Текст книги "The Outcast Dead"

Автор книги: Грэм Макнилл

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Текущая страница: 21 (всего у книги 26 страниц)

‘Oh,’ she says, shaking her head.

‘Did you get anything?’ asks Nagasena.

She nods, still purging the after-effects of delving into Antioch’s mind. The man is fearful now, and Nagasena sees that Hiriko has rid him of the qash haze. Forced to face reality without the comforting curtain of the resin to hide behind, the world is a frightening place.

‘They are going to a place called the Temple of Woe,’ says Hiriko.

‘Do you know where that is?’ Golovko asks her.

Hiriko looks into Antioch’s eyes. ‘Yes. It’s east of here, I know the way now.’

‘Then we don’t need this traitor anymore,’ growls Golovko.

Before Nagasena can stop him, the Black Sentinel draws his pistol and puts a bullet through Antioch’s head.

TWENTY

Colours and Hues

The End of Everything Good

Kill Team

WHEN KAI WOKE, it was to a surprising lack of pain and an almost overwhelming sensation of relief. He lifted his head, feeling hard edges of metal digging into his belly. The world around him shone with contours of light and shadow, psychic emanations and dead space. It painted a clear portrait of the buildings, streets and space around him, a representation of the world as clear and vivid as any perceived by those with their birth eyes.

‘Stop,’ he said, his voice hoarse and parched. ‘Stop, please. Put me down.’

The juggernaut upon which he was being carried halted, and rough hands lifted him carefully to the ground. A giant clad in burnished plates of metal stood before him, a warrior of enormous proportions made even larger by the crude plates of sheet steel strapped to his enormous frame and the sharp lines of pistols tucked into his belt. A faint golden haze clung to him, like wisps of cloud caught by the trailing wings of an aircraft.

The image sparked a memory of his dreamspace, but the substance of it drifted just beyond reach, though he was sure that something of vital importance had occurred there. He had a vague recollection of a regicide board and a hooded opponent, but he could not yet grasp its meaning.

‘Atharva?’ said Kai, as the cold reality of this world intruded.

‘Yes,’ said the giant. ‘You gave me cause for concern. I did not know if you would live.’

‘I’m not sure I did,’ moaned Kai as he stood on unsteady legs, amazed he could remain upright after so fraught a journey. ‘I feel like one of you has punched me in the face.’

‘That is not too far from the truth,’ admitted Atharva, looking over at the heavily armoured form of Asubha. The Outcast Dead had changed since last Kai last saw them. Armoured in beaten iron breastplates, curved pauldrons and archaic helms, they looked like the barbarian warriors of pre-Unity, the bloodthirsty tribesmen who had ruled Old Earth before the coming of the Emperor. Subha even carried a wooden shield.

Kai had always known his fellow escapees were warriors, but to see them garbed for war was a stark reminder that they were only his protectors because it aligned with their purposes. Should that change, he would be of no more use to them.

‘Where did you get the armour and weapons?’ he asked, seeing the strange array of pistols and blades they carried, enough to equip three times their number.

‘Some very stupid people got in our way,’ said Asubha. ‘But they are dead now.’

Ghosts of light limned each warrior against the darker, iron blacks, steel greys and umber brickwork of the background. He knew them all by their colours and hues: Tagore, Subha and Asubha in angry reds, purples and killing silver, Atharva in gold, ivory and crimson, and Severian shrouded in stormcloud grey and mist. Kai saw Argentus Kiron and Gythua, propped up against a landslip of rock, the last traces of their auras bleeding into the air like warmth from a cooling corpse.

‘We lost Gythua and Kiron,’ said Subha with very real pain. ‘They had one big bastard who knew how to fight.’

‘And we beat him like a whipped cur,’ said Tagore.

‘But he’ll be back,’ said Asubha. ‘Someone like that won’t give up.’

