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The Mistress of Threads – Extract

A Black Library Publication

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The Mistress of Threads

By John French

The following record entries make up the correspondence and summary documents (grade primus to secundus-beta) from the Stygian archives of the von Castellan Rogue Trader Dynasty relating to the Cytos Purge and the fall of the House Morio.

<entry I>

From: Cressida Syr Morio, Executor of the House Morio

To: Viola von Castellan, Seneschal of the von Castellan Rogue Trader Dynasty

Message delivered by oath-bound messenger

My Most Dear Cousin,

I hope that this finds you well. I am afraid that I must break with the formalities that should begin a letter between kin after such a long time. I am sorry to say that there are matters which must force formality and manners to the side. I must ask you for help, Viola, most urgently and strongly. I know that the circumstances around your family’s trouble may have left you less inclined to listen to me, but I hope that the bonds that we shared in childhood will mean that you will excuse me for my current lack of consideration. God- Emperor, but I need someone to help us.

It began with our pact with the Cytos Cartel.

As you may know, it became clear after only a few years that my marriage into House Morio was more than a merger of wealth. As your father counselled my mother at the time, it was clear that House Morio was decaying from within. Its diminishing intellectual and commercial ability and traditions had led to continual loss of station and wealth. While Morio still held the grand supply agreements for Battlefleet Caradryad and the transit bonds for goods coming from the Throneward trade routes, it was within a generation of collapse. My skills and those of my bloodline were what old Morio wanted when my marriage was brokered. And for a time that worked. My life-bound partner, Osric Morio, continued on the path of dissolution he had been following before our marriage. He had no power in the family anymore and seemed happy with that lot, as long as he had money enough to waste on the turn of a card and to burn in cadula smoke.

I kept him happy in that regard, and turned my attention to salvaging the House’s withering fortunes. I was successful, as I am sure that you are aware. For a while it seemed as though there was no wrong that I, or the House Morio, could do. We secured the harvest rights to Persepol, regained the supply contracts for the Askar, Numal and Ventu chartist fleets. The broker houses of Tio and even Bakka were willing to extend credit bonds to us with eager smiles. The flow of wealth went from a rivulet to a torrent that carried us on and seemed bound only for an ocean of even greater bounty.

As executor of House Morio the credit for the return to fortune fell to me, and I must admit that I did not turn away from it. I don’t know if you ever knew what it was like being a fourth cousin of a minor blood line bound to the great von Castellans. You were always at the centre of things, in the line of inheritance, control and fortune. We in the shadows knew our place, Viola, and that place was to be grateful for what fell to us. So I relished the power growing in my grasp and the fortune filling my fingers. It has a feeling, an almost physical sensation, doesn’t it? Warm, like smooth cut stone under the sun, fluid and flying like soft fabric caught in the breeze, strong as the pull of the ocean tide. It was mine, created by the application of my skill, and mine to protect and wield. The sense of freedom seems almost giddy as I remember it.

I am sorry that during the time of our prosperity misfortunes overtook you and your dynasty. It is a truth, though, that the wheel of fate raises us all up into light and plunges us all back down into darkness. I have learnt that truth well in these last months.

The beginning of our trouble was growing then, though I did not realise it. Shadows were spreading, omens abounded, and fanciful news came with travellers from far places. Storms, rebirth, horrors and devils and dead worlds haunted the loose talk around even high tables. I paid these rumours little attention; there was work to be done, and there have been stories of dire futures told since mankind learned to use its tongue.

Osric, my blessedly absent consort, also began to behave unusually at this time. Ever since our marriage he had been happy keeping himself to his well-financed life of dissolution. Now I found him haunting the estates and holdings of House Morio, as though uncertain what to do, or like a child caught just after committing a sin that they are considering confessing to. He seemed unusually interested in the details of the House’s business and transactions. I humoured him with a little insight into the universe of our trade ledgers.

All thought of Osric’s unusual behaviour vanished the moment that the storms broke and cataclysm came. I will not write to you of that moment; you know only too well, as do we all, and we are living in the world that it left to us. Let me touch on it only to say that as the wound opened across the stars and the storms swallowed the Throne’s light, my House lost and lost again.

Only a year before, I had made contact with trade enterprises in the coreward sectors. I had hoped to expand the scope of our operations and holdings beyond the Caradryad sector. Our credit, reputation and influence was at a height that made it seem like a modest venture.

The great storms swallowed that optimism.

