A Company of Shadows Read online

  I have influence, Mayir had said. Anything you want.

  She won’t hold strong either. She’ll break for the Sighted, if she thinks it’ll save her life.

  Raine takes off her greatcoat and starts to pull off her gloves.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Wyck says.

  Raine looks him in the eyes. His pupils are blown, swallowing up the grey. It looks like a concussion, but Raine knows better.

  ‘We cannot outrun the Sighted with Mayir,’ she says. ‘And we cannot let them take her.’ She takes off her peaked cap. The wind bites without it. ‘But if they take me instead, then you have a chance of getting Mayir back to High Command. Of fulfilling our duty.’

  Wyck stares at her.

  ‘They will kill you,’ he says flatly.

  The idea doesn’t particularly seem to trouble him.

  ‘They might,’ Raine says. ‘But first they will take me where they have taken the other prisoners.’

  He blinks. ‘The Sighted stronghold.’

  She nods. ‘And then you will know where it is, and so will High Command.’

  ‘How?’ Wyck says. ‘Nobody has managed to track them back to that place. They disappear into the mountains like water into the earth.’

  Raine puts her hand in the pocket of her greatcoat and takes out her timepiece. It is still intact, even after the crash. The only damage is the crack that’s been there since the day she got it. Since the day it was left in an unmarked box at the scholam on Gloam where she was trained.

  ‘Take this,’ she says. ‘Find Zane, and give it only to her. She will know how to find me.’

  Wyck frowns, but he takes the timepiece. Raine watches it go into one of the pouches at his belt. She feels hollow, like she’s missing a part. Not one of the Antari has ever held that timepiece. Not even Andren Fel, though she trusts the storm trooper captain with her life.

  And Raine knows with absolute certainty that she cannot say the same about Daven Wyck.

  Above the Valkyrie crash site, the path flattens out. Tall, hardy trees grow clumped together, creaking in the high, cold wind. The ground underfoot is a mess of curled roots and loose scree. Wyck keeps his gun raised and places his feet carefully. Every noise is deafening. The cracks in the bark look like shadowed smiles. He thinks about Antar. The forests of his home world are thick, dark tangles of thorns and rich green leaves where fog curls underfoot. The sort of place where you lose your way. Where things with teeth wait in the darkness. A place of stories and superstition. His squad is named for one of those stories, for the wicked spirits of the forest who cut trespassers deep. He should feel at ease among the trees, but he doesn’t, because this time he is the trespasser.

  It’s the timepiece, too, making him wary. It weighs heavily on him, sitting in the next pouch along from where he keeps his last vial of stimms. A part of Wyck swears he can hear it ticking, like a heartbeat carried with him.

  Wyck stops, spotting something between the trees. A barely glimpsed movement. It’s the Sighted. He can’t say how long they’ve been watching, but he hopes it’s not long enough for them to know that Raine isn’t Mayir. That the Tacticae Principal is actually hiding with Crys and Nial, up in the cliffs.

  Wyck raises his hand and Raine moves up beside him. He barely hears her tread. She has Mayir’s bloodied yellow cloak thrown around her shoulders. He thought that would make her look less like a commissar, but it doesn’t. It’s not the uniform that makes Severina Raine what she is.

  Raine sees what he sees. She slowly raises her pistol.

  And the forest lights with gunfire.

  A las-bolt hits the trunk of the tree to Raine’s left. Splinters hit her, followed by the smell of scorched wood. The Sighted are everywhere. All around them. Bellowed words in their gutteral tongue carry to her. It takes her a moment to understand them.

  We have the one! the voice is calling. We have the one!

  The rest of the Sighted take up the cry until the forest rings with it.

  Raine looks at Wyck. ‘Get Mayir out of here,’ she says. ‘As I said.’

  It seems a long moment before he nods. A moment filled with the snap of las-fire and the splintering of wood.

  ‘As you said,’ he says.

  Raine sets off running towards the Sighted. The chant is interrupted by a rolling wave of cheers and shouts. She brings up her pistol, firing twice. Two of them are knocked onto their backs. Blood mists the air and stains the pale bark of the trees. A las-bolt grazes her leg. Another her shoulder. It should burn, but all she feels is cold. The feeling spreads along her limbs until she cannot run anymore. Around her, frost is spreading up the trunks of the trees. Weight presses down on Raine from nowhere, and she is forced to her knees. Her vision dazzles.

