Extracts from Pariah.

This thread revolves around the soon to be released book 'Pariah' by Dan Abnett.

Black Library wrote:

Volume One of the Bequin Trilogy

In the city of Queen Mab, nothing is quite as it seems. Pariah, spy and Inquisitorial agent, Alizebeth Bequin is all of these things and yet none of them. An enigma, even to herself, she is caught between Inquisitors Gregor Eisenhorn and Gideon Ravenor, former allies now enemies who are playing a shadow game against a mysterious and deadly foe. Coveted by the Archenemy, pursued by the Inquisition, Bequin becomes embroiled in a dark plot of which she knows not her role or purpose. Helped by a disparate group of allies, she must unravel the secrets of her life and past if she is to survive a coming battle in which the line between friends and foes is fatally blurred.

This is the teaser that the Black Library released.

Black Library wrote:

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 family’s 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 scholam’s 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.

Also, this is an extract from the Black Library catalogue, for those of you who can't wait to read the book.

Black Library Catalogue wrote:

I heard the crack, the crack of metal on flesh, the sound of an axe smacking a ripe tuber. Saur's head was snapped aside, his body rotating after it. Blood flew. It was in his dirty white hair. He crashed backwards into the railings of the upper ring, and knocked over a spit bucket. He half-fell, yet somehow kept his feet, but he was done. The stranger was following in, the salinter going for the throat while the guard was dropped.
You have to remember the speed. You have to appreciate, as I tell you this, that virtually no time at all had passed since I first entered the room and saw them fighting. Three, four seconds, enough time for them to trade two dozen blows. I had come in with just enough time to grasp the basic situation and see Saur fall.
I never liked Thaddeus Saur. It's safe to say my feelings towards the cruel bastard were stronger and more negative than that.
But he was of the Maze Undue, and so was I, and this could not be permitted.

I started forward. I shouted out a great cry, and snatched a buckler from the pegs. My cuff was turned to dead, so the force of my bluntness came with me and my shout.
It can be like a slap to have a pariah come at you, aggressive, un-limited. To even a non sensitive, a regular human, the psykanic null of a blank mind be disturbing, if only fleetingly.
He recoiled. The stranger recoiled. It was enough of a surprise to stop him cutting out Saur's throat. My interruption wasn't going to stop there. I hurled the buckler like a discus.
The small, circular shield missed him, but he was obliged to duck. Saur was far from finished. He kicked out, savagely, and caught the stranger on the inside of his thigh with his heel, throwing the man sideways, clumsily.

The stranger landed, hands on the canvas, but was ready as Saur propelled himself forward and kicked the mentor's legs away. Saur slammed onto his back.
And I was, all this time, still running at him. I turned the run into a flying kick.
He rolled under me, flat to the floor, and sprung up as I landed and turned.
I think he wanted to say something to me, but he didn't know what. Perhaps he wanted to tell me to flee, to back away from a fight I had no part in, but he couldn't. If he wanted Saur dead, he had to kill me too, or the whole house would come down on his head.

I could sense his conflict. Unarmed as I was, I drove at him, using his reluctance against him. Fighting Saur was one thing, but he didn't want to engage a young woman. His response was half-hearted. He tried to shove me away. He tried to spare me his blade, though it was still in his hand. I think he hoped to clip me with the hilt or pommel and perhaps knock me out.
I would not let him off so easily. I grasped his wrist, turned it and, with my other hand, punched the pressure point in his upper arm.
The salinter flew out of his deadened fingers.
"Who are you?" I demanded.
With both hands, he rammed me aside. I staggered and fell, knocking down a rack of wooden exercise staves.

I got up, gripping one stave and kicking the others out of my way. The stranger was backing from me, his hands up.
I think he was intending to cut his losses and flee.
He doubled up as Saur'scutro tore into him from behind. The short swordwent through his coat, through his robes, through his under-jack and mesh, and sliced into his wrist. Saur ripped the blade free,and blood squirted out across the canvas. The stranger stumbled away, his head wobbling like a drunkard, his feet unsure, his eyes confused. He had both hands clamped to his waist, but even tight together, they could not plug the hole in him. Blood poured out, like red wine from a jug. His hands and sleeves were soaked with it.
His mouth opened and closed, without managing to form words.

He fell down on his back. Saur just stood there, watching him bleed out, the bloodied cutro low at his side.
Blood formed a huge, dark red mirror on the canvas around the stranger. The mirror crept out. Blood soaked his coat and robes, covered his hands and flecked his face. He stared at the ceiling, mouth fluttered open and shut, his legs twitching.
I bent over him.
Perhaps he didn't have to die, I thought. We could hold him, bind his injury, call for the city watch. I tried to apply pressure to his ghastly wound, but it was open, and as big as a dog's mouth. My hands were no better at stemming the flow of blood than his had been.

He suddenly, finally, saw me instead of the ceiling and the lights. He blinked, refocused. Tiny beads of blood had lodged in his eyelashes.
"What is this? Who are you?" I asked.
He said a word. It came out of him like a gasp, more breath than sound.
It was a word I had not heard before.
He said, "Cognitae".
There was a bang, right in my ear, and it made me jump because it was sudden and close and painfully loud. A bark of pressure clouted me along with the noise. I flinched as bloody back-spatter hit my face, throat and chest. I had his blood in my eyes.
Mentor Saur put another round through the stranger's face for good measure, then holstered his snub pistol.

wasn't she essentially comatose at the end of the Eisenhorn Trilogy?

She was, but it was always hinted that she would awaken, and now it seems that it has hapened. I am thrilled about it, as now I am not left angry with the fact that my favourite character was (half)killed off.