I looked over the data. Despite everything, all the entreaties and the quiet bribes and the appeals to reason, the matter remained poised. The structure of the Council had been designed to encourage consensus. It was twelve-strong, making it hard to pass contentious acts, for an even vote ensured that the proposal remained unacted. Any member could choose to support, reject or abstain.
At present, we knew that Dissolution had the firm support of five members of the Council: Kleopatra Arx, the Inquisitorial Representative; Uila Lamma, the Paternoval Envoy of the Navigator Houses; Kania Dhanda, the Speaker of the Chartists Captains; Merelda Pereth, the Lord High Admiral of the Imperial Navy; and the originator of it all, Kerapliades. We also knew that five members would vote against: Oud Oudia Raskian of the Adeptus Mechanicus, Irthu Haemotalion, the Master of the Administratum and the primus inter pares of the Council; Baldo Slyst, the Ecclesiarch of the Adeptus Ministorum; Aveliza Drachmar, the Grand Provost Marshal of the Adeptus Arbites; and Leops Franck, the Master of the Astronomican.
So then, five for, five against. Our efforts over the past weeks had been directed to the sole undecided member – Fadix, the Grand Master of the Officio Assassinorum. The assassins often abstained from votes, since their interests were generally served no matter what policies were enacted by their masters. Fadix had always been an archetypal grand master – swathed in layers of protection, his domain the hardest of all to penetrate, and alongside Arx the most perilous to cross. We had tried carefully, doing what we could to make the case and secure some kind of indication of preference. If he opted to oppose, then all was lost – the vote could not be passed. If he opted to support, then things became easier – the seat vacated by Brach could remain unfilled and the vote would still be carried. That would mean our attempts to make contact with the Captain-General became less pressing, something that I would have welcomed, for I was still no closer to gaining an audience there.
‘Any news from the Grand Master?’ I asked, noting that we hadn’t had a communication from our agent for some time.
Jek gave me an apologetic look, and handed me a small casket.
I opened it, to find a comm-bead, speckled with blood, sitting on a bed of crumpled silk. I didn’t need to activate it to know that it was one of ours. The silk was Fadix’s signature – they said that every kill he made was left with a ribbon of it somewhere close by.
I sighed deeply. I had known our agent there – a good and brave woman who had operated undetected for a long time.
‘So that’s that, then,’ I said, deflated.
‘Not quite,’ said Jek, motioning for me to close the lid of the casket. As I did so, I noticed the inscription, written in one of the Council’s many internal ciphers, inlaid black on black and almost undetectable.
I looked up at Jek. ‘He wants to see me,’ I said.
‘For what, though?’ asked Jek, warily.
‘He doesn’t take kindly to interference, I’d say.’
‘Or he means to end it for good.’
It would be a bold move, for a Council member to extinguish one of its more prominent servants, but not impossible. They were beholden to no one but themselves, and I had always known I was eminently replaceable.
‘Perhaps we’ve pushed things too far,’ I murmured.
Jek hesitated before replying. She was the most loyal of my many aides-de-camp, and yet now there was the slightest hint of reproach.
‘Forgive me, lord, if I don’t fully understand it,’ she said. ‘There have been many proposals, and yet with this one…’
I knew what she was trying to say. It was a mystery to me too, why this one idea had captured my attention so completely. I had built a career on playing the odds, remaining allies with all, never letting a single issue derail me from the greater goal of efficiency and self-preservation.
If she had pressed me, I do not know what I could have told her. I didn’t even fully understand the deeper legal aspects of Dissolution, which in its fullest sense was a whole range of measures involving the repeal of some of the earliest acts of the Lex Imperialis as laid down by the first Lord Commander. In practice, though, we all knew what it truly meant – the end of the standing injunction that tied the Adeptus Custodes to Terra – although this had never been something that had taxed me, not until now.
Were the Custodians sorcerers, I wondered? Could Valerian have done something to my mind? Could Kerapliades have done?
I leaned on the desk. I probably looked tired.
‘You do not have to go,’ Jek said, concerned for me.
‘No, I don’t,’ I said.
Then she smiled. ‘But you will.’
‘Of course.’
She reached out and placed her hand over mine. I couldn’t help but notice how young it was, next to my wrinkled, many-times-rejuved flesh.
‘He would not dare to end you,’ she said.
That was a kind thing to say, and perhaps she even believed it. I, though, knew better how the man worked. I was getting in too deep, as if past sins were catching up with me.
‘I guess we’ll find out,’ I said, pulling my hand away.
I will not deny it – I was discomforted. My nerves were weakened by the heavy burden of care, and the sense of things running beyond our ability to control them never went away.
But I got in the shuttle, gave directions to the pilot, and did what I had to. As we took off from the high spire of my domain, I saw the cityscape of Terra run away before us, crumbling and magnificent, grey under a darkening sky. Some way to the north was the mountain-face of the Sanctum Imperialis itself, glowering like a dormant volcano. The urban tower-mass stretched off in every direction, tangled and overbearing. I considered this my natural habitat, though I had always understood its danger. Harster had been right in one sense – this was a warzone, albeit one where the killing happened silently.
