Blood Pact

SEVEN Prisoner B

An armoured elevator took them down into the detention level. The cell-block area, heavily guarded, was tiled in white stone, and felt more like the surgical zone of a medicae facility than a prison. Edur took Gaunt to an observation room that looked into a simple tank cell through a murky one-way mirror.

When the sanctioned torturers, their sackcloth hoods tucked into their belts for the time being, led the prisoner into the cell, caged phosphor lights flickered on, and bathed the cell in a sick, green glare. The torturers, burly men with bitter faces, strapped the prisoner onto the single cage chair screwed to the deck in the centre of the cell floor.

‘I don’t know him,’ said Gaunt.

The prisoner was a soldier. Gaunt could tell that from a glance. It wasn’t so much the size of him, which was considerable and heavily muscled, it was his bearing. He was straight-backed and upright. He was somehow noble. He was underweight, and he had evidently suffered physical abuse, but he was not cowed. He held himself the way a soldier holds himself.

The prisoner was dressed in a simple prison-issue tunic and breeches, and he had been given hessian slippers to cover his feet.

‘Are you sure?’ asked Edur.

‘I don’t know him,’ Gaunt repeated.

‘Please, make certain.’

‘Edur, don’t be an idiot. I’d remember a face like that.’

The prisoner’s face and head were not noble. The scalp was shaved, and the flesh was covered with deep ritual scars, old scars, scars that signified the most mortal and bloody pact.

‘He asked for you by name,’ said Edur. ‘He has made it clear that he will speak only to you.’

‘How does he know me?’ asked Gaunt. ‘How does he know I’m here, on this world?’

Edur shrugged. Gaunt could see that Edur was watching him for tell-tale body language, any little slip or give-away. He also knew that just as they were watching the prisoner in the cell, they were in turn being watched.

‘You’re desperate to unlock him,’ Gaunt observed to Edur, ‘and I’m the best hope you’ve got, but you don’t trust me either.’

‘This is a complicated matter,’ Edur replied, his genial tone unable to mask his tension. ‘It’s very sensitive. Objections were raised at the idea of bringing anyone else in. Your clearance is not as high as they would have liked.’

‘My clearance levels have been pitiful since I came back from the Gereon mission,’ replied Gaunt. ‘I imagine your colleagues have reviewed that, and they’ll have read the dossiers compiled on me by Commissar-General Balshin, Commissar Faragut, and a number of other individuals, including a servant of the holy ordos.’

‘I think they probably have,’ agreed Edur.

‘I imagine they don’t present me as an attractive participant in this business, which is why you’ve spent the last week or two vetting me, and why they’re watching us now.’

Gaunt looked up at the ceiling, and ran his gaze along the walls.

‘But, for all that, the Gereon mission is precisely why I’m here, isn’t it?’ he asked.

Edur nodded.

‘This man is connected to Gereon?’

‘Specifically, your mission there,’ said Edur.

Gaunt paused and looked back at the prisoner in the cell. The man wasn’t moving. He was just staring blankly at the mirror wall.

‘He has told us that his name is Mabbon Etogaur,’ said Edur.

‘Well, that’s not strictly accurate,’ said Gaunt.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Mabbon may be his name, though I doubt it’s his given one. It’s probably a saint name he adopted when he took his pact.’

‘A saint name?’ asked Edur.

‘They have saints too, Edur,’ replied Gaunt. He looked at the prisoner again. ‘Etogaur isn’t a name. It’s his rank. He gave you his name and rank. An etogaur is roughly the equivalent of a general.’

‘I see.’

‘It’s a senior rank in the army of the Blood Pact.’

‘Anything else?’ asked Edur.

Gaunt nodded. ‘Yes. For all that, he’s not Blood Pact.’

‘He isn’t?’

‘The ritual scarring on the face and the scalp, those are pact-marks, definitely, but look at his hands.’

They looked through the mirror wall. The prisoner’s forearms were buckled to the arms of the cage chair. His hands were resting, limp and open, against the ends of the chair-arms.

‘I don’t see anything,’ said Edur.

‘Exactly.’

Edur glanced sideways at Gaunt. ‘If you know something, say it.’

