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“Hey, Butcher. I've got a question for you.”
The Rogue Trader's voice drawled out from behind the high backed armchair, cheerful and bit slurred from the amasec she was most certainly too many cups into. Heinrix had hoped to make it through the wardroom without alerting her but clearly she was not as lost in her alcohol haze as she seemed. Her claims that the augments that reconstructed much of the right side of her skull let her hear ‘the flies nibbling on a grox's asshole’ weren’t all idle boasting. The thought of simply ignoring her was appealing; there was no conversation worth having with the woman when she was like this.
Creaking leather and the muffled thud of boots hitting plush carpet as Philomena von Valancius rose to her feet put that thought to rest. Heinrix straightened his back and squared his shoulders. When he turned to face Philomena his expression was placid and coolly polite.
“Lord Captain,” he nodded.
If Philomena heard the greeting she did not acknowledge it. She made her way over on heavy unsteady steps. She came to a stop in front of Heinrix and shoved her hands in the pockets of her oversized officer's coat. Though he was no more than an inch or so taller she strained to peer up at him, leaning back as she did as if he were some giant towering over her. In her mind, now, perhaps he was. A glassiness in her good eye suggested she'd been indulging in more than the drink. She'd been doing so more and more since Commorragh. Every day new whispers swept through the officers’ deck: rumors about new fights she'd picked and where she'd last been found, drooling and unconscious; debates on the weight of noble blood against lowborn upbringing.
A problem, for sure, but not his.
“A question…” Philomena repeated. Boneless, like a worn out rag doll, she flopped forward at the waist and jabbed her index finger at his chest. She jabbed again. The third time Heinrix reached up to grab her wrist and she jerked back, clutched her hand to her breast as if she'd been struck.
“Listen. I just want to ask,” she whined. A familiar, near imperceptible, tremor laced her voice. Fear, but she was not retreating. “It's really bothering me, yeah? Not knowing. So I'm here, you're here, I gotta ask. Are you doing it on purpose?”
“I’m afraid you’ll have to be more specific.”
Irritation furrowed Heinrix’s brow. He made no attempt to hide it. Either she wouldn’t notice or, as was his hope, she would and that would be enough to break her resolve. ‘It’ could be nearly anything. His personal failings and slights against the Rogue Trader, real and imagined, were numerous as she was nothing short of eager to remind him. Convenient as it was to have ready access to her plans and her people it confounded him that she had not removed him from her retinue the moment the Lord Inquisitor graciously extended that olive branch.
She stood tall that evening on Dargonus, confident. She carried herself with the haughty arrogance befitting not a Rogue Trader but the thug who’d ground the outer edge of the Calixis Sector beneath her heel. A compelling threat display marred only by a tremble in her right calf. A prey animal ready to bolt.
“How kind. You’ll let me be? Just like that?” A poisonous smile curled on Philomena’s lips. “No, I think you’ve made your play clear. If it pleases your Lordship, I’d rather keep your bitch where I can see it.”
Something of the woman from that night clawed her way into the mouth of the obscura-addled drunk of today. Her next words were as venomous as they were playful. “Specific! Fine, I’ll put it plain. Tell me, Interrogator: are you acting like a two-penny whore on purpose?”
Philomena’s voice was no louder than normal conversation volume but it boomed off the walls as if she were shouting. The question hung in the air, cradled in awkward silence that dragged on for agonizing seconds before Heinrix finally broke it with the only response he could muster.
“...Excuse me?”
“Playing coy or are you truly that stupid?” Her face twisted into an ugly toothy grimace. “The drukhari. It’s disgusting to watch, don’t try to tell me you don’t know what you’re doing.”
That was not the answer Heinrix expected. The shock of it was the only thing that stopped him from lashing out. The moment it took to process what she had said was the moment he needed to compose himself. He clasped his hands behind his back, squeezing them hard enough the bones ached and crunched. Better a broken finger than dashing his fist across the Lord Captain's already ruined face. He exhaled slowly; breath escaped from his lips in white wispy vapors.
Philomena stepped back. Frost glittered on the carpet and crunched beneath her boots. She was laughing, a rasping humorless bark. “Hit a little close, did it?”
“It did not,” he spat with more heat than he intended. “I understand her Ladyship is…compromised but I would advise against making any further unfounded blasphemous accusations. That you allow the creature to live and hunt freely on your ship is already a crime beyond forgiveness.”
“Boil my blood about it.”
He could. He wanted to, shameful though it was to admit even in the shuttered confines of his own mind. Shameful not for the desire to rain the righteous justice that was every heretic's due but for the fact he had allowed her to anger him. Crude words and vile allegations were nothing new from the honorable Lord Captain; nor were they as creative and biting as she believed them to be. But anger came dangerously easy these days.
