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Gideon Ravenor was officially recognized as my Interrogator in 338, after the Erthe affair. That had been a lengthy campaign, and I was glad when he declined my offer to throw a formal celebration on Thracian Primaris, where our Ordo colleagues could attend. I invited him instead to my estate on Gudrun, hoping for a few months’ quiet repose.
I had bought Spaeton House some decades before, when the family whose name it still bore decamped for the new sub-sector capital. It had its own landing pad on the grounds, but I was obliged to come by way of Dorsay. Maxilla had prevailed upon me to use one of his pilots these last few years, but soon I would have to visit Glavia, and have a conversation with my god-daughter. Her mother had succeeded in postponing it awhile, and my work had intervened, but she was stubborn. Of course. She was a Betancore.
That was for later. In truth, I did not mind the drive. The headland was covered in morning mist, which pooled in picturesque fashion over lawns and between fruit trees. I allowed the sight to relax me while Ravenor caught up on his own messages, though I could not fail to notice a divot of concern between his brows even then.
For a moment, I envied him the frown upon his brow. Mine is a stern countenance, I understand, but even such a minute expression as that was beyond me. I thought for a moment of telling him to put his data-slate aside, but his diligence was an asset in our calling, and had stood us both in good stead on our last outing.
Soon, the aged tiles of the villa roof, stained green with verdigris, rose over the horizon, and the groundcar drew abreast of Spaeton House’s main entry. The staff were arrayed to greet us, of course. I was glad to see them, and introduced Ravenor to each one in turn.
‘Jarat, of course, you already know,’ I told him.
Ravenor pressed her ageing palm between both of his own and greeted my housekeeper with a smile. ‘I trust we haven’t put you out too much?’ he said.
‘Not at all,’ my housekeeper insisted, seeming uncommonly flustered by his attentions. ‘Autumn on Gudrun? I would rather be here than Thracian.’
As it happened, I agreed. I half-listened to their friendly palaver as the house servitors moved to unload our luggage so the driver could retire to the carriage house. There was an odd tension among some of the junior staff. One grows accustomed to this in our line of work; I put it down to their never having met Ravenor before. But I was eager to throw off the pains and pangs of travel, and soon I dismissed them, intending to bathe and relax before luncheon.
Jarat stopped me. ‘If I might prevail upon you—both,’ she said, with a surreptitious look at Ravenor, ‘I would appreciate a moment of your time this afternoon.’
‘Of course,’ I agreed.
I expected some questioning on the itineraries of my associates. Alizabeth had told me to expect her in no less than a week’s time, having matters with the Distaff to manage before she could join us. Uber Aemos, my ageing savant, had already been here a month. Godwyn Fischig would not come at all. He was, then, racing Tantalid to a particular prize, a pursuit that would have implications decades later.
Instead, she conducted me to the guest wing, steps slowing as she traversed the southern hall. At its terminus was a morning room which I rarely visited. Members of my retinue or guests might breakfast there, perhaps read and answer their correspondence in quiet phratry. I had my own reading room—and a private office, as befit my station. So I was surprised to find a crimson curtain hastily tacked over the niche above the fireplace. Its colour matched exactly the drapery lining the windows. At first, I assumed politeness held Jarat at bay, but Ravenor, too, lingered nervously at the threshold.
‘What is this?’ I crossed to the hearth in a moment, stepping around the sofa. The fire was unlit, and the room was chilly, the thin autumnal light of afternoon sparing little warmth. There was a fine layer of dust upon the mantle, undisturbed by the hem of the drapery. Until, that was, I twitched it aside.
For a moment, I was reminded of Lores Vibben, dead these hundred years, and of the Scipio she had engraved for me, buried along with her. The painting was stark in its lines, bold in its contrasts. A multitude of pale hands reached out upon a field of black, toward a woman offering the illumination of crimson flame. Beati Sabbat, I supposed, taking in the symbology. The memory of Vibben’s loss lingered, made fresh by the reminder.
‘A gift,’ said Ravenor, less sure than I was used to. Looking back at him, I could see that he stared at the image as though puzzled. Jarat, behind him, could not bear to look upon it at all.
‘Gideon and I,’ Jarat began, and my Interrogator held up a hand to forestall her.
‘No, mamzel,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘It was my idea.’ He crossed the carpeted floor as though he was afraid the antique secretary against the wall might pounce upon him, but at least he could look at the damnable painting. After a few more moments of examination, he pulled the curtain back into place.
