The Mistress of Threads - John French Read online

  [question redacted]

  ‘Yes, that was when the last two of Sonnus’ guards moved. Their robes tore off as they moved. They were just a blur. Claws and limbs and shining shells like polished bone. The figures in black… the Angels – that’s what they were, weren’t they? The Emperor’s Angels of Death – charged. And Sonnus reached out his hand and there was lightning on his fingers and he, he…’

  [question redacted]

  ‘I don’t know. The doors just unlocked and there were people from the household, people I knew or thought I knew, with violet light in their eyes and guns in their hands. The Angels did not stop. I saw one of them reach Sonnus and put a sword through his chest and lift him up like a roasting carcass on a spit. He… I…’

  [question redacted]

  ‘I don’t remember. Someone fired grenades into the room and suddenly I couldn’t see or breathe. There were just the flashes and roars through the fog and the shadows of the Angels.’

  [question redacted]

  ‘Yes, I think Mistress Morio was alive when I last saw her.’

  [statement redacted]

  ‘What is going to happen to me? I want to go home. Please can you tell me when I can go home?’

  Interrogation transcript complete.

  Hed-Sut was transferred to penal colony Stygos-VI as an acknowledgement of his freedom from taint.

 

 

  Operational summary report from Cytos Purge Stages I-VI

  Geresh orbital and void facility targets – Cleansed by five companies of Suraso mercenaries. Three target clusters eliminated on Gerrish surface by Dominicus Prime Death Clans.

  Ero system – Void macro storage complex, purged by three companies of von Castellan Household voidsmen.

  Mithras – Strike by Deathwatch Kill Company. All details redacted.

  Asoro – Manse of the House Morio destroyed by macro orbital strike. Zero warning given to maximise casualties. Sweep of debris completed by Arbitrator Execution Unit.

  Kias – Cleanse carried out by Throne Agent Cadre under Sensus-54-Zeta.

  Dust Scorn – Assassination of six target clusters by Inx Blade Cult devotees.

  Geo-1 – Assault on Geo Combine harvest machines by the 45th Plethian Dragoons. Total cleanse ratified after seven days of fighting by use of a Primaris Telepathica Cadre.

  Trade ship Tide Bringer – Destroyed off Ero dockyards by direct fire from the warships Last Oath and Scion of Wrath.

  Carthos – All Cytos Cartel members killed in the detonation of plasma generators on Orbital Dock 56-A.

  Trade ship Journey of Wonder – Boarded and taken and scuppered by the rogue trader Dionysia under the command of Duke Cleander von Castellan.

 

 

  From: Cressida Syr Morio, Executor of the House Morio

  To: Viola von Castellan

  I have nothing. I am a beggar in a universe that does not suffer the weak and where the light of mercy does not lighten the dark. I am alive and for that I suppose I must thank you. I am told that this ship will take me to Bakka, and from there…

  Osric is gone. They say that he betrayed me, that he was working with the Cytos from even before the storms came, that he resented me and wanted to take control from me. It is a lie. I will not believe it.

  Everything is gone. Even my House’s name will mean nothing. That fat priest friend of yours said I am to be a pilgrim – a pilgrim on a journey that may never end to see the light of Sol and the glory of Holy Terra; a journey of penance that I will die on. That is what I get? That is what I deserve?

  My mother always said that the von Castellans had cold silver in their veins, and you… you, Viola, are a true scion of your noble line. Did you destroy the Cytos just so that you could do this to me?

  You always were a jealous, bitter thing. Don’t deny it. Even when we were children you could not bear it that your sister would inherit, that your brother had freedom, that our tutors liked me more, that you would always be in someone’s shadow. You just could not bear it when I rose out of the pit that your family made for its loathed lesser cousins.

  Do you know what kept me going all those years of watching you twist into the shape your parents wanted? Knowing that I was better than you all. And I still am, Viola, I still am. You have sent me into an exile of rags. You have your victory, Mistress of Threads. But I will remember what you did and what you are.

