Nemesis

there was the distant echo of great violence in him, but it was overshadowed by two

towering opposite forces. On one hand, a grand sense of hope, even redemption, as if

he believed he would be saved; and on the other, an equally powerful dread of

something hunting him, of his own victimhood.

Perrig’s psychometry was not an exact science, but in her time as an investigator

she had developed a keen sense of her own instincts; it was this sense that told her

Erno Sigg did not kill for his pleasures. As that thought crystallised inside her mind,

Perrig felt the first fuzzy inklings of a direction coming to her. She allowed her hand

to pick up the stylus at her side and moved it to the waiting data-slate on the floor. It

twitched as the auto-writing began in spidery, uneven text.

Her other hand, though, had not left the leaflet. Her fingers toyed with the edges

of it, playing with the careworn paper, seeking out the places where it had been

delicately folded and unfolded, time and time again. She wondered what it meant to

Sigg that he cared so much for it, and sensed the ghost of the anguish he would feel

at its loss.

That would be how she would find him. The sorrow, fluttering from him like a

pennant in the wind. The scribbling stylus moved of its own accord, back and forth

across the slate.

105

Confidence rose in her. She would find Erno Sigg. She would. And Hyssos would

be pleased with her—

Her heart jumped in her chest and she gasped. The stylus, gripped beyond its

tolerances, snapped in two and the broken ends dug into her palm. Perrig was

suddenly trembling, and she knew why. At the back of her mind there had been a

thought she had not wanted to confront, something she took care to avoid as one

might favour an ugly, painful bruise upon the skin.

But now she was drawn to it, touching the discoloured edges of the psychic

contusion, flinching at the tiny ticks of pain it gave off.

She had sensed it after their arrival on Iesta Veracrux. At first, Perrig imagined it

was only an artefact of the transition of her mind, from the controlled peace of her

domicile aboard the Iubar to the riotous newness of the planet’s busy city.

Correction; she had wanted to believe it was that.

The trembling grew as she dared to focus on it. A dark shadow at the edges of her

perception, close at hand. Closer than Erno Sigg. Much, much closer, more so than

Hyssos or any of the Iestan investigators suspected.

Perrig felt a sudden wetness at her nostrils, on her cheek. She smelled copper.

Blinking, she opened her eyes and the first thing she saw was the leaflet. It was red,

deep crimson, the words printed on it lost against the shade of the paper. Panting in a

breath, Perrig looked up from where she knelt and saw that the room, and everything

in it, was red and red and red.

She let the broken stylus fall and wiped at her face. Thick fluid came away from

the corners of her eyes. Blood, not tears.

Propelled by a surge of fright, she came to her feet, her boot catching the dataslate

and crushing the glassy screen beneath the heel. The room seemed humid and

stifling, every surface damp and meat-slick. Perrig lurched towards the only window

and reached for the pull to drag back the curtains so she might open it, get a breath of

untainted air.

The drapes were made of red and shadows, and they parted like petals as she

came closer. Something approximating the shape of a human being opened up there,

suspended by spindly feet from the ceiling overhead. The heavy velvets thumped to

the wooden floor and the figure unfolded, wet and shiny with oils. Its name

impressed itself on the soft surfaces of her mind and she was forced to speak it aloud

just to expunge the horror of it.

“Spear…”

A distended maw of teeth and bone barbs grew from the head of the monstrosity.

Stygian flame, visible only to those with the curse of the witch-sight, wreathed the

abstract face and the black pits that were its eyes. In an instant, Perrig knew what had

made all those kills, what hands had delicately cut into Jaared Norte, Cirsun Latigue

and all the others who had perished at its inclination.

She backed away, her voice lost to her. More than anything, Perrig wanted to

cover her eyes and look away, find somewhere to hide her face so that she would not

be forced to see the Spear-thing; but there was nowhere for her to turn. Even if she

clawed the orbs from her sockets, her witch-sight would still remain, and the aura of

this monstrous creature would continue to smother it.

106

Horribly, she sensed that the killer wanted her to look upon it, with all the depth

of perception her psychic talents allowed. It projected a need for her to witness it, and

that desire drew her in like the pull of gravity from a dark sun.

Spear muttered to itself. When Perrig had touched the minds of other killers in

the past, she had always flinched at the awful joy with which they pursued their craft;

she did not see that here, however. Spear’s psyche was a pool of black ink,