A Note from YourFriendlyNeighborhoodGeis t:
I'm honestly a little nervous continuing on with this, considering how little (that is to say no) feedback I've gotten. What's a girl got to do to get a review around here? Anyway, made some progress, thought I'd share. Thanks to my first follower! :-D -Geist
Part 2 – The Black Brand
Chapter 6 – A Good Man
Ellie Reiker had never seen anything quite so big, or beautiful, or bright as the sky of Holy Terra. It was a luminescent sheet of gray, swirling darkly in places; it hurt her eyes, but she couldn't bear to look away. She followed closely behind her master, the Inquisitor Lord, as he stepped from the shuttle, all the while rubbing at the rough, new mark at her neck.
She turned her face up to see more and felt the strangest thing – something small and wet landed on her cheek. Her hand came up to it and she gazed curiously at the liquid shine on her fingers before her attention was again arrested by the sky. It lit up a section of clouds for just a second, and a distant rolling rumble followed swiftly after.
Her breath caught in a half gasp, half laugh, and she turned to smile up at him. He raised his brow just a bit. It was safe to talk. With exuberance and a bit of awe, she explained, "The sky sounds like you." The brow over his real eye (she'd never seen anyone with violet eyes before him) remained lifted, and his hand came down behind her. She stiffened, expecting censure, but it landed flat between her shoulder blades and gave a firm little push as he stepped off, reminding her to keep up.
What Doctor Trixie had said about the Black Ships was all true in an area called "general population." When Ellie had come on board there had been four guards surrounding her and armed servitors at the stations that they passed. Her master, on the other hand, walked around freely, unescorted, and she followed closely, not wanting to be left behind. He had taken her there.
General population was not a nice place to visit. The air was thick and hot and rank with the stench of unwashed human bodies, raw sewage, and spoiling food. There was a roar of noise from a hold full of people talking, shouting, singing, praying – all vying to be heard. They surged and churned against each other in a primally organic way that made her slightly nauseated.
She followed him in – yes, he went down there, into that mess – and she stuck to him closely (not going so far as to hold onto him as she had her mother when they were doing drills, though she'd considered it). They were eating and punching and pinning each other to walls for the Throne alone knew what. Some of them caught sight of her first, and leered hungrily like she was fresh meat to be hunted.
She touched the leg of his armor so that she could turn her head without drifting from him; because he, unlike she, was not being looked upon as prey. As a matter of fact all of them – even the enormously tall, muscled ones with sharp, broken teeth – parted around him. One of them, double her height who had been casing and pacing her saw exactly who she was with and wet himself, crying, scrambling desperately to get out of her master's way.
He began to speak as if giving a tour. "This," he rumbled clearly, still pacing forward and gesturing to the rabble around him, "is the general population. They represent some of the more pitiful examples of humanity." A few glanced almost guiltily at him as they fought to get out of his way. "These wretches' only worth is sustenance."
There were two children about her age along that wall, eyes closed, skin chalky, lips blue… she shivered. That could have easily been her. "This," he gazed around and then met her eye, "is where you end up if you slack off – if you fail me." She swallowed hard and glanced back to the wall. He continued walking towards a door out and she snapped back to his side, terrified of being stuck down here.
He held something up to the scanner next to the door and it opened at the same time that some sort of filmy, cloudy gas started expelling through pipes – first those in a half-arc unfurling around the door and then (she saw as she backed out of the room with a jump after him) the rest stationed around the room. That must've been the drug Doctor Trixie had told her about. If it was in the air, they couldn't avoid it.
The chaos resumed for only a second before, slowly, each figure began to sink towards the floor, crumpling into heaps on top of one another like so many corpses.
He was walking down the gangway, completely unperturbed, and, without bothering to check that she was still there, queried, "Any questions?"
She glanced over her shoulder, frowning a moment, and asked with a slow thoughtfulness, "Could they smell you? Is that why they got out of your way?"
He stopped short, an uncontrollable and unnoticed micro-expression of outrage there and gone. She stopped half a step later and then backed up. He stared down at her with one brow raised, face utterly impassive. She missed the tight danger in the over-calm tone that rattled her chest as he asked, "Are you implying that I have an odor?"
After a deep breath on her part, she explained, "I notice it," she tapped her forehead where her sinus cavities were, "here. Sometimes it's familiar, and sometimes it gives me a headache. It was on Doctor Trixie. It's much stronger on you. When I wake up from a nightmare it's overpowering. It's got different… colors… but it's always like," she thought for a moment, trying to classify it, "ozone."
He gazed at her for another moment before he (probably as gently as he could manage) cuffed her on the back of the head and stepped off again. She had never been hit before.
It hadn't hurt, but it startled her into silence, and she followed with head down and lip bitten. After a few paces he elaborated as if nothing had happened, still in a gravelly bass, still clinical, "That isn't smell. What you've taken note of is psyniscience: the psyker's sixth sense. It alerts one regarding immaterial activity – noticeably psykers, sorcerers, daemons, specially endowed or cursed items, places that those have been, objects on which they've used a power, et cetera, et cetera."
She tilted her head to the side. Near-smell had a name.
She considered another moment, then ventured, "Is the medicine why I couldn't sm-" she caught the slip, "sense them in there?" Because, she realized, she had indeed smelled them in there. The stench had been nearly unbearable. They just hadn't had that smell – thousands and thousands of psykers, and not a hint of the prickly tingle that was now identified as psyniscience.
He regarded her for a beat, brow still raised, and prompted, "Medicine?"
"The white drug in the pipes," she clarified.
"Torpor," he supplied, looking forward again. "It reduces their psychic profile, and yours, which would make them more difficult for you to perceive."
"And they couldn't perceive you?"
"With psyniscience, no."
"So you're just scary enough without it?" she asked much like when she had asked about his smell: pragmatic, without guile, and with no intent at offense.
His brow raised as he faced her once more with an intentionally neutral, "Am I not?"
"You're-" she wracked her mind for the word she wanted, and finally came to, "impressive." He said nothing, at least out loud, but his expression was slightly incredulous. Her little brow knit for a moment as she gazed up at him, and she continued thoughtfully, "I'm afraid –" she clarified after another moment's consideration, "but of disappointing you." His chin lifted with the faintest trace of a sneer as he regarded her, his demeanor explicit: both would be better. Startled by it, she asked in a quiet voice, "Should I be? – Frightened, I mean."
"Most people who know what I am are."
"You're a man." She took measure of him for less than a heartbeat, and then smiled serenely, as if by so swift an observation she could determine enough to claim, "A good one."
His expression was flat and timbre condescending and almost – almost – hostile. "I am a Lord among Inquisitors." He stopped and leaned towards her, looming, intimidating, and his eyes bored into her, "A harsh one."
She blinked rapidly, focusing intently on him with her bottom lip seized between her teeth; she swallowed hard and nodded once to affirm she understood. She didn't want to push his grace – or patience – and so she kept her opinion (that he was probably both) locked away in a secret part of her heart.
It didn't stay a secret very long, though.
Nothing did.