‘Those are private papers,’ said Jaume. He wandered into the room, and found Gaunt at the desk.
Gaunt nodded, but kept reading.
‘How much do you get for each one?’ he asked.
‘The cost isn’t the issue,’ said Jaume.
‘It’s a price, not a cost,’ said Gaunt. ‘How much? A crown? Two crowns? Five crowns for a particularly lurid exploit or a mention in dispatches?’
‘I charge a standard rate of two crowns,’ Jaume admitted.
‘And how many can you churn out in a sitting?’ Gaunt asked, leafing through the stack. ‘A dozen? Twenty?’
‘I don’t churn them out,’ said Jaume.
‘Maybe, but it’s not what you’d call hard work, is it?’ asked Gaunt. ‘I mean, two crowns a letter, that’s good money, considering there’s no research to do.’
Jaume didn’t reply.
Gaunt held up one letter.
‘There was no Cantical Gate. Good name, though.’ He gestured with another. ‘In the zone you mention here, there was no “valiant fighting on the sixth day”, because the action was over in four. In this one? The commanding officer is an invention. In this one, you’ve actually awarded a medal that doesn’t exist.’
He looked over at Jaume.
‘You just make it all up, at two crowns a notice. It’s just like the portraits. You just make it all up.’
‘The content doesn’t matter,’ Jaume answered quietly. ‘Who’s going to care? Who’s going to know? Who’s ever going to spot the contrivance or point out an error?’
‘Well, me?’ Gaunt suggested.
‘With respect,’ Jaume replied, ‘in fifteen years, you’re the first person to set foot in here, who was actually on Balhaut at the time. No, sir, the details don’t matter. To the bereaved and the grieving, to the heartbroken and the inconsolable, the details aren’t remotely important. All that matters is a handsome portrait of the soul they’ve lost and, if it helps, a few lines that speak to good character, sound duty, and a minimum of suffering. Two crowns, sir, is a small price to pay for that kind of easement and solace.’
Gaunt shook his head, and dropped the sheaf of notices back onto the desk.
‘I must remember,’ he said, ‘to remind my men the next time we go into battle that the details don’t matter.’
Jaume snorted.
‘I think you’re being rather naive, sir,’ he said. ‘Why do you suppose I was so eager to secure the commission to make your portrait?’
‘I would imagine there was two crowns in it for you,’ Gaunt replied.
Jaume laughed humourlessly.
‘This is my living, colonel-commissar, this is my trade. I stalk a city that almost died on a world that almost died memorialising those who were lost. I never get to meet the living. I never get to meet the men who won the war and came through that fire alive.’
Gaunt didn’t reply.
‘You think I trivialise it,’ said Jaume. ‘Perhaps I do. I manufacture heroes. I’ve never met a real one before.’
‘I’m no hero, Jaume,’ said Gaunt.
Jaume laughed.
‘If you’re not, then God-Emperor help us all.’
‘I appreciate your understanding in this,’ said Hark to Curth quietly. They stood in the temple house, watching Beltayn and Rerval work the caster. Nothing had come through from Rawne in a very long time. Dawn was on them, and impatience was beginning to turn into irritation.
‘I’m surprised you would even question my response, Viktor,’ Curth replied. ‘I was on Gereon with Gaunt. I was on Gereon for longer than anyone. I appreciate the grey areas of this more than anyone, and my loyalty to Gaunt is absolute. You could have trusted me earlier.’
‘It wasn’t a question of trust,’ said Hark. ‘I didn’t want to put anybody in a difficult position unless it was necessary.’
‘How long are you going to give it?’ Curth asked, nodding to the vox-caster.
Hark shrugged.
‘And if you can’t raise Rawne, what else can we do to reach out to Gaunt and help him?’
‘Short of taking on the agents of the Inquisition, disobeying direct orders and bursting out of Aarlem Fortress by force if necessary you mean?’
‘Those would certainly be less favourable options,’ she replied.
‘Then I really have no idea,’ he replied.
The Imperial hunters set out again from Section, at daybreak, into a city hazed white with thick winter fog. The fog blurred but magnified the sun, creating a strange, luminous glare in the air.
Less than four kilometres from the Imperials, within the projected sweep radius, the philia circled and re-circled the small patch of city turf in the vicinity of the refurb, worrying like a pack of blood hounds at a scent trail that had been strong and was suddenly gone.
In his bolt hole, Eyl knew that time was draining away. They needed success fast before their luck ran out altogether. Every time Karhunan or one of the other men checked back to the house with a negative report, Eyl’s agony increased.
His sister was at work in the back room of the house. She’d been labouring all night, weaving ugly witchcraft in a corpse room rank with blood. He kept hearing her squeal and moan as frustration followed frustration.
Just after dawn, she called out to him. He went into the corpse room. She had laid out the chart of Inner Balopolis and the Oligarchy, the chart that Valdyke had provided, and which she’d used to pinpoint Section. She had spread it on the floor, and it was soaked with blood.
‘Have you found him?’ he asked.
‘No,’ she whispered, and shook her head under her veil. ‘I cannot see him at all.’
She pointed to one tiny part of the map that the spattered blood had curiously not blemished.
‘But I can see where I can’t see,’ she said.
Criid approached her destination well before dawn, on the cusp of the change from frost-glass cold to phantom fog. Gaunt had told her there wasn’t much point making a direct approach before mid-morning.
The snow-thick streets were quiet, though at this end of town, there was more activity than in the unnaturally still thoroughfares of Old Side, beneath the Blood Pact’s warp-crafted spell.
She circled the target twice, assessed it, and then looked for somewhere to rest. A small public chapel, dedicated to the beati herself, occupied a street corner close by, and Criid found that it was the sort of place left unlocked at all hours of the day or night.
She clunked open the heavy wooden door and let herself in out of the bitter cold of the empty night. The place was old and uneven, stone built with heavy wooden beams, and a fading painted ceiling. Glow-globes had been left lit up in the vault, casting a soft yellow light, and the last flames of votive candles lit the day before were sputtering out in the metal rack in front of the beati’s effigy.
Criid curled up in one of the choir stalls, and used the pack containing her change of clothes as a pillow. She got a couple of hours of uneasy sleep.
When she woke, the chapel was bathed in a soft, white luminescence. The sun had come up, and brought the fog up with it, and strange, diffuse white light was glowing in through the chapel’s windows.
She picked up her pack and went through into the small rooms at the rear of the chapel where the ayatani priests kept their sacraments and some of the holy codices. It was a drab, cobwebby place that was obviously seldom visited. She lit a glow-globe, and began to get changed into the clothes in the bag. The clothes had all come from Jaume’s dressing up racks, as had the small, battered case of make-up. Criid couldn’t remember the last time she’d had to apply any face paint that wasn’t camo or black-out. It wasn’t a talent she’d ever developed, growing up, and she was concerned that she might overdo it and end up looking like one of those frightful transvestite castrati at the Circe du Khulan. She set the make-up case to one side, unopened.