Choose Your Enemies, page 27
‘And why was that?’ I asked.
Defroy looked puzzled. ‘She didn’t want to be assassinated or strung up by insurrectionists?’ he hazarded.
I shook my head. ‘I mean why wasn’t she popular?’
‘Because she was the governor,’ Defroy said. ‘It was a difficult time. Lot of tension between the Skysiders and the Dirtgrubbers.’ He smiled, in a faintly embarrassed fashion. ‘Which is what they called the surface dwellers. They thought the administration down there was out of touch with their concerns. So it was decided that the governor should divide her time between the hives and the orbitals to help foster a spirit of unity.’
‘I see.’ I nodded. With tensions running high, securing the dome against attack as discreetly as possible would have been a high priority. ‘A tradition maintained to this day, I take it.’
‘Pretty much,’ Defroy agreed. ‘Some governors spent more time in the hive, and some would have stayed up here permanently if they could, but most of them have divided their time more or less equally.’
‘And His Excellency?’ I asked, faking polite interest.
‘Definitely one of the latter. Born up here, thinks of himself as a Skysider first and foremost.’ Which I supposed went some way towards explaining his rash decision to run the blockade. ‘But he doesn’t let that get in the way of objective decision-making. Or spending as much time on Ironfound as he needs to get the job done.’
‘I’m glad to hear it,’ I said, although to be honest I was no more interested in the governor’s vicissitudes than in anything else the civilians got up to while the Guard kept the galaxy at bay. I glanced at our surroundings. ‘Seems comfortable enough.’ The truck was negotiating a wide gravel drive by now, which wove its way around lush lawns and artfully clipped shrubbery, revealing sporadic glimpses of the most impressive frontages of the main house. The overall effect was evidently meant to evoke the ambience of a country estate on an agri world somewhere, in stark contrast to the rest of its surroundings, although – like the gardens of Fulcher’s mansion in the spire – the needs of defence had clearly played a part in the placement of things. I found myself wondering just how many of the decorative excrescences concealed emplaced weapons and, once I started examining things more closely, began to detect clear signs of artifice. Many of the shrubs were too symmetrical to have been the unaided work of nature, and the larger trees appeared to have been cast in the same kind of resin as the pseudowood panelling I’d noticed in his spiretop mansion.
‘What’s that?’ As we rounded the final corner, heading for the main entrance rather than the service one – presumably because now we were safely within the governor’s demesne he saw no further need for subterfuge – a large block of neatly clipped foliage roughly the size of a scrumball pitch had come into view. It seemed like an enclosure of some kind, twice the height of a man, pierced at intervals with arches, presumably giving access to whatever lay inside.
‘That’s the maze,’ Defroy said. ‘It’s quite famous. According to legend, it’s so complex people occasionally get lost for days, and a few of them are never seen again.’ He grinned. ‘Although all you have to do is keep taking the second left followed by the first right, and it takes you straight to the middle. And reverse it to come straight back out.’
The truck lurched, with a squeal of brakes, and we came to a halt so close to the centre of the wide circle of gravel in front of the house that our driver, who might as well have been a servitor for all the notice he’d taken of our presence alongside him, could have measured it with a ruler. He turned his head, and spoke to us for the first and last time. ‘Here we are,’ he said.
‘Thank you,’ I replied, as politeness costs nothing, and it never hurts to let people think you care. I popped the passenger door and climbed out, followed by Defroy, in time to see Fulcher clambering down from the flatbed. He didn’t seem to have enjoyed the journey very much, although it had been short, mainly among the dock traffic, before we’d turned off along the tunnel leading to the gateway to the dome. Nevertheless he rearranged his composure, glancing over my shoulder at the grand entrance to the house behind us. On this side of the structure, two quarter-circular wings swept out from it to enclose the nearest half of the gravelled area we were parked on, and a welcoming party was heading in our direction with all the speed they could manage concomitant with the dignity of their positions. The man in front – tall, greying, and in the most ornate robes – was clearly in charge, and greeted Fulcher accordingly.
‘Welcome home, your excellency. I trust your journey didn’t prove too fatiguing?’