  A figure steps into view. Raine sees bloody, bare feet and a long feathered cloak that snags on tree roots. She looks up. A man stands over her, his lips tweaked up in a smile. Her face is reflected a dozen times in the cut gemstones where his eyes should be.

  ‘The one,’ he says, in Gothic this time.

  Then he closes his fist, and darkness takes her.

  Wyck sits by the body of the Sighted scout with his back against one of the pale trees, wiping the blade of his knife on his fatigues. They aren’t green and grey anymore. They are every shade of red, from scarlet to rust. Blood on blood. The Sighted is a mess that Wyck can’t quite remember making. He just remembers the feeling. Bright and vital. It’s one of the only things that make him feel like that.

  That, and the stimms.

  In his other hand, he holds Raine’s timepiece. It keeps drawing his eye. Brass and bone, marked with a seal he doesn’t know. Beautifully made. There’s a word scratched into the back of the case clumsily, as if by hand. A name, he thinks. Lucia.

  Wyck gets to his feet. His arms and legs ache from running and fighting and his lip is split from where the Sighted scout punched him. He walks over to where the trees spill off the cliff. The Maw stretches away below, deep and dark. Wyck holds Raine’s timepiece out over the edge by the chain. The wind snags at it, spinning it. The name engraved on the back flashes in the light.

  He could drop it. Tell Crys and Nial that Raine is dead. They could call in a Valkyrie and fly out of the Maw. The Sighted would kill her for real, and he would be done with Commissar Severina Raine and the way she hangs over him like a spectre of death. Like the black hound of shadow from the old stories, come to kill those that fate forgot to take.

  He looks at the timepiece hanging there and wills his shaking hand to open, but his fingers don’t move.

  He doesn’t care about Raine’s blood on his hands. She’s not Antari. She’s not one of them. She’s an outsider, and he knows for a fact that she wouldn’t hesitate to put a bullet in him. He’s seen her do it to better men.

  But he still can’t drop it.

  If she dies here, she’ll be replaced by another. The spectre will follow him in a different form. At least with Raine, like with the forests of home, death would wear a familiar face. She’d owe him too, whether she liked it or not. Maybe she’d even stop looking at him so closely.

  Then there is the name scratched into the brass of the watch.

  Lucia.

  It proves that there’s still a part of her that cares about something. Wyck feels the barest pull of a smile.

  Because something that the commissar cares about is something that he can use.

  The Valkyrie gunship sets down on the flat plateau at the heart of the Maw amid a squall of dust. The turbojets cycle down and fall silent, then there’s a thud as the ramp drops. Six Antari soldiers disembark. The rest of Wyck’s Wyldfolk. The ones that were lucky enough to be on the other Valkyrie out of Caulder’s Reach. They are followed by five more in black and grey with snarling faces painted on their masks. Andren Fel and his Duskhounds. High Command sent Lye, too. Wyck points the medic strai
ght to where Mayir is sitting. Lye will patch Mayir up as best she can and then accompany her back to High Command. Wyck’s eyes go back to the gunship as the last figure sets foot on the ramp. Lydia Zane. The psyker’s pale face turns to Wyck immediately and he tightens his grip on his gun.

  ‘This is all?’ Crys says. ‘We go after the Sighted with this?’

  Wyck nods. The response from High Command when they finally connected via the vox-set had been clear. With the Sighted taking back the primary city, there are no more guns to spare. The Antari are to follow Raine’s trail alone. If they find her and the Sighted stronghold – and the Lord-General had put a lot of emphasis on that if – then they will have four hours to retrieve her and any of the other high-value prisoners and do as much damage to the Sighted as possible.

  After that, the site will be bombarded from orbit, whether the Antari are still in there or not.

  ‘About time,’ Wyck says, as his squad gather to him in loose ranks.

  Crys and Nial join the others, exchanging handshakes and softly spoken words.

  ‘You look a mess, Dav,’ Awd says.

