Blood Pact

TWENTY-THREE Headshots

‘I don’t understand,’ Jaume said. ‘Was our appointment rearranged, or…?’

‘No, Mr Jaume,’ said Gaunt, ‘this is a rather more improvised visit.’ He stepped into the hall, past the mystified young man, and looked around. Like the building’s front door and entrance, the hall had an air of impressive, sober dignity. The floors were varnished and blacked, the walls were painted in dark, subdued colours, and the hall chairs and drapery were silky blacks, purples and maroons. It felt like the foyer of an upmarket bordello.

But there was an underlying scruffiness. Gaunt noticed immediately the odd chip in the paintwork, the hasty way the drapery had been gathered and pinned, the faint smell of musty dampness that scents of lilac and lavender could not quite disguise.

‘I wonder if you could enlighten me,’ said Jaume. He was staring at Gaunt. It seemed likely that, just as Gaunt had seen through the initial impression of Jaume’s premises, so Jaume was seeing past the initial impression of Gaunt. He was seeing the dirty, scuffed clothes, the two-day stubble, the various bruises.

‘I find myself in an unfortunate situation,’ said Gaunt. ‘I need help, and there are very few people I can turn to. Just now, Mr Jaume, you are the closest. Are you a loyal servant of the Imperial Throne?’

‘Am I what?’ Jaume began. ‘Of course!’

‘You would, therefore, have no objections to assisting an officer of the Throne in the pursuit of his duties?’

‘What is this?’ asked Jaume.

Gaunt looked at the doorway behind Jaume, and gave a brief nod. Suddenly, other people were coming in out of the snow and the gathering darkness.

‘What is this?’ Jaume repeated as they pushed past him.

Criid was escorting Maggs, who was dazed and bleary, his hands still bound. Kolding, weighed down by his medical kit, was supporting the prisoner.

‘Through there,’ Gaunt said, gesturing, and then closed and bolted the front door behind them.

Criid had led the way into the reception room off the hall. It was similarly appointed in dark romantic shades of maroon, red and black. There were couches and armchairs, side tables decorated with arrangements of dried flowers, and a great deal of gathered drapery dressing the walls.

Criid left Maggs slumped on one of the couches, and Kolding settled the prisoner on the other.

‘Check the place, please,’ Gaunt said to Criid. ‘Entrances and exits. Is there anyone else here, Mr Jaume?’

‘No,’ Jaume replied. ‘I’m here alone. There were appointments booked for today, but they were all cancelled due to the snow.’

Gaunt nodded to Criid. She drew the laspistol and slipped out of the room.

‘Why is she armed?’ Jaume asked.

Gaunt ignored the question.

‘You work here?’ he asked, looking around.

‘Yes,’ said Jaume.

‘This is your studio?’

‘Yes,’ said Jaume.

‘And you’re a portraitist? You make picts?’

‘Photographic exposures,’ said Jaume, ‘and also some hololithic work.’

The reception room was as discreetly shabby as the hall. Gaunt could see that boot-black had been used to cover scuff marks on the floorboards and the legs of the furniture. The drapery had been gathered so as to hide old watermarks, and the flower vases had been painted over to disguise chips.

Several large, black albums with embossed felt covers were arranged on one of the side tables for casual inspection. Gaunt opened one, and began to turn the oversized card pages. The picts inside were large, and mounted in elegantly muted paper frames. They were portraits of men in uniforms: Guard, Navy, PDF, militia. The men’s uniforms were all dress formal, and their faces were uniformly solemn. They stood stiffly, facing the camera, looking into the lens with vacant or preoccupied eyes, and expressions that would never alter. There were chin straps and moustaches, dress swords and bugles, standards and drums. There were shakos perched on heads, and gilded chase helmets cupped under arms. There were bearskin capes, breastplates, and frogged button loops. To his surprise, Gaunt found he couldn’t identify many of the uniforms.

