The Trials of Trass Kathra

T
WILIGHT OF
K
ERBEROS

The
TRIALS

of
TRASS KATHRA

By Mike Wild

TWILIGHT
of
KERBEROS

G
ABRIELLA
D
E
Z
ANTEZ

The Light of Heaven

L
UCIUS
K
ANE

Shadowmage

Night's Haunting

Legacy's Price
(Coming in 2012)

K
ALI
H
OOPER

The Clockwork King of Orl

The Crucible of the Dragon King

Engines of the Apoclaypse

The Trials of Trass Kathra

S
ILUS
M
ORLADER

The Call of Kerberos

The Wrath of Kerberos

T
WILIGHT OF
K
ERBEROS

The Children of the Pantheon
(Coming in 2012)

An Abaddon Books
^TM
Publication

www.abaddonbooks.com

[email protected]

First published in 2011 by Abaddon Books
^TM
, Rebellion Intellectual Property Limited, Riverside House, Osney Mead, Oxford, OX2 0ES, UK.

Editor-in Chief: Jonathan Oliver

Desk Editor: David Moore

Cover Art: Mark Harrison

Design: Simon Parr & Luke Preece

Marketing and PR: Keith Richardson

Creative Director and CEO: Jason Kingsley

Chief Technical Officer: Chris Kingsley

Twilight of Kerberos
created by Matthew Sprange and Jonathan Oliver

Copyright © 2011 Rebellion. All rights reserved.

Twilight of Kerberos
^TM
, Abaddon Books and Abaddon Books logo are trademarks owned or used exclusively by Rebellion Intellectual Property Limited. The trademarks have been registered or protection sought in all member states of the European Union and other countries around the world. All right reserved.

ISBN (epub): 978-1-84997-337-3

ISBN (mobi): 978-1-84997-338-0

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

CHAPTER ONE

O
NE YEAR AFTER
Kali Hooper last laid eyes on Killiam Slowhand she came face to face with her lover once more. The reunion, if such it could be called, was brief; he a sketch on a stray handbill plastered to a storm-lashed steeple high above Scholten Cathedral, she a flailing, cursing figure sliding hopelessly down its slates in the direction of thin air and certain death.

Despite this, Kali couldn’t help but snatch up the sodden parchment and gaze on it curiously. The bill advertised a travelling carney and its main attraction, Slowhand. Except Slowhand was now ‘Thongar the Golden Archer!’ with the emphasis very much on the ‘thong’. The tiny posing pouch in which he was pictured hid little – which, okay, was quite a lot, she’d grant – but she’d seen those bits before. It was the burgeoning beer belly, sparkling body paint and peaked feathered cap that were new to her.

So it was that when she plunged off the steeple, her cry was a mix of bemusement, hilarity and desperation.

“Waha? Wahahaha! Wahaaarrrggghhh...”

The wind snatched away the handbill and Kali shut up. It wouldn’t do to alert the Faith with her noise – especially if that noise was a splat. She concentrated instead on finding a way to halt her fall, perhaps to make the violent night that had caused her to lose her footing in the first place work
for
rather than against her.

She was high enough, fortunately, to allow herself to simply drop and look for a second, and this she did, though unfortunately there seemed to be nothing more substantial nearby than the curtain of water pouring from the steeple, acting as a backdrop to her descent.

Then, lit by a sudden and powerful sheet of lightning, she made out a ramshackle trellis-work of iron behind the filthy liquid curtain, guttering meant to carry the ocean unleashed by the heavens which, like herself, had been overwhelmed by volume and unremitting strength. What rain the guttering did carry filled it beyond capacity and bubbled, foamed and spurted from every joint, threatening to break the protesting labyrinth of pipes and send a tangle of iron crashing into the courtyard far below.

Kali spotted one pipe ready to go and, twisting with a grunt in mid-air, snatched through the waterfall at the column of over-stressed iron. Already loose in its mooring, pulled further by her weight, its top half broke from the wall, a jet of filthy grey water erupting in her face. Another jet came from its disjoined gutter above, plastering her hair flat, and Kali flubbed her lips, spitting away the clinging strands. Dammit, she’d just had her hair done, too.

Jerking to manoeuvre the pipe, Kali clung to the roughly wrought metal as, with a groan, it bent further away from the steeple until it projected at the diagonal, then swung her weight around, forcing the metal to the side and rotating it back in against the wall. The stress on its lower half was now so much that it was starting to snap but that didn’t matter – if it did crash to the ground the Faith would think it a victim of the storm, and it had served its purpose anyway. Even as she had manoeuvred the pipe, Kali had already spotted where to leap next, and she threw herself through the air to grab a horizontal section some feet away.

Water splashing and beading coldly on her already chilled hands, Kali dangled there for a second, gasping, and watched the piping she had abandoned break away to tumble down the vertiginous side of the steeple tower. It turned end over end until it almost disappeared from sight and then bounced across the courtyard below with a series of barely audible clangs. It gone, she looked around her, regaining the orientation she had lost in her fall. Her sudden departure from her well-planned route across the rooftops had caused her to lose sight of her destination – the reason she had come to Scholten tonight – and it was a few seconds before she found it again. Then there, between annexes of the sprawling cathedral complex, she once more pinpointed her goal.

Perched high above her, atop a sheer wall dotted with maybe a hundred or more yellowed, candlelit windows beyond which berobed shadows roamed, the dark dome that was the domain of Brother Incera sat.