Still, it made me uncomfortable as the airship swung in towards the landing tower and made its final approach. Beneath us I could see the great geodesic dome of the Hunting Grounds. It was full of exotic jungle plants and great carnivores brought from across the sector to provide sport for Macharius and his chosen guests. It was a place of death and danger, as I would find out for myself one day.
‘Gentlemen, you are dismissed for the moment,’ said Macharius as we stepped across the threshold of the palace. A new detachment of his personal guard stood ready to greet him. They were spotlessly garbed in their green lion’s head tunics, drawn up as if for review.
The words were spoken with a pleasant, comradely smile, and their tone made it clear that he valued us greatly. I felt almost embarrassed by the thoughts I had been having about him just a few minutes ago on the airship. We stood at attention, though, until he was gone and Inquisitor Drake with him. After that, the Undertaker said, ‘You’re not on duty any more. There’s no need to just stand there.’ Taking himself at his word he strode off into the palace. The bodyguard split off into small groups and I was left standing with Anton and Ivan.
‘How is the arm?’ Anton asked, slapping it roughly.
‘Better,’ I said, ‘or you would be spitting teeth right now.’
‘Where are you going to get ten extra men in a hurry?’ Anton said.
‘Is that how much help you think you’d need?’ I asked.
‘No. I meant you would need them to…’ His words trailed off as he realised what he was saying. He let out a long sigh, then stared off into the distance, back in the direction of the airship. Servitors were already start to unload huge trunks full of plunder and wargear.
People in the green tunics of palace servants lounged nearby. They watched us, just as they had watched Macharius depart. ‘How many of those guys are spies, do you think?’ Ivan asked. His voice sounded slightly better since his mechanical parts had been upgraded, but it could still not remotely be described as normal.
‘All of them,’ Anton said. ‘That’s what Lady Patricia says.’ Lady Patricia was his latest flame. A highborn lady from Emperor’s Glory.
‘She would know since she’s one herself,’ Ivan said.
‘No, she’s not,’ said Anton, a little too quickly.
‘Yeah, she would tell you if she was,’ Ivan said.
‘She’s not.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘She’s just interested in your good looks and personal charm.’
‘That’s right,’ said Anton.
‘Funny that,’ said Ivan. ‘Since you don’t have any.’
‘Look who’s talking,’ said Anton.
‘So before you became Macharius’s bodyguard, how many highborn ladies threw themselves at you?’ I asked.
‘I think we all know the answer to that,’ said Ivan.
‘I had a few,’ Anton said.
‘I don’t remember any,’ I said.
‘I don’t think you’re in any position to criticise me,’ said Anton. ‘I’m not the one who fell into bed with an Imperial assassin.’
‘Hush!’ I said. I always regretted the drunken time I had told the pair of them about my involvement with Anna, back on Karsk. ‘That’s the sort of fool statement that could get you killed. It could get all of us killed.’
I smiled as though I were making a joke and I kept my tone very light, but I was looking around to see who was listening. Nobody seemed to be, but, of course, that meant nothing. All of these people were adroit at appearing to notice nothing while noticing everything, and that was not taking into account the possibility of all manner of technological eavesdropping devices being focused on us. The very powerful found it useful to keep even such minor members of Macharius’s retinue as us under surveillance. After all, you never knew when someone like Anton would let something slip they shouldn’t. Someone like me too, I suppose.
Even Anton had the good grace to look abashed. He had learned something in our time with Macharius after all. He considered his words for a while and said, ‘Look, I know what the Lady Patricia sees in me.’
‘Nothing,’ Ivan suggested, a little cruelly under the circumstances.
Anton continued with an air of mock dignity, as though he had not been interrupted. ‘But you’ve got to remember, I am using her as much as she is using me. How often does a common soldier like me get to bed down with a highborn bedroom acrobat like her?’
‘She teaching you some new tricks, is she?’ I asked.
‘I am teaching her some, actually. Anyway, I don’t tell her anything she does not already know.’
‘How do you know what she knows?’ Ivan asked. He looked quite genuinely curious.
‘She tells me.’
‘And no woman has ever lied to you,’ I said.
‘You leave me to worry about that. You worry about your own women. I suspect you’re in much more trouble than me.’ He reached out and picked a goblet from a tray being carried by a passing servant girl, swigged a mouthful of the yellowish nectar in it and walked on. He did it as though it were his right, which it was. Everything was available to one of Macharius’s bodyguards within the palace, and I do mean everything. It was a life of staggering luxury compared to the one which we had grown up with on Belial. In this palace, even common soldiers like us could live like merchant princes on our home world. It was one of the advantages of being there.
Anton let out a sudden loud whoop that had everyone looking at him, including Ivan and me. He just grinned his idiot grin and said, ‘Did you ever think we would be living like this, lads?’
It was infectious. I found myself grinning back. ‘No,’ I said.
‘Best thing that ever happened to us was running into Macharius,’ Anton said. He believed that right till the end.
My chambers were in the same sector of the palace as Macharius had his. They resembled what I had always imagined luxury to look like, until I caught sight of the way the generals lived. It was not a barracks room. It was a suite with a living room and a massive four-poster bed in the centre. There was a naked woman in mine when I entered. I recognised her too. ‘Anna,’ I said. It was not her real name, of course. I never found out what that was. It was the first one I had known her by, though, all those years ago on Karsk. It is the name I still think of her by now.
‘Leo,’ she said. She was a good-looking woman, no doubt of that: compactly built, hair very short, large, deceptively trusting eyes. Her beauty could not be compared to the striking, surgically-enhanced glamour of the local noblewomen – she would barely have been noticed among them, which was the whole point, of course – but she was lovely. Her face was the same today as it had been when I first met her. It did not have to be, she could change it as she liked, but she knew I had a sentimental attachment to that look. Maybe she did too.
On the dresser beside her sat a large, custom-made pistol. I had no doubt there were half a dozen other weapons within easy reach. She was not a woman who ever entered a room without being prepared to fight her way out of it. ‘I saw the reports that said you were back in one piece.’
I very carefully unbuckled my belt and placed my holstered sidearm on top of the chest of drawers. Her reflexes were much faster than mine. She was much stronger too. Somewhere, sometime, the strange archeotech of the ancients had been used on her, transforming her into something other than human.