Larkin paused. He could do it now. He’d even have a cover story. He could fething well–

  But the old woman was staring at him. Her hands were up over her head, protectively, though she was still sitting in the chair. He could see the glint of her eyes staring out between her gnarled fingers.

  ‘Feth, it’s okay!’ said Larkin. ‘He won’t hurt you. I swear he won’t!’ He crossed to her and bent down, trying to calm her.

  ‘Please, it’s okay. It’s really okay. I–’

  He blacked out. There was a dull thump, like a muffled peal of thunder, and he blacked out.

  He came to, sprawled face down across the table. The back of his head hurt really badly. His vision swam.

  He tried to rise, but lost his balance and fell off the side of the table onto the floor.

  The fall saved him. Cuu brought the iron skillet pan down for a second blow and hit the table where Larkin had just been crumpled. The pan exploded the cup and sprayed porcelain shards and tepid caffeine across the polished wood.

  Larkin tried to crawl backwards away from Cuu, but the Verghastite came for him, swinging the pan again. It caught Larkin on the shoulder. He kicked out at Cuu’s legs.

  Cuu reached down and grabbed Larkin by the throat. With a snarl that flecked spittle out between his clenched teeth, Cuu hauled Larkin up and threw him against the side counter. He pinned Larkin with the flat of his forearm, and hit him with the pan again. Larkin squealed as he felt a rib go. Another savage blow and pain flared through his left elbow. But for that raised arm, the heavy pan would have mashed his face.

  ‘You Tanith gak! You little shit! You stupid bastard!’ Cuu rained down slurs and blows alike in a berserk fury.

  Suddenly, Cuu shrieked and collapsed off Larkin, dropping the pan with a clang. The metal frame stock of a Mark III lasrifle had just smashed up between his legs from behind.

  Cuu hit the floor, convulsing and choking, tears washing down his screwed up face. He fell in a foetal position, clutched at his groin and threw up.

  Dripping with storm water, Muril turned her lasrifle round so that the muzzle was pointing at Cuu’s temple.

  ‘Any more from you, Cuu, any more, and I use this end on you instead.’

  ‘What the feth’s going on?’ demanded Caffran pulling down his cape hood as he came in through the kitchen door behind Muril. The old woman made a sudden dash for the open door, but Caffran intercepted her gently and sat her back down. She didn’t protest.

  Muril helped Larkin up. He was shaking. One cheek was swelling and turning blue, and blood streamed from his nose. The back of his head had left more blood on the countertop.

  Muril dragged out a chair and helped Larkin sit down.

  ‘Cuu… Cuu was gonna hurt her–’ he stammered.

  Muril looked round at Caffran. ‘Little bastard nearly beat Larkin to death. If we hadn’t come back…’

  Caffran looked down at Cuu, who was still curled up and weeping out jagged groans. Every few breaths, he retched again and added to the expanding pool of liquid vomit around his head.

  ‘Feth,’ Caffran murmured. He was reaching down to grab hold of Cuu when Feygor and Brostin stormed in. They were both very drunk, more obviously drunk than Cuu had been. Feygor was having trouble walking. They reeled to a halt and blinked repeatedly, trying to take in the scene before them and understand it.

  ‘Where’s the fething food, Lijah?’ Feygor said.

  ‘You want some food?’ asked Caffran. ‘I’ll bring you some. Go back to the drawing room and I’ll bring you some.’

  His head swaying back and forth like his neck was rubber, Feygor frowned and made several vague pointing gestures around the room.

  ‘What the feth?’ he barked, his augmetic voice box coarse and indistinct as it tried to cope with his inebriated sounds. He looked at the old woman and tried to focus his eyes. ‘Who the feth is this?’

  ‘It’s likely we’re all guests of hers here, so show some respect,’ Caffran said. ‘She’s old and she’s scared.’

  Feygor snorted. ‘What’s with Larks? And why’s Cuu down?’

  ‘Cuu was making trouble for the old lady,’ Muril said. ‘Larks tried to stop him and he went wild with a skillet.’

  ‘We had to subdue him,’ Caffran added, hoping to take a little heat off Muril if necessary.

  ‘Cuu was hurting the old lady?’ slurred Brostin. The idea seemed to offend him.

