Contents

Cover

Pariah – Extract

A Black Library Publication

eBook license

CHAPTER 1

In which I make myself known

This, I think, will be my life story, and it will start here. You will not learn much from me, or you will learn everything. I have not yet decided which.

I know one thing, and that is that my life has too many stories within it. It is made out of stories, like a rope is wound from smaller strands, or a mosaic is made of little coloured tiles. I am made of stories. I must leave many of them out, otherwise the one that matters will not make a bit of sense. Some day, if I am alive, I might be persuaded to tell some of the stories I have omitted. But they are lies and fabulations and, anyway, I do not expect to live.

My family’s name was Bequin, and this is the name I have always used when I am being myself. I was given to understand that proof of this heritage could be found in a marshland cemetery, for my family was a marshland family, but I never thought to check this, or visit the gravestone. This, I realise, makes me seem foolishly trusting. I am not. Besides, if I had seized, one day, upon the notion of taking a holloway down to Toilgate and entering the marsh beyond, I am sure that a gravestone would have been waiting for me in the waterlogged plot when I arrived, flecked with the lichen of ages though it had not stood there the previous sunset.

It is said that I am very like my mother. That I was raised an orphan means that I cannot corroborate this either.

My status as an orphan explains my situation. I was a ward of the city from a very young age, brought to the Scholam Orbus on Highgate Hill and raised there, and then transferred on my twelfth birthday to the Maze Undue, whose rambling accommodations adjoined the scholam. This was due to my selection as a promising candidate. Most of the scholam’s wards left the school and went down to the city when they turned twelve and were legally old enough to work. Promising candidates, one or two every few years, were transferred to the Maze Undue. I had, therefore, lived all of the life I could remember there on the hill, in one leaky, draughty building, or the other backing onto it.

My name is Beta Bequin. The forename is an affectionate contraction of my full name, Alizebeth, and not an uncial label. It is said aloud with a long vowel as in Bay-tar, not as Beater or Better.

I was found wandering in the marsh as a very young child by a kindly stranger, and upon investigation it was revealed that my mother had passed away of a distemper. The air of the marshes is noisome, and can afflict the lungs.

If the city is not familiar to you, then let me tell you something about it. The marshes I spoke of are to the south, far to the south, beyond the crumbling bulk of Toilgate where the workers once passed to and from the shipyards. This was in the olden times. Sister Bismillah told me about it when I was a girl. By the time I lived there the shipyards were derelict, just rockcrete sheds of immense size standing at intervals along the old river slipway. The lands had been partly reclaimed, or conquered, by the water, turning them into a grey and misty flatness of wet trees and low, impoverished dwellings. To the west of the city, past Highgate, lay the mountains, which were only ever referred to as the Mountains, and to the north-east, beyond the grim structure of Coalgate, lay the emptied space, the great Sunderland, whose grey dusts, I was told, eventually give way to the scorched harrat of the Crimson Desert.

The city is called Queen Mab. It is in the prefecture of Hercula, in the south part of the world, which is named Sancour, which itself is in the subsector of Angelus. Queen Mab was once very mighty and important, the mightiest city in the world, and its splendid towers and conspicuous gates were the envy of all other cities in the world, and on many other worlds besides. War made it mighty. But the war ended, and Queen Mab was left spent and exhausted. For as long as I have known it, and far longer than that besides, the city has been in its dotage. It is forever ailing and weak; it is worn out and withering. Many parts of it are crumbling, and there are some parts that are so decayed that no one dares visit them for fear of dislodging a wall or a ragged roof with no more force than the sound of footsteps. The city has always been an old place, with damp around its feet and dust in its mouth and a cold wind off the mountains at its shoulder. From my early childhood, I rose up through it. Sister Bismillah often said I floated up, from the lowest, wettest part, all the way to Highgate Hill. I remarked to her that this made me a strong swimmer.

She suggested this simply made me familiar with the function of metaphor.

When I was twelve, and not one day more, I entered the Maze Undue, and began my private instruction by the fourth, unspoken branch of the worshipful Ordos. I was selected for this because of certain aspects of my humour, which Mentor Saur referred to as my temper.

