from floor to ceiling and no handle. A less accessible door did not exist outside Cythuria itself, so it seemed unlikely that the killer came that way.
We left using the other door opposite the hole. Rake stopped suddenly in front of me, and I bashed into his leg, my face coming discomfortingly close to bouncing off his buttock cheek. In front of us was another body that no one – not Vins, nor Benrick, not even the transcript of the emergency call I read on the journey – had even mentioned.
Chapter 3
"Something else Vins forgot to tell us," Rake said, staring at the guard a few mets down the corridor. Like Kenrey, his throat was cut with little sign of resistance. The only blood was on his hands where he'd clutched his throat as he died.
The book he was reading was thrown on the floor, presumably in his rush to get to Kenrey. The question was how the killer managed to kill a man wielding a gun by using only a knife.
I knelt over the body examining it more closely. "He's not close enough to the door."
"Let the fracker die wherever he wants," Rake said.
"I mean if the killer came through that door, then why from his current position didn't the guard have time to shoot him?"
He shrugged. Rake had mastered expressing indifference in the basement listening to old men talk about their house conversions and fishing trips. Much to the dismay of many, fishing was the Kaeroshi national pastime. We had network shows, national competitions, leagues, even hard copy magazines. "Probably staggered back a bit once the guy cut his throat," he said finally.
It was possible, but there was no blood on the floor near the door, and his gun lay close to his body, meaning that if he did stagger, he was still holding his gun for most of it, and his blood should have dripped to the floor.
"Perhaps we should ask if there are any other dead men about the place," I said.
Round the corner was the guard station. Other than the hole in the wall, the windows, and the locked entry from the church, this appeared to be the only way in. A small room, no larger than a myuki's living quarters, it was as if someone was trying to break a record for the number of heavily armed individuals in a confined space. The stench of body odor was so strong it was like an entirely new smell. There were about 30 guards in this room alone, all protecting a single man, and somehow someone had managed to blow a hole in the wall, kill him, and escape.
Some sat alone cleaning their weapons or staring into the sea of navy uniforms, while others huddled in groups chatting loudly. No one even seemed to notice we were there. Shrill voices and rapid facial movement suggested fraught nerves. Loud, awkward laughter would erupt from pockets of the navy sea like saucepans bubbling over. Kenrey was dead, and they could do nothing but pray that Clazran's wroth fell on someone else.
Too short to assess the layout of the room over all the people, I walked around with Rake in tow. Each corner of the room contained an armored security camera rotating back and forth so that not a single cim was unobserved at any one time. A long red rug ran from door to door, with guard posts on either side like a series of toll booths. The gun turret positioned at the far wall looked fit to bring down an army of degodiles. It seemed impossible that anyone could have got through here without being reduced to steaming flesh.
Some while back, two von yus quilla avoided pressure alarms on the floor of a branch of the Bank of Gys using anti-grav suits to slither along the ceiling. These were the tiny cousins of the three met long mainland variety atop Kenrey's gate, inhabiting the barren outcrops to the north of Vas Bes. Dwarf quilla they were sometimes called, kindred to myself in that respect, but even they would surely have been observed coming through the doorway in full view of all the guards.
"Who do you want to talk to first?" Rake said.
"Cythuria knows. That one." I pointed at a man sitting
Carol Wallace, Bill Wallance
Vic Ghidalia and Roger Elwood (editors)