EIGHT
Esarhaddon's lair.
Lyko the victor.
A vestige.
We went into the grounds of the Lange palace over the wall. There was a harsh stink of ozone from the ruptured shield, and the trimmed fruit trees and laraebur hedges of the gardens were singed and smouldering.
With Roban and Inshabel, I ran down a flint-chip path between the servants' wing and the east portico. Flashlights and under-muzzle torches bobbed in the gardens behind us as Heldane led the main force of our troop round to the garden terrace.
The house was dead and dark, all power killed by the pulse. The main doors on the east portico lay splintered on the mosaic floor where the accompanying wave of overpressure from the void collapse had blown them in. All of the windows were smashed holes too.
Photo-receptors and climate controls in the portico's polished blue-wood panels were fused and charred. Smoke and the glow of flames issued from deeper in the palace.
We pushed further in, finding dead house staff and inert servitors. A whole suite of state rooms on the first floor was burning where ornate promethium lamps had been knocked over.
We checked the rooms on each side as we progressed. Roban led the way, sweeping his braced laspistol from side to side.
'How long?' Inshabel asked me.
'Until?'
'Until he recovers from the pulse?'
I didn't know. There was no telling how badly we'd hurt Esarhaddon, or how resilient his mind was. We hadn't got long.
On the second floor, a flight of aethercite steps brought us up into a grand banqueting hall. The roof, a turtleback of toughened glass, had fallen in and the psi-storms crackled and surged in the sky far above. Every step crunched glass or disturbed debris.
There were bodies here too, the bodies of nobility and servants intermingled.
I heard movement and sobbing from an adjoining antechamber.
The wretched occupants of the room gasped in terror as our flashlights found them. A handful of survivors from the household, cowering in fear in the dark. Many displayed signs of psychic burns or telekinetic welts.
'Imperial Inquisition/ I said firmly but quietly. 'Stay calm. Where is Esarhaddon?'
Some flinched or moaned at the sound of the name. A regal dowager in a torn pearlescent gown curled up in the corner and began weeping.
'Quickly… there's little time! Where is he?' I thought to use my will to spur them into an answer, but their minds had been tortured enough already that night. Even a mild mental probe might kill some of them.
'W-when the lights went out, he ran… ran towards the west exit,' said a blood-soaked man dressed in what I presumed was the uniform of the House Lange bodyguard.
'Can you show us?'
'My leg's broken…'
'Someone else then! Please!'
'Frewa… you go. Frewa!' The bodyguard gestured to a terrified page boy crouching behind a column.
'Come on, lad, show us the way/ Roban said encouragingly.
The boy got to his feet, his eyes white with fear. I wasn't sure if he was more afraid of Esarhaddon or the inquisitors looming over him.
A communicating hallway ran from the rear of the banquet hall west towards the house's private landing platform. Specks of blood and glass twinkled along its tiled floor.
I felt what seemed to me a breath of wind on my skin. An exit to the outside, perhaps?
Heavy blast shutters were prised open in the entrance to the gloomy loading dock. Past the shadowy shapes of several slumped, dormant cargo servitors, stood a main hatchway through which cold exterior light flickered.
My weapon raised, I waved Roban and Inshabel round to the right. The page boy cowered back in the doorway. The air quality was changing, as if the atmosphere itself was stiffening and drawing tight. Like some great force gathering its breath.
Esarhaddon was recovering, I was certain.
Livid green light suddenly bathed the loading dock, a psychometric flare accompanying a burst of savage psionic power. Roban and I staggered, our lungs squeezed and fingers of telekinesis thrusting at our minds. Inshabel cried out as he was bowled over from behind by the page boy, Frewa. Dull-eyed and frothing at the mouth, the boy had been reduced, in an instant, to a mindless puppet. Inshabel fought, but the boy was feral, and despite the interrogator's superior bulk he was pinned.
