgotten that her words were being amplivoxed. The audio compensators in his alcove accounted for it, but several of the witnesses in the Occurriam hunched down. Even Barrin winced. ‘Why would the lord governor attach her agents to this investigation unless it stood to uncover something she had to hide?’

‘Honoured margreve,’ said Barrin, ‘she has allowed the High Service to assist this investigation precisely because she has nothing to hide.’

‘The honourable lords of this assembly seem to be a bit confused,’ said Greve Chole. ‘First Tish implies the Lady Matkosen’s people are incompetent. Then Old Uri would have us believe they are attempting to suppress evidence. And now Missionary Ulika tells us that it was a deliberate killing to scare us into line, and implies the lord governor is to blame! It would seem that the lords circling the palace like so many carrion birds might want to take a moment and make sure their feathers are all lined up in the same direction.’

Darmodi’s use of the diminutive epithets employed by the aristocracy behind closed doors was all the spark that the room needed. The assembly descended rapidly into chaos. Threats were issued. Old enemies confronted. New enemies made. Darmodi Chole’s bully tactics had worked: all attention fell away from Group Captain Barrin, who eventually packed up his notes and left as the elevated lords, in their hall of dignity and purpose, continued to scream and insult one another.

When it became clear no work was going to be done for the rest of the day, Ostap eventually gave up as well. He tapped a command into the data-slate on his desk, and his alcove darkened. A small panel of the wall slid away, allowing access to the private hall that allowed the greves to take their seats without being seen by the general public.

Although called the Lower Hall, the backroom that ringed the greves’ tier was more properly a series of interconnected chambers, where adjacent greves could sit in threes and fours and converse privately or prepare for the issues of the day. Wood panelled walls and deeply carpeted floors gave an enclosed, cosy feeling. In many ways, going from the Lower Hall to the Basilica Hall felt like stepping between two different worlds.

To Ostap’s good fortune, neither Minister Wernek nor Lord Sipivisky – two of the peers with whom he shared his portion of the Lower Hall – had stayed to talk. It wasn’t that he detested speaking to either of them, but neither was a political ally and he was in no mood for debate. Inzigo Hodyuk was there, reclining in one of the great padded chairs for the use of the lords, her feet resting on a tasselled stool.

‘Bad business,’ she said. Ostap nodded, taking the chair next to hers. The two sat in silence, staring at the elegant wood on the far wall, knowing that just beyond, the upper tiers were still shrieking at one another, or at the few lower greves who had not the sense to leave yet.

‘It’s blood in the streets,’ Ostap said. ‘It’ll get worse before it gets better.’

Greve Hodyuk sat forward with surprise on her features.

‘You think she did it, don’t you?’ she said. ‘You don’t know how, but you think she was involved in… in the murder.’ Inzigo, like many of the Grevenate, had actually seen pictographs of what had been done to Tanzeg Vaneisen. Few of them were sleeping well any more.

Ostap kicked his feet up onto his own foot stool, and closed his eyes. He rarely stayed long in the Lower Hall. Some of the lords treated it as a gentry’s club, and he knew there was food or fine spirits just waiting for a servant to fetch them for him, but Ostap had always preferred his own company. Still, the day had been exhausting enough that he was willing to lounge for a minute or two more.

‘I cannot say, for I wasn’t in that alley on that night,’ he said, finally, ‘nor would I wish to have been. I can’t imagine how strong a person would have to be to witness such a thing and emerge on the other side still whole, but I can say for certain that however strong that might be, I am found wanting.’

‘An evasion,’ said Inzigo. A servitor wheeled into the room bearing a glass on a tray. Inzigo took the drink and eased herself back into her seat. ‘We’ve all had nightmares of the alley, Ostap. Now quit hedging and tell me what you think.’

Ostap went quiet, and considered his response carefully. Greve Hodyuk was hot-headed, but also a valued friend.

‘I think that most of us know, or believe that we know, that Geordan and Ruprekt Matkosen were killed in an accident that was anything but,’ Ostap said. He sat forward, swinging his feet back to the carpet. ‘Even if that weren’t true, it’s perceived to be true. The law of the street demands retaliation.’

‘And this, by you, is a positive outcome?’ Inzigo asked. ‘Our nobles warring against one another using criminal hitmen?’

Ostap shrugged and stood. ‘Politicians sending assassins to kill one another is vastly preferable to them settling the issue with armies.’

‘Did you hear about the evacuees?’ Inzigo said, as if he had reminded her.

‘I didn’t,’ he said. None of the local newssheets had been covering them.

‘They were struck by an intensely terrible storm while crossing the Arendian Divide. Fewer than seven hundred were still alive by the time they reached Pennenvost.’ Greve Hodyuk caught Ostap’s eye, and he saw for the first time how drawn her face had become. He wouldn’t have been surprised to discover she was skipping meals and losing sleep to spend more time in the Basilica dealing with Grevenate issues.

‘I’m so sorry, Inzigo.’ Ostap knew it had been a landmark for her. She had spent days lobbying for better treatment for the Tupykamini.

She shook her head. ‘You did everything in your power. As did I. But the Vaneisens and their cronies preferred the deaths of twenty-three hundred men, women and children over a sting to their pride. Rather than allow desperate people to take shelter in buildings they were going to take down eventually anyway, they chose to turn them away, knowing it would kill them.’ She took a sip of her spirits, nodding and staring, her eyes glazing over. Ostap suspected that no matter where she looked, she was seeing barefoot outcasts, dead of exposure and drowned in swollen, flooded rivers.

‘I hope it was the lord governor,’ she said.

So this is what they’d come to. A population so beholden to a corrupt line of nobles that they would accept execution-style murders if it meant their lives might improve. A government so jaded that they took reciprocal murder in their stride, so long as it stood a chance of bringing the madness to an end.

As terrible as he knew it was, Ostap had to agree.

The athenaeum appeared, at first glance, to be a sad reflection of the Grand Cathedral. It was shorter, without the soaring height and elaborately buttressed façade of the grand Kostoveim architecture. The pilasters at the front were old and worn, and mounted on the north of the building, where they never gleamed in the sunlight. Inside it was nearly devoid of life. No candelabras adorned the halls, and there was no army of chandlers to light them.

Ashielle, however, recognised the dedication of the athenaeum for what it was. There were no dribbling decorative candle mounts because there could be no open flame in such an ancient building. The worn pilasters were some of the oldest on the planet, shielded from the degradation of the elements until they could be preserved or restored.

Group Captain Barrin had been quite insistent on trying to send a group of soldiers with her as an escort, but she would have none of it. Instead she had brought only Cheyster, her mother’s faithful driver, whose loyalty she knew to be beyond reproach. In the salt-miner’s strike, a group of disaffected labourers had attempted to waylay Cheyster in the course of his duties, to kidnap and ransom the Lady Matkosen, who had been expecting her first child at the time. The faithful driver had been prepared to give his life to protect Ashielle’s mother, and had taken two bullets in the exchange – then still managed to drive the Lady Matkosen to safety. Ashielle felt that a large entourage would have sent the wrong message to the party she intended to speak with, and if she could only take a single person, there was no one in her employ better qualified than Cheyster.

Inside, the library was shrouded in dimness, with only a fraction of the luminators lit. Part library, part restoration laboratory and part scriptorium, she could see the care that had gone into preserving the works within. Ashielle couldn’t even make out the titles of the books that she passed. In some places, the shelves were replaced by glass-walled enclosures, each housing a work of art too delicate to be exposed to the elements. These, too, were too poorly lit to be seen. The building was one large room; the bookshelves, workbenches and display mounts were the only walls or dividers to be found inside.

The athenaeum was a dream for one such as her, though. If time had permitted, Ashielle might have wandered the library alone for days. She could see a complete collection of the Erchenvolt chapbooks on one shelf, works the broader literary community had considered lost for decades. Beneath the glass of a restoration bracket she recognised pages from Tenshigo’s Treason of Nine Lovers, a work she had heard of but never thought to actually see. To the warp with the bank vaults and treasury rooms: this athenaeum was her true treasure.

Like a hunter in the southern fern savannas being shadowed by a lion, Ashielle could hear her stalker long before she saw her, and she realised she had been heard the moment she stepped through the doors. A slow stomp traced its way through the stacks of books, heralding the arrival of Preacher Larrichan.

Ashielle had expected someone old, and indeed the preacher was ancient. She had expected, however, such a venerable and sequestered elder to be frail and enfeebled. She’d never seen anyone outside of the cult of the Machine-God with so much heavy augmentation. The upper left third of the preacher’s face was covered by a jade mask, carved with angelic features, including a crown of cherubic curls. Beneath her ear, a cluster of gold threads wound up from beneath her collar to socket into the mask. The jade covering left the right eye and the preacher’s mouth exposed. The eye set into the jade was pure white, although as the preacher approached, Ashielle could hear the tell-tale clicking of lenses telescoping inside.

‘Preacher Larrichan,’ she said.

The preacher inclined her head graciously. She moved smoothly and rhythmically, but there was a measured mechanical clumping sound that accompanied her steps. Ashielle was willing to bet the augmetics beneath Larrichan’s cassock were even more extensive than what was visible.

‘Lady Matkosen,’ Larrichan replied. She gestured to the tea table, already set for them. Ashielle smiled to herself, imagining her father’s apoplexy if he could see a preacher bucking the system of address so. ‘What brings you to our library today?’

Ashielle handed the book she had brought from her chambers, open to Canthor’s diptych, and slid it across the table to the preacher. She pointed to the cavorting skitterlings.

‘Ah,’ said Preacher Larrichan. ‘Common proto-cthonic mythofauna. A frequent sub-theme or background element in Ceocan artworks. I believe the local name for them is skitterlings.’

‘Can you tell me anything more about them?’

‘This seems like an odd topic of fascination,’ said Preacher Larrichan, ‘for the lord governor.’ She poured a small cup of tea for herself and her guest.

