“This? No. I just like to be careful.”
Elodie pushed one of the brimming shots across the nalwood bar towards Banda.
“You should get out of those wet clothes,” she told the Tanith girl.
Banda knocked the sacra back and held the glass out for a refill.
“It was a rough night, wasn’t it?” Elodie said, smiling and pouring again.
“Like you wouldn’t believe,” Banda replied.
Elodie plonked a digital key on the bar-top. It was tied to a block of wood with a hank of twine.
“There’s a box of cast-offs in the hallway behind the private rooms,” she said. “It’s just stuff girls have left behind over the years. You might find something more weather-appropriate in there. Take what you want. And use the staff toilet to get changed.”
“Thanks,” said Banda.
“I’ll see what food I can knock up,” said Elodie, refilling their glasses.
Holding the digital key in one hand and her glass in the other, Banda wandered back into the hallway. The lights were off, but she found the box, a ratty-looking hamper stuffed with stale clothing. She helped herself to the best of what was on offer: a pair of baggies, a singlet, and a combat jacket. No shoes, apart from some strappy things that were no better than the ones she was wearing.
She used the digital key to let herself into the staff toilet. With the door locked behind her, she pulled the red silk dress up and off over her head. Naked, she crossed to the toilet’s small window and forced it open. Ancient overpainting had fused the seal shut, and she had to smack the frame with the heel of her hand.
Snow-cold air breathed into the dingy bathroom.
Elodie had found some eggs and some rashers of green-grox, and she’d slung them all in a pan while she sawed some thick slices off a loaf of spelt bread for frying.
“Cooking me breakfast?” asked Urbano.
Elodie turned, trapped. “No, I was, I mean, I was just hungry.”
“What’s going on?”
“Nothing, I swear.”
“There’s enough in that pan for an army,” Urbano said, peering down into the sizzling skillet.
“Look, Banda came back, all right?”
“Banda?”
“The Tanith girl.”
“Ah,” Urbano said, nodding. “And you felt sorry for her?”
“Yes, yes I did. She’ll be gone in an hour. Just some food and a drink and some fresh clothes.”
“You’re such a soft touch, Elodie,” Urbano chuckled.
“Yeah, well, I had it all covered,” she replied. “I even had the snub in case—”
She paused.
“What’s the matter?” asked Urbano.
Elodie ran her hands back and forth across the top of her sash and the small of her back.
There was no las-snub.
“Looking for this?” asked Banda. She was standing in the doorway of the parlour’s small kitchen, wearing hand-me-down combats and baggies. Her feet were bare. She was aiming the las-snub at them.
“Is this some kind of joke?” asked Urbano.
“No,” replied Banda.
“Put that toy away,” Urbano laughed. “Put that toy away or I’ll kill you.”
“Oh, Banda, please—” Elodie began.
Urbano reached into his coat and calmly produced a massive double-ceiled laspistol. He raised it and aimed it at Banda.
“Is this some kind of frigging joke?” he repeated, over-carefully.
“Permission to take the shot,” Banda said.
“Who are you talking to?” Urbano asked.
“She’s talking to me,” said Rawne. He appeared in the kitchen doorway beside Banda. Behind him, Varl was aiming a lasrifle at Urbano.
“Shit!” exclaimed Urbano, and lowered his pistol.
“Good boy,” said Rawne.
“You’re Hark, right?” asked Urbano, looking at the commissar uniform Rawne was wearing. “Listen to me, Hark, it doesn’t have to go like this. We can do business. Didn’t you get enough last time you were here? Why the frig are you on me like this?”
“Because we’re pissed off,” said Rawne. “Because we’ve been through hell. Because we need some serious kill-power, and you were the nearest outlet we could think of.” Rawne paused and looked at Banda, who was still aiming the snub at Urbano’s face.
“Thanks for leaving the toilet window open,” he said.
“No problem. You want me to take this shot?”
“Whoa, whoa!” said Urbano. “Kill-power. I can get you kill-power. What do you need, Commissar Hark?”
“You still think I’m a commissar?” Rawne asked him.
