‘I will show them. For you, Master of Mankind. I will show them.’

  Tibbet ran his hand over the cold, pitted surface of one of the pipes that lined this narrow corridor. Condensation had gathered there, thick drops that wet his fingers, and he raised his hand to lick them clean. The rusty water quenched his thirst, but it didn’t help the hunger that gnawed at his belly, didn’t clear the thick confusion that clotted his head. How long had he been out here, staggering through cramped passages, ruined factorums, shattered storage units? It was hard to tell when the only gauge he had for the passage of time was the slow healing of the burn on his arm. He wished he could hear the scrap-forged bells that tolled the hours in Sepulchre, but he was far from their familiar sound, far from the verminous rag nests of the cells and the bowls of fungus and corpse-starch. He’d been wandering for days, spiralling out from Sepulchre, moving ever farther and deeper until he found himself here, on the edge of House Cawdor’s territory, dangerously close to the toxic shadows of the underhive.

  ‘Go back,’ he muttered to himself. ‘Can’t. Can’t go. Go–’

  No. Going back now would be admitting he’d failed. Tibbet had spent so long searching for something, anything, that he could use to prove his worth to the masked gangers of the Broken Bloods. A stub gun. Some armour. A flamer… By His name, a flamer! But there was nothing in all the places he was used to searching, just the cast-off garbage of the ­towers far, far above, useless… like him.

  ‘No!’ Tibbet slammed his hand against the rusty pipe, scraping his knuckles against the rough metal. He wasn’t going to go back empty-handed. The fire of his faith sustained him. Barely.

  Tibbet staggered down the corridor to its end. He’d only ever been this far once, with a few other scrappers, following rumours of unexplored corridors, but they’d only found an empty room and a sealed door. This time, though, maybe he’d see something they’d missed. But the room was as he remembered it, a bare hexagonal chamber badly lit with a lumen panel that buzzed and flickered. The broken light made the shadows of the place dance and shift, but there was nothing to see except that one closed door, a hatch of heavy plasteel that couldn’t be scratched with axe or torch. Tibbet glared at it. What did he expect? For it to be open, just for him, with a horde of archeotech waiting on the other side?

  ‘Stupid,’ he rasped. ‘Stupid and useless.’ He started to turn away, started to curl in on himself, his throat thick with tears he would not shed, but then stopped. Stopped and turned back, furious. Tibbet rushed into the room, hawking up a massive wad of spit as he moved, and when he was close enough he let fly. The disgusting blob flashed in the flickering light, then disappeared into the shadow that clung to the bottom of the hatch.

  A shadow?

  Tibbet blinked at the hatch. The lumen buzzed and flashed overhead, and he saw it. The gap at the bottom of the hatch. Not a shadow. An opening. One that hadn’t been there when he was last here.

  ‘Bless His name,’ Tibbet whispered, and then he flung himself through the narrow gap. He landed hard on his belly on the other side and lay still. There was only the faint, intermittent flickering under the half-closed hatch, barely enough for him to see that this new chamber was much like the one he’d just left, hexagonal and bare. The lumen panels overhead were opaque and dull as a dead eye, and the floor was covered with a layer of dust. But that dust… It was disturbed, heavily tracked. A group of people had ducked through this open hatch and searched the room, and then…

  Tibbet peered through the dark. On the other side of the chamber there were two deeper shadows, doors that opened on the angle walls opposite the hatch he’d come through. The tracks led to both, going back and forth between them, and it was impossible to tell which one the people had gone down. But it was obvious that whoever this was, they had opened this hatch recently somehow and were the first ones to begin to explore this abandoned section of the hive in… centuries? Millennia? Who knew?

  ‘Master bless me,’ Tibbet whispered. He’d listened to so many stories about discoveries like this in the orphanarium-fane when he was a child. Ancient sections of the hive, long forgotten, rediscovered, full of treasure and danger. His fatigue, his hunger faded away. This was just what he needed. Here, in these forgotten corridors, he’d find what he needed to prove himself to the Broken Bloods. Tibbet dropped to his knees, ready to shout his prayer to the exalted Emperor, who had blessed him with this discovery… then slammed his mouth shut.

