'Possible…' I admitted.
'Or…' he said.
'Or?'
'Or the one Imperial institution that regularly employs such devices and has the prestige and determination to make sure it is using the best available equipment.'
'That being?'
Aemos looked at me as if I was stupid.
'The Inquisition, of course.'
I slept badly, fitfully. Three hours before the end of the night cycle, I sat up in my bed, suddenly, coldly awake.
Dressed only in the sheet I had wrapped around me, I stalked out into the hall, my grip firm on the matt-grey snub pistol that lived in a holster secured behind my headboard.
Dim blue light filtered through the hallway, softening the edges of everything. I crept forward.
I was not mistaken. Someone was moving about down below, in the lower foyer.
I edged down the stairs, gun braced, willing my eyes to accustomise to the gloom.
I thought to hit a vox and alert Kircher and his staff, but if someone was inside, skillful enough to get past the alarms, then I wanted to capture him, not scare him off with a full blown alert. In the few hours since I had arrived back at the Ocean House, a nasty taste of treachery had seeped into my world. It might be largely paranoia, but I wanted an end to it.
A beam of white light stabbed across the foyer floor from the half open kitchen doors. I heard movement again.
I sidled to the doorframe, checked the safety was off, and slid, weapon first, through the gap in the doors.
The outer kitchen, a realm of marble-topped workbays and scrubbed aluminium ranges, was empty. Metal pots and utensils hung silently from ceiling racks. There was a smell of garlic and cooked herbs in the still air. The light was on in the inner pantry, near the cold store, and the illuminated backwash filled the room.
Two steps, three, four. The kitchen's stone floor was numbingly cold under my bare feet. I reached the door to the inner pantry. There was movement inside.
I kicked the door open and leapt inside, aiming the compact sidearm.
Medea Betancore, clad only in a long, ex-military undershirt, roared out in surprise and dropped the tray of leftover ketelfish she had been
gorging on. The tray clattered on the tiled floor in front of the open larder.
'Great gods alive, Eisenhorn!' she wailed in outrage, jumping up and down on the spot. 'Don't do that!'
I was angry. I didn't immediately lower my aim. 'What are you doing?'
'Eating? Hello?' She sneered at me. 'Feel like I've been asleep for a week. I'm famished.'
I began to lower the gun. A sense of embarrassment began to filter into my wired state.
'I'm sorry. Sorry. You should… maybe… get dressed before you come down to raid the larder.' It sounded stupid even as I said it. I didn't realise how stupid until a moment later. I was too painfully aware of her long, dark legs and the way the singlet top was curved around the proud swell of her bust.
'You should take your own advice… Gregor/ she said, raising one eyebrow.
I looked down. I had lost the sheet kicking open the door. I was what Midas Betancore used to call 'very naked'.
Except, of course, for the loaded gun.
'Damn. My apologies.' I turned to scrabble for the fallen sheet.
'Don't stand on my account,' she sniggered.
I froze, stooped. The muzzle of a Tronsvasse parabellum was pointing directly at my head from the darkness behind me.
It lowered. Harlon Nayl looked me up and down for a moment in frank dismay and then raised a warning finger to his lips. He was fully clothed, damn him.
I retrieved my sheet.
What?' I hissed.
'Someone's in. I can feel it/ he whispered. 'The noise you two were making, I thought it was the intruder. Didn't know you were so keen on Medea/
'Shut up/
The two of us fanned out back through the outer kitchen. Nayl pulled up the hood of his vulcanised black bodyglove to cover his pale, shaved head. He was a big man, a head taller than me, but he melted away into the darkness. I watched carefully for his signals.
Nayl waved me left down the hall. I trusted his judgment completely. He had stalked the galaxy's most innovative and able scum for three decades. If there were intruders, he'd find them.
I entered the Ocean House's main hall, and saw the front entry was ajar. The code display on the main lock was blinking a default of zeros.
I swung round as a gun roared behind me. I heard Nayl cry out and sprinted back into the inner foyer. Nayl was on the floor, grappling with an unidentifiable man.
'Get up! Get up! I'm armed!' I shouted.
In reply, the unknown intruder smacked Nayl's head back against the floor so hard he knocked him out, and then threw Nayl's heavy sidearm at me.
I fired, once, and blew a hole in the wall. The spinning gun clipped my temple and knocked me over.
1 heard a series of fleshy cracks and impacts, a guttural gasp and then Medea Betancore's voice shouting, 'Lights up!'
I rose. She was standing astride the intruder, one hand braced in a fierce fist, the other pulling down her undershirt for modesty.
'I got him,' she said, glancing round at me.
The dazed intruder was clad in black from head to foot. I wrenched off his hood.
It was Titus Endor.
'Gregor/ he lisped through a bloody mouth. 'You did say you were home.'
FOUR
Between friends.
An interview with Lord Rorken.
The Apotropaic Congress.
'Grain joiliq, with shaved ice, and a sliver of citrus/
Seated in my sanctum chamber, Endor took the proffered drink and grinned at me. 'You remembered/
'Many were the nights, in those fine old days. Titus, I've mixed your drink of choice too many times to count/
'Hah! I know. What was that place, the one off Zansiple Street? Where the host used to drink the profits?'
The Thirsty Eagle/ I replied. He knew full well. It was as if he was testing me.
The Thirsty Eagle, that's it! Many were the nights, as you say/
