第 44 页

one Aemos had conducted would have shown up such a connection, given the scale of area involved and the size of population. Listed

together, the deaths stood out like a sore thumb.

Here, Aemos had come into his own. Another clerk might have sent those findings to me and waited for direction, but Aemos, hungry

to answer the questions himself, had pressed on, trying to make a pattern out of them. No simple task. There was nothing to demographically

or geographically link the victims. A housewife here, a millkeeper there, a landowner in one small village, a community

doctor in another, seventy kilometres away.

The only thing they had in common was the sudden, violent and inexplicable nature of their demises: seizures, abrupt, fatal.

I set down my cup and scrolled on, aware that Alizebeth was grinning at me.

'Get to the last bit,' she advised. 'Aemos strikes again.'

Right at the last, Aemos revealed another connection.

A day or two before each death, the victim's locality had been paid a visit by Sunsable's Touring Fair.

LADY FROIGRE WAS most perturbed to see us about to leave. 'There are questions here still…' she began.

'And I'm going to seek the answers,' I said. 'Trust me. I believe my savant has hit upon something.'

She nodded, unhappy. Rinton stepped forward and put his arm around his mother's shoulders.

'Trust me,' I repeated and walked out across the drive to my waiting flyer.

I could hear the sound of chain blades, and turned from the car to walk around the side of the hall. One of the trees brought down in

the night's freak storm had crashed part of the stable block and the housemen were working to saw up the huge trunk and clear it.

'Is that where you detected Penshel seed?' I asked Alizebeth when she came to find out what was keeping me.

'Yes,' she said.

'Fetch my blade.'

I called the housemen away from their work, and walked into the collapsed ruin of the stable, crunching over heaps of coarse sawdust.

The ivy-clad tree still sprawled through the burst roof.

Alizebeth brought me Barbarisater and I drew it quickly. By then Lady Froigre and Rinton Froigre had emerged to see what I was

doing.

Barbarisater hummed in my hand, louder and more throatily than it had done the previous night. As soon as I entered that part of the

stable block, the particular stall the tree had smashed, it jumped. The taste of Chaos was here.

'What was this used for?' I asked. 'During the fete, what was this area used for?'

'Storage,' said Lady Froigre. 'The people from the fair wanted to keep equipment and belongings out of sight. Food too, I think. One

man had trays of fresh figs he wanted to keep out of the light.'

'And the hololithographer,' said Rinton. 'He used one of those stalls as a dark room.'

SO HOW DO you find a travelling fair in an area the size of the Drunner Region? If you have a copy of their most recent invoice, it's

easy. The fair-master, eager to be paid for his services at Froigre Hall, had left as a payment address an inn eighty kilometres away in

Seabrud. From the invoice, I saw that Aen had been asked to mail the payment within five days. The fair moved around a great deal,

and the travelling folk didn't believe much in the concept of credit accounts.

From Seabrud, we got a fix on the location of Sunsable's Fair.

They had pitched on a meadow outside the village of Brudmarten, a little, rustic community of ket-herds and weavers that was flanked

by a lush, deciduous woodland hillside to the east and marshy, cattle-trampled fields below at the river spill to the west.

It was late afternoon on a hot, close day, the air edged with the heavy, fulminous threat of storms. The sky was dark overhead, but the

corn was bright and golden down in the meadows, and pollen balls blew in the breeze like thistle-fibres. Grain-crakes whooped in the

corn stands, and small warblers of the most intense blue darted across the hedges.

Gabon lowered the limo to rest in a lane behind the village kirk, a pale, Low Gothic temple in need of up-keep. A noble statue of the

Emperor Immaculate stood in the overgrown graveyard, a roost for wood doves. I buckled on my sword and covered it with a long

leather cloak. Gabon locked the car.

'Stay with me,' I told Alizebeth, and then turned to Gabon. 'Shadow us.'

'Yes, sir.'

We walked down the lane towards the fair.

Even from a distance, we could hear the noise and feel the energy. The arrival of the fair had brought the folk of Brudmarten and the

neighbouring hamlets out in force. Pipe organs were trilling and wheezing in the lank air, and there was the pop and whizz of

firecrackers. I could hear laughter, the clatter of rides, the ringing of score bells, children screaming, rowdy men carousing, pistons

hissing. The smell of warm ale wafted from the tavern tent.

