• THE VAMPIRE GENEVIEVE •
by Kim Newman
BOOK 1: DRACHENFELS
BOOK 2 : GENEVIEVE UNDEAD
BOOK 3 : BEASTS IN VELVET
BOOK 4 : SILVER NAILS

THE WICKED AND THE DAMNED
A portmanteau novel by Josh Reynolds, Phil Kelly and David Annandale

MALEDICTIONS
An anthology by various authors

THE HOUSE OF NIGHT AND CHAIN
A novel by David Annandale

PERDITION’S FLAME
An audio drama by Alec Worley

Contents

Cover

Backlist

Title Page

Warhammer Horror

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

About the Author

An Extract from ‘The Wicked and the Damned’

Warhammer horror : A Black Library Publication Imprint

eBook license

A dark bell tolls in the abyss.

It echoes across cold and unforgiving worlds, mourning the fate of humanity. Terror has been unleashed, and every foul creature of the night haunts the shadows. There is naught but evil here. Alien monstrosities drift in tomblike vessels. Watching. Waiting. Ravenous. Baleful magicks whisper in gloom-shrouded forests, spectres scuttle across disquiet minds. From the depths of the void to the blood-soaked earth, diabolic horrors stalk the endless night to feast upon unworthy souls.

Abandon hope. Do not trust to faith. Sacrifices burn on pyres of madness, rotting corpses stir in unquiet graves. Daemonic abominations leer with rictus grins and stare into the eyes of the accursed. And the Ruinous Gods, with indifference, look on.

This is a time of reckoning, where every mortal soul is at the mercy of the things that lurk in the dark. This is the night eternal, the province of monsters and daemons. This is Warhammer Horror. None shall escape damnation.

And so, the bell tolls on.

PROLOGUE

Then

‘It’s haunted,’ Katrin said the first time she saw Malveil. She spoke with the adamantine assurance of an eight-year-old, and Zander, who was four, began to cry.

‘It is not,’ Eliana said. She crouched beside our daughter and gave her a hug, but her face showed alarm at Katrin’s blasphemy. ‘Never say that.’

I lifted Zander in my arms. He rested his face against my shoulder, wetting my uniform with his tears. He did not turn his eyes from the house, though. He stared at it, terrified, his sister’s statement confirmation of what he had already decided for himself.

We were standing at the gates to the grounds of Malveil. The house was some distance away, brooding at the top of its hill. From this vantage point, under the leaden sky, the great mansion was a dark shape, the silhouette of its towers jutting up from the walls. The details of the facade were invisible. Malveil was a hard mass of black, and I could understand the children’s reaction, even as I regretted it. The grounds were rugged and broken, gnawed apart by the generations of mining. The industry that had burrowed into the stony hill was the foundation of the Strock family’s wealth and power, though much of the machinery was quiet now. The seams were almost exhausted. We would not be drawing much more wealth out of the ground. We no longer needed to. With enough accumulation, wealth and all that flows from it is self-sustaining.

‘Ghosts do not exist,’ I told Zander and Katrin. ‘Do not offend the Emperor by believing in such nonsense.’ I spoke gently, but I needed them to know there were ideas no one should have. I  patted Zander’s shoulder and smiled at Katrin. ‘Anyway, you shouldn’t be frightened of Malveil. You should be proud. This is our family’s home. It is a great house. The greatest on Solus.’

‘If it is our house, why don’t we live there?’ Katrin asked. She did not sound eager to do so, but at least it was curiosity, rather than fear, that prompted her question.

‘My uncle Leonel lives there now. It is his home, because he is lord-governor of Solus.’ Over time, the line between family estate and governor’s palace had blurred. Though Malveil was not officially the seat of government, it had become so in practice since the rise of the Strocks to prominence. As long as a Strock was governor, Malveil would be the governor’s residence. Our line had had its share of travails, but there was still no sign that power might slip from our grasp. Even in the present circumstances.

‘But you’re governor,’ Katrin said.

‘Governor-regent,’ I said. ‘Just for a little while, until Leonel is better.’ He had been ill for some time now. The precise nature of his affliction was unclear, and he had become a recluse, never leaving the house and rarely admitting visitors. He was an absent ruler, and I had been recalled from my Astra Militarum service as captain in the Solus Nightmarch to act as governor until Leonel recovered or a proper regency could be established, one that would, naturally, both ensure stability on Solus and see off any political challenges to Strock supremacy.

This period lives, in my memory, as a golden time. I was home on Solus for most of a year, and had been given that rare opportunity for an officer – the chance to be a part of one’s family, even if only for a short while. I had left to do my duty to the Imperium while Eliana was still expecting Zander. That I had been able to see Katrin through her first years had itself been an unusual dispensation, a privilege granted by my family’s standing. I had not expected to return until – if I survived – late in life, by which time both children would be complete strangers to me, assuming they were still on Solus at all and not swept up in a subsequent Astra Militarum tithe themselves. So Leonel’s affliction had become my blessing.

That year was a glorious one. Its memories sustained me in the time that followed, whether I was facing the horrors of the battlefield or other, more personal griefs. But when I finally came back to Solus for good, it was this day that loomed over all the others, casting its shadow upon the entire year. Even before my return, it had begun to grow, metastasising, becoming the dominant image of that year, hauling my thoughts back to it with an irresistible gravitational pull. I should have been recalling my games with the children in the grounds of the family’s secondary residence, near the centre of Valgaast. I should have been picturing the two of them splashing in the fountains of the courtyard. I should have been thinking of Eliana, and her smiles as she watched them. I should have been thinking of her hand in mine.

Instead, I kept coming back to Katrin’s fearful pronouncement and Zander’s tears. And the moments that followed.

‘Will you ever be governing governor?’ Katrin asked.

I exchanged a glance with Eliana, and she pressed her lips tightly together, holding back a laugh. ‘That’s hard to say,’ I answered. ‘It depends on whether Leonel has any children.’ An unlikely prospect at his age, but not impossible. ‘If he does, then one of them will become governor, not me.’

‘Good,’ said Zander.

‘Oh?’ I teased. ‘You don’t think I’d make a good governor?’

Eliana had straightened up from hugging Katrin, but now our daughter pressed herself tightly against her mother’s waist. ‘We don’t want to go in that house,’ she said.

‘Please, papa,’ Zander sobbed. ‘No, papa.’

‘We’re not about to move there,’ Eliana said. She ruffled Katrin’s hair and gave me a sign that it was time to go. ‘We can’t even visit it, so stop your worrying.’

We started walking again, Zander quaking in my arms, Katrin clutching Eliana’s hand and snuffling through her tears. We put the high wall of the grounds behind us as we headed back down the Malveil Road, making our way through the industrial sector, back towards the residential quarters of Valgaast. I looked over my shoulder to get one last glimpse of the house before a curve in the road took it out of sight. I had never feared Malveil. It had always been a palace of dreams for me while I was growing up. It represented the highest summit a Strock could climb, the highest honour and, as my understanding matured, the noblest duty. I did not think of it as haunted. When I looked back at it at that moment, I felt pity for Leonel, gratitude for my time as regent and wistful longing to see again the halls that I had visited only once before.

I had no dark thoughts. I felt no presentiment of menace.

But when I turned back to my family, a wave of vertigo struck me. I stumbled, almost dropping Zander, as the ground turned treacherous beneath my feet. It seemed to be as thin as cobwebs, about to give way and throw us into a nightmare chasm. Zander was limp in my arms, his head a lolling dead weight, his neck broken. Eliana was dragging Katrin’s corpse, heedless of the blood pouring from our daughter’s open throat.

I gasped, struggling to find the air to scream. I was drowning, falling and suffocating all at once.

And then the moment passed. The horror receded, evaporating from my memory. The road was solid, my children unharmed. I had had a brief dizzy spell, that was all. My stride was sure, and within seconds, all that had happened was that I had looked forward too quickly and gone light-headed.

For years, that was all I would recall. Even when the memory of Katrin and Zander’s terror grew large, my terrible vision remained buried, hidden from my mind’s eye. It did not resurface.

Not until I returned to Solus. Not until I looked upon Malveil once more.

CHAPTER 1

Now

The antechamber to the Hall of Judgement on the battleship Eternal Fury was a semicircle, fifty-four paces across at its widest. I had counted. Against the fore wall, a single iron chair stood next to the heavy bronze doors that separated me from my judges. I had yet to sit in it. I could not keep still. I walked the periphery of the antechamber, finding no relief in movement, only the necessity to avoid the curse of stillness.

To port and starboard were deck-to-ceiling windows, and from the port one I could see the charred lump of coal that had been the world of Clostrum. The world it had been my duty to save. Every time I passed before that view, I paused, wincing through fresh spasms of guilt. Averting my gaze was not within my power. The sight pulled me, hooks sunk into my soul. Again and again, I stared at the dead world and then jerked away, my heart thumping hard, my gut dropping away, my left palm tingling with new sweat.

There was no feeling in my right palm. Nor anywhere else in my right arm, or my right leg. Or, more precisely, there was no natural feeling. They were my prosthetics, replacing the flesh and bone taken from me on Clostrum. I was not used to them yet. My pacing was more than restlessness. It was also my attempt to come to terms with the new realities of my body. The faint whirs of the servo-motors were still an alien sound, a machinic voice that I could not truly connect with myself. It was a whisper that followed me everywhere I went, its true source perpetually out of sight, though always near. The arm and the leg worked well, obeying the impulses sent by my brain. I did not consciously have to command their motions. At the same time, they were a strange land, a zone I did not recognise. They belonged to someone else, someone whose intentions perfectly reflected my own. I felt the phantom pains of my vanished limbs, and the aches corresponded to places on the prosthetics yet did not come from them. I was a divided being, playing at unity.

My soul was as split as my body. I was present in the moment, and grappling with the agony of my shame. I was also distant, part of my mind retreating into a cocoon of numbness, observing my torment with a cold disinterest.

I had been waiting in the antechamber for hours. When my eyes did not go to the ruin of Clostrum, they lingered on the relief sculpture of the bronze doors. On each was a massive figure, Justice personified in heroic lines, arms crossed, jaw stern, gaze directed far above my head, as if seeing the arrival of judgement. There was no mercy to be had here, no concessions.

I expected none. I desired none.

I did not think I desired anything. Not any longer. I awaited the call to pass through the doors with no impatience. I did not even feel the urge to get the process over with. There was only the shame, its spears battling with the protective shield of the numbness. The shield that held the memories of Clostrum at bay. I had to protect myself from them, or they would rip me apart. I would not be able to function at all. And if nothing else, I was determined to meet my fate with dignity. I owed that to my regiment. And to my fallen troops.

‘Steady,’ I whispered to myself as I approached the port window again. ‘Steady.’ But the effort to avoid the memories backfired. Instead of blocking them, I summoned them. They stormed my defences. They came for me with pincers and claws that could shred a Leman Russ like parchment. They came with bodies bloated with bioweapons. They came in a swarm that blotted out the sky and covered the land with an undulating carpet of horror. I saw the heroes of the Nightmarch, the soldiers who trusted me, who followed my commands without question, who looked to me for guidance and the path to victory. I saw the monsters turn them to blood and pulp. I saw the ocean of jaws devour my regiment.

I was in the roof hatch of my command Chimera again. The giant horror rushed us. It towered over the vehicle, its body armoured with impregnable chitin, its huge arms ending in talons like serrated spears. It stabbed its talons through the flanks of the Chimera, lifted it from the ground and ripped it in two. It hurled the halves away. I went flying and landed twenty yards from the burning wreckage. I tried to stand. I tried to make my last stand a worthy one. Before I could rise, the creatures were on me, marching over me, barely seeing me. One warrior form paused. Its talons pierced my shoulder and thigh.

The agony was fresh again. The agony and the sound, the awful tearing of muscle and the cracking of bone. The agony and the smell, the mix of my blood and the sharp, burning stench of xenos pheromones. The agony and the sudden absence, the parting of arm and leg from body.

And still other memories came, more fragmented but just as terrible, maybe even worse. They were confused impressions of gunfire, light and darkness, screams and roars. They were my last impressions as I wavered in and out of consciousness, of the troopers who came to my aid and died saving their failed colonel.

I hunched forward in the antechamber, clutching my false arm, my right leg feeling as if it were buckling, even though it could not. I gasped for air, and my nostrils were filled with the smell of xenos and massacre. My eyes watered. My chest heaved. I growled, because if I didn’t, I would scream.

‘Colonel, you may enter.’

The words jerked me from the memories. My eyes cleared. The bronze door had opened. Two men, one in the livery of the Imperial Navy, the other a surviving major of the Solus Nightmarch, stood on either side of the doorway.

I straightened up, cleared my throat and gave the major a curt nod. His name was Hetzer. He had been among those who had saved me. He was one of the few who had survived doing so.

I crossed the threshold into the Hall of Judgement. Four sculpted swords pointed to the centre of the vaulted ceiling, from which a great skull stared down. The room was circular, and I advanced down an aisle to its centre, to stand on a bronze aquila inlaid in the marble floor, directly beneath the gaze of the skull.

A ring of thrones surrounded me. All were occupied. The majority of the authorities present were of the Astra Militarum, most notably General Pereven of the Solus Nightmarch. There were a number of officers from the Imperial Navy as well, in deference to the fact that it was in their ship that this court was assembled. There were others too. There was Captain Numitor of the Ultramarines Eighth Company. I had never seen him before, but I knew who he must be. We had all known that the Ultramarines were fighting on Clostrum, though they had not been present near the battle I had lost. This was the first time I had been in close proximity to one of the Adeptus Astartes. I was dwarfed by his colossal stature. I felt something even worse than shame to be in the presence of so noble a warrior.

Sitting next to Pereven was a woman in solemn robes of black laced with gold. She was very old. The heavy chain and pendant of the Adeptus Terra seemed to weigh her neck down, but her eyes were piercing.

Pereven confirmed my surmise by introducing Numitor, and presented the woman as Lady Arrasq. ‘The rest you know,’ he said.

I did. I had the deepest respect for every officer in the room. It made my failure all the more painful to have it witnessed by them.

‘Colonel Maeson Strock,’ said Pereven, ‘the Circle of Judgement has been called to consider your actions in the battle for Clostrum. Do you understand your position in these proceedings?’

‘I do, sir.’ I stood straight. I stared at a point on the wall just above the general’s head. ‘I understand that the work of the Circle is complete. Judgement has already been reached. I am here for it to be rendered, not to defend myself.’

‘Good,’ said Pereven. ‘Before we pronounce the verdict, this court would like to hear your evaluation of the event.’

‘Sir, I was charged with leading my regiment against the tyranid invasion and protecting the civilian population of Hive Throndhelm. I failed in this task. My regiment was defeated, taking severe losses, and Throndhelm was overrun. So was all of Clostrum. In the wake of the Imperial defeat, Exterminatus was declared. I make no excuses for the part I played in losing a forge world. Whatever the verdict of this court, I accept it with thanks and will do grateful penance.’

Pereven toyed with the stylus in his hands. ‘Colonel, though you have described the events accurately, your analysis is incorrect.’

‘Sir?’ I asked, confused.

‘You did not fail in your duty,’ said Numitor. ‘No success was possible, though none of us knew this at the outset of the battle.’

‘You slowed the tyranids,’ Pereven said. ‘You bought enough time for a significant portion of the population of Hive Throndhelm to be evacuated off-world, along with a considerable amount of resources. Colonel, you are to be commended for your actions.’

‘Commended,’ I repeated softly. The word tasted like sawdust.

‘Though Clostrum was lost,’ said Numitor, ‘the larger tyranid advance into this sector of the Imperium has been blunted, at least for now. You were part of a victory, colonel, not a defeat.’

The screams of devoured soldiers roiled in my memory, blotting out my sense of the chamber for a moment. If there was a triumph here, I could not find it.

‘You fought hard,’ said Pereven. ‘You have done well, colonel.’

‘Thank you, sir,’ I managed. His praise struck my soul like a curse. ‘I look forward to serving with honour wherever the Nightmarch is called to next.’ It took a huge effort to utter those words. Sweat beaded on my forehead.

Pereven exchanged a glance with Arrasq.

‘No,’ said the noble who spoke for the Adeptus Terra.

‘How much of the retreat do you remember?’ Pereven asked before I could respond.

‘Very little,’ I admitted. ‘I believe I was unconscious for most of it.’

‘Despite your wounds, you were not. You continued to issue commands throughout.’

‘Coherent ones?’ I turned to look at Hetzer. He looked uncomfortable.

‘Speak freely, major,’ said Pereven. ‘You will do no harm to your colonel. We already know the answer to his question. He does not, and he deserves the truth.’

Hetzer cleared his throat. ‘No,’ he told me. ‘Many of your orders could not be followed.’

‘Meaning you had the good judgement not to obey them,’ I said sadly. ‘Was I delirious from blood loss?’ I asked Pereven.

‘The medicae officers have concluded that this was only partly the case. You were suffering from other forms of shock, colonel.’

‘You have given what you could to the battlefield, Colonel Strock,’ Arrasq said. ‘You have nothing left to give.’

What she said was true, and I knew it. Yet it felt like the most humiliating weakness to agree. Then she said, ‘The Imperium still has need of your services.’

Hope flared. I was ready to agree to anything, as long as I could salvage even a thread of dignity. ‘All I ask is to serve,’ I said.

‘Tell us about your home world, colonel,’ said Arrasq.

I was puzzled, but did as she had asked. ‘Solus is an agri world,’ I said. ‘Its seat of government is Valgaast, which is also its largest city. Its exports to the Imperium are on the order of twelve billion tonnes a year…’ I trailed off, feeling foolish. ‘I’m sorry, Lady Arrasq. I really don’t understand what you want from me.’

‘You have told me what I wanted to hear.’ She glanced at the data-slate in her hands. ‘Colonel, would you be surprised to learn that exports from Solus have been gradually falling for some time? And that the current level is just under ten billion tonnes a year?’

‘I would be, yes, though it has been many years since I have had news from Solus. Have there been droughts?’

‘Not of any unusual kind. The decline has been steady since the death of Leonel Strock.’

‘My uncle was incapable of governing for the latter part of his life. That was why the regency was established.’

‘Yes, and under your guidance the export levels were steady. In fact, they climbed. But not only is this no longer the case, evidence has also been uncovered of large quantities of Solus products entering black markets.’

I saw what Arrasq was implying. ‘You believe the governing council has become corrupt.’

‘We do. Its members are engaged in war profiteering on a large scale.’

‘Leonel Strock died over thirty years ago. Has the problem been festering that long?’

‘It has, but the council has been careful. The decline of exports and rise of profiteering were very gradual, unnoticeable from year to year. The wheels of the Administratum grind slowly. It is only recently that an audit of Solus’ exports over the long term has been conducted.’

‘The corruption will be deeply rooted, then.’

‘Indeed. Until now, your duty to the Imperium has been on the battlefield, but matters have changed.’

‘I am no longer useful in combat,’ I said. I managed to keep the bitterness from my voice.

‘This is your new campaign, colonel,’ said Pereven.

‘We believe it is only a matter of time before the council seeks to install a new lord-governor,’ Arrasq went on. ‘To date, it seems that the only barrier has been your hereditary claim. But that will not stop the council indefinitely. You must return, Lord-Governor Strock. Take up the title that is yours by right, and purge the council of corruption.’ She paused. ‘You must go home.’ She watched me, gauging the effect of her words.

Home. I did not know if the word still had meaning. It had been so long. I was changed. Solus had changed too, in ways more profound and personal for me than the political situation.

Home. I pushed the word as far from my consciousness as I could. That was not far enough. It would come back for me all too soon. I would have to try to be ready for it.

I doubted I would be.

‘Thank you, Lady Arrasq,’ I said. I mouthed the correct responses. They sounded flat to me, as if a servitor were speaking instead of me. ‘I am grateful for this assignment.’ The word redemption rose in my thoughts. Redemption for what? For which sin? Or maybe this is punishment. Perhaps this court is sentencing you without realising it. ‘I will return honour to Solus.’

‘I’m sure you will, lord-governor.’

That was twice she had used the title. She was emphasising my new role. I was no longer to think of myself as a colonel in the Astra Militarum. I was returning to the other tradition of my family. I was a noble, and the duties were of a very different nature. She was also reminding me of the authority she represented. General Pereven and the other officers might control what happened to me within the aegis of the Nightmarch. It was not for them to declare me lord-governor. Even my family claim on the governorship did not, ultimately, rely on any authority on Solus. No matter how strong my right might appear in the traditions of my home world, those traditions were subject to the decisions that could, at any time, emanate from the Adeptus Terra. Arrasq could make or unmake me with a word.

I saluted Pereven, then turned, slowly, giving due acknowledgement to the full circle of my judges. They looked back at me impassively, expressions perfectly neutral.

Hetzer and the Navy officer opened the doors of the chamber for me.

What are you thinking? I wondered as I walked back down the aisle. I had been praised, not censured. But in every way that mattered, I was already no longer a colonel. What do you see before you? Is that pity you are hiding? Is it gratitude that my fate is not yours? Is it contempt for my weakness?

I was glad not to know. I had self-loathing enough to keep me occupied. No matter what I had been told, I despised the officer who had lost Hive Throndhelm. I hated the relief I felt in knowing I would not be returning to combat.

The echoes of screaming troops grew louder again. I managed to keep my breathing regular and my stride steady. I prayed to the Emperor for strength. I was terrified the memories would attack with all their monsters and shame me before I could leave the chamber.

I made it out with my dignity intact. I allowed myself to take a long, shuddering breath when I heard the doors close behind me. I kept walking, my action mechanical, as if all my limbs were prosthetic, and as if movement alone would get me away from the waking nightmares. I stopped in front of the port window. The dead planet turned slowly beneath the ship. It was free of nightmares, free of hope. It was nothing now. I was almost envious.

‘I shall miss you, sir.’

I hadn’t realised that Hetzer had followed me out. I did not jump. I took that as a small victory.

‘Thank you, major.’ I turned my back on the sight of Clostrum. ‘Thank you for everything.’

His smile was crooked, skewed by the massive scar cutting across his face. He would bear the mark of saving his superior officer forever. ‘It was an honour to serve with you.’

‘The honour was mine. I thank the Emperor that you will continue to lead. I imagine these are your last days as major.’

He looked embarrassed. ‘So I have been told,’ he admitted.

‘I am glad. Let me congratulate you and call you colonel now, before we part.’

We shook hands.

‘I hope your return to Solus goes well,’ Hetzer said.

I made myself smile. I wasn’t sure that it could. I was going home to mourning and to painful hope. I didn’t know which was worse.

That night, I dreamt about the day I showed Malveil to my children. My vision of their deaths rose from the grave of memories and roared.

I woke with a gasp, and with the shrieks of lost comrades in my ears.

CHAPTER 2

The gate to Malveil was open when I arrived. I sat in the back of the car for a few moments after Belzhek, my chauffeur, had pulled over. The grounds were waiting, after so long, for me to claim them as the new lord of the manor. The last time I had seen Malveil, its sight had been tainted by my children’s tears, and the stain lingered.

‘Shall I drive in, lord-governor?’ Belzhek asked. She was another veteran of the Nightmarch, mustered out by extensive injuries. She had been a sergeant, and her family was not wealthy, so her prosthetics gave her mobility but not much more. The lower half of her body was a platform with motorised treads. Her mechanism slotted well into the vehicle, but outside the car, she moved at a crawl. Her life was better than that of a servitor, but that was small reward for her service.

‘No, thank you,’ I said. ‘I’ll walk the rest of the way.’ I wanted to feel the grounds as Malveil and I became properly acquainted for the first time. ‘Wait here. I’ll need you to take me to the Council Hall afterwards.’

‘Yes, lord-governor.’

I got out of the car, shutting the door behind me with a hard clunk. The vehicle was an old one, as well maintained as it could be, though its engine grumbled loudly and the exhaust spewed blue smoke. It was a stolid thing, squat and heavy. It favoured strength over luxury, and I liked it. It sent the right signal about the kind of governor I intended to be.

I walked up to the gate, dwarfed by the ancient wall surrounding the estate. It was fifty feet high, a massive rockcrete barrier stained black with time. It had not had to defend Malveil against an attack for as long as the Strocks had owned the land, but when Leonel had turned into a recluse, it had held off the curious, the concerned and the scheming. The iron gate was just as high, each of its bars over a foot thick. I crossed the threshold into the land that was now mine and felt the strength of the wall at my back.

Let the council do its worst. Its corruption, no matter how thorough, suddenly seemed a weak thing indeed compared to the power that resided on this hill.

A gatehouse crouched against the interior of the wall, its gothic windows shadowed by its steeply gabled roof. It was the home of Rhen Karoff, the major-domo of Malveil. He had offered to meet me at the gate, but I had asked him to wait for me at the house itself. I needed the time alone to prepare myself. Things had changed since I had stood outside the gates with Eliana and the children. Hopes had died within its walls. This was not the return I had imagined for myself long ago.

But hopes were not reality. It was reality that I must face.

The route up the hill was barely a road. It twisted back and forth between the entrances to mines and quarries. The rockcrete had been broken up and rutted over the centuries by the passage of heavy machinery. The machines no longer travelled it. The mines were exhausted, Leonel had let the road fall further into disrepair, and nothing had been done to improve it since his death. I passed between gaping pits and dark tunnels burrowing into the bare stone of the hill. The mines were open graves. Here and there, the bones of cranes and excavators marked the tombs. The day was chilly, and a north wind, soft but insistent and steady, blew through the iron skeletons with a rusting, hollow whistle.

As I drew closer to the top of the hill, I left the remains of the mining behind. There were trees here, and they were all dead, killed by the toxins that had permeated the ground in the wake of the excavations. The Strock estate had been the source of our power, but the price had been the ruin of the grounds. There was no beauty in this land. It was grey and hard, a pitted fossil. And though the trees were dead, they refused to fall. They surrounded Malveil with their petrified death, branches reaching out to the leaden sky, splayed, angled, clutching, pleading.

The house had filled more and more of my vision during my ascent. Sometimes it disappeared behind a mound of ejecta and then reappeared with greater force. The dead forest veiled it from view again, the tangles of branches and the crooked trunks concealing all but fragments of the house. Then I emerged from the trees, and it rose before me in its full power. I stopped, taking it in.

This is yours, now. This belongs to you.

I had trouble making myself believe that.

The Strocks belong to Malveil.

The thought was an odd one. I tried to dismiss it as unworthy fancy. It did not leave willingly, because it was confident in its truth, and it gnawed at my chest.

I tried another tactic. All right, then. We belong to Malveil. It comes to the same. We are united in strength. Let me claim my birthright, and use it to save Solus.

Malveil had been standing long before the Strocks had made it their family seat. It had been built millennia ago, its birth lost in the fog of Solus’ deeper history. Its walls were pitted and cracked, their edges worn by the slow claws of time. Malveil was there before us, and it would be there long after the Strocks were no more. This was not pessimism. This was a simple fact. Malveil did not hide its age. If anything, it looked even older than it was, as if it somehow predated Solus itself. And despite its age, or perhaps because of it, it did not seem frail. It was as solid as it was ancient. It was eternal. It would never fall. I could picture it on the surface of post-Exterminatus Clostrum, defiant against all destruction, outliving worlds because it was an unalterable fact of the galaxy.

It was a long house, the facade stretching far to my left and right. The tall, narrow, pointed windows were glowering eyes in its grim, impassive face. Two square towers guarded the main entrance, and narrower, conical towers rose over the battlements at regular intervals. To the west, at my left, the main body of the house adjoined the largest tower of them all. It was circular, massive and much older even than the rest of the building. It was the remnant of an earlier structure, though it also looked as if it had given birth to the new house. The ferrocrete walls of Malveil were stained a dark grey, but the round tower was a deep black, as if it had turned into a night of stone under the weight of Solus’ history.

Behind me, wind soughed through the dead trees. Branches creaked like opening vault doors.

Malveil was not a welcoming house. It never had been. That was not its purpose. I had, for much of my life, taken for granted that its purpose was to be the gravitation centre of the Strock family. But now, standing here, looking at its uncaring visage, trying to prepare myself for the mourning that would return, hard, when I walked through its door, I knew that idea was a delusion. I had managed to hold on to it while I served in the Nightmarch, far from the realities of Solus. I had held on to the lie because I had had to. It had given me comfort. I could no longer believe in it now.

I thought again of the day I had brought Katrin and Zander to see Malveil. I remembered what Eliana had said that night, after we had finally managed to get the children to settle down. We were preparing to go to bed, keeping half an ear open for the sound of sudden crying.

‘I suppose we’ll be lucky if we make it to morning without being woken to deal with nightmares,’ I sighed.

‘I did warn you,’ said Eliana. She folded back the covers and climbed into our bed. ‘What did you think was going to happen? That they would clamour to visit the magic castle?’

‘No. Of course not. I just…’ I thought for a moment, trying to remember why I had imagined the visit would have been a good idea. ‘It’s their heritage. It’s part of who they are. It’s important that they know that.’

‘Agreed. When they’re older.’

‘I can see that now,’ I said sheepishly, getting in beside her. I put my arms around her and she nestled against my chest. ‘I just didn’t think it would frighten them, that’s all.’

‘I love you, Maeson, but how, in the name of the Emperor, could you not know they would be frightened by that house?’

I could not remember what I had answered. I had probably said something very weak and foolish. Because there could not have been a good answer.

‘Didn’t it scare you when you were little?’ Eliana asked.

‘No.’

‘Not even the first time?’

‘No… I mean…’ I hesitated. ‘I don’t think so. I can’t remember the very first time I saw it.’

‘Aha.’

She had smiled, and I had really had no answer to that. I pictured that smile now. I wanted to tell her that she was right. Not because she didn’t know that she was right. I wanted her to know that I had learned.

It was a pointless wish. All it did was make everything hurt a little more. So did standing here, waiting for nothing.

Get this done.

I walked on, and the entrance loomed higher and higher above me. The massive oak doors opened as I approached, and Rhen Karoff stepped out onto the porch to greet me.

‘Welcome to Malveil, lord-governor,’ he said, bowing low.

‘Thank you, Karoff. It’s good to see you.’

I had only ever met Leonel a couple of times. By contrast, I had come to know Karoff quite well during my time as governor-regent. He had been the only point of contact between Leonel and the outside world, a frustrating, thankless task he had undertaken with quiet, endlessly patient dignity.

He had been old then, and he was ancient now. No one else had served the Strocks longer than he had. Seeing him made me feel, for the first time, that I had indeed returned home. He stood straight, despite his age. He was bald, his face deeply lined but his cheekbones and chin still prominent. His brow was heavy, shadowing his eyes, lending him an air of perpetual deliberation. He moved with careful precision, slower now than when I had last seen him, but not frail.

Karoff stood to one side and invited me in. ‘Work began as soon as we received word of your return…’ he began.

‘But there is still a lot to do,’ I finished. ‘There is no need to apologise. I could not have expected things to be otherwise. The house has been empty for a long time.’

‘It has. It will be good to see it live again.’

The entrance hall took up the echoes of our voices, bouncing them off the marble floor and carrying them up the wide staircase that, ahead and to the left, rose to the landing. Doorways on both sides opened into cavernous halls. The one on the left held a dining table almost twenty feet long. Its dark surface gleamed, reflecting the candlelight from the great iron chandelier above. The sight of the dining hall held me for a moment. ‘When was this last used to entertain?’ I asked Karoff.

There was the slightest hesitation before he answered. ‘I believe your wife entertained guests here once,’ he said, and I managed not to wince. ‘Before that, I could not say. It has been a long time.’

I nodded. I did not say that things were about to change. I was not about to host gala receptions at Malveil. At the same time, the thought of eating alone in that space was too melancholy to contemplate.

The dining room and, to the right of the entrance, the great hall had been thoroughly cleaned. Even so, an air of faded grandeur pervaded their space. The paintings on the walls had grown dark, their subjects difficult to make out. Webs of gossamer-thin cracks covered the walls. Malveil might stand forever. It would also decay forever.

We were about to take the main staircase when I stopped, not sure what I had heard. ‘Are there children here?’ I asked.

‘No, my lord.’

‘I thought I heard one laugh just now. Didn’t you?’

‘No, my lord,’ he said again. ‘There are no children in this house.’ He was emphatic. ‘None of the serfs bring them here. This is no place for children.’

‘I must have been mistaken, then.’ A distorted echo of voices at work, I guessed.

‘Shall I show you your chamber?’ Karoff asked.

I nodded, and we climbed the staircase. I took in the polish of the wood steps. There was no dust on the intricate ironwork of the balustrade. ‘You have overseen impressive work already,’ I said. From elsewhere in the house, I could hear the confused, muffled din of the ongoing efforts to restore Malveil into a functioning residence.

‘We have focused on the areas that will be most visible, or see the most use, lord-governor,’ said Karoff. ‘Much of the house is still in disrepair. There are many rooms that are nothing but storage, of a kind.’

‘In other words, filled with debris.’

‘Yes, and furniture, collections of objects, and much else. It will be the work of years to set it to rights, and there are what appear to be family records too, which we cannot touch.’

‘I understand. Eliana wasn’t here long enough to undo much of what happened under my uncle.’ I managed to refer to Eliana almost casually. I changed the focus of the conversation quickly. ‘How bad did things get during Leonel’s decline?’ I had some idea from my dealings with Karoff during my regency. I guessed the full picture was worse than I had known then, and had become much worse afterwards.

‘They were as bad as could be, lord-governor. I did not even know the full extent until after your uncle’s death. In his final years, he rarely left his bedchamber. There were many days when he barred the house to all, including the staff.’

‘To you as well?’

‘Yes. When he died, it was many days before we found him.’

That was a lonely thought.

None of the serfs who worked at Malveil lived within its walls. Karoff, in the gatehouse, was the one closest to the hall. All the others had quarters in Valgaast. They arrived at the gates with dawn, and the last of them would leave each night after I retired. This had been the way of things for generations. I doubted if anyone knew if this tradition had developed to respect the privacy of the Strocks or for some other reason. Given the frequently troubled history of my family, I could well imagine that even when, as with Leonel, serfs were forbidden to live in the house, they likely would have chosen not to anyway, preserving a necessary, sanity-maintaining distance between themselves and their unstable master.

I pictured Leonel, alone in his colossal house, floating through the corridors like a phantom, finally dying with no one around, no one to know, no one to grieve.

And then, unwillingly, I saw Eliana too, also alone, swallowed by all this immensity, another phantom lost to the night spaces of Malveil.

She had moved into Malveil after Leonel’s death. I was Leonel’s closest living descendant, and the house had come to us. I could not return to take up the governorship, and Senior Councillor Veth Montfor had succeeded in blocking any attempt to have Eliana declared acting-governor in my absence. I had been too successful in making the regency stable. With hindsight, I realised that I should have been more suspicious of the council’s cooperation than I had been. Still, Eliana’s residence in Malveil had been intended to remind the council that the Strocks still ruled Solus. Katrin and Zander did not accompany her. They were away in boarding schola, in the early phases of education that would take them across Solus and train them in their responsibilities as nobles. They did not return to Valgaast until well after her death.

That was a small mercy. At least it was one.

We reached the first floor, where a long gallery led to the private chambers. The wall was lined with portraits of my ancestors, half concealed by gloom and the waxy reflections of candle flame. The windows at the far end of the gallery barely admitted enough light from the dull day to see by. Karoff led me to a door at the eastern end of the gallery, which opened to another flight of stairs. We were in one of the corner towers now, and my bedchamber was at the top, with an iron ladder outside the door leading to a trapdoor and the roof. It took up the entire width of the tower. Windows looked out on all four sides. There was more natural light here than in what I had seen of the rest of the house so far, though the glass was thick, old and stained. My view of the grounds was bleary. The landscape looked swathed in fog.

The furnishings were old too, though in good repair. A four-poster bed dominated the centre of the chamber, and there was room enough for a desk in the north-east corner and a pair of deep armchairs next to a fireplace in the western wall. A spiral tapestry carpet covered the floor. It was from Donum, in the southern hemisphere of Solus. It depicted the ascendance of the world, over its history, into the light of the Emperor, which radiated from the centre. The carpet was worth more than the entire apartment my family and I had lived in during my regency.

I looked at the bed. After decades of cots, it seemed grotesquely huge.

And empty.

‘Was this room my wife’s?’ I asked.

‘Yes,’ said Karoff. ‘It is the master bedchamber,’ he explained. ‘Do you wish to move?’

‘No. I wanted to know, that’s all.’

‘It was not here that…’ he began.

‘I know. I know. Thank you, Karoff. That will be all for now.’

Karoff withdrew, leaving me alone in the room that I should have shared with Eliana. Instead, we would both sleep here, decades apart. I felt physically close to her as I stood there. At the same time, her absence was a sudden blade in my chest.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said aloud. My words sounded muffled, falling dead in the still air of the chamber. ‘I miss you.’

The silence felt like an accusation.

Guilt following me like a shadow, I went to the south window and looked down onto the hard ground below.

CHAPTER 3

I was composed again as Belzhek drove me through Valgaast, towards the Council Hall. I had passed through the first trial of my return. Another lay ahead. I did not expect my first encounter with the ruling council to go smoothly. That was not the trial, though. I welcomed the coming struggle. It was a battlefield I was determined to conquer. I was hoping for a campaign that would silence the clamour of the dead of Clostrum. The trial was going to be Zander. He would be there.

I was going to see my son for the first time in over thirty years.

‘Do you find Valgaast much changed, lord-governor?’ Belzhek asked.

‘Somewhat. Not as much as I might have expected.’

‘Changed for the worse, though, I expect. If I may speak freely.’

‘I thank you for doing so. And yes. Things look worse.’

Though Valgaast was the largest population centre on Solus, it was not a big city by Imperial standards. The people of this world were spread across the globe, the vast majority working its great farms. The population levels were not permitted to rise past a point that would see settlements impinge upon precious fertile land. The tithes to the Nightmarch held Solus’ numbers at a stable level.

Valgaast itself was home to a few hundred thousand souls. It was the more important off-world transportation hub on the planet, and it was where the administration of exports and tithe quotas was overseen. The city was home to the upper echelons of the farming authorities as well. Disputes between the huge collectives were settled here, and productivity targets were set based on regional conditions. This was where the wealth of the world was concentrated, and it seemed that in the years since my departure, that wealth had grown more concentrated.

Public works were being neglected. Too many of the roads on which we travelled were not being properly maintained. The buildings were dingier, shabbier.

‘From what I see,’ I said, ‘the council should be doing more, wouldn’t you say?’

Belzhek snorted.

‘And please,’ I added, ‘continue to speak freely.’

‘A great many might say that the council is doing quite enough, thank you very much.’

‘Quite enough for themselves, you mean.’

‘Aye, lord-governor. And quite enough squeezing of riches from everyone else to them. But when something needs repairing, there’s always a good reason why it can’t be done. The treasury is strained. There are other demands. We must all do what we can, since the Imperium is at war.’

‘As I’m sure you all do,’ I said. ‘Except, perhaps, the councillors?’

‘They don’t appear to be tightening their belts, lord-governor. No, they do not. Nor their friends.’

‘The big landowners.’

‘Yes, my lord.’

‘And somehow, Solus’ exports have still been dropping.’

‘It is a mystery,’ said Belzhek wryly. ‘Truly, it is.’

The industrial sector that had grown up at the base of Malveil’s hill had turned into a ghost town since the mines had shut down. The first part of the decay that I witnessed was, in fairness, something beyond the council’s control. We bumped down pitted streets between the empty shells of manufactoria. Some complexes were still active, chimneys belching black and brown smoke into the sky, but the activity of the zone had easily been cut in half.

Further in were the residential sectors. The ones nearest the manufactoria were dark, crowded slums. The further we left the manufactoria behind, the wealthier the districts became. The facades of the hab blocks showed ornamentation instead of filth, and the citizens were visibly more prosperous. But here, too, the streets were narrow, barely wide enough for a single lane of traffic, the buildings close together as if huddling against the coming winter.

Valgaast was far north of Solus’ equator. The moist climate that made the land fertile turned the city clammy, shivering in the months after the harvest.

We crossed a bridge over the sluggish waters of the Oblivis River and entered the administrative sector of the city. At its centre, the Cathedral of Faith Unmerciful faced the Council Hall across the wide Square of the Emperor’s Bounty. Belzhek dropped me off in front of the ornate facade of the hall. Above the main entrance was a winged representation of War’s Harvest. It had sheaves of wheat at its feet. In one hand it held a sickle, and in the other, a sword. Above War’s Harvest, stretching across half the facade, was a golden aquila.

I looked up at the double-headed eagle as I mounted the stairs to the doors. Its majesty and size gave me purpose. The gold made me think of what I had come to fight. The aquila predated the regency, but it seemed now a symbol of the councillors’ ostentation and hypocrisy. They had sworn to serve the Emperor. They served the gold instead.

A militia guardsman saluted and pulled the brass doors open for me. The first drops of rain began to fall, thick drops splattering against the paving stones of the square, and I stepped inside.

The entrance hall was an echoing stone space, its vaulted ceiling overlooking ten floors of arched galleries. Ahead of me was a great marble staircase flanked by two huge winged skulls in bronze. Waiting for me at the foot of the stairs was Veth Montfor.

‘Thank you for meeting me, senior councillor,’ I said.

She gave me a polite, cold smile. ‘I feel this greeting is inadequate. For Solus to once again have a governor after so long is, one would think, an event that should be properly marked.’

‘I think it is being properly marked,’ I said. ‘I am here to get things done, not to indulge in ceremony. It would be wrong to begin in a way that was not in keeping with that goal. Wouldn’t you say?’

She bowed slightly in acquiescence. ‘As you wish. Shall we?’

We climbed the stairs together, two enemies taking the measure of each other.

Montfor was maybe ten years older than I was. She wore her long, grey hair pulled back with severity. Her face was lined with experience, and it was the experience of the great river of corruption that was so deep an inheritance of her family that it seemed a point of pride. Her nose had rotted away, and a long, tubal prosthetic coiled from her nasal cavity, around the back of her head, then plunged through her throat, linking to her bionic larynx. Her voice was patrician, yet flat, and buzzed around the edges. She wielded her monotone like a rapier. She walked with a diamond-headed cane, rapping its tip on the marble with a proprietary firmness.

I had dealt with her as little as possible during my regency. Our families had a long history of enmity. The Montfors had been the most powerful house on Solus until the mineral wealth of Malveil’s hill had pushed the Strocks into ascendance. The Montfors had never forgiven us for taking away the rulership of Solus, which they felt was rightfully theirs. While Leonel was still alive, I did not have the full authority of the governorship. Direct confrontations with Veth Montfor would have been counterproductive, and the bad blood between us would have made our conflicts look like a personal feud. Perhaps they would have been. She was not as powerful then as she was now, so I had been able to work around her. I did not delude myself into thinking that I could do the same thing again.

‘I suppose,’ Montfor said, ‘that it would be too much to hope that we could work together, rather than against each other.’ The corner of her mouth curled in mockery.

‘I don’t see why we can’t,’ I said, fencing. ‘Do we not both serve the Emperor? Do we not both have the welfare of Solus at heart?’

‘Oh, we do,’ she said. ‘At least, I think we do. Of course, some of my fellow councillors might understandably wonder whether the intentions of an outsider are entirely trustworthy.’

‘You amuse me, senior councillor.’

‘I’m glad to hear it.’

Montfor took me to the uppermost floor, and the chamber of the Inner Council. The full body of the council had representatives from every region of Solus. Its sessions were more in the order of an airing of grievances than anything else. The actual governance of the planet was in the hands of a small number of Solus’ most powerful families.

The banners of the agri sectors of Solus hung over the assembly. The coats of arms of the great houses were mounted on the walls, resplendent in images of harvest and blade. The conjunction of the banners and shields implied an inherent connection between the families and the agri sectors. This was very close to the truth. The nobility had its roots sunk deeply into the soil of the world. Power did not change hands easily on Solus. The rise of the Strocks had acquired an almost mythical status because it was the first and only major shift in a family’s fortunes and the power it wielded in many centuries.

The council thrones were arranged in a horseshoe shape, at the top of which was the lord-governor’s seat, so long empty. On its right was the throne of the senior councillor.

And so a Strock comes once again to unseat a Montfor from power. I was careful to keep my thoughts from showing on my face.

The doors through which we entered were on the opposite side of the chamber from the governor’s throne. The other seats were filled, and the eight nobles rose to greet us, watching us carefully. I looked steadily back, gauging the forces before me. Some I knew from long ago. The others I had researched carefully during my voyage back to Solus.

