Deathwing (37 page)

‘Never think that we are endangered, Postulant Tenzig,’ said the master, mildly. ‘There are no absolutes, even for gods. I have much thinking to do, and little time left. Tell me,’ he added, his hands fiddling with the bulbous armrests, ‘what do we know of the theosophy of those who come from the stars?’

Tenzig blinked. ‘They believe in absolutes,’ he said. ‘Absolute power and absolute evil, and absolute ignorance. They are trapped in the cycle of their own eternal turmoil, and they will subject us to it if they can. They accept only mindless accession to their cant… with which our uncertain dogmas might be—’

‘Stop.’ The master held up his right hand. ‘Your bias is becoming intrusive. Have you learned nothing?’

‘No, master,’ Humbled, Tenzig bowed his head; rueful self-doubt tugged at him. Have I been colouring them with my own daemons, he wondered?

‘The Imperials are undoubtedly inimical to the order,’ pronounced the master, ‘but to act in haste is worse than not to act at all,’ He stood. ‘There will be a concillium of the masters, when brother abbot will make his determination. And then we shall see how to deal with the outsiders,’ He smiled. ‘Perhaps, even with the Imperium, there will be a way.’

J
UDIT GLANCED FROM
the swirl of stars to the planet through the observation deck window, indescribable thoughts circulating in her head. A billiard-ball of white mist, it was totally featureless from orbit; it reminded her of her home-world, except that Neuss-Four had been grey rather than creamy white, and everyone on it had died shortly after her departure. Her abduction. Recruitment, rather. She grimaced at the recollection and looked back to the globular cluster, shifting her grip on the free-fall grabrail.

The starswarm was magnificent, a diadem of stars that gleamed across half the sky and drowned the Milky Way with its brilliance; but it was the magnificence of a jewelled catacomb. During the Age of Strife, entire suns had disappeared into warp space: the frozen husks of a thousand civilizations drifted between the stars. How this world had escaped was beyond understanding, but now that it had been rediscovered, it would be the job of this mission to purge it of deviationists and mutants, and then install puppet rulers to support the Imperial demands.

‘Another dirtball, eh?’ said Joachim Ahriman, grinning humourlessly at her. He stood behind her, a slim figure clothed entirely in form-fitting blackness, the lightweight armour of a member of the Adeptus Arbites, the order of judges. ‘Just another flyblown wasteland full of nomads, I shouldn’t wonder.’

‘Possibly not,’ she murmured. ‘When’s the report from the preliminary probe due in?’

‘Shortly,’ Joachim fell silent, also contemplating the world – but from his own perspective of elevated disdain. Joachim considered any world not of the Imperium to be barbaric, its inhabitants barely more than animals. It was a failing, Judit thought. Even barbarians could display sophistication and indirection… which was why they were here. An assassin and a martial priest of the Adeptus Arbites, sent to support the Inquisitor in his reassertion of power over the lost worlds of this cluster, of which Hito was but the seventh in priority.

She pursed her lips as she glanced at him. Why did they have to saddle me with an intolerant fanatic like this? she thought. Surely no one could be this crude? Perhaps it’s an attempt to discredit me…

A tone rang out from the annunciator: Joachim answered it. ‘Yes?’ he said impatiently.

‘This is the Holy Office – we have cleared the preliminary probe. Reports are coming in of an indigenous civilization, some techlore, a native government. Would you care to examine them?’

Joachim snorted, but Judit spoke over his shoulder, ‘I’ll be up shortly.’

‘Tell me if they can talk,’ he called out after her as she went up the tube into the body of the ship. ‘Tell me if they look human!’

She shook her head as she climbed the decks towards the Holy Mission. A government to deal with delicately, and she was going to have to do it saddled with a blunt instrument like Joachim. What kind of bloody mess was he going to make of this one? Then a different thought occurred to her. Perhaps it could be turned to her advantage.

O
N LEAVING THE
presence of the master, Tenzig returned to his cell. He changed his loose, dark habit for the white woollen surplice of a postulant, then composed himself for meditation.

He was not surprised when, presently, a visitor knocked on his door; moving to open it, he was confronted by a young novice.

‘The abbot would see you,’ he stammered at Tenzig, eyes wide at the prospect of attracting such attention. ‘I am to take you…’

‘Then lead.’

