Anarch

Nine: Bad Shadow

Olort stabbed down with the ritual blade. Mkoll was blinded by his own blood, which was pouring out of the scalp wound the decanter had left. His head was spinning.

Somehow, he managed to block the stab with his forearm. The edge of the skzerret sliced his sleeve and broke the skin beneath.

Still shouting for help, Olort stabbed again, and again Mkoll blocked, grabbing his knife-wrist. Olort had Mkoll pinned under him. Mkoll grabbed frantically with his free hand, seized something, and swung it.

The sirdar helmet smacked into the side of Olort’s face. He lurched sideways. Mkoll hit him again, fending him off with his left arm and swinging the helmet by the chinstraps with his right.

The second blow clipped Olort off balance and made him yelp. Mkoll kicked out and sent him staggering back across the room.

Olort came back at him, hatred in his eyes. Blood was running down his cheek from a cut above the left cheekbone. He thrust in with the dagger. Mkoll, barely on his feet, blocked the thrust with the dome of the helmet, using it like a buckler. Olort jabbed again.

‘In here! In here!’ he was yelling in the Archenemy dialect.

The skzerret punched through the top of the helmet and dug deep. Mkoll twisted his grip and wrenched the dagger out of the damogaur’s grasp. The helmet, with the dagger transfixing it, bounced away across the floor.

Wide-eyed, Olort dived for it. Mkoll went for the damogaur, landing a glancing kick that knocked the diving man down short of his target. Olort landed on the floor and scrambled for the helmet.

Mkoll dived for it too.

He got his hands on the dagger’s hilt. Olort merely managed to grasp the helmet. He clawed at it. Mkoll wrenched the blade out. Olort’s hands got to it too late. All he managed to grab was the blade as it slid free of the helmet. The serrated edge sliced off all the fingers of his right hand.

Olort screamed.

Mkoll smashed the dagger back down again. It punched through the side of Olort’s neck. Mkoll turned his grip with a sharp jerk and tore out Olort’s throat. The scream turned into a gurgle.

Mkoll rose, dagger in hand. He was dizzy and disorientated. He was drenched in his own blood, and Olort’s was still pumping out across the floor in a pool of astonishing size. Mkoll heard hurried footsteps outside.

He kicked the damogaur out of the way. Olort rolled, still making ghastly sucking sounds. Mkoll opened the door. Two packson scribes were right outside. One had drawn a laspistol.

‘Voi tar karog!’ Mkoll yelled at them, stepping aside to let them in. They rushed in, not knowing what to expect, just that a sirdar had ordered them to assist him.

They halted. One almost slipped in the widening pool of blood. They saw a damogaur bleeding out on the floor, his throat cut through.

Mkoll punched the skzerret into the ribcage of the scribe with the gun. With his left hand, he grabbed the laspistol as the man dropped to his knees. There was no time to turn the pistol. Mkoll swung it instead, hitting the other scribe in the face with the butt of the gun. The packson reeled away, blood and spit flying from his lip, and bounced off the door.

More footsteps. Mkoll stuck the blade in his belt and stepped out into the long hallway. Two more packsons were running towards him from one direction, three more from the other. They were shouting. They had weapons. Mkoll raised the pistol and fired, cutting the approaching pair off their feet with four neat snap-shots. Then he turned smartly, and fired on the trio. He dropped one and clipped the second. The third hurled himself into the cover of a doorway. The second tried to rise, and Mkoll plugged him in the side of the head with a single bolt. The man flopped back down.

From the adjoining chambers, Mkoll could hear raised voices and the frantic ringing of handbells. The whole building was scrambling to respond.

He stepped back into the room. The scribe he’d dropped with the pistol butt was stirring and moaning. Mkoll put a shot through his head. He shoved the bodies of the packson scribes out of the way, and closed the door. There was no lock, and merely the overpainted marks where a bolt had once been screwed in place.

