First and Only (37 page)

Gaunt screwed the foil up and threw it away. Bandaged and aching, he moved through the medical wing of the frigate
Navarre
, checking on his wounded… Domor, Dorden, Corbec, Larkin, Bragg, a hundred more…

As he passed Corbec’s cot, the grizzled colonel called him over in a hoarse, weak whisper.

‘Rawne told me you found the thing. Blew it up. How did you know?’

‘Corbec?’

‘How did you know what to do? Back on Pyrites, you told me the path would be hard. Even when we found out what we were looking for, you never said what you’d do when you found it. How did you decide?’

Gaunt smiled.

‘Because it was wrong. You don’t know what I saw down there, Colm. Men do insane things. Feth, if I’d been insane enough to try and harness what I found… if I’d succeeded… I could have made myself warmaster. Who knows, even emperor…’

‘Emperor Gaunt. Heh. Got a ring to it. Bit fething sacrilegious, though.’

Gaunt smiled. The feeling was unfamiliar. ‘The Vermilion secret of Epsilon was heretical and tainted by Chaos. Bad, whichever way you care to gloss it. But that’s not what really made me destroy it.’

Corbec hunkered up onto his elbows. ‘Kidding me? Why then?’

Ibram Gaunt put his head in his hands and sighed the sigh of someone released from a great burden. ‘Someone told me what to do, colonel. It was a long time ago…’

A MEMORY

F
OUR
H
YRKAN TROOPERS
were splitting fruit in the snowy courtyard, lit by a ring of braziers. They had found some barrels in an undercroft and opened them to discover the great round globe-fruit from a summer crop stored in spiced oil. They were joking and laughing as they set them on a mounting block and hacked them into segments with their bayonets. One had stolen a big gilt serving platter from the kitchens, and they were piling it with slices, ready to carry it through to the main hall where the body of men were carousing and drinking to their victory.

Night was stealing in across the shattered roofs of the Winter Palace, and stars were coming out, frosty points in the cold darkness.

The Boy, the cadet commissar, wandered out across the courtyard, taking in the stillness. Distant voices, laughing and singing, filtered across the stone space. Gaunt smiled. He could make out a barrack-room victory song, harmonised badly by forty or more Hyrkan voices. Someone had substituted his name in the lyric in place of the hero. It didn’t scan, but they sang it anyway, rousingly when it came to the bawdy parts.

Gaunt’s shoulder blades still throbbed from the countless congratulatory slaps he had taken in the last few hours. Maybe they would stop calling him ‘The Boy’ now.

He looked up, catching sight of the landing lights of a dozen troopships ferrying fresh occupation forces down from orbit, their bulks invisible against the darkness of the night. The landing lights reminded him of constellations. He had never been able to make sense of the stars. People drew figures in them: warriors, bulls, serpents, crowns; arbitrary shapes, it seemed to him, imperfect sense made of stellar positions.

Back on Manzipor, back home years ago, the cook Oric would sit him on his knee at nightfall and teach him the names of the star groups. Years ago. He really had been a boy then. Oric knew the names, drew the shapes, linked stars until they made a ram or a lion. Gaunt had never been able to see the shapes without the lines linking the stars.

Here, now, he knew the lines of lights represented drop-ships, but he couldn’t imagine their shapes. Just lights. Stars and lights, lights and stars, signifying meanings and purposes he couldn’t yet see.

Like the stars, the sweeping ship-lights occasionally went dim as they passed beyond the wreathes of smoke that were streaming, black against the black sky, from the parts of the Winter Palace that still smouldered.

Buttoning his storm-coat, Gaunt crossed the wide expanse of flagstones, his boots slipping in the slush. He passed a great stack of Secessionist helmets, piled in a trophy mound. There was a stink of stale sweat and defeat about them. Someone had painted a crude version of the Hyrkan regimental griffon on each and every one.

The men at the braziers looked up as his figure loomed out of the darkness.

‘It’s the Boy!’ one cried. Gaunt winced and smirked at the same time.

‘The Victor of Darendara!’ another said with a drunken glee that entirely lacked irony.

‘Come and join the feast, sir!’ the first said, wiping his juice-stained hands on the front of his tunic. ‘The men would like to raise a glass or two with you.’

‘Or three!’

‘Or five or ten or a hundred!’

Gaunt nodded his appreciation. ‘I’ll be in shortly. Open a cask for me.’

They jibed and cackled back, returning to their work. As Gaunt moved past, one of them turned and held out a dripping half-moon of fruit.