Ashielle had the feeling that something was being left unsaid.

‘Oh,’ she said, ‘I don’t ask as the lord governor. Art history was my chosen career field before… well, before my life changed so dramatically. There has been so much turmoil, recently.’ She paused. ‘I should think pursuing my intellectual passions might provide an outlet for me, one that might very well save me in the years to come. But rest assured, I seek your advice only as a personal favour.’ She paused again, to allow the preacher to hear what remained unsaid. ‘I would never dream of involving you in politics, of course.’

‘Of course,’ said Preacher Larrichan. ‘I have so little time for political intrigue these days. What do you know about ancient Ceocan history?’

‘Only what everyone knows,’ she said. ‘The Old Ceoc turned their eyes from Him upon the Throne, and Ceocan endured millennia of darkness until He led an exploratory fleet to rediscover our planet and bring us back into His light.’ She stirred her tea, acutely conscious of how loud the sound of spoon against ceramic sounded in the tomb-quiet of the athenaeum. Even the air was still, devoid of any stray breeze that might dislodge an errant page. The preacher stirred her own tea in complete silence.

‘Not everyone,’ said Larrichan. ‘Only those with any sort of formal education know even that much. The farmers and fishers are told only what we allow them to know, which is a far more sanitised version of the same story. Surely a child of such wealth as yourself has a bit… broader knowledge of the galaxy?’

Ashielle sipped her tea, trying to gauge how much to tell the preacher. Larrichan already seemed completely unlike every other member of the Ministorum she had ever met. She had the impression Preacher Larrichan was testing her in some fashion.

‘I know our world was settled during the Dark Age of Technology,’ she said, ‘lost for unknown years before the Astartes Legions found us during the Great Crusade.’

‘Is that it?’ Preacher Larrichan seemed unimpressed. The stone half of her face seemed kinder than the flesh. ‘Were you educated in anything other than rote platitudes?’

‘Was my father?’ Ashielle said. ‘When you spoke with him?’

Preacher Larrichan smiled, although she didn’t seem surprised. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Your father was much more willing to speak freely with me than you are.’ She bobbed her head from side to side as if gauging some unknown factor. ‘Although, it took him nearly a year longer to approach me. I suspect he had exhausted other avenues of research, or perhaps done more extensive probing into my own background. Either way, he was more trusting.’

Ashielle kept her face neutral. ‘How do you mean?’ she asked. She was not a veteran of this particular form of verbal dance, but she was familiar with the steps. Both she and the preacher knew more than they were saying, but each had to tread with caution, given the authority of the other.

‘Do you really believe the Old Ceoc turned, en masse, from their devotion to the Throne?’ Preacher Larrichan broached the topic carefully, but Ashielle had been prepared for this.

‘Unlikely,’ she said, choosing her words with care. A verbal misstep could be construed as heresy. Throne, the most conservative of Ecclesiarchy officials would consider the entire conversation heretical already, anyway. ‘I think it’s more likely a warp storm, bureaucratic error, or simply shifting trade routes cut Ceocan off from the Imperium for a time, and while our closest neighbours probably meant to re-establish contact eventually, time went on. Wars were waged. Governors fell. The Imperium restructured. Eventually, the planet was forgotten.’

Preacher Larrichan arched one eyebrow. She lifted her own cup of tea, and Ashielle realised for the first time that the preacher’s right hand was entirely augmetic.

‘Do you believe that the Emperor directed the exploratory fleet to return the planet to the Imperium?’ The preacher’s voice was light, innocuous, though her question was anything but. Ashielle paused, breathing in the scent of the tea, trying to think of the best way to answer.

‘I think,’ she said, slowly, ‘that those who commanded the exploratory fleet which found Ceocan again believed that they did so of their own free will, guided by nothing more than their own expertise. The Adeptus Ministorum tells us that the Emperor is omniscient and omnipresent, however, so I will believe that the actions of those men and women were guided by the invisible hand of Him upon the Throne, if the Ecclesiarchy tells me it is so. Such facts are, after all, their area of expertise.’

Preacher Larrichan tsked in her throat. She set the cup down on her saucer, the augmetic hand guiding the vessel so smoothly the china didn’t even clink.

‘Deacon Phoebian likes to govern with a kind hand, as such things are judged,’ she said, ‘but if a common labourer were to say such things on our hallowed grounds, even she would have them in stocks in a moment.’

‘I am no common labourer,’ said Ashielle, beginning to realise what sort of game Larrichan was playing. ‘Does the Book of Solangia not say, “the weight of duty is borne by the strength of privilege”?’

Preacher Larrichan smiled, her flesh mouth a mirror of the half-smile of the jade. ‘True, but she goes on to say “privilege shall fail the faithless and the false, the weight of their duty shall grind them to meal”.’

‘Do you believe that I am faithless or false?’ Ashielle asked.

‘Faithless, no,’ said the preacher. ‘Although I’ve yet to meet the politician who wasn’t a little bit false.’

Both women smiled in lieu of laughing at the joke, which didn’t deserve it.

‘True enough in your duty for Solangia’s purposes, anyway. Understand,’ said the preacher, ‘that the Old Ceoc had a history with inhuman influences. Before the Great Crusade, the people of Ceocan had fallen far from the ancestors of theirs who had colonised the planet. They believed that great xenos deities had spirited them away from the world on which they had been born, taken them to live on Ceocan. If there is any evidence of humanity arriving here under their own power, it has long since been destroyed.’

The preacher stood, and clumped her way through the bookshelves. After a moment, she returned, bearing a slim volume of ancient paper.

‘This is the personal journal of Schain Renislaus, a remembrancer with the Thirteenth Legion of the Emperor’s elite.’ The preacher smiled at Ashielle’s wide-eyed expression. ‘Not the actual journal, of course. This was a fairly common text in the more populated parts of the Ultima Segmentum, although it’s fallen out of favour as the Historitors gained power and scope.’

‘I see,’ said Ashielle. ‘And did Schain Renislaus have something to say about Ceocan?’

‘I believe he did,’ said the preacher. ‘He speaks of a world filled with “painted barbarians, who know nothing of Terra and call themselves the Shoke.” He goes on to say that the world is beset intermittently by xenos who hunt the nomadic Shoke for sport. The legionaries set up an Imperial garrison on the planet, and the planet of Shokan became a vital supply of foodstuffs for the crusade fleets.’

‘Speculative,’ says Ashielle. ‘But assuming Mr Renislaus was misspelling Ceocan’s name, that does fit.’

‘Indeed,’ said the preacher. She stood, and gestured for the governor to follow her.

The stacks of books between the door and the preacher’s receiving area were curated, Ashielle realised, and arranged to convey a sense of gravitas. Here, back in what must be Preacher Larrichan’s private area, there was no order she could perceive. Some shelves were devoid of books entirely, and were filled with picks, brushes and other tools that Ashielle could only guess at the function of. Other shelves were filled to the point of sagging beneath the weight of the ancient tomes piled upon them, and stuffed full of yellowed scrolls so brittle with age that she couldn’t begin to guess how the preacher could handle them without the paper turning to dust. The plaster walls, once adorned with frescoes of pastoral scenes and soaring aquilas, had been sacrificed on the altar of necessity. There was scarcely a square inch of bare wall visible, as it was buried beneath a forest of paper. Handwritten notes about ink or paint recipes, book-binding techniques and restoration instructions were mixed in with spare pages that had been salvaged from destroyed books, reference picts for damaged paintings, and cross-reference lists for research projects.

Finally, they came to a stout case set against a back wall. The case itself was decorative, made from iron trimmed with gold, but there were no baroque paintings or decorative reliefs. Instead, the entirety of the black metal surface was covered in gold inscription, which Ashielle recognised as Imperial scripture. This was no display cage like the glass-fronted cases in front. Ashielle had seen similar scripture cases. There was, in fact, one of them in the secret room off the Draper’s Hall in Darcarden.

Unlike the other scripture cases Ashielle had seen, Larrichan’s had no lock. Instead, the preacher placed the index finger of her augmetic hand in the depression where the lock should be. Ashielle could hear smooth metallic clinking echoing from within the lid of the scripture case. Clearly the lock on the scripture case was far more elaborate than the ones that Ashielle had seen before.

The lid popped open with a hiss. Inside were a number of texts and tomes, protected from the corrosive effects of even the air itself.

‘We tell the people that the world was brought joyfully back to the Imperium upon Reunification.’ The preacher straightened, and held one finger aloft as if correcting herself. ‘Rather, we tell that to the children of families wealthy enough to afford a private education.’ She resumed shuffling through the papers with painful slowness, carefully moving each stray note or piece of correspondence from one pile to another.

‘Is that not the case?’ Ashielle asked.

‘Is it ever?’ The preacher turned, hefting a large folio from the case. ‘Here we are,’ she said, before Ashielle could answer her rhetorical question. She gestured to a workbench, where she spread the folio out across the work surface.

The glossy pages were unlike anything Ashielle had ever seen – a treasure trove of artworks from before the Reunification. Picts of displays, shrines and art exhibitions. She drew her hands back sharply before her fingers touched the paper. Ashielle looked to the preacher, who nodded, and she began leafing through the pages.

‘This is an installation,’ she said.

The pict showed a triptych of paintings, lit from beneath. The paintings were beautiful, in the hinged Marcorellian style. Of greater interest to her was the background. The walls behind the painting were fitted wood, and on the left edge of the frame she could make out a dividing screen. Ashielle had seen such architecture in paintings and sculpture, but never in real life.

‘Where was this pict taken?’

The preacher smiled. ‘A city on Ceocan, about a day’s ride south of Ystrode.’

‘There is no city south of Ystrode,’ said Ashielle, closing her eyes and recalling her geography. Ystrode and Kostoveim were on separate continents, but it was all part of her planet, and she prided herself on knowing it well. ‘Just scrubland until you reach the ocean.’

‘That may be true, now,’ said Preacher Larrichan, ‘but at the time of Reunification, there was a thriving community there.’

