by Dan Abnett
A few other meat brokers had arrived before them, and were lounging around, smoking, waiting, under an arch nearby. Nayl wandered across to the spoliarium overseer and signed his name in exchange for a numbered paper chit. At the end of the show, the overseer would draw the numbers randomly. The winning broker got first pick of the spoils, the second got to choose from what was left and so on. A butcher's lottery. The waiting brokers had buckets and carts, soiled aprons, saws and surgical masks. In their filthy plastek smock coats, Nayl and Mathuin looked the part.
"Lucky seven," said Nayl, walking back to Mathuin and flashing the chit.
"What now?" Mathuin asked.
"Now we lose ourselves in the mix. Hang on." He strolled over to the waiting brokers, and nodded a few curt hellos. Mathuin heard him ask them where a man could get a drink while he waited. A couple of the brokers pointed and mumbled.
Nayl rejoined Mathuin. "Now they won't even miss us," he said as they fell into step.
The underhall was packed. They had to weave their way through the crowd. A team of chainsword fighters shared a group huddle as they waited to enter the caged walkway onto one of the lowered logeums. Weaponeers trundled carts of swords and pikes over to the traps. A pit-bull cracked his lash across the backs of a chain gang of convict fighters, desperate men hoping to win a state pardon through an arena victory. Rumour had it the lord governor himself was here tonight, enjoying the show from his executive belvedere. That would certainly explain the number of marshals on the prowl. Gold painted dancers ran by, perspiring and swearing. Two trainers were having a stand up row about marquee billing. A professional gladiator, huge, oiled and armoured, knelt and bowed his head as the circus' appointed priest blessed him in expectation of death. Tipsters and bookies were everywhere, eyeing up form and gathering last minute advice for their clients. Servitors lumbered past with crates of water and ale for the fighter pens. Musician bands tuned up against the constant din. Money changed hands, debts spiralled or were wiped clean, letters of pledge were signed. Medicae surgeons knelt in a pool of blood around a twist clown who had come off stage minus an arm.
Two animal handlers hurried past with long pole-goads. They were heading through the crowds towards a heavy shutter on the far side of the hall.
"Follow them," said Nayl.
The galley halls were rattling with activity. In a hellish, smoky environment, squads of cooks and their underlings and servitors slaved to cater for the paying customers in the stadium. Most of their fare was savouries or pies that were taken up by box lift to the vendor stalls in the stands, but there were sumptuous feasts to be prepared for the dignitaries in the exclusive belvederes - meals that would be shipped up by hand and served by impeccably mannered attendants in circus livery.
Kys held back in the main doorway for a second. Unless she went all the way around the outside underwalks of the circus-drome, the only way to the cavae was through the galleys. And no matter how many telekinesis distractions she created, she'd not manage that without being seen. She breathed in, remembering one of the inquisitor's training dictums: "If you can't hide, don't. Bluster."
If nothing else, Patience Kys had boundless confidence. She adjusted her microbead and whispered, "Carl? Who's head chef tonight?"
As the reply came, she straightened her bodice demurely, adopted a haughty stance, and marched into the kitchens.
A few underchefs glanced at her, perplexed, but they were too fearful of their head cooks to stop what they were doing and challenge her. Kys strode right down the line between brushed-steel workstations, and paused to lift the lid on a large stockpot simmering over a galley range.
"Who the hell are you?" yelled a senior cook, spotting her. He was a fat man - always a good sign in a cook, Kys believed - but he was meatily powerful and over two spans tall. His apron was cinched around his great girth. Red faced, he marched over to her, pushing several slow-moving undercooks out of his path.
Kys ignored him. She elegantly extended the index finger of her gloved left hand and stuck the tip of it into the pot's contents. Then she withdrew it, and made a business of studying the moonstone ring she wore on it.
"I said-"
"I heard," she cut him off, and looked him in the eye. "Are you Binders?"
"What?"
"Binders, man, Binders. Are you Binders? I was told he was cook in charge tonight."