He looked around and made a rapid assessment. Then he dragged the bodies of the two dead scribes and piled them against the foot of the door in an awkward heap. They would hardly keep the door shut, but they’d slow down any attempts to shove it open. There was no time to check the bodies for anything useful like spare clips or keys.

He crossed to the desk, bent down, and opened the ledger, brushing splinters of decanter glass off the pages. He found the page that had surprised him, the page of enkil vahakan, and tore it out. He folded it and stuffed it in his pocket. His hands were leaving bloody finger marks on everything.

He swayed slightly, and steadied himself against the desk. There was a dull, throbbing ache behind his right eye. The scalp wound was still bleeding freely. Shaking his head, he gritted his teeth and shoved the heavy desk against the end shelves.

Olort was still twitching, staring at him with wide eyes, his bloody mouth opening and closing dumbly.

‘Vahooth voi sehn,’ Mkoll said. I bless you.

He shot Olort between the eyes.

There were more footsteps outside, raised voices, thumps at the door, an attempt to shoulder-barge the door open. The door opened a crack, but the weight of the bodies slammed it shut again. The thumping resumed. Another fierce shoulder-barge.

Mkoll clambered up on the desk, and climbed the shelves to the high windows. There was no clasp or opening, but the sea air had rotted the ancient windows in their frames long since. He pushed out a pane of glass and heard it fall and shatter somewhere far below.

Then he hauled himself up and out through the gap. Cold air met him, and a strong sea breeze. He clung to the sill. The wall dropped away sheer directly below him, but there was an adjoining tiled roof three metres down to his left.

He jumped.

Behind him, the first las-rounds tore through the door.

Baskevyl was handing out stablights from a packing crate.

‘One each. Check the charge, grab a weapon, and start searching.’

‘What are we looking for, sir?’ asked Leyr, taking the stablight offered and testing it.

‘Commissar Fazekiel, for a start,’ replied Baskevyl. ‘She was the one who called this amber status. Right, Meryn?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Aside from her… I don’t know,’ said Baskevyl.

‘Is this an attack?’ asked Neskon. ‘I mean, has the undercroft been penetrated, or–’

‘We don’t know anything,’ said Kolea. ‘This is probably just faults in the circuit. Spread out like Bask says and take the undercroft by sections. There will be stragglers, so round them up and send them along to the exit staircase.’

The darkness felt close, as if there was no room to move or breathe. The stink of the cellar level was getting worse, but Baskevyl thought this was probably just his imagination. That, or the air-circ pumps and vents had shut down too. And the scratching in their ears was persistent. That, more than anything, made Bask feel like this was more than a technical problem.

The chamber itself possessed the eerie qualities of a bad dream. It was so lightless, it was hard to tell who you were standing next to, even though it was packed tight. As stablights flashed on, the moving beams came at haphazard angles, like bars of pale blue glare that showed frosty details but nothing of the whole. The alarms kept stuttering and squeaking in short, fitful bursts, little shrill gasps of sound that came and went, truncated. Neskon had strapped on his flamer unit, and had used the ignition burner to light tapers. He was now passing these, one by one, to Banda and Leclan so they could light the wicks of little tin box-lamps. The box-lamps issued only a dull glow, but it was more diffuse than the hard beams of the stablights.

‘Pass them out,’ said Leclan. ‘Maybe take a bundle of them up to the stairs. The retinue haven’t got many lamps.’

‘Do that, Luhan,’ ordered Baskevyl.

‘On it, sir,’ replied Trooper Luhan.

‘I could take them along,’ suggested Blenner.

‘Luhan’s doing it,’ replied Baskevyl, passing a stablight to Blenner.

‘Well, maybe I should at least check on the progress,’ said Blenner. ‘There’s a lot of women and children, in the dark, trying to find their way out–’

‘Yerolemew and Bonin are running the evac,’ replied Baskevyl. ‘They’ve got it covered. Help with the section search.’

‘All right,’ sighed Blenner. ‘Of course.’

‘Has anyone seen Dalin?’ Kolea called out. ‘Or Yoncy?’