  In front of him, buried in shadow against the blank wall that lay between the two doors, was a crawler. A boxy thing with rugged tracks, mounded with supplies tied down with a net of woven cords and scavenged wire. Whoever had opened this place had left their supplies, which meant they were still here, still close. And they could be back at any moment.

  Panic rushed through Tibbet. He had no idea who was here, but he knew one thing – they’d kill him if they found him. He looked around the room, searching for a hiding place, but there was nothing but the disturbed dust and the broken lumens overhead. He could try going down one of the corridors, but he had no idea where the other explorers were. They could be down one or both of them right now. But where then? He wasn’t ducking back outside, this place was his. He had led Tibbet here. ‘Master of all Men,’ he groaned, tipping his head back, a prayer for help – and he was answered. Up above him, he could see the broken lumens bolted to a grid of metal braces, and from one of them a cable hung, a thick power conduit dangling right over the crawler.

  Moving fast and quiet, Tibbet clambered up the netting holding the supplies in place. At the top he reached for the conduit, but it dangled just beyond his fingertips. He jumped for it, but the supplies shifted beneath him and he missed, tumbling back to the floor with a thump. He cracked his elbow against the stone and pain flared through him, but that didn’t distract him from the sound he heard coming down the corridor to the left. Footsteps, moving fast, and he could see a brightening glow through that empty door. Pain forgotten, Tibbet flung himself up the supplies stacked on the crawler. At the top, in the growing light, he threw himself at the conduit again, and this time caught it. He swarmed up the heavy power cord, pulling himself into the tangle of girders and brackets overhead, pressing as much of his skinny body behind one of the dead lumens as he could. He clung there, silent, as the room brightened below him.

  A man came out of the corridor, light held in one hand, autopistol in the other. He was dressed in a patchwork of armour and dirty clothes, his head shaved and decorated with tattoos of women and rats, but there were no marks of any House on him. A hive scum mercenary, and Tibbet’s hand fell to the handle of one of his knife blades. A dangerous man, but a man alone, and he had a gun, armour. Those alone would be enough to make the Broken Bloods recognise him. Tibbet watched the man walking, searching, and waited to see if he would walk right below him. But instead the mercenary stopped on the other side of the room and raised his light, sweeping it through the girders, searching. Tibbet pulled his blade, readying himself to jump. If he could knock the man’s light away…

  ‘Voke!’

  The man below twitched, almost dropping his light at the sound of the woman’s voice. He stared across the room at the other passage, and above him Tibbet stared too, clutching the edge of the dead lumen tight. She walked out of the other door, a tall woman with short hair slicked back tight to her skull. She wore a shell of dark armour and goggles that whirred and clicked as the hive scum’s light flashed across her face. A heavy medallion hung from the thick chain of brass that she wore around her neck. Guilder, Tibbet thought, as he stared from medallion to the needle rifle that she carried in her hands. Iron Guild.

  ‘What do you think you’re doing, shining that damn light around?’ The woman moved into the centre of the room, followed by four more hive scum, all armoured and cradling shotguns, laspistols or autoguns. ‘I told you to stay still and watch that door.’

  ‘Thought I heard somethin’, Lu.’

  ‘Yeah?’ The guilder, Lu, frowned at him. ‘Sure you weren’t looking for something to pocket while I was gone?’

  ‘Course not,’ Voke said. ‘I’m no thief.’ The hive scum smiled, showing a mouth full of chromed and sharpened teeth. ‘You get your salvage, and I get my share, fair and fair. I been sitting here watching this door in the dark, just like you told me.’

  ‘Just like I told you.’ The goggles covering Lu’s eyes spun as she stared at the man. One of her hands dropped to her belt and tapped a dark square that hung from it. Lights rippled across the device, and then from the other side of the room came a groaning, grating sound as the heavy plasteel hatch slid shut.

  Voke watched the thick door close. ‘Thought you was keeping that open. In case that fancy key of yours didn’t want to work a second time.’

