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Throne of Light – Extract

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Chapter One

CHOZTECULPO
STOP, IN THE NAME OF THE EMPEROR
THE HAND OF ABADDON

‘It’s bloody freezing up here,’ said Cheelche. The alien’s words were harsh in Lacrante’s vox-bead, an extension of the cold wind burning his face. She was right. It was freezing. ‘Rostov better not be much longer. I’m going to die in this drekking climate. I’ll be a lump of ice, I tell you I will.’

Lacrante looked up at the tower jutting from the crag behind him. There, Cheelche waited, sighting down her rifle from somewhere in the geometric frontage. The stonework provided a mass of ledges overlooking the town. A sniper’s dream, if it weren’t for the weather. Wind hit the mountain and rushed upwards into town, hard as fists. It snapped through the narrow streets clinging to the rock with teeth of snow that bit at Lacrante’s exposed skin. He could stand only a few moments watching the saloon before he was forced into the shelter of the doorway opposite, where he’d steal a moment to recover, then go back out again, in case he was needed.

‘For the sake of my unlaid spawn, can this take any longer?’ Cheelche grumbled.

‘They’ll be out soon,’ said Lacrante quietly. ‘It was a good contact. A transaction, that’s all. Money for information. In and out, that’s what Antoniato said.’

‘Yeah, what do you know about it, new boy? It’s never that simple,’ she grumbled. ‘Freezing.’

‘I’ve been investigatus for two years now,’ said Lacrante. He got annoyed when Cheelche patronised him, and it happened often.

‘Investigatus? Still new,’ said Cheelche. ‘New and naive. This is going to go wrong, just you wait and see. It always bloody does.’

Antoniato would have calmed her. He had a way with Cheelche that Lacrante did not. His time on Rostov’s crew hadn’t taught Lacrante the knack of jollying the sour little xenos along. Sometimes, she got on his nerves, and that wasn’t just because he’d been brought up to find all alien life despicable.

Lacrante rubbed his face, leaned out of the doorway again and peered up the steep street. He saw no one. It was unlit, narrow, grim with refuse, little more than an alleyway made of steps. All the streets were like that. The buildings were squat, made of blocky stone to a severe xenos pattern, adapted by the monks who made Azazen their home. Light spilled in tightly defined stripes from slit windows, cutting the cobbled steps into neat sections of shadow divided by the shining performances of snowflakes. A little noise emanated from the taverna Lacrante watched, but each roar of laughter and stray phrase of music was shredded by the wind, and all sense of warmth it conveyed was snatched away.

He ducked back into the door, his skin needling. Steam gushed out with every breath, carrying off his precious body heat.

Chozteculpo was a nowhere town clinging to a nowhere mountain that clung to a nowhere planet. Though in the Segmentum Solar, Azazen had been off the main warp conduits for millennia, hard to get to, right on the edge of wilderness space. In Imperial terms it hardly mattered, and by virtue of its isolation had been untouched by galactic events.

Things were changing. The upheaval of the Rift had forced the warp routes deeper into virgin territory, enough to open up the frontier, and the monks found themselves living in uneasy coexistence with criminals and adventurers using the world as a layover before heading out into the uncharted sectors. Though the war seemed a long way from Chozteculpo, it had become a dangerous place, especially after dark, and few people were abroad.

Lacrante looked out again, shivered, clamped his teeth tight to stop them chattering. One of the local gangly xenos stumbled past, bundled up so heavily against the wind it could have been human, if it were not so tall and misproportioned. Its head was bent against the weather, the reek of drink coming off it strong as promethium fumes. That sort was common hereabouts; you’d not find aliens on a more important Imperial world. He had no idea what the species was called. Lacrante pulled himself back into the doorway, and the being paid him no heed as it stumbled by.

The minutes dragged. His joints ached.

‘Any sign yet?’ said Cheelche.

‘You can see from up there just as well as I,’ he grumbled. His fingers were numb.

‘My left eyeball’s frozen solid. I’m sure of it. I daren’t take it off the scope. It’ll come out.’

‘Take it up with Rostov,’ Lacrante said, and switched off his vox-link, sick of Cheelche’s moaning. ‘If he ever comes out of there,’ he muttered to himself.

The saloon was hot with many bodies crammed together. A fire of dried dung burned fiercely in the centre under a conical flue of moulded clay, the smoke sucked up so hard by the wind the chimney hooted.

