Rites of Passage - Mike Brooks Read online

  Tobias reached backwards into the shadows under his coat, his hands searching for his knives. But shadows held no secrets from Radimir.

  He drew two long blades from his pockets: the finest plasteel, with what was presumably the symbol of Tobias’ house of minor nobility worked into the hilt. Tobias gaped at seeing his own weapons in another man’s hands, then turned to run.

  Radimir plunged the first blade into his liver. Tobias screamed and staggered sideways, his knees buckling.

  The second blade reached around and opened his throat, sending a sheet of blood cascading across the floor, which one of Svet’s brothers had apparently mopped only that morning.

  Radimir kicked Tobias in the back, knocking him onto his face, then dropped the knives and left him to die. He turned back to the rest of the group. Aylen Marjuk still hadn’t drawn, but the tension in the man’s face and neck was obvious. Radimir could tell that the rest of them had recognised Tobias’ blades – he’d probably brandished them often enough – and were even now wondering how Radimir had stolen them into his own pockets.

  He had their attention, and almost certainly their obedience.

  ‘The space port,’ Radimir said calmly. ‘Do you have any contacts there? Any influence?’

  Sulaman Eichner looked around, then nervously shook his head. ‘No, Sire Niklau. Not to my knowledge.’

  Radimir flexed his fingers and began to calculate how best to kill them all. If they couldn’t help him, they were a liability. He’d have to deal with Darke first…

  ‘But Mamzel Bettan and her husband are indentured to House Brobantis itself,’ Eichner continued hastily. ‘We rarely see them, due to the nature of their service, but they are loyal to our cause, and we can get messages to them.’

  A slow smile began to spread across Radimir Niklau’s face.

  Azariel’s Wake

  The sky was the colour of grief, and spat rain like insults.

  The voyage home to Vorlese from the Gallimo System had taken the best part of a month: considerably longer than the journey from Necro­munda would probably have been, but that was just the way the warp flowed. Chetta didn’t regret the detour, and had taken the time to make a full report on her best understanding of the nature of Gallimo’s fate to the representatives of the Adeptus Arbites as soon as she’d made planetfall in Ascension City, despite the fact that she was reasonably certain they wouldn’t have understood one word in three. It would undoubtedly be flagged for the attention of the Inquisition, and her stomach turned at the notion of one of them tracking her down for further questioning, but it was necessary.

  Unfortunately, the delay meant that her late husband’s funeral and wake could not be held quickly and discreetly, as she’d have preferred. News of her bereavement had preceded her, and she’d come back to a boiling insects’ nest of activity. Most critically, various other houses had received enough notice to send their condolences – or gloatings dressed up as condolences – in the form of representatives too high-ranking to simply be acknowledged and then shunted away somewhere. And so they all assembled on one of the great dining roofs of the main palace of House Brobantis, under the oppressive sky, and proceeded to subtly posture at each other around the casket of black crystal where Azariel’s body lay, and where her two children, Felicia and Ranovel, wept over the father whose death she had arranged. It wrung at her heart to see them so distraught, but she would never have done it had she not been absolutely convinced that it was in their best interests.

  ‘How many are we up to?’ she asked quietly. She was dressed in a mourning gown of black lace, encrusted with midnight sapphires from the Night Mines of Amatryx, which left her right shoulder bare. Her veil was anchored in place by a blacksteel diadem set with black onyx stones, and she wore long, black silk gloves reaching to above her biceps. Her tachydon ivory cane was an appropriate fit with the ensemble, and in any case Chetta was far too stubborn to forgo her favourite walking aid for the sake of propriety. Besides, she needed it: the floor was slippery, because she’d instructed her servants to disengage the void shield which would have kept the rain off. If she had to put up with all these visitors, then she wanted them just as miserable as she was.

  ‘Four Novators now, my lady,’ DeShelle murmured back. ‘Balevolio…’

  ‘Stuck-up prigs,’ Chetta muttered.

  ‘Xan’Tai…’

  Chetta grunted in mild surprise. ‘He’s a long way from home.’

  ‘The Celestarch of House Belisarius…’

  ‘Now that is a shock,’ Chetta commented. ‘But I suppose you can only spend so long with the Space Wolves before you want some civilised company.’

