Ciaphas Cain: Choose Your Enemies

Which promptly, and quite naturally, disintegrated into gobbets of charred goo and gristle, that collapsed to the floor along with a tangle of momentarily flailing limbs and a head bearing a faintly surprised-looking expression.

The stench of overcooked meat became overlaid with a more familiar odour, as Jurgen ambled up to join me. He stared down at the mess on the carpet with a bemused expression.

‘Well,’ he said finally, ‘this is going to take some explaining to the inquisitor.’

Twenty-six

‘You mustn’t blame yourself,’ Amberley said in a conciliatory tone, which stopped some way short of an assurance that she wouldn’t be doing it for me. We’d met on a terrace outside the mansion which, by this time, was becoming crowded with guests arriving for Fulcher’s little shindig. Quite where they’d all come from and how they’d managed to turn up at such short notice was beyond me, but I suppose the governor wasn’t really someone you said no to.186 We were attracting a predictable number of furtive glances from both partygoers and the servants attending to them, although – equally unsurprisingly, given the power armour she still wore – no one cared to interrupt our conversation. ‘Following up his contacts within the household should be simple enough.’

‘I’m already working on that,’ Defroy assured her. I still wasn’t sure whether Evander revealing himself as the traitor had entirely removed the guard commander from Amberley’s suspect list,187 but we needed his expertise now, so I was prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt. He nodded an assurance at Amberley, then his eyes roved on, watching the crowd even as he carried on speaking. I had to admit I was quietly impressed; not many people could talk to an inquisitor while keeping their minds on the job. ‘It’ll take a little time, but we’ll round them all up, you can be sure.’

‘Can I?’ Amberley asked. ‘How very reassuring.’

Defroy nodded again, pretending to miss the sarcasm, and continued to scan the crowd for any potential trouble. ‘It should help our investigation into the attempted assassination of the commissar, too,’ he added. ‘It must have been orchestrated by one of Evander’s contacts in the spire establishment. Narrows down the suspects to a far more comfortable number.’

‘How very gratifying.’ Vekkman materialised from the shadows. ‘Where are the rest of your acolytes?’

‘Elsewhere,’ Amberley said, in a tone which was meant to close the subject. Fortunately Vekkman took the hint.

‘What about Rakel?’ I asked. The psyker was with us, staying as far from Jurgen as possible, but even that didn’t seem to help much. She was slouched in the corner, her elegant purple gown looking as though the contents had been stuffed in without much regard to its shape or capacity, her eyes unfocused. Not surprisingly, she was muttering to herself, the only phrases I could make out being ‘nearly here,’ and ‘it’s coming,’ neither of which I found particularly reassuring. ‘Has she located the spirit stones?’

‘They’re here,’ Rakel said, waving an arm which took in most of our immediate surroundings. ‘Close. And screaming in terror.’ Which wasn’t exactly the kind of thing I wanted to be hearing.

‘Can you narrow it down any more?’ I asked, but she’d returned to her own private universe, and I might as well have saved my breath.

‘There’s too much going on,’ Amberley amplified, echoing the gesture – with specific reference, so far as I could see, to the partygoers thronging the gardens. ‘All these minds are overwhelming her.’

‘But she seems convinced that something’s about to happen,’ I said, the palms of my hands beginning to itch, as they so often do when something’s going seriously wrong but I can’t quite put my finger on what. ‘We need to find the governor, and get him to safety.’ Which would give me the perfect excuse to get away from there as well, before it all went ploin-shaped.

Defroy laughed. ‘I know precisely where he is, commissar. I’d hardly be doing my job if I didn’t. And he’s as safe in the maze as anywhere.’

‘The maze.’ The thought I’d had before, and been unable to pin down, came trotting back, dragging a very unwelcome realisation with it. ‘The spirit stones are in the middle of the maze!’

‘How do you know?’ Vekkman asked, and I glanced at Amberley, wondering how I could explain the certainty I felt without revealing Jurgen’s secret to one of her fellow inquisitors.

‘There was a crate among the governor’s effects which was taken to the maze instead of the house,’ I said. ‘It stuck in my mind, because it was the one Jurgen was sitting on.’

Amberley nodded, and to my relief I realised she’d got it. The majority of the stones had fallen out of Rakel’s perception as we boarded the truck, and back into it again as we disembarked. If my aide’s unique aura had somehow blocked whatever she was sensing while he was close to it, then it had to have been in the crate he was sitting on.