Spinoza listened carefully, trying to establish what species of heresy this was. Perhaps Lermentov was merely a social revolutionary, foolish enough to believe that with a little compassion all the travails of his people could be somehow magicked away.
‘You have no idea of what you are protected from,’ she said.
‘Oh, really?’
‘You cannot.’
Lermentov shot her a contemptuous glance, and moved towards the wall to her left into which one of the iron doorways had been cut. He placed his hands, both of them, on a rusty lever sunk deep into the stone, and prepared to pull on it.
‘This is what we live with,’ he said. ‘See if you recognise it.’
He hauled down and the heavy door swung open with a squeal of metal on metal. A further chamber came into view, lit with strip-lumens that strobed painfully. Something crouched in there, something massive and coiled. As the door clanged back on its hinges, the thing unfurled, its limbs sliding and jerking over one another, its torso straightening. A domed metal head swung upwards, and pale grey flesh rippled under the harsh lights.
Spinoza’s eyes widened. The thing was horrific. Far taller and broader than a human, its ribs protruded starkly from a weeping mass of scar tissue. Its waist was wasp-thin, its chest and thighs engorged out of all proportion. Its hands were gone, replaced by claws fashioned from some glossy metal. Cylindrical vials protruded from the creature’s back and stomach, bubbling with liquid as they jostled amongst chitinous spines and vanes. Needles were half-buried under the skin, and wounds pulled apart by hooks. It hissed as it moved, swinging its head from side to side as if blind, then tried to leap at the open portal. Heavy chains yanked taut, pulling it back, and it thrashed wildly against its bonds. It stank of misery and confinement and… something else.
Spinoza recognised the stench from the Rhadamanthys. Perhaps not exactly the same, but with the same indefinable cloud of repugnance attached to it. She gagged, swallowing hard to dispel the nausea as the thing snaked and rattled against the chains.
‘Quite something, is it not?’ said Lermentov, unable to hide his own revulsion. ‘You know what these things are called? We had no true name for them, not until we took your assassin friend to see it, but she is of the Ordo Xenos and knew what it was straight away.’
Spinoza couldn’t take her eyes off it. Everything about it was a study in repulsion. It was clearly in terrible pain — every move was stilted and racked with trembling — but it was also driven by some malignant inner fury. Its limbs were distended horribly, as if the bones within had been broken and poorly set, and its muscles bunched in obscene clumps of bloodshot gristle, swollen into fists of churned flesh.
‘So now I can tell you, interrogator,’ said Lermentov grimly. ‘This thing was once a human — man or woman we can’t tell now. It has been turned into something your assassin called a xenotype eldar-beta, subtype grotesque. These things are hunting in the dark, all throughout the tunnels down here. The ‘blood rites’ you’re looking for? Look to these things. They are slaying freely. Nothing can touch them — they’re fast, they see perfectly in the night-dark, they’re stronger than our ogryns. They are terrible.’
She could believe it. The grotesque was trying to get at them again, lashing out against its bonds, pulling the chains tight and shaking them in their clamps. Drool hung in glittering loops from its hidden mouth, and its claws whickered in an insectoid clatter.
Lermentov hauled the lever back to its original position, and the thick doors slowly ground their way closed, sealing with a dull boom. Spinoza said nothing. Thoughts raced through her mind, one after the other, but few of them made any kind of sense.
‘That is what we fight,’ said Lermentov. ‘That is why the people come to our banner for salvation, because they know what these things will do to them if they are left alone. And there are even worse fears now, because we know what the origin of the monsters is. So when you discover these images of blood and horror, or find bodies pulled apart and corridors swimming in broken flesh, consider the cause, and think. We are not the authors, interrogator — we are the victims.’ He came closer to her again, and there was a savage pleasure of vindication in his eyes. ‘So we do hunt down weapons, and we do organise, and when we are taken by you we bluff and we hide as much as we can, even when the knives come out, because every one of us knows that unless we remain united there is no hope for those we leave behind.’
Spinoza thought back to what she already knew. According to Crowl, the Rhadamanthys had unloaded its cargo twenty days ago.
‘When did these… things emerge?’ she asked.
Lermentov shrugged. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘We’ve been active for months, planning to seize our chance when all eyes were on the Gate, but this changed it all. Three weeks, perhaps, when we first noticed the killing? No more than that, but it’s getting worse, quickly. This one is the only one we’ve been able to capture, and it cost us dozens. They’re being bred fast, and soon there will be no eradicating them.’
‘You should have reported it.’
‘Ha!’ Lermentov clapped his hands together. ‘To the authorities, yes? The first one of us to do so would have been condemned as a fantasist, a xenos-lover, and his family would have been quietly disappeared. You do not understand this, do you? The people here have precisely three fears — the monsters, each other, and you.’
Spinoza remembered Crowl’s words then.
‘But I did not kill you,’ Lermentov went on. ‘See, even after all the pain you brought us, I took a final chance. We know where they are being made. Tonight is the night when we move on them, take our forces and burn them out. Many will die.’ He looked her directly in the eye. ‘It would be safer for me to kill you. Many of my followers urged me to do it quickly, lest more of you come. You have killed so many of us, Luce Spinoza, and it is hard for them not to hate. So why not do it?’ He shrugged. ‘Because I have no illusions about what we face. We will need every blade, and still the odds are it will not be enough. I cannot help but think He has a purpose in our meeting here. Now that you have seen these things, interrogator, you can guess the choice I will give you. You can die here, or you can do your duty and help us.’
Spinoza looked up at him sharply. He was entirely serious. Lermentov brought out a heavy key on a chain, and swung it idly, as if for temptation.
Every instinct railed against it. The man — the heretic — made her almost as sick as the creature in the cage. He was a fantasist and a rebel whose pride made him blind to the ruinous course he had taken, and deserved his place on the pyre just as truly as those who had listened to his poison.
But this was what Crowl had been hunting. It was here, buried under the mammoth spires, fomenting in the dark even as the hosts of blithe pilgrims coursed over the transitways towards the Palace precincts. This was what had come in on the Rhadamanthys, and if the source could be found then that would give them the answers he had been seeking.
‘The others,’ she said. ‘Khazad, Hegain — you gave them this choice?’
‘You’re the commander. They’ll serve if you order them to.’
‘I condone nothing you have done.’
Lermentov smiled wearily. ‘Yes, that would be too much to hope for.’