The Buried Dagger - James Swallow Read online

  ‘Forces are converging. It is known to me that the Sisters of Silence have quit the Somnus Citadel and returned to Terra to regroup,’ Garro went on. ‘They would not leave their base on Luna without good cause.’

  ‘And the Seventy? What of them?’ Rubio referred to a small group of Death Guard loyalists, who had originally accompanied Garro on his desperate mission to Terra aboard the starship Eisenstein. Since their Legion had been declared Excommunicate Traitoris, those warriors had been held in abeyance with their future still undecided.

  ‘Their numbers are far less than that now,’ Garro admitted. ‘The Sigillite gave me no answer as to their fate when I demanded it of him, save to tell me that they live. I suspect they are somewhere on Terra.’ He looked away. ‘This war has taken everything they knew from them.’

  Rubio sensed that Garro was speaking as much of himself as he was of his former cohorts. He is hiding something. The psyker was certain. From the moment we first met on Calth’s blasted landscape, I’ve known it.

  Rubio reached inside himself, fashioning the most subtle of psychic probes. Perhaps the mysteries guarded by Malcador were beyond his ability, but for all his strength of will Nathaniel Garro was not.

  But when Rubio reached out, his telepathic power ebbed away, drawn from his target by a subtle, abyssal darkness that dragged it in like matter towards a black hole. Rubio halted, the colour draining from his face. For the second time in less than a day, he sensed a negative shadow in the warp, close enough for his psyche to touch it.

  ‘Rubio? Speak!’ Garro saw the shift in his expression, and the battle-captain pulled his bolt pistol from its dusty holster, expecting the worst. ‘What is it? Another psyker?’

  ‘No…’ The null-void in the unseen psionic current around him became clearer. ‘The very opposite, in point of fact. There is a pariah…’ Rubio turned and found the source of the effect. ‘Here.’

  He pointed towards a collapsed section of the platform, a collection of damaged frames and support panels that had once been part of a habitat module. A metal hatch was visible beneath a pile of wreckage, and Rubio moved towards it. The closer he got, the greater the suffocating negative sensation became. This felt very different to the odd, atonal psionic emptiness he had experienced with Wyntor, closer to the horribly familiar, soulless, sickly cold Rubio knew from previous engagements with a blank. He held his breath, letting his weight settle on the broken decking. A faint sound reached him from within the hab-module. A voice? He could not be certain.

  Garro heard it too. ‘I will follow your lead,’ he said.

  Rubio nodded and moved to the rim of the hatch, grabbing at the latches holding it shut. The crystals of his psychic hood emitted tiny, high-pitched crackles as their delicate structures reacted to the presence of the null. Being this close to the deadening effect repulsed him, and instinct screamed at Rubio to fall back, out of range. He gritted his teeth and held firm. ‘Ready?’

  Garro nodded, and Rubio gave the latches a savage twist, snapping both off with a squeak of breaking metal. Pulled open by gravity, the hatch swung wide and slammed against the frame with a concussive bang. Garro was already stepping inside, leading with his bolter.

  ‘In the Emperor’s name, show yourself!’ Garro swept left and right, peering into the dimness. His genhanced vision adjusted instantly, bringing the jumbled interior of the broken compartment into sharp relief. Amid piles of wreckage, he saw an amber-skinned woman garbed in rags, her wrists and ankles bound by heavy manacles. Chains pooled around her where she crouched on the floor. Despite her dirty and dishevelled appearance, the woman had the spare, muscular build of a warrior, and Garro noted a broad scar across her chin that could only have come from a sword blade. Her scalp was bare but for a fuzz of coppery hair, and she bore wounds along the visible skin of her arms that looked freshly self-inflicted.

  She did not seem to notice him. Instead, the woman stared blankly at the walls and muttered to herself, rocking slowly backwards and forwards.

  Garro’s aim did not falter. The woman appeared to be no threat to him, but in the war of lies and rebellion he was fighting, it was hard not to suspect everything as a falsehood on first sight. He closed in, aware of Rubio waiting at the door. The psyker was reticent to come any nearer.

