'I was lucky/
Palfir walked a circle around me, his polished boots squeaking on the worn floor. 'Let me make it clear. We are just beginning here. In respect to your rank and career, we are employing interrogation of the First Action. The First Action is-'
I cut him short. 'I have been an inquisitor for many years, Palfir. I know what the First Action is. Verbal interview without duress/
Then you know of the Third and Fifth Actions?' sneered Riggre.
'Light physical torture and psychic interrogation. And by the way, you just utilised the Second Action – verbal threat of and/or description of Actions that may follow/
'Have you ever been tortured, Eisenhorn?' asked Moyag.
Yes, by less squeamish men than you. And I have interrogated too. Second Action methods really won't work on me/
'Inquisitor Osma has authorised us to use any methods up to and including Ninth Action/ spat Palfir.
'Again, a threat. Second Action. It won't work on me. 1 told you that. I am trying to be co-operative/
'Who is Hound?' asked Riggre. Ah, there it was, the follow-up, designed to wrong-foot by coming out of sequence. For a moment, I began to admire their interrogation skills.
'I don't know his real name. He works clandestinely/
'Is it not Godwyn Fischig? The man you chose as your second here. The man who waits outside this chamber?'
There are times when the injuries Gorgone Locke did to my face on Gudrun have their benefits. My face simply couldn't show the reaction they were hoping to see. But inside, I balked. Their intelligence was good, good enough to have cracked Glossia, if only partially. I was sure of the source. They had already mentioned that weasel von Baigg. Months before, on Thracian right before the atrocity, I had begun to suspect von Baigg. At that time, I merely assumed he was Lord Rorken's plant to watch over me. Now I realised he was happy to talk to anyone. I had recognised von Baigg's weakness and stalled his career. Clearly he had decided to seek advancement from other inquisitors by selling me out.
'If you are telling me Fischig is the operative I know as Hound, I am truly surprised/ I replied levelly, choosing my words with extreme care.
'We will talk to him in time,' said Palfir.
'Not while he is my recognised second. That would break the code of prejudice. If you wish to interview him, I must be allowed a new second. Of my choosing.'
'We will get to that,' said Riggre.
'Why did you survive the Thracian horror?' asked Moyag.
'I was lucky.'
'Explain lucky?'
'I had stopped to honour the tomb of the admiral. The Spatian Gate protected me from the air strikes.' After the lies Cherabael had told me on Eechan, I dreaded this question coming up again under psychic interview. The lies, or at least my attempts to screen them, would be picked up.
'The atrocity was simply cover to allow you to liberate and remove from Thracian the heretic psyker Esarhaddon.'
'I would normally address that notion with scorn. If the entire event had been staged simply to 'launder' the psyker, then it was inhumanly wasteful. However, I believe in some regards you are right. That's what the atrocity was engineered to do. But not by me.'
Moyag licked his yellowing teeth eagerly. 'You maintain that it was in fact Interrogator Lyko who executed the event?'
'In collaboration with the daemonhost.'
'But Lyko cannot answer those charges, can he? Because you killed him on Eechan.'
'I executed Lyko on Eechan as a traitor-enemy of the Imperium.'
'I submit to you that you killed him because he was on to you. You killed him to silence him.'
'Do I really have to be here? You're doing a fine job of making up your own answers.'
'Where is Esarhaddon?'
'Wherever Cherubael took him.'
'And where is that?' asked Palfir.
I shrugged. 'To his master. Quixos.'
All three of them laughed. 'Quixos is dead. He died long ago!' Moyag chuckled.
Then why did the inquisitor general and I find that he had been manipulating her codes to gain access to Cadian airspace?'
'Because that's how you made it look. You say Quixos used his power to steal her authority code. If that's true, then it's a crime any deviant inquisitor of renown could manage. You could manage it. And using a dead man's code means no one is going to object/
'Quixos isn't dead/ I cleared my throat. 'Quixos is Hereticus and Extremis Diabolus. He has perverted inquisitors such as Lyko and Molitor into his service. He uses daemonhosts. He triggers holocausts to cover his theft of alpha-plus class psykers/
The three interrogators fell silent for a moment.
'We are wasting time here/ I said. 'I am not the man you want/
But the time-wasting continued. A week, passed, then a second. Every day, I was taken to the great hall and subjected to anything from two to six hours of First Action interview. The questions were repeated so many times, I became sick of hearing them. None of the interrogators seemed to listen to my statements. As far as I knew, no part of my story was being checked out.
They were clearly wary of escalating to physical or psychic means of extraction. Because I was a psyker, I could at least make things difficult enough so that they'd never know how much of what they were getting out of me was true. Osma had evidently decided to wear me down with endless cycles of verbal cross-examination.
For fifteen minutes each evening, with the ocean light fading, I was allowed to speak with Fischig. These conversations were pointless. The cell areas were undoubtedly laced with vox-thieves and listening devices, and as far as we knew, Glossia was compromised.
Fischig could tell me little, although I was able to learn that Medea, Aemos and the gun-cutter were not in Osma's hands, and neither was the
There had been no further sighting of Prophaniti-Husmaan, and Fischig was certain that the mystery starship that had delivered Prophaniti to Cadia had not been intercepted that fateful night.
Through Fischig's agency, I sent petitions to Osma, to Rorken and to Neve, protesting my arrest and urging them to take further action regarding Quixos. No word came back.
Candlemas was long past. Three more weeks went by. I realised that the year had turned. Outside the thick, bleak walls of the Carnificina, it was 340.M41.
At the end of my third month of detention and interrogation, I was led into the great hall for my daily interview and found Osma waiting for me instead of the usual interrogators.
'Sit/ he said, gesturing to the chair in the centre of the stark room.
It was dark and cold. Bitter, late winter storms were pushing in from the east, and though it was day, no light came from the high windows. They were muffled with snow. My breath steamed in the air, and I shivered. Osma had arranged six lamps around the edges of the room.
I sat down, pushing my hands into the pockets of my coat against the chill. I didn't want Osma to see my distress. He stood, warm and insulated in his burnished power armour, reviewing a
