The information was useless to her now, and that troubled her deeply. She liked to have solid, verifiable facts to give her power over her circumstances. That was gone, and she felt her long-conquered anxieties rising.
The hallway she was following was long. She knew that no single hallway in the entire undercroft was this long or this straight. The environment had turned against them, buckled by the warp-aura of whatever stalked them.
Whatever it was that made the noise she had first heard at Low Keen, a noise that had lodged in her ever since and thrown her into a downward spiral of anxieties.
She led the way, controlling her breathing to avoid the onset of panic. Merity and Meryn followed her. Merity seemed alert, but Meryn was either traumatised, or unwilling to hide his usual, sullen nature. He had said very little about what had happened to him, despite her questions. People had died. His squad. Something had torn them apart.
Information – specific detail – was a tool that allowed for greater control. Meryn’s reluctance to help her with much compounded her sense that she was losing her grip.
‘You’re sure,’ she asked, ‘that we have only been down here an hour?’
‘Thereabouts,’ said Merity.
It was difficult to allow for that. It lacked sense, and wasn’t backed up by the evidence of Fazekiel’s own experience.
‘I’m not sure any more,’ Merity added. ‘I’m not sure of anything.’
‘Why did you come down?’ she asked Merity. ‘You came down to the undercroft. Why?’
‘I…’ Merity said. She eased her grip on the carbine. ‘Does it matter?’
Fazekiel looked at her.
‘You were working with the Lord Executor’s cabinet up in the palace, but you chose to come down.’
‘I came to find you,’ said Merity.
‘Regarding the Low Keen incident?’ asked Fazekiel. She was fidgeting with the front of her coat in a futile effort to wipe the stains off it.
‘Yes,’ said Merity. She was painfully aware of the way Meryn was staring at her, his eyes hooded. ‘Look, it’s hardly important right now, is it, commissar?’
Fazekiel turned to Merity and presented her with what she hoped was a reassuring smile. She was finding it hard to know what expression her face was actually wearing, or how much of her mounting terror she was betraying.
‘We don’t know what’s important,’ she said. ‘Things happened at Low Keen. The thing that attacked Yoncy and Elodie Daur. Mam Daur described a very distinctive noise associated with the attack, a noise I believe we have now heard. Yoncy was present at both places–’
‘So?’ asked Meryn.
‘I’m just assembling facts,’ said Fazekiel. ‘You said she was also present when your squad died. And we both saw her before the lights went out.’
Meryn said nothing. He looked at the wall. His breathing was too fast, too shallow.
‘I’m sorry,’ Fazekiel said to Merity quietly. ‘I… I am meticulous to the point of compulsion. I always have been. I like detail. I like to know the far side of everything. I suppose it is a weakness. An obsession. Detail gives me a sense of control.’
‘I’m sure it makes you a very good investigator,’ Merity answered. Merity was edgy and scared, and she could see how strung-out Fazekiel was. She didn’t feel reassured by either of the people she was with, though she was glad she wasn’t alone.
‘Detail freak,’ muttered Meryn. ‘That’s what everyone says about you. Taking great pains and giving them to everybody else.’
‘There’s no need for that,’ Merity said to him.
Meryn glared at her. ‘We’re lost, little girl,’ he said, ‘and something out of a nightmare is hunting us. But yeah, let’s swap a few personal secrets and braid each other’s fething hair.’
‘In the face of an unknown threat, assembling reliable data seems sensible,’ said Fazekiel. ‘Do you have a better idea, captain?’
‘Give me a gun,’ he replied.
‘We only have two firearms,’ said Fazekiel.
‘And she’s a fething civilian!’ Meryn growled, indicating Merity with contempt. ‘I’m a fething serving officer in the Tanith First.’
He looked at Merity.
‘Give me the carbine,’ he said.
‘No,’ she replied.
‘Commissar?’ he said, looking for support.
‘What happened to your weapon, captain?’ Fazekiel asked.
‘Feth you. Both of you,’ he murmured and looked away. Merity could see how badly his hands were shaking.
‘Why did you come down here?’ Fazekiel asked Merity.
‘I just… I just did.’
‘To find me. You had something to tell me regarding the Low Keen incident?’
‘It doesn’t matter now. It’s not important.’
‘You were in a meeting with Gaunt’s tactical cabinet, ma’am,’ said Fazekiel. ‘It must have been important to tear you away from that.’
‘I remembered something, that’s all,’ said Merity. She kept flicking her eyes in Meryn’s direction, trying to show she didn’t want to speak in front of him, but the commissar was too weary and anxious to notice the hint. Merity had always disliked Meryn intensely. She wasn’t about to throw suspicion his way. Not in front of him. So, she thought she’d heard his voice outside the shower block? So what? How did that matter even slightly now?
Meryn had turned to stare at her, listening intently.
‘What did you remember?’ he asked. There was an edge to his tone. His eyes were bright and unblinking, like a snake’s.
‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ she said.
‘It might be important,’ said Fazekiel. ‘It might relate to this.’
‘It doesn’t,’ Merity insisted.
Fazekiel sighed, and turned to start walking again.
Meryn stood for a moment, staring at Merity. When she went to walk past him, he whispered, ‘Careless talk, that’s always a bad thing. Rumour, gossip. Don’t want people getting the wrong idea, do we?’
Merity blanked him and kept walking.
They’d only gone another few metres when they heard the sound again. The saw-blade, screeching somewhere close by. It was like the shriek of an animal. The lights flickered.
‘Feth this,’ Meryn whispered. ‘Give me the gun.’
‘No,’ Merity replied. It was the only thing making her feel remotely safe.
‘What I think,’ said Ayatani Zweil, ‘is that darkness follows the light.’
‘Is that so?’ Domor replied. They sloshed, knee-deep, along the flooded hallway. Domor had his straight silver in his hand, for all the good it would do.
‘Yes, oh yes, Shoggy,’ Zweil replied earnestly. ‘Like a shadow, you know? Imagine a candle.’
‘All right.’
‘The candle’s lit, you see? So there’s light.’
I’m familiar with the fething principles of candles, Domor wanted to scream. He didn’t. The old priest was scared. He’d been talking non-stop for the last twenty minutes. Domor wanted him to shut up. He liked the old man dearly, but he longed for silence. He wanted to be able to hear things coming.
He sighed to himself. And then what? he wondered. He looked around at the half-lit gloom, the reflections of the low-power lamps flickering on the rippled surface of a waste water flood that was still rising.
This was going to be a grim old end. Not at all what he’d ever imagined. Domor had always known for sure he would die in the regiment. He was resigned to that. He’d come close often enough, including the occasion that had robbed him of his eyes and left him with the buggy optical augmetics that had earned him his nickname.
But he’d always pictured the end as a glorious one. On the field of battle, a valiant stand at Gaunt’s side. A noble death. Maybe there’d be wreaths afterwards, and a bugle call or a gun salute.