Rostov was playing tarot. He looked steadily into the eyes of his opponent, hand of cards curved in his gloved fingers. The man stared back, face studiously blank. Geometric tattoos in black covered the man’s face, and his hair was greased into two horns dyed green. He was dirty, skin patterned with ground-in dirt between the tattoos. The lines in his face suggested a tendency to shout and scowl. He was scum, probably a murderer, certainly a thief. Weapons were prominent on a leather vest so stiff with filth it sat up on his fat gut as he hunched over his cards. He was the sort of man it pays to be wary of, but Inquisitor Rostov did not think him so dangerous.

Rostov glanced at the cards. Playing with the tarot was a mildly blasphemous use of the Emperor’s oracle, and forbidden in most civilised places, but though Rostov found it distasteful he knew the game well enough. He had a good hand. He took a stack of gold coins, and let them drop one after another onto the stake between them.

‘Confident,’ said the man. He grinned, showing filed teeth full of decay.

Rostov let the last coin fall. It slithered down the pile. ‘Maybe I have reason to be, Ser Tapind.’

Tapind’s grin widened further and he theatrically looked away, pointing his nose into the air. ‘Ser, is it? Nice manners. We don’t have much call for those out here.’

‘Do not take my politeness for weakness,’ said Rostov. ‘Perhaps you could tell me what I came here to learn, and I will make it worth your while.’

Tapind hunched lower. ‘Not yet. I like to play. Finish the game, and I will tell you what you want.’

‘I don’t understand why we can’t just pay you,’ said the Imperial Guard veteran accompanying Rostov. He was not young, but yet not old. No grey in his brown hair, though his face carried a network of fine lines. He was well muscled. When he moved, the patched uniform he wore under his heavy fur coat strained. Behind his chair a plasma gun was propped against the wall. A heavy gun with a tendency to catastrophically overheat, it needed strength and nerve to wield.

‘Because I like to play,’ said Tapind, and gave him a dismissive look. ‘You can learn a lot about a man’s character by the way he lays a tarot hand, and I can read you, sonny. You look like a deserter, and this fellow, your boss… I ain’t never seen skin so red like that. He’s got a touch of the xenos on him, this one.’

To the people in the bar, Rostov did look strange. His hair and beard were fair, and that contrasted strikingly with the reddish cast of his skin. He looked like a man with sunburn, in a town where the sun rarely shone.

‘I fit well within the accepted categories of sanctioned human form,’ said Rostov. ‘The organisation I represent would not have it any other way.’

‘Is that so? I don’t sell information to just anybody. Gotta be careful. Game’s a good way of gauging what kind of man you are, so – play.’

Rostov shrugged. ‘As you wish, but I assure you, we will learn what we came to learn.’ He looked to his companion. ‘Take your turn, Antoniato.’

Unlike Rostov and Tapind, Antoniato had no skill in hiding his thoughts. He jingled his coins in his hand, hesitating before laying his stake. He drew another card from the deck. He frowned and dithered over which to put into play, biting at the stubbled skin beneath his lip. His fingers hovered over one card, then another, before he finally settled on a third, plucking it from the fan clenched in his fingers and laying it on the table with a soft curse.

‘The blind seer,’ said Tapind, cocking his eyebrow. ‘Interesting choice.’ By that he meant bad, and he made sure Antoniato knew it with another black-toothed grin.

‘I’m no good at this, alright?’ said Antoniato.

‘I noticed.’ Tapind took his turn quickly, his move already formulated. He put down a large bet. ‘Are you going to match me or not?’ He spoke only to Rostov, Antoniato already discounted.

‘How the Throne should I know?’ Antoniato grumbled.

Rostov stared at Tapind. ‘I’ll invoke my pass, see what you’ve got.’

‘Suit yourself,’ said Tapind. He laid down his card, a golden-armed warrior brandishing a burning sword. Everyone in the faith knew that image. ‘Emperor Among Us. Ain’t no higher spread than that,’ Tapind said, as he completed the layout on the table. ‘I win. Nice to meet you, boys. Now pay up, and get out. I ain’t selling no words today. I don’t like the look of you. Cards don’t lie.’

Tapind reached for the money. Rostov gripped his wrist.

‘Let’s say I raise the stake.’

Tapind scowled. ‘With what?’

‘Prudent agreement.’

