The Mistress of Threads - John French Read online

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  The Mistress of Threads – John French

  About the Author

  An Extract from ‘The Horusian Wars: Incarnation’

  A Black Library Publication

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  The Mistress of Threads

  By John French

  The following record entries make up the correspondence and summary documents (grade primus to secundus-beta) from the Stygian archives of the von Castellan Rogue Trader Dynasty relating to the Cytos Purge and the fall of the House Morio.

 

  From: Cressida Syr Morio, Executor of the House Morio

  To: Viola von Castellan, Seneschal of the von Castellan Rogue Trader Dynasty

  Message delivered by oath-bound messenger

  My Most Dear Cousin,

  I hope that this finds you well. I am afraid that I must break with the formalities that should begin a letter between kin after such a long time. I am sorry to say that there are matters which must force formality and manners to the side. I must ask you for help, Viola, most urgently and strongly. I know that the circumstances around your family’s trouble may have left you less inclined to listen to me, but I hope that the bonds that we shared in childhood will mean that you will excuse me for my current lack of consideration. God- Emperor, but I need someone to help us.

  It began with our pact with the Cytos Cartel.

  As you may know, it became clear after only a few years that my marriage into House Morio was more than a merger of wealth. As your father counselled my mother at the time, it was clear that House Morio was decaying from within. Its diminishing intellectual and commercial ability and traditions had led to continual loss of station and wealth. While Morio still held the grand supply agreements for Battlefleet Caradryad and the transit bonds for goods coming from the Throneward trade routes, it was within a generation of collapse. My skills and those of my bloodline were what old Morio wanted when my marriage was brokered. And for a time that worked. My life-bound partner, Osric Morio, continued on the path of dissolution he had been following before our marriage. He had no power in the family anymore and seemed happy with that lot, as long as he had money enough to waste on the turn of a card and to burn in cadula smoke.

  I kept him happy in that regard, and turned my attention to salvaging the House’s withering fortunes. I was successful, as I am sure that you are aware. For a while it seemed as though there was no wrong that I, or the House Morio, could do. We secured the harvest rights to Persepol, regained the supply contracts for the Askar, Numal and Ventu chartist fleets. The broker houses of Tio and even Bakka were willing to extend credit bonds to us with eager smiles. The flow of wealth went from a rivulet to a torrent that carried us on and seemed bound only for an ocean of even greater bounty.

  As executor of House Morio the credit for the return to fortune fell to me, and I must admit that I did not turn away from it. I don’t know if you ever knew what it was like being a fourth cousin of a minor blood line bound to the great von Castellans. You were always at the centre of things, in the line of inheritance, control and fortune. We in the shadows knew our place, Viola, and that place was to be grateful for what fell to us. So I relished the power growing in my grasp and the fortune filling my fingers. It has a feeling, an almost physical sensation, doesn’t it? Warm, like smooth cut stone under the sun, fluid and flying like soft fabric caught in the breeze, strong as the pull of the ocean tide. It was mine, created by the application of my skill, and mine to protect and wield. The sense of freedom seems almost giddy as I remember it.

  I am sorry that during the time of our prosperity misfortunes overtook you and your dynasty. It is a truth, though, that the wheel of fate raises us all up into light and plunges us all back down into darkness. I have learnt that truth well in these last months.

  The beginning of our trouble was growing then, though I did not realise it. Shadows were spreading, omens abounded, and fanciful news came with travellers from far places. Storms, rebirth, horrors and devils and dead worlds haunted the loose talk around even high tables. I paid these rumours little attention; there was work to be done, and there have been stories of dire futures told since mankind learned to use its tongue.

  Osric, my blessedly absent consort, also began to behave unusually at this time. Ever since our marriage he had been happy keeping himself to his well-financed life of dissolution. Now I found him haunting the estates and holdings of House Morio, as though uncertain what to do, or like a child caught just after committing a sin that they are considering confessing to. He seemed unusually interested in the details of the House’s business and transactions. I humoured him with a little insight into the universe of our trade ledgers.

  All thought of Osric’s unusual behaviour vanished the moment that the storms broke and cataclysm came. I will not write to you of that moment; you know only too well, as do we all, and we are living in the world that it left to us. Let me touch on it only to say that as the wound opened across the stars and the storms swallowed the Throne’s light, my House lost and lost again.

  Only a year before, I had made contact with trade enterprises in the coreward sectors. I had hoped to expand the scope of our operations and holdings beyond the Caradryad sector. Our credit, reputation and influence was at a height that made it seem like a modest venture.

  The great storms swallowed that optimism.

  Ships vanished in the immaterium. Riots on planets burned trade goods. Messages vanished. Suddenly we had reservoirs of promethium but no tankers to move it to the chem-combines who had paid for it. In other places we had trade ships bonded and paid and waiting for cargo that had vanished into the flames. In others… in most places we did not even know what we held or where it was going.

