Merrt tapped his jaw.
‘Nope,’ said Larkin, and reached out to tap a finger against the top of Merrt’s head.
‘Right,’ said Merrt. ‘It’s gn… gn… gn… psychological.’
The jaw tripped him all the time. Apart from being ugly, it tended to seize and clamp, as if he were fighting the neural links the medicaes had wired it to. On some words, not even difficult ones, Merrt ground his jaw as if he were stuck in verbal quicksand. It got worse when he was edgy.
Larkin was no medicae, but life had given him some insight into head stuff. The stress factor suggested that it wasn’t the physical impediment of the jaw so much as a nerve thing, like a nervous tic. Augmetics, especially bulk-fix battlefield stuff, could do strange things to you. Rhen Merrt, Emperor bless him, saw his problem as simply one of gross impairment. He was busted up, ergo he couldn’t shoot any more. Larkin saw it was finer scale than that. The crude and halting neurodes of his augmetics were a constant reminder to Merrt that he was broken and imperfect, even during that one, serene, perfect moment of firing. He could never achieve full concentration. Result: shot ruined, every time.
That was Larkin’s hunch. Except he couldn’t prove it.
And even if he was able to, what could he do about it? Get them to remove Merrt’s jaw?
‘Take another pop,’ said Larkin.
‘So you gn… gn… gn… can watch me miss again?’
‘No,’ said Larkin. ‘I’m not watching the bottles on the wall. I’m watching you. Take the shot.’
In the hall, Bandmaster Yerolemew had finally ushered the players to stop. It was time for them to break, to case their instruments, and enjoy some of the drink and food on offer. Two Tanith pipers on the opposite side of the hall had taken over entertaining the assembly.
The bandsmen came off stage, some carrying their instruments. Erish, one of the standard bearers, was helping Elway re-attach the drum banner to the frame of his field drum. Erish was a big guy, heavily muscled from carrying the weight of the colours staff. He had a back and shoulders that came out like a tulip bulb. On static parade, he played clash cymbals. Nearby, Ree Perday, one of the leads in the brass section, admired him appreciatively as she cased her brass helicon. Gorus, who played woodwind, was adjusting his reed.
‘I need a drink,’ said Gorus. ‘I thought they were going to keep us playing all night.’
‘Not like they even seemed to enjoy it,’ replied Perday. She took off her high, crested cap and stroked her pinned-down hair.
‘Who?’ asked Erish, overhearing. He pushed past a pair of bandsmen with fanfare trumpets to join her. ‘Point out a face, and I’ll smack it.’
‘He would, too,’ said Gorus.
‘Did anyone see where Cohran went?’ Perday asked. ‘He’s been looking odd all day.’
‘Odd?’ asked Grous.
‘Like he was sick.’
Bandsman Pol Cohran was less than two dozen metres away from Ree Perday when she asked after him. He had left the stage, and wandered into the latrine block behind the hall.
He was one of the youngest bandsmen, tall and well-made, good looking. He was especially handsome in the immaculate finery of his parade uniform.
The truth of it was that Pol Cohran was actually a kilometre away, floating in a sump-water tunnel under the groundworks of the main landing field, his white and bloating corpse providing a-source of food for the gel-eyed, pin-toothed residents of the lightless ooze.
In the hall latrine, the other Pol Cohran caught his own reflection in the glass of the small window, cast by the lamp. He looked at himself. For a moment, his face rippled. There was a wet click and crack of bone movement as he relaxed the concentrated effort he had been sustaining, and cranial kinesis restored the normal structure of his skull. An entirely different face looked back.
He rested a second, enjoying the slackening of muscles and the loss of tension, then brought Cohran’s face back with a muffled, gristly clack of bone.
Gaunt had been using office quarters across the quad from the barracks hall. The night sky was smog-dark like stained velvet. There was an acrid back-note of pollution in the air.
He left the bright and noisy hall behind him and went up to his lodgings.
The door was unlocked. A lamp was on. Beltayn was the only one with a key, and Gaunt had just seen him in the hall.
He drew his power sword. The steel slid out of the scabbard silently. Peering through the crack in the door, he could see no sign of an intruder.
Gaunt stepped inside, sword ready. He was making no sound at all. A man didn’t fight alongside the likes of Mkoll and Leyr all these years and not learn how to move like a ghost.
The office area was empty. Or had the papers on his bureau been disturbed? The bedchamber, then. Gaunt could feel that someone was there.
He moved around to the doorway. There was the tiniest flash of movement. His sword came around in a defensive block.
Something stopped it. Something parried his blade. It was moving fast and it was very strong. He reprised, a more aggressive blow. The slash was blocked, then something blurred into him. Gaunt sidestepped, but the attacker was too fast. He took a glancing blow across the shoulder and crashed sideways into a small library table which crashed over, spilling its load of books and data-slates.
Off-balance, he swept the sword around, now igniting its energy charge so that the already lethal cutting edge of the old weapon was enhanced by fierce blue fire. His attacker, still less than a blur, executed a handspring over the sizzling blade and landed behind him. One arm clamped his throat and another pinned his sword arm.
He head-butted backwards, then kicked back, smashing himself and the attacker locked to his back into the office wall. Objects fell off shelves. He used his left elbow and the heel of his boot to dislodge the attacker. The grip tightened, clamping the carotid arteries in his neck. He felt himself greying out. Before the chance went, he drove backwards with even more fury and he and his attacker collided with the desk and brought it over onto the floor with him.
He’d dropped his sword, but the throat-grip had gone. Gaunt came up with his bolt pistol aimed at his attacker’s forehead.
She came up with a laspistol aimed at his face.
‘Drop it,’ he said. He didn’t recognise her.
‘You’re Gaunt,’ she said. Clipped accent. What was that?
‘Yes.’
‘Then this is an unfortunate mistake.’
‘So drop the pistol,’ said Gaunt, ‘or I’ll paint the wall behind you with your brains.’
She thought about it, pursed her lips, and then tossed the ornate and expensive laspistol onto the floor beside her.
‘Identify yourself,’ said Gaunt, his aim not flickering from her forehead.
‘This is an unfortunate mistake,’ she repeated.
‘Not as unfortunate as making me repeat an order,’ he replied.
She was lithe and extraordinarily beautiful. Her elegantly sculptural head was shaved to a fine down of hair. She was clad in an armoured bodyglove and the holster at her hip was shrouded with a red cloth.
‘Maddalena Darebeloved,’ she said. Her lips were very red. ‘I am a licensed lifeguard of Imperial House Chass, Vervunhive.’
Gaunt eased his fingers on his gun-grip thoughtfully, but didn’t move his aim.
‘House Chass?’ he repeated.
‘You did not greet us this afternoon,’ she said.
‘I was detained,’ replied Gaunt. ‘Who’s “us”?’
A second person emerged from the bedchamber. He was a young man of no more than fifteen or sixteen years dressed in a plain black bodysuit and boots.
‘You did not come to greet us,’ said the lifeguard. ‘We came to your quarters to wait for you.’