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'They all say that,' he muttered snidely, turning away.

'No,' I said levelly, stopping him dead. 'The guilty and the polluted fight. They deny. They straggle. In my lifetime, I have brought

down nine marked diabolus. None went quietly. Mark that fact in your record,' I said to the scribing interrogator. 'If I was guilty, I

would not be submitting to your process so politely.'

'Mark it so!' Osma told his hesitating scribe.

He looked back at me. 'Read the carta, Eisenhorn. You're guilty as sin. This show of understanding and co-operation is exactly what I

would have expected from a being as canny and clever as you.'

'A compliment, Osma?'

He spat into the bracken. 'You were one of the best, Eisenhorn. Lord Rorken actually pleaded for you. I acknowledge your past

triumphs. But you have been turned. You are Malleus. You are an abomination. And you will pay.'

'This is insane…' Neve muttered, limping towards us.

'And none of your business, inquisitor general,' Osma replied.

Neve faced him, her torn armour wet with her own blood.

'This is my province, inquisitor. Eisenhorn has proved himself to me. This charade is interfering with Inquisition business.'

'Read the carta, inquisitor general,' Osma told her. 'And shut up. Eisenhorn is clever and convincing. He has fooled you, lady. Be

thankful that you're not implicated.'

MY COMPANIONS WERE arraigned at Kasr Derth, under Neve's recognizance. No such luxury for me. I was flown south aboard a

Cadian military lighter, through the dawn, to the furthest islet of the Caducades group, to the infamous Cadian prison, the Carnificina.

They had fettered my hands and feet. I sat on a bracket-bench dropped from the wall of the lighter's armoured hold, surrounded by

Cadian guards, and read the carta by the shifting light that sheared in through the window slits.

I could scarcely believe what I was reading.

'Well?' grunted Fischig from his seat in the corner. I had been allowed one spokesman, and I had selected Fischig, with his legal

background.

'Read it,' I said, holding the carta out to him.

One of the impassive Cadians took it from me and passed it to the scowling Hubrusian.

After a few moments spent reviewing the scroll, Fischig blurted out an incredulous profanity.

'Just what I thought,' I said.

THE CARNIFICINA JUTTED up from the thrashing sea like the molar of a massive herbivore, the gum eaten away.

It had not been built so much as hollowed out of the upthrust crag. There wasn't a wall on the prison isle thinner than five metres.

Vicious plungers broke in white spray around its granite base and the western aspects were open to the worst of the pelagic abuse from

the oceans beyond. Icebergs from the calving glaciers at Cadu Sound and the distant Caducades Isthmus jostled and splintered in the

open water between the prison isle and the barren atolls opposing it.

Kelp and hardy, lean axel trees decorated its lower slopes.

The lighter swung in over the eastern ramparts and settled on a pad cut from the stone. I was marched under guard out into the cold

sunlight, and then into the dank hallways of the rock. The white-washed walls sweated and stank of seawater. Rusting chains ran down

from the ceiling to the hatches of forgotten oubliettes.

I could hear the shouts and screams of prisoners. The demented and infected of the Cadians lived here, mostly ex-servicemen who had

been driven mad in the wars of the Eye.

The Cadian troops handed me over to a squad of red-uniformed prison guards who reeked of unwashed flesh and carried pain-flails

and leather whips.

They opened up a fifty centimetre-thick hatch cover riven with studs, and pushed me into a cell.

It was four paces by four, cut from stone, with no window. It stank of piss. The previous incumbent had died here… and never been

removed.

I pushed aside his dry bones and sat on the wooden bunk. I knew nothing. I had no idea if the Cadian Interior had captured that rogue

starship, or if anyone had managed to track the flight of the thing that had been poor Husmaan.

The path to Quixos, the path we had been so lucky to strike at last, was disappearing by the second as we played these games. And

there was nothing I could do about it.

'WHEN DID YOU first decide to consort with daemons?' asked Interrogator Riggre.

'I have never done so, or decided to do so.'

'But the daemonhost Cherubael knows you by name,' said Interrogator Palfir.

'Is that a question?'

'It—' Palfir stammered.

