Honourbound - Rachel Harrison Read online

  He takes the sabre, and puts it back in the scabbard with a soft click.

  ‘I endure because I am a creature of faith,’ he says. ‘As you must be, in all things, at all times. Unbreakable.’

  He looks to the progena arrayed at the side of the dais once more.

  ‘Unbreakable in mind. In spirit. In sheer will.’

  Serek raises his fist in the air.

  ‘Unbreakable,’ he shouts.

  Severina answers him with the other progena, and with Lucia too. Hundreds of voices as one, in a roar to challenge the cry of the ocean.

  Four

  The red line

  Raine’s first duty on the return to the Antari muster grounds is always the same: to debrief Lydia Zane.

  The debrief takes place at the far end of the Antari medical block, in a small room that smells of counterseptic and cold steel. The room’s walls are whitewashed flakboard, like the rest of the block, but there are no cots or stretchers, just two chairs and a table with drawers, all heavy-duty steel, and all bolted to the floor. Raine takes her own seat, then unlocks and opens the drawer and takes out Zane’s file. It is a thick binder full of loose sheaves, wrapped in cord. Hundreds of battles, captured in ink. The chair that sits opposite Raine is tarnished from oxidisation. It has inbuilt restraints for the wrists, and a locking collar studded with sedative injectors that are slaved to a button under Raine’s side of the desk. A cautionary measure. Raine cannot hear the wounded or the dying from this room. There are deliberately empty rooms left between the debriefing suite and the wards, to ensure that anything said during debrief is not overheard. To ensure that there is distance between the psyker and the wounded, in case anything should go wrong.

  Another cautionary measure.

  This time, it is Andren Fel who escorts Zane into the room, and the psyker practically falls into her seat when he lets go of her. One of the aides has to hold Zane’s head up while the other bolts the restraint collar around her neck. The only time Raine has seen her look worse was after Drast. After she lost her eyes, saving those of her kin that she could. The aides move silently around them, connecting cables and activating the psy-reader on the table. It starts to scratch out a pattern with jagged movements of its auto-quill. One of the aides draws a vial of Zane’s blood. If it hurts her, she says nothing. She doesn’t even flinch. Then the aides bow low and retreat, still without speaking a word. Fel goes too, though he doesn’t look happy about it. Raine knows that the process makes him uneasy. That despite all of his training, he is still Antari, and still filled with dread at the thought of a psyker, even one that is bound and monitored like Lydia Zane.

  After almost two years of serving alongside them, and seeing all of the things that Zane has done, there’s a part of Raine that can understand his dread.

  Raine clicks the vox-thief live and opens Zane’s file.

  ‘Post-mission debrief,’ Raine says, turning to a new page. ‘Operation one hundred and seventy-five. The retaking of the Forge Primary on Laxus Secundus.’

  She writes it into the file too. It isn’t strictly necessary with the vox-thief recording every word, but the file is Raine’s choice. It’s the act of taking notes. The unequivocal black and white of ink on page. One of the few things in life that are quite so clear-cut.

  ‘Name and rank,’ Raine says.

  Zane coughs. The breath she takes afterwards is as if she’s come up from underwater.

  ‘Lydia Zane,’ she says. ‘Primaris psyker. Graded Epsilon. Eleventh Antari Rifles.’

  ‘How long have you served the Rifles?’ Raine asks.

  It’s a question she knows the answer to, and that’s the point.

  ‘Fourteen years,’ Zane says. ‘From the moment they would let me, I chose to serve.’

  Raine takes her notes. The psy-reader pushes out parchment.

  ‘You always wanted to serve?’ Raine asks.

  Zane coughs again. The psy-reader’s auto-quill trembles.

  ‘There are few other choices, for a witch,’ Zane says.

  Raine stops writing and looks up at Zane. ‘I thought that you loathed that word.’

  Zane’s pale cheeks colour, and she frowns. ‘I do,’ she says, bitterly. ‘There is no dignity in it.’

  ‘Then why use it?’

  Zane draws her broken fingernails along the arms of the chair. ‘Today has been a test,’ she says, haltingly. ‘I misspoke. That is all.’

