Ciaphas Cain: Choose Your Enemies

‘No one’s shooting anyone unless I say so,’ Amberley said, in a tone I knew well enough not to venture to contradict. She was over halfway to the eldar by now, advancing under the impassive gaze of their blank-visaged helmets. An almost palpable air of expectation hung around them as she approached, and I found myself wondering if the farseer had already decided the outcome of this encounter, and was merely going through the motions. A thought which made me extremely uneasy, as you can imagine, so I thrust it to the back of my mind. If push came to shove, I was sure I could still surprise them – after all, there were occasions when I’d even surprised myself by my reactions to the threat of imminent death, so catching some pointy-eared tanna leaf reader64 on the hop shouldn’t be too much of a problem. She made some complex gesture with her hand, which I assumed to be an eldar form of greeting,65 and spoke to them in their own tongue.

They responded in kind, the one Amberley had identified as the farseer doing most of the talking – which I suppose was fair enough if he already knew how the conversation was due to end66 – their mellifluous tones intermingling with Amberley’s deeper contralto. From time to time all of them, including Amberley, glanced in my direction, which I found far from comforting, and I was sure I heard my own name emerging from the trilling flow of eldar speech more than once.

At length the conversation ended, although Amberley’s expression gave no clue as to how successfully or otherwise she felt it had gone. The eldar turned dismissively and filed away into one of the tunnels, while Amberley strolled back towards Jurgen and me.

‘Well,’ she said slowly, ‘that went about as well as could be expected.’

‘Are they pulling out?’ I asked. In all the time the war had been ­raging, I strongly suspected, neither side had parlayed with the other for more than a handful of minutes if at all, so if Amberley had managed to negotiate a truce she’d just pulled off a major diplomatic coup.

She laughed. ‘Ever the soldier, Ciaphas.’ She shook her head. ‘Probably not.’

‘So what were you talking about?’ I asked.

Amberley shrugged. ‘I’m not entirely sure. Eldar’s not like Gothic, you know, there are words for concepts which don’t even have human equivalents, and Sambhatain’s a farseer to boot. For all I know he could have been talking about something which might happen, is happening now, or would have happened if they hadn’t already prevented it.’

‘At least you know his name though,’ I said, and Amberley smiled, in the would-be reassuring fashion which was actually anything but.

‘I know the name he gave me,’ she said, and hesitated for a moment. ‘And he knows yours. Whatever potential futures he’s foreseen, you seem significant in an awful lot of them.’

‘In a good way, I hope,’ I said, although under the circumstances I somehow doubted it.

Eight

‘Chaos cults in the mines,’ Kasteen said, her tea bowl hitting the surface of the conference table in the command centre with the emphasis of a pistol bolt. ‘And eldar coming and going as they please, apparently. How the hell did they get down there in the first place?’

‘The cultists seem to have been using the place for decades,’ Proktor said, looking distinctly green around the gills. He shot a sidelong glance at Amberley, who’d taken the opportunity to freshen up after whatever adventures had brought her there, although her clothes remained just as rumpled (not to mention a little on the fragrant side) as before. Clearly he was finding the presence of a real live inquisitor just a few seats away more than a little intimidating. ‘The governor wishes me to express her shock and dismay at this discovery, and assure you of our full cooperation in rooting out every last vestige of this appalling heresy.’

‘Not my department,’ Amberley replied breezily, to his apparent bewilderment, ‘but one of my colleagues from the Ordo Malleus will be arriving soon to take over the investigation. In the meantime, you’ll just have to do the best you can on your own.’

‘But how can we?’ Proktor protested. ‘There’s no telling how big this cult is, or how much influence its members have. What if they’re in a position to sabotage the whole enquiry?’

‘If I were you,’ I said, ‘I’d start by assuming very, lots, and they are, respectively, and proceeding on that basis. Get every investigator checked out at least twice by different people, and reporting only to the local arbitrator’s office67 – they’re from off-world, so they’re less likely to be compromised.’

Kasteen nodded. ‘We’re liaising with them already,’ she said, ‘in case they need warm bodies with guns. Obviously local law enforcement and the defence force have to be considered compromised until proven otherwise.’

‘Obviously,’ Proktor agreed, looking far from happy. ‘What can I tell the governor?’