Montfor paused with me just inside. ‘Councillors,’ she pronounced, ‘this is a day of rejoicing. The need for the regency has at last come to an end. Once more, Solus has a lord-governor. I present to you Lord-Governor Maeson Strock. Long may he serve the Emperor.’

‘Long may he serve the Emperor,’ the council echoed.

I made my way to my throne, then turned, still standing, and nodded. ‘I thank you,’ I said, ‘for this warm welcome.’ We were all lying to each other. Maintaining the fiction of civility to start with was necessary. I needed to get my footing before I could learn what action I had to take, against whom and when. ‘I thank you, as well, for your long and patient service to Solus.’ It was hard to keep anger out of my voice. ‘I come to this position in gratitude, and with determination. I have been sent to oversee specific tasks that the Imperium expects of Solus.’ I am going to rip your corrupt carcasses from the hills of your spoils. ‘I know that, with your help, I will see these tasks through to fruition.’ I don’t expect you to repent. But if you decide you fear me more than Veth Montfor, I might allow you to survive.

There was polite applause, and we sat. I looked at two councillors in particular to see how they were reacting to my speech. One was Adrianna Veiss. She was grinning at me. Of everyone here, she was the only one who seemed genuinely pleased to see me. She looked as if she had understood every nuance that lurked behind my words.

And then there was Zander.

My son had been small enough to carry when I last saw him. I barely recognised the man who managed to sit indolently in the iron-backed chair. He was watching me with idle curiosity. He did not seem hostile. He did seem disinterested. His clothes, exquisitely tailored, gave the impression of having been chosen with such care that their wearer had little energy left for any other endeavour. His hair and beard were trimmed to fussy perfection. He looked like a man who was actively looking forward to being somewhere that he considered much more entertaining than his current surroundings.

I called the council to order and made a formal show of deferring to Montfor. ‘I’ll thank the senior councillor to guide us through the agenda for the day. I will rely on all of your expertise to show me what I need to know. I have no doubt you will.’ This was my reconnaissance. I would learn about this battlefield before I stormed it.

The matters before us turned out to be very mundane. There were the likes of some minor jurisdictional disputes, and a budgetary reallocation towards sewer repair in Valgaast, which I thought was a nice touch. The enemy was anticipating my concerns.

Throughout the meeting, Zander said nothing. He lounged in his chair, looking more and more bored and long-suffering.

‘There is one more item,’ Montfor said as the session drew to a close. ‘As Councillor Trefecht brought this to our attention, I will ask her to elaborate.’

‘Thank you, senior councillor,’ said Marianna Trefecht. She was Zander’s age, and with him was the youngest councillor present. She did not look bored, though. She looked hungry. ‘This is, lord-governor, an embarrassing admission for me, and something that I am ashamed that we are only detecting now. We have unearthed evidence of important black market activity in the agri sector of Rosala.’

‘Oh?’ I said, doing my best to feign surprised interest. ‘How bad is the problem?’

‘We are still attempting to determine that. But I am confident we will uproot it very soon.’

‘I’m glad to hear it. Please keep the council informed of your progress.’ I stole a glance at Montfor. Aren’t you the clever one? I wondered if this was just an attempt to head off my own investigations before they were properly started, or if it was a warning too. Are you telling me how much you know? I accept the challenge. I will defeat you.

We adjourned. The councillors filed out, and Zander rose lazily from his throne and walked across the floor of the chamber to me.

‘I will leave you to your reunion,’ was Montfor’s parting shot.

‘Father,’ Zander said. ‘It is good to see you.’

‘And you.’

There was a moment of silence. Then Zander grinned. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘aren’t we being the awkward pair.’

‘It is hard to know what to say after so long,’ I admitted.

He shrugged. ‘We don’t have to say anything if it doesn’t suit us. We can’t pretend we actually know anything about each other.’ The suggestion was not unfriendly. He seemed simply happy to go along with whatever I preferred.

‘We may be strangers,’ I said, ‘but we are also blood. That means something. And I hope we won’t be strangers.’

‘That sounds fine, father,’ he said, smiling, with all the force of feeling as if I had said that I preferred one vintage of amasec over another.

‘I’m glad you think so,’ I said, ‘since we will be seeing a lot of each other. We have a lot of hard work ahead of us.’

‘We do?’

I was not prepared for the question, and more particularly the way it was asked. It was an expression of pure, guileless confusion and dismay. For the moment, at least, it had the effect of convincing me that unless Zander was an extraordinary actor, he had no knowledge at all of what other members of the council had their hands in. But my overwhelming emotion was a sinking disappointment. We do? With those two words and a frown, he expressed bafflement that anything at all needed to be done, and horror that he might be expected to exert himself.

I had wondered why Montfor had not found a way to have the representative of the Strocks removed from the council. I had my answer.

‘Yes,’ I said, unable to conceal my disgust. ‘Great tasks lie ahead of us.’

‘Oh.’ He paused, as if casting about for a better answer, some reason why he could be excused from the work. Then he shrugged. Perhaps he had resigned himself to the inevitable. Or perhaps he had decided to live in the moment. I wasn’t demanding effort from him just yet, so the problem could be ignored for the present. Then he changed the subject. ‘Have you seen Katrin yet?’

‘No.’ I was worried that encounter might be much more painful than meeting Zander. I did not have the emotional energy to see both my children on the same day as my return to Solus. ‘I plan to call on her tomorrow,’ I said.

‘I know she’ll be pleased you’re back,’ said Zander, mouthing a meaningless platitude.

‘That would be nice,’ I said quietly.

‘Well.’ He smiled again. ‘Well. I should be off then. Until next time, father.’

He turned and strode off before I could answer, fleeing to the promise of entertainment. I watched him go. I reminded myself that he was my son, and that he was worth saving.

Pure indolence is better than corruption, at least. Hang on to that.

I stayed in the chamber a few more minutes, thinking about the work ahead. Purging the council seemed like the easiest of my labours.

When I finally left, Adrianna Veiss was waiting for me near the staircase. I was pathetically grateful to see her. She raised a sardonic eyebrow. ‘So?’ she said. ‘Drinks at the great house tonight?’

‘Absolutely.’

Three of us gathered in Malveil that evening. We met in the librarium. It was at the end of the east wing, on the ground floor. Its collection was a large one, the shelves of volumes reaching from the floor to the ceiling. The spines of the tomes were still dusty, untouched for decades. But, supervised by Karoff, the serfs had made the great room usable again. I sat with two old friends, looking down the south prospect. We were comfortable in heavy armchairs arranged in a half-circle. The librarium was warm, the amasec excellent, and we watched the night rains of early winter wash down the windows. Just visible through the clouds was the dull yellow glow of the nitrogen atmosphere of Luctus, Solus’ huge moon.

I relaxed for the first time that day. I don’t think I had felt this much at ease since before Clostrum.

‘Your path is going to be a hard one,’ said Cardinal Kalvan Rivas.

‘It will be,’ Veiss said before I could answer. ‘But we need you.’

‘And I will need all the help you can give,’ I told them.

‘You have it,’ said Rivas. ‘All of it.’

Veiss, Rivas and I had grown up together. Their destinies had been clearly defined for them from birth, much more than mine had been, and both had embraced their duties with fervour. Veiss, the firstborn of her house, had led it with honour since she had inherited its leadership. Rivas, also the firstborn of his family, had followed his house’s tradition into the Ecclesiarchy. I trusted both of them, because I knew them, and no length of separation could change that. Despite the years that had passed since I had seen them, we settled back into each other’s company as if we had only been apart a few days.

Veiss had startlingly large eyes. They looked upon the world with a shrewd, knowing judgement. Like Montfor, she had no illusions. Unlike Montfor, she did not use that as an excuse to indulge her worst instincts. The one thing she did indulge in was a gaudiness of attire. Her long, black hair, which was just beginning to grey, was held up in an elaborate headdress whose intertwining of gold and crimson complemented the black and scarlet of her high-collared dress. The long feathers of the pataarka bird reached out from the headdress, waving gently whenever Veiss moved her head. Her theatricality was ironic, as if ostentation were symbolic of all the temptations she stood against, and was a visible rebuke to the Montfors, who were her family’s enemies as much as they were mine. The Montfor clan was a foetid swamp. The House of Veiss was a bulwark against corruption. The family had long been rivals of the Montfors for power. When the Strocks had risen to supremacy, the House of Veiss had welcomed our assumption of power, backing us unswervingly ever since.

I had, over the years, encountered ecclesiarchs who were paragons of faith, and others who were embarrassments, men who had let their souls drown in a sea of political calculation. Rivas was one of the former, though he also knew better than to hold himself aloof from politics. He was not happy about the grubby realities of power. He accepted them, though. He never turned away from what was necessary, always acting to serve the Imperial Creed. He was tall, always leaning forward slightly, as if perpetually in a state of concerned interest. If Veiss responded to the world with wary amusement, Rivas was melancholic.

‘How have things gone with your children?’ Rivas asked.

I stared into my goblet, searching for the answer.

‘You have seen them.’

‘Not Katrin. Not yet. Maybe tomorrow.’

‘Zander was at council,’ Veiss told the cardinal.

‘He was… civil,’ I said.

‘Better than the alternative.’ Veiss reached for the bottle on the low table before us. ‘What did you think of your first meeting with the council?’ she asked.

‘That you’re my only ally there,’ I said, thinking about the closed, wary faces. ‘Am I right in that? Are things that bad?’

She nodded. ‘I’ve fought Montfor, and I’ll keep fighting her, but she has had the whip hand until now. There was never a chance of toppling her, not with her being senior councillor, and she’s made sure the others have every reason to support her.’ She raised a cautioning finger. ‘She’s dangerous, Maeson. Very dangerous. I cannot emphasise that too strongly.’

‘I appreciate the warning. She’ll find that I’m dangerous too.’

‘You’ll have to be.’

I forced myself to ask my next question. It was best to know the worst immediately. ‘Is Zander one of her creatures too?’

‘No, I don’t think so. He…’ She stopped. ‘What was your impression?’

I grimaced. ‘That he was too lazy to undertake the work of corruption.’

‘That is my sense, too. He’s wealthy enough to entertain himself as he likes.’

‘So why would he lift a finger to do more?’ I said, depressed. Indolence was sad cause for innocence.

‘Again, better than the alternative,’ Veiss said softly. ‘Montfor is keeping him at arm’s length from everything, and he is happy with his lot. You might be able to change that. He is still your son. I find it difficult to believe the Strock blood is that attenuated. It isn’t in his sister.’

‘That’s true,’ said Rivas. ‘She’s doing well.’

‘So I hear,’ I said. Katrin was a history inductor at the schola progenium of the Valgaast sector of Solus. I was as proud of her as I was disappointed in Zander.

‘Why haven’t you seen her yet?’ Rivas pushed.

‘The last time I heard from her was when Eliana died. She made it clear then that she did not wish to speak again. That was a long time ago.’

‘Only it never feels like it, does it?’ Veiss asked. Her wife had died in a lifter crash a few years after I lost Eliana.

‘No, it doesn’t.’

‘How are you doing, being back?’ said Rivas.

I sighed. ‘I had hoped that the fact that I have no memories of living in Malveil with her might make things a bit easier. It doesn’t. This is hard.’

‘The Emperor will guide you,’ Rivas promised.

‘I will need Him to.’

I bade them goodnight an hour later. When I shut the door, I was alone in Malveil for the first time. In the sudden silence, I braced myself for an assault by the memories of Clostrum. The momentum of the day had served me well. But I had learned to dread nights. I expected sleep to be fleeting and bad. I knew that once I was alone, the cries of dying soldiers would rise in my mind.

And, as I turned from the door and began to mount the stairs, the dead called to me. The images of Clostrum, of the tide of monsters and blood, rushed forward. Only they did not force me to stop walking. Malveil did not vanish from my perception. I did not begin to drown in the clamorous echoes of my defeat. The memories were present, but they did not have the same power as before, because they were not alone. They were accompanied by other losses. Malveil’s silence pulsed with all the losses of my life. And it was the older grief of Eliana’s death that was the greatest of all. It enveloped me. Every second I passed in this house was a second that I should have had with Eliana, and never would.

We had been robbed, and I didn’t know why. I did not know how she had fallen.

By the time I reached the top of the stairs, the silence of the house seemed different. It was not truly a form of quiet. It was a white noise, all of my losses roaring at me at once. This wasn’t silence, it was a wall in the air, drawing around me, tightening until I couldn’t breathe.

I started down the hall, and vertigo hit. I had not experienced it since the day I showed Malveil to the children, but I recognised the sensation at once. The floor turned into thin ice, and threatened to turn into thin air. I staggered, my body instinctively searching for solid ground. There was none to be had.

I weaved back and forth across the hall, clutching my head. ‘Stop it,’ I told myself, hoping the sound of my words would beat back the roaring silence. ‘Stop it!’ I shouted, barking with the voice of command, but my psyche disobeyed, and the dizziness grew worse. I was about to plunge through the floors of the house and down and down to the core of Solus. Everything was insubstantial. Only losses and grief were real.

I stopped walking. I leaned against a wall and closed my eyes. ‘Enough,’ I said. ‘Enough.’ I kept repeating the word until I could focus on the sound, the real sound, that I was making. The white noise receded, and the floor became solid enough to hold my weight.

I made my way unsteadily towards the door leading to my bedchamber. I was still dizzy, and the choir of loss called at the edges of my mind. I took deep, regular breaths, trying to slow the irregular beating of my heart.

One thing I was not experiencing was surprise. I had expected something like this.

You knew this first night would be difficult. Tomorrow night will be too. And the night after that. This is part of your battle. This is part of your penance.

‘The Emperor protects,’ I prayed quietly, clawing back my strength. ‘The Emperor sustains.’

I climbed the last flight of stairs without stumbling and arrived at my quarters. I fell into bed, feeling a small degree of triumph at having fought through the vertigo and the memories.

The memories were not defeated, though. They were waiting for my defences to lower again. I craved sleep, and I feared it. I took deep breaths again, listening to that sound, grasping hard to that rhythm as though it could drown out all the other noises that crowded around my soul.

I listened to my breathing so I would not hear the ghosts.

Then I did sleep. I fell asleep. I fell. I fell down into a nightmare, and it was a nightmare of falling.

Eliana falling.

I saw her leap from the tower, and in this vision, she was not alone. She held Katrin and Zander by the hand, Katrin and Zander as children, small children who would never be adults because their mother had seized them and pulled them, shrieking, from the parapet. They dropped with her, and they were screaming. Their three faces filled my sleeping sight. Eliana was expressionless. She fell without sound, her lips tight, her eyes dead of feeling and staring at the onrushing ground. Katrin and Zander howled, their features distorted with terror and betrayal.

The dream was the most vivid I had ever had. I felt the rush of the wind as my perspective plummeted with my family. The screams of the children pierced my ears. I saw the billowing of their clothes in the terrible, vertical wind of their fall.

Even as I felt myself trying to scream too, but only capable of silent horror, I knew I was dreaming. A tiny part of me understood that this was not real, and that the horror would end before my wife and children hit the stones and the base of the tower.

This was the nature of nightmares. It was the way they kept from driving us mad.

The crunch of impact jolted me awake, and now I could scream.

CHAPTER 4

I did not sleep for the rest of the night. I sat in front of the window, waiting for day, pursued by my predatory, traitorous mind. The nightmare hung over me, a malevolent undertow pulling my thoughts back again and again to the images of my screaming children and to the sickening crunch of shattering bodies. The dream was as vivid as a memory, as disturbing as truth. When I tried to get away from it, the dark gravity of Clostrum pulled me in.

The night was long. I prayed, but though I spoke the words aloud, I could not focus on them. When at last the light began to grey and I could see the rain streaking the window, I sagged with relief.

I could almost have gone back to sleep, protected by the comfort of daylight. I resisted the temptation. I had duties. I also had pride. I would not be defeated by my weaker self. Night was when I would have time to sleep. I would have to learn again to do so.

I dressed, and when I descended from my tower, I heard the sounds of serfs entering Malveil and beginning the work of the day. I lingered on the second floor, giving the kitchen staff time to prepare my meal. I explored the other rooms in this wing. Some of them were completely empty, the floors bare, the walls clear of decoration. I guessed that what Leonel had done to these had meant a purge was the only way of making them usable again. There were a couple of bedchambers close to the central staircase that were still furnished. I paused for a while in each. They felt painfully vacant.

Karoff found me in the room closest to the stairs. Its bed, chairs and tapestries were all dark, though it felt warm rather than gloomy.

‘Will you be eating, lord-governor?’ Karoff asked.

‘Yes,’ I said absently. Then, with firmness of purpose, ‘This room should be used. Malveil should be used.’

‘My lord?’ Karoff said, puzzled.

‘Good work has been done here,’ I said. ‘Let us do a bit more. I would like you to have this and the next room down made ready to be occupied.’

‘Of course. May I ask what visitors we should expect?’

‘Over time, we should expect many, I hope. But not in these rooms. I would like them to be prepared for my children.’

Karoff regarded me steadily. ‘They are going to take up residence in Malveil?’

‘I am going to invite them to do that, yes.’

‘I see.’ He couldn’t quite prevent the slight frown of worry that creased his brow.

I put a hand on his shoulder. ‘I know exactly what I’m saying,’ I said. ‘They might not accept right away, or at all. But we shall go forward in the confidence that they will. This is the house of the Strocks, after all. It must be able to house the entire family.’

Such as it was. Neither Katrin nor Zander had children. There were other relations, other branches of the Strocks, scattered around Solus. If my line ended, another would take its place, as I had after Leonel died without issue.

‘I will see that it is done, lord-governor,’ Karoff said.

‘Thank you.’ It was up to me, then, to see that Karoff and the serfs’ efforts would not be in vain.

I had come to Solus with the hope of doing more than restoring its exports to their proper level. I wasn’t sure if I hoped to heal myself. I didn’t know if that was possible. But I had some thoughts of legacy. And I missed my family. I missed what it had been. I wanted to be able to hold on to what was left.

I started down the stairs, Karoff a step behind me. ‘Did you sleep well, my lord?’ he asked.

He spoke with such genuine concern that I answered honestly. ‘It was a broken night.’

‘I expect there will be some adjustment necessary.’ He sounded like he needed reassurance. ‘You will not have had the luxury of such space in a long time.’

‘Quite so. Quite so.’

I wanted him to be right, too.

I had Belzhek leave me at the schola progenium. The stern complex was about a mile west of the Square of the Emperor’s Bounty. The Oblivis flowed around three of its sides, like a moat isolating the schola from a city that was failing to live up to the principles instilled inside the institute’s walls. Round towers stood at each of the building’s four corners. It was square, hulking, a brutally solid fortress of discipline. Its rockcrete walls were not dark with stain. They were black to start with. There was nothing welcoming about the schola progenium, and that was as it should be. It took in the orphans of officers and nobles, children who had lost those on whom they depended for protection, and it changed them from the vulnerable into the strong. It turned them into shock troops and commissars and officers. It made them into the unbreakable spine of the Astra Militarum.

A tall, circular counter of black marble greeted me like a turret in the entrance hall. The trooper seated at it was, like Belzhek, a veteran who had left most of his body behind on the battlefield. Multi-jointed tool arms extended from his shoulders, and one of his eyes was bionic, scanning me with a dull red glow. He grinned when he recognised me, and would have risen if he had still had legs.

‘Colonel!’ he exclaimed, then corrected himself. ‘Lord-governor, I mean. I crave your pardon, I–’

‘That’s quite all right, trooper. I’m not used to the change in rank myself yet.’

He bowed his head in thanks. ‘It is an honour, my lord. I served under you on Epsilon Frouros.’

‘Then we shared in a great victory.’

‘We did, my lord, we did.’

‘I have come to see Instructor Katrin Strock.’

The trooper looked startled, as if he had only now understood the connection of the name. ‘Of course, my lord.’ He consulted a data-slate. ‘Her current indoctrination lecture will be ending shortly. Shall I send for her?’

‘No, thank you. I’ll go to her.’

‘Yes, my lord.’ He turned to the servo-skull hovering over the desk. ‘History, Strock,’ he said. The skull chattered, and a ribbon of punched runic code emerged from its jaw. The trooper tore it off. Next to the counter was a servitor in a slumped, passive state. The trooper fed the code ribbon into a receptor at the back of the servitor’s head, and it jerked to life. It turned away from the counter, running on motorised treads, and I followed.

The servitor led me through the schola progenium’s maze of corridors. We passed numerous lecture amphitheatres, doorways to drill courtyards, and dormitoria. At length, it stopped by the entrance to a fourth-floor amphitheatre. During our journey there, I grew more and more uncertain. This was going to be a more difficult meeting than the one with Zander. He and I had simply become strangers to one another. Katrin had broken her connections with me. I revised and discarded the things I might say to her a dozen times over. Each one was inadequate. We had been too long apart, and the gulf was too wide.

I looked through the doorway. I was at the bottom of the amphitheatre, looking up at the curving rows of pews where students sat at rigid attention. Before them, Katrin paced as she lectured.

‘What then does the Age of Redemption teach us?’ she said. ‘It teaches us that the will of the Emperor will ultimately triumph over every form of apostasy. It teaches us that redemption is possible. But it also shows us the path to redemption. There can only be redemption through fire, through blood, and through the purging of the heretic and the traitor. It teaches us that mercy is worse than a weakness. It is a crime against the Emperor. If mercy had been extended to a single heretic, that would have been an invitation to another Reign of Blood. Those who extend mercy reveal the uncertainty of their faith. On the battlefield, uncertainty means death. It means defeat. It means dishonour. If, after what we have learned today, there is one among you who believes in the quality of mercy, then know that you will receive none from me.’

Her hair was the same light brown as her mother’s, and she wore it shaved close to her skull. The gaze she turned on her students was forbidding. In her black uniform, her boots thudding against the floor with the steady rhythm of an execution’s drumbeat, she was the embodiment of pitilessness. Her posture was unnaturally straight, held that way by the iron brace on her spine. Its collar went around her throat, adding still more to her air of absolute authority.

I could see the pride she took in the work she was doing. I also knew this was not the destiny she had initially chosen for herself. Despite our estrangement, she was the one who had once been going to follow my steps into the Solus Nightmarch.

When Leonel died and the inheritance of the governorship came to my branch of the House of Strock, my children became automatically exempt from the military tithe, as part of the mechanism designed to ensure a continuity of rule on the planet. The exemption, however, did not mean they could not volunteer. There had never been any chance that Zander would seek to serve. Katrin, on the other hand, enlisted as soon as she came of age. And then, during training, she broke her back. The injury was too severe for her to continue. The bionics necessary to make her viable in combat would be wasted on someone with no battlefield experience.

Katrin could not serve on the front lines. So she had turned her energies into forging the officers who would. As I watched her, I was able to put aside some of my pain and indulge in pride.

The lecture ended, and the students filed out through the upper exits. Katrin moved to a lectern and gathered her notes. ‘Hello, father,’ she said without looking up.

I stepped into the amphitheatre. I hadn’t realised she had seen me. ‘Hello, Katrin.’

She walked towards me, stopping at a formal distance. ‘I heard about the battle for Clostrum,’ she said. ‘I am glad you survived.’ The words were a pat greeting. They did not sound genuine, and I could see the judgement in her eyes.

It was that judgement that I had been dreading, because it mirrored my own self-condemnation. She had resented me since Eliana’s death, and I wondered if the reasons for her anger had changed since then. Did she resent me for having left? Or for having returned? Perhaps she wasn’t sure herself.

‘Tell me,’ she went on, ‘are you grateful for having lived when so many of your troops died?’ There was nothing pat about that question. The niceties were over, and I had just heard what she thought about mercy.

‘I am grateful that I can still serve,’ I said. ‘Beyond that, I’m not sure.’ I offered her complete honesty, if she was willing to accept it.

She gave me a curt nod. ‘We must serve the Emperor however we can, even if it is not in the manner of our first choosing.’

She started walking again, and we left the theatre.

‘Have you seen Zander?’ she asked.

‘I have.’

‘How is he?’

‘You don’t know?’

She shook her head. ‘We do not speak much.’

‘Why is that?’

She looked at me as if I were mocking her. I was not. I no longer wanted things unsaid. Our family had lost too much already, and much of what we had lost was time.

‘If you have fallen out,’ I said, ‘I would like to know why. Precisely.’

‘All right. I don’t speak to him because I don’t know what has happened to his sense of honour. Or shame, for that matter.’

‘He seems to have misplaced them both,’ I agreed. ‘I intend to help him find his honour again, at least.’

‘I don’t think he will be interested in your help.’

‘He won’t have a choice. I will not permit the council to continue as it has been. That is the mission I have been given on Solus. That is how I am to serve the Emperor.’

‘I thought you were to serve as lord-governor.’ She was openly contemptuous. I saw myself through her eyes. I was a disgraced commander, scuttling away from the battlefield to slip into the privileges afforded him by the lucky chance of his birth. I could not blame her. I kept seeing the same thing in the mirror.

‘The governorship is a means to the end,’ I said. ‘The council is corrupt. I have been commanded to be the cleansing fire. I am going to make Solus worthy of what you are teaching here.’

‘I hope you will,’ she said. She sounded less hostile. I felt that she wanted to believe me.

We parted outside her study. ‘I would like to see you again,’ I said. ‘I would like us not to be strangers.’

She hesitated, then nodded her acquiescence. I thanked her and turned to go. I had taken a few steps when she said, ‘Do you miss her?’

I turned back. Do I miss her? I tried to find the words to answer, but everything I could think of to say was hopelessly trite and inadequate to the scale of Eliana’s absence in my life.

My silence was the answer Katrin sought. She nodded again, but more gently. We shared a moment of loss, the distance between us diminished. I thought I saw behind her wall of discipline, and at the same time, I felt I understood Zander better too. In very different ways, they had both retreated, whether they knew it or not. He into indolence, she behind the walls of the schola progenium, they were where they believed they would not be hurt again.

Who was I to try to lure them out from behind their shields? Was I doing any better?

Maybe. Maybe. I think I am trying, and I think that is necessary.

I left, not saying anything about Malveil. There would be time, a better time, to extend the invitation. But I left the schola with more hope than when I had entered. I believed we could be a family, and make the House of Strock as strong as it could be, as strong as Solus needed it to be.

I smiled to the trooper at the entrance when I passed him again. The smile came easily. I could not remember the last time that had been true.

‘Rosala? They said they had discovered corruption in Rosala?’ Ernst Stavaak, enforcer of the Adeptus Arbites, began to laugh. Soon he was roaring, pounding a hammer-like fist against the scarred surface of his desk.

We were in his office, high in the thin tower that rose from the centre of the barracks of the Arbites in the south-west sector of Valgaast. The windows were grimy, the view of the city smeared. I could just make out the silhouettes of the cathedral and the Council Hall. I had come here to prepare my opening salvo against Montfor and her allies.

It was almost a minute before Stavaak got himself under control. ‘I’m sorry, lord-governor,’ he said, wiping tears from his broad face. His features were even more scarred than his desk.

I waved his apologies away and leaned back in the chair facing him. ‘If the joke is a good one, I want to share in it. Or have I been made its butt?’

‘I’m afraid you have been. But I wouldn’t worry. I don’t think too many people outside this building and Rosala itself would appreciate the humour.’

‘Which is what?’

‘Discovering a black market in Rosala would be like announcing that winter is damp.’

‘And this is common knowledge?’

‘Not exactly. In Rosala, it’s an open secret. Beyond its borders…’ He shrugged. ‘In general, I would say that if you know, then you’re involved.’

That was reassuring, in its way. It meant that I didn’t have to wonder why Veiss had not mentioned this. I was going to have to live with suspicion as my constant companion for the foreseeable future. I did not want it to develop into total paranoia.

‘Can I ask why nothing has been done about Rosala, if its level of corruption is so high?’

‘The enforcement of local laws is not the responsibility of the Adeptus Arbites,’ Stavaak reminded me.

‘Not even when it affects the planet’s ability to meet its obligations to the Imperium?’

‘It is a question of balance and resources. Rosala is a large agri sector.’

It was. It took up half the land mass of a small continent in the southern hemisphere.

‘Are you saying the problem is too big to deal with and should be ignored?’

‘Not at all. Or perhaps, not any longer. But Councillor Montfor and her allies have been careful. Other than the matter of Solus’ export level, which is not information that it was possible for us to gather at this end, they have done nothing to interfere with this world’s loyal service to the Imperium. And they have been the ones setting the laws of this world. There has been no way to intervene without destabilising the government.’

‘But the situation is different now.’

Stavaak grinned. ‘You are lord-governor. Your word is the authority now.’

I grinned back. ‘I believe we will be able to work together productively for the good of Solus.’

‘I hope so. You understand that what you are undertaking will cause upheavals?’

‘I have been sent to disrupt the corrupt order here. That is the command of the Adeptus Terra.’

‘Good.’

‘So based on what you know, is Councillor Trefecht involved in the black market exportations from Rosala?’

‘Involved? She controls it.’

‘Even better.’

‘What do you intend to do?’ Stavaak asked.

‘Make an example of her.’

I returned to Malveil that evening with a sense of having made real progress towards my goals, both official and personal. I retired to my chamber for a short while and wrote at the desk, filling in time before my evening meal with work, trying to keep myself distracted.

It didn’t work. My eyes kept going to the south window. I kept thinking about the roof of the tower. At length, I gave up. I left the chamber and climbed the ladder to the trapdoor. I paused before opening it.

What do you expect to learn?

Nothing. Though I hoped, against all reason, that I would learn something.

What is this going to accomplish?

Nothing.

Even so, I pushed the door open and climbed onto the roof. It was a narrow, circular space on the peak of the spire. The waist-high guard rail was a sour joke. I stared down. The ground seemed much further away than it did from the bedroom window. My head swam with vertigo. The cobblestones of Malveil’s approach lured me with their mystery.

Do you want to know how Eliana died? There’s a sure way to learn.

I blinked and shook off the spell.

Get down from here. This is serving no purpose.

I left the roof, telling myself that now I would be productive, but instead of returning to my desk, I headed for the ground floor. I was obeying an irrational impulse to go and stand where Eliana had fallen, and look up to where she had stood for the last time. I was midway down the staircase to the ground floor when I heard a child laughing.

I stopped, startled. I believed Karoff that none of the serfs brought their children with them to the house. At the same time, I was not imagining what I had heard. I held my breath, listening intently, trying to hear past the immediately identifiable sounds of the ongoing cleaning and restoration of the house.

The laugh came again, followed by another. There were two voices, somewhere on the ground floor, I thought. I hurried down the stairs, and the laughter pulled me deeper into the house, away from the long, south-facing halls.

I headed down corridors I had not properly explored yet, following the echoes of mirth. The laughter was always just around the next corner, somewhere beyond the next room. The children must have been running. Though I was walking quickly, I was not catching up. And yet I could not hear any footsteps. There was only the laughter, a mocking, silvery bell that pulled me on.

I was soon in a region of the house where the work of restoration had yet to begin. The doorways I passed opened onto chambers of clutter-filled gloom. I took in vague impressions of huge, disordered masses shouldering forward like stumbling hills. Every time I paused, the laughter would ring out again, and I would continue the pursuit.

I asked myself if I was imagining the sound. The flashes of Clostrum that assailed me were so vivid, the memories of the troopers’ screams were almost audible. But when Clostrum claimed me, I never heard the laughter of children. And this sound was clearly outside me. It bounced off the walls. As it moved around and I chased it, it grew more, then less, muffled. It wasn’t in my mind.

You’d better hope it isn’t. If it was, I was losing the ability to distinguish fantasy and reality. I would truly be unfit.

At last the laughter led me into a lesser hall. It, too, had become a storage space. The discarded jumble of years was piled high in chaotic heaps. I could just manage to squeeze between the mounds of clutter, following a twisting path whose footing was treacherous with fallen objects. There was no organisation here. Furniture, portraits, statues, candelabra and journals loomed over me. I passed chests of clothing, of footwear, of correspondence and of miscellaneous debris. It was like descending into an underground cavern, and the light from the torch sconces in the hall became very dim. I could barely see more than a foot in front of me. The path between the heaps was a vague greyness. The towering piles loomed heavily, as if ready to topple.

The laughter had stopped when I entered the hall. Perhaps the children were hiding. Or perhaps they aren’t here at all. I did not know which possibility was less disturbing. Then a familiar shape arrested my progress. It was half buried in the mound on my left, and there was so little light I could easily have missed it.

It was an orrery of Solus’ star system, made of crystal and bronze. My hand hovered over the shape of the planets thrusting out of the heap. I knew this piece because it had not belonged to Leonel. It was Eliana’s, and it had been a fixture in our quarters together. I stared at it, half expecting its silhouette to dissolve into the shadows. I forgot about the laughter that had brought me here and tried to grasp the meaning of what I was seeing.

It was easy enough to understand. It was harder to accept.

I was used to the idea that Leonel had thrown more and more of his life into these rooms, rendering them unusable. But if this was our orrery, then Eliana had done the same.

How long? For how long?

The heap was quite far into the room. The orrery was nowhere near the top of the mound.

What else from our life will I find here?

Karoff saved me from learning more just then.

‘Lord-governor?’ he called.

‘I’m here,’ I said. The orrery remained solid. Speaking did not reveal it to be a hallucination.

Karoff cleared his throat. ‘Your meal is ready, my lord.’

‘Thank you. I’ll be there in a moment.’ I stared at the orrery for a bit longer. I would have to come back here tomorrow, with more light, though I did not look forward to what I would discover.

The laughter still had not returned. I turned to go, prepared to begin the hard process of accepting that my senses had deluded me, and then I saw them, in front and to my right, hidden in the shadows at the edge of a heap. They were so still, I had gone right past them on my way into the far reaches of the hall.

‘Katrin?’ I whispered. ‘Zander?’

They stared at me, their eyes dark holes of night. They were the children I had left behind, not the adult strangers I had met these last two days. Their faces were pale, glowing milkily into the gloom. Their lips were parted in thin, solemn smiles.

They were motionless as death.

I gasped. My flesh prickled with shock. I stood as still as my children.

Only they weren’t my children. They weren’t children at all. They were two porcelain statues, representations of children who had died, if they had ever existed, generations ago. I took a step closer and saw, even in the dim light, the cracks in the white skin and the chips in the clothes. The boy was missing a hand, his left wrist ending in a hollow stump.

I worked my way back to the corridor and lights as quickly as I could. Foolishness, I thought. All of this is foolishness. I’m tired. I need rest. That’s all, and that’s enough.

I knew I was right. Yet I was relieved to see Karoff waiting for me in the doorway. And as we headed to the dining hall, it was an effort not to listen for the laughter.

CHAPTER 5

Though the crowds were much smaller, there were still people in the Square of the Emperor’s Bounty when I reached the Council Hall for the next day’s session. I vowed that today I would give them something to cheer.

The session began with what was explained to me as the latest phase of an ongoing dispute between two minor agri sectors, Jernoa and Fryne. Neither was important enough to warrant representation on the Inner Council. The dispute had been winding its way back and forth along jurisdictional lines for over fifty years, and concerned three mega-farms that were divided by the boundary as it now stood. Neither sector was claiming the farms in their entirety. In fact, in one instance, Fryne was insisting on giving Jernoa the lion’s share of one farm. It seemed the mega-farms themselves were irrelevant. The dispute was an arcane mix of local laws, clannish feuds and traditions whose origins were lost to history and so might as well have been eternal. As far as I could tell, the dispute was well on its way to becoming one of those traditions. The more the councillors explained it to me, the more I was inclined to let it carry on down its pointless path. I saw that its current purpose was to present me with an issue that was equal parts complex, trivial and stultifying.

I grew angrier as the session wore on. Zander made no attempt to hide his boredom and fell asleep in his throne. Veiss said little, though we exchanged a knowing look. Montfor was quiet too. I felt her watching me.

I let the explanations and debates continue until I was sure I had let enough time pass for my own preparations to be complete, so that what I needed would be waiting on the other side of the doors. Then I said, ‘Let me cut to the end. Do the parties to the dispute expect a ruling from me today?’

‘They do not,’ said Amir Bokanta, councillor for Grenferes, the nearest large agri sector to the antagonists. ‘An acknowledgement, I believe, of the gravity of the issue, and a statement that it will be given the time and consideration warranted by its importance.’

‘Of that, there is no doubt,’ I snapped. ‘I will sign a proclamation expressing those very words. Now,’ I went on before Montfor could step in with the next deliberately pointless item on the agenda, ‘I want to return to a point of concern from our last meeting. Councillor Trefecht, what is the status of the investigation into black marketeering in Rosala?’

‘Lord-governor, it has only been two days,’ she said, as if explaining the world to a child. ‘And the problem has only recently come to our attention. I’m afraid we will have to be patient.’

‘There is no virtue in having patience with corruption,’ I said. ‘I will not be patient.’

‘We could certainly act on what we do know,’ said Trefecht. ‘We could arrange for a demonstration of force.’

‘That’s an excellent idea,’ I said. Then, raising my voice, I called, ‘Enforcer, you may proceed.’

The doors to the Inner Council burst open and Stavaak entered, escorted by two troopers. Zander jerked awake, and Montfor actually looked startled. ‘Lord-governor–’ she began.

‘No,’ I said.

The troopers marched down the aisle towards Trefecht. She rose, confused, reaching for an authority that had suddenly deserted her.

‘Marianna Trefecht,’ Stavaak proclaimed, ‘I arrest you for corruption, and for crimes against the war effort of the Imperium.’

‘This is ridiculous,’ she said.

‘You will have plenty of time to explain to us just how amusing you believe this to be,’ Stavaak said. The troopers put her in manacles and led her from the chamber. Stavaak gave me a quick nod as he passed in front of me. We both had the same thought.

Now we have begun.

I called an end to the session. Then I stood, and met the shouts of other councillors with silence. Of my foes, only Montfor was quiet. Her momentary break in composure was over. Her gaze went back and forth between me and her proxies. That was how I saw the other councillors now. They were not just her allies. They did not act without her consent. There was a weakness to their howling as one of their own was taken away. It was the screeching of the impotent. There was nothing they could do to stop what was happening, and it enraged them. But Montfor just watched. I had seen the look on her face before. I had seen it in my best officers, the ones who were the most lethal to the enemy, as we developed our strategy of attack.

Montfor withdrew without saying a word, and her exit was the signal for the others to abandon their protestations and follow. They stormed out. She glided through the doors, a grey shadow on a cane.

Zander sat still through it all, his eyes wide. If I had harboured any lingering doubts about his innocence, they would have been dispelled by his gaping, staggered incomprehension. I did not think he was so completely naive as to believe that there was no such thing as corruption. What I was seeing, I judged, was the result of his resolute disinterestedness. He had so utterly detached himself from any shred of responsibility that he could not grasp what he was seeing.

Veiss watched the end of the spectacle, then turned to face me, her expression doubtful.

I left the Council Hall with her a few minutes later, after having given the others time to make their exits. If their departures looked like flights, so much the better.

‘You have more flair for the theatrical than I would have thought,’ Veiss said as we approached the exit.

‘I learned its value on the battlefield,’ I told her. ‘The enemy’s perception can matter as much, or more than, reality.’

‘So control their perception.’ Veiss nodded. ‘That’s something Montfor has been doing here for a long time. She is very, very good at it.’

‘I think I surprised her.’

‘Maybe. That isn’t the same as shaking her. Don’t underestimate your opponent.’

‘I don’t think that’s something I can ever do again.’ I suppressed a shudder as I involuntarily pictured the tyranids. ‘You think I should have waited.’

‘Until we could have had more evidence, and more leverage ready, yes. Maeson, you’ve only been here a few days.’

‘I would prefer to think I’m acting faster than she can be ready for me.’

‘She is always ready. You showed your hand too soon. She will find a way to use what you did today against you.’

Outside, other than our two vehicles and their drivers, the square was deserted.

‘She already has,’ Veiss whispered.

I looked around at the sudden emptiness. ‘Did everyone suddenly grow bored?’ I wondered.

‘This is Montfor’s first countermove,’ said Veiss. ‘The people were hers. She told them to welcome you, and they welcomed you. She tells them to vanish, and…’ She snapped her fingers.

‘Impressive,’ I said. ‘You’re right. She is good at theatre.’

‘That’s just one reason why I’ve been urging caution. Did you not understand what I just said?’

‘That these people were her creatures.’

‘Not these people. The people. They aren’t yours. Maybe, maybe, if you had been able to govern all these years, they might be. But this is how deep her grasp goes. This is how serious this war is. Montfor and her circle have their claws embedded in every aspect of the life of Solus. They’re all obscenely wealthy, but she’s also made sure they’re generous. This isn’t just a few people at the top redirecting some shipments by issuing orders to ignorant lackeys.’

‘I hope you don’t think that’s what I believe.’

Veiss carried on as if I hadn’t spoken. ‘The corruption is everywhere. It touches everything on Solus. The missing production doesn’t all go off-world. There are merchants who have more items than they should, and those items are easier to buy than they should be.’

‘I suppose that Montfor makes sure no one goes hungry during the drought years.’

‘Far fewer do than if the quota were being fulfilled. You and I know the necessity of sacrifice. But it is easily forgotten when someone has more to eat than they expected. And this is the result.’ She gestured at the empty square. ‘You have the authority to rule. She has the means.’

‘Then I’ll have to take those means away. I don’t relish brutality, but I’ll resort to it for the good of Solus and the Imperium.’

Veiss sighed. ‘I really hope you don’t have to.’

‘So do I. How far do you think she dares to go?’

‘As far as it takes to defeat you and hold on to her place.’

I frowned, picturing worst-case scenarios. ‘Does she have the militia’s loyalty?’

‘My contacts there are limited. My impression is that to some extent, yes, she has. How deep or wide that loyalty is, I don’t know, and that troubles me.’

I thought things through, then shook my head. ‘It doesn’t matter. There are limits to her power. An actual uprising would bring the Astra Militarum to Solus. She can’t want that. It would destroy her completely.’

‘She doesn’t need an uprising if she can rid herself of you.’

‘I hope she tries.’ I spoke with sudden, violent feeling, surprising myself and shocking Veiss.

‘What have you been contemplating?’ she asked.

‘I’m not sure.’ I took a few breaths, calming myself. But I had said what I had said, and I meant it. Slowly, I saw why. ‘Justice, perhaps.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘There was no reason for Eliana to be on the roof of that tower. No reason for her to go up. I went. It’s just an invitation to an accident, and I only went there because she did. I doubt I would have even noticed the trapdoor otherwise. So. Why go?’

‘Maeson,’ Veiss said gently.

‘No. I won’t accept that she jumped. I won’t. Why would she have? That’s not who she was.’

‘You think Montfor had her killed?’

‘Eliana dead. The children too young to rule. Me gone, perhaps forever. All of that must have made her ascension easier. Well? Didn’t it?’

‘It did,’ Veiss admitted. ‘But there is no evidence that she did. I have no love for her. If there is any way of toppling her, then let it be done. Still…’

‘You don’t think she would have?’

‘It’s far from impossible. Even so…’

‘If she did it, let her try again.’ I was almost praying. ‘She’ll fail. And then she’ll fall.’

Veiss gave me a long look. ‘Please promise me you won’t do anything foolish. You’ve already provoked her enough.’

The screams of the dead of Clostrum roared through my head, and for a moment, all I asked for was one last, reckless charge, one that would grant me the boon of oblivion and its silence at the end.

The moment passed. I thought of Katrin and Zander. I thought of what I was trying to build on Solus. I was here for more than destruction. Oblivion was not mine to claim. And I would not reward Veth Montfor’s arrogance. I would not give her the victory she believed was hers to claim.

‘I promise,’ I said.

Veiss looked me in the eyes a few seconds longer. ‘All right,’ she said. ‘Good.’ She got into her car.

It was starting to rain again.

That night, I focused on my breathing once again, trying to hear that and not the memories. My instinct was to squeeze my hands against my ears. I forced myself to hold my arms at my sides.

The voices are inside your head, not outside. Face them down. Breathe, breathe, breathe.

Some of the voices, the ones I could barely make out, truly did seem to be coming from outside my memory. In my imagination, they were floating through the house, calling at the entrance of each room.

They’re going to get louder. Closer. Sooner or later, they’ll find you.

Stop it. Stop it.

The fear the memories were stirring was real. The pain they were causing was real. The voices were not. They were no more real here than they had been in my quarters on the Eternal Fury.

The children’s voices, whispering now between the laughs, kept growing closer. They were louder now than the screams of my soldiers, louder than the snarls of the tyranids. The giggling climbed the steps of my tower. In a moment, it would be outside my door.

I held my breath, waiting for the scratch of fingernails.

I was straining with all my being to listen, trying to hear what I did not want to hear. I was rigid on my bed, paralysed as I waited for the impossible to happen.