“What are you, then?” Urbano asked.
“Serious bad news for Cyrus Urbano,” Rawne replied.
“Come on!” Urbano exclaimed. “You want kill-power? I’ve got it. What do you want? Las? Hard-slug? Hell? I’ve got it all!”
“Good,” Rawne said.
“We just need to discuss price,” Urbano said.
“Price?” Rawne echoed. “You’re serious? In this situation?”
“Of course,” Urbano replied. “I’m a businessman.”
“And I’m a bastard,” Rawne replied. He looked at Banda. “Take the shot.”
“What?” Urbano managed.
Banda shot him through the forehead. The las-round made a scorched hole in Urbano’s brow. He smashed backwards into the cooker, and brought the pan of frying eggs and rashers down on top of him as he folded onto the floor and lay still in a lake of his own spreading blood.
“Holy Throne!” Elodie cried.
“I guess we’ll be negotiating with you now,” Rawne said to Elodie.
They opened up what Elodie referred to as the “gun room”. It was little more than a reinforced closet in one of the private rooms. Inside it, arranged on wooden racks, was the stock of side-arms kept to defend the premises. There were two combat shotguns, two lasrifles, and a lot of solid slug pieces, including a massive bolt-action rifle, and a crate of brand new, forge-fresh small pattern laspistols with their Munitorum tags still on them, a trophy of the lucrative crossover between underworld rackets and Guard quartermasters on the take.
“Nice,” said Leyr, lifting one of the pistols and arming it.
“Pull what you want,” Rawne told them. It seemed as if he was going to be staking personal claim to the Blood Pact lasrifle he’d taken in the cells at Section. The two lasrifles in the gun room went to Daur and Meryn, and Varl and Banda took combat shotguns. Cant, lower on the pecking order, armed himself with an old autogun and a bag of reloads. Leyr took the big bolt-action.
“Are you sure?” asked Varl.
“Used to hunt with a baby like this back home,” Leyr replied.
The gun room, due to its hefty locks, also held the club’s stash of obscura and other narcotics, stored in tins and paper folds.
“Don’t even think about it,” Daur said.
Varl and Meryn looked at him.
“Go feth yourself, Daur,” said Meryn.
Daur took a step forwards.
“Whoa, whoa!” interjected Varl, getting between them. “We’re all friends here!”
“We’re really not,” said Daur, glaring at Meryn. “We are deep in it, and I don’t want the fether who’s supposed to have my back to be anything less than wide awake.”
“Listen to yourself, Daur,” Meryn mocked, popping the lid off a tin of obscura leaf and sniffing it, “it’s like you’re still in the fething Guard. You are so straighter-than-straight. Like I’m going to listen to you or even care what you say.”
Daur lunged at Meryn, but Varl held him back.
“Meryn?” said Rawne from behind them.
“Yes?”
“Throw it away.”
Meryn turned to stare at Rawne.
“What?”
“Throw it away.”
“Why?”
“Because,” said Rawne, “we are deep in it, and I don’t want the fether who’s supposed to have my back
to be anything less than wide awake.”
Meryn glared.
“We’re still fething Guard, Meryn,” said Rawne, “we’re just in a temporary bad place. So throw that shit away and start observing the chain of command, or I’ll have Leyr shoot you with his ridiculously big rifle. No, no, worse than that. I’ll have Cant mow you down with his stubber. Then there’d be shame involved.”
“You can mow Meryn down with that, can’t you, Cant?” Varl asked.
Cant smiled.
“Yes,” he promised.
Meryn lowered his hands.
“Feth you all,” he said and tossed the tin away.
“I didn’t hear you, soldier,” said Rawne.
“I said: feth you all, sir,” said Meryn.
“Better. Now perhaps you’d like to take yourself off and investigate what this place has to offer in the way of comms. Varl, assist him.”
Daur watched Varl and the glowering Meryn leave the room.
“Thanks for the support,” he said to Rawne.
“Please don’t think I did it for your benefit,” Rawne replied.
