[Gaunt's Ghosts 12] - Blood Pact

by Dan Abnett

  “You too, Rerval,” Varl responded with a grin.

  Meryn reached for the mic again, and Varl knuckle-slapped him so hard he leapt back with a bark of pain.

  “I’ve got Commissar Hark standing by,” the vox said. “Is this a good time?”

  “It’s fabulous, Stronghold,” Varl replied.

  Daur, Banda and Rawne had entered the club’s monitor room. Varl held the mic out to Rawne.

  Rawne took it. Meryn glared at Varl.

  “Stronghold, this is Rawne.”

  “Stand by, major.”

  The vox crackled.

  “Rawne, this is Hark.”

  “Reading you, sir. I take it we’re secure?”

  “As far as we can be sure. We’ve slipped a bypass into the Inquisition’s listening watch that we’re hoping they won’t notice. What’s your situation?”

  “We’re holed up in an establishment in the vicinity of Selwire Street.”

  “That’s the Oligarchy?”

  “It’s pretty central,” said Rawne.

  “All right, I’ll find it on a chart. So you all got out of Section alive?”

  “That’s right,” Rawne replied. “I can confirm seven alive, no injuries.”

  “Rawne, are you armed?”

  Rawne glanced at the others. Even Varl was looking serious.

  “I can confirm seven armed,” Rawne replied. “Why the question, Hark?”

  “It won’t come as a staggering surprise to you, but we’re looking at a bad situation, major.”

  “Is this planet-wide?”

  “I can’t confirm or deny, Rawne, but from the intelligence I’ve got, it looks like it’s confined to the Balopolis-Oligarchy region, which means you’re smack in the middle of it. Confirmed Archenemy hazard.”

  “Strength?”

  “Unknown, but we’re thinking no bigger than an incursive or expeditionary force. Watch yourselves.”

  “Understood,” said Rawne.

  “It’s more complicated than that, Rawne,” said Hark over the link. “Gaunt’s in trouble, and you might be the only real help the Ghosts are able to offer him.”

  “I read you, Hark,” said Rawne. “Tell me everything you know.”

  By the time the call transmit was finished, Ludd, Beltayn, Dalin and Merrt had joined Hark and Rerval in the temple house. Hark signed off and handed the mic back to Rerval.

  “Rawne’s gang is alive, and we know their position,” Hark said.

  “Gang?” Ludd echoed.

  “Got a better term for them?” Hark asked. “Bunch of criminal idiots, perhaps? Recidivist morons?”

  “Gang’s fine,” said Ludd.

  “We can stay in touch with them as long as the bypass goes unnoticed,” said Beltayn.

  “And how long will that be?” asked Dalin.

  “If we’ve got any luck on our side, young man,” said Hark, “long enough for us to learn Gaunt’s whereabouts, and pass that intelligence on to Rawne.”

  “Let’s hope, in the meantime,” said Ludd, “that Major Rawne doesn’t take it upon himself to do anything else.”

  “Such as?” asked Hark.

  “Well, you told him to stay put. You told him to stay with that vox-set, where we could contact him,” said Ludd. “What if he decides to… go somewhere?”

  Hark let out an exasperated sigh. “Even Rawne wouldn’t be that stupid, would he?”

  “Of course not, sir,” said Beltayn.

  “So long as it’s up to him,” said Dalin.

  Daur walked back into the parlour’s main area. Elodie was sitting at the bar, nursing a small amasec. The muscle, Xomat, was still taped to the chair by the back wall. He looked entirely unhappy about his predicament. Leyr was catnapping on one of the parlour couches.

  “Drink?” Elodie asked Daur.

  He shook his head.

  “What’s the story?”

  Daur began to flip through the pack of cards he’d left on the bar top.

  “We’ve managed to contact our regiment, on the sly. There’s stuff happening, but the full picture’s not clear. Orders are to sit tight and wait for further instructions.”

  “And are you going to do that?” Elodie asked.

  “Yeah,” said Daur.

  “All of you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I only ask, because following orders doesn’t appear to be your lot’s strongest suit.”

  Varl walked into the parlour.

  “Is there any danger of food in this place?” he asked.

