The House of Night and Chain Read online

  Pereven toyed with the stylus in his hands. ‘Colonel, though you have described the events accurately, your analysis is incorrect.’

  ‘Sir?’ I asked, confused.

  ‘You did not fail in your duty,’ said Numitor. ‘No success was possible, though none of us knew this at the outset of the battle.’

  ‘You slowed the tyranids,’ Pereven said. ‘You bought enough time for a significant portion of the population of Hive Throndhelm to be evacuated off-world, along with a considerable amount of resources. Colonel, you are to be commended for your actions.’

  ‘Commended,’ I repeated softly. The word tasted like sawdust.

  ‘Though Clostrum was lost,’ said Numitor, ‘the larger tyranid advance into this sector of the Imperium has been blunted, at least for now. You were part of a victory, colonel, not a defeat.’

  The screams of devoured soldiers roiled in my memory, blotting out my sense of the chamber for a moment. If there was a triumph here, I could not find it.

  ‘You fought hard,’ said Pereven. ‘You have done well, colonel.’

  ‘Thank you, sir,’ I managed. His praise struck my soul like a curse. ‘I look forward to serving with honour wherever the Nightmarch is called to next.’ It took a huge effort to utter those words. Sweat beaded on my forehead.

  Pereven exchanged a glance with Arrasq.

  ‘No,’ said the noble who spoke for the Adeptus Terra.

  ‘How much of the retreat do you remember?’ Pereven asked before I could respond.

  ‘Very little,’ I admitted. ‘I believe I was unconscious for most of it.’

  ‘Despite your wounds, you were not. You continued to issue commands throughout.’

  ‘Coherent ones?’ I turned to look at Hetzer. He looked uncomfortable.

  ‘Speak freely, major,’ said Pereven. ‘You will do no harm to your colonel. We already know the answer to his question. He does not, and he deserves the truth.’

  Hetzer cleared his throat. ‘No,’ he told me. ‘Many of your orders could not be followed.’

  ‘Meaning you had the good judgement not to obey them,’ I said sadly. ‘Was I delirious from blood loss?’ I asked Pereven.

  ‘The medicae officers have concluded that this was only partly the case. You were suffering from other forms of shock, colonel.’

  ‘You have given what you could to the battlefield, Colonel Strock,’ Arrasq said. ‘You have nothing left to give.’

  What she said was true, and I knew it. Yet it felt like the most humiliating weakness to agree. Then she said, ‘The Imperium still has need of your services.’

  Hope flared. I was ready to agree to anything, as long as I could salvage even a thread of dignity. ‘All I ask is to serve,’ I said.

  ‘Tell us about your home world, colonel,’ said Arrasq.

  I was puzzled, but did as she had asked. ‘Solus is an agri world,’ I said. ‘Its seat of government is Valgaast, which is also its largest city. Its exports to the Imperium are on the order of twelve billion tonnes a year…’ I trailed off, feeling foolish. ‘I’m sorry, Lady Arrasq. I really don’t understand what you want from me.’

  ‘You have told me what I wanted to hear.’ She glanced at the data-slate in her hands. ‘Colonel, would you be surprised to learn that exports from Solus have been gradually falling for some time? And that the current level is just under ten billion tonnes a year?’

  ‘I would be, yes, though it has been many years since I have had news from Solus. Have there been droughts?’

  ‘Not of any unusual kind. The decline has been steady since the death of Leonel Strock.’

  ‘My uncle was incapable of governing for the latter part of his life. That was why the regency was established.’

  ‘Yes, and under your guidance the export levels were steady. In fact, they climbed. But not only is this no longer the case, evidence has also been uncovered of large quantities of Solus products entering black markets.’

  I saw what Arrasq was implying. ‘You believe the governing council has become corrupt.’

  ‘We do. Its members are engaged in war profiteering on a large scale.’

  ‘Leonel Strock died over thirty years ago. Has the problem been festering that long?’

