Alas, his situation did not appear to have dented his enthusiasm, nor silenced his laughter.
'...and at one time, het-het-het, I might have prayed to the Omnissiah,' he cackled, 'but no longer, no, no. Not Pahvulti. They tried to turn me, you see? They said the puritens had rejected my flesh. Het-het-het. Rejected! No! It made me strong! It made me wise!'
'Be silent, confound you!' Sahaal's temper was by now comprehensively frayed.
'Are you not interested, Space Marine, in how your new friend came to find you? Are you not interested in my knowledge?'
'Call me a Space Marine once more, worm, and I'll cut out your tongue and choke you on it.'
'Het-het-het, no, no... Not my tongue. Not while I know what I know.'
'The spiral electoo? Who wears it? His name!'
Het-het-het...
Sahaal hissed his anger through the grille of his helm and hooked a claw into what little meat remained of his captive's belly. It was a hopeless gesture — the man had demonstrated nothing but contempt for the notion of torture — but at the very least the moist noises of slicing helped to calm Sahaal's mood.
Never before had a mere human occupied a position of such influence over him. Pahvulti refused to divulge what he knew until Sahaal vowed to spare him, and to offer him such an oath would shatter every code Sahaal believed, tear to shreds every ounce of his dignity and sully every corner of his authority. Under other circumstances he would have laughed at the very suggestion.
Nor could he merely make, then break, the oath: Pahvulti had made it clear that he would deliver his information only from afar, well beyond Sahaal's punitive grasp.
For the twentieth time since bringing his captive to this dark, deep well, Sahaal cursed Pahvulti's name, cursed the ill fortune that had gifted him with such leverage, and cursed the warpshit filth that had stolen the Corona Nox and placed him in this situation in the first place.
Zso Sahaal was not accustomed to fear or uncertainty. His natural response to each was to grow angry, and in his increasingly violent gashes at Pahvulti's guts, some small portion of his venom was assuaged.
Until—
'Het-het-het... not that it bothers me, Space Marine, but you should be aware...' Pahvulti made a show of grinning, '...that impervious to pain I might be, but invulnerable I am not. Continue to cut me and I am eighty-seven-point-six per cent certain that I shall perish.' His remaining lens-eye twinkled. 'Just thought you should know. Het-het-het.'
He was a calculus logi, or at least had been. Over the previous hours Sahaal had been treated to the man's life story at least three times — a repetition which was not helping his mood.
Pahvulti had begun as a human savant-computer of the Adeptus Mechanicus — whose brittle thoughts had aided administrations and diplomats, tacticians and explorators all across the sector. On the day of his fiftieth birthday he was presented with the highest accolade reserved for his kind: the puritens lobotomy. This ritualised surgery removed from his scarred brain what little trace of humanity remained, amputated his subconscious, and burned away his pain.
It should have made him pure, mechanical, perfect. It should have brought him closer to his god, and sheltered his weak biology from the predations of temptation. To say that it failed would be a quite spectacular understatement.
His body rejected the implants. He awoke shriven of his pain and his dreams, but excised utterly from the obsessive faith he'd held before. He awoke a greedy, flawed bastard with the mind of a computer, and when his priest-masters ordered that he report for dismantlement, he laughed down his thrice-blessed comm-line and fled.
And now?
Now he was the self styled ''cognis mercator'' of the Equixus hive: an information broker whose lattice of influence and spymongering extended to all points. He served the gangmasters with mercenary neutrality, sold his rumours to upcity analysts, hired himself to navy officials to direct pressganging and grew fat and rich in the certain knowledge that he was too valuable, too vital, for any fool to kill.
He alone had collated information on all twelve of Sahaal's slayings. He alone noted the spiral scars cut into each corpse. He alone recognised the power, the lethality, of the killer on the loose. He alone had compiled maps and behavioural patterns, identifying the point central to each murder. He alone had found Sahaal's lair.
And he alone was bold enough to come looking for him, seeking influence and opportunity over whatever force of destruction had entered his territory.
And he alone was fortunate enough to be in a position to achieve both.
Sahaal cursed his name again, flexed his claws impotently, and prepared to cut him free.
Mita Ashyn
The knocking at her cell door, which she had been expecting, came in the evening of the third day. The cowled acolyte responsible sniggered as she read the summons he delivered.
Her master demanded an audience.
Having failed utterly to distinguish herself at the crash site of the Umbrea Insidior — its name being the only detail she remembered from her trance and subsequent blackout — she expected the summons to herald a formal discharge. The Inquisition was ruthless in defending its obscurity, and if that required ineffectual personnel to be cerebrally cleansed or, worse, culled, then so be it.
She had spent the intervening days meditating — neither scrying nor dreaming, but basking in the Emperor's light — and when the summons arrived she had prepared herself for death, or at least lobotomisation, as best she could.
Kaustus received her alone — that was the first of her surprises, she'd assumed the retinue would turn out in force to witness the spectacle of its newest member being cast aside.
'Interrogator,' Kaustus greeted her, not looking up. He sat at a simple desk in the centre of his suite, engrossed in a bundle of parchments and auspex pads, and delicately laid down his writing stylus as she dipped her head in return.
'My lord.'
The second shock, and one for which she was utterly unprepared, was that he had removed his mask. His face was unremarkable — somewhat gaunt, perhaps, bordering on the aquiline — and his hair, tied in a tall black tower that crested his head like a topknot, could hardly be described as outlandish amongst the clashing fashions of the upper hive. But it was his teeth that stood out. Two of them, at any rate.
Inquisitor Kaustus had tusks.
'Orkish,' he said, without prompt.
Mita realised she'd been staring and lowered her eyes, brows furrowing in uncertainty. He hadn't even looked up.
'For three days I stalked the bastard through the tar pits on Phyrra. We'd freed his slaves, wiped out his war-band, crippled his fleet and filled his green flesh with more lead than a target range, but the brute wouldn't give in. Warlords are like that. Proud. Stubborn.'
Mita fidgeted, wondering if this was some perverse treat the inquisitor reserved for the condemned: a story from his own lips, a glimpse of his secret features, then a bullet between the eyes. If Kaustus noted her tension, he gave little sign.
'We caught up with him on the edge of a volcano,' he continued, turning a page of parchment before him, 'and after he'd hacked his way through my men I fought that piece of xeno filth for two hours. The way I saw it, if he'd killed me he would have taken my head as a trophy.' He twanged a tusk with a gloved finger, finally looking up with a smirk. 'This seemed an appropriate measure.'