‘Having kindred. Siblings. I have no concept or experience of it. I was matured in an enclosed environment. A research facility. Your experience… fascinates me. What is it like?’ she repeated
Strangely, Soalm felt a momentary pang of sadness for the Culexus. ‘Difficult,’ she replied, at length. ‘Iota, listen to me. Please, say nothing to the others about the chapel.’
‘If I do not, will you try to kill me?’
‘Will you force me?’
The Culexus shook her head. ‘No.’
Where? Where was
The question thundered through Spear’s mind and it would not let him go. He could not find rest, could not find a moment’s peace until the document had been located. Everything about his master’s careful, intricate plan hinged on the procurement of that one item. Without it, the assassination of the Emperor of Mankind was impossible. Spear was useless, a gun unloaded, a sword blade blunted. His existence had no meaning without the kill. Every single death he had performed, all of them, from the strangling of his birthparents to the ashing of the Word Bearer who came to slit his throat, the fools on Iesta Veracrux, the psy-witch, the investigators and the man whose face he now wore – all of them were only steps on a road towards his ultimate goal.
And now, Merriksun Eurotas had denied him that. The bloody rage Spear felt towards the Void Baron was so all-consuming that the killer feared merely laying eyes on the man would shatter his cover and send him into a berserker frenzy.
Spear had all but the most trivial of Hyssos’s memories absorbed within him, and the operative had never known that the Warrant of Trade on display in the reliquary was a fake. There were fewer than a dozen men and women in the entire Eurotas Consortium who outranked the operative in matters of security… Spear wondered if one of them might know the true location of the tome. But how to be sure? He could kill his way through them and never be certain if they had that precious knowledge until he sucked it from their dying minds; but he could not risk such reckless behaviour.
Eurotas himself would know. But murdering the Void Baron here and now, disposing of a body, passing through another assumption so soon after having torn Hyssos’s identity from his corpse… This was a course fraught with danger, far too risky to succeed.
‘Hyssos?’ The nobleman’s voice was pitched high and sharp. ‘What are you doing here?’
Spear looked up as Eurotas crossed the anteroom of the rogue trader’s personal quarters where he stood waiting. ‘My lord,’ he began, moderating his churning thoughts. ‘Forgive my intrusion, but I must speak with you.’
Eurotas glanced over his shoulder as he tied a velvet belt around the day robes he was wearing. Through a half-open door, it was possible to glimpse a sleeping chamber beyond. A naked woman was lying in a doze back there on a snarl of bed sheets. ‘I am engaged,’ the baron said, with a grimace. He seemed distracted. ‘Come to the audience chamber after we enter the warp, and–’
‘No sir,’ Spear put a little steel into Hyssos’s voice. ‘This won’t wait until we set off for Arrowhead. If I am correct, we may need to return to Iesta Veracrux.’
That got his attention. Eurotas’s eyes narrowed, but not enough to hide the flicker of fear in them. ‘Why would that be so?’
‘I have been retracing my steps, going over my notes and recollections from the Iestan murders.’ He fixed the baron with a level gaze and began to pay out the fiction he had created over the last few hours; a fiction he hoped would force the nobleman to give up the information he so desperately needed. ‘The two men… Yosef Sabrat and Daig Segan, the ones who did those terrible deeds. There was something they said that did not seem right to me, at the end when I thought I would be killed by them.’
‘Go on.’ Eurotas went to a servitor and had it pour him a glass of water.
‘Sir, they spoke about a warrant.’ The baron stiffened slightly at the word. Spear smiled inwardly and went on. ‘At the time I thought they meant warrants of arrest… But the thought occurs that they may have been talking about something else.’ He nodded towards a painting on the wall, an impressionistic work showing the current Void Baron reading from the Warrant of Trade as if it were some scholarly volume of esoteric knowledge.
‘Why would they be interested in the Warrant?’ Eurotas demanded.
‘I do not know. But these were no ordinary murderers, sir. We still cannot be certain by what exact means they terminated poor Perrig… And the things they did at the sites of their kills in the name of their Theoge cult–’
‘They were not part of the Theoge!’ snapped the baron, the retort coming out of nowhere. He shook his head and paced away a few steps. ‘I always knew…’ said the nobleman, after a moment of silence. ‘I always knew that Erno Sigg was innocent. That’s why I sent you, Hyssos. Because I trusted you to find the truth.’
