I pushed past the end of the seats and down into the stairwell, the auto-gun braced at my hip. The bodies of two staff members trampled in the press lay broken there.
Urisel Glaw had not gone far, bleeding badly from his shoulder wound. He heard me coming and staggered around, firing a small stub-pistol down the gloomy tunnel. Then he disappeared from view.
Gun-butt raised under my arm, I moved forward, searching the darkness of the dank stone tunnel. An opening to the left looked down into a stairwell that entered the cell bay below. To the right was a hatch that allowed access to the main house.
I pushed the hatch open with the barrel of the autogun.
Urisel came out of the cell-bay stairway, howling, and slammed into me from behind.
I hit the door frame face first, and the autogun fired off three shots as it twisted out of my grip.
Without even trying to turn, I doubled over and reached behind me, grabbing a fold of dress uniform cloth, and jerked Urisel Glaw around into the wall. He cried out.
I threw a left-handed punch that sent him reeling, then a right that smashed his teeth. He enveloped me in a bear hug and we stumbled back a few paces before I braced, kicked his legs out and jabbed a knuckle punch into his sternum.
The fight seemed to be out of him. I choked him with a clawing hand and cracked his skull back against the tunnel wall.
There will be no redemption for you, sinner/1 spat into his bloody face, 'or your foul house! Use your last breaths wisely and unfold your truths to me, or the Inquisition will teach you pain that Gorgone Locke has yet to imagine!'
Той-' he gurgled through blood and spittle and flecks of shattered teeth, 'you cannot even begin to imagine the Imperial misery House Glaw will wreak. Our power is too great. We will pitch the bastard Emperor from his golden throne and make him grovel and feed upon excrement. The worlds of the Imperium will blister and burn before Oberon and Pontius. Exalted will be the Great Darkness of Slaanesh-'
I cared little for his heretical ramblings, but the mention of that daemon-blasphemy turned my stomach and chilled my heart. I knocked him down, and looked around for something with which to bind his wrists.
Beyond the tunnel, the House of Glaw shook as if caught in a war zone.
Midas Betancore appeared at the mouth of the tunnel, and saw me lashing Urisel Glaw to a heating pipe with lengths of awning cord. He bolstered his needle pistols and walked down to join me. I heard him activate his vox-link and report his position. A curt response crackled back.
What's going on?' I asked him.
'A Batflefleet Scaras naval action/ he replied smugly.
* * *
He'd been out in the dark when Glaw's men came to seize Aemos, Bequin and Heldane. I was, by then, two hours overdue, and he'd slipped away from our apartment to look for signs of me. The militia had fanned out through the estate searching for him, but Midas was the sort of man who wouldn't be found if he didn't want it to happen. He had avoided the hunting parties, broke into the house's communication annexe and sent a brief but comprehensive report in code directly to Commodus Voke in Dorsay.
Voke's response had been immediate and authoritarian. The Glaw family had forcibly detained a servant of the Imperial Inquisition and his associates. That was all the excuse Voke had needed.
His demands, which brooked no refusal, swept clean over the heads of Fleet Admiral Spatian and his officio, and went straight to the Lord Militant Commander himself. The Lord Militant had mobilised a detachment of naval security troopers into Voke's remit within half an hour.
As an inquisitor, I know I have the right and authority to demand such supportive responses myself, even from a Lord High Militant. And I have done, on a very few occasions. But I was still impressed by the respect and fear the old inquisitor conjured in men of such supreme rank.
A confident move like this was characteristic of Voke, characteristic of his crushing, heavy methods. He'd wanted the slightest reason to come down upon House Glaw with the proverbial wrath of Macharius, and I had given it to him.
