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The Tear of Selevia – Extract

A Black Library Publication

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THE TEAR OF SELEVIA

By Mike Brooks

The emporium is rich, and not just in content. Its wares of glistening jewels and glimmering precious metals are valuable, to be sure, but it is their surroundings that give the sense of opulence. The goods are not stretched out on bare display boards of grey plastek, like cadavers on a mortuarium slab: they rest on plush cushions, like lovers in a boudoir, held in display cases carved from rich wood that would have once been scented, but which has now lost its aroma to time. Whole downhive families on this planet of Ranistat could be bought for the price of one of these pieces. The woman is finely dressed, as any customer would be, although her clothes are less extravagant than the local fashion. Her short, dark hair is shaved in a pattern that reveals the dark skin beneath, and her eyes take in the wares with a silent evaluation that appears to find them lacking in some manner.

‘May I help you, milady?’ the shopkeeper asks, for she gives the impression of someone who is searching for something specific, and that can be a most profitable sort of customer. She turns towards him and smiles, which goes some way towards lessening the impact of her unwavering gaze.

‘You have many fine pieces here,’ she says politely.

‘You are most gracious to say so,’ replies the shopkeeper humbly. His name is Marrek, and he has long ago learned the value of humility when dealing with the gentry. A shadow moves outside the shop’s door: a hulk of a man with a bionic right arm, his face scarred by burns. He came here with the woman, but did not enter. Marrek notices these things.

‘They are all new?’

‘Indeed, my lady,’ Marrek says with a smile, which fades slightly as her mouth pouts a little. ‘Is that a problem?’

‘I am… I suppose you could say that I’m running an errand,’ the woman says, with a slightly embarrassed smile, and Marrek finds himself wondering who this woman might answer to. Her age is hard for him to determine, but while she’s not old, she certainly can’t be young. And her manner! This is not someone who gives the impression of taking instruction.

‘I’m looking for a piece with history, if you understand me?’ the woman continues, and Marrek nods, because he does indeed.

‘If you would follow me, milady?’

He activates his security servitor, who will inform anyone who enters that he is temporarily indisposed – not to mention prevent them from making off with any of the goods – and leads her through a curtain into a back room. This is smaller and less brightly lit, but the sense of age and wealth is, if anything, more tangible.

‘I have some few pieces here that might serve,’ Marrek says casually, touching a button. The smooth whirr of machinery brings perhaps a dozen items of jewellery into view, rising on small plinths, or revealed by the opening of clamshell doors. The impression of secrecy is nearly as important to such a sale as the quality of the goods themselves. ‘All from one noble family or another, down on their luck and forced to sell, for a variety of reasons.’

Some rich folk like to wear the former glories of others. Perhaps they wish to claim a history that isn’t their own; perhaps they want to flaunt how they haven’t succumbed to the tragedy of their former peers; perhaps, in some cases, they even mock a rival they’ve brought low, by possessing their former property.

Marrek doesn’t care. It all makes him money.

‘This has a good air to it,’ the woman says, hooking her finger under a ruby as large as her fingernail – the centrepiece of a finely worked bracelet. She looks at Marrek. ‘I believe this might serve.’

‘Milady has excellent taste,’ Marrek says, an automatic response. It is a good piece though. Opulent, but not gaudy.

‘I assume it’s not cursed,’ the woman says, with a small chuckle to indicate that she’s joking, and is aware that it’s not a particularly good joke.

‘Oh no, milady!’ Marrek says, with a laugh of his own. ‘You’d have to go to Selevia for such a thing!’ He reaches out to pick up the bracelet and attach it around the woman’s wrist, so she can try the fit.

‘Selevia?’ the woman asks. Her tone is only mildly curious, but Marrek meets her eyes for a moment, and abruptly feels as though the temperature has dropped by a degree or two.