The senior backed off a little. "No, mam, I'm Cutcheska. Senior Binders is away in the cold store, but I can get him if-"
"No matter. Cutcheska. Your name was mentioned too. I've heard fine things of your work. Fine things."
The senior blushed. "Mam..."
Kys walked past him to another range where underlings were pan-frying marinated terrapins. "You understand that not just anything can pass the lord governor's lips?"
Cutcheska balked. "The lord g-"
"His food must be inspected rigorously for tampering."
"I... I know that, mam!" the senior exclaimed, hurrying after her. "But his tasters and personal dietitian have already examined the kitchen and-"
"I know they have. But an unscheduled inspection keeps you on your toes, does it not?" Kys leaned past an undercooks shoulder and pressed the tip of her left index finger against the tenderised belly of a frying terrapin. Then she studied her ring again. As if noticing the way Senior Cutcheska was staring at her hand, she held it up towards him.
"Augmetic," she said. "The index finger is a micro-calibrated poison snooper. If it detects any trace venoms, the result is displayed in the ring screen."
"I see," nodded Cutcheska.
Kys raised the little finger on her left hand. "This digit cases a tight-focus digi-weapon. If I find any food tampering, I am authorised to use it to incinerate the line chef responsible for the contaminated area."
Cutcheska started to tremble. "I can assure you-"
"I'm sure you can. Walk me through." Kys started off again, with Cutcheska hurrying to catch up. She paused for a moment to glance back at the undercook frying the terrapins. "Too much nutmeg, by the way."
Cutcheska took her down the line, waiting nervously while she poked her finger into all kinds of food. He brought her a glass of wine, and she poked her finger into that too, before nodding and knocking it back. He introduced her to four other seniors, who fell in step behind them like an anxious chorus.
Finally, she turned to face Cutcheska. "Through there," she said, indicating over her shoulder with a thumb. "That goes through into the cavae, am I right?"
"Indeed, mam."
"I'm very troubled. Livestock... including xenos-breeds... penned this close to the main food manufactory."
"We are scrupulously, clean, mam-" Cutcheska began.
"My dear senior, xenos germs and bacteria travel in ways unknown to science. I will have to examine it." Kys took off one of her pearl earrings and handed it to Cutcheska. "Hold that up, please, between finger and thumb. No, arm straight, Higher. That's it."
She started to walk away.
"What am I doing?" he called.
"That's a relay sensor for my augmetics," she said. "I'll enter the cavae and take readings, and then compare them to the delayed response of that module. Be careful, it's very delicate. Ami straight, please. This should only take about ten minutes. You can stand there for ten minutes holding that up in the air, can't you, senior?"
"Of course, mam."
"Good. Arm really straight, please. Do try not to move."
The knuckles on her right hand were badly skinned. Threads of blood ran down the back of her hand and along the gold-painted skin of her forearm. The second clanster's jaw had been more solid than it looked.
Laying them out had slowed her down. Kara was running now, along the attic upper walk, and then down the stone screw-stair, the emergency exit that led right down the side of the building into the subdecks. She took them three at a time, hip-surfing off the handrails and leaving streaks of gold paint behind. The stadium was still shaking with noise. Through a wi
ndow-slit, she glimpsed the night's first headline bout beginning on the main logeum. The outer stages had sunk down into their pits, awash with gore and littered with bodies, victorious champions raising their arms and bloodied blades to the baying masses as they descended from view. To a fanfare and a tumult - CAR-CAR-CARNIVORA! Bam-bam-thump!-the evening's first primary spectacle rose up on the central stage. Chained at intervals around the main stage's edges were four professional pit fighters, armed and gleaming, and four inhumanly massive greenskins, glanded out of their minds on spika and slavering at their leashes. A thorn-bar cage rose up to surround the main logeum. Then the chains released.
The crowd roared, louder than ever before.
Kara kept on running.
She came down into a choragium sub-deck where sooty spade workers were shovelling body parts into the furnace hatches of the ustrinum, and sprinted west, through the tunnels of the fighter pens towards the cavae.