It’s haunted. The memory of Katrin’s voice, quiet and fearful.

I had to let the breath go, and I realised I was listening to silence. There were no voices.

I gasped for air. The only sound was my breathing. There was no laughter. There never had been. I could move again. The howls of the memories had receded. I was back in the quiet.

The tension gradually flowed out of my body, as if the rigidity had turned to water and was slowly leaking from me, into the bed, to the floor and down through the house to the ground below. I took deep, grateful breaths. I thought I would sleep. I actually welcomed the prospect of sleep.

In my last moment of consciousness, the sound came, clear and beautiful as a chime. Eliana called to me, ‘Maeson.’

There was a spasm of grief. I was leaving her in the waking night as I fell into the dream world. Then she came with me.

At first I saw her in a cascade of memories. I was dancing with her again on the night we first met, at a ball for the nobility thrown by Leonel in the Council Hall, at a time when he still left Malveil. I saw her striding from the Administratum Palace, where she reigned over an entire division, her walk as she descended the steps sure and purposeful, the simple movement of a leg locking itself forever into my heart. I saw her holding our infant daughter. I saw her comforting our son when he had fallen as a toddler. I saw our lovemaking.

Each memory was perfectly defined, as clear as if I were experiencing present moments. But I knew they were the past. I felt the moments as I had when they occurred, and I felt them through the filter of loss. I mourned anew, seeing so clearly what I had once had, and never would again.

My dream self sobbed.

‘Maeson.’

The images came quickly, nearly simultaneously, a flickering gallery of joys turned into pain. Through them, I kept hearing her voice.

‘Maeson.’

She was there before me. Not a memory now, though we were standing in the entrance hall of our apartments in Valgaast. I was myself as I was in the present. I had aged. I was faintly aware of the background hum of my prostheses’ servo-motors. Eliana was as I had last seen her. The sharp eyes that saw through me and loved me all the same, that understood what I meant even when I was speaking like a fool. The smile that mocked without truly mocking, that invited me into the shared joke between us.

‘Maeson,’ she said again. ‘What are you staring at?’

‘You,’ I said, my voice a breaking croak, riven by joy and grief to be speaking with her again. ‘I don’t know that dress.’

‘It’s my nightdress,’ she said. ‘It was new. You never saw this one. It’s the one I died in.’

I tried to answer. I could only groan.

‘It’s all right,’ she said gently. ‘Everything is all right.’

So often I had wished for just one more conversation. A wish to say goodbye, to say at least one of the things that were so important and that I had never had the chance to say. ‘I’m sorry I wasn’t here,’ I said.

Her smile became melancholy. ‘There’s nothing to forgive. You couldn’t be here.’

‘I miss you so much.’

‘Shhh,’ she said. ‘There, there. There, there.’ She raised a finger and stroked my cheek.

I felt her touch.

I jerked awake with a gasp, the touch lingering on my skin, hot and cold at the same time. Then I saw that I was still in the dream. Though I was in my bedchamber in Malveil, Eliana was there too, standing in the doorway.

‘Come with me,’ she said, holding out her hand.

I climbed out of the bed. Everything seemed real. I felt the brushing of the sheets against my legs and the cold of the floorboards under my feet. But when she took my hand, I felt nothing, as if the more concrete the world around me became, the less present she was.

‘I wanted to be here with you,’ I said. ‘In this house.’

‘We’re together now. We have this, at least.’

‘It isn’t enough.’

‘I know.’ She smiled. ‘Come with me. Come! Come!’

I could not feel her hand, yet she tugged, and I followed.

Walking through the dark of Malveil, I did not see where we were going. All I could look at was her, the wonder of her. I knew this was not real, and I was thinking about how I would feel when I woke up.

Treasure this. You spoke to her. She spoke to you. This is the farewell you never had. And it isn’t over yet. She is still there.

She touched your cheek.

I would hold that memory as real, I vowed, even when I was awake.

I was floating. She seemed to be drifting through halls, blown to her destination by an ethereal wind. Perhaps the corridors would go on forever. I would have been happy never to wake.

And then she stopped.

We were in the librarium. The room was dim, lit only by a dirty yellow wash of moonlight through the windows. It frosted the spines of the books with amber. I could see Eliana clearly. She was looking at a row of books on a shelf just below chest-height. Her smile turned sad.

I sensed that the moment of our parting had come. ‘I love you, Eliana,’ I said.

She turned to face me, her smile growing wider and wider. I looked into her eyes to see the reflection of love.

She had no eyes. There were only holes in her skull, black and deep and cold. And her forehead was a crater, punched in by the impact of her fall.

CHAPTER 6

I woke with a yell. I staggered, disorientated, to find that I really was in the librarium, standing where Eliana had brought me. I had never walked in my sleep before, or had so vivid a dream. It was resilient, resisting the erosion of wakefulness. I remembered every moment of Eliana’s visitation. I remembered what I had promised myself. But when I tried again to find the comfort of being able to see and speak to Eliana, her eyeless, shattered face filled my thoughts. I trembled with the effort to banish the sight. It was wrong. It was a crime to think of her that way. My mind had betrayed Eliana and me.

Standing in the librarium, in the very spot where I had seen the monstrous Eliana, I was finding it hard to break from the embrace of the nightmare. It was as if it had not ended.

‘It is over,’ I announced to the dark librarium. ‘Finished.’

I was sick of dreams and memories. I was sick with them. Knowing this was important. Armed with this knowledge, I would, with the Emperor’s help, triumph over them.

I knelt. I made the sign of the aquila, crossing my arms and pressing my hands hard against my chest. I closed my eyes tight. ‘There is no wisdom but the word of the Emperor,’ I recited. ‘There is no interpretation before the word of the Emperor. There is only obedience. Faith through obedience. Strength through faith. When my senses lie, the creed is my shield.’

The words of the prayer calmed me, though not as much as I had hoped.

‘Get light,’ I told myself.

I felt my way carefully through the dark until my hands bumped against a small table next to the armchairs in front of the window. Outside, the vast orb of Luctus gazed blankly at me, an eye filmed by cataracts, its light outlining shadows and making them deeper. I found the wrought-iron stand of a lumen globe on the table, and finally I could see properly. The immediacy of the dream receded, its waves lapping at the edge of the illumination.

I thought about the way Eliana had been looking sadly at a shelf before her eyes had vanished.

No, she was not, because she wasn’t really here.

It was time to leave the librarium. I would feel better in a different space. I headed for the door, passing by the spot where Eliana had stood.

Reality turned to thin ice and began to crack.

The books Eliana had been looking at were a multi-volume chronicle of the martyrs of Solus. One book was smaller and thinner than the others, and had no printing on its spine. It was nestled in the middle of the collection, its binding just as dark as that of the other books. It was easy to overlook. It was also protruding just enough to disrupt the uniform line of volumes.

I reached for it with frozen fingers. My pulse grew loud in my ears as I took it down and opened the cover.

I stared at pages covered with Eliana’s handwriting.

My hands convulsed around it. I expected the book to turn to air in my hands, because it could not be real. I waited for the jolt of truly waking up. It did not come. The journal remained solid.

I walked unsteadily over to the table and collapsed in one of the chairs. Eliana’s words swam before my eyes. I took long, shuddering breaths and tried to find an explanation that made sense of what was happening. The Imperial Creed denied the existence of ghosts, and I would not, could not, go against that teaching.

Yet a fundamental fracture had opened in the world. I could not see how to close it.

You must have seen this before and forgotten. When Veiss and Rivas were here, your eye must have passed over it. Then the memory surfaced in disguised form. Something like that must have happened. Nothing else makes sense.

The rationalisation was a weak one. It would have to do for now. It was the only bulwark I could throw up against superstition.

I ran the tips of my fingers over the pages. This was a treasure much more precious than what I had hoped to keep from the dream. This was not a wish-fulfilment memory construct of my wife. This was real. It was something that truly did come from her. These were her words.

I paused for a long moment, placing my palm over the first page. Are you sure you want to read this?

No, I wasn’t sure. No matter what journey this book described, Eliana’s broken body lay at the end of it. There would be things I would regret learning.

You have to learn them. These are Eliana’s words, Eliana’s truths.

Could I put this aside? Could I imagine not reading it?

Of course not.

My pulse was still hammering in my ears as I moved my hand away from the page and began to read.

The house is ours now. Ours. It feels ironic to write that word. Ours. The right to live here has come to Maeson, the children and me, but I am the only one here. Curse Leonel for waiting to die until Katrin and Zander were away at the schola.

Malveil is huge. I did not have an appreciation of how big it is until today. Seeing it from a distance is a poor preparation. Even so, it’s strange to feel so dwarfed by the space here. I’ve never experienced a sensation like this before. If I could understand why I feel the way I do, perhaps I could do something about it. I’ve been inside large buildings before, after all. Maybe the difference in this case is that this is supposed to be my home. It doesn’t feel like one. What am I supposed to do with this space? It’s empty enough when the serfs are here. Malveil just swallows them up and leaves me alone. And they’re going to leave for the night in a short while.

I feel like I’m falling through two kinds of vastness. The oppressive size of the house is reflecting the size of the task I’ve had to take on, one that I didn’t truly feel until today. I’m trying to manage my Administratum duties while doing what I can to hold the line for the Strocks in council. My position has never been as strong as it needs to be there. With Leonel dead, Maeson would be lord-governor if he were here, but he is not, and I do not have an official title. I am not a councillor. My presence on the Inner Council is, as far as I can tell, a courtesy that has been extended as a result of some kind of negotiation between Adrianna Veiss and Veth Montfor. I exert what influence I can. It is hard to know what effect I am having. It’s odd. Until today, I’ve been able to tell myself that what I am doing there matters. Now I’m not sure.

I’ve just looked at what I’ve written and I want to scold the person responsible. This doesn’t sound like me. I’m very tired. I didn’t sleep well last night. There was a lot of thrashing, and waking up from dreams that the bed was floating in an infinite void. Fatigue. That’s why I’m reacting this way. I didn’t think the move would take as much out of me as it has. I don’t even know why it did. Karoff has everything well in hand, and there has been surprisingly little for me to do.

Perhaps that is the problem. I have been rather purposeless today. Perhaps it was a mistake to arrange for the leave of absence from the Administratum Palace. Wandering from room to room here like I’m wide-eyed and lost accomplishes nothing. Sitting in the librarium as if I were seeking refuge from something is even worse. Refuge from what? This is nonsense. I’m embarrassed to write these words. I should be ashamed. If my scribes at the Administratum could see me, they would lose their respect and fear, and well they should.

Let us have purpose in this day, then.

Later.

Perhaps I’m ill. Something must be wrong with me. I tried to go through Malveil in a systematic way. If I knew the space, I thought, it would seem less huge. Seeing all the still-unusable rooms, packed high with the debris of generations, would also help, I thought, because I would see that even Malveil could get crowded.

I was wrong. I feel worse. The house seems bigger than ever. I tried to explore each wing carefully, stopping at every doorway, and studying every room. I thought I could imprint the geography of Malveil on my mind. I failed. Every time I worked my way to the end of a wing and started back, I would find doors and passages that I had missed the first time around, and end up more confused than when I had begun. I must have attempted the ground floor of the west wing five times, and I still don’t know how many chambers open off the main gallery.

This is ridiculous. Whatever is wrong seems to be more than exhaustion. But lack of sleep isn’t helping, certainly. I’ll try again tomorrow, and I’ll do it when Karoff and the other serfs are here. I was wrong to make the attempt while I was alone. Not when I’m unwell. I kept paying too much attention to the echoes of my own footsteps.

That was probably how I lost track of which rooms I’d been in.

Well. This is a rather unfortunate start to this journal. If I can feel shame about my reactions now, then I can’t imagine how mortified I’m going to be in the morning. So, to the Eliana of tomorrow, my apologies. See if you can’t set the Eliana of tonight straight.

Throne, I’m so tired. And there’s a session of council tomorrow too. If I don’t get some sleep, I doubt I’ll even be able to drag myself to the bottom of the hill.

I closed the journal with a shaking hand. I didn’t know how I was going to get out of the chair. I could hear her voice so clearly. Her voice, and her confusion. That distress wasn’t like her.

With an effort, I lifted my arm and put the book down on the table beside the chair. I needed air, and I needed to change my focus. I needed to plunge back into the turmoil of Valgaast’s political cauldron.

The journal would wait. I already knew I would only be able to read it a little bit at a time.

Because I had to savour the gift of my wife’s words.

That’s what I insisted to myself until I believed it.

I had taken a risk in having Trefecht arrested. I did not take Veiss’ warnings lightly, but I had relished the opening salvo of the war. The risk I was taking this evening gave me more pause.

The first stage of this campaign had been successful, though. I took that as a good sign. Katrin and Zander had agreed to dine with me at Malveil.

The three of us sat at one end of the enormous table in the dining hall. Under Karoff’s supervision, serfs unobtrusively served a three-course meal that I had difficulty tasting. The conversation was sporadic and awkward. We were three strangers to each other. Zander was pleasant, but clearly wondering why I had thought it necessary to go through this painful exercise. Katrin was coldly formal, particularly towards her brother. There was no open hostility, though. So that was something.

When we had finished eating, Zander looked around the immense space with an amused smile. He clinked his knife against the rim of his goblet of amasec and cocked his head.

‘The acoustics are striking in here, father,’ he said. ‘Fine echoes.’

‘It is rather large and empty,’ I agreed. ‘It needs to have life return to it. I would like to think even three of us is a start.’

‘Are you going to be hosting feasts for the council?’ Katrin asked coldly.

‘Not until it has been purged.’

Zander’s smile faltered.

‘I heard about Councillor Trefecht,’ Katrin said. ‘That’s a start.’

‘Only a start,’ I said.

To my disappointment, Zander changed the subject. ‘I don’t imagine this hall has seen much use in a very long time.’

‘No, it hasn’t. Nor has most of the house. I plan to change that, too.’

‘Have you…’ Zander hesitated. ‘Have you seen anything of mother’s? I mean…’ He grimaced, searching for the right words.

I understood what he was trying to say. ‘Anything that shows that she lived here once too?’

‘Yes.’ He gestured at the room around us. ‘You wouldn’t know it to look at this.’

‘I found her journal. Just this morning.’

‘Does it say why she turned her back on her family and her duty?’ Katrin asked.

Zander winced at his sister’s anger. I held back the impulse to rush furiously to Eliana’s defence. This was anger born of pain. ‘You believe that is what she did?’ I said gently.

‘How could anyone say otherwise? Killing herself was an act of cowardice. She shamed us all.’

‘We don’t know why she did it,’ Zander said. ‘We don’t know what she was going through. We–’

‘None of that matters,’ Katrin snapped. ‘Actually, I withdraw my question. I don’t care why she did it. She abandoned us, she abdicated her responsibilities to the Adeptus Administratum and to Solus, and she betrayed the Emperor. There are no reasons that can justify her actions.’

‘Unless that isn’t what happened,’ I said.

‘You think she didn’t kill herself?’ Zander asked.

‘I’m not sure.’

‘There has never been any evidence to suggest otherwise,’ Katrin pointed out.

‘No, there hasn’t. But it is also true that her death was useful for some people. One in particular.’

‘Montfor?’ said Katrin.

‘Since Eliana’s death was to her advantage, she had a motive. But the corruption of this council has depended on maintaining an almost invisible profile. An obvious assassination would be a problem.’

Zander looked shocked and confused, much as he had been at the session the day before. Katrin seemed thoughtful.

‘What you say makes sense, but it is only speculation.’

‘For the moment.’

‘What does mother’s journal reveal?’ Now Katrin sounded genuinely interested.

‘I’ve only just started reading it,’ I said. ‘She wrote a lot. It will take some time to go through it properly. There may very well not be anything in it that is helpful in finding out what happened, but even if there isn’t, when I read it, I hear your mother’s voice again. That is worth something.’

‘I’d like the chance to hear her voice too,’ Zander said quietly, with a slight tremble.

‘Of course,’ I said. His face was open, vulnerable. His studied nonchalance was gone. ‘I’ll pass the journal on to you when I’m through.’

‘How did you find it?’

‘She kept it in our bedchamber.’ The lie was simpler and easier to believe than the truth. ‘It’s been waiting for me to find it since she died.’ That felt like the truth, though it made me uncomfortable. ‘I do think we should all read it.’

‘Is that why you asked us here?’ Zander asked. ‘To tell us about the journal?’

‘No. I have been a stranger to you for most of your lives. And you have been becoming strangers to each other as well. I would like this to change. I believe it is part of our family duty as Strocks to be strong, and we will be stronger together.’ I had just made the easy part of the argument. The appeal to honour and duty came naturally for me to use, and for Katrin, at least, to accept. ‘And I miss you,’ I went on. ‘I never thought I would return to Solus. We have been granted another chance at union. I think we should take it.’

‘I don’t see why not,’ said Zander. He was recovering his poise, but there was a note of eagerness in his tone.

‘What do you propose?’ he asked. ‘Dinner here once a week?’ His tone was casual, but there was a look in his eyes of cautious hope, as if he wanted me to ask for more but couldn’t bring himself to risk making the suggestion.

‘I was going to ask you and Katrin to live at Malveil.’

That took them both by surprise. They stared at me for a long time, then at each other.

‘Why?’ Katrin finally asked. ‘Why is that important?’

‘Because this is the seat of our family. Malveil is a symbol. Your mother’s death rendered it vacant, and that symbolism strengthened the council’s regency. To have it occupied again, not just by me but by the family would matter at least as much. It would be a show of continuity and power. It would show our unity in this struggle.’

Zander squirmed. ‘This isn’t my fight,’ he said.

‘It should be.’

‘I don’t know what’s going on between you and the council, and I really don’t care to. It has nothing to do with me.’

‘Are you really that naive?’ said Katrin. ‘Or just that cowardly?’

‘Neither,’ he said with a smile. ‘I’m just lazy.’ He made the confession without a trace of embarrassment. ‘I can tell when something underhanded is going on, and I’m good at making sure I don’t find out what it is. Montfor wants me at arm’s length, and that’s where I’m comfortable. An anti-corruption fight is a lot of effort, but so is corruption. I’m not good at effort. I’m really not.’

‘At least you’re honest about it,’ Katrin said sourly.

‘I think it’s best for everyone to know that about me. That way they are never disappointed.’ He looked pleased with himself, as if his logic were unassailable.

‘You aren’t going to be able to follow that path any longer,’ I told him. ‘I am at war with Veth Montfor and her creatures. I have been commanded to put an end to their criminal endeavour, and so I shall. Montfor is going to fight back, and she will use any weapon she can. She won’t allow you to remain an amused spectator. She will try to suborn you.’

‘She’ll fail.’

I finally heard some determination in Zander’s voice. I was glad. There was Strock blood in him after all. ‘Then she’ll threaten you to get to me. There is no safety on the sidelines. Not any longer.’

Zander sighed. ‘You know, father, I was rather enjoying my life until now. It’s very unkind of you to upset things in this way.’

I smiled. ‘Perhaps. But there we are.’

‘There we are,’ he repeated.

‘Well?’ Katrin pushed him. ‘Do you understand?’

‘I do. I won’t pretend I’m happy about it. But if I’m going to be forced to choose my camp, then that’s what I’m going to do. And I’m not going to side with Montfor against my family.’ So there was iron in his blood, deny it as he would. The declaration of loyalty came easily, as if it were an instinct, a deep one, coming from a core that was pure Strock despite a shell of indolence.

‘And will you stay here?’

‘Can I think about that?’

‘Of course. I’m not going to take you prisoner.’ I looked at Katrin. ‘What about you?’

‘I agree with the principles you just espoused. I agree that our family has clear duties and responsibilities.’

And you thought you were the only one who was still true to them, I thought. I was careful not to say anything.

‘The arrest of Councillor Trefecht gives me hope,’ Katrin said.

‘That I will stand by what I say?’ That I did not betray your trust on Clostrum, and that I will not abandon you again?

She thought for a moment. ‘That something will be done,’ she said.

‘It will be.’

‘Then I will think seriously about taking up residence here.’

‘Good,’ I said. ‘Thank you both. I don’t ask this lightly, and I don’t expect your decisions to be instant, either. As a first step, if you are willing, I have had chambers readied for you to spend the night here. Of course, Belzhek will take you back to your homes if you prefer.’

They both accepted. The surge of joy I experienced pushed the nightmare further to the back of my mind. I was relieved that neither Katrin nor Zander had asked precisely what Eliana did say in her journal. They could read it in due course, once things were more settled, once we were all closer.

Perhaps I didn’t need to be cautious. But the first few pages I had read made me uneasy.

I couldn’t sleep. The voices of memory weren’t assailing me this time, and I welcomed the reprieve. The knowledge that my children were under the same roof as me for the first time in decades gave me comfort, even as the thrill of hope also kept me awake. For a while, I even indulged myself in imagining that it was not a grim schola progenium indoctrinator and a genial, ambition-free wastrel sleeping in the chambers below my tower, but the young children I had left behind and never had the chance to see grow. I had come back to my past, and the tiny boy who needed holding and the little girl who clutched my hand did not feel very far away from me at all.

I got up. I had to work off some nervous energy or I wouldn’t sleep at all. I looked at Eliana’s journal, sitting on the bedside table. I decided against reading more just now. I didn’t need my mind racing even more than it was, and Eliana’s reactions to Malveil disturbed me. If I had not known her handwriting, I might have suspected a forgery. The voice that those words conveyed did not sound like the Eliana I thought I remembered.

For one thing, her sense of direction had been impeccable. It was hard to picture her having such difficulty trying to get her bearings in the house.

The systematic attempt, though, was in character. It was also a challenge. After several days, there were still regions of Malveil I had yet to explore. I will follow in your footsteps. The thought appealed to me, as if in this way I could feel a little closer to her again. And maybe I could banish the dream from my thoughts.

I headed down to the ground floor. I would start there, in the west wing, and go as far as the Old Tower. One section at a time, one day at a time, if need be, I would make myself familiar with every corner of the house.

In the dining hall, I took up a candelabra from the table and used it to light my way through the dim corridors. I mimicked Eliana’s approach, pausing to note every intersection, imagining I was echoing her gestures. I told myself that this made me feel closer to her.

I was moving through a sea of shadows whose waves rose and fell with the flickering of candle flame. The house faded into vague darkness ahead and behind, and I began to see how Eliana might have become confused. The mistake is to do this at night. But I was going to finish what I had started, and I kept going. At last, I reached the door that led into the Old Tower.

It was massive, banded in iron, and of wood so thick and ancient it seemed petrified to black stone. It was forbidding, a barrier more than an entrance, and I half expected it to be locked against me. It wasn’t, but I had to pull hard on the heavy iron ring before the door opened, iron grinding against rockcrete, hinges turning into a screeching choir.

A jagged, hulking mass heaved at me as I crossed the threshold. I recoiled, but the movement was an illusion conjured by the candles. It took me several long moments to understand what I was seeing. It was grotesquely absurd. It defied what I believed to be possible, and what I wanted to believe.

I was standing on a staircase that spiralled up the interior wall of the tower, rising to my right and descending to an unknown depth on my left. The tower was hollow, and it was filled by the largest, most impossible pile of debris I had encountered in Malveil. It was a frozen vortex, twisting up from the darkness below, rising into the darkness above. Edges of portraits, crates, furniture and many more objects I could not identify in the gloom thrust out from the vortex, and it seemed to grow wider as it climbed higher, a cyclone of wreckage contained within the tower. I had to stare long and hard to make sure that it was not moving. It should have collapsed. I could not imagine how the configuration of chance and mass contrived to keep the twisted, inverted pile steady.

Did Leonel do this? That, too, was hard to credit. How much of a lifetime would it take to create this monument to waste? To accumulate so much, to haul it into the tower one piece at a time, to climb the stairs and hurl the objects down… To do all of this would require an army of serfs, and years upon years of obsession.

Or maybe generations of madness.

Eliana took part in this too. What she had done in one chamber, she could have done here as well.

It seemed to me that I was staring into the heart of madness, as if the accumulations began here, rising from the depths of the Old Tower to spread throughout the house. And as I looked, I began to feel a cold breeze. It blew up from the darkness below, coming up from a core of ice. It touched my cheeks. Then it pushed against them. It was turning into a wind.

Air from the mines? Do the foundations connect to the tunnels?

The explanation seemed strange. The lack of one was worse.

The cold began to numb my face.

I backed out of the Old Tower, put my shoulder to the door and pushed it closed, shutting away the sight and its implications for now. This was something to be dealt with in daylight. It was not my purpose tonight.

The Old Tower had taken away my appetite for exploration, though. I no longer cared about creating a mental map of the west wing. I was suddenly very weary. I turned from the tower and started back to my room. My legs were heavy. I stared dully at the floor, no longer paying attention to my surroundings. I just wanted to sleep.

I thought I was taking the direct route back to the main entrance. I didn’t think I had turned or branched off into a side corridor. I must have, though, because I came to a dead end. I raised the candelabra higher and looked around, confused. I didn’t recognise the room I was in. It was empty except for a dusty, cobwebbed ruin of a table in one corner. I turned back, and found three doors leading from the chamber. I couldn’t remember through which I had entered.

We need to head east. Which wall is east?

I didn’t know.

I couldn’t stay there. I wasn’t about to go to sleep on the floor. I looked through each of the doorways. They led into narrow corridors. The pictures hanging on the walls, impossible to make out in the dark, made the passages seem cramped. I could not recall having been in any of them before. It was just the dark, I told myself. I couldn’t really see any of the spaces I was passing through.

Stop being a fool. Enough of this stumbling around in the gloom. Get some light.

There had to be some lumen globes in the corridors. I took one of the halls at random and moved cautiously down its length, feeling along the wall for a sconce. I walked past several doorways before I hit another dead end, but found nothing to light my way. The candles I carried were dwindling, and their light seemed dimmer, dirtier, as if it were being choked off by smoke and dust.

I started back up the hall, and now I could not tell which room had led me here. I peered through the doorways, and half the spaces beyond looked identical in their empty dereliction.

I kept walking. I turned right at the first intersection with another corridor. It was just as unfamiliar as the last, its doorways leading to still more foreign territory, taking me to other halls, and other rooms, some vacant, some choked with heaps of discards.

I’m lost.

How? How do you get lost going in a straight line?

It wasn’t straight. I took a wrong turn.

How? HOW?

I had no answer.

There was nothing to do but keep going. One of the corridors had to take me back to a main hall. Malveil was big, but not infinite. Yet I could not shake the impression that I was burrowing deeper and deeper into a maze of halls, larger than any battleship. I could not even find a room with windows. I was trapped in a web of stone, and when I reached its centre, Malveil would consume me.

‘No,’ I said aloud. ‘That is ridiculous, unworthy fancy.’

The words fell dully into the dark, muffled and hollowed out of force. The darkness tightened around me. Then, as if it had been waiting for my feeble attempt to break the silence, the laughter of children began again.

My mouth went dry. The giggling came from somewhere behind me, and I pictured children crouching behind a door, watching me, their smiles too wide and cold. And there was only the laughter. Clostrum was a lifetime away, its screams and blood suddenly the torment of another soul, someone I might once have known, but no longer.

I couldn’t pretend the laughter was my imagination.

I had to insist that it was. I clung to the fact of my exhaustion with a death grip.

I entered another hall, as strange to me as all the others. I walked more quickly, trying to get away from the laughter. It followed. The children I knew could not be real kept pace with me, always hiding around the corner I had just turned, inside the room I had just passed.

‘Katrin!’ I called, swallowing my humiliation. ‘Zander! I seem to be lost! Can you hear me?’

The laughter behind me answered. And then, ‘Father?’ Katrin’s voice. Katrin as a child. I turned, and there she was as I remembered her, as I knew her. The woman who slept on the floor above was a stranger to me. I could see a faint resemblance between her and the daughter of my memory, but it was so faint, she could have been an imposter. Here, in front of me, was my little girl. Behind her, peeking around a doorway, hand over his mouth to stifle his giggles, was Zander as he lived in my heart. Though their faces were mischievous, they looked at me with the love that I also remembered, and that my soul had held close during the years of our separation. I smiled back and took a step forward.

‘Maeson!’

Eliana’s cry made me look over my shoulder. There was no one there. And when I turned back to the children, they were gone. I realised belatedly that they could never have been there.

‘Maeson!’ Eliana’s voice shouted again.

I spun around and almost collided with the librarium door. I had not been standing outside it a moment ago. I would have known where I was.

It’s just the dark. I’m just having trouble seeing, that’s all.

Yet I would have sworn there had been a stretch of corridor where the door now was.

‘Maeson!’ The cry came one more time, weaker and despairing.

I hurried into the librarium. Eliana wasn’t there, because she couldn’t be there, because the voices were all in my head. An impulse that felt external to me summoned me to the shelf where I had discovered Eliana’s journal the night before.

It was there, between the chronicles of martyrdom again. I had left it in my bedchamber, yet it was here, waiting for me to find it a second time. I pulled it down, and it did not disappear into the recesses of my imagination. It was solid. It was real. It felt heavy as ice, and cold as damnation.

CHAPTER 7

I have found a purpose in this house. I have a direction now. I know it will help me. It was not just lack of purpose that was troubling me. I believe I was experiencing that as one symptom caused by the enormous emptiness of Malveil, emptiness magnified because I am alone. Karoff and the serfs are only here during the day, when I am absent. There is just a short period in the evening when there are voices other than mine inside the walls. Even when the serfs are here, we exist in separate spheres. I have no one with whom I can speak. I am lonely. Tackling the symptom of feeling purposeless will, I think, help with the loneliness.

Lonely. It seems weak to write that word. It would be weaker to pretend otherwise. I did not feel this until I moved into Malveil. I think it is the scale of the emptiness that has forced me to recognise how lonely I am. In central Valgaast, surrounded by the restless tides of a large population, I was able to pretend that I wasn’t alone. But here, at night, I am truly alone, and forced to realise that I have been for some time.

I miss Katrin and Zander. Of course I do. Their departures are recent enough that I feel their absence acutely. There have been a few times over the past few days when I have actually forgotten that they aren’t here, and I’ve caught myself starting to speak to them, thinking I’d seen one or the other out of the corner of my eye. That is not healthy behaviour. So an honest reckoning of where I stand is clearly necessary.

I miss Maeson too. More painfully than I have for some years now. Being in Malveil, being very conscious that this is his family home, is, I think, what has reopened the wounds.

It disturbs me that I have not noticed this before, but who is left among my friends? Adrianna Veiss is kind and generous with me, but it is with Maeson that she shares a childhood. Where are my friends? Embeth, Treva and Bakal were all part of the same tithe as Maeson. Verey is dead. So is Hanja. Petrain and Fenza are on the other side of the globe now. And so it goes. My growing isolation was so gradual that I didn’t notice it. Not until it was complete.

Throne. Look at all this self-pity. But if that is what I’m feeling, then I must acknowledge it. The point is to be honest. I can’t address the problem by pretending it doesn’t exist. So. I’ll set it down again.

I am lonely.

Good. Done. That is the problem. And being adrift in Malveil is exacerbating it. What is the solution? To become the glittering hostess of Valgaast? To fill the nights of the house with the entertained nobility of Solus?

I made myself a bit ill writing that. The reality would be intolerable. I have no appetite for the political games such social events embody. I can almost hear Maeson laughing at the idea that I would stoop to engaging in something so completely abhorrent to who I am. Playing that farce would only make things worse.

Anyway, I found the solution. I have a direction. I’m actually quite pleased. I’ve expressed the self-pity, and now I can purge it.

The seed of the idea was planted this morning as I was getting ready to leave for the Administratum Palace. On the wall as one descends the grand staircase, there are portraits of other Strock governors. As I glanced at them today, it struck me how completely forgotten they have become. I know who these men and women were only because they wear the sash of planetary commander. Beyond that, nothing. Though I wrack my memory, I can’t think of the name of a single prior Strock ruler other than Leonel. As for him, he was ill for so long that the only thing I can recall from his reign is the illness. I can enumerate every bad decision the council made during the regency. I remember how urgent it was to establish the regency. But of Leonel himself, I have next to nothing. I know he held the ball where I met Maeson, but I don’t think I saw Leonel there.

During the day, I was able to establish that this ignorance is not a personal flaw. In passing conversations, I found that the prior Strocks seem to have been swallowed by oblivion. No one I spoke to appears to remember Leonel in any more detail than I do. No one could recall his predecessor (Berenova) without consulting a data-slate.

What is really odd is that, as far as I can remember, I don’t think Maeson has ever mentioned any of his governing predecessors apart from Leonel. Perhaps I’m wrong. He was always full of stories about his parents. Maybe the ruling branch of the family was too remote for him to know anything.

The situation is odd, but it is also wrong. It is an injustice for the Strocks’ service to be forgotten in this way. So I am going to change it. I am going to know Malveil, and I will know it through its history. I will restore the governors to history.

My idea really took form this evening, when I found that there is a specific question I need to answer. There is, in the librarium, a framed genealogy of the Strocks. I shall need to have it updated, as the most recent name added is Leonel’s. This will be a useful resource, since at least it gives the names that I am bound and determined to successfully match to the portraits. But studying it brought home what appears to be a tragic paradox that haunts the family. On the one hand, the Strock claim on the governorship of Solus has been unchallenged for centuries, ever since the first mines opened on this hill. On the other, there does not ever appear to have been a direct transfer of power from parent to child, but only through cousins, nieces, nephews and so on. Sometimes the connections are quite distant. Whatever branch of the family assumes the governorship, the mantle then passes to another. There are no dates written on the genealogy, but it would be very easy, looking at this pattern, to perceive that a doom always befalls the immediate family of the governor. Where the governor has children, none of them succeed their parent, and none of them have any issue.

I do not like this conclusion. I refuse to let this interpretation prey upon my mind. The information on that chart is fragmentary. It is not the whole story. It can’t be. I will find out what is missing.

I will preserve history.

I will set my mind at rest.

These are more than worthy purposes. I believe they are necessary.

Later.

The task I have set for myself at Malveil is having the effect I wanted. I think. I don’t feel purposeless any longer. Quite the reverse. My research consumed my thoughts at the Administratum today. I had to discipline some archivists for not keeping pace with the arrival of new data, and all the time, my mind was on the demented archives facing me here, in the house. My efforts at the Administratum suddenly seem trivial by comparison. I correct the work of underlings there. I give the orders. Here, it will all be up to me.

It’s late now. I’ve spent hours going through just one of the rooms on the ground floor. I have the work of years ahead of me. I’m worried that it might be the work of lifetimes. I’ll have to get some help from Karoff and the serfs. It is physically impossible for one person to move everything that needs to be moved. If I’m not careful, I’ll be crushed beneath an avalanche of debris.

There isn’t the tiniest hint of organisation in the chaos of these rooms. If all the collections of paper kept by Leonel and, no doubt, his predecessors were all in one place, that would be something. But every type of discard is mixed with every other kind. When I look at the mounds, there is no way to know how many records there might be hidden from sight. All I can do is dig and hope.

I have made a start. Most of what I have unearthed this evening is useless. Copies of old proclamations, scribbled bits and pieces of speeches, lists of names and lists of items and lists of lists. But I have also found some transcriptions of council sessions, and what I think might be early drafts of edicts. There are very few dates, so it will take a lot of deductive work to piece together what Leonel did or thought, and when. I’m not even sure everything I’m looking at is from Leonel’s governorship. But this is a start. I think I can take some satisfaction in what I have achieved already. It is fascinating work, too, though exhausting.

I have to say that I feel even more tired than I did the other day. The thought of having to go into Valgaast tomorrow and leave Malveil is too much to bear.

I had gone to see Stavaak for our first meeting. This morning, he came to see me. I invited him into the librarium. We sat at the window, and he leaned forward to speak, keeping his voice low. I had never seen an enforcer act with such caution. It was another reminder of the real dangers in the war I had declared.

‘I thought you should know,’ Stavaak said, ‘that there have been a large number of arrests across Rosala.’

‘That was fast. Is this your doing?’

He shook his head. ‘This is local militia.’

‘Following your example?’

‘Quite.’ He bit the word off, sharp with sarcasm.

‘You don’t trust what is happening.’

‘It’s too convenient, and too soon. If they had the evidence they needed before, they should have acted. If they did not, they could not have gathered it this quickly.’

‘Then why is it happening?’

‘This is Montfor’s doing,’ he said. ‘I’ll take any wager it is.’

‘What does she hope to gain?’

‘She’s turning the loss to an advantage. She’ll make sure Rosala’s production levels shoot upward.’

‘Ah.’ I saw now. ‘Reducing Solus’ deficit at no cost to herself or to her remaining allies.’

‘Exactly.’

‘Can Rosala produce enough to make up the difference for all of Solus?’ If Montfor made that happen, the watchful eyes of the Adeptus Terra would see what they wanted and presume I had succeeded. Solus would fall beneath notice again, and Montfor would have a free hand. My position would become highly vulnerable.

‘I don’t know if that’s possible,’ said Stavaak. ‘Even if they risk starving the Rosalan population. The amount they can produce will be enough to make a difference, though.’

‘Then we need to move against Montfor.’

‘That was always going to be necessary. But that’s the problem, isn’t it?’

‘Can you arrest her?’

‘No evidence. And she controls too much. We need proof.’

I thought for a few moments. ‘I can command that production levels be reported to me on a sector-by-sector basis. Make it impossible to hide the corruption in Rosala.’

‘That might give us something solid to use. A chance, anyway.’ He stood to go. ‘In any event, I wanted you to know what was happening so she doesn’t surprise you with it at council.’

I clasped his shoulder in thanks. ‘I appreciate it.’

As we walked back to the entrance hall, I noticed Stavaak taking in the interior of Malveil with undisguised curiosity.

‘You’ve never been here before?’ I asked.

‘No.’

‘Never in Leonel’s day?’

‘The presence of the Adeptus Arbites was never called for.’

‘That’s a shame,’ I said dryly. ‘The presence of somebody was clearly called for.’

‘I do believe my grandmother was here once. Shortly after she became an enforcer, if I remember the stories.’

‘Was she here in an official capacity?’

‘Ah, I don’t remember the stories that well. Sorry. But I would imagine so.’

‘I wonder what brought her to the house.’

‘It’s odd that I can’t remember her ever having mentioned the reason.’

‘It’s just that my family has a more than passing acquaintance with tragedy,’ I said.

‘I see. I’m afraid I don’t know much about prior lord-governors.’

‘Neither do I.’ The passage I had read in Eliana’s journal that morning bothered me. It was uncomfortably true to my own experience, and I had needed Eliana’s words to point that out. I had never noticed before how little I knew.

Stavaak left, and about an hour later, Belzhek arrived to drive me to the council meeting. The day had turned foul by then. A strong wind had come up. The dead trees on the hill waved back and forth, clawing at the dead sky. Sleet pelted into my face as I got into the car. It was a cold whip of an afternoon.

The wind shook the vehicle as we drove through the dead industrial sector. Funnelled by the looming bulk of the manufactoria, it shrieked down the road as if it would hurl us into the air. Then, over the howls of the wind, I heard deep, rumbling cracks. I looked out of the right passenger window and saw two enormous smokestacks sway and lean.

‘Belzhek!’ I shouted, but she had already seen.

The road was narrow, and there was nowhere to turn off. One of the chimneys was right beside us, the other a short distance ahead. Belzhek accelerated and then braked hard. Our only hope was for her to place us between the two titanic falls.

The rockcrete giants slammed into the road, shaking the earth, obliterating the day with the thunder of their death. Thousands of tonnes of stone and dust swallowed us in night. Belzhek manoeuvred well, but the destruction was wide, and a massive chunk of rockcrete descended on the bonnet of the car, crushing it flat, buckling the roof and frame. Debris shattered the windshields and tumbled violently inside.

I coughed, struggling to breathe. My ears rang, and I could barely see in the dust-clogged air. I called to Belzhek.

‘My lord,’ she answered, her voice tight with pain.

‘Can you move?’ I asked.

‘I am pinned.’

The door on my left was hanging open. There was a heavy weight on my legs, but it shifted when I tried to move. Sharp edges gouged my right arm and leg, but there were no nerves to feel pain, and my prostheses gave me the strength to drag myself out from under the rubble and out of the vehicle.

I managed to yank Belzhek’s door open. Her tread assembly was destroyed, the machinery that gave her mobility caught and mangled together with our vehicle. I pulled away rubble until her upper body was free, and she struggled with the cumbersome control mechanism at her waist. Latches unclasped and tubes pulled away, spraying steam and black lubricants. She gasped. Blood drained from her face. She slumped to one side, and I pulled her free of the vehicle.

The wind screamed at us, blowing away the dust. I carried Belzhek away from the wreckage, stumbling over debris when the sleet blinded me. I squinted into the lashing storm. There was no shelter on the street, and the sector was deserted. We were on our own.

Well done, Montfor. An excellent location for an ambush, and an accident just on the right side of plausible.

I struggled on, into the teeth of the storm. The right side of my uniform of office was in shreds. The world was a grey, streaming blur. I must have walked for more than a mile before I left the manufactorum shells behind.

I did not think it a coincidence that in the region of the collapse there had been no other traffic at all. It must have pleased Montfor to think that even if I survived, she would have shown me just how much power she had over the city and its citizens.

I muttered a vow to take that power away.

At last we reached roads with traffic. I flagged down a passing transport and had the driver take us to the nearest militia post. There, I left Belzhek, giving instructions for her to be taken to a medicae centre, and commanded that I be escorted to the Council Hall.

The session was in full swing when I marched in, fully conscious of the spectacle I presented. I was soaked, my face was cut and bleeding, and my clothes were torn. My teeth were clenched and I wasn’t so much breathing as snarling. Veiss and Zander stared in shock. Zander made a move to assist me, but I waved him back into his seat.

Montfor rose from her throne in a convincing show of alarm. ‘Lord-governor,’ she said, ‘what has happened?’

‘I have had a near miss with a collapsing manufactorum.’ I took my throne.

‘That is distressing news. Were there any fatalities?’

‘None,’ I snapped. ‘Though my driver was injured.’

‘We are fortunate, then.’

‘Ivina Belzhek, veteran of the Solus Nightmarch, might disagree with you.’

Montfor shrugged. ‘In any event, we have been courting disaster with those abandoned structures for some time. It was inevitable that something would happen sooner or later, but I never imagined–’

‘I’m sure you didn’t.’

‘We will need a full investigation into the causes of this disaster.’

‘Oh yes,’ I said. ‘There will be one. We will learn who is responsible.’ I leaned on the word who, making it clear that this was not a case of finding out if anyone was to blame. I gave the councillors a long stare, Montfor especially. She gazed back, her face a picture of concern, just artificial enough to show that it was false. Everyone in the room understood the meanings behind our words. Neither of us could attack the other directly. Not just yet.

I could still attack indirectly, and I moved on to the next phase of my campaign.

‘We have opened a front against corruption in Rosala. This is a start, and I will not allow our good work to go to waste by seeing the criminal networks seek refuge in other agri sectors.’ I made my tone as false as Montfor’s concern. Look at me, you vermin. I know what all of you are doing. And you know that I know. Look at me. I am still alive and still fighting. I am not afraid of you. I will teach you to be afraid of me.

‘We must be vigilant,’ I continued. ‘And we must have the tools for our vigilance.’ Then I demanded production reports. ‘I expect to see them all one week from today.’

‘That task–’ Sebat Vanzel, the councillor for the Kertzia agri sector began.

‘Will surely not present any great difficulty,’ I said. ‘I would presume these records already exist. It is merely a question of the Administratum scribes of your sector collating them. If they do not exist, then the question arises as to why they do not, and I can only think of one answer.’

‘Certainly they exist,’ said Vanzel.

‘Then I look forward to seeing them. This session is adjourned.’

No one dared contradict me and suggest that I had interrupted other work. I was acting on adrenaline, and I needed to press the advantage of my survival with an appropriately dramatic show of force.

Montfor did not bother to hide her anger this time when she left. After only a few days of hostilities, the masks were slipping.

Good.

I still made sure I was the last to leave, standing before my throne as a figure of anger and blood. I was ready to fall over. I had to keep going until I was safely back at Malveil.

Zander and Veiss joined me as I reached the door. ‘I’ll take you home,’ Veiss said.

‘There’s no need,’ said Zander. ‘I’m going there too.’

Veiss’ eyes widened slightly, but I couldn’t tell if she was also a little pleased.

‘My driver…’ I said.

Veiss nodded. ‘I’ll see that she is well cared for.’

‘Thank you.’

