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  Regia Occulta

  Dan Abnett

  I crossed over into Jared County via the pass at Kulbrech. Air links were down, because of the Cackle, so a reluctant motorised unit of the local militia conveyed me from the capital as far as Kulbrech Town, and then only because the Jared Commissioner had been so insistent. This was – oh – 223.M41, and I was only just out on my own.

  Even then, at the very dawn of my career, I was treated with a mixture of fear and suspicion. The rosette, or the title ‘inquisitor’, or a combination of both, fairly focused the minds of those who met me. This attitude bores me these days. Back then, it gave me a sort of vulgar sensation of power.

  Inquisitor Flammel had been killed six months before in a miserable warp transit accident, and I had been posted as a locum to cover his circuit, which was the fief worlds of the Grand Banks in the coreward reaches of the Helican sub. Circuit work is a drudge, and one acts, in the main, as an itinerant magistrate, travelling from planetary capital to planetary capital, reviewing flotsam cases gathered in by the local authorities. Most are trivial and hardly ordo business, scares conjured up by superstition and petty disputation, though I had spent eight weeks on New Bylar working through a caseload that eventually exposed a traffic in low-grade, unsanctioned psykers.

  From New Bylar, I went to Ignix, the smallest and most peripheral of the fief colonies, a place locally regarded as the back end of all creation.

  Ignix did not disappoint. Small, wet, and whorled with ravines and meandering trenches created by an eternity of rainfall eroding its way down into the frothing seas, the planet is administratively divided into counties, each one millions of kilometres square.

  Its capital is called Foothold, for it was there the first settlers made planetfall. They were miners, mineral extraction being the only profitable occupation a man can find on Ignix. Not long into their habitation, the miners of Ignix specialised and became wet miners, panning and sifting the planet’s thousand thousand fast waterways, many of them temporary run-offs that surge one day and are gone the next, for precious ores.

  Wet mining fortunes had built Foothold into a decent sized but drab town. All the worthwhile minerals had been shipped off-world in return for hard cash, and the place had been constructed from the residue. The buildings were stained and grim, many of them fabricated from locally cast rockcrete or a type of melta-formed pumice brick. I was put up in an airless residentiary, and went to the courthouse every day to review the pending cases. None of them deserved my attention, or even the rubber stamp of the ordos.

  I had been there four days when the Cackle began. The name is a local one, a more appropriate description would be seasonal electrocorporal storms. A by-product of Ignix’s orbital variations and the virile behaviour of the star it circles, the storms visit each yearly cycle and blanket the northern hemisphere with a steady, florid electromagnetic display. The sky lights up. Corposant nests on rooftops and masts. Vox-links suffer. There is a continuous sound in the air, like a dry, evil chuckle, hence the name.

  Some years it’s mild, others it’s bad. 223 was a bad year.

  The Cackle was so fierce, it prevented any and all passage by air, including shuttle links from the lift harbour to starships at high anchor. Transfers on and off Ignix were suspended, and I was stuck for the duration, which turned out to be three weeks.

  There was some novelty to be enjoyed at first. The flickering lights in the sky, day and night, were quite sublime, and produced certain hues that I swear I have never encountered since.

  But the constant dirty chuckle became onerous and tormenting, as did the rancid, metallic sweat the charged air drew out of me. It was fuggy and close, and I quickly wearied of getting shocks from every damn metallic object I touched or used. I came to realise why the late Flammel had made Ignix a low priority on his circuit.

  With the cases done with, there was little to do but wait for the Cackle to subside. I read, and studied, and struck up passing friendships with several similarly stranded travellers living in the residentiary, merchants mostly. Perhaps friendships is too strong a word: I knew them well enough to share a drink or a conversation or a game of regicide with, but nothing more. They understood what I was, and it made them nervous around me. For the first time in my career, that vulgar sensation of power began to feel like a burden.

  Towards the end of the first week of enforced occupation, a message arrived from the commissioner of Jared County. Due to the vox-out, it was brought by a biker who had run the flooding levees and wash plains of the county limits overnight. I can only assume the commissioner had paid the man well, for he was in a poor state by the time he arrived. The Foothold Administrator, an old fellow called Wagneer, brought the message slip to me and waited while I read it.