‘Not so you’d notice,’ Fulcher said, neatly skipping over the lives lost in the process of delivering him. He gestured in my direction. ‘This is the celebrated Commissar Cain, who will be our guest for a while. I trust you’ll be able to find him some suitable accommodation.’
‘Of course, sir.’ The major-domo nodded, in exactly the same manner I suspected he would have done if he’d been asked to find some tanna or turn the sun down a bit because it was too bright.
‘Splendid.’ Fulcher turned back to me. ‘Anything you need, just ask Evander here.’ His bodyguards jumped down from the truck, taking up station just behind his shoulders.
‘Of course, sir,’ Evander repeated, gesturing to the other servants, who promptly began to manhandle the boxes from the back of the truck. ‘I’ll have your luggage taken directly to your private apartments.’
‘Apart from that one,’ Fulcher said, apparently struck by an afterthought, and gesturing towards the crate currently supporting Jurgen’s buttocks. ‘That’s for this evening’s festivities.’
‘Festivities?’ I asked, noting a momentary frown appear on Defroy’s face. ‘Is that appropriate under the circumstances?’
Defroy nodded in agreement. ‘I would earnestly advise the cancellation of the translocation cotillion,’ he said. ‘Inviting guests here while your life may be in danger will hardly help with security.’
Fulcher laughed, in the easy-going manner of someone who’s had his own way about almost everything since the day he first learned to suck his thumb, and wants everyone not to forget it. ‘I have you, your finest guards, and now a Hero of the Imperium ensuring my personal safety.’ Then, with a faintly dismissive gesture to the bodyguards behind him, ‘Plus these two. I think I’ll be safe enough.’
‘As you wish,’ Defroy said, his tone of voice adding ‘however stupid that is’ for anyone who cared to hear it, although Fulcher either didn’t, or chose not to.
Jurgen jumped down from the back of the truck, and crunched across the gravel to join me. Evander’s carefully composed neutral expression flickered for a moment, before settling back into its default setting. Fulcher gestured in the general direction of my aide. ‘This is Commissar Cain’s man. See that he’s taken care of.’
‘Very good, sir.’ Evander turned, with barely visible reluctance, to face Jurgen, while the last crate was manhandled off the back of the truck by a couple of burly servants who seemed on the point of swearing about its weight. ‘If you follow me to the kitchens, I’m sure we can find something to your taste.’
‘I’m sticking with the commissar,’ Jurgen said, inevitably. ‘At least until he’s settled. I’ll find the kitchen when we need it.’ Of which I had no doubt; my aide’s talent for scrounging amounted to a gift from the Emperor, and one from which we’d both benefitted over the years.
‘Then if you’d both care to accompany me,’ Evander said, clearly recognising a lost cause when he saw it, and choosing to address me instead. ‘I’ll show you to your suite.’
‘Thank you,’ I said, following him towards the house, Jurgen falling in at my shoulder as he usually did.
I glanced back. Defroy was gazing after us, his expression pensive, and Fulcher was engaged in some kind of conversation with his bodyguards. Most of the servants were trailing after us, lugging the boxes from the truck, although one seemed to be missing; after a moment I spied a pair of their compatriots carrying it across the lawn between them, directly away from the house. Then we were inside, being fawned over by flunkies, and I saw nothing more.
‘This’ll do,’ Jurgen said, as the major-domo ushered us into the guest suite he’d conducted us to, through the same kind of lavishly decorated corridors I’d walked along in Fulcher’s spire-top residence. Though almost as garish and with a similar overabundance of family crests and Imperial iconography, the overall effect here was less cluttered, and a little more homely; I strongly suspected that this was indeed where the governor felt most comfortable.
‘I’m gratified to hear so,’ Evander said, in studiedly neutral tones, and withdrew with a perfunctory bow, the door clicking closed behind him.
