Blood Pact

TWENTY-FIVE The Net Closes

The night was nearly done. The first grey stains of day had begun to soak into the sky. The cold, glass-clear night that had followed the snowstorm had bred, by morning a translucent fog that hung upon the silent, snow-bound city like the breath of a winter daemon. From the windows of Jaume’s studio, the street was a smoky ghost.

Ghosts hiding in a ghost town.

After Criid’s departure, Gaunt had been unable to rest. He’d paced the studio, and the grim rooms adjoining it, while the others slept. He flicked through more of Jaume’s albums, and studied the eyes of faces that would never come home, as if they might offer him some advice or wisdom.

He thought about what Criid had said, and the foolishness of it made him smile again, but it also made him think about Slaydo, and Hyrkans, and the Gate, and so the smile quickly vanished.

Jaume had a large old desk in the room next to his studio. Like everything else beyond the public rooms of his premises, it was cluttered and untidy. Gaunt sat at it, and picked through the stacks of yellowing paper for the sake of distraction. There were bundles of letters tied with ribbon, sheaves of communications, and orders and requests, miserable, grief-strangled messages from widows and bereaved families. These were the fuel of Jaume’s business. Gaunt wasn’t sure how he felt about it any more. He wasn’t sure if he thought Jaume was some kind of ghoul making money out of other people’s loss, or if he was actually, in some counter-intuitive way, offering them some real comfort. The comfort wasn’t authentic, but perhaps the effect was.

On one side of Jaume’s desk was a battered old manual rubricator. Beside it was a deep pile of papers that Gaunt, at first, presumed to be invoices, or perhaps handbill brochures.

They were something else entirely. They were epitaphs. They were short, descriptive obituary notices, recording the heroic deeds of dead men. Each one was addressed, and Jaume had clearly composed each account individually. Gaunt began to read them.

‘Those are private papers,’ said Jaume. He wandered into the room, and found Gaunt at the desk.

Gaunt nodded, but kept reading.

‘How much do you get for each one?’ he asked.

‘The cost isn’t the issue,’ said Jaume.

‘It’s a price, not a cost,’ said Gaunt. ‘How much? A crown? Two crowns? Five crowns for a particularly lurid exploit or a mention in dispatches?’

‘I charge a standard rate of two crowns,’ Jaume admitted.

‘And how many can you churn out in a sitting?’ Gaunt asked, leafing through the stack. ‘A dozen? Twenty?’

‘I don’t churn them out,’ said Jaume.

‘Maybe, but it’s not what you’d call hard work, is it?’ asked Gaunt. ‘I mean, two crowns a letter, that’s good money, considering there’s no research to do.’

Jaume didn’t reply.

Gaunt held up one letter.

‘There was no Cantical Gate. Good name, though.’ He gestured with another. ‘In the zone you mention here, there was no “valiant fighting on the sixth day”, because the action was over in four. In this one? The commanding officer is an invention. In this one, you’ve actually awarded a medal that doesn’t exist.’

He looked over at Jaume.

‘You just make it all up, at two crowns a notice. It’s just like the portraits. You just make it all up.’

‘The content doesn’t matter,’ Jaume answered quietly. ‘Who’s going to care? Who’s going to know? Who’s ever going to spot the contrivance or point out an error?’

‘Well, me?’ Gaunt suggested.

‘With respect,’ Jaume replied, ‘in fifteen years, you’re the first person to set foot in here, who was actually on Balhaut at the time. No, sir, the details don’t matter. To the bereaved and the grieving, to the heartbroken and the inconsolable, the details aren’t remotely important. All that matters is a handsome portrait of the soul they’ve lost and, if it helps, a few lines that speak to good character, sound duty, and a minimum of suffering. Two crowns, sir, is a small price to pay for that kind of easement and solace.’

Gaunt shook his head, and dropped the sheaf of notices back onto the desk.

‘I must remember,’ he said, ‘to remind my men the next time we go into battle that the details don’t matter.’

Jaume snorted.

‘I think you’re being rather naive, sir,’ he said. ‘Why do you suppose I was so eager to secure the commission to make your portrait?’

