Erunion shook his head resignedly, then limped over to a rack containing an array of arcane devices — brass-vaned and coiled, studded with bottle-green lens apertures, each trailed by thick segmented power cabling. He reached for a handheld augur and yanked it from its cradle, powering up the heavy cells within. Static crackled across the surface as the crystalline viewer clarified. ‘This will destroy what remains,’ he said, stiffly.
‘Understood, Erunion. Do it now, please.’
The chirurgeon placed the device over the corpse’s face and activated the energy field. A pool of green light flooded over the rigid features, picking them out in stark relief. Faint lines of smoke rose from the grey skin, and the stench of burning gradually filled the chamber. Erunion moved the augur back and forth, adjusting the device’s dials as he did so. From behind the slab, over where the cables snaked into a heavy snake’s nest of tangled metal wiring, crystal-housed transistors pinged and chattered, and arcs of force snapped between conductor loops.
The scan intensified. The dead man’s face began to char, turning black where the beam hit and sloughed from the bone beneath. By the time Erunion had completed the sweep, a heap of ash-dry flakes remained, wedged in the burned skull-curves. He deactivated the augur’s beam and the device wound down.
Crowl waited patiently, though Gorgias was less able to contain its excitement and began to bob in agitation.
‘Put the skull out of its misery,’ said Crowl.
For a moment longer Ernnion said nothing, but peered studiously into the augur’s main viewer. He cycled back and forth across the stored data-screed, searching, comparing, looking for anything out of the ordinary. For a while there was just lurid green light reflected in the half-moon spectacles. Then, reluctantly, the chirurgeon placed a marker on the screen and froze the image.
‘So there was something buried,’ he said. ‘An old ident-tattoo, scrubbed from the surface, but not quite erased beneath.’
Crowl took the augur. A faint image throbbed on the screen, barely visible amid the emerald image-grain. At first he could make out nothing intelligible, but long experience had habituated him to all the runes and markers deployed in his sectors of the world-city.
‘So he was a scribe indeed,’ Crowl said, deciphering the marks. ‘Signals operative, if I read this right. Grade quintus, conditioned for orbital comms transmission.’
‘Just so,’ said Erunion, grudgingly, not meeting Gorgias’ triumphant lens-glare. ‘One of millions.’
‘Perhaps,’ said Crowl, taking the image-grab and shunting a facsimile into his armour’s static storage. ‘But these are Chartist guild marks, or my eyes are dying faster than the rest of me. They can be traced.’
Erunion pushed his spectacles a notch further up, and his pink eyes blinked.
‘You asked for my counsel, lord,’ he said sullenly, ‘and I gave it to you. If you choose to pursue this lead then you will surely succeed, for I have never seen a scent you could not run down. But, in truth, I do not think this worthy of your attention. Give it to the arbitrators, if you must.’
‘And what use would they make of it?’ said Crowl, handing back the augur. ‘I’ll judge what’s worthy of my attention and what is not. Gorgias, we have a trip to Mamzel Huk in store. My thanks, chirurgeon. As ever, your expertise has been invaluable.’
The servo-skull thrust up triumphantly, missing Erunion’s head by a finger’s width and causing him to duck in irritation.
‘You listen too much to Palv’s ghost, lord!’ he called out as Crowl moved away. ‘What’s left of him is no guide — you know it!’
‘Ah, but the best guides are the ghosts,’ said Crowl, carrying on walking, a clucking Gorgias in tow. ‘Sometimes I think they’re the only ones worth
listening to.’
CHAPTER FIVE
As the old sun sank below the western horizon, Terra took on another aspect. The clouds of grey smog deepened to a thick black haze, shrouding the spire trunks and making the myriad lights glimmer softly. Prayer beacons rang out from the vox-amplifiers mounted on every cathedral cupola, and workers trudging from their daylight duties filed into the cavernous halls to attend the sermons of the priest-caste. Lamplighters filled the column-mounted gas-burners along the ceremonial ways, adding to the heat and muck that spiralled up into the distant heavens, a choking blanket that coated the high walls and stained the devotional frescos that lined the transit passages. The sunset bled down to a deep dark red, casting the jagged summits like bloody teeth against the world’s end.
The noise never ceased. The shrine world of all shrine worlds was a planet in the grip of perpetual tumult, enveloped in the distributed roar of an entire species as it lived, bred, toiled and expired. Ministorum fervour engines emerged from their housings, bipedal monsters of steel and promethium, stalking through the lengthening shadows bleating against the ancient enemy and proclaiming the eternal reign of the Master of Mankind. The furnaces never stopped burning, the cargo-lifters never stopped coming, the prayers never stopped being whispered through cracked, chapped lips.
Spinoza watched the sun go down from Courvain’s summit, standing up close to an armourglass viewportal. The vantage was not ideal — mightier and taller spires thrust up around the lesser edifice, framing the vista with gigantic walls of blackened adamantium — but the dying of the light could just be made out along the length of a single westward-running canyon, slowly fading to forge embers amid the immensity of its man-made enclosure.
She heard Crowl enter the chamber, and turned to bow. As the red light slanted across the room, he looked cadaverous, a lean shadow stripped from the urban wells below and brought up choking into the realm of the living.
The inquisitor waved away her bow and reached for a glass. Crystal decanters were arranged in a chaotic procession on top of a long inlaid cabinet, each one half full and surrounded by a variety of goblets.
‘Will you have one, Spinoza?’ he asked, pouring himself something dark blue.
‘No, thank you, lord.’
‘Crowl. And why not? You’ve been down in the grime — you should have a drink.’
‘I am still in service.’
‘Unto death, eh? Long time to wait.’ He took a long swig, then refilled the glass. ‘You’re stitched tight, interrogator. I don’t like that.’ He drank again. ‘You’ll burn up quicker than a witch-heap, and that’s no good to me.’
Spinoza drew in a weary breath. This was juvenile stuff, a tedious attempt to unbalance her. ‘Do you wish to know the results of the day’s labour?’ she asked.
‘Hegain briefed me,’ said Crowl, walking over to an anomalously luxurious chair and sinking into it. ‘But let me know if there’s anything you wish to add.’
‘Only my apologies. I will do penance.’
‘If you really want, but I won’t demand it.’ He turned the glass in the light, watching as it caught the last rays of the ruby sun. ‘You lost a subject, something got in the way. It happens. Hegain told me you were capable down there, and I trust his judgement. Tell me, though — what was the thing you hunted?’
‘I have not had time to analyse the data.’
‘For the Throne’s sake, Spinoza, sit down. Tell me what you made of it — I’m not recording this for scrutiny.’
She walked over to the chair opposite and took her place. Thirst nagged at her — she had not taken much sustenance since returning from the underworld, and suddenly refusing a drink seemed like a poor option.