Ashielle had been to Ystrode, once, and had seen the desert to the south of it. There were no resources there, no buildings. Nothing but scrubland for miles. If there had ever been a city there, it had to have been razed to the ground.

Of course, that’s exactly what would have happened, wasn’t it? The Imperium did not do things by half measures. Its attention might be slow to adjust, but when it had fixed its gaze on a target, there was little and less that could be done to stop its inexorable advance. The very idea that a planet could exist self-sufficiently outside their domain was heresy. The notion of leaving any evidence that it had done so? Intolerable.

‘The Old Ceoc resisted Reunification,’ Ashielle said. Each pict she paged through showed her more of the art and culture that had been lost. How many of these sculptures had been destroyed? How many spirited away? She saw examples of architecture that could no longer be found anywhere on Ceocan. Paintings that had been burned for venerating a hero not sanctified by the Ecclesiarchy. Thousands of years’ worth of history, crushed beneath the conqueror’s boot.

‘Of course they did,’ said the preacher. ‘They had new masters, by then.’ She extracted one of the picts, and laid it out for Ashielle’s viewing.

The pict showed a wall fresco, a grand mural picked out in small coloured shells, the largest no bigger than a fingernail. The mural showed a grand house, a temple or mansion of some kind, in cutaway view. Inside, a man in a grand headdress presided over a legion of bowing human figures: a priest or king of some type. More troubling was the figure next to him, at his right hand. The second figure was humanoid, picked out in glossy black shells. Small green lines, an abstraction of glowing runes, covered its body.

The preacher showed her more pictures of the same mural. Outside the temple there was a city of tiered towers, distinct in their stacked, multiple-eaved design. Images of Ceoc people running through the streets, clustering together in the light of massive bonfires. Between the buildings, skitterlings cavorted. These beings did not merely take to the background, as all images Ashielle had seen did. They wielded blue flame against foolish sword-wielding soldiers. They carried wailing children into the night. They stared out of the wall, directly at the viewer, their eyes picked out in red lacquered shells.

‘The Ceoc people dwelled on this world for thousands of years, alone in the darkness,’ said the preacher. ‘But then the skitterlings came.’

‘What are they?’ Ashielle asked. ‘Nightmares made flesh?’ She stared at a pict of a woven blanket, divided into panels, which told a pictorial story of a family offending a king and being condemned to be dragged away by skitterlings.

‘I don’t think so,’ said Larrichan. ‘I believe they’re scouts or espionage specialists for the sport-hunters that plagued the planet before the Crusade.’

‘You think they came back?’

‘It’s possible, although the few surviving elements of pre-Reunification history don’t show anything like the sport hunts from Renislaus’ third-hand accounts.’ The preacher flipped through a few more picts which showed other art pieces, each of which depicted similar scenes to the first.

It took everything Ashielle had not to laugh in triumph.

‘The Imperium banished them, though,’ she said. ‘During the Reunification, they must have.’

Preacher Larrichan nodded. ‘You see this orange blade this ruler is depicted with?’ she asked. ‘And here, this shows a house with orange stones set in the roof being passed over by the skitterlings. If I’m correct, these are slaenite crystals. Known to be mildly psycho-reactive, and prized in Geller field technology.’ The preacher must have seen the inquisitive look coming across Ashielle’s face. ‘The slaenite crystals on Ceocan are occluded and of poor purity. The ones in our solar system’s asteroid field are abundant and of far greater quality.’ She turned over another page. ‘However, I do believe even locally-sourced crystals would be sufficient for someone familiar with warpcraft to use them to create a shield or protective device to prevent extra-dimensional incursion.’

‘A shield against the invaders?’ said Ashielle. ‘If they aren’t from here, then it stands to reason they must arrive somewhere.’

‘There you are,’ said the preacher. ‘And their means of entry were sealed with slaenite crystals. I doubt the crystals would be sufficient themselves – it would likely also have taken rituals infused with mighty warp powers.’

‘How could such a monumental task be undertaken?’ said Ashielle. ‘How would the Imperium have known?’ She rubbed her thumb across the cap of her missing finger idly.

‘If you notice, the motif of a leader commanding or working alongside the skitterlings is common,’ said Larrichan. ‘And always while brandishing a token of office made of slaenite. I suspect that the skitterlings had some form of compact with the tribal leaders of the Old Ceoc. When the Imperium of Man came calling again after so long, the most powerful of them would have been disinclined to cooperate. The new system had seen them accrue much power and influence.’

Understanding dawned on Ashielle. ‘But when the Imperium of Man came calling again after so long, the least of these leaders, or perhaps their avaricious subordinates, saw an opportunity for advancement for themselves. Betray the ancient covenants of their people,’ she nearly retched as she realised she was almost using Jaezubiel’s exact phrasing, ‘and rise to positions of power in the aftermath.’

‘A reasonable assumption,’ said Larrichan. She fixed Ashielle with a hard look. ‘I suspect, however, that it’s possible that some of those loyal supporters of the Imperium chose not to build a wall, but rather a prison, trapping one or two of the skitterlings in our world.’

Ashielle returned her stare, giving away nothing. ‘That would be the gravest folly,’ she said. ‘No ward can hold forever, after all. Such disastrous short-sightedness would eventually spell danger for someone down the line from them.’

‘Too right,’ said the preacher. ‘Your father had a similar concern, oddly enough.’

‘Do you think these slaenite talismans still have the power to command such creatures?’

‘If their material form was part of the covenant, then most likely,’ said Larrichan. She smiled, a little wistfully. ‘However, it should be noted that the talismans of rulership were considered grand heresy. The last known example was the Spear of Fortunes, but that was destroyed in late M37. So far as I know, only one such relic has survived the years.’

Ashielle looked at her, expectantly, but the preacher only dropped her gaze. The governor felt her heart sink. She had come all this way, only to find that the scholar didn’t know. Then she realised that Larrichan had not dropped her gaze in shame, but rather to stare at Ashielle’s hand.

Or more importantly, her signet ring.

Ashielle lifted the hand, gazing at the dull silver of the band, the flat amber stone set atop it. It was much clearer and purer in colour than any slaenite crystal she’d seen before. She had always taken it to be amber or a rich topaz. It had never occurred to her that it might just be merely a stunningly clear example of a common mineral.

‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘Preacher Larrichan, you’ve been most helpful.’

The preacher inclined her head. Ashielle was beginning to suspect that the cleric was incapable of bowing at the waist.

‘It is no trouble,’ she said. ‘The material was ready to hand.’

Ashielle stopped on her way to the door.

‘Why would that be?’ she asked.

The preacher paused, as if considering whether or not to prevaricate.

‘Someone else was asking about the same subject,’ Ashielle said. ‘Weren’t they?’

‘No,’ said the preacher. ‘Not quite. Although a related one.’

‘Who came to ask you about the skitterlings?’ she asked.

‘Your brother. The arbitrator.’

12

Esilia enjoyed her rose garden more than any other part of the Vaneisen manor. When she had discovered the garden, it had been a forgotten part of the estate. The fountain was dry and overgrown, the hedges long since atrophied to nothing.

As a young woman, she had made it part of her mission to reinvigorate the rose garden, and under her care, it had flourished. The lawns were lush and green, watered by hand from heavy brass canisters hauled daily from the cistern. The brightly polished bronze furnishings allowed the Vaneisen nobles a place to read quietly or receive visitors. The benches and tables scattered throughout the garden were separated by a waist-high series of rose hedges. The thin, sparse vegetation made for a deceptive maze, often appearing from a distance to have a gap where none existed, or concealing an actual passage from view. The fact that all of the features of the garden were visible at all times made navigating the labyrinth all the more frustrating. The slightest misstep on the path would lead to a painful correction, as the Vaneisen rose had been bred for the wickedness of its thorns.

The blood-red blooms of the garden were at their most beautiful when dripping with fresh rainwater, but Esilia preferred to sit in her greatest work when the sun was high in the sky and the garden was positively baking. Reading or calmly taking a meal while all around her servants toiled to sacrifice their sweat and blood before the altar of her vision: that was the most potent joy she could imagine.

She smiled as she saw Ireina picking her way through the maze to her. Her daughter eyed the thorny hedges distastefully. Her children didn’t share her love for the rose garden, but she didn’t require them to. They each had their own interests and areas of excellence.

‘Have the funeral arrangements been made?’ Ireina asked as she sat down. She had wisely chosen a thick riding outfit.

‘They have,’ said Esilia. ‘There will be no viewing, however.’

Ireina was not surprised. She and Esilia had both seen the mess that had been made of Tanzeg’s body. It would have taken a miracle for his corpse to have been made presentable.

Esilia studied her daughter’s face as Ireina gazed about the garden. She watched Ireina, who was in turn watching the head gardener, Rorgen, correct a new servant, striking the young boy with a thin switch whenever he trimmed a bloom incorrectly. Ireina had been the one who had hired Rorgen, recognising in him a commitment to detail combined with a ruthless streak. She had always been skilled at spotting and cultivating good talent. It was a talent that would serve Ireina well, now that she was poised to inherit her mother’s title someday.

‘Have you given any thought to your prospects?’ Esilia asked.

Ireina tore her eyes away from the gardener, who had begun kicking the boy. ‘Oh, no,’ she said, waving one hand. ‘I’ve been focusing on tying up loose ends.’

Esilia grimaced and sipped at her tea. ‘Tanzeg was a dear boy, but he was ever prone to leaving his messes for other people to clean up.’

Ireina nodded. Esilia knew that if her daughter was going to take the position of Vaneisen matriarch someday, to continue her family’s legacy, there couldn’t be any random claimants to her position coming out of the woodwork. Tanzeg might not have married, but his numerous companions over the years had borne several illegitimate children. While Tanzeg had been the Vaneisen heir Esilia had been content to allow the children to live, as she was loath to discard useful tools. With Tanzeg deceased, however, those children had become threats to Ireina’s ascension. She felt no great sorrow at Ireina disposing of her own bastard nieces and nephews. In fact, Esilia would have thought less of her daughter if she hadn’t dealt with the brats.