Fadix’s realm was a long transit south of the holy apex, lodged up against the inner sweep of the walls themselves. A neophyte would never have known that the place housed what it did – its facade looked no different from one of a thousand Ecclesiarchy temples, blackened by old soot and bedecked with dolorous angels on pediments of granite. Perhaps it was a little darker than the rest, a little more solidly made. For some reason its lintels were dotted with psy-ravens, dozens of them, staring out with black augur-eyes over the vistas of decay. No other aircraft went within a kilometre of that place, warned off either by reputation or silent intuition. For the last few moments of the journey my flyer was the only one in the air, a lonely speck against the giant terraces ahead.
We docked, and I was greeted in a cavernous, dusty hall by a single attendant. He wore a suit of black armour, close-fitting and tight-plated. He never spoke and I never saw his face, which was hidden behind an eyeless vox-distortion mask. If there were other menials or servitors present, they remained out of view. The whole place was cold, and heavy with grime and shadow. It was almost a parody of what the order stood for, perhaps put on as some kind of elaborate theatre for their own amusement. I was perfectly aware, for instance, that this was only one of many Officio Assassinorum citadels. The true nexus of their operations was unknown to all but the Grand Master himself, and perhaps a few of his peers in the Council.
As we passed further within, I saw icons of the Officio Assassinorum sunk deep into walls of brass and onyx. The passageways remained quiet, almost deathly, and I glimpsed great vaults yawning off on either side of us as we walked, each lined with obscure cabinets and strange sculptures.
It was a long time before we reached the Grand Master’s own chambers. Once there, my guide melted away, going as silently as everything in that damned morgue, leaving me alone before a pair of copper-faced doors. They opened before I had a chance to move, sweeping soundlessly across a dark stone floor.
He was waiting for me inside, seated behind a long desk stacked high with parch
ment. Candles burned in iron holders, scarcely illuminating the room. What little I could see was exquisite – thick oil paintings in sooty gilt frames, bronzes atop mahogany side tables. I could almost smell the age of it all. Some of it might have been there for thousands of years, some of it might have made its way to the room as a result of the contracts carried out against powerful figures across the Imperium.
I had not heard it said that the assassins were more corrupt than the rest of us, but there had never been much official disapproval attached to the accumulation of suitable compensation for services rendered. And there had been, after all, so many of those services.
He did not rise. I carried myself as confidently as I could. I had a profound sensation of being watched from all sides, and resisted the urge to look around me into the gloom.
‘Be welcome, chancellor,’ he said.
Fadix was as cadaverous as his profession demanded. His head was lean, his eyes as black as the psy-ravens that stood guard over his halls. He wore loose robes – silk, of course – that glistened like oil in the flickering light. Even seated, there was something in his posture that gave away the extreme conditioning he had always lived his life under. I wondered then, as I had done when meeting him before, which Temple he had originally served in. He was surely not one of the Eversor monsters – they were ruined by their unique regimen – and I do not think a Culexus could have been restored either. That still left plenty of possibilities.
‘Your message was perfectly eloquent,’ I said.
‘It was nothing personal. I dislike being observed too closely, by you or anyone else.’
‘I do what I must.’
‘But you do not suffer for it. She did.’
I resisted the sudden urge to swallow. There was no overt malice in his words, just a chilling lack of intonation. This man killed like another man breathes.
‘I regret that greatly,’ I said, honestly enough.
‘Maybe you do.’ Fadix leaned forwards a little, and the silk drapes shifted. ‘But you’re taking a peculiar interest in this matter. I’ve never known you to overreach before.’
It was all true, so there was little point denying it.
‘I act on the demands of the Council,’ I said.
‘In the beginning, maybe,’ Fadix said. ‘But you’re not Kerapliades’ creature. Unless he’s bought you now, which might not have been a wise move for either of you.’
I grew impatient. ‘This is Terra, my lord,’ I said. ‘Even the statues watch one another.’
Despite my long experience, I was letting the Grand Master get to me. If that counted as some kind of victory for him, he gave no outward sign of satisfaction. His expression never seemed to change.
‘No doubt,’ he said. ‘And now you have your date for camera inferior set, and all of us lining up to do your bidding. And yet this time is different. You are doing more than arranging times and places. You’re gathering information as if it were food for a starving man. They tell me coin has changed hands in quantities not seen for years. You’ve been careful to hide the sources, but you’re not the only one to have spies.’
I began to reply, to make the standard defence of my independence, but he held up a thin hand, and my lips closed. His fingernails were long, carefully filed into perfectly smooth ellipses.
‘You want a certain result,’ Fadix said. ‘You’re no longer impartial. That intrigues me. I could shatter your game with a single choice, for I too know how the Council stands. If I voted against your motion it would die. I’m quite used to killing things.’
‘You are bound, lord, to vote in the interests of the Imperium.’
Fadix smiled dryly. ‘I’ve done more for the Imperium than you’ll ever know,’ he said, and his teeth glinted like burnished iron in the dark. ‘I’ve sent my sons and daughters into the hell of Cadia, and almost none return. For every target we eliminate, we lose twice that number of priceless operatives. Do I think Dissolution would change that?’
