Nemesis

Cool, calm and without fear of discovery. Yosef peered into the shadows, the first

questions forming in his mind.

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How had this been done and kept silent enough that no one had heard it? With so

much blood shed, had the killer been tainted, left a trace? And where…? Where

was…?

Yosef stopped short and blinked. The pool of blood was in gentle motion, small

swells crossing it back and forth. He heard tiny hollow splashes here and there. “The

remains…” he began, glancing back at Skelta. “There’s not enough for a corpse.

Where’s Norte’s body?”

The jager had one hand to his mouth, and with the other he gingerly pointed

upwards. Yosef raised his eyes to the roof and there he found the rest of Jaared Norte.

The drivesman’s body had been opened in a manner that the reeve had only seen

in use by morticians—or rather, in a manner that was an extreme variation on the cuts

used for a post-mortem examination. Iron impact rods, the kind of heavy bolts used

by building labourers to secure construction work to sheer cliff sides, had been used

to nail Norte to the ceiling of the shed. One through each ankle, another through the

meat of the forearms, the limbs splayed out in an X-shaped stance. Then, slices

across the torso at oblique angles had enabled the killer to peel back the epidermis of

the torso, the neck and face. These cuts created pennants of skin that each came to a

point; one to the right and to the left, another down across the groin and the last torn

up over the bloody grinning mess of the skull to rise over the dead man’s head. Four

more impact rods secured the tips of these wet rags of meat in place. From the

opened confines of the man’s body, loops of dislodged muscle and broken spars of

bone pointed down towards the blood pool, weeping fluid.

“Have you ever seen anything like that?” managed Skelta, his voice thick with

revulsion. “It’s horrific.”

Yosef’s first thought was of a sculpture, of an artwork. Against the dark metal

plates of the shed’s roof, the drivesman had been made into a star with eight points.

“I don’t know,” whispered the reeve.

19

TWO

The Shrouds

Masked

A Common Blade

The Imperial Palace was more city than stronghold, vast and ornate in the majesty of

its sprawling scope, towers, pinnacles and great monoliths of stone and gold that

swept from horizon to jagged horizon. Landscapes that in millennia past had been a

patchwork of nation-states and sovereignties were now buried beneath the grand

unity of the Empire of Humanity, and its greatest monument. The dominions of the

palace encompassed whole settlements and satellite townships, from the confines of

the Petitioner’s City to the ranges of the Elysium Domes, across the largest star-port

in the Sol system and down to the awesome spectacle of the Eternity Gate. Millions

toiled within its outer walls in service to the Imperium, many living their lives

without ever leaving the silver arcology ziggurats where they were born, served, and

died.

This was the shining, beating heart of all human endeavour, the throne and the

birthplace of a species that stood astride the galaxy, its splendour and dignity vast

enough that no one voice could ever hope to encompass them with mere words. Terra

and her greatness were the jewel in the Imperial crown, bright and endless.

And yet; within a metropolis that masqueraded as a continent, there were a

myriad of ghost rooms and secret places. There were corners where the light did not

fall—some of them created for just that purpose.

There was a chamber known as the Shrouds. Inside the confines of the Inner

Palace, if one could have gazed upon the schematics of those bold artisans who laid

the first stones of the gargantuan city-state, no trace of the room or its entrances

would have been apparent. To all intents and purposes, this place did not exist, and

even those who had need to know of its reality could not have pinpointed it on a map.

If one could not find the Shrouds, then one was not meant to.

There were many ways to the chamber, and those who met there might know of

one or two—hidden passageways concealed in the tromp I’oeil artworks of the Arc

Galleries; a shaft behind the captured waterfall at the Annapurna Gate; the blind

corridor near the Great Orrery; the Solomon Folly and the ghost switch in the

sapphire elevator at the Western Vantage; these and others, some unused for

centuries. Those summoned to the Shrouds would emerge into a labyrinth of evershifting

corridors that defied all attempts to map them, guided by a mech-intellect

that would navigate them to the room and never twice by the same route. All that

could be certain was that the chamber was atop a tower, one of thousands ranged in

sentry rows across the inner bulwarks of the Palace, and even that was a supposition,

20

based on the weak patina of daylight allowed to penetrate the sailcloth-thick blinds

that forever curtained the great oval windows about the room. Some suspected that