  Cressida Syr Morio

 

 

  From: Viola von Castellan

  To: Cressida Syr Morio, Executor of the House Morio

  Cressida,

  You say you have nothing, so let me give you the coin whose value never fades. The truth is that I never resented you – I pitied you. I pitied you when we were children, and I pity you now. In all honesty nothing that I have done since I received your first message was driven by anything other than my duty to the Imperium. You see, I am a penitent, too. I live a penance for the mistakes of my family and the sins of my brother.

  Cleander, like you, wants to believe that I have taken revenge on you for your washing your hands of us after our family’s fall. He wants nothing more than for your current situation to be the result of my careful design, for it to be just and fitting that you find yourself alone and without friends just as you left us alone and without help. He very much wants to believe that. But the truth is that I don’t care enough to make that happen, and while I am many things I am not cruel for my own ends.

  You are a bitter and foolish soul, Cressida. You believe your desires and power define the universe. I know that belief is false. I know that my desires and designs are nothing in the play of time and the span of the stars.

  Could I have helped you to start again, set you up with wealth and the hope of the prestige you so crave? Yes, I could. But, as I said, I am not cruel without reason.

  Walk the path given to you, cousin, and maybe one day you shall see the light of Terra and know that I have given you a freedom and peace that I cannot give myself.

  Yours in blood and truth,

  Viola von Castellan

 

  Operational records relating to the Cytos Purge end here.

  No further correspondence between Cressida Syr Morio and Viola von Castellan exists in the von Castellan dynastic record.

  About the Author

  John French is the author of several Horus Heresy stories including the novels Praetorian of Dorn, Tallarn and Slaves to Darkness, the novella The Crimson Fist, and the audio dramas Dark Compliance, Templar and Warmaster. For Warhammer 40,000 he has written Resurrection and Incarnation for The Horusian Wars and two tie-in audio dramas – the Scribe award-winning Agent of the Throne: Blood and Lies and Agent of the Throne: Truth and Dreams. John has also written the Ahriman series and many short stories.

  An extract from The Horusian Wars: Incarnation.

  The harvest pilgrims came to the glass tabernacle as they always had. They trod the half-severed stalks down, and sent their prayer smoke into the blue sky, a slowly gathering tide of people old and young, man and woman, all clad in the sacred blue of rain. Thousands of them had already gathered around the tabernacle. They swirled about it, white smoke puffing from their fume pipes, scenting the air with fruit and spice.

  ‘Credulous fools,’ muttered Ninkurra, as she guided one of her hawks lower over the scene. The creatures were psyber-bonded – their eyes and will hers.

  The pilgrim throng was swaying like the crops that had stood where they now walked. Whooping prayers lifted into the air. Inside the tent of glass, the priests were gathering around the altar box. She could see them sway as they sang their secret songs and swung incense smoke around the reliquary. From their point of view, her seeing this would be a blasphemy; she was not of the priesthood, and not initiated in
to the mysteries of the Emperor’s Eternal Light. The pilgrims who circled the tabernacle would have torn her apart if they had known that she could see a priest open the first leaf of the reliquary. They would have been even more incensed that she could see an acolyte at the back of the group pick his nose. A kilometre away from them, she snorted with laughter.

  ‘Something diverting?’ asked Memnon.

  ‘No,’ she said, still watching the priests, ‘not really, just… Don’t you sometimes think humanity is too petty for divinity? If we found the Emperor’s frozen tears someone would give them to a child as a toy.’

  ‘That is what defines the divine – that it is beyond us.’

  ‘If you say so.’

  ‘I do.’

  Seen from above, the tabernacle itself was a mountain made of ­triangular sheets of glass, each one tethered to another, the smallest on the outside just a couple of metres tall, the largest over fifty metres in height. Its apex was a blade point thrust at the sun. Even though each sheet of glass was transparent, those stood on the outside could see only a handful of layers inside. Rainbows of blinding light scattered from its faces and edges, hiding the sanctuary at its core. Once the ceremony began, only a few of the pilgrims would be allowed inside. There was no straight way to the centre of the structure, just an ever-weaving path between sheets of reflection. If a pilgrim reached the sanctuary itself, they would be able to turn, and – thanks to the precise setting of each glass pane – see perfectly in every direction.