His voice was sudden and loud. Everybody, even Baskevyl as he called the shots, had been talking low, as though louder voices might somehow offend the choking darkness that had engulfed them.

‘We’ll find them, Gol,’ said Baskevyl. ‘Come on, shift your arses and get to it!’

Shoggy Domor hadn’t waited for a stablight. He’d simply flipped his bulky augmetic optics to night vision and set off.

Now he was beginning to regret responding to Baskevyl’s instruction so eagerly. He could hear an agitated murmur of voices several chambers behind him as the retinue hurried to evacuate and find their way to the undercroft steps. The alarm system kept piping in sudden, unnerving squelches of sharp sound.

His heart was racing. It was unnerving. Domor could feel an unpleasant rasping in his ears, as if someone was wiggling a pin against his eardrum. He wished he’d waited for some company. He wished he’d picked up a weapon. All he had was his straight silver.

He wondered why he felt he needed a weapon. Was it just the non-specific amber status that had been issued? Out on the line, that usually meant bad shit was coming, but this wasn’t the line. Domor didn’t scare easily, and this was surely just a power-out. But the darkness was oppressive. It didn’t feel like the simple absence of light. It felt like a thing in its own right, as if darkness had poured into the undercroft and filled it like black water.

‘Taskane?’ he called. ‘Overseer Taskane?’

The blackness seemed to eat his voice.

‘Commissar Fazekiel?’

Domor moved forward, seeing the world as a cold, green relief map. He moved with one hand on the wall, feeling his way even though his augmetics gave him the best sight of anyone down on the undercroft level.

‘Taskane? Overseer?’

Domor jumped as the alarms sounded again. This time it was a dying shriek that ended in a long, warbling throb of defective speakers. It tailed off into nothing, but while it lasted, for five or six seconds, it sounded less like a broken, misfiring alarm system and more like a baby crying.

‘Feth,’ he whispered to himself.

He edged on, following the hallway that led to the latrine area. The stone wall was hard and rough under his groping hand. Just to the right, he thought, the tunnel turns and–

There was a blank stone wall ahead of him. A dead end.

Domor stood for a second, and adjusted his optics. How was that possible?

He cursed himself. You got turned around, Shoggy, he thought. You took a wrong turn. Mach Bonin will have your guts when he finds out a Tanith man got himself lost in his own fething billet.

He turned and moved back the way he had come. Stupid. Just stupid. Just nerves. They’d been in the undercroft for four days. He knew the fething way around.

Domor came back under a low lintel into one of the main billet halls. His optics showed him the rows of empty cots, the rumpled sheets a brighter, almost incandescent lime green compared to the deep emerald of the bedrolls. Kitbags had been knocked over and left.

‘Taskane! For feth’s sake!’

He thought he heard something, but it was just the damn scratching in his ears. He turned back and took the correct exit this time, fumbling along another wall.

He went down a couple of steps and found himself shin-deep in water. It was cold as hell, rushing into his boots.

‘Feth’s sake!’ he cursed.

He splashed on for a few metres.

‘Taskane!’ His optics winked out.

Domor stood stock-still for a moment. He tapped at the sides of his augmetics.

Vision returned in a jumble of green noise.

Then it failed again. The temperature seemed to drop sharply.

In utter darkness, he sloshed his way backwards and found the reassuring solidity of the wall. Get your breathing under control, you idiot. You’re not afraid of the dark. There’s nothing down here to be scared of–

A noise shuddered through the darkness. It wasn’t the burble of the faulty alarms. It was a rasping, keening whine.

He’d heard it before. A noise like a surgical drill. A bone saw.

He’d heard it down at Low Keen, while searching behind the billets for Elodie and Gol’s kid.

Heard it right before the… the whatever it was slaughtered an insurgent pack of Sekkite troops.

Shoggy Domor drew his warknife, and felt the comfort of it in his hand. He tried to adjust his optics and get them working again.

Something grabbed him from behind.

‘Good to see you,’ said Daur.

‘You too,’ replied Curth.

He’d come down to a reception hall just off the palace east gatehouse as soon as he’d received word that the regimental casualties had arrived.

