Drouet got to his feet and checked his laspistol. "Certainly," he said. "Alive?"
"If possible," she said.
SIX
The rain was in his face, and the whole world was black. Shuddering with cold and effort, Carl Thonius clambered a few metres more up the steep rock track. It was a sheer climb in places where the path fell away, nothing like the simple ascent he had envisioned. The laughing, buzzing thing in his soul had lied about that.
He hauled himself up over an overhang, straining with arms alone, his legs dangling. The darkness yawned below him. If his numb fingers let go, it would be a long, final drop. Overhead, the breaking storm boomed. The rock was wet.
Heh heh heh.
He pulled himself up onto the overhang and lay there for a moment, panting. Rain fell on his face.
He'd lost touch with the others. At the base of the crag, they'd split up, deciding to optimise their chances. Thonius had gone up the western path he'd identified. Ballack had taken the east face. Plyton and Belknap had chosen to work their way up the ravine behind the Elmingard plateau, to see if they could find a way up from the north.
Thonius resumed his climb. Conditions were awful and getting worse, inside and out. The storm was closing in. His own storm was closing in. Fire and buzzing laughter licked at his mind. He tried to force it back, but it sizzled at his thoughts and burned back his memories. Pain shot through him, making him gag and lose his grip. Nausea yawned. He could hear a voice inside him sniggering at his puny, mortal efforts to survive and stay human. Buzzing, buzzing... heh heh heh.
His scanner pad bipped, and he pulled it out to check it. The pad showed him the contact prints of several scanner pods built into the rock face above. They read as passive. That was good. Lucky, in fact. He'd expected serious electronic countermeasures, an active system, probing and stabbing at them as they came up, but a passive system was easy to beat.
Perhaps Molotch was getting slack in his old age. No one was expecting them. Thonius drew himself up and clambered on.
The rain had begun in earnest, driving the partygoers indoors. Out on the lower north terrace, the tapers sputtered and fizzled as the downpour extinguished them. Siskind's first mate, Ornales, closed and bolted the double doors once they were inside.
Siskind was ordering more drinks, and there was laughter in the room. Off in one corner, Molotch had been drawn into deep conversation with two of Culzean's most learned savants. They were ancient, robed individuals, their bald heads like heavy ivory balls.
Worna stayed outside the activity, watching. He had never been one for hellraising and drink, unless it was with his own kind, and the members of his team that he'd managed to pull out of the Utochre mess were all still aboard Siskind's ship. These people were not his type: intellectuals, savants, Culzean's brand of people. Even the hard-bodied men in blue wool suits with silver buttons who acted as security were not Worna's sort. They were good, Worna acknowledged, but they were young. Guard-vets mostly, a few high-end underworld recruits, well drilled and well made. None of them had the grizzled edge of experience that a bounty life provided. They regarded him with curiosity, but he knew they thought he was low-life scum. "Scum" barely covered what Lucius Worna thought of them.
The only person around that he had the vaguest sense of connection with was Culzean's minder, Slade. He liked her. She hadn't had the same career path as him, but she was good, professional and dedicated. He'd seen her work. She was a kindred spirit, or as close to a kindred spirit as he was likely to find in this blasted house at the end of the world.
He left Siskind's party quietly and slipped out into the draughty corridor. He'd been privately scanning the vox net for the past few minutes, and he'd heard some tantalising stuff on the back and forth. Something was up.
Gall Ballack hauled himself up over the lip wall of one of the eastern terraces. The rain was sheeting down, like a white curtain. He was soaked, and chilled to the bone. His long white hair hung lank and wet, and water streamed down his face.
The place was empty and unlit. He could smell wet stone and wet earth, and hear nothing but the hiss of the rain.
He rose, and glanced around. His pad showed no sign of active sensor noise. Parched rosebushes nearby fluttered and shook in the night's wind and rain. He looked up. Several levels above him, in the inner knot of the ancient house, lights glowed behind shuttered windows. He stepped forwards across flagstones so worn and uneven that rainwater had collected in deep, angular puddles.