  ‘It has, but the council has been careful. The decline of exports and rise of profiteering were very gradual, unnoticeable from year to year. The wheels of the Administratum grind slowly. It is only recently that an audit of Solus’ exports over the long term has been conducted.’

  ‘The corruption will be deeply rooted, then.’

  ‘Indeed. Until now, your duty to the Imperium has been on the battlefield, but matters have changed.’

  ‘I am no longer useful in combat,’ I said. I managed to keep the bitterness from my voice.

  ‘This is your new campaign, colonel,’ said Pereven.

  ‘We believe it is only a matter of time before the council seeks to install a new lord-governor,’ Arrasq went on. ‘To date, it seems that the only barrier has been your hereditary claim. But that will not stop the council indefinitely. You must return, Lord-Governor Strock. Take up the title that is yours by right, and purge the council of corruption.’ She paused. ‘You must go home.’ She watched me, gauging the effect of her words.

  Home. I did not know if the word still had meaning. It had been so long. I was changed. Solus had changed too, in ways more profound and personal for me than the political situation.

  Home. I pushed the word as far from my consciousness as I could. That was not far enough. It would come back for me all too soon. I would have to try to be ready for it.

  I doubted I would be.

  ‘Thank you, Lady Arrasq,’ I said. I mouthed the correct responses. They sounded flat to me, as if a servitor were speaking instead of me. ‘I am grateful for this assignment.’ The word redemption rose in my thoughts. Redemption for what? For which sin? Or maybe this is punishment. Perhaps this court is sentencing you without realising it. ‘I will return honour to Solus.’

  ‘I’m sure you will, lord-governor.’

  That was twice she had used the title. She was emphasising my new role. I was no longer to think of myself as a colonel in the Astra Militarum. I was returning to the other tradition of my family. I was a noble, and the duties were of a very different nature. She was also reminding me of the authority she represented. General Pereven and the other officers might control what happened to me within the aegis of the Nightmarch. It was not for them to declare me lord-governor. Even my family claim on the governorship did not, ultimately, rely on any authority on Solus. No matter how strong my right might appear in the traditions of my home world, those traditions were subject to the decisions that could, at any time, emanate from the Adeptus Terra. Arrasq could make or unmake me with a word.

  I saluted Pereven, then turned, slowly, giving due acknowledgement to the full circle of my judges. They looked back at me impassively, expressions perfectly neutral.

  Hetzer and the Navy officer opened the doors of the chamber for me.

  What are you thinking? I wondered as I walked back down the aisle. I had been praised, not censured. But in every way that mattered, I was already no longer a colonel. What do you see before you? Is that pity you are hiding? Is it gratitude that my fate is not yours? Is it contempt for my weakness?

  I was glad not to know. I had self-loathing enough to keep me occupied. No matter what I had been told, I despised the officer who had lost Hive Throndhelm. I hated the relief I felt in knowing I would not be returning to combat.

  The echoes of screaming troops grew louder again. I managed to keep my breathing regular and my stride steady. I prayed to the Emperor for strength. I was terrified the memories would attack with all their monsters and shame me before I could leave the chamber.

  I made it out with my dignity intact. I allowed myself to take a long, shuddering
breath when I heard the doors close behind me. I kept walking, my action mechanical, as if all my limbs were prosthetic, and as if movement alone would get me away from the waking nightmares. I stopped in front of the port window. The dead planet turned slowly beneath the ship. It was free of nightmares, free of hope. It was nothing now. I was almost envious.

  ‘I shall miss you, sir.’

  I hadn’t realised that Hetzer had followed me out. I did not jump. I took that as a small victory.

  ‘Thank you, major.’ I turned my back on the sight of Clostrum. ‘Thank you for everything.’

  His smile was crooked, skewed by the massive scar cutting across his face. He would bear the mark of saving his superior officer forever. ‘It was an honour to serve with you.’