‘So next time we kill him properly,’ snarled Tagore with bared teeth. Kai saw the aura around his skull flare with a shimmer of cold iron, like the yoke of a hound’s master pulling taut. Tagore’s muscles bunched and swelled in anticipation of violence, but the World Eater exhaled loudly and turned away before his control slipped away.

‘Where are we?’ asked Kai, extending his senses.

‘Still in the Petitioner’s City,’ said Atharva. ‘But we are almost at its eastern edge.’

Kai nodded slowly. From the background buzz of thoughts and life, he had known they were still in the Petitioner’s City. Though the pain in his head was intense, it was manageable and he felt curiously liberated at employing his blindsight instead of expensive augmentations. It had been so long since he had used his psychic abilities to navigate and understand the world around him.

The mountains towered above Kai, so vast it seemed as though there was no end to them. Though the peaks were not alive, they had accumulated a wealth of emotion and experience from those who had clambered over their rocky flanks in the painful epochs since they had been thrust from the bottom of an ancient seabed. A haze of permanence hung over the mountains, split by the searing torrent of psychic energy that speared from the hollow mountain to the farthest reaches of the galaxy. Now that the threat of being sent to its nightmarish depths was gone, Kai found its presence curiously reassuring, like the half-heard voice of an old and trusted friend.

Deeper in the city, the air was a heady mixture of sweat, boiling fats, rotten meat, spices and perfumes, but here it was clean, and the winds coming down from the high ranges were refreshing rather than chilling.

Tagore lifted Gythua’s body and slung it over one shoulder, while Asubha lifted Kiron’s body with somewhat more respect for his fallen brother. Severian turned and set off towards an opening in the rock that lead towards a sheer scarp of rock climbing almost vertically to a rampart crowned peak.

‘Come on,’ said Atharva. ‘It is just a little farther.’

‘What is?’ said Kai.

‘The Temple of Woe,’ said Atharva.

THE TEMPLE OF Woe turned out to be something altogether less sinister that its ominous name had suggested. Built from what looked like a thousand mismatched pieces of variegated marble, it was a formidable structure that rose high above its nearest neighbours. Situated towards the end of a narrowing canyon, its façade was graced with numerous handsome statues depicting weeping angels, mothers holding their stillborn children and skeletal harbingers of death.

Reapers skulked in alcoves, while mourners worked in polished granite clustered around biers of fallen heroes and ouslite pallbearers took the dead to their final rest. Any one of the rival Masonic guilds that had raised the glory of the palace would have dismissed its haphazard beauty with a glance, but it possessed a grandeur and welcoming air the greatest structures of the palace could only dream of.

The road leading towards the temple was festooned with offerings, children’s dolls, picts of smiling men and women, wreaths of silken flowers and scraps of paper embossed with poetic eulogies and heartfelt farewells. Hundred of people knelt in supplication, gathered in weeping groups around drum fires placed along the length of the wide road that led towards heavy iron doors that led within. Oil-burning lanterns hanging from the outside of the temple cast flickering shadows that made the statues dance.

‘What is this place?’ said Subha.

‘A place of remembrance and farewell,’ said Kai.

He felt a tremendous surge of emotion as his blindsight took in the full panoply of conflicting auras that swirled around, within and through the building. Enormous sadness washed over him as the weight of grief that filled the street threatened to overwhelm him.

‘So much loss,’ he said. ‘The sadness and pain, it’s too much. I don’t think I can stand it.’

‘Steel yourself, Kai,’ said Atharva. ‘Grief and guilt are powerful emotions. You know this all too well. You have held yours at bay long enough for this to present no problem.’

‘No, there’s something else,’ he whispered. ‘There’s something in there that’s more powerful that any guilt I’ve ever known…’

Atharva leaned in close, so that only Kai could hear his next words.

‘Say nothing of it,’ warned Atharva. ‘Our lives will depend on it.’

