A rough, rocky passage, tunnelled straight from the hillside from its unfinished appearance, led away from the ladder’s rest, curling around and upward. Spider led the way, a fat candlestick in hand, half-invisible in the darkness. The air within was cold and stale, but free, at least, of the embalming stench.
Tarfel walked alone, half sobbing, half muttering. As the sound of Vashenda’s inchoate rage fell away behind them, Chel risked a word.
‘I’m sorry about your father, highness.’
Tarfel sniffed and nodded.
‘When did you last see him?’
The prince’s eyes were glossy pools in the low light. ‘See him? Ha. A few months ago. I made my presentations, as ever, and was rewarded with a nod and a gesture. A nod and a gesture! But I was grateful, you see. Grateful for the acknowledgement. Because he was so very … ill …’
He spluttered into another choking sob, then wiped away the tears with his sleeve.
‘But it was puppetry! My father a primarch’s marionette!’ He swallowed, loud and wet, then cleared his throat. ‘My father, my sole parent, one third of what remains of my family, has been dead all this time, and I’ve been played for a fool!’
His voice was loud enough to echo down the tunnel, and heads turned ahead of them, but nobody said anything. The prince turned on Rennic, who looked like he wanted no part of the conversation. He was already hunched against the tunnel’s low ceiling.
‘How long? You saw him. How long has my father been dead?’
Rennic prevaricated. ‘Hard to say, uh, your highness.’
‘How long could he have been dead? Months?’
Rennic nodded to himself, as if he’d expected the question.
‘Years.’
‘How many?’
‘Four or five, maybe more. Less than ten, I’d guess, but I’m no practitioner. This tunnel is only a few years old, I can tell you that much. My guess is you’d find its diggers entombed in here if you had a proper rummage.’
Tarfel’s eyes glazed as they shuffled on through the gloom.
‘It was five years ago that bandits attacked my brothers’ caravan. They killed my brother Corvel, and left Mendel the only survivor – gravely wounded, forever changed.’
Chel pictured the crown prince, his bright, shining eyes, the jagged scar down his cheek, his earnest compliance.
‘I remember.’
‘I mean, Corvel could be cruel and devious, but he was our blood, and we loved him. At his loss, my father became bedridden. Struck down by grief, they told me. Of course, I was much younger then.’
‘Of course.’
‘And thanks to Master Torht, our Watcher, I know that Vassad himself was behind my brother’s murder.’ He turned back to Rennic, gaze hard. ‘But what if there’s more to it? What if we have events backward?’
Rennic offered only a blank look.
‘Did Vassad kill my father first? Tried to control him with alchemy, poisoned him by accident or design, then decided to kill my brothers before they could ascend, to cement his hold on the kingdom?’
Rennic’s hands were spread. He could offer no answers in the echoing dark.
‘And that’s why Mendel still lives now.’ Tarfel’s voice fell away. ‘Because he was hurt, because he’s … he’s pliable. Am I pliable?’
Rennic looked to Chel in pleading.
‘I’m pliable, aren’t I? Aren’t I, Vedren?’
Chel swallowed. ‘You can’t be that pliable, highness. Look where you are now.’
Tarfel laughed, surprising himself.
‘No, no, indeed. Ha. Maybe that’s what happened at Denirnas, eh? Maybe the old bastard saw something like this coming?’
Chel offered half a nod, unconvinced.
‘Let’s hope not.’
***
Palo held open the sturdy door at the tunnel’s far end. Spider and Dalim between them had burst the lock, using Dalim’s pilfered spear as a lever. The door opened into a crate-filled store-room, and Chel thought immediately of the room in the depths of the Silent Sepulchre, the secret wall, the smugglers’ caves beneath. He thought of Torht and Mendel, their laborious journey up the tower’s great spiral. They would have reached the top by now. They must have done. Unless they’d also been caught up in the confessors’ violent response.
Rennic tilted his head, tracing what looked a well-worn path through the crates to a curtain-covered opening on the far side. ‘Well, I’m going to check every store-room I come across for hidden doors in future.’
Spider was already at the curtain, peeping around, curved knife in his hand. Palo joined him.
‘Where are we?’
Spider turned with a leering smirk.
‘We’re in the tower. Close to the meat.’
An empty office lay beyond, the quills, ink and rolls of paper suggesting a senior church clerk’s. Chel wondered if such a clerk existed, and whether that clerk was in on the puppet-king conspiracy. How far did the tendrils reach?
They crept through a narrow set of interconnecting rooms, each seemingly empty, then the passageway opened to reveal the great stone spiral at the tower’s heart. Palo cocked an ear at its edge.
‘Activity below, but doesn’t sound like it’s coming our way. They may still believe we are hidden in the royal wing.’ She turned and looked upward.
Dalim stepped beside her.
‘Anything?’