The gate in the meadow's hedge had been turned into an entranceway arched with a gaudy, handpainted sign that declared Sunsable's

Miraculous Fair of Fairs open. A white-eyed twist at the gateway took our coins for admission.

Inside, on the meadow, all manner of bright, vulgar sights greeted us. The carousel, lit up with gas-lamps. The ring-toss. The neat,

pink box-tent of the clairvoyant. The churning hoop of the whirligig, spilling out the squeals of children. The colourful shouts of the

freak show barker. The burnt-sugar smell of floss makers. The clang of test-your-strength machines.

For a penny, you could ride the shoulders of a Battle Titan - actually an agricultural servitor armoured with painted sections of rusty

silage hopper. For another penny, you could shoot greenskins in the las-gallery, or touch the Real and Completely Genuine shin bone

of Macharius, or dunk for ploins. For tuppence, you could gaze into the Eye of Terror and have your heroism judged by a hooded man

with a stutter who claimed to be an ex-Space Marine. The Eye of Terror in this case was a pit dug in the ground and filled with

chemical lamps and coloured glass filters.

Nearby, a small donation allowed you to watch an oiled man struggle free from chains, or a burning sack, or a tin bathtub full of

broken glass, or a set of stocks.

'Just a penny, sir, just a penny!' howled a man on stilts with a harle-quined face as he capered past me. 'For the young lady!'

I decided not to ask what my penny might buy.

'I want to go look at the freak show,' Alizebeth told me.

'Save your money… it's all around us,' I growled.

We pushed on. Coloured balloons drifted away over the field into the encroaching darkness of the thunderhead. Corn crickets rasped

furiously in the trampled stalks all about us. Drunken, painted faces swam at us, some lacking teeth, some with glittering augmetic

eyes.

'Over there,' I whispered to Alizebeth.

Past the brazier stand of a woman selling paper cones of sugared nuts, and a large handcart stacked with wire cages full of songbirds,

was a small booth tent of heavy red material erected at the side of a brightly painted trailer. A wooden panel raised on buntingwrapped

posts announced ''Hololiths! Most Lifelike! Most Agreeable!'' below which a smaller notice said A most delightful gift, or a

souvenir of the day, captured by the magic art of a master hololithographer.' A frail old man with tufted white hair and small

spectacles was seated outside the booth on a folding canvas chair, eating a meat pie that was so hot he had to keep blowing on it.

'Why don't you go and engage his interest?' I suggested.

Alizebeth left my side, pushed through the noisy crowd and stopped by his booth. A sheet of flakboard had been erected beside the

booth's entrance, and on it were numerous hololithic pictures mounted for display: some miniatures, some landscapes, some family

groups. Alizebeth studied them with feigned interest. The old man immediately leapt up off his chair, stowed the half-eaten pie behind

the board and brushed the crumbs off his robes. I moved round to the side, staying in the crowd, watching. I paused to examine the

caged birds, though in fact I was looking through their cages at the booth tent.

The old man approached Bequin courteously.

'Madam, good afternoon! I see your attention has been arrested by my display of work. Are they not fairly framed and wellcomposed?'

'Indeed,' she said.

'You have a good eye, madam,' he said, 'for so often in these countiy fairs the work of the hololithgrapher is substandard. The

composition is frequently poor and the plate quality fades with time. Not so with your humble servant. I have plied this trade of

portraiture for thirty years and I fancy I have skill for it. You see this print here? The lakeshore at Entreve?'

'It is a pleasing scene.'

'You are very kind, madam. It is handcoloured, like many of my frames. But this very print was made in the summer of… 329, if my

memory serves. And you'll appreciate, there is no fading, no loss of clarity, no discolouration.'

'It has preserved itself well.'

'It has,' he agreed, merrily. 'I have patented my own techniques, and I prepare the chemical compounds for the plates by hand, in my

modest studio adjoining.' He gestured to his trailer. That is how I can maintain the quality and the perfect grade of the hololiths, and

reproduce and print them to order with no marked loss of standard from original to duplicate. My reputation rests upon it. Up and

down the byeways of the land, the name Bakunin is a watchword for quality portraiture.'

