第 25 页

my coat pocket. It comforted me.

Osma turned to face me. 'In three months, your story has not changed.'

'That should tell you something.'

'It tells me you have great reserves of strength and a careful mind.'

'Or that I'm not lying.'

He put the slate down on one of the lamp tables.

'Let me explain to you what is going to happen. Lord Rorken has persuaded Grandmaster Orsini to have you extradited to Thracian

Primaris. There you will stand trial for the charges in the carta extremis before a Magistery Tribunal of the Ordo Malleus and the

Officio of Internal Prosecution. Rorken isn't happy, but it is all Orsini would allow. Rorken, I have heard, feels that your innocence -

or guilt - can be ascertained once and for all in a formal trial.'

'The result of that trial may embarrass you and your master, Lord Bezier.'

He laughed. 'In truth, I would welcome such embarrassment if it meant the exoneration of a valuable inquisitor like you, Eisenhorn.

But I don't think it will. You will burn on Thracian for this, Eisenhorn, as surely as you would have done here.'

'I'll take my chances, Osma.'

He nodded. 'So will I. The Black Ships will arrive in three days time to conduct you to Thracian Primaris. That gives me three days to

break you before the matter is taken out of my hands.'

'Be careful, Osma.'

'I'm always careful. Tomorrow, my staff will begin Ninth Action examination of you. There will be no respite until the Black Ships

arrive or you tell me what I want to hear.'

'Two days of Ninth Action methods will probably guarantee I won't be alive when the Black Ships come.'

'Probably A shame, and questions will be asked. But this is a lonely prison and I am in charge. That is why, today, I'm just talking to

you. Just you and me. A last chance. Tell me the whole truth now, Eisenhorn, man to man. Make this easy on us both. Confess your

crimes before the pain begins tomorrow, spare us the trial on Thracian, and I'll do everything in my power to ensure your execution is

quick and painless.'

'I'll gladly tell you the truth.' His eyes brightened.

'It's all there, on that slate you were reading. Exactly as I have been saying these last three months.'

WHEN THE GUARDS took me back to my frigid cell, down stone hallways where the ocean gales moaned, Fischig was waiting for me.

Our daily fifteen minutes.

He had brought a lamp, and a tray with my night meal: thin, tepid fish-broth and stale hunks of rusk bread with a glass of watered rum.

I sat down on the crude bunk.

'I'm to be extradited for trial,' I told him.

He nodded. 'But I understand tomorrow the painwork begins. I've filed a protest, but I'm sure it'll be accidentally lost in the trash.'

'I'm sure it will.'

'You should eat,' he said.

'I'm not hungry.'

'Just eat. You'll need your strength and from the look of you, you've precious little of that.'

I shook my head.

'Gregor,' he said, dropping his voice. 'I have a question to ask you. You won't like it much, but it's important.'

'Important?'

'To me. And to your friends.'

'Ask it.'

'Do you remember - God-Emperor, but it seems so long ago! - last year, when we met up again, at that grave field outside Kasr

Tyrok?'

'Of course.'

'In the shrine tower, you said to me that you couldn't conceive of doing anything that would please or benefit a daemon. You said, "I

can't ever imagine myself that insane."'

'I remember it clearly. You said that if you ever thought I was, you'd shoot me yourself.'

He nodded, with a sour chuckle. There was a moment of silence, broken only by the crackling of the lamp and the boom of the sea

outside the prison ramparts.

'You want to be sure, don't you, Godwyn?' I asked.

He looked at me, reproachfully.

'I can understand that. I expect total loyalty from you and all my staff. You have the right to be assured of the same from me.'

'Then you know my question.'

I fixed him with my eyes. 'You want to ask if I'm lying. If there's any truth to the charges. If you have been working for a man who

consorts with daemons.'

'It's a stupid question, I know. If you are those things, you won't hesitate to lie again now.'

'I'm too tired for anything but the truth, Godwyn. I swear, by the Golden Throne, I am not what Osma says I am. I am a true servant of

the Emperor and the Inquisition. Find me an eagle and I'll swear on that too. I don't know what else I can do to convince you.'