  ‘He seems most insistent, this commissioner,’ I remarked.

  ‘Mal Zelwyn? He’s a good sort, very dutiful. He knew you were in town on circuit duties, and evidently hopes you might oblige him.’

  I held the slip up. ‘Do you think this is genuine, administrator?’ I asked.

  Wagneer shrugged his sloping shoulders. ‘Sounds like a hot one to me, but what do I know? I don’t have rosette training.’

  Zelwyn, the commissioner of Jared County, had reported a pair of killings in his township, the unimaginatively named Jared County Town. He suspected cult activity, and requested an assessment by the circuit inquisitor. I would have dismissed it except for two facts. One, I had nothing better to do, and two, Zelwyn had written:

  The victims had suffered deep, random cuts and slashes to the body, having been slain by a crushing head wound. Each victim was missing its left ear.

  ‘How do I get there? Can you scare up a transport for me?’ I asked.

  Wagneer laughed at the idea. ‘In this? All right, I’ll see what I can do.’

  The local militia took me overland to the pass in a Centaur, hooded against the rain and bulked out with yellow swim-bladders to allow for the fording of flash floods. The crew was not at all happy about the outing, but bit their tongues because of what and who I was. After twelve hours grinding along mud tracks and waterlogged gulches, they got me through the pass, over the iron bridge, and into Kulbrech Town.

  As we crossed the old, rusting bridge, I watched the corposant crackle and dance across the posts and stanchions.

  In Kulbrech Town, an odious shanty backwater, transit was arranged to carry me on the next leg of my journey. The Centaur turned back to Foothold. I went on in a cargo-8 that had seen better days.

  ‘There’s been killing, you know?’ the driver mentioned, conversationally.

  ‘I had heard something to that effect.’

  The driver nodded. Tiny threads of static were playing across his knuckles as he nudged the wheel. ‘Four dead,’ he said.

  I can honestly say that I quite admired Jared Commissioner Maldar Zelwyn. What he lacked in almost everything he made up for in sheer optimism. He showed me around Jared County Town personally, and made it clear he was tremendously proud of it.

  The town straddled twelve river threads, and it seemed to be all bridges and decking and cantilevered platforms. Habs stacked up high above the steep, rain-river chutes. Water throbbed and rattled and chugged down the channels through the town on its journey from the hills to the sea. As he drove me across the New Bridge, Zelwyn proudly explained how he had seen to its construction five years earlier, for the benefit of the community. It was a large metal structure connecting the Commercia quarter to the merchantman residences, and was evidently a boon to working practices. Before the bridge, the merchants had been obliged
to take taxi boats from their homes to the Commercia every day. The river it crossed was one of the largest and most powerful bisecting Jared County Town, and the New Bridge was equipped with elevating sections so it could lift to admit the passage of trade ships and other water traffic coming inshore from the coast to the warehouse docks. It was an impressive piece of engineering, lit up, as we rode across it, by the unending light-show of the Cackle. Zelwyn clearly worked hard to support and improve his community, at the back end of all creation though it was.

  We drew up on the glistening wharfs of the Commercia and got out of the bulky land car. Zelwyn was a stocky man in his late forties with thinning hair and a heavy, bushy moustache. He took a data-slate out of his overcoat pocket.

  ‘All the victims were discovered in the Commercia district,’ he told me. ‘Here’s a plan of the locations. It seems arbitrary to me.’

  I agreed, but I didn’t say so. ‘Is there crime scene data? Forensic material?’

  ‘I’m having it processed to you,’ he replied.

  ‘And you’ve got four now?’

  ‘Two more since I sent my message,’ he confirmed.

  ‘Is there a pattern?’

  ‘Apart from the way they were killed?’ he asked, and shook his head. ‘There’s no connection between the victims, except for the area they worked in: a trolley pusher, a warehouseman, a junior mercantile clerk, and a whore. We haven’t been able to connect any variables. As far as we know, they didn’t know each other.’