Without explanation, Atharva followed Severian into the canyon, and Kai felt the hostile gazes of the mourners turn on them. Their anger was matched by their fear, and though every one of them looked like they wanted to hurl some missile or shout an obscenity, none dared move or open their mouth. There was recognition in their anger, but surely that was impossible.

‘Whoever those men were you killed, I think they were known here,’ he said.

‘I think you might be right,’ agreed Atharva as the shutter doors to the Temple of Woe opened with a squeal of rusting bearings. A tall man with wild grey hair and a face that spoke of a life lived in the open emerged from the building. His aura was so choked with guilt that Kai drew up in shock to see someone burdened with a heavier share than his own.

Kai became acutely aware of the hundreds of people pressing in around them. They had been afraid of them before, but they drew strength from this man, and their anger was building moment by moment. The Outcast Dead were powerful, but could they kill so many without being overwhelmed? More to the point, could they stop the mob from killing him?

‘Get out of here,’ said the man. ‘Didn’t you learn anything the last time you came here?’

‘We are here for the dead,’ said Asubha. ‘We were told this was a place to bring fallen warriors.’

‘You are not welcome here,’ said the man. ‘If you’re looking for the men you left here, you can tell the Babu they went into the fires, same as all the others.’

Tagore said, ‘You will stand aside or you will die,’ and Kai felt the pulsing waves of belligerence surrounding the World Eater sergeant. His anger was a wild dog, kept in check by only the slenderest of threads, and the device in his skull frayed that thread with every angry beat of its mechanical heart.

Atharva stepped forward, and placed his hand on Tagore’s shoulder. Atharva’s golden light bled into the killing red surrounding the World Eater, and the taut aggression of his posture eased a fraction.

‘We are not here for killing,’ said Atharva, altering his voice so that everyone gathered in the canyon could hear him. Its cadence and tone conveyed a calming effect that diminished the anger radiating from the gathered people. ‘And we are not Dhakal’s men. We took this armour and these weapons from Ghota’s thugs when they attacked us without provocation.’

‘Ghota is dead?’

‘No,’ said Atharva. ‘He fled like the coward he is.’

Kai felt the subtle psychic manipulations Atharva was employing, amazed at the power of the Thousand Sons warrior. Like most people, Kai had heard the rumours concerning the Legion of Magnus, but to see him so casually wield such abilities was astounding.

The grey-haired man took a closer look at the Outcast Dead and his eyes widened as he recognised them for what they were.

‘The Angels of Death,’ said the man. ‘You have come at last.’

THE DIMLY-LIT halls of the cryptaesthesians were unpleasant at the best of times, and the Choirmaster’s senses were vibrating like a badly-struck tuning fork. He disliked coming down here, but Evander Gregoras had ignored his every summons and there was work to be done that required him to forego the study of his precious Pattern.

A trio of Black Sentinels had accompanied him ever since the psychic intrusion of Magnus, though he could not decide whether Golovko had assigned them to protect him or to kill him in the event of another attack. Probably both, he thought.

Black walls of bare stone passed him, feeling like they were pressing in on him with every step he took deeper into the lair of the cryptaesthesians. His head ached from the aftermath of a particularly difficult communion, a garbled message that claimed to be from an astropath attached to the XIX Legion, but had no synesthesia codes verifying its truth. The message spoke of the death of Primarch Corax, and Nemo desperately wanted to believe it was false, a piece of deliberate misinformation designed to demoralise the forces loyal to the Emperor. Though the message had the ring of truth to it, he had chosen not to pass it to the Conduit for fear of the damage it might wreak.

Nor was this the only piece of bad news. Rumours had come from the Eastern Fringe of a cowardly ambush sprung on the XIII Legion around Calth, and two score astropaths had gone mad attempting to make contact with the sanguinary Legions of the Blood Angels. What monstrous fate had befallen the scions of Baal, and why could no word penetrate the Signus Cluster without dreams of madness and slaughter afflicting those who made such attempts?