He got to his feet. 'That's enough for me. I just wanted to be sure. Your word has always been enough, and after all the years we've

been together, I was sure that you'd tell me if… even if it was…'

'Know this, old friend. I would. Even if I was the scum Osma believes me to be, and even if I could hide it from him… I couldn't lie to

a direct question from you. Not you, Chastener Fischig.'

The guard rapped on the cell door.

'One minute more!' Fischig shouted. 'Eat your supper,' he said to me.

'Did Osma put you up to this?' I asked.

'Hell, no!' he snarled, offended.

'It's all right. I didn't think so.'

The guard hammered again.

'All right, damn your eyes!' Fischig growled.

'I'll see you tomorrow,' I said.

'Yeah,' he replied. 'Do one thing for me.'

'Name it.'

'Eat your supper.'

THE CRAMPS BEGAN just after what I guessed was midnight. They woke me from a bad sleep. Pain surged through my body and my

mind was numb. I hadn't felt this bad since Pye's handiwork on Lethe Eleven, during the Darknight almost two whole years before.

I tried to rise, and fell off the bunk. Spasms wracked me, and I cried out. I vomited up the dregs of the dire supper. Bouts of fever-heat

and death-chill twitched through me.

I don't know how long it took for me to crawl to the cell door, or how long I lay there beating my fists against it until it opened. Hours,

possibly.

Consciousness ebbed and flowed with the cramping and the rising agony.

'Holy Emperor!' the guard exclaimed as he opened the door and saw me by the light of his rush-lamp.

He called out and feet came beating down the cell way.

'He's sick,' I heard the guard say.

'Leave him till morning,' said another.

'He'll be dead,' the first guard answered nervously.

'Please…' I stammered, reaching out my hand. It was frozen in a claw-shape, paralysed and ugly.

Others were arriving. I heard Fischig's voice.

'He needs a doctor. Trained medicae help,' Fischig said.

'It's not allowed,' complained a guard.

'Look at him, man! He's dying! An attack of some sort.'

'Let me through,' said another voice.

It was the prison medic, accompanied by Interrogator Riggre, who looked as if he had been roused from his bed.

'He's faking it, leave him!' Riggre said contemptuously.

'Shut up!' Fischig snarled. 'Look at him! That's no act!'

'He's a master of deception,' Riggre returned. 'Maybe he's been licking the lead-paint off the door to aid his act, more fool him. This is

a sham. Leave him.'

'He's dying,' said Fischig.

'He looks bloody sick,' said a guard uncomfortably.

More cramping spasms twisted me involuntarily.

The doctor was hunched over me. I could hear the beeping of the medicae auspex he'd taken from his pharmacopoeia.

'This is no act,' he muttered. 'His body's in seizure. You can't fake muscle binding like that. Blood-oxygen is down to thirty per cent

and his heart is defibrillating. He'll be dead in less than an hour.'

'Give him a shot. Fix him!' Riggre yelled.

'I can't, sir. Not here. We haven't got the facilities. Ahh! Emperor, look! He's bleeding out now, from the eyes and nose.'

'Do something!' Riggre screamed.

'We have to get him to an infirmary. Kasr Derth is the nearest. We have to get him there quickly or he's dead!'

'That's ridiculous, doctor!' said Riggre. 'You must be able to do something…'

'Not here.'

'Call up a flight, Riggre,' Fischig said.

'He's a primary level prisoner of the Inquisition! We can't just take him out of here!'

'Then get Osma—'

'He's gone back to the mainland for the night.'

Fischig's voice was low. 'Are you going to be the one to tell Osma you let his prize captive die on the floor of his cell?'

'N-no…'

'I'll tell him, then. I'll tell Osma that his man Riggre cheated him of the greatest prosecution of his career because he couldn't be

bothered to authorise transport and thus let Eisenhorn die of toxic shock in this prison stack!'

'Call up transport!' Riggre shouted at the guards. 'Now!'

THEY CARRIED ME up to the stone-cut landing pad on a stretcher. Voices yelled and argued in the biting wind and blizzard-filled

darkness. The medic had fixed up an intravenous drip and was trying to slow my symptoms with a few drugs from his kit.

