‘There, exactly like that,’ she said. She pointed at his face. ‘A barrier. And I do know what I’m talking about. And what I’m trying to do is steal the chief’s straight silver.’
‘What?’
‘I’m saying, I’m not meddling in your business, you churlish gak. I was out here, doing something, and you walked out, and so I spoke–’
‘What?’
‘–you interrupted me, not the other way around.’
‘You’re trying to steal his warknife?’ he said.
She grinned.
‘Oh, that. Yes,’ she said.
‘What… Why?’
‘Mkoll’s given me a shot, but everyone expects me to fail. One, I’m a woman. Two, I’m Verghast.’ She started to count the strikes off on her fingers. ‘Three, I’m an officer, or was. Four, I have no background in recon specialties, and I sure as shit don’t have that Tanith tree-magic crap baked into me. Five, I’m a woman–’
‘You said that.’
‘It bears repeating. They’ve given me a shot at it, and I’m working my arse off to make the grade, but they are all waiting for me to fail. Even Mkoll. So I’m putting in the extra hours. Like now, Milo, until you interrupted me. One of these nights, I’m going to get in there and lift his straight silver while he’s sleeping. That’ll wipe the fething smirk off their faces.’
‘You won’t.’
She sniffed.
‘Not you as well,’ Zhukova murmured.
‘No,’ he said, back-tracking fast. ‘Because it’s Mkoll. None of us could do that.’
‘We’ll see.’
‘Seriously, set yourself an easier challenge.’
‘Why?’ she asked.
He started to answer, but didn’t know what the answer was. It was a genuinely good question.
‘Nearly got it, two nights back,’ she said. ‘He didn’t stir. But I couldn’t reach the blade. So I left a flower on his bolster instead.’
‘A flower?’ Milo asked.
‘Yes,’ she said. She gestured towards the stone planters that framed the courtyard. ‘One of those things. I picked one of those and left it.’
‘Islumbine,’ he said.
‘Yeah. It grows everywhere.’
‘It does now.’
‘What?’
He shrugged.
‘He was livid,’ Zhukova said, with an involuntary snigger. ‘Thought it was some kind of joke or something, which I suppose it was, but he didn’t get it. He thought Bonin had done it.’
Milo smiled.
‘The knife,’ she said. ‘Next time. Thought I had a good shot tonight, except you came blundering about.’
It didn’t seem to warrant an apology, so he made none.
‘What did you mean?’ he asked. ‘Just now. You said you know what you’re talking about?’
‘Self-recrimination,’ she said. ‘That was my vice for a long time. It eats you up, so stay away from it, that’s all I’m saying.’
‘I’ve lost a lot,’ said Milo.
‘I have no doubt.’
‘It feels like I’ve lost everything,’ he said, ‘except a nickname I despise.’
‘Well, loss is often a factor,’ Zhukova said, quite matter-of-fact. ‘Actual loss, or a feeling that you’ve lost your way. Or the feeling that you’re not good enough. That you’re an imposter, and someone’s going to call you out any second. That was mine.’
‘How did that work?’
‘I’m a career soldier, Milo,’ she said. ‘It’s what I wanted to be, what I chose for myself. I’m not bad at it. Got a commission. A mention or two in after-actions. But my whole career, I’ve been dogged by rumours. By gossip. I only made officer school because I’m a good-looking woman. I only made captain because I’m easy on the eye. I only got a command post because I slept my way through the academy. I only got anything because, I dunno, tits.’
She looked at him.
‘Everything I’ve got, everything I’ve done… no one ever thinks it’s on merit. On ability. Unless banging your senior instructor is considered an ability, which I did not do. I began to believe it. That rots you from the inside. So, there’s my advice, free of charge and speaking as one who knows. Don’t do it.’
‘What changed?’ he asked.
‘The chief gave me a chance. The first person to actually evaluate me on ability. That’s why I resigned my pins and went for it. And that’s why I am not going to feth it up.’
‘He brought us both back in, then,’ said Milo.
‘What?’
‘Mkoll. Brought us both back in.’
‘I guess so. Well, you’d better not feth it up either, then, had you?’
