Honourbound - Rachel Harrison Read online

  Raine sees Vander’s jaw set, but he’s clever enough not to challenge Tula.

  ‘Aye, lord,’ she says.

  ‘I said that our value is in our deeds. Work together to secure that city, keep your regiments fierce and fighting.’ Tula pauses and looks at them both in turn. ‘Prove your worth,’ he says. ‘Prove you have earned your scars, and your place at this table.’

  ‘May I speak with you in private, lord?’ Raine asks Tula, once the conclave is over.

  He pulls the datakey that maintains the hololith, and the image of Laxus Secundus disappears. Tula puts the datakey into the pocket of his greatcoat and nods.

  ‘I can spare you a moment,’ he says. ‘Follow me, if you please.’

  Tula leads Raine to a smaller room at the end of the corridor. It is Tula’s quarters, without question. Raine can tell by the way the paperwork stacked on the desk is perfectly square to the table’s edge and by how spare and clean it is.

  ‘Take a seat,’ he says, as he takes his own behind the desk.

  Raine does. The seats are cushioned, which makes her more uncomfortable than if they weren’t.

  ‘I hope that you are not going to request a different deployment,’ Tula says, taking the first sheet of paper from the stack and inspecting it.

  Raine blinks. She would never have considered such a thing.

  ‘No, lord,’ she says. ‘Absolutely not.’

  Tula picks up a stamp from his desk and presses it into black ink, then against the paper. Raine knows they are chastisement orders. Punishments and executions awaiting. Tula places the stamped form on the other side of the table. Again, it is aligned carefully to the edge.

  ‘Good,’ he says. ‘Vander might be discourteous, but he is a good commissar.’

  Raine can think of words other than discourteous to describe Lukas Vander, but she doesn’t say so.

  ‘He is not alone in his prejudice,’ Tula says. ‘There are many who would see you stripped of your rank because of your blood alone.’

  ‘I know,’ Raine says. ‘But they are wrong, lord.’

  Tula glances up from his sheets of paper.

  ‘They are,’ he says. ‘I know this. You know this. But you will always have to answer for your blood, deservedly or not. You cannot do so by fighting everyone who speaks ill of it.’

  Raine feels shame colour her cheeks.

  ‘My actions were unacceptable,’ she says. ‘Whatever penance you deem necessary, I will undertake.’

  Tula stamps the sheet of paper and stacks it on top of the others, then he rests his hands on his desk, his fingers laced neatly.

  ‘Defiance is penance enough,’ he says. ‘I meant what I said. I want you to prove your worth. I want you to make Vander see it too. We have few enough allies without fighting amongst ourselves.’ Tula frowns. ‘Deeds, Severina,’ he says. ‘They are what made your mother, and your father. Your sister too. In time, you will have to answer for yours, so make sure that you choose them carefully.’

  ‘I will,’ Raine says.

  ‘I know that too,’ he says. ‘Now, what was it that you wished to speak about?’

  Raine puts her hand into the pocket of her greatcoat and takes out the auditory damper disc given to her by Andren Fel. She takes the rifle, strapped at her back, and puts both on the desk in front of Tula. If the rain-slick rifle in close proximity to his paperwork angers him, he doesn’t show it.

  ‘What do you see, lord?’ she asks.

  Tula picks up each item in turn. He looks at them the same way he looks at everything. With a careful, discerning gaze.

  ‘These were taken during the battle at the forge,’ he says. ‘From the Sighted.’

  Raine nods. ‘The rifle–’ she begins.

  ‘Is Steadfast marked, which is troublesome.’ Tula picks up the small, silver disc. ‘But this is more so. I have seen the like before.’

  ‘Where?’ Raine asks.

  He narrows his dark eyes. ‘I cannot tell you,’ he says. ‘Needless to say, those who were using them would not have given them up, or been easily killed.’

  A chill rolls up Raine’s spine at his words. She can’t help thinking of Zane’s long shadow again. That perhaps it is longer and deeper than she thought.

  ‘It was not just traitors we fought today,’ she says. ‘They had machines. Automata, and things they had created.’

  Tula’s face twists at the word created.

