‘You are about to amaze me with your powers of deduction, are you?’
She smiled at me. ‘I am not your enemy, Leo. I may be one of the few people around here who is not, right about now.’
‘What do you mean by that?’
‘Inquisitor Drake is using you as bait in a trap for some very dangerous men.’
‘Did he tell you that?’
‘He does not need to. I can see the pattern of things as well as you.’
‘You’re doing better than me if you can see any pattern.’
‘You were abducted this evening and someone gave you truth drugs. Presumably so they could find out what you know?’
‘Very good,’ I said.
‘And what everybody is concerned about just now is Macharius and whether he will go to Terra.’ She looked at me and I could tell she was reading me as she always could. ‘That’s only part of it though. It goes deeper than that. Since Drake is interested in all this, you are part of some scheme of his.’
Some movement of mine confirmed this to her, or perhaps she already knew. She was very well informed. ‘He is using you as bait, feeding you information he wants others to pick up on.’
‘Is that what you think?’
‘Leo, don’t try to deceive me. You are not capable of it. I know Drake is feeding disinformation to the agents of half the would-be Macharius replacements. It is his way. He will draw them out and then he will move against them. Or so he thinks.’
‘What will stop him?’
‘Look around you, Leo. Times are changing. Macharius is no longer secure on his throne. Drake is his shadow, whether he likes it or not. His star rose with Macharius. His star will fall with him, unless he makes a transition to standing behind someone else, whispering in their ear.’
‘You think he would really do that?’
‘You think he wouldn’t? Drake is a political animal, Leo. They all are. You are in a tank full of mud sharks.’
‘Of which you are one, if an exceedingly beautiful one.’
She looked at me rather sadly I thought, and considered her response for a long, nerve-wracking time. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I am. But for my own small personal reasons I am inclined to keep you alive if I can.’
‘That does not sound very cheerful.’
‘Wake up! What is left of the crusade is sliding out of anyone’s control. Macharius is a sick man. Drake is scrambling to try and keep the whole doomed structure from sliding over the edge of anarchy. The generals are pushing and tugging at it from all sides to try to get what they can. This is a disaster just waiting to happen, Leo, and you are standing right in the middle of it. You’ll be right there when the earthquake hits and it all comes tumbling down.’
‘So will you.’
‘The difference is that I already have a way to get out.’
‘I was offered one myself tonight,’ I said and then I stopped and wondered if her whole speech had not simply been a lever to get me to admit that. She showed me the sort of smile a wolf shows sheep.
‘By whom? By the agents of General Crassus? I would not put too much faith in them if I were you, Leo.’
‘I am not entirely stupid,’ I said. She reached out and ruffled my hair.
‘No,’ she said. ‘You are not.’
‘Anna,’ I said. ‘There is no way out for me. Whatever happens, I stand behind Macharius. I always have and I always will.’
She looked away for a moment and then said, ‘Loyalty has always been your strong point, for better or worse. You are loyal to Macharius and you are loyal to me in your way.’ There was nothing much I could say to that. ‘It will get you killed in the end.’
‘I am an Imperial Guardsman, Anna. I have already lived far longer than I expected when I signed up. And far better too. And that’s down to Macharius and to you.’
She kissed me then and we talked no more. There were other things to say and other ways of saying them.
The camp of the Seventh Belial lay on the edge of the city, beyond the circle of those great black starscrapers. In theory, I was simply visiting my old regiment. In practice it was a lot more complicated than that. There were still people there who remembered me, after all these years, although not so many as I would have liked, and I was wearing the green tunic of the Lion Guard, which both made my visit conspicuous and gave it a political undertone. All of the soldiers watching me wondered whether I could be spying or whether I was bringing word from Macharius to their officers. It was a tense little march.
I walked along the ranks of tents and pre-fabricated huts, between the lines of battered Baneblades and shell-marked Shadowswords and I felt a growing nostalgia. I stood in the silhouettes of the great armoured beasts and felt their power and buried rage. I sensed their animating spirits and their fury and I wondered if the time was coming when they would be unleashed on their fellow Imperial soldiers. Such potent armoured vehicles were rare on Acheron at this moment, and whichever side they were on would have a huge advantage in any coming conflict.
Even as that thought occurred to me, I felt a growing fear in my belly. I was taking it for granted that not only was battle possible, it was likely. I was imagining a time when all of these men around me, my former comrades, would be my enemies. It brought back strange memories of Loki and the walking dead. Some of them, too, had once been comrades. Perhaps in this, we were all of us walking dead men.
I nodded to soldiers as I walked past and saluted officers who looked at me with cool, curious looks. There was a time when I would have felt daunted and resentful, back when they had been my social superiors from Belial and I was just a hive-boy who had joined the Guard. Now, I did not really care. I had spent more than half my life around aristocrats with far greater power than these men would ever have, whose families were far better connected, and I had not been so impressed by those. Why should I let these people intimidate me? And yet the fact that I still asked myself that question showed that it was important to me.
I headed towards the tent row and number that Sergei Krimov had given me. He was sitting outside, no doubt waiting for my two old friends Konstantin and Mikhail. I threw Sergei an ironic salute and took a seat outside the tent. We must have looked for all the world like off-duty soldiers, smoking and chatting.
‘Find out anything interesting?’ Sergei asked.
‘I just found out you don’t like sharing your booze,’ I said.
He produced a hip flask and passed it to me. ‘I see you’ve got over your reluctance to drink with me,’ he said.
‘Tell me, Sergei. How well do you know Konstantin and Mikhail?’
‘Well enough. Why?’
‘Are they for real?’
‘You mean can they do what they say?’
‘Yes.’
‘They can and you would do well to believe that. They have powerful backers, serious men with a serious agenda.’
‘And you would know this how?’ I asked.
‘You are the one asking me the questions. If you don’t like the answers it’s not my fault.’
‘How do you know them?’
‘They were with the Seventh right enough,’ he said. ‘They were promoted out to General Crassus’s staff years ago. Kind of like you were, only they rank higher and they do more than bodyguard work.’
‘You are making me feel inadequate,’ I said.
‘Look. I know you don’t like what happened the other night but I was doing you a favour. Play your cards right and you’ll end up rich and powerful.’
‘Just like you?’
‘Be the smart-mouth, but you are in this thing as much as I am, whether you like it or not. You said things you should not have said.’