Che stood still for some moments while the man gargled blood at his feet. He listened until he heard the gentle splash of water once more from the other side of the door. With a garrotte dangling from one hand, he pushed the bathroom door slightly ajar. Steam escaped around his shaven head.
He looked in to see the man lying in the wooden bathtub, muttering to himself with his eyes squeezed shut. Che slipped inside, and stopped behind his head as he gripped the garrotte in both fists. He gazed down on Romano’s young lover. There were fresh scars over his pale, lean body; scabbed bruises the size of bite marks.
Che observed the great bronze pot of a water-heater sitting on the stove at the foot of the tub, and knew what he must do.
The young man jerked, and snapped his eyes open as Che looped the garrotte around his neck and pulled hard on the cork handles.
Brown eyes, Che noted, near popping out of their sockets; and there, within the glassy pupils, a shadow, Che himself looming large. The youth snorted and wheezed for air, his face bulging. His hands scrabbled at the garrotte around his throat. His legs flailed in the water spilling in waves over the side to splash around Che’s sandalled feet. The Diplomat maintained his steady pressure. He thought of nothing as he performed the act, though he felt, strangely, a rising sense of anger.
At last, Topo stopped floundering and lay limp in the settling water. Che maintained pressure for a few moments more, then released the garrotte with a gasp.
Panting, he kicked open the door of the stove beneath the heater and tossed in a log from the wooden bin that sat next to it, then after that as many more as would fit. Then he unlatched the lid of the pot to expose the warming water within. Quickly, he hauled the body out of the bath, with his hands slipping on its slick skin. Che was strong enough for all his modest height; still, it was an effort to lift the dead weight of Topo into the great pot, to make it fit as the displaced water rose up around it, so he could replace and refas-ten the lid.
By the time he was finished the flames of the stove were starting to roar. He imagined the smoke tumbling out of the chimney far above his head; hoped it wouldn’t draw Romano’s early return. He stepped from the bathroom and listened for the sounds of footfalls.
Behind him, the bronze water-heater made a sudden popping sound. Che stopped.
Another thump sounded from within it.
He’s still alive in there.
Che hesitated, at once caught in a moment of self-doubt. He glanced back through the doorway, struggling with an impulse to rush inside and unlatch the lid and haul the lad out from there.
He fought it down. He’d spent too long at this already.
Che strode across the main cabin while a faint scream pursued him to the open window. It shook him to hear it; his hands trembled as he clambered out onto the balcony, cursing himself for his own carelessness.
From the bathroom, the scream grew in pitch until it was consumed by the piercing shriek of steam that suddenly blasted through a whistle.
In the early evening chaos of the Chir harbour, Che waited in line before the thronged gantry, impatient to be off the ship so that he could sample some of the attractions of the ancient cityport.
On the other side of the gantry, the dockside was awash with slaves manhandling fresh supplies onto the waiting ships, and a host of newly arrived immigrants from elsewhere in the empire, drawn to the island’s sudden land rush now that it was conveniently deserted. Through them all, in stamping columns, the grim, orderly troops of the Sixth Army marched aboard the transports in preparation for the dawn departure, when the newly combined army and fleet of the Expeditionary Force would set sail for Khos.
He was first aware of trouble when he heard the distinct sound of shouting up towards the quarterdeck. He turned instinctively towards Sasheen’s quarters, saw that the Matriarch’s door was lying open, her honour guard nowhere to be seen.
Che swore under his breath, then bounded for the steps and the open doorway. He passed the two twins, Guan and Swan, standing at the top of the stairway with their expressions wholly neutral.
Inside, the guards were struggling with a group of priests who were trying desperately to protect General Romano. The man raved beyond reason, his spit flying towards the Holy Matriarch, who sat in a chair flanked by her two personal bodyguards, watching his fury with a self-satisfied smile. Che’s eyes widened as he saw a flash of a blade in the young general’s hand. A priest shouted and tried to grasp it. Beyond them, bizarrely, the severed head of Lucian sat balanced on a table, watching it all with an expression of manic glee.
Footsteps sounded behind him as Archgeneral Sparus marched into the room. He took in Che and the rest of the scene in a single unhurried glance from his eye.
‘I’ll kill you for this,’ Romano was screaming. ‘I said nothing I wouldn’t say to your face! Your son was a coward – and you, you are the-’ one of his fellow priests hissed and clamped a hand over his mouth. Romano heaved to be free of it while another priest did the same, two hands over his mouth.
Che stepped aside as the guards forced the struggling group backwards out of the room. Archgeneral Sparus stared at Romano without expression as he was dragged outside, then closed the door behind them.
Clumps and curses on the steps outside. Silence settling.
‘He does not mean what he says,’ pleaded an elderly priest on his knees before the Matriarch. ‘He is intoxicated, and distraught at his loss. He’s lost his mind for a while, that’s all.’
Sasheen flashed her eyes at caretaker Heelas.
‘Out,’ Heelas said to the kneeling priest, and lifted him with a tug of his robe to shove him outside after his master.
A wet snort came from the severed head on the table. Lucian was trying to laugh.
‘And you,’ Heelas snapped as he crossed the room. ‘Back in your jar, little man.’ Heelas lifted the head in both hands and let it settle back amongst the Royal Milk.
Moments passed without anyone saying a word. They looked to Sasheen, who no longer smiled, but instead glared at the door through which Romano had just departed. Her eyes flickered to Che. She nodded, gracefully; looked to the rest of the priests still gathered in the cabin. ‘I have reason enough, as witnessed by all here, to execute him now and be justified in doing so.’
‘Matriarch,’ Sool said, bending close to her. ‘He will soon calm himself and see his position. That will be the end of it, if you let it end here. He will understand the message given to him. He will submit.’
‘It’s civil war otherwise,’ added Archgeneral Sparus. ‘In Q’os, once his family found out, and here, in the fleet, if his men caught wind of it. A third of the Expeditionary Force could turn against us.’
Sasheen’s fingernails scratched along the ends of the armrests.
‘I will not forget those words,’ she said harshly. ‘I will never forget what he said to me, about my own son, to my face.’
In the absolute blackness the rats fussed around him. Ash ignored the creatures, his ears keen for any sounds above. Every set of footsteps overhead was a story untold to him.
It was his twenty-first day in this reeking bilge, at least by his own rough reckoning. Hours previously, he’d heard the thunderous racket of the anchor being dropped and felt the shudder of it through the timbers of the hull. At once, he’d experienced a sudden urge to climb out of his hole and make his way through the ship to the uppermost deck, so that he could see where it was the fleet had anchored; see too if he could leave the ship for good.
He’d mastered the desire though. He knew he should wait until the silence of the crew heralded nightfall before he stole outside and chanced a proper look.
In the deep hours of the night, when all was indeed silent above him, Ash decided it was finally safe enough to make his move. Fully clothed and with his sword in his hand, he left the bilge as quietly as he could, and carefully made his way up through the bowels of the ship.