‘Never heard of it, and there is no higher card for this spread than the Emperor Among Us.’ He jerked his head at Antoniato. ‘Don’t think to shake me down. Your muscle doesn’t scare me. I’ve got powerful friends in these parts, so back off. You lost fair and square.’

Rostov released Tapind’s wrist, and dropped something from his sleeve into his hand. He held it over the table, hidden by his fingers. Curious, Tapind paused raking in his winnings.

‘I’m not talking about cards,’ said Rostov. ‘I’m talking about you making a sensible choice. Prudent agreement.’

He laid a small ivory amulet down on the wood with a click. It bore an Imperial barred ‘I’ overset with a skull, in the forehead of which a small ruby flashed. Tapind blinked at it in shock.

‘You recognise this seal, yes? Now will you talk to me?’ said Rostov calmly.

Tapind’s expression turned scared. ‘You’re an inquisitor. Holy Throne of Terra! What the hell do you want with me?’

The dreadful word cut through the hubbub of the taverna. Suddenly, a dozen pair of eyes were on the gaming table. Antoniato tensed, flipped aside his furs, one hand going to his holstered laspistol, the other resting on the bulbous nose of the plasma gun.

‘What are you doing all the way out here?’ Tapind asked his question, but stood rapidly, ready to leave without an answer. ‘I’m not talking to you. It’s a death sentence on me. I knew there was something off about you.’

‘It’s a death sentence if you don’t,’ said Antoniato, taking his turn to grin.

Tapind shoved away from the table, money forgotten. ‘Stay away from me.’

‘If you speak to me, the rewards will be great,’ said Rostov.

‘Not great enough. All the wealth of Terra is useless to a dead man.’

‘Then you have a dilemma, because leaving will not prevent your death.’

Rostov’s words proved prophetic. There was the wheezing bark of an energy weapon by the door. A yellow flash lit up the saloon. Half of Tapind’s face disintegrated and splashed over the wall. Blood soaked into plaster.

There were two attackers: a squat human in a filthy heatsuit, and a rangy, humanoid xenos with a tall cap and flat face on its thin, cylindrical head. They didn’t have time for a second shot. Antoniato had his pistol in his hand and was firing before Rostov had turned in his seat. The crack of the lasgun beam in the air was loud in the confined space. The xenos assailant was flung against the wall, leaving a stripe of copper-green blood as he slid to the floor. The human loosed off four poorly aimed energy blasts as he fumbled for the door handle. Antoniato threw himself under the table and returned fire. Throughout, Rostov stayed seated, calm with the coherent light of death flicking around him.

The man fired again, got his fingers on the latch, then fled into the night. A blast of freezing air pushed the fire in the taverna hearth flat before the door slammed and the flames jerked up to attention.

Antoniato surged up off the floor, sending the table crashing down. Coins bounced everywhere. He fired again. His laspistol left a guttering hole in the taverna door, but the man was away.

‘Lacrante!’ Antoniato shouted into a handheld vox-caster. ‘Contact’s down! One assassin, human, xenos-weapon armed, heading your way.’

‘In pursuit,’ Lacrante responded.

Antoniato switched his aim from patron to patron. Hands were raised. A man shifted in his seat. ‘Nobody move!’ he shouted.

Rostov remained serene. With deliberate movements he collected his seal from the floor and stood from his chair as if he had just finished a meal in a fine restaurant. ‘Cheelche, keep your eyes on the target, but you are not to shoot,’ said Rostov into the vox-thief at his neck. ‘I want this one alive.’

Rostov stopped by the body of the alien assassin, searched it briefly, lifted up a talisman hung about its neck. An eight-pointed compass wheel etched into a spread-fingered hand: the mark of the thrice-damned Warmaster Abaddon’s chief servant.

‘Damn it. Now we’re back to square one,’ said Antoniato.

‘The killer knows something,’ Rostov said, and got to his feet. He pointed to the money lying on the floor. ‘Keep it, for your trouble,’ he told the bartender.

With Antoniato covering him, the inquisitor opened the door and stepped out into the night.

‘Lacrante! Contact’s down!’

The saloon door burst open and a human male staggered out, nearly lost his footing on the thin snow coating the steps, stumbled into the far wall, then ran into the dark, the charge lights on the weapon in his hand glowing bright in the gloom.

‘One assassin, human, xenos-weapon armed, heading your way.’

