XXVI
+Tearlach of Rosenstein city+
Note: This
chapter is written from the perspective of Naomi Hadranoh.
The new receptionist, a small girl maybe 25
years old with curled yellow hair and long pointy nose, didn’t know a thing.
She was pathetic.
“Where is that older male receptionist?
Fergus… something, I don’t know, I need him”, I shouted to the receptionist who
just shook her head.
“I don’t know! I don’t, no one does, he has
just disappeared. He should have started his shift three hours ago. Okay. I don’t know”, the girl receptionist
explained.
Truth was, nonetheless, when you work in
mafia, you find out that no one, ever, never gets missing. Eventually people are
found.
And Fergus is in debt to me.
Without me he would never have caught that
off-worlder. Tearlach Rosenstein, that must be a joke. I have never met a
person with that name because people don’t have that name, it is such a bad
bedtime story for children that no parent ever wants to name their children as
Tearlach. And there isn’t a single family on the planet that has Rosenstein as
their surname.
What a joke.
I turned on my heels and faced a man with
venomously mean look on his face.
“You are coming with me”, he said and threw
his room keyes to the receptionist. With tight grip of my arm he started to
drag me behind him.
Tearlach?
Joke-man returned?
“If you drag me out of this building I’m going
to scream and you’ll be sure to have cops behind you!” I hissed to the silent,
grim-faced man. Tearlach turned to me and pulled me so close to him I could
smell the menthol of the toothpaste he had used and gentle manly odour of his
cologne. I could also feel the barrel of his gun pressed to my belly.
“And if you dare to scream I’ll blow your head
off and you’ll be sure I won’t be here to wait the cops”, he whispered in my
ear pressing his lips right next to my ear and making my skin go goosebumbs.
This Tearlach, if it was his real name in a
first place, demanded me to show to him a way to a car renting service. He
rented a medium size off-road car with inbuild trailer and demanded a map of
the area.
“Can you drive a car”, he asked of me. I tried
to play ignorant but he pressed his pistol against my forehead and asked again.
“Can you drive a car?”
“Yes. I’m…” I started but he interrupted me.
“I don’t care. You drive”, he said and threw
the keyes to me and walked around the car to the right side of the off-road and
stepped in.
He pulled the safety belt around him and
locked it.
I saw my chance.
I threw the keys away and started to run out
of the carage where the off-road was parked for us.
I got the first step. Great leap over some
scrap metal pipes and toolbox gave me speed to start running to the carage
door.
But on my third step I felt a curious feeling
on the bottom of my belly. Gently, my running stopped and I merely floated
towards to the ground. My legs were so slow that they looked like taken out of
some game with ‘bullet time’. I raised my hands in front of my face to prevent
the eventual collision with a floor. Instead, I started to hover backwards,
towards the car. The situation was so stunningly absurd and confusing I cannot
really even describe it well. I felt a strong presence of another being and
like I was lifted with extreme care, slowly and jealously carefully in the car
and then seated down in front of the wheel.
I looked to Tearlach.
In the Black Coven, mafia’s hideout, we had
had some rogue psykers. From time to time they appear even on planets like
Velgram’s world. There I had seen a telekines psyker. It was then quite funny.
Amazing I would say. We threw stuff at him until he was too tired to block
anything and then strapped him with anti-psyker bounds and sold him.
Now this wasn’t even a bit as funny as it had
been then.
I looked to Tearlach who just had clicked the
safety belt around me.
“What are you?” I asked. My voice was frail,
it shivered like a leaf in the wind. I had to swallow to get something out of
my mouth in the first place.
Tearlach looked to me. His eyes were deep
green. I hadn’t even noticed how green they were when I had met him last time.
They were like an ancient forest after rain. The colour faded into deep, dark
green and then brightened up to an overhelming turquoise or cyan all around his
eyes, even when he didn’t move a bit. They were like a stars in the night sky.
In the very greeny sky.
“I’m Tearlach Rosenstein, I believe that that
is enough information for you for now”, he answered. Rudely.
A second later the keys hovered on my hand and
the open door slammed shut.
“Drive, if you may”, Tearlach said and pressed
his head to the neckrest in his seat.
I pushed the keys in and turned the car on,
pressed the pedal and drove out of the carage.
“Where are we going?” I asked and glanced
Tearlach who opened his eyes and turned to me.
“To the Rosenstein city, if you may.”
So I drove.
After two hours on an old asfalt road leading
to abandoned city we stopped to take a leak.
Apparently to remind me that I was a hostage,
or something like that, Tearlach had left his laspistol on the car’s dashboard.
Just like that. He had slept all the way down here and the pistol had just been
on the dashboard. Like he was testing me. I could just reach it and blow the shit
out of him.
But it scared me. I was afraid of him. What
kind of guy carries a laspistol with him all the time? And who the fuck even
has a guard-issue laspistol with a caliber as wide as my wrist?
Decluding the laspistol and the fact he was a
psyker, there was actually nothing prominent about him. He was neither tall nor
short. Slim-build, thin actually, with drowsy eyes and messy hair. His clothes
were new, I could see it from the colour, but already trashed and ripped from
the lapels. He wore no eyeglasses, no bionics, at least none to be seen, no
charms or amulets or medallions, no jewelry at all. Only things that caught my
eye were a bone flute that he held in his hands all the time and a data-slate
that carried, I saw, mark of the Inquisition. I recognized the insignia as he
streched his hands and it was revealed underneath his sleeves. It was custom
made, propably manufactured in Helíca or An Romos systems judging by the
overall shape and the size of the memorycard that was pludged in from the rear.
I gulped heavily.
“Are you from the Inquisition?” I asked when
we jumped back in the car. As Tearlach rose on his seat I saw that he limped
his left leg and was, propably instictively, careful about it.
