Infuriatingly, no one dared ask the question I could almost taste hanging over them all — the bunch of cowards. I sidered puppeteering one of them to ask it. Even without my telepathy, I could do that much just by manually trolling a human body with a swarm of invading strings of my eldritch flesh.

  As, the trolled person would know instantly, and I doubted I could mimic their entire demeanour — I would have to manually trol every single muscle fibre and nerve firing — without extensive practid access to their thoughts. Having a Bnk breathing down my neck was just so very … inve.

  There was a much easier option though: getting rid of the annoying Bnk.

  By that, I mean, make him sod off. I didn’t o kill anyone, I just needed him a good twenty metres away from me. After a few seds of sideration, I shrugged and decided to go with the first, stupid, idea that came to mind.

  A tendril thihan hair, invisible to the naked eyes snapped out and lunged into the unsuspeg Jurgen’s body. He didn’t eve, and it wouldn’t even leave a wouher, I just o poke a few ug on another bunch of receptors … aaaaaand done.

  Jurgen stiffened as I pulled back my tendril, then almost meically ambled out of the tent with only a mumbled apology. The poor thing robably mortified. I felt some pity for him, but oh well.

  Worst-case sario, he popped a blood vessel trying to take a shit that wasn’t there. Yep, that’s what I did. I made him feel like he was having the shits. Genius, I know. My non-violent problem-solving skills were a thing to be studied.

  Curiosity was burning in all of them, they were all just dying to know what the gem they had been w and fighting for did. I selected the person whose curiosity was least tempered by a healthy respect for an Inquisitor’s authority and a matg amount of fear for what said Inquisitht do if they poked their noses into her business: .

  That wasn’t to say he didn’t fear or respect the Inquisitor, just that he also knew a simple question wouldn’t get him in trouble. Not after all the two of them had been through together. It was simplicity itself to hat curiosity over the edge now that I could use my telepathy unimpeded.

  “Are we allowed to know what that oversized gem does?” asked with a quirked eyebrow.

  “I’m afraid not,” said Inquisitor Vail, her g veying equal parts admonishment and an unsaid apology. “Not with this little toy. Maximum secred absolute fidentiality on this one.”

  Iing. I mused, my mental tendrils tasting the unnaturally few surface thoughts slipping past the Inquisitor’s mental fortifications. The fact her mind was so ordered and so protected — well, by regur human standards — was curious by itself. I didn’t notiything simir with Thrace, though maybe I had been too distracted to do so back then.

  Now, do I push it now or do I just wait? I tapped my in thought as the group went bato discussing the logistics of them leaving. Apparently, the bea they would use to call the escape shuttle down was a finicky piece of equipment that would only work if pced up a mountaintop where nothing for a few hundred metres oher side was level with it. That appeared to be the cost of stealth. Regur Vox traffic would have been uionably caught by the ‘mysterious Xeno teology that took trol of the p’s unication systems’. Or so they think.

  I could front them now, tease what I want to know out of the Inquisitor. Or I could py with them some more …. I shook my head. I had shit to do. This had to be over with today, I couldn’t travel off to some far-off p, hiding away in the Inquisitor’s ship.

  “-ich is why we o hurry this up. We o be off-p yesterday. I’ve gohrough the databases and found no clue as to what fa or Xeno race the ones who’d wiped out the cultists here were from. What I do know though is that we ’t allow ao cim this … artifact … “

  She trailed off, her fiill pointing at the empty table where the artifact had once id with her eyes widening in panic. To her credit, she barely took a sed to issue her order.

  “Close down the camp!” Vail shouted, jolting all the soldiers into a but her words stopped them. “No one leave this tent. I don’t know who, but- “

  “There is no need for that,” I said aloud, my voice low and zy as I held the artifa my palm. When everyouro stare seargly at where they heard my voice from, with ’s face showing a sign of blossoming reition, I let my cloak drop. I swung the gem around on the lio it like a fiddle toy. “Your toy is still here, safe and hale.”

  “Put dowifad identify yourself!” the man I took to be the ander of the soldierly types in the room barked, a psma pistol levelled at me with all his seven men ient, following just a moment behind. ithing I knew, I was staring down seven open barrels and another few as Inquisitor Vail and to pulled out their ons.

  “Rude,” I murmured, making airely unnecessary grasping motion with my hand as I tore all of their ons out of their hands. My hand tightened into a fist and all ons crumpled into balls of junk. “Very rude ihough I guess I deserved that, sneaking into your camp and all.”

  My as painted a mix of horror aermination across their faces, with the prior finding its way onto ’s face predominantly. I saw reition in his eyes, and of course I did. I didn’t bother to ge my face since our st meeting.

  “Hi, Ciaphas.” I gave him a dainty wave with my fingers, sending an exaggeratedly flirty smile his way and giggled as his face went pale. Then I turned my gaze at the woman of the hour, Inquisitor Amberly Vail. “I find I’m running into your kind far too muy liking, Inquisitor. As, I suppose it was my fault this time … but in my defence, you had su iing toy with you. It seems it was worth putting a tracker on your boyfriend after all.”

  If a man ever wahe earth to swallow him up to end his misery, it was Ciaphas in that very moment as the Inquisitor sent a pierg stare his way. To her credit, she didn’t start questioning him or anything of the sort.

  “Who are you?” she asked, her owions almost perfectly hidden but I heard her rag heart thundering in her chest like it was trying to break out of her ribcage as clear as day.