  ‘And of course, Dukarr,’ DeShelle finished.

  ‘Of course,’ Chetta sighed. Sen Uru Dukarr was the person she least wanted to speak to right now, and so naturally he’d turned up. ‘What about Jo’Sin? Is Veel coming, or has he foisted the Leech off onto us?’

  ‘Lord Veel has sent his apologies and condolences, and his son Lord Jalamar.’

  ‘The Leech,’ Chetta corrected her aide, taking a petty pleasure in using the name she couldn’t say in public. Jalamar Jo’Sin was his house’s great hope for the future, seeing as how he’d managed to ensnare and marry the Lady Morandia, Azariel Brobantis’ younger sister, after her arranged marriage to a different house had come apart when they’d suffered a terminal case of the Ordo Hereticus. Chetta respected Jalamar’s ambition, but it didn’t mean she had to like him. What made matters worse was that Morandia had always viewed Chetta’s marriage in the exact same way, despite the fact that Chetta had never had any say in the matter whatsoever, short of taking her own life to avoid it. Morandia was always going to be here, of course – she and Azariel had been genuinely fond of each other – but if Veel had come then Chetta could have at least dealt primarily with him, rather than his son.

  And Azariel’s siblings didn’t end with Morandia. Over on the other side of the roof, brooding like one of the rain clouds above, was Vittariel. As ambitious as his brother-in-law Jalamar, but with a considerably worse temper, Vittariel Brobantis was the firebrand of the house’s ruling arm. Chetta actually quite liked him, despite herself; he was impetuous enough that he often said what he meant, unlike most high-born Navigators. He was also, if she was being entirely honest with herself, considerably more attractive than Azariel had been. She’d often reflected that her marriage might have been more enjoyable, albeit less influential, had she ended up betrothed to the younger Brobantis brother.

  ‘Has anyone offered their condolences on the… other matters?’ she asked quietly. Two members of her house had been found dead in Ascension City shortly before her return. On one occasion the body had been decapitated and then burned, presumably in an attempt to avoid it being identified. The other had been found with anti-mutant scrawls around it, and actually carved into the flesh, with the warp eye removed. Such sentiment wasn’t uncommon, of course, but it was a surprise for it to be prevalent on Vorlese, where so many Navigator houses had a prominent presence.

  ‘No one yet, my lady,’ DeShelle replied. They hadn’t made news of the deaths public. Anyone offering commiserations would know considerably more about it than they were supposed to.

  DeShelle’s comm beeped faintly, just audible to Chetta above the rain, and she pressed it a little further into her ear with one finger. Her slight frown, nearly ever-present, deepened somewhat.

  ‘DeShelle?’

  ‘Another Novator has arrived, my lady,’ DeShelle said, her voice suddenly uncertain. ‘I… Forgive me, perhaps my service with you has not been long enough, but… House Xudine?’

  A chill ran down Chetta’s spine that had nothing to do with the rain. House Xudine had tried to undercut Brobantis on a trade deal some twenty years ago, not long after Azariel had ascended to the rank of Novator. Everyone had assumed that it was a power play on Xudine’s part, looking to test the new Novator’s mettle.

  Azariel had destroyed them.

  He’d taken them apart remorselessly, using every piece of House Brobantis’ influence and resources to not only damage their holdings and assets, but also to discredit them. Their ventures failed. Their collateral mysteriously vanished. Crimes were found to lead inexorably back to them. Within eighteen Terran months, House Xudine had been forced to abandon their sumptuous palaces and flee from an assortment of creditors, the Arbites and the angry congregations of three particularly vehement preachers. They’d become a vagabond house, the last Chetta had heard, plying their trade around the edges and gaps of the Imperium, wherever they could find someone whose need for a Navigator outweighed any concerns about their pedigree. For them to reappear now, at Azariel’s wake, could be no coincidence.

  Chetta couldn’t help but wonder if the deaths of her kin-by-marriage were a coincidence either.

  ‘Allow them entry,’ she said crisply. ‘It appears that the game has changed. Let’s take our measure of the new players.’