Another step, another. It looked like there was a staircase ahead, a flight of steps cut in the terrace side, which might afford him access to the next level of the haphazard palace.
"I suggest you stop there," said Drouet, stepping out of the rain and the shadows behind him, a laspistol raised and aimed.
Ballack froze and slowly, resignedly, raised his hands. "Throne, you're good. I didn't even hear you," he said.
Drouet came closer. "On the ground. Down on the ground, face down," he instructed sharply. "Hands where I can see them!"
"Hands?" asked Ballack, bitterly.
"Get down!"
Ballack lay down on his face, smelling the wet rock close up. Rainwater streaked off him.
"I have to see Molotch," Ballack said.
"Shut up."
"It's a matter of the most pleasant fraternal confidence," Ballack tried. It stood to reason that Molotch might employ other Cognitae.
"Whatever you say," said Drouet. Clearly, he was not of the brotherhood.
"Tell him that, then," said Ballack. "Use those exact words, and he'll-"
"Shut up." Drouet spat, standing over him. He bent down and began to frisk Ballack. The interrogator felt the muzzle of the laspistol poke at the back of his head.
"One move from you I don't like." Drouet told him, "you'll be scraping your brains up with a trowel."
"You paint a vivid picture." Ballack grunted. Unamused, Drouet pushed harder with the gun and Ballack's face banged into the flags, chipping one of his teeth. The lip cut Belknap had given him began to bleed again.
Drouet found Ballack's weapon, tugged it out, and tossed it away into the rain and darkness over the wall.
"Roll over." Drouet instructed.
Ballack obeyed. Flat on his back, he stared up into the sheeting downpour at the man standing over him. Ballack blinked the rain away.
"Get me inside," he said. "Take me to whoever is in charge."
"Shut the frig up," said Drouet, aiming his weapon and taking out his link.
The one-shot las was a small device, just a tube, and Ballack had fitted it to the stump of his wrist, just behind the cuff. It was so small that a cursory pat down wouldn't find it. He swung his arm up, popped the tube forwards on its spring catch with a flex of his forearm, and fired the shot. Its bark was lost in a thump of thunder.
Drouet smacked backwards. The shot had punched in under his chin and gone up through his skull. The entry wound made a neat, fleeting black hole that closed again into a tiny blemish as tissue shock rippled across the flesh of his throat. The back of his head came off in a spray of blood and tissue.
He fell back, slumping against the terrace wall and almost pitching off. Then he fell down heavily. Thick, acrid smoke billowed up from the exit wound in the back of his cranium. What remained of his ruptured brain was still cooking and burning. His limp legs began to spasm and thump.
Ballack got up. He took hold of Drouet, dragged the twitching corpse upright, and then pushed it over the wall into the night.
Drouet plummeted away into the blackness below.
Ballack retrieved Drouet's pistol, and snapped the one-shot back into its holder. I'll recharge it later, he thought as he turned.
A steel fist ploughed him down. It came out of nowhere and piled into the side of his face, smashing most of his teeth. Ballack went over so violently that he almost inverted, his legs flying up. He crunched onto the puddled flagstones.
Gasping, blood pouring from his mouth, he reac
hed out to grab his fallen weapon. The moment his fingers took hold of it, a pearl-armoured boot stamped on it and crushed it to pieces. The laspistol cracked and fractured, its power cell shorting wildly as it met the rain. All the bones in Ballack's remaining hand broke and mashed.
Ballack screamed in agony, aspirating blood out into the drenching downpour.
"Ballack," said Lucius Worna. "We meet again."
"Nyaaaahh!" Ballack wailed as Worna ground his boot down harder to emphasise the point.
"Guess what?" asked Worna, drawing his bolter.
"Hnhhh?"
"End of story."
Carl Thonius clambered over the west wall and dropped two metres onto the flagged yard. The rain was extreme, affording zero visibility. Lightning flashed, brighter than even lightning ought to be. A second later, thunder smashed like a daemon's drum.
Beating for me, beating for me...
