Interior Guard, closing to surrounding a lone humanoid who crackled and glowed with spectral light. Thorny jags of flame lit out from the cornered figure and dropped one of the guardsmen as we watched. Esarhaddon. They had Esarhaddon cornered.
Inshabel and I leapt down from the pad – a three metre drop onto the wet grass – and ran to join the fray.
I could see Esarhaddon clearly now despite the rain. A tall, almost naked man with wild black hair and a lean, stringy body, corposant gleaming and sliding around his capering limbs.
We were just ten metres from the edge of the fight when one of the robed figures raised a bulky weapon and blasted at the rogue psyker.
A plasma gun.
The violet beam, almost too bright to look at, struck Esarhaddon. In his weakened state, he had no defence against it.
He ignited like an incendiary round and burned from head to foot in the middle of the lawn.
Lowering our weapons, Inshabel and I walked to join the ring of figures standing around the white hot pyre. As his robed and hooded acolytes murmured prayers of grace and deliverance, Inquisitor Lyko set down his plasma gun.
The Emperor will thank you, Lyko,' I said.
He glanced round, seeing me for the first time. 'Eisenhorn.' He nodded. His narrow face was lined and taut and his blue eyes hooded. He was only about fifty years old sidereal, a mere youth by inquisitional standards. Young enough for his promising career to survive the way this day's atrocity would tarnish his achievement on Dolsene.
'I do not serve the Emperor for his gratitude. I do it for the glory of the Imperium/
'Quite so,' I said. I looked back at the molten heat that had been our quarry. It mattered little to me that I'd made this opportunity for Lyko. He could take the glory. I didn't care. The escape of the psykers had stolen much of the glory he had received of late. Hunting them down was the only way he could make amends.
Planetwide, there was some sense of rejoicing when it was announced mat Lord Commander Helican had survived the carnage unscathed, and mat Warmaster Honorius would live. That announcement came on the sixth day of unrest, by which time the Imperial authorities had begun to reim-pose order on the stricken citizens of Thracian Primaris. But it helped. Common folk who assumed memselves to be lost were calmed into believing law was back in the hands of the great and good. Panics died away. Arbites units unleashed their last few suppression raids against the die-hard recidivist looters in the lowhabs.
My own spirits were not much lifted. For a start I was privy to the confidential fact that Lord Commander Helican had actually died screaming and shitting himself under a crash-diving Imperial Navy Lightning on the Avenue of the Victor Bellum. A double had been arranged by the Eccle-siarchy and the Helican Senatorum, and that double continued to act in his place until, several years later, he 'died naturally of old age' and a successor was established in less-turbulent circumstances.
I can speak of that public deceit now in this private record, but at the time, communicating that secret was a death-crime for even the highest lord of the Imperium. I was not about to break that confidence. I am an inquisitor and I understand how fundamental it is to maintain public order.
In addition to fatigue and the pain of my wounds, what darkened my mood was the news about Gideon Ravenor. Now, of course, we all understand what a priceless and brilliant contribution he was to make to Imperial learning, and how that would never have happened if he had not been confined to a life of mental rumination.
But back then, in that stinking hospice ward off the Street of Prescients, all I saw was a young man, burned and crippled and physically paralysed, a brilliant inquisitor ruined before he could fulfill his potential.
Ravenor, in the eyes of some, had been lucky. He had not been amongst the one hundred and ninety-eight Inquisition personnel killed outright by the crashing fighter that fell into the Great Triumph beyond the Spatian Gate.
He, like fifty others, had been caught on the edge of the explosion and lived.
My pupil was barely recognisable. A blood-wet bundle of charred flesh. One hundred per cent burns. Blind, deaf, mute, his face so melted that an incision had been made in the fused meat where his mouth should have been so he could breathe.
The loss touched me acutely. The waste even more. Gideon Ravenor had been the greatest, most promising pupil I had ever taught. I stood by his plastic-sheeted cot, listening to the suck and drool of his ventilator and fluid drains and remembered what Commodus Voke had said in the arbites sector house on Blammerside Street.
'I will make amends. I will not rest until every one of these wretches is destroyed and order restored. And then I will not rest until I find who and what was behind it.'
Right then, there, for Ravenor's sake, I made that promise to myself too.
At that time, I had little idea what that would mean or where it would take me.
I returned то the Ocean House at last on what would have been the ninth and final day of the Holy Novena. There was no one to greet me, and the place seemed empty and forlorn.
I stalked into my study, poured a too-large measure of vintage amasec and flopped down into an armchair. It felt like an eternity since I had sat here with Titus Endor, worrying over speculations that seemed now so insignificant and remote.
A door opened. From the instant chill in the air, I knew at once it was Bequin.
'We didn't know you'd returned, Gregor.'
'Well, I have, Alizebeth.'
'So I see. Are you alright?'
I shrugged. Where is everybody?'
'When the…' she paused, considering her words. 'When the tragedy occurred, there was a great public commotion. Jarat and Kircher took the staff into the secure bunkers for safety, and I locked myself away with the Distaff in the west wing, waiting, hoping for your call.'
'Channels were out.'
'Yes. For eight days.'
'But everyone is safe?'
Yes.'
I leaned out of my chair and looked at her. Her face was pale and drawn from too many nights of fear.
Where's Aemos?'
'Outside, with Betancore, Kircher and Nayl. Von Baigg's around too. Is… is it true what we've heard about Gideon?'
'Alizebeth… it's…'
She crouched down and put her arms around me. It is difficult for a psyker to be hugged by an untouchable, no matter how long and close their personal history. But her intentions were good, and I tolerated the contact for as long as seemed polite. When I gently pushed her back, I said, 'Send them in. In fact, send everyone in here.'
They won't all fit, Gregor'
The sea terrace, then. One last time.'
Sitting or standing around in the lime glow of the sea terrace, the numerous members of my faithful band looked at me expectantly. The place was packed. Jarat had fussed around, bringing out drinks and sweetmeats until I had pressed a glass of amasec into her gnarled hands and forced her down into a chair.