Jarat’s shoulders relaxed fractionally, and she could look upon us again. ‘I am, of course, aware of your austere tastes,’ she said, looking for a moment all the years of her advancing age. ‘But when Gideon asked what might be an appropriate host-gift for the occasion of his first visit here, I suggested that something could be found for this room.’
‘It was I that selected it,’ Ravenor insisted. ‘Jarat was good enough to put me in touch with a gallery, and from their catalogue I chose this.’
I understood, then, their motivations; I did not understand their nervousness. Jarat had been too long in my service to be overawed by my rank, and Ravenor had not erred so badly as to be held in abeyance by the fear of chastisement. There was more to the matter, gnawing on Jarat’s nerves.
I dragged my fingers through the dust, unthinkable on even the highest shelf of my library, and spared a glance for the hearth. The last fire lit there had gone out long before, but the ashes remained unswept, and no log had been laid, even as the house had been opened.
‘The sight of it upsets you,’ I said to her.
She nodded. ‘It should not, I know,’ she said, ‘but it has reduced three of my maids to tears.’ She hesitated a moment. ‘Even the servitors we used to arrange the furniture,’ she said, ‘wept.’
Now that was intriguing. They should not have had the capacity for such a thing.
Ravenor still gazed up at the covered niche, his gaze slightly unfocused as though lost in thought. ‘There’s something,’ he murmured, almost absently, but whatever thought followed, he chose not to voice it.
‘Take it down,’ I said.
Jarat’s sigh of relief almost drowned out her grateful words.
Ravenor caught my eye.
‘Bring it,’ I amended, ‘to the reading room above the library. You may tell the staff not to service that room until I give the word otherwise.’
‘Right away,’ she agreed. Her relief was palpable, even with no attempt on my part to gauge her thoughts.
I went there to await the painting’s delivery, beckoning Ravenor after me.
Already, I could feel the thought of rest and relaxation slipping through my fingers.
‘I never saw it in person ’til now,’ Ravenor was saying when the servitor arrived. Though the painting it carried was swaddled in the disused curtain, I could see Jarat had the right of it. Tears leaked from its dull eyes.
With a gesture, I dismissed it, turning my attention to my Interrogator. I said nothing, only looked at him. An old trick, and reliable.
He could not meet my gaze for long, reaching out to tug the velvet so it lay flat. ‘It is,’ he said, ‘psychically resonant.’ A moment later he produced his data-slate, showing me the catalog image.
It did not, of course, elicit the same reaction. I could see there was no real resemblance to the Tornish scrimshaw that Vibben had once applied to my sidearm. Boldness and color it had in common, but I did not think the artist was studied in that gang tradition. ‘Why did you choose this painting?’ I asked.
Ravenor frowned, gathering his thoughts. ‘The artist is local to Gudrun,’ he began. ‘That seemed important. Jarat seemed to think it would suit the room. And,’ he admitted, more hesitantly, ‘I liked the subject matter. Reaching for illumination. Striving for the light of truth. That is what I saw in it.’
It was a somewhat more sentimental answer than one might have expected from an agent of the Throne, but Ravenor had a poetic soul even then. ‘What do you see now?’ I asked, sweeping back the shroud once more.
‘Children,’ came his response, immediate and emotional. ‘Reaching for the hot coal in the stove, knowing nothing but that it glows. They see something bright and seek to grasp it. They would claw it back from the saint, if they could.’ Disgust twisted his lips, and he turned away. ‘I will speak to the art dealer,’ Ravenor declared then. ‘Surely he can be reasoned with. It has no place in this house.’
He was right about that last, at least.
We went to Dorsay the following day. Ravenor had been able to secure an appointment at the gallery, though he had left the gallerist to guess at our purpose. No doubt eager to make a second sale, we had been accommodated at once. I had prevailed upon Aemos to examine the painting the afternoon before, to little effect. He could tell me a great deal about the ornamental motifs that interrupted the large masses of like color, but none of it meant anything even to him. Over amasec after dinner, however, it had occurred to him that perhaps the underdrawing might prove more revelatory. I had advised him to take Vance, my astropath, and make a full examination. While they did that, we traversed the city by groundcar and water taxi until, passing beneath the Bridge of Carnodons, we arrived at the gallery.
Its splendid edifice offered a discreet glance to the more subdued environs within, the natural light eschewed in favor of controlled conditions. The obsequious clerk, upon Ravenor giving his name, conducted us to a dim little room for a showing. A sofa and pair of wing-back chairs flanked a low table. On the wall opposite, beneath a spotlight, a single painting rested atop the picture rail. It was larger still than the one I’d left in Aemos’s care, and depicted a council of illuminated figures, their oils brilliant, their varnish gleaming. I felt none of the unease that had pervaded my morning room, and neither did Ravenor. Indeed, he wore a smile that rendered him almost boyish. I could not match him, but I seemed to recall at last that my purpose in visiting Gudrun was relaxation. The sofa was comfortable enough, and the tea they brought very fine—a comfort, after the wearying details of travel, to say nothing of the ordeals before.