Deep in thought, Tenzig followed the boy through the passages of the monastery, out into the open pentagon at the heart of it, and across to the white tower where brother abbot and his staff controlled the day-to-day destiny of the order.

The burden of foreknowledge was heavy on Tenzig as the novice brought him to a halt outside the wide, thick doors of the tower. The boy stopped and looked up at him. ‘I am not allowed to go any further,’ he said. ‘You are to proceed from here alone.’

Tenzig paused, nonplussed. Presently he grinned. Not waiting to see if the boy would go, he turned to the door and rapped hard on the rough surface with his right hand. Invisible eyes stared at him, and presently the door opened.

‘Postulant Tenzig,’ said the sallow-faced monk behind it, ‘you are bidden enter. May your stay bring honour to the order.’

‘And may its days be long,’ Tenzig replied with an inclination of his head. The door-keeper stepped back, admitting him, and shut the portal. Tenzig looked around, ignoring the strangely fashioned weapon that the monk held loosely. Bare, polished stone and solid black iron: an architecture of war. But of course. The knowledge of the Order of the Heavenly Virtues was its treasure, and during times of trouble the order’s reputation was not always an adequate defence.

‘You are to come this way,’ said the gatekeeper, beckoning Tenzig towards a staircase. They made their way up winding flights of steps and along landings floored in wood that creaked loudly, beneath narrow slots in the ceiling; Tenzig marvelled at how vulnerable the tower was. Presently they arrived in a surprisingly small room, and the gate-keeper took his leave. In all this time, Tenzig had seen not one other person, but now the door slid open and brother abbot himself entered the room.

‘Tenzig,’ the abbot said, voice grave and totally assured. ‘The master of the secret arts has assured me that you aspire to membership of his branch of the order, and all that that entails – to membership, moreover, with mastery. You know that such rank can only be earned?’

‘I do,’ he replied, throat suddenly dry and tight. The room seemed to be closing in, constricting his chest so that the beat of his heart pressed against the walls themselves.

‘Then know this,’ said the abbot, ‘if you succeed, today, you will achieve just such mastery with glory. But if you fail, far more than this order will revile you. The world will curse your name; legions unborn will suffer for your failure.’ He looked away, a half-amused expression on his face. ‘I have confidence in you, Tenzig. Your master says that it is justified. Will you accept this burden, at risk of your life?’

Tenzig paused, and the room seemed to focus on him with a thunderous silence. ‘I will,’ he heard someone say in the near-distance, and realized that it was himself. The abbot smiled grimly.

‘Good. Then this is how we shall deal with the dragon…’

T
HE SCRIBE READ
from a text that flopped across his lectern like an expired snake, limp but still fanged and deadly. ‘The planet is in a state of intermediate civilization, supported by the presence of records left over from an STC source. Only one continent supports a human population, and there are no nations as such, but a number of warring factions and duchies. A broadly feudal system pertains outside of the religious orders, with homage paid to a ceremonial king by the warlords, who compete for temporal leadership. The tech-records are maintained by a monastery: the Order of the Heavenly Virtues.’

The scribe paused, frowning as if the taste of the words which were to follow were bitter in his mourn. ‘The cult of the Emperor is extinct on this world, if indeed it ever existed here. Two religions coexist; one is a superstitious animism based on the sky and the forces of nature, while the other is a broadly philosophical cult which maintains the monasteries – our scouts, to their credit, were unable to understand the basic tenets of the heresy. The cults are both widely respected and the monastic orders in particular are large and almost as powerful as the warlords – perhaps because they control the supply of advanced goods on this world.’

He glanced up from his scroll. ‘It would be a mistake to assume because the predominant level of civilization is primitive that these people have no subtlety or machinery. The complexity of their life may hide many details, and I would advise extreme caution in dealing with them, other than from a position of unassailable power.’

He looked down and, presentation at an end, began to roll up his scroll. Judit glanced round at the rest of the audience. Inquisitor Rathman, charged with the responsibility of returning the worlds of this cluster to Imperial rule, looked abstracted; gloved fingers twisted his signet ring from side to side as he waited for the scribe to finish.

‘A question,’ he said, tapping his fingers on the arm of his chair. ‘The STC source – how much do we know about that?’

