in exchange for a single hit of a narcotic to drown their sorrows.
There came a voice behind his curtain.
‘Mister Menzo?’
Menzo drew back the curtain to his den. Bleary from sleep, he rubbed his eyes and checked his chron. It was still four hours until dawn cycle but the slave dens were raucous with activity.
‘What? Quickly,’ snapped Menzo. He did not like to receive visitors before his shift began.
‘Sabtah is dead!’ cried the man. Menzo recognised him by his matted hair and the dried, flaking corners of his mouth. It was one of the drug‐dependent menials. Culk, or whatever his name was. His eyes were ringed with black from insomnia, the sign of a man who had spent eighteen hours labouring and the following six in a drug‐tranced stupor.
‘I know that. Quieten your voice,’ Menzo said. He threw back his blankets and smoothed down the front of his canvas tunic.
‘Will this… this affect your trade?’ Culk asked pathetically, wringing his hands with worry.
‘Why would it?’
‘You always said Gammadin and Sabtah didn’t care enough about the slaves to mind what we did with our sleep shift. You said Muhr’d be a hard bastard to try to sneak by.’
‘Shut your mouth!’ snapped Menzo. He glanced around to make sure no one had heard.
Muhr was now the helmsman of the ship, so to speak. Insolence towards any bond‐brother was punishable by torture and death, let alone the Witchlord. He could not imagine what harm Muhr would inflict on an insolent slave.
110
Culk didn’t seem to understand the danger of his words. His speech was slurred and his eyelids hooded. Chemicals seemed to have addled his mind. ‘But you said that. You said Muhr would be a right stiff pri–’
Menzo cut him off, clapping a palm to Culk’s mouth and shoving him against a bulkhead.
Culk’s glazed eyes suddenly widened. Menzo had stabbed him with a shiv, a screwturner for unpacking sealed crates. He twisted and Culk shuddered all over before falling slack.
As Menzo lowered Culk’s body to the floor, he heard footsteps behind him.
It was a trio of slave loaders, judging by the curve of their backs and the slump of their calloused shoulders. The men had just completed a toil shift and were hurrying back to their dens for a flicker of sleep before their labour began anew.
‘Long live Lord Muhr!’ Menzo shouted to them, his bloodied shiv hidden in his palm.
‘Long live Lord Muhr,’ they chanted wearily without even acknowledging him with a look.
POUNDING DRUMS AND the squeal of a viol penetrated the citadel decks of the foreship, a constant babble of sound that suggested relentless energy. It echoed in the abyssal halls with a timbre that did not belong in the pages of man‐made music. The citadels themselves were unbarred, their masters and slaves trickling out to cavort on the wide causeways that connected them.
On the stone walkway, Brother Skellion glanded a concoction of industrial chems. The abrasive substance scoured his superhuman fortitude, lapsing him in and out of consciousness. Skellion was naked, except for a loincloth of chain; today was not a day for war. He allowed himself to sink down on his palanquin as menials massaged his keg‐like quadriceps. Other menials filed and polished the stubbled horns that grew across his upper back.
Since his ascension, Muhr had declared a day of celebration. For a Blood Gorgon, that meant an orgy of chem‐based alcoholics, savage pleasure and pit‐fighting. The young warriors of Squad Akkadia indulged themselves. The air was thick with incense, and wine had sluiced in sticky rivers across the floor.
In truth, Skellion did not care whether Sabtah or Muhr ascended. He was a young warrior, inducted two years ago, and he barely remembered Gammadin. Skellion and many other new youngbloods in the Chapter shared the same nonchalance towards the leadership struggle. As long as Muhr promised him plunder and war, Skellion cared nothing for history.
ABOARD THE CAULDRON Born, Vigoth locked himself away in his tower, high up in the eastern shelves of the citadel deck. A sagging gambrel roof capped the iron fort that was anchored into the bulkhead, clinging to the wall like a barnacle.
Sheltered within, Chirurgeon Vigoth was left to his brooding. He was not pleased with Muhr’s ascension. He was one of the coven, a witch too, but that did not make him one of Muhr’s own.
Casting the bones again, he watched the runes tumble in the darkness of his vault. They landed on the sign of the Ophidian – a bad omen.