“I did not for a moment presume it was, sir,” the man said. He was holding his sister’s arm quite tightly, as if she might otherwise slip her lines and fly away.
“It is true, though,” the lady said. “I cannot tell any lies. Not ever, anymore. It is quite beyond me to do so. This is the price I must pay. If I desire the truth, I must have all truths, so that only truth can spill out of my mouth and—”
“Hush now, sister,” the man said, “you will make yourself ill. Let me take you to a quiet place where you can gather your wits.” He glanced at E. F. Montvelt. “Sir?”
“There is a lounge in the disembarkation hall, there at the end of the slipway,” said E. F. Montvelt, pointing.
“You’re most kind,” the man said. “The Lady Eyl appreciates your understanding. She does not know what she says.”
“Well, that is apparent,” said E. F. Montvelt. “I asked the whereabouts of the shipmaster, and she told me plainly that she had murdered him.” He laughed. The man did not.
“It is because I am witched!” the widow protested.
“The shipmaster went to hold sixteen aft, to attend to our baggage,” the man said. “I believe you will find him there.”
“I’m obliged to you,” said Montvelt.
The man took his sister away. Montvelt went up the gangway and entered the ship. He cued the manifest list back onto the screen of his data-slate and scrolled down it. Lady Eyl. There she was, Lady Ulrike Serepa fon Eyl, of San Velabo, travelling with her brother Baltasar Eyl and a household party.
Still rather discomfited by his encounter with the damaged Lady Eyl, E. F. Montvelt descended into the bowels of the ancient packet ship. He wondered who she had lost. A husband, he felt. Perhaps another brother. Such things she had said. For a mind to be that torn and frayed by grief, well, it did not bear thinking about. The dead came back to Balhaut, and brought their ghosts with them, but the truly frightening apparitions were the souls destroyed by loss.
The underdecks of the Solace were quiet: dark halls, dark companion-ways, a current of heat against his face, dissipating from the drive vents, the bad odour of air breathed too many times, the sounds of hull fabric creaking and settling as commonplace orbital gravity replaced the distorting insanity of the Empyrean.
Caged lamps glowed soft yellow, their once-white shades stained brown by age. Oily condensation dripped from the pipes of the climate systems running along the ceiling. The Solace was clicking and settling and easing her bones, like the arthritic grand dame she was. E. E Montvelt enjoyed the smells and sounds of a thoroughbred packet ship. He’d crewed one, the Ganymede Eleison, in his youth, serving three years as junior purser before his uncle’s influence secured him a shore-job at Highstation. The hollow echoes of footsteps on deck grilles, the low stoops of the bulkhead hatches, the scents of priming paint and grease and scrubbed air brought it all back.
Without needing to check the doorframe code markers, for the Solace’s layout matched the deck plan of all ships of her class, E. F. Montvelt found hold sixteen aft.
The air inside was full of vapour. The hold’s jaws were open, so that sunlight shone in, and a magnificent open drop down to ferociously white and snowy clouds was revealed through the cage floor of the stowage space. He stepped out onto the cage floor, Balhaut turning below him, and called out the shipmaster’s name.
No one answered.
Bulk containers were lashed along the cage, ready to be discharged by the servitor-handlers. Their certificates had been pasted to them, and their seals were intact. E. F. Montvelt called the shipmaster’s name again.
He took out his scanning wand, and flashed the nearest container to check that its certificate code matched the number on his dockets.
It did, but there was something odd. The wand had registered a temperature blip.
He put his hand against the container’s side, and then drew it away again sharply.
“Something wrong?” asked the man in the beige coat. He came down through the steam onto the cage floor, and approached the wharfinger.
“These containers,” E. F. Montvelt replied. “They are not what they seem, sir.”
“How so?”
“Trace heat,” the wharfinger replied. “There is a mechanism here. These are not containers.” He showed Baltasar Eyl the dial of his wand. “You see?”
“I do.”
“Test for yourself.”
The man pressed his gloved hand against the container’s side.
