Thinking of his home world, Yosef reflexively looked up at the oval window above his head. The planet drifted there in stately silence, the dayside turning as dawn passed over the green-blue ribbons of ocean near the equator. But for all its beauty, he couldn’t shake the sense of it hanging over him like some monumental burden, ready to fall and crush him the moment his focus slipped. He looked away, finding Daig by his side. The other reeve glanced at him, and the expression on his cohort’s face was muted.
‘What are we doing up here?’ Daig asked quietly. ‘Look at this place. The light fittings alone are probably worth a governor’s ransom. I’ve never felt so common in my entire life.’
‘I know what you mean,’ Yosef replied. ‘Just stay quiet and nod in the right places.’
‘Try not to show myself up, you mean?’
‘Something like that.’ A few metres away, Hyssos was mumbling quietly to the air; Yosef guessed that the operative had to have some sort of communicator implant that allowed him to subvocalise and send vox messages as easily as the jagers of the Sentine used a wireless. It had been clear to him the moment the Consortium shuttlecraft had landed in the precinct courtyard, the elegant swan-like ship making a point-perfect touchdown that barely disturbed the trees; Eurotas’s riches clearly bought the baron and his clan the best of everything. Still, that didn’t seem to sit squarely with the neglect he’d seen at the trader’s compound a day ago. He thought on that for a moment, making a mental note to consider it further.
The shuttle had swiftly brought them into deep orbit, there to meet the great elliptical hulk of the Iubar, flagship of the Eurotas Consortium and spaceborne palace of the rogue trader who led it. A handful of other smaller ships attended the Iubar like handmaidens around a queen; and Yosef only thought of them as smaller because the flagship was so huge. The support craft were easily a match for the tonnage of the largest of the system cruisers belonging to the Iestan PDF.
The psyker Perrig remained on the surface, having insisted on being taken to the Blasko lodge to take a sensing. Hyssos explained that the woman had the ability to divine the recent past of objects by the laying on of hands, and it was hoped that she would find Erno Sigg’s telepathic spoor at the location. Skelta drew the job of being her escort, and the silent panic on the jager’s face had been clear as daylight. The reeve marvelled how Hyssos seemed completely unconcerned by Perrig’s preternatural powers. He spoke of her as Yosef or Daig would discuss the skills of the documentary officers at a crime scene – as no more than a fellow investigator with unique talents all their own.
In the hours after his arrival – and his blunt dismissal of Laimner – Hyssos had thrown himself fully into the serial murder case, absorbing every piece of information he could get his hands on. Yosef knew that the man had already been briefed as fully as the Eurotas Consortium could – how else could he have known the names of everyone in the precinct without prior instruction from Gorospe and her offices? – but he was still forming his view of the situation.
Daig took a few hours to sleep in the shift room, but Yosef was caught up by Hyssos’s quiet intensity and sat with him, repeating his thoughts and impressions to him. The operative’s questions were all insightful and without artifice. He made the reeve think again on points of evidence and supposition, and Yosef found himself warming to the man. He liked Hyssos’s lack of pretence, his direct manner… and he liked the man for the way he had seen right through Berts Laimner at first glance.
‘There’s more to this,’ Hyssos had said, over a steaming cup of recaf. ‘Sigg murdering and playing artist with the corpses… That doesn’t add up.’
Yosef had agreed; but then the message had come down from command. The Void Baron had arrived, and the Governor was in a fit. Normally, a visitation from someone of Baron Eurotas’s rank would be a day of great import, a trade festival for Iesta’s merchants and moneyed classes, a diversion for her workers and commoners – but there had been no time to prepare. Even as the shuttle had taken them up to meet Hyssos’s summons, the government was in turmoil trying to throw together some hasty pomp and ceremony in order to make it seem like this had been planned all along.
Laimner tried one last time to get a foot on the shuttle. He said that Telemach had ordered him to give the baron the briefing, that he could not in good conscience remain behind and let a lesser officer take the responsibility. He’d looked at Yosef when he said those words. Yosef imagined that Telemach was probably unaware of the shuttle or the summons, probably too busy fretting with the Landgrave and the Imperial Governor and the Lord Marshal to notice. But again, Hyssos had firmly blocked the Reeve Warden from using this as any way to aggrandise himself, and left him behind as he took the two lowly reeves up into orbit.
It was an experience that Daig was never to forget; it was his first time off-world, and his usual manner had been replaced with something that approximated stoic dread.
Hyssos beckoned them towards the far end of the wide gallery, where a dais and audience chairs were arranged before a broad archway. Inside the arch was a carved frieze made of red Dolanthian jade. The artwork, easily the size of the front of Yosef’s house, showed a montage of interstellar merchants about their business, travelling from world to world, trading and spreading the light of the Imperium. In the centre, a sculpture of the Emperor of Mankind towered over everything. He was leaning forward, holding out his hand with the palm down. Kneeling before him was a man in the garb of a rogue trader patriarch, who held up an open book beneath the Emperor’s hand.
Daig saw the artwork and gasped. ‘Who… Who is that?’
‘The first of the Eurotas,’ said Hyssos. ‘He was the commander of a warship that served the Emperor many centuries ago, a man of great diligence and courage. As a mark of respect for his service, the Emperor granted him the freedom of space and made him a rogue trader.’
‘But the book…’ said Daig, pointing. ‘What is he doing with the book?’
Yosef looked closer and saw what Daig was talking about. The artwork clearly showed what could only be a cut upon the Emperor’s downturned palm and a drip of blood – rendered here from a single faceted ruby – falling down towards the page of the open tome.
‘That is the Warrant of Trade,’ said a new voice, as footsteps approached from behind them. Yosef turned to see a hawkish, imperious man in the same cut of robes as the figure in the frieze. A group of guardsmen and attendants walked in lockstep behind him, but the man paid them no mind. ‘The letter of marque and statement granting my clan the right to roam the stars in the name of humanity. Our liege lord ratified it with a drop of his own blood upon the page.’ He gestured around. ‘We carry the book in safety aboard the Iubar as we have for generation after generation.’
Daig glanced about him, as if for a moment thinking he might actually see the real thing; but then disappointment clouded his face and his jaw set in a thin line.
‘My lord,’ said Hyssos, with a bow that the reeves belatedly imitated. ‘Gentlemen. Allow me to introduce his lordship Merriksun Eurotas, Void Baron of Narvaji, Agentia Nuntius of the Taebian Sector and master of the Eurotas Trade Consortium–’