Gamet scowled and said, ‘I am afraid I do not know you-’
‘You may call me Pearl,’ the man replied, hesitating on the name as if its revelation was the core of some vast joke of which only he was aware. ‘And my lovely companion is Captain Lostara Yil, late of the Red Blades but now-happily-seconded into my care.’ He swung to the Adjunct and elaborately bowed. ‘At your service.’
Gamet could see Tavore’s expression tighten fractionally. ‘That remains to be seen.’
Pearl slowly straightened, the mockery in his face gone. ‘Adjunct, you have quietly-very quietly-arranged this meeting. This stage has no audience. While I am a Claw, you and I are both aware that I have-lately-incurred my master Topper’s-and the Empress’s-displeasure, resulting in my hasty journey through the Imperial Warren. A temporary situation, of course, but none the less, the consequence is that I am at something of a loose end at the moment.’
‘Then one might conclude,’ the Adjunct said carefully, ‘that you are available, as it were, for a rather more… private enterprise.’ Gamet shot her a glance. Gods below! What is this about? ‘One might,’ Pearl replied, shrugging.
There was silence, broken at last by the Red Blade, Lostara Yil. ‘I am made uneasy by the direction of this conversation,’ she grated. ‘As a loyal subject of the empire-’
‘Nothing of what follows will impugn your honour, Captain,’ the Adjunct replied, her gaze unwavering on Pearl. She added nothing more. The Claw half smiled then. ‘Ah, now you’ve made me curious. I delight in being curious, did you know that? You fear that I will bargain my way back into Laseen’s favour, for the mission you would propose to the captain and me is, to be precise, not on behalf of the Empress, nor, indeed, of the empire. An extraordinary departure from the role of Imperial Adjunct. Unprecedented, in fact.’ Gamet took a step forward, ‘Adjunct-’
She raised a hand to cut him off. ‘Pearl, the task I would set to you and the captain may well contribute, ultimately, to the well-being of the empire-’
‘Oh well,’ the Claw smiled, ‘that is what a good imagination is for, isn’t it? One can scrape patterns in the blood no matter how dried it’s become. I admit to no small skill in attributing sound justification for whatever I’ve just done. By all means, proceed-’
‘Not yet!’ Lostara Yil snapped, her exasperation plain. ‘In serving the Adjunct I expect to serve the empire. She is the will of the Empress. No other considerations are permitted her-’
‘You speak true,’ Tavore said. She faced Pearl again. ‘Claw, how fares the Talon?’
Pearl’s eyes went wide and he almost rocked back a step. ‘They no longer exist,’ he whispered.
The Adjunct frowned. ‘Disappointing. We are all, at the moment, in a precarious position. If you are to expect honesty from me, then can I not do so in return?’
‘They remain,’ Pearl muttered, distaste twisting his features. ‘Like bot-fly larvae beneath the imperial hide. When we probe, they simply dig deeper.’
‘They none the less serve a certain… function,’ Tavore said. ‘Unfortunately, not as competently as I would have hoped.’
‘The Talons have found support among the nobility?’ Pearl asked, a sheen of sweat now visible on his high brow.
The Adjunct’s shrug was almost indifferent. ‘Does that surprise you?’
Gamet could almost see the Claw’s thoughts racing. Racing on, and on, his expression growing ever more astonished and… dismayed. ‘Name him,’ he said.
‘Baudin.’
‘He was assassinated in Quon-’
‘The father was. Not the son.’
Pearl suddenly began pacing in the small chamber. ‘And this son, how much like the bastard who spawned him? Baudin Elder left Claw corpses scattered in alleys throughout the city. The hunt lasted four entire nights…’
‘I had reason to believe,’ Tavore said, ‘that he was worthy of his father’s name.’
Pearl’s head turned. ‘But no longer?’
‘I cannot say. I believe, however, that his mission has gone terribly wrong.’
The name slipped from Gamet’s lips unbidden but with a certainty heavy as an anchor-stone: ‘Felisin.’
He saw the wince in Tavore’s face, before she turned away from all three of them to study one of the tapestries.
Pearl seemed far ahead in his thoughts. ‘When was contact lost, Adjunct? And where?’
‘The night of the Uprising,’ she replied, her back to them still. ‘The mining camp called Skullcup. But there had been a… a loss of control for some weeks before then.’ She gestured at the scroll on the table. ‘Details, potential contacts. Burn the scroll once you have completed reading it, and scatter the ashes in the bay.’ She faced them suddenly. ‘Pearl. Captain Lostara Yil. Find Felisin. Find my sister.’
The roar of the mob rose and fell in the city beyond the estate’s walls. It was the Season of Rot in Unta, and, in the minds of thousands of denizens, that rot was being excised. The dreaded Cull had begun.
Captain Gamet stood by the gatehouse, flanked by three nervous guards. The estate’s torches had been doused, the house behind them dark, its windows shuttered. And within that massive structure huddled the last child of Paran, her parents gone since the arrests earlier that day, her brother lost and presumably dead on a distant continent, her sister-her sister… madness had come once again to the empire, with the fury of a tropical storm…
Gamet had but twelve guards, and three of those had been hired in the last few days, when the stillness of the air in the streets had whispered to the captain that the horror was imminent. No proclamations had been issued, no imperial edict to fire-lick the commoners’ greed and savagery into life. There were but rumours, racing through the city’s streets, alleys and market rounds like dust-devils. ‘The Empress is displeased.’
‘Behind the rot of the imperial army’s incompetent command, you will find the face of the nobility.’
‘The purchase of commissions is a plague threatening the entire empire. Is it any wonder the Empress is displeased?’
A company of Red Blades had arrived from Seven Cities. Cruel killers, incorruptible and far removed from the poison of noble coin. It was not difficult to imagine the reason behind their appearance.
The first wave of arrests had been precise, almost understated. Squads in the dead of night. There had been no skirmishes with house guards, no estates forewarned to purchase time to raise barricades, or even flee the city.
And Gamet thought he knew how such a thing came to pass. Tavore was now the Adjunct to the Empress. Tavore knew… her kind.
The captain sighed, then strode forward to the small inset door at the gate. He drew the heavy bolt, let the iron bar drop with a clank. He faced the three guards. ‘Your services are no longer required. In the murder hole you’ll find your pay.’
Two of the three armoured men exchanged a glance, then, one of them shrugging, they walked to the door. The third man had not moved. Gamet recalled that he’d given his name as Kollen-a Quon name and a Quon accent. He had been hired more for his imposing presence than anything else, though Gamet’s practised eye had detected a certain… confidence, in the way the man wore his armour, seemingly indifferent to its weight, hinting at a martial grace that belonged only to a professional soldier. He knew next to nothing of Kollen’s past, but these were desperate times, and in any case none of the three new hirelings had been permitted into the house itself.