He nodded.
‘They’re in awe of you, you know?’ Zhukova said quietly.
‘What? Who are?’
‘The Ghosts. Your old friends. You walked with the Beati. Fought at her side. Fought at the chief’s side on that fething island and killed the Anarch. They’re in awe of you. That’s why they keep their distance. They have no idea how to talk to you.’
‘They can talk to me like they used to.’
‘Call you “boy”?’
‘I don’t mean that.’
‘No, I know what you mean,’ she said. ‘You should tell them.’
‘I honestly don’t know how.’
‘Well, you need to find a way. If you’re staying.’
‘I don’t even know that.’
‘Wow, boy,’ Zhukova said. ‘You are stubborn. Well, it’s been nice meeting you.’
‘You too,’ he said. But she’d gone. Vanished without a sound into the blue shadows.
He could see why Mkoll had given her a shot.
In Cygnus City, the turret guns are hammering. The next wave of Aeronautica has just gone over, dropping dazzle-flares to paint the redoubts. They’ll need to stay in cover when the shockwaves come, then get up and start moving before the smoke clears. He can smell islumbine on the air, but it’s not in the air, it’s in his head, and so is Cygnus City. It’s a memory of the scent of islumbine, a hole that something used to occupy, like the space left in a gun-case when the gun has been removed, but you can still see the fitted depression for it. And the empty memories are just inside a dream anyway, and this is just a fething dream again, and she’s not in it, not even a space she used to occupy and–
He woke.
On his fifth or sixth visit, he finally realised why he liked the liquor-house on Hainehill Street. It had certain advantages. Locals drank there, Urdeshi locals, and off-world Militarum didn’t venture in.
But most of all, the building was old. Its frame was timber built.
The barman saw him when he entered, and had a jar of fobraki waiting on the wooden bar-top. The bar itself was framed with thick, worked timbers, stained almost black with varnish and smoke and the grease-dirt of years. Posts cut from single tree trunks held up the ceiling, and the rafters had been cut from the same forest.
Not nalwood. He could tell that by the grain. But not local. This timber had been shipped in years before, maybe cadderwood from Taliscant, or Far Halt cedar. Maybe it was nalwood. The Tanith mills had traded off-world for centuries, and it had been a long time since he’d walked the forests, perhaps so long that his knowledge of knot pattern and heartwood grain had waned.
But it was wood. It was Great Timber, cut by loggers from an old forest, brought here from there. The warmth of it, the feel of it, it reassured him. And if he squinted, after a few jars, he could imagine the upright posts as trees standing in leaf, and smell the damp musk and leaf-litter of the forest floor, and hear the wind sigh as it stirred the boughs above.
The pulse had never left him. The throb behind his breastbone, beneath the old tattoo he couldn’t remember getting. It had been there since his childhood, since the time when he really was just a boy. Instinct, intuition, a warning knot in his gut, call it what you like. Milo didn’t call it anything, because he couldn’t explain it, and people looked at him warily when he tried
to.
She had never questioned it. In fact, the Beati had trusted it, and looked to him when a certain expression crossed his face. It wasn’t a curse or a blemish to her. It had been a gift from the Throne, and one to be cherished.
He hadn’t felt the pulse since Orchidel Island.
He’s on the shingle. The air’s cold, a strong wind off a grey, wallowing sea. There’s no scent of islumbine, there’s just a sense of purpose. The bastard will die. The bastard will die, now and here. This is how it’s supposed to end. This is what he’s meant to do, no matter how much his ears are ringing from blast concussion, no matter how weak his limbs are, no matter how much his stomach heaves or his head aches from translation sickness. The pulse beats right under the gristle of his breastbone. This is where his path has been leading him. This is where she saw him going. This was why she let him walk at her side, so he could come here and do this.
Everything has led here. From the deep woods of Tanith, from the dust of Herodor, everything, from there to here.
