‘Anatomically?’ he asked, glancing up from his work.
Curth smiled.
‘Hark’s covering,’ she said. ‘I saw him just now in the hall. Something’s going on.’
She dumped the stack of reports on Dorden’s desk and began to work through them.
‘What’s this?’ asked Dorden.
‘Everything we sent to the pharmacon yesterday has come back.’
‘You’re joking! It usually takes a week.’
Curth shook her head.
‘Nope,’ she said. ‘Everything. Every single test, every single sample, every single blood. Praise be the Emperor for lock-down.’
‘What?’
‘The pharmacon staff couldn’t leave base last night, so, for want of anything more interesting to do, they worked through the entire case-load. I think we should remind them how fast they can work next time we have a rush on and they tell us they’re pushed.’
‘Agreed,’ said Dorden. He began to help her sort the file packets, breaking the seals on confidential examination reports.
‘Costin’s hep is confirmed,’ she read. ‘I’ll get him in to discuss remedial care.’
‘Have you got Twenzet’s bloods there?’
‘Yes, and they look all right. Which is more than can be said for Neskon’s augmetics. It looks like he’s rejecting again.’
‘If Neskon can’t keep that leg, it could see him out of the Guard on a 4-F.’
‘I know,’ said Curth. ‘I’m exploring other options.’
‘What were you saying about Hark?’
‘He’s hiding something,’ Curth said. ‘Something’s going on.’
‘How could you tell, Ana?’ Dorden asked.
‘You develop a nose for these things,’ she replied. ‘Something is afoot.’
She opened another packet.
‘Oh, this one’s yours,’ she said, handing it to him.
Dorden read the tag strip.
‘Aha, Zweil,’ he said. ‘Thank you.’ He pulled the envelope open and slid out the contents.
‘Viktor just had this look on his face, you know?’ Curth said, sorting through the remainder of the reports for priority. ‘You know that look he gets? Dorden?’
She turned and looked across the desk at the Ghosts’ elderly doctor.
‘What’s the matter?’ she asked.
‘Oh, Throne,’ Dorden whispered, turning the pages of the pharmacon report and reading quickly.
‘Dorden? What’s the matter?’
‘Oh, feth,’ said Dorden. He closed his eyes, shut the report, and handed it to her. Curth took it from him and started to read.
‘Shit,’ she murmured.
‘The old dog must’ve known,’ Dorden said, taking off his spectacles and massaging the bridge of his nose. ‘That’s why he was dodging the medicals.’
‘Oh, this is just awful,’ said Curth. She sniffed hard and rubbed her eyes. ‘It’s unfair, that’s what it is.’
Dorden nodded.
‘So who gets to tell him?’ Curth asked.
TWENTY
Old Ghosts
Gaunt found Criid watching the refurb’s road access entrance.
‘You need to rest,’ he told her.
She shook her head.
‘You’re no good to me tired,’ he said.
‘I’ve been resting for months,’ she told him quietly. ‘Standing still. This is what I need.’
‘The prospect of a bloody death at the hands of the Archenemy?’ he asked, raising an eyebrow.
She snorted.
‘A purpose,’ she said.
Gaunt looked out onto the snow-heavy street. His wrist chron appeared to have stopped at some point during the night, and he could not shake or wind life back into it. His best guess was that it was approaching mid-morning. They’d been holed up in the refurb for about six hours.
It didn’t look like mid-morning. The Old Side street was silent and empty. Snow was still fleecing down out of the cloud cover, and icing every surface. It had drifted deeply across the pavements and around parked vehicles. There was no sign of life: no traffic, no civilians, no pedestrians, no municipal street workmen or ploughs, no gritting trucks. The sky was as grey as slate, and visibility was severely restricted. The Old Side skyline was a faint black phantom in the flurrying snow. The more he looked at the snow against the sky, the more it looked like static flooding a jammed pict-feed.
The city’s haunted emptiness could be explained by the bad weather, and it could also be put down to a security lock-down following the attack. Either of those explanations suited Gaunt fine.
The third one, at the back of his mind, the idea that it was entirely unnatural, did not. He set it aside, even though there was a yellowish quality to the snow-light, and an odd sensation of brooding in the air, and his wrist chron had stopped dead and refused to work.
‘A purpose is good,’ he said, belatedly.
‘A plan would be better,’ said Criid.
He nodded.
‘Doctor Kolding says the etogaur’s too sick to be moved. He’s running a serious fever. Kolding didn’t want us to move him from his practice in the first place, although our hand was forced. As this place seems a little more secure, I’m loathe to ignore his professional advice.’
Criid shrugged and pouted.
‘What?’ he asked.
‘This man is really that important? Do we really care if he dies?’
‘You’ve seen what the Archenemy has put into motion to silence him,’ Gaunt replied. ‘There’s your answer.’
‘I suppose,’ she replied. ‘It just feels wrong. I mean, we’ve spent most of our careers trying to kill men like him.’
Gaunt sat down on a pile of fibreboard.
‘If we can’t move him, we need to bring help here,’ he said. ‘One of us… you, me, Maggs… could go out and try to raise some help. But just one of us, in case trouble comes calling.’
‘I’ll go,’ said Criid. ‘I’ve been running a lot recently. I can cover some ground. Question is, who do I go to? Who do you trust?’
‘I trust the regiment. But we don’t know how deep the infiltration runs, so I don’t trust any of the standard lines of communication. We need an unimpeachable point of contact. If I could speak directly to Hark or Gol.’
‘We could find a vox.’
Gaunt shrugged.
‘We also need food if we’re going to stay here any length of time,’ she said. ‘Let me scout the area, and see what I can scrounge up. I’ll see if there’s anything moving around out there, while I’m at it.’
Gaunt nodded.
‘Let’s start with that. But be careful.’
Criid slipped out through one of the refurb’s side windows, and ran down to the eerily empty main street. Snowflakes caught in her hair.
She was already spiking again, but it felt good this time, it felt right.
She turned left, and ran along the centre of the road, ignoring the pavements where the snow had drifted into deep banks. She followed the half-buried glitter of the tram rails, and splashed across stretches of meltwater where the snow cover had been heated by pipe-work or power sources under the street’s surface.
She went two junctions east, and then turned south around the church of Saint Sark, where the green iron railings looked as if they’d been dipped in icing sugar. There was a baker’s shop she knew on Londolph Square where she’d be able to get some bread and perhaps some cold meat or cheese. Gaunt had given her all the money he had on him.
That was presuming the baker’s shop was open. If it wasn’t, she’d impose Martial Provisioning Rules and help herself.
Something made her stop running. Afterwards, Tona couldn’t account for it. Something had just clicked in her head. It was intuitive. It was as if Caff had been at her side, and had just reached out and touched her arm.