on which Tarray or Tari was a registered surname. Aemos had already cross-referenced the lists of worlds using 'khanjar' with worlds owning the surname 'Tarray', and had come up with seven hundred possibles. Now I was able to add sense to one of them.
There it was. 'Khanjar' was the word for a war knife on Quenthus Eight, and Tarray was a clan name from that world. Nearly three hundred and fifty years before, one of the most vile sociopaths in the Imperium had started his career on Quenthus Eight. Maria Tarray's reported claims to have been born on Gudran had been discounted by Aemos, who had checked the census and found no sign of the name.
He hadn't gone back far enough. He hadn't gone back three and a half hundred years. I did, and found that Tarry had been a peasant name on Gudran until that time. The family tree ended right there.
I knew who it was. I knew who my enemy was.
THIRTEEN
Locastre.
Full stop.
End of the line.
We arrived at Locastre over an hour behind schedule. Unseasonal blizzards had swept up from the east into the Uttes, and the express had been forced to reduce speed to a crawl. On steep gradients through the passes, there was a danger of back-slip, and we could feel the frequent jerks as the car bogies hunted over the ice-caked rails. There was a ten minute stop on a straight section on the west of Utte Major as the train's engineer gangs got out and winched the locomotive's nose plough into place. The blizzard was around us then and everything outside the windows was a colourless swirl.
I went down to the end of the car and peered out through the van windows. Black blobs were moving in the white haze, some lit by fizzling flares of green and red. I felt several jolts and metallic clunks shiver through the deck beneath me.
The intercar tannoy softly informed us that we would be on our way soon, reassured us that the weather was no hazard, and soothed us with the news that complimentary hot punch was now being served in the dining salon. Unnecessarily muffled in furs or expensive mountainwear, other passengers came to peer out of the mush-flecked ports, grumbling and what if-ing.
I returned to the cabin I shared with Aemos, locked the doors and sat down with him. 1 ran through my theory.
'Pontius Glaw…' his old lips spat the name. 'Pontius Glaw…'
'It fits, doesn't it?'
'From what you tell me, Gregor. Though of course, I know little of what passed between you and that monster on Cinchare.'
We had first tackled the villainy of Pontius Glaw and his poisonous brood right there on Gudrun back in 240, an age ago as it seemed. At the time, Glaw himself, a notorious heretic, had been dead for two centuries, his obscene activities curtailed by Inquisitor Angevin.
But Glaw's intellect and engrammed personality had been preserved in a psi- pathetic crystal by his noble family. We thwarted the attempts of House Glaw to restore him to corporeal life, and afterwards I had the crystal placed for safekeeping with my old ally, Magos Geard Bure of the Adeptus Mechanicus.
A century later, in 340,1 had revisited Bure's remote fastness on the mining world Cinchare during the Quixos affair, in order to obtain arcane information concerning daemonhosts from his prisoner. Without Pontius Glaw's dark advice, I would never have been able to vanquish Quixos or his slaved daemons Prophaniti and Cherubael.
But I had been forced to deal with Glaw. Make it worth his while. The lure I dangled was that in return for his help, I would commission Bure to manufacture a body for him to inhabit.
And, because I was an honourable man, I kept my word, believing that even if Glaw was given mobility, he would never escape Geard Bure's clutches.
It seemed I had been wrong about that.
During those private interviews on Cinchare, Glaw had confessed to me die event that had driven him, the accomplished scion of one of Gudrun's most respected noble houses, into the worship of the warp.
It had happened on Quenthus Eight in 019. Glaw had been visiting the Quenthi amphitheatres, purchasing gladiators for his pit-fighting hobby. Even before his fall, he was a cruel man. He bought one brute, a warrior from a remote feral world… Borea, I seem to recall. Anxious to please his new master, the warrior had given Glaw his tore. It was an ancestral relic from the feral world, and neither the warrior nor Glaw realised it was tainted with the foulest Chaos. Glaw had put it on and immediately had fallen into its clutches. That one simple act had sealed his fate and transformed him into the idolatrous fiend who had plagued the Helican sub-sector for nearly two decades.
I gave Aemos the gist of this.
The matter seems to fit together. You believe, I take it, that Pontius Glaw has escaped from his prison on Cinchare, built up his forces, and is now targetting you for revenge?'
'Revenge? No… well, indirectly, perhaps. He certainly would want to have his revenge on me, but the scale of his attack, the effort, the comprehensive scope… every element of my operation, and Inshabel too.'
Aemos shrugged. 'Inshabel was with us at Cinchare.'
That's my point. Pontius is trying to destroy everyone who might know he exists. Most of the Imperium believes he is long dead. We pose a threat to him just by knowing about him.'
I could tell Aemos had something on his mind that he didn't want to say.
Aemos?'
'Nothing, Gregor.'
'Old friend?'
He shook his head.
'Say it. Pontius Glaw's existence is only a secret because I never informed the ordos that he was still sentient. Because I never delivered his engram sphere into the custody of the Ordo Hereticus as I should have. And he's only free now because I had a body built for him/
'No.' He got to his feet and squinted out of the car window, trying to see something, anything, in the blizzard. 'We've had this conversation before, or at least one like it. About Cherubael'
He turned to look at me. He was so very old. 'You are an inquisitor of the Glorious Imperium of Mankind. You are dedicated to the destruction of evil in any facet of its three classic forms: Xenos, Malleus, Hereticus. You face unimaginable hazards. Yours is the most arduous task undertaken by any Imperial servant. You must use every weapon at your disposal to protect our culture. Even the arsenal of the enemy. And you know full well that sometimes such uses have consequences. We may now regret your actions with Pontius Glaw, but without those, Quixos would not have been brought down. We can play the 'if only' game all day. The simple truth is that victory comes at a price, and we are paying that price now. The true measure of your character is what you do about it/
'I correct my mistakes. I bring down Pontius Glaw/
'I have no doubt of that/
Thank you, Aemos/
He sat down again. This Tarray woman. How does she fit in?'
I showed him the census record. The Tarrays were a low caste family on Gudrun during Glaw's organic lifetime. Then the line stops abruptly, but reappears on Quenthus. I think the Tarrays, or at least a Tarray, was amongst Glaw's retinue, and he took them to Quenthus. I need you to look into mat at Locastre/
'Locastre? But we're only going to be stopping there for forty-five minutes/
I gestured to the window. 'It'll probably be longer given the weather, but you'll have to move fast. I'm going to use the time to access the Aegis account/