As Zander and I arrived at the top of Malveil’s hill, we saw Katrin walking up the last stretch of road to the house. The contrast between my children was painfully stark in that moment. The pampered councillor was being delivered to his destination by his personal driver. Katrin must have taken the maglev trains to the nearest stop, easily two miles from the base of the hill, and walked the rest of the way. Sleet pattered against the black longcoat and cap of a schola progenium indoctrinator. Katrin looked as if she were heading for the trenches of war. Zander looked as if war was a word with no meaning in his universe.

He also looked shaken and angry. That gave me hope for him.

‘You heard?’ Zander asked Katrin when we entered the hall.

‘I did. Was that an assassination attempt?’

‘I’m sure it was,’ I said. ‘But we will not be able to prove it. My death would have simply seemed an accident.’

‘So Montfor would have won that easily.’

‘No, she would not have. Because I am not here alone. I have heirs.’

‘Do you think she’ll try again?’ Zander asked.

‘She will. She’ll have to choose her moment carefully. A second accident too soon after this one would not be credible.’

‘She might come after one of us,’ he said.

‘And?’ said Katrin. ‘Are you frightened?’

‘Yes, I am. I don’t want to die for…’

‘For what? For Solus? For the Emperor? Or were you going to say for nothing?’

Zander shook his head. He didn’t answer.

‘We’re at war,’ I told him. ‘In war, there are no sidelines, no matter how much we might wish there are. Solus must fight for the Imperium, and we must fight for Solus.’

Zander sighed. ‘I was happy before you came back. You understand? My life was good.’

‘It was a waste,’ said Katrin.

‘Then it was an enjoyable waste. I wasn’t waiting to be assassinated by the senior councillor.’

‘You had no hope of defeating her either,’ Katrin said. When Zander did not respond at once, she continued, ‘Are you going to pretend you never wished you were not subject to her?’

‘All I had to do was leave her alone.’

‘That would never have been enough.’

‘War is your salvation,’ I said to Zander. ‘You will never have to pay her price.’

‘That’s certain, if nothing else,’ he said, less bitterly than he might have.

‘I would not have wished to bring either of you into danger,’ I said. ‘But I have my duty, and performing it has made that unavoidable.’

‘Sooner or later, she would have used Zander, and discarded him,’ said Katrin. ‘If he had resisted, she would have targeted me. You only hastened what had to happen.’

‘You will be safer here than in Valgaast, and living alone,’ I said.

‘You will be too, father,’ said Zander. ‘You’re back, and I’d rather like you to stay. Preferably in one piece. So yes. I will live here.’

‘As will I,’ Katrin said.

I smiled, feeling grateful and determined. ‘Thank you both. I am very glad. Together, we are stronger. We are family, we are blood, and let that be our pact. If Montfor strikes one of us, she will not have the chance to strike another.’

‘Stopping her might mean killing her,’ said Katrin.

‘It might,’ I agreed.

‘If you’re so eager for blood, what’s stopping you from killing her now?’ Zander asked.

‘The upheavals that would cause on Solus. I am here to restore order to the world. I will not plunge it into civil war. If Montfor overreaches and visibly draws first blood, she will doom herself.’

‘Throne,’ said Zander. ‘The Emperor grant things do not come to that.’

‘I don’t think they will.’ I smiled. My children were going to live here. My family was united. Sheltered within the powerful arms of Malveil, the world outside could not touch us.

Night and dreams were still far enough away for such confidence.

CHAPTER 8

I have been ill for several days now. I don’t know what is wrong, precisely, and neither does the medicae who came to see me. She has given me some ampules that are supposed to combat the lethargy that takes hold of me, but they don’t seem to be doing much good. Each morning, I think I might be better, and will be able to discharge my responsibilities at the Administratum Palace. And each morning, even when driven, I do not make it more than halfway down the hill before I have to turn around again. I am fortunate to have some solid lieutenants to whom I can delegate matters for the time being. They are able enough administrators, they are disciplined, and they are loyal. They are also very stolid. Really quite dull, it must be said. Which is good. I don’t want ambition in an underling when I am unable to be present.

And now I have been staring at these words for several minutes. I’m trying to decide if they are true. I was quite convinced of them when I wrote them. I want to believe them. Only I don’t think I do. Is this a physical ailment that is keeping me housebound? I have my doubts.

Let us have an honest accounting. I refuse to lie to myself on these pages. If I am seeking to restore the truth of the Strocks, then I dishonour Maeson’s family if I lie to myself.

So. I wrote that I am lethargic. Sometimes that is true. But not always. Not even most of the time, when I am in Malveil. My limbs have grown heavy when I have started on the way to Valgaast. That much is true. But that is a suspiciously selective kind of symptom if it only strikes in order to prevent me from fulfilling my duties.

If I focus too much on the exhaustion, I ignore the other symptoms. I must count fear, or something like it, among them. Before the exhaustion hits, when all I am doing is contemplating heading out to work, I become irrationally nervous. My heartbeat accelerates. My mouth dries. I stare out of the windows as if expecting a catastrophe as terrible as it is vague to loom over the horizon. The last thing I want to do is leave the house. And when I return from my abortive attempts to head into the city, I am overcome with relief.

In this light, the lethargy looks like a rather convenient physical symptom. An excuse.

All right. That feels more honest. I also feel more guilt, because I don’t think there’s anything I can do to change things. Maybe this is still some kind of illness. I can’t leave the house. I simply can’t. It would take too much out of me.

At least I am being productive while I’m here. I have made a lot of progress in my search for family records. The work is long and frustrating, but being able to avail myself of help from Karoff and the serfs during the day has made a big difference. I am able to dig much deeper into the heaps. Karoff organises the disposal of everything that is of no value. I would have thought, given the endless stream of objects leaving Malveil, that we would have made more headway in emptying the rooms, but we appear to be no closer to reclaiming them. The past lies thick in Malveil, and will not be purged.

This is an added bit of frustration, because I am trying, despite my preoccupation with the research and my condition (whatever it truly is), to shape a present in Malveil. I believe the house should bear the signs of its current inhabitants. We matter too. And I live in hope for the day that there will be a we here. So I have artisans and tradespeople coming, bringing wares and ideas to add our touch to the house. All right, my touch. For now. I will make an impression on Malveil, though I can see that I will have to purchase quite a bit to do so.

In the meantime, I am starting to be able to read the past. I am piecing together revealing fragments about the early part of Leonel’s reign. This is archival work at its most difficult. It is also something I take some pride in being very good at, and I have something to show for it. Before now, I knew nothing about Leonel except the long years of his illness, and what was notable about him at that time was his absence. Even Karoff, who was at Malveil before Leonel’s decline, can barely remember anything from then. Granted, Karoff was very young. Leonel’s degeneration set in quite early in his term as lord-governor. What I have found, though, suggests that Solus has done Leonel an injustice in forgetting what he once was. I find signs of a man who thought deeply about what his world needed and was determined to act accordingly.

I have also discovered some scattered sheets of what may have been a journal. Or possibly just some notes for himself towards possible speeches. They mention the House of Montfor, and are more evidence of the long enmity between that family and the Strocks, and also that the corruption of the Montfors stretches all the way back. The rise of the Strocks was a very fortunate thing for Solus. I cannot imagine what the unchallenged reign of the Montfors would be like.

There are some other records that I find somewhat disturbing. They certainly do not help with my morale. It seems that Leonel, while still healthy, had the idea to embark on a very similar project to mine. He too wanted to establish a proper history of his ancestors. He made some progress, too. I haven’t discovered much yet to tell me anything about the other lord-governors. What there is so far is either written in Leonel’s hand, which I can now identify quite readily, or was collected by him.

The repetition of effort is demoralising. I keep finding paradoxes in Malveil. The reign of the Strocks is uninterrupted, yet the immediate families of each governor are always interrupted. The past is everywhere I look in this house, yet it is also opaque.

I want to talk to someone about this. I want to talk to Maeson about this. I wish he were here. Sometimes this work feels like a conversation I am having with him, one that he may never hear. My love, I know why you cannot be with me, but it is hard. I wonder if you can understand what it truly means to be the one left behind.

Look at this. My loneliness is speaking out again. My history project is only a partial remedy, then. Of course it is. There can be no full cure for loneliness except for the condition to end.

Karoff has just come into the librarium. I have an unexpected caller this evening.

Well. That was interesting. Veth Montfor came to see me. I wonder when a Montfor last set foot inside Malveil. If ever. The same thought must have occurred to her. It looked as if she had to force herself over the threshold. I thought she must have a truly compelling reason for being here.

Apparently not, though. She said she had come just to see how I was.

I can only imagine the sceptical face Maeson would have made. I suppose mine must have looked rather similar. If she was offended, Montfor did not show it. And I didn’t see how I could reject a peaceful overture. If I did so, I would be the one engaging in hostilities. That may have been exactly the trap she intended to set, and so had herself invited into her enemy’s stronghold. But the strain on her face when she came inside is hard to reconcile with the idea that this was a strategic victory for her.

She stayed for a short while. She was very pleasant. I did not let my guard down, or so I am telling myself. I know better than to trust her. I don’t think anyone trusts her. Her enemies don’t. And her allies are just her creatures. They do not trust her. They fear her. To look at her is to see how corruption shapes a face. It gnaws and erodes the features. It twists the remains into something hard. I refuse to imagine what goes on inside Silling, the Montfor keep. I did not want to sit close to her, as if her rot were contagious.

And yet. And yet. She was friendly. And she was concerned. She had heard that I had not been out recently. She did not think that was good.

‘I would like to invite you to dine with me,’ she said.

If she had stopped there, with the invitation, I would have known that I was being lured into an ambush. Only she didn’t stop there. She clearly was not surprised when I demurred. Her response was actually gentle. There is no other word for it. She told me that she understood. She said, ‘Will you do me a favour? Will you contact some of your friends? Will you go out with them? Don’t invite them to see you. Go to see them.’

What should I make of this? She spoke softly, yet with great insistence, as if she were making a request of the utmost importance.

I told her that I would do what I could. I was vague. No matter how friendly her mask is, I know that she would see the Strocks destroyed, if she could. Coming to see me like this must be part of that goal, though I can’t divine how.

She probably didn’t believe me. She didn’t challenge me, though. She thanked me for my hospitality and left. She appeared relieved to be out of the house. When she was on the porch, she said something odd. She said she hoped I would follow her advice. And then she said, ‘You are not a Strock by blood. Remember that. The house has no claim on you.’

So. Another puzzle to solve. I have no shortage of those.

Whatever she meant, in at least one sense, she is wrong. The house does have a claim on me. I am here because it does. I am part of the Strocks. Living here is my regency. I represent the Strocks. Through me, they are in Malveil, and the council is not allowed to forget that even if the rightful governor is absent, he is alive.

Maeson, I hope you appreciate what I am doing for you. I am giving up a lot of who I am to be you by proxy. The longer I am ill, the more I am losing touch with my identity as it exists outside the boundaries of the Strocks and Malveil.

You have left me with a burden, Maeson. It is growing heavy.

Sobbing woke me. The voice was Eliana’s. I knew it right away. I jerked upright in bed, knocking the journal off my chest and onto the floor. I had fallen asleep reading it, and Eliana’s resentment had followed me into unconsciousness. That was what was happening now, I thought.

‘This is a dream,’ I said.

I spoke clearly, my voice slightly rough from sleep, and with none of the strain and suffocating silence of nightmares. The sobbing continued, angry and lost, my wife’s pain cutting the dark and my soul.

I turned on the lumen globe on the bedside table. Illumination made the room concrete. It pushed the shadows to the periphery and gave precision to the objects around me.

I was awake.

I had been mistaken on that count before. I got out of bed, testing the floor, stamping once to feel the impact up my leg. I pinched myself. Everything felt as it should. I really was awake. And I could still hear the sobbing. It sounded like it was just outside the door. It grew louder as I approached, but when I threw open the door, the sound retreated down the stairs and into the hall below.

I had had enough of fugue states. My heart was pounding. I was not only awake, I felt as if sleep had been banished forever. The sound of Eliana’s tears pulled me, chains wrapped around my heart demanding that I follow them. I wished with the fervour of prayer to ease her suffering. Yet my rational side, fully alert this time, warned me not to trust what I was hearing. It could not be Eliana making that noise. I could not assume that there was a noise at all. One half of my mind held the other half in deep suspicion.

I walked down the stairs from my tower and into the main gallery of the first floor. I stopped to light the lantern in the sconce beside the door. The tears were further away again, fainter, perhaps descending the staircase. There was no one to see.

I’m sorry. I want to follow you. I want to hold you. I can’t. Not like this. You can’t be here. I wish you were, though. Throne, I wish you were.

I would not let myself get lost this time. With shaking hands, I lit the other lanterns as I made my way down the hall. I passed the doors to Katrin’s and Zander’s rooms, then doubled back. I listened to the echoes of grief a moment longer, then rapped on the doors and called to my children.

The sobs cut off. There was only silence when Katrin appeared, confused but fully dressed and alert. Zander emerged a few moments later, looking rather more haggard. He had returned to Malveil late that night, and I hadn’t heard him come in.

‘What is it, father?’ Katrin asked.

‘Have either of you heard anything unusual tonight?’

Katrin shook her head, and Zander said, ‘I’ve been asleep.’

‘Or any other night since you’ve been here?’

‘No.’

‘What is it?’ Katrin asked again.

‘Probably nothing.’

‘But possibly an intruder,’ she said.

‘Possibly.’ I didn’t believe it was. That explanation was still more plausible than a ghost. At least I wasn’t lying to them. Not precisely.

‘Let’s look,’ said Katrin. Zander sighed, but nodded.

I made them wait and listen for a moment. There was only silence.

Why won’t you speak to the children, Eliana?

We went through the house, lighting it up as we went. It took more than an hour, and even then, there was no way we could look in every possible hiding place. All of us were going through the motions. I did not believe we would find any living being. They did not believe we would find anything at all, though Katrin, at least, did not entirely rule out the chance of a security breach.

The one place we were not able to bring more light than what we carried was the Old Tower. The spectacle was as disturbing to Katrin and Zander as it was to me. The draught from below caressed our faces with cold. By unspoken agreement, we looked from the doorway and then left. No one would be hiding there. That was certain, even if there was no firm basis for the certainty.

There was no one in the house but us. We extinguished the lanterns as we retraced our steps, returning Malveil to the night.

‘Well, that was exciting,’ Zander said when we were outside the bedrooms again. He waved a goodnight and closed his door behind him.

‘Can you describe what it was you heard?’ Katrin asked.

‘Not well,’ I said evasively. ‘Maybe the wind woke me up.’ That was a weak answer, and she knew it.

‘Has that been happening to you a lot?’

That felt like the beginning of an interrogation. ‘No,’ I said. ‘Once or twice.’ She won’t believe a blanket denial. ‘Being up in the tower might be a factor.’

‘It might be.’ She was watching me carefully, her tone noncommittal.

We parted. I headed back to my tower door but did not go up the stairs. I waited until I was sure Katrin had gone back to bed, and went back out to the gallery. I kept only one lantern lit, the one by the tower. I accepted, without thinking about the reasons, that I must embrace the darkness and solitude. I walked slowly down the gallery, waiting. I was hopeful and fearful at the same time. I moved quietly, making sure to make no noise at all when I passed by Katrin’s door. I had wanted witnesses to the impossible. Now I understood this was not to be. So I did not want witnesses to behaviour I could not easily explain.

The sobbing began again when I reached the head of the grand staircase. I did not resist this time. I descended, and followed the sound to the librarium. I saw Eliana when I entered. She was sitting at the window, bent over, her hands covering her face. The waning light of Luctus touched her, yet gave her none of its colour. She had a shimmering pallor, the grey of grief.

Wind slammed against the window, fierce and sudden as a shout. I jumped, and looked. Outside, the trees shook once with violence, and stilled.

‘Eliana,’ I began, but she was gone from the chair. I saw her just as she passed through the far exit of the librarium. She disappeared through the closed door.

I followed.

At first, Eliana stayed out of reach, always just rounding the corner, or at the far end of a hall. Then she began to enter the rooms that Leonel had filled with his madness. She moved slowly before the heaps of possessions, staring at them with a fixed desperation. Her sobs became strangled moans. I kept back, fearful that if I came too close, she would vanish.

But when I stood some distance away, she remained before me, clearly visible. She was as I remembered her, even with her colour washed away in grey. The movements of her arms and hands were slow and graceful, as though she were under water. She was in the nightdress I had seen in what I still thought of as a dream. This time was different. The world around me was hard and real. I was painfully awake.

I looked at her, pain wracking my chest. I understood nothing, but I accepted without question that I was truly seeing my dead wife, and that she was consumed by grief.

‘Eliana.’ My choked whisper was inaudible beneath her sobs.

She did not linger very long in any room. She roved between the piles, hands moving as if trying to divine some hidden secret, and then she moved on. I followed. Her agony grew more intense with every room, and now I cried out to her, begging her to let me comfort her. She did not respond. She began to move faster. Her tears were desperate now. She seemed to be searching for some key that had eluded her in life, and doom was coming for her anew.

We reached the Old Tower. Eliana paused before the door. Her head ducked down, her body shaking with the force of the sobs, and her hands twisted into claws. Then she passed through the door. I rushed forward and clasped the ring. Before I could pull it open, her scream came from inside. Long, high, loud, it was a howl of horror and despair that climbed and climbed and climbed until I was screaming too. It cut off as if severed by a blade.

In the silence that followed, I knew there was no point in looking for her. She was gone. I fell against the door, slid to the ground and curled into a ball. Now it was my turn to weep.

CHAPTER 9

I attended worship the following evening at the Cathedral of Faith Unmerciful. I had need of the succour of my faith. I sat in the lord-governor’s private box, beside Adrianna Veiss. The box was attached to one of the huge pillars at the cathedral’s transept crossing, diagonally across from and just below the level of the cardinal’s pulpit. It was where the lord-governor sat to be witnessed while maintaining a modicum of privacy. Everyone in the congregation could see me. No one could hear me apart from Veiss.

We spoke before the service began, but my mind was not on our conversation. I was barely aware of what I said. I kept looking down the nave towards the altar. The tower of marble and obsidian rose sixty feet above the aisle. Mounted at its peak, the enormous skull of gold and bronze looked down upon the congregants, its wings spread wide beneath the gothic arches. It was a vision of judgement in full flight, a reminder that the Emperor saw all. He protected, but to fail Him meant rightful, wrathful punishment.

Though I needed the help of the Imperial Creed, I didn’t know in what form. I needed to know what to do. But I did not want to hear an answer that meant Eliana would disappear forever.

‘Maeson,’ Veiss said gently.

I blinked, tearing my eyes away from the great skull and looking back at her. ‘What did you say?’

She cocked her head. The feathers of her headdress swayed slowly from left to right. ‘I asked you a question a full minute ago.’

I had no idea what that question had been. ‘I’m sorry.’ No point trying to pretend I could remember what we had been discussing.

‘What’s wrong?’

‘I would tell you if I could.’ And I wanted to, desperately.

‘Then you should.’

I thought carefully before answering. I trusted Veiss with my life. The more I opened up to her about what I was experiencing at Malveil, though, the greater the burden I would be placing on her. On the other hand, since she could see something was troubling me, she wouldn’t simply let the matter drop.

‘You still miss Jarallen,’ I said.

‘Of course I do. All the time. I especially miss her at the beginning and at the end of each day.’

I nodded. Those were the worst moments, when life’s demands eased and the loss cut to the quick. The absence in the other half of the bed. That second upon regaining consciousness when you forget there is no one there, and then the terrible second that comes next, when you remember you are alone.

‘Do you…’ I hesitated, then started over. ‘Have you… Have you ever seen her?’

Veiss said nothing for a long time. Her gloved hands tightened, then relaxed slowly, as if she were consciously ordering her fingers to open again. Her shoulders shuddered once. ‘In my dreams,’ she said. ‘So often. To see her is beautiful, and then it is awful when I realise I’m not really seeing her. I bless those dreams and I curse them. Is that what you meant?’ She looked hard at me, clearly hoping for my sake that I would answer in the affirmative.

I had gone too far to lie now. Too much was happening for me to try to find solace in an easy lie. ‘No,’ I said. ‘Have you ever seen her while you were awake?’

‘No,’ she said quickly. She took a breath. ‘You’ve seen Eliana?’

I didn’t answer. I stared straight ahead, into the vast, dark orbs of the skull.

‘More than once?’ Veiss asked.

‘Yes.’ I barely moved my lips.

‘Where?’

‘At Malveil.’

‘And in the city?’

‘No. Only at the house. Only at night.’

‘What do you think you really–’

‘I don’t know.’

‘It isn’t really her.’

I grunted, unwilling to admit that possibility. As late as yesterday, I would have agreed. No longer. The explanations I used to reach for no longer sufficed.

‘You’ve been through a lot.’

Even her vagueness was enough to stir the memories of Clostrum to life again. They had been slumbering of late, pushed under by the extremity of emotion caused by seeing Eliana. I forced myself to remain present in the cathedral. I could not let the old horrors capture me here. ‘What is happening is not what you’re suggesting. It is not in my mind.’

‘Are you sure?’

Yes. No.

‘You’re going to speak to Kalvan?’

‘Yes.’

That seemed to satisfy her for the moment. She said nothing else, but gave my shoulder a companionable squeeze, letting me know I was not alone.

The cardinal appeared in his pulpit, and the service began. Flights of servo-skulls passed through the nave, clouds of incense pouring from their open jaws. I inhaled the smell gratefully. The hymns began, and I joined in with fervour. I sang of our abasement before the glory of the Emperor, and of our absolute obedience to the creed. I condemned the sin of original thought. I celebrated the extermination of the heretic. I could not hear my voice. When I sang, it was as if the vast choir of the congregation emerged from my mouth. I was part of the whole, of the thousands in the cathedral who sang and thought and obeyed as one. There was comfort in this. My eyes brimmed with tears as I threw my soul into the iron embrace of the Emperor. There was nothing to doubt here. There was nothing to fear except the sin of disobedience and the righteous punishments it brought upon the sinner.

We sang, and then Kalvan Rivas spoke. ‘For each of us,’ he began, ‘there is only submission to the Emperor. Nothing is beyond His law, and beyond what the creed declares, there is nothing. Our every action must be in accordance with His law, and so our every action is submission. Our every thought is submission, for nothing can be conceived outside the Imperial Creed.’

I listened desperately. Rivas said what I needed to hear, and what I feared. I had been trying to remind myself of these precepts, trying to make them strong in my soul once again. Submission to the will of the Emperor had sustained me in every battlefield. Even in the nightmare of Clostrum, when the horror of the tyranids and the shame of failure had engulfed me, I at least had the consolation of knowing I would die having served without question. But it was getting harder for me to believe as unwaveringly as I always had in every tenet of the creed. They denied that what I was seeing at Malveil was possible. If all I had seen was an illusion, then my mind had truly become treacherous. But if even one thing was real, what then?

If nothing was real, Eliana was not real. Accepting this, embracing this without any deviation, would banish her. I could not bear that thought.

Nor could I, in full honesty, believe it. Not after last night. There was something happening at Malveil. Something real. I had already gone too long trying to pretend this was not so.

‘Illusions have real consequences!’ Rivas thundered. ‘To deny the truth is a crime!’

Yes, they do. Yes, it is.

The service lasted three hours, three hours in which I rocked back and forth between comfort and frustration. When it ended, I was no better off than I had been before. I had to speak to Rivas.

‘I’ll wait for you,’ said Veiss. The cathedral was slowly emptying. ‘I’ll see you at the doors.’

I thanked her and headed for the vestry. It was at the far end of a maze of corridors behind the altar. The door was open, and Rivas was still in his vestments, leaning against his desk. He smiled when I entered.

‘Were you expecting me?’ I asked.

‘Of course.’

‘Because you saw me in the box?’ I felt a flush of guilt that it had taken me this many days to attend.

‘Because I saw the pain on your face.’ He gestured at the tall-backed iron chair in one corner of the room. It faced both his desk and the smaller altar behind it. To sit there would be to feel the eyes of the cardinal and the Emperor at the same time. A salutary position. ‘What is going on, Maeson?’ Rivas asked.

I took the chair. I looked straight ahead, at the eyes of my friend and the eyes of the skull. I told Rivas everything. I spoke as calmly as I could, and without exaggeration. I described what I thought was real, and what might be phantasm. I could no longer decide between the two. The nightmare about Eliana troubled me more and more. Above all, I did not want to picture the eyeless horror having a reality greater than what my subconscious could grant it.

Rivas listened without interrupting. When I paused, he would murmur a question to get me to clarify a point or to get my thoughts moving again. He barely moved the whole time, but the lines in his face seemed to grow deeper, his eyes more and more troubled. When I was done, he asked, ‘Have you ever experienced anything like this before?’

‘No. Though Adrianna has pointed out that my state of mind is not as stable as it once was.’

‘She was probably a bit more tactful than that.’

‘True.’

‘You also think she’s wrong.’

‘Not about my state of mind. But that my condition might explain what I’m seeing.’

Rivas clasped and unclasped his hands. He looked more worried than Veiss. ‘I agree with you,’ he said. ‘I think there might be something wrong with Malveil. I think you should leave immediately.’

‘What is wrong? What could be causing this?’

Rivas sighed, frustrated. ‘I don’t know.’

‘Is there something in the creed that could account for what I’ve seen?’

‘No.’ Rivas looked as if he were about to say something else, but stopped. I recognised the look on his face. It was the expression of a man wrestling with unwelcome paradoxes.

‘Am I seeing Eliana’s ghost?’ I asked directly.

‘There are no such things.’

Rivas’ answer was too pat. It sounded recited, backed by insufficient force of belief.

‘Then…’

‘I do not have an answer for you now,’ he said. He was choosing his words carefully. ‘I do not want to speculate rashly, but you are seeing something. That is why I want you to leave.’

‘I can’t.’ In a day full of doubts, that was the most categorical sentence I had uttered.

‘Why not?’

‘Her journal… I’m starting to understand what it meant to leave her here. The responsibilities she had to shoulder…’

‘Nothing she didn’t know from the start. And you had left before, when the children were very young. She was fine then.’

‘Perhaps. I don’t know. But this time something broke her. It killed her, Kalvan.’

He nodded sadly.

‘I think I might have a chance at atonement if I stay at Malveil.’

‘A chance with what? What will forgive you? Not Eliana. That vision can’t be what you think it is.’

‘I can’t take the chance that it isn’t.’

‘What about Katrin and Zander? Have them leave, at least.’

I shook my head, feeling stubborn. My family was together again. Zander was showing signs of acknowledging something like duty. Katrin was speaking to me. We might never be close, but we were not actively estranged. I would not give up on what I had accomplished so far. ‘They haven’t seen or heard anything.’

‘Can you honestly state that they’re safe there?’

‘Safer than they would be on their own. Montfor isn’t going to give up. She failed to kill me. She knows her days are numbered. That makes her even more dangerous. She’ll attack me and my family in any way she can.’

‘There are other ways of protecting your blood,’ Rivas said.

I didn’t want to hear them. ‘There’s no reason to think they’re at risk. It isn’t as if I’ve been attacked.’

‘Your nightmare…’

‘It might have just been one. And even if it wasn’t, I wasn’t harmed.’

‘Injuries are not just to the flesh. You don’t need me to tell you that.’

He was right. But was I worse off than I was before I came to Malveil? I didn’t think so. And if I could atone… I thought about the pain in Eliana’s face. If I could take that pain away… If I could give her peace…

I knew that my reasoning flew in the face of everything Rivas had been saying. I was thinking and acting as if what I had seen really was Eliana’s ghost. As if it truly was Eliana.

I needed that to be true. I saw, with a sudden, calm lucidity, that the only path that stood any chance of giving me peace was to act as if this were true. Because if I did as Rivas asked, and denied the existence of the ghost, and he was wrong, then I would be forever beyond forgiveness.

Rivas saw that he would not be able to sway me. ‘All right. You’re going to do what you’re going to do.’

‘Does that mean you’re going to ask the Inquisition to pay me a visit?’

‘You know better than that.’ He looked hurt.

‘Sorry. That was unfair.’

‘Promise that you’ll tell me everything that happens.’

‘I will.’

He seemed reluctant to let me go on that, but he was also resigned. I felt his concern following me out of the vestry.

The cathedral was empty now. My foosteps sounded small and hollow as I crossed the nave. Veiss was waiting at the door, as she had promised. Stavaak was with her. Their faces were grave.

‘What is it?’ I asked.

‘Zander,’ said Veiss.

‘What’s he done?’

‘It’s what he’s doing.’

‘He was spotted going into the Unforgiving Light.’

‘Which is…?’

‘A private establishment. Owned by Amir Bokanta.’

I cursed. ‘What does he think he’s doing?’ After everything we had talked about, Zander might as well have put his neck on Montfor’s execution block.

‘He isn’t thinking,’ said Veiss.

‘That much is clear.’ The recklessness was so extreme, it had to be wilful.

‘I’ll take you there,’ Stavaak offered.

I thanked him, and we climbed into the Taurox that waited at the edge of the square. I raised an eyebrow at the armoured carrier. ‘I don’t think Montfor’s next attempt is going to come this soon and be that obvious.’

‘I know,’ Stavaak said. ‘I just thought a show of force would be useful in this circumstance.’

I agreed.

We rumbled through Valgaast, heading east. We entered a sector where the streets barely ran for a block before turning at sharp angles. Traffic moved glacially, shouldering through crowds of pedestrians flowing between the hab blocks and the nocturnal gathering places. The people tried to rush out of the way of the menacing growl of the Taurox, but there was too little room. We moved forward slowly. By the time we reached the Unforgiving Light, Zander had had more than enough time to do serious damage. Or to be seriously damaged.

The establishment was in the basement of a hab block that was itself owned by Bokanta as well. It was more luxuriously appointed than most of those around it. The relief sculptures and gargoyles of its facade were more intricate. Its windows were larger, and its main doors were armourglass, showing off an entrance hall of crimson and gilt. Bokanta cared for those loyal to him, and announced this to the world.

As we descended from the Taurox, movement caught the corner of my eye. There was so much pedestrian traffic, there was no reason for one person to draw my attention more than another. But this one did. I looked, and saw a shadow at the intersection of the alley leading behind the hab block. It swayed slowly, and its robes moved as if caught in the current of a river.

It was Eliana. The way she stood, looking at me, her head cocked slightly to the left, even as she swayed strangely. I knew it was her.

‘Lord-governor?’ Stavaak asked.

I was standing stock-still. ‘Over there,’ I said. ‘At the entrance to the alley.’

‘Do you see someone?’

Now I didn’t. She had been there. Now she was gone. I felt comforted all the same. She had her eyes on her family.

‘No,’ I lied. ‘I was mistaken.’

Eliana had appeared to me beyond the confines of Malveil. My blood heating with barely contained exhilaration, I wondered what this could mean. We are growing closer, I decided. The wall between us is thinning. I wondered what Rivas would make of this. When I chose to tell him. For the moment, this secret was mine alone, and I held it tight.

The doors to the Unforgiving Light were down a wide flight of steps to the right of the hab block’s entrance. Two guards stood before plasteel doors whose engravings depicted the armoured saints of the Emperor yet implied that patrons would discover that what lay beyond considered victory to be more of a revel than a solemn observance.

Stavaak was not in uniform, but he bore the badge of the Adeptus Arbites. The guards took one look at the image of the fist and scales and stepped aside.

Inside, lumen globe chandeliers cast a warm but discreet glow over round oak tables surrounded by iron booths whose backs were so high it was difficult to see who was seated at them. The floor of the Unforgiving Light looked like it was filled with miniature cloisters. We didn’t have to search hard for Zander, though. He was highly visible, and making a lot of noise. He was standing on a table, a bottle of amasec in one hand as he shouted to the room.

‘Look at me!’ he said. ‘Look at me! Do I look like a threat?’

‘You look like a fool,’ someone called out.

‘Yes! Yes! Exactly! I see you know me well!’

His companions laughed with him, as did the onlookers gathering outside the booth.

‘What am I fit for? Am I fit for council? Barely. Am I fit to govern? By the Emperor, no! I am fit to be one thing, and that is a fool. Who among you can fear a fool?’

Arms folded, Bokanta observed my son’s spectacle from a short distance away. He gave me a significant look as we approached. ‘About time you arrived,’ he said.

‘It was you who reported that he was here,’ Stavaak said, eyes narrowed.

‘A gesture of good will. I thought the lord-governor would like the chance to get things under control before they became embarrassing.’

‘My thanks,’ I muttered.

I strode over to the booth and confronted Zander. ‘Get down,’ I ordered.

He ignored me. ‘Tell anyone!’ he proclaimed. ‘Tell everyone! And most of all, tell Lady Montfor. I am not a threat. I wouldn’t know how to be one. So no one needs to do anything about me. You won’t even know I’m here.’

‘That is enough,’ I snarled. I reached up, grabbed the lapels of his long vest and hauled him off the table. Scattering goblets, he stumbled to the floor. ‘Out,’ I said. ‘Now.’ I dragged him forward.

‘But I’m not finished,’ he protested. ‘I want everybody to understand–’

I cut him off. ‘They understand perfectly.’

Stavaak stepped forward to help me. Together, we marched Zander out of the Unforgiving Light and into the Taurox.

We glared at each other in the troop hold of the vehicle. ‘What was that?’ I demanded. ‘What were you doing?’

‘Acting out of self-preservation.’

‘All I saw was a disgraceful display.’

He shrugged. ‘Better to be a disgrace than to be dead.’

‘You’re speaking like a coward.’ I had never felt so ashamed of my son.

‘I’m speaking like a realist.’ He was nowhere near as drunk as he had appeared to be. ‘I’ve seen it,’ he hissed. ‘Did you think we wouldn’t, living in the house? You should have said something. You could at least have been honest.’

‘Seen what?’ I asked, my skin turning cold.

Zander didn’t answer. He leaned back on the bench and glared at me the rest of the way back.

Katrin emerged from the house when Stavaak left us at Malveil. ‘What have you done?’ she demanded of Zander as we entered.

‘What you should be doing if you want to live,’ he snapped.

‘He was in a drinking house owned by Councillor Bokanta,’ I said. ‘Shouting his surrender to Montfor.’

Katrin glared at him, disgusted.

‘If you’re smart, you’ll do the same,’ Zander told her, unrepentant.

‘So nothing we talked about, about the need to be strong together, means anything to you?’ she said.

‘No. It doesn’t.’ He paused. ‘You haven’t seen it, have you? In the librarium?’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘Come with me.’

Zander marched to the librarium, his gait angry and steady. I revised my earlier impression. He wasn’t drunk at all. The spectacle at the Unforgiving Light had been entirely for the benefit of his audience. That made me even more angry.

In the librarium, Zander headed for the wall opposite the window. It was dominated by a crowded bookshelf, but there were gaps on either side of it. On the right was the Strock coat of arms – crossed swords above a great house. On the left was the framed genealogy that had so disturbed Eliana. I had not paid it close attention before reading her thoughts, and since then I had consciously avoided looking at it. I didn’t doubt the accuracy of what she had seen. I just didn’t think staring at that pattern would be helpful in breaking it. Zander seemed set on proving me right.

He jabbed a finger at the genealogy. ‘Look,’ he said. ‘Look! Look what happens to the families of lord-governors. They end!’ He turned to me. ‘You knew about this, didn’t you?’

I nodded.

‘All that talk about heirs,’ he said. ‘So much delusion.’ The hurt in his voice made me flinch.

Katrin studied the chart. ‘What are you saying this means?’ she asked Zander.

‘That we’re doomed.’

‘Nonsense.’

‘How can you say that? When the governorship has never passed directly from parent to child? When every one of the ruling branches stops dead?’

‘Our future is not governed by this chart.’

‘I want to make sure mine isn’t. That’s why Montfor is going to know I have no designs on anything at all, let alone the governorship. And if I’m worried, you should be terrified. You’re the eldest. You’re next in line. You’re the one at greatest risk.’

‘I will take Montfor down,’ I said. ‘I swear that she will not harm this family.’

‘That’s all very well,’ said Zander. ‘In the meantime, I’ll take myself off her target list.’

‘You’re a fool, and a craven one at that,’ said Katrin. ‘Declaring yourself one isn’t going to save you. Montfor isn’t going to leave you alone just because you’re useless. You’re still a Strock. As long as one of us is a threat, she’ll have her eye on all of us. All you’ve done is make yourself useful to her. Now you’re an easier target.’

‘Then none of us should be threats!’ Zander cried. ‘Give her what she wants. Is the governorship worth dying for?’

‘Solus is worth dying for,’ I said. ‘Duty is worth dying for.’

‘Duty!’ Zander laughed bitterly. ‘Look what your duty has done to this family. Look what your duty did to mother.’

‘She understood,’ I said, rasping the words through a throat tight with anger and guilt.

‘Oh, and that makes it all right, then? She understood what broke her? It’s fine to die for nothing as long as you understand that?’

‘You’re pathetic,’ said Katrin. ‘Go on, then. Scream from the rooftops that you are powerless and ignorant.’

‘I intend to. I want to stay alive. If you two won’t help, I’ll still do what I can.’

‘You’re trying to hide from shadows,’ said Katrin. ‘Are you going to say that there’s a curse? Are you going to speak that heresy?’

Zander bit back a reply.

‘Father is governor now,’ Katrin continued. ‘I will be governor later. You can cower in a bottle.’

‘So that’s it? You’re just going to accept your fate?’

‘I accept nothing.’

Zander began to back away from us. ‘I don’t understand how you can see the evidence there on the wall and not be concerned.’

‘To accept your interpretation would be to accept heresy,’ said Katrin. ‘What I accept is the Emperor’s will, and whatever may come of it.’

Zander lost all his energy at once. He deflated, his shoulders sagging, his face drooping with despair. As angry as I was, I saw that what he had done tonight had taken a perverse kind of bravery. Motivated by fear, he had nonetheless taken a stand and was desperately trying to steer us away from what he perceived to be the path to ruin. From his perspective, we were mad.

From Rivas’ perspective, I was too.

I wondered as well about how quickly Zander’s belief in our family’s doom had developed, and how fervently he clung to that belief. Had a look at the genealogy been all it had taken? Was it simple chance that had made him notice the chart in the first place? It was not chance that had brought me to Eliana’s diary.

Maybe Eliana is influencing him too, without his knowing it. Maybe she is trying to save him.

No. I couldn’t admit the possibility that Zander was correct. That was the road to dereliction of duty.

Zander sighed. He looked at me with despair, and with sorrow, and with anger. ‘Is this why you came back?’ he said softly. ‘To kill us?’

He didn’t wait for an answer. He left.

To my shame, I was relieved. I had no answer to give.

CHAPTER 10

Sleep did not come easily. When it did, I kept thrashing awake. Zander’s fears and accusations roiled through my mind. I was storm-tossed on warring waves of guilt and doubt. I couldn’t believe in the reality of Eliana and dismiss Zander’s terror of a curse. I did not want to credit it. I wanted to know that this time was different, that Eliana’s intervention would make things different. I had no basis for that idea. It was only a hope. And the strange ignorance I had of my predecessors came like a wind to stir the waves to greater turmoil.

As I replayed the confrontation in my mind again and again, I kept seeing Katrin’s hard, stoic face, and read new meaning into her lack of expression. I wondered if she believed what Zander said more than she was willing to admit. I wondered if what I saw in her was quiet, grim resignation, an acceptance of the dark inevitable.

Nothing is inevitable.

Isn’t it? Clostrum was. There was never any hope there at all.

That was a bad thought, a toxic one. In my somnolent state, I cursed it, fearing another inevitability. I was right, too, because it seized me and pulled me down beneath the waves.

In my sleep, I plunged away from doubt and into the depths of terrible certainty. The unknown future made way for the implacable horror of the past. I cried out, knowing I was dreaming, knowing the shape the dreams would take. I tried to wake, because I could only drown. And then I returned to Clostrum.

I was on the battlefield, surrounded by the flames of burning tanks. I was crawling away from the wreckage of the Chimera. The monsters were everywhere. They were a plague, a swarm. They were the embodiment of devouring. Stingers impaled troopers. Claws clutched their mangled bodies. The tyranids raised the corpses to the smoke-filled sky. I beheld a forest of chitinous spears stretching to the crimson horizon. The distortions of dreams fused with the perfect reproduction of memory.

Clostrum had spared me for several days. It had merely been holding back to strike all the harder now. The memories of my senses ignited. I smelled the unholy stench of the tyranids. I smelled blood, human blood in such quantities that when I breathed, the warm, salty tang of it filled my mouth. Clouds of smoke poured into my lungs, and I was coughing, wracking, painful coughs that woke pain in my ribs and chest. The ground cut my hands.

So much was real. There was so much in the nightmare that was exactly as I had lived it. In moments, I would try to stand, as I had before. Then I would feel the pain again as the tyranid attacked me. I could feel my right leg and arm. In a few seconds, I would relive the sensation of losing them.

And there were the elements that my imagination saw fit to add. The twists to reality that sought to break what remained of my spirit. In the dream, the tyranids laughed. A thousand thousand monsters bellowed with cruel mirth. The laughter could not be, and had never been, yet it reverberated in my hearing as fully as the explosions of the vehicles and ammunition. It pierced my soul like the howls of the wounded. It went on and on and on, gigantic bellowing that I had not heard then but heard now, and it was the laughter of a foul intelligence, the laughter of a thing that loomed behind the images of the tyranids and mocked the fragility of the human before it.

I could not survive the mockery. It grew louder and louder, greater than the roars and the screams, greater than the blows against all my other senses. I screamed, and could not hear my scream. I tried to cover my ears and found my arms were paralysed. I tried to shut my eyes, but they could not close. I shrieked with all my strength. The weakness of nightmares was upon me, and I could do nothing.

I screamed silence. I struggled to move. I thought I would go mad.

I broke the silence. I jolted awake, shrieking loud enough to shatter walls. I gasped. I clawed at the bedclothes and at my chest. I tried to expel the horror. It clung to me as if it had emerged with me from the dream. The laughter would not leave me.

As I finally started to breathe again, I discovered that the laughter was real. It was rising from the floor below. It was human, the sheer number of voices turning into monsters when I heard the slaughter in my sleep.

I staggered to my feet. I shook my head, trying to clear it. The fog of sleep lingered. I thought I could still smell the sting of smoke and blood. I couldn’t think straight. Confusion had me, and I walked like a man struggling through a mire. I managed to form a vague sense of anger. There were people here who did not belong. Malveil was ringing with the sound of revelry. It was an insult to me, and to the troopers who had perished on Clostrum.

I did not stop to wonder how these people could know what I had just been dreaming.

I yanked my door open and descended the tower. The uproar was deafening in the gallery. It was coming from Zander’s room. I marched towards his door. He was seeking to spite me. He had invited all his reprobate friends while I slept. This was unworthy of him, but if he wanted to witness my rage, then he would. I would grant him that satisfaction. He would regret provoking me. At that moment, I could have wrapped my hands around his throat.

The din of the merrymaking was extraordinary. The joy in the laughter was violent, savage. It was the sound of hundreds of people. They could not possibly all be inside Zander’s apartment. I knew this, but I ignored the thought. I was too angry.

I jerked to a stop outside Katrin’s room. My breath caught. Blood seeped from beneath the door, pooling slowly in the hall.

‘Katrin!’ I shouted. There was no answer. I called her name again and tried the door. It opened, and I rushed into an abattoir.

There was blood everywhere. A slick of it covered the floor and walls. The ceiling was drenched, and a soft crimson rain pattered down. Jagged bone fragments nailed flesh to the walls in long, wide strips, as if it had been unrolled from bodies. Chunks of corpses were scattered around the room, on the floor and draped over furniture, a butcher’s display. Clusters of severed hands clutched at each other, their fingers tight and digging into each other’s flesh. A femur dipped in tar and lit at both ends dangled by a chain from the ceiling. It provided the room’s only illumination. It turned gently back and forth, caught in an unfelt draught.

The stench of blood was as it had been in my dream, but even more cloying in the enclosed space.

And there were skulls, scores of them, shining with the blood that dripped on them from above. They were piled into squat pyramids surrounding the bed.

My eight-year-old daughter sat in the centre of the bed, arms wrapped around knees drawn against her chest. Her eyes stared, and her mouth was agape and trembling with shock. I swept her into my arms and held her face against me.

‘I have you,’ I said, trying to sound calm and reassuring. ‘I have you. It’s all right. I have you now.’

What had Zander invited into our home?

I ran with my child from the room, my bare feet slipping in the cold puddle of blood. In the hall, I carried Katrin to Zander’s door. The revel continued on the other side, much too loud for the number of people who could fit in that room.

I feared what I would see when I opened the door.

‘I need you to wait for me here,’ I told Katrin, and set her down.

