The Magos Page 24

  ‘Don’t you care?’ Carl asked.

  The untouchable nodded at his book. ‘It’s just getting interesting.’

  Outside, DaRolle scurried forward, keeping low behind a half-fallen wall. He checked the area, unshipped his laspistol, and deactivated his limiter.

  Then he began to run, head down, towards the parked transport.

  XVIII

  Her breathing was coming in short, sharp bursts. Patience had run as hard and as fast as she could. There was at least one person very close to her now, but the psychic-trace was faint and hard to place. She was worn out, exhausted, and her gift was weak from over-use.

  She clambered down into a cavity behind a ruined pumping station, crawling into a cave formed by the overhang of the fallen roof. She curled up against the back wall, her arms around her knees. Outside, the Dolors were still jeering and shouting, but it was more distant now. She’d gone as far as she could. Now it was just a matter of waiting.

  Waiting for the end.

  +Patience.+

  She started, and looked around, not daring to speak.

  +Patience. Stay calm. Stay where you are. I’m coming to help you. I want to help you.+

  ‘Where are you?’ she hissed in fear.

  +Don’t speak. They’ll hear you. Think your answers.+

  ‘What do you mean? Where the frig are you?’

  +Don’t be scared. Try not to speak aloud. They’ll hear you.+

  ‘This is another trick. You’re one of them! One of the frigging hunters!’

  +No. Patience, my name is Gideon. I swear by the God-Emperor Himself I mean you no harm. I’m trying to help you. You’re hearing me because I am speaking directly to your mind, psychically.+

  ‘You lie!’

  +Try me. Think of something I couldn’t know.+

  Patience closed her eyes and moaned softly.

  +Prudence. And Providence.+

  She gasped.

  +Your sisters. You’re worried about them. They were taken… wait… Yes, they were taken from the scholam. Without your consent.+

  ‘Just kill me, you bastard, or leave me alone!’

  +Please, Patience, don’t speak. They’ll hear you.+

  I was moving fast now. The jagged ruins of the slum-tracts slid by me on either side. Rocks and catapult bullets occasionally clattered off my chair’s armour. Where was she? Where was she?

  +Patience? Can you still hear me?+

  ‘Leave me alone!’ she sobbed, crawling deeper into the damp cavity. ‘I can’t do this! I can’t do this any more!’

  +Yes, you can! Just keep it together! Focus! Focus on something!+

  Patience twisted in panic, clawing at the sides of her head. I was scaring her. My voice. Something about my voice. Not just the fact that it was coming, disembodied, into her mind. Something else.

  What?

  As I steered my chair out across a long sea of trash and debris, I gently peered into her mind, into the panic and turmoil. Into the fear.

  I saw it. It was my voice itself. I sounded like a middle-aged, well-educated male. Reasonable, polite, refined. Exactly the sort of man who had betrayed her for her entire life, her fellow pupils, her sisters. I saw she had formed a picture of me already. It was part Cyrus, part Ide, part Loketter, part some ginger-haired man. It was all of these, blended into one monster.

  Immediately, I switched the focus of my telepathy.

  +Kara?+

  I found her at once, bleary and sick. Nayl was helping her along a rubble ledge back towards the gig.

  ‘What?’ she asked.

  +I’m sorry, Kara, but I need to ware you again.+

  ‘Throne, no!’ she whimpered.

  ‘She’s had enough, boss,’ Nayl said.

  +It’s important. Really important. I need her voice.+

  Kara looked at Nayl and nodded wearily. He caught her as her wraithbone pendant flashed, and she fell.

  I left her body limp in Nayl’s arms, and put on her personality like a skin-suit. My psychic-voice became Kara Swole’s soft, reassuring tones.

  +Patience?+

  ‘What? What?’

  +Patience, my name is Kara. My good friend Gideon has asked me to talk to you. Time is very short, Patience, and you need to listen to me if you want to stay alive. Trust Gideon. Do exactly as I say.+

  I could feel the girl giving way to panic.

  +Patience, focus! Hold on! There must be something you can hold on to! Something you can hold on to so you can keep going! Your sisters, maybe? Your mother? Patience?+

  She had found it at last. It was something so small and dark and hard in her mind that even my telepathy could not unlock it. She held on to it, tight, tight, as the dark closed in.