He pulled out his weapon. It was going to be a tight call, but he was here. This was where it would play out. Molotch would save him, or Molotch would-
Carl blinked. His gun was no longer in his hand. It had been kicked out of his grip. A woman came at him through the streaming rain. He side-stepped, and they circled one another.
"Hello," she said, brightly. "You're Carl, right? Carl Thonius?"
"Who do I have the pleasure of addressing?" he replied, courteous to the end.
"My name is Leyla Slade. I'd like you to come with me, Carl. Quietly."
"Oh, dear," he said. "I might not be able to do that."
She shrugged and wheeled immediately into a spin kick that almost took his head off.
No wonder his gun had gone flying.
Thonius ducked the kick, and circled again. The woman, Slade, kicked out twice in a rotating one-two, her powerful legs punching like pistons, but he evaded both strikes.
"Come on, Carl," she taunted. "I thought you were good?"
"I am," he answered.
He threw a side-kick feint at her, followed by a lateral jab. She back-stepped out of the former, reading the feint for what it was, and blocked the latter, but he had momentum, and he drove a rapid sequence of killing punches at her. She blocked them all with stinging claps of skin on skin, and managed to wrong-foot him. Pirouetting off the ground, she kicked out a response and caught him square in the chest.
His breath left him in a bark and he staggered backwards. Then he dropped into a quick defensive stance, trying to recover. His chest hurt. He lunged forwards, low and fast, risking a sternum punch.
She met the punch with a high, deflecting kick, and countered with a blade fist, which he barely slapped aside. He switched right with another feint and drove at her throat with a needle fist, but she was too quick for him to catch.
"I think I love you, Leyla Slade," he panted.
"They all say that," she retorted. They were circling again.
"I think you should know something." Thonius added.
"What might that be?"
"Knocking me insensible is probably the last thing you want to do."
"Why?"
"Because if I'm unconscious, I won't be able to concentrate anymore."
"I'll take my chances," she said.
They leapt at each other, simultaneously, their attacks clashing and overlapping. There was a meaty crack of flesh and bone as one was successful. Slade landed squarely. Thonius fell hard. His body rolled limply across the rain-slick flagstones.
Breathing hard, Slade opened her link. "Got him," she said, over the hissing rain.
Overhead, the thunder roared, as if in approval.
SEVEN
Culzean left the Alcove and hurried out into the drafty gloom of the corridor. "This way, this way!" he hissed as Slade and Worna approached. Worna had Ballack's body slung over his wide shoulder plate. Slade was dragging Thonius. "Fine work, my friends," Culzean said. "Did anybody see you?" Slade shook her head.
"Your man Drouet's dead." Worna grumbled. "Ballack shot him. Lucky for you, I was close by."
"Where shall we put them?" Slade asked.
"We can lock Ballack up in the under pantry," Culzean said. "First we make Thonius secure. Bring him this way."
"What's so important about Thonius?" Slade asked.
"Never mind."
"Why are we hiding this from Molotch?" Worna growled.
"Never mind that either. Come on."
They moved away down the stone corridor until they were out of sight. The rain beat down, and drools of rainwater seeped into the lower structures of Elmingard. Maud Plyton, a shotgun in her hands, rolled out of hiding as soon as it was quiet.
She ran to the Alcove's door, and tried the handle. It was locked. Muttering an oath, she knelt down and pulled out her picklock bundle. She worked the lock, sweating, jumping at every sound and every boom of thunder. "Come on!" she spat. "Oh, come the frig on!"
The door swung open. Raising her weapon, she crept inside, instantly repelled by the skeletal horrors and jarred monstrosities on display in the gloom around her. A woman in a curious head brace sat chained to a wooden chair at the centre of the room, her head bowed. "Kara?"
Kara Swole looked up, drunkenly, at the sound of Plyton's voice. Her eyes were blinkered by the coloured lenses of the kinebrach device.
"Who?" she sighed.
Plyton moved towards her and began to unfasten the chains. "It's all right, Kara. It's me, Maud. I'll get you out of this."
"Maud? Maud, I saw." Kara murmured.
"It's all right." Plyton assured her, fighting with the shackles.