“No, sir, take off your glove and do it,” said E. F. Montvelt.
Baltasar Eyl peeled off his right glove. The hand that was revealed was so terribly marked by old scars that the sight of it made E. F. Montvelt baulk. Eyl saw his reaction.
“I keep them covered, for the most part,” he explained. “I know how they look. They proclaim the pact I have made with my master.” The wharfinger stared at him, wide-eyed. Eyl smiled.
“I don’t expect you to understand. Listen to me, I gab like my sister. The isolation of the voyage has made me talkative. I am betraying secrets.”
E. F. Montvelt took a step or two back. “I have seen nothing,” he said. “Truly, sir, I have heard nothing.”
“Why do you say that to me?” asked Eyl.
“Because I fear that otherwise you are going to be obliged to kill me,” said E. F. Montvelt.
“I think I might,” said Eyl. “Sincerely, I mean nothing by it.”
“Please, sir,” said the wharfinger, backing away.
“A most dreadful thing!” cried Lady Eyl, running along the slipway quay. “A most terrible accident! He fell. He just fell! Please come! There has been the most awful occurrence!”
E. F. Montvelt dropped away from the open hold jaws of the Solace. Arms spread wide, he descended into air and bright cloud. It was a long way down.
He was approaching terminal velocity, already dead. The atmosphere began to ablate him, until a tail of fire was racing out behind him, the sort of shooting star upon which one might make a wish.
He fell towards the planet. He and his late uncle had been quite correct.
The dead did seem to have a knack of finding their way back to Balhaut.
TWO
Back to Balhaut
“Do you remember Vergule?” asked Blenner, over lunch at the Mithredates Club.
“Vergil?” Gaunt replied. “Auguste Vergil? The Oudinot staffer?”
“No, old man,” Blenner laughed. “Vergule. Salman Vergule. Urdeshi fellow, served with the 42nd. We were in the field alongside him at Serpsika.”
“You maybe,” said Gaunt. “I was never at Serpsika. You’re thinking of somebody else.”
“Am I?” asked Blenner, with a touch of concern.
Across the table, Zettsman chuckled at them.
“You’re like an old married couple, you pair,” he said. He finished clipping the end of a fine, Khulan-leaf cigar, and lit it with a long, black match.
“Are we indeed?” replied Blenner.
“I’m not sure which one of us should be more offended,” said Gaunt.
“Neither am I,” Blenner agreed.
“You witter on so,” remarked Hargiter, sipping caffeine from a little, heavy-bottomed glass.
“I’ve never wittered in my life,” said Gaunt.
Hargiter caught the look, and shrugged.
“Well, maybe not. But he does,” he said, gesturing at Blenner.
“I resemble that remark!” returned Blenner.
“So what were you saying about this Vergule fellow?” asked Edur.
Blenner tapped the top sheet of the broadside gazette he had been reading. “It turns out he’s been here all this while. Arrived a year ago, about the same time you did, Bram.”
“Wait,” said Gaunt, putting down the sugar tongs. “This Vergule, was he a tall fellow with a hangdog expression?”
“That’s the one,” said Blenner.
“Yes, I do remember him. He was at Phantine, I believe. Anyway, if he’s here, I have
n’t seen him around.”
“You wouldn’t have done,” replied Blenner. “It says here he’s entirely dead. His body’s been in the Urdesh regimental chapel for twelve months.”
“What did he die of?” asked Zettsman.
“Oh, you know, war,” said Blenner.
“Where?” asked Gaunt.
“It doesn’t say,” said Blenner, peering at the broadside. “Oh, wait, it does. Morlond.”
“Not the only good soul lost there,” remarked Edur grimly.
Blenner looked at Gaunt. “I was thinking, we should go and pay our respects. This afternoon, perhaps?”
“I’ve got things to do, Vay.”
Vaynom Blenner sighed. “Tomorrow morning then? Come on, old man, we ought to toddle over there and apologise to him for not dropping by sooner. It’s the decent thing.”
“I suppose,” said Gaunt.