  Her panic waned. Her breathing slowed. I was close now. I could reach her.

  Patience opened her eyes. A skull, eyes bright, hovered at arm’s reach in front of her, gazing at her. A drone.

  I was too late. She had made too much noise.

  The hunters had found her.

  XIX

  ‘Throne!’ cried Carl, leaning back from his auspex station in alarm. ‘What the hell did you do?’

  ‘I might have broken wind,’ admitted Wystan Frauka. ‘Sorry.’ He turned back to his book.

  ‘Check your limiter, dear boy,’ Thonius demanded.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Why? I was just listening in, and Ravenor suddenly went offline!’

  ‘The vox?’

  ‘The vox is still live! I mean his telepathic link just scrambled! Was that you?’

  Wystan Frauka frowned and put down his data-slate. He checked his device. ‘No, it’s on. I’m blocked.’

  ‘Then what?’

  ‘Relax, Carly. I’ll take a look.’

  ‘Please–’ Carl began.

  Frauka patted the handgun in his belt again. ‘I told you, I’ve got your back.’

  ‘No, it’s just… could you not call me “Carly”?’

  Frauka frowned. ‘All right. What about “Thony” then?’

  ‘No!’

  Frauka held up his hands. ‘All right. Throne! I was just being pally. The boss said I was too aloof. Too aloof, can you believe it? He suggested I should try being more friendly. He said it would help with team building, and–’

  ‘Frigging hell, Frauka!’

  ‘What? Emperor’s tits, you guys are so uptight! I’ll go look! I’ll go look! I got your back, remember?’

  Frauka turned. DaRolle’s laspistol was aimed directly at his face. The ginger-haired killer grinned.

  ‘On a side note,’ Frauka said, ‘it would have been nice if you’d got my back too, Carly.’

  XX

  ‘Out!’ said the hunter in grey-scale armour. He gestured with his double-bladed harn knife. Patience got up, and slowly came out of the pumping station cavity. The hunter’s drone circled her, purring softly.

  ‘Gonna fight?’ he asked. She shook her head.

  ‘Good girl. Step out here.’ She came out.

  The hunter keyed his vox-link. ‘This is Greyde. I’ve got her. Game’s done. Tell Loketter that my master Vevian will want his winnings in small bills, so he can pay me off nice and handsome.’

  The hunter looked at Patience. ‘Why are you smiling?’

  ‘No reason.’

  He settled his grip on the alien blade. ‘Sure you’re not thinking of trying something dumb? I’d hate that. It’d make me take a lot longer with you.’

  ‘I won’t fight,’ Patience said.

  ‘Good.’

  ‘Because Kara told me I didn’t have to any more.’

  ‘Who? Who’s Kara?’

  ‘The girl who told me her friend was coming. She told me to have patience, because patience is a virtue.’

  The hunter, Greyde, looked around edgily. ‘No one here but us, girl. No sign of any friend of yours.’

  Patience shrugged. ‘He’s coming.’

  A wind picked up, stirring the dust and the grit around them, billowing the filth up in swi
rling clouds. Like an exhalation from the sumps of the towering city.

  Except it wasn’t.

  Larger pieces of trash lifted and fluttered through the air. Pebbles rolled on the ground. It was like a hurricane was gathering over the slums.

  No hurricane.

  Alarmed, Greyde grabbed the girl, viced her neck with one powerful arm, and raised the harn blade to deliver the kill-stab.

  +Kuming Greyde. I know you. I know everything about you. I know the nine counts of murder that you are wanted for, and the fifty-seven other killings you have on your clammy soul. I know you killed your own father. I know you understand only hard cash and killing.+

  ‘What? What?’ the hunter wailed in terror as the tempest of wind engulfed him and his prey.

  +I don’t carry cash. No pockets. I guess it’s going to be killing then.+

  I turned on my chair’s stablights, so I became visible as I ploughed in through the tumult of dirt and dust. The hunter screamed, but the dust choked him. Gagging, he threw Patience aside, and drew his Etva c.II plasma cannon, a pistol-sized weapon more than capable of burning clean through my armoured chair.

  Staggering, half-blinded, he aimed it at me.

  With a simple tap of my mind, I fired my chair’s psycannon. The hunter’s corpse slammed back through the wall of the pumping station. Even before it had hit the wall, every bone in that body had been pulped by concussive force, every organ exploded.

