by Dan Abnett
“Actually, sir, we can,” said Fultingo.
“This is Gaunt’s regiment, these are Gaunt’s men…” Daur said quietly. “Ibram Gaunt the only commissar I know of to hold a command rank. Don’t you think simple courtesy would have you approve it via him?”
“The God-Emperor’s exalted Commissariate has little time for courtesy, captain.” Daur turned and saw Hark strolling up behind him. “Unfortunately. However, as assigned Tanith First commissar, I intend to make sure that courtesy is extended.”
“They want to search the billet,” Daur said. “Do they? Why?” Hark asked.
“A matter of internal security,” said Fultingo’s cadet quickly. Hark raised his eyebrows. “Really… why?”
“Commissar Hark, are you refusing to cooperate?” asked Fultingo.
Hark turned. He took off his cap and tucked it under his arm. He fixed Fultingo with a poisonous stare. “You know me?”
“We were briefed.”
“Yet I don’t know you, or your… junior.” Hark waved his cap at the cadet.
“I am Commissar Fultingo, from the admiral’s general staff. This is Cadet Goosen, who was serving under the Urdeshi Commissar Frant.”
“And Frant couldn’t be bothered to attend?”
“Commissar Frant was killed in the assault,” said Goosen nervously, adjusting his collar.
“Oh, thrust into the limelight, eh, cadet?” smiled Hark.
“Not in any way I would have wished,” said Goosen. Daur thought that was a particularly brave response from the junior officer. Hark was in the process of bringing his full, withering persona to bear.
“So… Fultingo… what’s this all about?” asked Hark softly.
“Something to do with that child, I should think,” said Curth. She’d joined them from the billet rows, her brow knotted. She pushed past the officers and the escort and knelt beside a small, grubby boy who was holding onto the last trooper’s coat tails and trying not to cry.
“My name’s Ana. What’s your name?” she whispered.
“Beggi…” he said.
“Did you know that?” she asked Fultingo caustically.
Fultingo consulted his data-slate. “Yes. Beggi Flyte. Eldest son of Onti Flyte, Cirenholm mill-wife.”
The boy was shuddering with tears now.
“He’s deeply traumatised!” Curth spat, holding the child. “Why did you see fit to drag him around these billets and—”
“He’s deeply traumatised, ma’am,” said Fultingo, “because his mother is dead. Murdered. By one of the Ghosts. Now… can we proceed?”
The entourage camp was a heady, smoky place half filling a cargo hangar. Cooks were roasting poultry and boiling up stews along a row of chemical stoves, and their assistants were dicing vegetables and herbs on chopping stands nearby. There was music playing, pipes, mandolins and hand-drums, and behind that there was the steady chink-chink of the armourers in their work-tents. Ghosts milled about, eating, drinking, getting their weapons sharpened, dancing and laughing, chatting conspiratorially to the painted women.
Kolea moved through the press. A fire-eater retched flame into the air and people clapped. The sounds reminded Gol of flamers in battle.
Someone offered him a smoked chicken portion for a credit but he waved them aside. Another, dressed in gaudy robes and sporting augmetic fingers, tried to interest him in a round of “find the lady”. “No thanks,” said Gol Kolea, pushing past. A bladesmith was sharpening knives on a pedal-turned whetstone. Sparks flew up. Kolea saw Trooper Unkin waiting in line behind Trooper Cuu for his straight silver to be edged. Cuu’s blade had already been rubbed in oil and was now set at the grinder, sparking. He moved on. Black marketeers offered him size three clips.
“Where the gak were you?” he snarled, sending them away with a cuff.
Others had candy, porn-slates, exotic weapons, booze.
“Real sacra! Real, ghosty-man! Try it!”
“Can’t stand the stuff,” growled Kolea, shouldering through.
A one-legged hawker showed off talismans of the Emperor, Tanith badges and aquila crests. Another, his face sewn together, produced chronometers, nightscopes and contraband micro-beads.
Yet another, limbless and moving thanks to a spider-armed augmetic chassis, displayed lho-sticks, cigars and several stronger narcotics.