‘I would imagine there was two crowns in it for you,’ Gaunt replied.

Jaume laughed humourlessly.

‘This is my living, colonel-commissar, this is my trade. I stalk a city that almost died on a world that almost died memorialising those who were lost. I never get to meet the living. I never get to meet the men who won the war and came through that fire alive.’

Gaunt didn’t reply.

‘You think I trivialise it,’ said Jaume. ‘Perhaps I do. I manufacture heroes. I’ve never met a real one before.’

‘I’m no hero, Jaume,’ said Gaunt.

Jaume laughed.

‘If you’re not, then God-Emperor help us all.’

‘I appreciate your understanding in this,’ said Hark to Curth quietly. They stood in the temple house, watching Beltayn and Rerval work the caster. Nothing had come through from Rawne in a very long time. Dawn was on them, and impatience was beginning to turn into irritation.

‘I’m surprised you would even question my response, Viktor,’ Curth replied. ‘I was on Gereon with Gaunt. I was on Gereon for longer than anyone. I appreciate the grey areas of this more than anyone, and my loyalty to Gaunt is absolute. You could have trusted me earlier.’

‘It wasn’t a question of trust,’ said Hark. ‘I didn’t want to put anybody in a difficult position unless it was necessary.’

‘How long are you going to give it?’ Curth asked, nodding to the vox-caster.

Hark shrugged.

‘And if you can’t raise Rawne, what else can we do to reach out to Gaunt and help him?’

‘Short of taking on the agents of the Inquisition, disobeying direct orders and bursting out of Aarlem Fortress by force if necessary you mean?’

‘Those would certainly be less favourable options,’ she replied.

‘Then I really have no idea,’ he replied.

The Imperial hunters set out again from Section, at daybreak, into a city hazed white with thick winter fog. The fog blurred but magnified the sun, creating a strange, luminous glare in the air.

Less than four kilometres from the Imperials, within the projected sweep radius, the philia circled and re-circled the small patch of city turf in the vicinity of the refurb, worrying like a pack of blood hounds at a scent trail that had been strong and was suddenly gone.

In his bolt hole, Eyl knew that time was draining away. They needed success fast before their luck ran out altogether. Every time Karhunan or one of the other men checked back to the house with a negative report, Eyl’s agony increased.

His sister was at work in the back room of the house. She’d been labouring all night, weaving ugly witchcraft in a corpse room rank with blood. He kept hearing her squeal and moan as frustration followed frustration.

Just after dawn, she called out to him. He went into the corpse room. She had laid out the chart of Inner Balopolis and the Oligarchy, the chart that Valdyke had provided, and which she’d used to pinpoint Section. She had spread it on the floor, and it was soaked with blood.

‘Have you found him?’ he asked.

‘No,’ she whispered, and shook her head under her veil. ‘I cannot see him at all.’

She pointed to one tiny part of the map that the spattered blood had curiously not blemished.

‘But I can see where I can’t see,’ she said.

Criid approached her destination well before dawn, on the cusp of the change from frost-glass cold to phantom fog. Gaunt had told her there wasn’t much point making a direct approach before mid-morning.

The snow-thick streets were quiet, though at this end of town, there was more activity than in the unnaturally still thoroughfares of Old Side, beneath the Blood Pact’s warp-crafted spell.

She circled the target twice, assessed it, and then looked for somewhere to rest. A small public chapel, dedicated to the beati herself, occupied a street corner close by, and Criid found that it was the sort of place left unlocked at all hours of the day or night.

She clunked open the heavy wooden door and let herself in out of the bitter cold of the empty night. The place was old and uneven, stone built with heavy wooden beams, and a fading painted ceiling. Glow-globes had been left lit up in the vault, casting a soft yellow light, and the last flames of votive candles lit the day before were sputtering out in the metal rack in front of the beati’s effigy.

Criid curled up in one of the choir stalls, and used the pack containing her change of clothes as a pillow. She got a couple of hours of uneasy sleep.

When she woke, the chapel was bathed in a soft, white luminescence. The sun had come up, and brought the fog up with it, and strange, diffuse white light was glowing in through the chapel’s windows.