  The air inside the compartment was heavy with dust and the odour of sweat. Garro suspected that the woman had been a prisoner in here for some time – but for what reason, and to what end? ‘Identify yourself,’ he said, taking care to measure his voice. ‘What are you doing here?’

  Still she ignored his presence. At length, Garro frowned and returned his pistol to its holster, dropping to one knee so that he could look the woman in the eye. He was close enough now to hear what she was saying.

  ‘Schism. Broken, sundered.’ They were the same words, repeating at the interval of every other breath she took. ‘Schism. Broken, sundered.’

  ‘I do not understand,’ he said, trying once more to engage her. Gently, Garro reached out and touched her face, but she did not react. He saw something on her neck, the lines of raised scarification in a defined shape – a crimson eagle, wings spread and talons bared.

  The symbol was familiar to him, and suddenly things made sense. The woman was an Untouchable, a psychic blank, but with a warrior’s aspect to her. Carefully, Garro reached up to her throat, and opened the grimy tunic she wore to reveal the skin above her right collarbone. There, laser-tattooed in stark black ink was a string of numerals and text in High Gothic. A name, a rank and a serial code.

  ‘Malida Jydasian.’ Garro read her name back to her, and there was the briefest of flickers in the woman’s eyes. But the moment passed, and she returned to her rhythm of repeated speech. He sighed, and guided her to her feet, pausing only to snap off the chains holding her in place. Applying steady pressure to her back, Garro impelled Jydasian to take one step, and then another, guiding her to the hatchway and out into the cold light of day.

  Rubio backed away as the two of them emerged. ‘Do you know her?’

  Garro shook his head. ‘I know what she is.’ He indicated the eagle scar. ‘This woman is a Null Maiden of the Silent Sisterhood.’

  ‘But she speaks. Their kind are oath-sworn never to utter a sound.’ The other warrior narrowed his eyes. ‘What is she doing here? And in such a state?’

  ‘I do not know,’ Garro admitted. In their missions to hunt down the rogue psykers who threatened the safety of the Imperium, the Sisters of Silence rarely operated alone, with their preferred tactic being the deployment of a huntress team numbering six or more. But if there were more within the Walking City’s environs, Rubio would doubtless have sensed them. The most logical explanation was that Jydasian had been captured by some insurrectionist faction operating on the platform, but even that seemed hard to accept. Garro had fought alongside the Silent Sisterhood, against the jorgall at Iota Horologii, and their fortitude and martial prowess had greatly impressed him. Among humans, there were few warriors who had earned that praise, and he imagined that none of the Sisters would submit easily to captivity. The distant, hollow look in Jydasian’s eyes and her toneless manner suggested that it was not only her physical form that had been maltreated, but also her mind as well. ‘We need to get her to safety,’ Garro concluded.

  ‘Indeed,’ said Malcador.

  Garro and Rubio stiffened as the Sigillite made his way down the slope of a fallen wall, measuring out each step with a thud from his towering staff upon the metal.

  ‘Always watching,’ Rubio said quietly, throwing Garro a sideways look.

  Garro’s lip curled, and he eyed the figure in the hooded robes. He knew he was looking at an illusion, cast telepathically across the planet to this location, but still it was hard not to feel daunted in its presence. He chose to mask that with acerbity. ‘Lord Regent. Can you not simply use a vox-channel, like anyone else?’

  ‘Quicker this way,
’ Malcador replied. ‘More direct. And less chance of my commands being creatively interpreted.’ He halted at the bottom of the fallen wall, and seemed to become insubstantial for a moment, before the image reasserted its solidity.

  Garro glanced at the woman. The pariah’s null effect was strong enough that it could affect the Sigillite’s ghostly presence.

  ‘This woman is dead,’ Malcador pronounced, examining the freed prisoner. ‘Or so her sisters believe. She was a Witchseeker of the Thunder Vane cadre, but the rolls list her as missing, presumed killed in action during a pogrom on one of the Mercury orbitals. That was over six months ago.’

  ‘Did you know we would find her here?’ asked Rubio.