A pair of stewards at the entrance tried to stop her.
"Where you off to in a hurry, dancer girl?" asked one.
"Not that we mind you running, at all," smiled the other. "Makes your body jiggle real nice, if you know what I mean."
No time left. Certainly no time for subtlety. "My frigging boyfriend just got eaten by some frigging carnosaur!" Kara yelled. "I gotta get in there!"
"If he's eaten..." one of the stewards began.
"He had my nanny's diamond ring as a keepsake! I gotta check the dung for it, or nanny'll kill me!"
There was no arguing with that. They let her pass.
"Uh, some keepsake," one of the stewards called after her.
Ranklin Sesme Duboe, accredited handlerman-chief of the Imperial pits, ran the cavae. He was two hundred years old, standard, and had benefited from judicious juvenat work. He looked forty-five, was strong and well muscled. His grizzled face sported a bushy salt-and-pepper moustache. He never seemed to have to raise his voice. Just a look sent his handlers scurrying. He was a force of power in the circus understage. Without his say-so and his skill, the show would simply not go on.
He knew what to buy and where to buy it. He knew how to source the most interesting and deadly beasts for the show, and how to cage them and keep them fit, and how to get them dandered up just right for the spectacle.
Of all the great understage sections of the circus stadium, the cavae smelled the worst. Worse than the kitchens, worse than the fight-waste furnaces, worse even than the reeking spoliarium. In a long, semi-circular series of dank chambers under the drome's western end, the pit animals were caged and prepped. The air was wretched with the sharp bite of piss-ammonia and fecal matter. Blood too. And the humid musky scents of penned creatures, most of them predators, most of them anguished and goaded.
A cue-man ran a slip over to Duboe. He read it, tossed it away, checked with the logeum control via his headset, and then pointed across the paved stone floor to a team of handlers around a trap cage in which a mature fighting strathid was clawing and clacking.
The handlers obeyed at once. They pulled the slot-hatch open on the logeum entry, and then cranked back the cage door. The flightless fighting bird - four metres tall and with a beak the size of an Space Marine's power axe - came rushing out up the penway, driven by the sparking jolts of the handlers' electro-goads.
Overhead, the crowd thundered approval.
Pulling off his headset, Duboe walked over to the group of game agents assembled around an upturned pack-crate they were using as a table. A smile-girl in a short skirt had fetched them liquor and grin from upstairs, at Duboe's expense. She was serving them now.
Duboe approached, and shook hands with a few of them, accepting a shot-glass of amasec from the girl.
"Budris... good work, that strathid. Worth the wait, I'm sure."
Budris, a sallow man with two lean bodyguards, nodded his satisfaction.
"Skoh. What can I say?" Duboe slapped hands with a heavy-set, square-jawed man with sandy-white hair. Skoh's bulky figure was sleeved in leather armour. "Perfect saurians as always."
"I may have some long-tusks come winter," said Skoh. "Interested?"
"Only if they're the aggressive kind. The dociles play really bad here. Yeah, I'm looking at you, Verdendener. I haven't forgotten that crap-fest last summer."
A bespectacled agent turned his head, miffed. "I was assured of their quality-" he began querulously.
"Take another drink, Verdendener." Duboe smiled. "You've redeemed yourself with those ursids. Never seen bears so nasty. Leave the long-tusks to Skoh here."
Skoh nodded appreciatively.
Duboe looked over at another game agent. "Murfi... stop bringing me shit crocodilians, or I'll turn them back."
Murfi hung his head. "Sorry, Duboe. They seemed class to me."
"They weren't class. They were shit. Doped."
"I had to dope them to get them in transit."
"Next time load them with a spike to get them kicking. Those bastards just lay there in the frigging pool, like it was midsummer with nothing to do."
"Sorry, Duboe."
Duboe finished his drink and set the glass down. "That's all for tonight, gentlemen. I've work to do. Pick up your fees from the drome office. I've stamped your dockets. Get on with you."
The group broke up. Duboe tugged Skoh by the arm and drew him aside.