  Raine makes a note of the psyker’s words. She can feel Zane’s false eyes on her, and on the words she writes into the file.

  ‘And if you were to choose?’ Raine asks. ‘If there were an option other than service, what would you do?’

  It is not one of her usual questions, but that in itself is usual. It is protocol to pressurise Zane. You cannot test the strength of something by pushing gently.

  ‘There is no choice,’ Zane says.

  ‘Pretend there is.’

  Zane scowls. A fat drop of blood falls from her nose into her lap.

  ‘I am caged,’ she says. ‘Bound. Tempered, by what they did to me. I do not pretend. I cannot.’

  Lightning crackles across Zane’s scalp, and the psy-reader spikes.

  ‘They cut deep, and built walls,’ she slurs. ‘Iron bands to bind me on the inside. Collar to bind me on the outside. It is what you do to an animal that you expect to bite or thrash. Bind it. Watch it, always. Shoot it when you need to.’

  The psy-reader is close to the red line. Zane is rattling and twitching as much as the needle. As with every duty Raine has, it is a choice she has to make.

  Trigger the collar.

  Shoot the psyker.

  Keep pushing.

  Her pistol is on the table. The emergency trigger for the collar is under the desk. Raine makes the choice, and she reaches for neither.

  ‘I won’t shoot you,’ Raine says.

  Zane smiles, though it is more like a snarl. The psy-reader dips again. ‘Not today,’ she says.

  Raine frowns. She sounds so sure. ‘Tell me about the shadow,’ she says. ‘The one that you sensed at the heart of the forge.’

  It takes Zane a moment to muster her answer, as if she has to dredge it up.

  ‘Fel gave you my words,’ she says. ‘I should have known it.’

  ‘Does that make you angry?’ Raine asks.

  Zane shrugs. ‘He does what he does,’ she says. ‘He is faithful, that one. Another one bound and tempered by what was done to him.’

  Raine stops writing. ‘The shadow,’ she says, changing the subject. ‘I asked you about the shadow.’

  Zane closes her eyes, the lids stretching thin over her bionics. The scars in her eye sockets look dark, like crazing in pottery.

  ‘If Fel truly gave you my words, then you know all that there is to know,’ she says. ‘I cannot take the shape of it, because it keeps none. I cannot tell you what it is, only what it wants.’

  Raine watches her carefully.

  ‘Which is what?’ she asks.

  The psy-reader bottoms out completely. Zane’s breathing has slowed. Her breath no longer mists the air.

  ‘Everything,’ she says. ‘The stars and all of the spaces in between.’

  Raine can’t help it. The words run a chill along her bones. For a moment, the both of them are quiet. The only noise is the scratching of the psy-reader and the sound of the rain drumming on the roof of the medicae block.

  ‘Will that be all, commissar?’ Zane asks.

  Raine can see where the psyker’s fingernails have dug half-moons into her palms, but even with that, and the misting of the air and all of the pushing, the needle on the psy-reader never crossed the red line.

  ‘Yes,’ she says. ‘That is more than enough.’

  When Raine arrives at her command tent, Yulia Crys is waiting outside it, wrapped in a raincloak
. She is holding a lasrifle that she took from the forges. A kind of rifle only made on Steadfast, she says, that the Sighted definitely shouldn’t have.

  ‘I didn’t know who else to tell, sir,’ Crys says. ‘Thought you might know what’s to be done about it.’

  Crys has never had the same qualms about Raine that most of the other Antari do. But then, she doesn’t have qualms about anything much. It makes her a good soldier, if a little direct.

  Raine takes the rifle from her. It is solidly built. Well made. Unscarred, save for where the Sighted have tried to remove the Imperial insignia.

  ‘Troubling, don’t you think, sir?’

  Raine glances up at Crys. It is a good word for many things about today.

  ‘Yes,’ she says. ‘I do. Leave it with me.’

  ‘Aye, commissar,’ Crys says.