  ‘I was,’ Lu said, ‘but we’ve found a tangle of corridors back here to explore, and it’s going to take a while. Too long to leave that door open with one guard, however… obedient.’ Voke tried to look hurt, while the other hive scum snorted with laughter. Lu ignored them and kept talking. ‘We’ll have to take our chances on my key. There’s a nest of those miserable Cawdor scavengers not far from here. If they found that door open, they’d swarm this place like rot beetles.’

  ‘Useless fanatics,’ Voke growled. ‘We’ll stomp them if they show.’

  ‘I’d rather not be stuck with the stench,’ Lu said. ‘Come on, we have work.’ She started down the corridor that she had come out of, her mercenaries falling in behind her. Voke followed too, until she called back to him. ‘The crawler, Voke.’

  The hive scum frowned, but he holstered his pistol and grabbed the crawler’s handles. With a muttered curse he started after his boss, dragging it behind.

  Tibbet waited until the lights that they carried had faded and he was left in darkness absolute. Then he dug out his sparker and snapped it until it lit, the little flame letting him see, and dropped to the floor. He dug through the meagre supplies he kept on his belt and found his flask of pro­methium. Tearing a strip from his ragged tunic, Tibbet wrapped it around the end of a metal crowbar then soaked the dirty cloth with fuel. Tibbet lit the rough torch with his sparker, nose wrinkling at the smell, but now he had enough light to explore.

  ‘Useless fanatics,’ he growled. ‘House Cawdor isn’t useless. I’m not useless.’ Wavering a little on his feet, still hungry, still tired, still moving, Tibbet started down the other corridor. ‘I’ll show them all.’

  ‘Something. There’ll be something,’ Tibbet whispered to himself. ‘The Master of Mankind led me here. It can’t be empty.’ He said the words over and over as he staggered down another long hall, holding up his sputtering torch with one hand, his other pressed against the rough wall, propping him up.

  He’d been walking for hours, winding through empty corridors, echoing rooms, and finding nothing. There was no treasure here, no ancient archeotech.

  Nothing.

  He needed food. He needed sleep. He needed… Tibbet turned his head a little, and stared at the flame of his torch. He needed nothing. He had this. Fire. Fire inside him. The fire of faith. That was all he needed. Fire. Faith. Tibbet dragged his foot forward another step. He’d find something. He’d find–

  The wall Tibbet had been leaning against with his hand suddenly opened up, and he staggered to the side. His feet tangled as he tried to catch his balance, and then there was nothing but empty space. He was falling, flailing, into darkness split by the wild swinging light of his torch. Then he hit the ground, and kept moving, hitting the ground again and again. He was falling down a wide set of stairs, rolling and striking, down and down, until his head cracked against the edge of one of the steps and finally darkness swept through him, a kind of sleep that could not be refused by any faith or fire.

  Fire.

  It flickered in front of Tibbet, a tiny flame dancing, floating in a puddle of blood. So bright. So bright. Tibbet stared at it for a long time, watching it dance, ignoring the deep pain in his head, in his body. Pain was pain, and fire was pure, and pure was good – pure was what he could never be, pure wasn’t useless…

  The flame sputtered and popped, and Tibbet coughed, a cough that split his head and made him close his eyes. In the darkness, the pain grew, trying to swallow him, but Tibbet held the image of the fire in his head. The pain might want him to curl in on himself, to lose himself in darkness again, but the fire still burned and Tibbet forced his eyes open. The flame sputtered in front of him, dancing in the pool of blood that had gathered around Tibbet’s head. It split the darkness just enough to show a smooth, dark floor – and a boot. Tibbet blinked, then tipped his head back.

  He stared up at a statue of a man in armour. Armour like Tibbet had never seen before. It covered the man completely, heavy plates hewn from dark stone wrapping around a massive, powerful body. Every bit of the armour was intricately carved with cables and conduits that twisted and flowed over its surface, their paths complex and beautiful. They almost seemed to form symbols, like the script that Tibbet saw written on some of the things he scavenged sometimes, but these symbols… they were beautiful, and for the first time Tibbet wished he could read, so that he could understand.

