‘I find myself in an unfortunate situation,’ said Gaunt. ‘I need help, and there are very few people I can turn to. Just now, Mr Jaume, you are the closest. Are you a loyal servant of the Imperial Throne?’
‘Am I what?’ Jaume began. ‘Of course!’
‘You would, therefore, have no objections to assisting an officer of the Throne in the pursuit of his duties?’
‘What is this?’ asked Jaume.
Gaunt looked at the doorway behind Jaume, and gave a brief nod. Suddenly, other people were coming in out of the snow and the gathering darkness.
‘What is this?’ Jaume repeated as they pushed past him.
Criid was escorting Maggs, who was dazed and bleary, his hands still bound. Kolding, weighed down by his medical kit, was supporting the prisoner.
‘Through there,’ Gaunt said, gesturing, and then closed and bolted the front door behind them.
Criid had led the way into the reception room off the hall. It was similarly appointed in dark romantic shades of maroon, red and black. There were couches and armchairs, side tables decorated with arrangements of dried flowers, and a great deal of gathered drapery dressing the walls.
Criid left Maggs slumped on one of the couches, and Kolding settled the prisoner on the other.
‘Check the place, please,’ Gaunt said to Criid. ‘Entrances and exits. Is there anyone else here, Mr Jaume?’
‘No,’ Jaume replied. ‘I’m here alone. There were appointments booked for today, but they were all cancelled due to the snow.’
Gaunt nodded to Criid. She drew the laspistol and slipped out of the room.
‘Why is she armed?’ Jaume asked.
Gaunt ignored the question.
‘You work here?’ he asked, looking around.
‘Yes,’ said Jaume.
‘This is your studio?’
‘Yes,’ said Jaume.
‘And you’re a portraitist? You make picts?’
‘Photographic exposures,’ said Jaume, ‘and also some hololithic work.’
The reception room was as discreetly shabby as the hall. Gaunt could see that boot-black had been used to cover scuff marks on the floorboards and the legs of the furniture. The drapery had been gathered so as to hide old watermarks, and the flower vases had been painted over to disguise chips.
Several large, black albums with embossed felt covers were arranged on one of the side tables for casual inspection. Gaunt opened one, and began to turn the oversized card pages. The picts inside were large, and mounted in elegantly muted paper frames. They were portraits of men in uniforms: Guard, Navy, PDF, militia. The men’s uniforms were all dress formal, and their faces were uniformly solemn. They stood stiffly, facing the camera, looking into the lens with vacant or preoccupied eyes, and expressions that would never alter. There were chin straps and moustaches, dress swords and bugles, standards and drums. There were shakos perched on heads, and gilded chase helmets cupped under arms. There were bearskin capes, breastplates, and frogged button loops. To his surprise, Gaunt found he couldn’t identify many of the uniforms.
‘I make commemorative portraits,’ said Jaume, watching Gaunt go through the album, eager for approval. ‘There is a great demand for it here on Balhaut, because of the Famous Victory, of course. A great demand.’
Most of the portraits showed the skyline of Balopolis or the Oligarchy in the background. The same views, over and over. In most, Gaunt could read a skyline that had not existed for fifteen years. Some portraits included proud families in their formal best, gathered around the son or husband, brother or father in uniform.
‘Families come here, or send commission orders,’ Jaume went on, ‘from all across the sector, actually. There is dignity in a commemorative portrait. And consolation.’
Gaunt realised that it wasn’t a bordello that Jaume’s premises reminded him of. Rather, it was a funeral parlour. Jaume’s business was part of the mourning industry. The men he was looking at were dead, surely. He was reviewing images of men who no longer existed, which had been skilfully combined with images of a city that no longer existed either.
Gaunt closed the album.
‘What’s through here?’ he asked, and walked through the draped arch before Jaume could answer.
The main studio lay beyond the arch. Powerful lights and pict-imagers on tripods were arranged in front of a scenic area. To one side were racks of clothes, and boxes of props, like a messy backstage dressing room. Gaunt turned on one of the lamps, and its powerful filament lit with a ftoom!
Balopolis lay before him, noble and magnificent. Above, the Oligarchy; below, the bending river. There, the Tower of the Plutocrat, the Monastery, the High Palace, the Sirene Palace, the Emancipatory, the Oligarchy Gate.
The Oligarchy Gate. The afternoon of the ninth day, at Slaydo’s left hand. Ahead, the famous Gate, defended by the woe machines of Heritor Asphodel. Mud lakes. Freak weather. The chemical deluge triggered by the orbital bombardment and the Heritor’s toxins. Molten pitch in the air like torrential rain–
Gaunt walked towards the bright vista. It was untouched. War-clean. It was Balopolis as it had been.
Wire barbs skinning the air. The thuk of impacts, so many impacts. Clouds of pink mist to his left and right as men were hit. Ahead, below the Gate, the machines whirring again–
‘Stop it,’ Gaunt said.
‘Sir?’ Jaume asked.
‘I was talking to myself,’ said Gaunt.
Balopolis was one of a number of theatrical backdrop flats arranged behind the posing area.
‘There is a selection,’ said Jaume, moving Balopolis aside on its running wheels. ‘The Oligarchy is especially popular. But also Ascension Valley, Zaebes City… I can do Khulan too. Terra itself, at a pinch.’
‘But your subjects are dead men,’ said Gaunt.
‘Not all of them,’ said Jaume.
‘But most of them. You take their images from old stock, and superimpose them. Why do you need a set?’
‘It depends upon the commission,’ said Jaume. ‘If the family wants to be included, I have them sit here, arranged in front of their chosen scene. Then I dress an assistant appropriately to stand with them.’
Jaume moved to the heaped racks of clothes, and picked up, at random, a hussar’s jacket and a sabre.
‘You see? Something appropriate. I have a great deal to choose from. War surplus. Stuff that was left behind.’
‘The gun that was left behind,’ Gaunt murmured.
‘Pardon?’
‘Nothing.’
Jaume brandished his props. ‘The assistant stands in a pose that matches the pose of the family’s loved one in an old pict, and then I match the face in later. It’s most satisfactory. The families are always delighted to be reunited in that way, one last time.’
‘How do you get the uniform details right?’ Gaunt asked.
‘To be honest,’ said Jaume, ‘many of the old picts I’m given to work from are not in formal dress, or sometimes the uniforms just aren’t very… compelling. Heroic, if you like. The families are always keen to make their loved one look as dashing and martial as possible.’
‘So you make it up?’ asked Gaunt.
‘I manufacture commemoration, sir,’ said Jaume. ‘I give my clients a memento of the way things should have been.’
Criid entered. She looked around and whistled.
‘Clear?’ Gaunt asked.
She nodded, and recounted the basic layout of the premises. As she spoke, she picked along the clothes rail, and tried on a plumed dragoon’s cap.
‘How do I look?’ she asked.
‘Astonishingly authentic,’ Gaunt replied sourly. ‘Did you find a kitchen?’