The scribe shook his head. ‘Very little, I’m afraid. The natives refused to talk about it to our agents. But this is a primitive world, by and large. All the libraries of tech-information that we know of were destroyed during the Age of Strife. The odds say that these monks work from records of parchment – but they could contain details of devices long forgotten, bizarre arcana beyond the ken of any – save only the Emperor himself,’ he added piously.

Joachim, present as head of the detachment of Adeptus Arbites aboard the fleet, shook his head angrily. ‘This whole world is like a can of worms,’ he said. ‘Little warlord wrigglers waiting to go on the hook one by one. Unless there’s a faster way to bag them we could be here forever!’

The inquisitor shook his head. ‘That’s not acceptable, Joachim. Not at all. We must establish control over this backwater, and swiftly. We need a weak point.’

‘There is anarchy down there,’ said the clerk. ‘The scouts could find no integrated hierarchy – kill one warlord, and another will rise to take their place.’

Judit was staring into space. An opening, she mused; yes, I need an opening. Secret knowledge. A library… The STC library, if there really was one here, would be ideal. Such computerized libraries, relics of the Dark Age of Technology, contained incalculable wisdom vital to the works of the Adeptus Mechanicus – but all the known ones were damaged in some way, and there were so few of them left. If she could find one…

‘Our assassin would appear to be lost in a pleasant dream,’ Joachim said drily. ‘Perhaps our esteemed colleague would be prepared to give us the benefit of her insight?’

Judit turned her eyes on him. For the entire voyage he’d been sniping, little abusive derogations, nasty gibes at the expense of the Assassins’ Guild. Relations between the monolithic Adeptus Arbites and their secretive, independent rivals – the Imperial assassins – were far from friendly. She stared at him, pupils narrowing to the semblance of gunsights, until he looked away.

‘There is a weakness,’ she said determinedly, ‘and one which is wide open to action by my team. My team, you understand,’ She looked at the inquisitor, who watched her with saturnine interest. ‘I can deliver this world to you on a platter,’ she said. ‘Along with the library, which won’t be of use to anyone if we wind up bombing it from orbit!’ She glanced at Joachim. ‘It should be obvious that we have a perfect lever to bring them into line, of their own accord. Of course it’ll take a while, but I believe as few as two kills might be sufficient.’

‘I hope you can deliver on that promise,’ Joachim said with a smirk. ‘If not…’

He left it unsaid, but she knew what he was thinking. There were those amongst the Arbites who would love to adopt the functions of the assassins in addition to their own – and augment the considerable power of the Judges within the priesthood. And Joachim clearly felt that the assassins were not entirely to be trusted; as a secular arm they were a sharp but treacherous blade that might twist in the wielder’s hand. Judit had not failed to notice that while she was aboard the flagship Joachim wore his black carapace of armour everywhere.

Inquisitor Rathman nodded at the scribe, who activated a recorder. ‘Let it be entered,’ he intoned, ‘that on this day Assassin Judit Bjarnesdottir did avow that by action under her leadership she could bring the administration of the planet Hito into line with Imperial governance,’ He looked at Judit knowingly, a lethal twinkle in his eyes; she suddenly felt a shaft of coldness run through her stomach. Yes, the inquisitor knew how to play off the bureaucracy against itself.

‘Let it further be entered that with the power vested in us,’ he added, ‘that we hold her to her promise and instruct her to work in conjunction with Joachim Ahriman of the Adeptus Arbites to ensure that the rule of this planet passes into our hands within thirty standard days. In the name of the Emperor, let it be so.’

W
HEN
T
ENZIG RETURNED
to his cell after his meeting with the abbot, he spent an unquiet night worrying about the task which he had been set. Brother abbot had been firm: word of the proceedings of the meeting must not travel any further. Secrecy was essential. As the junior member of the order present, execution of the task must devolve on him; it was an awesome responsibility.

He lay staring at the ceiling, and remembered the abbot’s words.

As master of the Order of the Heavenly Virtues, the abbot was wise in the ways of the world, just as the master of the secret arts was educated in the dark sciences of death.

‘They come from far away, but we must not assume that they are naive about the sources of power. They will seek us out and try to manipulate the order, to use us as a tool with which to control the warriors. They will try to make it look attractive to us… for they know of our library, do they not?’