  “Good question,” I mused, my masquerade of clothes copied from the locals shifting and melding until I was covered from the neck down in a battle-armour they would all be familiar with. I even added the same silvery figree Selene had on her own armour during the pwide annou. “The name I had given your pocket issar over there was Emilia, I suppose it’ll do for now.”

  The soldiers were calling for backup through some low frequency radio, but I didn’t bother doing more than send an amused gheir way. There was nothing in this encampment that was even just mildly threatening to me. Maybe the Inquisitor had some big no-no toys hidden away in her back pocket that would prove to be a bother, but I was watg her like a hawk for any such thing. If she made a move, I’d be a dozen kilometres away with a droaking my p a nanosed.

  It also helped that only she herself had some measure of trol over her mind. The rest, while in possession of a sturdy mind fed in hundreds of battles, were not so adept at terag telepathy. I’d be able to tell when they were about to move.

  Like the soldier behind me, who tried to tackle me to the ground. The soldier, who, unceremoniously dropped to the ground the momeook his first step towards me.

  “Naughty,” I mused, not even turning as I sent a disarming smile at the rest of them. “Don’t attack me please. It’s rude. I have no iion of harming any of you.”

  “What about him then?” Vail asked before the furious ander of the fallen man could, her voice mueasured than his would have been. In way of an ahe fallen soldier started sn like a saw a moment ter, gurgling a little with his fated in the muddy earth. I kicked him over to the side so he wouldn’t suffocate.

  “Taking a nap.” I shrugged. “Should help him calm down. It seems your other soldierly types are a bit agitated too, do they by ce also need calming afternoon nap?”

  “They might need a breather,” said Inquisitor Vail seargly, likely looking for some disapproval on my face. I had none, answering with a mild smile as I nodded. “That might be for the best. Though that would leave the rest of you aloh me.”

  “It would alert the rest of the camp of your presence,” Inquisitor Vail answered with nonce that barely seemed forced. Those Imperials really made their Inquisitors of steruff. A random, strange opped up in her secret camp, stole her fancy artifact, Psykered their ons into balls of junk than made a man fall asleep without as much as gng at him. Regur humans would either be running away in fear, would have broken down or would be shouting sweet nothings like ‘DIE HERETIC’ as they rushed at me with their fists. She did none of that, ag like we were having a genial versation. “There are hundreds of armed men and women out there, ready to e to our rescue.”

  “It’s adorable you think they would be of any help,” I said with a half-lidded smile that made shudder. I wiped it off my face a moment ter, snapping my fingers. With that, a round table with a handful of chairs around them appeared out of thin air, shog the people ient. “e and sit. I had just e to figure out what fun toy attracted an Inquisitor like you onto this far-off rock, but that doesn’t mean we ’t have a alk. I even have some tea for you, much better than that atrocious thing Ciaphas made me drink.”

  Why was I calling him by his given name? I don’t really know. But it was amusing to watch him jump every time I did, and how the Inquisitor’s lips twitched minutely in tandem with it.

  I sat down in a chair of my own, pg the artifact down oable and smiled genially at the Inquisitor and the few members of her inner circle arrayed around her.

  After a moment, Inquisitor Vail elegantly slid into the chair opposite to me after stealthily poking and prodding it, testing whether it was real. It seems someone had been pranked by an Illusionist ooo many times.

  The twig-like man who’d been standing in the back was o sit down with curiosity and eagerness burning in his eyes. Then, with visible relud a wistful gowards the fp of the tent where the soldiers were meically streaming out of the enclosed space, he sat down too. The st two people, a pair of assassins of some kind, a male and a female respectively, stood behind the Inquisitor. They eyed me, both of their eyes dark and searg, looking for weakness and their bodies coiled up like a spring. Unfortunately for them, their crumpled ons would be of little help, though both had some smaller sidearms and melee ons stashed around their bodies.

  “What do you want for returning that artifact?” Inquisitor Vail asked without preamble.

  “Its funs for one,” I said mildly. “Curiosity drove me to e here, but a healthy amount of paranoia never hurt anyone. With the way fate works, this artifact could be a on capable of killing me. You uionably have many more hidden away i vaults, but most of them would take time and soul-crushing bureaucracy to extract from some obtuse order of Space Marine Chapter’s vaults.”

  “Many things are capable of killing a human,” Vail said.

  “True,” I said, not eborating as I gave them a humorless smile. “I’ll answer a question of your own truthfully if you give me an ao my prior question. How does that sound?”

  Why do I always resort to this trading of questions when I’m iating? I wondered silently. Was it to make up for my shortings in a protiation? Because I knew I couldn’t really glean as much as others could from veiled small talk? Or was it just that I liked the simplicity of it? Maybe a bit of both. I’d need decades of experiend tut to catch up with people like Inquisitor Vail in diplomad duplicity. But I also liked being straightforward, or appearing like I was anyway.

  “Very well,” Inquisitor Vail said, noddiantly. “The artifact is supposedly capable of proteg the soul of those who wear and i with their own power.”

  “Fasating,” I mused, my eyes narrowing. What she’d said wasn’t a lie, not quite, but it stank of oher a lie by omission, or a half-lie. Curious. What is she hiding that’s worth lying in front of a Psyker who’d shown herself capable of as much as I had? Very curious indeed. “Ask your question.”

  P3t1