‘I make commemorative portraits,’ said Jaume, watching Gaunt go through the album, eager for approval. ‘There is a great demand for it here on Balhaut, because of the Famous Victory, of course. A great demand.’

Most of the portraits showed the skyline of Balopolis or the Oligarchy in the background. The same views, over and over. In most, Gaunt could read a skyline that had not existed for fifteen years. Some portraits included proud families in their formal best, gathered around the son or husband, brother or father in uniform.

‘Families come here, or send commission orders,’ Jaume went on, ‘from all across the sector, actually. There is dignity in a commemorative portrait. And consolation.’

Gaunt realised that it wasn’t a bordello that Jaume’s premises reminded him of. Rather, it was a funeral parlour. Jaume’s business was part of the mourning industry. The men he was looking at were dead, surely. He was reviewing images of men who no longer existed, which had been skilfully combined with images of a city that no longer existed either.

Gaunt closed the album.

‘What’s through here?’ he asked, and walked through the draped arch before Jaume could answer.

The main studio lay beyond the arch. Powerful lights and pict-imagers on tripods were arranged in front of a scenic area. To one side were racks of clothes, and boxes of props, like a messy backstage dressing room. Gaunt turned on one of the lamps, and its powerful filament lit with a ftoom!

Balopolis lay before him, noble and magnificent. Above, the Oligarchy; below, the bending river. There, the Tower of the Plutocrat, the Monastery, the High Palace, the Sirene Palace, the Emancipatory, the Oligarchy Gate.

The Oligarchy Gate. The afternoon of the ninth day, at Slaydo’s left hand. Ahead, the famous Gate, defended by the woe machines of Heritor Asphodel. Mud lakes. Freak weather. The chemical deluge triggered by the orbital bombardment and the Heritor’s toxins. Molten pitch in the air like torrential rain–

Gaunt walked towards the bright vista. It was untouched. War-clean. It was Balopolis as it had been.

Wire barbs skinning the air. The thuk of impacts, so many impacts. Clouds of pink mist to his left and right as men were hit. Ahead, below the Gate, the machines whirring again–

‘Stop it,’ Gaunt said.

‘Sir?’ Jaume asked.

‘I was talking to myself,’ said Gaunt.

Balopolis was one of a number of theatrical backdrop flats arranged behind the posing area.

‘There is a selection,’ said Jaume, moving Balopolis aside on its running wheels. ‘The Oligarchy is especially popular. But also Ascension Valley, Zaebes City… I can do Khulan too. Terra itself, at a pinch.’

‘But your subjects are dead men,’ said Gaunt.

‘Not all of them,’ said Jaume.

‘But most of them. You take their images from old stock, and superimpose them. Why do you need a set?’

‘It depends upon the commission,’ said Jaume. ‘If the family wants to be included, I have them sit here, arranged in front of their chosen scene. Then I dress an assistant appropriately to stand with them.’

Jaume moved to the heaped racks of clothes, and picked up, at random, a hussar’s jacket and a sabre.

‘You see? Something appropriate. I have a great deal to choose from. War surplus. Stuff that was left behind.’

‘The gun that was left behind,’ Gaunt murmured.

‘Pardon?’

‘Nothing.’

Jaume brandished his props. ‘The assistant stands in a pose that matches the pose of the family’s loved one in an old pict, and then I match the face in later. It’s most satisfactory. The families are always delighted to be reunited in that way, one last time.’

‘How do you get the uniform details right?’ Gaunt asked.

‘To be honest,’ said Jaume, ‘many of the old picts I’m given to work from are not in formal dress, or sometimes the uniforms just aren’t very… compelling. Heroic, if you like. The families are always keen to make their loved one look as dashing and martial as possible.’

‘So you make it up?’ asked Gaunt.

‘I manufacture commemoration, sir,’ said Jaume. ‘I give my clients a memento of the way things should have been.’

Criid entered. She looked around and whistled.

‘Clear?’ Gaunt asked.

She nodded, and recounted the basic layout of the premises. As she spoke, she picked along the clothes rail, and tried on a plumed dragoon’s cap.

