Саймон Спуриэр - Lord of the Night

She surrendered to the pressure with a quiet sigh, closing her eyes and clearing her mind, and the visions of future madness poured into the cavity of her skull like a plague descending upon unwary heads.

First, there is... altitude .

The same old vision, then. Just as before. Always the same.

Coldness assails her, and though she is unsure whether she is truly a part of this vision at all, or simply watching events from some remote 'beyond', she feels nonetheless that she is naked: that ice is forming on her skin, and hot vapour arises from her mouth with every breath.

To every side the world is an abyss. She stands on a monolith of metal, a great cactus-spire that threatens to cast her off, to send her tumbling along its steepening flanks with whichever tawdry zephyr seizes her. She cries out, afraid, nauseous, although she has seen all of this before.

This is the fourth time she has witnessed this vision.

And then there seems to be something in the clouds before her, some unseen presence that breaks the squalling ice, that shifts like a shadow upon a pearl, drawing near.

And just like before, she knows what it is.

It is herself. Held aloft by a beast of smoke and shadow. Dressed in rags, hair cut and unkempt — and in some distant part of herself she recognises changes that have already been wrought, and realises that this scene, this awful tableau created before her, must be almost upon her.

But there is more to occur yet.

Her reflection's arm is gone. She bleeds like an endless river. She tries to see the monster that holds her up and it is indistinct... but already she knows what it is.

The Night Lord carries her into the squalling snow on wings of darkness and smoke, and it seems to her that for an instant there are shapes below it — bright-knuckled beasts that reach out with claw and tentacle to snare him — but he is too fast. He is too agile.

He is gone, and her doppelganger with him, and Mita is left to tumble from her impossible vantage down into the dark, where hate and anger boils around her. She has seen all of this too. She has experienced all of this before.

Except...

Except this time the trance-vision is different. This time there is no hag. No fat-bellied witch tumbling down on contrails of blood and fire, and she thinks to herself:

That was the indicator of another event, then, something that has already occurred...

The Night Lord's arrival. The hag was his vessel. Her bloated belly ruptured and spilled-out the prize that he had come to claim. That is the way of the furor arcanum: half truths and twisted versions of reality .

This time is different. This time Mita's fall from on high is interrupted. This time she is caught in mid-air, buoyed up by a steely eagle, lifted in its wake like a leaf in the pull of an engine. This time she is there to witness the endgame.

The eagle returns her to the peak of the metal mountain. It circles and swoops, and fixes beady eyes upon the turrets of the city's crown, where it has business to attend. It can sense something it wants inside. It tilts wings of jetair and fuel towards the monolith, and races down to shatter its beak across the steely surface.

And then the horizon is no longer dark. The endless night is on fire.

And the sky fills, from edge to edge, with the shrieks of hawks and the blood of the ignorant.

Mita awoke in the elevator with a gasp, thick bile pooling in her mouth. She spat and choked, clutching at her belly.

The pater donum descended on her like a pleasant breeze, a cloying luxury that tweaked inside every muscle and every bone. Her tutors had taught her to relish it, to enjoy the one luxury her curse'gift would ever bestow upon her. But not so now: seated and nauseous within the cramped elevator, the pater donum could give her no comfort.

She slipped into a faint with inexpressible relief, and in her mind the screaming hawks that lit the sky plunged deeper and deeper into the surface of her dreams, plucking flesh and sinew clear with each swoop.

They flocked above her. They flocked above the world. Her last conscious thought, before sleep claimed her, was: They are coming. They are coming for us all...

She awoke with no idea how long she had slept. A brief instant of claustrophobic panic gripped her — what if the elevator was sealed? Paused in some door-less cavern? Never to reopen! — but, no, the gentle rumble of its guidance machinery continued apace. Judging by its pitch — almost totally vertical where previously it had skewed along increasing diagonals — she was approaching the apex of the city.

It was a thought that gave her pause. As an outlaw, it occurred to her that travelling to the peak of the hive — where even the stealthiest of intruders couldn't hope to set foot without discovery — hardly smacked of intelligence.

But what else could she do? Lurk in the shadows of Cuspseal forever, growing more hungry and more cold, more confused by the conflicting thoughts that assailed her? Spend her life running from the Inquisition, slipping down into the dark of the underhive like so many dispossessed nobodies before?

Spend her life wondering...?

Of course not. Passivity was not in her character.

There were two mysteries that gripped her above all others, and as she settled in her corner, feeling the ponderous machinery of the elevator grinding higher and higher, she happened to cast her eyes upwards seeking some indicator of its progress, and found herself agog. The twin riddles slid together, mixing like accreting puddles of icemelt, becoming a single unified issue, and all at the single glimpse of what was embossed above the door...

The first uncertainty concerned the package, the stolen prize, the Corona Nox. What was it? Why did it matter so much to the Night Lord? Was it truly at the zenith of this grinding shaft that it could be found?

The second confusion was older, an enigma that seemed to have settled upon her bones like a layer of dust, too thick to ever remove. She felt as though she'd been gnawing at it her whole life, drenched in the suspicion and paranoia that was integral to it:

What are you up to, Kaustus?

Two queries. Two struggles, separate but equally as chaotic within her thoughts.

And suddenly they were one. Her eyes fell upon the bronze plaque above the elevator's sealed doors, and everything fell into place.

It showed a shield. A carefully scrawled coat of arms that sucked at her gaze like some awful abyss. She'd seen it before.

A sword crossing a sceptre, set upon a field of snow, surmounted by a sickle-moon and a halo of stars. The heraldry of the Noble House Zagrif.

This was the governor's personal elevator.

So...

Think, Mita! Work it through!

So the Glacier Rats stole something from the Umbrea Insidior ... They did so at the request of the Slake collective...

Who had... had...

'Oh, sweet Emperor...'

Who had been commissioned by the agents of the governor himself.

The audacity of the plot astonished her, sent her reeling. Snippets of sound and sight rushed across her mind, making her wince. She'd been so foolish! Why had she not realised before?

' And to what do we owe this pleasure? ' the governor had asked, when Kaustus brought her before him. ' Is she here to help us with the lock? '

She remembered thinking at the time: what lock ?

She should have remembered! She should have seen!

And then, glimpsed through Pahvulti's eyes, the Night Lord rasping his venom at the cringing Slake collective: