I recalled the exchange I had had with Chancellor Tieron. Those old debates had felt esoteric at the time, a distraction from our ancient duties and rituals, but they preyed on my mind now. We all knew that the Captain-General had taken a place on the High Council, something that bound us more closely to their deliberations than before, but we did not know where that would lead us. So much was changing, and it seemed inevitable that we would be caught up in it somehow.
By then I had also heard about the Lord Guilliman. News of his return had spread through the Palace quickly, first in hushed whispers, then in increasingly confident tones from the mouths of those who knew the truth. Few had laid eyes on him since his triumphal entry to the Sanctum, and it was widely believed that Valoris had now taken him to the Throneroom, where the two of them remained closeted for many days. An adjutant had been assigned to him, the new tribune Colquan, Italeo’s replacement, who would act as liaison between him and the Captain-General, but otherwise he served as little more than a background presence, a legend that had not yet stepped fully into the light.
Some of my brothers had witnessed him fight during the height of the battle of the Lion’s Gate, of course, though they said little about it, and I had little interest in finding out more.
A primarch was a primarch. We preceded them, just as the Sisters of Silence preceded them. We knew the truth of what they had done for the Imperium, both for good and for ill, and also we understood what role our Master had intended for them in the beginning, as well as what He had hoped for following the apocalypse of the Siege. If one of that fraternity had indeed returned to bolster our flagging defences then that could be welcomed. Our duty would remain as it had always been – as it had been before the Legions had been created, and as it had been after they were dissolved.
For myself, I had other priorities. Once my wounds had healed and my armour was repaired, I did what I had sworn I would do, and sought out Tanau Aleya.
I found her in quarters set aside within the Palace specifically for the returned Sisters of Silence. They were ancient buildings, once used to train and garrison the thousands of null-maidens of the Imperium, but more recently used as a fortress for the Inquisition. There was talk of reinstating the archaic Somnus Citadel on Luna in due course, but that was not something that could be done quickly, and so for the time being the new arrivals were herded together here, where the need was greatest.
It took me some time to locate her cell within that huge and ramshackle edifice. The Inquisition had burned all their records on leaving, as well as destroying or removing many of the old chamber furnishings, leaving the fortress dark, dank and cold. Servitors were everywhere, hauling machinery and lumen-banks, power coils and supply canisters. The sound of turbo-drilling echoed up from the foundations, and I saw huge void shield generators being winched into place by heavy cargo-lifters.
Some of the fortress’ new occupants had served with Imperial institutions for a long time already, and so the adjustment needed for a life within the new dispensation was small. They retained their own armour, mostly still bearing the sigils of individual Black Ships, and carried weapons marked by heavy use. Those Sisters made the sign of the aquila as I passed them, and I returned the gesture of acknowledgement.
The sensation of being surrounded by so many null-souls in such a confined space was, I admit, unnerving. The effect was cumulative, and the further in that I went, the more I became aware of the strange sense of numbness in the filtered air. I had noticed it less during the heat of battle, but now, with something like normality restored, I could begin to understand why it had been so easy for them to slip away from us. It was hard to be around them, to tolerate the vague and nagging sense of wrongness that they exuded. I resolved to concentrate, to overcome such quintessentially human weakness. I was supposed to be beyond such things, after all.
Eventually I found her down in the very lowest level, where the ceilings dripped with rusty fluids and the air was thick with mould spores. Those chambers looked more like gaol cells than spaces in which to meditate. Knowing the identity of the previous occupants, it was likely that they had been.
When I entered, she was staring at a piece of stretched leather placed between staves of iron. She was so intent on her study that she didn’t hear me approach, and I was reduced to that most human of gestures – a faint cough.
She looked up, her face a picture of irritation. She must have recognised me, but I received no welcome.
What do you want? she signed.
‘To give you my thanks,’ I said. ‘And to register my debt to you.’
I was not sure whether to use Thoughtmark or speak out loud. The first seemed presumptuous, the second incongruous.
For what? And why? It was just fighting.
When I had last seen her she had been near collapse from exhaustion. In the days since the battle she had obviously been fed and given medicine, her armour hurriedly repaired, the foul blood burned from her sword and the steel sanctified by priests, but she still looked drained.
‘It was a mighty deed,’ I said, ‘to cripple that beast.’
It wasn’t a beast, it was shedim. You’d have done the same for me. It doesn’t make us soul-siblings.
The degree of resentment in her voice took me aback. Maybe I had become too accustomed to either awe or fear from those I served – to be faced with irascibility, that was novel.
‘Forgive me, Sister. My presence here is unwelcome.’
She turned on me, her eyes flashing. Yes, shield-captain, your presence here is unwelcome. It has been unwelcome for ten thousand years. Throne damn you, I wonder you have the nerve to face me at all.
I could hardly keep up with the blur of her fingers then – anger made her gestures rapid and slurred.
I saw the way you fought out there, she went on. I’ve never seen anything like it. You must have killed hundreds. So why were you here, and why were we there? Why were we left to fester, and you given all this to revel in?
Her fingers were stabbing now, jutting towards me like physical accusations.
So the war’s come to Terra now. I might even be pleased about that. Maybe it’ll stir you out of your damned laziness, though I fear it’s too late for that now.
I may have misinterpreted some of that diatribe. My suspicion is that Thoughtmark contains several expletives in its lexicon that I was unable to decipher; however, the core of her meaning was perfectly clear.
‘You must have suffered gravely,’ I said, doing my best not to antagonise her further. ‘Where were you stationed?’
Arraissa. Heard of that? No, of course not. You’ve been stuck in the Palace so long you’d barely be able to find your way to the front gate if your menials didn’t hold your hands.
She was wrong about that. I knew precisely where Arraissa was – an industrial world deep in the heart of the Segmentum Solar, one of the many hundreds that comprised the productive centre of the Imperium. It raised Militarum regiments and supported a range of sub-Mechanicus-grade manufactures, as well as being a minor pilgrimage centre for the adherents of the Cult of Saint Eutrosius. I felt it politic not to point this out, though. I doubt it would have improved things.
I drew closer to her. Something about the map she was looking at disturbed me. The script was written in an ancient dialect, one that I recognised from my studies in the forbidden archives.
Where did you obtain this? I signed.
She looked up at me. You can read it?
I took a closer look. The more I read, the more concerned I became. Over the centuries, my scholarship had encompassed a wide range of theological subjects. I had become versed in many languages now forgotten by the wider Imperium. Some of them, I suspect, were spoken nowhere save those places only we and our ancient enemies could still go.
‘This is a tongue of Lost Cthonia,’ I said out loud. ‘A dialect that had died out long before tha
t world was destroyed. It is the gravest heresy even to possess such a thing. If the Inquisition knew you had it–’
What does it mean?
My eyes passed over the swirls, running down arcane patterns that eluded sense. It was a representation of the warp, that was plain enough, although I had always believed such things were of limited use – the empyrean changed all the time, mutating itself and twisting into new forms. A fixed diagram would only be of service at a specific moment, and to be able to predict the warp’s future form was beyond even the greatest of our prognosticators.
Some aspects, though, I could decipher. Star systems were marked in Cthonian script, given figurative names that I could deduce from my knowledge of the stellar cartography around the Sol region. The more I looked, the more became evident.
This is an invasion scheme, I signed, switching again to Aleya’s mode of discourse. Centred on Terra, marking eight cardinal conduits through which a fleet could pass. Here are the worlds, all within a single warp stage, all sitting at the mouths of secure ether channels.
Aleya had lost her earlier irritation, and now looked at her map with hungry eyes. S– thought it must be something like that, she signed, using a name-form I didn’t recognise, but he couldn’t read it. Can it be used?
I committed the schema to memory. Even as I worked, I was contemplating what must be done with it. If accurate, this was of the highest value, and notice should be sent to the High Lords without delay.
Where did you get it? I signed.
I broke up a cabal. The Circlet, they were called. The last thing I did before the galaxy began to break. She looked up at me. The Black Legion were on their heels. They were involved in this thing, working through mortal cults across void-stations.
It must be taken to the Council, then. If an attack is planned–
She glared at me. I suffered to retrieve this. My convent suffered – we were being picked off. If you know where these places are, we go there now. We burn them before they burn us.
She was utterly serious. The muster of null-maidens was only just complete. The attack on the Lion’s Gate had only just been seen off. Our forces were in disarray and gathering significant numbers for a fresh assault on such flimsy grounds would be difficult, probably impossible.
But I could not ignore the threat. Aleya was not wrong about what she had – this was surely part of the same grand assault, a fragment of the same strategy that had conspired to fracture the skein of the warp and silence the beacon of the Emperor. Our enemies knew we were half-blind and reeling, and so they would strike close, and strike soon. If this truly were evidence of where they would make their first move, then it needed to be used.
She noticed my hesitation, though. That was the most legitimate of the many criticisms that we endured in the years to come – that our long and patient vigil had made us too cautious, too bound to old rites and unable to react decisively when the need arose.
You say you owe a debt to me, she signed, rapidly and forcefully. Discharge it, then. Show me how to find these places and take me there.
I felt something unusual then, watching her thrust those flickering signs of Thoughtmark at me. At the very least I ought to have found her presumptuous, and at the worst guilty of the gravest disrespect, but instead I found myself unable to suppress the twitch of a smile. I admired this woman. I admired her lack of deception and her genuine fervour. By the Throne, I even admired the way she conversed, not that I expected that the sentiment would be readily reciprocated.
Nothing about what she demanded was simple. We were in flux, the Captain-General was with the Emperor Himself, as was the Lord Commander Presumptive. The High Lords, in whose names the Imperium was still theoretically governed, were fully detained with the many tasks of recovery and rearmament. To do what she asked required influence that I did not possess.