  ‘No.’ Malcador shook his head, and there was genuine concern in his tone. ‘It’s rare that I encounter the unexpected. I hadn’t anticipated coming across another so soon…’

  ‘Another?’ Garro seized on the word.

  Beneath his hood, the Sigillite’s brow furrowed, as if he had allowed something to be said that was better left hidden. Garro knew him better than that, however. Malcador never uttered a word without first weighing every possible import of it. ‘There have been others, discovered in similar condition.’

  ‘How many?’

  Malcador went on as if he had not heard Rubio’s question. ‘This is a delicate time. It is important that the attention of our disparate forces are not split by secondary concerns.’ He looked Garro in the eye. ‘Nathaniel. You will take the Witchseeker to a place of safety. Coordinates will be transmitted to you on an encrypted data-channel.’ Then he glanced at Rubio. ‘Ensure the Walking City is secure, then stand down. I will find a new assignment for you and the others in due course.’ The Sigillite turned and retraced his steps, back up to the top of the ramp.

  ‘If you are not really here,’ Garro called after him, ‘then why are you walking away?’

  ‘If I vanish like a mirage…’ The hooded figure gave a low chuckle as he reached the crest of the broken wall, passing out of sight. ‘Well. Where would the theatre be in that?’

  ‘Irksome, indeed,’ Rubio said, staring after the hooded figure. ‘These matters grow more complicated by the day, and as always, he does his best to reveal nothing to us.’

  ‘Malcador is a creature of artifice,’ said Garro. ‘If you expect anything other than that from him, you will be disappointed.’

  A reply began to form on Rubio’s lips, but he held it in check. Garro was right, up to a point – but Rubio could not shake the memory of the Sigillite’s behaviour up on the Eagle’s Highway, before the man Wyntor had chosen to die. He had seen truth then, some tiny fraction of who Malcador really was, and it sat poorly with him.

  Garro looked away as Varren and the others approached from the far side of the tumbledown plaza where they stood, and he signalled with a cutting motion. ‘We have our orders, then. You will take command of this team.’

  ‘The World Eater won’t like that,’ said Rubio. ‘He outranks me.’

  ‘Not any more.’ Garro tapped the ghostly mark etched into his battle armour. ‘Do as Malcador said, but be swift about it. I have another task for you.’

  ‘Oh?’ Rubio eyed him, while warily observing the woman Jydasian from the corner of his sight.

  Garro studied the freed prisoner. ‘Why does he not turn this unfortunate over to her fellow Untouchables? I warrant he will not reveal her existence to the Silent Sisterhood.’

  ‘What benefit would that have?’ Was Malcador fearful of alarming the Witchseekers, or distracting them from Horus’ invasion? Rubio’s personal antipathy for blanks aside, the Sisters of Silence were fellow warriors in the Emperor’s service and he disliked the idea of misleading them.

  The auspex unit on Garro’s belt gave a melodic chime and he glanced at it, reading off a string of data. ‘As good as his word. A location in the Polar Radwastes… I will need to secure some transport.’ He frowned, then fixed Rubio with a hard look. ‘Search this location,’ he ordered. ‘Find some of the survivors, get what information you can from them. Someone must have known about a captive being held here. I want to know how Jydasian came to be in the Walking City. It is a long way from Mercury.’

  ‘Malcador said nothing about investigating,’ Rubio noted.

  ‘I know. Do it anyway.’ Garro showed a slight smile.

  Rubio nodded, accepting his part in this act of disobedience. ‘How far do you want us to follow her trail?’

  Garro placed a hand on the muttering woman’s shoulder and guided her away. ‘Until we have illumination. We will know it when we find it, yes?’

  Interval III

  The Grave Lies

  [The planet Barbarus; before]

  A thin liquid precipitate drooled from the stonework of the walls, following a black furrow gouged in the heavy grey bricks. The ticking of the drips upon the undecorated floor marked the passage of time.

  Mortarion sat in solitude, atop a low bench heaped with the hides of crag-dogs, warmed by an odorous fire of petrochemical tar. The blue-yellow light of the flames illuminated the pages of the book in front of him, and drew shadows from the makeshift nib of the pen he pulled across the acid-bleached paper.

