Blood Pact

EIGHTEEN Zolunder’s

Someone was knocking on the street door. The knocking was disturbing the cantor-finches, and they were banging and twittering around their delicate cages in dismay. Midnight had long passed. Elodie wasn’t sure if that made it ridiculously late or ridiculously early.

She checked the security monitor covering the red door, but whoever was knocking was standing just out of pict-view. And why were they knocking when there was a perfectly good bell?

Elodie yawned. The night after the raid, Urbano had decided not to open. This had surprised Elodie, because Cyrus Urbano was normally such a get back on the frigging steed kind of man. There had been something funny in the air that day, though, and it wasn’t just the sting of being taken for such a huge score, or the miserable snowstorm that had come in, out of season and unwelcome.

Urbano had told her to send everyone home for a day or two, and had then gone out to attend to some business.

Now someone was knocking on the street door.

Elodie had fallen asleep on the couch in her dress. Xomat, the member of parlour security who’d pulled premises watch that night, had long since drunk himself to sleep, and was snoring in the greeter lounge.

Elodie got up. The knocking came again. Then whoever it was found the bell-push at last, and started pressing it hard.

She took the las-snub out of the under-bar drawer, and tucked it into the back of her sash. She went to the street door and peered through the spyhole.

Outside, dawn was fighting a losing battle with the snowstorm. The court was a dim, lightless void, especially as the garmentfab had shut and no light was coming down from its windows. There was somebody out there. Elodie just couldn’t see who.

She opened the door. The new lock they’d been obliged to fit following the raid was stiff.

‘Oh, thank the Throne,’ said the girl on the doorstep. ‘I was starting to think no one was here.’

‘Banda?’

Banda looked pinched and tearful. She was still dressed in the red silk gown she’d been wearing when the Commissariat had carted her away, and not much else. She was shivering, and leaning on the gryphon’s beak of the black iron handrail for support.

‘What are you doing here?’ Elodie asked.

‘They let me go,’ Banda said. ‘Hey, can I come in?’

‘They let you go?’

‘Yeah, yeah. No charges. They questioned me. Fething Commissariat. Then they slammed me in a cell overnight. But they had nothing on me, so they let me go.’

‘What are you doing here?’ Elodie repeated.

Banda gazed at her, a hurt expression on her face.

‘Where else was I supposed to go?’

‘Not here,’ said Elodie. ‘Go away.’

‘What? Fething what? I took one for the team and you’re brushing me off?’

‘Not me,’ said Elodie. ‘I’m sorry, Tanith. Urbano doesn’t want you around. He told me to let you go. He doesn’t like hostesses who–’

‘Who what?’

‘Who get picked up. I know it wasn’t you, although you should have known better. You should have pulled your head in. It doesn’t matter. Urbano wants you gone. He’s superstitious. He doesn’t like the connection. Come back in a week or two, and maybe I’ll be able to find you an opening at one of the other parlours.’

‘I don’t believe this,’ Banda replied. Her voice sounded as if it had been crushed flat. She sat on the snow-crusted step and began to tear up.

‘Oh, come on. Go home,’ said Elodie.

‘I’ve got no home,’ Banda snivelled. ‘Tanith burned, remember?’

‘I didn’t mean. Oh, Throne, this really isn’t my problem. You must have friends in the city, family?’

Banda shrugged, and said, ‘I don’t know anybody.’ She looked at Elodie. ‘Maybe I can talk to Urbano? Make him see sense?’ she asked.

‘He’s out,’ Elodie replied. ‘I’m sorry, Tanith. I’ve got nothing for you. Go and find a hostel or something.’

Banda sighed and shrugged. She breathed hard to control her sobs. She rose to her feet.

‘Right. Fine. Thanks for feth all. I’ll be seeing you.’

She turned and started to walk up the steps to street level.

‘Tanith?’

‘Yeah?’

Elodie held the door open.

‘Come in,’ she said. ‘I can give you a drink and maybe some food, and some better clothes. But you’ve got to be gone before Urbano gets back. Understand?’

‘Throne, yes! You won’t regret this.’

Xomat was still snoring. Elodie went around behind the bar and fixed two stiff sacras.

‘Were you expecting trouble?’ Banda asked, gesturing at the las-snub tucked into Elodie’s sash. It was visible now that Elodie had turned and bent to fetch shot glasses.

‘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-celled 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.’