Twenty minutes brought them through the derelict quarters of Low Keen to the head of the service road. They walked in silence, weary, out of words. The battle had escalated around them and left them out of the main action. It was time to catch up and hope there was still a chance to rejoin the regiment.
Whatever warning they thought they might bring was surely now too late.
From the service road, they could see the Tanith K700 billet in the gloom of the industrial scar-land. Lights moved around the buildings. They could see transports.
‘Someone’s still there, at least,’ said Bask.
Halfway down the service road, they were challenged by sentries. Erish, the big standard bearer from V Company, and Thyst, another trooper from his squad. They seemed punchy and ill at ease.
‘Major Baskevyl?’ Erish said in surprise as they drew close enough for him to recognise them.
‘What’s going on, trooper?’ Baskevyl asked.
‘Just prepping to move out, sir,’ said Erish. ‘Up to the palace.’
‘The whole regiment?’
‘No, sir, just V and E Companies, moving the regimental retinue to shelter.’
‘Where are the rest of the Ghosts?’ asked Domor.
‘Front line, sir,’ said Erish.
Baskevyl and Domor glanced at each other. Their companies had gone to secondary without them. Possibly primary. They might already be fighting and dying.
‘Who’s in charge here?’ asked Fazekiel.
‘Captain Meryn, ma’am,’ Erish replied. ‘With Commissar Blenner.’
Fazekiel looked at him closely. She was a good study of body language, and Erish seemed unusually tense. No, not tense. Unsettled.
‘Vox the gate, Erish,’ said Baskevyl. ‘Tell Meryn we’re on our way in.’
‘Yes, sir,’ said the trooper.
‘What’s going on, Trooper Erish?’ asked Fazekiel.
Erish looked nervously at his comrade.
‘What do you mean, ma’am?’ he asked.
‘What aren’t you telling us?’
‘There’s been an incident, ma’am,’ said Erish.
‘How the feth did this happen, captain?’ asked Baskevyl.
Meryn shrugged. Around them, in the K700 yard, men from his company were loading cargo onto the Munitorum trucks, and the huddled members of the retinue were lining up to clamber aboard. There was an uncomfortable quiet, more than just a wartime quiet. A sense of shock.
‘A shrug’s not going to cut it, Meryn,’ Baskevyl said.
‘I don’t know what the feth to tell you,’ Meryn replied. ‘It’s a feth awful mess. What do you want from me? You want me to say that an arsehole from my company went psycho? Is that it?’
‘You and Gendler were close.’
‘So?’ Meryn sneered. ‘He was still an arsehole. I just didn’t realise how big an arsehole. Attacking a girl like that.’
‘Gaunt’s… daughter?’
‘Seems so.’
‘Where is she?’ asked Domor.
‘In one of the trucks. She’s conscious now, but she’s woozy and in shock. Once we arrive at the palace, we’ll get her to a medicae.’
‘I want to talk to her,’ said Baskevyl.
‘I told you,’ said Meryn, ‘she’s not in a fit state. Leave it. Leave it for now. Give her some time.’
‘There’ll be an inquiry,’ said Bask.
‘Don’t doubt it,’ said Meryn. ‘There should be. Blenner and I are ready to provide full statements.’
‘I can’t believe Wilder would–’ Domor began.
‘Well, he did,’ said Meryn bluntly. ‘There was always some loose wiring there. You must have seen it. Too much booze, and a grudge the size of the Golden Throne. Didi must’ve… Gendler must have put him up to it. Fethwipes, the both of them.’
‘Wilder killed Ezra?’ asked Baskevyl.
Meryn nodded. ‘I can’t believe it,’ he said. ‘I mean, Ezra… fething Ezra.’
‘And Blenner sanctioned Wilder?’
‘What else could he do?’ asked Meryn.
Domor and Baskevyl looked at each other.
‘Look,’ said Meryn, ‘we don’t have time for this now. Priority is to get the retinue up and into the sanctuary of the palace, while the shields are down. That’s a direct order from Gaunt. We can’t hang about here, no matter what’s gone down. We have to get this lot moving in the next few minutes.’
‘All right,’ said Baskevyl reluctantly. ‘Double time, everyone. Let’s move them to safety.’
Meryn threw a quick salute, and turning, began shouting orders at the loading parties. Baskevyl saw Elodie Dutana-Daur approaching, with one of the women from the retinue in tow.
‘Major?’
‘Yes, Elodie?’
‘Juniper’s lost Yoncy,’ she said.
‘She was with me, sir,’ said the older woman. ‘We were getting all packed away, then the commotion started, and I turned around and she was gone. I think she got upset. People were talking, saying that there’d been shooting. That people were dead. She thought it was them snipers again and got upset. I think she went to hide.’
‘I can’t find her,’ said Elodie.
Bask swore under his breath.
‘We’ll hunt around,’ he said. ‘She can’t be far.’
‘Yeah, we’ll find her,’ Shoggy echoed. He knew that he and Baskevyl were thinking the same thing: there’d been enough bad turns for one day. They weren’t about to lose Criid’s little girl too. Criid’s little girl… Gol’s little girl. Meryn had told them that the Astra Militarum intelligence service had taken Gol away. Wherever he was now, Gol Kolea would need his friends to look after his family for him.
‘Where’s Dalin?’ asked Baskevyl.
‘On the truck, looking after Gaunt’s child,’ said Meryn.
‘I’ll go and ask him if he knows anywhere Yoncy might’ve hidden,’ said Baskevyl.
‘I’ll start looking,’ said Domor. He turned to Elodie and Juniper.
‘Where’d you last see her?’ he asked.
A voice spoke in the night. It spoke in the crump of the artillery bombardments, in the distant roar of firestorms, in the clunk of mortars.
It was the old voice, the shadow voice. It had no words; it just spoke of war in sounds made out of war.
But its meaning was clear. So clear, it seemed to drown out all the sounds and furies bearing down on Eltath.
In the blue darkness of the unlit waste-ground behind the billets, Yoncy cowered in the rubble heaps. It was time. Papa was telling her it was time. Time to come home. Time to be brave and grow up. Time to go to Papa.
‘I don’t want to!’ she whispered, rubbing tears from her eyes with her grubby wrists. Then she wished she hadn’t spoken. Someone would hear her.
Someone had heard her.
Someone was close. She could hear boots crunching over the rubble in the darkness around her. People moving.
People coming for her. Ready or not.
‘What are you doing, exactly, Luna?’
Fazekiel stopped taking images, and lowered her small hand-held picter. Blenner was standing in the wash house doorway.
‘Recording the scene,’ she said. ‘Or did you do that already?’
‘Me? No,’ said Blenner. ‘Why? Why would I?’
‘Three deaths in billet,’ she said. ‘We can’t preserve the scene here, so we’ll need as much evidence as we can get.’