‘How do I look?’ she asked.

‘Astonishingly authentic,’ Gaunt replied sourly. ‘Did you find a kitchen?’

He glanced at Jaume. ‘Do you have any food?’

‘Yes, of course. Not much, but–’

‘When this is over,’ said Gaunt, ‘the Munitorum will reimburse you for all costs.’

‘Sir, may I ask,’ said Jaume, ‘exactly what “this” is?’

Gaunt went to the kitchen with Criid. He was in a foul mood. He wasn’t sure if it was a response to Jaume’s tawdry fantasies, or to the memories of the ninth day that had been summoned so unexpectedly by the shabby set.

Away from the public areas, Jaume’s premises were sordid and neglected. The kitchen was a festering horror. The milk and eggs they found were off, though Gaunt had a suspicion that all the milk and all the eggs in the city were off, in the same way that all the clocks had stopped.

There was, at least, some bread, some cured sausage, some pickled cabbage, and the makings of decent soup and caffeine.

‘He lives in these back rooms like a slob,’ said Criid as they prepared the food together.

‘I think the death industry of Balhaut is itself dying,’ Gaunt replied, chopping onions for the broth. ‘Mr Jaume insists otherwise, but I don’t think there’s much money in it anymore. Grief only lasts so long. When it’s done, there’s only emptiness, and emptiness doesn’t want or need a gravestone or a commemorative portrait.’

‘Grief lasts a long time,’ she said. There were tears in her eyes.

‘Tona?’

She laughed.

‘It’s the onions,’ she said.

‘I know it’s not,’ said Gaunt, and scraped the onions off his board and into the pot with his kitchen knife.

Maggs was awake. The fever in him had subsided somewhat.

‘Why are my hands tied?’ he asked. ‘Why does my head hurt like a bastard? Hey, who cut up my hand? It’s sore!’

Criid held out a bowl of hot soup. ‘Eat this. Don’t ask questions.’

‘But my hands are tied, Tona. Come on.’

‘So are mine, in a much more metaphorical sense. You want to eat? Be inventive.’

‘How is he?’ Gaunt asked Kolding.

Kolding was so busy devouring his soup and bread that he’d steamed up his glasses.

‘The prisoner?’ he asked, between mouthfuls.

‘Yes, doctor.’

Kolding lowered his bowl, swallowing. He looked over at the prisoner, asleep on the nearby couch. Mabbon had managed a little soup and bread before sleeping.

‘He’s surprisingly… well. The fever’s broken. It’s a turnaround, I confess.’

‘And nothing to do with any mumbo jumbo ritual, obviously.’

‘Well, obviously,’ said Kolding, picking up his spoon.

Gaunt and Criid ate their soup and bread sitting under the lights in front of Balopolis.

‘You were here, weren’t you?’ she asked, mouth full, nodding at the backdrop.

‘In another life.’

‘Was it as bad as they say?’

‘I don’t know,’ Gaunt replied. ‘What do they say?’

‘That it was bad,’ replied Criid, spooning more soup into her mouth as if there was a race to finish first.

‘Then that’s what it must have been,’ he said.

He sat back on the couch, and stared at the backdrop for a long time.

‘It was something,’ he said at length.

‘Worse than we’ve seen?’ she asked.

‘Of course not. With the Ghosts, I’ve walked through bad, and worse, and worse still. Balhaut was just an action. They’re all just actions. Balhaut was a major action. A major action. Of course it sticks in my memory. But it doesn’t define me.’

Criid stared at him. ‘Oh, I think it does.’

‘What?’

‘I think Balhaut was hell on a stick, and I think it matters to you because Slaydo mattered to you more than you’d like to admit. I think Balhaut is an old wound for you.’

Gaunt laughed.

‘I’m serious,’ she went on. ‘You won a massive victory for the Warmaster here on Balhaut. You and the Hyrkans? The Oligarchy Gate and then the Tower of the Plutocrat? Hello? And what did he do for you? Eh? He died, that’s what he did.’