  ‘He’s drunk,’ said Muril.

  ‘No excuse,’ said Brostin with great certainty.

  ‘Who the feth is she?’ Feygor wanted to know. He took a step forward, approaching her. Caffran stepped in and carefully steadied Feygor.

  ‘She’s the owner of the house,’ he said. He didn’t know that for sure, but it had a certain weight Feygor’s addled brain might take in.

  ‘Where’d she come from?’

  ‘She was here all the time. Hiding.’

  ‘Fething spy!’ Feygor said, clapping his hands. The old woman jumped.

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘I fething say so. Sneaking and hiding.’

  ‘She was scared of us. Does she look like a Shadik agent?’

  ‘Fethed if I know!’ Feygor said. He stood straight and waggled a finger. ‘Lock her up somewhere. Lock her up. I’ll question her in the morning.’

  ‘We can’t lock her up,’ Muril began.

  ‘Lock her the feth up!’ Feygor spluttered. ‘Who’s in charge here, bitch?’

  Good question, Caffran thought.

  Brostin tugged at Feygor’s arm. ‘You can’t lock her up, Murt. Wouldn’t be right. Not an old lady.’

  ‘’Kay, what then?’

  ‘I’ll look after her. I’ll stay with her,’ said Caffran. ‘You can talk to her tomorrow.’

  ‘All right,’ Feygor said, satisfied. He wheeled around, unsteadily, and wandered into the pantry. They could hear the smash of breaking jars as he foraged for food.

  Brostin stood for a moment, and then followed Feygor out.

  ‘Feth,’ murmured Caffran. He looked over at Muril, who shook her head. Caffran bent down and hauled Cuu towards the door. He threw the coughing Verghastite out into the rain.

  ‘Sober up, you little swine!’ he snarled after him. Cuu lay in the yard, whining like a canine in the beating rain.

  When Caffran came back into the kitchen, he saw that the old lady was carefully picking up the objects that had fallen during the fight. Pans went back onto the dresser. Shards of china were picked up one by one.

  ‘She just started doing that,’ Muril said, dabbing disinfectant pads from her field kit to the back of Larkin’s head.

  Caffran watched. The old lady threw the broken cups into the kitchen waste, and then swept up the bits she couldn’t pick up with a dustpan and brush. She took the skillet Cuu had used to beat Larkin and hung it back on its hook over the stove. Then she shuffled into the wash house and re-emerged with a mop.

  Caffran stepped forward and took it from her. She gave it up without resistance. ‘Let me do that,’ he said, and started to clean Cuu’s spew off the tiles.

  He wouldn’t watch her do that.

  It was well past midnight. The electrical storm had returned with a show of force even greater than the previous night. Rerval gave up his search of the upstairs. There was no sign of anything personal apart from the old furniture and bedclothes. Wardrobes were mostly empty except for a few dry pomanders rolling about their floors. Just about every upstairs room was damp, some saturated, from the leaking roof. Trickles of water streamed down. The air stank of mildew and rotting linen.

  He played his flashlight around the halls and the walls of the rooms. There were few pictures, but in places his light revealed the pale oblongs where pictures had once hung. There was an ormolu clock on the mantle of one bedroom. It had stopped at half past four. The gilt decoration showed two soldiers in plumed hats, standing either side of the face and supporting it with their hands.

  He found a linen closet where the old, piled sheets were generally dry. There were a few items of kit and some hot-shot clips stacked in the corners. This was evidently where Larkin had chosen to make his lair.

  Rerval left it alone.

  He saw the attic hatch, and got a chair. Pushing up through the hatch, he shone his light around. The attic was swimming. Many tiles had gone. His beam picked out black, mouldering rafters, streams of rainwater and stacks of rotting junk. He decided not to waste his time.

  He wandered back to the stairs. How had she lived here for so long? Alone? Had the isolation snapped her mind? Was that why she wouldn’t speak?

  He went down the stairs, avoiding the plinking pots and water catchers. Lightning flashed.

  Lamp light was shining from the half-open drawing room door, and he could hear voices and the clink of glasses.

  A paler light was coming from under the dining room door.