“Perish the thought,” said Daur. He walked back into the main bar. Leyr, the big bolt-action resting across the crook of his arm, was watching Elodie, who had been left sitting on a sofa. The strong-arm, Xomat, was sitting in a chair by the back wall, tied up and gagged with adhesive tape. His eyes were wide.
Daur walked over to the bar and rested his lasrifle on the nalwood top. He sat on one of the stools, the same stool he’d sat on the night of the sting. He’d taken a pack of the club’s hand-coloured cards from one of the gaming tables, and began to flip through them absently, placing them face-up on the counter.
“What size are your boots?” Banda asked. She had strode into the bar, barefoot, the shotgun lodged over her shoulder, and gone right up to Xomat.
“Mmgggh!” he replied.
Banda stripped the tape gag away from his mouth.
“What?”
“Nine!” Xomat stammered.
“Oh, you’re no use!” Banda declared, and wedged the tape back into place.
“You’re what, a six?” asked Elodie.
“Yes.”
“Upstairs, in my room. The blue door at the end. There’s a pair of work boots under the bed. Size six.”
“Thanks,” said Banda. She turned to go, but paused. “I never meant to feth your life up,” she said.
Elodie shrugged.
When Banda had gone, Elodie rose and walked over to Daur at the bar. Leyr watched her, but made no comment.
“I’d like you to do me a favour,” Elodie said to Daur as she sat on the stool beside him.
“And that would be what?”
“Kill me.”
Daur looked at her.
“What?”
“Kill me,” said Elodie. “It would be a kindness.”
“How do you work that out?”
“Urbano has friends. Colleagues. Partners. They run all the serious clubs and bars in this part of town. If they come here and discover what’s happened, and find me alive, they’ll just assume I had some part in it all. So, please, kill me. Make it quick.”
“I’m not going to kill you,” he protested. He turned another card over.
“Please, Daur. Your name is Daur, isn’t it?”
“Yes. My name is Daur.”
“So what is this? That Hark guy, he’s no commissar. And Banda—”
“Banda is Banda. Hark, his name is actually Rawne, and no, he’s no commissar. This was a scam. We’re all Guard, and, Throne help us, we were bored. We decided to see just how much we could take the famous Zolunder’s for. I think it was Varl’s idea, originally. No, maybe Meryn’s. I was the icing on the cake. What Varl calls the ‘beauty part’.”
“Because you’re straight and honest, and you don’t do this sort of thing?”
“Precisely You know what? Here and now, in this fix, I can’t even begin to remember why I said yes.”
“The thrill of it,” said Elodie.
“What?”
“You’re a soldier, a warrior.”
“So?”
“When did you last see action?” Elodie asked.
“Two years ago,” said Daur.
“You miss the risk,” she said.
Daur started to reply, and then nodded. He turned over a few more cards. He had a dynasty in front of him, capped by Blue Sejanus and the Queen of Mab.
“I like the cards too,” he confessed.
“Yeah?”
“I’ve never played,” he said, “not much at all. I just like the cards themselves. Their permutations.”
“You’re an undiagnosed gambler,” said Elodie.
Daur shook his head.
“No, no. I just like them,” he said.
“Can you see the future in them?” she asked.
“It’s not like that.”
“Can you tell me what’s going on?” she asked.
Daur sighed, and said, “We ripped you off. The night before last, we ripped you off. Then we got caught and bad things happened to us. We were looking at serious charges, detention—”
“And?”
“Then the stakes changed again. Suddenly. The Archenemy is here, mamzel. Here on Balhaut. He’s got his hands in the guts of this world, and he’s going to keep twisting until it hurts.”
“Are you serious?” Elodie asked.
“Absolutely.”
“So if Urbano’s partners don’t get me, the Archenemy will?” Elodie asked.
“Not if I can help it,” Daur replied.
“Pretty standard vox,” said Meryn, sitting back with a shrug in the club’s monitor room.
“Plus, we can watch all the approaches on these viewers,” Varl said. “We’re pretty secure.”
“Rawne nodded, and asked, The vox is high gain?”
