by Dan Abnett
Gaunt went along whenever he got the chance. Whenever, apropos of nothing, Zweil came out with a fact or detail that he hadn’t previously encountered, Gaunt would make a brief note of it in his copybook. In a year on Balhaut, Gaunt had been obliged to request three copybooks from stores.
That evening, when Gaunt entered the temple house, the chosen subject appeared to be either the history of poetry or the poetry of history. There were about forty Ghosts present, and Zweil, perching at the lectern like a roosting vulture, was getting them to read verses aloud from faded, green-bound schola copies of the Early Sabbatists.
It was Shoggy Domor’s turn. He was on his feet, carefully reading short cantos that Gaunt reckoned were either Ahmud or some middle period Feyaytan. Gaunt waited a while. When Domor had done enough, Zweil gestured for him to sit down, and then picked on Chiria, Domor’s adjutant. She got up, wiped her palm across her scarred cheek uncertainly, and started up where Domor had left off.
Gaunt found a seat near the back, and listened. When Chiria, halting and clumsy, had done, Costin got up and embarked on an over-hasty run at one of the Odes of Sarpedon. After Costin, Sergeant Raglon read a Niciezian sonnet, and after Raglon, Wheln, who offered up a surprisingly fluid and spirited recital of Kongress’ Intimations. After Wheln, it was Eszrah’s turn.
The Nihtgane rose to his feet, a tall and considerable presence, and read one of Locaster’s Parables. It was peculiar to hear his Untill vowel-sounds rounding out Low Gothic. In the two years since Jago, and especially in that last year on Balhaut, Zweil and Gaunt between them had taught Eszrah ap Niht his letters. The Nihtgane virtually never missed one of the ayatani’s “occasions of enlightenment”. He read well. He even removed his battered old sunshades when required to read from a book indoors. When he wrote out his name, he spelled it Ezra Night.
If a year on Balhaut has civilised Eszrah, Gaunt thought, what has it done to the rest of us? How soft have we become? How much of our bite have we lost? Is there an edge left on us at all?
When the meeting broke up, Gaunt went down the front to speak to Zweil. The old ayatani looked up from a discussion he was having with Bool, and saw Gaunt approaching.
“This can’t be good,” he said.
“It’s nothing,” said Gaunt.
“If it’s about that amasec in Baskevyl’s quarters, somebody had already drunk most of it.”
“It isn’t about that,” said Gaunt.
“Well, if this is about the Oudinot mascot, I didn’t roast it, nor did I suggest to anybody that it should be roasted, and I certainly didn’t supply any recipe for ploin and forcemeat stuffing.”
“This isn’t about the Oudinot mascot,” said Gaunt. He paused. “What Oudinot mascot?”
“Oh, they don’t have one,” said Zweil hurriedly.
“They don’t?”
“Not since someone roasted it,” Zweil added.
Gaunt shook his head. “It’s not about any of that. I just need a little help, father.”
“Help?”
“That’s right. The benefit of your great experience.”
“And my wisdom?”
“And that. There’s a problem with one of the men, and I’d like your advice.”
Zweil furrowed his brow, concentrating. “Oh, certainly. No problem. Hit me.”
“There’s a member of the regimental company—”
“Do I know him?” asked Zweil.
“Yes, father.”
“All right, go on.”
“This member of the regimental company, he’s causing a big bureaucratic problem.”
“Oh, the little fether!” Zweil hissed, nodding conspiratorially. “Are you going to have him flogged?”
“Flogged?”
“Flogging’s too good for him. I know, have him tied to a rocket and fired into the heart of the local star,” said Zweil.
“Well, that’s certainly on my list of possibilities.”
“Is it? Good.”
“The problem,” said Gaunt, “is that the man is refusing to take his medical.”
“Refusing?”
“Everyone needs to be certified fit, and he’s refusing to submit himself for the exam.”
“There’s always one, isn’t there?” said Zweil. He frowned more deeply and tapped his finger against his chin. “I’d make an example of him, if I were you.”
“Tou would?”