The wet shingle slithers under his feet. Kicked stones skitter. There’s the weight of the grenade in his hand. He wants to fall down and vomit and pass out, but he won’t. The bastard is right there. Just ahead. A ragged shape on the beach, trying to get up, dirty robes flapped by the inshore wind. The magister doesn’t look like anything. He doesn’t look like a creature that has dominated the stars, or razed worlds, or united hosts of fanatics with his voice. He looks pathetic, fallen, broken. This, in the end, will be easy to do. An easy kill, quick and–
He woke.
The wood in the Hainehill liquor-house was painted pale blue, the walls white, and the lipped edges of the low tables yellow-gold, the three colours of the Urdeshi banner. Between the thick ceiling posts, most of the liquor-house was given over to seating: low wooden benches around squat wooden tables, no more than a foot off the ground. The tables were oblong, with thick, raised lips around the edges, almost like market pallets. Milo supposed that’s what they had once been: market pallets, or ware boards, or maybe dough trays from a bakery, repurposed as tables just like everything else in the place was repurposed. Jars and trays, even the mismatched bottles that were used to store the fobraki, they had all been something else originally. They had been used for a long time, they had served their purpose and, when they were no longer needed, they had been pressed into service in a second life, to serve in a different way.
The paint was so thick, it was hard to see the grain of the wood. The tables and benches were so low, patrons sat hunched, like men around a campfire, except for those who had found benches against the white walls which allowed them to lean back.
Up in the rafters, old, moth-eaten banners had been strung up: the faded flags of long-lost Urdeshi companies and brigades, or the threadbare pennants of local labour guilds and fab worker unions, once paraded through the streets on high days and festivals.
Milo admired the Urdeshi resolve, their steadfast nature, unbowed and dignified after centuries of hardship and war. Where did that come from? Was it some special alloy struck in the alchemy of the forges? Suffering and loss broke some cultures, but not the Urdeshi. It seemed to make them stronger.
But not stronger so they would rise up, renewed, and win. Just stronger to endure the next loss, and the one after that, and the one after that. They expected loss. They expected suffering. Victory seemed like an awkward surprise.
‘You Guard?’ asked the man in the machinist’s smock. ‘You Imperial Guard?’
The Sons of Sek were the archenemy. Worse than the Blood Pact, because their feral nature was tempered by a greater discipline. They had harnessed rage and murder like no others.
Milo had been fighting them for a long time, first with the Ghosts and then at the Beati’s side. He loathed them, but he also respected them. You had to respect such a capable foe or you’d lose the fight.
And the Sons had lost. They were gone now, broken. Milo had fought them, and he had been their prisoner, and he had hidden in their midst long enough to get some measure of them. Not an understanding, or a sympathy, but enough to get a degree of insight. The devotion to the cause, the certainty of their calling.
The corpses of five of them, mob-killed, were strung from a gibbet at the corner of Hainehill. There were gibbets just like it all across Eltath. The bodies would hang there until decay made suspension impossible. They would be abused, and spat at, and pilloried by every passing citizen, day in, day out, a reminder of someone’s victory and someone’s defeat. Milo was sure that, when decay finally took its toll, the remains would be dragged to the bastion walls, and skulls put on spikes, and bones in iron cages. The defeated enemy, humiliated and desecrated. The Urdeshi victory would be made to endure too.
At Brachis City, Ashwarati and Siprious, the Sons had displayed Militarum skulls on stakes. Milo remembered it clearly.
What must it feel like to have lost? Milo had no sympathy, but he could imagine. To be so certain. To be so united in one cause and one purpose, unified by a single voice, and for all of that to just disappear. The Sons had lost their voice. They had lost their way.
Better to rot from a gallows-tree than live with that.
Am I like you, corpse? Am I so different? Loyal, driven by a purpose I believe in with all my heart, fighting for a cause? Answering a voice without hesitation? When our bones hang side by side from a gibbet, or rot side by side in the grave, could anybody see a difference? Duty and faith, honour and belief, those things rot away long before flesh and organs.
You found your way from there to here, and here, for you, is a rope and a crossbar and ignominy. Somewhere, on the road from there, I lost my way.
And all I can do is stand and look up at you. I am breathing, and you are simply swaying in the midday breeze. Beyond that, is there any real difference between us?
‘You Guard?’ asked the man in the machinist’s smock. ‘You Imperial Guard?’
