Blood Reaver by Aaron Dembski_Bowden

Author:Aaron Dembski_Bowden [Dembski_Bowden, Aaron]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Warhammer 40K
Published: 2011-05-09T07:00:00+00:00

Octavia clutched her jacket close as she left the communal ablution chamber. Several of the mortal crew waited in the corridor, kept out by her armed attendants, waiting their turn for the recharged cleansing racks. For obvious reasons, she had to bathe alone. Even though the crew knew the reasons, it seemed it only added to their dislike of her.

Most averted their eyes when Octavia came into the corridor. Several made superstitious motions to ward off evil, which she found bizarre, given where these people lived. Quietly, she asked two of her attendants to recover Telemach’s body from the chamber and dispose of it however they wished.

Nostraman mutterings followed her as she walked away. In a solitary life, she’d never felt as lonely. At least on the Maiden of the Stars the crew hadn’t hated her. Feared her, certainly, for fear in a Navigator’s presence was a legacy of her bloodline as undeniable as the subspecies’ third eye. But here, it was different. They loathed her. Even the ship despised her.

Hound loped along at her heels. For a while, they walked in silence. She didn’t care where she was going.

“You smell very female now,” Hound said unhelpfully. She didn’t ask what it meant. It probably meant nothing at all—just another of his blindingly obvious perceptions.

“I don’t think I want to live like this anymore,” she said over his head, staring at the walls as she walked.

“No choice, mistress. No other way to live.”

Throne, her eye ached. Beneath the bandana, an abrasive itch was steadily growing angrier. It took supreme effort not to claw at the skin around the closed eye, soothing the rawness with her fingernails.

Octavia walked on, taking lefts and rights at random. She was prepared to concede that she dwelled in self-pity, but she felt it was an indulgence she’d earned lately.

In the distance, she heard a faint shriek—it sounded female, though it cut off too quickly to be certain. Hammers, or something like them, crashed in dull industrial rhythm somewhere nearby, muted by the dense metal walls.

Her eye gave another dizzying throb. The pain was making her nauseous now.

“Hound?” She stopped walking.

“Yes, mistress.”

“Close your ey… Never mind.”

“Yes, mistress.” He paused in his hitched stride, looking around as Octavia removed her bandana. The skin of her forehead was sticky with sweat, the flesh almost burning to the touch. Blowing upwards did nothing but flutter a few wet locks of hair and make her feel foolish. It certainly didn’t cool her down.

Sweat dripped onto her nose. She wiped it, catching sight of a dark smear on her fingers.

“Throne of the God-Emperor,” she swore, looking down at her hands. Hound shuddered at the curse.

“Mistress?”

“My eye,” she said, wiping her hands on her jacket. “My eye is bleeding.” The hammering clanged louder as her words hovered in the air between them.

Touching her forehead made her wince, but she daubed the bandana over the sore flesh. Her eye wasn’t bleeding, exactly. It was crying. The blood drops were its tears.

“Where are we?” she asked, her voice shaking as her breath misted before her face.

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