‘I’ve got them all to the palace infirmary,’ she said, handing Daur the casualty list. ‘All stable. No losses en route.’

Daur nodded, reading the list. ‘Some of these look grim,’ he said.

‘It was fething brutal at the batteries,’ she said. ‘Some of them should have been shipped back from the front line days ago. It’s a miracle three or four of them made it.’

‘I imagine that miracle was you,’ said Hark as he joined them.

‘No,’ she said. ‘Just luck and maybe the blessing of the Emperor. They’re all with the palace medicae now. Best surgical teams in the crusade.’

She looked at Daur.

‘I’d like to get back out there,’ she said. ‘Re-join Pasha’s group, or Rawne’s. Are you sending V or E out in support?’

‘This is Gaunt’s op,’ said Daur. ‘He’s told us to sit here for now.’

‘Well, can you authorise my return, Ban?’ Curth asked.

Hark looked at her. She was filthy with dirt and blood stains, and had a dazed look in her eyes, a look he’d seen many times before. She clearly hadn’t slept in days.

‘I think a little turn-around rest here first, eh, Ban?’ said Hark gently. He glanced at Daur.

‘I think so,’ he replied.

‘Feth’s sake,’ she snapped. ‘They’re deploying into… well, who the feth knows what. No one’s clear about it. The whole regiment’s been on the line for nearly a hundred and fifty straight. They’re burned through–’

‘I know,’ said Daur. ‘And so are you. Take an hour or two at least, get cleaned up, and we’ll talk about it again.’

‘I’ll take this to Gaunt, then,’ she said, her chin jutting pugnaciously.

‘Good luck,’ said Hark. ‘No fether’s getting in to see him. He’s with the Saint. He’s the Lord high fething Executor, Ana. We’re just getting scraps from his table, and the scraps say do this and get it done.’

Curth breathed out hard and her shoulder slumped.

‘Is it true?’ she asked.

‘About what?’ asked Daur.

‘Ezra being dead? Felyx being…’ her voice trailed off. ‘Gaunt’s daughter or some shit?’

‘All true,’ said Hark.

‘Feth!’ she said.

‘It’s been quite a time, all told,’ said Hark. ‘Ana, let’s go find you a billet.’

‘And a drink, maybe?’ she asked.

‘Oh, definitely that,’ said Hark.

The three turned and began to walk back down the reception hall. It was filling up with Helixid and Keyzon troopers, just arriving off transports that had set down in the Hexagonal Court. The trio had to skirt between gaggles of men and stacks of fieldpacks and bagged support weapons. Munitorum staffers were shouting orders and herding the arrivals into formations. A squad of Urdeshi troopers hurried through the hall, and spat disparaging taunts at the Helixid as they pushed through.

There were some angry answers. Some of the Helixid squared up, blocking the big Urdesh men.

‘You! Yes, you!’ Hark yelled. ‘That’s enough. Back off and get about your business or I’ll turn the lot of you arseholes-out!’

‘That’s an actual surgical procedure, right?’ Daur murmured sidelong to Curth.

‘Takes a steady hand, but it’s highly effective,’ she replied with a weak grin.

‘Idiots,’ muttered Hark as he turned back to join Curth and Daur. ‘Is it me, or is there something in the air tonight?’

‘The storm?’ asked Daur. Hark didn’t look convinced.

‘No, Viktor’s right,’ said Curth. ‘A really ugly mood. I thought it was just me, but you could sharpen steel on some of the looks in here.’

Hark nodded. ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘I know I’ve got a bastard of a headache. Right between the ears. Gnawing away.’

‘Probably brain worms,’ said Curth.

‘That would explain an awful lot,’ said Daur.

‘The two of you are simply hilarious,’ said Hark.

‘Sir! Captain Daur!’

They turned at the sound of a woman calling out anxiously. Trooper Ree Perday, the helicon player from V Company, was pushing her way through the hall towards them, waving to be seen over the tall, solid mob of assembling Guard.