The astropaths of the City of Sight could not cope with the demands the palace was placing upon them. They had reached breaking point, and the Choirmaster needed the cryptaesthesians of Evander Gregoras to take their places in the choirs if the entire network was to be saved. Sifting the psychic debris or hunting for hidden truths in the background noise of the universe would have to wait.

At last they came to the correct doorway, and the Choirmaster rapped his thin knuckles on the shutter, careful to avoid damaging his ring from the Fourth Dominion. He waited, but no answer was forthcoming, and he frowned. He could feel the presence of Gregoras’s mind beyond the door, and could hear the sounds of paper tearing.

‘Evander!’ he shouted, though he hated to raise his voice. ‘Open the door, I have to speak with you.’

The sounds within the cryptaesthesian’s chamber stopped for a moment then began again, more vigorously than before.

‘I need your cryptaesthesians, Evander,’ said Nemo. ‘I need them to ease the backlog of communications. We simply don’t have enough telepaths, and with the Black Ships not coming through, we’re burning out. Evander!’

Clearly, Gregoras wasn’t about to answer, and the Choirmaster nodded to the sergeant of the Black Sentinels.

‘Open it,’ he said, irritated that the master of the City of Sight could not open every door in his city without the say so of the Black Sentinels. No door was barred to them, and the sergeant waved a data-wand in front of the locking pad. The door slid open, and Nemo stepped into Gregoras’s chambers with a shocked expression as he saw the disarray within.

The nature of the cryptaesthesians work made them gloomy and introspective, but given to eccentric behavioural quirks. Gregoras was a cantankerous bastard, but he was the best there was at sifting the Bleed, and thus Nemo had tolerated his obsession with the Pattern. He had seen the work Gregoras had done, but where the cryptaesthesian saw order and meaning, Nemo saw only chaos and happenstance. That work had filled these chambers, every square inch of wall covered with unintelligible script, every shelf bowing under the weight of books, data-retrieval cogitators, statistical compilers, maps, plotters and devices he had devised for the purposes of translating the heartbeat of the universe.

All of it was gone.

Evander sat on a high backed chair in the centre of the room with a book resting on his lap. One hand pressed down on the cover, as though trying to keep its pages from flying open. The other hung at his side, holding a quill that dripped ink to the floor. The Choirmaster took a hesitant step into the chamber, feeling the pressure of an overwhelming psychic presence in the room that had nothing to do with Gregoras or his own powers.

‘Evander,’ hissed the Choirmaster. ‘Your eyes…’

The cryptaesthesian’s cheeks were streaked with impossible tears, and the traceries of light that filled his body shone from his eyes in a glittering sheen of organic tissue.

Evander Gregoras was no longer blind.

The cryptaesthesian did not answer, his eyes screwed tightly shut and his face contorted with the effort of holding some terrible fear at bay. His entire body was tense, and the tendons stood out as hard edges against the soft skin of neck. His hands shook on the cover of the book, a black leather-bound Oneirocritica.

‘Evander, what’s happening here?’ he asked.

‘I saw it all,’ said Gregoras, dropping the quill and placing both hands on the cover of the book. ‘It needed me to see and it gave me back my eyes! Throne, it gave me back my eyes so I could see it.’

‘See what, Evander?’ said the Choirmaster. ‘You’re not making any sense.’

‘It’s hopeless, Nemo,’ said Gregoras, shaking his head as though trying to loose some hideous memory. ‘You can’t stop it, none of us can. Not you, not me, no one!’

‘What are you talking about?’ said Nemo.

The Choirmaster took another step forward, crouching in front of Gregoras. A hint of spectral illumination, like starlight reflected on the surface of a river danced beneath his tightly closed eyelids.

‘It’s all for nothing, Nemo,’ said Gregoras, his chest heaving with sobs. ‘Everything we did, it’s all for nothing. It all stagnates. Nothing really lives, and it’s a slow death that lingers for thousands of years. Everything we strove for, everything we were promised… all a lie.’

