‘Evidence?’ asked Blenner. ‘Evidence for what?’
‘Are you serious, Blenner?’
‘It’s cut and dried!’ Blenner snapped. ‘Feth’s sake, Luna… Gendler went crazy. Wilder was in on it. They attacked Gaunt’s girl, then Ezra–’
With each name, Blenner was pointing angrily at a different blood pattern on the walls and floor of the old wash house. Fazekiel started taking pictures of every dark stain.
‘Stop it!’ Blenner snapped.
‘This incident is bad enough,’ said Fazekiel. ‘It would warrant a full hearing anyway, but the fact that the child of a lord militant is involved? You think Gaunt will just let this go on a field report?’
Blenner shrugged helplessly.
‘He’ll want to know everything. Ezra was his friend, and…’ She trailed off and stopped. ‘You’re supposed to be his friend, Blenner. His oldest, dearest friend. Why the hell aren’t you doing this for him? Why aren’t you doing your duty as a friend and a commissar, and wrapping this up in a bow for him? I mean, impeccably? No stone unturned? Why aren’t you doing that for him?’
‘I executed the bastard who–’
‘Just get out of the way, Blenner. I’ll deal with this.’
‘It doesn’t need to be dealt with,’ said Blenner petulantly. ‘I have a full report. Meryn was a witness to it. There’s nothing to–’
‘I’ll deal with it, I said. My report, my case.’
‘Just a fething minute, lady!’ Blenner yelled. ‘You weren’t even here!’
‘Exactly. Officio Prefectus procedural provision four hundred and fifty-six slash eleven. Independent review of any serious or capital crime. Don’t you even know the fething rulebook? Why am I not surprised? This can’t be your case because you were an active in the incident. Summary powers only cover so far. Get out, Blenner. My case, as of right now.’
She stopped suddenly, and looked around.
‘What was that?’ she asked.
‘What was what?’
‘That noise? Outside? It sounded like a bone-saw.’
The people had found her. Yoncy looked up.
Eight figures stood around her in the gloomy rubble. Men. Soldiers. Masks hid their faces.
‘Go away!’ she said. ‘Go away!’
She hid her head in her hands so she couldn’t see them.
The Sons of Sek raised their weapons and stepped closer.
‘This way, maybe?’ said Elodie hopefully.
‘She did like to play out in the open ground,’ said Juniper, hurrying along behind them. ‘Out the back, in the waste-ground. She’d play hide and seek, sometimes.’
‘We’ll take a look,’ said Domor. He adjusted his augmetics to the lower light. Behind the billet, away from the lamps of the yard, it was pitch dark, and the ground was loose and uneven.
They stopped and peered around.
‘Check that way,’ Domor said. ‘Juniper, go along to the latrines. I’ll look over here.’
They separated and stumbled into the darkness. Elodie moved along the rear of the billet buildings, groping her way. She called Yoncy’s name a few times, but there was something about the darkness that made her reluctant to speak. It was cold, and thick like oil. A fathomless shadow.
A bad shadow.
Elodie heard something. Movement, or a faint voice, perhaps. She turned, and started to move in the direction it had come from.
‘Yoncy?’ There was someone up ahead.
‘Yoncy, are you there?’
Something ran out of the darkness and flung itself into her. The impact almost knocked Elodie down.
‘Yoncy?’
Yoncy was clinging to her legs, sobbing.
‘It’s all right,’ said Elodie, trying to prise her free and get her on her feet. ‘It’s all right, Yoncy. We’ve found you now.’
‘They’ve found me too,’ wailed Yoncy.
Elodie froze. She looked up and saw the big, black shapes stepping out of the night around them.
‘Oh, the Emperor protect me,’ she gasped. ‘By the g-grace of the Throne, and all l-light that shines from Terra…’
She could smell the dirt-stink of them, the unwashed filth, the dried blood. Their masks leered at her like remembered nightmares.
‘Ver voi mortoi,’ said the leader of the Sons. He had drawn a blade.
The darkness grew thicker. It swallowed Elodie up. She clung to the child, but the darkness ate her whole. A swooning red-rush, then blackout.
There was a shrill, screeching noise, like a power saw ripping through hard bone in a surgeon’s theatre.
Blood flew everywhere.
Domor heard the noise. He started to run.
‘Alarm! Alarm!’ he yelled. It was a weapon of some sort. He’d heard a weapon. Insurgents. The fething enemy was among them.
He ran towards the spot where he’d last seen Elodie. Ghosts were moving out from the yard in response to his yells. Lamps were bobbing and flashing.
‘Secure the perimeter!’ Domor shouted to them. Fazekiel and Blenner shoved their way through the men to join him.
‘Shoggy?’
‘There’s someone back here, Luna,’ Domor yelled, running forwards. ‘Get fire-teams to the rear fast! I think it’s a raid!’
Fazekiel grabbed him. ‘Wait! Wait, Shoggy! What’s that?’
The lamps and torch packs were illuminating something in the rubble dead ahead of them. Two bodies, twisted together.
Everyone came to a halt.
‘Holy Throne…’ whispered Domor.
Elodie lay on the ground, her body and arms curled protectively around Yoncy. The two of them were soaked in blood.
Around them, every scrap and stone and brick and rock was dripping with gore. Steam rose from it in the night chill. Domor had seen shells detonate among squads of men. It had looked like this.
As if half a dozen or more men had been torn to shreds by some immense and violent force.
Blenner gagged and turned aside to retch. Domor and Fazekiel stumbled to the bodies. The Ghosts looked on, bewildered.
There were body parts everywhere, scraps of flesh and bone, chunks of shredded uniform, pieces of weaponry. Fazekiel crouched beside Elodie and Yoncy. As she touched them, her hands grew slick with blood.
‘They’re alive,’ she called out, her voice hoarse with horror. ‘They’re unconscious but they’re alive.’
‘What the feth did this?’ asked Domor.
The western end of Turnabout Lane was carpeted with bodies. Many had been felled by the Tanith marksmen during the first advance, the rest had been mown down in the two desperate pushes that had followed. Sons of Sek lay twisted and sprawled on the open roadway and the narrow pavements, piled up in places, smoke rising from clothes punctured by las-shots. Enough blood was running in the downslope gutters to make a clear gurgling sound. Smoke draped the air like gauze.
‘Movement at the head of the road,’ Larkin voxed.
‘Copy, Larks,’ Criid acknowledged. Her company and Obel’s had the top end of Millgate covered. They were dug in, but that wasn’t saying much. Street fighting was luck as much as craft, and the old mill area was a warren.
She glanced at Varl.
‘You honestly think they’re stupid enough to try again?’ Varl asked. ‘We cut them to ribbons. Three times.’
‘I don’t think stupidity has anything to do with it,’ Criid replied. ‘They want to come through, so they’re going to keep trying.’
Obel ran across and slid into cover beside them.
‘We’ve got a six-street section covered, backyards and breezeways too,’ he said. ‘Any wider, and we’ll be spread too thin.’