‘Oh, I meant nothing by the comment, milady,’ he stammers. Is she from Selevia? Has he just offended a customer, lost a potential sale? ‘There are tales of a cursed necklace from there, that’s all. Not that I believe in such superstition, of course,’ he adds hastily. ‘I’m sure it’s just a tale.’ He proffers the bracelet. ‘May I?’

‘Please do,’ she replies, and smiles again, and the misunderstanding is past.

‘So, tell me of our destination, Master Trellavyn,’ the woman says, casually scanning her cards. She is sitting at a table in the master’s lounge, with a half-full glass of amasec at her right hand and a stack of coins at her left. Danid Trellavyn is not the captain of the Emperor’s Smile – she is hardwired into the bridge, from where she controls all the ship’s processes – but he is the master: he owns the ship, and dictates where it will fly and what cargo or passengers it will take. He rarely invites outsiders into his personal lounge, but the woman opposite him is possessed of a manner that greatly intrigues him. Master Trellavyn is less taken by the man with her, a small fellow named Kantid with the personality of engine grease, but the woman made it clear that an invitation to her was automatically extended to him. Still, the man has turned out to be shocking at cards.

‘Selevia, Mamzel Dollane? It’s a newly claimed Imperial system,’ Trellavyn says, rubbing his chin as he looks at his own hand and tries to work out the probabilities of the right cards coming up. ‘I say newly claimed – a matter of a couple of centuries, nothing more.’

‘Lovely worlds they are too, as planets go,’ says Nator, his master-of-arms. ‘I wouldn’t trade my berth on the Smile for one of them, but they’re green and fertile. It was a great victory to take them from those xenos bastards. Pardon my language, mamzel,’ he adds a moment later, but the woman waves it away with a smile.

‘Please, sir, I’ve heard far worse.’ She drums her fingers on the table, and places three fifty-throne chits into the middle of the table. ‘Xenos, you said?’

‘Aye, the aeldari,’ Trellavyn replies. He casts a glance at Kantid, who makes a face and places his cards face down, folding the hand: probably a wise decision, given his run so far.

‘Aeldari?’ The woman’s eyes are wide and watchful.

‘Motherless void-scum, every one of them,’ Nator says forcefully. Trellavyn makes a decision and matches the woman’s bet. Perhaps her eagerness to hear more will distract her. ‘They’re generally pirates, picking off small freighter craft and the like – nothing the size of the Smile, you’ve no need to worry there, milady – but as the tale goes, they made quite a stand in the Selevia System: pitched battles on the planets, the lot.’

‘And the Astra Militarum rolled right over them,’ Trellavyn chuckles. ‘You’re up, Nator.’

‘Hmm? Oh, sorry.’ Nator pushes his own money in without hesitation. ‘Tell me though, mamzel, how is it that you are travelling to Selevia, yet know little of it?’

Trellavyn looks at his cards. He’s interested to hear this too, although he has better manners than to let on. One of the benefits of playing cards with Nator is that he will generally ask whatever questions he pleases, meaning that the master of the Emperor’s Smile has no need to.

‘I don’t travel the galaxy solely on my own whims, gentlemen,’ the woman replies with a smile. ‘I go where I must, sometimes at the behest of others. Besides, all too often the official accounts of a system turn out to be somewhat at odds with the experiences of those who’ve actually been there.’ Nator turns over the next card. ‘Ah. Well, in that case…’ She pushes in another three fifty-throne coins.

‘And what is your business, if I may be so bold as to ask?’ Nator enquires. Trellavyn matches the woman’s bet, but doesn’t raise her. She’s played well so far, and he’s cautious about being drawn in. Nator matches them both.

‘Master Trellavyn, did you invite me here just to have your officer interrogate me?’ the woman says lightly. She sips her drink as Nator turns over the last two cards, and Trellavyn works to conceal his eagerness. His hand is not unbeatable now, but it is certainly strong.