A juggler tumbled past. A mime artist, her face yellow and stark, performed the death of Solan to an appreciative crowd. A small boy ran through the crowd, running a hoop with a stick. Two little girls, neither of them more than five years old, were playing hop-square.
“Going my way, handsome?”
Kolea stopped in his tracks. His Livy had always called him “handsome”. He looked round. It wasn’t Livy.
The camp-girl was actually pretty, though far too heavily made-up. Her dark-lashed eyes were bright and vivid. A beauty spot sat on her powdered cheek. She smiled at Kolea, her long skirt bunched up either side of her hips in her lace-gloved hands as she posed coquettishly. Her large, round breasts might as well have been bared given the flimsiness of the satin band that restrained them.
“Going my way?”
Her perfume was intoxicatingly strong.
“No,” said Kolea. “Sorry.”
“Ballless gak,” she hissed after him.
He tried to ignore her. He tried to ignore everything.
Aleksa was waiting for him in her silk tent.
“Gol,” she smiled. She was a big woman, fast approaching the end of her working days. No amount of powder, paint or perfume could really sweeten her rotund bulk. Her petticoats were old and threadbare, and her lace and holiathi gown was faded. She cradled a cut-crystal glass of amasec against her colossally exposed bosom with a wrinkled, ringed hand.
“Aleksa,” he said, closing the hems of her tent behind him.
She wriggled around on her pile of silk cushions. “The usual?” she asked.
Gol Kolea nodded. He took the coins from his safe-belt, counted them again and offered them to her.
“On the nightstand, please. I don’t like to get my gloves dirty.”
Kolea heaped the coins on the side table.
“Okay then… off you go,” she said.
He climbed on to the heap of cushions, and crawled across past Aleksa. She lay back, watching him.
Kolea reached the wall of the tent and parted the silk around the slit Aleksa had made for him.
“Where are they?”
“Right there, Gol.”
He angled his head. Outside, across the walkway, two children were playing a nameless game in a gutter puddle. A small boy and a toddler, laughing together.
“They’ve been okay?”
“They’ve been fine, Gol,” said Aleksa. “You pay me to look after them so I do. Yoncy had a cough last week, but it’s cleared up.”
“Dalin… he’s getting so big.”
“He’s a feisty one, no doubt. Takes a lot of watching.” Kolea smiled. “Which is all I do.”
He sat back on the cushions. She leaned forward and rubbed his shoulders with her hands.
“We’ve been through this, Gol. You should say something. You really should. It’s not right.”
“Caff and Tona… they’re doing right by them?”
“Yes, yes! Believe me, they’re… I was going to say they were the best parents those kids could get… but you know what I mean.”
“Yeah.”
“Oh, Gol, come on.”
He looked round at her. “They’re mine, Aleksa.”
She grinned. “Yes, they are. So go out there and claim them.”
“No. Not now. I won’t gak up their lives anymore. Their daddy’s dead. It has to stay that way”
“Gol… it’s not my place to say this—”
“Say it.”
Aleksa grinned encouragingly. “Just do it. Criid will understand. Caffran too.”
“No!”
“Criid’s a good woman. I’ve got to know her, the time she spends here. She’d unders
tand. She’d be… oh, I don’t know. Grateful?”
Kolea took one last look through the slit. Dalin had made a paper boat for Yoncy and they were sailing it down the murky gutter.
“Too late,” breathed Kolea. “For their sakes, and for mine, too late.”
The party reached the end of the last Ghost billet hall. Off-duty troopers watched them curiously as they passed by the cots. The boy had done little except stare and occasionally shake his head.
“Nothing?” asked Hark.
“No one he recognises,” said Fultingo.
“Satisfied, then?” snapped Curth.
“Not at all.” Fultingo dropped his voice. “That boy’s mother was killed in a frenzied knife attack. The wounds match exactly the pattern and dimensions of a Tanith warknife.”
“Knives can be stolen. Or lost in battle. Or taken from the dead. Some of the Ghosts may be missing their blades…” Hark said confidently. Daur knew it was for show. A warknife was a Ghost’s most treasured possession. They didn’t lose them. And they made sure their dead always went to the grave with their straight silver.