The knuckles of his fingers were white with the effort of holding the cover of the Oneirocriticaclosed, but he removed one hand long enough to reach inside his robes to remove a small calibre snub-nosed pistol.

The Choirmaster stood erect and moved away from Gregoras as the Black Sentinels raised their rifles and took aim.

‘Put the gun down!’ barked the sergeant. ‘Put the gun down or we will shoot you dead.’

Gregoras laughed, and the pain and soul-sick loss in that sound broke the Choirmaster’s heart. What could be so terrible that it could make a man give voice to such a plaintive sound?

‘Evander,’ said the Choirmaster. ‘Whatever has happened here, we can deal with it. We can handle anything. Remember our time on the Black Ships? That boy from Forty-Three Nine? He killed almost everyone on that vessel, but we contained him. We contained him, and we can stop this, whatever it is.’

‘Stop it?’ said Gregoras. ‘Don’t you understand? It’s already happened.’

‘What’s happened?’

‘The end of everything good,’ said Gregoras, putting the pistol in his mouth.

‘No!’ shouted Nemo, but nothing could stop the cryptaesthesian from pulling the trigger.

His head bucked and a thin wisp of smoke emerged from his mouth as his jaw fell open. A line of blood ran from his nose and fell to the cover of the Oneirocritica. In death, Gregoras’s eyes opened, and the Choirmaster saw they were the colour of amber set in rose gold.

The book slid down the dead man’s knees and fell to the ground. The Choirmaster took a deep breath as he felt whatever malign presence had occupied the space between worlds begin to dissipate. He stared at the body of his once-friend, trying to imagine what might have driven so rational a man to suicide.

His blindsight was drawn to the fallen book. The droplet of blood on its cover shone with the last vital energies of the dead man, and the Choirmaster felt an immense sadness as the shimmering life-light faded to nothing.

‘What did you see, Evander?’ he said, knowing there was only one way to find out for sure and wondering if he had the strength to look.

Nemo Zhi-Meng picked up the last Oneirocriticaof Evander Gregoras and began to read.

KAI FOLLOWED THE Outcast Dead as they entered the Temple of Woe, feeling the weight of grief and guilt that pervaded the air like invisible smoke. Like the outside façade, the interior of the building was also embellished with funereal statuary depicting mourning in all its varied forms: wailing mourners, deathbed vigils, raucous wakes and dignified farewells. Torches hanging from iron sconces filled the temple with a warm glow, and a circular rim of what had once been the cog-toothed wheel of some enormous Mechanicum war-engine now served as a hanging bed for hundreds of tallow candles.

Groups of mourners gathered in sombre groups on wooden benches, the lucky ones whose turn had come to bring their dead inside. People looked up as they entered, some staring in amazement, others too wrapped in their grief to pay them more than a cursory glance. A man and a woman wept beside a body that lay at the foot of a polished black statue of a faceless, kneeling angel. A faint black haze clung to the sweeps and curves of the angel’s wings, and though it had no features carved into its head, Kai sensed something behind that unfinished surface, like a face half-glimpsed in the shadows.

‘What is it?’ he asked, knowing Atharva was staring at him and would understand his meaning.

‘I suspect it is not one thing, but many,’ said Atharva. ‘The Great Ocean is a reflection of this world, and as the alchemists of old knew: as above, so below. You cannot vent so much grief in one place without attracting the attention of something from beyond the veil.’

‘Whatever it is it feels dangerous,’ said Kai. ‘And… hungry.’

‘An apt term,’ nodded Atharva. ‘And you are right to believe it is dangerous.’

Fear touched Kai, and he said, ‘Throne, should we warn these people to get out!’

Atharva laughed and shook his head. ‘There is no need, Kai. Its power is not so great that it can escape the prison of stone in which it currently resides.’