  The entry in his journal for that day might have described any number of others. A battle on the escarpments against a rival of Necare. I killed many. My foster father was displeased with me. He gripped the pen in his hand and squeezed it until the metal creaked. This was his life, repeated over and over. It seemed there would never come an end to the cycle. He was the High Overlord’s champion murder-maker, his battlefield tool, and would never be anything more.

  Mortarion let the pen drop and brooded, glaring into the depths of the flames. Other books, similarly bound in scraps of old leather or lesser skins, lay in piles among the shadows. At first, Necare had forbidden the young Mortarion to learn the texts of the Overlords, in an attempt to control his education. But the boy had grown fast, faster he suspected than was normal for a typical human, and with that growth in muscle and mass Mortarion’s questing intellect had also blossomed. Eventually, the High One saw the merit in having him taught, and books were brought to Mortarion’s citadel, downslope from the master’s own impregnable fortress.

  Most of them were dry tomes on the tactics of warfare and the many manners in which humans could be killed, or works depicting knowledge gleaned from dissections and grotesque experiments. Others contained scraps of contradictory accountings from the planet’s past, of wars between the feuding Overlords and the endless cycle of conflict between these immortals. Some suggested that the Overlords had come from another place and taken up residence on Barbarus, inflicting their callous rule upon the lessers. There were hints they might have once been human – or humanlike – until a change had been wrought upon them in the wake of a cataclysmic pact with a monstrous, unknown power. With the reality lost after thousands of years, the full truth was nowhere to be found.

  The boy devoured them all, read and reread them time and again, until he retained every word in his memory. This eidetic recall he possessed had been one of the first secrets he kept from his foster father, and when he found he had no need to turn the physical pages any more, Mortarion secretly soaked off the ink upon them. The newly blanked books became a record of his hopes, his fears and his simmering fury.

  Perhaps that younger version of Mortarion had believed that by giving form to these things, he would find a measure of peace; but as he looked back over past writings, all he saw served only to confirm his certainty of the bleak inequity of his existence.

  Abruptly, the youth stood and stalked away, startling a servile standing in the doorway at the far end of the hall. The patchwork golem retreated out of sight and Mortarion watched it go. Like the pikemen who had marched with him, the servile was a flesh-gathered slave, made out of parts of the dead and animated by the warped magicks conjured by the Overlords. It and all the
others in Mortarion’s citadel were nominally under his command, but that was a thin veil over the truth. Necare was the master here, and Mortarion knew that the golems watched him at his foster father’s behest. Like the citadel, it was a lie meant to pacify him. The stone walls of this place were a prison for the youth, not a domicile.

  He wandered to one of the thick armourglass doors in the far wall, the once-transparent panes now grimy and green with slicks of greasy algae. Outside, the mists were running thin on fast winds up from the valley below. The gusts were channelled through a narrow pass that Mortarion’s abode overlooked, and on some days, the haze hung in sheets so heavy and cloying that he could barely see ten metres ahead of him, the poison in them making his breathing heavy. At other times, hard squalls would push the clouds towards the high peaks. He remembered hearing sounds, on the rarest of occasions. The crackle of gunfire, perhaps even voices, carried from the distant settlements of the lessers far below.

  Barbarus did not often permit such reverie. This feral world was an unforgiving environment, and even in its desolation it did not permit the slightest hint of beauty. All native life upon it was ugly and venomous, from the simplest poison lichens coating the rocky tors to the hook-toothed lamprey serpents that writhed beneath the surface of the murky earth. The very air itself, a smouldering black-orange at the highest reaches, bled toxins into everything. Excited by radiation from a sun seen rarely as a white smudge in the high heavens, the clouded atmosphere of Barbarus wept acidic rain and bred a bestiary of noxious miasmas. The higher one climbed, the denser the poisons became. Up there, nothing natural could live. Only the Overlords survived unaided upon the tallest peaks.

  Mortarion peered upward, picking out the jagged, broken teeth of the Scarred Mount, tallest of the Barbarun ranges – and there atop it, barely visible in the shadowed night, the distant watchfires burning against the black monolith of Necare’s castle.