  “You know where the kitchen is,” Daur told him.

  Varl sighed, and left the room again. From the bar, they heard him shout, “Cant? Can you cook or can’t you?”

  Elodie smiled and got down off her bar stool. She went around the bar to find the amasec for a refill.

  Daur suddenly looked up. Urgent voices had begun to issue from the monitor room. Daur looked at Elodie and they hurried out of the bar together.

  “What’s going on?” Daur asked as he strode into the monitor room. Banda, Meryn and Rawne were studying the pict-feeds coming from the club’s various security viewers.

  “Company,” said Rawne. He pointed at one of the screens. “Which door is that?”

  “Service,” said Banda. “Freight access, at the back.”

  “Do we know these handsome gentlemen?” Rawne asked.

  Elodie slipped into the room alongside Daur and peered at the viewer. The exterior lighting was bad. There were perhaps six or seven men approaching the club’s service door from the loading dock on Conaut Row.

  “I don’t recognise them,” she said. “Wait. Run it back and freeze on their faces as they pass under the light.”

  Rawne played with the viewer’s control toggle, and the feed ran backwards jerkily.

  “There?”

  “Yes,” Elodie said, and studied the fuzzy image more closely.

  “Oh shit,” she said. “I think that’s Csoni.”

  “Who?” asked Meryn.

  “One of Urbano’s infamous partners?” asked Rawne.

  “I wish,” Elodie replied. “Lev Csoni is part of a business cartel in direct competition with Urbano’s crowd. We’ve had trouble with them before. They’ve been looking for an excuse or opportunity to knock this club out.”

  “And with the city shut down by a freak snowstorm—” Daur began.

  “Safeties off, everyone,” said Rawne.

  He went up the snow-laced steps and knocked on the front door of the mouldering old tenement.

  Half a minute passed. He was about to knock again when the door opened. A young, slightly scruffy man in a black, buttoned suit and a cravat peered out at him. He looked rather confused.

  “Can I help you?” the young man began to ask, and then stopped, and instead said, “Wait, wait aren’t you Colonel-Commissar Gaunt?”

  “Hello, Mr. Jaume,” said Gaunt.

  TWENTY-THREE

  Headshots

  “I don’t understand,” Jaume said. “Was our appointment rearranged, or…?”

  “No, Mr. Jaume,” said Gaunt, “this is a rather more improvised visit.” He stepped into the hall, past the mystified young man, and looked around. Like the building’s front door and entrance, the hall had an air of impressive, sober dignity. The floors were varnished and blacked, the walls were painted in dark, subdued colours, and the hall chairs and drapery were silky blacks, purples and maroons. It felt like the foyer of an upmarket bordello.

  But there was an underlying scruffiness. Gaunt noticed immediately the odd chip in the paintwork, the hasty way the drapery had been gathered and pinned, the faint smell of musty dampness that scents of lilac and lavender could not quite disguise.

  “I wonder if you could enlighten me,” said Jaume. He was staring at Gaunt. It seemed likely that, just as Gaunt had seen through the initial impression of Jaume’s premises, so Jaume was seeing past the initial impression of Gaunt. He was seeing the dirty, scuffed clothes, the two-day stubble, the various bruises
.

  “I find myself in an unfortunate situation,” said Gaunt. “I need help, and there are very few people I can turn to. Just now, Mr. Jaume, you are the closest. Are you a loyal servant of the Imperial Throne?”

  “Am I what?” Jaume began. “Of course!”

  “You would, therefore, have no objections to assisting an officer of the Throne in the pursuit of his duties?”

  “What is this?” asked Jaume.

  Gaunt looked at the doorway behind Jaume, and gave a brief nod. Suddenly, other people were coming in out of the snow and the gathering darkness.

  “What is this?” Jaume repeated as they pushed past him.

  Criid was escorting Maggs, who was dazed and bleary, his hands still bound. Kolding, weighed down by his medical kit, was supporting the prisoner.

  “Through there,” Gaunt said, gesturing, and then closed and bolted the front door behind them.

  Criid had led the way into the reception room off the hall. It was similarly appointed in dark romantic shades of maroon, red and black. There were couches and armchairs, side tables decorated with arrangements of dried flowers, and a great deal of gathered drapery dressing the walls.