  She opened her true eyes and for a moment felt vertigo as the sight from her hawks clashed with the world in front of her. Then the two split and the hawk’s eye view receded to the back of her mind.

  ‘I see no indications of the prospect,’ she said.

  Memnon reached beneath his robes and withdrew a small box of bone. Ash tattoos marched down his cheeks in rows of tiny dots, each one faded to grey. His patchwork robes fluttered in the warm breeze. He alone was not dressed in pilgrim blue, but in the faded and torn cloth that he always wore. Ninkurra had often thought that he looked more like a beggar or an ascetic monk than an inquisitor. He looked young, at least young in the way that people judged such things, maybe no more than three decades to the eye. Ninkurra saw his lips move in silent prayer before he opened the lid of the box. He took a pinch of dust from within, and cast it into the air. The grey powder caught the breeze. Memnon watched it, face impassive, until it had dissolved into the wind. Ninkurra had no idea what he looked for, but she knew that he saw more than dust vanishing on the wind.

  ‘It is coming,’ he said at last. ‘Order the gunships to come in.’

  Ninkurra obeyed, transmitting the command with a thought.

  ‘I am reading low-grade atmospheric interference across multiple spectra.’ Geddon’s voice was a scratched patchwork of static and voice samples. The auspextra was sweating profusely under the sun’s glare. Sweat stuck her blue pilgrim’s robe to her hunched body. Bulbous curves of metal gleamed in the gaps between the lank cloth. The heat sinks of her signal and scanning arrays must have been cooking her, reflected Ninkurra. ‘Static and moisture levels are rising. Pressure inversion unfolding at one hundred metres above ground level.’

  ‘What does that mean?’ asked Ninkurra, glancing back.

  ‘There is a storm coming,’ said Geddon.

  Ninkurra snorted. ‘It’s clear blue to beyond the horizon,’ she said.

  ‘No,’ said Memnon softly, and raised a hand to point up. ‘Look.’

  Ninkurra followed the line of his long finger. She squinted against the light, raising a hand to shield her eyes. Then she saw it – a smudge of white in the clear air. A gust of air tugged at her robe, and she was aware of the same wind pulling at her hawks as they turned above the tabernacle.

  ‘You may wish to bring your birds back,’ said Geddon. ‘All readings are spiking.’

  Above the tabernacle the patch of cloud was growing, expanding up and out, darkening. She could hear the voices of pilgrims rising in ­puzzlement. Through the eyes of her hawks, she saw the black dots of the gunships rise from above the horizon. Even the voices of the priests in the tabernacle were faltering. The outer layers of glass shook in the rising wind.

  ‘Readings across all parameters are reaching paradox,’ rasped Geddon. The hawks spiralled down out of the darkening sky. Ninkurra could feel it now – metal on her tongue, static shivering on the inside of her skin. The mass of pilgrims were looking up at the thunderhead darkening the air above them. Some were crying out, some were already running.

  ‘We have targets locked and weapons live,’ said a voice in Ninkurra’s vox-bead.

  The gunships were visible now. The sound of engines growled across the distance.

  ‘Do you have a triangulation?’ asked Memnon, calmly.

  ‘No, lord,’ shouted Geddon, her fingers clacking the keys of the controls that took the place of her left arm. ‘Phenomenon and paradox traces are changing too rapidly. The prospect is not clear.’

  ‘Very well,’ said Memnon. ‘Gunships into gyre pattern. Nothing that runs lives.’ He began to walk down the gentle slope towards the tabernacle and the crowd of pilgrims. ‘We will need to identify the prospect directly. There is not much time.’

  The hawks on Ninkurra’s shoulders took to the air with shrill cries as she followed him.

  Lightning flashed inside the cloud above them. Thunder rolled.

  ‘Come,’ said Memnon. ‘We must be pilgrims now.’