  Rerval switched off his flashlight and drew his laspistol. He put his hand on the door knob and carefully opened the door.

  A single candle was guttering in the middle of the long dining table, its twisting flame reflecting off the dark, varnished top.

  Piet Gutes sat on his own halfway down, his head in his hands. There was a half-finished bottle of red wine next to him, and some pieces of paper spread out on the tabletop.

  ‘Gutes?’

  Gutes looked up. He was drunk, but that didn’t completely explain the redness of his eyes.

  ‘You all right, Piet?’

  Gutes shrugged. ‘Doesn’t matter where you go,’ he said, ‘it always finds you.’

  ‘What does?’

  ‘The war. You think you’re so far away it can’t touch you, but it finds you anyway.’

  Rerval sat down beside him. ‘War’s our life, you know that. First-and-Only.’

  Gutes smiled bitterly. ‘I’m tired,’ he said.

  ‘Get some sleep. We–’

  ‘No, not like that. Tired. Tired of it all. When we got sent out here–’

  ‘Aexe Cardinal?’

  ‘No, Rerval. The woods. This mission. When we got sent out here, I was thankful. We might get a few days, leave the war behind. Get out from its embrace. And when Ven and Jajjo found this place… feth, it seemed like a little paradise. A little paradise, just for a day or two. I’m not greedy.’

  ‘Sure.’

  Gutes drummed his fingers on the table top and then took a swig of the wine. He offered the bottle to Rerval, and Rerval knocked back a sip himself.

  ‘Everything’s okay from far away,’ Gutes said. ‘I mean, when you get back far enough, nothing matters.’

  ‘I suppose,’ said Rerval, handing the bottle back to Gutes.

  ‘I was far away when Finra died. And little Foona too.’

  ‘Finra? Your wife?’

  ‘No,’ Gutes chuckled. ‘My daughter. My wife died eighteen… no, nineteen years back. I raised Finra on my own, you know? Did a good job, I think. She was a beautiful girl. And Foona. A little darling, my first grandchild.’

  Rerval hesitated. He didn’t know what to say. It was ironic, he thought. I’m signals, a vox-officer. Communication is my speciality. But I have no idea what to say to this man.

  ‘I wish I had pictures of them,’ Gutes said. ‘There was no time, when I signed up. It was last minute. We agreed she’d send some on via the Munitorium. She promised me a care package. Letters.’

  ‘They didn’t suffer, Piet,’ Rerval said.

  ‘No, I know that. Just a little flash and Tanith was dead. Bang, goodnight. Like I said, nothing matters if you’re far enough away. You know that song? “Far away, up in the mountains”? Brin Milo plays it sometimes.’

  ‘I know it.’

  The candle flame fluttered and almost went out. Then it flared again, as wax dribbled from the lip. Thunder slammed above the percussion of rain outside.

  ‘I always thought,’ Gutes said, ‘that she’d be the one getting the letter. My daughter, I mean. The one that comes in the vellum envelope. The one that says blah blah blah regret to inform you that your father, etc.’

  ‘That letter,’ Rerval nodded, taking another sip from the bottle.

  ‘Turns out, it was the other way round. Except I didn’t get any letter. Just saw a little flash from far away.’

  ‘You should get some sleep,’ Rerval said.

  ‘I know. I know, Rerval.’

  ‘Come on then.’

  ‘Far away. That’s what this place is. So I thought. A chance to be far away at last, just for a few days. But it doesn’t matter where you go. It always finds you.’

  He fumbled with the old papers in front of him and pushed them over towards Rerval. A letter sheet, brown with age, and its envelope. The letter was embossed with the crest of the Aexe Alliance.

  Rerval read it.

  ‘Feth, where did you find this?’

  ‘In the rack, in the hall. It was there when we came in. I didn’t pay it much heed before.’

  The letterhead date told Rerval it had been sent nearly seventeen years before. It began: ‘Dear Madam Pridny, on behalf of the General Staff Command of the Aexe Alliance, I regret to inform you that your son, Masim Pridny, corporal, was reported missing during action at Loncort earlier this week…’

  ‘Rain’s stopped,’ Muril said. A pre-dawn glow was spreading in through the kitchen windows.