“You can’t have insubordination like that, Gaunt. You’re meant to have some authority. Don’t stand for it. Have the man drummed up and down the quad, and then maybe tied to something heavy while the rest of us throw blunt objects at him.”
“So, in your opinion, this man’s definitely out of line?” asked Gaunt.
“Absolutely, categorically, inexcusably out of line. He needs to be certified fit, and he knows it. It’s just pure bloody-mindedness, is what it is. He has to be made to follow the rules down to the letter of the — Wait a minute. It’s me, isn’t it?”
“It is,” said Gaunt.
“Hmm,” said Zweil. “That was very sly of you.”
“I know. Will you go and see Dorden?”
“I suppose.”
“What’s the problem?”
Zweil rocked his head from side to side and shrugged. “I’ve never liked doctors. Yurk. Poking their noses in places where noses weren’t supposed to fit. I won’t have it.”
“You’ll have this.”
Zweil stuck his tongue out at Gaunt.
“What are you afraid they’ll find?” Gaunt asked.
“I’m old. I’m very, very old. What aren’t they going to find?”
Gaunt smiled. “Tomorrow morning, please. Don’t make me have this conversation with you again.”
Zweil scowled.
“Now bless me.”
Zweil waved some half-hearted business with his hands. “Bless you, in the name of the God-thingumy, blah blah.”
“Thank you.”
Zweil returned to the conversation he had been having with Bool. Haller was waiting to ask a question of his own. Gaunt wandered over to the seat where Eszrah was working. The Nihtgane was patiently writing in a copybook. He was concentrating, threading the pen across the paper in a slow, exact hand.
“Histye, soule,” Gaunt said.
Eszrah looked up. “Histye.”
Gaunt sat down beside him. “Busy?”
Eszrah nodded. He carefully blotted out the paragraph he had already written, using a square of tan blotting paper. “The father, he asked of me to written down stories that have belonged to my regiment,” he said.
“Zweil asked you?”
Eszrah nodded. By regiment, Eszrah meant his people, the Nihtgane of the Gereon Untill. His vocabulary was expanding every day, often with nuanced meanings, but he understood the word regiment in a very particular way. He could not be encouraged to use “tribe” or “people” or even “community” in relation to the Nihtgane, nor could he be persuaded of the specific military definition of regiment. The Tanith First was a regiment and, to Eszrah, it exhibited precisely the same dynamics of loyalty and collective reliance as a tribe or a family.
“He’s asked you to record Nihtgane stories? Do you mean histories?”
Eszrah shook his head. “Not of things that were done, but of older than things.”
“You mean like folklore?” Gaunt asked.
Eszrah shrugged. “Soule not know word.”
“I mean legends. Myths,” Gaunt said.
Eszrah smiled. “Aye. That is word how the father says it.”
“Do the Nihtgane have many myths?” Gaunt asked.
Eszrah puffed out his lips and turned his eyes up to indicate the level of Gaunt’s understatement.
“They have belong many, many,” he said. “There is the story of the sleeping walker, which I have writ here, and the story of the moth and the jar, and the story of the snake and the branch, which I have writ here and writ here both. Also there is the story of the walking sleeper, and the story of the old s
un, and the story of the hunter and the beast—”
“How many have you written?”
“Four and ten,” said Eszrah. He looked at the open copybook. “This I am written, it is the story of the hunter and the pool. It will make five and ten. The hunter, he walks in many of my regiment their stories.”
“Can I read them?”
Eszrah nodded willingly, and then hesitated. “But I must need the book to written down more of them.”
“Here’s what,” said Gaunt. “Why don’t I get you a second copybook. You write a story down in one book while I’m reading another, then we’ll swap. How’s that?”
Eszrah seemed quite satisfied by this compromise. Abruptly, he touched Gaunt on the sleeve and nodded towards the door of the temple house.
Beltayn had just entered, followed by Nahum Ludd, the regiment’s junior commissar. Ludd was in full uniform, and thawing snowflakes speckled his stormcoat.
“There he is,” said Beltayn.
Gaunt got up. “Something awry, Bel?”