  ‘But you have a theory?’ I asked him.

  He nodded. ‘The killer lives somewhere in the Commercia.’

  ‘Because?’

  ‘Each killing took place at a time when the New Bridge was raised. There was no crossing to the merchant district. To me, that says it must be local.’

  I nodded. ‘But just a regular killer, surely? Not an ordo matter?’

  ‘We’ve had our share of murders over the years, inquisitor,’ Zelwyn replied. ‘My office handles the cases. But this… the random mutilation, the missing ears–’

  ‘What do you think that signifies?’ I asked.

  ‘Trophy taking?’ he suggested. ‘Cults do like to take trophies, I understand. Ritual, I suppose. It smacks of ritual.’

  ‘I reckon it might.’

  ‘Yeah, I thought so,’ said Zelwyn.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘You wouldn’t be here otherwise.’

  The Cackle grew more fierce as night pushed in. When we left the Commercia, rain was beginning to fall, and sirens hooted, warning that the New Bridge was about to raise its hydraulic spans. The river was at flood tide.

  I reviewed the victims in the frosty twinkle of the town morgue. Preservation methods in Jared County were not ordo standard. The cadavers had been dumped in bulk freezer units, and came out on their gurneys caked in frost, their vulnerable tissues blackened and cold-burned.

  ‘Sorry,’ said Zelwyn, watching me work. ‘I wish… our facilities could be better.’

  ‘Forget about it,’ I replied.

  I used probes and skewers on the frigid bodies, sampling and measuring. The hacking wounds, some so deep they looked like claw marks, were especially ugly. They smiled like happily parted lips, their mouths full to the brim with frozen black ice.

  ‘Cult work, then?’ he asked, after a few minutes. ‘Have I got a cult here I need to deal with?’

  ‘No, a hunter,’ I replied.

  ‘A hunter?’

  I nodded.

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘Trophy taking is a hunter’s quirk: an ear, a finger, a lock of hair.’

  ‘But that’s ritual, isn’t it?’ Zelwyn asked.

  ‘Hunters have rituals too,’ I said. He looked downcast.

  ‘Not a cult thing, then?’

  ‘You sound disappointed.’

  The Jared commissioner managed a weak smile. ‘Of course not. It’s just that I’d hoped I was on the money. I wanted to impress you. If this is simply some nut-job serial, I’ve wasted your time, and I should have known better.’

  ‘Not to mention,’ I added, wickedly, ‘that if this had been cult work, I’d have dealt with it for you?’

  Zelwyn shook his head. ‘I’m sorry to have cost you a journey, sir,’ he said.

  I felt rather ashamed of my attitude. I put down the probe, wiped frosted blood off my gloved hand, and turned to face him. ‘Look, I’ve nothing better to do. Let me help you anyway.’

  ‘You’d do that?’ he asked, rather taken aback.

  ‘Of course. Why not?’

  ‘Because you’re… you know…’

  ‘An inquisitor? Inquisitors don’t like serial killings any more than commissioners do,’ I said. ‘I have certain skills, Commissioner Zelwyn. I think I can bring this animal down.’

  He smiled. It was the warmest, most genuine thing I’d seen in years.

  I was just trundling the last corpse back into its freezer when a militia officer came into the morgue and whispered something to Zelwyn.

  He turned to look at me. I felt his pain. I mean, I actually felt it. The psyker talents that would later serve me and shape my career were still raw and unshaped in those days, but my empathetic function nevertheless resounded at his distress.

  ‘While we were busy here…’ he began.

  ‘Talk to me, Zelwyn.’

  He took a deep breath. ‘While we were fussing around here, there’s been another death.’

  ‘Is the body still in situ?’

  He nodded.

  ‘Let’s see it.’

  We had to wait for five minutes while the New Bridge lowered its spans to let us cross into the Commercia district. Zelwyn let one of his militiamen drive us. The Jared commissioner’s hands were shaking too much to be trusted.

  Corposant lit up the bridge. The sky made strange colours that twisted and turned. Rain fell. The river below us rushed along, rich in sediment, towards the distant sea.

