wool monodominant, Emperor love him. But he had been a firm believer in gut-instinct. He told me a servant of the Emperor could do worse than trust a flash of instinct. In his opinion, the Emperor himself placed such feelings there.
I tapped the word 'daesumnor' into the pad. The lock cycled and the door opened.
A clean, warm, well-ventilated staircase, significantly newer than the main structures of the estate, took me down into the cellar system. There was a caged lamp every three metres down the wall. By the chart and my estimation, I was some ten metres underground, moving beneath the east wing. I removed my hood to hear better.
'Daesumnor' opened another hatch, and I entered a long hall with hatch-doors along one side. One stood open, and I could hear voices and smell smoke.
I edged along, and skirted the hatch so I could peer in.
'… secured with two weeks,' a voice was saying.
'Said that month ago!' another snorted. 'What's the matter, you trying to inflate your fee?'
The room was some kind of lounge or study. Books and slates were racked with archive-like precision in wooden stacks along the walls. Soft light glowed from pendant lamps, and also from a number of sealed, glass-topped caskets in front of the shelving. They reminded me of the protective, controlled environment units Imperial libraries used to display especially ancient and valuable texts.
The room was carpeted, and as I craned round, I could see four men sitting around a low table in throne-like armchairs. One had his back to me, but from the folds of his coat falling over the chair's arm, I was certain it was Urisel Glaw. Facing him, sitting back in his chair, was the ship master, Gorgone Locke. The other two I didn't know, but I had a feeling they'd both been at the dinner. They all had glasses of liquor and one of the unknown men was using a water-pipe to inhale obscura. Various objects lay on the table between them, some wrapped in velvet, others unwrapped and displayed. They looked like stone tablets, old relics of some sort.
'I'm just trying to explain the delay, Glaw/ Locke said. 'They're a difficult enough culture to deal with at the best of times.'
That's why we pay you,' Glaw said with a scoffing laugh. He leaned forward and toyed with one of the tablets.
'But we won't stand much further delay. We've invested a great deal in this matter. Time, funds, resources. It's meant holding back or cancelling other enterprises, some of them very special to us.'
'You will not be disappointed, lord,' said the man with the narco-pipe. He was dressed simply in black, a slightly built, bald individual with watery blue eyes. 'The archaeoxenan provenance of these items speaks for itself. The saruthi are serious about their offer.'
Urisel started to reply and got to his feet. I ducked into cover and then moved away down the hall. Eyclone's code opened the door at the end and I crept through into a wide, circular vault. Two more hatches of regular pattern led off to either side. Ahead of me was a larger archway protected by a force screen instead of a door.
I backed into hiding alongside this opening as someone cancelled the force screen from inside. A figure stepped out, turning to raise the screen again. It was Kowitz.
I took him from behind, an arm locked around his throat to silence him, another hand pinning his right arm. He gurgled and struggled. I twisted him round and slammed his head against the doorframe.
Kowitz went limp. I dragged him in through the open force-portal. A control on the inner wall raised the screen again.
The chamber was long with a low ceiling. The climate-controlled air was dry. I realised it was a chapel of sorts, a stone-floored, rectangular nave leading to a shape that seemed to me an altar. The room was otherwise
bare of features, even seats or pews. Light glowed from recessed lamps in the roof. Leaving Kowitz on the floor, I strode down the length of the chapel and took a closer look at the altar.
It was two metres high, black, fashioned from a single piece of obsidian. The glassy stone seemed to glow with an internal light. On top of it was a jewelled prayer box about thirty centimetres square. I lifted the lid carefully with the blade of my knife-tool. In a bed of velvet lay an intricate sphere. It looked like a jagged lump of quartz, the size of a clenched fist, inlaid with gold circuits and complex woven wires, like an oversized uncut gemstone in a bizarre, ornate setting.
I spun around at a sound from behind me.
Kowitz, blood dripping from his dented forehead, stood pointing a laspistol at me. His face was pale, angry, confused.
'Step away from the Pontius, scum/ he said.
ELEVEN
Revelations. The noble sport. Pacification 505.
This was no place to be trapped. I dug into my reserves of concentration, and without any physical movement, struck him clean between the eyes.
A psychic goad like that, especially at close range and with a clear line of sight, should have felled him like a force hammer. Kowitz didn't even blink.
'Don't make me repeat myself,' he said, raising the weapon so it pointed at my head.
The room was psychically shielded, it had to be. Either that or something was leeching psychic energies out of the very air.
There's been a misunderstanding, Kowitz,' I said. 'I went for a walk and must have taken a wrong turn.'
It was pretty lame, but I wanted to keep his responses engaged and his mind busy.
'I don't think so/ he hissed. He was groping behind himself with his free hand, trying to find the control panel for the entrance. There was an alarm stud on it.
I waited. At any second, he was going to glance round involuntarily to help his fumbling.
When the gesture came, I threw myself forward and down, pulling my autopistol.
He looked back with a cry and fired, but his aim was too high and the shot flared off the end wall.
From a prone stance, I punched two shots through his left collar bone, and threw him back against the force door, which crackled at the impact.
Kowitz collapsed face down on the floor and blood began to pool around him.
I reached the door control. An amber rune was flashing. The bastard had managed to press something. I hit the force door deactivator.
Nothing.
I punched 'daesumnor' into the key pad.
Nothing.
I realised I was in deep trouble.
I guessed that Kowitz had hit an alarm that locked everything out. That was what prevented me from opening the door.
Urisel Glaw and several of his house militia appeared outside the shimmering force door. I could see them peering in and shouting.
I backed from the doorway and snatched up Kowitz's laspistol. When the door opened, I would use both guns to take down anything that tried to get in.