  The Black Priest walked in silence through the Dionysia. Midnight robes billowed in his wake. Vials of holy water and silver aquilae hung from his waist, and a heavy ‘I’ set with a rayed skull hung around his neck. Two void-armoured troopers in pressure helms followed him, their shot-cannons held low but ready. If the priest was disturbed by their presence he did not show it. No muscle twitched under the pattern of tattoos which covered his face, and his hands hung loose beside the pommel of his sword and the butt of his pistol. The guards had let him keep both. It was a sign of trust, but Viola could not help thinking that it, like the threat of the troopers, held little sway on the priest’s mind.

  ‘They make them from priests who have seen the truth of the warp,’ Josef had said when she had talked of the meeting.

  ‘Make them?’ she had asked, arching an eyebrow above her chrome-clouded left eye.

  ‘Don’t get me wrong, they are taught and trained, too – litanies of castigation, rites of exorcism, myth and knowledge that would earn a death penalty across the Imperium – they learn it all. A Black Priest is never a fool and often as clever as they come.’ Josef had smiled. ‘Some of them might be even cleverer than you.’

  She had shrugged away the jibe.

  ‘That’s just education, unusual but not–’

  ‘Once they get past that they are tested. Every lie and heresy a daemon can utter is thrown at them. They pass through hunger and thirst, pain and torment, and all the while they hear lies, and truths that are worse than lies. Those who get that far are marked with verses of the books of detestation. The tops of their heads are opened and the inside of their skulls etched with sigils of protection. Only then are they sent out to those of the Inquisition that want them.’ Josef had paused and shivered. ‘So, yes, they are made, just like you would make a sword, and you have to treat them as if that’s what they are – things with sharp edges made to do harm.’

  The Black Priest stopped a pace from Viola. The door at her back remained closed. She met his gaze. His eyes were pale grey, she noticed.

  ‘I am Viola von Castellan. I bid you welcome to the Dionysia.’

  ‘I know who you are,’ said the Black Priest.

  ‘And I you, but there is a politeness to observing the form of things, don’t you think?’

  He moved his head to look at the door behind her and then back.

  ‘Hesh,’ he said. ‘That is my name
.’

  Viola fought to keep the frown from her face.

  ‘My master will see you.’

  She blinked her left eye and the door opened. Hesh waited for a second and then stepped through. Viola followed, sealing the door with another blink.

  The space beyond was small, barely five paces across, but its stone walls extended up and up until they met a crystal dome that let in the light of the stars outside the ship. Candles burned on iron brackets. Covenant stood opposite the door, clad in the plain grey robe of an adept. Josef waited behind him, the head of his hammer on the floor between his feet, his hands resting on the top of the haft.

  ‘You are Covenant?’ asked Hesh.

  ‘Yes.’

  Hesh bowed his head.

  ‘You brought me here because you wish to know something. I submitted because I would know how my lord died.’

  ‘The circumstances of Lord Vult’s death were presented by my lord inquisitor to a conclave of his peers,’ said Viola, moving to stand behind Covenant.

  ‘Falsehoods,’ said Hesh.

  ‘You call my lord a liar?’ asked Viola.

  ‘All inquisitors are liars,’ said Hesh.

  ‘For the truth will destroy us all,’ said Covenant. Hesh looked at Covenant. Their gazes locked.

  ‘True,’ said Hesh.

  ‘You will address him as lord,’ growled Josef. Covenant gave a small turn of his head and Josef went still and silent.

  ‘You served Vult for five decades,’ said Covenant, ‘you held his proxy during the purges of Lamish, and turned down the calling to be invested as an inquisitor in your own right, did you not?’

  Hesh nodded once. Covenant returned the gesture.

  ‘He is gone, but I have need of you,’ said Covenant.

  ‘I was my master’s servant, not yours.’

  Covenant’s gaze did not shift, but Viola saw the twitch next to his temple.

  ‘You are anything I decide you are,’ said Covenant softly.

  Hesh’s face was a mask, his pale eyes moving across Covenant’s young features. Then he nodded.