Lord of the Night

'I am sorry, my lord, truly... It's just that...' she'd fumbled for words, the memory of the body twisting her guts, flickering before her. Its naked shape haunted every blink and its empty eyes — hollows that led only to shadow — regarded her mutely from her own mind. Should she say it? Should she voice her suspicions? By the Throne, she'd been so sure, but now that she came to it, now that it needed to be spoken, suddenly it sounded ludicrous. Melodramatic. Too much.

But the words!

Adeo mori servus Imperator Fictus, Ave Dominus Nox.

The words had filled her with such certainty that she'd all but screamed her fears when she saw them, biting her tongue all the way back to Cuspseal, desperate to tell her master.

She must tell him. She must.

In the control room, staring at the voicetube with her stomach churning, she'd taken a breath, composed herself, injected formality into her tone, and said it.

'Inquisitor, it is my belief that the taint is abroad within the hive.'

This time the pause had dragged long and deep, and when he spoke Kaustus's voice was so quiet that she'd strained to hear his words.

'Chaos?' he'd whispered. 'You think the city harbours Chaos?'

She'd choked back a retch at the very word, and had gripped the speakertube as if clinging for dear life.

'Yes, my lord,' she said, committed. 'Or... or something like it, Emperor preserve.'

'Interrogator Ashyn,' Kaustus had said finally, and it seemed to Mita that a strange new element had entered his tone, a hint of ice that had not registered before. 'We are servants of the Ordo Xenos. We have come to this world to unmask the cancer that is xenophilia. That is the course we shall pursue.'

'But—'

'You are young, interrogator. Already you have served two masters. You lack continuity. You lack experience. You are unqualified in the ways of Chaos.'

'But... my lord,' she'd struggled with the plug of frustration in her throat. Why could he not trust her? What reason could he have for such belligerence? 'My lord, I feel it. I sense it. It stalks the shadows...'

'That,' and his voice had allowed no room for argument, no hope of persuasion, 'is not in your power to diagnose. Is that all, interrogator? Or do you have more spurious assertions to make?'

Standing there with mouth agape, a forked pathway had presented itself to her, and she had closed her eyes to explore its shimmering angles. Beyond the guiding techniques of the psi-trance, without even consulting the lesser arcanoi of the Imperial tarot, she knew that such echoes of the future — uninvited and uncontrolled — should be mistrusted. They presented fickle visions of what might be, writhing on skeins of chance, and the adept-tutors at the Scholia Psykana had warned their charges to be wary of their deceptions.

Nonetheless, the options had been as vibrant as had she been seated in her meditation cell, and she'd regarded them with the tranquillity of a practiced, competent psyker.

On the one hand she could return to her master's side. She could kow-tow to his desires, disregard her own judgements, suppress the condemnation of his eccentricities and accept his authority. She could trust in his righteousness and serve him with the devotion his rank deserved. In time, she could see, she would gain a portion of his respect.

Or she could believe what her heart told her: a path that ran ragged with uncertainty, violence and blood.

And glory.

'My lord,' she'd said, enslaved to her ambition. 'I would ask your blessing in undertaking a hunt.'

'A hunt.'

'Yes my lord. For the killer.'

The speaker crackled softly, as if astonished by her request.

'Interrogator,' it said eventually. 'Either your brain is addled by the crudity of your surroundings or your insolence is greater even than I had feared. Your request is d—'

And then the connection had broken, the lights flickered, and the world turned on its head.

The way Mita saw it — during the hours of madness that followed the quake — an interrupted refusal was no refusal at all.

In a metropolis as densely populated as the hive, any upheaval causing fatalities in the mere hundreds could barely be considered calamitous. Nor was Cuspseal's regimented architecture overly disturbed by the subterranean blast: its buttresses and spindled towers continued to stand, its bleak factories barely paused in their ceaseless grind, and its cabled walkways simply swayed before resuming their sprawl. And if here or there a habstack found its view altered, or a chapel leaned from its foundation where before it stood proud, then the teeming masses could be relied upon to shrug and thank the Emperor-on-high that the quake had not been more devastating. The ancientness of this skyless place weighed heavily, and deep in their hearts each hiver felt its fragility keenly. It was a house of cards, a tower of glass, and would require but one carelessly cast stone to crumble.