  ‘Heresy,’ he snarls.

  ‘It is not just the machines, either,’ Raine says. ‘Or the rifles, or the equipment. It is the Sighted themselves. They are changing. Growing stronger. We fight them as fiercely as we ever have, but we are being held to a standstill all over Laxus Secundus, and I would not be surprised were it the same across the crusade front.’

  Tula sits back in his chair, turning the silver disc in his fingers.

  ‘If they are gaining strength then we need to stop it,’ Raine says. ‘Cut off their supply lines and disrupt their hierarchy. If we don’t, the Bale Stars will be bled white and there will be nothing left to fight for.’

  Tula stops turning the disc and puts it back down on the desk with a soft click. There is an expression on his face that she has never seen before. It takes Raine a moment to realise that what she’s looking at is Lord-Commissar Mardan Tula unsettled.

  ‘Leave it with me,’ he says. ‘I will take your words to High Command.’

  Gloam, before

  Severina is running the ice-rimed iron walkways when she sees a familiar figure leaning on the balustrade by the scholam’s heavy outer doors. A figure dressed in black and gold, wearing a peaked hat. A figure with a beautiful, snub-nosed bolt pistol holstered at her hip, and a gold chain from a timepiece reaching into the pocket of her greatcoat.

  ‘Lucia,’ Severina says, in disbelief. Her words mist the air.

  Lucia turns away from the angry ocean and looks at her. She has changed much in the months since Severina saw her last. Lucia has earned a handful of scars that sit pale against her skin. She has become lean and corded, like an animal made to run.

  ‘Sister,’ Lucia says, with the slightest of smiles.

  Her voice is still the same, though. Severina returns the smile. They don’t embrace because they stopped doing so long ago, but they clasp hands for a moment, Severina’s cold, numb fingers lacing with Lucia’s gloved ones. Then they let go and Lucia goes back to leaning on the balustrade. Severina joins her.

  ‘I truly thought I would never see you again,’ Severina says. ‘Certainly not here.’

  Lucia nods. ‘I did not think that I would return either,’ she says. ‘But my master has business to attend to with the drill-abbots.’

  Severina thinks to the letter that Lucia sent. The one that was spare on detail, and marked with dirty fingerprints at the edges.

  ‘Commissar Morbin,’ she says. ‘What is he like? And the Kavrone Dragoons. I want to know everything that you can tell me.’

  Lucia laughs. ‘Some things do not change,’ she says. ‘Still asking so many questions.’

  Severina nods. ‘It is important to know everything that you can,’ she says. ‘The truth is often found among the details.’

  ‘You know, those words sound familiar,’ Lucia says. ‘I think they must belong to someone terribly wise.’

  This time, Severina laughs. ‘Tell me about your master,’ she says. ‘About the crusade.’

  Lucia nods. ‘Commissar Morbin is a good master,’ she says. ‘He is uncompromising and cold, of course, but he is fair. He does not treat me like a child.’

  ‘And the Dragoons?’ Severina asks.

  ‘They do not treat me like a child either,’ she says, with a half-smile. ‘They hate me, as you might expect.’

  Severina nods. She has been taught that very lesson many times since she arrived at the scholam. That she
cannot expect hatred from her enemies alone, but from every quarter.

  ‘They are fierce, though,’ Lucia says. ‘Strong of faith, with many victories to their name. It is an honour to serve with them.’

  She flexes her fingers absently as if they ache.

  ‘Would that you could have seen them on Paxar, sister,’ Lucia says. ‘The armoured companies catching the sun’s light. Dozens and dozens of tanks. They rolled over the Sighted like the ocean rolls over stones.’

  ‘Paxar,’ Severina says. ‘Then the Lord-General Militant was present?’

  Lucia nods. ‘Making legends,’ she says, with a flicker of a smile. ‘As always.’

  ‘I heard the abbots say that he killed one of the Nine there, as on Steadfast,’ Severina says.

  ‘Not just one of the Nine,’ Lucia says. ‘A whole coven of their traitor psykers too. He faced them with only a handful of his Lions and emerged victorious nonetheless.’