  She ducks into a neat half-bow and then disappears off into the rain to join her kin as they prepare to be redeployed. Raine takes the rifle into her tent. It is dry inside, but no warmer. In one corner, there is a cot with the thin sheet folded as she left it. In the middle of the space is a metal table with a chair either side of it. The tent is bigger than the Antari get for four berths, and it always seems needlessly so to Raine, who slept in a shared dormitory for most of her youth.

  She walks around the table and takes her seat. Turns the rifle in her hands.

  ‘How did you end up here?’ she says. ‘And in the hands of a traitor?’

  The rain drums on the tent canvas over her head. It is always raining on Laxus Secundus, because of the filth thrown into the air by the working of the forges. The sound lulls her, reminding her of that cold night she arrived on Gloam. Of Lucia and the warm glimmer of the timepiece in her hand. To be shown that memory again, on today of all days. It seems like fate. Raine blinks the thought away, her eyes heavy. It is an Antari thing, to think of everything as cast by the hand of fate. It is superstitious, and illogical. She is seeing connections where there are none because it is late in the day. Because she has been awake for almost forty-six hours and fighting for most of that time. Her uniform is still filthy with ash and blood from the forges. It is under her fingernails and settled into the grain of her skin. Impossible to scrub out. Just like her own memories, and the feelings tangled up in them. Raine breathes a slow, measured breath.

  ‘Commissar.’

  The voice is familiar, and welcome.

  ‘Captain,’ Raine says, looking up from the rifle to see Andren Fel standing in the tent’s doorway.

  ‘A moment of your time?’ he asks.

  Fel’s matt-black armour is a ruin, stripped back to the base layers and punched through with holes. He goes without his Duskhound mask. His fair skin is bruised and there is still forge ash in his dark hair and his close-cropped beard. It has settled into the deep, old scar that runs down one side of his face from his jawline to his nose.

  ‘Of course,’ Raine says.

  She pushes out the other chair with her boot and Fel comes and sits down opposite her. He is still carrying a limp, and his throat is discoloured with bruises that blur his dense Antari tattoos.

  ‘It is about the Sighted,’ Fel says. ‘The way of the fight back there.’

  ‘I thought it might be,’ Raine says. ‘Tell me what you saw.’

  Fel nods. Rainwater drips from where it has collected in his dark hair and paints trails through the ash on his armour.

  ‘We were supposed to be the shadows in those tunnels,’ he says. ‘But they were hunting us.’

  He leans forwards and puts something on the table. It’s a metal disc, small enough to be held in the palm of a hand.

  ‘They had camouflage gear. Auditory dampers and mirror-cloaks. It’s better kit than we have. Better kit than the Lions, even, if I had to guess.’

  Raine frowns and takes the disc. Unlike the rifle, there’s no marking to see. She has never seen the like before.

  Fel exhales a slow breath. ‘They killed Rol,’ he says. ‘Came near close to killing me too. It wasn’t just that they had the kit, it was that they knew how to use it. They were prepared. Trained, even.’

  ‘Crys took this rifle off one of the dead,’ Raine says. ‘More kit that is better than what they should have. Then there were the field guns too. They were properly maintained, fully functioning. This isn’t just scavenging and scrap.’

  It’s Fel’s turn to frown. ‘This is different,’ he says. ‘They have always been fierce, but not like this.’

  ‘Yuri Hale said the same thing to me,’ Raine says, sitting back in her chair. ‘And he is right. It’s not just the weapons, or the equipment. It’s the way they were fighting today.’

  ‘Like an army,’ Fel says.

  Raine nods, drumming her fingers on the table. ‘Then there is the matter of the machines, and whatever they were hiding in the inner forge.’

  ‘Evil things, surely,’ Fel says.

  ‘Indeed,’ Raine says. ‘If it must be left to the Lions to deal with them.’

  She thinks back to the abominable machine they did see – the one that nearly made the Antari no more than a name to be remembered – and wonders what could be worse than that. What it would take to stop something that bad. She thinks about Lydia Zane, and the shadow she felt.

  The one that wanted the stars and all the spaces in between.

  ‘You asked me if they escalated earlier,’ Raine says. ‘I think that is exactly what they are doing.’