I almost did not rise when the gallerist entered. He was a spare man in his middling years, clear-eyed and clean-shaven. ‘Sieur Ravenor,’ he greeted my Interrogator, who turned that youthful smile on him, crossing to shake hands as I rose.
‘Master Thurburn, how good to meet at last. This is Gregor Eisenhorn, the glad recipient of my last acquisition.’
Thurburn addressed himself to me, shaking hands. ‘How are you finding the Kabo?’ he asked me.
‘It has certainly been the subject of a great deal of conversation in my house,’ I told him, amused despite myself.
His look was one of mild surprise. Perhaps it was simply the mismatch between my still expression and the far less forbidding tone of my voice, but the relaxed atmosphere in the room was suddenly shot through with a single bolt of nerves. ‘I am glad you are enjoying it,’ he said, not quite able to keep the wariness from his own voice.
‘Tell me about the painting,’ I said, finding my will at last.
‘A relief when it sold,’ he blurted, laughter following after, as though realizing he had revealed too much. I looked hard upon him, continuing to press his mind. ‘Five years on consignment. More showings than I can recall. The rest of his work,’ Thurburn said with a gesture toward the rail, ‘is not difficult to place.’
Ravenor turned from his examination of the work to tilt his head in curiosity. ‘Kabo has his own collectors, then?’
Thurburn made some thoughtful sound. ‘The pride of Gudrun,’ he explained, ‘has been somewhat bruised of late.’
I only nodded. The Glaw affair had been many long years before, but there was little doubt it had been the inflection point. If Thurburn did not know my part in it, I saw no need to mention it.
‘Certainly the attitude of the Gudrunite collector remains cosmopolitan enough. Sameterware and other arts are still popular, but the naming of a new sub-sector capital saw a groundswell of interest in more local artists. Combined with the emotive qualities of Laurie Kabo’s works, he’s garnered a great deal of interest in the last decade or so.’
‘What’s his background?’ Ravenor wondered. Even retiring to one of the plush chairs, he continued to look back at the painting. Perhaps he meant to ascertain the identities of the subjects, whose features were unfamiliar to me.
He was handling it well enough, I thought, and I, too, was content to take my ease and watch my Interrogator work.
Thurburn took that as a cue to settle in the remaining chair, refreshing my cup of tea as he gathered his thoughts. ‘He took service in the Guard,’ he said, ‘and only began to paint afterward. His formal art education he had at Shurfath, up in Maelificer. He was part of the Winter Salon there.’ At length, he began to explain the salon culture of Gudrun, the interlinking fraternities and rivalries of master painters and their favored students. Maxilla or Aemos would have gotten more out of the lecture than I, though it was pleasant enough. If Thurburn was at all anxious about making the sale, he did not let it show. It was equally possible he had other customers in mind, but neither did he seem annoyed to have to go to the effort.
Eventually, it seemed, Ravenor allowed himself to be convinced. He and Thurburn moved on to negotiations of price and the details of delivery, and soon we emerged, blinking, into the daylight once more.
Over a midday meal, it occurred to me to wonder, ‘Where will you put it?’
Ravenor’s smile was a touch inscrutable. ‘That depends how this all turns out,’ he said.
I examined, slightly belatedly, my reason for asking the question. Some part of me hoped that Gudrun could be as meaningful to him as it had become to me. It hardly seemed the moment to say so, and I was perhaps relieved when he chose to continue.
‘This one, too, is psychically resonant. Whether or not it is dangerous, it seemed better not to hunt through private collections for it later.’
‘We would have been within our rights to simply leave with it beneath the authority of the rosette,’ I pointed out.
Ravenor nodded, and gave the answer I expected. Perhaps even hoped for. ‘That would have required us to disclose the nature of our interest, and risk Thurburn alerting Kabo of it.’
My vox-link chimed, and surreptitiously I engaged it. ‘Eisenhorn.’
It was Aemos. ‘We’ve completed the survey of the underpainting and drawing layers, and I have conferred with Vance on the results.’
‘And?’ I prompted.
‘Vance concurs with Gideon in the matter of psychic trace,’ he began, ‘but his examination turned up nothing to indicate the why of it… The paints themselves are common pigments and fixatives, the frame pinewood, and the varnish simple rosin. The underdrawing was executed on the canvas rather than guidelines transferred by cartoon.’
