‘Which way?’ Krule asked.
‘South.’ Wienand indicated the walkway.
‘If you’ll wait a moment, ma’am?’
She nodded, and he disappeared into the shuffling crowd, scouting ahead.
‘He must know you want to reach the Inquisitorial Fortress,’ Rendenstein said.
‘Of course he does. But knowing that and seeing its location are not the same thing.’
‘What do you intend?’
‘We’ll have to lose him at some point.’
‘Permanently?’
Wienand shook her head. She wasn’t interested in testing Rendenstein’s killing prowess against Krule’s. No matter the outcome, Veritus would be the only winner of that battle. Krule had cost her a valued operative, but he had also saved her life. Her allies were in short supply. Vangorich was one she could count on with more certainty than her fellow inquisitors for the moment.
‘If the opportunity arises to part with his company, we’ll take it.’
‘And if that moment doesn’t come?’
‘We’ll deal with that when and if we have to.’ She sighed, thinking of what she had seen in the sky. ‘We’re at a stage where having Krule in the heart of the Fortress wouldn’t be the worst of all scenarios. We have to reach it.’ Shoring up her political strength against Veritus was no longer the most important consideration. Nor was her survival. What mattered was the contingency that she could authorise. It was needed now. She cursed the High Lords for having let things reach this pass.
Krule returned after a few minutes. ‘Looks clear,’ he said.
They headed off down the walkway, moving as quickly as they could through the crowds, the floor carrying them on for several kilometres.
‘It would be useful to know the extent of Veritus’ control,’ said Krule.
Wienand had been thinking that through. ‘The attempt to kill me is actually a good sign.’
‘You’re still a threat,’ Rendenstein said.
‘Yes. If my influence had been neutralised, he wouldn’t have bothered. I don’t think Veritus likes needless internecine killing any more than I do.’
Krule’s grin was not a reassuring one. ‘So more attacks would be a good omen.’
‘They would be delightful.’
At the next intersection, Wienand went right. An elevator platform large enough to hold a hundred at once took them down. At the third level, they got off, and she chose another walkway, still heading south. The crowds were thinner here. This route served fewer active centres. Krule offered to recon ahead again. ‘No point,’ Wienand told him. His earlier absence had given her the few minutes she’d wanted to speak alone with Rendenstein. ‘If there’s an ambush, we’re better off together.’
The downside to taking the routes she knew was that they might also be familiar to other, hostile elements of the Inquisition. She couldn’t lose herself forever in the mazes of the outer reaches of the Imperial Palace, and she couldn’t hand over her agency to Krule. She might well not reach the southern ice cap in time as it was. Her best hope was to catch another sub-orbital from a point where Veritus wasn’t looking. Another few hours of travel, if all went well, would take her to the next flight hub.
All did not go well. After ten minutes, the walkway they were on ground to a halt. The serfs using it groaned, then carried on trudging. A few hundred metres on, at the next junction, there was another mechanical conveyor moving at an uneven, jerking pace in about the same direction.
‘That will do,’ Wienand told the other two, and they took it.
The walkway passed almost immediately under a low, narrow arch. Krule and Rendenstein had to duck. On the other side they emerged in a long hall formed by rockcrete foundations on either side, and coming to a rounded vault a dozen metres overhead. There was a floor here, just below the level of the walkway. It was covered with the detritus of centuries, though at first glance, Wienand thought she was looking at a disused cemetery.
The space was filled with statuary. There were warriors and ecclesiarchs, Adeptus Astartes and High Lords of the past, and many imposing figures that likely had been intended to be the Emperor. None were complete. Many were unfinished, flawed material betraying the artists with splits and cracks. Others had been damaged beyond restoration. There was a vagueness to them all, whether their features had been destroyed or never set down. They were not gigantic. No single piece was so large that it could not have been transported by a group of unaided humans. Some of the chunks, though, were fragments of huge works. A finger two metres tall thrust from one heap, pointing at the walkway in accusation. A head as big as a man lay face-down on the dark floor.
Though the space had the shape of a building interior, it seemed to have come into being as a result of architectural happenstance, born of the juxtaposition of other structures. It had never had a purpose. It was a tunnel through which the walkway passed, and it had gradually accumulated the cast-off statuary. What must have begun as a random act had become a tradition, and then faded away. An air of abandonment hovered over the hall. The lumen strips were few and old. Many were missing. The lighting was deep night broken by weak pools of yellow.
‘We’re alone,’ Krule said.
Wienand could see no serfs on the metal path before them. She looked back. No one had followed them onto the walkway.
‘This is a disused conveyor,’ she realised. ‘It doesn’t go anywhere still active.’
‘Then why is it functional?’ said Rendenstein.
‘It shouldn’t be.’
‘It’s for our benefit,’ Krule said.
Of course. It would be nothing to stop a target’s walkway, then activate one that no one other than the target would choose to take.
They’d found her.
Krule jumped over the walkway’s right-hand railing. Wienand followed, with Rendenstein right behind. They landed between two piles of statues. Stern, unformed faces frowned and heroic limbs reached for nothing. The floor crackled with shards of ceramic and marble.
‘Keep going,’ said Krule.
Wienand moved on through the mounds of broken art. She looked back after a few steps. Krule had vanished.
‘There.’ Rendenstein pointed to a deeper patch of darkness in the wall. Another corridor. Wienand nodded and hurried forward. She didn’t worry about making noises. Her enemies knew she was here. Just as they reached the passage, she heard the crunch of footsteps behind them.
Her anger at having fallen for the trap passed, replaced by cold venom.
What she and Rendenstein moved through now was not a true corridor. It was a narrow gap between facades. The rockcrete floor gave way to metal struts. Footing was treacherous. The light was even dimmer. The gaps between the struts grew wider. A slip meant a fall into blind depths. Wienand advanced another few steps, then stopped. The next gap was too wide to jump. She turned to face her enemy, laspistol in hand. Rendenstein moved to the other side of the passage. She balanced on the rusted struts, ready to leap.
In the gloom of the passage, the main hall looked brighter. Wienand saw the attack coming. The assassins knew they had her cornered. They had no need for stealth now.
There were five of them. They wore loose cameleoline robes. They would have been almost impossible to spot in the shadows and abandoned art. As they closed in, their camouflage covered them in shifting patches of dark and grey. When they were a few metres from the entrance to the passage, a statue came to life behind them. Krule had been more still and hidden yet. The two rearmost assassins, a man and a woman, jerked to a stop. Their heads snapped back, mouths open wide for air they would never draw again.