‘All tidied up?’ Esilia asked.

‘All done,’ said Ireina. ‘There were two that gave my agent a bit of trouble, but it’s all taken care of now.’

‘Oh?’ asked Esilia. ‘Anything I need to be concerned about coming back on us?’

‘Nothing extreme,’ said Ireina. ‘Two of the women claimed Tanzeg wasn’t the father of their children, and I couldn’t establish conclusively if they were telling the truth or not.’

‘What did you do about it?’ Esilia asked.

Ireina shrugged. ‘Better safe than sorry.’ She leaned back a little, closing her eyes and enjoying the sunshine.

Esilia nodded. ‘Indeed.’

Ireina tapped her finger against the table and opened her eyes again. ‘I’m a little concerned about this much activity,’ she said, ‘especially so close to what happened to Tanzeg.’

‘As am I,’ said Esilia. ‘But there’s little we can do about it, is there? If Ruprekt’s daughter goes looking too closely at our affairs, there’s all sorts of nasty secrets she might find poking around in Tanzeg’s business. So, we have to clean them all up, as quickly as possible.’ She paused, suddenly afraid. ‘I do hope you took precautions?’

Ireina scowled. ‘Of course,’ she snapped. ‘I’m not a child. The families died in a combination of house fires and street muggings. Nothing suspicious at all.’

‘And your cleaner?’

Ireina shrugged. ‘Gone,’ she said, ‘which is a pity. He was extremely efficient.’

‘Nevertheless,’ said Esilia.

‘Nevertheless,’ said Ireina, ‘the only way to question him would be to question his corpse. Which would require the wardens to dig it out of the rockcrete foundation of the hab block that Jennifia Bruisell started pouring this morning.’

Esilia nodded. ‘Good girl,’ she said. There had been many times when she’d wished that Ireina had been born first. She certainly was far from pleased that her son had been killed, if for no other reason than the time and expense that she had invested in him. Several arms of influence had been under his control and would require time and resources to wrangle, especially the illicit ventures.

‘Switching topics,’ said Esilia, ‘how is your new friendship coming along?’ If Ireina was able to secure a solid relationship with an agent inside Darcarden, it would make many of their endeavours easier.

‘Progressing well,’ her daughter replied. ‘There’s no love lost between them and the governor. At this point their relationship is… professional at best.’

Esilia nodded and returned her attention to her newssheet.

‘What about you?’ asked Ireina.

Esilia arched one manicured eyebrow. She was unaccustomed to her daughter speaking to her in that way, but if Ireina was going to step into the number one position she supposed she was deserving of some leeway.

‘What about me?’ she said.

‘Have you figured out who killed Tanzeg?’

Esilia knew she meant who had done the deed. They both knew who had ordered it done. There was hardly any surprise there. Tanzeg had taken a shot at the lord governor and missed. Esilia was hardly surprised that he had ended up dead. She had made her peace with that possibility the night Lostrovsky had failed to return.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said. Which was true. She’d put two of her people on investigating the murder, but both of her agents had quit after discovering enough of the details of her son’s demise. Esilia had to hand it to Lady Matkosen: if she had been trying to send a message, she’d done so loud and clear. Several lesser houses that had been content to sit quietly and let the regent and coadjutor slug it out were now grousing their support for the Matkosens as loudly as possible. She could still count on her most loyal (or indebted) supporters, like the Bruisell and Gavozny families, but the notion of pushing Lady Matkosen out through influence or coercion was now a dead idea.

‘Oh?’ asked her daughter.

‘We both know who had Tanzeg killed,’ she said. ‘We were doing what we could to keep the warfare off the streets. To keep our assassinations quiet. The Governor Matkosen doesn’t seem to want to play that way, however.’ She nibbled delicately on a biscuit. ‘She has chosen to show us her teeth. When we have shown ours, and removed her entirely, the rest of the Grevenate will fall in line.’

‘Are you sure?’ Ireina asked.

‘It’s already done,’ said Esilia. ‘She’s visiting the cathedral today, for some goodwill mission or other. Unfortunately for her, that position leaves her uncharacteristically vulnerable.’ She returned to her tea. She might have known her son’s death was inevitable, even made peace with it in some fashion, but there was a far cry between that and allowing his murder to go unpunished.

The carriage door closed. Ashielle arranged her skirts around her lap and pursed her lips in silent thought. Suspicious glances were one thing, but if Hanrik was inquiring with the Ecclesiarchy about the heresies of Ceocan’s past, it meant he was pursuing something more concrete, whether he knew it or not. The carriage lurched into motion.

‘I know you’re here,’ Ashielle said.

The burning red eyes appeared before she saw the rest of it.

‘Did you follow me here,’ she asked, ‘or do you just hear my call wherever you are?’ She stared idly out the tinted window. The sunset glare did little to penetrate the smoked glass.

‘Why can’t it be both?’ Jaezubiel said.

‘I think you followed me,’ she said, ignoring the creature’s evasiveness. ‘After all, you’ve invested quite a bit of risk into me, haven’t you?’ Ashielle didn’t turn to see if Jaezubiel reacted, and didn’t wait for it to respond. ‘If I perish, you pass into the hands of the coadjutors. You’ve already weighed that and decided against it.’

The silence was so profound it was nearly audible, a distinct and threatening lack of sound.

‘Perhaps,’ said Jaezubiel. ‘Perhaps you’re correct.’

Before she could ask it why, the carriage shook violently.

Ashielle folded her skirts into her lap and exited the carriage. The early evening crowd pressed in around the route, with several other carriages filling the street before and behind her. The bronze facades reflected the light of sunset down the thoroughfare, filling the street with golden orange radiance.

‘Cheyster, what is it?’ she asked her driver. The man looked down, surprised to see the governor out of the carriage.

‘Appears to be a downed cart up ahead, ma’am.’ The driver put one hand up to shield his eyes. ‘Some sort of accident.’

‘How long to clear?’ she asked.

Cheyster’s face contorted with the look of a man trying to feign uncertainty to conceal an unpleasant truth.

‘Hard to say, ma’am.’ He pointed down the way, although Ashielle couldn’t see anything through the packed mass of people and milling horses. ‘The alleys here are too narrow to take a cart, so it could be quite a while before they get the street clear.’

Ashielle nodded and leaned against the side of the carriage. She folded her arms across her chest, and stood posed as if deep in impatient thought.

‘We have to leave on foot,’ she whispered out of the corner of her mouth.

She could hear a peevish hiss from inside the carriage.

‘You do so alone,’ Jaezubiel whispered back. ‘I cannot follow through this damnable light.’

Ashielle nodded and stepped away. The wide street was indeed bathed in light so bright it banished nearly all shadows. The polished bronze cornices, statuary and reliefs all reflected the day’s final radiance, aligned nearly perfectly with the angle of the setting sun. Any of Jaezubiel’s kind trying to cut through the city would be isolated and exposed.

She looked back down the street as far as she could see. For the first time, she wondered if the layout of Kostoveim’s streets was deliberate. The largest, oldest streets had all been laid out in neat rows, like a farmer’s field. All arrayed east-to-west along the line of the sun, every building adorned with gleaming metal decorations that would turn the hour of dusk and dawn into a blazing inferno of light. The cross-streets that carved through the old blocks, the markets which cut the main roads into segments, the satellite cities that followed no set pattern but the sprawling madness of the convenience of the moment: they had all sprung up centuries after the Reunification. After people had forgotten that there was once a time when they feared the encroaching shadows more than anything else.

‘The sun will be down shortly,’ Ashielle said, as though this were a reasonable impetus for her impatience. She reached back into the carriage and plucked out her hat: a wide-brimmed Kostoci lady’s hat meant to be worn low, perfect for concealing the face. She nodded to her driver. ‘Come, Cheyster. We’ll walk from here.’

She did not wait, but began pushing her way through the crowd with all the haste she could manage. It was slow going. Once off the main thoroughfare and onto the pedestrian’s sideways, she was no one, recognisable only as an impatient noblewoman too hot-headed to wait for traffic to clear. The newssheets rarely had both the reason and the means to run picts of her, and currency bearing her face wouldn’t go into production until the beginning of the winter season.

Cheyster, ever faithful, had leaped from his board to follow her. Despite the crowd impeding her progress, she had evidently made good pace, because by the time her driver had caught up with her, he was flush-faced.

‘Begging your excellency’s pardon,’ he huffed, ‘but why are we leaving the carriage?’

Ashielle managed to push through a break in the crowd and down a side-alley. At some point a market vendor had used the alley to store a wheeled stall, but by the looks of the mouldered wood he had long been out of the street meat business. Beyond that, the alley angled sharply away. A few pedestrians from the pack of dusk traffic populated the end of the alley, having ducked in to have a quiet smoke or a low conversation and avoid the busiest part of the day.

‘Because,’ she said, ‘I generally find that the best method of avoiding an assassination is to not be where it is occurring.’ As though to illustrate her point, an explosion roared behind them. Ashielle forged on down the alley, even as the screams began from the street.

‘Is there a place we can hide you, excellency?’ Cheyster shifted without command to a pace behind her, his footsteps matching her own, his large frame spoiling any shot at her from behind.

‘No,’ she said. ‘We need to get back to the palace.’ She reached the turn in the alley and peered around the corner. It only ran another fifteen feet or so, then turned again to run parallel to its original course. ‘What I wouldn’t give for a vox-bead.’

Or a pistol, she realised. Her plasma pistol was holstered in a smuggler’s rig hidden beneath the short jacket she wore over her dress. An exquisite piece of covert tech, the holster allowed her to carry the weapon entirely unnoticed, even by some auspex arrays designed to detect concealed weapons. The trade-off was that it took a few moments to extract the weapon, and she didn’t have them to spare at the moment.