She picked up her pack and went through into the small rooms at the rear of the chapel where the ayatani priests kept their sacraments and some of the holy codices. It was a drab, cobwebby place that was obviously seldom visited. She lit a glow-globe, and began to get changed into the clothes in the bag. The clothes had all come from Jaume’s dressing up racks, as had the small, battered case of make-up. Criid couldn’t remember the last time she’d had to apply any face paint that wasn’t camo or black-out. It wasn’t a talent she’d ever developed, growing up, and she was concerned that she might overdo it and end up looking like one of those frightful transvestite castrati at the Circe du Khulan. She set the make-up case to one side, unopened.

Jaume had helped her pick out the clothes. He had shown some interest in her choices. Apparently, a widow’s dress was called weeds, and the best were made of bombazine, crepe and fine lace. Criid had run her hands across the jet silk of one of the dresses that Jaume was showing her, and thought how ironic it was that she was selecting clothes to allow her to play the part of a widow, when, inside, she’d been a widow since the Gereon Liberation.

Jaume had suggested a particular dress in purple, which, he said, was slighted mourning. The colour change from black to purple denoted that the mourning period had lasted more than three years. The widow was no longer obliged to wear her veil all the time, and she could make sparing use of marginally more decorative keepsake jewellery. A further slighting, to mauve, followed after another year, and signalled the eventual return to the world.

Criid put on the slighted mourning, and the shoes and gloves that Jaume had selected, and then the veil. She decided that the widow she had become was so anguished that she had no time for fripperies like make-up, so she went without.

Commissar Blenner had only just been seated at his regular table when the visitor was announced.

It was a dreadful morning, with the snow still thick, and a hellish fog like artillery smoke, and that on top of a couple of days when the city had been quite turned upside down. He’d heard the most appalling stories about some business up at Section that had sealed the centre of the city off.

At least the snowstorm had stopped. Blenner had a zero tolerance approach to barracks food, so he slipped his driver the usual bonus to convey him through the elemental murk to the Mithredates for a late breakfast of tanzato pastry and thick, sludgy caffeine.

There was hardly anyone there. The staff, in their liveries of crimson, black and gold, seemed glad of something to do, and his breakfast arrived in record time.

‘There is a visitor to see you,’ the majordomo said as he was tucking in.

‘Really?’

‘A lady, sir.’

‘Good show.’

‘She’s asking for you by name.’

‘Twas ever thus.’ Blenner dabbed his mouth with a napkin. ‘Did she say who she was, by any chance?’

The majordomo nodded.

‘She says you knew her husband, sir. His name was Vergule.’

Blenner frowned. ‘Vergule? I never even knew the man was married. Well I never. All right, you’d better bring her over.’

‘I’m sorry to have to remind you, sir, that ladies are not permitted in the main rooms of the Mithredates,’ said the majordomo, ‘but if sir so desires, I can arrange for her to be conducted to the day room so you can greet her there?’

Blenner glanced down at the breakfast he had barely touched.

‘Oh, all right,’ he said, scraping his chair back, ‘but can you have some caffeine brought through to the day room? And, maybe, the dessert trolley?’

‘Mamzel,’ said Blenner. ‘I’m Vaynom Blenner. I am honoured by your visit.’

The widow was veiled. She stood waiting for Blenner by the windows of the day room, beyond which the phantom white morning was uncurling. Waiters brought in a tray of caffeine and a large trolley of cakes and desserts.

‘Commissar Blenner, it’s good of you to see me.’

‘Not at all. I knew your husband well, and was damned sorry to hear of his passing. I take it that his memorial is what brings you to Balhaut?’

‘Yes, but it’s not what brings me here today,’ she replied.

Blenner offered her a seat.

‘Drink, perhaps?’

‘No, thank you.’ She waited until the club staff had left the room.

‘Something to eat, then?’ Blenner gestured towards the trolley. ‘The crustuko is especially good.’

Forget the crustuko, Criid thought. Look at the almond sepis. What a glorious thing.

‘Thank you, no,’ she said, with great reluctance.