  Fel narrows his eyes. ‘So what is to be done about it?’ he asks.

  Raine stops drumming her fingers. ‘What we always do,’ she says. ‘We escalate too.’

  Fel smiles. ‘Sounds about right.’

  ‘But first we have to know the threat to match it,’ Raine says. ‘Speak to the troops. Find out what they have seen and heard. Anything and everything. They will tell you things that they would never bring to me.’

  Fel nods. ‘Consider it done,’ he says.

  He has to put his hand on the table to get to his feet.

  ‘Andren,’ Raine says.

  There’s an easing in him at the sound of his given name. It’s only slight, but it’s clear for Raine to see.

  ‘Tread carefully,’ she says. ‘There are still stories that I owe you.’

  He nods, and raises his closed fist over his heart for a moment.

  ‘Consider that done, too,’ he says.

  Daven Wyck picks his way through the medicae block, past the injured and the dying, looking for Nuria Lye. He spots her in the corridor, leaning against the lightweight boarding of the wall and holding a tin cup of water in her bloody fingers.

  ‘Nur,’ he says.

  She looks at him sidelong and scowls. ‘You had better be hurting, Dav,’ she says. ‘Or you had better get out.’

  Wyck laughs, and it makes him dizzy. His head is aching like he’s split it open, and it burns behind his eyes. Every noise is like needles against his eardrums.

  ‘You know I am,’ he says. ‘I used it all. Every dose. I need more, Nur.’

  Lye’s scowl grows deeper, and she grabs him by his fatigues and pulls him into a room at the far end of the corridor. One where the shelves are lined with sterile wraps and bottles and jars of murky liquid. One where they won’t be overheard.

  ‘You damned fool,’ she hisses. ‘You will get us both strung up, mouthing off like that.’

  Wyck shakes his head. His heart is slow and arrhythmic. Uncomfortable.

  ‘So give me what I’m after.’

  She looks at him again with that same scowl, then comes closer and takes hold of his face with her rough, bloody hands.

  ‘What are you–’ he starts.

  ‘Shut up,’ she hisses, then she lets go. ‘God-Emperor, Dav,’ she says. ‘When did you last dose?’

  He tries to remember doing it, but when he thinks of the inje
ctor and pressing it he just thinks of the hiss and the rush and the blindness that comes with it. The fast rush of his heart.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he says. ‘Too long ago.’

  She shakes her head. ‘Your pupils are fixed, and if you didn’t know, your nose is bleeding.’

  Wyck puts his hand to his face. It comes away with a red stripe painted on the back of it.

  ‘Huh,’ he says. ‘So it is.’

  ‘Those doses are killing you,’ she says.

  Wyck’s temper spikes. That has been getting worse lately too, as if some of the fury that the stimms bring gets left behind when they wear off.

  ‘Not taking them will kill me,’ he says, deliberately. ‘It’ll make me slow. Slow enough for death to catch up. At least this way, I get to choose my fate.’

  He presses his fingertips against the bridge of his nose. The burning is so bad now.

  ‘Give me the stimms,’ he says.

  She folds her arms. ‘No. I won’t do it. Not anymore.’

  He blinks. ‘You owe me,’ he says. ‘For deeds, and secrets kept. You don’t forsake that kind of owing.’

  She looks at him with those eyes of hers. The eyes that used to look at him differently, before all of this. Before Gholl and Hyxx. Before she got a good look at his soul.

  ‘No,’ she says again.

  Wyck’s temper snaps like a frayed cord. He doesn’t realise he’s hit her until she’s hit him back. Until he sees stars and spits blood. Then he hears something smash and feels a sharp pain in his hand.

  And finds himself holding a shard of glass from a broken bottle pressed against Nuria Lye’s throat.

  ‘You bastard,’ she hisses through her teeth. ‘You unforgivable bastard. Do it. You’ll only prove them all right.’

  She’s wearing an aquila on a silver chain. Like the man in the forge. The wings catch the light like the icons on the dead in the witch-dream.

  Too much to forgive.