‘In pursuit,’ said Lacrante, and set off at a sprint up the alley steps. He keyed his vox back on.

‘What are you mammals up to down there?’ Cheelche voxed.

‘Didn’t you see him go out? Single target!’

‘You try seeing anything when your eye is literally frozen and your scope’s hazy with frost.’

‘Just cover the door,’ Lacrante said. ‘Don’t let anybody follow me.’

She said something he didn’t hear. Lacrante raced around a corner into the full force of the winter. Freezing air tore the heat from his body. He was a fit man, Lacrante, but a combination of his heavy clothes, the altitude, the steepness of the streets and the cold had him puffing like a lho addict in the last days of life.

Fortunately for him, the fugitive was no better acclimatised to the environment. The man skidded on the snow compacting on the stone, and Lacrante gained ground unseen. He wasn’t noticed until a couple huddled against the cold stepped out in front of Lacrante from a side alley.

‘Get out of the damned way!’ he shouted, almost crashing into them. One of the two fell, and Lacrante was forced to hop over their legs to avoid being entangled. They shouted after him as he slipped and bounced off the wall. He was lucky not to get a bullet between the shoulder blades in that place. He trusted to the Emperor to shield him.

When the shouts cut through the wind, the man looked behind. Spotting Lacrante, he ran faster.

‘Throne,’ Lacrante cursed. He pulled his laspistol and let off a shot, but the slippery cobbles made his aim lousy. Tiles exploded on the low eaves overhanging the street.

His quarry ran like Horus and his devils were on his heels.

They were getting higher, following the twisting alleys towards the town’s centre. Lacrante kicked over piles of frozen refuse as he caromed off the wall, and he half-fell, half-ran on. The man took another corner. Lacrante followed, and he burst out onto Chozteculpo’s via principia, Merchant’s Row. It was hardly worthy of the name, being only a little wider than the rest and not very long, but it was lit by barrels of burning animal oils, and vendors stood by stalls of wares and food stands where coals roasted skewered examples of the smaller local wildlife. There were more people there, enough to make a crowd, and that slowed his target down.

The man shoved his way through the throng. He glanced back. Lacrante had a glimpse of a pale face behind goggles. Sweat-steam puffed up around his heatsuit seals at his throat.

‘Stop him!’ shouted Lacrante. ‘Stop, in the name of the Emperor!’

Heads swung round to look. Lacrante’s call to action had the opposite of the desired effect. Not wishing to get involved, the crowd parted, and the man went free. He let off a shot behind him. Some sort of low-yield plasma weapon. Lacrante ducked. A fizzing yellow ball sliced the air over his head and scattered the crowd. His target man was now racing down a long corridor of people, but clear enough to run meant clear enough for a shot.

Lacrante dropped to his knee, ripped off his glove, steadied his gun on his forearm and aimed at the receding fugitive, his finger resting on the trigger. Cold metal burned him.

‘Emperor guide my hand,’ he whispered, and squeezed.

A flash of red chased the man, connected with his leg, and sent him crashing down into a portable grill. Embers and meat skewers skittered across the road. He tried to push himself up and screamed as he put his hand on a hot coal. He was still trying to rise when Lacrante came up behind him and rested his gun against the man’s head.

‘Don’t move,’ Lacrante said. The man moaned, his injured leg ramrod straight, his burned hand cradled against his chest. The crowd looked uneasily on. Hostile eyes peered out from behind heated goggles and the gaps between scarves and hats.

Planets like Azazen were hostile in the extreme to all but the lightest touch of Imperial authority. There were a lot of people giving him ugly looks, and several of the local xenos in evidence. They in particular had good reason to hate men like Lacrante. Hands moved towards weapons.

‘This is an Imperial matter,’ he said as firmly as he could. He was so cold he could barely speak. ‘Get back. Be about your business.’

The assassin spoke through gritted teeth. ‘That’s not going to work. You’ve made a mistake. There’s no governor here. No law. Not even yours.’

Lacrante switched his gun from face to face, jerking it by way of emphasis. Most of the bystanders moved off, shooting looks varying from fearful to aggressive. Three of them did not.

‘Shit,’ Lacrante said.

The assassin hissed, a reptilian noise of commingled amusement and pain. ‘You could take one for sure, maybe two if you’re good enough, but not three. You’re dead.’

