Kultus Read Free Page A

an elementary and requisite aspect of necromancy; any novice knew it.
    The encounter had been mercifully brief and Thaddeus was left in no doubt as to the importance of the liaison. Unfortunately, as with all things associated with the demonic, he had been given the most cryptic of clues as to the nature of his task.
    Procure the Key for us , Rankpuddle had said, its dog-like muzzle forming the words perfectly. As it spoke its mouth seemed strange, the bestial jaws working just as a man’s would. Blaklok didn’t know whether the key in question was meant for the imp or for someone else, for the creature always spoke about itself in the third person, and even then not very plainly. A deluge is coming that must be stopped continued the imp, the Key is the way . Of course Thaddeus had asked which key in particular, to which the answer had been, look to the dead . Then, with a flash of blinding light and a whiff of sulphur, the foul creature was gone.
    Look to the dead , Blaklok thought. Well, that could mean anything. If the damnable beast demanded his aid then why not just ask for it? Why all the puzzles?
    Thaddeus sat himself in the small wooden chair that had been pushed to the room’s edge. The shaking in his hands had all but left him now and even the bilious feeling in his gut was beginning to subside.
    A sudden rapping at the door set his heart racing once more.
    ‘Mr Blaklok?’ It was Mrs Fotheringay, his landlady. Trust her to pick now of all occasions to bother him. ‘Is everything all right in there? I heard a terrible loud bang earlier on. And next door is complaining of a peculiar smell.’
    Thaddeus opened his mouth to give his usual gruff reply, when he noticed something on the floor. More flies had rushed to join their fellows around the rat, and something black and hairy had crawled from beneath the floorboards to investigate the tiny body. But it was not the carousing of insects that had caught Blaklok’s attention. He moved from the chair, crawling on all fours to where the carcass lay, its entrails strewn in what he had originally believed a haphazard manner.
    Look to the dead , he thought again with a smile. The rat’s innards spelled out a word, the slimy guts spread across the floorboards in an elegant script. Chronicle, they said, bold as brass.
    Thaddeus jumped to his feet, feeling the sudden elation of triumph. Mrs Fotheringay bashed on the door once more, just as he wrenched it open. Her sullen expression, the one she bore most often as though she had just stood in dog shit, dropped from her face. Her eyes popped open at the sight of Blaklok bearing down on her, stripped to the waist, tattoos plain to see on his muscular frame, face of thunder, covered in sweat and surrounded by a queer effluvium.
    ‘I was only–’ she managed to say, before Thaddeus grasped the newspaper that sat in the crook of her arm.
    He held it up before her face and nodded his thanks, his eyes still burning in their deep sockets. She flashed him a bewildered smile as he slammed the door in her face.
    Quickly he laid the newspaper out on the bare floorboards. The Chronicle was the most popular broadsheet in the Manufactory. In fact it was the only broadsheet in the Manufactory, its stories bearing a particular bias towards the Noble Houses that ran the city and the Sancrarium, the papacy to which they all paid a cursory tribute. In the metropolis that was the Manufactory, journalism was as functional a vocation as street sweeping or lamplighting. There was nothing that passed for freedom of the press, but right now Blaklok didn’t give a damn – he only wanted information.
    The cover bore several headlines, and Blaklok was quick to rule them out as he scanned the crisp paper. A murder in the Cistern, the betrothal of two unexceptional nobles, a tower in the Spires finally completed. All trivial.
    Then he saw it; Key of Lunos on Display .
    A smile slowly crept across Blaklok’s face. That must be it! Though he had