David Gunn - Death's head

All this I discover in the time it takes the Aux to walk from the Trade Hall to a residential district overlooking the river. I’ve ditched my dreads and removed the silver body hose, losing both once Colonel Nuevo’s troops begin pouring through the recently opened gates.

“How about that one, sir?” asks Franc, indicating a huge house on the shady side of a square.

“Or that?” Shil says, pointing to something even grander.

“Too flash,” I tell Shil. “We’d lose it to the colonel. We’ll take the first.”

It’s still large, faced with sheets of solidified foam cut to look like sandstone. The high windows that stare at us are barred and reinforced with toughened glass, which suggests Ilseville isn’t quite the haven of tranquillity the Enlightened have been suggesting. As I suspect, the front door is cored with mesh and its lock is semi-smart.

“Hello,” says my gun.

And then it explains, using very simple language, exactly what is going to happen to the lock if it doesn’t cooperate. Three seconds later, five bolts click back and the door begins to open as we watch. A maid in full uniform is waiting on the other side.

“Welcome,” she says.

If she’s shocked to be greeted with a faceful of drawn weapons she does a good job of keeping it hidden. The maid is young, in her early twenties probably, and bright enough to know she stands a better chance of getting through this alive if she makes herself visible and useful rather than hiding behind a locked door to be hunted down.

“Whose house?”

“Lord Filipacchi, of Filipacchi Trading.”

The name means nothing to me.

“It’s mine now,” I say. “Mine, and theirs…Understand?”

She does.

Her name is Maria, and she walks me around the house as if I really am the new owner. There are five floors, not including an attic, which makes this the tallest house I’ve ever seen. A turret on the top floor overlooks the city, and I claim this for my own. The room is filthy and full of old furniture.

“Are there any other servants?”

Maria shakes her head.

“Hire some,” I tell her. “Have them prepare this room.”

Neen selects Lord Filipacchi’s own bedroom, complete with silk hangings and a huge bed that labors under the weight of a vast fur. From the glances he’s been giving Maria, it’s obvious who he wants to crawl under the fur with him.

Shil and Franc decide to share a much smaller room on the floor below. As for Haze, he drags a mattress into a ground-floor office stacked with computers and hits the larder and kitchens for all the carbohydrate he can find. When I check, he’s flicking his fingers across a slab, pulling up real-time pictures of the city.

“How did you do that?”

He jerks his thumb toward the ceiling. “HiSats, sir,” he says, “self-focusing. They’ll stay in orbit until the U/Free tell them to come down or their packs run out of fuel. Thought I might as well take a look.”

THE KNOCK ON our door comes ten minutes later. It’s heavy, someone hammering their fist against solid wood. We’re meant to be impressed, so I let them wait.

“Soldiers,” says Maria. She’s looking nervous.

“How do you know?”

“Lenz,” she says.

So Haze flicks his fingers over the slab, replacing his satellite pictures with a shot of a Death’s Head officer and two corporals.

“Sir.”

He’s accessed the house system and cut to tight focus so I can see the flaring nostrils of the smartly dressed lieutenant. Needless it say, it’s Miles Uffingham, the idiot who collected me from the tent when Colonel Nuevo wanted someone to talk to his ferox.

“Let them in,” I tell Maria. “Say we’ll be down in a moment.”

Haze gets Neen, and I drag Shil and Franc out of their room. We’re a mess, uniforms torn and faces filthy.

“Arm yourselves,” I tell them.

“You don’t think-”

“Obviously not,” I say. “But we should look like we mean business.”

“We do, sir,” says Neen.

“Ahh…Tveskoeg. Here you are.”

I’m meant to remember Uffingham’s name, return the compliment. I can’t be bothered. There are few staff officers who couldn’t be improved by a hollow-point implant to the back of their neck, and Miles Uffingham isn’t one of them.

“The colonel wants to see you.”

“Okay…”

“You might want to change.”

“Into what?”

Turning on his heels seems to be a habit with this man. So we follow the lieutenant out of our own front door and into the square in silence, and I’m glad to see my group are scanning the roofline, behaving like proper soldiers. The man we’re following just marches straight ahead as if snipers don’t exist.

“Visitors for the colonel.”

The guards let their eyes drift across us. At least two of them are doing their best not to grin.

“You hear me?”

“Yes, sir.” Their immaculately dressed sergeant snaps to attention, and I wonder if Uffingham has any idea how much contempt is in that salute. As we follow him through the door Colonel Nuevo’s staff stop talking.

Maybe it’s the girls, still in their head scarves and both clutching enemy pulse rifles, or maybe it’s the bloodstains down Neen’s uniform. Or maybe it’s just me, with my missing sleeve and prosthetic arm.

“In here…”

The room to which we’re shown is huge and hung with pictures so old the paint’s cracked. Since the Enlightened don’t believe in pictures, this house has to belong to someone important enough to be left alone. And it has that pragmatic mix of old and new, wooden furniture and intelligent doors, china plates and drexie boxes to pull food out of nothing.

“Expensive,” says the gun when I wake it from sleep mode. “Tasteful, quietly understated, obviously the home of a connoisseur…”

You can tell it hates the place.

“Just scan the bloody room.”

It does, and tells me we’re being targeted by 205 different weapons, which it considers overkill. I’m saved from arguing by the entrance of an orderly.

“The colonel will see you.”

“Keep quiet,” I tell the others. “Answer only if asked a direct question, don’t stare at anyone, and let me do the talking. Understand?”

“Sven.”

My salute is smart enough to make Colonel Nuevo smile.

“You look like shit.”

“Yes, sir.”

A dozen officers stand near his desk, almost half of them militia officers or legion; some don’t even look like regulars at all. It makes me wonder what they’re doing here.

“You want to tell me what’s in your hair?”

It takes me a moment to remember. “Dead Enlightened,” I say. “Used his braids to disguise myself, haven’t had time to wash him off.” This is not strictly true. It simply hadn’t occurred to me.

“You scalped an Enlightened?”

“Yes, sir…though I killed him first.”

“Glad to hear it.” The colonel is smiling. “And his scalp was enough to disguise you?”

“Used one of his tubes as well. Across my chest and into my hip.”

“Tricky to glue?”

“No need, sir. I cut holes.”

“In yourself?”

I nod, lift my shirt so he can see the scar.

“And what were your auxiliaries doing?”

“Killing Uplift guards, sir. Plus a NewlyMade and a two-braid. We saved the Uplifted until last.”

“You killed the Uplifted?”

“Yes, sir.” I’m nervous for the first time since entering this room. Some very strange emotions are messing with the colonel’s face.

“How?”

“I shot it.”

Colonel Nuevo shuts his eyes.

“It was dying, sir. Already senile. Probably long beyond questioning. Any routines it ran were from habit. The equivalent of remembering to breathe.” The voice isn’t mine and it certainly isn’t anyone who is meant to be speaking. Haze has gone bright red, as if he’s just remembered what I said about silence.