‘Shut up,’ said Lacrante. The snow was coming thicker and stung his eyes. He raised his voice. ‘You three, withdraw. I have no quarrel with you.’

‘Maybe we have one with you,’ said one man. He wore an oiled poncho over a heatsuit, and moved it aside, revealing a long-barrelled slug pistol at his belt. The others showed their own weapons. One drew a laspistol. The other unslung a rifle of non-human make from his back.

‘Let’s see how good you are, outlander,’ said the leader. He spat, an obvious distraction to cover his draw, but his hand barely brushed his gun before Lacrante had drilled a hole through his chest. It was a good shot, and fast, Lacrante swung his gun around to take the second, expecting to die at the hands of the third.

He did not. Lacrante’s shot passed over the second man when he was dropped by a high-angle las-fusil beam. The third was warned of his own demise by the whooping roar of a plasma gun discharging, not that it did him any good. The stream hit him as he turned, and he lit up from within like a lantern, sunfire burning in his mouth and eyes. He opened his mouth to scream but released only his own vaporised lungs. In a second he was reduced to a carbonised mess in the snow.

The prisoner made to crawl off. Lacrante pinned him to the ice with his boot.

‘Don’t even think about it,’ he said. ‘You’re done. I’m not alone.’

His vox-bead crackled. ‘Miss me?’ said Cheelche.

‘Yes,’ said Lacrante. ‘Nice shot. Thank you.’

‘Maybe you won’t be such a dumb Terran ape and run off on your own in future, eh?’

Rostov and Antoniato were coming down the street. Rostov spooked people, and Lacrante thought him being a witch was only the half of it. There was something that hung over him, a presentiment of doom, or the sense the Emperor Himself was watching you through his eyes. His presence cleared the street; even the vendors withdrew, leaving their grills to gutter in the wind. Antoniato was laughing, his sun gun spewing steam into the frigid night.

‘“Stop in the name of the Emperor?” Is that the best you’ve got, Lacrante?’

‘It seemed appropriate,’ said Lacrante, and holstered his gun.

‘You have him,’ Rostov said. His boots crunched to a stop on the snow, and he looked down at their captured prey. ‘I am pleased.’

‘This is an inquisitor,’ said Antoniato to the man. ‘You know what one of those is, right?’ He shouldered his plasma rifle and together he and Lacrante hauled the prisoner up. He jabbered in an impenetrable dialect.

‘He was speaking Gothic just fine a moment ago,’ said Lacrante.

‘Remind him how to communicate,’ Rostov said.

Antoniato punched the man in the face. He swore. Rostov fixed the prisoner with his uncompromising gaze.

‘Who are you working for?’

The man spat blood. ‘I don’t know what you are talking about.’

‘Don’t play stupid,’ said Antoniato.

Rostov ran a finger around the man’s neck, until he snagged a cord and hooked it out, pulling up a bronze amulet. Like the xenos in the bar, he too wore the eight-pointed wheel of Chaos stamped into an open hand. Rostov looked at it with intense disdain.

‘Where is the Hand of Abaddon? You wear his sigil. Tapind knew something, you silenced him. Who gave you the kill order? That will do for a start.’

The prisoner hissed some local curse. Antoniato pressed his knee into the man’s wounded leg. The prisoner grunted.

‘Show my master respect,’ Antoniato said.

The man bared his teeth. ‘Why? I am a servant of the Warmaster, the true lord of mankind. I have no care for your evil god. You will never break me.’

‘The power of the false gods is as nothing compared to the power of the Emperor.’ Rostov yanked the amulet, snapping the cord, and tossed the symbol into the snow. ‘They will not help you. The eye of the Emperor is upon you, and He sees all. You will tell me everything and die painlessly, or you will beg for mercy before I am done, and I will still know every thought you have ever had.’

The man stared defiantly back. Rostov regarded him a moment, then looked from Antoniato to Lacrante.

‘Take him to the ship. We are finished with Chozteculpo. Cheelche, time to go.’

‘Got you, Leonid. I’m coming down.’

Antoniato and Lacrante dragged the assassin away. Rostov remained a moment, surveying the untidy pile of streets leading up the mountain, like a man who feels another’s stare upon his neck and searches for the watcher.

Seeing nothing, he turned and left.

In moments, the snow had covered their tracks.

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A BLACK LIBRARY PUBLICATION

First published in Great Britain in 2022.
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