  Wyck chose Gereth Awd as a second when he had to split the unit because he was one of the longest-serving Wyldfolk still standing. One that he can trust, mostly because Awd owes him several times over.

  ‘You mean I look like I’ve been doing something, instead of sitting on my arse.’

  Awd grins, but then he’s always grinning. The burn scars don’t allow for anything else. He’s as much of a mess as Wyck, his camouflage peeled back to grey and his knuckles split open to the bone. He’s covered in ash and filth from using the flamer slung across his chest.

  Awd’s eyes soften. It’s the way to tell he’s being serious.

  ‘So we’re it,’ he says. ‘What’s left of the Wyldfolk.’

  Wyck nods. He thinks back to throwing Yevi’s luckstone into the Maw. ‘We will cut them twice as badly as they’ve done us,’ he says. ‘For every death.’

  The two of them clasp wrists.

  ‘For every death,’ Awd says.

  ‘Wyck.’

  Lydia Zane’s voice tugs at him like snagging claws against his mind.

  ‘Take the others and keep watch,’ Wyck says to Awd.

  Awd does as he’s told and Wyck turns to face Lydia Zane. He still hasn’t grown used to the loss of her grey Antari eyes and the silver bionics that replace them. He always hated looking the psyker in the eyes before, but now it’s even worse. It feels like she can see more of him, somehow. Andren Fel stands beside Zane. The Duskhound’s armour is black and grey but for the plating on his forearms. Red, to mark him as captain.

  ‘Raine gave you something I can use to find her,’ Zane says. ‘To track the shape of her soul.’

  Wyck takes the timepiece out of the pouch at his belt and holds it out so that Zane can see it. There’s a shift in Andren Fel, the barest movement of his fingers on the stock of his hellgun.

  ‘The commissar gave that to you,’ he says.

  The Duskhound sounds like he doesn’t believe it for a moment. Wyck expects it from him. Fel follows Raine around like a shadow. He might as well not be Antari at all.

  ‘Freely,’ Wyck says. ‘Said to let nobody else touch it but Zane.’

  Fel’s face is hidden behind that Duskhound mask, but Wyck can tell he’s angry and can’t help feeling a little pleased about it. It doesn’t last. A creeping unease pushes up in its place. More snagging at his mind.

  ‘He is speaking the truth,’ Zane says. Then she smiles. ‘This time.’

  Wyck spits on the ground at her feet. His mind burns where hers brushed against it. He tries not to think about what she might have lifted from it.

  ‘Do that again and I will cut you for it. That’s the truth.’

  Lydia Zane laughs. ‘I would love for you to try.’

  Wyck curls his fists. He wants to hit her, or better, shoot her. He won’t do either, though, and she knows it.

  He’s too afraid of her for that.

  ‘Do your damned spell,’ he says, and throws the timepiece at her.

  Zane catches it easily in her gloved fingers. ‘It is not a spell,’ she says. ‘It is a sensing.’

  Wyck doesn’t see the distinction, and he doesn’t much care, either.

  ‘How does it work?’ Fel asks.

  Zane removes one of her gloves.

  ‘Our souls echo inside the things that we carry, especially those that we carry close.’

  She holds the timepiece by the chain.

  ‘Once I have that echo, the shape of a soul, I can find it again.’

  ‘Like a hound with a scent,’ Fel says.

  Zane nods. ‘Just so.’

  She lowers the timepiece into her hand. Wyck keeps his finger on the trigger of his rifle. He can see Fel doing the same. The moment that the brass casing touches Zane’s skin, the temperature around them drops like a stone.

  ‘Oh,’ Zane says.

  ‘What?’ Wyck and Fel say in the same instant.

  Zane doesn’t look up, focused entirely on the timepiece. Wyck can hear her silver eyes focusing with a soft hiss.

  ‘The soul-echo is strong,’ she says, her breath misting in the air.

  ‘You can use it to find her?’ Fel asks.

  Zane nods. Wyck watches as a single, impossible tear slides down her cheek. It freezes against her skin. He wonders exactly what Zane saw when she touched the watch. What in the name of the Throne could make a woman like Lydia Zane cry?

