Honourbound - Rachel Harrison Read online

  ‘No,’ Zane whispers. ‘No.’

  Then Ommatid puts her hands on either side of his head and Rol starts to scream too. The fire reaches so high and burns so brightly that for a moment it is all that Zane can see, writhing and contorting in shapes that look like faces. The screaming is deafening, from the gifted and Ommatid and Rol alike, and Zane finds she cannot help but scream with them.

  But then as suddenly as it began, the screaming stops. Zane knows that every one of the psykers in the nine caskets are dead. She feels their souls twist away as the fire burns down to reveal Ommatid still standing, and Rol, still sitting in the throne.

  But now he is changed.

  He is awake, his grey eyes focused and clear. He is not bruised, or injured. All of that blood on his face has gone.

  Save for the fate-mark that has opened in his skin.

  ‘No,’ Zane says, again.

  And the Sanctum of Bones blows away like smoke, returning her to Antar’s coast’s edge.

  ‘See,’ Ommatid says. ‘Fates can be changed, for a price.’

  Zane is still shaking from the sight of the caskets and the fire and the fate-mark. They are indelible, marks like that. They seep all the way through to the soul. Zane presses harder on her darkwood knife.

  ‘Why did you do it?’ she asks. ‘Why Rol?’

  ‘Because fate is the sum of countless instances,’ Ommatid says. ‘In order for something grand to unfold, many small things must happen first. Particular paths must be chosen at the correct time. Lives must be ended, or spared. And of course, blood must be spilt.’

  ‘That is why you are telling me all of this,’ Zane says, softly. ‘Because you believe it will allow something grand to unfold.’

  ‘Clever little thing,’ Ommatid says, with a proud smile that turns Zane’s stomach.

  ‘The fate-engines,’ Zane says. ‘What will you do with them?’

  Ommatid laughs. It is a vicious noise.

  ‘Oh, my sweet,’ she says. ‘It is not what we will do with them that should concern you. It is what the manticore will do with them.’

  ‘The manticore,’ Zane rasps. ‘Who is the manticore?’

  But Cretia Ommatid does not answer her. Instead, she laughs again.

  The two Duskhounds left standing are both scored and scorched. Bruised and bloodied. When Tyl breathes, she sounds winded. There is a wide, dark bloodstain on her fatigues from a bad wound in her side. Jeth is dragging a limp and he has had to cut his face to ease the bruising trying to close his right eye. Raine knows that it isn’t really the wounds that hurt them. They are built to take punishment. Used to physical pain. What will hurt them is the fact that only two of them are left standing.

  And Raine knows just how badly that will hurt Andren Fel, too, when he finds out.

  ‘What happened up there?’ she asks.

  They are moving up through the Sanctum of Bones, through a chamber lined with boiling vats, sluices and catch-trays. Clusters of candles stand around them, half as tall as the Antari are. Polished skulls watch them from recessed niches on the walls. Tyl is still wearing her Duskhounds mask, so Raine cannot see her face, but there is a hesitation in her before she answers. A visible tensing.

  ‘They tried to break us. Ommatid tried.’ Tyl puts her hand to that wound at her waist. ‘She underestimated what it would take.’

  ‘The shielding was fueled by witches,’ Jeth says. He has that same sour tone to his voice that the other Antari do when saying the word witches. ‘Nine of them.’

  ‘They kept saying something, over and over,’ Tyl says. ‘Protect the engines.’

  ‘Engines.’

  Raine stops and turns to look at Lydia Zane. Lye and Rath drop her bodily to the ground as lightning arcs from her scalp. The psyker lands on her hands and knees.

  ‘Throne,’ says Lye. ‘Oh, Throne.’

  Rath and Lye both take a step back from the psyker. Raine doesn’t. She moves closer and drops into a crouch so she can hear exactly what Zane is saying.

  ‘Engines,’ Zane slurs again. ‘Fate-engines.’

  Then she raises her hand and points, trembling, past Raine, before slumping forwards once more.

  ‘What in the hells are fate-engines?’ Hale asks.

  ‘Something definitely worth burning,’ Tyl says, coldly.

  Raine nods. She does not know any better than they do what the fate-engines are, but Sylar’s order from the briefing is ringing in her ears.