‘Perday?’

She ran up, slightly out of breath, and threw a salute.

‘Message from Major Baskevyl,’ she said. ‘There’s a situation in the undercroft, sir.’

‘Where?’ asked Curth.

‘Our spectacular billet,’ replied Hark, ‘also known as the old palace wine vaults that no one else wanted.’

‘What sort of situation, trooper?’ asked Daur.

‘Well, the lights have failed. Total blackout,’ she said.

‘Then get a fething tech crew on it,’ said Daur. ‘Bask doesn’t need my permission to call in a–’

‘Begging your pardon, sir,’ said Perday, ‘he’s already done that. It’s f – bad word dark as arseholes down there – sorry, sir. It’s totally dark. And Commissar Fazekiel, she’s called an amber status.’

Daur and Hark looked at each other sharply.

‘What?’ asked Daur. ‘Why?’

‘No one really knows, sir, but that’s what happened. Sergeant Major Yerolemew sent me up right away to appraise you, sir.’

‘Amber status is a hazard advisory…’ said Daur, mystified.

‘“Threat suspected”,’ Hark agreed. ‘But that’s a combat zone condition. This isn’t a combat zone.’

‘I think Rawne might disagree with that,’ said Curth.

Hark scowled. ‘Urdesh is,’ he said. ‘The fething palace isn’t.’

‘Luna’s not one to jump at nothing,’ said Curth.

‘No, she’s not,’ said Hark. ‘Nor one to get a technical definition wrong.’

‘Granted,’ said Daur, ‘but even so…’

‘Major Bask, he’s ordered the retinue out, sir,’ said Perday. ‘Personnel evac. They’re making their way up now.’

‘Luna and Bask don’t piss around, Ban,’ said Hark.

Daur nodded. ‘I’ll alert the palace watchroom. See if they’ve got anything. Then I’ll take this to Gaunt immediately. In person. Viktor, you go down and take a look. Report back to me.’

‘Of course,’ said Hark.

‘You think this is something?’ asked Curth.

‘I think someone’s got their shorts in a knot,’ said Daur.

‘But you’re taking it to Gaunt…’ Curth said.

‘Yes,’ said Daur, ‘because he’ll put a rocket up the Munitorum and get specialist crews down there to sort it out.’

‘If it’s just a circuit problem…’ Hark said.

‘We’re inside the void-shielded Urdeshic palace, Viktor,’ said Daur, ‘as you just pointed out. What else could it be?’

Curth and Hark exchanged uneasy glances.

‘Well, that’s why you’re going to check it out, isn’t it, commissar?’ said Daur.

Hark nodded.

‘I’ll be down as soon as I’ve spoken to Gaunt,’ said Daur, and hurried away.

‘There’s an officer’s mess on the third floor,’ Hark said to Curth. ‘Decent log fire, decent amasec–’

‘Feth that,’ she replied, ‘I’m coming with you.’

The beams of their stablights criss-crossed the walls as they moved into the darkness.

‘Gol, take the left there,’ Baskevyl instructed.

Kolea nodded, and moved through an archway with a team of troopers from V Company.

Baskevyl shone his torch around to the right. ‘Meryn?’

‘Yes, sir?’

‘Move through the billets in that direction.’

‘Right,’ Meryn replied. He sounded reluctant. Baskevyl couldn’t blame him. The internal scratching was getting more intense, like a dry hum, a crackle. His own hands were shaking.

Meryn played his light around, picking out the faces of Leyr, Banda, Neskon and the E Company corpsman, Leclan.

‘Let’s go,’ he said.

Baskevyl could feel Blenner’s nervous presence at his elbow, even though he couldn’t see him.

‘We’ll follow the main tunnel down to the latrine area,’ he said.

‘Close up behind,’ Blenner said to the E Company men at their heels. ‘Where’s Shoggy?’ he asked. ‘Didn’t he go this way?’

‘I don’t know where the feth he is,’ said Baskevyl. He tried the micro-bead links several times, but there was some kind of interference pattern.