Jurgen was, as usual when stating the obvious (or, in this case, understating it), perfectly correct. As well as a bedroom large enough to have parked a Baneblade in, the suite of rooms assigned to me contained a second one almost as lavish, a balnearia I could have swum laps around, a drawing room furnished in so sumptuous a fashion that anyone daring to sit on the sofa would probably have been completely engulfed in its upholstery, and a smaller sub suite apparently intended for a servant, which would have fitted in its entirety into any of the primary rooms. In all honesty it looked a lot more comfortable than the quarters I’d been given, and I felt a faint stirring of envy as Jurgen took possession of a mattress hard enough to sleep on and a washroom unlikely to be much troubled by his presence.
‘Nice view, anyway,’ I said, gazing out through the large picture windows, across the lawns, and up (or down) at the vast curved face of Ironfound hanging across half the sky.
‘I can get you some refreshment, if you’d like, sir,’ Jurgen offered, his mind as ever on the more practical side of things.
‘Just a snack, perhaps,’ I said, realising that, now he came to mention it, I was beginning to feel a little hungry. ‘And get something for yourself while you’re at it.’
‘Right you are, sir,’ my aide agreed, and disappeared with remarkable alacrity.
Left alone, I took a few minutes to explore my surroundings in a little more detail, and confirm to myself that I really wasn’t comfortable just sitting around waiting for the eldar to attack the orbital or a bunch of slavering cultists to jump out of the wardrobe and attempt to assassinate me. Neither of these things happened, though, and carried on not happening, so I tapped the comm-bead in my ear and reported in to Amberley.
‘We’re at the mansion,’ I told her, ‘and the governor seems safe for now. He even seems to be planning some kind of party.’
‘That would be in accordance with protocol,’ Mott chimed in, confirming my suspicion that, once again, her entire team was listening to our conversation. ‘The governor traditionally marks the transition between residences with a formal gathering.’
‘I’ll keep an eye on things anyway,’ I said. ‘If there are guests arriving, an assassin or a heretic might be able to sneak in among them.’
‘Has Defroy said or done anything suspicious yet?’ Amberley asked.
I thought about that. ‘No,’ I said, uneasy at having him out of my sight for so long. But I could hardly have refused to go with Evander without raising suspicion about my real reasons for being here. ‘I’ll catch up with him again as soon as I can. Has Rakel come up with anything yet?’
‘The singing’s back,’ the psyker told me, and some half-formed thought stuck its head up, before skittering away through my synapses before I could get a proper look at it. ‘Louder than before.’ She hesitated. ‘It sounds frightened.’
‘But can you track it?’ I asked. There was a short pause.
‘We’re trying a new approach,’ Amberley said, when it became obvious that Rakel had become lost in her own private world again. ‘Psychometry. Trying to narrow down our search area by getting her to pinpoint the location on the structural plans Caractacus got for us.’ She sighed. ‘But it’s not going well. The impressions she’s getting are strong, but diffuse.’
‘Then perhaps I can offer a fresh line of enquiry,’ a new voice broke in, Vekkman’s acidic tones eliciting a barely audible groan from Amberley in response to the intrusion. ‘The lead you gave me turned out to be a solid one.’
‘Delighted to hear it,’ Amberley said, sounding faintly confused.
‘The Eternal Faith,’ Vekkman reminded her. ‘The starship the spirit stone you found was ostensibly being smuggled out-system on. I interviewed some of the dock workers who would have transhipped the cargo containers and they admitted that they occasionally diverted items from the smuggling ring you broke up at the behest of someone on the orbital. It seems that a few other spirit stones have already travelled the same route.’
‘To where?’ Amberley asked, her reservations about her fellow inquisitor apparently forgotten.[180]
‘They don’t know,’ Vekkman said. ‘But I have a name. And a rough description.’
‘A name’s good,’ Amberley said, a trifle grudgingly. ‘Maybe my savant can run it down.’
‘Let’s hope so,’ Vekkman agreed. ‘The suspect goes by the name of Vandire, like the notorious apostate – middle-aged in appearance, but he could have had juvenat treatment so I’d go back a century or so to be on the safe side. Well dressed, so either wealthy–’
‘Or working for someone who is,’ I said, making a run for the door as I spoke. ‘I think we’ve just found the traitor in the governor’s household.’