‘Take this at least! Freshest thing we’ve had in weeks!’

Gaunt took the segment, scooping the cluster of seeds and pith out of its core with a finger. In its smile of husky, oil-wet rind, the fruit was salmon-pink, ripe and heavy with water and juice. He bit into it as he strode away, waving his thanks to the men.

It was sweet. Cool. The fruit flesh disintegrated in his hungry mouth and flooded his throat with rich, sugary fluid. Juice dribbled down his chin. He laughed, like a boy again. It was the sweetest thing he’d tasted on Darendara.

No, not the sweetest.

The sweetest thing he had tasted here was his first triumph. His first victorious command. His first chance to serve the Emperor and the Imperium and the service he had been raised to obey and love.

In a lit doorway ahead, a figure appeared. Gaunt recognised the bulky silhouette immediately. He fumbled with the fruit segment, about to salute.

‘At ease, Ibram,’ Oktar said. ‘Carry on munching. That stuff looks good. Might just have to get myself a piece too.

‘Walk with me.’

Gnawing the sweet flesh back to the rind, Gaunt fell in beside Oktar. They passed the men at the brazier again, and Oktar caught a whole fruit as it was tossed to him, splitting it open with his huge thumbs. The pair walked on wordlessly towards the Palace chapel grounds, through a herb-scented garden cast in blue darkness. Both ate, slobbering and spitting pips. Oktar handed a portion of his fruit to Gaunt and they finished it off.

Standing under the stained glass oriel of the chapel, they cast the rinds aside and stood for a long while, swallowing and licking juice from their dripping fingers.

‘Tastes good,’ Oktar said at last.

‘Will it always taste this fine?’ Gaunt asked.

‘Always, I promise you. Triumph is the endgame we all chase and desire. When you get it, hang on to it and relish every second.’ Oktar wiped his chin, his face a shadow in the gloom.

‘But remember this, Ibram. It’s not always as obvious as it seems. Winning is everything, but the trick is to know where the winning really is. Hell, killing the enemy is the job of the regular trooper. The task of a commissar is more subtle.’

‘Finding how to win?’

‘Or what to win. Or what kind of win will really count in the long term. You have to use everything you have, every insight, every angle. Never, ever be a slave to simple tactical directives. The officer cadre are about as sharp as an ork’s arse sometimes. We’re political animals, Ibram. Through us, if we do our job properly, the black and white of war is tempered. We are the interpreters of combat, the translators. We give meaning to war, subtlety, purpose even. Killing is the most abhorrent, mindless profession known to man. Our role is to fashion the killing machine of the human species into a positive force. For the Emperor’s sake. For the sake of our own consciences.’

They paused in reflection for a while. Oktar lit one of his luxuriously fat cigars and kissed big white smoke rings up into the night breeze.

‘Before I forget,’ he suddenly added, ‘there is one last task I have for you before you retire. Retire! What am I saying? Before you join the men in the hall and drink yourself stupid!’

Gaunt laughed.

‘There is an interrogation. Inquisitor Defay has arrived to question the captives. You know the usual witch-hunting post mortem High Command insists on. But he’s a sound man, known him for years. I spoke to him just now and apparently he wants your help.’

‘Me?’

‘Specifically you. Asked for you by name. One of his prisoners refuses to speak to anyone else.’

Gaunt blinked. He was confused, but he also knew who the Commissar-General was talking about.

‘Cut along to see him before you go raising hell with the boys. Okay?’

Gaunt nodded.

Oktar smacked him on the arm. ‘You did well today, Ibram. Your father would be proud.’

‘I know he is, sir.’

Oktar may have smiled, but it was impossible to tell in the darkness of the chapel garden.

Gaunt turned to go.

‘One thing, sir,’ he said, turning back.

‘Ask it, Gaunt.’

‘Could you try and encourage the men to stop referring to me as “The Boy”?’

Gaunt left Oktar laughing raucously in the darkness.

G
AUNT
’
S HANDS WERE
sticky with drying juice. He strode down a long, lamp-lit hallway, straightening his coat and setting his cadet’s cap squarely on his head.

Under an archway ahead, Hyrkans in full battledress stood guard, weapons hanging loosely from shoulder slings. There were others, too: robed, hooded beings skulking in candle-shadows, muttering, exchanging data-slates and sealed testimony recordings.

Incense hung in the air. Somewhere, someone was whimpering.

Major Tanhause, supervising the Hyrkan presence, waved him through with a wink and directed him down to the left.