‘That is the matter before you.’
He shrugged. ‘For me, I have no view. I care little for laws, only that they bind my hands. Suppose you release the Custodians from their vigil here. They say there are ten thousand of them. The enemy numbers in the billions. A lion is a poor hunter to set against so many jackals.’
I remembered Harster’s bleak face then. There’s strength in the universe even greater than theirs.
‘The same argument applies to the Angels of Death,’ I said. ‘We’ve always needed elites.’
‘And so we have them.’ Fadix reached for the leaf of parchment before him and brandished it. I could see reams of close-scrawled text, stamped and restamped with the great seals of the Adeptus Terra. ‘This is the warrant, under the Lex, for an Eversor to be unleashed. It has taken two years to secure. This night, it will be activated, and the stasis pod will be launched into the void. It is the deadliest weapon in my arsenal, honed over ten thousand years of experience. It will kill and kill until it reaches its target. It will cause terror to set against terror. What have the Custodians done to prepare themselves for such fighting, save patrol these walls and polish their spears?’
I knew that they had done far more than that. I guessed that Fadix knew too, but the point was still well made.
‘If you mean to oppose,’ I said, feeling that I had come here at such personal risk only to see my endeavour thwarted, ‘then you are within your rights.’
‘Hah. If I wished to wound you that way, it would have been sweeter to do it at the Council, and watch your hopes crumple at the moment of completion.’ He replaced the parchment lightly. Every one of those sheets was a warrant for the death of some proscribed soul, and he shuffled them like a banker shuffles notes of promise. ‘No, I have in mind a subtler punishment for you. I know you’ve already spoken to the Adeptus Custodes. You do not wish to return to them. I would not wish to return to them either, and yet you will have to, for I plan to abstain. And you understand what that means.’
I did. If he were telling the truth, the votes would remained tied at five each. The twelfth place would have to be filled in order to break the deadlock. I would have to, somehow, speak to the Captain-General.
I could see now what Fadix had done. My interest in the result had been uncovered. Going anywhere near the Custodians would be dangerous for me now, and yet doing nothing risked the chance slipping away. I could pursue it, but it endangered everything I had striven to build over eighty years.
The matter had always been delicate. Now it had become perilous.
‘I do not yet know the intentions of the Adeptus Custodes,’ I said, almost to myself.
Fadix placed his hands on the tabletop, folded neatly, sheathed in cuffs of purest silk.
‘Then, chancellor,’ he said, bringing the interview to its terminus, ‘if you value your reputation, and care anything for this project of your Council allies, I think you had better find out.’
Valerian
I ran down the long corridor. I was deep within the Inner Palace, where the ground itself was hallowed. The high vaulted roof was hung with battle-standards, hundreds of them, all stiff with age. Tall windows let a poor light slip across the flags, etching silver across skull-faced gargoyles.
My guardian spear, Gnosis, crackled in my grip. I could feel my heart thumping steadily, my lungs working, my blood coursing. My armour swam with lines of static electricity, feeding thin lines of energy from the snarling blade. I was like a star in the void.
He was ahead. I could smell him now. This enemy was not one for concealment – he had been built to level walls, and now he was inside them. I had few illusions over what he was capable of – for all that our cultivation was in many respects superior to that of the old Legiones Astartes, they were still among our deadliest foes and quite capable of defeating one of us if sufficient care were not taken. The Long War had given them many dark
gifts, ones that we had to learn about and counter.
I wondered often if we even surpassed our brothers of old now, the ones who had worn the crimson-and-gold, for we had had so many more centuries to understand the nature of the enemy we fought. That was no doubt prideful, and probably inaccurate, but still the thought often came to me.
I rounded the corner at speed, and saw my quarry. He was still running, going faster than his gunmetal-heavy armour would have suggested was possible. He might have been making for one of the pulpits higher up, hoping to find some vantage from which to launch a defence, but my pursuit had been too swift.
I opened up Gnosis’ bolter, catching my enemy on the shoulder and sending him crashing to the ground. Above us both, banners swayed heavily, caught by the backwash from the explosion.
I raced after him, watching him twist back to his feet. He was a massive brute, crusted with ridged and tarnished battleplate. His helm-lenses glowed a dull red, like magma, and he carried a two-handed warhammer. The stench of engine fuel hung over him. He might have even approached my own size, my weight, my strength – such were the perversions the warp had wrought on those who had once served the Throne.
We slammed together, and the impact rippled the stone around us. Our weapons crunched into a brace-lock, showering plasma over both of us. I swung away, hilt-first, and smashed him back a pace. He shoved back, aiming to ram the fizzing hammerhead into my chest.
He nearly connected. I judged his weapon was within a few microseconds of an impact that would have cracked my auramite breastplate. That interval, however, was comfortably sufficient to spin my blade over in my grip, ram the spear tip into the Traitor’s gorget and fire at point-blank range.
The bolt-shell exploded instantly, blasting his head apart in a shower of blown metal-shreds. His warhammer spun out of control, his limbs jerked apart and the momentum of my down-thrust sent his headless corpse crashing to the ground.
Watchers of the Throne: The Emperor’s Legion Page 5