  Wealth is a web of chains. Each link is a promissory note, a cargo, a bill of sale or a contract of supply. The credit bonds that pay for a trillion mega-tonnes of grain to be shipped from Caelus are raised on Tio against the contracts sworn with the Administratum that we will supply that grain to the monasteries of Dominicus Prime. The chartist freighters that carry that grain are charged at a rate agreed and paid for by credit raised against the billion tonnes of ore sold to us in advance of it being mined on Gult. On and on it goes, link by link, growing out and out, across drifts of stars and planets and threading the dark with ships crossing the night. But all the chains lead back to House Morio. To me, dear cousin. And for all that they are made of gold, those chains bind.

  The storms broke and the promissory brokers and the coin guilders and the families and cartels called in their debts. All of them. First one then another and another, in a great hungry cascade. It was panic, you see. There was fire in the sky, prophets telling of the death of the most blessed Emperor, dreams of blood and darkness. And so people did what they do when afraid that the world is coming apart – they grab hold of whatever they can. For the people in the streets that meant food and water, and a weapon to keep themselves alive. For those whose world is measured in debit and credit it meant calling in every debt they were owed.

  I know you understand these circumstances better than even I do. My mother once said you were the most brilliant seneschal-in-waiting the von Castellans had produced in twenty generations. And so I know that I have explained to you something that you already know, and that when I say that we could not pay our debts, not even begin to pay, that you have already deduced that before I wrote it.

  Strange, don’t you think, that even in times of the greatest uncertainty and disaster the ability to call in a debt seems to persist? We had nothing. O
ur remaining assets were seized across the sector. Proxies of our House were imprisoned, some even killed. And it was clear that this was only the beginning. Bounty hunter platoons from the Iron Venators were bound to bring myself and Osric to a cabal of our creditors. Only the loyalty of our household staff saved us from that fate. But there seemed no hope besides exile and life as a vagabond House, living off scraps in the carcass of our broken empire.

  It was at that moment that Osric said that there might be people who could help us. Things were so desperate that I barely wondered at how he would know of anyone who could offer us aid. He said that over the years he had made the acquaintance of a number of members of the Cytos Cartel and that they had sent him a message offering to help remove our current difficulties.

  I had heard of the Cytos. They were a power in sector trade. Quiet, private, reliable. All its members were said to be bound by the single version of the Imperial creed that they all shared. I had done trade with them, but never met them. Now, despite myself, I agreed to meet their representative.

  The one that came to us was called Sonnus, and he said that he had the authority to speak for all the cartel. He seemed young, clean limbed and healthy, clad in the dust pale grey that I would come to learn was the mark of their kind. His eyes were the clearest amethyst I had ever seen. He wore a headdress of gold and beaten bronze set with moonstones and blood carbuncles. Two hulking lifewards accompanied him, their bulk and faces hidden beneath the plates of armoured pressure suits. His voice was like the ringing of a perfect silver bell. He was exceedingly gracious, expressing both great sympathy and willingness to help even without an agreement being reached. His agents had eliminated two bounty capture units and he presented us with real-time intelligence on many more. He also gave me the heads of the bounty hunters in crystal jars.

  I confess, I was relieved. Here, somehow, we had a friend. We were not alone. It was a moment before I asked what the Cytos wanted in return for their help.

  Sonnus replied that they wanted no payment. They simply wanted to become our partners in future business once our good name and fortune had been restored. They had the means to remove our debts and to help smooth over every other difficulty. All they wanted in return was to count House Morio as the most close associates and partners.

  I had enough of my wits left to ask if he was alluding to taking over House Morio.

  He replied with a kind laugh, and said no. Though the Cytos Cartel would make privileged use of all House Morio assets and contacts, we would keep complete autonomy. They would not even take a cut of the wealth flow – our profit would be ours.

  I should have asked more. I should have looked deeper and thought longer. But the heads of eight bounty hunters were still looking up at me from inside the jars placed at my feet like blood gifts to a ghoul queen. I did hesitate, but Osric said that he for one did not want to be chained in the gaols of one of our creditors or made into a dancing servitor for their pleasure.

  So, I agreed.

  And it worked. Our debts were paid, the contracts and bonds we had committed to fulfilled. The storms were still swallowing ships, and worlds were still in chaos, but there was still opportunity for profit amongst the blaze. And we were suddenly placed to take advantage.

  The Cytos were very helpful. Their own operations were exceptionally stable and seemed to stand like rocks of order amongst a sea of anarchy. On the Fuzreina moons, the bond houses and fuel reservoirs held by the Cytos remained crewed and defended even as the rest of the populace rampaged through the refinery cities, and that was just one example.

  We opened up new contracts, we made profits even beyond what we had at our previous high point. It was unbelievable, as though divine intervention had both saved and elevated us. I was not just relieved. I was elated.

  For their part, the Cytos seemed content to simply take advantage of our name and contacts. Only gradually did they begin to make use of the terms they had negotiated with us. Both Osric and I acted as brokers between the Cytos and a number of other organisations and power blocs, in particular within parts of the Imperial power structure. I mediated an agreement that allowed ships carrying Cytos bonded cargo to resupply at Naval facilities in the Amarynth subsector, and for their agents to move onto and off Gothar without checks under bond to the governor. They made use of our trade routes as they said they would, but only for small, sealed cargos and, above all, personnel.

