It grew dark. The noise of the flotilla’s weary engines echoed louder in the wide confines of the rock-roofed passage.
Mkoll stood at the barge’s stern, beside the rail. His hand at Olort’s back. The darkness slid across him, blotting out the sky.
There was no going back.
Six: Protection
‘You’re conducting a Hereticus investigation of my regiment?’ asked Gaunt.
‘Your specificity is wrong, Lord Executor,’ replied Inquisitor Laksheema. ‘It is a more–’
‘You’re running an investigation?’ Gaunt asked more firmly. The sharpness of his question stilled the room. They sat across a table in an empty ward room a short distance along the hall from Gaunt’s chambers. Daur had claimed the ward room for what clearly had to be a private meeting.
Daur sat at Gaunt’s side, his face impassive. Colonel Grae sat beside the inquisitor. Hark occupied a chair at the table’s end, as if he was somehow moderating the discussion. He had chosen the seat himself. His eyes were narrow. He could see how Laksheema was testing Gaunt’s patience, just as she had tested his.
Gol Kolea sat alone on a low-backed chair in the corner, staring at the floor.
‘Yes, my lord,’ said Laksheema. The burnished golden sections of her partly augmetic head glowed in the lamplight. She was impossible to read. Was she smirking? Annoyed? Amused? Viktor Hark knew there was no way of telling. Her face was a mask. That made her very good at her job. It was probably why she’d had herself rebuilt that way, after whatever grievous damage she’d suffered.
No doubt deserved, Hark thought.
There was no misreading Gaunt’s annoyance.
‘An investigation of my regiment? And of the Astra Militarum dispositions on Urdesh?’
‘Yes, my lord.’
‘Without approval? Without notifying anyone in high command?’ asked Gaunt.
‘The matter is sensitive–’
‘So high command itself is under suspicion?’
‘I didn’t say–’
‘You’re not saying much, inquisitor,’ said Gaunt. ‘But you would have informed senior staff militant unless you thought senior staff were also potentially complicit.’
‘I am informing you now, lord,’ said Laksheema. ‘I have come to you directly.’
‘Not directly,’ said Gaunt. ‘First, you detained one of my officers.’ He looked at Kolea, whose attention remained resolutely fixed on the floor. ‘Then you come to me with questions, and not through official channels. That’s not informing me. My man, my regiment. I fall within the compass of your investigation too, don’t I?’
‘Lord, this is a formality to expedite the–’ Colonel Grae began.
‘I don’t think it is, colonel,’ said Gaunt. Grae closed his mouth. Gaunt turned his unnerving stare back to the inquisitor.
‘Ask. Speak. Inform,’ he said. ‘If you wish to expedite, get on with it and I’ll cooperate.’
‘You are correct, my lord,’ said Laksheema calmly. ‘We have issues of concern that involve the Tanith First and so, by extension, you. Those concerns stretch into other departments of the Astra Militarum and other regiments, and simply due to your status, to high command.’
‘Lay these concerns out for me,’ said Gaunt.
‘There are issues of strict confidence that–’
‘No,’ said Gaunt. ‘You’re cleared, Grae is cleared, and I am cleared, all at the highest level. Because of my status, which you so delicately point out, the officers of my regiment present are also, by extension, authorised.’
Laksheema shrugged slightly.
‘Certain ratification would be necessary,’ she said. ‘For Commissar Hark, Captain Daur and Major Kolea… paperwork and disclosure approval–’
Gaunt shook his head. ‘Again, dissembling. If your investigation encompasses the entire Astra Militarum on Urdesh, who stands outside that purview to warrant and approve such authorisation? You’re hiding behind the rules you’re seeking to subvert, asking us to chase our tails through the Administratum, knowing we’d never get an answer. Let’s be clear. I am ratifying them. Right now. With these words.’
‘Yes, my lord,’ said Laksheema.
‘And you are clearing them with yours, on behalf of the ordos,’ Gaunt added.
‘Yes, my lord,’ said Laksheema. ‘We will consider them cleared to both our satisfactions.’
‘Good,’ said Gaunt. ‘Begin.’
‘There has been a crisis on Urdesh for some time,’ said Laksheema, ‘one that existed before your return. The obvious challenge of overcoming the Anarch’s military threat, matched by a lack of understanding of his tactics. This is now, for the most part, resolved. It is clear that the Anarch’s strategy on Urdesh was a mirror of our own, to whit, the enticement, containment and elimination of the opposing leaders. The obliteration of the warmaster and his high command. The neutering of this crusade.’
‘I think we can agree that the Lord Executor played no small part in the revelation of that stratagem,’ Grae said to Laksheema. ‘He saw Sek’s trap, and prevented it from springing shut, and–’
‘Please, don’t,’ said Laksheema.
‘Don’t what?’ asked Grae.
‘Attempt to flatter and support these men,’ said Laksheema. ‘They are of your institutions, Grae, not mine. I serve the Throne, directly. My intentions are not filtered through the strata of a vast and hidebound organisation like the Astra Militarum.’
‘I advise you not to push that point,’ said Hark quietly. ‘Say your fething piece or get your fething arse out of the door.’
Laksheema looked at Gaunt. ‘Will you not reprimand your man for such–’
‘I find,’ said Gaunt, ‘as I grow older, the Astra Militarum indeed to be a vast and hidebound organisation, inquisitor. Starched with needless formality and protocol, and strangled by the chains of command. So, in this room, Viktor can speak his mind with my entire support. Say your fething piece.’
Laksheema sat back, her eyes fixed on Gaunt.
‘Whatever your accomplishments in revealing the truth of the Anarch’s stratagem,’ she said, ‘I do not believe it is ended or even halfway done.’
‘Then we agree on something,’ said Gaunt.
‘And your very return is an issue,’ Laksheema said. ‘For it changed the nature of things. Of the crisis. Whatever long game Sek is trying to win on Urdesh, it altered overnight to accommodate you.’
‘Me?’
‘The material you brought with you from Salvation’s Reach,’ said Laksheema. ‘Its import is unknown to us, but it is clearly of great significance to the enemy. Such significance, in fact, that he is willing to abandon – or at least, delay and modify – a scheme of war that he has been preparing and executing over a period of years.’
‘The eagle stones,’ said Gaunt.
‘Yes, those artefacts,’ said Laksheema.
‘Apparently, a Glyptothek–’ Grae began.
‘Whatever,’ said Gaunt. He looked at Laksheema. ‘Again, agreed. I believe the late assault on Eltath was as much about recovering said items as it was about annihilating high command.’
‘The attack was repulsed,’ said Daur.
‘Was it, captain?’ asked Laksheema.
‘Yes, Ban, was it?’ Gaunt said, glancing at Daur. ‘The main assault was repulsed. Perhaps. It certainly fell back without warning. Secured objectives were not capitalised on. It may have been a feint. A cover for some clandestine objective now invisibly secured.’
‘But the Beati struck a blow at Sek at Ghereppan,’ said Daur. ‘That surely was the decisive factor? The timing was no coincidence.’
‘It seems likely,’ said Gaunt. ‘He may have been disadvantaged by the Beati’s work. Feth knows, he may even be dead. But his strategy isn’t. My gut says so. Sek wasn’t defeated four nights ago. He didn’t walk away from Eltath and Ghereppan empty-handed with his arse whipped. Whatever it cost him, he achieved something.’