"Oh, Throne," said Kara more clearly, stiffening in her seat.
"Kara? It's all right, just let me-"
"I saw. I remembered. He's here. He's here. He's here."
"Kara? What are you saying to me?"
Kara shuddered, and then projectile vomited violently.
"Kara!"
Plyton pulled her loose and let the chains fall away with a clatter. She dragged the strange lensed device off Kara's head.
"He's here, Maud. Slyte's here." Kara gurgled. Hauling her upright, Maud Plyton felt the hairs on her neck rise.
"No, he's not, Kara. We're all right. Stop saying that."
"He's here!"
Elmingard's vast stone kitchen smelled of peppers, goose fat and grease. Their work over for the night, the cooks had gone, and a few scullery boys had been left clearing the marble counters and mopping the floor. Pots were being scrubbed, and the ovens were being banked down. Two youngsters, on menial dishwashing duties, began to lark around beside their enamel sinks, throwing soap suds and bottle brushes at one another.
A senior domestic in a floor-length apron marched in from the larders and bellowed at the pair. He took them both by the ear-lobes and dragged them out of the kitchen, ignoring their squeals of protest. The other scullery boys quietly stopped their chores and crept over to the doorway to eavesdrop and giggle at the dressing down the pot washers were receiving outside.
Belknap seized his chance. He slipped down the length of the old kitchen, hugging the shadows and the wall, his rifle clutched to his chest. Old skills, never forgotten. Hug the cover. Stay low.
His pulse raced. If any of the youngsters turned away from the door, they would see him and raise the alarm, but he couldn't stay hidden. He had to find Kara. There was nothing more important in the entire galaxy.
A small part of him stepped back and scoffed at his antics. Belknap had been taking risks all his adult life: six years in the Guard, nine as a community medicae, and then the rest as a back-street, unlicensed doctor. The risks he'd taken had always been about the general good, about service. They had always been measured and rational. This was different. This was stalking into a hornets' nest of first degree sociopaths and heretics, and all for the love of a woman he barely knew, a woman who, in all likelihood, had been dead for over a week.
This was not like him, not at all. He was out of his depth. He was no principal agent like Thonius, Ballack or Kys, or even, Throne rest h
im, Harlon Nayl. This was not the life he had chosen, nor been recruited for. He was just an ex-soldier who knew his way around a rifle, and had a little training in stealth work and the use of cover.
All he really had was his faith and his passion. He hoped they would be enough.
The scullery boys broke from the doorway and flocked back to their chores as the senior domestic returned, shouting. Belknap had just reached the exit at the far end. He slid into other shadows, breathed out, and headed up a dingy staircase into the rambling house.
Halfway up the stairs, he ducked down as he heard a sound from outside, louder than the din of the storm. What was that?
Thrusters?
"I'd really like to know what's going on," said Zygmunt Molotch, stepping into the cold, damp under pantry.
He had come out of nowhere. Culzean glanced around, saw him, and quietly cursed. He put on a busy smile and strode towards Molotch. "Zyg, Zyg, my friend, you don't need to bother yourself with this." He put a hand gently on Molotch's arm to steer him out of the room, but Molotch shook it off.
"I don't like the idea that you're hiding things from me, Orfeo. Who is that?"
Molotch pushed past Culzean and advanced into the dank under pantry. Worna and Slade reluctantly stood back from their captive.
Culzean knew he had to handle Molotch with more care than ever before. He shrugged, changing his approach. "All right, Zyg, you got me. It's Ballack. It was supposed to be a surprise."
"Ballack?" Molotch asked. He peered at the man Slade and Worna had been chaining to a stone block by the pantry's back wall. "Ballack? The interrogator?"
"It was going to be my gift to you," Culzean said.
Molotch ignored the facilitator. He knelt down beside Ballack, peering at him.
"I was quite sure I'd killed you," he said.
Behind him, Culzean shot urgent looks at Worna and Slade. Slade put her hand on the grip of her holstered weapon. Worna drew his bolt pistol quietly. Molotch didn't seem to notice. He stimulated a pressure point in Ballack's neck with the tip of his finger.