‘Beg pardon, ma’am?’

‘Vox-bead,’ she said. ‘It’s like a military vox, only it fits in the ear. Quite common in the galaxy at large, but after the Night of Bloody Streets the Grevenate asked Vittorya Matkosen to outlaw man-portable communication devices smaller than the backpack units.’

Not that it had prevented Vittorya from keeping them in use in her own house, of course. It hadn’t been until Ruprekt ascended that the governor’s staff had quit using them as well, her father insisting on setting an example for his subordinates. He had always been adamant that ethical conduct kept a governor from death at the hands of a populist uprising, so she found it quite ironic that his ethics were about to be the reason she was probably going to be assassinated.

As she passed the second corner in the alley, she corrected herself to ‘definitely going to be assassinated.’ Instead of connecting back to the next large street, the alley ended in an impromptu wall. Flakboard sheets had been erected to close the alley off, with wooden struts supporting them. Ashielle turned on her heel and tried to go back the way she had come, but she rounded the first corner and saw a trio of men pushing their way through the crowd, laspistols in hand.

Ashielle dropped to the ground behind the alley’s corner before the first shots blazed past them. Cheyster saw the first volley of shots go sizzling by before he was able to leap for cover behind the abandoned vendor stall. He fumed, as though the audacity of the assassins was beyond comprehension. Cheyster reached into his overcoat as the laspistol shots blasted smouldering holes in the wooden cart and blew divots in the grey stone of the alley’s buildings. He drew a laspistol of his own, old but serviceable. Ashielle hadn’t even realised he carried it, but could well imagine that having survived one kidnapping attempt on an aristocrat in his care, he had made preparations to never be caught so unawares again. She crouched, back against the stone building corner, and dug beneath the jacket she wore over her dress for her plasma pistol.

‘Come out, lady, and we’ll let your man go free,’ called a voice from the end of the alley. Ashielle could barely hear him over the screaming of the crowd. ‘You like pretending that you give a damn about your people’s lives, right? ’S your chance to die a martyr!’

‘Heretics!’ Cheyster’s face had turned livid with rage, his odobenid moustache trembling with fury. He leaped up from behind his makeshift barricade. ‘Wretched traitors! Rebels! Scum!’ He punctuated every word with a shot from his antique laspistol.

The first several shots of the return fire went wide, but eventually one of them clipped Cheyster’s leg. He fell to his knees, his face screwed up in pain, and kept firing. She heard his efforts rewarded by a pained scream from one of the assassins, but he was no longer a moving target, and they had found their range. The next three shots impacted him squarely in the chest, and Ashielle’s long-time servant slumped to the dirty pavement. His sacrifice had not been in vain, however, as it had afforded her the time to retrieve her own pistol.

She poked her head around the alley, as low as she could. Cheyster had evidently kept his marksmanship in practice: one of the three assassins was lying face-down, another leaned against a wall, one leg stretched out and marred by a charred hole. She snapped her pistol up and pulled the trigger.

Ashielle had worried that her aim would be ruined by firing with her middle finger, but once again she found that her middle finger could do just as well as the missing one had. The first shot took the wounded man by surprise, the plasma round tearing down the alley and blazing into his lower leg. He screamed in agony as half his leg vaporised, and fell to the ground, wailing. The uninjured assassin fired blindly and tried to shrink down. Ashielle fired again, but the plasma pistol had been made for shorter ranges, and her shot went wide. Superheated brick exploded, sending shards across the alleyway and showering the assassin with debris. Venomous cursing and wild lasgun fire flew back in her direction.

She pulled the trigger again, but her pistol merely beeped in warning, the safety threshold reached. If she tried to fire it again before the coils cooled, she would risk catastrophic heat damage.

‘Jaezubiel,’ she said. Ashielle ducked back behind the corner. She looked down at the blinking red light on the side of her pistol, willing it to return to green. No luck. ‘Jaezubiel?’

The fiend didn’t respond. She gazed up at the sky with exasperation. She was still twenty minutes out from it being able to rescue her, assuming the carriage hadn’t been detonated with it inside in the first place. She looked back towards the dead end. Maybe she could climb it?

The tromping of boots put an end to that notion. She sighed as she heard them. Reinforcements. Still not willing to admit defeat, she tried to recall the words to the Litany of Thermal Maintenance. Then she heard the voice, booming through the alley with the thunder of a plains storm.

‘By order of the Arbites, citizen, you are under arrest!’

Ashielle dared to poke her head around the corner again. The wardens, clad in their flak armour and green tunics of office, had spread across the entrance to the alley. Her would-be assassin, his face pocked with tiny bits of brick, scrambled down the alley, coming towards her as he backed away from the wardens, and flipped his lasgun to full-auto.

Before he could fire, Hanrik stepped through the line of wardens. The gold aquila on his shoulder gleamed in the dying sunlight, enhanced by the pure black of his carapace armour. His expression was as unyielding and merciless as the eagle on his pauldron. His autopistol was extended, and three shells had fallen to the pavement before Ashielle even realised her brother had fired. She scarcely noticed the assassin’s body falling to the floor, or the wardens rushing to see if she was injured.

All she had been able to see was Hanrik dressed in the armour of a trained killer, striding towards her with a face devoid of mercy and an outstretched gun. It was a memory she feared would be with her for quite a while.

13

Ashielle took the moist cloth and thanked her maid, closed the door of her bedchamber, and sat down at the vanity. She lifted one hand to her lips, her eyes unfocused and staring into space.

‘You seem less than pleased.’

‘I’m not.’ She didn’t bother to turn, or even look into a mirror. Jaezubiel’s appearances and vanishings had become rote to her.

‘Did the kill-sculptors who attacked us know too much? Agents of the preacher, sent to detain you for your heresy?’

She shook her head. ‘Unlikely. If Deacon Phoebian wanted me dead, she would have moved days ago. We don’t know who sent them. Yet.’

She sighed and looked up to see the creature in her mirror. It crouched on her bed, head turned on one side, its white hair pouring over one shoulder and down the asphalt-black skin of its chest. She was beginning to realise that the more pain the creature bore witness to, the healthier it became, as though it were literally feeding on suffering. With the pain and panic of a bombing on a crowded street, the thing was darkly radiant.

‘How unfortunate.’

‘Maybe not,’ she said. ‘If they are agents of someone who knows about you, I’d rather keep them silent. Fortunately, we recovered none of the assassins alive. The one I shot is in our custody, but there’s some doubt over whether or not he’ll regain consciousness.’ Ashielle took the moistened cloth and began wiping the cosmetics from her face.

‘And your driver?’ Jaezubiel sat upright a bit more. ‘The one with the inflamed knees?’

‘Alive, but sedated. He’s likely to recover. Also in the hands of my personal medicae.’ Ashielle furrowed her brow. ‘I didn’t know anything was wrong with his knees.’

Jaezubiel grinned with its mouthful of tiny teeth. ‘Yes,’ it said. ‘Horrible pain. When it rained, his knees and ankles would swell so bad he would occasionally sit on his board in the driving rain rather than go inside and bear the pain of walking.’

Ashielle shuddered. How horrible. She suspected that a month prior she would have been far more alarmed that she hadn’t realised such an important detail of Cheyster’s life, but so much had changed for her in so short a time.

‘How did you survive?’ she asked.

‘While the ancient wards stand, I am protected,’ said Jaezubiel. ‘Do you think your father didn’t try to kill me himself? I suspect, if we continue on long enough, you will try too, of course. With blade or bolt, you will come for me. But still I persist.’

‘Oh, cease your idle boasting,’ Ashielle snapped. In the mirror, she saw the monster sit upright, swinging its feet to the floor. ‘Your wards obviously have their limits. With all the gore you’ve soaked yourself in of late, you may have forgotten, but my people drove your kind from this world. With blade and with bolt. Whatever great and mighty kingdom of terror they might have commanded, their legacy now is dust and ashes, remembered not at all save for background graffiti and children’s stories.’

The shadows deepened, and Jaezubiel snapped from the bed to loom over her shoulder in an instant. Its eyes blazed, and the heliotrope runes across its skin raged. She did not flinch, but met its gaze in the mirror. The blackened streaks from her eyedark gave her a haunted, cadaverous glare.

‘I am no mere soldier of the darkness,’ Jaezubiel hissed. ‘I am a nightfiend, anointed by Nag-Tzaddyk the Unrighteous in the Weeping Ziggurat. Moreover, I was bound by ancient pacts forged between your people and the elders of Aelindrach when the Overlord still suckled at his mother’s teat. I am not so easily slain in this realm. Kill me, crush me, do what you will, and the darkness will claim me. The shadows will take me in their arms and nurse me back to health. I will be lurking, waiting in the darkness of the oubliette beneath your feet, feeding on the woes and worries of your children’s children’s children.’

Gone were the oily promises of help, the sly references to the halcyon days of cooperation between their peoples. She looked down at her hand, at the amber ring there. She should never have released Jaezubiel from its prison, but that field had been sown.

‘Not if Hanrik finds out about you,’ she said. The fiend clicked in laughter, but she cut it off. ‘I’m quite serious. You might think you’re immortal, and in the context of any resource I can bring to bear, you just might be. Should the Inquisition be called, however, that story changes dramatically.’

‘I don’t fear mon-keigh scholars,’ Jaezubiel sneered.

‘You should,’ said Ashielle. ‘And while I’d wager that their resources are enough to kill even the likes of you, I’m not particularly enthusiastic to find out, as that would involve my certain execution before that point.’ She held up one hand to forestall the creature’s inevitable argument. ‘If Hanrik makes his report, then eventually we’ll be staring down the barrel of an inquisitor. No, this needs to be put to bed, and now. Before he has concrete proof.’

‘Do you plan to go to your litter-mate?’ Jaezubiel asked. ‘Confess everything?’