She stood with one fist pressed against her mouth. She blinked rapidly, trying to hold back tears.

‘I’ll get your brother and we can go.’ I didn’t understand why I had been blaming Zander for the uproar. He was only five.

I crouched before Katrin. ‘Will you be brave for me?’

She gave a tiny nod and shrank back against the wall.

I grasped the door handle, took a breath, jerked open the door and rushed inside.

The noise stopped. The room was dark. I walked forward slowly through sudden silence. I bumped against the bedside table and felt around until I located the lumen globe and turned it on.

The room was empty. There was no one here, and the bed had not been slept in.

I ran back out to join Katrin. She was gone. So was the blood that had been flowing from her room, and the red footsteps I had tracked down the floor. I went back to her door, which I had left open. There was flickering light here, but not from a burning femur. It came from a single lantern in a sconce on the outside wall.

I backed out of the room. I swayed in the hall, trying to force some sense into the world. I was fearful for my children. Where had they gone? They would be frightened. They were too little to fend for themselves. They needed me, and I was failing them.

I walked towards the staircase, determined to search, uncertain where to begin. I tried to remember where their favourite hiding places were. Was the Old Tower one? I couldn’t recall. I had no memories of them ever being in Malveil. It was frustrating. They had been here all their lives. We all had. How could I not know their habits in our home?

At the head of the stairs, I made out adult voices speaking softly below. I went down the stairs. Enough of the wall lanterns were lit for me to find my way without difficulty. I followed the voices to the librarium.

Katrin and Zander were sitting in the chairs by the window. They looked up as I entered and fell quiet.

My children were safe. My grown children. Of course they were adults. I couldn’t understand why I was surprised.

‘Father?’ Katrin said. ‘Are you well?’

‘Yes. Yes, of course I am.’ The words felt thick. My lips had to work hard to shape them.

A slight frown of concern creased Katrin’s impassive face. Zander looked worried and ashamed. Perhaps Katrin had managed to reason with him, and convince him he had been a fool.

Or maybe he feels guilty because you caught them.

Caught them at what?

‘Did we wake you?’ Zander asked. ‘I’m sorry if we were loud.’

‘No, you didn’t wake me.’ That’s a lie. His carousing could have wakened all of Valgaast.

What carousing? There was no noise. There was no one in his room. What’s wrong with you?

‘Trouble sleeping, that’s all,’ I told my children.

‘We have much to think about,’ said Katrin. ‘There is little sleep to be had for any of us.’

‘The price of duty,’ Zander mumbled.

Maybe Katrin had got through to him.

Or maybe he’s mocking you. Maybe they both are. What were they discussing behind your back? You can’t just leave them to it. They’ll start again as soon as you go. You have to be careful. They could be planning to harm the children.

‘Father?’

Zander’s voice shook me from my reverie. I rubbed my head, trying to clear it of the confusing thoughts.

‘It’s nothing,’ I said. ‘I’m just tired. Goodnight.’

I left the librarium, forcing myself to acknowledge the normality of what I was doing. I had had a nightmare. I might have walked in my sleep again. There were things happening in Malveil that I could not explain, but there were others that I could. It was the lingering effects of the battle of Clostrum that were upon me this night. Nothing more.

Yet I could not shake the taint of suspicion as I climbed the stairs once more. I told myself it made no sense. It was irrational, nonsensical. I gripped the ornate banister, forcing myself to acknowledge reality, a reality where my daughter and my son were adults.

An impulse remained at the back of my mind. I needed to talk to Eliana. I needed to know that our little ones were safe.

CHAPTER 11

In morning light harsh as doubt and brittle as joy, I walked slowly down the great staircase, struggling with gaps in my memory. I could recall nothing after leaving the librarium, and even then, the events of the night felt distant. My mind was holding them away, shrouding everything in the protective veil of dreams.

You’re finding it harder to decide between dream and reality. That must stop.

Then let’s decide. What was last night?

Nothing real.

None of it?

Maybe we spoke to Katrin and Zander after waking up. After sleepwalking.

That seemed reasonable. If I could accept that logic, then maybe I could rest tonight. I must have slept deeply after returning to bed, but I did not feel refreshed. I felt worn, thin, gnawed around the edges.

Katrin had already left when I went downstairs. The reassuring noises of the serfs at work on emptying the rooms filled the house with the sound of the ordinary. Zander was sitting at the great table in the dining hall, drinking a mug of caff. He looked haggard too, and more than a little embarrassed.

‘Good morning, father,’ he said.

I sensed there were things he wanted to say. I nodded. ‘Have you recovered from your excesses?’

‘Physically, more or less. And that is more than I deserve.’

I felt lighter as I sat down. This was not the belligerent, terrified Zander of the night before.

‘I apologise for last night,’ he said. ‘My actions were… intemperate. To put it mildly. Katrin spoke to me in no uncertain terms when I sobered up.’

‘You didn’t seem that drunk to me,’ I said.

‘I was drunk enough.’

‘And did she convince you that there is no curse?’

‘I wouldn’t go that far. She can’t pretend our genealogy is something other than what it is.’

‘No,’ I admitted.

‘She did convince me that throwing myself on the mercy of Veth Montfor is not the best strategy for survival.’ He sighed. ‘Maybe that would be the way to ensure that our line does end.’

‘I believe unity is the best way of preventing that,’ I said.

There. Are you satisfied? Their conversation was exactly what you thought it might be. Nothing else. Why would it be about anything else? You only thought it could be something else because of the dream. All right? All right. That’s an end to things.

‘But you’re still worried,’ I said.

‘I am.’

He was being honest, open about his fears and calm about discussing them. He was not letting go of the idea of the curse, just like I would not let go of the idea of Eliana’s ghost. So I decided to open up to him, too.

‘Apart from the genealogy,’ I said, ‘have you noticed anything in the house?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Have you been aware of anything… unusual?’

‘I don’t think so,’ he said uncertainly.

‘Maybe you have without realising it. Have you seen things and then thought you were dreaming?’

‘Like what?’ He sounded very cautious.

I hesitated, then plunged ahead. I was committed now. ‘Like your mother.’

Zander stared at me. Silence stretched between us, growing longer, stronger, turning into a wall. ‘No,’ he said at last. ‘I haven’t seen anything like that. I haven’t seen anything unusual at all.’ He stopped, visibly wrestling with himself. Then he said, ‘Though what happened last night…’

‘What?’ I asked, eager. ‘What happened?’ Too eager.

‘What do you mean, what happened? Don’t you remember? Coming down while Katrin and I were talking?’

I felt my face flush. ‘Of course I do.’

‘That was unusual, father. You seemed confused.’ Another pause. ‘Are you well?’

He was concerned. He was worried about me. I cursed myself for having spoken. I shouldn’t have said anything. Not yet, anyway. I should have waited until I was sure that either Zander or Katrin, or both, had seen something. The way he was reacting was the opposite of what I had hoped. And I could hardly backtrack.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I am well. I am dealing with the after-effects of the battle on Clostrum.’ I stuck to my determination to be honest. If I said nothing, I could expect to be called to task later. ‘What I have experienced here is unrelated to that. Yes, I have seen your mother.’

I felt a reckless pride in making that declaration. I wondered if this was how Zander had felt in the Unforgiving Light.

‘A ghost?’ Zander gasped, horrified by the blasphemous thought.

‘I don’t know if that’s what she is–’

Zander cut me off. ‘Father, no!’ he cried. ‘Think about what you’re saying!’ He was shaking. He took three deep breaths and tried to speak more calmly. ‘I didn’t want to hear you last night, but you were telling me what I needed to hear. Please, please, listen to me now. You must not say these things. You must not think them. They are crimes against the Emperor.’ He took my hands in his. ‘For your sake, father, I beg you.’

‘I know she can’t be a ghost,’ I reassured him. I almost sounded convincing in my ears. ‘All I’m saying is that I’ve seen her. I also know that in at least one instance, there is no chance that I was dreaming.’

‘Have you told anyone else about this?’

‘Cardinal Rivas.’

‘Oh. Good.’ Zander radiated relief. ‘What does the cardinal have to say?’

‘He’s concerned about possible danger.’

‘He believes that you saw mother?’

‘Yes.’

That gave him pause.

‘Is it so impossible to believe?’ I said, beginning to plead. ‘If you are willing to believe in a curse…’

‘A belief which you denounced last night.’

‘I did. I still do not believe you’re right. I can’t. Why keep fighting if we are foredoomed? We must keep fighting. But I should not be a hypocrite. I do not believe you are right. I cannot state that you are wrong. Especially given what I have seen.’

Zander gazed down into his empty mug. When he looked up, his eyes were sad. ‘I would like to see mother,’ he said. ‘I wish I had. But she’s dead, father. She’s been dead a long time. She’s gone.’

‘I don’t think you understand–’ I began.

He stood up, interrupting me. ‘I must be off. I’ll see you in council.’ He thought for a moment. ‘You haven’t spoken to Katrin about this yet?’

‘I haven’t had the chance, no.’

‘I wouldn’t.’

I had no intention of doing so. I had thought Zander would be receptive to the idea. If I was this wrong about him, Katrin might well sever all ties with me.

‘I’m sorry, father, but I have to ask. Is there madness in our family?’

‘Is that what you think? Do I seem mad?’

‘I don’t know what to think. But there’s Leonel.’

‘And now me.’

He glanced over his shoulder, in the direction of the librarium. ‘That would be one explanation for our genealogy. That might be our doom.’

I’m lonely.

Montfor was right, as far as that goes. I need company. I’m lonely and I resent it. The problem is, I don’t know if I can do anything about it. I don’t even know if anyone can help. Or if they want to.

I’m starting to think they may be trying to harm me. After today, given what I have seen, I think that might be the case.

That would make sense, wouldn’t it? I was foolish to think Veth Montfor came here out of the goodness of her heart. I don’t think anyone has ever confirmed that she even has one.

That doesn’t mean her advice was bad. Her reasons for giving it might be foul, but she wasn’t wrong. And I’ve been trying, these last few days, to do as she suggested.

I wonder, Maeson, what you would think if you read that. What would you think of your wife following the wisdom of Veth Montfor?

I wish you did know. You don’t, though. You aren’t here. I won’t say it’s like you never were. That isn’t true. If you had never been here, I wouldn’t be in Malveil. I wouldn’t be digging through the mountains in these rooms, hoping to find information that will mean I don’t have to worry about the future of my children. If you had never been here, I wouldn’t be torturing myself about whether I am doing enough to preserve the governorship of the Strocks, and I doubt very much that I would be receiving inexplicably friendly visits from the senior councillor.

You were here. You were here enough to change every facet of my life. I know that not long ago I was grateful for that. I don’t remember how I felt then. I don’t feel like that at all now.

Can you hear me, Maeson?

No. You can’t.

Will you ever again?

I shouldn’t let myself think that way. But I can’t help it. This is where I am now. I’m all alone. Even when the serfs are here I’m all alone, and I don’t think that’s a good thing.

I’ve tried, like I said. I’ve tried not to be alone. It hasn’t gone well, for a number a reasons. I don’t think they’re all my fault.

Montfor really wanted me to get out of Malveil. At least, that’s what she said. She sounded convincing. She must be good at making people believe what she wants them to believe, of course. But what she said seemed sensible. I hadn’t been out of the house for several days. I’m not sure how long, exactly. I’ve been having trouble keeping track of the dates since I started to feel ill, and anyway, it’s winter, and every day is a cold, windy, wet misery. There aren’t any differences that matter between the days.

This isn’t a very organised entry, is it?

Yes, then, I went out. Montfor said I should see my friends. That made me think again about how few of them are still left. I shouldn’t feel sorry for myself, though. Even if I’m finding that self-pity comes very easily.

I still know people. I have acquaintances. So I arranged to meet a few for a meal in the afternoon. I felt a bit guilty. If I was well enough to do this, I should have been well enough to resume my duties at the Administratum. But I couldn’t face those. The mental energy of riding herd on the scribes and keeping an iron grip on our tenuous, easily broken forms of order there is more than I can muster at the moment. I’m reasonably confident that I’ve delegated things well enough that matters will keep for a bit longer.

So I went out. I was about to write that this was four days ago, but I think it might have been longer. The more I think about it, the more I’m sure it was. But I don’t know how long.

Treva Garnheim hosted. She used to work in the Estate Imperium with me, many years ago. She married into nobility too, and decided to focus her energies on the advancement of her new house. That is her duty now. The upper levels of Valgaast society are the sea in which she swims. We used to be close. We’ve grown apart. We aren’t unfriendly, though, and House Garnheim has always been allied to House Strock. When I got in touch with Treva and she suggested that she host a small gathering, that seemed like just the thing. It required no effort on my part, other than showing up.

It was a mistake to go. It felt wrong to leave Malveil. I should have listened to my impulses. I am not well enough even to walk around the grounds for more than a short while. Going into Valgaast did me harm, not good. Treva sent her car for me, and I could barely keep my head up during the ride to Garnheim Manor, on the western edge of the city. I was exhausted by the time we reached our destination. Treva’s driver almost had to carry me into the house. I was anxious too, and became more and more nervous as the afternoon wore on. I couldn’t concentrate on what anyone was saying. I knew everyone there. I had been close, once, to quite a few. On that day, though, it was as if I had never met them before.

No, wait, that isn’t quite it. It was as if I never even met them then. As if they weren’t really there. Or maybe it was me who wasn’t there. They might have been images on a pict screen with which I was simply pretending to interact. And the effort to keep up that pretence was excruciating. By the end of the afternoon, I was so tired, I was having trouble breathing. And the anxiety was developing into terror. I had to get out of there. I had to get back to Malveil.

It was a relief when I did get back. I felt better, if not exactly well, immediately. I won’t be going out again. Not while I feel like this.

While I was at Treva’s, I tried to combat the terror by analysing it, hoping I could tamp it down if I could identify its source. It was my project, my history of the Strock governors. I’m always thinking about it, but when I was away from Malveil, it felt like the project was in jeopardy. As if only my presence in Malveil could prevent the entire house from going up in flames.

Nonsense, yes. I didn’t think that would happen. But I felt as if it would.

So that attempt was a disaster. I didn’t give up, though. I made one more try at doing what Montfor asked. I hope she’d be pleased. Or I hope Maeson would be pleased.

Maybe I don’t care, after all.

I acted as though I did. I invited Treva and the others to come and see me in Malveil. I would be less tired that way. I wouldn’t be anxious. I hoped I would enjoy their company. I hoped I wouldn’t be lonely.

The experience was worse than at Garnheim Manor. I was less nervous. I was less tired. I was able to pay attention this time. That’s why it was worse. I was able to see the truth of things.

Everyone was pleasant. I can remember what we talked about. None of it mattered. I looked at these people, people whom I thought I knew fairly well. They were hollow. If I had ever really known them, that was no longer the case. Things were changing. Their bodies were present, but they were only shells. They might as well have been servitors, tasked to perform the motions of a social gathering. I felt that if I stared at Treva and the others long enough, I would see right through their bodies. Their skin would become translucent. Inside was nothing, not even bone. These people had not come to see me. They had come to take their leave. They were abandoning me. Even as they sat there talking, they were abandoning me, hollowing themselves out, turning into pantomiming shadows.

I hated them. I could not get rid of them fast enough. I will not be hosting any other events in Malveil.

Maeson was the first to abandon me, and he has taken everyone in his wake. First the children, then all the others.

I am alone.

I was on my way to the Inner Chamber when Veiss caught up to me and took me aside.

‘You’re going to have to do without me today,’ she said.

‘I think I can fend Montfor off.’

‘I know you can.’

‘What will you be doing?’

‘Gathering ammunition, I hope. I’ve heard some rumours about Montfor, ones that might be useful to us if there is any truth to them. I’m going to see if there is.’

‘Go where?’

‘To Silling.’

Montfor’s home. I didn’t like the idea. ‘She may be here, but she will have eyes there.’

‘I know. I’m not about to break in. I have a possible informant in the house.’

‘Good luck then.’

‘I’ll meet you at Malveil after council,’ she said, and headed off back down the hall.

The council session was relatively calm. We were all gathering our strength for the storm to come. We were engaged in an administrative charade, performing the actions of government with our thoughts elsewhere. Mine certainly were, and the lack of conflict suggested this was the case for my opponents too.

My thoughts careened from one pressure point to another. Every time I looked at Zander, he was watching me with deep concern. I worried about how much damage I had done that morning. I wondered what Veiss might have found, and what she might be risking. I could easily believe that Montfor had planted the rumours herself, whatever they were, with the goal of ambushing Veiss. I tried to remember that it was Veiss who had warned me about how dangerous Montfor was, and so she would be cautious.

And I kept thinking about the growing alienation and anger in Eliana’s journal.

You forgave me, didn’t you? That’s why you’ve come back, isn’t it? In the end, you did forgive. You must have.

Unending bitterness was not who Eliana was.

In the end? What end?

I had no answer.

I managed to pay just enough attention to the session to make it sound like I was present. That was as much a victory as I could hope for that day. I was lucky that that was the best Montfor and her allies could achieve too.

No one hid their relief when the Inner Council adjourned. We had done little other than mark time. I felt some shame in that. It was Solus that paid a price while we were distracted by our wars and ghosts.

Belzhek had already returned to my service. The injuries to her flesh were not extensive, and she was mobile again on a new treaded engine. The vehicle she now drove stopped short of being a Taurox, but it was much more heavily armoured than the previous car had been. She was waiting for me outside the Council Hall, and we headed back towards Malveil through another day of drenching downpours. The temperature was just above freezing. We were spared sleet, and cursed with torrential, frigid rain instead.

Gutters overflowed. Flash floods roared down the narrower streets, turning the drive back through Valgaast into an interminable journey. We were caught behind a convoy of transports, carrying tonnes of grain. The streets were barely wide enough to contain their massive, squat bodies. They belched clouds of blue exhaust and rocked back and forth over the uneven, pitted roadway.

The rain came down harder. Even on the main artery of the Boulevard of Toiling Faithful, foaming water rushed past us. If our vehicle had been any lighter, it would have been washed away.

We crawled towards the Cardinal Reinhardt Bridge. It was one of the older spans over the Oblivis River. It was humpbacked and its rockcrete was porous from centuries of acidic rainfall.

The transports climbed the bridge. Water from the street gathered at its base. The swollen Oblivis churned against its pillars.

There was a sudden squall of rain. The world disappeared in the dirty white of the downpour. The rise of the bridge was a vague smudge. At its base, in the middle of the road, I saw a woman’s silhouette. She was motionless, a black shape in the rain.

‘Eliana,’ I whispered.

I could see no features. Only darkness. She was absolutely still. There was nothing to say this was Eliana, except that I knew it was. I could feel the spectre staring into my heart.

Belzhek did not see her. I gasped, unable to cry a warning or plead forgiveness. And then the bridge began to sway. Its side-to-side rhythm was gentle, but this was rockcrete, which could not be gentle. Belzhek slammed on the brakes and stopped us before we reached the bridge. We watched as the movement of a rocking cradle became a catastrophe.

The huge transports seemed small now on the back of the stricken beast. The pillars in the river fell with a deep, heavy groan. The span of the bridge broke into three pieces. Through the veil of rain, the fall was beautiful, a slow, graceful dying of stone. The transports plunged into the water. They were just little things, the lives inside them invisible, the screams unheard.

I opened the car door. The wind blew the rain in, drenching me.

‘My lord,’ Belzhek said, trying to stop me.

‘It’s all right,’ I said. This was not Montfor’s doing. At least, not directly. This time, the event really was an accident. What the council pretended had happened to the manufactorum now had occurred to the Cardinal Reinhardt Bridge. Another collapse, another gasp of Solus’ crumbling infrastructure. The drivers of the transports and the other vehicles that had fallen into the Oblivis had been murdered by the council. The funds that should have gone to restoring the bridge had lined the pockets of the councillors and their cronies instead. Now people were dying.

I stood at the edge of the shattered span, looking down into the river. The transports had vanished. The wreckage of the bridge thrust up from the turmoil of the river like tombstones. There was no one to rescue, but I stayed there until the militia arrived. It was important that I be seen by the growing crowds. I wanted them to know that their lord-governor stood by them.

I didn’t like thinking about the political advantage this might give me over Montfor. That was a form of pragmatism I despised. I also could not deny the truth of the situation.

Well done. You’re turning into a politician.

At length, I acknowledged that there was nothing I could do here, and I climbed back into the car. My clothes were soaked. I was chilled to the core. And I was going to be hours late to meet Veiss. I hoped she’d been able to wait, and that she had found something useful. We had to bring Montfor down. Valgaast could not withstand her corruption much longer.

The rain was still hammering Valgaast when we finally passed through Malveil’s gates. I was startled to see Karoff standing outside in the cloudburst. We were about a quarter of the way up the hill. He was in the shadow of a rusted crane. He wasn’t moving. I couldn’t see him clearly, but I got the impression he was staring into the middle distance of nothing at all.

‘What is he doing?’ I said.

‘My lord?’

‘Karoff. Look.’

Belzhek slowed the vehicle. ‘I’m sorry, my lord, but where?’

He was gone. He must have gone around one of the support columns of the crane.

‘Never mind,’ I said. I would ask him what he had been doing later.

But when we arrived and I ran from the car to the entrance, Karoff was opening the door for me. He was perfectly dry. There was no way he could have made it here before us.

‘My lord?’ he asked when I stared at him.

‘It’s all right,’ I said, but my skin crawled. ‘Has Councillor Veiss been here long?’

‘She hasn’t been here at all, my lord.’

‘I see.’

Worried, I went up to my tower to change into dry clothes. There were innocuous reasons for Veiss to be delayed. She might also have been caught by the widespread chaos caused by the collapse of the Cardinal Reinhardt Bridge. Given where she had gone, though, I conjured worst-case scenarios.

So I breathed a vast sigh of relief when I descended to the ground floor and found her waiting for me in the librarium.

‘I didn’t know you’d arrived,’ I said. ‘I’m glad to see you.’

She was damp from the storm, and one hand was rubbing her temple. She looked up at me. ‘Oh, Maeson,’ she said. ‘Yes. Yes. I wanted to see you.’

‘So you said.’ I sat down next to her. ‘Did you learn anything useful?’

She blinked slowly. There was something wrong with her gaze. It was unfocused. She kept looking back and forth at me and then at nothing. ‘Learned,’ she said. ‘Oh yes.’ She winced.

‘Are you all right?’ I asked. ‘Did something happen?’

Her jaw dropped open and her head jerked down and to the side. She flailed like a hooked fish. I lunged forward to catch her, and then stopped.

There she was, sitting quietly, still looking confused, but that was all.

I sat back. I closed my eyes, opened them. Nothing had changed.

What’s wrong with me?

‘I came here,’ Veiss said.

‘Yes, you did.’

‘I have to warn you.’

‘About what?’

She stood. ‘Warn you,’ she said again, and walked unsteadily out of the librarium.

‘Adrianna?’ I called after her, and followed. ‘Where are you going?’

‘I have to go.’

‘Not now. Let me get some help for you. You’re not well.’

She opened the door. The rain hammered with such ferocity that I couldn’t see the drive beyond the porch.

‘I must go.’ Clutching her head, she stepped out into the rain.

I went after her, and a blast of wind hurled rain into my face, blinding me. I stumbled back into the cover of the entranceway, wiping the water from my eyes. I couldn’t see her. Then a long, vague shadow rumbled up to the porch. I assumed it was her car, though I didn’t know why it was just arriving. I heard the sound of a door opening, and Kalvan Rivas ran to the doorway.

‘What’s going on?’ I asked. ‘Are you going to look after Adrianna?’

‘You know I will,’ he said. ‘Then I guess you’ve heard.’ His voice was foggy with grief.

‘Heard what?’

‘About Adrianna,’ he said, looking confused now. ‘They’ve just pulled her body from the river. She’s been murdered.’

CHAPTER 12

‘When?’ I demanded, managing not to grab the doorway to support myself. ‘She was just killed now?’ In my confusion and shock, I was starting to babble.

‘No,’ said Rivas. ‘She was probably killed some hours ago. She’s only just been found.’

‘But that isn’t…’ I began, then stopped.

But that isn’t possible. She was just here.

Just like it wasn’t possible for Karoff to be in two places at once.

It was suddenly hard to breathe.

‘What’s wrong?’ Rivas asked.

‘I’m not sure.’ I would have to tell him.

Not right now.

He would be even more insistent that I leave Malveil immediately. I couldn’t. I would not.

Veiss came to warn me. She was dead, and still she wanted to help.

What was going on at Malveil was not an attack.

But the slaughterhouse in Katrin’s room. The shrieking revels in Zander’s.

That was a dream. It was.

It would take more than that for me to abandon Eliana.

She saved my life today.

I decided, then and there, how I would interpret the vision at the bridge.

There is no evil here.

‘Take me to Adrianna,’ I said to Rivas, and I went to get my coat.

Rivas’ Ecclesiarchy vehicle was solemnly ornate. Mine had the family’s coat of arms and the lord-governor’s crest on the sides. It was a simple affair by comparison. Gold scrollwork lined the body of Rivas’ car. The Ecclesiarchal symbol on the roof seemed the size of a monument. The vehicle was not only visible but instantly recognisable from a great distance, announcing its holy mission to all who saw it. Rivas’ quiet sanctity imbued the luxury with sacredness. This was not ostentation. The glories of the artisanship on display were a tribute to the God-Emperor.

‘Are we going to Silling?’ I asked.

The Oblivis ran by the edge of the Montfor estate on the southern edge of Valgaast.

‘What?’ said Rivas. ‘No. She was pulled from the Loath, not the Oblivis. Just a few miles from here.’

Nothing made sense. I said nothing for the rest of the drive. For the moment, grief was standing at bay. I believed that Veiss was dead, but not at the emotional level. I had just spoken to her minutes ago. She had spoken to me. Her death was a thing reported, not real.

Her visitation, though, that was real. I did not understand what was happening at Malveil, but I was growing more and more accepting of its reality. There were events that still had to be cordoned off as dreams. But I had not dreamt seeing Veiss. I would not denigrate that miracle.

Miracles. That’s what these events are. They are blessings sent by the Emperor.

The epiphany was so sudden and so obvious that I almost laughed with sudden joy. I kept still. This was not the moment. He would not understand. I thought he would, though, in time. A miracle would explain Eliana’s return to me. A miracle was not heretical.

Why the miracle was occurring was another question. I might leave that to Rivas to sort out.

Rivas’ driver took the road that ran along the northern edge of the industrial shell and the base of Malveil’s hill. Past the hill, the River Loath flowed down from the north, then turned east, marking the edge of Valgaast. After a few minutes, we reached a grey wasteland. The manufactoria here had been largely torn down, leaving an uneven landscape littered with mounds of tailings and rusting, disassembled machinery. Though the mines were closed, the ground was still saturated with toxins. The river ran black and brown. Grey sludge foamed against the banks.

The militia had erected a large tarpaulin tent by the riverside. Their vehicles surrounded it. The Taurox of the Adeptus Arbites was there too. The sides of the tent flapped tautly in the wind. The sheeting rain rattled against the tarp.

Rivas and I ran to the entrance. Stavaak was just inside with two of his troopers. He was in full uniform and armour, the visor of his helmet hiding his eyes, shock maul sheathed at his waist. He nodded solemnly. ‘Lord-governor,’ he said. ‘Cardinal. I grieve for you and for Solus. This is a great loss. We will all feel it.’

At the other end of the tent was a medicae table. Militia officers were gathered around the shape that lay on its surface.

‘Is the investigation yours?’ I asked Stavaak, hoping that it was.

He shook his head. ‘Not yet,’ he said. ‘Not until I can determine a threat to the Imperium.’

‘But this is clearly linked to your investigation of Trefecht. This is retaliation for her arrest.’

‘We don’t know that,’ said Stavaak.

‘What else could it be?’

He glanced towards the corpse. ‘I really don’t know.’

I advanced towards the medicae table, Rivas at my side. The militia officers saw us and parted.

I looked down on my friend.

Now her death hit home. The memory of Veiss’ visit earlier faded before the reality of her corpse. I placed my palms on the edge of the table, my arms locking to hold me up. I forced myself to look at her head, though the wound there reopened injuries in my soul, tearing them deeper. The wound to her head was enormous. She was almost unrecognisable, with half her skull smashed. It looked like something had gone through the top of her head, crushing the right side of her skull and piercing down through her shoulder, as far as her ribcage. A few feathers remained from her headdress, matted in blood, stuck to the ruin of her skull.

‘What could have done this?’ said Rivas.

I had seen wounds like this before, on Clostrum. It looked like she had been stabbed by a tyranid’s talon.

That cannot be. This impossibility I will not accept.

But look at the wound!

Other things could have done that. Identifying causes of injuries is not my field of expertise.

Clinging to the rational was hard. I was staring at the body of my best friend, and all I could think was that the devourers of Clostrum had escaped from my nightmares to kill her.

Rivas clasped my shoulder. He thought he was seeing grief alone in my reaction. ‘We will honour her,’ he said.

‘And avenge her,’ I croaked. I turned away from the table. The emotions I had held off on the drive here were crashing down on me like massive breakers. If I did not stand up to them, I would drown. I stiffened my gait and walked over to Stavaak. ‘What is known?’ I asked him. The militia might have jurisdiction, for now, but I didn’t trust them.

‘Not much,’ said Stavaak. ‘A passing patrol spotted her washed up against the riverbank.’

‘How convenient,’ I said quietly.

‘Perhaps, perhaps not. The patrols are regular. Sooner or later, she was bound to be seen. Even here.’

‘How did she wind up here?’ Rivas wondered. ‘Was she coming to see you?’ he asked me.

‘Yes. But when I last saw her, she was heading for Silling. She was hoping to learn something we could use against Montfor.’ I spoke quietly. If Stavaak saw fit to share this information with the militia, I would trust his judgement. I suspected they already knew.

Rivas and Stavaak looked grim.

‘If she was killed there, we will find no evidence or witnesses,’ said Stavaak.

‘This would be a brazen attack, even for Montfor,’ Rivas said. ‘To my knowledge, she has never had a political rival killed before.’

‘To your knowledge,’ I pointed out. ‘And perhaps she has never felt the need to do so before.’

‘Have you managed to threaten her that much?’

‘I didn’t think I had.’ I felt no pride. I felt sorrow and anger. If I could have wrapped my hands around Montfor’s throat then and there, I would have. I was furious at myself, too. I had plunged into the war in the full knowledge that my life was at risk. If I was honest, the assassination attempt had provided me with a certain dark satisfaction. I was concerned with keeping my family safe. But it was myself I imagined being the principal target. I invited Montfor’s wrath. Let her call lightning upon my head. I would send it back at her a thousandfold.

I hadn’t thought that she would begin to slaughter the few on the council who dared oppose her. Veiss had been a thorn in her side for decades, and no harm had come to her.

Until now.

I should have seen this coming. I should have anticipated the full consequences of my campaign. Instead, I had left an ally to be cut down on the battlefield. I had been careless.

You were worse than that. You were arrogant. You were proud.

Veiss was dead because of my pride.

I would have time for self-recriminations later. This was not the moment for indulgences. ‘Is there any direct action we can take?’ I asked Stavaak. ‘This cannot go unpunished. She will not stop.’

‘We don’t even know if this is her doing.’

‘It was not by her hand, but it was by her command. Who else had motive?’

‘Montfor also had good reason not to do this,’ Rivas pointed out.

‘For the same reasons she could not attack you again too soon,’ said Stavaak. ‘She has too much to lose. One mistake and everything would come crashing down. I agree with you, lord-governor. I don’t think you have managed to threaten her enough yet for this to be a sane form of retaliation.’

‘She isn’t sane,’ I snapped. ‘So you’re saying that she’s untouchable.’

‘For the moment, I believe so.’

The air inside the tent was too close. I threw the flap open and strode outside. The wind rammed into me. In moments the rain was streaming from my hair and down the back of my neck.

There was a car by the side of the road, a short distance away from the other vehicles. Beside it, leaning on her cane, was the grey ghoul of the senior councillor.

My hands balled into fists. I marched over to her against the howl of the wind. She wore a long coat but no head covering. Her hair was plastered against her skull. Water poured from the tubes of her breathing apparatus. She was so still, she could have been another apparition. She stared at me with cold hatred.

‘Take your gloating elsewhere while you still can,’ I said.

‘The murder of Councillor Veiss gives me no pleasure.’

‘Liar. I will see you burn for this.’

Her eyes narrowed slightly, the hate in them growing hot. ‘Do not think you can frame me for your crime.’

‘My crime!’ I was so astonished that she would attempt such a gambit that I could say nothing else for a moment.

‘I had no reason to kill her,’ she said. ‘Councillor Veiss’ death does me no good.’

‘Since when does the death of an enemy not benefit you?’

‘When that enemy is as popular as Councillor Veiss. Alive, she was an opponent. Dead, she will become a symbol, as we both know very well, one that will serve your interests against mine. You will not prevail, lord-governor. You will be found out.’

‘This is beyond absurd.’ I began to wonder if I was hallucinating the conversation.

‘As far as I know, she was last seen alive speaking to you.’

‘That is your evidence?’

‘It might be enough to interest the Inquisition.’

My jaw dropped open. I stared, unable to believe that she was serious. I didn’t put any stratagem or any crime past her, but she sounded utterly mad. She couldn’t really believe that was a credible threat. ‘By all means,’ I said. ‘Invite the Inquisition to pay me a visit.’

‘You are a Strock of Malveil,’ she said. ‘You should be conscious of what that means.’

‘I am. And you should be conscious of what I am willing to do.’

I turned on my heel and walked away. I heard the door of her car slam. Her driver was pulling away just as Stavaak and Rivas came out of the tent to look for me. Stavaak squinted through the rain at the departing vehicle.

‘That wasn’t…’ he began.

‘It was. She dared to come here to mock us. She actually threatened to accuse me of the murder.’

‘Don’t take that threat lightly,’ said Rivas.

‘I won’t.’ She should take my warnings seriously too. But I hope she doesn’t. Emperor, let her slip. Let me purge more than the corruption she reigns over. Let me purge her. ‘I will do what is necessary.’

‘Meaning what?’ Stavaak asked sharply.

‘Exactly what I said.’

The wind howled around us. We were so far beyond being drenched that we barely noticed the rain any more.

My mind was filled with images of Montfor’s blood. In battle, I had rejoiced in victories. I had been glad to burn xenos filth, to remove their taint from the galaxy. But I had never taken pleasure in killing. I would enjoy killing Montfor, though. My muscles tensed in anticipation of the strain of tearing flesh. My right palm, the prosthetic with no sensation, could feel the contours of the handle of the blade, the hammer, the laspistol. I knew already the weight of the weapons I would wield. The rain against my face was the splash of the blood of the criminal. I was a coiled spring. If Montfor had returned, I would have attacked her there and then, no matter the consequences.

‘Do not destroy what you are labouring to create,’ Rivas warned. He knew me too well. Yet he was looking at me as if I had become a stranger.

‘What would you have me do? She murdered Adrianna! Doesn’t that mean anything to you?’

Rivas said nothing. His pained look was his answer, and it was clear enough.

‘Think carefully about what you plan to do, lord-governor.’ Stavaak spoke calmly, but his warning was unmistakable. ‘I want you to succeed. Solus needs you, and it needs you more than ever now. Do not force me to take action against you.’

‘You would do that?’

‘I always do my duty.’

‘Yet you say you can do nothing against Montfor.’

‘At this moment, no. I can’t. Let me repeat, we do not know that she was responsible. If I learn that she was, and her actions are destabilising Solus, then, as with Councillor Trefecht, the situation is different. But if you kill her, then you become the destabilising force. I can see your wrath, lord-governor. There would be no subterfuge in your attack. You would gun her down in the Council Hall, if that was where you had her in your sights. And you would risk plunging Solus into civil war. I will not allow that.’

‘Then do your duty,’ I snarled. I had no authority over the Adeptus Arbites, but I shouted commands as if I did. ‘Find the evidence of her guilt!’

I stalked away.

‘Maeson!’ the cardinal called.

I didn’t stop. I was seething.

‘At least let my driver take you back.’

‘I’ll walk!’ I shouted, and kept going. I raged at Stavaak’s caution, even though the rational part of me, struggling to make itself heard past the roar of anger and sorrow, knew that he was right.

I walked through the storm. Wind and rain lashed my face so hard I thought I might bleed. The world around me was a smear of vague silhouettes and endless grey. Reality had faded until it was nothing but ghosts. Nothing mattered, I thought. Everything would be washed away. Only my anger was strong, a flame that could not be doused, a fever that must burn until it consumed me or destroyed Montfor.

I was chilled and exhausted when I reached Malveil. Katrin and Zander had heard about Veiss. I did not want their condolences. I wanted revenge. I wanted justice.

I needed to speak with someone who understood and believed everything that I was experiencing at Malveil. Rivas believed, but did not understand. No one else even believed.

Eliana. I need to speak with Eliana. I thought this as if we had spoken outside my dreams. I felt sure that soon, we would. That was, surely, where things were heading.

This was what I told myself when I retired to my tower, cutting myself off from the rest of the house for the night. This was the one light of hope I reached for in the midst of the roiling thoughts of vengeance.

The storm had followed me into my sleep, shrieking through my mind, turning my blood cold, then hot, then cold again. I thrashed in the bed, blown back and forth by the whistling shriek of the wind outside as it tried to pry its way through chinks in the rockcrete walls. When I woke, I was tangled in sweat-soaked sheets.

My skin was burning. My tongue felt thick and dry. I sat up, and my head swam. The fever raged through my blood, and I was a furnace. Yet the fever was not just in me. Heat radiated from the walls. I lit the lumen globe and stared blearily around me. The room pulsed in time with my heart. I reached out and placed my palm against the nearest wall. In the next instant, I snatched my hand away. The surface felt like taut skin, trembling with disease. It was damp, too, with a thick, gelid sweat.

I heard vomiting. The sound was huge, as if the house itself were being ill, the hallways turned throats expelling the liquefied accumulations into the unused rooms. It also sounded personal, as of a single individual in the grip of ferocious disease, throwing up with such violence that their body was turning inside out.

The retching and thick splashes turned my stomach. I breathed through my mouth to combat the nausea and staggered up. I weaved back and forth, dizzy, as I made my way to the door. Once again, I was being summoned. There were revelations at hand. I must attend to them. An urgency of action drove me forward, though I did not know what I was being called upon to do. Nor did I know who was calling.

‘Eliana!’ I cried as I fumbled with the door. She did not answer.

The heat was suffocating. It came in pulsing waves, squeezing my head and stomach. I could barely stand. When I finally got the door opened, the buzzing of a swarm of flies roared into my face. I choked, clapped one hand over my mouth and nose and waved the other frantically. I squinted to keep the insects out of my eyes, even though I could not see them. The light was dim, and the air squirmed, so thick that breathing felt like inhaling insect eggs.

I stumbled down the stairs, bumping against walls that had become heaving flesh. Their sweat pooled on the staircase, making footing treacherous. I reached the first-floor hall, desperate for its greater space, desperate to breathe something clean. The air was even worse. It stank of rot and loosed bowels. The buzz of the flies was deafening. I beat at nothing, frantic and repulsed. The vomiting sound became a retching scream followed by panicked choking, and then the liquid scream again.

Behind the bedroom doors, my children were calling for me. Their young voices were high with terror. This was what I had been summoned to do. I must get them out while there was still time, before we were consumed by the sickness that had seized Malveil. Katrin was desperately trying to be brave, but her voice was trembling, and Zander’s little cries were frantic with incomprehension and fear. I called back to them. I almost vomited as I shouted, and acid burns scraped my throat. I tried Katrin’s door, and then Zander’s. The handles were coated in slime. Pustules burst under my grip, releasing centipedes that curled around my fingers, swelling my joints with their venomous bites. I lost my grip and hammered helplessly against the door that held Zander prisoner.

‘Father!’ Katrin’s voice, nearby. Zander echoed her. Their cries came from my right, not from their bedrooms at all. At the same moment, I smelled smoke.

I saw them at the head of the stairs. Zander had his arms wrapped tightly around his big sister, his face buried against her waist. Katrin was pointing down the stairs. ‘He’s setting the house on fire!’ she shouted.

I ran to the stairs and caught a glimpse of a figure charging through the hall with a flaming torch. The smoke was getting thick, and the heat of fire added itself to the heat of fever. I was about to pick Katrin and Zander up and carry them down, but if the man below attacked, I would be unable to fend him off. I could barely stand as it was.

‘Take Zander’s hand,’ I said to Katrin. ‘Hold tight. Follow me carefully. If I tell you to wait, you wait. If I tell you to run, run for the door as fast as you possibly can.’

She nodded. She was pale, though her cheeks were flushed. The sickness had her in its grasp too, but she was being strong.

I started down the stairs as quickly as I could. The vomiting sound, I now thought, was the house reacting to the murderous intruder, seeking to hurl him out even as he wounded it with fire. This was Montfor’s doing. She was attacking to end us all, me, the children and the house. Rage gave me strength, though I slipped on the sweat and crawling vermin on the steps. The banister squirmed in my grip, pliable as muscle, porous as sponge.

My lungs rattled with larvae. I could barely move through smoky air as thick as quicksand, yet I made it to the ground floor. The torch-bearing figure burst out of the librarium, flames high and bright behind him. He was a blurred silhouette. I couldn’t see his face. He ran for the main doors, and I followed. I had to stop him. If I didn’t, I knew what he would do once he crossed the threshold. He would shut the doors and seal them, trapping us in the conflagration.

‘Run!’ I shouted. I could not look to see if the children obeyed. All my concentration was focused on staying upright and catching the intruder.

He stayed ahead of me, reached the entrance and hurled the doors back. The storm was still strong. The wind and rain roared into the hall. I ran into the blast after the intruder. He disappeared into the darkness, and I stopped running when I reached the drive.

The explosion threw me to the ground. My children’s screams fell into its roar. A wave of fire washed over me, the pain a burning lance on my back. Helpless, I howled. The thunder of the explosion faded, and I vomited, retching until only a thin string of bile-dark drool dripped from my lips. I pushed myself up. Smoke and dust stung my nostrils. Another howl building in my chest, I turned around to face the destruction and the bodies of my children.

The house was intact. It was quiet. There were no bodies. There was no smoke, no roar of flame.

Yet my ears were still ringing from the blast. My back was hot from the burn.

You should be past questions. Accept this, and learn what it might mean.

I went back inside. The floor was wet from the rain, but there was no slime anywhere. The heat of the fever was gone. I pushed the doors closed, locked them and cautiously headed back to the first floor.

Purged. The house is purged. It warned me of the intruder, and I chased him out, saving the house and the children.

But the flames…

What he would have done. We stopped him.

My head was clear, my legs steady again. I could breathe easily. The stench had evaporated. There was no trace of the illness.

Or of my young ones.

I started to call for them, but the silence of the halls and a sudden suspicion stopped me.

They’ve gone back to their rooms. The danger has passed, they saw you had saved them, and they’ve gone to bed.

Oh, have they now?

On the first floor, I tried Zander’s door. The handle was dry. The door opened easily, and I padded inside. My eyes had adjusted to the dark, and I could just discern the adult Zander under the bedcovers. He was sleeping.

Or so he wants you to think.

I stood beside the bed for a full minute, motionless, waiting for him to think I was gone and betray himself. He didn’t move, his breathing deep and steady. I left him and tried Katrin’s room. She, too, gave every appearance of being asleep. Her discipline was stronger than Zander’s. If she broke, though, he would give himself away immediately. So I stayed there for a long time, in the dark, absolutely still, hands clenched in anger at the deception.

Who are you? What have you done with my children? Does Montfor have them?

If they had harmed Katrin and Zander, there would be no mercy.

I blinked, suddenly unsure why I was there.

This was Katrin. What was I doing? What was I thinking?

I crept out of the room and shut the door. I returned to my chamber, jaw set and grim. I was still a bit disorientated. My grip on time and the passage of years was uncertain. At the same time, I knew I had not been dreaming. I was receiving messages. I was being shown things. There were truths that I needed to unearth.

I felt better when I was back in the tower with the door bolted.

Can we trust those people sleeping below?

I was not sure that I could.

CHAPTER 13

My husband is an honourable man.

His uncle was an honourable man.

So much honour in the Strock family! Generations and generations and generations of honour, and duty, and faith, and unquestioning service to the Imperium. Such loyalty to the Emperor! An exemplary family! Centuries of labour to create a legacy of honour.

I know what honour smells like. I know its stench. I know its foundation. What lies below. All these legacies are a mere film. All these centuries of duty, what are they worth? A film, so thin, always ready to tear.