The pad lights flickered on, cold and white, and backlit the swirling snow into black dots.

A Cadian shuttle came in low, its attitude thrusters shaking the pad and swirling the snowfall in random directions.

They carried me into the green-lit interior, and the worst of the cold and weather was stolen away as the hatch shut. I felt the sudden

yaw of the ship as we lifted up and turned away towards the mainland. Fischig loomed over me, adjusting the restraining straps that

held me into the shuttle's cot. Over the roar of the engines, I could hear Riggre shouting at the pilot.

Covertly, Fischig slid an injector vial from his coat and fixed it into the intravenous rig in place of the prison doctor's injector.

I began to feel better almost at once.

'Stay still, and breathe slowly,' Fischig whispered. 'And hold on tight. Things are about to get… bumpy.'

'Contact! Three kilometres and coming in hard!' I heard the co-pilot blurt.

'What the hell is that?' Riggre demanded.

There was a pinging sound from the shuttle's transponder.

'Throne of Earth! They've got a target-lock on us!' exclaimed the pilot.

'Attention, shuttle,' a voice crackled over the open vox. 'Set down on the islet west five-two by three-six. Now, or I will shoot you out

of the air!'

My vision was settling now. I looked across the green-lit cabin and saw Riggre pull a laspistol.

'What treachery is this?' he asked, looking at Fischig.

'I think you should do as you were asked and set down right now,' said Fischig calmly.

Riggre made to fire the pistol, but there was a searing flash of light. Fischig burned Riggre with a blast from the digi-weapon built into

the jokaero-made ring on his right index finger. An item of Maxilla's jewellery, I realised.

Fischig fired another shot that vaporised the vox-system.

'Down!' he ordered the pilot, pointing the ring at him.

THE SHUTTLE MADE emergency groundfall in a snowstorm on the rocky beach of the uninhabited islet.

'Hands on your heads!' Fischig ordered the crewmen as he bundled me out of the hatch and into the blizzard.

I could barely walk and he had to support me.

'You poisoned me,' I gasped.

'I had to make it convincing. Aemos prepared a dose that would reactivate the binary poison in your body. Pye's poison.'

'You bastards!'

'Hah! A man who can curse is far from dead. Come on!'

He half-carried me across the shingle into the oceanic gale, snowflakes stinging our faces. Lights swooped down ahead of us as the

gun-cutter came in, executing a perfect, Betancore-style landing on the icy shingle.

Fischig bundled me up the landing ramp into the arms of Bequin and Inshabel.

'Dear lord, have you thought this through?' I wheezed.

'Of course we have!' Bequin snapped. 'Nathun! Get a booster shot of antivenin!'

FOR THE SECOND time in under two years, I was dead. From binary poison at the hands of Beldame Sadia's henchmen on Lethe, and

now, dead in a shuttle-crash, brought down in a winter-storm over the Caducades on Cadia.

The gun-cutter lofted from the beach, ran the length of it, and then came back towards the downed shuttle.

May the Emperor forgive me and my staff for the deaths of Riggre and the two flight crew. Their deaths were the only way I could

maintain my security.

'Fire,' I heard Nayl tell Medea.

The gun-cutter's ordnance strafed the Cadian shuttle and blew it apart. By dawn, the jetsam along the remote islet's shore would

suggest nothing but a tragic crash caused by the hellish storms.

WE BANKED UP through the cover of the storms towards orbital space. Though no one told me, I knew our flight plan was covered by

someone else's authority code.

Neve's was my guess. Probably with her permission.

The Essene was waiting for us.

'Now what?' I asked Fischig hoarsely.

'Dammit, I've risked everything I count dear to get you this far,' he replied. 'I was kind of hoping you'd know what to do now.'

'Cinchare,' I said. 'Tell Maxilla to get us to Cinchare.'

THERE ARE SOME secrets that are worth keeping.

'What's at Cinchare?' Bequin asked.

'An old friend,' I said.

'Not a friend, exactly,' added Aemos.

'No. Aemos is right. An old associate.'

'Two old associates, to be specific,' Aemos added.

'Bequin pulled a particularly angry face. 'You pair and your old intimacies. Why don't you ever give a straight answer?'