I entered the Maze Undue, and the whole city of Queen Mab became my classroom.

Click here to buy Pariah.

A Black Library Publication

First published in Great Britain in 2012.
This eBook edition published in 2021 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.
Cover illustration by Lorenzo Mastroianni.

Pariah © Copyright Games Workshop Limited 2021. Pariah, GW, Games Workshop, Black Library, The Horus Heresy, The Horus Heresy Eye logo, Space Marine, 40K, Warhammer, Warhammer 40,000, the ‘Aquila’ Double-headed Eagle logo, and all associated logos, illustrations, images, names, creatures, races, vehicles, locations, weapons, characters, and the distinctive likenesses thereof, are either ® or TM, and/or © Games Workshop Limited, variably registered around the world.
All Rights Reserved.

A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN: 978-1-80026-750-3

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

See Black Library on the internet at
blacklibrary.com

Find out more about Games Workshop’s world of Warhammer and the Warhammer 40,000 universe at
games-workshop.com

Affectionately inscribed to Vincent Rospond and likewise those of the House Rospond, in gratitude for the years of kindness, support and duty.

eBook license

This license is made between:

Games Workshop Limited t/a Black Library, Willow Road, Lenton, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, United Kingdom (“Black Library”); and

the purchaser of a Black Library e-book product (“You/you/Your/your”)

(jointly, “the parties”)

These are the terms and conditions that apply when you purchase a Black Library e-book (“e-book”). The parties agree that in consideration of the fee paid by you, Black Library grants you a license to use the e-book on the following terms:

* 1. Black Library grants to you a personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable, royalty-free license to use the e-book in the following ways:

o 1.1 to store the e-book on any number of electronic devices and/or storage media (including, by way of example only, personal computers, e-book readers, mobile phones, portable hard drives, USB flash drives, CDs or DVDs) which are personally owned by you;

o 1.2 to access the e-book using an appropriate electronic device and/or through any appropriate storage media.

* 2. For the avoidance of doubt, you are ONLY licensed to use the e-book as described in paragraph 1 above. You may NOT use or store the e-book in any other way. If you do, Black Library shall be entitled to terminate this license.

* 3. Further to the general restriction at paragraph 2, Black Library shall be entitled to terminate this license in the event that you use or store the e-book (or any part of it) in any way not expressly licensed. This includes (but is by no means limited to) the following circumstances:

o 3.1 you provide the e-book to any company, individual or other legal person who does not possess a license to use or store it;

o 3.2 you make the e-book available on bit-torrent sites, or are otherwise complicit in ‘seeding’ or sharing the e-book with any company, individual or other legal person who does not possess a license to use or store it;

o 3.3 you print and distribute hard copies of the e-book to any company, individual or other legal person who does not possess a license to use or store it;

o 3.4 you attempt to reverse engineer, bypass, alter, amend, remove or otherwise make any change to any copy protection technology which may be applied to the e-book.

* 4. By purchasing an e-book, you agree for the purposes of the Consumer Protection (Distance Selling) Regulations 2000 that Black Library may commence the service (of provision of the e-book to you) prior to your ordinary cancellation period coming to an end, and that by purchasing an e-book, your cancellation rights shall end immediately upon receipt of the e-book.

* 5. You acknowledge that all copyright, trademark and other intellectual property rights in the e-book are, shall remain, the sole property of Black Library.

* 6. On termination of this license, howsoever effected, you shall immediately and permanently delete all copies of the e-book from your computers and storage media, and shall destroy all hard copies of the e-book which you have derived from the e-book.

* 7. Black Library shall be entitled to amend these terms and conditions from time to time by written notice to you.

* 8. These terms and conditions shall be governed by English law, and shall be subject only to the jurisdiction of the Courts in England and Wales.

* 9. If any part of this license is illegal, or becomes illegal as a result of any change in the law, then that part shall be deleted, and replaced with wording that is as close to the original meaning as possible without being illegal.

* 10. Any failure by Black Library to exercise its rights under this license for whatever reason shall not be in any way deemed to be a waiver of its rights, and in particular, Black Library reserves the right at all times to terminate this license in the event that you breach clause 2 or clause 3.