FORTY-FOUR

They were waiting for him when he returned to Regara’s quarters. Culcis had needed to make a stop on the way to enlist Greiss to guard the chapel. He didn’t tell him why but gave him strict orders not to enter. No one but he or Shiller was to be granted admittance. Greiss looked confused but behaved like a good sergeant and went to rustle up some help before he headed to the chapel.

The memory of it played through Culcis’ mind as he saw Aramis sitting in a chair and conversing with the major, Fenk leaning against the wall, half lost in shadow like a damn wraith. Culcis almost didn’t see him. If Regara thought anything about Fenk’s presence and his unlooked-for involvement, he didn’t show it.

‘Armand…’ the major began, an edge of concern in his voice, ‘you’re late, though your accomplice vouched for you,’ he added mildly, glancing towards Fenk.

Something in Culcis’ face must have betrayed him because Regara’s demeanour changed as soon as he saw it. Aramis saw it too.

‘What is it? What’s happened?’ she asked.

Regara said nothing, but his expression grew taut like a stretched mask. He barely moved.

‘There is a problem,’ said Culcis.

‘I sincerely hope we aren’t about to get arrested by the Prefectus,’ said Fenk, who had stopped leaning against the wall to pay attention.

Culcis met Regara’s hard stare and felt the weight of it like a Pardus tank. ‘It is a delicate matter.’

‘These are all delicate matters, lieutenant,’ snapped Aramis, losing patience. ‘Out with it.’

Regara spoke up, uttering the question on everyone’s mind but that no one had the courage to ask until that moment. ‘Where is Lieutenant Colonel Barbastian?’

Culcis fought the urge to lower his gaze. He owed Regara that at least.

‘I am sincerely sorry, sir… Lieutenant Colonel Barbastian is dead.’

Stunned silence filled the room, made heavier by the leaden privacy field.

Aramis cursed under her breath. She stood and started to pace. Fenk did and said nothing, a statue in the half-darkness.

Regara’s jaw stiffened, his face having turned to stone and impossible to read. ‘How did he die?’

‘I only found his body,’ Culcis explained. ‘His throat had been slit.’ A nerve trembled in Regara’s cheek but still he didn’t react. ‘It appeared…’ Culcis swallowed back the dryness in his throat. ‘It looked like suicide, sir.’

‘Filip Barbastian would never kill himself,’ Regara declared matter-of-factly, as if he were stating that ice was cold.

‘Shiller has gone to fetch the Prefectus.’

Aramis stopped pacing at that, her face a barely contained grimace of anger. ‘How is Shiller involved?’

‘He’s not,’ Culcis explained. ‘At least, he wasn’t. He arrived a few moments after I did. Barbastian was already dead.’

Regara nodded, as if absorbing nothing more unusual than a field report.

‘You should all leave. Return to your quarters, say nothing of this.’

Aramis shook her head, her frustration boiling over. ‘That’s it? Grussman isn’t fit to lead a marching band. His recklessness has cost countless lives. You said so yourself, major. I am here at your request.’

‘I said, say nothing!’ Regara snapped, his voice like a whip-crack that stung the air. Regaining his composure, he added more quietly, ‘It’s over. Without Barbastian, we’re done.’

Aramis swore loudly, then apologised.

Fenk was already halfway to the door when Culcis uttered, ‘There is something else.’

Shiller waited outside to be granted admittance then came at Rensaint’s call.

‘Enter…’

The lord commissar was glistening with sweat and dressed down in sparring apparel, a simple pair of charcoal-grey fatigues and a dove-grey vest. A mil-serve was setting a well-scarred cuirass of flak armour onto a mannequin in one corner of the room. Rensaint’s foils and other blades stood next to it, arranged carefully in a black-lacquered weapons rack.

‘Do you spar, captain?’ he asked idly, busying himself with pulling off a pair of leather gloves. He sat them on the desk, and reached for the wine that the mil-serve had dutifully provided. There was something vaguely familiar about her, a small slip of a thing, waiflike and feeble. She barely met Shiller’s gaze, which the captain thought was most assuredly for the best. For her. He only liked a mil-serve to acknowledge him when he wanted something. At all other times, they should be beneath his notice, as unremarkable and silent as a pauper’s grave.

‘On occasion,’ Shiller lied, or at least he had not done so in many years, content for war to keep him as lean as he needed to be, though even he admitted he had lost a step or two. The dead weighed on him, despite all of his caustic bluster. He hated Voke for the callous disregard of the soldiers under his command; good, honest Volpone men of noble blood. They deserved better. It made what he would have to say next easier.

‘I am here on a serious matter,’ he said.

Rensaint looked up from unlacing his boots. The mil-serve had begun to towel off his body, but shrunk into the shadows at his slightest gesture. ‘Ominous…’

Shiller’s gaze followed the girl. ‘It is of the utmost importance and secrecy.’

Rensaint nodded, understanding. ‘You may leave us,’ he uttered. ‘Thank you, Lenna.’

The girl bowed sharply before departing.

‘What is this concerning, captain?’

Shiller waited until he was sure the two men were alone and then produced the cylinder.

‘I have evidence of conspiracy.’

Rensaint set down his wine. ‘Conspiracy to do what, captain?’

‘Murder, lord commissar, and it is already done.’

Rensaint regarded the proffered cylinder in Shiller’s hand.

‘I have something here than can play that, if your intent is for me to hear it.’ He gestured to the phonogram he kept on his desk. ‘Major Regara recommended one to me and I confess that I have found it pleasantly diverting.’

‘There is a secondary matter.’

‘Oh…?’

Shiller took a breath, moistening his bone-dry lips. He yearned for a drink, something to take the edge off.