  ‘The honour was mine. I thank the Emperor that you will continue to lead. I imagine these are your last days as major.’

  He looked embarrassed. ‘So I have been told,’ he admitted.

  ‘I am glad. Let me congratulate you and call you colonel now, before we part.’

  We shook hands.

  ‘I hope your return to Solus goes well,’ Hetzer said.

  I made myself smile. I wasn’t sure that it could. I was going home to mourning and to painful hope. I didn’t know which was worse.

  That night, I dreamt about the day I showed Malveil to my children. My vision of their deaths rose from the grave of memories and roared.

  I woke with a gasp, and with the shrieks of lost comrades in my ears.

  Chapter 2

  The gate to Malveil was open when I arrived. I sat in the back of the car for a few moments after Belzhek, my chauffeur, had pulled over. The grounds were waiting, after so long, for me to claim them as the new lord of the manor. The last time I had seen Malveil, its sight had been tainted by my children’s tears, and the stain lingered.

  ‘Shall I drive in, lord-governor?’ Belzhek asked. She was another veteran of the Nightmarch, mustered out by extensive injuries. She had been a sergeant, and her family was not wealthy, so her prosthetics gave her mobility but not much more. The lower half of her body was a platform with motorised treads. Her mechanism slotted well into the vehicle, but outside the car, she moved at a crawl. Her life was better than that of a servitor, but that was small reward for her service.

  ‘No, thank you,’ I said. ‘I’ll walk the rest of the way.’ I wanted to feel the grounds as Malveil and I became properly acquainted for the first time. ‘Wait here. I’ll need you to take me to the Council Hall afterwards.’

  ‘Yes, lord-governor.’

  I got out of the car, shutting the door behind me with a hard clunk. The vehicle was an old one, as well maintained as it could be, though its engine grumbled loudly and the exhaust spewed blue smoke. It was a stolid thing, squat and heavy. It favoured strength over luxury, and I liked it. It sent the right signal about the kind of governor I intended to be.

  I walked up to the gate, dwarfed by the ancient wall surrounding the estate. It was fifty feet high, a massive rockcrete barrier stained black with time. It had not had to defend Malveil against an attack for as long as the Strocks had owned the land, but when Leonel had turned into a recluse, it had held off the curious, the concerned and the scheming. The iron gate was just as high, each of its bars over a foot thick. I crossed the threshold into the land that was now mine and felt the strength of the wall at my back.

  Let the council do its worst. Its corruption, no matter how thorough, suddenly seemed a weak thing indeed compared to the power that resided on this hill.

  A gatehouse crouched against the interior of the wall, its gothic windows shadowed by its steeply gabled roof. It was the home of Rhen Karoff, the major-domo of Malveil. He had offered to meet me at the gate, but I had asked him to wait for me at the house itself. I needed the time alone to prepare myself. Things had changed since I had stood outside the gates with Eliana and the children. Hopes had died within its walls. This was not the return I had imagined for myself long ago.

  But hopes were not reality. It was reality that I must face.

  The route up the hill was barely a road. It twisted back and forth between the entrances to mines and quarries. The rockcrete had been broken up and rutted over the centuries by the passage of heavy machinery. The machines no longer travelled it. The mines were exhausted, Leonel had let the road fall further into disrepair, and nothing had been done to improve it since his death. I passed between gaping pits and dark tunnels burrowing into the bare stone of the hill. The mines were open graves. Here and there, the bones of cranes and excavators marked the tombs. The day was chilly, and a north wind, soft but insistent and steady, blew through the iron skeletons with a rusting, hollow whistle.

  As I drew closer to the top of the hill, I left the remains of the mining behind. There were trees here, and they were all dead, killed by the toxins that had permeated the ground in the wake of the excavations. The Strock estate had been the source of our power, but the price had been the ruin of the grounds. There was no beauty in this land. It was grey and hard, a pitted fossil. And though the trees were dead, they refused to fall. They surrounded Malveil with their petrified death, branches reaching out to the leaden sky, splayed, angled, clutching, pleading.

