Rime shook his head and stepped past Edur to return to his men.
‘Then consider this, sir,’ said Edur. ‘Bring the Tanith in on this hunt, and I won’t have to mention to anybody what I saw today.’
‘What are you talking about?’ asked Rime.
‘That thing… in the hallway… it burned your face off. It cremated your skull. You shouldn’t be here, you shouldn’t be alive. You shouldn’t be talking to me.’
‘You don’t know what you’re talking about,’ said Rime.
‘No, I don’t,’ said Edur, ‘but I’ve got a nasty feeling it’s got something to do with the fact that you and your lackeys all look alike.’
‘If that’s the case, it was evidently one of them you saw burn,’ said Rime.
‘I know what I saw,’ said Edur, ‘and it speaks of darkness and warpcraft, and heresy. It speaks of things the Inquisition doesn’t want exposed during a situation this sensitive.’
Rime glared at him for a second. Then he turned and strode back into the company office.
‘You, soldier,’ he said, pointing at Kolea.
‘Major Kolea,’ Kolea replied.
‘Whoever you are,’ said Rime. ‘I want you to assemble, quickly and efficiently, your finest huntsmen.’
SIXTEEN
The Other Hunters
Karhunan Sirdar stole down the silent street, following the trail of little black discs where drops of blood had marked the snow. The street was steep, and the buildings on either side were dark and shuttered against the night and the snowstorm, as if they were hiding with their eyes tight shut. He watched the gusting snow billowing like sparks in the light cones of the streetlamps. Not every lamp in the old quarter street worked.
The beloved magir had put a duty upon his soul, but Karhunan was content. The duty was almost done. They had followed, and they had closed. The vehicle they’d found abandoned up the street behind him was definitely the same one that had outrun them at Section. The blood drops on the snow completed the death warrant.
Some of the philia had moved up with him to reconnoitre the street. Samus was standing outside one of the buildings just ahead, staring up the steps at the front door. The building was dark, and betrayed no sign of life. A sign, some kind of pole device that Karhunan half-recognised from the depths of his scarred memory, hung above the door on a brass rail. Samus was shivering and gnawing at his tongue. As the sirdar approached, he made a soft mewling noise and inclined his head towards the door.
Karhunan patted the misshapen man gently on the shoulder. There were little spots of blood leading up the entrance steps, not yet covered by the softly falling snow.
Imrie appeared to Karhunan’s left, and Naeme to his right. They looked eager.
‘Melthorael,’ Naeme muttered, ‘then it is Aroklur, then it is Ultheum.’
‘Quiet,’ Karhunan whispered.
At the sirdar’s nod, Imrie took out the door with a kick, and they swept into the dark wood hallway. The snow came in with them. Flakes settled on a long-case clock standing in the hallway.
Imrie led the way, his weapon level, shoulder-height, hunting. He was the sharpest of them. A long time ago, in what was almost literally another life, Imrie had been, like Karhunan, a Throne soldier. He was a convert, an incomer. The sept word was elterdwelt, which meant ‘other life’ or, more loosely, ‘traded item’. He had sloughed off most of his other life, shed it gladly like a snake sheds an old, tight skin, but some parts of it had remained stubborn. Damogaur Eyl, no elterdwelt, but rather Consanguinity-born, cherished such old traits in the men of his philia. Imrie had been a scout, a hunter. He saw details almost anyone else would miss.
Imrie swept down the hall. He noticed that one of the six bulbs in the hall lamps had blown, and blown a long time before, because its dull glass was coated in dust. He noticed that the long-case clock was not working. He noticed the dried residue of snow-melt footprints on the dark wood floor, all but invisible.
A small kitchen. Three mugs, all half-full, all cold. A stove-top burner where the wrought iron ring still held some heat.
Imrie nodded Samus on. Samus checked a side room, caving the door in with a crash. Naeme was on the stairs, his weapon aimed upwards, peering.
Imrie went down the stone steps into the basement. Karhunan followed him. The basement areas were quite extensive, stone vaults built beneath pavement level. There was a surgical theatre, a storeroom and a cold room for cadavers.
‘There’s nobody here,’ said Karhunan.
‘But there was,’ Imrie replied.
‘You sure?’
‘Sure as blood speckles in the snow,’ Imrie replied. ‘Sure as a stove still warm. Sure as this.’
They were in the theatre. It was clean and tidy, and empty, but Imrie had lifted the lid of the medical waste bin. Karhunan Sirdar peered in. He saw dirty swabs and blood dressings, along with some disposable medicae materials.
Imrie walked over to the tool counter. He unscrewed the lid of one of the glass sterilising baths, and withdrew a scalpel. He sniffed it.
‘Blood,’ he said.
Even after a time in the chemical soak, the smell lingered enough for a man like Imrie.
‘So, where?’ asked Karhunan.
Imrie tilted his head and thought. He could smell something else, something dirty and metallic. He strode out of the theatre into the lower landing. The wood panelled back wall wasn’t a wall at all. It was a screen. He found the recessed brass handle and drew it aside.
A service elevator. Cold, damp mustiness drifted up from below.
Imrie rode the rattling carriage down with his sirdar and Naeme. On arrival, after just a short drop, they swung out, weapons raised.
Snowflakes blew into their faces. The front of the house faced one steep street, but the rear let out three floors down onto another street-level of the escarpment. In Old Side, the buildings and streets were stacked in tiers.
The doors of the small basement garage were open onto the back lane. There were oil marks on the rockcrete floor, and a scent of exhaust in the air.
Imrie hurried to the garage doors and looked out.
Nothing had been left behind, except the ghost of squirming tyre tracks.
‘It’s just an idea, but could you try going faster?’ asked Maggs.
‘Quiet,’ Gaunt warned him. Maggs sighed, and sat back in the rear of the little private ambulance. It was a rickety thing that patently hadn’t been used in years. Gaunt was in the cab with Kolding. Maggs was in the back with the unconscious prisoner. The ambulance was creeping through the night at what felt like a mollusc’s crawl, except that it was also managing to slide and wheel-spin too.
‘Gently,’ Gaunt said to Kolding, who was hunched low, glaring over the top of the wheel.
‘I’m trying my best,’ Kolding replied.
‘When was the last time you took this vehicle out?’ Gaunt asked.
‘A while.’
‘At night?’
‘A while.’
‘Who drove then, doctor?’
Kolding shrugged and found another gear. ‘My father.’
Gaunt shook his head.
‘Sir,’ he said, ‘have we forced you to leave your home for the first time in fifteen years?’
Kolding shrugged again, and said, ’It’s all right. I keep myself to myself. It’s just a strange turn of events, that’s all.’
‘You’ve been in that house for fifteen years?’ Maggs asked incredulously.
‘Enough, Maggs,’ said Gaunt.