  Severina feels that same rush of awe that she felt on the day of Lucia’s graduation. The Lord-General Militant has a score of stories to his name, and each one only makes her admire him more fiercely.

  ‘Unbreakable,’ Severina says. ‘Just as he said.’

  ‘Yes,’ Lucia says. ‘He is. As we all must be.’

  She looks down to the ocean for a moment, lost in thought. To Severina, it looks as though Lucia is dreaming awake.

  ‘What is it?’ Severina asks.

  Lucia shakes her head. ‘Nothing, sister,’ she says, and the moment passes like a cloud passes before the sun. ‘And what of you? Those bruises tell me that you have either been training, or fighting.’

  Severina puts her hand to her face. She had forgotten about the black eye.

  ‘Training,’ she says.

  Lucia frowns. ‘Don’t lie,’ she says. ‘I can always tell. Who were you fighting? Illariya?’

  Severina shakes her head.

  ‘Cozelt,’ she says. ‘And Pallard.’

  ‘Severina.’ The way Lucia says her name, it is like a sigh. ‘You know what can come of fighting like that, without authorisation. I am not talking about the lash, or even the undervaults. They could hang you for it, if the mood takes them.’

  ‘They kept talking about father,’ Severina says, interrupting her.

  Lucia lets out a slow breath. ‘What did they say?’ she asks.

  Severina looks out over the ocean now, because she can’t look at Lucia as she says the words.

  ‘That he deserted his post,’ she says. ‘That his whole unit were killed because of it.’

  ‘That is the truth,’ Lucia says. ‘You know it as well as I do. He paid for it with his life, as is right.’

  ‘I know that,’ Severina says. ‘That is not why I fought them.’

  ‘Why, then?’ Lucia asks.

  ‘They said that I have coward’s blood,’ Severina says, gripping the freezing railing with her hands. The cold metal stings her skin, but she pays it no mind. ‘They said that I am weak. That one day I will break like he did and I should be put to death before it can happen. They told me that my soul will go nowhere when I die because the Emperor has no place for cowards.’

  Severina turns away from the ocean and looks at her sister.

  ‘But that is not why I fought them either,’ she says. ‘I fought them because they said the same of you, and I will not have it.’

  Lucia puts out her hand and grips Severina’s shoulder. It is a strong grip.

  ‘My fierce sister,’ she says, softly. ‘You are not weak, nor a coward. You will never break, and neither will I. That is how you prove yourself. Not by fighting those who doubt you, but by proving yourself beyond all doubt. Honour, duty and faith. That is all that matters.’

  Lucia’s dark eyes are unflinching. Proud. She has never looked so much like their mother.

  ‘And that is how we will earn our place at the Emperor’s side,’ she says.

  Five

  Fighting for every breath

  The mess hall is busy and noisy by the time Fel arrives. His kinfolk have cleared the long hall, dragging the benches and tables out of the middle, before making a circle in chalk in the space that’s left. The mess hall is built of the same flakboard and corrugated plasteel as the other large buildings at the muster, so it does a little better than a tent at keeping out the wind and the ever-present Laxian rain. It is warm from the strip-heaters placed at the edges and from the many people present. Smoke coils in the air from leaf tobacco and the lanterns on the tables. Tonight, there are not just Antari in the mess. Fel spots a handful of logisticians and Munitorum support crew in jumpsuits and work boots. He knows some of them from transit. Some from resupply. There are a couple of Navy pilots too. They aren’t wearing their pins or their dress jackets either, but Fel knows they must be from the 4470th Naval Wing, because there are no others of their kind fighting in the major city or the forges. All of the outsiders sit together around one table, their uniforms a blot of colour in a sea of Antari green and grey.

  Yulia Crys stands in the middle of the chalk circle under the flickering lumens, talking to another of her squad called Kane, who is helping Crys wrap her hands for fighting. The combat engineer is dressed in her fatigues and a vest, but she’s barefoot and without her flak armour or her patches or pins. It’s the way of it, and it always has been. On the nights before a new deployment, the Antari fight for the joy of it. The fights only have two rules. No weapons, and the only way to stop it is to yield or go out cold. There is one more rule, which applies to everyone under the roof, fighting or not. There is no rank, no class. Everyone here is at ease, finding peace in something, for a few hours at least.