But there were ways around most obstacles. Dwelling in the snake’s nest of the Palace for as long as I had done had taught me that.
‘I know a person to whom this could be taken,’ I said. ‘If we do so, may I suggest, with all possible respect, that you leave the talking to me?’
Aleya
I never for a moment believed that he would actually do it. I was merely taking out my frustrations on him in that cell, trying to make him feel as bad as I did, and yet he listened to me, and then he even did as I asked. Perhaps he really did believe all that talk about debts of honour, or maybe he saw the true danger of the map in a way that I did not – in any case, it forced me to look at him with rather different eyes.
In truth, my desire to hunt down the planets on that damned flayed parchment was as much about getting off Terra as anything else. In my short time there I found the place almost unbearably depressing. I was not seeing it at its best, of course, and I appreciated that the war had come suddenly and brutally to its walls, but even so my rancour towards it only intensified the longer I was there.
There was never an apology. No official from the High Lords ever came to us and expressed regret for the way we had been treated. We were simply thrown into that hideous fortress, given our orders and expected to form ourselves into an army that had not fought together for many thousands of years. They were fools, all of them, the High Lords – blind fools that were unworthy of our service.
My only allegiance, in those days, was to Him. That, and that alone, never faltered. I swore a vow that I would avenge my sisters in His name, but not in the name of the Council and not at their bidding. Everything I would do from that point onwards would be framed within that prism of vengeance, and I looked forward ferociously to the coming of the enemy to the Throneworld so I could visit such pain on them as they had on me.
I never thought that Valerian would give me a route to this revenge, nor that it would happen so swiftly. He stood there in my cell, with his soft, patient voice, ignoring my repeated insults and studying that infernal parchment as if it were a fascinating but harmless piece of interesting illumination. Most infuriating of all, he proved impossible to provoke. Hatred seemed to have almost no purchase on him, as if it were an emotion he simply couldn’t understand.
Later, after I had spent more time in his company, I realised just how close to the mark that judgement was. It was actually more a case, I think, of his having no conception whatsoever of pride. He had no ego to bruise. He saw his entire life as a pure expression of service, and wished for nothing more than that. His only ambition, of any kind, was to serve the Throne more perfectly. If he had been ordered to throw his armour away and stand in the path of daemonic arrows, he would have done so without complaint. That was the key difference between him and, say, a Space Marine. A Space Marine was a creature of incredible internal pride, a warrior breed of such bellicosity that they would go to war – and had done – over matters of martial insult or the resentments of their flawed primarchs. Valerian would never have done that. In that distinction, I felt, was both his greatest strength and his most profound weakness.
We went from the cell, taking a picter image of the map and leaving the original in its stasis field. As we went, I could tell that he was communicating, sending urgent requests for a meeting ahead of us, even as he kept up the flawless stream of Thoughtmark with me. We passed into finer parts of the Palace, with high stained-glass windows and gold-chased columns. I saw few warriors but many menials and even more Adeptus scribes, all racing from one task to another like a herd of startled bovines. The scale of it all was numbing rather than impressive – an endless warren of chamber after chamber, hall after hall, linked by a filigree of bridges and transit arches that wove through the toxic air and turned the mind.
He guided us expertly, walking swiftly but never hurrying. His wound, which I had thought might have been terminal, was by then hardly in evidence. His powers of recuperation, I surmised, were as impressive as his ability not to take offence.
Soon we had entered some truly gra
nd regions – basilicas and mansions that piled atop one another in a bacchanalia of cumulative construction. Through narrow portals I caught glimpses of the very centre of it all, the colossal Sanctum Imperialis itself, rising against the northern horizon like some continental landmass, part masked by the haze of distance. I wondered briefly if we would go anywhere near it, and my interest was piqued. Hestia had always told us that only two orders were permitted into the presence of the Emperor Himself – the Custodians and ourselves.
One day, I thought to myself. One day.
But then our path turned away from it, and we were climbing into ostentatious rooms lined with mirrors and hung with thick tapestries. The luxury was obscene – just one of the many artefacts that littered those galleries could have been ransomed for the annual tithe of an entire planet. The courtiers that we passed by in those places I found repugnant. They bowed low to Valerian, and to me, but I found the shallow subservience disgusting. One woman had the temerity to flash me a timid smile, so I shot her a Thoughtmark stun-gesture that sent her reeling into a table full of glassware.
At the end of it, we found ourselves ushered into one of the most opulent rooms of all, a veritable magpie’s nest of ancient objects and antiquaries. I looked around at it all, trying to gauge how much coin it must have taken to assemble.
Soon afterwards, heavy doors at the far end of the chamber opened smoothly and two figures entered. One was a woman, fairly young with a clever face and a dancer’s erect bearing. The other was a man, older, with a heavy paunch and thick lines under his eyes. Neither of them looked like they’d slept for a long time, and their fine robes couldn’t hide a certain quiet desperation. The man greeted Valerian with warmth, though.
Watchers of the Throne: The Emperor’s Legion Page 25