“It’s a Guard-issue unit,” said Meryn. “These idiots got it off the black market.”
“You know how to twin a signal, Meryn?” Rawne asked.
“Yeah, of course.”
“So twin one for me.”
Meryn adjusted the caster’s dials.
“Who am I sending to?” he asked. Rawne told him.
“Are you out of your mind?” Meryn cried. “Uh, Meryn?”
“For feth’s sake… are you out of your mind, sir?”
“Send exactly what I say, Meryn,” said Rawne. “Right now, I need to trust someone, and he’s the only bastard I can think of.”
NINETEEN
Traces and Results
The Inquisition’s birds had set down in Viceroy Square and the courtyards of Section, Their fans were cycling on neutral and the snow fell softly around them. The snowflakes perished fast when they landed on the hot hoods of the turbo fan assemblies. Black smoke was still pluming from the HQ’s damaged wings.
Kolea waited at the gate with a group of Tanith personnel that included Baskevyl and Larkin. Edur prowled around nearby with some storm-troopers from S Company, keeping his eye on Rime and the forces of the ordos, who were searching the stands of trees in the square’s gardens.
“Will we be expected to take shots?” Larkin asked Kolea.
“Of course not,” Kolea replied.
“But we’ll be up and scoping?”
“Will you relax, Larks?” Kolea said.
“It feels wrong, Gol,” Larkin said. “I shouldn’t be going looking for Gaunt through my scope.”
“So noted, Larkin,” said Baskevyl. He touched Kolea’s arm. “Here comes Mkoll.”
Mkoll, Bonin and the other Tanith scouts came into view, walking out through the gatehouse towards them. Behind them, Section smouldered against the colourless sky.
“Talk to me,” said Kolea.
“Gaunt’s alive,” said Mkoll, coming to a halt in front of the acting commander and pulling a small but respectful salute. “The high-value prisoner too. We’ve seen monitor footage and track-back from the gate cameras, and pict-feed from guard-tower mounts.” r />
“Gaunt and Maggs busted out of here at the height of the attack,” said Caober. “Hell of a thing. They were definitely the Blood Pact’s main targets.”
“So they’re alive,” said Kolea. “Close by?”
“Give us ten minutes and we’ll tell you,” said Bonin.
“Who’s going aloft?” asked Baskevyl.
Bonin looked at Mkoll.
Mkoll said, “You go up. Take Larks with you. Hwlan, get upstairs with Nessa.”
“On it!” Hwlan called back.
They ran to their waiting Valkyries. Turbo-fans began to wind up to speed. Mkoll gestured to Jajjo, Preed and the other scouts and they began to move forward. Eszrah ap Niht had been standing near Baskevyl. When the scouts moved off, so did he.
The trees in the square trembled and swished as the two Valkyries took off, and snow gusted out like dust.
“I didn’t authorise any transport lifts!” Inquisitor Rime declared, striding over to them. “Where are those Valkyries going?”
“We’ve got the scent,” Kolea told him.
“Really? And this scent? Who has it?”
“He does, sir,” said Kolea. He pointed across the snowy gardens.
“And he’s your chief of scouts? Does he know what he’s doing?”
“The Tanith know what they’re doing, inquisitor,” said Edur.
Out in front, Mkoll was slowly following the tracks left in the snow. As if realising they were talking about him, he rose and looked back.
He beckoned them after him.
“Game on,” muttered Gol Kolea.
“It would have been nice to get out there with them,” remarked Nahum Ludd. He was gazing out of the command post’s grubby windows at the snow falling onto Aarlem’s parade ground.
“Too many chiefs,” replied Hark.
“How so, sir?”
Hark looked up at his junior from the stack of reports he was working through.
“The Inquisition’s all over this. Did you not get the impression that the Edur fellow was doing everything he could to retain some control of the operation?”
“I suppose.”
“Thanks to him, we’ve got Tanith officers and scouts on the ground. I think if he’d tried to bring Commissariat personnel into the mix too, that creep Rime would have burst something aortic.”
“Do you know Edur?” Ludd asked.