“Was”, he answered bluntly.
I turned the car on and started to drive
again.
“I thought that a job in Inquisition lasts
your lifetime”, I continued. The silence was making me crazy and a bit
small-talk wouldn’t harm anyone. Maybe I’ll get some information out of him in
the process.
“You can talk but don’t expect that I would
answer”, he answered. Why was he so damn stubborn?
“Where are you from?” I asked.
“I told you, from Lothringen Primus”, he
answered but I knew he lied. We had had contact in Lothringen Primus and they
spoke way differently. This Tearlach’s speech didn’t actually sound like he had
lived on any planet at all. It was like his own dialect.
“You aren’t speaking the truth”, I said which
made him turn his head to me. I could see from the corner of my eye that he was
judging me with his eyes. I also, strangely, had a feeling similar to a sudden
headache that faded away as soon as it had occurred.
“True. I’m from here”, he said.
I was sure he wasn’t from the Velgram’s world.
He didn’t have any sign of correct dialect or way of speech. He spoke like he
had lived with nobles or… or maybe with church. Inquisition perhaps?
“No, you are not, you speak so differently.”
He bursted in laugh.
“I was born on Velgram’s world, that doesn’t
mean I had lived my life here. I had lived on Helíca-2, An Romos IV and visited
almost every planet in Iox sector. It might be I don’t speak like Velgram’s
worlders, but I was born here”, he laughed. “If you think you can out think me,
go ahead, try me!”
What a mocking bastard. I’d shove
that laspistol up in his arse when I get the chance.
“From where have you bought that gun?” I asked
and pointed the laspistol that trembled on the dashboard as I drove on a
weathered and broken road.
“What you know about that gun?” he asked.
“You can’t answer with an answer!”
“Just answer my question and I’ll answer
yours”, he said and looked to me and started to unassemble the gun.
I checked the parts of unassembled gun before
answering.
“I think that is custom made.”
“Safe answer, and correct, but only thing here
what is custom made, is the grip and apparently the muzzle have been changed”,
he answered and raised his right eyebrow. “Anything else?”
“I think it is old, at least couple hundred
years old, most likely guard-issue weapon given to some specialist trooper…”
“Storm trooper perhaps?” he asked.
“Yes, maybe even a storm trooper but I highly
doubt that that was given to some veteran or guerilla fighter.”
Tearlach looked the parts thoughtfully.
“Yes… you might be right”, he said.
“You don’t know the gun’s origins yourself?”
Tearlach gave me spiteful smile.
“Hell no! I got it from Munoxyaa, who had
achieved it by capturing some guard squad”, he looked me smiling and watched
the gun’s grip he held in his hand. “But now you said it, you might be right,
it seems like a handgun given to the patrol’s of Planet of Phantoms. Sometimes,
not usually, but sometimes yes… don’t know the model’s name though.”
He assembled the gun back and left it on the
dashboard again. He even pushed the magazine in and loaded it.
Why did he know someone who had captured a
guard squad? Munoxyaa… there was a strange name. Before I asked he answered me.
“I’ll explain the Munoxyaa case later, don’t
worry about that.”
And then there was silence again.
We drove six hours in total. It had already
became dark when the broken road led us in the city.
Rosenstein city’s first buildings were
collapsed and in ruins. You could see that they were burned in some point of
their history but not much was left of any building. Only some high buttresses
were standing still and quiet against the darkening sky.
Rosenstein city was built in a narrow valley
that limited the city’s size to something between one and three kilometres
wide. Though the long valley was built from the northern end to the southern so
it was almost ten kilometres long in total. It had been a big city once. You
could see all the broken and burned glass here and there on pavements, walkways
and roads. Collapsed buildings had left the overwalks hanging on top of their
pillars lonely and unconnected. There were bronze statues of angels and
apparently some Imperial saints but their faces had been torn off or faded by
rain and wind that had wildly raged here for forty years.
After the incident none had came here.
Okay, that wasn’t really true. I had visited
this city once when me and some other mafia’s bountyhunters tracked one snitch
here. But we didn’t sleep here or make any kind of camp. We just came here,
grabbed the snitch and went back home. Some money owing lowlifes are known to
inhabitate this forsaken city. Otherwise this was like some kind of Forbidden City. No one came here
voluntarily.
Except Tearlach, apparently.
He pointed me to drive next to a cathedral
that still stood in the middle of the city. Half of its roof had collapsed. Propably
during the incident as it otherwise looked to be in fairly good shape.
I turned the car off after I had parked it in
the corner of that cathedral and turned to Tearlach.
“What in the name of Throne are we doing in
this god-forsaken city?”
He rubbed his stubble.
“Hide, for a while at least.”
“For how long exactly?”
“It depends on you… and propably on me too…
For some time. I don’t really know better now”, he answered and unfastened his
seatbelt. “What I do know is that we need to make a doll now.”
“A doll?”
“Well… yes, not right away, it can wait… now I
think we should sleep”, he said and opened his hand in front of him. The car
keys plunged themselves out of the ignition and flowed on his open palm. As
they lied on his palm the key itself bend until it was absolutely no use at
all. Then he closed his hand and put the keys inside of his coat.
“I’ll straighten these when I’m ready to go
back so if you feel like walking, be my guest”, he said and gave one malicious
smile to me.
“Fuck you! Who the fuck you think you are?” I
shouted to him. I was so angry. How could this… Tearlach just come and kidnap me? Just like that!
But he gazed me and asked me a question.
“You remember that story you told about
Rosenstein city back in front of the Velgram D’Ark’s statue?”
I nodded, too angry to say anything.
“I am that little boy who was found in the ruins
of Rosenstein city. I am Tearlach of Rosenstein city”, and then, he laughed.