Alizebeth smiled. 'It's most impressive, Master Bakunin. And how much…?'

'Aha!' he grinned. 'I thought you might be tempted, madam, and may I say it would be a crime for your beauty to remain unrecorded!

My services are most affordable.'

I moved round further, edging my way to the side of his booth until he and Alizebeth were out of sight behind the awning. I could hear

him still making his pitch to her.

On the side of the trailer, further bold statements and enticements were painted in a flourishing script. A large sign read ''Portraits two

crowns, group scenes three crowns, gilded miniatures a half-crown only, offering many a striking and famous backdoth for a crown

additional.''

I wandered behind the trailer. It was parked at the edge of the fairground, near to a copse of fintle and yew that screened the meadow

from pastures beyond the ditch. It was damp and shaded here, small animals rustling in the thickets. I tried to look in at one small

window, but it was shuttered. I touched the side of the trailer and felt Barbarisater twitch against my hip. There was a door near the far

end of the trailer. I tried it, but it was locked.

'What's your business?' growled a voice.

Three burly fairground wranglers had approached along the copse-side of the booths. They had been smoking lho-sticks behind their

trailer on a break.

'Not yours,' I assured them.

'You had best be leaving Master Bakunin's trailer alone,' one said. All three were built like wrestlers, their bared arms stained with

crude tattoos. I had no time for this.

'Go away now,' I said, pitching my will through my voice. They all blinked, not quite sure what had happened to their minds, and then

simply walked away as if I wasn't there.

I returned my attention to the door, and quickly forced the lock with my multi-key To my surprise, the thin wooden door still refused

to open. I wondered if it was bolted from inside, but as I put more weight into it, it did shift a little, enough to prove there there was

nothing physical holding it. Then it banged back shut as if drawn by immense suction.

My pulse began to race. I could feel the sour tang of warpcraft in the air and Barbarisater was now vibrating in its scabbard. It was

time to dispense with subtleties.

I paced around to the front of the booth, but there was no longer any sign of Bequin or the old man. Stooping, I went in under the

entrance flap. An inner drop curtain of black cloth stopped exterior light from entering the tent.

I pushed that aside.

'I will be with you shortly, sir,' Bakunin called, 'if you would give me a moment.'

'I'm not a customer,' I said. I looked around. The tent was quite small, and lit by the greenish glow of gas mantles that ran, I supposed,

off the trailer supply. Alizebeth was sat at the far side on a ladderback chair with a dropcloth of cream felt behind her. Bakunin was

facing her, carefully adjusting his hololithic camera, a brass and teak machine mounted on a wooden tripod. He looked round at me

curiously, his hands still polishing a brass-rimmed lens. Alizebeth rose out of her seat.

'Gregor?' she asked.

'The good lady is just sitting for a portrait, sir. It's all very civilised.' Bakunin peered at me, unsure what to make of me. He smiled and

offered his hand. 'I am Bakunin, artist and hololithographer.'

'I am Eisenhorn, Imperial inquisitor.'

'Oh,' he said and took a step backwards. 'I… I…'

'You're wondering why a servant of the Ordos has just walked into your booth,' I finished for him. Bakunin's mind was like an open

book. There was, I saw at once, no guile there, except for the natural money-making trickery of a fairground rogue. Whatever else he

was, Bakunin was no heretic.

'You took a portrait of Lord Froigre at the fete held on his lands just the other day?' I said, thinking of the picture on the harpsichord

back at the hall.

'I did,' he said. 'His lordship was pleased. I made no charge for the work, sir. It was a gift to thank his lordship for his hospitality. I

thought perhaps some of his worthy friends might see the work and want the like for themselves, I…'

He doesn't know, I thought. He has no clue what this is about. He's trying to work out how he might have drawn this investigation to

himself.

'Lord Froigre is dead,' I told him.

He went pale. 'No, that's… that's…'

'Master Bakunin… do you know if any other of your previous subjects have died? Died soon after your work was complete?'