Fultingo wasn’t put off anyway. “Several witnesses saw a man in Tanith First battledress leaving the area of the habs. A man in a hurry.”
“Large? Small? Bearded? Clean-shaven? Tanith colouring or Verghast? Distinguishing marks? Rank pins?” Hark demanded.
“Lean, compact. Clean-shaven,” Goosen read from his notes. “No one got a clear look. Except the boy. He’s the best witness.”
Hark looked round at Daur and Curth. “I deplore this crime, commissar,” he said to Fultingo. “But this witch hunt’s gone far enough. The boy’s been through the halls and he hasn’t recognised anyone. There’s been a mistake. Your killer isn’t a Ghost.”
Hark led them out into the corridor away from the men. It was cold, and condensation dribbled from the heating pipes that ran along the wall.
“I suggest you check with other regiments and explore other avenues of enquiry.”
Fultingo was about to reply, but they had to move aside as a platoon of weary Ghosts thumped down the corridor, dirty and smelling of smoke. A clearance squad returning from the fighting in the primary dome. Some were wounded or at least blood-stained.
“We haven’t seen all of the men,” said Fultingo as they clomped past. “There’s still a number in the active zone and—”
“What is it? Beggi?” Curth said suddenly, crouching by the boy. He was pointing. “What did you see?”
The boy didn’t speak, but his finger’s aim was an inexorable as a long-las.
“Detachment halt!” Hark shouted, and the returning platoon came up sharp, turning in fatigued confusion.
“Is there a problem, commissar, sir?” asked Corporal Meryn, moving back from the head of the line.
“Is that him, Beggi?” asked Curth, warily.
“Is that the man?” echoed Hark. “Son, is it?”
Beggi Flyte nodded slowly.
“Trooper! Come over here,” Hark growled.
“Me?” asked Caffran. “Why?”
TWO
The great bells of the Phantine Basilica pealed out into the morning across a municipal square at the heart of primary dome, and the sound of them raised cheering from the great gathering of Cirenholmers. The bells had been cast seventeen centuries before to serve the original Basilica some five kilometres below at a time when Phantine culture had occupied the surface of the planet. Since then, the cities had been serially abandoned and rebuilt on higher and ever higher ground to escape the rising blanket of pollution, and each time, the bells had been removed and transported up to the newly consecrated church.
Now they rang for joy. And they rang to signal the end of the service of deliverance that had been held to formally mark the liberation of Cirenholm. The night before, the last of the Blood Pact dug into the northern edges of the primary dome had been slaughtered or captured. Cirenholm was free.
Ecclesiarchs from Hessenville had conducted the service as all the Imperial priests in Cirenholm had been butchered during the invasion. The worthies of the city attended, some still sick and weak from their suffering during the occupation. So many citizens had come, the majority had been forced to congregate outside in the square and listen to the service via brass tannoys.
Hundreds of Imperial officers from the liberation force had also attended as a gesture of respect. Van Voytz, dignified in his dress uniform, had risen to say a few words. Diplomatically, his speech mentioned the efforts of the Tanith, Phantine and Urdeshi without differentiation. This was not a time for rebukes.
When the service was over and the bells were ringing. Gaunt rose from his pew and followed the crowds outside into the square. He paused briefly to speak to Major Fazalur, the stoic Phantine troop leader, and to a young officer called Shenko who was now, apparently, acting commander of the Urdeshi.
“How’s Zhyte?” Gaunt asked.
“His fighting days are over, sir,” Shenko replied, with obvious awkwardness. “He’s to be shipped off-world to a veterans’ hospice on Fortis Binary.”
“I hope his time there is happier than mine was,” said Gaunt with a reflective smile.
“Sir, I—” Shenko fumbled for the words.
“I don’t bite, despite what you may have heard.”
Shenko grinned nervously. “I just wanted to say… Zhyte was a good commander. A damn good commander. He saw us through hell several times. He always had a temper and his pride, well… I know he made a mistake here, sir. But I just wanted to say—”
“Enough, Shenko. I have no animosity towards the Urdeshi. I’ve actually admired their fortitude since Balhaut—”
“You saw action on Balhaut?” asked Shenko, his eyes wide.