  The house had filled more and more of my vision during my ascent. Sometimes it disappeared behind a mound of ejecta and then reappeared with greater force. The dead forest veiled it from view again, the tangles of branches and the crooked trunks concealing all but fragments of the house. Then I emerged from the trees, and it rose before me in its full power. I stopped, taking it in.

  This is yours, now. This belongs to you.

  I had trouble making myself believe that.

  The Strocks belong to Malveil.

  The thought was an odd one. I tried to dismiss it as unworthy fancy. It did not leave willingly, because it was confident in its truth, and it gnawed at my chest.

  I tried another tactic. All right, then. We belong to Malveil. It comes to the same. We are united in strength. Let me claim my birthright, and use it to save Solus.

  Malveil had been standing long before the Strocks had made it their family seat. It had been built millennia ago, its birth lost in the fog of Solus’ deeper history. Its walls were pitted and cracked, their edges worn by the slow claws of time. Malveil was there before us, and it would be there long after the Strocks were no more. This was not pessimism. This was a simple fact. Malveil did not hide its age. If anything, it looked even older than it was, as if it somehow predated Solus itself. And despite its age, or perhaps because of it, it did not seem frail. It was as solid as it was ancient. It was eternal. It would never fall. I could picture it on the surface of post-Exterminatus Clostrum, defiant against all destruction, outliving worlds because it was an unalterable fact of the galaxy.

  It was a long house, the facade stretching far to my left and right. The tall, narrow, pointed windows were glowering eyes in its grim, impassive face. Two square towers guarded the main entrance, and narrower, conical towers rose over the battlements at regular intervals. To the west, at my left, the main body of the house adjoined the largest tower of them all. It was circular, massive and much older even than the rest of the building. It was the remnant of an earlier structure, though it also looked as if it had given birth to the new house. The ferrocrete walls of Malveil were stained a dark grey, but the round tower was a deep black, as if it had turned into a night of stone under the weight of Solus’ history.

  Behind me, wind soughed through the dead trees. Branches creaked like opening vault doors.

  Malveil was not a welcoming house. It never had been. That was not its purpose. I had, for much of my life, taken for granted that its purpose was to be the gravitation centre of the Strock family. But now, standing here, looking at its uncaring visage, trying to prepare myself for the mourning that would return, hard, when I walked through its door, I knew that idea was a delu
sion. I had managed to hold on to it while I served in the Nightmarch, far from the realities of Solus. I had held on to the lie because I had had to. It had given me comfort. I could no longer believe in it now.

  I thought again of the day I had brought Katrin and Zander to see Malveil. I remembered what Eliana had said that night, after we had finally managed to get the children to settle down. We were preparing to go to bed, keeping half an ear open for the sound of sudden crying.

  ‘I suppose we’ll be lucky if we make it to morning without being woken to deal with nightmares,’ I sighed.

  ‘I did warn you,’ said Eliana. She folded back the covers and climbed into our bed. ‘What did you think was going to happen? That they would clamour to visit the magic castle?’

  ‘No. Of course not. I just…’ I thought for a moment, trying to remember why I had imagined the visit would have been a good idea. ‘It’s their heritage. It’s part of who they are. It’s important that they know that.’

  ‘Agreed. When they’re older.’

  ‘I can see that now,’ I said sheepishly, getting in beside her. I put my arms around her and she nestled against my chest. ‘I just didn’t think it would frighten them, that’s all.’

  ‘I love you, Maeson, but how, in the name of the Emperor, could you not know they would be frightened by that house?’

  I could not remember what I had answered. I had probably said something very weak and foolish. Because there could not have been a good answer.

  ‘Didn’t it scare you when you were little?’ Eliana asked.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Not even the first time?’

  ‘No… I mean…’ I hesitated. ‘I don’t think so. I can’t remember the very first time I saw it.’

  ‘Aha.’