They both looked around as Maggs screamed out from the other room.
‘He’s got a knife!’ Maggs was yelling.
Gaunt and Criid ran through to the reception room. The etogaur was on his feet, holding the rite knife. Both Kolding and Jaume had leapt up, and were backing away. Maggs was sitting bolt upright on his sofa, his bound hands in front of him as though he were praying.
‘He’s got a knife!’ Maggs yelled as soon as he saw Gaunt. ‘Where did he get a knife from?’
Gaunt stared at Mabbon. He wasn’t sure how the prisoner had ended up with the rite knife. Gaunt had probably simply forgotten to take it back from him in the refurb. It was an oversight, a simple oversight.
All that mattered was what the prisoner intended to do with it.
‘Give it to me,’ Gaunt said. ‘Give it to me or drop it.’
The prisoner did neither of those things. Criid swept the laspistol out of her waistband, and aimed it at the prisoner in a two-handed grip.
‘Do what he told you to do,’ she said.
Gaunt raised his hand to ease Criid back.
‘Give me the knife,’ he said again.
‘I’m not going to hurt anybody,’ Mabbon replied. ‘Did you think I was intending to hurt anybody? We simply have to make ourselves safe here.’
‘With a knife?’
‘The witch will be looking for us,’ said the etogaur, looking directly at Gaunt. All signs of fever seemed to have left him. There was a healthy flush in the scarred pink tissue of his face. ‘This isn’t far, is it?’
‘What?’
‘This isn’t far from the place we were hiding in before, is it? I don’t really remember. I was still delirious when we moved. I don’t remember how long it took.’
‘No, it’s not far. A couple of streets away, if that,’ said Gaunt.
‘The witch will be looking for us. We shook her off, made her lose the scent, but she will renew her efforts. I was intending to cloak us. Where is the blood?’
‘The blood?’ Gaunt asked.
‘The blood you took out of me and your man there.’
Gaunt looked over at Kolding. ‘You’ve still got it, haven’t you, doctor?’
‘Yes,’ said Kolding.
The doctor produced the basin. Mabbon took it, and walked to the front door of the studio. Criid shot a questioning look at Gaunt, but Gaunt shook his head.
At the door, Mabbon used the rite knife to scrape an intricate symbol in the wood of the doorstep, a symbol that Gaunt didn’t care to look at too closely. Then Mabbon filled the scratches with blood from the basin.
Methodically, he repeated the process on the sills of the building’s main windows, and the steps of the back and side doors.
‘That’ll keep her blind to us, for a few hours at least,’ he said. He handed the basin back to Kolding, who had followed to watch the work warily, and then offered the knife back to Gaunt.
Gaunt took it, and returned it to his coat pocket.
‘Heretic magic,’ muttered Kolding, and went to put the basin away in his bag.
‘Exactly,’ said Mabbon.
Gaunt gazed out into the last hours of the night. The sky above Old Side had gone an odd, pale colour, and the snow had eased off for the first time in two days. Gaunt had, against his better nature, begun to associate the snowstorm with the force of the witch set in opposition to them. The easing of the snow suggested, perhaps quite wrongly, a waning of her power and her influence.
‘What do you think?’ he asked Criid.
They were sitting by the window in the reception room, sipping caffeine. Mabbon had gone back to sleep, and both Kolding and Jaume had withdrawn into some semblance of slumber. Maggs lay on the sofa, his eyes wide open.
Gaunt had spent the last few minutes outlining an idea to Criid.
‘It’s not a great plan,’ he admitted.
‘It’s not,’ she agreed.
‘It’s the best I’ve got.’
‘You trust him?’
‘With my life. I’m just sorry you’ll have to go instead of me. I need to stay with the prisoner, and we can’t trust Maggs.’
She nodded. ‘Makes sense. I can get there fast.’
‘We’ll need to get you some clothes from Mr Jaume’s racks.’
‘Really?’ she asked.
He nodded. ‘You won’t get in without them. And you know what to say?’
‘I know what to say. What happens if I don’t come back for… for whatever reason?’
‘I’ll still be there.’
Criid looked at him. ‘That’s way too much of a risk.’
‘It’s too much of a risk not to be. We need this to be over and done. There could be all sorts of factors preventing you from coming back. I will be there.’
‘And if it’s a total fething mess?’
‘I’ll fight my way out of it,’ said Gaunt.
With a small bag of Mr Jaume’s dressing up clothes over her shoulder, Criid left the studio on Carnation Street just before dawn. Gaunt watched her run off into silent, empty streets where the snow had stopped falling.
He hoped that the cessation of snowfall was a good omen.
He hope that he’d see her again.
He wasn’t confident about either of those things.
TWENTY-FOUR
Repulse
First, it went dark, then there was a crackle of hot, white noise as Csoni’s men compromised the club’s security countermeasures and crippled the comms.
‘The work of an EM charge, and a couple of seconds with a pair of needle-nosed pliers,’ Leyr said with grudging admiration. ‘Nothing too fancy, but they know what they’re doing.’
A red gloom flooded the club premises and, with the power out, the air-circulation systems died. It got stale and warm very rapidly. They could smell the beer-soaked carpets and the cantor-finch shit. In the monitor room, the screens, running on a battery circuit, boiled with static like a snowstorm.
As it had, by then, stopped snowing outside, Rawne considered this to be ironic.
In the red gloom, they waited for sounds of the doors being forced. The loading dock was a given, because they’d seen the men approaching on the monitors. If they were approaching the loading dock, they also had access to the east side of the building.
‘Roof,’ said Leyr.
Meryn looked at the scout. ‘You reckon?’
Leyr glanced at Elodie.
‘Where’s the main junction box of your comms and cameras, miss?’ he asked.
‘Behind the main chimney stack on the main roof slope,’ she replied.
‘Well, that’s where they went to work with the needle-nosed pliers, so someone’s on the roof too,’ said Leyr.
‘Skylights? Roof access?’ Varl asked.
‘I can show you,’ Elodie said.
‘Just tell him,’ Daur said firmly.
Elodie explained the upper floor layout, and Varl moved out with Cant.
‘What now?’ asked Elodie.
‘Just stay real fething quiet,’ Meryn told her.
‘Why?’
‘Because he’s listening,’ replied Meryn, pointing through the gloom at Rawne.
A silhouette in the red darkness, Rawne had his head cocked.
‘Metal saw,’ he said at last, ‘portable. That’s the back door. You want to cover that for me, Meryn? I’m sure Leyr will assist.’
Meryn nodded, and got up. Leyr followed him out, the big bolt-action rifle over his shoulder.
‘Captain?’ asked Rawne.
‘Yes, sir?’ Daur answered.
‘Perhaps you and Banda could cover the front?’
‘On it,’ Daur said.
‘Are you just going to sit here and let us do all the work?’ Banda asked.
‘No,’ Rawne replied.