It was Ashielle’s turn to sneer. ‘Don’t be absurd,’ she said. ‘But don’t make the mistake of thinking he won’t discover enough to destroy us both on his own merits. He might not have a living witness, and Preacher Larrichan might not have told him everything she knew, but he’s worldly enough to have put together that something inhuman is loose in Kostoveim, and that it’s something connected to the heretical deals of the Old Ceoc.’

The nightfiend glared at her in the mirror. She met its gaze. For all of its anger and cruelty, for all the sorcerous powers it wielded, it was bound to her will, and could only stretch its leash as far as it could cow her into allowing.

‘What do you suggest?’ Jaezubiel said. Its tone had changed from grand boasting to that oily hiss it only used when it was suggesting something particularly malevolent. ‘I gather you’ve already come up with an idea on your own?’

‘I have,’ said Ashielle. ‘The plan is to frame Lady Esilia. She and her family are a blight on Ceocan. They have been for generations.’

This could work, she realised, even more than just a way to escape the wrath of the Inquisition. Acquiring the business interests of the Vaneisens would be out of the question, of course: the Grevenate would never stand for her accruing that much power. She could always silence her detractors, if she were so inclined, but no. No, she clamped down on that thought immediately. Using Jaezubiel because she was forced to was one thing. She could even countenance using it for a larger social good, such as removing the wanton cruelty of the Vaneisens once and for all. But doing so merely to silence dissidents seemed beyond the pale. Still, the Vaneisen family’s business concerns could be parcelled out to those who were loyal to her, or rather to those who could be trusted to work hand-in-hand with her to keep the population crisis from coming to a head.

‘What a wickedly simple notion,’ Jaezubiel said.

‘It is,’ said Ashielle. ‘You murder the Lady Esilia, and we can plant a few heretical artefacts near her – items related to the lore of skitterlings. My forces can arrest Ireina Vaneisen, and after a suitably brief interrogation, determine that her family was attempting to summon and control a xenos assassin as part of a false flag operation, intended to get Hanrik Matkosen to destroy his own family. Their own assassin turned on them.’

Jaezubiel clicked its talons together in applause. It revolted her to think that this was where they had landed, but there was little else she could think of doing.

‘There’s just one obstacle,’ the fiend whispered. ‘Whose blood and flesh will you offer up in exchange for Lady Vaneisen’s?’

Ashielle finished wiping the cosmetics from her face and stared at herself in the mirror.

‘As provenance would have it, I’ve just had two possible choices brought home with me.’

The door to the medicae ward slid open cleanly. It had taken her an hour or so of searching, but she had found a copy of the key among her own security detailings.

All four of the beds were taken up. Two of the beds contained the dead assassins, sheets pulled up over their faces. Ashielle saw that the third assassin had also perished, and was likewise covered with a sheet. That left only one possibility.

Cheyster lay on his side, facing away from her. The damage to his torso was too severe to allow him to rest on his back. Ashielle felt a slight twinge of pity; the pain he had to be in would have been severe. Her distress might have been greater if Cheyster were facing a lifetime of agony, but she knew that his suffering would soon be at an end. Her own callousness might have bothered her, once, but her struggles in the past weeks had taught her that the mantle of leadership required a certain coldness. Stone, steel, iron: the strongest building materials were rarely warm to the touch.

She hadn’t come with a concrete plan on how to end the servant’s life. She had her plasma pistol tucked in her sash, but she would prefer to eliminate him in a way that would lead a medicae to conclude he’d died of natural causes. If she’d been able to use the assassin, she had considered the idea of just shooting him and claiming he’d lunged for her, but with Cheyster that clearly wouldn’t be an option. If she could find his old laspistol, perhaps she could shoot him with that? A medicae would surely see his gout on an autopsy. A suicide might seem like a reasonable course for such a man.

A fluttering, like a shifting sheet, drew her attention to the corpses. Her breath caught in her throat. She held her stance, staring at them for what seemed like an interminable period of time. They couldn’t be alive, she realised: the lights on the medicae bed were lit up solid red across the board. She took a deep breath, reminding herself that paper sheets were easily disturbed in the air. Unless the dead were rising, there was nothing to fear.

Cheyster breathed in with a sudden heaving rasp, and Ashielle saw the respirator next to him flicker and accordion with the rise and fall of the man’s chest. There, then. She walked around him, satisfied that he was in fact hooked up to a respiration machine. It would be a simple effort to sabotage the mechanical breathing apparatus, or simply remove it. It could be reactivated or returned once she’d left.

She paused. Was she really willing to do this? She shook her head. There was no other choice.

‘Stop.’

Ashielle turned. The medicae beds with the first two assassins were empty, the paper blankets discarded on the floor. Instead of an ambulatory corpse, her brother Hanrik stood before her. The black plates of his enforcer armour were resplendent. The gold trim at the shoulder gleamed. The autopistol was pointed directly at her, and was somehow far more intimidating than the laspistols she had been threatened with as of late. Laspistol barrels were delicate, tapered, almost toy like, and belied the danger of the weapon. The autopistol, on the other hand, had to serve a functional purpose. The blunt, squared muzzle of the weapon was much more solid. It didn’t just house the deadly apparatus of the pistol, it was a weapon in its own right, capable of cracking skulls with one brutal swing.

Even more disturbing was the partner who stepped out from behind him. She was unsurprised to see Hanrik working with a conspirator. Judge Idonell, one of the wardens, even Group Captain Barrin would have surprised her less than seeing Ireina Vaneisen, dressed in a black bodysuit and aiming a laspistol at her.

‘What do you think you’re doing?’ Ashielle said, adopting her best expression of terrified surprise. The fear was feigned, the shock was genuine. ‘You’ve thrown in with the Vaneisens?’

‘Do not feign innocence with me,’ Hanrik snapped. ‘It won’t work.’

It was telling, Ashielle thought, that for the first time he had donned his arbitrator helm. The black armorcrys of his visor reflected only her own expression of shock and dismay.

‘What… what are you talking about?’ she asked. She started to edge away from the table. If she could reach an intercom, she could try to call for Group Captain Barrin.

‘Stop moving,’ Hanrik snapped. ‘I will shoot you, excellency.’ He turned to Ireina. ‘Take the evidence we’ve gathered to the wardens,’ he said. ‘Make sure the Grevenate knows as well.’

‘Of course, arbitrator,’ Ireina said. ‘It’s my pleasure to perform my duty to the Throne.’

Ireina smirked at Ashielle and strolled from the medicae bay, as casually as if she were taking a moonlit walk about her own manor. Ashielle considered reaching for her pistol. She had wisely moved it to the sash around her waist, after seeing how impractical the concealed holster had been in the field. She might be able to kill Ireina and command Jaezubiel to subdue her brother.

‘I don’t understand,’ said Ashielle.

‘Stop your lying!’ Hanrik roared. ‘If you’re going to shame and disdain our family’s legacy, the obligations that father put on you, then at least have the stomach to bear the weight of your crimes!’

Ashielle drew herself up to her full height. Defiant of his authority, she dropped her arms to her sides.

‘Very well,’ she said. ‘Now put your weapon down, arbitrator.’

‘Not bloody likely,’ he spat.

‘You know nothing of what’s happening,’ Ashielle replied. She kept her voice level, refusing to return his anger with her own. She’d learned from her earliest years that nothing, bar nothing, infuriated her brothers more than refusing to match their anger.

‘Look at yourself!’ Hanrik yelled. ‘Look at what you’ve become! You were going to sacrifice a man’s life – a human life – to a xenos assassin! Not an enemy, not a traitor – a man who risked his own life to save yours!’

Ashielle continued to return his rage with cold distance.

‘Mine is the warrant of jurisdiction,’ she intoned. ‘I alone have the moral authority to decide that the ends are righteous and true, and to choose where and how the lives of my people are spent.’

‘As a human sacrifice?!’

Ashielle lifted her chin and gave him a cold and imperious look. ‘Don’t play the martyr, Hanrik. We’ve come too far for that. Perhaps on Sorinoux you can afford the luxury of such high and mighty ideals, but here, on the rim, we are alone in the darkness.’

Hanrik shook his head. Despite his words, he had not shot her yet. Against all of his training, he was in shock. She could see that he had so desperately wanted to believe that she had been fooled, that there was some part of her that was not what he feared she had become. He had come here thinking he knew the extent of her transformation, but it became ever more apparent with each passing second that he had not.

‘Do you see what you’ve done?’ he asked. ‘This is… this is heresy.’

‘Failure is heresy,’ she snapped. ‘A crime against the Emperor and dereliction before the Throne. And to allow the Vaneisens to take charge of this planet, that would be the truest failure imaginable.’

‘You cannot mean that,’ said Hanrik.

Now it was Ashielle who was in disbelief. ‘I thought father sent you to Sorinoux to grow up,’ she said. ‘Don’t ignore what they’ve done. Who they are. Allow Esilia Vaneisen or her poisonous brood to take up residence in Darcarden, and hundreds will bleed for their personal amusement. Thousands more will suffer and weep at the hands of the other nobles, who follow the example of their leaders. By the time their rule is finally concluded, it will have touched for the worse the lives of every man, woman and child on Ceocan.’

‘You cannot believe you are in the right,’ Hanrik breathed.

‘Why wouldn’t I be?’ she snapped. ‘I rule in the Emperor’s name.’

‘Father always said that his privilege was a responsibility to the Throne, not a blessing from it.’

Something cold passed down her spine, and Ashielle realised for the first time that she did not care what her father had said or thought. He may have moulded her, but the laurel had passed to her now.

‘I am not my father,’ she said. ‘And my privilege is absolute.’

Hanrik’s grip tightened on his pistol.

‘Lord Governor Ashielle Matkosen, on the evidence of my own eyes and your own words, by the authority of the Adeptus Arbites and in the name of the God-Emperor of Mankind, I am hereby placing you under arrest for the crimes of murder, dereliction of duty, failure to report a xenos presence, heretical consortation, and hubris before the Throne. Give me your weapon.’

Ashielle stared at him.