“I did. I was with the Hyrkans then.” Gaunt smiled. Was he so old his past actions had a ring of history in the ears of younger men?
“Ask one of your veterans to tell you about Hill 67 sometime. The Hyrkans to the west of the ridge, the Urdeshi to the east. I don’t bear a grudge, and I’m certainly not going to damn a whole regiment because of the attitude and actions of one man. Zhyte should have… ah, never mind. Your boys paid for his mistake here. Feth, Zhyte paid too, come to think of it. Just do me a favour.”
“Sir?”
“Be what he wasn’t. We’re going into the next theatre together soon. I’d like to think the Urdeshi will be allies, not rivals.”
“You have my hand on it colonel-commissar.”
Gaunt walked away down the steps, through the throngs of people, stiff in his braided dress uniform.
Confetti streamed in the wind, and citizens pushed forward to hang paper garlands around the necks of their liberators and kiss their hands. Real flowers had vanished from Phantine eight centuries before, except for a few precious blooms raised in specialist hortivatae. But the paper mills still functioned.
With a garland of paper lilies around his neck. Gaunt made his way slowly through the crush on the square, shaking the hands thrust at him. He caught sight of a particularly striking officer dutifully shaking hands. It was Rawne. Gaunt smiled. He so seldom saw Rawne in full ceremonial regalia, it was a shock.
He moved over to him.
“Nice pansies,” he whispered mockingly in Rawne’s ear as he shook the eager hands.
“Speak for yourself,” returned Rawne, glancing from his own garland to Gaunt’s. The suturing around his blood-shot eye made his glare even angrier than usual.
“Let’s get out of here,” said Gaunt still smiling outwardly at the crowd.
“Good idea! Where to?” said Ayatani Zweil, appearing out of the press of reaching hands. Zweil had a half dozen garlands round his neck.
They pushed to the edge of the crowd and, with hands aching, made off down a side street. Even then they were stopped several times to be kissed, hugged or thanked.
“If this is the upside of a soldier’s life, no wonder you like it,” said Zweil. “I haven’t been worshipped this much since I was a missionar
y on Lurkan, walking the bead’s path. Of course, at that time, I was much better looking, and it helped that the locals were expecting the return of a messiah named Zweil.”
Gaunt chuckled, but Rawne wasn’t amused. He tore off his garland and tossed it into the gutter.
“The mawkish praise of sweaty hab-folk isn’t why I signed up,” he sneered. “That rabble probably thanked the Blood Pact just as effusively when they arrived. It always pays to be nice to the armed men controlling the place you live in.”
“You truly are the most cynical devil I’ve ever met, major,” Zweil remarked.
“Life sucks, holy father. Wake up and smell the flowers.”
Zweil toyed wistfully with the paper blooms around his neck. “If only I could.”
“If you didn’t sign up to enjoy the adulation of the Imperial common folk, Rawne,” Gaunt said, “what did you do it for?”
Rawne thought for a moment. “Feth you,” was all he could come up with. Gaunt nodded. “My thoughts exactly.” He stopped. “This will do,” he told them.
It was a tavern. Built into the basement of a shabby records bureau, there was a steep set of steps running down from street level to the door. It had been closed since the Blood Pact occupation, and Gaunt had to pay the nervous owner well to get them in.
The place was dismal and littered with smashed glasses and broken furniture. The heathens had caroused their nights away, breaking everything they were finished with. Two girls, the owner’s teenage daughters, were sweeping up debris. They’d already filled several sacks. The owner’s brother was furiously scrubbing the walls with a bristle-brush dipped in caustic soda, trying to obliterate the obscenities that had been daubed on the plastered walls.
Gaunt, Rawne and Zweil took seats on a high bench beside the bar.
“I shouldn’t be open,” the owner said. “But for the saviours of Cirenholm, I’ll gladly make an exception.”
“A double exception, I hope,” said Zweil. “What will you have?”
“You have any sacra?” Gaunt asked. “Uhh… no, sir. Not sure what that is.”
“No matter. Amasec?”
“I used to,” the owner said ruefully. “Let me see if there’s any left.”