  Who was this statue supposed to be? Someone vastly important, if they wore armour like that. Tibbet looked to the statue’s head, but its face was covered, hidden by a dark lump of something that gleamed blue-black in the meagre light, something that had flowed over the head of the statue like wax, perfectly hiding its features. It wasn’t wax, though. Tibbet wasn’t sure exactly what had formed that lump, what metal had slowly built up over the years to hide that face, but he’d been trained to recognise it by the reverent keepers of his orphanarium-fane when they’d instructed him and the other children in the secrets of scavenging. They had told Tibbet that if he found a metal this colour, impossibly hard, impossibly dense, he must report it right away. It was precious, valuable beyond all other scrap. And here it had formed a perfect mask to hide the face of whoever wore that magnificent armour.

  Lying on the floor, starving, delirious, wracked with pain, Tibbet stared up at the statue and its precious mask, and he knew. Knew with pure, perfect certainty. This was Him. The Master of all Mankind, the Emperor of the Golden Throne. His majesty carved in stone, His perfect, terrible visage hidden behind a veil that was as incalculably valuable as it was indestructible

  Tibbet raised himself up to his knees. The statue loomed over him, beautiful, perfect. The little flame gleamed off its metal mask, and Tibbet felt himself tremble. A sacred sculpture of the Master of Mankind, hidden away for millennia. Tibbet reached up and wiped blood and tears away from his eyes. This. This would show everyone.

  ‘Thank you,’ he breathed, and bowed his head. When he opened his eyes again, he couldn’t look at the statue. It overwhelmed him. He looked at the black walls instead, carved with the plain, angular marks of normal script – words of benediction Tibbet was sure, even if he couldn’t read them. ‘Thank you,’ he said again, then turned away. Behind him reared the long flight of stairs that he’d fallen down. He’d have to trace his way back, find some way past that closed door, then convince the Broken Blood to follow him back here…

  It didn’t matter. He’d been led here for this purpose. He’d find his way back. Tibbet tried to rise, but the dark room swung around him and he fell back to his knees. But that was right. He should be on his knees in such a holy place. Leaving the broken torch, he started to crawl up the stairs. The stone edges bit into his shins, but he crawled until he reached the top. Then he let himself stop, to stare back down at the tiny flame flickering at the base of the statue.

  It was beautiful. It was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen.

  He had to force himself to turn, to start crawling again, and that’s when the light flashed on, harsh and white, making him blink up at the woman standing over him in dark armour, staring at him with eyes hidden behind goggles that whirred and clicked.

  ‘Cawdor scum,’ she sighed, and then kicked him in the chin, lifting him up and knocking him back down the stairs, a crashing, crunching fall that ended again in darkness.

  ‘Careful, damn you!’

  ‘It weighs a ton!’

  ‘You’re the one that wanted to haul it down without unpacking it!’

  ‘You’re the one–’

  ‘Shut up.’ The last voice cut across the bickering and silenced it. Clenching his teeth against a groan, Tibbet opened one eye just a slit. Light struck him, harsh and blinding, and he had to shut it again. In the darkness, he felt the pain, heavy as a blanket. His head, his arms, his legs, his ribs… By His name, his ribs, they felt like a bundle of broken sticks, splintered ends scraping against his lungs every time he drew a breath. But Tibbet kept himself silent, and opened his eye again.

  He was lying to one side of the room of the statue, which was brightly lit now by lumens being set out by a couple of hive scum. Another four, Voke included, were easing the equipment crawler down the stairs to the floor. In front of them, still as stone herself, the guilder woman Lu stood staring at the statue. No. At the mask that covered the statue. Her goggles were raised up on her forehead, and her brown eyes traced the wrinkled flows of the metal as if she were reading her fortune in its swirling patterns.

  When they clanked the crawler to the ground behind her, she finally moved, turning her head to stare at her hirelings.

  ‘Get the saw. If I take the head off, we’ll get the whole mass.’

  ‘No.’ Tibbet whispered the word first, and they never even noticed as they started pulling the net off the crawler. ‘No!’ he said, louder, and tried to roll to his feet. Tried and failed as his broken ribs screamed. But he caught an eye.