The Eversor charged again, and the rifle shouted. The first shot had been a kinetic impact round, the kind of bullet that could shatter the engine block of a hover truck or reduce an unarmoured man to meat; that had been enough to attract the Garantine’s attention. The next shot whistled through the frigid air, blurring as it impacted the Eversor’s chest. The round was a heavy dart, fashioned from high-density glassaic. It contained a reservoir of gel within, pressure-injected into the target’s flesh on impact; but it was not a drug or philtre. An Eversor’s body was a chemical hell of dozens of interacting combat medicines, and no poison, no sedative could have been enough to slow it. The gel-matter in the rounds was a myofluid with a very different function; when exposed to oxygen it created a powerful bioelectric charge, a single hit strong enough to stun an ogryn.
It was a non-lethal attack, and the Garantine seemed incensed by that, as if he were insulted that so trivial a weapon was being used on him. He tore out the dart and came on. Kell fired again, flawlessly striking the same spot, and then again, and then a third time. The Eversor did not falter, even as crackles of blue sparks erupted from the weeping wound in his chest.
For one moment, Iota felt a rare stab of fear. How many rounds did the Vindicare have in the magazine of his longrifle? Would it be enough? She ignored the Vanus shouting in her ear and watched, as the crash of shot after shot was swallowed up by the hush of the falling snows.
The Eversor leapt up to where the Vindicare stood and swung a taloned hand at him, but his balance faltered, the warshot of a dozen darts pinning his flesh. The blow smashed Kell’s rifle in two and sent the pieces spinning. Iota was on her feet, aiming the animus; if she fired now, the Vindicare would be caught in the nimbus of the psi-blast.
But then the fight ebbed from the Eversor assassin, and the Garantine staggered backward, finally succumbing to all the hits he had taken. He made a last swipe at Kell and missed, the force of the blow carrying him back off the roof of the blockhouse and down into the courtyard.
Iota approached him carefully, loping low across the ground. She was not convinced. Behind her, the marksman came in to survey his work.
‘Is he down?’ she heard Tariel ask.
‘For our sake,’ Kell muttered, ‘I bloody hope so.’
Daig halted the groundcar at the foot of the hill and killed the engine. ‘We walk from here,’ he said, the weak pre-dawn light giving his face a ghostly cast.
Yosef studied him. ‘Tell me again how you came across this lead?’ he said. ‘Tell me again why you had to drag me out of my bed – a bed I’ve hardly had leave to be in these last few days, mind – to come out to a derelict vineyard while the rest of the city is sleeping?’
‘I told you,’ Daig said, with uncharacteristic terseness, ‘a source. Come on. We couldn’t risk coming in by flyer in case Sigg gets spooked… and he may not even be here.’
Yosef followed him out into the cold air, pausing a moment to check the magazine in his pistol. He looked up the low hill. On the other side of heavy iron gates, what had once been the Blasko Wine Lodge was now a tumbledown husk of its former self. Gutted by fire a full three seasons ago, the site on the southerly ridges had yet to be reopened, and it stood empty and barren. In the dampness of the dawn air, the tang of fire-damaged wood could still be scented, drawn out by the moisture. ‘If you think Sigg is in there,’ Yosef went on, ‘we should at least have some support.’
‘I don’t know for sure,’ Daig replied.
‘Not an overly reliable source, then,’ said Yosef.
That earned him a sullen look. ‘You know what will happen if I breathe a word of this at the precinct. Laimner would be all over it like a blight.’
He couldn’t disagree with that; and if Laimner was involved and Daig’s tip came to nothing, it would be the two reeves who would suffer for it. ‘Fine. But don’t keep me in the dark.’
When Daig looked at him again, he was almost imploring him. ‘Yosef. I don’t ask much of you, but I’m asking now. Just trust me here, and don’t question it. All right?’
He nodded at length. ‘All right.’
They got into the vineyard through a broken stand of fencing, and followed the driveway up to the main building. Small branches and drifts of wet leaves dotted the ground. Yosef glanced to his right and saw where unkempt, blackened ground ranged away down the steep terraces. Before the fire, those spaces had been thick with greenery, but now they were little more than snarls of wild growth. Yosef frowned; he still had a ten-year bottle of Blasko caskinport at home. It had been a good brand.
‘In here,’ whispered Daig, motioning him towards an outbuilding.
Yosef hesitated, his eyes adjusted to the dimness now, and his sight picking out what did not fit. Here and there he saw signs of recent motion, places where dirt had been disturbed by human movement. Looking up from the gates, an observer would have seen nothing, but here, close up, there was evidence. Yosef thought about the Norte and Latigue murders, and he reached into the pocket of his coat for the butt of his gun, comforting himself with the steady presence of the firearm.
‘We take him alive,’ he hissed back.
Daig shot him a look as he drew a thermal register unit from inside his jacket, panning it around to scan for a heat return. ‘Of course.’
They found their suspect asleep inside the cooper’s shack, lying in the curve of a half-built barrel. He heard their approach and bolted to his feet in a panic. Yosef put the brilliant white glare of his hand lantern on him and took careful aim with the pistol.
‘Erno Sigg!’ he snapped, ‘We are reeves of the Sentine, and you are bound by law. Stand where you are and do not move.’
The man almost collapsed, so great was his terror. Sigg flailed and stumbled, falling against the side of his makeshift shelter, before catching himself with an obvious physical effort. He held up his shaking hands, in the right gripping the handle of an elderly fuel-lamp. ‘H-have you come to kill me?’ he asked.
It wasn’t the question Yosef had expected. He had faced killers of men before, more often than he might have liked, but Sigg’s manner was unlike any of them. Dread came off him in waves, like heat from a naked flame. Yosef had once rescued a young boy held prisoner for weeks in a wine cellar; the look on the boy’s face as he saw light for the first time was mirrored now in Erno Sigg’s expression. The man looked like a victim.
‘You are suspected of a high crime,’ Daig told him. ‘You’re to come with us.’
‘I paid for what I did!’ he retorted. ‘I’ve done nothing else since!’ Sigg looked in Daig’s direction. ‘How did you find me? I hid well enough so even he couldn’t know where I was!’
Yosef wondered who he might be as Daig answered. ‘Don’t be afraid. If you are innocent, we will prove it.’
‘Will you?’ The question was weak and fearful, like the words of a child.
Then Daig said something that seemed out of place in the moment, and yet the words were like a calmative, immediately easing the tension in Sigg’s taut frame. Daig said ‘The Emperor protects.’
When Yosef looked back to Sigg, the man was staring directly at him. ‘I’ve done many things I’m not proud of,’ he told him. ‘But no longer. And not those things the wire accuses me of. I’ve never taken a man’s life.’
‘I believe you, Erno,’ said Yosef, the words leaving his mouth before he was even aware of them forming in his thoughts; and the strangeness of it was, he did believe him, with a totality that surprised the reeve with its strength. On some instinctual level, he knew that Erno Sigg was telling the truth. The fact that Yosef could not fathom where this abrupt conviction had come from troubled him deeply; but he did not have time to dwell upon it.