  Lana Howey had worked the wharf for twelve years, and was a regular face at the drink-stops and taverns along the hem of the Commercia. She’d once been popular, a fast girl with good looks and impressive legs, but the work had taken its toll. In the months before her death, she had earned her income turning tricks for specialist customers, men who were more interested in what she was prepared to do rather than the way she looked.

  Now she was dead.

  Her body lay on the ground floor of a warehouse just off Commercia Main. It had been discovered by a night watchman. Slim, too slim, and wearing too much makeup, she lay naked and awkward under the over-bright portable lamps. The blood from the deep, slashing incisions had pooled out under her in a slick. Her left ear was missing.

  ‘Same as the others,’ said Zelwyn, shuddering.

  ‘No,’ I said, crouching beside the body.

  ‘No?’

  ‘No, she’s still–’

  I wanted to say alive, but that would have been wrong. She wasn’t alive anymore, but she was fresh, fresh compared to the freezer-burned residue Zelwyn had shown me earlier.

  ‘The hunter again?’ Zelwyn asked.

  ‘Looks like it. The ear, you notice?’

  ‘Why do you think it’s a hunter, Inquisitor Eisenhorn?’ Zelwyn asked.

  ‘The slash wounds,’ I replied. ‘You see? So deep. These are the kind of deep cuts that a hunter might administer to accelerate decomposition. A kill he doesn’t want, and which he wants to rot away quickly.’

  Zelwyn pursed his lips. ‘What are you going to do now, sir?’

  ‘I’m going to ask you and your people to get out of this place. Withdraw to a sixty metre perimeter.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Don’t ask me that, commissioner.’

  ‘I want to stay,’ said Zelwyn.

  ‘On your own head, then. Get your people out.’

  Later on in my career, I only ever undertook auto-seances when I had a properly qualified astrotelepath to assist me. Such acts can take a toll. Back then, I was young and headstron
g, and full of my own energy and will. It’s a wonder I ever survived.

  ‘Bolt the door,’ I said to Zelwyn. He obliged. His men had gone. ‘Do what I say and don’t interrupt me,’ I added.

  ‘Right,’ he said.

  He stood back, near the heavy warehouse door, watching. I knelt down beside the hacked corpse and sighed.

  Outside, the Cackle sputtered and pulsed.

  ‘Lana Howey?’ I called softly.

  I felt Zelwyn open his mouth, to ask why in the name of the Throne I was talking to a dead body. I think it was about then that he finally woke up to what was going on. I sensed fear bubbling up inside him, along with a strong desire to be outside with his men after all. He’d never seen anything like this done before.

  ‘Lana Howey?’

  The warehouse air took on the glossy, cold feel of hyper-reality. The light refined in clarity, and small details became impossibly sharp. The various odours of the place: soot, rockcrete, oil, sacking, thinners and the body itself, were suddenly more concentrated, more pronounced.

  ‘What am I doing here?’ asked the late Lana Howey.

  I heard Commissioner Zelwyn groan. I felt his gnawing fear.

  ‘Lana Howey?’ I called.

  ‘Hello, mister. What’s your pleasure, then, sir?’

  ‘Lana, my name is Gregor.’

  ‘That’s a lovely name. Gregor. You’re a handsome one for sure, Gregor. What can I do for you tonight?’

  ‘Where are you, Lana Howey?’

  ‘I’m in the warehouse, with you, silly man. This is my place. Don’t you fret. It’s quiet here, discrete. You’re a regular, aren’t you? I know your face.’

  ‘You’ve never seen me before, Lana Howey. You’ll never see me again.’

  ‘I doubt that,’ she sniggered. Her chuckle was the scratchy glee of the Cackle. ‘I bet you’ll be back again for more, soon enough.’

  ‘I need you to focus, Lana Howey,’ I said.

  ‘Focus? What? Why do you keep using my name, my whole name, like that? Is that your thing, mister?’

  +Lana?+

  I felt Zelwyn fighting back an urge to throw open the door bolts and run. I really hadn’t wanted him to be here in the first place. All he could see was me kneeling beside the body. He could not see what I could see.