All the relaxation of the art gallery had long since fled, and I urged Aemos along to the point. ‘Did anything you found account for the feelings of aversion it elicits?’
‘None of the particular elements of the underdrawing matched any symbols and sigils of the enemy that we have encountered in the work… but it is my impression, and Vance agrees, there may still be an element of ritual to it. Forms repeat which do not appear in the final composition… Which may account for the psychic phenomenon. Be careful, Gregor.’
I related this to Ravenor when we were in the privacy once more of the groundcar, having directed Aemos to find Laurie Kabo’s address and pass it along to the driver. He’d done more than that, finding Kabo’s service record and educational transcripts, which now awaited me on my data-slate. It was clear, then, that we could not simply return to Spaeton House.
‘What will we do when we get there?’ Ravenor wanted to know. He was ostensibly perusing a review of an exhibition a few years prior in which Kabo had exhibited three works. But there was an agitation in him that seemed to make it impossible.
‘What would you do?’ I wanted to know. I was having little more success with my own reading, though the fact that Kabo was a second-generation member of the 50th Rifles had certainly made an impression.
‘Ascertain whether he was in the studio,’ Ravenor began. ‘Bar the doors. Burn the building down.’
I was quietly horrified. I am a Puritan by nature, but by no means a hard-line Monodominant, and I wondered, briefly, where he had gotten such an idea. Fischig, I supposed. His intractibility had been an asset, when he had been with the Arbites. I even understood his reasoning, given a moment to reflect. Still… ‘No,’ I said. ‘These are actions of last resort. It is true that men and women of our office are called upon to make such choices, but it is not a thing to be done lightly. It is possible that Kabo does not do this deliberately, or that he is another’s cats-paw, or we are being misdirected to look at him while the mind behind the scheme escapes. All these things I have encountered in my service. It may be that we end up without a choice, but I would exhaust our options, first.’
Kabo lived in his studio: a squat, unassuming building. Judging by the rust staining on the facade, which had left ghostly outlines of the insignia, it had been a minor Administratum storehouse that had had its operations relocated to Thracian Primaris when it became the sub-sector seat. The windows were high and small, and the door heavy. We had announced ourselves to no response, and our knocking did not rouse anyone. Reaching out with my will, I felt the haze of psychic phenomenon, but no focused mind: Kabo was not there to answer.
The lock was not difficult to force, and the scent of mineral spirits and stagnant air was almost choking as we entered. Kabo’s living quarters were small; a rumpled cot and a galley kitchen, a few shelves of books. It was cold in the warehouse, and dim, though the lamps and heaters were not lacking for promethium. Ravenor kindled the lamps, moving to the bookshelves.
‘Art texts,’ he cataloged. ‘And journals? … Sketchbooks.’
In the kitchen I could see a dirty plate gone fuzzy with mold, and a faint layer of dust settled on the counter tops.
The workspace was an ill-organized jumble. Shelves and drawers full of commercial paints and base pigments; primers and brushes and soaps. He had cut up his fatigue undershirts for cleaning rags, the screen printed Aquila awash in a riot of discarded colors. There were a half-dozen finished paintings laid out along a wall, oil paints curing or varnish drying—and one more, still upon the easel. I did not wish to look at it. I did not want to know what it would make me feel. Finding a drop cloth, I threw it over the wooden frame and went to find my Interrogator, who I could not help but feel then may have had the right idea in the first place.
‘No one’s been here in a long time,’ Ravenor said. He set one of the sketchbooks down before me, revealing the thumbnails that would eventually become the painting that awaited me at Spaeton House. ‘This was his last known address. He couldn’t have been tipped off before we were coming.’
‘He’s here, Gideon,’ I told him.
Ravenor looked up at me. Confused, then disbelieving. Obstinacy passed over his face, and then he closed his eyes. Gideon Ravenor is a far more accomplished telepath than I have ever been, and as I watched him reach out in search of another mind, I could see him shudder. ‘He put himself into the paintings,’ he realized at last.
‘Piece by piece,’ I agreed. ‘Feeling by feeling.’
It is an unenviable death which comes by inches. I would return to Gudrun many times, in sorrow and in joy, in relaxation and in pursuit. So too would Gideon Ravenor—as my Interrogator and as an Inquisitor in his own right. His career would end ignominiously there… and begin again, the final time we met on Gudrun.
If either of us knew what we would become, back then, perhaps we too would have pushed the feeling away.