“One of them. Several of my stripe arrived with the Guard.”
“But you’re the famous one: Ibram Gaunt. They say the People’s Hero Kowle was beside himself with rage when he heard the famous Gaunt was coming to Vervunhive.”
“Do they?”
The girl circled him. Gaunt remained facing the way he was.
“Indeed they do. War heroes Kowle can manage to stomach, so they report, but a commissar war hero? Famous for his actions on Balhaut, Fortis Binary, the Menazoid Clasp, Monthax? Too much for Kowle. You might eclipse him. Vervunhive is large, but there can be only one famous, dashing commissar hero, can’t there?”
“Perhaps. I’m not interested in rivalry. So… you’re versed in recent military history, lady?”
“No, but my maids are.” She smiled dangerously.
“Your maids have taken an interest in my record?”
“Deeply, you and your—what was it they said? Your ‘scruffy, courageous Ghost warriors’. Apparently, they are so much more exciting than the starchy Volpone Bluebloods.”
“That I can vouch for,” he replied. Though she was lovely, he had already had enough of her superior manner and courtly flirting. Responding to such things could get a man shot.
“I’ve six scruffy, courageous Ghost warriors right outside if you’d like me to introduce them to your maids,” he smiled, “or to you.”
She paused. Outrage tried to escape her composed expression. She contained it well. “What do you want, Gaunt?” she asked instead, her tone harder.
“Lord Chass summoned me.”
“My father.”
“I thought so. That would make you.
“Merity Chass, of House Chass.”
Gaunt bowed gently again. He took another sip of the drink.
“What do you know of my father?” she asked crisply, still circling like a gaud-cock in a mating ritual.
“Master of one of the nine noble houses of Vervunhive. One of the three who opposed General Sturm’s tactical policy. One who took an interest in my counterproposals. An ally, I suppose.”
“Don’t use him. Don’t dare use him!” she said fiercely.
“Use him? Lady—”
“Don’t play games! Chass is one of the most powerful noble houses and one of the oldest, but it is part of the minority. Croe and Anko hold power and opposition. Anko especially. My father is what they call a liberal. He has… lofty ideals and is a generous and honest man. But he is also guileless, vulnerable. A crafty political agent could use his honesty and betray him. It has happened before.”
“Lady Chass, I have no designs on your father’s position. He summoned me here. I have no idea what he wants. I am a warmaker, a leader of soldiers. I’d rather cut off my right arm than get involved in house politics.”
She thought about this. “Promise me, Gaunt. Promise me you won’t use him. Lord Anko would love to see my noble house and its illustrious lineage overthrown.”
He studied her face. She was serious about this—guileless, to use her own word.
“I’m no intriguer. Leave that to Kowle. Simple, honest promises are something I can do. They are what soldiers live by. So I promise you, lady.”
“Swear it!”
“I swear it on the life of the beloved Emperor and the light of the Ray of Hope.”
She swallowed, looked away, and then said, “Come with me.”
With her bodyguards trailing at a respectful distance, she led Gaunt out of the anteroom, along a hallway where soft, gauzy draperies billowed in a cool breeze and out onto a terrace.
The terrace projected from the outer wall of the Main Spine and was covered by a dedicated refractor shield. They were about a kilometre up. Below, the vast sprawl of Vervunhive spread out to the distant bulk of the Curtain Wall. Above them rose the peak of the Spine, glossed in ice, overarched by the huge bowl of the crackling Shield.
The terrace was an ornamental cybernetic garden. Mechanical leaf-forms grew and sprouted in the ordered beds, and bionic vines self-replicated in zigzag patterns of branches to form a dwarf orchard. Metal bees and delicate paper-winged butterflies whirred through the silvery stems and iron branches. Oil-ripe fruit, black like sloes, swung from blossom-joints on the swaying mechanical-tree limbs.
Lord Heymlik Chass, dressed in a gardener’s robes, slight marks of oil-sap on his cuffs and apron, moved down the rows of artificial plants, dead-heading brass-petalled flowerheads with a pair of laser secateurs and pruning back the sprays of aluminium roses.
He looked up as his daughter led the commissar over.
“I was hoping you would come,” Lord Chass said.
“I was delayed by events,” Gaunt said.
“Of course.” Chass nodded and gazed out at the south Curtain for a moment. “A bad night. Your men… survived?”
“Most of them. War is war.”
“I was informed of your actions at Hass West. Vervunhive owes you already, commissar.”
Gaunt shrugged. He looked around the metal garden.
“I have never seen anything like this,” he said honestly.
“A private indulgence. House Chass built its success on servitors, cogitators and mechanical development. I make working machines for the Imperium. It pleases me to let them evolve in natural forms here, with no purpose other than their own life.”
Merity stood back from the pair. “I’ll leave you alone, then,” she said.
Chass nodded and the girl stalked away between the wire-vines and the tin blooms.
“You have a fine daughter, lord.”
“Yes, I have. My heir. No sons. She has a gift for mechanical structures that quite dazzles me. She will lead House Chass into the next century.”
He paused, snicked a rusting flowerhead off into his waist-slung sack and sighed. “If there is a next century for Vervunhive.”
“This war will be won by the Imperial force, lord. I have no doubt.”
Chass smiled round at the commissar. “Spoken like a true political animal, Commissar Gaunt.”