  Criid left Maggs slumped on one of the couches, and Kolding settled the prisoner on the other.

  “Check the place, please,” Gaunt said to Criid. “Entrances and exits. Is there anyone else here, Mr. Jaume?”

  “No,” Jaume replied. “I’m here alone. There were appointments booked for today, but they were all cancelled due to the snow.”

  Gaunt nodded to Criid. She drew the laspistol and slipped out of the room.

  “Why is she armed?” Jaume asked.

  Gaunt ignored the question.

  “You work here?” he asked, looking around.

  “Yes,” said Jaume.

  “This is your studio?”

  “Yes,” said Jaume.

  “And you’re a portraitist? You make picts?”

  “Photographic exposures,” said Jaume, “and also some hololithic work.” The reception room was as discretely shabby as the hall. Gaunt could see that boot-black had been used to cover scuff marks on the floorboards and the legs of the furniture. The drapery had been gathered so as to hide old watermarks, and the flower vases had been painted over to disguise chips.

  Several large, black albums with embossed felt covers were arranged on one of the side tables for casual inspection. Gaunt opened one, and began to turn the oversized card pages. The picts inside were large, and mounted in elegantly muted paper frames. They were portraits of men in uniforms: Guard, Navy, PDF, militia. The men’s uniforms were all dress formal, and their faces were uniformly solemn. They stood stiffly, facing the camera, looking into the lens with vacant or preoccupied eyes, and expressions that would never alter. There were chin straps and moustaches, dress swords and bugles, standards and drums. There were shakos perched on heads, and gilded chase helmets cupped under arms. There were bearskin capes, breastplates, and frogged button loops. To his surprise, Gaunt found he couldn’t identify many of the uniforms.

  “I make commemorative portraits,” said Jaume, watching Gaunt go through the album, eager for approval. “There is a great demand for it here on Balhaut, because of the Famous Victory, of course. A great demand.”

  Most of the portraits showed the skyline of Balopolis or the Oligarchy in the background. The same views, over and over. In most, Gaunt could read a skyline that had not existed for fifteen years. Some portraits included proud families in their formal best, gathered around the son or husband, brother or father in uniform.

  “Families come here, or send commission orders,” Jaume went on, “from all across the sector, actually. There is dignity in a commemorative portrait. And consolation.”

  Gaunt realised that it wasn’t a bordello that Jaume’s premises reminded him of. Rather, it was a funeral parlour. Jaume’s business was part of the mourning industry. The men he was looking at were dead, surely. He was reviewing images of men who no longer existed, which had been skilfully combined with images of a city that no longer existed either.

  Gaunt closed the album.

  “What’s through here?” he asked, and walked through the draped arch before Jaume could answer.

  The main studio lay beyond the arch. Powerful lights and pict-imagers on tripods were arranged in front of a scenic area. To one side were racks of clothes, and boxes of props, like a messy backstage dressing room. Gaunt turned on one of the lamps, and its powerful filament lit with a ftoom!

  Balopolis lay before him, noble and magnificent. Above, the Oligarchy; below, the bending river. There, the Tower of the Plutocrat, the Monastery, the High Palace, the Sirene Palace, the Emancipatory, the Oligarchy Gate.

  The Oligarchy Gate. The afternoon of the ninth day, at Slaydo’s left hand. Ahead, the famous Gate, defended by the woe machines of Heritor Asphodel. Mud lakes. Freak weather. The chemical deluge triggered by the orbital bombardment and the Heritor’s toxins. Molten pitch in the air like torrential rain—

  Gaunt walked towards the bright vista. It was untouched. War-clean. It was Balopolis as it had been.

  Wire barbs skinning the air. The thuk of impacts, so many impacts. Clouds of pink mist to his left and right as men were hit. Ahead, below the Gate, the machines whirring again—

  “Stop it,” Gaunt said.

  “Sir?” Jaume asked.

  “I was talking to myself,” said Gaunt.

  Balopolis was one of a number of theatrical backdrop flats arranged behind the posing area.