I understand the labour in this house now too, the relics of the past trying to bury the foundations.

You are such an honourable man, Maeson. What do you think? Is it duty to the end? Duty to preserve? Duty to save? Is that what you think? Do you think the end isn’t already here? Do you think everything isn’t already rotting? Already rotten?

So many chains. We are bound. I am shackled. Once we see and feel the chains, it is too late.

That is a lie too. A comforting one. The truth is that it is always too late. The chains are always there.

When was it too late for me? When I crossed the threshold for the first time? When I saw Malveil for the first time? The chains are long. The chains go deep. The chains were always there. There is no freedom. Only chains.

Never day. Ever night.

I left the house again. Isn’t that something? Are you proud of me, Maeson?

ANSWER ME!

Don’t be proud. I’m not. It felt like an accomplishment. It wasn’t. I didn’t pull myself free. I wasn’t even released. I was hauled along by the chains.

I discovered nothing. I was made to see.

Sometimes Malveil rattles the chains for its amusement. For its joke.

I would like to tell you something, Maeson. I would like to tell you many things. But here is a small secret. It is a secret about humour and fate. You know what it is?

I have to make my writing as small as possible, so I can whisper.

Fate and humour are the same thing, and that is terrible. Consider the nature of jokes, Maeson. The construction of a joke is the movement towards a surprise that is also inevitable. When the ending arrives, we see, despite and because of the absurdity, that no other ending was ever possible. It was fated.

The Strocks are fated, Maeson. I am too. The chains are strong. If you ever see them, you will try to break them. You will fail.

The chains begin with Devris Strock. Leonel discovered this too late. So did all his predecessors. So did I. Devris made the pact. Leonel saw the proof. I have not yet. I know I will. The time is coming soon when I will have to look below.

I have been to the Administratum for one last time. That was where Malveil sent me. That was where the chains dragged me. I knew where to look. The name of Devris was on enough fragments. The past is buried in Malveil, but it is restless. It surfaces. It sends up the lures, and then the iron traps snap shut.

So. I have seen what I was meant to see, and I have been brought back. I do not think I will ever leave Malveil again.

If I have seen this, Maeson, you should too. Why should I be the only one of us to bear this curse? You fight the wars, and you are shielded. You cannot know. You abandoned me, and you labour for duty and honour.

You are honourable to your core.

Honour is thin. It is brittle. It is your truth, but it is a lie.

It is just the weakest film stretched over the pact.

I will throw away the past too. There is nothing else I can do. It serves no purpose. Nothing does.

Maybe I will gain time.

Maybe that doesn’t matter.

Honour. I wish the word were flesh. I would rip it with my teeth. I would drink its rotten blood.

The storm had finally ended. The sky was still a heavy grey, gathering its strength for another burst. Rain fell intermittently, and the wind keened, cold as a scalpel cut against the flesh. I welcomed the bracing pain as I walked the grounds of Malveil in the desultory morning. I needed the air.

Eliana’s journal was becoming harder and harder to read. I could no longer take any pleasure from it. I dreaded the effort. The hatred, the despair and the anger that soaked the pages were beyond disturbing. I had known that the closer I came to the final pages, the more upsetting I would find her words. Things could hardly be otherwise, with her suicide waiting after the last page. But I had not counted on the specific nature of her distress. The exhaustion she had complained about before seemed to have turned into a belief that Malveil held her prisoner.

Is that true? Or was it something within her that formed a delusion?

I did not understand everything that was happening at Malveil. There were aspects that were frightening. I did not think they were dangerous. I could come and go as I liked. I was not a prisoner. I did not want to leave, but that was not the same thing as being held. I wished that I could have done something for her while she was alive. I wished that I could have helped her find joy in Malveil.

Maybe I can make a difference. Maybe I can give her peace now. She is reaching out to me. I will not abandon her again.

So I kept telling myself. I clung to that hope tenaciously. I needed it to give me the strength to get through the rest of the journal.

That was going to take some time. It was not just the content that was difficult. Page by page, Eliana’s handwriting slowly degraded. It became cramped, so jagged and angular that I could barely recognise it as hers. It had become infinitesimally small. It took several minutes to decipher each line, and the eye strain gave me a headache before I had managed to read more than half a page. Worse yet, actual words only made up a small portion of each line. It was as if Eliana were trying to hide her thoughts within a forest of incomprehensible marks. The stylus scratches looked like letters, and they were clustered into groups resembling words. There were even patterns in the shapes. Sometimes, my eyes watering, my head pounding, I found myself trying to decipher the shapes and feeling on the verge of comprehension. In such moments, I jerked myself away from the journal and had to leave it alone for a time. It became distasteful to me when that happened. It became a thing I did not want to touch.

Eliana hinted at things I did not want to know but could not ignore. So far, she was vague about what she might have found at Malveil itself, but she had gone to the Administratum Palace, and there was a name. Devris Strock.

I followed the path she had set for me. I had Belzhek take me to the palace. It dominated the eastern sector of Valgaast, a gigantic complex of black ferrocrete. Spires surmounted the great, dark hulk, the largest building on Solus. It was keeper of records, keeper of memories, keeper of secrets and monster of regulations. It sprawled for miles on each side, and was higher than any other structure in Valgaast except for the towers of the cathedral.

The entrance hall was sombre, lit by candelabra. Its walls slanted inwards, meeting at a point more than seventy feet above. Though the floor was wide, the hall felt narrow. Its lines drew the gaze up. Suspended from the apex was the huge Administratum symbol, the great Imperial I with the embedded, coiled rune of the Adeptus. The dimness and the solemnity of the space commanded silence.

A few robed scribes passed as I entered. A servo-skull flew up to me.

‘Archives,’ I said. ‘Reference “Curator Strock, Eliana”.’

The servo-skull chattered in binharic and then retreated, flying through an aperture in the far wall behind a high iron pulpit raised ten feet above the floor. Doors opened a moment later and a scribe in dark robes strode to the pulpit and looked down at me.

‘Lord-governor,’ she said. ‘You are welcome. You seek records related to your honoured wife.’

‘Yes. Specifically ones she would have requested herself the last time she was here.’

The scribe typed a query into the cogitator mounted onto the pulpit. She consulted the screen, then flipped through the pages of a massive tome on the lectern before her. ‘These are ancient records indeed,’ she said. Approvingly, I thought. ‘It will take some time to reach them.’ She pulled a brass lever in the pulpit and another set of doors behind her opened. The servo-skull flew back out of its aperture, and through the doors came a wheeled servitor. ‘Historical,’ the scribe said to the skull. ‘Vault Secundus, sub-level twelve, archive one-two-seven.’

The servo-skull spat out a thin scroll, which the scribe tore off and inserted into the back of the quiescent servitor’s neck. The servitor jerked into motion.

‘You will be taken to the records,’ said the scribe.

I thanked her and followed the servitor through an archway on the east side of the hall. For more than twenty minutes we walked through the vaulted corridors, going deeper and deeper into the maze of the Administratum Palace. We passed honeycombs of cells where scribes laboured over transcriptions and exegetical texts, reconciling conflicting regulations. We crossed narrow bridges, barely three feet wide, that cut across the immense spaces of the enormous vaults. In Vault Secundus, the servitor led me down the webwork of bridges to a sub-level that must have been more than a hundred feet below the surface.

The servitor approached one of the archives and moved onto a lift platform at its base. Mechanisms engaged, and the platform carried the servitor up a rail on the high iron archive. The lighting was dim here too, and the servitor became indistinct as it neared the top of the archive. I heard the grind of a cabinet door opening, and after a minute the servitor descended, laden with documents. I followed it another short distance to a reading cell. The servitor deposited the records on an iron table that took up most of the space in the cell, then departed.

I sat on a dark oaken stool and looked through the documents. They were, as the scribe had said, very old. Vellum sheets cracked, brittle with age. Parchment crumbled at my touch. The printing was faded, and sometimes illegible. History was vanishing slowly into the void of the past.

The files were a miscellany of everything that had passed through the Administratum during a period centuries back, a time that I recognised as coinciding with the rise of the Strocks to power. There were hundreds of records, and I spent hours combing through minor regulatory adjustments, notices of punishments meted out to families I had never heard of, agricultural production reports, and on and on, an endless collection of bureaucratic trivia. But at last I found one of the documents that Eliana must have been referring to. It was a duplicate of the exploitation licence granted to Devris Strock for the mineral resources discovered in the Malveil grounds. I found another report, dated several months later, that summarised the special session of the council following the death of Lord-Governor Agata Montfor. Instead of her son, Gregor, succeeding her, the council had named Devris to the position.

The report was a dry summary, a record that existed merely to exist, with little expectation that it would ever be read. But it marked the moment of my family’s ascendance. Devris was the first Lord-Governor Strock.

I had never known his name. The accomplishment was remembered. The man was utterly forgotten.

The oblivion that surrounded my predecessors deepened. The paradox of power and obscurity that held the Strocks was more than strange. But there was nothing really new here. I had confirmation of what we had always known to be the reason for our power. Other than the name of our first lord-governor, this information did not seem particularly significant.

I kept looking. Eliana had requested material that covered several years, coming from a period both before and after Devris’ ascension. I went back and forth through the documents, examining reams of tedium. I didn’t know what I was looking for. Even if Eliana hadn’t had a specific target, she would have been much better at this than I was. This was her domain, her battlefield.

In the end, I found it. My eyes were glazing over by that point. I’d been there for hours. My head was beginning to throb. The record would have been easy to miss. But it was as if my hand were directed to hold the page and not let go until I read it and registered what it said. It was a query from the office of a surveyor. It requested a review of prior geological scans of the Malveil region to see where errors might have been made. Previous estimations of the composition of the hill showed no extractable value whatsoever.

I stared at the parchment for several minutes, implications dawning on me. I looked some more, and found a memorandum making brief reference to the request, stating that the matter had been closed. I carried on for another half hour, but there was nothing else.

It was growing cold in the reading cell. The candles flickered in a faint breeze that had begun to breathe about me. One went out. The breeze touched the back of my neck like ice.

I looked back and forth at the parchments I had found, reluctant to acknowledge the chronology that appeared before me.

The land on which Malveil stood was worthless, and then it was valuable almost beyond measure. I looked at the exploitation licence again, at the extraordinary range of riches that were found there. Gold, silver, iron, copper. All in one place. How truly fortunate. How gigantically improbable. No one had noticed this aberration except one person, and nothing had come of that. It was as if there were a balance. Everything impossible about the Strock riches was ignored as thoroughly as each governor was forgotten.

This did not seem like a blessing from the Emperor.

From somewhere, water dropped onto the document I held. It ran down the parchment like tears.

‘A pact,’ I whispered, repeating Eliana’s word.

A sob of despair answered me. I jerked up from the stool and stumbled away from the table. Eliana was there, sitting where I had been, her eyes fixed on the documents, her mouth open. She tried to form words, her hands raised, her fingers clenched like claws. Tears flowed down her face, and then she screamed, the wail rising and writhing in terror and grief.

Reach out! Give comfort!

I could not. Her scream was too huge, too overwhelming. There could be no comfort here. There was only horror. It filled the room. It filled my soul.

Ashamed, gasping, I turned and fled.

Behind me, the spectre of my wife screamed and screamed and screamed.

CHAPTER 14

It was late when I returned to Malveil. I shut myself up in my chamber and sat in my bed, waiting for something, anything, to happen. I whispered Eliana’s name again and again, calling to her, begging her forgiveness for having abandoned her once more. This time I would do better, I vowed. I would help her.

How would I atone? How would I comfort the dead? What did I know about peace? I had lived nothing but war for most of my adult life. Now that I no longer took to the field, I felt even less peace than before. But I must help. If only I knew what had made her scream. What I had read in the archives disturbed me. It made me uneasy. I did not understand enough yet. That might have been a mercy. It was also one I could not accept. If I were to help Eliana, I had to know the reason for her horror.

The hours of the night dragged by. She did not come. Nothing appeared. I was alone with my thoughts and my failures. I clutched my head. I wished I could tear the guilt from my mind. But all my thoughts were of guilt. I had failed my troops and the Imperium on Clostrum. I had failed Veiss. I had failed Eliana. I had failed my children. How could I stop the failures? How could I protect my children? How could I protect those who could not protect themselves?

What do you mean? They’re adults. They’re down below, sleeping.

Oh? Are they? And are they really…

Really what?

Are they really my children? I don’t know these people. I’m told she is Katrin. I’m told he is Zander, and I accept that. They could be anybody.

They look like your children.

There is a resemblance. I may be seeing it because I expect to see it.

If they aren’t your children, who are they? Imposters?

What, not who. That is the question. What are they? Isn’t it odd that they never react to the manifestations in this house?

No one sees them but you.

Perhaps, but it isn’t just that. When I pound on their doors, they don’t hear me. When I yell, they do not come. It is as if they aren’t present at all. As if the only time they exist and sleep in their beds is when I am there to observe. The young children, little Katrin and Zander, they react. They know the danger. They turn to me for help. They love me.

I keep trying to save them. I keep failing, but they’re still safe. Somehow, they’re still safe.

They burned in the fire.

No, there wasn’t a fire. I chased the arsonist away. There were no bodies. I will find them again. I will save them. I swear it, Eliana.

Please come back to me. Please give me another chance.

Where are the children? Are they all right?

Then I remembered what year this was, and how old I was. I brought myself up short.

This is unhealthy. Stop indulging in these thoughts. Be careful of where they might lead.

Everything led to failure, I thought. I spiralled down into the recrimination of failure again. The rest of that night, I tried not to wonder too much if Katrin and Zander were who they said they were, but the weed of suspicion refused to be uprooted.

‘You look tired,’ Zander said to me in the dining hall the next morning. All three of us were there this time.

‘I am tired,’ I admitted. That was half a lie. My arms and head felt so heavy with exhaustion that I could barely move them.

‘Don’t let the gossip rob you of sleep,’ Katrin said. ‘It is not worth the cost.’

‘What gossip?’ I asked.

‘There are whispers in the town that you killed Councillor Veiss, or that you had her killed.’

‘Montfor,’ I muttered. ‘This is her doing. She as much as told me this was what she would do.’ Only that wasn’t entirely true, if I was honest. Montfor had not threatened to frame me. She had directly accused me of the murder. She could not seriously believe that I had done it. Especially since it was obvious that she had orchestrated the murder.

Unless she’s mad. Perhaps she genuinely does not know what she has done.

‘Then it’s time.’ It took me a moment to realise I had spoken aloud.

‘Time for what?’ Katrin asked sharply.

She would no more agree to killing Montfor than Rivas and Stavaak had. Zander just looked confused and worried, but I could guess where he would stand, also. They would not support me. There was no unity in this house.

If they were really my children, there would be.

Stop it. Stop it. Stop it.

‘Time for what?’ Katrin asked again.

‘Time something was done,’ I snapped. ‘And Throne, I wish I knew what that was.’

I marched out of the hall before she could question me further. The last thing I had said was true, though. I didn’t know how to counter Montfor. The idea that I should want Veiss dead should have appeared ridiculous to anyone capable of conscious thought. Montfor had the power to make truth and reason irrelevant. I could see how it would work. I could see what Veiss had been trying to tell me. Too many people were under Montfor’s thumb. If she said something was real, they would echo and re-echo her until even those who were not her thralls believed it. If Montfor said I had two heads, then that, too, would become the truth.

I wondered if the militia also would accept Montfor’s perverse truth. If enough of them were in her pocket, they would. Still, deposing me through arrest would not be easy, not with the Adeptus Arbites watching. Such a move could attract the wrong kind of off-world attention for Montfor. She might not be able, or wish, to get me that way. Nor would she have to. The more successful her rumour campaign, the more difficult my work would become.

I couldn’t see any way to fight back except through direct means. That was how I had fought every battle until now. My patience with everything else was badly frayed.

As she drove me to the Council Hall for the day’s session, Belzhek said, ‘For what it’s worth, my lord, the people behind these rumours should be punished.’

‘Senior Councillor Montfor is behind them,’ I said. ‘But I suspect you guessed that.’

‘I did, my lord. I hope you will silence her soon. The Montfors should not be permitted to blacken the Strock name like that.’

I grunted softly, surprised by revelation. There was the answer to the mystery of the Strock governors’ obscurity. The Montfors had been at war with us ever since we had taken power from them. Their revenge had been to deny us a legacy. They whispered infamy against the memory of every Lord-Governor Strock. They wove a tapestry of lies, used their influence to have it declared reality, and then they smothered our good name beneath it.

‘Silencing her would be my fondest wish, Belzhek,’ I said. ‘My heart’s desire. But in this matter, I cannot act as my heart would have me do.’

Belzhek was quiet for a few moments. When she spoke again, I sensed that she was choosing her words very carefully. ‘My lord, you are far from alone in your enmity towards the Montfors.’

‘I am glad to hear it.’

‘Despite their power, they do not control every aspect of…’ She paused. ‘Of the shadows on Solus. Do you understand what I mean by that?’

‘I think so. Do go on.’

‘There are some acquaintances of my acquaintances who are able and willing to undertake delicate tasks.’

‘And how wide is the range of their work?’

‘Very. I hope you don’t mind my mentioning this, my lord.’

‘I don’t. In fact, I appreciate it very much.’

I looked out of the window, musing. The vehicle nosed slowly through the crowded streets of Valgaast as we made our way towards the city centre. The day was frigid. It had begun to snow.

In spite of how much I wanted to see Montfor dead, Rivas’ warning came back to me. I reminded myself that my duty was the restoration of Solus’ honour, not pursuing a family vendetta. Ordering an assassination, even if it were successful, would be a betrayal of that duty.

‘What I would most want to ask,’ I said, ‘I cannot.’ Yet here was an opportunity for direct action, one I should not forego. There might be another way to come at Montfor. ‘Is one of these acquaintances of acquaintances proficient at gaining access to difficult locations?’

‘Yes. I know of one who is very skilled in precisely that field.’

‘I would like to meet this person.’

‘Is that wise, my lord? Perhaps I should act as intermediary.’

‘No,’ I said. I was conscious of the risk of making myself known to a third party, but I needed to be inside Silling myself. A thief would not know what to look for, because I didn’t. I was sure I would know it when I saw it, though. ‘Arrange a meeting,’ I said. ‘I will be there in person.’

Silling was not isolated from the rest of the city in the same way that Malveil was. Yet, with its defences, it might as well have been.

Many of the councillors had their great houses just south of the city centre. The home of the Montfors, though, was much further south. Their fortress, and that was surely what it was, stood amidst Valgaast’s most squalid sector. This was where the disgraced, the criminal and the unwanted found their homes. The hab blocks were foul and cramped. Some had been gutted by fire, but their hollow shells provided comfortless shelter from the winds and rains to the most desperate of Valgaast’s citizens.

I still had my laspistol and sword, and I brought my pistol with me that night. I had no intention of using it in Silling, but I might have need of its persuasive power in the streets outside.

The grounds of the house were surrounded by a wall a good fifteen feet high. Its gates were an impenetrable iron barrier, and heavily guarded. From the street, the house was invisible.

I met the thief a block away, in the entryway of one of the burned-out hab blocks. The wind keened through the empty windows and echoed piercingly in the doorway.

The thief was an old man. He called himself Tervine. His face was cross-hatched with deep lines. He moved with a fluid grace belying his age, and his eyes were sharp. He greeted me with a nod and a grin. There was no bowing to my status. He simply took me on as an equal partner of the shadows.

I felt strangely flattered.

‘So,’ he said. ‘Silling. There’s a cap for the career. That’s a target I’ve been thinking about for a long time.’

‘Why haven’t you broken in before?’

‘Needed an incentive to take the risk. Too chancy to do it on my own hook, hoping to find what I can find. That’s no good.’ He shook his head. ‘A poor reason to stir up the Montfors.’

‘I’m told you have no great love for them.’

He snorted. ‘Greedy hypocrites. They want everything for themselves. Those they can’t control, they punish with the militia. That’s not a fair game.’

I sensed there was more than a matter of principle at stake. There was anger behind that smile. ‘I think you have a personal debt to settle with the Montfors.’

He hesitated, then shrugged. ‘As well we know what’s what,’ he said. ‘I had a family once. I tried to play by the Montfors’ rules. Their tithe got too big. We were hungry. I tried to keep back a little more on the side.’

‘You were punished.’

‘My family was punished. They weren’t part of what I did. There was a fire. Just an accident of fate.’

‘I’ve had one of those too.’

‘Right. So we understand each other. Good.’

We set out. The snow had turned back to sleet, and the street was covered in inches of dirt-blackened slush. The gate was on the north side of the wall, and Tervine took me to the west. We were alone on the street there. The buildings on the other side of the road were deserted rubble. There was no lighting. The only illumination came from the waxing crescent of Luctus glowering through the clouds. We had to move carefully through the amber-tinged gloom. The wall was a featureless black mass beside us.

Tervine stopped at a point three-quarters of the way towards the south-west corner. He checked that we were alone, then unshouldered the case he was carrying.

‘Have to be sharp about this,’ he said. ‘There’s a gap in the patrols, but it won’t last forever.’

‘Careless of the Montfors to have one last this long.’

‘Are your grounds guarded?’

‘Not particularly. There isn’t a need.’

‘No,’ he agreed. ‘No one breaks into Malveil.’

‘Why is that?’

‘Don’t know, exactly. Never heard of it being tried, is all. With Silling, it’s clear why no one has tried. Who wants to go to war with the Montfors?’

‘I do.’

Tervine chuckled. ‘There you go. Takes a lord-governor to do it.’ From his case he removed what I took to be a firearm. It looked like a crossbow with a very large magazine. He took aim up the wall and pulled the trigger. Twin bolts shot out, each pulling a monofilament lanyard. From the magazine came thin strips of flexible plasteel. The bolts struck home, and a nearly invisible ladder hung before us.

Tervine scrambled up. ‘Hold the steps, not the filament,’ he warned.

I did as he said. I preferred to keep all my fingers.

Tervine’s aim had been true in the dimness. He had hit very close to the top of the wall. When we reached the top, he pulled the ladder up and dropped it over the other side. We climbed down into the darkness of the grounds.

Silling rose before us. It was a grand manor house that embraced an iron tower at its centre, jutting more than fifty feet into the night sky.

Tervine paused to reload his ladder gun. ‘Been here before?’ he asked.

‘Never. You?’

‘No.’ He nodded at the facade. ‘Not a subtle bunch, are they?’

They were not. The house’s front was a riot of gold-plated sculpture. It glowed in the light that blazed from the ground-floor windows. A colossal aquila stood proudly over the main entrance, its wings so broad they extended almost half the length of Silling.

There were statues scattered about the grounds, and they were in keeping with the sculptures on the house. Even in the night, I could see they were all portraits of exemplars of faith. This was faith where ostentation mattered more than religion. The Montfors had managed to make a vice out of piety. There was something obscene about the detail of the martyrs’ suffering, or the godlike heroism of the saints. All were rich in gold and embedded jewels.

‘You called them hypocrites,’ I said as we started walking again. ‘You were profoundly right.’

‘I can see it’s going to be a pleasure working with you, lord-governor.’

He led me towards the south-west corner of the house. There was less light coming from inside at this end.

‘So,’ he whispered, ‘now that we’re here, where would you like to go?’

‘Wherever they might keep their secrets.’

I knew Tervine was grinning at me in the dark again. I could feel it. ‘Big house,’ he said. ‘Lots of places to look.’

He was right to be amused. It would be one thing to come here with robbery in mind. A thief could remain flexible, grabbing whatever valuables came easily to hand. I was looking for something that was simultaneously much more specific and much more vague.

And yet, I said, ‘I know exactly where we should start.’ A single glance at Silling was all I had needed.

We would be heading for the tower. It was a thin spire. The staircase inside would have to be a tight spiral, unless there was a vertiginous ladder to climb instead. The spike of its peak could only hold a single room, whose windows looked out on all sides. When the room was occupied and lit, I imagined that the windows would be dull, baleful eyes staring covetously at all of Valgaast.

‘Can you get us in there?’ I asked.

‘I can. It will be the dizzy way in.’

‘I thought it might be.’

As we drew closer to the house, we heard a scream from inside. I started. Tervine laid a hand on my arm to keep me still.

‘We can’t ignore that,’ I whispered.

‘It isn’t what you think.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘The victim is being paid.’

‘To do what?’

‘To be a victim.’ Tervine must have felt my stare. He tugged my arm.

I pulled free and crept back towards one of the lighted windows.

‘Selling their services does not mean they are agreeing to be tortured,’ I said.

‘These ones do. Councillor Montfor and her family pay very, very well. I know. I’ve seen the wounds and I’ve tried to get the injured to work against the Montfors. They won’t. They’re clever, the Montfors. They know exactly how far they can go. Especially when it comes to going too far.’

I reached the window. I stayed back, looking in at an angle. There was so much light in the room that I was invisible to anyone there. And they were too occupied to look outside. I could only see a bit of what was going on, but that was more than enough. I saw a heaving tableau of contorting, entwining bodies. I saw the tools and the iron frames that twisted flesh and produced the screams. I saw Montfor, rampant, the centre and presiding power of the twisted carnival. Her face turned towards the window for a moment, and I saw the awful coldness in her eyes, the perfect control in the midst of abandon.

Tervine was right. Those were the eyes of someone who knew, down to the smallest nuance of sensation, exactly how far to go, and no further.

Tervine pulled at me again. Grimacing in revulsion, I turned away from the window and followed him. Trying to intervene for Montfor’s slaves of the night would be worse than useless. Her corruption and debauchery were as finely tuned as her political acumen.

Tervine stopped at the base of the mansion’s wall. The windows above us were dark. There was plenty of noise coming from elsewhere in the house, deeper inside and muffled by the walls. It reminded me of the dark revels I had heard coming from inside Zander’s room, though there were differences. The nature of those differences was hard to define. There was something ordered in what I heard. It was cruelty with a system and with purpose, utterly devoid of chaos.

Tervine fired the ladder gun again, launching much longer filaments this time, giving us the means to get all the way to the roof of the main structure. It had a steep slope, and we had to move carefully to keep our footing as we crept towards the base of the spire.

‘What’s the range of that gun of yours?’ I whispered.

‘Not as great as we would like this night,’ he said. He opened his case again and reloaded the magazine. ‘What we just climbed is about as long as I can make a single ladder, and I only have the material for two more.’

‘That isn’t going to get us to the top.’

‘Not at a stroke, no. I did say this was going to be the dizzy way. We can turn around.’

‘No, we can’t.’

‘Good. You go ahead of me this time.’

He fired again, and we climbed again, getting about a third of the way up the side of the tower. A few rungs down from the top of the ladder, he hooked an arm through the rungs, held himself firmly in position and fired once more. The bolts shrieked past me, struck home, and the end of the new ladder dangled just within reach of the top of the one I held.

Impressed by Tervine’s aim, I moved on. He stopped once he had hold of the new ladder and, dangling precariously, pulled up the first. Claws on the gun hooked the filaments, and he turned a mechanism, spooling the ladder back into the device.

I watched the procedure, trying not to think about how things were going to be for our descent. I made myself look away when the ground began to spin.

We climbed, and Tervine repeated the procedure. The awkwardness of the task did not seem to bother him. His movements were confident, the thief sure that he was not going to fall to his death. I was less certain.

We kept climbing. I focused on the immediate task of moving from one rung to the next. My left arm ached with strain, and though the prosthetic grip of my right was firm, the lack of feeling kept making me doubt if I had truly gripped the rung. At last, we reached the edge of the window. The ledge was just large enough for the two of us to haul ourselves up and crouch in the pointed arch of the recess.

The window was clear glasteel. Tervine took a small plasma cutter out of his case and set to work. It was a slow process. The wind was strong this high up, and though it was blowing from the north and we were sheltered from its full fury, gusts kept reaching around the spire and trying to pry us loose from our perch. I gripped the edges of the sill, the fingers of my left hand growing numb. Impassive, Tervine worked away, cutting an outline that would be just big enough for us to squeeze through one at a time.

He shut down the cutter. ‘Ready?’ he asked. Before I could answer, he kicked the window. The central portion fell into the room beyond with a crash that seemed loud enough to be heard across Valgaast.

‘They won’t have heard down below,’ Tervine said. ‘Not with all the noise they’re making.’

The chamber we entered was a circular study. There was a bronze desk placed before each of the windows, giving a choice of commanding views. In the centre of the room was a throne on a mechanised dais. The walls between the windows were taken up by shelves crammed with scrolled parchments and leather-bound volumes.

Now that we were inside, I became aware of the smell of the place. The stench was old and fresh, engrained into the walls and floor, and clearly constantly renewed. It was the smell of sweat, of sex, and of pain. Blood, ancient and new, was present too. It was the stench of decadence. I grimaced in disgust that it should be so strong here, in a chamber clearly meant for observation. And then I wondered what terrible forms observation could take.

From far, far below, the cries of the Montfor entertainment rose in sordid echoes up the tower’s stairs.

‘I should send the Inquisition here,’ I muttered.

‘It would do no good,’ said Tervine. ‘You’re not the first to have thought of that. It’s what I said. The Montfors know what they’re doing.’

‘But such excesses…’

He shook his head. ‘No. That’s not the impression I got from the people I spoke to, the ones who were paid to take part. It’s not excess. It’s a kind of discipline.’ Tervine sounded revolted and impressed at the same time. Then he produced a lumen torch and shone the beam around, being careful not to flash it past the windows. ‘Well?’ he said. ‘The search is up to you, lord-governor.’

I grunted. I moved around the dark chamber slowly. There were documents scattered on the desks, but a quick glance showed that though they might be suggestive of malfeasance in the right context, they were not useful enough to justify the risks we were taking. Nor did what I saw on the shelves look promising. My goal was nebulous and frustrating. ‘I don’t think what I seek will be left out in the open, even in here,’ I said at last. I glanced at the small door in the west wall of the study. Through it we could descend to the rest of the house. And a search so large it was doomed to failure.

Tervine was examining the controls on the arms of the throne. ‘Rotate left and right, yes, yes,’ he muttered. ‘But what about these? What are they for?’ He was focused on two small switches under the arms of the throne. He toggled them in turn, then at the same time. After a minute of experimentation, he triggered the correct combination. With the grinding of metal against stone, the throne’s dais rose, becoming an iron column five feet across. A narrow doorway in its side opened onto a cramped flight of stairs that led down into a vault under the study.

Tervine handed me the torch. ‘I think whatever you’ll find down there would not be healthy for me to know about. But if you see something an ordinary thief could use…’

‘I’ll make sure to take it,’ I promised.

I descended into the gloom. The ceiling was so low I had to crouch. I was surrounded by oaken cabinets. I pulled drawers open at random. Some of the documents inside looked very old, as old as the records I had seen in the Administratum Palace. Others were more recent. All of them were written in cypher. I cursed.

I opened the drawers faster, flipping through the documents I found. All handwritten, at different times by different people, all with meanings hidden from me. The only things that were not indecipherable were, at first glance, useless to me as well. They were copies of council records. They covered a wide variety of subjects, none of them sinister by themselves. It was only after I had seen what must have been a dozen of them that a pattern began to emerge. All of these documents concerned actions taken or edicts issued by the governing Strock. I saw names I had never known, references to ancestors completely forgotten by history.

Forgotten by everyone except the Montfors. Only our enemies appeared to have taken the proper care to preserve our history.

I moved deeper into the vault, and behind the last of the cabinets I found a long plasteel chest with a heavy padlock. I shuffled back to the stairs, got Tervine to pass down his plasma cutter, then returned to the chest. The searing glare of the cutter dazzled me, but I made short work of the lock. I waited until I could see properly by the light of the torch, then opened the chest.

There was a portrait inside. Very old. The name engraved on the bottom of the frame was Devris Strock.

He wore rich robes of blue and violet, green and red. They were not the vestments of a planetary governor. At first I assumed the portrait had been done before his ascension. Then I saw that he held the rod of office in one hand and a sword in the other, as if announcing what was, or would soon be, his.

There was no doubt this was a Strock. The sharp, slightly elongated nose. The narrow eyes. The high, rather heavy forehead. The family characteristics were strong, recognisable over the span of centuries. There was an arrogance in his gaze that I did not like, a defiance and hunger that were not, I fervently wished to believe, the dominant traits of our house.

And all of this was nothing. It was not the expression in the portrait that hit me with the force of a physical blow and had me staggering back, yet at the same time held my gaze with an unbreakable lock.

Runes surrounded Devris. They crawled up and down the periphery of the painting. They writhed and tangled with each other like serpents and insects, though they were infinitely fouler. I did not know what any of them meant. They were monstrous, though, unholy. They were mere shapes, and they were abominations. Such contortions of lines could not exist. And here they were, a heresy so monstrous it exceeded my sense of what was possible in all the possibilities and permutations of degradation. They attacked my gaze with their angles. Their illusion of movement sank claws into my soul. I was endangering myself just by looking at them. Ignorance could not protect me for long.

The worst and largest of the runes was an eight-pointed star. In the simplicity of its shape, by comparison to the rest of the terrors, it was familiar in some hideous fashion. Though I had never seen it before, it seemed to whisper to me, as if it could conjure unspeakable thoughts, urges and desires from the deepest well of my psyche. It knew me better than I knew myself. It would show me such wonders, if only I gave myself to it.

Horror was my salvation. It made me cling to my faith with a death grip.

The star took up most of the width of the portrait. It was in the background, behind Devris, though the circle that surrounded the arms of the star appeared to embrace him at the waist.

Ancient as the painting was, the eight-pointed star glistened. If I touched it, I would be tainted.

With a groan of effort, I tore my gaze from the painting and slammed the lid of the chest down. I sank down against a cabinet, gasping for air. The words Eliana had written swirled through my mind like acid, like cancer.

The pact.

The pact.

The pact.

There were things here that I did not understand, and I must never do so. There were others, less dangerous but agonisingly painful, that I had to confront.

Tervine was wrong. There had been at least one robbery at Malveil. There was no question in my mind that this was a portrait Devris had commissioned. The creation radiated pride of the worst kind. And at some point, the Montfors had acquired it.

Why haven’t they used it?

The potential for blackmail was enormous. I shuddered at the thought of what would happen if that portrait of blasphemy fell into the hands of the Inquisition. Would all the virtue and piety and duty that had been the hallmarks of the House of Strock since Devris matter in the least?

Maybe they would.

Maybe the unswerving faith of my family had been an unconscious effort to atone for a crime we could not remember but from which we continued to benefit.

A pact. I saw what Eliana had deduced. I understood her agony that continued past death. Devris had entered into a pact with powers I could not comprehend, though I could see they were beyond unholy. He had been given the impossible riches beneath Malveil, and through them the governorship of the planet.

What did he give in return?

His allegiance, to judge from the portrait. But what did his allegiance mean? What was the cost?

No direct heirs. Let’s start there.

Terror for my children threatened to choke me. Was that part of Eliana’s pain too? It wasn’t just peace that I had to try to grant her. She needed salvation. We all did. We needed to be rescued from what Devris had done.

I did not know how to save us. Perhaps Eliana did. She kept pointing the way for me as best she could.

Together, we could save our family.

I clung to that hope. It was a thin one, and fragile. It was also enough to give me the strength to struggle back to my feet.

I stared at the chest. I dreaded opening it, but I could not leave that painting intact. It was more than the danger it represented in Veth Montfor’s hands. It was an unclean thing. It could not be permitted to exist.

I braced myself, then moved to the chest. It seemed to radiate cold now. It was a monstrous thing itself, corrupted by the evil it held. In a rush, before I could hesitate, I flung the lid back, ignited the plasma cutter and trained its beam on the painting.

The beam shut off. I tried to restart the burn. Nothing. The cutting tool was dead.

I brought the lid of the chest crashing down before the painting seized my gaze and started gnawing into my soul again. I rushed back to the stairs, banging into cabinets. The vault was closing in on me. The spider at its centre wanted to haul me back.

I lunged up the stairs, back into the study. The degraded stench of the house seemed almost banal now compared to what I had seen.

‘Was there anything…’ Tervine began. Then he saw my face. ‘We should go,’ he said.

We fled.

The vertiginous descent from the tower was as nothing. I had just fallen infinitely further.

CHAPTER 15

I will never leave this house again.

This is not a determination. It is a fact. This is my prison. Malveil sent me out one last time. Now it will keep me.

Earlier, I tried to leave again. I did not want to go. Though the house wishes me ill, the thought of leaving was intolerable. Because of that, I knew I had to try. My terror of the outside world might not be mine. I don’t know how many of my thoughts are my own, and which belong to the house.

Even this journal. No matter how much I whisper to myself, I find other words here that I do not remember writing. There is so little that is mine any more.

I was in the librarium. I was sitting down, looking out of the window. I was as comfortable as a prisoner can be. But I resent this prison. So I vowed to shake the bars and try to leave of my own volition, not the house’s.

I reached the front door. I called for Karoff. He did not appear. I looked into the dining hall, searching for one of the serfs. I could hear them in the house. I wanted someone with me. I hoped that might give me the strength to go outside.

I could not find them. Their distant voices were lies. I do not believe the serfs are really here. I think they have abandoned me too. They are just pretending they have not.

I am alone. I think, in truth, I always have been.

I opened the door. I stood on the threshold. I could go no further. I tried to lift my foot, to take a single step. I could not. It was as if adamantine shackles held me where I was.

It was windy. The dead trees near the house looked like they were nodding. They were mocking me.

There were figures in the trees, and partway down the hill. They were indistinct. The ones in the trees were not moving. They were half hidden behind the trunks. They were staring at me. They were grey, and they were hollow. Their eyes were dark, but if I had been close enough to look into them, I would have gazed into empty skulls. They were shells, here but not here, a walking lie, just like the serfs.

Or perhaps not. Perhaps they were more real. Perhaps they were the truth. The serfs only wanted me to think they were there.

The figures on the road to the house were harder to make out. They moved back and forth, back and forth, purposeless. They were trapped, like me.

The wind grew stronger. I wanted to go back inside. The house had won. I surrendered. I did not wish to see these figures any longer.

Malveil would not let me go. It was teaching me a lesson. I had to be punished for my wilfulness. As the wind howled, I was terrified that it would develop a voice. I needed to shut the door against the wind before it began to speak.

I couldn’t cover my ears. I couldn’t close my eyes.

There was movement at the edge of my vision. I stared straight ahead. I must not turn my head and look. I must not see.

The wind found its voice. It came from under the ground. It came from the open mouths of the mining tunnels. They were the throats of something vast.

I heard the first notes of a terrible choir.

I screamed. I screamed to drown out those voices. I failed, but Malveil must have been satisfied with my terror. It released me, and at last I could shut my eyes, and I could move. I rushed inside and slammed the door.

I trembled in the entrance hall for a time. The voices scratched at the door. When I moved into the dining hall, they followed, hurling themselves at the windows. The panes rattled, and the choir sang just at the edge of my hearing. If anyone else had been with me, they would only have heard the keening of the wind.

But there was no one else. There never has been.

I wandered through the house, purposeless as the figures on the hill. When I heard the voices of the empty shells pretending to be serfs, I hurried in another direction. I was done with illusions, and I was frightened.

I moved through the rooms of debris. After all the work that had been done, none of the heaps looked any smaller than when I first arrived.

Of course they aren’t. All is pretence.

There was something different, though. Now, when I paused near a pile, I easily found records and journals left by the previous inhabitants. I am a prisoner, just as they were. There will be no secrets for me any longer.

No. That is not true. There will always be secrets in Malveil. No matter how many revelations there are, no matter how much I learn to my cost, there will always be more. I am reading the journals and the letters and the desperate scrawlings that I have found. I am no longer making a history of the family. I am living its curse. But I read, because what else can I do?

One of the secrets is a figure who sets the building on fire. Generation after generation of Strock lords see this figure, sometimes male, sometimes female. The fire that it sets is always an illusion. It vanishes with the arsonist. The governors feel mocked by it, though they can never see its face. They always pursue it and it always escapes. So that is a secret. If any of them have discovered who the figure is, they have not set it down in writing, or at least not in the bounty of dark writings Malveil has exposed me to.

Enough of these histories of terror. Enough of Malveil’s torment. I must cut the strings on which I dangle. Enough of everything. I see what I must do to force a crisis. I will wait until the pretence of the serfs ends, and then I will act.

I failed.

And now I have seen the arsonist too.

I have seen more than that. I have seen worse than that.

I started to discard my past days ago. Now it is time to finish the task. I understand it better now. The past is foul. It is dangerous to anything I might still hold dear. I must bury it. I must add my small efforts to stamping down upon it.

The burying can never stop. What rises does not rest. Its hunger is eternal.

Before dawn, I answered the call to the Old Tower. I have resisted as long as I could. Until recently, I did not know I was resisting. Unconscious fear kept me away. I have gone though. I descended.

I have learned something new. It is possible to have a renewed purpose and know the greatest despair.

I have learned too much.

I have seen.

I know, Maeson. I saw and I know.

This should be your burden. I cannot carry it any longer.

From a great distance, I watched myself go through the motions of the day. My body attended council. My spirit was far away, trapped in the vault in Silling’s spire. My mind roved back and forth between them, agonising over the implications of what I had seen and what might happen now. How long would it be before Veth Montfor discovered the broken window, and from there the broken padlock on the chest? She would guess that my agents or I had been there. She would know I knew what she had.

She’ll have to act soon. I would have to, in her position.

Act how?

That was the only reason I was able to pay any attention at all to the council session. I managed to avoid staring directly at Montfor. I did what I could to observe her actions, and her allies’ too. I tried to divine what they meant. I was looking for auguries that would tell me when the storm would break, and how.

I was no wiser at the end of the session than I had been at the start. There were manoeuvres to delay the production reports. That side of the war seemed a mere distraction now. If Montfor destroyed me, the campaign against corruption would end. I had no faith that Zander would continue my fight, or that Katrin would urge him to. The promises we had made to each other felt empty. I kept having to suppress doubts that I had been speaking then to my actual children.

I was sure Montfor saw our overt struggle in the same way. If she was fighting to preserve her empire of crime, it was for the larger end of destroying the Strocks.

I spoke out against delays, though I barely paid attention to my own words. Montfor remained impassive throughout. She did not look like someone who was being forced to take precipitous action.

I was wrong. She must have discovered what we did, and she isn’t worried. She has the whip hand, and she knows it.

When the session ended, I was filled with even greater dread.

I had Belzhek wait when I left the Council Hall. I crossed the square to the cathedral. I stopped just inside, looking down the length of the nave and up at its majestic heights. I was alone in the vastness of the sacred space.

Speak to Kalvan. You must. You can’t put it off any longer.

Only I did. The Emperor did not grant me the spiritual strength to seek out my friend. I let anxiety convince me to delay a bit longer.

What will he say about what I found? He is my friend, but he is also a cardinal of the Ecclesiarchy. I know what his duty is. There is no question there.

Delay, then. Give Montfor the opportunity to speak with him first. You will deserve what happens.

If she was going to reveal the existence of the portrait to him, wouldn’t she have done so already?

The time might not have been right. The stars may have aligned for her, thanks to our efforts.

What Montfor planned to do was irrelevant. My moral duty commanded that I walk down the nave in the direction of the vestry.

Instead, I turned around and crossed the square once more.

The light was failing when Belzhek turned through the Malveil gates. The days were growing shorter as winter fastened its grip on Valgaast. ‘Night is falling early,’ I muttered.

Belzhek heard me, and assumed I was speaking to her. ‘Not as early as it will in two days, my lord.’

‘In two days?’

‘The eclipse, my lord.’

‘So soon,’ I said. I had been too long away from Solus. I had forgotten about the eclipse. That would have been impossible if I still had the habits of a native son of the world. I would have been bracing myself for the event. Luctus would pass in front of our star in the hours before sunset. It was so large it would blot out the light completely, and night would fall early, with the suddenness of an executioner’s blade. It was a hard darkness. And the reminder made it loom ahead of me like a grim monument. I would speak with Rivas before then, I promised myself. I must not look up into that deep night with my conscience so troubled.

I saw Karoff on the grounds again, at the entrance to a different mine tunnel. He was just as motionless as before, oblivious to the frigid drizzle. We passed by some of the other serfs too, also motionless. They were all hard to see in the twilight. Twice I was about to call Belzhek’s attention to their presence, and both times the figures disappeared before I could utter a syllable.

I even caught a glimpse of a young Zander and Katrin. They too were still, though their heads turned to watch us. They were standing on the slope of a crane’s fallen arm. I felt a clutch of anxiety. They could so easily fall and be hurt. I was failing them again.

Then we were past, my children vanishing into the deepening grey of the twilight, and I was working hard to remind myself that they had not been real.