The majordomo, in crimson, black and gold, hovered beside the table where the five Imperial commissars were sitting.
“Will there be anything else, sirs?” he asked.
Gaunt shook his head. “Just bring me the tab to sign, would you?”
The major domo nodded. Blenner looked crestfallen.
“I was considering another helping of fruit tart,” he announced plaintively.
“You’ll end up looking like a fruit tart,” said Edur.
“Steady, old man!” Blenner replied. He looked hurt. He patted the orange Commissariat sash that was stretched around his ample stomach. “Solid muscle, that. Solid.”
“Edur’s right,” said Gaunt, taking a stylus from the majordomo to sign the bill. “When I came back from Gereon the first time, my duty breeches hung off me like a tent. The other morning — and they’re the same pair, mind — I realised I had begun to fasten them on the third button. I used to have a washboard stomach.”
“Some of us still do, old man,” said Blenner.
“Wash-house, more like,” muttered Hargiter.
“Oi!” snorted Blenner. The others laughed.
“It’s the passage of time,” said Blenner. “That’s what I’m saying. You came back from Gereon in ’76, Ibram. That’s knocking on five years ago. Face facts. We’re all getting old.”
“Speak for yourself!” the other four men chorused. There was more laughter.
Gaunt told the majordomo to have his car brought around. He waited for Blenner in the atrium, out of courtesy. His oldest friend had disappeared into the club’s cloakroom, complaining about a missing glove.
The atrium’s marble columns had been draped in swathes of mourning crepe, and white lilies had been set in the onyx jardinieres. At the far end of the hall, under the dished window that looked out across the street and north towards the Oligarchy Gate, two craftsmen in overalls were working on the last phase of restoration to the inlaid murals. The night manager of the Mithredates had told Gaunt the work was expected to be finished in another eighteen months. It had taken fifteen years to get that far. The club had been hit by a tank round in the final hours of the war, and the intricate murals had been badly damaged.
Gaunt wondered if there might not be better things to spend fifteen years rebuilding.
“So what’s on your plate for the rest of the day?” asked Zettsman, buttoning up his stormcoat as he walked over.
“I might spend a few hours with the Kapaj,” Gaunt replied.
“You rate them?”
“They’re decent enough,” Gaunt answered. “I’d rather spend time with my own mob, but the Kapaj need to be whipped into shape, and Section is very keen on this mentoring role.”
“Tell me about it,” Zettsman replied. “I’ve been given a group of cadets and I’m expected to get them through their SP31s. They’re appalling. Throne help me, they manage to make Blenner look like he operates at an acceptable level of competence.”
Gaunt laughed, but it rankled. Lately, Blenner had been taking too many jibes below the waterline.
“I don’t know why you put up with him,” said Zettsman.
“Who?”
“Blenner, of course.”
Gaunt paused.
“We were at schola progenium together,” he said. “Vaynom has survived longer than anyone else I’ve known. I have to give him some credit for that.”
“I suppose,” replied Zettsman. “And he was right, of course, about time rolling on. None of us are getting any younger. It must be strange for you especially.”
“What must?” Gaunt asked.
“Well, we’ve all done our bit over the years, and we’ve all had our moments, but your track record puts most of us to shame. If I’d done half the things you’ve done, I’d have taken a marshal’s baton and a seat at high command years ago.”
“Not my style.”
“Oh, and this is? Like I said, it must be very strange for you, this easy life, these leisurely meals, the evenings at the club. It must be odd to accept that your active service is done, and this is the end of it, mentoring new-founds and growing a paunch while you fly a desk towards semi-retirement.”
“What’s the matter?” Blenner asked, catching up with Gaunt. He had found the elusive glove.
“Nothing.”
“Don’t give me that, Ibram. There’s a look on your face. Zettsman was here, just a moment ago. I saw him walking away. What did he say to you?”
“Nothing,” said Gaunt, again.
“I’ll wrestle you to the ground, don’t think I won’t.”