  Capture. Excise. Preserve.

  The fate-engines are what the Kavrone general wants. She would stake her honour on it. Cold runs through Raine like a winter’s gale as she looks to Vander and his Dragoons. They are still moving up through the chamber in the direction that Zane pointed.

  Towards the fate-engines.

  ‘We move,’ Raine says, as the Kavrone engage with the Sighted once more. ‘Now.’

  Hale and his command squad are slow, because of Zane. Too slow to keep up with Severina Raine as she enters the fray alongside the Kavrone Dragoons. She cannot let Vander and his regiment get away from her. Cannot let him reach the fate-engines first. She runs the edge, alongside Wyck and his Wyldfolk. Gereth Awd’s flamer fills the air with smoke and ashes. Yulia Crys fights like a brawler. The two new recruits stick together, protecting one another. Wyck is out alone, in the centre of the storm, like always.

  Raine grabs hold of the wrist of a Sighted fanatic who tries to cut her with a jagged glass knife, and twists it. She feels the bones break. He drops the knife, but he doesn’t give up on trying to cut her, reaching for her throat with his other hand. His hand is a silver claw of curved blades that Raine catches on the blade of her sword.

  ‘For those who truly see,’ the fanatic rasps. ‘For the lords of fate and change!’

  ‘No,’ Raine says. ‘For the Emperor.’

  And she fires Penance at point-blank range. The fanatic spills backwards. His black blood hits the ceiling and hits Raine too. She spits onto the tiles before turning to face the next threat with her limbs burning. She refuses to tire. Refuses to slow. Raine strikes and parries and takes cuts in return until she is alongside Vander. The Kavrone’s commissar is cut and bleeding too. Between every swing of Raine’s sword she sees Vander cleave fanatics in two with his own. He kicks and punches and fights for his life. Around him, the Kavrone make clean shots with their modified rifles. Centre-mass, like a combat drill.

  Like a firing squad.

  ‘Push through!’ Vander shouts. ‘Courage in His sight!’

  The words ring in Raine’s ears. She remembers hearing them from Lucia, all of those years ago. Remembers the wildness of her sister’s eyes, and the words that followed shortly after.

  Faith has been broken.

  Severina Raine has spent a decade hating her sister. Dismantling every memory that she held dear in the belief that Lucia betrayed the crusade. She has built walls around herself and her heart, and put all of that anger and hate into every battle she has fought, only to find out that it is all built on lies.

  Raine falters then, slowing just for an instant. It is how she sees so clearly the moment in which Vander sends a Sighted fanatic staggering backwards with a strike from his sword. The fanatic falls flat on his back and his layered, padded coat opens, revealing the cluster of grenades strapped to the Sighted’s chest.

  ‘Your Emperor cannot see you here,’ the Sighted says, and he laughs.

  And before Raine or Vander can do a thing about it, he triggers the bomb vest.

  The explosion takes Wyck off his feet and puts him against the wall, hard. The impact drives the air out of his lungs and fractures something in his chest. He sits there for a second, struggling to breathe. He shakes his head, but it just makes his ears ring worse. White blossoms of light print on his eyelids when he blinks. There’s a fire roaring in the chamber. Everything is getting thi
ck with smoke. He can taste it. Ash and death.

  Just like Cawter all over again.

  Around him, his Wyldfolk are down. He hears moans and screams under the ringing in his ears and sees Crys lying there. She’s not moving.

  ‘Get up,’ Wyck says to himself.

  He puts his hand out and tries to get to his feet, but his legs go and he falls again. He thinks maybe there’s something fractured there too. The fall jolts the air back out of his chest. He can’t do it. Can’t get on his feet. Can’t get to them.

  Not on his own.

  Wyck takes one of the vials from a pouch at his belt. The liquid inside it is dark red, like old blood. His heart accelerates just from holding it. He knows the risk. Knows that he should have listened to Lye when she told him to stop. But he can’t, because without it he can’t get up.

  Wyck uncaps the auto-injector with his thumb and punches it into his leg. He takes a deep breath and counts it out and waits for the stimms to hit him. For his vision to tunnel and sharpen. For his heart to fight like it’s trying to get free. Then he gets to his feet. It hurts so bad that it makes him shout, but he doesn’t fall. He staggers through the ash and the smoke over to where Crys is lying. There is blood matting her hair and running down her face.