‘Really?’ Vekkman and Amberley spoke simultaneously, sounding equally taken aback; but there was no time to savour the probably unique moment of binaural Inquisitorial astonishment.
‘Fulcher’s major-domo is called Evander,’ I said, ‘and the description’s a match.’ I tapped my vox-bead again. ‘Jurgen. Keep an eye out for Evander. He might be the person we’re looking for.’
‘Very good, sir.’ My aide’s voice was as phlegmatic as ever, though perhaps a little more breathless than usual. ‘I suppose that would explain why he’s just tried to kill me.’
‘What?’ I flung the door open, and glanced up and down the opulent corridor, wondering which direction Jurgen’s unerring instinct for finding unattended provender would have taken him. ‘Where are you?’
‘Right here, sir,’ he responded, accurately but unhelpfully. Fortunately a burst of lasgun fire echoed down the passageway at that point, which settled the question to my satisfaction, and I broke into a sprint, drawing my chainsword and laspistol as I ran.
‘I’m on my way,’ I assured him.
‘So are we,’ Amberley said. ‘If the spirit stones are anywhere on the estate, Rakel should be able to find them.’
Which I supposed was good news, but not my highest priority at that point. The sound of something expensive breaking guided my footsteps round the bend into a side passage, where to my great relief I saw Jurgen, apparently unharmed, crouching behind an overturned settle, his lasgun levelled. The inert form of one of the liveried servants was sprawled across the carpet a few metres away, the intricate floral pattern of which would never be quite the same again, a laspistol still clutched in her twitching hand. Two more were taking what cover they could behind an occasional table[181] and a display cabinet of what had presumably once been an exceptionally fine selection of ceramics before a lasgun burst reduced them to flinders, while Evander bobbed about behind the wall at the other end of the corridor, occasionally sticking his head out to see what was going on, before ducking back again like a startled sump rat at every loud noise.
‘Was it something you said?’ I asked as I joined my aide, and his brow furrowed in puzzlement.
‘I don’t think so, sir,’ he said, taking the flippant remark entirely at face value, which after all the years I’d known him should hardly have come as a surprise. ‘I only asked the way to the kitchen, and he tried to stick a knife in my ribs.’ Which would have been very unwise. Jurgen might not have been the most prepossessing trooper in the Guard, but his reflexes were second to none; now I came to look at Evander more closely, his nose was bloody, probably from the impact of my aide’s forehead, and his right arm was hanging at the sort of awkward angle which speaks of dislocation or a fracture. ‘I would have finished him off, but I thought the inquisitor might like a word with him, then these other three turned up and it all got a bit messy.’
‘You thought right,’ I assured him. Amberley would definitely have a few questions for the homicidal butler, and I presumed Vekkman would too, if she let him get anywhere near him once he was in custody. I popped off a couple of laspistol rounds at the lurker behind the china cabinet, reducing a few of the shards inside to even smaller splinters, and provoking a flurry of panic-stricken las-bolts in return. Jurgen retaliated with a burst from his lasgun, which chewed the tottering structure to pieces, showering the luckless gunsel with razor-edged fragments as it collapsed on top of him. A shrill keening emerged from beneath the debris for a moment, before I silenced it with a well-aimed las-bolt to the partially visible head I could now see. Anyone less deserving of the Emperor’s peace[182] I found it hard to imagine, but the noise was beginning to get on my nerves.
That was enough, the remaining lackey turning and running as his nerve broke – which was a huge mistake, as he was too panicked to pop off a few las-bolts in our general direction to keep our heads down as he fled.
‘Trakki shoot,’ Jurgen muttered, putting a vengeful las-bolt through the obligingly presented shoulder blades, before turning to me with a faintly troubled expression. ‘You don’t think the inquisitor would have wanted a word with that one too, do you?’
‘I doubt it,’ I assured him, to his evident relief. ‘Not while we can still bag the ringleader.’ Who was now legging it with all possible speed, if the scuffling sounds from the end of the corridor were any indication. Vaulting over the obstructing settle,[183] I dashed in pursuit, my aide at my heels.