Milo nodded. The man sat down on the bench beside him, uninvited. They sat hunched over the blue table, like friends around a firepit on a cold night.
‘This is no place for you, lasman,’ the man said.
‘What?’
‘This is an Urdeshi place. Not for your kind.’
‘My kind?’ Milo turned to look at him.
‘Look, I mean no offence,’ the man said. He waited as the passing server filled his jar again. ‘But others might.’
‘I don’t know what you’re saying,’ said Milo.
‘Then you’re a fool. Urdesh has lived Archonate, and Urdesh has lived Imperial. More years the former. This is just another thing. Urdesh is Urdesh.’
‘But we won,’ said Milo.
The man in the machinist’s smock laughed. He smelled of grease and metal dust, the work-waste of the forge.
‘This time,’ he said. ‘You won, lasman. Urdesh didn’t. The cities burn. The land burns. You are just a different master.’
‘Is that what you think?’
The man shook his head. ‘Not me. Some do. Many do. Urdesh is strong. It survives, no matter what. Archon or Throne, one year or the next, carving their tithes and their tributes, crowing their commands, making promises and never delivering. Urdesh is Urdesh, in the end. Not my sentiments, but out of respect, I wanted to mention it to you. This is no place for you. Coming here, alone. What do you come here for anyway? Praise? Thanks? Deference? Undying gratitude?’
‘No.’
The man shrugged.
‘What then, lasman?’
Milo didn’t know what to say. He couldn’t say the reassurance of the old timber, or the solitude, or the anonymity, because those things sounded feeble.
‘I like it here,’ he said.
‘Here, friend, is no place for you.’
There, on Tanith, when he is a child too young to remember it happening, he is given a tattoo over his breastbone. There, in Tanith Magna, when he is just a boy, a pulse of premonition drives him to escape the fire, and allows him to live. There, in the hea
t of Vincula City, just months later, a tall man in a commissar’s uniform unpins his shiny unit badge, and hands it to him to acknowledge his formal entry into the Tanith regiment. There, on Hagia shrine world, the dreams of islumbine begin. There, in the dust of Herodor, the same tall man hands him a straight silver to replace the one he has lost, so he can carry it with him as he walks at the Beati’s side.
There, from each there, each step on the path, to here. To the shingle. To the inshore wind flapping the ragged robes. To–
He woke.
To the dirty liquor-house on Hainehill. To the low, blue timber tables. To the creak of a gibbet rope outside as the breeze sways a voiceless corpse. To the jar of fobraki in his hand. A toast, my friend, my friendless friend, my dreamless friend, a pledge.
To Tanith. To Urdesh. To duty. To dreams. Here’s to them. Here. From Tanith to Urdesh. From there to here. From–
He woke.
But he did go back. Damn the man in the machinist’s smock. Damn his friendly advice.
Another night of fireworks in the skies over Eltath. Music and laughter in the streets. A victory, of sorts, for some. Enough for most to celebrate. Deliverance, from there to here.
Milo walked up the steep streets alone, avoiding the celebrating crowds, the pit-roast grox and the bands, the bunting strung from gutter to gutter, the kegs rolled out and tapped at the kerbside, the liquor-houses and dining halls where the Militarum went off duty to make merry with the locals and wash the war out of their minds with fobraki and amasec, and ale and laughter.
He wandered up Hainehill, into the quieter streets, past the fab and the manufactory row, past the gibbet, creaking and stinking in the night air. Fireworks flashed behind him. The lamps in the liquor-house made a reluctant invitation.
It was subdued. Locals, drinking silently, hunched. A pledge murmured as a jar was lifted towards a mouth. Milo felt he knew what it meant now, the Urdeshi pledge. It was entirely in keeping with their stoic character. A stubborn acknowledgement that here was little different to there, and all that mattered was the persistence in between. A sour, resentful toast to the effort of enduring, a salute to the weary, unending slog of seeing it through.
The barman saw him come in, and wiped the blue, painted wood of the bar with a dirty cloth. He set up a jar, and unstoppered a bottle. No greeting. Grudging eyes on him from all sides.
SABBAT WAR Page 39