‘That’s not how it happened,’ said Gaunt.

‘But that’s effectively what happened,’ Criid replied, putting down her empty bowl. ‘You and the Hyrkans fought like furies for Slaydo, but when the dust settled, he was dead, and there was another Warmaster on the ascendant. You got overlooked. A pat on the back and a sideline to some backwater forest world where–’

‘It wasn’t like that.’

‘Wasn’t it?’ she asked.

‘The Hyrkans were honoured and rewarded. I was rewarded. My own command.’

Criid smiled sadly. ‘You were Slaydo’s best. His favourite. You should have been his heir. His anointed one.’

Gaunt laughed again. ‘You have no idea what you’re talking about, Tona.’

‘I may not have much in the way of book learning or formal schooling,’ she replied, ‘but when you became my commanding officer, I made a point of reading up on you. I studied. You excelled at the Gate and excelled at the Tower. How much older than you is Macaroth?’

‘The Warmaster?’ Gaunt asked. ‘He has seven years on me, I think.’

‘Not much to split. Two young men. Two young protégés. Little to choose between them. Like brothers, inheriting. Slaydo died. And in death, only in death, Macaroth succeeded him.’

‘It wasn’t like that at all,’ he scoffed. ‘Macaroth was a high order commander. I was just a commissar.’

‘Slaydo loved you,’ she replied. ‘Think how he favoured you. He gave you the left flank, into the Gate. Yes, I’ve read the accounts. Memorised them. He favoured you into the Gate from the left, not because that was the easy path but because he trusted your ability. You took two impossible obstacles. Bang, bang! Macaroth had taken command of the Balopolis assault simply because everyone above him in rank was dead.’

‘He still won it,’ said Gaunt.

‘And you would have won it too, in his place. Have you ever met him?’

Gaunt looked at her.

‘Macaroth?’

‘Yes, Macaroth, our beloved Warmaster.’

‘No.’

‘No, never?’

‘Never.’

‘So he didn’t get you sidelined to some backwater forest world where–’

‘No!’ Gaunt snapped.

‘Just asking,’ Tona smiled.

‘Don’t,’ said Gaunt.

‘For an hour or two there,’ she said, turning to point at the cityscape backcloth, ‘for an hour or two right there, you were on the verge of becoming Warmaster.’

‘That’s not true.’

‘Yes, you were.’

‘No.’

‘You really were.’

‘Criid. Enough!’

‘Listen,’ she said, rising from the couch, ‘who were Slaydo’s obvious successors? Cybon? Dravere? Blackwood? They were all old, senior men. He gave it to Macaroth. Slaydo was absolutely ready to give the Warmastery to someone younger and less qualified than the usual chain of command suggested. Macaroth proves the precedent. You could have been Warmaster! You should have been!’

Gaunt looked away.

‘You weren’t there,’ he said.

She watched him. He stared at the floor for a moment, and then looked up into her eyes.

‘You weren’t there,’ he repeated. ‘I applaud your imagination, but it wasn’t like that. Believe what you like, the only thing you really need to know is this: I would never have missed the chance of becoming the Ghosts’ commander. Tanith, Verghast, Belladon, it’s been an honour to serve alongside them all.’

They both looked around as Maggs screamed out from the other room.

‘He’s got a knife!’ Maggs was yelling.

Gaunt and Criid ran through to the reception room. The etogaur was on his feet, holding the rite knife. Both Kolding and Jaume had leapt up, and were backing away. Maggs was sitting bolt upright on his sofa, his bound hands in front of him as though he were praying.

‘He’s got a knife!’ Maggs yelled as soon as he saw Gaunt. ‘Where did he get a knife from?’

Gaunt stared at Mabbon. He wasn’t sure how the prisoner had ended up with the rite knife. Gaunt had probably simply forgotten to take it back from him in the refurb. It was an oversight, a simple oversight.

All that mattered was what the prisoner intended to do with it.