‘There are no scars on his hands,’ said Gaunt, still staring at the silent prisoner. ‘None on the backs, none on the palms. Of all the pact-marks, the hand scars are the most significant. When a warrior of the Blood Pact makes his oath, he slices the palms of his hand against the sharpened edges of his heathen master’s armour. That solemnises the pact. That is the pact. This man has no scars.’

‘No, he doesn’t,’ said Edur.

Gaunt narrowed his eyes to peer harder. ‘It’s hard to tell in this light, but the flesh of his hands looks new. It’s unblemished. A little smooth. I can’t be sure, but I’d wager he’s had grafting done to conceal or remove the rite scars. The chances are, this man was Blood Pact, but he isn’t any more.’

‘So you suppose he has renounced his pact?’

‘Quite possibly. He’s a man of significance in their world, and he’s gone to a lot of trouble and expense to have those grafts to erase his scars. It’s quite a statement.’

‘Could he not just be concealing what he really is?’

Gaunt shook his head. ‘This isn’t about concealment. He’d have had the rite scars on his head done, otherwise. They show his connection to the Sanguinary Worlds clearly enough. No, the hands are telling. He’s not hiding his scars, he’s deleting them. He’s actively rejecting the pact.’

‘What does that make him?’

‘It could make him any number of things, Edur, but at the very least it makes him a traitor. A traitor general.’

‘Interesting,’ said Edur.

‘Not really. You know all of this already,’ Gaunt replied.

Edur raised his eyebrows. ‘What makes you say that?’

‘Oh, come on, commissar,’ Gaunt sighed. ‘The idea that you, and our invisible handlers, and the whole of Section’s intelligence division hadn’t already worked all of that out is frankly insulting. We’ve been studying the Pact for years. This was all about you finding out how much I know.’

Edur smiled and raised his hands submissively. ‘Fair play, Gaunt. You can’t blame us.’

‘So how did I do?’ asked Gaunt.

‘Not bad at all. What else can you tell me?’

Gaunt took a deep breath and looked back at the prisoner. ‘The key thing, I suppose, is that he’s changed sides. That’s a huge psychological marker. He is capable of being sworn to something, to be absolutely committed to it, and then to switch away and renounce it. If he’s done it once, he can do it again. It’s like infidelity.’

Edur chuckled. ‘What sort of switch are we talking about, do you think?’

Gaunt shrugged. ‘An awful lot of Blood Pact start out as Imperial Guard or PDF. Most of the time, it’s a “join us or die” dynamic, but sometimes the choice is rather more personal. Like all converts, willing or not, they can often be the most radical, the most zealous. This man may have been Imperial once. Then he took the blood pact. Then he renounced that too. For some reason, he’s serially unfaithful.’

‘What do you suppose he is now?’ Edur asked.

‘It’s just a hunch,’ Gaunt replied, ‘but I think he’s one of the Sons of Sek.’

‘Explain your logic,’ said Edur.

‘The Blood Pact is a warrior cadre sworn to the personal service of the Archon. Magister Sek, called by some the Anarch, is Archon Gaur’s foremost lieutenant. It’s a king and prince dynamic, a father and son thing. Sek is ambitious, and envies the Gaur’s Blood Pact shamelessly. When I was on Gereon, we heard that Sek’s agents had set out to build a Blood Pact of their own, the Sons of Sek. Just as the Blood Pact have stolen bodies from the Imperial Guard over the years, so the Sons have begun to pilfer from the Pact. Officers, particularly, men with experience to help them shape the Sons quickly and robustly. This man says he’s an etogaur, and the Sons have pretty much the same rank system. It’s the best reason I can think of to explain why he still holds the rank, but has erased the scars from his palms.’

Edur smiled and nodded.

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘that’s exactly what we thought.’

‘Two questions stand, then,’ said Gaunt. ‘What does our etogaur know, and why does he want to talk to me about it?’

‘Indeed,’ Edur replied.

‘So, do you want me to talk to him?’ asked Gaunt. ‘Or am I too great a liability?’

Edur hesitated.

The vox-plate mounted on the tiled wall beside the mirror jangled suddenly. Edur lifted the handset before it could complete its first ring.

‘Yes?’ he said. Gaunt waited. He could just hear a whisper of voices talking on the other end of the line.

‘Very well. Thank you.’

Edur hooked the handset back on its cradle. He looked at Gaunt.

‘You can go in,’ he said.