  ‘Yulia,’ Wyck says.

  He drops to one knee and puts his hand on her shoulder. Crys snaps awake and swings for him. It’s only the stimms that make him quick enough to grab her hand and block it.

  ‘Whoa,’ he says. ‘That’s enough of that.’

  Her eyes go wide and she rolls to sit up. Wyck helps her onto her feet.

  ‘Sarge,’ she says, her voice raw. ‘What happened?’

  Wyck remembers what he saw in the seconds before the explosion blinded him and took him off his feet. The Kavrone Dragoons firing their lasguns, and in amongst them, the two commissars. Raine and Vander. Wyck looks over to where the fire is burning itself out. The blast put a hole straight through the floor, cutting the Wyldfolk off from the rest of the regiment, who are stirring on the other side. It turned several of the Kavrone into nothing more than a mess. He can’t see any amongst the dead that wear the black. No sign of Raine.

  ‘I think they might have killed our commissar,’ Wyck says to Crys.

  ‘Wyck.’ Hale’s voice is hoarse over the vox. ‘Are you still alive over there?’

  ‘For the most part,’ Wyck says. ‘What now?’

  ‘Keep moving,’ Hale says. ‘Run the edge. We have the witch slowing us, but we will make our way around to find you.’

  ‘Run the edge,’ Wyck says, as if there’s ever another way to live. ‘Understood.’

  Severina Raine comes to with a start and raises her pistol instinctively, pointing it into the empty darkness. It takes her a moment to lower it again, and to calm her heart. Raine sits herself up. The action makes her cough, bringing up masonry dust and blood. She spits on the stone floor. Her head rings from the explosion.

  The explosion.

  Raine looks up to see the collapse. It must be twenty feet above her. Everything up there is on fire and thick with smoke. Raine can still hear las-fire echoing down from above, but on this level, all is quiet save for the settling of rubble. She has to get back up to her regiment and back into the fight. Raine gets to her feet slowly, leaning on the rubble to do it. She tastes blood again. Everything aches as the world turns around her. Very still bodies lie everywhere. Most are Sighted, and yet more are clad in Kavrone blue, but there is one in Antari splinter. All of them are surrounded by dark puddles of their own blood. Raine checks the Antari first. It is Tian, of the Wyldfolk. He is burned so badly that she can only tell by what’s left of his tattoos. The Kavrone are just as bad. Just as dead.

  Raine stops and tries to catch her breath. It is coming short and shallow. She puts her fingers to the vox-bead in her ear.

  ‘Hale,’ she says. ‘Acknowledge.’

  There’s a roar of static that tells Raine her vox-link is shot. She winces and takes the bead out. With the static gone, and the ringing in her ears fading slowly, Raine can hear another sound.

  Someone else, struggling to breathe.

  She raises her pistol and snaps the stablight live. The beam illuminates the space. The collapsed stonework and shattered chunks of flagstone. Shards of glass.

  And Lukas Vander, slumped against the rubble, pinned in place by the length of rebar that has punched through him at the shoulder. His right arm hangs at his side, useless.

  ‘Raine,’ he says.

  She moves over to him, her boots sticking in his blood as she does so. Vander’s face is drained white, but he is still scowling at her. His breathing is shallow too. It sounds wet.

  ‘I hate to say it,’ he says, between breaths. ‘But I need your help.’

  Raine doesn’t move. She is still thinking about the fate-engines and about broken faith. About that moment at the commissariat hub when his composure broke, just for an instant.

  She knows that she will not get another chance like this one to know the truth about Lukas Vander.

  ‘Raine,’ Vander says, again. ‘Are you addled? Stop staring at me and help me.’

  ‘I will help you,’ Raine says. ‘But first I want you to tell me what really happened to Mardan Tula.’

  ‘What?’ he asks, blinking into the light.

  ‘You heard what I said,’ Raine says.

  Vander’s scowl deepens. He struggles against the rebar but gives up as the bloodstain on his tunic spreads and his breathing starts to whine in his chest.

