Nagasena steps between Antioch and Golovko before the man can strike him. He beckons to Adept Hiriko and says, ‘Can you find what you need in his mind?’

Hiriko steps gingerly over the wreckage towards Antioch. The man looks at her warily, but says nothing as she places her hands either side of his head.

‘What’s she doing?’ asks Antioch.

‘Nothing for you to worry about,’ Nagasena assures him.

The chirurgeon is not reassured and looks at her suspiciously, a nervous glint in his eye.

‘What is she?’ he asks.

‘I am a neurolocutor,’ says Hiriko by way of explanation. ‘Now be still or this will hurt.’

Antioch stiffens in expectation of pain as Hiriko closes her eyes.

What might the mind of a man in a qash stupor be like? Will it even be possible to lift anything of use from him, or will his mind be like a fortress with its gates lying open and every door left unlocked?

Hiriko does not move for almost a minute, then lets out a powerful exhalation as her hands slip from Antioch’s head. Her eyes are glassy and Nagasena wonders if the effects of the qash have passed into her mind.

‘Oh,’ she says, shaking her head.

‘Did you get anything?’ asks Nagasena.

She nods, still purging the after-effects of delving into Antioch’s mind. The man is fearful now, and Nagasena sees that Hiriko has rid him of the qash haze. Forced to face reality without the comforting curtain of the resin to hide behind, the world is a frightening place.

‘They are going to a place called the Temple of Woe,’ says Hiriko.

‘Do you know where that is?’ Golovko asks her.

Hiriko looks into Antioch’s eyes. ‘Yes. It’s east of here, I know the way now.’

‘Then we don’t need this traitor anymore,’ growls Golovko.

Before Nagasena can stop him, the Black Sentinel draws his pistol and puts a bullet through Antioch’s head.

TWENTY

Colours and Hues

The End of Everything Good

Kill Team

WHEN KAI WOKE, it was to a surprising lack of pain and an almost overwhelming sensation of relief. He lifted his head, feeling hard edges of metal digging into his belly. The world around him shone with contours of light and shadow, psychic emanations and dead space. It painted a clear portrait of the buildings, streets and space around him, a representation of the world as clear and vivid as any perceived by those with their birth eyes.

‘Stop,’ he said, his voice hoarse and parched. ‘Stop, please. Put me down.’

The juggernaut upon which he was being carried halted, and rough hands lifted him carefully to the ground. A giant clad in burnished plates of metal stood before him, a warrior of enormous proportions made even larger by the crude plates of sheet steel strapped to his enormous frame and the sharp lines of pistols tucked into his belt. A faint golden haze clung to him, like wisps of cloud caught by the trailing wings of an aircraft.

The image sparked a memory of his dreamspace, but the substance of it drifted just beyond reach, though he was sure that something of vital importance had occurred there. He had a vague recollection of a regicide board and a hooded opponent, but he could not yet grasp its meaning.

‘Atharva?’ said Kai, as the cold reality of this world intruded.

‘Yes,’ said the giant. ‘You gave me cause for concern. I did not know if you would live.’

‘I’m not sure I did,’ moaned Kai as he stood on unsteady legs, amazed he could remain upright after so fraught a journey. ‘I feel like one of you has punched me in the face.’

‘That is not too far from the truth,’ admitted Atharva, looking over at the heavily armoured form of Asubha. The Outcast Dead had changed since last Kai last saw them. Armoured in beaten iron breastplates, curved pauldrons and archaic helms, they looked like the barbarian warriors of pre-Unity, the bloodthirsty tribesmen who had ruled Old Earth before the coming of the Emperor. Subha even carried a wooden shield.

Kai had always known his fellow escapees were warriors, but to see them garbed for war was a stark reminder that they were only his protectors because it aligned with their purposes. Should that change, he would be of no more use to them.

‘Where did you get the armour and weapons?’ he asked, seeing the strange array of pistols and blades they carried, enough to equip three times their number.

‘Some very stupid people got in our way,’ said Asubha. ‘But they are dead now.’

Ghosts of light limned each warrior against the darker, iron blacks, steel greys and umber brickwork of the background. He knew them all by their colours and hues: Tagore, Subha and Asubha in angry reds, purples and killing silver, Atharva in gold, ivory and crimson, and Severian shrouded in stormcloud grey and mist. Kai saw Argentus Kiron and Gythua, propped up against a landslip of rock, the last traces of their auras bleeding into the air like warmth from a cooling corpse.

‘We lost Gythua and Kiron,’ said Subha with very real pain. ‘They had one big bastard who knew how to fight.’

‘And we beat him like a whipped cur,’ said Tagore.

‘But he’ll be back,’ said Asubha. ‘Someone like that won’t give up.’

‘So next time we kill him properly,’ snarled Tagore with bared teeth. Kai saw the aura around his skull flare with a shimmer of cold iron, like the yoke of a hound’s master pulling taut. Tagore’s muscles bunched and swelled in anticipation of violence, but the World Eater exhaled loudly and turned away before his control slipped away.

‘Where are we?’ asked Kai, extending his senses.

‘Still in the Petitioner’s City,’ said Atharva. ‘But we are almost at its eastern edge.’

Kai nodded slowly. From the background buzz of thoughts and life, he had known they were still in the Petitioner’s City. Though the pain in his head was intense, it was manageable and he felt curiously liberated at employing his blindsight instead of expensive augmentations. It had been so long since he had used his psychic abilities to navigate and understand the world around him.

The mountains towered above Kai, so vast it seemed as though there was no end to them. Though the peaks were not alive, they had accumulated a wealth of emotion and experience from those who had clambered over their rocky flanks in the painful epochs since they had been thrust from the bottom of an ancient seabed. A haze of permanence hung over the mountains, split by the searing torrent of psychic energy that speared from the hollow mountain to the farthest reaches of the galaxy. Now that the threat of being sent to its nightmarish depths was gone, Kai found its presence curiously reassuring, like the half-heard voice of an old and trusted friend.

Deeper in the city, the air was a heady mixture of sweat, boiling fats, rotten meat, spices and perfumes, but here it was clean, and the winds coming down from the high ranges were refreshing rather than chilling.

Tagore lifted Gythua’s body and slung it over one shoulder, while Asubha lifted Kiron’s body with somewhat more respect for his fallen brother. Severian turned and set off towards an opening in the rock that lead towards a sheer scarp of rock climbing almost vertically to a rampart crowned peak.

‘Come on,’ said Atharva. ‘It is just a little farther.’

‘What is?’ said Kai.

‘The Temple of Woe,’ said Atharva.

THE TEMPLE OF Woe turned out to be something altogether less sinister that its ominous name had suggested. Built from what looked like a thousand mismatched pieces of variegated marble, it was a formidable structure that rose high above its nearest neighbours. Situated towards the end of a narrowing canyon, its façade was graced with numerous handsome statues depicting weeping angels, mothers holding their stillborn children and skeletal harbingers of death.

Reapers skulked in alcoves, while mourners worked in polished granite clustered around biers of fallen heroes and ouslite pallbearers took the dead to their final rest. Any one of the rival Masonic guilds that had raised the glory of the palace would have dismissed its haphazard beauty with a glance, but it possessed a grandeur and welcoming air the greatest structures of the palace could only dream of.