‘I can’t do it,’ he said. Kolea could barely hear him. ‘The guilt. It’s the guilt, you see? Just on me, on me all the time.’
‘Talk to me, Vaynom.’ Kolea had dropped his voice to a low hiss. They had slowed down, and the rest of Baskevyl’s squad was pulling ahead slightly.
Blenner looked at Kolea. His eyes were puffy and red. A little tic was making his left cheek twitch.
‘Low Keen,’ he said. ‘It was stupid. So stupid. I… I was just trying to hold it together. They had their claws on me. I mean, I was properly screwed. They had dirt on me that would have… it would have been the end.’
‘Who?’
Blenner gulped, and wiped his eyes.
‘None of it matters now,’ he said. ‘It all seemed so important then, but now? Here? Feth! It’s so ridiculous! The horror here, our lives… death coming for us, and no way out.’
‘Tell me,’ said Kolea.
‘What?’ Blenner uttered an empty laugh. ‘A death bed confession?’
‘Think of it as absolution,’ said Kolea. ‘If this is going to be the end of us down here, then how do you want it to go? Don’t you want to pass from this duty into the next life with a clear conscience?’
‘Only in death, eh?’
‘That’s where they say it ends. Duty, that is. I don’t know about guilt.’
Blenner hesitated.
‘I can’t remember whose idea it was,’ he said softly. ‘Gendler, maybe? Wilder jumped at it, and they pulled me in because they knew, they knew, they could blackmail me into assisting. It was just money, major. Just money. Gaunt’s boy had so much, I mean, so much. Access to House Chass accounts. We didn’t know, not then. We didn’t know that the boy was… not a boy.’
‘And?’
‘Gendler was supposed to jump him in the showers. Put the scares on him, and force him to transfer a little funding our way. That’s all it was supposed to be. But Gendler, that feth Didi Gendler, he was heavy-handed. Knocked the boy down. That’s when we came in. That’s when we realised that the son was actually a fething daughter. Then Gendler fething improvised. Decided she couldn’t talk if she was dead.’
He looked up at Kolea.
‘Ezra found them. I think he was watching Merity, shadowing her. He went in and he killed Gendler. Wounded Wilder. Then we came in and pretended to help him, though we’d been in on it all along. He killed Ezra. Said we could say that Wilder had done it. And that I’d found them and executed Wilder on the spot. No loose ends, you see? You see how that worked? He made me kill him, Gol. He made me shoot Wilder. Wilder was begging me not to, and I just–’
‘Vaynom? Vaynom, listen. Who made you? Who was the other man in your group?’
‘Meryn,’ said Blenner.
Kolea clenched his jaw tight.
‘That little shit,’ he whispered. ‘It was him? He killed Ezra?’
Blenner nodded. Kolea wanted to punch him in the face and then keep punching. But he held his rage back.
‘You’ve done the right thing, Vaynom,’ he managed to say. ‘The brave thing. You feel better now, right?’
Blenner nodded again.
‘Good. All right. Let’s deal with this, and if we survive it, we can deal with Meryn. You’ve done the right thing.’
‘I just couldn’t do it any more,’ said Blenner.
‘Vaynom, I need you to give me your weapon now. Your sidearm. Can you do that?’
‘Yes,’ said Blenner, and handed his pistol to Kolea.
‘Good. I–’
‘Gol!’ Baskevyl’s voice echoed back down the hallway. ‘Problem?’
‘No!’ Kolea called back.
‘Close it up! We don’t want to lose the pair of you!’
‘All right!’ called Kolea.
He took hold of Blenner’s arm and began to move him along the hall. There’d be time for anger later. He couldn’t let it weaken him now. He couldn’t let it break his concentration. There was too much at stake.
They had just caught up with the others when the bone saw started shrieking. It sounded very close, as though it was just on the other side of the thick and unending stone wall.
‘Oh Throne!’ Baskevyl cried. He raised his weapon.
‘Move!’ he said. ‘Move! With me, now!’
Luna Fazekiel started to tremble uncontrollably when she heard the bone saw howling again. It was very close, and persistent this time. The long, drawn-out shrieks of destructive wrath echoed down the hallways.
She shoved her pistol into her belt to stop herself dropping it, and then clenched one hand around the other in an effort to control the trembling.
Meryn looked up in fear, twitching with every echoing shriek.
‘Feth,’ he whispered. ‘We’re so fething done. Just done. You know what? Feth him. Damn him. Screw him to hell! Fething God-Emperor, he does this to us?’
‘Captain,’ Merity said, trying to hold her own terror back.
‘What?’ he snapped, rounding on her. ‘It’s true! It’s true, you stupid little high-hive bitch! We serve him, serve him all our days, following his fething light, because he’s the way and the truth and all that bullshit! And for what? This? This shit? If we are his children, and he’s our god, then he’s a fething monster!’
‘That’s enough,’ Fazekiel said, her voice not much more than a stammer.
Meryn sneered at her. For a notably handsome man, his face had twisted in an ugly way. ‘What? That blasphemy, is it? Not the sort of thing a Guardsman should say in earshot of his Prefectus stooge? I don’t care. Feth you. You know it’s true as well. It’s a joke. It’s a farce. We give our lives every day, year-on-year, just to serve his great and inscrutable scheme. I have marched every bloody step from Tanith to this. There’s never been any hope. There’s never been anything but the most fleeting respite. And I’ve seen horrors. Horrors no one should see. And this is the reward. Trapped in a pit with some daemon fiend. Feth Terra. Feth the God-Emperor–’
‘I said that’s enough, captain,’ said Fazekiel.
Meryn looked away. ‘What’s he going to do?’ he murmured. ‘Damn me? Curse me? There’s no curse worse than this.’
He closed his eyes and clasped his hands to his forehead.
‘There’s never a way out,’ he whispered. ‘Never.’
Fazekiel swallowed hard and took a step towards him gingerly. She reached out one trembling hand in a futile gesture of consolation.
Something black and thrashing landed on the ground between them, shrieking. They both leapt back.
Meryn lowered his warknife.
‘It’s the fething mascot,’ he said. He started to laugh. Somehow, Merity felt his empty, cold laughter was worse than the echoing daemon-shriek.
She looked down at the wounded eagle. It was shuddering, its plumage a mess. Its remaining head jerked from side to side, regarding them with wild incomprehension.
‘There it is! You see? There–’
The old ayatani and Shoggy Domor appeared from a hallway beside them. They came to a halt and stared.
‘Throne,’ said Domor, ‘I never thought we’d see another living soul again.’
‘Shoggy,’ Meryn said in disbelief.
‘Are the three of you all right?’ Zweil asked.
‘Yes, father,’ said Merity. ‘Glad of company.’
Zweil looked at Fazekiel, then went over to her and hugged her tightly, pressing her head against his shoulder.
‘There, there,’ he said as she wept into the folds of his robe. ‘It’s all been a bit much. But we’re coming through it now. The Emperor protects. He really does.’
‘No, he doesn’t,’ said Meryn. ‘You hear that, right? That’s the sound of death coming for us.’
‘Come on, Flyn,’ said Domor. ‘Father Zweil is–’