‘Domor? Domor, this is Blenner,’ he heard Blenner say behind him. ‘Report your location, Shoggy. Have you found the work crew?’

‘I’ve tried that,’ Bask snapped.

‘Just getting noise,’ Blenner muttered. Their voices in the small, dark space sounded dead and muffled. ‘Is that jamming?’

‘In here?’ Baskevyl replied. ‘I don’t know how that would be possible.’ The palace was the most secure Imperial site on the Urdesh surface, and its void shields were up. Furthermore, they were in a sub-surface level. The undercroft might not be the most salubrious area of the palace complex, but it was buried in bedrock and sheathed in foundation stonework metres thick. None of the Archenemy dispositions on Urdesh could get within kilometres of the Great Hill, let alone undertake the engineering efforts necessary to undermine the foundations without being detected.

But Baskevyl’s mind kept returning to two things: the weird acoustics that they were all experiencing, and the simple fact that Luna Fazekiel was trustworthy and meticulous.

Baskevyl called her name into the darkness. There wasn’t even an echo, just a dull silence. Then he called other names… Domor, Dalin… Yoncy…

Nothing.

‘Keep up,’ he said to the others.

‘Sir?’

Baskevyl looked back, shining his beam. It was trooper Osket.

‘What?’

‘Something’s up with the commissar,’ Osket said.

Baskevyl played his beam around. Blenner was leaning against the passage wall, breathing hard.

‘Vaynom?’

He got a light on Blenner’s face. Blenner flinched. He was sweating and almost panting.

‘Vaynom?’ Baskevyl said calmly. ‘Vaynom? You’re having a panic attack. Vaynom, just breathe with me–’

‘There’s no air,’ Blenner gasped. ‘There’s no fething air…’

‘Vaynom, breathe with me. Slow. Count of three in… Hold it, count of three exhale…’

‘This is death,’ Blenner gasped, his breathing painfully quick and shallow. ‘This is death. It’s fething death. It’s fething punishment–’

‘Vaynom, breathe. Slow. Slower than that. Now hold it. Fill your lungs.’

‘What did I ever do, Bask? I mean really,’ Blenner stammered. ‘I didn’t want it. Not any of it. Just wanted to mind my own business and–’

‘Concentrate on your breathing,’ Baskevyl said firmly. He gripped Blenner by the shoulder. ‘Come on. That’s better.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Blenner mumbled, ‘I’m so sorry.’

‘Nothing to be sorry for,’ said Baskevyl. ‘It happens to all of us. Just gets up in your head–’

He paused. Where he was gripping Blenner’s shoulder, it felt wet to the touch. He took his hand away and shone his stablight at his palm.

‘What is it?’ Blenner asked.

‘Oil, I think,’ Baskevyl replied. ‘There must be some on the wall. You’ve leant on it–’ He sniffed his hand.

It wasn’t oil.

Baskevyl pushed Blenner out of the way and shone his light on the wall. The wet spatters read only as black in the harsh glare. Baskevyl didn’t have to see red to know it was blood.

‘Are you hurt, Vaynom?’ he asked. ‘Are you cut or–’

‘N-no,’ Blenner replied.

Baskevyl ran his beam along the ground. More black spatters there, gleaming in the light.

‘Someone’s hurt,’ he said. Then he pulled his lasrifle off his shoulder, clipped the stablight to the under-barrel lugs, and brought the weapon up in a ready position.

‘Secondary order,’ he said.

‘I thought…’ Erish began.

‘What?’ Kolea asked.

The big V Company bandsman hesitated.

‘Just thinking out loud, sir, sorry. I just thought there was another room beyond this one.’

Kolea’s team was in one of the smaller billet chambers. Forty cots in neat rows, head-ends to the cellar walls. Kolea turned his stablight on the end wall.

‘There, you mean?’

‘Yes,’ said Erish.

‘You’d know better than I would,’ Kolea said. This was his first visit to the undercroft. Erish and the others had been down here for two days.

‘The layout’s really simple,’ said Kores. ‘Just a grid with…’

He paused.