The doubts were strong. I wondered if the effort to see them as apparitions instead of real children in need of my help was not part of the insidious plan of the adult imposters.

I was braced, at least, for Karoff’s appearance at the house, and was not surprised when he opened the door to admit me.

‘Have my children returned?’ I asked him. I decided, provisionally, that he was real. He seemed solid enough. He answered when I spoke to him.

‘They have not, my lord,’ he said. ‘They have sent word that they will be not be returning until late.’

‘Did they give reasons?’

‘Your daughter has duties that are detaining her. Your son said he had an appointment with friends.’

‘I see.’ Likely reasons both.

Too believable. They’re avoiding you.

I could not blame them, even though I did.

I thanked Karoff and went to the dining hall. Serfs had my meal waiting for me. I sat at a table that seemed longer and emptier all the time. The clink of my silverware against dishes was the tiny sound of a pebble falling into a deep well. I brooded. My thoughts had no lack of dark subjects to orbit. I thought about Montfor. Now that I was back in Malveil, though, it was Eliana’s journal that preoccupied me more. There was a growing overlap between our experiences. She had seen only darkness in this house. I admitted that there was danger here. Pretending otherwise would be fatal.

The revelations in Silling had imposed a new weight of duty on me. I must fight to expunge Devris’ crime.

How? How will you purge the shadow of what he has done?

I ate, but tasted nothing. I didn’t notice when the serfs cleared the table. I had a vague sense of Karoff wishing me goodnight. I had been alone in the house for some time when I finally rose and took a proper account of my surroundings again.

I knew what I had to do. Eliana’s journal had shown me the way again. Though there was only darkness in what I was managing to decipher, there were lessons to be drawn. There was duty to follow. It might lead to salvation.

Eliana had realised that she had been avoiding the Old Tower. I had been, too. I had looked in it, briefly. It held the most extreme of the piles of discards. The serfs had been working on the chambers on the ground floor and in the west wing of the second floor. They had not touched the Old Tower. I was as sure of that as I was sure that it was night. The soul turned away from the Old Tower. The mind sought to pretend it did not exist.

I saw that this was what I had been doing, and that understanding removed the excuses to avoid it.

I headed for the tower, lighting every candelabra as I went. Where light could be, I summoned its presence. It was a welcome ally. It was also a weak one. When I reached the door of the Old Tower, shadows were reaching around me and pooling at the threshold. They refused to be banished.

I waded into them and opened the door. Inside, the frozen cyclone of debris awaited. I carried a lumen torch, and when I shone its beam at the discards, it was terribly narrow, the merest splinter of light. I could see better than I had before, though. And there were no windows. It made no difference to come here in day or night. It was the home of darkness.

Eliana had gone down. I would too. I started down the stairs, the cold breeze leeching warmth from my body. The steps had been rounded and made uneven by use and time. Their shapes were strange. I would have expected the worn depressions in the middle of each step caused by centuries of ascending and descending feet. Instead, there were depressions on one side or the other, sometimes both. Some steps looked as if a huge mass had depressed one end into the stairs below, the rockcrete behaving with sudden molten properties. I had to walk slowly. I almost lost my footing several times. The surfaces were as slippery as if they had been coated in slime, though they were dry.

I pictured myself falling and rolling down and down and down the staircase, breaking bones, coming to lie broken and helpless in the abyss below. There I would await death, an echo of the shattered remains of Eliana. It would be a long time before I would be found. I might never be. I would disappear, swallowed by the Old Tower and the secret it held.

Whatever Devris had done, it had been done here.

As I descended, stopping on each step to steady myself, I played the torch on the pile beside me. As slow as my progress was, it was enough to create the illusion of movement. The vortex of objects seemed to be spinning slowly, rising from the far depths, like some terrible engine starting to life in the heart of Malveil. The further down I went, the more the cyclone drew and held my gaze. I had to pause even longer on each step. I had to make a deliberate effort to look where I was going. And though I kept staring at the grandiose waste left by my ancestors, I saw nothing of use. Eliana had made it sound like the secrets of Malveil offered themselves up to her gaze here when she finally looked. They were hiding from me.

I judged I had descended as deep as the cellars in the newer portions of the house and still had far to go when I saw movement. Real movement, not an illusion. A small, thin, graceful waving in a breeze that could not exist. I drew closer, cold sweat breaking out. I saw the beautiful traceries, the rich scarlet against deep blue, the distinctive colouring of the pataarka bird’s plumage.

Veiss’ headdress.

The breeze gusted, buffeting the headdress, almost knocking me off my feet. It was as strong and brief as a harsh bark of laughter, and then it subsided.

The headdress sat on top of an upended bureau. I reached out slowly, half expecting and half hoping that it would vanish as soon as I tried to touch it. The feathers brushed against my fingertips, their touch inexpressibly gentle and lonely. My breath hitched. A sob caught in my throat, hard and painful as a stone.

My hand closed convulsively around the headdress. I pulled it from the heap. A narrow crust of dried blood was rough against my palm.

Veiss had come to Malveil when she had said she would. She had died here. Malveil, or the force that lurked within it, had killed her.

I headed back up the stairs. I fought the urge to run. I was no longer tempted to look at the heap, though the cyclone continued its pretence of turning in my peripheral vision. I took the steps carefully, moving as quickly as I dared. The darkness below was an open maw at my back. My shoulder blades ached with tension, anticipating the pain of a blow, of teeth, of something worse. The exit was so far away. For too long, it was behind the curve of the vortex, and I could not see it. I feared I would be here forever, caught and damned by the spiral.

I did reach the exit, and the Old Tower released me. It had struck its blow for the night. I hurled the door shut, and the boom of its closing resounded through Malveil like cannon fire. I could run safely now, though only a fraction of the candles I had lit were still burning. I rushed through the emptiness of the house, making for the illusory safety of my chambers.

There was a heavy knock, a single blow, on the main doors just as I reached the entrance hall. It sounded as if a large branch had been hurled against the house. I paused, panting and confused, then opened the door.

Tervine was there.

I was surprised he was strong enough to knock with such force, and I was surprised to see him at all. I had paid him last night. ‘What is it?’ I asked.

‘I need help,’ he said. He spoke without inflection.

‘What help?’ My grip on the headdress tightened. I prayed he was about to prove Belzhek wrong about his character and try to blackmail me.

Instead, he repeated himself. ‘I need help.’ His voice was barely above a whisper. His unblinking eyes stared right through me. He kept twitching, jerking back and forth so quickly he was almost blurred. Spasms of pain shook his face. A grimace, horribly wide, flashed across his features and was gone.

‘Show me,’ I said.

He walked away from the mansion. I followed. The rain had become a fine mist. It coated my face in an instant, chilling me. Tervine walked slowly, yet I could not keep up with him. He was jerking more and more violently, as if he were being pulled in two directions at once. I still carried the lumen torch, its beam weak in the damp night. I could hardly see Tervine beyond the beam, and he seemed to float just above the ground, his staggering, erratic steps carrying him further than they should. The more I struggled to keep up, the more distance there was between us.

He never vanished from my sight, though. He walked about halfway down the hill, then turned off the drive and moved between the giant iron skeletons of digging equipment. He turned again, going back up the hill a short distance. I kept having to look away from him to pick my way over stones and rusting girders. He stopped a few dozen yards from the entrance to a mine. As I hurried over to him, I tripped and fell. When I picked myself up, filthy with muck, he had disappeared.

I kept going. There was something in the cavern’s mouth. All I could see at first was a confused silhouette, a fusion of jagged lines with a softer mass at its centre. I was only a few feet away when the torch beam fell on Tervine’s body.

He had been pierced by spears of stone. They had emerged from the walls of the cave, a few inches thick and running from roof to floor and wall to wall. They were a web, impaling Tervine a dozen times. They split his torso open. Viscera had slid down the lengths of stone to hang just above the cavern floor. His head was ripped in two. The lower jaw was five feet from the upper skull, dangling from a spur that had pierced him on a diagonal.

There was nothing remotely possible about anything I saw. The stone spears fused seamlessly with the edges of the cave mouth, as if the configuration had always been here and the corpse had grown around it like moss.

The ground was covered in blood. The drizzle was slowly diluting it. Streams ran down the incline into the cave, feeding the thirst of the mine.

Tervine had just died, and he had been here forever. I could not guess how he had come to be here. Perhaps he had wanted to see me. Perhaps he had been lured. Perhaps he had walked in his sleep.

How he had come to be here did not matter. This was what Malveil could do. It could kill whom it pleased, then show its handiwork to me at its pleasure.

CHAPTER 16

I could not go back to the house. I went downhill, growing numb in the chill of the drizzle. I had a single purpose.

Speak to Kalvan. Confess to him. Tell him everything, and tell him now.

The foolishness of my delay bordered on the heretical. But even now, I wasn’t sure if I would have done things differently. Eliana still needed to be saved. I couldn’t save her alone.

Things moved in the darkness around me. The shapes were indistinct, and vanished whenever I looked to see what company I had. I saw Tervine again not long after I had rejoined the road. He came gradually and smoothly up the hill, his haunted eyes staring in the direction of the site of his death.

‘I need help,’ he said, the words a toneless, mindless refrain. ‘I need help. I need help.’

He walked on and disappeared. He passed me once more a short distance away from Karoff’s gatehouse. ‘I need help. I need help. I need help.’

There were other figures, motionless in the rain. I saw Karoff and the serfs again. I also saw Katrin and Zander. The adults. Cold statues gazing at me.

The masks are coming off.

I stopped outside the gatehouse. The windows were dark. Water dribbled steadily from the eaves. I could wake Karoff and have him summon Belzhek to take me to the cathedral. Only I didn’t know which Karoff would answer my knock. I had no certainty it would be the real one.

I couldn’t be sure there was a real one.

I moved on into the night, making the long walk to the Square of the Emperor’s Bounty. It was a journey of several miles. I was already wet and chilled to the point that I did not think I would ever be warm again. The chill went down through my soul. The walk was a penance for everything I had failed at, and for everyone I had failed.

I had lost track of time. I had no idea of the hour. The streets were as deserted as ever in the industrial sector, and they were quiet beyond that shell, the misery of the night driving all who had homes or shelter to find them.

I was not alone, though. The spectres of Malveil were with me. In the shadows of doorways, at the far ends of streets and in the gloom of narrow alleyways, they were there, stillnesses that watched, shapes that were just clear enough that I could tell who they were, yet vague around the edges, dissolving into the mist and dark.

Once, and only once, I asked myself again if they were phantoms of my mind. The headdress I held gave me the answer, once and for all. Malveil was using dreams and phantasms on me, and the line between apparition and real person was blurred, but I knew I was not dreaming now, and whether the figures I saw were visible to anyone else or not, I was not imagining my ordeal.

Sodden from the rain, the headdress hung limply in my hand. I did not know how Malveil had killed Veiss. It seemed to have pulled a nightmare out of my past to do it. I could believe the house was capable of almost anything. Even this. And the cruel implications of Veiss’ and Tervine’s murders were sinking in. Malveil had killed them because of their relationship with me. Their deaths had nothing to do with them. Malveil had stolen their lives of meaning. They were relevant only as a means to my torment.

Did they know why they died? Throne, I think they did. That would be worse than dying in ignorance. That would be more cruel.

I cursed the house. I cursed Devris Strock and what he had done to our family. I was tottering on the edge of an abyss of despair. There seemed to be no point in struggling any longer. My family’s legacy was a sick joke. My mission on Solus was another, a thing of twisted irony. My walk of atonement was a lie. The sin that lay at the foundation of Strock power was too great ever to be erased.

During that walk, the urge came to leave Malveil forever. To walk away and keep walking until I found the welcome of oblivion. The urge was piercing, acute and brief. It stabbed me, and then it evaporated. It vanished for one simple reason.

Eliana.

I vowed I would not abandon you. I will be true to you, my love. I will not leave you again. I will save you.

My lips moved, repeating the vow silently, and then, at last, I saw her again. She was far away. I was on the last stretch of road leading to the Square of the Emperor’s Bounty, and she was several hundred yards ahead of me, at the entrance to the square. Her figure wavered in and out of my vision, thin and fragile as a hair in front of my eyes. She was further than she had ever been since I first began seeing her. If her forgiveness was tentative, I could not blame her. But she was there again. I had a chance.

No matter how much I hated what Malveil was doing, it had also given Eliana back to me, even if only for a short time.

That mattered. That was everything. That had dictated my choices before tonight, and it would do so again in the future. I made no excuses and sought no absolution for that decision. It was the only one I could make, and it felt like it might be the only thing left in my life for which I had no regrets.

Eliana had vanished again when I reached the square. In a daze of grief, guilt and mournful hope, I crossed the slick flagstones to the cathedral. The doors were shut, but a chattering servo-skull flew down from its perch among the gargoyles. Its teeth clacked together with a stuttering, mechanical rhythm as it performed an ocular scan. Recognising who I was, it issued a binharic squeal, and the locking mechanism on the other side of the door released, granting me entrance.

The interior of the cathedral was dark. There were only a few dim lumen globes, every ten yards along the nave, bathing the marble floor in a low crimson glow. There was just enough illumination for me to make my way towards the back. Above me and to the sides it was pitch-black. It was like walking down a narrow plank through the void itself.

The darkness rustled. Silence twisted itself into sibilant whispers. Laughter haunted the edges of my footsteps’ echoes. The tendrils of Malveil’s influence reached even into this sacred ground. I walked faster, as if I could outpace my spectres.

The rectory was attached to the back of the cathedral, linked to the main building through the vestry. Another servo-skull registered my identity and flew off through conduits to wake Rivas. I didn’t wait. I pounded on the door of the vestry, as much to block out the sounds of the whispers as to call the cardinal.

Rivas opened the door after a few minutes and ushered me into the vestry. The illumination in the chamber was warm, and I collapsed gratefully into the chair Rivas offered me. He sat beside me, looking very worried.

‘What’s happened?’ he asked.

‘Too much.’ Shivering with cold, I recounted everything that had taken place since I had last spoken with him. The shadows in the room seemed to darken, but the whispers had stopped. For the moment, I had a refuge. It was only temporary. Horror, and the duty to fight it, waited for me in the night outside.

When I was done, Rivas said sadly, ‘I asked you to keep me informed.’

‘I am now.’

‘You know what I mean.’

I nodded. ‘There were things I felt I needed to understand for myself first.’ I looked at him. ‘Well? Is my family beyond salvation?’

‘I hope not. I devoutly hope not. The Strocks are Solus’ bulwark against the Montfors. You represent what our nobility must aspire to.’

‘Can any number of good works expiate what Devris did?’

‘Good works alone cannot, no. You need the intercession of the Emperor to cleanse your house.’

‘That can be done?’

‘I want to say yes. There are sacred texts I must consult first. We have a battle ahead of us.’

I grasped his hand when he said we. ‘Thank you,’ I said.

‘You are my friend,’ he answered. ‘We are fighting not just for your family, but for the soul of our world. If you are destroyed, Solus will never again crawl out from under the control of the Montfors.’

‘What I do not understand,’ I said, ‘is why that hasn’t happened long ago. Why haven’t the Montfors used that painting against us? Why hasn’t Veth Montfor used it against me? If I am truly threatening to her, why not destroy me now?’

‘She can’t use it,’ said Rivas. ‘It is the most damning proof of Devris’ heresy, but it is a proof so dangerous, it cannot be used. It must always be hidden. Simply possessing such a cursed object could see the Montfors condemned before the Inquisition. If they had revealed it as soon as they discovered it, that would have been one thing. But they did not. They have kept it to themselves, and that fact becomes more damning for each succeeding generation of that house. The deeds of your family seek to expiate the crime of one ancestor. The secret they keep incriminates them more and more deeply. They need some other kind of proof.’

‘The painting traps us both.’

‘If the evil can be purged, then you will be free. The painting becomes Montfor’s crime alone.’

‘So we must prepare for battle.’

‘Where are your children?’ Rivas asked.

‘I’m not sure. They were going to be late returning.’

‘Not this late, surely. It is almost dawn.’

It had taken me longer to walk here than I had realised. ‘Then they are at the house.’

‘They must leave. Tell them when you see them. They must leave and not return.’

‘I think it would be better if that came from you,’ I said. ‘Your words will carry more weight in this matter.’ I was thinking of Zander’s reaction when I had tried to talk to him about Eliana. And Rivas would know if he was speaking to real children or not.

Is Kalvan real?

Yes. I have seen him nowhere else. I just felt his arm under my hand.

‘All right,’ Rivas said. ‘I will speak with them. In the meantime, you will stay here. When I am ready, we will confront Malveil together.’

‘No. I have to go back.’

‘In the name of the Emperor, why? I implored you before to leave the house. I am begging you not to do this.’

‘I understand. And you must understand that I must.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘I finally saw Eliana again tonight,’ I said. ‘I have abandoned her for the last time. If I do not go back, I break my vows to her.’

‘There is no Eliana!’

‘There is. She is real. I know that with all my heart. She is as real as I am.’

More real than anyone else around me.

‘One day,’ Rivas pleaded. ‘Give me one day.’

‘I can’t.’

‘You know what you are risking?’

‘I think I do. If I am killed, then so be it. And there is no reason for me not to go. The spectres follow me. I’ve seen them in this city. I saw Eliana at the foot of the Cardinal Reinhardt Bridge. I saw her at the edge of the square. I heard them moving in the cathedral.’

‘What taint is this?’ Rivas whispered, horrified.

‘One I know we cannot allow to stand. We must destroy what Devris unleashed once and for all. It has trapped Eliana in some kind of prison. I have to try to save Eliana and–’ I’d been about to say and the children. I stopped myself. Which ones does he believe in? The adult ones. Tell him something he can understand. ‘The work will not die with me. Katrin and Zander will carry it on.’ They did say that, didn’t they? If the adults are real, then that is true. ‘I’ll keep everyone away. No one will be in danger except me.’

‘Like Adrianna and Tervine?’

‘They came to Malveil. They died there. I can’t keep people away from the house if I’m not there.’

Rivas stared at the floor, thinking. At last, he said, ‘I can see there’s no talking you out of this.’

‘There isn’t.’

‘Very well. I’ll have you driven back.’

‘Thank you. For everything.’

I saw no phantoms on the return trip. I felt stronger, determined. There was action to be taken. I was always better when I could bring the fight to the enemy. Maybe the spectres sensed it.

I had no fear of my own death. Failure, dishonour, damnation, the destruction of those entrusted to my care – those were the things I feared.

The house was quiet when I entered it again. I mounted the great staircase warily, anticipating horror around each corner. Gloom and silence greeted me. Nothing else.

I did not pause outside Zander’s and Katrin’s doors. Whether I heard nothing or signs of life, either could be a deception. I had to remain focused and not let the house distract me from the true battle that would come tomorrow. Let Rivas make himself ready and gather the weapons he would need for this campaign. I would prepare the terrain as best I could from here.

And Eliana would know I had not left her.

I was in a state so far beyond exhaustion it had no name when I collapsed into bed, yet I did not fall asleep right away. Tervine’s mutilated body rose before my mind’s eye, and next to it was Veiss’ corpse, crying out for justice. I groaned with horror and guilt, and gradually, Eliana came to my rescue.

Her image grew stronger in my imagination. Seeing her again, even from a distance, after I had fled like a coward in the Vault Secundus, gave me a hope that was a rich nectar, soothing yet agonising for my soul. Longing, joy and grief were a single burning intensity. She would come back to me, and this time I would make true amends. The need to make amends was all the greater because the pain of her loss was as strong and fresh as the first moment of bereavement. I had dreamt that I could speak to her one more time and say what I had to say, and make a proper farewell. The dream had become a nightmare, and the nightmare had become part of my waking reality. But so too had a miraculous hope. I would see her again. That certainty was a kind of ecstasy.

‘I love you, Eliana,’ I whispered.

I was sinking away from consciousness. The longing followed me.

‘I miss you so much.’

The grief came too. And the regrets, not just for all the things unsaid and undone but for the things that were said, and were done, all of the joys, little and great, that I would never feel again. I could hope to free Eliana. I could hope for a farewell with meaning. But what had been lost would not return.

The sound of her laughter. The sceptical upturn of her voice when I said something stupid. The casual touch of a hand on the back of my neck. The amused look of a shared joke.

All gone. Memories only now. Memories that were uncertain, distorted, incomplete, fading. Loss was not a single event. It was a terrible, merciless process. Eliana’s death was only the beginning of losing her. Time would erode her image in my mind until there was nothing left except the pain of regret and the consciousness of the full, miserable, pointless cruelty of loss.

‘I want you back!’ I cried out in my dream.

And in my dream, she answered. Eliana came to me.

I turned on my side and she was there, in the bed, and there was her smile, and there were her eyes. There was the promise of comfort that had been taken away forever.

‘Oh, my love,’ I whispered. I wept.

‘Shhh,’ she said. ‘Everything is all right. I’m here now. I’m here now.’

She cupped my cheek with her palm. A thumb wiped away my tears. I wept again at that touch. I knew it so well. I felt the warmth of her skin against mine, and there was one of the lost joys returned to me. I whispered her name and reached for her. Then she was in my arms, and I was in hers.

We kissed. The beginning of the kiss was filled with joyous disbelief. Our lips barely brushed, as if their touch would end the dream and hurl me back into the cold hardness of grief. She did not disappear. She kissed me back, harder, and I responded in kind.

We moved from disbelief to tenderness to passion.

My tears were running, and between the kisses, she smiled once more and said, ‘It’s all right. I’m here now. I’m here now.’ We held each other with greater urgency.

Eliana’s grin was wide before me. Too wide.

‘It’s all right. I’m here now. I’m here.’

Eliana changed. Her body softened, melted. Flesh came apart in stringy masses, flowed like quicksand and reformed with scales. With horns. With laughter like the clanging of terrible chains.

Her fingernails were like claws.

Like spikes.

‘I’m here now. I’m here now.’

Her voice was rough, the smile spreading, her cheeks splitting. Flesh sloughed from bones, wrapping itself about me. Her hair was like a web, a spider’s web, and then webbed flesh slapped around my head.

‘I’M HERE! I’M HERE!’

Her snarl was in my ear, her teeth biting my lip, and I screamed. I thrashed, but I was drowning in an exultation of flesh. Choking, suffocating, I screamed and screamed in muffled horror for the dream to release me, for the flesh to let me go.

At last I woke, howling and sobbing. I could not see, not because there was flesh-hair over my eyes but because they were closed, and it would be all right, I could open them now, it was just another nightmare. And so I opened my eyes.

I caught a glimpse of something vanishing back into the dream, the hint of a massive pincer.

And it had to be a dream. There was no Eliana in my bed.

But there was blood. It was mine, flowing from cuts in my back and a puncture in my side where it felt like something had been.

On the bed was the depression where Eliana had lain, and around its outline were writhing fragments of pale skin. They twisted on themselves, shrinking, disappearing, and as they dissolved, they giggled with satiated lust.

My mouth was wide open, painfully open. My howl grew too big. It caught in my chest. Only a faint whistle emerged, the sound of the shame that should have torn me in half.

And the flesh of the nightmare laughed, and laughed, and vanished.

CHAPTER 17

It was some time before I could draw breath, and when I did, it was with wrenching, ragged gasps. I was beyond tears. I moaned, the sound emerging from me as if claws had yanked my heart from my chest. It began as a keening whine, my eyes squeezed shut against the world, against the traces of what I had done. When I opened my eyes, they rolled back, my stare utterly blank. The entire world was a monstrosity I could not face.

I tore at my flesh with my nails, scraping long welts in my left arm, clawing back and forth until I bled, whimpering in shame. I attacked myself as if I could tear away the taint of what I had done.

‘Obey, and be purged,’ I prayed. ‘In obedience, there is no room for thought.’ I scraped harder, and now blood flowed down my arm. If there had been a whip in the room, I would have flogged myself until I had flayed every inch of skin from my back.

‘I did not do this. Emperor, grant that I did not do this thing.’ Unholy flesh had lingered on my bed after I woke, but that was the key. I had woken. Malveil had attacked me in my sleep. I had fallen to foul temptation.

That wasn’t Eliana.

But she felt so real…

Not her. Wasn’t her. Wasn’t wasn’t wasn’t.

Skin curled under the nails of my prosthetic fingers. Pain was expiation, but there wasn’t enough pain. Not yet.

It seemed like her because I have memories of her. She was made from my mind. The sin is mine and not hers. She was not here.

Malveil was trying to make me fear her. It was trying to drive us apart. I should draw hope from that. The attack should make me even more determined. It meant that I was a threat, that I really could do something for Eliana.

And the attack had very nearly worked. When I tried to think of Eliana, all I could picture was her body turning to a formless, enveloping mass of hungry flesh. It was my shame alone that kept me from surrendering completely to horror. Malveil had overreached. In desperation, that was the splinter of hope I clung to. I burned with self-loathing. I wanted to consign my body to flames, to purge my sin and my weakness, to consign the filth I had become to ashes. That was what Malveil wanted, I was sure, and that blow had landed. My hatred for myself, though, kept me from drowning in a horror of Eliana.

I was the one who must be punished. Not her.

I still believed in her. In saving her. More than ever, her salvation would be my own. The only way I could wash away my shame was by fulfilling my vow to her.

My left arm trembled. Pain throbbed from wrist to shoulder. It was a mass of welts and bruises and blood. My thighs were raw and bleeding too. My body was tainted. I did not think it would ever be clean. My soul was wounded too.

But not killed. The war was not over. I would not surrender. I would defeat this house.

I stayed in my chambers, watching from the window, until I saw Katrin and Zander leave the house. I could not face them. I could not trust them. I did not trust myself with them. If they were real, then Rivas would warn them away from Malveil, and, with the grace of the Emperor, they would be safe.

Like Adrianna was? Like Tervine was?

If they were imposters, I would not have to deal with their pretence.

Rivas would keep his promise. There was no question of that. He would come today, and we would do battle with Malveil. In the meantime, I would prepare the field as best I could.

I dressed as if I were going to council. The long governor’s coat concealed the blood seeping through my shirt. Karoff was waiting for me in the entrance hall when I descended.

‘Shall I call for Belzhek to take you to the Council Hall, my lord?’ he asked.

‘No,’ I said. ‘I won’t be needing her services today. Nor yours. I wish to be alone. I want everyone out of the house.’

‘Until this evening, my lord?’

‘Until further notice. No one is to set foot in Malveil until I say otherwise.’

The old major-domo could not keep the frown from his face. He looked at me with concern. ‘With respect, my lord, and with the most profound apologies for the presumption, I would beg you to reconsider.’

‘Your misgivings are noted and appreciated, Karoff, but my decision is final. This is my will. Please see that it is done immediately.’

He stayed where he was. The struggle to break from immediate obedience must have been huge. ‘I would not be doing my duty to you if I did not urge you to change your mind. There is… This is…’ He struggled for the words. ‘I believe it is dangerous for you to stay.’

‘I know,’ I said gently. ‘That is why I want you and the others out of here.’

‘My lord, please do not ask this of me. I have seen what lies down this path. I do not want to lose another Lord Strock.’

How many have you lost? The thought struck me. I grew suspicious. Were there more than Leonel? How long have you been major-domo here? I have seen you in the night. Have you walked these halls from the start? Have you always pretended to serve us, when you are loyal to Malveil?

‘I am doing what duty dictates,’ I said, my voice hardening. ‘I expect you to do the same.’

‘It is in the name of that duty that I am standing here, my lord.’

I stepped towards him. ‘Leave,’ I said. ‘Now. Or I will know that you are not what you pretend to be.’

He saw the threat of violence in my eyes. He backed away. ‘Yes, my lord.’

I would have drawn my sword if I had had it with me. Karoff’s resistance had made me wary. I stayed where I was in the entrance hall, watching the departures until I was sure all the serfs had gone. Then I followed them outside to observe them as they walked away. They trudged down the drive, not at all like apparitions. They were solid in the daylight, without vagueness. The sky had cleared for the first time in days, and watery sunlight washed over the grounds of Malveil. The lines of the world looked hard and brittle. What was real could not be trusted. Its strength was illusory, its stability merely provisional.

The serfs did not seem to be phantoms. Seem. I would not trust anyone that was linked to this house. I waited until the last of them were out of my sight, then went inside and locked the doors.

I retrieved Eliana’s diary from my chambers and took it to the librarium. There were only a few pages left, but it had become so illegible, so crowded with mad scratchings, that deciphering the last of her rational thoughts would take hours. This task felt like a necessary preparation for the battle. If there was even one more insight into the nature of the foulness in Malveil buried in these pages, I had to find it. I dreaded what was waiting for me at the end. I dreaded the journal turning into a suicide note. Yet it was my duty to read it.

I sat down in front of the window and began the laborious process of winnowing out the words from the madness.

I have done my last walk of Malveil. Was I commanded to do so? Maybe. I don’t know. I am forbidden from knowing which thoughts are mine now.

Write smaller. Look how big these letters are. They will never do. Make them smaller. Half the size. In half again. See? Yes. Like that. Squeeze the thoughts down to the bone. Maybe they will be mine.

Mine for what?

My legacy. Yes. I have one too. I am more than a tributary to the cursed river of the Strocks.

I have walked. I have seen. I have gone to the Old Tower again. Oh. Oh, I have truly seen.

I want you to read this, Maeson. I hope you read this. I have things I want to tell you. You think you know so much about duty. Do you think there is a difference between it and slavery? I’m sure you do. Maybe there is. The difference between a slave and a fool.

What about fate? You liked to talk about the destiny of the Strocks. Their destiny is their duty, their duty is their destiny. Empty words and empty thoughts. Gestures only. Meaningless.

Everything is meaningless.

I cannot be abandoned when everyone is empty, when they were never here, when I was never present either. Our flesh covers a void, and only for a short time.

Listen to me about fate, Maeson. I know you are reading this. Fate is meaningless. That is its purpose. It destroys all hopes and dreams and goals. They are curses we inflict on ourselves so that we may suffer when they burn.

Everything is empty.

Empty.

Empty.

I hate you, Maeson. It is because of you that I have learned what I have learned. I curse your family. I curse you. I want your destruction. I will have it.

I am with you, Maeson, as you read this.

I see you. In the librarium. Before the window.

I am behind you.

The journal fell to the ground as I leapt from the chair and whirled around. Light was fading. Time had slipped away while I prised out Eliana’s sentences, one isolated word at a time. The librarium was descending into gloom. But I could see Eliana clearly. She had her own sulphurous lustre. Her hair and her dress waved back and forth as if in a vortex. She stared directly at me. There was a greater force of presence to the phantom than there had ever been. She had been waiting for this moment. Waiting for me to read everything. Waiting for me to understand.

To feel the curse.

She reached out with both arms, as if inviting me to an embrace. Her hands, though, were crooked talons. They would tear me open. They would shred my body and hurl the pieces to the winds.

‘Maesssssson,’ Eliana hissed. Her lips parted in a hating, snarling grin. ‘I’m here, Maeson.’

My knees buckled when I heard the same words she had uttered in my dream.

‘It will never be all right, Maeson. I’m here. I’M HERE. I’M HEEEEEEEEEERE!’

The last word turned into a shriek of rage and hunger. Her mouth opened wide, wider, wider. It was too wide, and it kept opening. The upper jaw kept going back, as if on a loose hinge, back and back and back, her skull crumpling and disappearing beneath it, until her jaws were open a full hundred and eighty degrees, her teeth pointing upward, her tongue rising from the open neck like a serpent, twisting higher, becoming a clicking, chitinous thing that searched the air for prey, for me.

That is not…

I could not complete the thought. This was Eliana. This was the Eliana as she was not. A devouring thing. A hateful thing.

A thing that had come to destroy me.

Her movement was sudden, smooth, a floating strike. She came directly at me, flowing through obstacles, the scream louder and louder, and the window panes rattled with a sudden wind that roared into being with Eliana’s wrath.

CHAPTER 18

I ran. I collided against a bookshelf with bone-jarring force, bounced off it and stumbled as I struggled to keep my feet. The eyeless, shrieking phantom pursued me. I rushed from the librarium into the entrance hall. I had no thought except flight, no idea except to leave the house behind. My vows were forgotten.

The living Eliana had been right. Everything was meaningless.

Despite the horror that was reaching after me, I came to a sudden halt in the entrance hall. The main doors were open, and Veiss was there, standing on the threshold and peering into the house with a look of confusion. She was not entirely present. She flickered like static on a damaged pict screen, as if she were an image imperfectly arriving from the past. As she entered the house, something materialised in the air far above her. It was a hideous amalgamation of parts, a thing of limbs from different creatures, a patchwork that had become a monstrous whole. With hooves and claws it dropped from the ceiling. Its fleshy, pale torso had two huge, pincered arms. Its articulated tail was that of a colossal scorpion, and ended in a stinger so huge it could have been a talon.

A talon as I had seen wielded by tyranids on Clostrum.

The abomination dropped from the ceiling, its tail stabbing downwards and through Veiss’ skull. Its long jaws crooned and fluted a song of sensual pleasure and horror, one I began to respond to even as I was frozen with terror. A glistening pink mass emerged from the floor. The thing plucked the headdress from the corpse, then scampered away in the direction of the Old Tower, the speed of its movements belying its size. The patchwork fiend loped through the doorway, Veiss’ body dangling from the end of its tail.

Eliana’s scream was right behind me. Her hand touched the back of my hand, the hand that I knew so well, but cold, cold, cold, and grasping. I broke my paralysis and sprinted through the doorway.

Outside, there were hints of movement everywhere. Things were struggling to emerge from the walls. Forms gathered in trees and capered over the gables of Malveil. The shapes were still just the suggestions of fiends. They were tearing through into the world. They were not present quite yet. The complete forms I had seen in the house were not physically present. They were re-enactments, memories of events. The things in the trees and on the roof and in the ground were barely more than ideas, but they were foul ones. Illness and pleasure, rage and the promise of endless metamorphosis took their turn to scrape at my soul as my eyes fell on the squirming crimson and green and violet and blue. Clouds of flies erupted from the earth like geysers, and some of the swarms were singing.

I looked over my shoulder when I reached the drive. Eliana had vanished. The awful shriek had stopped. A moment later, I heard her scream again. The sound was different. It was a very human cry of terror. It came from the east, from the direction of the tower that held my bedchamber. The chamber that had been hers. The tower at whose base her broken body had lain.

Though the world around me trembled with the advent of unspeakable horrors, I slowed in my flight and turned my head, as Malveil directed, to see another echo.

I turned to see my wife die.

I turned, I thought, to see her fall from the tower. Instead, she was on the ground, still alive, and in the clutches of another abomination. The creature that had killed Veiss was like an animal. This one was a monster of deep, malevolent intelligence. It was horned, and a hooded robe draped muscular flesh of a deep, violent pink hue. One of the fiend’s three hands cradled a great tome. The book’s pages whispered a language I could not understand, yet my ears began to bleed at its sound. Its syllables spoke to me with hints of destiny, of fates determined millennia past or horrors not yet born but whose arrival, aeons from now, would be determined, irrevocably, by actions on this day.

As the horror held high its book of fate, it placed Eliana’s body on the ground, then stepped on her spine, crushing it. It looked at me as it did so, and smiled, as if receiving applause from an appreciative audience. Then, muttering to itself, the abomination broke bones and arranged limbs, creating the picture of a suicide out of torture and murder. Choked, gargling moans came from Eliana right to the very last.

The vision faded away.

It was still day, but the light felt old and brittle.

The huge shadow of Luctus was moving in front of the sun, turning day into twilight. The eclipse had begun. Night was rushing down.

Light was vanishing behind Luctus.

The movement of monsters began again. The creatures had stilled while I witnessed Eliana’s final moments and the beginning of her long torment. Now they moved again, their actions angry and joyful and dancing and savage. They pushed and pushed at the veil that separated them from reality. Things much more solid than echoes threatened to come for me.

The thing that Eliana had become shrieked once more. It appeared in the doorway of Malveil. I had been commanded to witness, and I had been released. I was Malveil’s plaything.

I ran. I could not fight. At some level, I knew I could not flee. I ran all the same. I ran down the hill into the deepening gloom as Luctus devoured the sun. I ran, and all about me the grounds of Malveil were stirring to unholy life. Things wailed and sang inside mine shafts. The wind howled through the dead trees. It rang cables against the rusted arms of cranes. Things flew on the wings of the wind and danced on the limbs of fallen machinery.

I tried not to look at them. I was half blind with terror and barely saw where I ran. I followed the road downhill, Eliana’s shriek following me. Then I heard a sound that made me want to weep with gratitude. I heard an engine, its sound so ordinary, so banal and thus inimical to nightmares. I rounded a bend in the drive and had to throw myself to the side of the road to avoid being hit by Rivas’ car. I fell, rolled and hit a hill of ejecta so hard I was stunned.

The driver slammed the vehicle to a halt. It skewed across the road. Rivas got out and rushed over to help me up. He was in his full Ecclesiarchal regalia. It weighed him down and gave his movements a solemn, prayerful slowness.

‘Are you all right?’ he asked.

I pointed back uphill, expecting to see Eliana’s spectre closing in on us. But though the wind’s ferocity was undiminished, the grounds had fallen quiet. The movement had stopped. The horrors had ceased their efforts to emerge.

I told Rivas what had happened as succinctly as I could. I trusted that he would believe me, and he did. Once I was steadied, he returned to the vehicle and took out his cardinal’s staff and heavy book, as holy in its appearance as the monster’s had been foul.

‘Go back,’ he told his driver. ‘Return to the cathedral. Stay there and pray without cease until you hear from me again.’

When we were alone, Rivas said, ‘This will be a hard battle. And all the more vital for its difficulty.’ He took a deep breath, bracing himself for the effort, and began the walk uphill.

‘Do you know what we are fighting?’ I asked as we slowly made our way back. I could not imagine any way to combat what I had seen. If the abomination of Malveil could be fought, I needed to know that. I needed the hope that came with a plan of action.

‘I know some of its nature. I know some of what we must do.’ He gave me a thin smile. ‘I have some friendly contacts in the Inquisition.’

‘The Inquisition understands this?’

‘The Ordo Malleus does.’

I shook my head. Like anyone else, I knew little of the Inquisition beyond the need to avoid its displeasure. I had never heard of the Ordo Malleus.

‘They fight daemons,’ Rivas said.

Daemons. The word filled my mind. It seemed to rise from an atavistic abyss, and I wanted to hide from it, to burn the word and what it represented from my head.

‘There is much that is still hidden from me,’ Rivas went on. ‘It was a task to know where to look, and whom to speak to, and what to say that would not bring destruction to those who do not deserve it. But I know something. I know enough. Malveil is a thing of the greatest evil, Maeson.’

‘That much is very clear to me now. I should have listened to you sooner. I should not have come back here. I was deceived.’

He placed a hand on my shoulder. ‘In truth, I don’t know how much of a difference anything you could have done until now would have made. The history of your predecessors is a bleak lesson.’

‘You mean the absence of that history.’

‘True.’

The eclipse reached totality just as Malveil hove into sight once more. Night swept over us. Luctus was triumphant, the day murdered by its vast shadow. The house looked down at us, coiled and poised to strike. Its quiet was a threat. It was taking the measure of a new enemy.

‘It knows who you are,’ I said.

‘I’m sure it does.’

‘I wonder if anyone has ever challenged it directly before.’

‘There has been no record kept of any attempt to fight it,’ said Rivas. ‘None, at any rate, that I could find.’

‘That is why it erases history,’ I said. ‘It keeps its threat hidden until it is too late for those who finally sense it.’

We paused at the main doors. In the darkness of the eclipse, the entrance was a waiting maw. The black windows gazed at their prey, their darkness full of terrible knowledge.

I looked up at the sky. The stars had come out, and their presence emphasised the huge circle of black they surrounded. An eye of void had opened in the firmament, and there was kinship between it and the abyss that waited for us inside Malveil.

‘The Emperor protects,’ Rivas intoned.

‘The Emperor protects,’ I repeated.

He raised his staff in challenge to the house. ‘I walk with the Emperor, and He with me. I am nothing, but I am everything, for He speaks His will through me. Fear me, unclean things, as you surely fear Him.’ He lowered the staff and nodded to me.

‘The Emperor protects,’ I said again.

‘He surely does. Now and forever.’

We walked through the open door.

The darkness in the house was profound. I felt along the wall until I found a lantern. It lit with great reluctance. Its glow was weak. The shapes of the entrance hall seemed distorted, as if their shadows had physical substance and would cut our flesh if we touched them.

‘We must strike the abomination at its heart,’ Rivas said. ‘If at all possible, the purification must begin at the source of the taint.’

‘Where Devris made his pact.’

‘Yes.’

‘The Old Tower,’ I said. ‘The core of the evil is there. Of that much, I can be sure.’

The journey through the halls was a long one. The eclipse had sunk so deeply into the bones of Malveil, it seemed that the house was the true source of the night. I did my best to give us some illumination. I had little success. None of the lumen globes worked any longer. The lanterns and torches were sparks in the void. We could see where we must go, and that was all.

Silence slithered through Malveil like a living thing. It coiled around the creaks of our footsteps and the deeper groans of the house. In another building, those would have been the sounds of settling. Here, they were the low snarls of Malveil preparing for battle.

The house had delighted in tormenting me. My agony had been its game, its pleasure. Rivas was something different. He came armed.

‘The Emperor protects,’ Rivas intoned. ‘Before His gaze, the abomination falls to ash. The light is His. The strength is His. Hear me, Malveil. I name you that you may know the Emperor beholds you, and judges you. Terrible is His wrath. It comes for you, and will scatter your powers like chaff in the wind.’

The windows rattled in answer. The wind outside howled in anger.

The door to the Old Tower stood open before us.

Rivas noticed my surprise. ‘What is it?’ he asked.

‘I locked that door. This feels like an invitation.’ Malveil wanted us to descend further.

‘The abomination is proud,’ Rivas said. ‘That will be its downfall. Where do we go now? Up or down?’

‘Down.’ The frozen cyclone came from below.

‘Down,’ Rivas repeated. He nodded, then opened his book, the pages falling open to a much-read spot. It was too dark to read the words, but Rivas looked upon them all the same, quietly mouthing the prayer he knew was there. He kissed the book, and kept it open. He stepped forward and struck his staff against the first of the steps heading down. ‘We are here!’ he announced. ‘Foul power, we counter your pride with our humility and our trust in the God-Emperor. Hear His footsteps!’ He struck each step as he descended, the sharp sound echoing loudly through the tower. ‘The Emperor marches with us. This is the sound of His coming. This is the sound of your doom!’

I grabbed a torch from a sconce just outside the tower and followed closely behind Rivas. The feeble light pushed against the darkness, and the darkness pushed back, solid and deep as an ocean. As soon as Rivas started to pray, the draught became a wind, steady and hostile.

Down we went, down as I had not gone before. We descended with purpose. We followed the spiral until we passed the spot where I had found Veiss’ headdress, and we kept going. Down, down, down, past the detritus of the personal histories of all my predecessors. I understood the accumulation better now. I understood why Eliana too, towards the end, had begun adding to it. The past was too monstrous to be allowed into the light. It had to be buried, crushed below ground by the weight of all the other pasts. Generations of Strocks, as their doom had come for them, had done what little remained in their power to do and sacrificed their pasts, their legacies, their histories and their identities to the effort to hold back the heart of Malveil.

And Malveil hurled their pasts upward. The blast only appeared to be static. It was not. It turned slowly, but it turned, and when it sensed prey, it turned faster. So it was now as we gradually dropped further and further into the depths. The cyclone moaned and ground with its tectonic spin. Smaller objects tumbled over each other as larger ones shrugged upwards. The edges of the slow storm glinted in the torchlight, revealing individual possessions trivial and important, all that had become part of a futile last act of defiance by the victims of a cursed lineage. I saw a golden astrolabe, armillary spheres of jewel-encrusted bronze. I saw a huge sundial, at least five feet across, its gnomon of iron carved to resemble one skeletal arm wrestling another into submission. I saw a discarded stained-glass window, its design invisible to me except for the hint of a frowning reptilian eye.

The sundial and the window disturbed me. Their designs were disquieting, and the objects gave the impression of great, inhuman age. They were not among the mundane discards of the sacrificed lives. They were something else. I felt that they had risen from below. They were something twisted that belonged to the house, and not to any sane human.

I wondered how many other such things were in the great pile, slowly moving upwards to visibility and discovery.

Rivas kept up a steady litany of prayer, invocation and anathema. He paused in his recitations a short time after we had passed the sundial. ‘We are very far below ground,’ he said.

‘Yes. No cellars could be this deep.’

The stairs continued down into the dark with no sign of an end.

‘Very well,’ he said. ‘Then we shall continue.’

