Dan Abnett - Pariah: Ravenor vs Eisenhorn

In which I make myself known

This, I think, will be my life story, and it will start here. You will not learn much from me, or you will learn everything. I have not yet decided which.

I know one thing, and that is that my life has too many stories within it. It is made out of stories, like a rope is wound from smaller strands, or a mosaic is made of little coloured tiles. I am made of stories. I must leave many of them out, otherwise the one that matters will not make a bit of sense. Some day, if I am alive, I might be persuaded to tell some of the stories I have omitted. But they are lies and fabulations and, anyway, I do not expect to live.

My familys name was Bequin, and this is the name I have always used when I am being myself. I was given to understand that proof of this heritage could be found in a marshland cemetery, for my family was a marshland family, but I never thought to check this, or visit the gravestone. This, I realise, makes me seem foolishly trusting. I am not. Besides, if I had seized, one day, upon the notion of taking a holloway down to Toilgate and entering the marsh beyond, I am sure that a gravestone would have been waiting for me in the waterlogged plot when I arrived, flecked with the lichen of ages though it had not stood there the previous sunset.

It is said that I am very like my mother. That I was raised an orphan means that I cannot corroborate this either.

My status as an orphan explains my situation. I was a ward of the city from a very young age, brought to the Scholam Orbus on Highgate Hill and raised there, and then transferred on my twelfth birthday to the Maze Undue, whose rambling accommodations adjoined the scholam. This was due to my selection as a promising candidate. Most of the scholams wards left the school and went down to the city when they turned twelve and were legally old enough to work. Promising candidates, one or two every few years, were transferred to the Maze Undue. I had, therefore, lived all of the life I could remember there on the hill, in one leaky, drafty building, or the other backing onto it.

My name is Beta Bequin. The forename is an affectionate contraction of my full name, Alizebeth , and not an uncial label. It is said aloud with a long vowel as in Bay-tar , not as Beater or Better .

I was found wandering in the marsh as a very young child by a kindly stranger, and upon investigation it was revealed that my mother had passed away of a distemper. The air of the marshes is noisome, and can afflict the lungs.

If the city is not familiar to you, then let me tell you something about it. The marshes I spoke of are to the south, far to the south, beyond the crumbling bulk of Toilgate where the workers once passed to and from the shipyards. This was in the olden times. Sister Bismillah told me about it when I was a girl. By the time I lived there the shipyards were derelict, just rockcrete sheds of immense size standing at intervals along the old river slipway, and the lands had been partly reclaimed, or conquered, by the water, turning them into a grey and misty flatness of wet trees, and low, impoverished dwellings. To the west of the city, past Highgate, lay the mountains, which were only ever referred to as the Mountains, and to the north-east, beyond the grim structure of Coalgate, lay the emptied space, the great Sunderland, whose grey dusts, I was told, eventually give way to the scorched harrat of the Crimson Desert.

The city is called Queen Mab. It is in the prefecture of Hercula, in the south part of the world, which is named Sancour, which itself is in the subsector of Angelus. Queen Mab was once very mighty and important, the mightiest city in the world, and its splendid towers and conspicuous gates were the envy of all other cities in the world, and on many other worlds besides. War made it mighty. But the war ended, and Queen Mab was left spent and exhausted. For as long as I have known it, and far longer than that besides, the city has been in its dotage. It is forever ailing and weak; it is worn out and withering. Many parts of it are crumbling, and there are some parts that are so decayed that no one dares visit them for fear of dislodging a wall or a ragged roof with no more force than the sound of footsteps. The city has always been an old place, with damp around its feet and dust in its mouth and a cold wind off the Mountains at its shoulder. From my early childhood, I rose up through it. Sister Bismillah often said I floated up, from the lowest, wettest part, all the way to Highgate Hill. I remarked to her that this makes me a strong swimmer.

She suggested this simply makes me familiar with the function of metaphor.

When I was twelve, and not one day more, I entered the Maze Undue, and began my private instruction by the fourth, unspoken branch of the worshipful Ordos. I was selected for this because of certain aspects of my humour, which Mentor Saur refers to as my temper .

I entered the Maze Undue, and the whole city of Queen Mab became my classroom.