Gaunt kept his hand on his bolter as he let the docent guide his party through the cloister shadows towards the Tower site. Maggs sidled close to Gaunt.
‘Give me a gun,’ he whispered.
Gaunt shook his head.
The sky above the High Palace had become an aching blue, unblemished by any clouds. The sun, beginning its afternoon track down the sky, was still bright. The shadows of the cloisters and the memorial chapels around the great quad were hard-edged and black.
Gaunt could hear a general murmur of voices: other docents, leading their parties; conversations between visitors; an ayatani priest performing a simple service of remembrance in front of a memorial plaque, a family grouped around him with their heads bent. The light wind ruffled long skirts of black silk.
Gaunt heard a clock tower down in the Oligarchy chiming four. He turned to the docent.
‘Can you keep my group here for a few minutes?’ he requested. ‘Tell them about the Tower. Tell them about the extraordinary noise it made when it fell, like the world splitting in half. Tell them about the dust-cloud that blotted out the sunlight. Tell them about the piles of bodies steeper than the piles of rubble.’
‘Sir?’ the docent asked, looking puzzled.
‘Tell them all about Commissar Gaunt and what an amazing soldier he was.’
Gaunt turned and walked out of the shadows into the sunlight of the great quad. He saw tour groups in the distance on the far side of the area, and several more closer to, grouped around the memorial statues in the centre of the quad.
It was nothing like he remembered it, though he had begun to seriously doubt the quality of his memories. The terrain was different, flatter. The topography of the buildings surrounding the area had changed, which was hardly surprising, given the collateral of the Tower’s demise. He remembered being holed up for hours under fire, staring at a small gatehouse with distinctive finials in the shape of aquilas. He wondered what had happened to the place. It had still been standing when he and the Hyrkans had finally been able to storm a path past it. Had it fallen later? Had it been demolished much later on to make way for these memorial vaults?
Even the sky was different.
He turned in a slow circle. He could see the High Palace, hazed by the blue distance. He could see a wheeling flock of birds. He could see the huge, dark drum-shaped monolith of the Honorarium rising behind the great quad like a battlement.
He walked towards the centre of the great quad. Though it was long gone, he could feel the presence of the Tower above him, clinging like a ghost. His orders had brought it down: his sweat, his effort. The Tower had added almost half a kilometre to the Oligarchy’s overall height. Falling, the roar it had made…
He saw a figure in the distance, standing at the edge of the cloisters. He recognised it instantly. The sight almost brought a spontaneous tear to his eyes: not a tear of sadness or weakness, but a sudden upwelling of emotion. To be here, so many years later, and to see his oldest friend coming to his aid, on this very spot…
Gaunt did not cry. It was one design feature his new eyes did not possess.
He began to walk towards Blenner. Blenner was smiling his shit-eating smile, his ‘Let’s blow the rest of the day off and go to this little bar I know’ smile. His cap was on at its trademark, almost jaunty, entirely nonconformist angle.
Everything was going to be all right.
As he got closer, Gaunt noticed Blenner’s hands. Blenner’s arms were down at his sides. The index and middle fingers of each hand were, quietly and subtly, making ‘walking’ motions.
It was one of the old codes, one of the scholam codes that they’d used so long ago on Ignatius Cardinal. Fellow pupil, friend, I can see trouble that you can’t see; I can see the master or the prefect waiting to pounce, waiting to catch us out for running or singing or chatting, so walk away while you still can. I’m done for already, but you can still save yourself. Walk, walk, walk, for Throne’s sake, walk…
Gaunt stopped in his tracks, and began to back away. A big grin crossed Blenner’s face. Yes, you’ve got it, Bram…
Two men suddenly shoved past Blenner, and burst out of the cloisters into the sunlight. They both had laspistols. They both had the same face: two of Rime’s agents.
They aimed their weapons at him.
‘Ibram Gaunt!’ one yelled. ‘By order of the holy Inquisition, we demand your immediate surrender! Do not resist. Get on the ground, face down, with your arms spread!’
‘Why?’ asked Gaunt.
‘Do as I say!’
‘I don’t recognise your authority.’
‘You are consorting with a known warp cultist. Guilt by association. Get on the damn ground!’
Eye-blink fast, Gaunt drew his bolt pistol, and aimed it at the Sirkles.
‘All right,’ he said. ‘Let’s do this.’
The Sirkles baulked slightly.
‘Take him,’ one said to the other.
There was a bone crack. Vaynom Blenner had wrapped his fists together and smacked them across the back of one of the Sirkle’s skulls.
‘Run, for Throne’s sake, Bram!’ Blenner yelled as the Sirkle he had struck went down onto his knees.
The other Sirkle looked at his twin, distracted.
Gaunt put a bolt-round into the quad paving at the Sirkle’s feet. The boom was gigantic, and echoed around the vast area. Flocks of startled birds exploded up into the blue from cloister roofs. Visitors looked around, wondering what the hollow thunderclap meant, not recognising the sound of gunfire.
Who on Balhaut recognised the sound of gunfire anymore?
Hit by paving debris, the other Sirkle staggered backwards. Gaunt started to sprint across the sunlit open ground, his stormcoat flying out behind him like ragged wings.
‘Run!’ he yelled at the group waiting for him in the cloister shadows. Maggs was already getting them moving.
‘I think you should stay here,’ Mabbon said gently to the bewildered docent. ‘This is probably the point at which you’ll want to disassociate yourself from this group.’
‘If you think that’s best, sir,’ the docent stammered. ‘Uhm, the Emperor protects.’
‘So I keep hearing,’ said Mabbon, as he turned to follow Maggs, Jaume and Kolding along the cloister.
‘It’s a trap! Move,’ Gaunt yelled, catching up with them.
Squads of troopers, some of them S Company, but many of them ordo fire-teams, rushed out onto the great quad from the eastern cloisters where Blenner had been waiting.
Rime was with them, yelling orders to his agents.
‘Spread out. Flush the cloisters! Is the area locked?’
‘Yes, sir! Strike teams at all the gates. They can’t leave the Oligarchy precincts.’
‘We can’t let him run!’ Rime declared. ‘Bring the birds in. Marksmen. Now, Throne damn it!’
‘Yes, sir,’ a Sirkle replied, waving up a vox-officer.
‘This Gaunt’s shown his true colours!’ snarled Rime. ‘If he’d surrendered when he’d had the chance, I would have had some measure of pity. But it’s clear where he’s cast his lot. Old habits die hard, and he learned all of his on Gereon. Tell the birds to take any shot they can get! They’re all viable targets, do you understand?’
‘Yes, sir!’ the Sirkle replied.
Edur emerged into the sunlight of the great quad with the first wave. He shouted his S Company men forward, hoping to secure Gaunt in the confusion that followed Rime’s fumbled play.
‘Go. Go!’ he yelled.
‘Targets have gone into the cloisters, west side, sir,’ Tawil voxed back via micro-bead.