  The wind dropped. Grit pattered off the sealed body of my chair.

  +Patience?+

  She got up. I wasn’t using Kara Swole’s voice any more.

  +Are you all right?+

  She nodded. She was singularly beautiful, despite the dirt caking her and the tears in her clothing. Tall, slender, black-haired, her eyes a piercing green.

  ‘Are you Kara’s friend?’ she asked.

  +Yes.+

  ‘Are you Gideon?’

  +Yes.+

  She stepped forward and placed her right hand flat on the warm canopy of my support chair. ‘Good. You don’t look anything like I imagined.’

  XXI

  ‘So, we’re dead? Yeah, of course we are,’ Frauka said softly.

  ‘You’d be dead already,’ replied DaRolle. ‘I just wanted to find out which bastard was running you. Who is it? Finxster? Rotash? That’d be right. Rotash always wants a slice of the boss’ gameplay.’

  ‘Neither, actually,’ Frauka smiled.

  ‘Frauka…’ Carl began, terrified. He’d backed away as far as the gig’s scan-console would allow, and even then knew there was no hope. This killer had them both cold. Carl wondered where he’d left his weapon. The answer – ‘in the cabin lockers’ – did not cheer him up.

  ‘Who, then?’

  ‘You won’t know him. His name’s Ravenor.’

  DaRolle sniffed.

  ‘Never heard of the frig.’

  ‘Untouchable?’ Frauka asked, casually indicating the limiter around DaRolle’s throat.

  ‘Uh huh. You too?’

  Frauka smiled. ‘Made that way, so help me. Still, the pay’s decent. Always someone who needs a good blunter, right?’

  ‘I hear that,’ DaRolle grinned.

  ‘Oh well,’ Frauka sighed. ‘Do me a favour, okay? Make it clean and quick. Back of the head, no warning.’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘I mean, one blunter doing a favour for another? We gotta stick together, right, even if we are working for rival crews?’

  ‘No problem,’ said DaRolle.

  ‘All right,’ Frauka said, and turned his back. ‘Any time you like.’ DaRolle aimed his pistol again.

  ‘I don’t suppose…’ Frauka began. Then he shook his head. ‘No, I’m taking the piss now.’

  ‘What?’ asked DaRolle.

  ‘Yeah, what?’ Carl squeaked in frozen terror.

  ‘One last stick? For a condemned man?’

  DaRolle shrugged. ‘Go on.’

  Frauka took out his lack, set a lho-stick to his lips and lit it with his igniter. He breathed in the smoke and smiled. ‘Oh, tastes good. Real mellow. Want one?’

  ‘No,’ said DaRolle.

  ‘Real smooth,’ said Frauka, inhaling a long drag. ‘These things’ll kill you, you know.’

  ‘I wouldn’t worry about that,’ DaRolle smiled.

  ‘I don’t frigging believe this!’ Carl whined.

  ‘Hey,’ said Frauka, glancing over his shoulder. ‘Why don’t you do him now while I’m smoking this baby? Save time. I never did like him.’

  ‘Oh Throne!’ Carl cried out and fell into a foetal position under the console.

  ‘Frig, what a baby!’ DaRolle laughed.

  ‘Tell me about it,’ Frauka said. He stubbed out his smoke. ‘All right, ready.’ He held up the squashed butt. ‘Know what that was, my friend?’

  ‘Don’t tell me,’ smirked DaRolle. ‘Best smoke of your life?’

  ‘No,’ said Frauka quietly. ‘It was delaying tactics.’

  DaRolle swung around. The hulking shape of Harlon Nayl filled the hatch behind him. Nayl’s Hecuter 10 boomed once.

  ‘Everyone alive?’ Nayl asked, stepping in over the twisted body of the ginger-haired man.

  ‘Saw you approaching on the scanners,’ Frauka said. ‘Thought I’d keep him talking.’

  Carl Thonius got to his feet, shivering with anger and fright.

  ‘You’re unbelievable, Frauka,’ he hissed.

  ‘Thank you, Carl,’ Frauka smiled, and sat down with his book again. ‘See? Now you’re team building too.’

  XXII

  I led the girl back to the gig, where the others were waiting.

  ‘Hello, Patience, I’m Kara,’ Kara said.