‘The plasma pistol in your sash,’ he said. ‘On the ground. Now.’

Slowly, she reached her hand back for the weapon. She brought it out from behind her back, eyeing him carefully.

‘Confidence is always named hubris by the weak and the jealous,’ she said.

‘You’re a servant of foul powers,’ Hanrik snapped. ‘No one is jealous of you.’

Ashielle felt the growing chill. Somehow, as if she had learned through repeated exposure, she could sense the shadows deepening.

‘I dare say you are, law-giver.’

Hanrik wasn’t accustomed to Jaezubiel’s sudden arrivals. He heard the voice, felt the temperature plummet, and his head snapped around. The moment of action was there, and Ashielle seized it. Hanrik’s gaze was fixed on the creature, and she brought her weapon to bear, smoothly.

The carapace armour of the Adeptus Arbites was designed to deflect most small arms fire. A normal laspistol was rarely effective against their plasteel plates. Even an autopistol would usually be deflected harmlessly unless it found the bodyglove beneath. Ashielle’s plasma pistol had no such issue, however. Superheated plasma tore through Hanrik’s armour and the chest beneath as easily as if she had been shooting at a glassine sheet.

Hanrik tried to turn, but his legs were refusing to obey his commands. He smashed into the medicae cot on his way to the ground and rebounded off the corner of the bed, which did his work for him. He landed on his back, facing up at her.

Jaezubiel laughed.

Ashielle held a hand over her brother’s mouth. She could still feel the exhalation. He was mortally wounded, certainly, but there were still a few precious seconds left within his frame. She pulled Hanrik’s carapace helm free of his head. He stared at her, his jaw clenched. He was still fighting for life, fighting to do his duty. He was a true Matkosen to the end, and she could respect that.

‘Stand relieved, arbitrator,’ she said. ‘You have faithfully executed your duty to Him upon the Throne, and He would have but one task more from you before calling you home.’

She stood and shot her brother in the face.

‘Now go kill Ireina Vaneisen,’ she told Jaezubiel.

14

The ancient rolltop desk was a fortress. Thanks to their loving ministrations as children, every lock, every secret compartment and concealed niche was in perfect working order. Searching the entire thing for Hanrik’s research might have taken Ashielle hours. Fortunately, it had been short work for the pry-bar she had brought.

‘Jaezubiel,’ she said.

The fiend appeared immediately. It leaned against one wall, its eyes watching her as she shuffled through the papers, brushing aside bits of splintered wood and thin, twisted metal springs. There was a different cast to its look. When she had first released it, when she had scraped the remains of its murder off the stones of Darcarden’s foundations, it had watched her with the predatory gaze of a marshlion.

Now, she was the lion.

‘It’s a letter from Judge Idonell’s office,’ she said. ‘He’s on the Callistonian and won’t be able to meet with Hanrik for a further three days.’

The fiend grinned. ‘Your secret is safe, then.’

‘Not quite,’ she said, scanning her brother’s notepad. She tsked to herself. ‘It appears he found the woman who was with Tanzeg in the alley: one Thora Rede. He hadn’t wanted to direct the wardens to pick her up until after they made an arrest. That’s a minor matter, easily resolved. It also looks like he met with Ireina Vaneisen last night and arranged to trade information with her. That’s where they hatched their plan to lie in wait to apprehend me.’ She glanced up at Jaezubiel over her reading spectacles. ‘That means the Vaneisens have evidence of my deeds. Circumstantial though that evidence might be, coupled with Hanrik’s sudden disappearance, it might be enough to convince a critical majority of the Grevenate to move against me. They’ve grown quite fearful in the last few weeks, for some reason.’

Jaezubiel clicked softly.

‘What do you propose to do about it, your excellency?’

There was a light in the darkness. Only a candle, a flickering tip of illumination, but it was enough. Ashielle had left the natural light far above her, along with the last wall luminator lighting her path before she had started descending the long spiral staircase. The depths beneath Darcarden no longer held any fear for her, however. They were hers, after all. Her ancestors had shaped them with their bare hands, in preparation for the day their people would need them again.

She hadn’t needed light for the labyrinth, either. Her fingers had traced the wall, guiding her along a path that had by now become familiar. The maze was hers as well. The ignorant might have once believed it could bind and twist the skittering denizens of Aelindrach, but she knew the truth, now: the maze was a moment of meditation, an interlude to allow her to attune her mind to the darkness around her.

‘What is it?’ she asked, as she ran a hand down the edge of the portal.

‘Wraithbone,’ Jaezubiel said. ‘Sung into being by young craftspeople who perished of old age before your kind had even learned to strike flame.’

Ashielle knelt on the cold stone floor. The yawning pale expanse of the portal stretched out above her. She spread her tools before her: a knife, her rod of office, a candle. She needed the candle only to read from the paper before her. It was short, less than a page, but Jaezubiel had insisted the wording be precise. Across from her, just barely visible in the wan candlelight, she could make out Jaezubiel’s indistinct form. Only its eyes were clear and bright.

‘There will be no holding them back,’ Jaezubiel said. ‘My kind have not my patience, and have long been denied this prized sporting ground. They will not be as restrained as I.’

‘Let them have their fun,’ she replied. She spread a parchment, covered in an intricate map of Kostoveim, before the portal. ‘Let those who live in earshot of House Vaneisen hear what befalls traitors and oathbreakers.’ Her men could move in after dawn and secure the manor. The High Service would believe what she told them: that the Vaneisens had released xenos assassins that had turned on them.

She pricked her finger, and traced a thin circle of blood around the borders of the Vaneisens’ manor. ‘Now bring him. And do it carefully – he barely clings to life.’

Jaezubiel vanished, and reappeared mere moments later, a heavy burden across its shoulders. With all the gentleness of which she believed it was capable, the mandrake dropped Cheyster’s body to the cold stone floor.

Ashielle smoothed the voluminous moustache he had always prided so much. Like the tail of a vulpid that had been stuffed and mounted, it just didn’t have the same volume and presence that it had in life.

‘Rest now,’ she whispered. Already Cheyster was gasping for air.

‘Azz-na tu’o Aelindrach,’ she intoned. She read aloud from the incantation that Jaezubiel had given her, the mandrake repeating her words a half-beat later, like her own reedy, whispering echo. She could not speak the language it had been composed in, and she doubted that she ever would, but the words themselves were more than mere phonetic accumulations. It was as though they were quasi-psychic concepts. When Jaezubiel spoke in its buzzing tongue, she heard the words echoing in her own mind. ‘Tazna taz-qu.’

‘We call to Aelindrach, the Shadow Realm, with the blood of our pact.’

She withdrew the silver cap from her severed finger, and drew the knife across it. Jaezubiel traced a rune on the stone in front of her, which she drew with her own blood. She continued to read.

‘Shaa-zad Jlun, Breaker of Legends, hear our demand. Behold the symbol of the conqueror. Let it pass to dust, as all things of light and memory shall.’ The rune in blood began to glow, a soft violet light emanating from the stone. Ashielle placed the rod of Saint Aleandru, the symbol of the Imperium’s victory over the mandrakes, atop the rune. As she repeated the incantation, the rod began corroding before her eyes, the adamantine steel turning to dust.

The stalagnates began to glow. With the sacrifice of the token, they flared to life, eldritch green fires glowing in their bases and spreading slowly up the length of them. Runnels of spectral flame spread across the floor, filling the runes that Ashielle had mistaken for imperfections in the stone. The wards were old, and worn by the passage of time, but the arcane flames knew their path all the same, and as she intoned the xenos spell, she found herself surrounded by a circle of writhing runic protections. The spiky script sketched out asymmetrical, alien geometry, nothing like the ecclesiastical seals or hexagrammatic wards of the Imperium.

Far, far above her in the skies of Ceocan, a massive clap of thunder heralded the arrival of a terrible storm upon Kostoveim. The force of the elemental wrath was loud enough to shatter the occasional window, and shook buildings in their foundations. Even in the depths of her hidden chamber, Ashielle could hear the planet protesting her actions.

‘Alei-a, alei-a, uzzulo,’ she finished. ‘What was, will be. We renew the covenant.’ She drew the knife down and across Cheyster’s throat. The blood pumped from the old man’s neck, and she held his head, whispering soothingly. When he had passed, she stood, her hands soaked red.

‘So say the Children of Aelindrach,’ Jaezubiel said, and pressed its hand to the stone.

‘So says the crown of the Ceoc.’ Ashielle pressed her own bloodied hand forward, but never felt stone. It was as if the wall fell away, pulled into a yawning void. The air froze, and she felt the heat being pulled out of her arm. She knew, instinctively, that she could step forward, through the portal if she wished to. She knew, too, that to do so would be to put herself in Aelindrach, at the mercy of the things that dwelled there.

The chamber was filled with the croaking, clicking, hissing laughter of the skitterlings. The single light from the candle flickered, and blew out.

Ashielle had expected the woman to be terrified in the face of ultimate authority, perhaps attempting to feign innocence, or possibly even catatonic from trauma. When Group Captain Barrin’s men escorted the young woman to her study, Ashielle was surprised to see her enter with her head up, her demeanour calm. There was no evasiveness and none of the duplicity from the Devotional Banquet, just a reasonable, collected woman waiting to be told why she’d been detained.

‘Thora Rede, I presume?’

The woman took one of the vacant chairs across from the lord governor. The huge desk that dominated the office sat between them. The poor woman was soaked, despite having only gone from the carriage to the door after she had been picked up. The storm outside was driving down on Kostoveim with a fury.

She nodded. ‘Yes, excellency.’

‘You seem much less fearful than most in your position would be,’ said Ashielle. She nodded to the High Service guards still in the office, gesturing for them to leave her alone. They exited, leaving the two women alone in the office.

Thora nodded. ‘I’ve seen more than most in my position,’ she said. ‘That tends to give one perspective.’

Ashielle nodded and smiled. ‘So I’m given to understand,’ she said. ‘The local arbitrator had an interesting file on what you’d seen as part of his investigation.’