  Fel walks past lines of benches and takes a seat opposite Yuri Hale. The others at his table are Sale Devri, Captain of Blue Company, and Gereth Awd of the Wyldfolk. Lara Koy of the Mistvypers is there too, sitting with a short-necked lute across her, playing soft notes that Fel can just about catch. Three of Koy’s fingers are augmetics, but the song is no worse for it. There are tin cups at their elbows. Hale’s, Devri’s and Koy’s are half-full. Awd’s is empty, but he has a second in his hand.

  ‘Now look who it is,’ Awd says. His voice is a lazy slur. ‘Andren bloody Fel.’

  ‘It is,’ Fel says. ‘Good eyes on you.’

  Awd laughs so hard that he coughs and almost loses what’s left of his drink.

  ‘Don’t see you often on these nights,’ Koy says, without looking up. ‘Not you, or yours.’

  She’s right. It’s not often that the Duskhounds join on nights like this one. It’s not for a lack of wanting to, but more that they are separate in this too, just as they are in mourning. They don’t fit here, because they don’t fight unless they are training, or killing. They don’t drink or bet. Those things are bred out at the scholam as surely as others are bred in, like how to tread quietly and which bones are the best to break. Those reasons stand for Fel, too, but for him there is another. Fel has taken to spending the hours before they deploy speaking with Raine instead. That is where he is at ease. Where he finds his peace. He knows for a fact that not one of them would understand it, because all they see of her is the peaked cap. The greatcoat. The gun. That’s how it needs to be, for her and for them. So Fel keeps their meetings a secret, hidden even from his Duskhounds. Secrets don’t sit well with him, nor lies, but when it comes to Raine, he doesn’t have a choice.

  Because he cannot be without her.

  ‘He is likely just tired of seeing Crys win,’ Devri says, with a snort.

  Koy laughs.

  Awd drains his drink and slams his cup on the table. ‘Aren’t we all?’ he says. ‘Speaking of which…’ Awd turns in his seat as Crys shouts for their attention. She is alone in the circle now.

  ‘Third fight,’ Crys says, as it goes all but quiet. ‘Who will it be?’

  There’s murmuring. Laughter. The soft t
wang of the strings of Koy’s lute. The Antari start to clap in time.

  ‘You’re here now,’ Devri says, grinning at Fel. ‘Seems a waste not to try.’

  Fel shakes his head. ‘You know better than to ask me that.’

  Awd sighs. ‘Such a waste,’ he says. ‘Might win something if I bet on you.’

  ‘Come on now,’ Crys shouts. ‘Or are we all tired and soft?’

  There’s a cheer from the next table along and Fel sees one of the Munitorum logistics crew stand up. He is a good deal shorter than Yulia Crys, but he is built strong. His right arm is augmetic from the elbow down. It’ll hit hard.

  ‘Try me,’ Crys says. ‘If you can remember how it is to fight after spending so long moving crates.’

  She makes a show of cracking her knuckles. He laughs and takes a bow.

  ‘My name is Leonar Krall,’ he says, stepping up to the circle’s edge. ‘And after watching you, I do not think it is me who needs reminding.’

  Awd laughs. He pushes a couple of crumpled ration slips into the centre of the table to join the ones already sitting there.

  ‘All in for Krall,’ he says. ‘Perhaps he can win me something.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ says Devri, before looking over at Fel. ‘If you’re not going to fight, then tell me you’re going to bet.’

  ‘Let him be,’ Hale says. ‘You know he won’t.’

  Devri shrugs, and bets on Crys. Hale does the same. Koy shakes her head and keeps playing her lute. All around them, the Antari watching bang their hands on the tabletops as Crys and Krall bow for the fight. Crys does it with theatre and a grin on her face. Fel can see what she’s going to do before it happens.

  ‘You’re winning nothing,’ he says to Awd, as Crys snaps up from the bow and knocks Krall reeling. A welter of blood hits the flakboard floor and the Antari cheer.