  ‘Good to know you,’ Patience replied.

  By the time we raided Loketter’s manse, backed up by a full squad of Magistratum troopers, the narcobaron and his cronies had cleared out. There are warrants out for all of them. I understand Loketter is still on the run.

  We returned to the Kindred Youth Scholam, and resumed the interrogations. It took several weeks, but by the end of it, I’d wrung some precious facts out of Cyrus and his staff.

  There wasn’t much. No, that’s a lie. There was enough to ensure that Cyrus would face further interrogation at the Inquisition facility on Thracian Primaris, and enough to make sure the scholam’s tutors and rigorists would remain incarcerated in the penitentiaries of Urbitane for the rest of their natural lives.

  And a lead. Not much, but a start. From Cyrus, just before his mind finally snapped, I learned that Molotch was heading for the outworlds. Sleef, perhaps. Maybe even deeper than that. I instructed Nayl and Kara to provision for what could be a long, dangerous pursuit.

  The day before we were due to leave Sameter, I met with Carl in one of the scholam’s old, faded classrooms. Most of the staff had been shipped out by then, in Magistratum custody.

  ‘Did you trace what I wanted?’ I asked.

  He nodded. ‘It’s very little. With the records wiped–’

  ‘What have you got?’

  ‘Pupils Prudence and Providence were sold to a free trader who called himself Vinquies. The name was false, of course. No other records remain, and the name doesn’t match any excise log I can get from Sameter Out Traffic.’

  ‘The man himself?’

  ‘There was a picture in Cyrus’ mind, and in the minds of several of the other tutors present at the supper, but they’re not reliable. I’ve fed them through both the local Magistratum files and the officio itself. Nothing.’

  ‘So… so, they’re lost?’

  Carl nodded sadly. ‘I suppose, if we dedicated the rest of our careers to trying to find them, we might turn up some clue. But in all reality, they’re long gone.’

  ‘I’ll tell her,’ I said, and slid out of the room.

  Patience was in the oubliette. By choice. The hatch was open. She sat inside, in the semi-dark, sliding her hands over the stones. She was still wearing her torn and filthy uniform. She’d refused to
take it off.

  ‘Patience?’

  She stared out at me. ‘You can’t find them, can you?’

  I thought for a moment, and decided it was better to lie. Better a lie now than a lifetime of hopeless yearning.

  ‘Yes, Patience, I found them.’

  ‘They’re dead, aren’t they?’

  ‘Yes.’

  She coiled up, and I felt her hold on to that small black nugget in her mind again.

  +Patience.+

  ‘Yes, Gideon?’

  +I’m sorry. I truly am. We have to leave soon. I’d like you to come with us.+

  ‘With you? Why?’

  +I’ll be honest. I can’t leave you here. You know about your gift? What it means?+

  ‘Yes.’

  +You’re a psyker. A telekine. You can’t be allowed to remain in public. But I can look after you. I can train you. You could come to serve the God-Emperor of Mankind at my side. Would you like that?+

  ‘Better than an apprenticeship to a mill,’ she said. ‘Will Kara be there?’

  +Yes, Patience.+

  ‘All right then,’ she said, and stepped out of the oubliette to join me.

  +If you follow me, it will be hard at times. I will demand a lot of you. I will need to know everything about you. What do you think to that?+

  ‘That’s fine, Gideon.’

  +I’ll be asking you questions, probing you, training your gift, unwrapping who you are.+

  ‘I understand.’

  +Do you? Here’s a test question, the sort of thing I’ll be asking you. What was it that you held on to? When the hunters were closing. I felt it as a dark secret part of you, something you wouldn’t let go.+

  ‘It was my name, Gideon,’ she said. ‘My true name, my real name. It was always the single thing my mother gave me that I didn’t ever give away to the bastards in this place.’

  +I see. That makes sense. Good, thank you for being so honest.+

  ‘Gideon, do you want me to tell you my real name? I will, if you want.’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘No, not now, not ever. I want you to hold on to it. It’s your secret. Keep it safe and it will keep you sane. It’ll remind you what you’ve come through. Promise me you’ll keep it safe.’

  +I will.+

  ‘Patience is a fine name. I’ll call you that.’

  ‘All right,’ she replied, and started to walk down the hallway at my side.