Thora’s eyes perked up and she glanced around. ‘The arbitrator?’ she asked.

‘He’s suffered an unfortunate accident,’ Ashielle said. ‘While attempting to serve justice on the Vaneisen family, he was the victim of one of their security personnel. But before he did he deduced that you were almost certainly in the alley where Tanzeg Vaneisen was killed by… forces unknown.’

The young woman’s eyes narrowed, and Ashielle could see her tense up. She smiled again, and wondered if this was how Jaezubiel felt when it was stalking its prey. She could practically feel the fear radiating from the woman, no matter how calm she kept her face. Thunder rumbled overhead, and the woman shivered.

‘I didn’t say anything to anyone,’ Thora said, slowly. ‘I certainly didn’t talk to any arbitrator.’

‘No,’ Ashielle said, ‘you didn’t. You didn’t even come forward to the wardens. Not after it happened, and not after they started offering rewards for information. No, you kept what you knew to yourself.’

Thora’s eyes widened as she began to understand what she was hearing, what she was being told through innuendo. She began glancing around the room, and Ashielle could see in her face that she was only just now realising that despite the warm fire crackling in the fireplace, the room was actually quite dark beyond the desk, with deep shadows clinging to the corners.

‘Is it… is he…’ she stammered.

Ashielle nodded. As if on cue, the heat began to drain from the room, chilling Thora’s skin and crystallising her breath. The rain bearing down on the windows in sheets began pecking against the glass as it froze at the last moment.

‘Quite,’ Ashielle said. ‘Although I wouldn’t concern myself with it currently. It has little interest in you, and in fact would strongly prefer to be elsewhere at the moment.’

Thora’s eyes fell, and she bowed her head. Ashielle smiled, to no one but herself. This was what she had been waiting for. Sincerity. Subservience.

‘What will become of me, your excellency?’ There was fear in Thora’s question, but Ashielle could tell that she had found her centre, and would not be broken by terror. That was what she had been counting on.

‘Have you considered matrimony?’ she asked.

Thora’s face lifted, a confused expression drifting across it. Ashielle stood, and walked to the cabinet on the far side of her study. A few sentimental trinkets adorned the shelves, along with a small decanter of amasec. She poured a small glass for herself and for Thora.

‘When the Grevenate reconvenes, they’ll need to appoint a new coadjutor from among their ranks. As the Vaneisens were also the holders of a margrevenate, I shall have to name a new holder to their title as well. This new margreve would be just as eligible as any to be appointed Vicereine of Ceocan.’

Thora shook her head. ‘Excellency, I think you’ve misjudged me. I am an actor, nothing more. I could not pull off such a deception.’

Ashielle handed the young woman the glass and sat down again, this time in the chair next to Thora, rather than across the desk from her.

‘No,’ she said, ‘not you, dear. I have, however, a persistent and loyal minister among the Grevenate, whom I think would be the perfect man for the role. He is lacking, however, in one key area – a spouse. And for that role I can think of no one better.’

Thora sipped at her liquor. Ashielle could see the confusion in Thora’s eyes. She clearly felt like the opportunity was one she wanted, but long experience had taught her that good things freely offered were seldom what they seemed.

‘How can you force the Grevenate to choose him as Vicereine?’ she asked. Ashielle found it amusing that Thora had not yet asked who the minister in question was.

‘Oh, I can’t,’ she said. ‘But just as I diligently rooted out the treason festering in House Vaneisen, I suspect it would take me little time to dig up further nests of traitors and heretics. My friend, whom I believe you’ve met, has a large number of kin who visit from time to time, and as good hosts we must make sure their needs are provided for.’

Thora gave a half-smile into her glass. ‘And if providing for their needs should happen to coincide with our goals, so much the better.’ She shook her head and looked at Ashielle again. ‘Why me?’

Ashielle leaned back in her chair. A bolt of lightning ripped across the sky, followed immediately by a clap of thunder from the storm which was immediately over the city. In the bright flash of the storm, Ashielle could see Jaezubiel’s form, slipping out of the door to join its own kind in their barbarous revelry.

‘A number of reasons,’ she said. ‘The first is that you kept your silence when you could have gone to any number of authorities. The second is that I admire your skills. You have the capacity to project false sincerity, which is one of the rarest talents in the galaxy.’ Ashielle finished the rest of her glass. ‘But the most important is that Minister Fomynko found you fascinating.’

The storm rattled the windows, but Thora seemed beyond caring now.

‘Ostap Fomynko? The bald minister with the love for naturalist literature?’ Thora shrugged. ‘He seems sweet and relatively harmless.’ She paused, considering. ‘I see why you picked me. But why him?’

Ashielle nodded, respecting her even more for coming to that question on her own.

‘Minister Fomynko has just the right combination of cynicism and idealism,’ she said. ‘He has turned popular opinion in the Grevenate before, lacking only in power and prestige to be able to affect real influence. And he is doggedly loyal to my family.’

‘So he influences and monitors the grevens on your behalf. And I do the same for him?’

Ashielle nodded. ‘That’s correct. I’ll want to speak with you more, of course, and we’ll move you to the palace immediately, to prepare a suitable background for you. But do I have your interest?’

Thora set the glass down on the governor’s desk and nodded her assent. She took the governor’s hand in her own, and beyond the windows of the office, the storm roared, sweeping away from the capital and out across Ceocan.

15

Ashielle paused in the receiving hall. She’d been to Vaneisen manor, of course, but had never had the opportunity to peruse the work on their walls without interruption. The paintings in the receiving hall were monuments to their own pride. A collection of portraits of their house rulers, going back the few generations they could do so. She would have them burned, of course, after denouncing the Vaneisens as traitors.

A piercing shriek drew her attention, and she turned from the portrait of Esilia’s grandmother that had drawn her eye. She resumed her walk through the halls. She could hear the skittering in the walls, and occasionally feel the cold passing of a mandrake, but felt no grip of fear any longer. She had given her blood to sanctify the ancient pacts between their people and hers.

The door to the great hall creaked open. Luminators fixed to lasgun barrels skewed crazed beams of light through the hall. Handheld luminator globes lay where they had fallen. Blood flowed over the stone tiles, seeping into every crack. Here and there, a broken weapon or a scrap of uniform showed where some militia member or house servant had tried to make a last, desperate stand against the invaders.

The art displayed on the walls of the Vaneisen great hall was gaudy and expensive, made to show wealth, not taste. The arterial fans and pitting of lasgun fire had done precious little damage. It had certainly not ruined anything that would diminish Ceoc history by its loss. Further up the walls, the moulding and the architecture showed less damage. Here were the bones of the home, laid down by those who had come before the Vaneisens, and who had shown a much greater degree of taste when they had done so. The scourging of the manor had not touched these sculpted elements. The rolling brass waves and the crying bronze sailors saw only the light of the hall below, reflecting in their burnished forms the carnage that they had borne witness to.

Above them, marble statues of great saints and heroes looked out from the arches of the hall’s triforium. Only the barest rumour of their forms penetrated the darkness, as if they had turned their face from the wickedness below.

Beyond them, the windows of the clerestory showed the few dim stars beyond. Their light was cold and distant, close enough to see but too far to be of any benefit to the people viewing it. Just like the worlds that orbited them.

Above the starry windows was only the vaulted ceiling of the hall. It would be covered with gilt and reliefs, of course. Too intricate to see from the floor even in the brightest light, and completely invisible now. The architecture of the hall was built to draw the eye skyward, to reflect on the almightiness of humanity and Him on the Throne. But none of that was visible, only darkness.

The few lights in the hall instead drew the eye downward, where everything of any importance was. Blood and ruin. The actions of the living compelled the eye to the carnage on the floor, the brutal evidence of the evil that had transpired there.

Ashielle slipped through the door and into the night.

TO: Prefect Secundus Corovidium

FROM: Adept Stavrophore Weschler

SUBJECT: Ceocan

Honoured Prefect Secundus,

Per your request I have completed the Tertiary Audit of Assessoria Exacta of M37 (Inter-sector systems, Sector Ephialtis). With the exception of Outpost Rorkenna [Destroyed by forces unknown, see appended Munitorum report J37.987.6-B], I find no planets recommended for a tithe reduction.

Due to the extreme isolation and difficulty transporting goods and personnel, I recommend no increases in tithe grades. Only Ceocan [see appended report collated by Adept Dyorak] shows an increase in output over the last millennium, but the deviation is likely a statistical anomaly. The data in fact shows that output on Ceocan is once again falling back towards statistical norms, and should remain at current tithe grade pending the next audit.

Yours in Service,

Adept Stavrophore Weschler

About the Author

J C Stearns is a writer who lives in a swamp in Illinois with his wife and son, as well as more animals than is reasonable. He started writing for Black Library in 2016 and is the author of the short stories ‘Turn of the Adder’ and ‘Blackout’ which have featured in various volumes of the anthology Inferno!, ‘Wraithbound’, and ‘The Marauder Lives’ in the Horror anthology Maledictions. He plays Salamanders, Dark Eldar, Sylvaneth, and as soon as he figures out how to paint lightning bolts, Night Lords.

Warhammer horror

A Black Library Imprint

First published in Great Britain in 2020.
This eBook edition published in 2020 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.
Cover illustration by Danny Frank.

The Oubliette © Copyright Games Workshop Limited 2020. The Oubliette, Warhammer Horror, GW, Games Workshop, Black Library, The Horus Heresy, The Horus Heresy Eye logo, Space Marine, 40K, Warhammer, Warhammer 40,000, the ‘Aquila’ Double-headed Eagle logo, and all associated logos, illustrations, images, names, creatures, races, vehicles, locations, weapons, characters, and the distinctive likenesses thereof, are either ® or TM, and/or © Games Workshop Limited, variably registered around the world.
All Rights Reserved.

A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN: 978-1-78999-232-8

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

This book is dedicated to Spring and Vincent.