‘You like my statues?’ said the custodian of the Temple of Woe, closing the doors and coming to join them.

‘They are magnificent,’ said Kai. ‘Where did you get them?’

‘I did not getthem anywhere, I carved them myself,’ said the man, holding out his hand. ‘I am Palladis Novandio and you are welcome here. All of you.’

Kai shook the proffered hand, trying to hide his discomfort as he felt the sharp stab of the man’s grief and guilt.

‘It is a mausoleum,’ said Tagore. ‘Why do you gather so much death in one place?’

‘They are images of aversion,’ said Palladis.

‘What does that mean?’ asked Subha.

‘By gathering so many images of death and grief in one place, you rob them of their sorrow,’ said Kai with sudden insight.

‘Exactly so,’ said Palladis. ‘And by honouring death, we keep it at bay.’

‘We bring warriors who have walked the Crimson Path,’ said Tagore. ‘Their mortal remains are not for the scavenger or the vulture to dishonour. We were told you had an incinerator here.’

‘We do indeed,’ said Palladis, pointing to a square arch at the rear of the structure. Kai felt the finality that existed beyond that door, a barrier that couldn’t quite keep the smell of burnt flesh from permeating the air of the temple.

‘We have need of it,’ said Atharva.

‘It is at your disposal,’ said Palladis, with a respectful bow.

Kai watched as the Outcast Dead lifted their fallen brothers between them like enormous pallbearers, the World Eaters bearing Gythua, Atharva and Severian hoisting Argentus Kiron to their shoulders.

‘The fallen warrior should be honoured in death by his blood-comrades,’ said Tagore, ‘but these heroes are far from their Legion brothers, and they will never see their homeworlds again.’

‘ Thisis their homeworld,’ said Atharva.

‘And we are their comrades now,’ added Subha.

‘We will honour them,’ said Asubha. ‘As brothers of battle, we owe fealty to no brotherhood but our own.’

Kai was surprised to hear such words from these warriors. In the brief time he had spent with them, he had not thought them close, but these words spoke of a bond that ran deeper than he would ever know, a bond that could only ever be forged in the bloody cauldron of battle and death.

‘Come,’ said Palladis Novandio. ‘I’ll show you.’

Tagore placed a hand on Palladis’s chest and shook his head. ‘No, you won’t,’ he said, his teeth bared and a barely restrained hostility razoring the edges of his words. ‘The death of a Space Marine is a private affair.’

‘I apologise,’ said Palladis, recognising the threat. ‘I meant no disrespect.’

The Space Marines moved down the central aisle of the temple, and all sounds of mourning faded as those who bore witness to the solemn parade bowed their heads in silent and unspoken respect. Atharva’s power flared like a half-glimpsed flicker of lightning, as the door to the incinerator opened on rust and ash-gummed hinges.

Kai watched them pass from sight, and let out the breath he’d been holding.

It took a moment for him to realise the significance of the moment, but when he realised that he was alone and free, all he felt was a strange sense of emptiness. He no longer knew whether he was a fellow fugitive or a prisoner of the Outcast Dead, but he suspected that hinged upon what he carried within his head.

Kai turned towards the door through which he and the Space Marines had entered the temple. Slivers of torchlight eased through its imperfectly-fitted frame, and that soft glow was the promise of everything he had been denied: the freedom from responsibility, the choice to live or die and, finally, a chance to be no one’s slave.

The last realisation was hardest to admit, for Kai had always believed he was master of his own destiny. Here, alone and hunted in a temple dedicated to the dead, he realised how naïve he had been. The worth of the individual was the greatest lie the Imperium had made its people swallow. From soldiers in the army to the scribes of the palace to the workers toiling in the factories, every human life was in service to the Emperor. Whether they realised it or not, the human race had been yoked to the singular goal of the galaxy’s conquest.