  ‘You saw what happened to Tula,’ he snarls.

  Raine drops into a crouch so that she can look him in the eyes and read him more easily.

  ‘I saw,’ she says. ‘But I don’t believe it, and if you were any kind of commissar then neither would you.’

  ‘You have no right to question my purpose,’ Vander says, through his teeth. ‘You are a damned half-breed with cowardice written in your blood.’

  Raine knows that he means every word. Vander has never been anything but honest about how he feels about her. It’s that honesty that makes her question whether he could really be complicit in the actions of his regiment.

  ‘Answer my question,’ she says. ‘Tell me what you think really happened to Mardan Tula.’

  Vander exhales a long breath.

  ‘Fine,’ he says, through his teeth. ‘I believe that it was suicide, just like the reports say.’ He spits blood onto the tiles. ‘I believe that Mardan Tula invited the rope around his neck, even if he did not set it himself. He thought himself above consequences. Above reproach. None of us are that, save for the Emperor.’

  ‘So who do you believe would want Tula dead?’ Raine asks.

  To her surprise, Vander laughs. It is short-lived, and sounds agonising.

  ‘Everyone,’ he says. ‘We are commissars. Every soul in the regiments wants us dead.’

  He gestures weakly past her to where the ceiling collapsed. ‘If you think for a moment that any one of those ferals you serve with are weeping over you right now, then you are more of a fool than I thought.’

  ‘I would not expect them to,’ Raine says. ‘I expect them to serve, and to fight. To do so with courage in the Emperor’s name. And I trust them to know that I will have a bullet or a blade waiting if they don’t.’

  Vander snorts. ‘Trust,’ he says. ‘There is no place in this world for trust.’

  ‘So you trust no one,’ Raine says.

  ‘Not a soul,’ Vander says. ‘Not the Kavrone. Not you, or any of the others we serve with. Certainly not Tula.’

  He shifts slightly, trying to ease the pressure on his shoulder. The rebar grinds against his bones.

  ‘Not like you,’ Vander says. ‘You trust your Antari, despite all that they are. Despite what you are.’

  ‘No,’ Raine says. ‘I do not tru
st the Antari. I understand them and I know their limits. What will drive them, and what will break them. There is a difference.’

  Even as Raine says them, she knows that the words aren’t entirely true. There is one soul amongst the Antari that she trusts, but she’ll be damned if she’ll say so to Lukas Vander.

  ‘And Tula?’ Vander says.

  ‘Tula was commissariat,’ Raine says, by way of answer. ‘He was a good man.’

  ‘A good man,’ Vander says. ‘Do you know that it was him who told me what your sister did? How she betrayed the crusade by leaking information to our enemies. How she tried to get the Lord-General Militant and half of High Command killed.’

  ‘That’s a lie,’ Raine snarls.

  Vander shakes his head. His breathing rattles in his chest. ‘Why would I lie about it?’ he asks. ‘I gain nothing from speaking ill of the dead. Despite what you may think of me, I have no interest in being cruel for the sake of it.’

  ‘What cause could he possibly have to tell you that?’ Raine asks.

  ‘His own,’ Vander says. ‘Mardan Tula was a political animal, Raine. He told people what they needed to hear if it would get him what he wanted. That’s what I meant when I said that he set his own noose. That kind of act makes enemies.’

  ‘So you do believe that Tula was murdered,’ she says. ‘But you are willing to let the act go unpunished because you feel that he deserved it?’

  ‘I never said that,’ Vander says. ‘All crimes must be punished.’

  The words are half of an old adage that Raine heard a hundred times or more during her training.

  ‘Every slight answered for,’ she says, completing it.

  Vander’s green eyes are distant. Unfocused.

  ‘Do you know what it is about you that I so hate, aside from your blood?’ Vander’s voice is weak now. It has lost all of its edges. ‘I hate your honour, and your loyalty. The fact that you sound so much like a commissar.’

  He takes a ragged breath.

  ‘I hate the fact that you are going to help me now,’ he says. ‘And that I am going to owe you for it.’

  Raine hates it too. She doesn’t want to help him, nor does she want his debt, but she cannot leave him to die without cause or confession. It is not how she does things.