Beltayn gestured to Ludd. The junior commissar drew an envelope from his coat. Gaunt could see that it was trimmed with a blue stripe, indicating an order despatch from the Commissariat.
“A courier just brought this in, sir,” said Ludd. “It’s come direct from Section, for your eyes only.”
Gaunt slit the envelope open quickly, took out the tissue-thin sheet inside and opened it to read it.
“You’re going to have to reschedule Mr. Jaume, Bel,” he said.
“How come, sir?”
“Because I’ve got to report to Section at daybreak tomorrow.”
“Does it say why?” asked Ludd.
“No,” said Gaunt, “it doesn’t say anything else at all.”
FIVE
Ennisker’s Perishables
Long after the last of the clock towers in the Oligarchy, and away down the hill below in the sprawl of Balopolis, had finished chiming midnight, the men in Ennisker’s Perishables began to die.
The night was as cold and hard as quenched iron, and flurries of snow came and went under the yellow street lighting. Traffic on the New Polis Bridge and the Old Crossing lit up the skeletal girderwork with their headlights, and caught the snowflakes like dust in sunlight. Light rippled across the oil slick river.
Ennisker’s Perishables was a meat-packing plant on the north bank, a large outcrop of ouslite and travertine that dominated the city wall in the shadow of the New Polis Bridge. There was ground access to the place through the warren of streets threading the land-side of the city wall, and water access via pulleys and cage-lifts on the river side.
The plant was grim, and smelled of dank stone. The ooze-breath of the river pushed up into it through its deep basements, and through the vent holes that dotted its stained facade above the waterline like arrow slits in the curtain wall of a donjon. It had been essentially derelict since the war. The Henotic League, a beneficial order founded for the relief of veterans and unhabs, had used it as a hostel for a few years until they had secured larger and less miasmal accommodations up near Arkwround Square. The phantom remnants of a notice announcing this shift of venue, and inviting lost and needy souls to come looking for the “hall with the yellow doors” on Arkwround, still lingered on one of the plant’s paint-scabbed loading doors. A subsequent attempt to revive the plant’s fortunes as a meat-packing site had foundered badly in ’81, but the power, waterlines and heating systems installed at the time had never been disconnected, a fact that Valdyke had noticed with satisfaction while sourcing the venue for his employer.
Nado Valdyke had come recommended by a man who knew a man who knew a man. His reputation was as a fixer, an arranger. A lack of scruples, and a willingness to get on with a job no matter how sound its legality, rounded out his resume nicely. Though he had enjoyed correspondence with his employer, a series of letters that set out the employer’s requirements in some detail, Valdyke had not met his employer personally.
His employer was from off-world.
When Valdyke received notice that, after a long and arduous voyage, his employer had finally arrived at Balhaut Highstation, Valdyke left his apartment in the Polis stacks and set out to make sure all the arrangements were in place.
He took four men with him, four thugs from the stacks that he’d paid very well to mind him. Valdyke did not intend to leave himself vulnerable to some off-worlder he’d never met.
The employer turned up at Ennisker’s Perishables late, riding in a car leased from the city landing grounds. A few minutes behind the car came two hired tractors, towing cargo trailers that barely fitted down the narrow, riverside streets.
Two of Valdyke’s thugs obediently trundled open the loading doors at the first hint of approaching lights. Valdyke already had the power running in the plant, and had brought in, as instructed, two bulk servitors for lifting work, and a medicae, a man called Arbus, who asked no questions and took what work he could get, due to the small matter of him having been struck off the community registry for malpractice.
The three vehicles drove into the plant’s vast loading dock, a musty cavern lit by sputtering naphtha flares. The bay’s floor had been stained brick-red by decades of blood-letting. At a sign from Valdyke, the thugs rumbled the doors shut.
“I’m Valdyke,” said Valdyke, walking up to the man getting out of the leased car. “Are you Master Eyl?”
The man brushed off his beige leather coat, and looked Valdyke up and down. “Yes,” he said.