For the first time in his life, Kai saw the Imperium for what it was, a machine that could operate on such a vast scale only because its fuel of human life was in never-ending supply. He had been part of that machine, but he was a tiny cog that had slipped its gear and was tumbling without purpose through its delicate workings. Kai knew enough of such mechanisms to know that such a random piece could not be allowed to remain within the body of the machine. Either that piece was returned to its designated place, or it was cast out and discarded.

‘Death surrounds you, my friend,’ said Palladis. ‘You were right to come here.’

Kai nodded and said, ‘Death surrounds me wherever I go.’

‘There is truth in that,’ agreed Palladis. ‘Do you mean to stay with the Angels of Death?’

‘Why do I get the feeling that you’re not using that as a nickname?’ asked Kai.

‘The Legiones Astartes are the physical embodiment of death,’ said Palladis. ‘You have seen them kill, so you must know that.’

Kai thought back to the bloodshed of their escape from the Custodes gaol, and suppressed a shiver at the ferocious carnage.

‘I suppose it’s apt,’ he agreed. ‘The Angels of Death. It has a ring to it.’

‘You haven’t answered my question,’ pointed out Palladis.

Kai thought for a moment, torn between his desire to shape his own future and the insistent voice that urged him to remain with the Outcast Dead.

‘I’m not sure,’ said Kai, surprising himself. ‘I feel that I wantto leave them, but I’m not sure I should. Which is stupid, because I think they mean to take me to… to a place I don’t think I’m meant to go.’

‘Where do you think are you meant to go?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Kai with a wan smile. ‘That’s the problem, you see.’

‘Then how do you know you are not already there?’ said Palladis, before giving his arm a gentle squeeze and making his way towards the man and woman who wept over the body of an old man at the foot of the faceless statue.

Before Kai could ponder the man’s last words, the door to the temple opened and a girl with a familiar aura entered. Though his psychic senses told him as much, he knew she had long blond hair beneath her hood and a blue bandanna wrapped around her forehead. He smiled, finally understanding that there were no accidents, no coincidences and no pieces of the universal puzzle that were not just links in a causal chain that stretched back to very beginning of all things.

‘Perhaps I amwhere I’m meant to be,’ he said softly, as the girl saw him and her eyes widened in surprise.

‘Kai?’ said the girl. ‘Throne, what are you doing here?’

‘Hello, Roxanne,’ said Kai.

NAGASENA WATCHES THE approaching vehicles with irritation and a sense of events moving faster than anyone gathered here can control. Six armoured vehicles, boxy and reeking of engine oil and hot metal. They have been forced to wait for these tanks by an order from the City of Sight. No explanation was forthcoming, and for nearly ninety minutes they have allowed their quarry to put ever greater distance between them.

‘We should not have waited,’ Kartono says to him, but he does not reply. The answer is self-evident. No, they should not have waited, but his every instinct is railing against this hunt. He tells himself that he is foolish to put faith in omens, that he should have continued without Golovko and Saturnalia.

He knows where his prey has gone, and he could be there already but for his hunt companions. Yet he did not set off on his own. He waited. Speed and the relentlessness of pursuit are his greatest weapons, and he has sacrificed them both.

Why?

Because this hunt does not serve the truth, it is intended to bury it.

Saturnalia stands at a crossroads to the east, eager to be on the hunt, but unwilling to disobey an order that comes countersigned with the authority of his own masters. Golovko sits with his men, displaying patience Nagasena had not suspected he possessed. He is a man to whom orders are absolute, a man who would kill a hundred innocents if so ordered. Such men are dangerous, for they can enact any horror in the unshakable belief that it serves a higher purpose.

The lead vehicle grinds to a halt in a squall of rubble and screeching metal. It is painted black and red, with the markings of a fortress gate upon which are crossed a black bladed spear and a lasgun. Golovko and Saturnalia join him as the side hatch opens and a junior lieutenant in a black breastplate and helmet emerges, looking as though he wishes he were anywhere but here.