'What is your relationship with the daemonhost Cherubael?' cut in Interrogator Moyag sternly.

'I have no relationship with any daemonhost,' I replied.

I was chained to a wooden chair in the great hall of the Carnificina, winter sunlight shafting down from the high windows. Osma's

three interrogators stalked around me like caged beasts, their robes swirling in the draft.

'It knows your name,' Moyag said testily.

'I know yours, Moyag. Does that give me power over you?'

'How did you orchestrate the atrocity at Thracian Hive Primaris?' asked Palfir.

'I didn't. Next question.'

'Do you know who did?' asked Riggre.

'Not precisely. But I believe it was the being you have referred to. Cherubael.'

'He has been in your life before.'

'I have thwarted him before. One hundred years ago, at 56-Izar. You must have the records.'

Riggre glanced at his colleagues before replying. 'We do. But you have been searching for him ever since.'

'Yes. As a matter of duty. Cherubael is a repellent abomination. Do you wonder that I would seek him out?'

'Not all your contacts with him have been recorded.'

'What?'

'We know some contacts have remained secret,' Moyag rephrased.

'How?'

'The sworn testimony of an Alain von Baigg. He states that you sent an operative code-named Hound out to make contact with

Cherubael, one year ago, and that you refrained from telling your ordo master about it.'

'I didn't think to bother Lord Rorken with the matter.'

'So, you don't deny it?'

'Deny what? Hunting for Chaos? No, I don't.'

'In secret?'

'What inquisitor doesn't work in secret?'

'Who is Hound?' asked Palfir.

I had no wish to make Fischig's life more difficult just then. I said, 'I don't know his real name. He works clandestinely.'

I thought they would press me, but instead Moyag said, 'Why did you survive the Thracian horror?'

'I was lucky.'

Palfir walked a circle around me, his polished boots squeaking on the worn floor. 'Let me make it clear. We are just beginning here. In

respect to your rank and career, we are employing interrogation of the First Action. The First Action is—'

I cut him short. 'I have been an inquisitor for many years, Palfir. I know what the First Action is. Verbal interview without duress.'

'Then you know of the Third and Fifth Actions?' sneered Riggre.

'Light physical torture and psychic interrogation. And by the way, you just utilised the Second Action - verbal threat of and/or

description of Actions that may follow.'

'Have you ever been tortured, Eisenhorn?' asked Moyag.

'Yes, by less squeamish men than you. And I have interrogated too. Second Action methods really won't work on me.'

'Inquisitor Osma has authorised us to use any methods up to and including Ninth Action,' spat Palfir.

'Again, a threat. Second Action. It won't work on me. I told you that. I am trying to be co-operative.'

'Who is Hound?' asked Riggre. Ah, there it was, the follow-up, designed to wrong-foot by coming out of sequence. For a moment, I

began to admire their interrogation skills.

'I don't know his real name. He works clandestinely.'

'Is it not Godwyn Fischig? The man you chose as your second here. The man who waits outside this chamber?'

There are times when the injuries Gorgone Locke did to my face on Gudrun have their benefits. My face simply couldn't show the

reaction they were hoping to see. But inside, I balked. Their intelligence was good, good enough to have cracked Glossia, if only

partially. I was sure of the source. They had already mentioned that weasel von Baigg. Months before, on Thracian right before the

atrocity, I had begun to suspect von Baigg. At that time, I merely assumed he was Lord Rorken's plant to watch over me. Now I

realised he was happy to talk to anyone. I had recognised von Baigg's weakness and stalled his career. Clearly he had decided to seek

advancement from other inquisitors by selling me out.

'If you are telling me Fischig is the operative I know as Hound, I am truly surprised,' I replied levelly, choosing my words with

extreme care.

'We will talk to him in time,' said Palfir.

'Not while he is my recognised second. That would break the code of prejudice. If you wish to interview him, I must be allowed a new

second. Of my choosing.'

'We will get to that,' said Riggre.

'Why did you survive the Thracian horror?' asked Moyag.

'I was lucky.'

'Explain lucky?'