Ships vanished in the immaterium. Riots on planets burned trade goods. Messages vanished. Suddenly we had reservoirs of promethium but no tankers to move it to the chem-combines who had paid for it. In other places we had trade ships bonded and paid and waiting for cargo that had vanished into the flames. In others… in most places we did not even know what we held or where it was going.

Wealth is a web of chains. Each link is a promissory note, a cargo, a bill of sale or a contract of supply. The credit bonds that pay for a trillion mega-tonnes of grain to be shipped from Caelus are raised on Tio against the contracts sworn with the Administratum that we will supply that grain to the monasteries of Dominicus Prime. The chartist freighters that carry that grain are charged at a rate agreed and paid for by credit raised against the billion tonnes of ore sold to us in advance of it being mined on Gult. On and on it goes, link by link, growing out and out, across drifts of stars and planets and threading the dark with ships crossing the night. But all the chains lead back to House Morio. To me, dear cousin. And for all that they are made of gold, those chains bind.

The storms broke and the promissory brokers and the coin guilders and the families and cartels called in their debts. All of them. First one then another and another, in a great hungry cascade. It was panic, you see. There was fire in the sky, prophets telling of the death of the most blessed Emperor, dreams of blood and darkness. And so people did what they do when afraid that the world is coming apart – they grab hold of whatever they can. For the people in the streets that meant food and water, and a weapon to keep themselves alive. For those whose world is measured in debit and credit it meant calling in every debt they were owed.

I know you understand these circumstances better than even I do. My mother once said you were the most brilliant seneschal-in-waiting the von Castellans had produced in twenty generations. And so I know that I have explained to you something that you already know, and that when I say that we could not pay our debts, not even begin to pay, that you have already deduced that before I wrote it.

Strange, don’t you think, that even in times of the greatest uncertainty and disaster the ability to call in a debt seems to persist? We had nothing. Our remaining assets were seized across the sector. Proxies of our House were imprisoned, some even killed. And it was clear that this was only the beginning. Bounty hunter platoons from the Iron Venators were bound to bring myself and Osric to a cabal of our creditors. Only the loyalty of our household staff saved us from that fate. But there seemed no hope besides exile and life as a vagabond House, living off scraps in the carcass of our broken empire.

It was at that moment that Osric said that there might be people who could help us. Things were so desperate that I barely wondered at how he would know of anyone who could offer us aid. He said that over the years he had made the acquaintance of a number of members of the Cytos Cartel and that they had sent him a message offering to help remove our current difficulties.

I had heard of the Cytos. They were a power in sector trade. Quiet, private, reliable. All its members were said to be bound by the single version of the Imperial creed that they all shared. I had done trade with them, but never met them. Now, despite myself, I agreed to meet their representative.

The one that came to us was called Sonnus, and he said that he had the authority to speak for all the cartel. He seemed young, clean limbed and healthy, clad in the dust pale grey that I would come to learn was the mark of their kind. His eyes were the clearest amethyst I had ever seen. He wore a headdress of gold and beaten bronze set with moonstones and blood carbuncles. Two hulking lifewards accompanied him, their bulk and faces hidden beneath the plates of armoured pressure suits. His voice was like the ringing of a perfect silver bell. He was exceedingly gracious, expressing both great sympathy and willingness to help even without an agreement being reached. His agents had eliminated two bounty capture units and he presented us with real-time intelligence on many more. He also gave me the heads of the bounty hunters in crystal jars.

I confess, I was relieved. Here, somehow, we had a friend. We were not alone. It was a moment before I asked what the Cytos wanted in return for their help.

Sonnus replied that they wanted no payment. They simply wanted to become our partners in future business once our good name and fortune had been restored. They had the means to remove our debts and to help smooth over every other difficulty. All they wanted in return was to count House Morio as the most close associates and partners.

I had enough of my wits left to ask if he was alluding to taking over House Morio.

He replied with a kind laugh, and said no. Though the Cytos Cartel would make privileged use of all House Morio assets and contacts, we would keep complete autonomy. They would not even take a cut of the wealth flow – our profit would be ours.

I should have asked more. I should have looked deeper and thought longer. But the heads of eight bounty hunters were still looking up at me from inside the jars placed at my feet like blood gifts to a ghoul queen. I did hesitate, but Osric said that he for one did not want to be chained in the gaols of one of our creditors or made into a dancing servitor for their pleasure.

So, I agreed.

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