‘What?’ asked Kolea.

‘I don’t like to say, sir,’ replied Kores awkwardly. ‘But Erish is right. I’d have sworn there was a door there. An archway.’

Kolea slapped the stone wall with his hand.

‘Well, there isn’t,’ he said. ‘Let’s back it up and go on to the left.’

The squad started to turn.

‘What was that?’ asked Arradin, a little woodwind player.

‘What?’ asked Erish.

‘Didn’t you hear that?’ asked Arradin. ‘Sounded like crying. Sobbing.’

Kolea couldn’t hear anything.

‘Just the alarms again?’ Erish suggested.

Kolea led the way back to the left-hand archway. ‘Close up,’ he said.

He aimed his light beam through. Nothing–

He played it back. He’d seen a damned figure. Someone standing there in the darkness. Gone now, gone before his beam could return to it.

‘Yoncy?’ he called. It had been her, he was sure of it. Just the flash of a pale face in the dark. ‘Close up,’ he said.

There was no one behind him.

‘Erish? Kores? Where the feth have you gone? Erish?’

He heard Erish call back. It sounded distant. The acoustics in the basement were off-putting.

‘Where the feth have you gone?’ Kolea yelled.

‘Where are you, sir?’ Erish called back.

‘I went to the left. You were right behind me!’

‘Where are you, sir?’ Erish called.

‘Feth’s sake!’ Kolea growled. It sounded like Erish was on the other side of the wall. He went back a few steps to the archway.

‘Erish!’

The archway was there. The chamber beyond was small, and stacked with munition boxes and kitbags.

Where the feth were the cots? Kolea snorted in annoyance. How the feth had he done that? He’d gone into a side room by mistake, not the billet they’d just searched.

‘Erish! Follow the sound of my voice!’

‘Where are you, sir?’ Erish called from a distance. It didn’t sound like a voice. It sounded like the echo of a voice, the echo returning slowly from Erish’s previous yell.

Kolea heard a skitter of movement behind him and turned fast. His stablight was quick enough to catch a pale figure darting out of sight.

‘Yoncy!’

He ran after her.

‘Yoncy! It’s me! Yoncy, don’t be scared! It’s just a power-down!’

The hallway ahead of him dead-ended in a solid section of curtain wall.

‘Yoncy?’ he called.

He heard muffled sobbing. He couldn’t tell for the life of him where it was coming from.

Trooper Luhan moved up through the tail-end of the retinue, handing out the little box-lamps.

‘Pass ’em out,’ he said.

They were crowded into the wide stone hallway that led to the stairwell.

‘Why’s everyone stopped?’ Luhan asked.

‘I don’t know,’ said one of the women.

‘They’re jammed up on the steps,’ said an elderly tailor, clutching his workbag to his chest so he could take a lamp from Luhan.

Luhan gave them the rest of the lamps to pass around, and began to push his way up the tightly packed hall.

‘What’s the hold up?’ he asked several times, getting nothing but anxious shrugs in reply. The retinue was a fair size: women, children and support artisans. But they should have been filing out by now, up the long steps to the undercroft’s single exit.

‘We just stopped moving a couple of minutes ago,’ Elodie said to him as he squeezed past.

‘Maybe someone’s had a fall on the steps, ma’am,’ he replied. ‘I mean, in this dark.’

Luhan saw her expression by the glow of the box-lamp he was holding. Captain Daur’s wife was a strong woman. He didn’t like the fear he saw.

‘Let us through,’ said Elodie, pushing forwards. Luhan followed. Elodie had become the spokesperson and leader of the retinue, partly because she was married to Daur, but mainly because she was well-liked and cool-headed. She didn’t crumble easily. Luhan stuck close behind her. The retinue was letting her through with more civility than they might have shown him.

They reached the bottom of the stone staircase. The stairs too were packed with people. The air was very close. Luhan could smell sweat, anxiety and the fouled diapers of some of the babes-in-arms.

‘What’s the hold up?’ Elodie called up.

