Gaunt had seen that kind of paranoia before. He’d seen it in soldiers, even in officers, who had been through too many hells. Sleep eluded them, or if it came, they slept with one eye open. They always faced the door. They would sleep in a chair, or in a dressing room, so they could watch the bed that was in plain view of anyone entering the room, and remain unseen.
Sancto and his men had reached the bedroom door and were looking in at them.
Gaunt glanced at Sancto.
‘Stay there,’ he said.
‘Sir–’
‘I mean it, Scion.’
‘Door, sir,’ said Bonin. He pointed at the wall panels.
‘What?’ asked Gaunt.
Bonin held out an open hand towards the wall. ‘I can feel a draught.’
He walked to the wall, ran his hands along the moldings of the panels, and pressed. A door clicked open.
Gaunt pushed the door wider. It was dark beyond. He could smell old glue, dust and binding wax.
‘Everyone stay here,’ he said.
Gaunt stepped into the darkness. It was a passageway, crude and narrow, just a slot cut in the stone fabric of the keep. He adjusted his augmetic eyes to the low light level and made his way along, skimming the stone wall with his left hand. A dusty curtain blocked the far end of the passage. He drew it back.
The room beyond was a library. Its high walls were lined with shelves stuffed with ancient books, rolled charts, parchments, file boxes and slates. Gaunt presumed he must be in the base of a tower, because the shelf-lined walls extended up into darkness, as high as he could see. Linked by delicate, ironwork stairs, narrow walkways encircled every level. Brass rails edged each walkway, allowing for the movement of small brass ladders that could be pushed along to reach high shelves. Several large reading tables and lecterns stood in the centre of the room, their surfaces almost lost under piles of books and papers. Some were weighed open with glass paperweights, and others were stuffed with bookmarks made of torn parchment. Gaunt saw old books discarded on the carpet, their pages torn out and cannibalised as a ready source of page markers. There was a litter of torn paper scraps everywhere. Reading lamps glowed on the tables, surrounded by pots of glue, rolls of binding tape, tubs of wax, book weights, pots of pens and chalk sticks, magnifying lenses and optical readers. Motes of dust whirled slowly in the lamp light, and in the ghost glow cast by the single lancet window over the tables. It was warm. More portable heating units chugged in the corners of the floor, making the air hot and dry, but there was a bitter draught from the open vault of darkness overhead.
For a moment, Gaunt was overcome by a memory. High Master Boniface’s room in the schola progenium on Ignatius Cardinal, a lifetime before. He felt like a child again, a twelve-year-old boy, all alone and waiting for his future to be ordained.
He stepped forwards. His hand rested on the hilt of his power sword. He did not know what he was expecting to defend himself from, except that it might be his own resolve. Coming here, he felt, he was going to make enemies, one way or another.
‘Hello?’ he said.
Something stirred above him in the darkness. He heard brass runners squeak and rattle on rails as a ladder shifted.
‘Is it supper time already?’ asked a voice. It sounded thin, exhausted.
‘Hello?’
Someone shuffled along a walkway two storeys above him and peered down. A small figure, his arms full of books.
‘Is it supper time?’
Gaunt shrugged, craning to see.
‘I don’t know. I’m looking for the warmaster. For Warmaster Macaroth. It is imperative I see him. Is he here?’
The figure above tutted, and hobbled to the end of the walkway. He began to climb down, precarious under the weight of the books he was trying to manage. He was old. Gaunt saw scrawny bare legs and heavy, oversized bed socks made of thick wool, patched and darned. He saw the tail of a huge, grubby nightshirt hanging down like a skirt.
The man reached the walkway below, somehow managing not to drop any of his books. He looked down at Gaunt quizzically, frowning. His face was round, with side-combed hair turning grey. He looked unhealthy, as if he hadn’t been exposed to sunlight in a long time.
‘Warmaster Macaroth is busy,’ he said petulantly.
‘I can imagine,’ said Gaunt. ‘Sir, can you help me? It’s very important I speak with him. Do you know where he is?’
The man tutted again, and shambled along the walkway to the next ladder. A book slipped out of his bundle and fell. Gaunt stepped up neatly and caught it before it hit the floor.
‘Fast reflexes,’ the man remarked. ‘Is it supper time? That’s the real issue here.’
‘I’m sorry–’
‘Is it supper time?’ the man asked, glaring down at Gaunt and trying to keep control of the books he was lugging. ‘Not a complex question, given the great range of questions a man might ask. You’re new. I don’t know you. Has the usual fellow died or something? This won’t do. The warmaster is very particular. Supper at the same time. He is unsettled by change. Why don’t you have a tray?’
‘I’m not here with supper,’ said Gaunt.
The man looked annoyed.
‘Well, that’s very disappointing. You came in as if you were bringing supper, and so I assumed it was supper time, and now you say you haven’t brought any supper, and my belly is starting to grumble because I had been led to believe it was time for supper. What have you got to say to that?’
‘Sorry?’ Gaunt replied.
The man stared down at him. His brow furrowed.
‘Sorry is a word that has very little place in the Imperium of Man. I am surprised to hear the word uttered in any context by a ruthless soldier like Ibram Gaunt.’
‘You know who I am?’ asked Gaunt.
‘I just recognised you. Why? Am I wrong?’
‘No.’
‘Ibram Gaunt. Former colonel-commissar, commander of the Tanith First, formally of the Hyrkan Eighth. Hero of Balopolis, the Oligarchy Gate and so forth. A victory record that includes Menazoid Epsilon, Monthax, Vervunhive-Verghast, Bucephalon, Phantine, Hagia, Herodor, so on and so on. That’s you, correct?’
‘You know me?’
‘I know you’re good at catching. Help me with these.’
The man held out the stack of books in his arms and released them. Gaunt started forwards and managed to catch most of them. He set them down on one of the reading tables and went to pick up the few he’d dropped. The man clambered down the ladder. He looked Gaunt up and down. He was significantly shorter than Gaunt. His stocky body was shrouded in the old, crumpled nightshirt, and Gaunt could see the unhealthy pallor of his skin, the yellow shadows under his eyes.
‘The warmaster is not receiving visitors,’ he said.
Gaunt eyed him cautiously.
‘I feel it’s my duty to inform the warmaster that Eltath is under primary assault,’ he said.
‘The warmaster has figured that one out, Lord Militant Gaunt,’ the man snapped. ‘The shields are lit, and there is a ferocious din that is making concentration rather difficult.’
‘This is more than just a raid,’ said Gaunt. ‘The warmaster needs to be aware of–’
The man started to rummage in the stack of books Gaunt had rescued from him.
‘A primary assault, yes, yes. The argument over Zarakppan has finally broken wide open. Thrusts are coming from Zarakppan across the refinery zone, using the Gaelen Highway and the Turppan Arterials. Primary formations of enemy forces, moving rapidly. That’s just interference, of course, because the main assault is coming from the south west, from the Northern Dynastic Claves, up along the southern extremity of the Great Bay, carving along a median line through the Millgate, Albarppan and Vapourial quarters. Messy and sudden, a rapid shift in tactics. I believe there are twenty… three, yes, three… twenty-three lord militant generals present in the Urdeshic Palace who ought to be capable of dealing with the issue competently. Any one of them. Pick a lord militant. That is why they are lords militant. They are born and raised and authorised to handle battlefield situations. Well, except Lugo, who’s a bastard-fingered fool. But any of them. Do you know how many battles there are under way on Urdesh right now? At this very minute? I mean primary battles, class Beta-threat magnitude or higher?’