Commissar Edur reappeared, and shut the anteroom door behind him.
‘What’s going on, Edur?’ Gaunt asked, rising to his feet. ‘When can I resume the interview?’
‘In a short while, I trust,’ Edur replied.
‘You heard what he said to me, Edur,’ Gaunt snapped. ‘It’s vital I keep talking to him. Why in the name of the God-Emperor did you pull me out of there?’
‘There are complications,’ said Edur, evasively.
‘What kind of complications?’
Edur looked particularly awkward.
‘I want to talk to him,’ Gaunt said.
‘We want you to talk to him,’ Edur assured him.
‘Then why aren’t I doing that right now?’ asked Gaunt.
‘You’re going to have to wait a little longer,’ said Edur. He flexed his chin, as if there was much more he wanted to say that he simply couldn’t.
Gaunt stared at him, and then slowly sat down again.
‘In the meantime, is there anything I can arrange to have brought to you?’ asked Edur. ‘Some refreshment? Or perhaps you’d like to see your men?’
‘My men?’
Edur hesitated, and took a copybook out of his jacket pocket. He flicked through the pages and consulted a memo.
‘Uhm, a Major Rawne, is it? Him and six others were brought in last night. They’re downstairs in detention. I thought, as you had time to kill, you might–’
‘Major Rawne has been a pain in my arse for twelve years,’ said Gaunt. ‘I don’t know what sort of trouble he’s got himself into now. I hardly care. He can stay downstairs in detention, and rot until I feel like being bothered. It might teach him not to get into trouble in the first place, though I doubt it.’
Edur cleared his throat and put the notebook away. ‘It was merely a suggestion,’ he said.
He turned to leave, but the door opened. A duty officer stepped in and whispered something to Edur, who nodded and turned back to Gaunt.
‘Come with me,’ he said.
Gaunt followed Edur out into the hallway. He had to stride purposefully to keep up with Edur’s brisk pace.
‘Listen carefully,’ Edur said to Gaunt, quietly and urgently, as they strode along. ‘Late last night, the ordos got wind of what was happening here. They’re insisting we hand Prisoner B over to them. Section is protesting our jurisdictional claim to hold and interrogate the prisoner, but the Inquisition is getting rather heavy-handed about it.’
‘I can imagine,’ replied Gaunt.
‘They’re talking about a legal challenge to the Commissariat’s authority, and a ground-up investigation by the Ordo Hereticus. Mercure is trying to head them off. He’s arguing that this is entirely within our remit.’
‘Mercure? You mean Isiah Mercure, head of the Intelligence Division?’
‘Yes.’
Gaunt whistled. They turned a corner together, and, maintaining their pace, started down another hallway. Several armed guards flanked a pair of imposing doors at the far end.
‘He’s called you in,’ said Edur. ‘Answer all the questions put to you simply and clearly. Don’t play games with these people. This is not a moment for showboating.’
‘Understood,’ replied Gaunt.
‘I hope so,’ said Edur. The guards snapped to attention as the two commissars strode up.
‘How did they find out?’ asked Gaunt.
‘What?’
‘How did the ordos find out about Prisoner B?’
Edur stopped in his tracks, and glanced at Gaunt.
‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘It didn’t come up.’
‘You ought to find out,’ said Gaunt. ‘If the ordos can find out, the information is not secure.’
Edur stepped past the guards, knocked emphatically on the doors, and then opened one of them. He held it open to usher Gaunt inside.
‘Colonel-Commissar Gaunt,’ he announced.
Gaunt stepped into the room and made the sign of the aquila. There were about twenty Commissariat officers and clerks in front of him, along with several representatives of the Imperial Inquisition. They were arranged on either side of a large table, lit by the wan snow-light coming through the large windows. The way everyone turned to glare at him when he entered made Gaunt feel as if he had walked in at an especially delicate point in the conversation.
‘Right, Gaunt,’ said the senior Commissariat officer. ‘Don’t just stand there, man. Approach please.’
Gaunt did as he was told. No one had returned his salute. No one had stood back or vacated a seat for his benefit. A couple of Section officers shuffled their chairs aside so that Gaunt could stand next to the table beside the senior officer.
It was Isiah Mercure. Gaunt recognised him well enough from dozens of high-level briefings, though the two of them had never spoken. Gaunt was ordinarily far beneath Mercure’s notice. Mercure dealt with Crusade business at sector level, and kept the company of system governors, lord generals, and the Warmaster. There was very little room for advancement left to him within the Commissariat. Gaunt had heard it suggested that Mercure’s future might include a lord militancy, or even the mastery of some significant theatre.
Mercure was a robust man with greying dark hair, and his strong features managed to be both craggy and fleshy. He was not a handsome man at all. His skin was a bad colour and pock-marked, and the bulk of his torso spoke of excessive high living, but he had exceptional presence. His voice was deep and his manner somehow reassuringly coarse and unaffected.
‘You’ve interviewed Prisoner B, right?’ Mercure asked Gaunt without really looking at him.
‘Briefly, sir.’
‘First impressions?’
‘We shouldn’t execute him, not until we’ve got everything we can from him.’
Mercure nodded. He still wasn’t bothering to look at Gaunt. Half of his attention seemed to be caught up in leafing through the paperwork spread on the table in front of him. The other half seemed to be considering the being seated opposite him.
This individual was, without doubt, a servant of the ordos. He wore dark body armour, and a mantle with a trim of white fur. His physique was long-limbed and lithe. He occupied the chair like a dancer at rest, or a mannequin that had been artfully posed as an artist’s model. He had a striking, leonine mane of hair swept back from his forehead, and his features were almost perfect in their refined construction: his eyes, for instance. It occurred to Gaunt that he’d seen eyes like that before. He’d seen them in his own face. The inquisitor’s eyes were extravagantly machined replicas, and it wasn’t just the eyes. The aesthetics of his face, the lines of the jaw and cheek and nose, were all too noble, too magnificently handsome to be true. At some point, the inquisitor had had his entire face rebuilt by the Imperium’s finest augmeticists.
‘What exactly do you think we can get from him?’ the inquisitor asked, staring at Gaunt.
‘Information vital to the prosecution of this crusade,’ Gaunt replied.
‘What qualifies you as an expert on the analysis of such information?’
Gaunt hesitated. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘Who am I addressing?’
There were half a dozen men in black bodygloves standing behind the inquisitor’s chair. His agents, Gaunt presumed, his team, his henchmen. Like their master, they were lean and lithe, and stood like a troupe of dancers, limbered up and ready to perform. Even unarmed, none of them looked like the sort of man you’d choose to tangle with. There was something curious about them that Gaunt couldn’t quite identify. They bristled at Gaunt’s question.