‘I think the door’s locked,’ Juniper called back.

‘The door? The door to the undercroft?’

‘I dunno,’ the woman replied.

Pushing and apologising, Elodie shoved her way up the steps, Luhan close behind, squirming through the press of bodies.

‘Mach!’ she called up. ‘Mach, what’s the issue?’

High above, in the shadows, she saw the wink of moving stablights.

‘Elodie?’ Bonin’s voice boomed down to her.

‘What’s the problem?’ she shouted. ‘We can’t leave everybody here like this! We’re crushed in! Get it moving!’

‘Keep everybody calm,’ Bonin called back.

Bonin looked at Yerolemew. They were painfully aware of the tight press of bodies on the deep stairs behind them.

‘What do we do?’ the sergeant major asked quietly.

‘I don’t know,’ said Bonin.

‘With respect, Mach, you’re the fething scout.’

‘These are the stairs,’ Bonin growled. ‘The only fething stairs. Unless there’s another flight of stairs I didn’t know anything about.’

‘Just the one flight,’ Yerolemew replied. There was a twitch in his voice, the faintest hint of anxiety breaking through. ‘You know that.’

‘Right,’ replied Bonin in a low whisper. He shone his light at the wall. ‘So where’s the fething door?’

The hallway ahead was flooding. Baskevyl tipped his light-beam down and saw the dirty liquid spilling along the flagstones. It stank. The latrine area had backed up entirely. He wondered if it was still raining. How much more water was going to pour into the palace’s ancient drains and force its way up into the lower levels?

‘Form on me,’ he instructed. All the Ghosts with him had weapons ready, as per his order to secondary. Blenner was hanging back, but he’d drawn his weapon.

‘We’re not going on, are we?’ Blenner asked.

‘Of course we are,’ Baskevyl said. ‘This is the area the crew was working.’

‘Well, they’re not working now,’ said Blenner, stepping back as the water began to reach his boots.

That much was obvious. There was no sound of pumps, no sign of pump tubing. Baskevyl had a scenario in his mind: Taskane’s crew had been working to drain the water, and there had been a short. It had blown the circuit and caused the blackout, and shocked Taskane and his men, who’d been standing in flood water. A maintenance accident, that’s all this was. They had to get in and help. The Munitorum crew could be seriously hurt. Maybe Fazekiel too, if she’d been with them when it happened.

The blood… there had to be some other explanation for that.

He stepped forward. In just a few steps, he had water gushing around his ankles as it back-fed along the hall.

‘Stay sharp!’ he said.

They splashed into the stream. It was getting deeper. Did the tunnel slant down at this point?

‘Sir!’ Osket called out.

The lamp’s beam moved and Baskevyl saw an object floating along in the tide. A work boot. Old and worn, laces broken.

‘That’s Munitorum issue,’ said Osket.

‘Fish it out,’ said Baskevyl.

‘Why?’

‘Don’t bother then,’ Baskevyl snapped, and took a step forward.

He fell, unable to catch himself. He crashed into water at least a foot deep, and thrashed around to get up again. He’d tripped over something.

‘Bask?’ Blenner called.

‘Feth it!’ Baskevyl replied. He groped around, swirling the water, trying to keep his light and his weapon raised out of the way.

He located the object he’d tripped on. He shone his light down.

A face stared up at him out of the filthy water. Overseer Taskane. Baskevyl jerked back.

‘Throne,’ he gasped.

‘Bask?’

‘I’ve found Taskane. He’s dead.’

‘Dead?’

Baskevyl swung the light around. There were other shapes in the water. Other bodies. Munitorum overalls.

‘Bask?’ Blenner called. ‘How can he be dead?’

‘They’re all dead. I can see all of them. The whole crew.’

‘How can they be dead? Did they drown?’

‘No,’ said Baskevyl. He rose slowly, weapon braced in his dripping hands. ‘They were killed.’

‘How do you know that?’

‘Because not a single one of them is intact,’ Baskevyl replied. ‘They’ve been torn apart.’