‘Of course not, mamzel,’ he says soothingly, and shoots Nator a glance. He’s curious, but he’s not so curious that he wants to risk this woman taking offence and abandoning the game. The Imperium is a massive and varied beast, and there are any number of things she could be doing aboard his ship, many of them entirely legitimate. He’s not convinced that her real name is Mamzel Dollane, but it’s rather more fun to try to figure her out himself, in the week or so they’ll be in the warp on the way to their destination. Besides, he has a record of her documentation and it all checks out as valid; he can provide the scans to the authorities, should he ever be questioned about who she was, and why he let her onto his ship.

‘So, Master Trellavyn,’ she says as they go through the final round of betting. ‘Have you ever had any encounters with these… aeldari?’

For a moment, he’s tempted to make something up. Something that sounds dashing and adventurous: repelling a boarding action against bloodthirsty reavers, perhaps, or taking one of their ships down with a well-placed volley from the Smile’s guns. However, he reconsiders without knowing exactly why. He tells himself that he’s not trying to impress her, and he’s certainly not flirting with her – he just finds her intriguing. Perhaps there’s something else at work though, some instinct of which he’s not even aware: the sort of subconscious perceptiveness that can make all the difference between success and failure for an independent captain who traverses the void.

The truth is best, here.

‘Once only, mamzel, and that at a great distance,’ he says soberly. ‘We caught a glimpse of one of their vessels on the ship’s sensors, a decade or so back. It was lurking a long way out in the Selevia System, near a large asteroid. We kept to our own course, and lost all sign of it shortly after. That’s the only time I’ve seen any of them, and I can’t say as I’m disappointed.’

She nods, as though that was the response she expected. The three of them turn their cards over, one at a time.

‘Well,’ Nator says happily, scooping up the pot, ‘the Emperor smiles on me today!’

‘Excuse me, goodsire?’

The woman is dressed conservatively, but well. Wetan Gurril, second under-archivist of Roka City’s reference chambers, the largest on all of Selevia Prime, looks up from the texts he’s organising. He smiles at her out of habit, although he has no wish to be interrupted. ‘Yes, mamzel?’

‘I’ve been looking into Selevia’s history,’ the woman says, ‘and I would like to ask you a few questions about it.’

‘I’m afraid my tasks are keeping me occupied at the moment,’ Wetan replies. He tries the sort of apologetic, put-upon smile that usually makes users of the archives apologise for bothering him, and go back to bothering him in a different way by disordering his system as they search for whatever it is they want.

The smile bounces off the woman, as though he has professed himself immediately willing and ready to help. She steps forward with a data-slate in her hand, and taps it to bring up a hololith of a tall, richly dressed lady. Wetan notices a flash of crimson at her right wrist, and nearly gasps in surprise when he sees the bracelet of precious stones she wears there. She is bold, to openly display such wealth!

‘This is the first governor of Selevia, is that correct?’

The hololith’s own caption is capable of telling her as much. Wetan has no time for the sort of person who looks with their mouth and not with their eyes. ‘Yes, mamzel. I’m sorry, but I really can’t–’

‘Goodsire, please,’ the woman says, laying two fingers on his forearm. ‘This will not take much of your time.’

Wetan stiffens reflexively. It’s not that he’s unused to being touched, for the data stacks are narrow: it is often impossible not to bump or jostle another person when navigating their pathways, particularly those of his colleagues who have a tendency to be engrossed in their work to the exclusion of all awareness. Nor is it the tone of her voice, which is level and pleasant, and not remotely threatening. Her expression is calm, and she is neither tall nor broad enough to be physically intimidating.

And yet…

There is something about her, when taken altogether, which suggests to Wetan Gurril that it is not in his best interests to refuse this woman. Perhaps it is simply the air of expectation about her, the apparently unwavering belief that he will do what she requests. Or perhaps it’s something else. If he, as a purely theoretical exercise, tries to imagine what will happen should he refuse her, his mind pulls back from envisaging the outcome. On some level, Wetan Gurril understands that he should keep this interaction brief, and the person standing next to him in good temper.

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Cover illustration by Nuala Kinrade.

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