She shook her head. ‘Perhaps they have already succeeded. Perhaps the pennant of the free peoples is unfurling as we speak.’
Dalim nodded, cradling the spear in his arms. His habitual assurance had deserted him.
‘Yeah. Maybe.’
‘Then let us finish our climb and find out for ourselves.’
***
The upper reaches of the tower were devoted to the Primarch’s private chambers. The spiral stair curled around with a final, wide flourish, pitching them before a giant set of gold-inlaid doors at the tower-top’s inner edge. Above, the ceiling climbed in a gleaming dome, similarly golden, emblazoned with the figures of the sanctified and hierarchs past, drawn against a backdrop of swirling stars. From somewhere came a strange rumbling sound, and the distant clatter of rolling chain.
‘Well, this is grand as fuck,’ Rennic muttered as the ceiling came into view. ‘What happened to all that shit about charity and bestowing all the good stuff on the meek?’
Chel offered a sardonic smile. ‘Not exactly meek, are you?’
‘Fuck off, I’m meek. I’m meek as anyone.’
‘Hey,’ a voice said from above. ‘Stop there. Stop right there.’
Two confessors stood before the doors, their garb grander than those below. Their robes were finely layered and embroidered, a cut above the rough, rust-coloured fabric of their comrades. Gleaming, ornate maces hung from their belts, but they seemed otherwise unarmed and unarmoured. Braziers burned to either side of the grand door, casting the confessors in a warm, fiery glow.
Palo came to a halt at the top of the grand stairs. Tall windows, inlaid with multi-coloured glass in sacred patterns, cast crisp winter light across her. The whole floor reeked of incense.
‘Tell me, brother,’ she said. ‘Has the crown prince come this way?’
‘Who are you?’ the first said, expression uneasy. ‘You shouldn’t be up here.’ His colleague looked only bored, although this was in danger of being the first interesting thing that had happened on their watch.
Palo spread her hands, her inherent lack of visible emotion going some way to reassuring the confessor. ‘We are his retainers. He asked us to complete a task for him, but we have been unable. Is he in consultation with the blessed Primarch?’
The confessor nodded, and Chel felt something unclench within him.
Palo smiled. It looked wrong on her face. The confessor’s look of suspicion returned.
‘Why are you armed? Weapons aren’t allowed in the tower.’
His colleague stirred, as if the thought had only just occurred. ‘Those are blessed blades!’
They looked at each other, then to the engraved silver bell that hung from a frame beside the stairs.
Palo’s smile faded. She dropped her hands. As the confessors lunged toward the bell, Spider and Dalim surged past her up the stairs and onto the landing. Dalim’s spear transfixed the first confessor, punching through his midriff and driving him backward toward the door, his legs flailing and buckling. Spider leapt upon the second, carrying him sideways past the bell-frame, driving him down against the cold stone floor. The two barely managed a cry between them before they were silenced.
Rennic shot Chel a look that said, are you taking notes?
Tarfel peeped a miserable face up from the staircase, frowning at the stricken confessors. ‘Did we have to … Wasn’t there another way?’
Rennic tilted his head, one thick eyebrow raised. ‘I doubt we could have won them over with strength of argument alone.’
‘But couldn’t we just have tied them up?’
‘You got a great spool of secret rope hidden somewhere in your pantaloons, princeling?’
Chel sighed. ‘It would take too long to secure them properly,’ he heard himself say. The image of the archer floated across his mind, her nervous smile, her slumped form at the feet of the strangling reaver. ‘And someone would need to keep watch on them. Even that would be no guarantee. This is just … safer.’
Something in his chest withered. Should we simply have killed Brecki? he wondered. Would that have been … better? Would it have been right?
Tarfel wiped at his nose with a sleeve. ‘So much … killing, so much death. And for what? I doubt these two were even in robes when my father died.’
Palo turned from the top of the stairs and fixed the young prince with a gimlet stare.
‘They are complicit,’ she said. She walked toward the grand doors as Dalim dug the spear from the first confessor. He lay crumpled at the wall’s foot, breath coming in short gasps, a dark puddle spreading beneath his robes. He tried to speak, but he couldn’t force out a word. Palo looked down at him for a moment, expressionless once more.
‘You know,’ she said, ‘when I was a girl, long ago now, before the wars, before the schism, before the New Church and its rancid corruption, we had a confessor in our keep. Just the one: a gentle, patient man. His divine calling was to listen, to hear the confessions of the keep’s people and provide guidance, and perhaps even absolution. The confessions he heard were freely given, not extracted!’ Anger rose in her voice. ‘A confessor is a keeper of a sacred duty. Not a red-clad thug, a tormentor of the helpless.’
She breathed deeply, and the anger left her again.
‘May your god forgive you, for mine will not.’
She reached down and cut the man’s throat, wiped her blade on the shoulder of his fine robe, and threw open the doors.