[Gaunt's Ghosts 07] - Sabbat Martyr by Dan Abnett

Author:Dan Abnett
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 2012-01-22T04:26:39.643312+00:00

SEVEN

PLANET FALL

“Nine are coming.”

—message written in Soric’s hand

Gaunt had arrived half asleep at the hastily called meeting just before dawn. After the night’s curious events, he’d tried to nap for a few hours, only to be woken by Beltayn in the middle of the afternoon.

“The lord general wants to see you, sir,” Beltayn said.

Lugo and his house staff had occupied a mansion on the ninety-seventh level of Old Hive. It was a place of faded grandeur. The walls and high ceilings were cased in shiny black ebonite inlaid with matt detailing in arthrocite, and the floor was paved with pink, earth-fired tiles throughout. On every fourth wall panel in the entry hall, an electrolamp was set in a brass wall sconce, and long webs of glinting steel-lace hung as drapes at each arched doorway.

It wasn’t made clear to Gaunt whose palace-home this was, or where they had gone to make way for Lugo.

To be honest, he wasn’t thinking much of that. He was bleary headed as the postern sentries let him in and showed him the way down two long hallways and up a flight of brick steps to the room where Lugo was waiting.

Gaunt had been expecting some kind of formal staff summit, and was surprised to find Lugo alone except for Kaldenbach.

The room was cold — the whole mansion was cold — as if the ancient heating pipes and hypercausts of the crumbling Old Hive were weak and inefficient at this high level. Lugo sat in a suspensor chair, dressed in a thick houserobe over his uniform shirt and breeches. His jacket and cap lay on a tall wooden dressing stand beside him.

He was sipping caffeine from a porcelain cup. A portable thermal heater was standing on the floor, warming his booted feet.

The room had tall, lancet windows of touched, coloured glass in two walls, and a set of ornate glass doors in the third that appeared, through the veil of a steel-lace drape, to give access out onto some kind of balcony or roof terrace. Kaldenbach stood beside these doors, arms folded, looking either stubborn or threatening. Gaunt wasn’t quite sure what the man was shooting for. Threatening, he guessed.

“Sir.”

“Come in, Gaunt. A hot drink?”

“Thank you, no, sir.”

Kaldenbach, who had started to move at Lugo’s offer, continued anyway even when it was refused, and helped himself to a cup from a silver vacuum-jug that stood on a dresser against the wall.

“I apologise for the early call,” Lugo said, almost cordially. “I wish to speak with you about the Beati.”

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