'I had stopped to honour the tomb of the admiral. The Spatian Gate protected me from the air strikes.' After the lies Cherubael had told

me on Eechan, I dreaded this question coming up again under psychic interview. The lies, or at least my attempts to screen them,

would be picked up.

'The atrocity was simply cover to allow you to liberate and remove from Thracian the heretic psyker Esarhaddon.'

'I would normally address that notion with scorn. If the entire event had been staged simply to "launder" the psyker, then it was

inhumanly wasteful. However, I believe in some regards you are right. That's what the atrocity was engineered to do. But not by me.'

Moyag licked his yellowing teeth eagerly. 'You maintain that it was in fact Interrogator Lyko who executed the event?'

'In collaboration with the daemonhost.'

'But Lyko cannot answer those charges, can he? Because you killed him on Eechan.'

'I executed Lyko on Eechan as a traitor-enemy of the Imperium.'

'I submit to you that you killed him because he was on to you. You killed him to silence him.'

'Do I really have to be here? You're doing a fine job of making up your own answers.'

'Where is Esarhaddon?'

'Wherever Cherubael took him.'

'And where is that?' asked Palfir.

I shrugged. 'To his master. Quixos.'

All three of them laughed. 'Quixos is dead. He died long ago!' Moyag chuckled.

'Then why did the inquisitor general and I find that he had been manipulating her codes to gain access to Cadian airspace?'

'Because that's how you made it look. You say Quixos used his power to steal her authority code. If that's true, then it's a crime any

deviant inquisitor of renown could manage. You could manage it. And using a dead man's code means no one is going to object.'

'Quixos isn't dead.' I cleared my throat. 'Quixos is Hereticus and Extremis Diabolus. He has perverted inquisitors such as Lyko and

Molitor into his service. He uses daemonhosts. He triggers holocausts to cover his theft of alpha-plus class psykers.'

The three interrogators fell silent for a moment.

'We are wasting time here,' I said. 'I am not the man you want.'

BUT THE TIME-WASTING continued. A week, passed, then a second. Every day, I was taken to the great hall and subjected to anything

from two to six hours of First Action interview. The questions were repeated so many times, I became sick of hearing them. None of

the interrogators seemed to listen to my statements. As far as I knew, no part of my story was being checked out.

They were clearly wary of escalating to physical or psychic means of extraction. Because I was a psyker, I could at least make things

difficult enough so that they'd never know how much of what they were getting out of me was true. Osma had evidently decided to

wear me down with endless cycles of verbal cross-examination.

For fifteen minutes each evening, with the ocean light fading, I was allowed to speak with Fischig. These conversations were

pointless. The cell areas were undoubtedly laced with vox-thieves and listening devices, and as far as we knew, Glossia was

compromised.

Fischig could tell me little, although I was able to learn that Medea, Aemos and the gun-cutter were not in Osma's hands, and neither

was the Essene.

There had been no further sighting of Prophaniti-Husmaan, and Fischig was certain that the mystery starship that had delivered

Prophaniti to Cadia had not been intercepted that fateful night.

Through Fischig's agency, I sent petitions to Osma, to Rorken and to Neve, protesting my arrest and urging them to take further action

regarding Quixos. No word came back.

Candlemas was long past. Three more weeks went by. I realised that the year had turned. Outside the thick, bleak walls of the

Carnificina, it was 340.M41.

AT THE END of my third month of detention and interrogation, I was led into the great hall for my daily interview and found Osma

waiting for me instead of the usual interrogators.

'Sit,' he said, gesturing to the chair in the centre of the stark room.

It was dark and cold. Bitter, late winter storms were pushing in from the east, and though it was day, no light came from the high

windows. They were muffled with snow. My breath steamed in the air, and I shivered. Osma had arranged six lamps around the edges

of the room.

I sat down, pushing my hands into the pockets of my coat against the chill. I didn't want Osma to see my distress. He stood, warm and

insulated in his burnished power armour, reviewing a data-slate.

I could see myself, reflected in the polished panels of his backplate. My clothes were ragged and filthy. My skin pale. I had dropped a

good seven kilos, and now sported a thick beard as unruly as my hair. The only item in my possession was the inquisitorial rosette in