What connected us? Who connected us? The obvious name was Quixos, but that led nowhere. I had eliminated Quixos myself.
I ran through the list of worlds again, trying to discern a link.
One of the planets named on the list was Quenthus Eight.
That name snagged me like a protruding claw. Quenthus Eight. A margin world. I had never been there. But I'd once been told about it.
Running on instinct, I cross-checked Quenthus Eight with the vast list of worlds on which Tarray or Tari was a registered surname. Aemos had already cross-referenced the lists of worlds using 'khanjar' with worlds owning the surname 'Tarray', and had come up with seven hundred possibles. Now I was able to add sense to one of them.
There it was. 'Khanjar' was the word for a war knife on Quenthus Eight, and Tarray was a clan name from that world. Nearly three hundred and fifty years before, one of the most vile sociopaths in the Imperium had started his career on Quenthus Eight. Maria Tarray's reported claims to have been born on Gudran had been discounted by Aemos, who had checked the census and found no sign of the name.
He hadn't gone back far enough. He hadn't gone back three and a half hundred years. I did, and found that Tarry had been a peasant name on Gudran until that time. The family tree ended right there.
I knew who it was. I knew who my enemy was.
THIRTEEN
Locastre.
Full stop.
End of the line.
We arrived at Locastre over an hour behind schedule. Unseasonal blizzards had swept up from the east into the Uttes, and the express had been forced to reduce speed to a crawl. On steep gradients through the passes, there was a danger of back-slip, and we could feel the frequent jerks as the car bogies hunted over the ice-caked rails. There was a ten minute stop on a straight section on the west of Utte Major as the train's engineer gangs got out and winched the locomotive's nose plough into place. The blizzard was around us then and everything outside the windows was a colourless swirl.
I went down to the end of the car and peered out through the van windows. Black blobs were moving in the white haze, some lit by fizzling flares of green and red. I felt several jolts and metallic clunks shiver through the deck beneath me.
The intercar tannoy softly informed us that we would be on our way soon, reassured us that the weather was no hazard, and soothed us with the news that complimentary hot punch was now being served in the dining salon. Unnecessarily muffled in furs or expensive mountainwear, other passengers came to peer out of the mush-flecked ports, grumbling and what if-ing.