  Did I have misgivings? After a time, I think I did. I found Sonnus increasingly strange. He was deeply charming and charismatic, almost mesmerically so, but the more time I spent with him the more I felt like there was something that I was not seeing, something that crawled over my nerves when my back was turned in his presence. I cannot describe that sensation clearly. The closest thing to it I have experienced before is when Cicero, the old master of beasts on the estate at Xarxis Plethis, would show us the old velocipuma they kept in the wild gardens. You remember how it used to look at us? How, despite the bars and the guards’ guns, you could see that it thought of us as nothing but prey, as cattle.

  I put aside my feelings and focused on business. That is what you do. Your family taught me well, Viola. But there were other things, small things, barely noticed at the time: deference of Sonnus’ guards, the way they never took off their masks, and a smell that lingered after them like… salt water or sugar sap…

  All of this was incidental until I was delayed passing through our manse at Mithras. The storms had surged again, and the captain of the chartist vessel we were to take would not send his ship into the tempest. I had not intended on staying there, but now I found myself in residence at the old place for an indefinite amount of time.

  I would ask if you remember the Mithras Manse, but of course you do – the lessons of our tutors mean that I am sure that you recall its every room and turret with perfect clarity. It still sits on the northern pinnacle outside Mithras-1, its wings and walls spilling down the mountainside. From the windows and parapets you can look down into the factory piles and see the flash of gunfire as the gangs kill each other down in the sump canyons. We had not really occupied the manse often, or for long periods, and so its stone and iron halls smelled of rust and dust. My servants did their best, but most of the rooms, staircases and wings remained deserted, or haunted by a few servitors with failing joints shuffling through half-forgotten tasks.

  For the first day I confined myself with work, then with some of the volumes in the upper libraries, then, as our delay dragged on into days I found myself walking the more obscure parts of the manse. Perhaps like you, I have never been able to sleep well. The memetic and cognitive tutoring broke down my ability to find peace in sleep. Often exhaustion and a blend of chems will send me down into the well of dreams. So it was that I was walking through the north-east wing’s lower levels in the dark hours of the night, a suspensor-held candle bobbing at my shoulder.

  The Northern Wing was the least used of the reaches of the manse, even when it was properly occupied. The tastes of its builder had run to long halls crawling with gargoyles and grotesques, statuary in the high mortuary style and narrow, high corridors that seemed to hold the promise of crushing those that walked them. The light of my candle pulled clawed shadows from the sculptures and threw them up the stone walls towards the darkened ceilings. Dust puffed from the rotting carpets beneath my feet. The sound of my breath slid off into the distance to echo in the dark.

  I had paused to examine the plaques beneath a row of portraits when I noticed a set of doors that had clearly been opened recently. The dust was disturbed on the floor at the threshold, and the doors’ iron panels and hinges bore the marks from where hands had come into contact with them.

  I paused, puzzled and intrigued. There had been no entries in the manse’s records of anyone visiting in the last ten years. Perhaps the few staff in the place had come here to perform a particular task, but I had absorbed estate-wardens’ logs and there ha
d been no activity recorded in the Northern Wing.

  I was curious. So, I went to the doors and put my hand on the left-hand one to push it open. It was locked. That was more curious still – many of the locks in the manse were purely mechanical, few doors were actually barred. I had the master key, however, the key that opened every door, key pad and security measure in the place. I slotted it into the lock. I wish I could say that I hesitated at that moment, that some summation of facts held my hand still on the key before it turned. I did not hesitate though, and no thought besides mild puzzlement sounded in my head.

  The chamber beyond the door had been a greeting hall, and it extended from the entrance to where dust-covered windows let in a grey haze of moonlight. The floor was stone, bare and unadorned, as though in echo of a church, or the citadel of a feudal world. There was no light source beside my candle, and it took a moment for my eyes to see anything beyond the circle of light.

  There were boxes set out on the floor. Plasteel crates, each two metres to a side and one high, the kind used to ship goods from and to every corner of the Imperium. They were not stacked, though, but laid out singly, each one separated from the next by a precise metre of space. The sides of the crates were stamped with the seals of our house, the House Morio crest stencilled beside the details of our bonds and license of commerce.

  They were not ours, though. I know every shipment and detail of our commerce down to the last grain and base coin. The crates were nothing to do with us. But here they were in our house, bearing our crest, set down with all the care of reliquaries in a chapel. I shivered then, and looked around, aware that I might not be alone. There was nothing. Just the dark, and the boxes lying silent and still.

  After a moment I forced myself forwards. The candle followed with me. The nearest crate hummed with an internal cryo-coolant system. Its lid was cold to the touch. There was a code lock holding it shut, but, like the door, it yielded to the master key of our House. Mist breathed from within as the lock released. I had not hesitated at the threshold of this room, but I did then. The carefree wander through the night of only moments before had fled, leaving a present that felt like it was going to tumble into an unkind future. I could have walked away, sealed the crate and room. I could have done that…