‘How can I help you, then?’ he asked.

‘I don’t need your help, but a mutual friend does.’

‘Indeed. Who?’

‘Ibram Gaunt.’

Blenner stared at her. ‘Ibram?’

‘That’s who I said.’

‘I say, what’s going on?’

‘Gaunt’s in a difficult position,’ Criid said. ‘You’re the only person he can call on for help. I’m the only means of contacting you.’

‘You’re not Vergule’s widow at all, are you?’ asked Blenner.

‘My name’s Criid. I’m one of his Ghosts.’

‘Tanith?’

‘No, Verghast,’ she replied.

Blenner leaned back. ‘Look, this is all rather silly. Is Ibram playing some sort of practical joke? Because I tell you now it doesn’t suit him.’

‘No joke,’ said Criid. ‘There is some necessary subterfuge involved, and for that you have my apologies. I had to get in here to find you.’

‘How do I know this isn’t some trick?’ asked Blenner. He was looking decidedly uneasy.

‘Gaunt sent me,’ she replied. ‘He said to say that the day you first met, you lied to him about your father.’

Blenner snorted. It was true enough. A life time ago in the schola progenium on Ignacius Cardinal, two little boys in a draughty corridor.

‘Very well. What’s going on?’ Blenner asked.

‘I’ll explain it as simply as I can,’ said Criid. She paused. ‘I’ve just got to do this first.’

She got up, and helped herself to a large wedge of sepis from the trolley, yanked back her veil, and began to eat. Blenner watched her with wry amusement.

‘What’s Ibram got himself into now?’ he asked.

She told him, between bites, and detailed the events of the last two days as clearly and simply as she could. Blenner’s amusement turned to concern, and then to something that Criid was alarmed to see looked like fear.

‘On Balhaut?’ Blenner asked. ‘The Archenemy is active on Balhaut?’

She nodded. Blenner turned pale. He’d cut himself a slice of sepis while she’d been talking, but he now showed no interest in touching it.

‘This is serious,’ he said. ‘We have to take it to Section.’

‘No.’

‘For Throne’s sake!’

‘Haven’t you been listening to me?’ Criid asked. ‘Nothing’s safe. We don’t know how deeply the enemy has infiltrated. Gaunt can only trust people he knows personally. He needs you to meet him.’

‘Me?’

‘Yes. You, sir. You and perhaps a small group of Guard that you trust from your regiment. He needs a bodyguard, fire-team strength.’

‘Oh, this just isn’t on!’

‘And transport,’ said Criid.

Blenner rubbed his forehead and pinched the bridge of his nose. ‘He’s going to be the death of me. This is typical of his nonsense. I have a good mind to go straight to the commissar general–’

‘If that’s your decision, sir,’ she told him, ‘you won’t get out of this room.’

Blenner was silent for a moment.

‘When does he want this meeting?’

‘Four o’clock,’ she said.

‘And where?’

‘He said you’d know where,’ she replied. ‘He said you’d know the place that he’d made sure isn’t there.’

‘What? Riddles on top of everything else?’

‘That’s exactly what he told me to say.’

Blenner rose with a long sigh.

‘You’d better come with me to my barracks. I’ll get things in motion.’

Side by side, they hurried from the day room down the stairs and out towards the club’s main entrance. In the foyer, Blenner looked around for a staffer to order up his car.

A man approached them. He was not wearing club livery.

‘Commissar Blenner,’ he said, more of a statement than a question.

‘What about it?’

‘Your association with Ibram Gaunt is a matter of record. We’ve had you under surveillance since yesterday.’

Criid began to back away. She’d lowered her veil before leaving the day room. She reached down to where her straight silver was taped to her thigh under her bombazine skirts.

‘Who the hell are you?’ Blenner asked the man.

‘I think it’s time you came in for questioning,’ the man replied. He looked at Criid. ‘Your friend too.’

Two more men had closed in behind them from the direction of the cloakroom. To Criid’s horror, they had precisely the same face as the first man.

‘My name is Sirkle,’ the man said, showing them his rosette. ‘Do not try to resist.’