Now, even the coat was wearing out. They needed a viable replacement, especially if they were going to honour the King’s request to increase productivity.

Gobleka heard footsteps on the metal stairs behind him, despite the roar of the Loom.

Davinch was ascending to the control platform, half dragging a heavyset man in a black coat. The man’s hands were cuffed in front of him, and he was hunched over in pain. Davinch was all but having to force him to walk.

But Davinch had a supremely satisfied look on his scrawny, tattooed face.

‘I got him,’ he said.

Gobleka walked over. The man in the black coat was standing with his shoulders down and his head bent forwards. He was breathing hard as if he had just run a marathon. Gobleka saw blood dripping from his hands and from the chain of his cuffs.

Gobleka reached out, grabbed the man by the jaw and forced his head up so he could look him in the eyes.

Eisenhorn. The great and mighty Gregor Eisenhorn. His eyes were dead and lifeless. His skin was pale and blotchy, and blood ran from his nose. He was having trouble breathing. Gobleka looked him up and down, and saw the years of scar tissue, the old augmetics under the coat, the leg braces and strapped servo-reinforcement. The man was withered and broken, and had been long before Davinch had got his murderous hands on him.

‘I’ve looked forward to this moment,’ said Gobleka. ‘Imagined it, you know. What I’d say, what you’d say. All that. But you’re a lot less than I expected. Damaged and weak. And old. Bit of a disappointment, really.’

‘Imagine,’ replied Eisenhorn, grunting the words out between rasping breaths, ‘imagine how little I care.’

‘Ooh!’ grinned Gobleka, play-acting scared. ‘Still got it, have you? Still got the old edge, eh? Or that’s what you’d like to think. Give me some more, so I can tell people afterwards that breaking you was noble labour, not a piece of piss.’

Eisenhorn didn’t reply.

‘Where’s the blood coming from?’ Gobleka asked Davinch.

‘Blayg plugged him,’ Davinch replied. ‘Body shot.’

‘Did you patch it?’

‘I didn’t have a med-pack with me,’ said Davinch.

‘Well, get one, now,’ said Gobleka. ‘And get the kit too.’

Davinch nodded and moved to the lockers at the end of the bank of cogitators.

‘Where is Blayg?’ Gobleka called out as he stood studying Eisenhorn.

‘Head shot,’ replied Davinch, sorting through supplies.

‘Have you seen Streekal?’

‘Not a sign,’ Davinch replied. He came back with a trauma pack. Gobleka opened it, took out a tube of wound sealant and rammed the applicator nozzle into the glistening hole in Eisenhorn’s abdomen. Eisenhorn winced, but remained on his feet.

Gobleka pressed the activator and pumped sealant into the wound. Then he walked around Eisenhorn, yanked up his old, black coat and did the same to the exit wound.