Lord of the Night

The floor of Cuspseal had developed a tumour. Where centuries before Herniatown had sagged into the shadows, now it had returned in contempt of those baroque towers built on its spine. It shrugged off the habs and trams and levered itself upright, its ceiling bulging from the Cuspseal foundation like some malign growth. It was here, at the disaster's epicentre, that the loss of life was greatest: hivers tumbling from splintered roads, crushed between pounding slabs. Dust boiled up and out like a living thing, breeding a race of staggering mud-caked zombies. In places the rising hillock split, plumes of molten metal rising from its rents, and there the explosion could vent itself, great tongues of fire licking the bases of gantries above. The stink of flesh wrestled with screams of terror for dominance, and for a brief hour Cuspseal resounded not with the usual factorial tumult, but with the sights and scents of a warzone.

It was perhaps a reflection of hive existence that the city barely paused in its industry at the quake's arrival. In the tier above it, or a single kilometre to either side, there the hive was as oblivious as was Governor Zagrif himself, insulated in the hive's peak. If any aristocrat from Steepletown found his apartments powerless for the instant it took ancient rerouters to correct the blip, or if some high-tier merchantman discovered his flow of mouldpaste interrupted before he could reassign his contracts, then such things could be attributed to the whims of the hive ghosts, or the will of the Emperor, or — at the very least — to just another aspect of the creaking, ineffective workings of hive life.

Cuspseal was all but back to normal within two hours, and the only factor of any note to have changed was the spiralling determination of a single woman to investigate exactly what was going on in the underhive.

'You want what?'

'You heard me. A squad of twenty men. Fully armed, fully armoured.'

'I see.' Commander Orodai sat back in his chair and steepled his fingers, raising an ironic eyebrow. 'Anything else? A set of wings?'

Mita waved a dismissive hand. She'd been too patronised by far less pleasant individuals to be bothered by Orodai's sarcasm.

'I think the men will suffice, for now. And a vehicle, of course.'

He nodded with false earnestness. 'Naturally.'

Orodai's office was a barren space, windowless, made all the less welcoming by the indistinct rusding of servitors in the shadows beyond his desk. Evidently the commander travelled often between the precincts beneath his control, and only his staff of mindless scribes remained constant.

'Save your sarcasm, commander. Whether it pleases you or not, this request carries the full weight of the Inquisition's authority, an—'

'Ha, yes. And is therefore not a "request" at all. It's a demand, girl, and you'd be better off calling it by name. I haven't time for your niceties.'

'Call it what you want. It's all the same in the end.'

Orodai regarded her beneath heavy brows, as if weighing her character by her looks alone. Judging by the taste of his thoughts, he didn't regard either with fondness.

'Let us pretend,' he said, 'that I give you what you want. What sort of madness are you planning on leading my men into?'

'We go to hunt the killer, commander.' This time it was her turn to cock an eyebrow. 'You remember? The one you invited our aid in capturing?'

'I remember. And I remember inviting aid to spare my men the trouble, not to draw them away from more important du—'

'Ah... Then you consider the Inquisition fit only for insignificant pursuits?'

'That's not what I—'

'But you just said as much.' She crossed her arms. 'If I were less charitable, I might consider that assertion to border on the heretical...'

She left the veiled threat dangling, watching him carefully.

He knew he was beaten. And in his thoughts — which of course he believed to be entirely private — he cursed her venomously. Inwardly, Mita joined him, briefly hating herself for steamrollering the objections of such a fundamentally honest man. She assuaged her guilt by reminding herself of the mission's importance. She could brook no concessions, no compromises.

'Fine,' Orodai snapped, hunching forward in his seat. 'Have the damned men. But how you plan to find a single killer amongst a multitude is a trick I'd love to know.'

She half smiled, dipping in a bow of genuine gratitude. 'I have my ways.'

'You'll need them,' he said, unimpressed. 'That quake started below. It's going to be messy down there, girl. Messy and mad.'

Orodai's predictions were unerringly accurate.

It was as if the subterranean blast had expelled not only fire and ash, but some indiscernible smog of insanity. In every settlement around the ruined husk of Hemiatown, across every sumpflow and debris-dune, madness had spilled out from the shadows to reclaim its domain.