Lesp had got halfway through the name ‘Costin’, a name that particularly troubled Gaunt. Before the raid, Trooper Costin, a chronically unreliable soldier, had been found guilty of death-benefit fraud through the Munitorum’s viduity allowance. It had seemed an especially repellant crime to Gaunt. Someone had made large amounts of money by exploiting the regiment’s dead and fallen. Costin had been killed before his associates in the fraud ring could be identified.
‘I’m honouring my dead,’ Meryn said quietly.
Gaunt nodded. The ‘Book o’ Death’ was a common and popular tattoo among the Tanith officer class, so popular it had been adopted by several Verghastites too. Out of respect, a field officer had the names of men who had died under his command inked onto his skin.
Gaunt had considered it more than once. He wanted to show respect for Tanith tradition, and he felt that certain names – Corbec, Caffran and Bragg, for example – should never be far from him. He’d felt it even more for Dorden.
But it was not seemly for a commissar to break uniform code, he kept telling himself.
‘It seemed only right, sir,’ Meryn said.
It did. It really did. Except it didn’t for a snake like Meryn, a man who had previously displayed absolutely zero company sentiment or sympathy for his troops. It didn’t sit comfortably with Gaunt. Why now? Had Meryn really woken up to something after the knock his company had taken at the Reach? Or was this compensation? Was he trying to look like the grieving commander?
Was he trying to distance himself from a crime by having the name of the culprit inked on his back out of ‘respect’? Costin had been killed before his associates in the fraud ring could be identified…
A common rule of law was that you didn’t mess with or question the feelings of an officer grieving for his men. Gaunt wanted to say something, but genuine pity and sympathy checked him. If this was Meryn being odiously clever, then it was very, very clever.
And Meryn was very, very clever.
‘Doctor Curth?’ Gaunt asked Lesp. Lesp pointed to the second office.
Gaunt went in and closed the door behind him. Ana Curth was sitting at Dorden’s desk, reviewing med files. She had grown a little thinner. There was a tension in her. Gaunt could smell alcohol that he hoped was medicinal.
‘Can I help you, Ibram?’ she asked.
‘Can I help you?’
She shrugged. She seemed tired. Gaunt had heard from various private sources that she had taken the loss hard, and had been working too much and then drinking in order to sleep. The same sources said that Blenner had been looking after her.
Such selflessness hardly seemed likely from Vaynom Blenner.
Gaunt felt a sting of jealousy, but he could hardly complain. His own nights were filled with another woman, and Ana knew it. If there had ever been any sense of them waiting for each other, Gaunt himself had crushed it.
He’d always held back from Ana Curth, partly for reasons of regulation and decorum, and partly because he believed that he wasn’t really the sort of man any decent woman would need or want.
‘I keep coming in here,’ Curth said, gesturing to the desk and the office. ‘You know what? Each time, he’s still dead.’
‘Ana…’
She waved him off.
‘Ignore me. I just can’t get used to it.’
‘Do you need–’
‘I’m fine, Gaunt.’
‘Ana–’
‘Fine. Fine. All right?’
He knew that tone, that firmness, that ‘don’t push it’ attitude. He’d known it from their first meeting at Vervunhive.
‘What do you think of Meryn’s ink?’ he asked briskly.
‘Meryn’s a grown-up,’ she said.
‘I just wondered,’ Gaunt began.
‘Wondered what?’
‘If he was compensating in some way?’
‘For his dead men?’ She had returned to her files, half listening.
‘All right,’ Gaunt said, ‘compensating was the wrong word. Deflecting.’
She looked at him.
‘Deflecting what? With what?’
‘Guilt, with a notion of honour.’
‘What now?’
‘Costin, and the viduity scam. I think Meryn’s complicit. Costin was not smart. He needed clever co-conspirators. Conveniently, Costin died before he could turn them over. And now Meryn’s in mourning and untouchable.’
‘So, what?’ Curth asked. ‘Meryn killed Costin before he could roll?’
‘No, of course not–’
‘You’re a piece of fething work, you really are!’ she spat out, tossing the file in her hand aside so forcefully it knocked a glass over.
‘No,’ he replied. ‘I’m a commissar. I know what men are capable of.’
She got up and took off her smock. Then she turned away from him and pulled her crew-issue grey tee shirt up above her shoulders. Her back was slender, beautiful, the line of the spine–
There was a dressing just below her left shoulder blade. With the fingers of her right hand, she ripped it off.
Dorden.
One word, still raw and seeping blood from the needles.
‘Silly of me,’ she said. ‘Sentimental. Against uniform code? I’m sure. Fething did it anyway.’
‘Ana–’
She pulled her shirt down again, turned and sat back down.
‘Forget it,’ she said.
‘The Book o’ Death,’ he said. ‘You know how many times I’ve thought about following Tanith tradition and doing the same? Getting Lesp and his needles at my skin?’
She looked at him.
‘What’s stopping you? No, I can guess. Uniform code. Unseemly for a commissar to decorate his skin.’
‘There’s that. As a commissar, I take both uniform code and setting an example very seriously, funnily enough. But that’s not the real reason.’
‘What is?’
‘The available area of my flesh.’
‘What?’
‘Dorden. Corbec. MkVenner. Bragg. Caffran. Colonel Wilder. Kamori. Adare. Soric. Baffels. Blane–’
‘All right…’
‘Muril. Rilke. Raess. Doyl. Baru. Lorgris. Mkendrick. Suth. Preed. Feygor–’
‘Gaunt…’
‘Gutes. Cole. Roskil. Vamberfeld. Loglas. Merrt–’
He stopped.
‘I just don’t have enough skin,’ he said.
‘You just don’t have enough heart,’ she replied.
‘All right,’ he said, but he wasn’t all right at all.
‘I came down to tell you that we might have trouble coming,’ he said. ‘A drive issue. Possible boarding. Be ready.’
‘I’m always ready,’ she said, blowing her nose loudly.
He nodded, and turned to leave.
Gaunt walked out through the first office area. Meryn was getting his back swabbed by Lesp. The smell of clean alcohol again.
‘I’m just on my way now, sir,’ Meryn said.
‘Stay, Flyn,’ Gaunt said as he walked past. ‘Get the names done properly. All of them. All of the Ghosts. I miss them too.’
‘Yes, sir,’ said Meryn.
A long walk took Gaunt back to his stateroom. Maddalena Darebeloved was waiting for him.
Since joining the regiment, Maddalena had spent some portion of her time in Gaunt’s cabin suite and the rest of it protecting Felyx Meritous Chass, the son Gaunt hadn’t known he had. Felyx was integrating into the Tanith Regiment under the watch of Dalin Criid. Felyx’s mother, Merity Chass of the Verghast House Chass, had insisted that he follow his father into war and learn the trade and value of combat from someone who excelled at it.