The threads that held a fragile peace together aboard the Rogue Trader's vessel were wound to their breaking point, pulled taut and frayed at the heart — and Philomena von Valancius, in dereliction of her duties to the Throne and Humanity, blundered through them heedless of the filaments that snapped beneath her careless tread. The monster she’d released upon her crew that scuttled through the bowels of the Daring Destiny was but another symptom.
In his last report to the Lord Inquisitor Heinrix dared to include a request to be relieved from duty and recalled to his mentor's side. The Lord Inquisitor's response came that same day, in the hands of a trembling astropath who knew all too well the truth of the old adage about shooting messengers. He did not shoot her. He was calm as he unfurled the scroll she left with him. He was composed as his eyes darted over the words therein. So calm and composed he startled himself when his cup of recaf froze and shattered.
Categorically denied.
It didn't make sense. Nothing that had happened since their return to realspace made sense.
It took several slow deep breaths but, gradually, the unnatural chill of the warp receded. The temperature rose. Philomena watched Heinrix through her squinted eye and nodded, like some suspicion of hers had been confirmed.
“You know what I've realized,” she mumbled, talking as much to herself as to him. “The thing about drukhari? They can't help it. Like animals, the things they do. It's their nature, yeah? Like blaming a dog for shitting in the grass.”
“I'm sure your revelation comes as a great comfort to your subjects.”
She flinched, and for the first time since their confrontation began she looked away. Her gaze darted to the wall, then the floor. Anywhere but his face. She was breaking, finally.
“It's under control,” she muttered. “And that's not…that’s not the point. Not my point at all. My point! Is that the drukhari, he is what he is. He can't change that but I – we're supposed to be better. A damned shining beacon of righteousness lighting up the heavens. A beast does what it does because it can't know any better but you? You…you do those things for fun. Hey!”
Words tumbled out of Philomena, faster and louder with each one until she was all but shouting. Her babbling reached a frantic pitch that reminded Heinrix of Mistress Tlass caught in the throes of one of her prophecies. A desperate woman with everything and nothing to say.
There was plenty he could say. About her. About ‘those things’ and how they filled her blood-soaked dossier. Cruelties inflicted not in service to humanity but in pursuit of profit and power. About how still she believed herself a victim, as all heretics did when it came time to pay their due. Something stopped him. She was looking at him again. The fog seemed to have lifted from her eye; in its place was something sharp and searching.
“I could have left you there, you know. In your little pod. I could have. I thought about it.” Her voice was soft now; the type of soft Heinrix had to strain to hear. The type of soft that belonged to chapels and vox-confessional booths. “I thought, ‘what if it was me in there with this bastard staring down, passing judgement.’ I really…really thought about it…”
A kind of peace seemed to settle over the Rogue Trader as she trailed off. Tension seemed to ease from her shoulders. She swayed slightly on her feet, opened her mouth as though she intended to speak, and doubled over and vomited.
It was a blessing there was no one else around to hear Heinrix’s yelp – for their continued good health as much as his dignity. He stumbled back, cursing, but not quickly enough to stop bile from splattering over his boots. Philomena didn’t care or, more likely, didn’t notice. She was lowering herself to the floor. Pathetic little whimpers came from her throat as she curled up in the puddle of her own sick. She pulled her knees tightly to her chest and pressed her forehead into the carpet. She was saying something again. Heinrix didn’t care to hear it.
It would be so easy to kick her.
He was, at least, spared from having to dignify her last outburst with a response. He dragged the toes of his boots over the carpet, trying to wipe off as much of the mess as he could. Satisfied, he turned and left. He made it to the door, hand on the access panel, before he stopped. Behind him, Philomena was silent. Passed out, finally. There was an uncomfortable tightness in his chest. He tapped a finger against the side of the panel, considering. Then he made a decision.
Philomena was sprawled on her stomach when Heinrix knelt beside her. A dangerous position. He wrapped one arm around her shoulders, the other around her waist, and hauled her onto her side. She was heavy, the parts of her that weren’t iron and plasteel corded with muscle, but he adjusted her easily enough. Tucking a hand under her head, bending her knee. She would be spared a degrading death by drowning in her own vomit. Probably.
Someone would find her. Her cold trader paramour, if she was lucky. Her seneschal, if she wasn’t. Possibly her pet drukhari, but Heinrix doubted it; he preferred to stalk to the lower decks.
The tightness in his chest did not go away. Not when the door to the wardroom whooshed shut behind him. Not when he returned to his quarters or when he awoke the next morning. Not when the astropath approached him again with a new message, this time from someone wholly unexpected.
He paid it no mind.