  She strode forwards, not bothering to hide her grimaces as her hip complained at her. Let the others gathered here see what she lived with, day to day. Let them think her weak, if they wanted. Those foolish enough to believe appearances would find that they’d sorely under­estimated her.

  Everyone flocked forwards, having previously hung back respectfully. Chetta nodded soberly at the greetings and commiserations she received, keeping in place her mask of stoic pragmatism. No one who knew her in any way would believe that Chettamandey Brobantis would be tearful or hysterical about her husband’s death, or anything else for that matter, so at least she didn’t have to act that part. She attempted to give off an aura of distracted, inner pain – which, in fairness, wasn’t far from the truth.

  ‘Vittar!’ Chetta called, motioning to her brother-in-law as he looked around. He scowled at her, but stomped across the roof in her direction. He had her husband’s gangly build, so common amongst Navigators, but he was a little less twig-slender, and his human eyes were not so large in his skull. He too wore black, a high-collared jacket of a style similar but not identical to the uniform of certain Imperial Navy officers, with diamonds for buttons, and he cut a dashing figure in it.

  ‘You want him to greet Xudine with you, my lady?’ DeShelle subvocalised into her comm, her tone as close to outright disbelief as she ever got.

  ‘Better to have him close at hand than risk him going off somewhere I can’t restrain him,’ Chetta murmured back. ‘Get Luc here, too. Just in case.’

  DeShelle pressed a stud on her bracelet, and Chetta saw another figure detach itself from the wall surrounding the rooftop garden. Luc Krane was House Brobantis’ head of security, and took a hands-on approach to it. He was a veritable monster of a man, and Chetta wasn’t entirely certain that her late husband hadn’t been supplying him with questionable supplements sourced from House Goliath on Necromunda. Should the representatives of House Xudine have anything treacherous planned, Chetta could rely on Krane to resolve it with extreme prejudice.

  She halted a little way back from the grand staircase that rose up from the hall beneath, and waited. The crowd of well-wishers now hung back, becoming aware that a new notary was about to arrive. Vittariel and his aide Subrala joined her a moment later, and Luc Krane pushed through the crowd to take up position at her back.

  ‘Your worships,’ the servant at the top of the stairs declared, her voice amplified through vox-speakers cunningly worked into her Brobantis livery, ‘the Novator Kennevario Den Jennu Bal Xudine…’

  Chetta heard Vittariel’s sharp intake of breath.

  ‘…and his guest Indrinian Vass, a rogue trader of the Ixaniad Sector.’

  A head rose smoothly into view. It was pale, gaunt-cheeked and entirely hairless, with the warp eye covered, as Chetta’s was, with a diadem: a concession to the non-Navigators present, for whom the stare of a Navigator was a pathway to madness and death. The reason for the evenness of ascension became clear a moment later, as the rest of Kennevario Den Jennu Bal Xudine came into view, flanked by two aides in Xudine uniforms.

  The Novator was sitting in a throne-like chair borne aloft by anti-grav motors. His body was swathed in rich blue cloth, with so much gold thread he almost looked as if he were trying to dress like one of the Adeptus Custodes depicted in the ancient glassaic windows of House Brobantis’ private chapel, but even the volume of his robes could not disguise the spindliness of his body. Chetta would be surprised if he could stand unaided. The ravages of exposure to the warp had hit this one hard, and she suspected he’d be for the catacombs before another decade was out, assuming House Xudine had such things.

  A chatter arose behind her. Most of her guests knew of the history between her husband and House Xudine, and it sounded like those that didn’t were quickly getting brought up to speed by those that did.

  ‘Lady Chettamandey,’ Kennevario Xudine intoned. His voice was heavy, like leaden slabs dropping into place, and sounded thoroughly incongruous coming from his wasted form.

  ‘Lord Kennevario,’ Chetta replied, keeping her tone neutral. She felt Vittariel bristle beside her, presumably at not being addressed.

  ‘Your husband was a ruthless and highly competent man,’ Kennevario said bluntly. ‘He oversaw the ruin of my house, after my predecessor went beyond both his authority and his wisdom. I come to you today, not to offer insincere condolences, but to appeal for your mercy. We have settled with those that pursued us, though it took us years, but we knew we would still have no peace while Lord Azariel ruled. I humbly offer you an alliance, in which my house would act as the junior partner, in exchange for your forbearance in allowing us to resume our place with no further persecution by your agents.’