"Post-match, we'll talk. I've got demand. Can you deal?"
"I'll talk to Captain Thekla," Skoh said.
CAR-CAR-CARNIVORA!
The main stage slid down out of sight. An outer rim logeum rose with two raptors from Quinze on it, slavering at their chains.
In the underpits of the cavea, Harlon Nayl walked up behind Duboe and fell in step with him. Duboe was busy shouting out at a team of gangers who were about to let a bull-cat out of its cage.
"Duboe?"
"Who are you?"
"Let's take a walk and talk."
Duboe stopped and looked at Nayl. They were eye to eye. Duboe was a big man and he didn't take shit from anyone.
"I don't think so," Duboe said.
"And yet... I think so," said Nayl. "There's a Tronsvasse 50 in my coat pocket, and it's looking at you."
Duboe frowned. "Just a word, and my staff will have you over. Gut you. Feed you to the animals. I don't know who you are, but get out of my frigging way."
Nayl smiled. "You want to go for it? Look to your left. Catwalk. See the big guy? He's watching out for me. That's a rotator cannon. Let's see your staff deal with that."
Duboe shrugged. "So, you're heavyweight. Hardcore. I'm impressed. What do you want?"
"Cooperation," said Nayl.
Duboe nodded. "Look, mate, if I don't release these cygnids, the circus master will have my guts."
"Go ahead."
Duboe aimed a control wand and frothing dog-beasts dashed out of their cage and up the trap towards the stage.
"You said cooperation," Duboe said. "Concerning what?"
"Flects. You deal. I know. I want a source."
Duboe laughed.
"Funny?" asked Nayl.
"Like I'd tell you. You'd need more than a gun in your pocket to get that out of me."
"And there I was being nice," smiled Nayl.
"I'm sure you were," Duboe said. He looked back at Nayl. "Rip-fish. What do you know about them?"
"What?"
"Rip-fish. Are you familiar with them?"
Nayl frowned. "They're from Antigula. Antigula, right? Like eels, but voracious. Strip a human to bones in a second..."
He paused.
"Why the frig are you asking me that?"
Duboe grinned and raised the control wand. "Because you're the one standing on the trapdoor."
The hatch parted under him and Harlon Nayl fell.
Below, the water chute was a frothing madness of famished rip-fish, boiling the water to hell.
Amid the cavae's din and activity, no one seemed to notice what had happened for a moment. But Mathuin had his eyes on Nayl, and sta
rted forward along the catwalk with a cry.
Duboe, hurrying on his way, clapped his hands and roared an order. A mob of waiting handlers immediately unlatched a main pen, and herded horned grazers out towards the central up-ramp. They were big, jittering beasts, designed to be the third party distraction in a large-scale man/predator showfight.
Mathuin cursed. Surging forward, the grazers suddenly created a flowing wall of haunches, bellies and hooves between him and Duboe. He ran along the catwalk further, to where suspended steps gave him access to a higher walkway.
"Duboe's running," he voxed as he moved. "Duboe's running and Nayl's down."
Duboe himself moved quickly across the main floor-space of the handling chamber. He was talking fast into his headset, making it look like business as usual, but in fact he was calling in his inner circle. Already, three or four veteran handlers were heading after Mathuin. Two others were heading across the understage to check the rip-fish had done their job and to close the tank shutters.
The pair of them approached the deck-hatch and heard the wet thrashing from below. One of them went towards the winch-post that manually controlled the hatch.
Upright, a slightly surprised look on his face, and his hands at his sides as if to keep balance, Nayl rose up out of the tank-pit, suspended on empty air. He wasn't even wet. Duboe's goons blinked at him. Nayl landed on his feet, gently, on the edge of the tank in front of them.
"Where did Duboe go?" he said, as if nothing untoward had happened.
Scared more than anything else, the goons drew out short-bladed estocs and lunged at him. Nayl delivered a backhand slap across the face of one whose headlong charge became a disorientated backward stagger. Then he sidestepped the other. The second man was only wrong-footed for a moment. He turned, to come in at Nayl again.