Lord of the Night

'And what is this zone called?'

'Lady, it's the warp's-arse underhive. We don't call it anything.'

'But... these settlements... They must have names. What do the people call th—'

'Look.' Varitens turned away from the Salamander's cab, sighing through the mike of his voxcaster. 'You want to stop and ask some of these filth what they call places, or where the local sights are, or which unfortunate bastard they just ate for di

They travelled in silence after that.

The underhive had not been what Mita had expected. Trawling across its debris-flows and pitted causeways in the vindictors' Salamander, she found herself admiring the diversity, as if there were some secret beauty — some hidden order — lurking in the decay. Here, salvaged waste was gold. She found herself impressed by the colour and vivacity of the sights, as if life had recoiled from the squalor of its environment in a storm of clashing hues and decorations. Gaudy totems leaned from the shadows, bright graffiti a

Commander Orodai had assigned the sergeant as her tour-guide. She suspected he'd done so out of spite.

'Tell me, sergeant,' she said, tiring of the silence, 'what ma

Varitens regarded her for a moment, face concealed within the featureless orb of his visor.

'Murder.'

She blinked. 'We're investigating a murder?'

'More than one. Five confirmed, probably more. We're taking you to the most recent discovery.'

She shook her head. This assignment was growing more and more ridiculous by the instant.

'Sergeant, it's my understanding that there are several hundred unexplained deaths every day. I imagine the figure is far higher in the underhive.'

'You imagine right, lady.'

'Then I'm afraid I don't understand. Why pay such close attention to this one?'

The Salamander turned a corner and began to throttle down, and Mita became aware that her companions were preparing themselves to disembark, hefting mauls and autoguns professionally.

Varitens pointed to a side tu

'Through there. You'll understand.'

She had been a missionary, judging by what little of her clothing remained: a white robe with a hemp cord and a reliquary cache slung across her shoulder, embroidered with golden scriptures.

She had come to this deep, dark place to spread the Emperor's light: as brave and selfless a being as one could ever hope to find. Her reward hardly seemed fair.

The robe was shredded.

The hemp cord creaked around her neck as she twisted above the ground.

The reliquary lay shattered at her feet and the fragments of bone from within — the knuckles of some long-dead saint, perhaps — were ground to dust.

'Emperor preserve us...' Mita hissed, stepping into the tu

The woman had not died here — that much was clear. Whatever violence had ended her life would certainly have spilled out across the murder scene: splattering walls and ceilings, pooling in thick puddles underfoot. This was less a scene of frenzy than an exhibit, a calling-card: neat, tidy, arranged.

Her hands were gone. Her eyes had been put out. One foot hung by a single scrap of gristle, the blow that had parted it with such razor ease stopping short — deliberately — of amputation. Her viscera had been evacuated, hanging in translucent loops from the incision across her belly.

And all across her, along every part of her worm-white body, lazy lines had been drawn: fluid ripples and scarlet whorls like the eddies of some mantra-wheel, spi

This was not psychosis. This was art.

And the artist had not shied from signing his work.

Above the body, carved on the rocky surfaces of the borehole in a dipped, tidy hand, an engraved legend picked at the light of Mita's illuminator and drew her eye.

Adeo mori servus Imperator Fictus Ave Dominus Nox.

She felt her gorge rise and turned away, forcing down bile in her throat. Sergeant Varitens, standing behind her with hands on hips, mistook her disgust for miscomprehension, nodding towards the text and clearing his throat.

'It says—'

'Thank you, sergeant,' she hissed, fighting for dignity as well as air. 'I'm quite capable of reading High Gothic.'

She turned again towards the words, and they seemed to writhe in her eyes with a malevolent life of their own. For an instant she felt the stab of shocking, familiar pain — awash with ancient violence and ageless bitterness — and in that moment knew, without any doubt, from where the murderer had come.

A great darkness, descending from the sky.

Something had survived the descent of the Umbrea Insidior...

'Adeo mori servus Imperator Fictus,' she said out loud, forming each word clear and strong. 'So die the slaves of the False Emperor.'

She could feel the vindictors staring at her, fidgeting. Even Cog watched her with troubled bemusement, struggling to understand the words.

'Ave Dominus Nox. Hail to the Lord of the Night.'

Zso Sahaal

They were called the Glacier Rats.

Their name was scrawled across parchment in the clipped hand of a servoscribe, belying the information's remarkableness in neat, tedious words, as if to render it as dull as any other record, sealed neatly with an uncrested daub of wax.

They were called the Glacier Rats.

Sahaal ran the name through his mind again and again, as if testing its mettle.

Tasting it.

The information broker Pahvulti had taken his leave from captivity. Walking free, ignoring the wounds patterning his necrotic skin, his swagger had been that of a victor, as if he'd somehow earned Sahaal's respect — or at the very least incurred his debt. He'd instructed Sahaal on where to find, and when, the information he'd promised, he'd dipped his head in sarcastic obeisance, then he'd smiled and waggled his brows.

'This is a business of credit,' he'd said, cackling his peculiar laugh — 'het-het-het' — like a gear skipping a tooth, 'the question costs nothing. The answers are priceless...'

Sahaal struggled with the urge to rip the man to shreds. Allowing him to simply walk away required every ounce of his concentrated pragmatism.

The silent vow that he would have his revenge later was little consolation.

'And yet I have paid nothing,' he'd hissed, oozing away into the shadows, struggling for some scrap of dignity.

He was denied even that.

'No... no, you haven't.' Pahvulti's one remaining eye fluttered, cycling through lenses like some perpetual wink. 'But then... the first one is always free.'