  Chetta heard Vittariel inhale.

  ‘I thank you for your honesty and your offer, Lord Kennevario,’ she replied quickly, before her hot-headed brother-in-law could speak. ‘As well as your acknowledgement that it was your house that precipitated the previous… unpleasantness.’

  Kennevario inclined his head very slightly, but his eyes remained fixed on hers.

  ‘You and I will need to discuss your offer in more detail, of course,’ Chetta continued, ‘but I am minded to receive it. Further conflict seems unnecessary.’ She placed one hand on Vittariel’s wrist and felt the thrum of tension in his flesh. ‘As a gesture of my house’s goodwill, be welcome here at this time of mourning for us.’

  Let the others see her restrain Vittariel. Let them notice how she spoke for her house. Chetta held the authority of her dead husband for the moment, but that would evaporate like morning dew under a summer sun. The Brobantis elders would choose a new Novator, and even confined to the vaults as they were, Chetta had no doubt that they would have their ways of learning who had done what, and said what to who. Chettamandey Brobantis had no intention of letting that title go to anyone except her.

  ‘My lady,’ Kennevario acknowledged her with another slight bow of his head, and began to float off to one side. ‘May I introduce my guest?’

  In Chetta’s experience, rogue traders were always odd. This one was no different, in that she was very different.

  Indrinian Vass was nearly six and a half feet tall in her suit of what had to be artificer-made power armour, which was a rich, regal blue, gilt-edged and festooned with ribbons and medals. Her skin was as dark as Chetta’s own and smooth as a mirror, and her eyes were a deep green flecked with amber. Her hair was nearly pure white and brushed her shoulders, save at the front where it was cut into a blunt fringe, and the corners of her mouth quirked insouciantly upwards.

  She looked like nothing so much as an Adepta Sororitas who had decided that the galaxy was a giant joke no one else had yet understood, stolen the canoness’ armour, vandalised it, and burned the priory down on her way out. Chetta disliked her instantly.

  ‘My lady and lord of House Brobantis,’ Vass said, gracefully taking a knee. ‘My condolences on your loss.’

  Chetta smoothed the scowl that threatened to cloud her features. ‘It’s not often that one meets a rogue trader who kneels.’

  ‘Manners cost nothing, particularly in someone else’s house,’ Vass replied, rising again.

  ‘And yet you come here dressed in full armour,’ Vittariel said, his voice a hair short of a growl. He was still locked in the anger stage of dealing with his grief, and sooner or later someone would suffer for it.

  ‘My Lord Xudine was uncertain of the reception his offer would receive,’ Vass replied with a smile. ‘I have found that manners avail one little against gunfire.’

  ‘Has your family long been associated with House Xudine?’ Chetta asked. Vass flashed her smile again.

  ‘Indeed not, my lady. I am the first of my family to bear my rank, since my Letter of Marque was awarded only a few years ago, although I hope not to be the last.’

  An upstart rogue trader, then, in the company of a vagabond Novator. Chetta couldn’t deny the appropriateness of the arrangement, and yet there was something about the woman that bothered her.

  ‘And these are…?’ she asked, gesturing at the two figures hovering behind Vass. One was a pale-skinned male, grizzled and well muscled, with his hair cut short and his right arm replaced by a bionic: military-issue, judging by the equivalents Chetta had seen when serving with the Navy. The other was a much smaller, slighter figure in the hooded red robes of the Adeptus Mechanicus, who could have been any enginseer on half a million worlds.

  ‘My assistants, Fell and Sef,’ Vass said casually. ‘May I have your leave to join Lord Xudine?’

  Chetta nodded. ‘Be welcome, Lady Vass.’ It was a delicate dance. Even a freshly minted rogue trader carried enormous authority – potentially the equal of a planetary governor, although it would depend on the exact wording of the individual Letter of Marque. Vass had shown every courtesy, but Chetta couldn’t know if she actually had the power to refuse any of the rogue trader’s requests unless she read the Letter. And of course, to demand to do so would be the greatest insult.