Eisenhorn Omnibus

Entipaul's Lounge and the entire level sixty deck of hive four in a radius of fifty metres.

Maria Tarray was atomised. In the last milliseconds of her life, her mental shields collapsed in terror and I got a precious snapshot into her powerful psyker mind. Not everything, but enough.

Enough to know that I had just annihilated Pontius Glaw's daughter.

FIFTEEN

Sanctum, Catharsis and Fischig.

Teht uin sah.

Promody.

Fifteen days later, we were a long, long way from New Gevae, a long way from Gudrun itself. I had, for the time being, evaded the clutches of Khan-jar the Sharp.

The morning before my meeting – or my puppet's meeting, I should say – with Maria Tarray in the mid-hive bar, Aemos and I had arranged passage on a packet lighter called the Spirit of Wysten, and by the evening, we were leaving the planet. Five and a half days out from Gudrun, in the vicinity of Cyto, we rendezvoused with the Essene.

My old friend Tobias Maxilla, eccentric master of the sprint trader Essene, had come in response to the Glossia code word 'Sanctum' without hesitation, breaking off from his merchant runs in the Helican spinwards and laying course for Gudrun. He had never been a formal part of my operation, but he was an ally of long standing, and had provided the services of his ship on many occasions.

He always claimed to do this for financial reward – I regularly made sure the ordos remunerated him handsomely – and to keep on the good side of the Imperial Inquisition. Privately, I believe his allegiance to me was the product of an adventurous streak. Getting involved in my business offered more diverting occupation than a trade voyage down the Helican worlds.

There was no ship, and no ship's master, that I trusted more than Tobias Maxilla and the Essene. With my life shattered, my back to the wall and an e nemy after my blood, he was the one I turned to for rescue and escape.

One could also always rely on Maxilla to lift a company's spirits. In truth, the mood in my little group had been uncomfortable since New Gevae. And that was largely my own fault.

As soon as I had realised that 'Nayl' was just another of Glaw's deceits, a ruse to lure me into a trap, I had set my trap in return. Certain sections of the Mains Codicium concerned the creation and remote animation of thralls – human beings psionically controlled as puppets. I had never tried the technique, for it seemed ghoulish. The Codicium suggested the process worked best with a freshly killed cadaver. But on the other hand, it was simply an elaborate extension of my use of will, and it suited my purpose.

I didn't go into detail about what I was going to do, but Medea, Eleena, Crezia and Aemos knew something unorthodox was afoot, and they were all concerned when I had Etrik's body covertly taken from the train to a lodging we had rented in hive four. Crezia mumbled something about body snatching, and Medea was dubious. Back aboard the Pulchritude, she'd shrugged off as a joke the idea that I was dabbling too far. She seemed to have accepted the whole business with Cherubael.

Now she seemed less confident about esoteric psyker tricks.

Even Aemos seemed reserved. He had not said a word about the Malus Codicium since he'd seen me remove it from the safe in my study. And he'd made it clear on several occasions that he trusted my judgement.

But there had still been a feeling in the air.

I kept them out of the room while I performed the rituals, and that may have been a mistake too. Except for Eleena, who was spared the sensations, they all felt the unnerving, creeping backwash of the act.

I had also never used a warp vortex before, but it seemed the only weapon I could equip my thrall with that would trap the trappers. In hindsight, I wonder if the Malus Codicium had planted the idea in my head.

The vortex worked. It destroyed the enemies who had tried to snare me. I doubt I will use one again. The feedback left me unconscious, and I was ill and weak for two days afterwards. My friends had to break down the door of the room to get at me, and they must have been shaken by the sight that greeted them. The burnt circle on the floor, the psy-plasmic residue trickling off the walls, the symbols I had painted. I think they felt for the first time that I had attempted something I wasn't quite in control of.

Perhaps they were right.

None of them had wanted to talk about it. Aemos had found the Malus Codicium on the floor beside me and slipped it into his pocket before the others could see it. Later, aboard the Spirit of Wysten, he'd handed it back to me privately

'I don't want to touch it again,' he said. 'I don't think I want to see it again.'

I was unhappy at his reaction. His life was devoted to the acquisition of knowledge – it was an actual clinical compulsion in his case – but there he was rejecting a source of secret data, albeit dark, that could be found

almost nowhere else in the galaxy. I thought he alone might appreciate its worth.

'It's the Malus Codicium, isn't it?'

Yes.'

They never found it. On Farness Beta, after Quixos fell, the ordos searched for it and never found it/ That's true/

'Because you took it for yourself and never told them/ 'Yes. It was my decision/

'I see. And that's how you learned to control daemonhosts too, isn't it?'

'Yes/

'I'm disappointed in you, Gregor/

Maxilla was, as ever, the perfect host, and the general spirit did pick up a little once we were in his company. He met us at the Essene's fore starboard airgate, dressed in a chequered sedril gown-coat, a blue silk cravat pinned with a golden star pin and a purple suede calotte wifh a silver tassel. His skin dye was gloss white with black hearts over his eyes, and a fine platinum chain ran between the diamond earring in his left lobe to the sapphire stud in his nose. Behind him, gold-plated servitors waited with salvers of refreshments. He greeted us all, flirting with Medea and making a particular fuss of Crezia and Eleena, two females he had not met before.

'Where to?' was his first question to me.

'Let me use your astropath, and set course for the place we first met/

I sent word, in Glossia, to Fischig, telling him to alter his route to avoid Gudran and meet me at a new rendezvous point. Thorn wishes Hound, at Hound's cradle, by sext/ Maxilla's cadaverous, nameless Navigator performed his hyper-mathematical feats of divination, and set the Essene thundering into warp space as fast as its potent drive could carry it.

As always, I was unable to rest easily while travelling in the hellish netherworld of the warp, so instead I retired with Maxilla to his stateroom. He was a terrible gossip and always relished a few hours catching up whenever we were reunited. Surrounded as he was by a crew that was more servitor than human, he did so crave company.

But I had been looking forward to a private talk. I'd never confided in him particularly before, but now I felt he might be the only man in the Imperium who would give me a fair hearing. And if not fair, then at least one free of harsh judgment. Maxilla was a rogue. He made no excuses about it. His entire life had been devoted to testing the ductile qualities of rules and regulations. I wanted, I suppose, to find out what he thought of me.

His stateroom was a double-storey cabin behind the Essene's cathedrallike main bridge. A ten-seat banquet table of polished duralloy that I