  ‘What is it?’ Fel says, his finger still on the trigger of his gun.

  Zane brushes the ice from her cheek. ‘Nothing of concern,’ she says. ‘Follow me.’

  Raine sits on a hard wooden stool, her elbows resting on the table in front of her. Outside, the wind howls. The air feels damp, even through the canvas of her command tent. On the table sits her bolt pistol. It’s properly and carefully disassembled in the way she was taught to do it at the schola progenium. A place for each part. Each part in its place. Her masters had said that she would find that maxim true of all things in her duties as a commissar. Raine sometimes wonders if her masters ever considered what happens when a part goes missing.

  When it cannot be replaced.

  ‘So, a story then?’

  Raine glances up at Andren Fel. He is sitting opposite her, also resting his elbows on the table. His arms are a dark patchwork of tattoos. Shadowy hounds and water wraiths and loops of pointed thorns. As the hanging lantern overhead swings, they seem to move.

  ‘It’s my turn?’ Raine says.

  He nods.

  ‘What story do you want to hear?’ she asks.

  ‘What about that timepiece you carry? Tell me about that.’

  Raine pushes a slender brush into the barrel of the pistol to scrub away the foulings. ‘We don’t know each other well enough for that.’

  ‘Don’t we?’

  Raine thinks about the ways they have come to know each other. About their scars and stories. It’s not enough. Not for that.

  ‘No,’ she says, and begins to thread the barrel back onto the pistol’s receiver.

  ‘It was made on Darpex,’ Andren says. ‘And that’s where you come from too, isn’t it?’

  ‘I thought you wanted me to tell this story,’ she says. ‘But it seems you already know it.’

  ‘Just what I’ve heard.’

  ‘Darpex doesn’t matter,’ she says, though it does. ‘I was made on Gloam when I was taken into the scholam. When I was shaped into what I am now. Where I was born, who I was before that, those things scarcely matter and you know it.’

  Andren smiles at her. It’s a smile that doesn’t sit easily on his face, as if it’s not his. ‘I’m not sure I’d say so,’ he says. ‘Not if I was born to parents like yours.’

  A chill runs through Raine
that she has trouble concealing. ‘You are overstepping, captain.’

  The wind picks up outside the tent. Rain thrashes the canvas.

  ‘Lord-General Militant Thema Raine,’ he says. ‘Your mother’s is a name to live up to.’

  He tilts his head.

  ‘But your father, not so much. It must gall you to bear his blood.’

  He smiles again, too wide.

  ‘A coward’s blood,’ he says.

  The words aren’t his. He’d never speak to her like that. His voice is all wrong too, distorted like a bad recording. Or a voice you might hear in a dream. Raine catches sight of the surface of the table. The tin cup at her elbow. They are both textureless and indistinct.

  Coated with frost.

  ‘This is not real,’ she says.

  Andren laughs, and that settles it. She knows that laugh well enough to know when it is wrong.

  ‘What are you talking about?’ he says.

  Raine shakes her head and her vision smears, edge to edge. She fumbles with the final parts of the pistol, her fingers cold and slow.

  ‘This is not real,’ she says again. ‘And neither are you.’

  She raises her rebuilt pistol and points it at his face. Right between his grey Antari eyes. Her hands are shaking and her heart is beating out of time.

  ‘This is a lie,’ she says.

  He holds up his hands, scarred and tattooed. His eyes go wide. ‘Severina,’ he says. ‘Don’t.’

  Her pistol booms and Andren falls backwards. His blood hits her face. The wind goes from a howl to a scream that rips the tent to shreds. Turns the table to splinters. Raine squeezes her eyes closed and keeps her hands tight on her pistol as the world falls apart.

  When she opens them again, it’s to a completely different place.

  The floor is stone, shot through with glimmering silver veins. Fat drops of blood sit there on the surface of it. Another drop falls from her nose to join it as she watches. The air is cold and carries a strange smell, like old flowers. Raine is on her knees, her hands chained in front of her through a loop driven into the floor of the cave. When she tries to move, she realises that the same chain binds her feet. Raine raises her head with effort and finds herself looking once again into the gory gemstone eyes of the man from the forest.