‘Give it to me,’ Gaunt said. ‘Give it to me or drop it.’

The prisoner did neither of those things. Criid swept the laspistol out of her waistband, and aimed it at the prisoner in a two-handed grip.

‘Do what he told you to do,’ she said.

Gaunt raised his hand to ease Criid back.

‘Give me the knife,’ he said again.

‘I’m not going to hurt anybody,’ Mabbon replied. ‘Did you think I was intending to hurt anybody? We simply have to make ourselves safe here.’

‘With a knife?’

‘The witch will be looking for us,’ said the etogaur, looking directly at Gaunt. All signs of fever seemed to have left him. There was a healthy flush in the scarred pink tissue of his face. ‘This isn’t far, is it?’

‘What?’

‘This isn’t far from the place we were hiding in before, is it? I don’t really remember. I was still delirious when we moved. I don’t remember how long it took.’

‘No, it’s not far. A couple of streets away, if that,’ said Gaunt.

‘The witch will be looking for us. We shook her off, made her lose the scent, but she will renew her efforts. I was intending to cloak us. Where is the blood?’

‘The blood?’ Gaunt asked.

‘The blood you took out of me and your man there.’

Gaunt looked over at Kolding. ‘You’ve still got it, haven’t you, doctor?’

‘Yes,’ said Kolding.

The doctor produced the basin. Mabbon took it, and walked to the front door of the studio. Criid shot a questioning look at Gaunt, but Gaunt shook his head.

At the door, Mabbon used the rite knife to scrape an intricate symbol in the wood of the doorstep, a symbol that Gaunt didn’t care to look at too closely. Then Mabbon filled the scratches with blood from the basin.

Methodically, he repeated the process on the sills of the building’s main windows, and the steps of the back and side doors.

‘That’ll keep her blind to us, for a few hours at least,’ he said. He handed the basin back to Kolding, who had followed to watch the work warily, and then offered the knife back to Gaunt.

Gaunt took it, and returned it to his coat pocket.

‘Heretic magic,’ muttered Kolding, and went to put the basin away in his bag.

‘Exactly,’ said Mabbon.

Gaunt gazed out into the last hours of the night. The sky above Old Side had gone an odd, pale colour, and the snow had eased off for the first time in two days. Gaunt had, against his better nature, begun to associate the snowstorm with the force of the witch set in opposition to them. The easing of the snow suggested, perhaps quite wrongly, a waning of her power and her influence.

‘What do you think?’ he asked Criid.

They were sitting by the window in the reception room, sipping caffeine. Mabbon had gone back to sleep, and both Kolding and Jaume had withdrawn into some semblance of slumber. Maggs lay on the sofa, his eyes wide open.

Gaunt had spent the last few minutes outlining an idea to Criid.

‘It’s not a great plan,’ he admitted.

‘It’s not,’ she agreed.

‘It’s the best I’ve got.’

‘You trust him?’

‘With my life. I’m just sorry you’ll have to go instead of me. I need to stay with the prisoner, and we can’t trust Maggs.’

She nodded. ‘Makes sense. I can get there fast.’

‘We’ll need to get you some clothes from Mr Jaume’s racks.’

‘Really?’ she asked.

He nodded. ‘You won’t get in without them. And you know what to say?’

‘I know what to say. What happens if I don’t come back for… for whatever reason?’

‘I’ll still be there.’

Criid looked at him. ‘That’s way too much of a risk.’

‘It’s too much of a risk not to be. We need this to be over and done. There could be all sorts of factors preventing you from coming back. I will be there.’

‘And if it’s a total fething mess?’

‘I’ll fight my way out of it,’ said Gaunt.

With a small bag of Mr Jaume’s dressing up clothes over her shoulder, Criid left the studio on Carnation Street just before dawn. Gaunt watched her run off into silent, empty streets where the snow had stopped falling.

He hoped that the cessation of snowfall was a good omen.

He hope that he’d see her again.

He wasn’t confident about either of those things.