Rensaint must have seen him eyeing the wine. ‘Take a cup if it’ll hasten this moment, captain.’

He did, and drained it, then poured himself another which he sipped more slowly.

‘Filip Barbastian is dead,’ he said baldly, ‘slain by his own hand.’

Rensaint gave away no emotion.

‘And this?’ He nodded to the cylinder.

‘The two matters are related.’

‘Then you had best play it, captain.’

The recording began with Barbastian’s playing, a lilting threnody giving way all too suddenly to the scratchy voices of three Volpone officers.

‘It is for the greater good, we must do this.’

That was Grussman, his bullish tone unmistakeable. Rensaint looked up at Shiller but the captain said nothing.

‘You are talking about murder, Mattias. We have already been through this.’

‘He is a deg, Filip. Nothing to us. Must a man of breeding stop to think before he shoots a stray dog?’

‘He is the blood of Horator De Nesk Deviers.’

‘A bastard, one of many. We all know Deviers’ reputation.’

A third voice intruded, voicing his agreement but otherwise saying little of import.

Rensaint gave him a questioning glance.

‘Major Enghart,’ Shiller explained, ‘East Army Group,’ to which the lord commissar nodded as he listened on.

‘…and also a talisman to our troops.’ There was slight pause, as if Barbastian were seeking outside counsel. ‘This cannot be the only way.’

‘You’ve seen the border wall, Filip. It is almost impregnable.’

‘The Pact will fight like hellions to hold it, even with Godsword at our backs.’

That was Enghart again, his manner as oleaginous as his bombast. A toadying career soldier, determined to grease his way up the ranks. Shiller had known many such men, and despised them all.

‘Our faith must match their fanaticism.’ Grussman again.

‘So you would make a martyr…’ Barbastian’s disgust was almost tangible, although for the other officers or himself it was difficult to discern.

‘I would make him into whatever he needs to be to win us this war. A boy cannot lead this army to victory. He dies at Karcas, Filip, and we will ride his sacrifice all the way to Rakespur. I need only your sanction to move forwards. Enghart has already pledged his. It is the Emperor’s will, Filip. None are greater than it.’

‘Even you?’

‘Even me.’ The smile in Grussman’s voice suggested he wasn’t being entirely truthful.

‘What choice have I?’

‘None, Filip. None.’ Here Grussman took on a darker tone.

Barbastian let out a shuddering breath. ‘God-Emperor forgive us…’

A low purr of activation hummed across the recording, only partly audible. A device of some kind, though Shiller still could not place it.

‘You are serving your Imperium this day, Filip.’

‘Tell me one thing, Mattias, now I am bound to your devil’s bargain.’

‘Name it.’

‘Once you have unleashed it, can you bring it to heel?’

‘Let me worry about that.’

There the recording ended, the cylinder having reached its terminus.

Rensaint listened without comment, his face studiedly neutral. ‘Is that all of it?’

Shiller nodded.

‘Who else has heard this?’

‘Only myself and Lieutenant Culcis.’

‘He is Regara’s man, isn’t he?’

Shiller confirmed it. ‘He has already gone to tell the major. He and Barbastian were…’

‘Old friends, yes, I am aware.’ Rensaint stared pensively for a moment. ‘Shiller, this is disturbing news.’

‘I assume I was right bringing this to you, lord commissar?’

Rensaint nodded but his mind was already elsewhere.

‘Speak to no one of this, captain. No one.’

The door loomed like a gravestone, heavy with the weight of what lay beyond.

Greiss and Hanmar guarded the exterior but possessed enough good sense not to impede Regara as he had approached the chapel. Both bowed their heads out of respect, Hanmar making the aquila across his breast, but Regara paid them little heed. His attention was on the door, knowing that once he crossed its threshold nothing would be the same. His heart crashed in his chest like an erratic parade drum and his breath snagged in his throat, swelling into a tumour of grief so large it threatened to choke him.

Regara betrayed none of this, his stern mask intact as he walked up to the door, pausing only for a second, and then went inside.

At the soft thud of the door finding its frame, he was alone with Barbastian. Kneeling before a chapel pew, his old friend looked still and somehow bled of all his colour, though the savage cut across his throat added a swathe of crimson. The blood had begun to darken in the air, reduced to a ruddy mark that ran the length of Barbastian’s front, his shirt and jacket irreparably stained.

Crouching down, afraid at first to touch him, Regara did his best to straighten the unkempt collar. Using a cloth and bowl of rose petal water, meant for penitents to wash their hands after confession, he gently dabbed at the bloodstain, the sheer length and extent of it abhorrent for reasons he could not articulate even to himself. He worked carefully and slowly, and although it could never be cleansed completely, it looked better than it had.

As he smoothed the shirt and jacket, he felt something tucked away in the inside pocket. His heart convulsed when he saw it was a note addressed to him.

Dear Vasquez,

Please do not think ill of me for this.

And let it be a matter of record that I always did love your wonderful music.

Sincerely, your friend,

Filip

Such an incongruous message, and not one that read like a suicide note, but Regara had no capacity for analysis in that moment. A cry rose up within him, a surge of emotion so raw that he had to clench his fists so that only its strangled remnants escaped his throat. Hot tears threatened and were quickly mastered, but the hollow inside him would be much harder to overcome.

He rose unsteadily, reaching for his cane, though he didn’t really need it. The leg worked fine, he just hid behind that cane – a metaphorical crutch as well as a literal one.

Through the haze of his agony as he stared down at the body, the sight of it somehow askew with reality, Regara knew one thing for certain.

Filip Barbastian had not killed himself. He had been murdered.