Grohl made a derogatory sound deep in his throat. The youth with the wrist-device sniffed and spoke again. ‘Liya Beye. Terrik Grohl. Olo Pasri.’
‘The nobles have files on all of you,’ said the hawkish man. ‘We took these copies of their database on the resistance when we destroyed the Kappa Six Communicatory.’
‘You did that?’ said Pasri.
‘Shut up,’ Grohl snarled. ‘Don’t talk!’
Beye kept silent. Like the rest of them, she’d been wondering just what had happened at Kappa Six ever since the newsfeeds had announced the ‘cowardly, treacherous attack by terrorist militants’ a few days earlier. In the end, Capra had suggested that it was either the work of an independent cell they weren’t aware of, or just some accident the nobles had decided to blame on them.
‘We’re nothing to do with those resistance radicals,’ insisted Pasri. ‘We’re just citizens.’
The youth sneered. ‘Please don’t insult my intelligence.’
‘Things are going badly for you, aren’t they?’ said the man, ignoring the interruption. ‘They’re getting close to finding your hideaway. Close to finding Capra and all his cell leaders.’
Beye tried not to react when he said the name, and failed. He turned to her. ‘How many of your people have surrendered in the past few weeks? Fifty? A hundred? How many have taken the offer of amnesty for themselves and their families?’
‘It’s a lie,’ Beye blurted out, ignoring Grohl’s hiss of annoyance. ‘Those who give up are executed.’
‘Of course they are,’ said the man. He nodded towards the youth. ‘We even have picts of the firing squads.’ He paused. ‘Your entire resistance network–’
‘Such as it is,’ said the youth, with an arch sniff.
‘Your network is on the verge of collapse,’ continued the other man. ‘Capra and his trusted core of freedom fighters are the only things holding it together. And the nobles know that all they really need to do is wait.’ He walked down the line of them. ‘Just wait, until you run out of supplies, of ammunition. Of hope. You’re all exhausted, pushed beyond your limits. Hungry and tired. None of you want to say it, but you all know it’s true. You’ve already lost, you just can’t admit it.’
That was enough for Grohl to break his own rules. ‘Go screw yourself, clanner bastard!’
The man raised an eyebrow. ‘We’re not… clanners, is it? We are not in the employ of the nobles.’ He leaned down and pulled something from the neck of his armour; an identity disc on a chain. ‘We serve a different master.’
Beye immediately recognised the shape of an Imperial sigil-tag, a bio-active recognition device gene-keyed to its wearer. An etching of the two-headed aquila glittered there on its surface. It could not be forged, duplicated or removed from the person of its user without becoming useless. Anyone wearing such a tag was a soldier in service to the Emperor of Mankind.
‘Who are you?’ Pasri was wary.
The man indicated himself. ‘Kell. These are Tariel and… Soalm. We are agents of the Imperium and the authority of Terra.’
‘Why tell us your names?’ hissed Grohl. ‘Unless you’re going to kill us?’
‘Consider it a gesture of trust,’ said the pale woman. ‘We already know who you are. And in all honesty, knowing what to call us hardly makes you a threat.’
Beye leaned forward. ‘Why are you here?’
Kell nodded to Tariel, and the youth produced a mollyknife. He moved to where Pasri was sitting and cut her loose, then proceeded to do the same with Grohl.
‘We have been sent by the Emperor’s command to aid the planet Dagonet and its people in this time of crisis.’ Beye was certain that she saw a loaded look pass between Soalm and Kell before the man spoke again. ‘We are here to help you oppose the insurrection of Horus Lupercal and anyone who takes his side.’
Grohl rubbed at his wrists. ‘So, of course you would like us to take you to the secret retreat of the resistance. Introduce you personally to Capra. Open ourselves up so you can murder us all in one fell swoop?’ He turned his head and spat. ‘We’re not fools or traitors.’
Tariel cut Beye loose and offered a hand to help her to her feet, but she refused. Instead, he gave her a data-slate. ‘You know how to read these, correct? Your file says that you served the Administratum as a datum clerk in the office of colonial affairs, prior to the insurrection.’
‘That’s right,’ she said.
Tariel indicated a text file in the slate’s memory. ‘I think you’ll want to look at this document. And please check the security tags so you are sure it has not been tampered with.’
Kell walked closer to Grohl. ‘I believe you when you say you’re not a traitor, Terrik Grohl. But you have been fooled.’
‘What in Stars’ name are you talking about?’ snarled the other man.
‘Because there is a traitor in this room,’ Kell went on; and then faster than Beye’s eye could follow, the Imperial agent’s hand flicked up from his belt with the blocky, lethal-looking pistol in its grip, and he shot Pasri dead through the heart at point-blank range.
Beye let out a cry of shock as Grohl started forward.
Tariel tapped the slate. ‘Read the file,’ he repeated.
‘And then search your good friend Olo,’ added Soalm.
Grohl did that as Beye read on. By the time she had finished, the colour had drained from her cheeks, and Grohl had discovered the wireless listening device concealed on the other woman. The files, as Tariel said, unaltered from their original form, were reports from the clanners about an informant in the resistance. Capra had suspected they had a leak for some time, but he hadn’t been able to discover who. According to the last entry, Olo Pasri had agreed to give up the location of the main freedom fighter safe zone, but was stalling for a larger finder’s fee and the guarantee of passage off-world.
All of this she told to Grohl, who listened with a stony, rigid expression. After a long moment, he spoke. ‘I don’t trust you,’ he said to Kell. ‘Even this, you could have faked it. Did it all just to get close to us.’
‘Grohl–’ Beye began, but Kell held up a hand, silencing her.
‘No, he’s right. Given time and effort, we could have engineered something like this. And if I were in your place, I would share your suspicions.’ He paused again, thinking. ‘So, then. We need to earn your trust.’
‘A demonstration,’ suggested Soalm.
Kell nodded. ‘Give us a target.’
Spear ran his hand up and down the arm of the grox-leather chair where he sat, guiding fingers moulded in fleshy echo of Hyssos’s body over the lustrous, tanned hide. The sensation was pleasing; it made him realise he had spent too long in quietus, denied the simple pleasures of awareness, allowing his consciousness to go dormant while the mind-ghost of Yosef Sabrat ran his flesh. Puppet and the puppeted, master and performer, their roles intermingled. He was tired of it.
At least now he had only to look the part, rather than literally become it. He glanced up and saw a reflection in the glass cabinet behind the desk of High-Reeve Kata Telemach; the ebon face of Hyssos staring back at him.
Telemach swivelled in her deep, wing-backed chair from the watch-wire console on her desk and replaced the bulky handset. Standing nearby like an overweight sentinel, the doughy figure of Reeve Warden Berts Laimner was uncharacteristically still. Spear imagined he was still trying to process all the possible outcomes of the revelation that Yosef Sabrat was the serial killer in their midst, looking for the results where he would come off best. He felt a particular kind of hate for the man, but when he concentrated on the shape of it, Spear could not be certain if it had originated in him, or in Yosef Sabrat. More than once, the reeve’s own temper had brushed against the killer’s, and in those moments threatened to awaken the dormant murderer.