  “There is a selection,” said Jaume, moving Balopolis aside on its running wheels. “The Oligarchy is especially popular. But also Ascension Valley, Zaebes City… I can do Khulan too. Terra itself, at a pinch.”

  “But your subjects are dead men,” said Gaunt.

  “Not all of them,” said Jaume, “but most of them. You take their images from old stock, and superimpose them. Why do you need a set?”

  “It depends upon the commission,” said Jaume. “If the family wants to be included, I have them sit here, arranged in front of their chosen scene. Then I dress an assistant appropriately to stand with them.”

  Jaume moved to the heaped racks of clothes, and picked up, at random, a hussar’s jacket and a sabre.

  “You see? Something appropriate. I have a great deal to choose from. War surplus. Stuff that was left behind.”

  “The gun that was left behind,” Gaunt murmured.

  “Pardon?”

  “Nothing.”

  Jaume brandished his props. “The assistant stands in a pose that matches the pose of the family’s loved one in an old pict, and then I match the face in later. It’s most satisfactory. The families are always delighted to be reunited in that way, one last time.”

  “How do you get the uniform details right?” Gaunt asked.

  “To be honest,” said Jaume, “many of the old picts I’m given to work from are not in formal dress, or sometimes the uniforms just aren’t very… compelling. Heroic, if you like. The families are always keen to make their loved one look as dashing and martial as possible.”

  “So you make it up?” asked Gaunt.

  “I manufacture commemoration, sir,” said Jaume. “I give my clients a memento of the way things should have been.”

  Criid entered. She looked around and whistled.

  “Clear?” Gaunt asked.

  She nodded, and recounted the basic layout of the premises. As she spoke, she picked along the clothes rail, and tried on a plumed dragoon’s cap.

  “How do I look?” she asked.

  “Astonishingly authentic,” Gaunt replied sourly. “Did you find a kitchen?”

  He glanced at Jaume. “Do you have any food?”

  “Yes, of course. Not much, but—”

  “When this is over,” said Gaunt, “the Munitorum will reimburse you for all costs.”

  “Sir, may I ask,” said Jaume, “exactly what ‘this’ is?”

  Gaunt went to the kitchen with Criid. He
was in a foul mood. He wasn’t sure if it was a response to Jaume’s tawdry fantasies, or to the memories of the ninth day that had been summoned so unexpectedly by the shabby set.

  Away from the public areas, Jaume’s premises were sordid and neglected. The kitchen was a festering horror. The milk and eggs they found were off, though Gaunt had a suspicion that all the milk and all the eggs in the city were off, in the same way that all the clocks had stopped.

  There was, at least, some bread, some cured sausage, some pickled cabbage, and the makings of decent soup and caffeine.

  “He lives in these back rooms like a slob,” said Criid as they prepared the food together.

  “I think the death industry of Balhaut is itself dying,” Gaunt replied, chopping onions for the broth. “Mr. Jaume insists otherwise, but I don’t think there’s much money in it anymore. Grief only lasts so long. When it’s done, there’s only emptiness, and emptiness doesn’t want or need a gravestone or a commemorative portrait.”

  “Grief lasts a long time,” she said. There were tears in her eyes.

  “Tona?”

  She laughed.

  “It’s the onions,” she said.

  “I know it’s not,” said Gaunt, and scraped the onions off his board and into the pot with his kitchen knife.

  Maggs was awake. The fever in him had subsided somewhat.

  “Why are my hands tied?” he asked. “Why does my head hurt like a bastard? Hey, who cut up my hand? It’s sore!”

  Criid held out a bowl of hot soup. “Eat this. Don’t ask questions.”

  “But my hands are tied, Tona. Come on.”

  “So are mine, in a much more metaphorical sense. You want to eat? Be inventive.”

  “How is he?” Gaunt asked Kolding.

  Kolding was so busy devouring his soup and bread that he’d steamed up his glasses.

  “The prisoner?” he asked, between mouthfuls.

  “Yes, doctor.”

  Kolding lowered his bowl, swallowing. He looked over at the prisoner, asleep on the nearby couch. Mabbon had managed a little soup and bread before sleeping.

  “He’s surprisingly… well. The fever’s broken. It’s a turnaround, I confess.”