  The old woman was asleep, curled up on the bench seat. Larkin was sitting hunched at the table, nursing a glass of sacra. The bruises on his face were almost black, and Muril was worried about the wound on the back of his head.

  Everyone else was long since asleep, except Caffran and Rerval, who were standing guard.

  Muril got up and used a cloth to open the stove plate. She tossed some more logs in, and raked them around with the poker.

  ‘You okay?’ she asked.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Larkin. He was still studying the letter Rerval had shown them. ‘Poor old girl, waiting all this time… seventeen years… waiting for her son…’

  ‘You suppose that’s why she didn’t leave this place?’

  ‘Yeah, I suppose. Waiting at home for a son who’s never actually coming back.’

  ‘Poor woman,’ Muril said, looking over at the sleeping figure. She sat down opposite Larkin.

  ‘Tell me about Cuu.’

  ‘Cuu?’

  ‘Lijah gakking Cuu. He nearly killed you, Larks. That wasn’t about some old lady, was it?’

  ‘He was drunk. He was hurting her.’

  ‘Still… there’s more to it than that, isn’t there.’

  Larkin shrugged. The gesture was painful. Muril wished they had Dorden around, or Curth, or even a corpsman, to check Larkin’s ribs and elbow.

  And his head.

  ‘Don’t know what you mean,’ he said.

  ‘What I mean,’ she said, ‘is that you and Cuu have a thing. Everyone knows it. Don’t know when and why it started, but you have a thing.’

  ‘A thing?’

  ‘A feud.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘For gak’s sake, Larks! I could help you!’

  ‘Help me? No, Muril, you don’t want to help me. No one would want to get dragged into what I’m doing.’

  ‘What are you doing? I mean, why the gak did you volunteer for this detail when you knew Cuu was part of it?’

  Larkin smiled. He sipped his drink. Muril could see the blood blossoming in the clear liquor as he lowered the glass from his mouth.

  ‘I mean… the two of you have a famous feud that everyone knows about. He treats you like crap. And here you are, signing up to join a squad that you know he’s in too. You usually do your best to stay away from him, but now it’s like you wanted to be close, you wanted to… oh gak!’

  ‘Now you’re getting it,’ Larkin smiled.

  Muril blanched. ‘What the gak are you planning?’

  ‘Nothing you need to know about. Forget it.’

  ‘I will not, Hlaine! What is this about?’

  ‘Payback,’ he said.

  ‘Payback? For what?’

  ‘Doesn’t matter. I should go relieve Caff.’ He knocked back the drink and stood up.

  ‘With your head? Are you sure?’

  He sat back down, blinking, and felt the back of his skull with cautious fingers.

  ‘Maybe not.’

  ‘So tell me about payback.’

  ‘You wouldn’t understand.’

  ‘Try me.’

  Larkin smiled. ‘You’re a good girl, Muril.’

  ‘So they say. Don’t change the subject. Payback.’

  ‘What can I tell you? What if I said I want to get even for the way Cuu has persecuted me since the day we first met? Would that be okay? He’s made my life a misery, leant on me, beaten me down. Would that be enough?’

  She shrugged. ‘Probably. Cuu’s a bastard. A predator. He bullies anyone he can. Caff hates him, you know? After that thing on Phantine. I know Gaunt got Cuu off, but Caff believes Cuu killed that woman. And Caff nearly went to the wall for it.’

  ‘I got Caff off,’ Larkin said. ‘Me and Try. We got Caff’s case dismissed and got Cuu sent up in his place. Bragg ratted on him. Then Gaunt got Cuu off on a technicality. Got him the lash rather than a firing squad. That’s why he hates me. He blames me for the lashes. Me and Try.’

  ‘So his hate is focused on you now Bragg is gone?’

  ‘Kind of,’ Larkin said, with a smile Muril didn’t like the look of.

  ‘So that’s why you want–’

  Larkin raised a finger. ‘I never said that. What if I want payback on Cuu because I’m crazy? Everyone knows I’m crazy. Mad Larkin, you know the form.’

  ‘Yeah, but–’

  ‘I’m not right in the head. Everyone knows that. Maybe I want Cuu because I’m insane.’

  ‘You’re not insane.’