Mallet withdrew the knife, picked up the discarded las, and returned to his position and his job. Shuey looked from Mallet to the priest, and then to Bedlo for his reaction. Bedlo straightened his jacket and regained a little of his dignity.
‘The information should’ve come through by now,’ he said. ‘Where’s the boy?’
‘He’ll come to me when it’s time,’ said Revere. ‘The agri-cell is strong and able, but they need us. They’ll give you what you want. They’ll share the power, but you’ll have to prove yourselves. There will be more recruits, and more weapons, you can count on that.’
Mallet looked up from adjusting the sights on the las.
‘And more dying,’ he said.
‘If the legends are true,’ said Revere, ‘if they can be proved, the Emperor will save Reredos, and all the dying will be done by the foe.’
Perdu stood at the narrow cross-street beneath the overhang of a disused manufactory, a small, domestic place for making clothes, and looked across at a hole-in-the-wall drinking place run by one of the many widows trying to scrape a living at the arse-end of the hive. A blue light shone for a moment at the basement window, barely visible at ground level but for the soft sheen it gave to the wet walkway. This was the address he’d been given for Ayatani Revere, but he didn’t feel comfortable. He wasn’t sure.
Perdu felt like he’d been dodging excubitors and glyfs far more than usual, and wondered whether Logier was right, whether he was being followed. He took a deep breath and tried to find the courage to cross the street to his destination.
While he was bracing himself, a shutter above Perdu opened a crack and then closed, and moments later someone took hold of the crook of his arm, and began to steer him in the direction he’d been facing.
Perdu didn’t look at his diminutive companion, but knew that it must be a woman or perhaps a boy. He didn’t like the thought of either; he was doing this to save a boy. He rubbed the fingers of his left glove against the palm to make sure that the chips were still there. They were.
Only a couple of metres away from the door to the hovel, Perdu’s companion feigned a fall and thrust a leg out under the ayatani’s feet, sending him crashing to the damp pavement.
Perdu tensed to spring back to his feet and defend himself.
‘Stay down,’ whispered his companion, leaning over him and faking a quick body-search. Perdu shoved his left hand behind his back, and looked into the face of a boy of about fourteen. The kid kicked him hard, once in the gut, and shrieked before making a dash for it.
A little more light spread onto the pavement from behind Perdu as the low door to the hole-in-the-wall opened, and a tall, solid man with a serious expression stepped to his aid. Perdu went along with the conceit, allowing himself to be helped, when no help was needed, leaning on the larger, older man as they both ducked into the drinking-hole. This had to be his contact.
‘You have the information?’ asked Revere as he leaned over Perdu, ostensibly to check his wounds, although there was no one in the room to see them other than the widow.
‘Revere?’ asked Perdu. ‘Aya–’
‘Emperor save us, man,’ said Revere, glaring intently at the younger priest. ‘No names here, and no titles, either.’
Perdu looked into Revere’s eyes for a moment or two, not sure what he was reading there, but fearful nonetheless. Slowly, still looking at the ayatani, he removed his gloves and placed them on a stool close to a small open fire. He put out his hands to feel the warmth of the yellow flames.
‘I’ll warm myself a little,’ said Perdu, ‘and be on my way. There’s no harm done.’
He didn’t look at Revere again, and, after a few minutes, he gathered himself together and left the room as he had found it, except that his gloves still sat on the stool. Revere scooped them up and pocketed them. He rolled an oilcloth rug away from the floor and reached for the handle to the cellar door, set in the planks beneath.
‘The priest?’ Ozias asked the barmaid, his beaker to his lips.
‘Two of ’em,’ said the barmaid.
Ozias had got his confirmation that the chips had finally reached their destination. He put his beaker down on the counter for the widow to clear away, and left.
Revere didn’t look at the chips, he simply gave them to Bedlo, pressing them firmly into his hand.
‘Do what you must, with the blessings of the Emperor,’ said the ayatani.
‘The Emperor protects,’ said Bedlo, looking the priest in the eye.
He waited until the old man had blessed them all and said a prayer over their weapons before leaving them to their plans. Then, leaving Mallet to strip down the lasrifles and autopistol while the others kept watch, Bedlo examined the ceramite chips. He had to take a glass to them, but he was soon able to make out the markings, compass directions inscribed on the obverse of the chips and digits denoting degrees and minutes on the reverse. Working methodically around the compass points from north, Bedlo lined up the chips in order, and then turned them over and read the directions.
He turned to Mallet and said, ‘Give me that map. This can’t be one location.’ Mallet took a wand from his belt, a little longer than a pencil, cylindrical, about half a centimetre in diameter. There was no apparent join in the rod, but Mallet quickly had it in two pieces and was soon extracting something from inside. He shook out a piece of silk about forty-five centimetres square, covered in a morass of fine lines and tiny handwritten labels, all squared off on a grid with an arrow pointing north and coordinates running along two sides.
The map was a rare resource, hand-drawn and redrawn at every opportunity over several years by a former cell-mate, now dead. Mallet blew on the floor between him and Bedlo, throwing up a small cloud of pale dust, and laid the map down, facing his boss.
Bedlo cast his eye methodically over the map, bringing a finger to rest at their current position. He took the empty rod in his other hand until he had rechecked the coordinates, and then tapped the map in two other places, forming an irregular triangle of three points on the map. Then he tapped the first place again, pointing at their initial destination.
‘It’s less than a kilometre from here,’ said Shuey, looking over Mallet’s shoulder. Mallet snatched up the map and began to fold and roll it up again.
‘That must be the site of the cache,’ said Bedlo. ‘The second coordinates are something else.’
‘Nothin’s for nothin’,’ said Mallet. Bedlo looked up and eyed him, suspiciously.
‘The second set of coordinates signify the site of a raid,’ said Bedlo. ‘They want us to do a job, earn our stripes.’
‘And?’ asked Shuey.
Bedlo stretched his hand out at arm’s length in Mallet’s direction.
‘Gimme that,’ he said.
Mallet tossed Bedlo the ancient lasrifle that still didn’t sound right when he fired it. Bedlo weighed it in his hands for a moment. Then he wrapped both his fists around the business end of the barrel, and pulled his arms back and his shoulders around. When he swung, he swung hard, levelling the butt of the rifle squarely at the lumpy, rockcrete cellar wall. The weapon made exactly the sort of krak when it exploded against the wall that it should have been making when he pulled the trigger. He’d hit the wall so hard with the las that the remnant of barrel in his hand was badly bent and virtually unrecognisable. Bedlo dropped it on the floor, but Mallet was already sorting through the debris for salvage.