Spinoza closed the link and sank back against an ouslite column. She shackled the crozius again and waited for her pulse rate to stabilise.
The multitudes paid her no attention. No doubt most were drugged, either by the priests handing out sacred devotion-amplifiers or through the food they scavenged from the resident gutter-scrapers. All they thought of was the prospect of making it to the Palace in time, and all they saw were lurid dream-visions of the beloved primarch swimming in front of their addled eyes. There must have been a thousand of them there, packed tightly together like herd groxes. Statistically, the chances were that none of them would make it. They were easy pickings for the predators of the underhives, or the rampant diseases of the subterranean levels would overwhelm their off-world constitutions, or they would never find the path that led them through the warrens in time.
She tried not to scorn them. Their faith was direct, untroubled by nuance. Most of them knew what the odds were, on some level. They still came, and they still strived. Better to die in purity than live in corruption, as the old dictum went.
Overhead, the close air stirred. The boom of atmospheric thrusters began to compete with the drone of the crowds, and soon the cloaks and cowls of the supplicants were rippling and flapping. The Shade emerged from the north end of the huge hall, dipping low to avoid the suspensor-lumens. Spinoza watched it come, marvelling at how little attention even the hovering transporter got from the chanting crowds.
‘Now I have you, lord,’ came Hegain’s voice over the comm, just as the Shade angled for the descent, its engines howling and its landing-lights whirling. ‘I will touch down here, just here, if you will it. Doors prepped for opening, watch the descending hatch-cover, if you forgive me for saying it. In all this, I thank Him that you are preserved, by His will. Here I come, steady, steady. ’
Spinoza couldn’t help the smile — it crept like a thief across her face as the sergeant found new irrelevances to list.
‘Your timing is exemplary,’ she said. For all that, though, she had failed, and felt it keenly. Crowl would not be happy. ‘Summon the others. We will at least take the corpse, if nothing else. Then home.’
The body taken from Gulagh’s citadel lay on the slab, cold as ice, its flesh cut open to the bone, and Crowl looked down at it. Gorgias hung unsteadily over the cadaver’s forehead, gazing intently at some detail with its single red eye before clicking away indeterminately.
A third figure busied himself with the scalpels and the flesh-pins — a skeletal figure, his bones protruding even under a thick covering of velvet drapery. Half-moon spectacles hung from the tip of a long nose, an outsize protuberance in an otherwise drawn face. His eyes were pink, his fingers long and augmented with iron surgeon-nails. As he worked, his breath came in contented whispers.
Only at the end of a long examination did his head rise atop the wrinkled stalk of a neck.
‘So then,’ said Crowl, who during the process had remained silent and contemplative, his hands clasped before him. ‘Your verdict.’
Courvain’s chirurgeon-philosophical rubbed his chin with those fingers. ‘Killed by a single shot to the torso, aimed from behind,’ he said, his voice like a scraped hiss of torn flesh. ‘Consistent with a single release from an Inquisition-issue augmented lasweapon, hellgun-type. See the burn-marks here? A standard beam is less focused, more diffuse. I can see why Gulagh thought it was one of yours.’ He looked up. ‘You are sure it was not?’
‘How long have you known me, Erunion? This is not one of my kills.’
‘Then there is the problem. Gulagh has made a mistake, and he will pay for it.’
‘Perhaps, though he’s already submitted his records to me.’ Crowl reached for a thick tarpaulin and dragged it over the corpse’s ravaged chest, leaving the face uncovered. ‘He assures me this came in with our consignment. I’ll maintain the pressure, but in truth I believe him. He’s worked with us for years, and this is the first anomaly.’
‘Then maybe,’ said Erunion, cocking his chicken-like head strangely, ‘it was a mistake. An honest mistake.’
Crowl looked hard at the dead man’s face. ‘There are as many honest mistakes on Terra as there are honest men. This one wasn’t living in Malliax. Too healthy. He’s been eating regularly, if not well. His complexion’s grey, not white. I’d judge a mid-spire occupant, lower scribe level.’
‘Agreed. Where does Gulagh’s jurisdiction run to?’
‘Six grid-zones.’
‘That is a lot of hab-units.’
Crowl bent lower, rolling the head to one side and taking a good look at the cheek. ‘Anything that might identify him?’
‘Not much.’ Erunion pushed his spectacles further up his nose, and the iron frames glinted in the low light. ‘Note the depressions around the eye sockets. He’s been using a picter-funnel to concentrate attention on a readout. His muscles are in a minor atrophied state, so he does not engage in manual labour. He shows precipitate signs of scurvy, sump fever and rotskin — which of them does not? — and his palms are indented from the use of cluster comm-link columns.’
‘No surface markings, subdermal identifiers?’
‘Nothing, which is unusual in itself. If you are right, and he has been inserted into a mortuary batch to hide his origin, then whoever did this would have been able to scrub the more obvious signals.’
Crowl nodded. ‘Dangerous, though. Gulagh may yet face the trials for it.’ Erunion giggled, an effeminate sound that made the wattles on his exposed neck wobble. ‘Then he will be flaying his own menials to discover the truth.’ The chirurgeon shuffled towards the end of the slab. ‘But are we in danger of making something more of this than is warranted? Supposition: someone has killed a person of little importance, and wishes to keep the business quiet. The killer arranges for the corpse to appear within a routine morgue-dispatch, one that comes under your seal and is marked for incineration. Further supposition: the only individuals capable of arranging this are also members of an equivalent ordo, inquisitor-rank. No one else would have access to the requisite seals, and certainly no one else would be stupid enough to fake them. Final supposition: your corpses will be destroyed soon, and if you had not paid a visit to Gulagh to oversee your delivery, which I have always said is a strange practice and beneath your dignity, none of this would have been known or cared about, for no other individual, not even of high rank, would have dared or been able to scrutinise the detritus of an Inquisition-ordained episode. Conclusion: this is the product of one of your colleagues’ private disputes, an individual with access to Gulagh’s services, and no profit will come of pursuing it further.’
‘I agree with the suppositions,’ Crowl said, tilting the corpse’s head to one side. ‘I don’t agree with the conclusion.’
‘No, I did not think that you would.’
‘My colleagues’ games are of no interest to me,’ Crowl said, still searching, still probing. ‘But this is my domain here, my realm, and I don’t take kindly to interference in it.’
Gorgias swept in lower, its residual spine-tail clattering across the slab’s edge. ‘Subdermis auspex contra facies,’ it chirped. ‘Iterum, now-now.’
Erunion fixed the skull with a cold look. ‘You think I did not scan already?’
Gorgias’ eye flared up. ‘Stupidus! Again, do it.’
Erunion, incensed, made ready to swat the skull away with an electrostave, but Crowl raised a calming hand between them. ‘What equipment did you use?’
‘Standard spectrum micro-augur.’
Crowl gestured for Gorgias to hover down, and the skull lurched back to its holding position over the corpse’s forehead. ‘If your suppositions are correct,’ he said to Erunion, ‘then this subject has been prepared for more than a cursory inspection. Perhaps there was a requirement for haste, though. Perhaps they missed something. Indulge me, chirurgeon — do what the skull recommends.’