Gaunt looked at Blenner. Blenner still hadn’t quite got used to the flash in his old friend’s new eyes.
“Zettsman just said something,” Gaunt replied. “He didn’t mean anything by it. It was just something I hadn’t really thought of before.”
“Well, what?” asked Blenner. “That you owe your entire career to my inspirational example?”
“That part obviously came as a shock,” said Gaunt. He smiled, but there was frost on it. “No, he just assumed that I was done. Didn’t give it a second thought. There was no malice meant. He just took for granted the idea that I’d done my part, and that my front-line career was over.”
“Ah,” said Blenner.
“I have always assumed that, in due course, the routing order will come through, and I’ll take the First and Only back to the line. Crusade main front, secondary front, I don’t care. It never occurred to me it would be any other way.”
“You worry too much,” said Blenner.
“I will get posted again, won’t I?”
“You worry too much.”
“But—”
“Look, old man,” said Blenner, patting Gaunt on the sleeve, “you were on the line a bloody long time. You and the Ghosts, how long was it?”
“From the Founding? Twelve years.”
“Twelve bloody years, old man! Twelve bloody years without rotation out of the line! Most regimental commanders would have been sending formal complaints to the top of the chain!”
“I’d thought about it.”
“And thank goodness they rotated you out before you had to.”
“It’s been two years since Jago, Vay.”
“You needed that long to recover, you old devil. The bastards nearly murdered you.”
Gaunt shrugged.
“We’re rested now,” he said. “We’ve come all this way back to Balhaut, to a world I never expected to see again, and we’ve sat around for a year, getting fat and bored and out of shape, and none of those things have filled me with anxiety, because I’ve been expecting the routing order any day.”
“It’ll come,” said Blenner.
“Will it?”
“Yes.”
“They’ll send me back?”
“Throne’s sake, Ibram, you’re the bloody poster boy for ridiculous Imperial heroism. They won’t be able to do without you at the front line for much longer.”
Gaunt nodded.
“If you ask me,” said Blenner, heading for the door, “I don’t know why you’re in such a bloody rush.”
/> Outside, there was a winter chill as hard as Gaunt’s mood. There was a touch of pink in the sky, and the light had turned the cityscape a pale, floury white. They stood on the steps and pulled on their gloves, their breath fuming.
“I’m sorry for the delay, sirs,” said the doorman. Gaunt’s staff car had yet to appear. Hargiter was down on the pavement, waiting for his own limousine to arrive from the parking garage. They joined him.
Hargiter was studying the skyline. So many of the spires and domes were still clad in scaffolding and canvas lids. Like a gap-toothed smile, there were pieces missing.
“You were here, weren’t you?” Hargiter asked.
“Oh, it was all very different then,” said Blenner. “I remember the Tower of the Plutocrat—”
“You weren’t here, Vay,” said Gaunt. “You and the Greygorians were on Hisk.”
“Fair play,” pouted Blenner. “If you had let me finish, I was going to say ‘I remember the Tower of the Plutocrat from the many mezzotints and engravings I have seen’. Yes, Ibram was here. In fact, I believe he’s the principal reason there isn’t a Tower of the Plutocrat anymore.”
“I doubt you recognise the place,” said Hargiter. “It took such a pounding, there can’t be much left that was standing when you were here.”
“No,” Gaunt agreed. “Time passes and things change. You tend to see things with different eyes.”
“Of course, in his case,” said Blenner, “he means that literally.”
THREE
Captain Daur and the Jack of Cups
He walked to the end of Selwire Street and then, on a drafty corner, checked the directions that had been written on the scrap of paper. Daylight was bleeding away fast, and it felt as if it was taking the heat with it. He wondered if there was going to be snow. He wondered if it was going to be as heavy as the trouble he was getting into.
Left at the corner, the instructions read, along an underwalk, and then across a small court hidden behind a merchant’s townhouse and a busy garmentfab loft. Follow the six steps down from street level, the ones with a black iron handrail ending in a gryphon’s beak. There’ll be a red door, the colour of a victory medal’s ribbon.