There was a boy in the passage to the left, standing outside a closed door. No older than me, mused Gaunt as he approached. The boy looked up. He was pale and thin, taller than Gaunt, wearing long russet robes, and his eyes were fierce. Lank black hair flopped down one side of his pale face.

‘You can’t come in here,’ he said sullenly.

‘I’m Gaunt. Cadet-Commissar Gaunt,’

The lad frowned. He turned, knocked at the door and then opened it slightly as a voice answered. There was an exchange Gaunt could not hear before a large figure emerged from the room, closing the door behind him.

‘That will be all for now, Gravier,’ the figure told the boy, who retreated into the shadows. The figure was tall and powerful, bigger even than Oktar. He wore intricate armour draped with a long purple cloak. His face was totally hidden behind a blank cloth hood that terrified Gaunt. Bright eyes glared at him through the hood’s eye slits for a moment, appraising him. Then the man peeled the hood off.

His face was handsome and aquiline. Gaunt was surprised to find compassion there, pain, fatigue, understanding. The face was cold white, the flesh pale, but somehow there was a warmth and a light.

‘I am Defay,’ the inquisitor said in a low, resonating voice. ‘You are Cadet Gaunt, I presume.’

‘Yes, sir. What would you have me do?’

Defay approached the cadet and placed a hand on his shoulder, turning him before he spoke. ‘A girl. You know her.’

It was not a question.

‘I know the girl. I… saw her.’

‘She is the key, Gaunt. In her mind lie the secrets of whatever turned this world to disorder. It’s tiresome, I know, but my task is to unlock such secrets.’

‘We all serve the Emperor, my lord.’

‘We certainly do, Gaunt. Now look. She says she knows you. A nonsense, I’m sure. But she says you are the only one she will answer to. Gaunt, I’ve performed my ministry long enough to recognise an opening. I could… extricate the secrets I seek in any number of ways, but the most painless – to me and her both – would be to use you. Are you up to it?’

Gaunt looked round at Defay. His stern yet avuncular manner reminded him of someone. Oktar – no, Uncle Dercius.

‘What do you want me to do?’

‘Go in there and talk to her. Nothing more. There are no wires to record you, no vista-grams to watch you. I just want you to talk to her. If she says what she wants to say to you, it may provide an opening I can use.’

G
AUNT ENTERED THE
room and the door shut behind him. The small chamber was bare except for a table with a stool on either side. The girl sat on one. A sodium lamp fluttered on the wall.

Gaunt sat down on the other stool, facing her.

Her eyes were as black as her hair. Her dress was as white as her skin. She was beautiful.

‘Ibram! At last! There are so many things I need to tell you!’ Her voice was soft yet firm, her High Gothic perfect. Gaunt backed away from her direct stare.

She leaned across the table urgently, gazing into his eyes.

‘Don’t be afraid, Ibram Gaunt.’

‘I’m not.’

‘Oh, you are. I don’t have to be a mind reader to see that. Though, of course, I am a mind reader.’

Gaunt breathed deeply. ‘Then tell me what I want to know.’

‘Clever, clever,’ she chuckled, sitting back.

Gaunt leaned forward, insistent. ‘Look, I don’t want to be here either. Let’s get this over with. You’re a psyker – astound me with your visions or shut the hell up. I have other things I would rather be doing.’

‘Drinking with your men. Fruit.’

‘What?’

‘You crave more of the sweet fruit. You long for it. Sweet, juicy fruit…’

Gaunt shuddered. ‘How did you know?’

She grinned impishly. ‘The juice is all down your chin and the front of your coat.’

Gaunt couldn’t hide his smile. ‘Now who’s being clever? That was no psyker trick. That was observation.’

‘But true enough, wasn’t it? Is there a whole lot of difference?’

Gaunt nodded. ‘Yes… yes there is. What you said to me earlier. It made no sense, but it had nothing to do with the stains on my coat either. Why did you ask for me?’

She sighed, lowering her head. There was a long pause.

The voice that finally replied to him wasn’t hers any more. It was a scratchy, wispy thing that made him start backwards. By the Emperor, but it was suddenly so cold in here!

He saw his own breath steam and realised it wasn’t his imagination.

The whisper-dry voice said: ‘I don’t want to see things, Ibram, but still I do. In my head. Sometimes wonderful things. Sometimes awful things. I see what people show me. Minds are like books.’

Gaunt stammered, sliding back on his seat. ‘I… I… like books.’