“Pleasure to meet you at last,” said Valdyke. He thought about proffering his hand, but the man didn’t seem like the sort. Not the sort at all.
“So, you want these shipments unloaded,” Valdyke began, “and th—”
“Did you receive my instructions?” Eyl asked him, in an accented voice.
“Yes, I got them.”
“Were they clear in all particulars?”
“Oh, absolutely,” said Valdyke.
“And the remuneration that I wired across, that was received correctly?”
“It’s the down payment we agreed,” Valdyke noted with a nod.
“Then I’m not entirely sure why any further conversation is required,” said Baltasar Eyl.
Valdyke hesitated for a second. The man had come in with his attitude set to “arsehole”, and Valdyke had diced men for less, for a lot less. Valdyke decided, however, to respond with an agreeable smile and a courteous nod. The smile-and-nod combo was inspired by two things. For one, the balance payment promised for the job was considerable, and Valdyke knew the only way to guarantee getting it was to finish the job properly.
For afters, the man, this off-worlder, had an air about him, something that said he was more than just dangerous. Dangerous was too small a word. He was still and contained, and his gestures were small and restrained, but Valdyke felt that was because an effort of sheer willpower was going on. Eyl’s flesh and behaviour were tightly controlled so that they could hold something in check, the way a straitjacket pinned a man’s arms. They were keeping a tight grip on something that smoked with feral cruelty, something that none of them, not even Eyl, wanted to see get out.
So Valdyke did his smile-and-nod, and clapped his hands. The thugs dragged open the dock’s inner shutters, exposing a second cavern-space, wreathed in steam, and filled with oily black machinery. Arbus the medicae readied his kit, and the servitors plodded forwards, bright orange and pincered like tusker crabs, to unload the containers.
As the work got underway (and Valdyke congratulated himself on his choice of venue, because it was a noisy business of clanks and thumps and piston-whines and vapour-hisses and, anywhere except the half-derelict piles of the riverside, it would have woken the neighbourhood and attracted the attention of the Magistratum), Valdyke assessed his employer a little further. There were three others in Eyl’s party, two men and a woman. The men were whip-cord, dog-eyed men like their master, and Valdyke presumed they were purchased muscle, though they were close with Eyl, their co
nversations tight and intimate. They were wearing leather bodygloves, boots, gloves and patched, Guard surplus jackets, but then so was every other thug in the sub. The two men had driven the tractors. Eyl had driven the leased car. Given the respect he apparently commanded, it seemed odd that he didn’t have a driver.
The fourth member of his party was a woman, a widow, weeded in a veil and black silks. She’d been riding in the back of Eyl’s motor, as if he was her chauffeur. There was something off about her too. When Valdyke looked at her — and widow or no widow, she was a handsome woman who deserved being looked at — it was as if she kept popping in and out of focus, like a film image distorting slightly as it was exposed to heat. It made Valdyke feel pretty sick to watch, so after a while he stopped.
The servitors detached the containers from the tractor flatbeds, and rolled them back up the dock into the adjoining chamber. Valdyke personally connected them up to the plant’s power source, just as if they were crates of meat, cold-stored, switching their refrigeration supply from mobile to static. Ducting systems inside the containers began to chatter and hum. Display lights lit up on the control panels.
Valdyke checked the lights. It was looking good.
“Ambient’s coming up, and I’ve got clean green on the vital boost.”
He looked over at Eyl.
“They look just like shipping pods,” he said.
“Of course,” replied Eyl.
“But they’re hibernaculums.”
Eyl stared back at him.
“What?” asked Valdyke. “Come on, I’ve been around. Even if I was so stupid that I couldn’t add together the resources you needed and the medical expertise you wanted on hand, you’re not the first person to smuggle live bodies onto Balhaut inside mortuary boxes.”
“Am I not?” asked Eyl lightly. His face, half-lit by the fluttering naphtha flares, was unreadable.
Valdyke shrugged. “Deserters, illegal immigrants, people who’d prefer to avoid the light of the Throne, it happens a lot.” He grinned. “Sometimes the poor stiffs inside actually survive the process.”