We did. Endlessly, around and around the great spiral of the Old Tower, down and down and down. I echoed Rivas in his prayers. I gave the responses invoked by his calls. Next to us, the cyclone stirred and turned. Its movements increased in speed with the same almost imperceptible pace as the progress of our descent. The foundations of the house groaned with the deep voice of a mountain. There were no other unholy manifestations. Malveil was holding back its blows.

I feared to think how strong they would be when they finally came.

I did not notice the glow at first. It was too faint. I registered only the fact that I could see some of the objects around us a bit more clearly. At the same time, my unease grew. Strange fragments of thoughts shimmered through my mind, unable to cohere, slithering like mercury. When I realised there was more light, I also saw that there was something wrong with it. It was worse than the darkness. It did not behave as light should. It dripped and ran like water. Its colours, as they intensified, were without name. Unnatural radiation crept towards us in rivulets from the depths. It flickered, scattered into droplets, then reformed, a slime of maddening hues.

I took Rivas’ arm, stopping him. He did not resist. His prayers faltered as he stared at the glow crawling up the walls and the stairs.

‘That is warp energy,’ I said.

I had been fortunate in my journeys through the immaterium. The Geller fields of every ship I had been on had held. Once, though, they had begun to crack under the strain of a warp storm. The tempest was powerful enough to throw us off course, and we had returned to the materium a hundred light years from our goal and eight months after we had made the translation to the warp. During the worst of the crisis, though the shutters had remained firmly closed over all viewports, traces of warp energy had leaked into some compartments adjacent to the outer hull. We had sealed them off immediately, but the sight of that light that was not light, of those colours that were not colours, of the flickering, coiling flames of madness itself had stayed with me. The horrors from my memory were with us again.

‘Then this is the result of Devris Strock’s crime,’ said Rivas. ‘He opened a portal to the empyrean in these depths.’

‘That is where the horrors come from?’

‘It must be.’

And our riches, too.

The sudden blossoming of mineral wealth beneath the grounds of Malveil could not have a rational explanation. It could have an irrational one, though.

The slithers of light grew stronger as we descended. The cyclone of debris spun faster, and it was rising now. I pictured it erupting from the roof of the Old Tower, dispersing the tainted relics across the land, Malveil spreading its touch far and wide.

‘We can’t go down much further,’ I warned. I no longer believed there was a bottom to this well. The Old Tower went on forever, its foundations anchored in the warp.

‘I know,’ Rivas said. ‘A short distance more. We will have only one chance. We must make it count.’

I agreed. We kept going, and a few minutes later we were rewarded for our perseverance. The stairs came to a wide landing. They continued to descend beyond it, but here was where we would make our stand.

We had left behind the rockcrete construction that formed the above-ground structure of Malveil. Here the steps and walls were black granite. There were no bricks. They were an unbroken whole. Instead of being carved, the steps looked as if they had extruded themselves from the curve of the walls. And on the floor of the platform was the design of an eight-pointed star. The deep grooves in the stone did not look as if they had been formed by any cutting tool.

This is where he did it. This is where Devris entered into the pact and damned our family forever.

Rivas stayed outside the circumference of the star rune. ‘We will not set foot on this unholy sign,’ he said.

We stood together, and Rivas opened the book once more. He kissed the pages again, held the staff high, then slammed it down, striking the rock with his most savage blow yet. ‘The Emperor commands!’ he shouted. ‘Who can defy Him?’

‘None can defy Him,’ I responded.

‘There is no light except the Emperor’s light. There is no god except the Emperor. In His light, all false things must burn. Burn then, creatures of lies and darkness! Burn, abominations! Burn!’

He spoke with the fire of sanctity. I had often said that Rivas was a saint, and now I wondered if he might truly be one. His voice thundered in the well of the Old Tower. It rose to the invisible roof. He was inspired. Here was the force of the holy, come to bring a reckoning to the foulness of Malveil.

‘The Emperor will not suffer the abomination to live! You are judged, unclean thing! And being judged, you must perish!’

‘Perish!’ I shouted.

‘There is no mercy for the daemon in the Emperor’s sight!’

‘No mercy!’

Rivas raised his arms, the book and staff his weapons of execution against the abomination of Malveil. ‘Let the light of the Emperor purge this house and make it clean!’

And there was light. True light. Rivas was at its centre, and it spread outwards from him. A halo became a sphere, and the sphere expanded, pushing back the darkness of the Old Tower. The cyclone began to slow again. The groans of the house subsided.

I felt hope again, true hope, hope that was sanctified by faith. The Emperor was mighty, and He was acting through His loyal cardinal. We stood with the Emperor, and by His will, the darkness was lifting. We would defeat the enemy in Malveil. We would know what it was.

I felt something more than hope. I exulted.

We will see the truth. We will find your weaknesses. We will know the identities of the horrors that you nourish. We will know what gods they serve.

We will see what lies in the warp. We will know the infinite and the terrible.

We will know change, and wrath, and excess, and plague. We will see the Throne, and the Maze, and the Palace, and the Garden.

We will know the names of–

I cried out and pulled away from Rivas. I clawed at my skull, trying to pull out the monstrous illumination that was trying to force its way into my consciousness, and from there into my soul.

The light was a trap. It was Malveil’s attack. Revelation was upon us, revelation that no human should ever be forced to endure.

It took Rivas a few seconds longer to know what was happening to him. He was bathed in brilliant light, hard and white as bone. He had stopped praying. His mouth and eyes were wide circles as vistas of monstrous truth opened up before him. Part of him awoke to the danger, and he began to moan in horror. Tears of blood formed at the corners of his eyes. His holy text burst into flame, and more fire surrounded the head of his staff. The flames of crimson and violet and green and blue entwined and fought.

With a violent jerk, Rivas threw the staff and book at the centre of the eight-pointed star. Their fires brought them together, and the staff curled like a serpent around the book.

The rumble of Malveil’s voice began anew, the grinding of stone coming closer and closer to forming hideous syllables. The walls bulged. Huge blisters formed in the stone. They became translucent. Things stirred eagerly within them. The blisters burst, and the revelling abominations were free. They came down the walls and through the air towards us, a deluge of horrors. There were things of hideous sensuality wielding pincers that could cut a man in half. There were horned monsters with crimson hides, bellowing with rage. There were more of the bulky, laughing pink abominations I had seen earlier. There were rotting, tumour-ridden creatures who intoned thankful prayers as they made for us. The walls of Malveil had opened up to all the shades of insanity. The monsters that even our worst nightmares tried to shield us from were here in the tower, and they were the house’s answer to Rivas’ prayer.

‘Emperor help us,’ Rivas whispered.

There was no one to hear.

The daemons fought with each other to be the first on the platform. Some went tumbling down into the farther reaches of the Old Tower. The robed daemon who had broken Eliana’s body extended its arms in a mocking imitation of Rivas. Its hideous laugh sent splinters of broken mirror through my mind. In another few moments we were surrounded on the platform, and there were still more coming.

The circle of daemons paused, savouring the moment before they closed on their prey. As they did, I saw that their eyes were focused entirely on Rivas.

He realised this too. He turned to me, his face a study in fear, despair and desperate determination. ‘Malveil has not finished with you yet,’ he said. ‘Make it pay.’

‘I will,’ I promised. I don’t know how. I could not say those words to a man on the verge of death. Then I looked at the torch in my hands. I thought of the apparition I had chased from the house, the spectral arsonist every one of my predecessors had also pursued. ‘The Emperor lights my path,’ I said.

He started to smile.

The daemons surged forward. I ran, and left my friend to his destruction. The daemons flowed around me, parting like water. I sprinted past them, up the stairs. I looked back, and saw they had seized Rivas and were competing for the pleasure of his destruction. He struggled, shouting holy imprecations at them, still defiant though his voice shook with terror.

That was my last sight of Rivas. The curve of the stairs took me around the churning vortex of discards and hid him from view. Then Rivas began screaming and begging and choking, and there were sounds that were very wet, and there were sharp cracks.

He wouldn’t stop screaming. The Old Tower shook with the roaring, gibbering laughter of the daemons and the wailing of my friend. As his shrieks reached a new pitch, I ran faster. I needed to get away from that sound, because what I heard in that extremity was a saint who had lost his faith.

CHAPTER 19

I flew up the steps two at a time, daring the house to throw me down. Malveil had mocked and stolen my every purpose since I had returned. It had twisted the paths of my entire life, and those of every Strock since the great sin of Devris. It had taken the light that Rivas had brought to the darkness and turned it against us. It would never tire of tormenting the playthings that it had made of the Strocks. But I was not done fighting. I would kill the house, and die with it if need be. No matter the cost, I would end its reign of damnation.

Rivas’ screams finally faded away, though I feared his agonies had not ended. The daemons shouted and laughed, raged and sang. The fluting melodies of the monsters of excess were mixed with bloodthirsty ravings. Bells tolled, and whispered chants climbed the tower, insinuating change and destiny. Though I climbed as fast as I could, I was slowing down. My legs were heavy, my chest aching with every laboured breath, and I was still far from the Old Tower’s door. There was no sign of it, and now that I had left the platform behind, I had no sense of my progress. The cyclone spun, and the objects within it climbed faster than I could. In the race against the vortex, I seemed to be losing ground. It was as if I could keep climbing forever.

I began to wonder if that might really be the case. Exhaustion set in, dulling the edge of my determination. I circled around and around the tower, endlessly struggling up a treadmill of stone. I had not even escaped the traces of warp energy. They were around me, thin rivulets of non-light writhing up and down the walls and dancing over the vortex, an aurora of madness.

Soon I could not run any longer. I dragged myself up the steps. I could only think as far as the next rise, the next movement of my legs. When I looked up, I saw only the unbroken wall. There was never any change. The violent revel of the daemons followed me, though the abominations had not come into sight. They did not have to. I was not going anywhere.

I did not know how long ago Rivas and I had entered the Old Tower. Malveil was stealing time from me, as it had so much else. In return, it was giving me a dark infinity, existence reduced to stairs without end, a purpose without expression, and all the exhaustion of hopelessness.

I will not let you win. I will not pass into your shadows in so pointless a fashion. I will hurt you. You will know I have fought back.

I thrust the torch to the side, touching its flames to the edges of the cyclone. The trailing edge of a rolled carpet began to smoulder. The papers in an open chest ignited. The vortex created a wind as it turned. The carpet exploded into flame and fire spread through the vortex like a spiralling vein of poison.

I kept the torch next to the cyclone as I climbed. More and more objects caught fire. They seemed eager to burn, kindling for a conflagration that had been too long in coming. The thread of fire became a ribbon, and the ribbon became a river. It very quickly grew hot in the Old Tower. With a huge, muffled roar, the cyclone became a colossal torch.

I was inside a chimney. It was hard to breathe, but time moved forward again. There was change now. The entire centre of the tower was a column of flame. From below, barely audible over the fury of the fire, the daemonic celebration turned into anger. The abominations would be coming for me. I was hurting the house.

The exit from the Old Tower came into view.

I have burned your heart, and forced you to release me. You have weaknesses. You can be destroyed.

I found new energy and struggled forward to the top.

Stabbing, burning pain consumed my face. My lungs seemed to curl in the heat. Every breath should have been fatal. I staggered through the door and slammed it beside me. The iron of its frame was already too hot to touch. The fire inside the tower would escape soon enough.

I moved through the house, spreading doom. I set fire to carpets and tapestries. I torched paintings. In the rooms piled high with debris, I created new bonfires. Before long, the flames no longer needed my help. I threw the torch away. I fled down halls while tongues of fire raced down the ceilings ahead of me.

Though every breath was precious, I shouted my defiance at the house. ‘You will not take me with you! I am the phantom that has been waiting to burn you down through every generation! You were the fate of the Strocks! Now I am yours!’

I finally knew the face of the vision that had run through the house, setting it alight. It was mine. It had always been mine. I was the bane of Malveil.

Smoke filled the halls. Curtains billowed as if in pain. I listened for the snarls of daemons and vengeful spectres. There was only the voice of the fire.

The flames were greedy, hungry, furious. They attacked the house as if every surface were covered in a slick of promethium. This was a blaze centuries in the making. It had been rehearsed over and over. At last it had come. I had not saved Eliana. There had never been anything to save. I had lost her when Malveil consumed her and refashioned her into a creature of hate. But there would be atonement, perhaps not for my sins, but those of Devris. If I survived, I could only seek Eliana’s forgiveness in my memories of her.

As I burned the house, I was braced for the reappearance of Eliana’s spectre. There was no room for the horror, though, in the firestorm. The time of purging had arrived. I was its agent.

‘The Emperor walks with me,’ I gasped.

I fell to my knees in the entrance hall, coughing and choking, my eyes blind with streaming tears. I had to crawl the last few yards to the entrance, and the doors were shut against me. Malveil wanted me to die with it on its funeral pyre.

The agony of the flames and the suffocation of the smoke felt like victory. That gave me the strength to crawl another yard, another foot, another inch closer to escape.

I clawed up and grasped the handle of the door. With the last of my strength, I pulled. The door resisted, and then, perhaps because the fire had weakened the house enough, it gave way. I fell out into the night.

Into silence.

The eclipse was over. Luctus was high above, the baleful light of the full moon blotting out the stars. The wind had dropped to a whisper. On my hands and knees, I took in lungfuls of clean air.

I could not smell smoke.

Stifling a moan of despair, I turned around to gaze at the silent, untouched house.

Malveil has not finished with you yet, Rivas had said. It would never be done. It would never tire of its game.

‘What do you want?’ I whispered. ‘Why did you not kill me with Kalvan? What more point can you wring from me?’

The sound of a vehicle made me turn around again. It was my car. Belzhek had brought Katrin and Zander home.

I stood up, wavering more than I would have liked.

‘Father?’ Zander asked. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘What are you doing?’ said Katrin. Where Zander was puzzled, she was accusatory.

‘I tripped,’ I said. I didn’t think either would believe the lie. It was enough for them to know that was all I was willing to say. ‘Why are you here?’ I asked, turning the interrogation around and letting some of my hopelessness emerge as anger. ‘Didn’t Cardinal Rivas speak to you?’

Katrin refused to be put off. ‘Karoff is worried about you,’ she said. ‘I think he is right to be.’

Zander stepped forward, playing peacemaker. He took my arm when I started to waver again. My left leg was ready to give out from exhaustion. If not for my bionic limb, I would have fallen again and been unable to stand at all.

‘Let’s go inside, father,’ he said. ‘It’s cold out here.’ He sounded as if he were speaking to an infirm old man.

Perhaps he was.

No. That’s what they want you to believe.

Katrin suspended her interrogation for the moment. Belzhek drove off, and we went inside. There, I found the house completely untouched. There was no sign of the fire, not even the faintest trace of smoke. The halls were as brightly lit as they ever had been, though. I had a sudden mental image of myself running through the house, believing I was lighting fires when in fact I was simply lighting all the lanterns, sconce torches and lumen globes.

The house was using a different tactic against me, a different blade to exact a different kind of pain. It wanted me to doubt myself again. It wanted me to think everything that had happened was a delusion. The illusion of tranquillity was so complete and my state of exhaustion so advanced, it would have been so easy to fall into that trap.

You would have me question everything I have seen and heard since returning to Solus. You will fail.

‘Let’s go to the librarium,’ Zander said.

I had to gather my strength, so I did not protest. I let the figure who claimed to be my son lead me to the chair where I had been reading Eliana’s journal. The book was still where I had dropped it. As I sat, I contrived to kick the volume with my heel while appearing not to notice that I had. I knocked the book under the chair. I wasn’t sure why I wanted to keep it secret. Some part of me felt protective of it even now. I also didn’t want the other two to have any idea of how much I knew about Malveil.

‘Didn’t you see Rivas?’ I asked, returning to the charge before Katrin had the chance to do so.

‘We did,’ she said. ‘He warned us to stay away from here. He didn’t say why.’

‘Affairs of the Imperium,’ I muttered. ‘You should have obeyed him. Why are you here now?’

‘What are you talking about, father?’ said Zander. ‘You sent for us.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Just what he said.’ Katrin moved in front of me, pushing Zander back. ‘We received your message to return right away. What is really going on here? Why do you want to see us?’

‘Who gave you the message to come to me?’ I asked.

‘Cardinal Rivas,’ said Zander.

‘When?’

‘Less than half an hour ago,’ said Katrin.

Impossible. Rivas had been dead in the tower by then. Based on how much time seemed to have elapsed since he and I had entered Malveil, he had probably been dead for hours. Either Malveil had sent his phantom to my children, as it had sent Veiss to me, or they were lying.

Why would they lie?

Because they aren’t real.

They look real.

So did Veiss after she was dead. So did Tervine.

I was taking too long to answer. I felt their eyes on me.

There’s nothing wrong with their gaze.

That doesn’t mean anything. I felt the heat of the fire. Everything about that was real, except that it wasn’t. This could be another game of Malveil’s. Another misdirection. It shows me how to recognise the phantoms, and so prevents me from doing so when it really matters.

‘Karoff is very worried about you,’ said Katrin. ‘You sent all the serfs away?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Why?’

‘My reasons are my own.’ If she was real, she wouldn’t believe the truth. If she was a spectre or an imposter, it wouldn’t matter what I told her.

‘Father, be reasonable,’ Zander pleaded.

Katrin held up a hand, and Zander stopped. ‘It’s late,’ she said. ‘We’re all tired.’ That much was true. ‘There will be time in the morning to talk about this.’

Zander nodded and left the librarium. Katrin stayed where she was. She wanted to talk to me alone, and Zander had understood.

‘Do you understand why Karoff is worried?’ she asked. ‘He remembers what happened after Leonel gave the same command.’

‘He obeyed Leonel, so he can obey me.’

‘He will.’ She crouched in front of me. ‘But I won’t. I will not abandon you.’

Her face was as sternly impassive as ever. She spoke as she did in her lecture halls at the schola progenium. Every statement was an edict. Even so, this was this cold, careful person’s expression of love. I will not abandon you. As she had been abandoned. Her father obeyed duty, and evil destroyed her mother. Neither of us chose to abandon our children. Forces far more powerful than we were made that decision. Our lack of choice made no difference in the end. We had abandoned Zander and Katrin when they were young. They had each found their way to survive. He refused to take life seriously. She, the older sister who had had the responsibility for her younger brother, took everything seriously, and had sealed herself off behind an adamantine emotional shield. Safe behind it, she could never be hurt again.

My return had made her think about lowering the shield. Now she was reaching out to me, vowing that she would not subject me to what had been, in her experience, the worst of things. I would not be abandoned.

I wanted to take her in my arms and reassure the child that still lived, buried deep in the grown woman, that she would be safe, that I would not hurt her again. I wanted to tell my daughter that I loved her.

My left hand twitched with the impulse to reach out.

Exactly what Malveil wants me to do. This is all so very well done. A very good trap, very convincing. And if this is not my daughter, what horror will she become? And what has she done, or what will she do, to your real one?

That last thought made my teeth clench in anger. I said, ‘You have my thanks,’ and kept us at frozen distance.

Katrin saw that it was useless to say anything else, and she left.

I stayed in the librarium a while longer, giving my children time to fall asleep, then went up the stairs. I paced stealthily back and forth between the bedroom doors, wondering what I should do, trying to think how Malveil planned to hurt me next.

Through the children. How else? What do I have left?

Nothing. Eliana was gone. My closest friends were gone. If there was still a chance of defeating Montfor and returning honour to Solus, I couldn’t see what that was, and I didn’t care. I had ceded the battlefield. Another failure. Another defeat. Another shame.

I wondered if Malveil’s influence had extended to Clostrum. The house had had an iron grip on the destinies of the Strocks for as long as we had inhabited it. Perhaps it had always controlled us. Perhaps even Devris had never had a choice in his actions, from birth fated to damn himself and all the generations that would follow. And then there was me, so far away, ignorant of any events on Solus. Yet I had been brought back, as surely and inevitably as if I had been chained to Malveil all along.

Maybe the house had decided what would happen on Clostrum. Maybe it was that powerful.

I could never defeat something so strong.

I should flee. Before such invincible malevolence, flight seemed the single sane response.

Flight to where? It will find me on Solus. If it reached for me on Clostrum…

I could not surrender. I accepted that Montfor had defeated me because I no longer cared about that battle. It was irrelevant, a distraction, a lure Malveil had used as part of the web of torment it had constructed for me. Solus needed to be saved, and Veth Montfor had to be brought down. My duty had not ended, even if the events that created that duty had been manipulated by the house. But I did not care. The confrontation with Montfor would take place in a world on the other side of the fight with Malveil, and I could not imagine seeing that world.

But I would fight. Malveil had not taken everything from me yet. Even if retreating into cowardice and flight had been a possibility, I had to fight to the last.

There were still my children. Flight would not save them, either. And I would save them. That was all I had left.

I kept going back and forth between the two doors. I did not know how to fight. I did not know whom to save. It was possible that if there was a woman and a man sleeping behind these doors, they were my children. But if they were not, if they were embodied lies, then the real Katrin and Zander were here somewhere. I had seen them. Malveil held them.

I had to find them and save them. That was the atonement I had left. Death in that effort would at least be death with honour.

They would also be the way Malveil would attack me. It had already threatened them. It would not stop there.

And I could not strike first. I had to wait for the enemy to attack. Then I would fight back. One last time.

This had to be the end, one way or another. If I lost, there would be nothing left of my soul to play with.

Back and forth. Hesitating at the doors, thinking about knocking, of warning that danger was coming and that we must fight, then backing away in angry suspicion.

Back and forth, the hours of the night endless, the darkness forever.

And then, as I had known things must be, I heard the voices. Small voices, high voices. Children’s voices. The voices of a little boy crying out in fear and a little girl suddenly abandoned.

‘Father!’

CHAPTER 20

The children were calling from down the hall, in the other wing. I could just make them out. They were Katrin and Zander as I knew them, the children I had come home to protect. I called back to them, but they didn’t hear me. They were facing the other way, holding hands, walking towards the darkness at the far end of the hall.

‘Father! Father! Where are you?’

‘Katrin!’ I yelled. ‘Zander!’ I started to run to them. As soon as I began to move, the light dimmed. The lanterns on the walls faded to a dying-ember orange. The shadows at the other end were absolute. They reached out with long, taloned hands that stretched over the walls and ceiling, extinguishing the light, grasping for my children.

I called again, but they did not hear me. They couldn’t, because the house had stirred to life again. It rumbled. It snarled. Stones spoke in hollow, grinding whispers. Rockcrete cracked like thunder. The doors in the hall shook with heavy blows, barely able to contain the things inside.

‘Stop!’ I shouted. ‘Look at me!’

They didn’t. They still couldn’t hear me, but I could hear their every word. They pleaded for their father to answer.

‘Father, I said it was haunted!’ Katrin wailed.

‘It is! It is! It iiiiiis!’ Zander sobbed, clutching tightly to his big sister’s waist.

The doors rumbled beside them. Katrin stopped beside one. ‘Father?’ She looked at the door fearfully. ‘He might be there,’ she said to Zander.

‘I don’t want to! I don’t want to!’

I ran past the main staircase. I was in the same wing as the children now. I was moving so slowly, as though I were running underwater. ‘Do not open that door!’ I warned. ‘Katrin! Zander! Listen to me! I’m right here!’

‘Please, no,’ said Zander.

‘We have to,’ said Katrin, being brave, being the strong one, being the one who knew that if they could not see me in the corridors, then I must be behind a door. She reached for the handle.

Throne, let it be locked.

I was so close now, just a few yards from the children.

The door flew open at Katrin’s touch. She peered into the doorway. ‘Father?’ she said.

Zander looked up. ‘Is that him?’

They screamed. My children screamed in high, desperate, howling terror.

My hand was out for them. I was two steps away when something yanked them into the room with a snarl.

The door slammed shut.

‘No!’ I roared. With all the force of my love for my family and my hatred for the house, I slammed my bionic shoulder against the wood and battered the door open. I stormed across the threshold.

I found myself in the holding chamber in a medicae centre. It smelled of disinfectant generously but incompletely poured over the stink of death. The walls were a pale green. It was a big room with many cots, and many tiny shapes on them. It was not as loud a place as it should have been with all those children.

Two people stood by a bed in the centre of the floor. They both wore beaked medicae masks that concealed their faces. One wore the uniform of an officer from the facility. The other wore a councillor’s robes.

‘What about this one?’ said the medicae officer.

‘What do you think?’ the councillor said contemptuously. Even muffled by the mask, I recognised the voice. It was not one I could ever forget. This was Veth Montfor.

Zander lay on the cot, under a thin, grey blanket. Though he was only four, his face was withered like an old man’s. Blisters clustered at the corners of his mouth and under his nose. Coughs shook his entire body, and he choked up black phlegm. He breathed in with a wretched, struggling moan, his lungs giving a piercing whistle. After every awful breath, he coughed again.

The officer looked at the small handful of vials he carried. ‘We might be able to save him.’

Montfor shook her head. ‘He has no advocate. He is alone. This is the Emperor’s judgement. He was abandoned, and he is not strong enough to survive. Choices must be made.’

‘He is not alone,’ I said, striding up to the pair. ‘I am his father. I speak for him.’

‘It is a hard logic,’ the officer said to Montfor.

‘That doesn’t make it wrong.’

‘No,’ he admitted.

‘Are you not listening? Give him the treatment immediately. I am Lord-Governor Strock, and I command you to save my son.’

They walked away, leaving Zander to be another member of an anonymous choir of coughs and whistles.

His little hands clawed at his chest. His head jerked back, his mouth wide open as he struggled for air. The whistle was tighter, more high-pitched. It sounded like his lungs were petrifying. His skin turned an angry red.

I bent to pick him up. ‘It’s all right, Zander. I’m here. I’m here.’

I couldn’t lift him. I couldn’t move him at all. Because I was not there.

I had never been there. I had left, and then Eliana had left, and this was the cost.

I wept. I prayed to the Emperor and called Zander’s name again and again. My son did not respond. He could not hear the absent ghost.

He flailed more desperately. The red turned violet.

‘Help!’ I shouted to the void.

The whistling stopped. Zander lay still. The colour slowly began to drain from his face, the red giving way to grey.

Sobbing, I tried again to pick him up. This time, I could. Now that he could no longer feel any comfort, I could carry him. I howled in grief. He was light as air, yet I almost fell. The weight of the loss was too great. I weaved back and forth, shouting incoherently. I took my son and went after Montfor. I had to make her pay. There had to be retribution. There had to be justice somewhere in the galaxy.

My vision blurry with tears, I staggered through the holding chamber and out the door.

I was outside, holding my empty arms before me. Zander had disappeared. I was in a street outside the walls of a schola progenium. This was not in Valgaast. The schola looked more run-down. The rockcrete of its walls was cracked, unpatched. The building sat next to barracks of the Solus Nightmarch, and the road vibrated from the passage of heavy armour returning from training exercises. The gutters of the street were thick with rubbish, and the hab block facing the schola had collapsed or been demolished. Its ruins had been left to the elements, and a group of children were playing in them. One of them was Katrin. She was older than when I had left Solus. She and a boy about her age were facing off. Katrin was brandishing a brass rod she must have found in the ruins. They were about a dozen yards in from the edge of the road.

I made my way towards them over fallen rockcrete chunks. As I drew closer, I began to hear their argument.

‘Apologise,’ Katrin said. She held the rod with both hands. Her face was contorted with anger. Her body vibrated with its tension. The length of brass might as well have been a shock maul. ‘You can’t say that about my mother.’

‘She was a coward,’ the boy sneered. ‘She was weak. We’ve all heard. Vanja’s cousin is a Montfor, and she knows everything. She told us. Your mother was so sad about being alone, she did the window jump.’ He spat. ‘Pathetic.’

The other children had stopped playing and were gathering around the two opponents. They did not look friendly towards Katrin.

I hurried faster, tearing the right leg of my trousers on a jutting piece of broken iron.

‘Take it back,’ Katrin warned.

‘Make me.’ The boy grinned.

Katrin swung the rod and smashed it against the side of the boy’s head. His face went blank with surprise and pain. He had expected several more rounds of bravado, not an immediate attack. Then he dropped to his knees, screaming and clutching his head. Katrin hit him again, and then again, always bringing the rod down on his head.

‘Katrin, no!’ I shouted, and rushed to intervene. She was going to kill the boy.

Again, I was not there. Katrin was here because I had left, and then Eliana had died. She was the last to fight for the honour of our family, and she was alone. She had only her anger to sustain her, and now she had unleashed it.

I pulled at Katrin to no avail. I tried to catch the rod. Somehow, its trajectory was always a bit off from where I grabbed, its speed a little too great. She smashed the boy again, and there was blood everywhere. She hit him again, and I heard bone split.

The sound of the boy’s skull breaking open snapped the other children out of their fascination. Shouting, they rushed at Katrin. She dropped the rod and ran, cursing them as she leapt over the rubble.

I couldn’t catch up. I was clumsier than the children, and always several steps behind.

Katrin was making for the schola. They caught up to her at the edge of the rubble. They grabbed at her. She punched and kicked and spat. The children became a tiny riot of hate. As I reached them, two boys grabbed Katrin and threw her into the street. She fell over in front of an oncoming Chimera.

‘Stop!’ I shouted, my arms out as if desperation alone would halt the vehicle.

There was a terrible thump and the crackling of a bundle of wet sticks. Katrin’s head rolled away into the gutter.

I screamed. I covered my eyes, but the image was there in my mind. It would be there always. Her skull, rolling, rolling, rolling.

I screamed until I was out of breath and a string of drool hung from my lips. When I looked up, I was in Silling, in its spire’s study. There was laughter coming up from below. The door opened, and Zander came in, accompanied by Veth Montfor.

Zander was a young man now, barely in his twenties. He was drunk and worse. He swayed, giggling, and Montfor had to steady him. His pupils were dilated. He was pale, and too thin. He looked like he hadn’t eaten in some time. He was consumed by other appetites. His clothes were dishevelled, looking like they had been donned in haste. He was grinning wildly, at once satiated and excited for more.

There was blood on his teeth.

‘Zander,’ I said mournfully. I didn’t reach for him. I knew he would not hear me. I had always been absent. I was absent still.

‘That was extraordinary,’ he said. ‘No words, no words. Oh, that was… To do that, to feel that…’

‘You went too far,’ said Montfor. She absently stroked her breathing tube, her gaze narrowed with the disapproval of the expert libertine.

Zander laughed. ‘Of course I went too far! That’s why we’re here, isn’t it? What was it like for you the first time?’

‘There was no first time,’ she said. ‘You should not have done that.’

Zander spun around the room, arms out. ‘I’m floating!’ he cried, delighted. ‘Look at me! I’m floating!’

‘I’m having what is left taken out of my house,’ Montfor said. ‘It will be found elsewhere. But the militia will be alerted.’

Zander couldn’t stop laughing. ‘Listen to you! So stern and proper! Since when did you turn from excess? I saw what you were doing.’

‘I know where to stop. Excess without discipline is dangerous.’

‘Then it isn’t truly excess!’ Zander shouted. ‘I have surpassed my master!’ He flapped his arms. ‘The ceiling here isn’t high enough. I’m going to bump my head against it in a moment!’

‘Listen to me,’ Montfor warned. ‘You will be executed.’

‘The militia has to catch me first.’

‘How do you intend to escape?’

‘Can they fly?’

‘No. Can you?’

‘I can now!’ He moved to the casement and threw open the window. The great eye of Luctus looked in on us. Zander pointed to the moon. ‘There,’ he said. ‘They won’t catch me there, will they?’

‘No,’ said Montfor. ‘I don’t believe they will.’

‘Then I thank you,’ Zander said, still laughing. ‘What an evening!’ His eyes widened with his smile, new ecstasy suffusing his face. ‘What a grand evening!’

He leapt.

Montfor was already heading back to the door before the crunch of impact.

Broken by grief, crushed by despair, I moved to the window. Despite myself, I looked down to add one more horror to the images in my mind.

Zander had hit the ground head first.

‘Where were you, father?’

Katrin’s voice made me turn around. We were in the librarium. She was in the chair where I had sat an aeon ago, reading Eliana’s journal. She was a bit younger than the Katrin that purported to be sleeping upstairs. She wore her indoctrinator’s uniform.

Katrin looked up from the journal, her face ashen. ‘Where were you?’ she asked again.

I was standing in front of the window, and she appeared to be looking directly at me. ‘I didn’t know,’ I said, desperate for her to understand. ‘How could I have known? She knew why I left. You know what duty means. What could I have done differently?’

I trailed off. She was looking right through me. She had been speaking to a father who was not there, and never had been when it mattered.

Zander sauntered into the librarium. He was less dissolute than he had been in Silling. He was removing his councillor’s sash as he walked in. ‘What’s that?’ he asked.

‘Nothing.’ Katrin closed the journal. ‘It’s all nothing.’

‘Not the book. That.’ Zander pointed to a cloth-draped shape on the chair next to Katrin.

She stood. ‘It’s a gift from Councillor Montfor.’

‘You’re joking.’

‘I don’t joke.’

‘True.’

‘Did Montfor say anything in council?’

‘About this?’ said Zander. ‘No. I don’t think so.’ He frowned. ‘Now that you mention it, though, she seemed very pleased with herself. Kept making pointed remarks about honour and then smiling at me. I have no idea what she was on about.’

‘I do. She was thinking of this.’

‘But what is it?’ Zander insisted.

Katrin hesitated, visibly reluctant. Then, with a sigh, she pulled the cloth away, revealing the portrait of Devris Strock. She backed away slowly until she was standing behind Zander.

He stared at the painting, convulsively brushing his arms as though something cold had left trails of slime on his skin. ‘I don’t understand,’ he said, though the shudder in his voice showed that, at some level, he did. ‘What does this mean?’

‘It’s the truth of our family,’ Katrin said, her voice dead and flat. ‘It’s our destiny.’

‘It doesn’t have to be,’ I croaked. ‘Together we can fight it.’

But I was not there, and they did not hear me.

‘This is evil,’ Zander said. He took a step back from the portrait. He tried to tear his eyes away and failed.

‘Yes, it is.’ Katrin opened her long coat and pulled a bolt pistol from the holster at her waist.

‘No…’ I moaned.

‘What should we do?’ Zander pleaded.

‘I have been reading about our history,’ said Katrin. ‘There is nothing we can do. All has been written. All has been determined. There is only fate.’

‘I won’t believe that. The Emperor protects.’

‘Yes,’ said Katrin. She shot Zander in the back of the head. His skull exploded into mist. The shell smashed through the wall in front of him and kept going. Blood splashed across the portrait. It flowed onto the arms of the eight-pointed star and was absorbed into the canvas.

‘The Emperor protects,’ Katrin said. Her composure broke, and she let out a single, bitter sob in answer to the lie in those words. Then she brought the muzzle of the pistol to her forehead and pulled the trigger.

I was curled in a ball, eyes closed, tears running down my face, my hands over my ears, trying to blot out the sounds of my children dying yet again. I would stay as I was. I would not look again. I would not subject myself to another vision of horror that I could not stop, another tragedy flowing from the first act of abandonment in the name of duty.

Gradually, I realised that the only sound was my strangled keening. I was lying on floorboards. I opened my eyes. I was in the first-floor corridor, midway between Katrin’s and Zander’s bedrooms.

I used the wall for support to get to my feet. I stood still for a moment, finding my balance again. I was numb, but I knew that feeling would pass. Shock was protecting me. Soon the tidal wave of guilt would break through the flood wall.

‘Are you well satisfied, then?’ I asked Malveil. I could barely croak the words. My throat was so taut from weeping that swallowing was agony. ‘There is nothing left to take from me.’

I knew the truth now. Katrin and Zander were dead. They had been taken from me long ago. They had died and died and died before my eyes, and it didn’t matter which vision had been the truth and which ones were lies. Ultimately, they were all true. I had failed my children. I had abandoned them. Now they were dead. The ones who had appeared to me as adults were more illusions, more projections of my grieving, guilt-ridden soul, just like Eliana’s spectre.

There was no forgiveness. No atonement. No hope.

There was, though, one last thing for me to do. One last action to take.

My stride slowly becoming steadier, I headed for the tower and my chambers.

CHAPTER 21

In my chamber, I opened the grand wardrobe and dragged a battered plasteel weapons case out from the bottom. It had been with me through decades of campaigns. While human comrades had fallen, it and what it contained had always been there. I lifted it onto the bed and opened it. Waiting inside were my plasma pistol, my colonel’s sword of rank and my chainsword.

The ceremonial blade was carefully polished. It shone in the light of the bedside lumen globe. In the artistry of its workmanship and the precision of its lines, it was another reminder of failure. I did not deserve the rank it represented.

I deserve nothing.

‘What are you doing?’

Rivas stood in front of the closed door.

‘I didn’t hear you come in,’ I said.

‘You were too focused on that crate.’

‘Of course.’ What kind of a fool do you take me for? You aren’t here. You aren’t real.

He seems so real. Look at his eyes.

Just like we were thinking about the children.

Exactly. So we know better now, don’t we?

Rivas slowly walked towards me. ‘You didn’t answer me. What do you plan to do with that?’

‘I think you know.’

‘Put it down, Maeson.’

‘I’m curious. How did you come to be here?’

‘I couldn’t sleep for worrying about you,’ he said. ‘After speaking with Katrin and Zander–’

‘Oh yes,’ I snapped. ‘When you told them to come back.’

‘Yes. What is wrong, Maeson?’

I sighed, and looked up at the ceiling. ‘Malveil,’ I said, ‘I’m tired of the games. I’m bringing them to an end.’

‘Stop,’ said Rivas. ‘By the Throne, remember who you are. Remember your duty. Remember your oaths to the Emperor. Will you betray Him?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘I will not.’ I brought the plasma pistol up, pointed it at his face and pulled the trigger.

Nothing happened. Just the click of the trigger. The pistol was dead, inert.

Rivas shook his head. ‘You should know better than to try something like that.’

The numbness left me all at once. In a second, all my defences against the violence of my emotions collapsed. The grief and the guilt were so enormous, they should have killed me. When they did not, they ignited the flame of my wrath. My hate for Malveil and what it had done to me, what it had done to my family and what it had done to Eliana, was as colossal as my agony. It burned with the heat of a star. I could have cracked Solus in two with my bare hands. All this anger focused on a single point, on this mockery of my friend that stood before me.

I would no longer allow this thing to be.

I dropped the plasma pistol. With a wordless roar, I grabbed the chainsword. I depressed the stud as I lifted the weapon free of the crate, and it snarled to life.

Rivas’ eyes widened. ‘Maeson!’ he said in terror. ‘Don’t!’

I was no longer prey for illusions. I knew that the fear in the cardinal’s face was a lie, because the face was not real either. I brought the chainsword down in an overhead blow onto Rivas’ skull. The blade whined against bone. Then it cut through the cardinal. It was like breaking open a hollow tree. It felt like killing a man, but there was nothing inside. The shell that looked like Kalvan Rivas split in two, bisected by my blow, the halves of his face frozen in an imitation of terror. Then the body fell to either side of me.

I stood over the false corpse. My breath came out in rhythmic snarls. I was growling with the chainsword.

The body lost definition. Rivas’ robes and flesh flowed together, the colours fading until they were just an increasingly vague shape of light pink. Gradually, it melted away to nothing.

‘There!’ I shouted at the house. ‘Now we have truth! At last, it is time to end all illusions!’

I left the bedroom and descended the stairs, revving the chainsword’s motor.

Back in the hall, I tried Katrin’s door. It was locked. ‘Why would it be locked unless you are a deceit?’ I said. I leaned back and kicked the door with my bionic leg. I kicked three times before the latch broke and the door banged open.

Katrin was awake and leapt out of the bed as I strode into the room. ‘Father, what–’ she began.

‘I am not your father,’ I growled, and came at her with the chainsword.

She dropped into a crouch, supported herself with her arms and kicked out with both legs. She hit my prosthetic. Though I felt no pain, she struck hard enough to knock my feet out from under me. I fell, the chainsword howling with the speed of its revolutions as it cut through her bed. The room was filled with a cloud of shredded bedclothes and splintered wood.

Katrin ran from it, shouting for Zander. I was up again quickly and right behind her. I was fast, but she was faster, and as I came out into the hall once more, Zander was stumbling out of his chamber, confused with sleep, his eyes like a startled animal’s. The illusion was good, as convincing as Rivas had been. Zander’s expression was a silent plea for mercy that almost gave me pause.

They ran, I pursued, and Malveil burst into dark life. The floor heaved. The hall rocked back and forth like a ship in a storm. A deep choir of daemonic voices chanted an incantation to horror. I roared so I could not hear, and spun the teeth of my weapon with greater fury. I could not block out the chanting completely. The rhythms were claws on my being. A terrible meaning was rising to the surface. If I did not end things soon, I would witness a revelation my mind could not survive. And deeper yet than the chant was a slow, ponderous blast. It was the pounding on a drum as big as a mountain, the booming of an asteroid impact, the voice of an artillery gun to shatter worlds and the beating of a heart the size of horror.

I moved like a drunken man, staggering from one side of the hall to the other as the house chanted and rolled. The children reached the stairs ahead of me and started down. A wave passed through the floor as they did, and Zander lost his footing. He fell against Katrin and they both crashed down the staircase.

When I arrived at the top of the steps, Zander was curled on the middle landing. He moaned as he tried to get to his feet. Katrin had fallen further, and I could not see her from my position.

The Zander phantom’s pretence of vulnerability enraged me further, and I rushed down the stairs, heedless of the bucking. Anger gave me power, and it gave me speed.

Zander was upright when I reached him. Eyes wide, he stretched out his arms to ward me off. ‘Father!’ he cried.

I rammed the chainsword into his chest.

The blade ground through his ribcage. The teeth spun red. Bits of lung and heart sprayed into my face. Zander shuddered wildly as I pulled the blade up. It ended his scream. It moved up through his torso and into his neck. I was shouting in a storm of blood. I was shouting with triumph. I was shouting with furious joy because here was the death of lies. Now, I was hitting back at the house through the weapons it had used on me. For everything the house had done throughout the history of my family, for everything it had done to me and my loved ones, for the defeat on Clostrum, for the planet that had died because Malveil wanted its toy to come home, this was my act of vengeance. I drew the chainsword up, and it sawed through Zander’s chin and on up through his skull to his brain, until at last the twitching corpse slid wetly off the blade.

I paused for a moment, my teeth clenched in a snarl, my clothes and face drenched in gore. The house was not letting go of its lie willingly.

The chanting shouts grew louder. The walls bulged. Mouths formed in them, ten feet high. They howled at me. A wind came for me, buffeting me and trying to throw me off the staircase. I left Zander and went down to the ground floor. Other mouths opened in the walls, keeping pace with me. The chant was deafening, and the colossal pounding vibrated through my spine. It was all I could do to stay upright. But my anger was with me, and I was sustained now by the promise of victory.

One more lie. One more lie and it would all be over.

There was blood at the foot of the stairs. The spectre was feigning injury from the fall. I followed it to the entrance. The Katrin thing must have struggled with the door, because there was a larger scattering of red droplets there. I tried the doors. They would not open. I was trapped inside with the phantom. Good. I had no desire to leave until all was done.

The blood trail led me away from the entrance to the librarium. When I stepped inside, she launched herself at me with the family’s shield she had taken down from the wall. She struck my shoulder hard with the edge, knocking me back, and came at me again, swinging the shield viciously.

‘Why are you doing this?’ she screamed.

I did not answer. I would not engage with the house and let it twist my mind again. I concentrated on blocking Katrin’s attack. She was good and she was fast, but her training was not for the battlefield. I anticipated her next strike, and stepped back before it came. She overswung, losing her balance. I brought the chainsword up with a sharp jerk and smashed the shield from her hands. She tried to retreat.

She was too slow. With a swift blow from the side, I decapitated her. Her body remained upright for a moment, a geyser of blood erupting from the neck. Then it fell. Her head rolled on the floor.

Rolling, rolling, rolling.

It came to rest at the window.

The house stopped moving. The chanting ceased.

Finally, there was silence.

CHAPTER 22

I wiped the blood from my face. I stayed with the body, waiting for it to dissolve. Dawn broke, and grey light filtered in through the windows. It grew brighter while I stood there. I still hadn’t moved with the coming of full, cold daylight. Blood pooled. Blood began to dry. The librarium filled with the cloying stench of death. And the phantom did not vanish.

In the daylight, there was something monstrously banal about the body. Katrin’s head stared at me from its resting place, the glassy eyes wide in frozen shock.

The chainsword slipped from my hand. It thudded against the floor.

The corpse should be gone. The night was over.

I was trying very hard not to think as I stepped out of the librarium and looked up at the staircase. The mutilated remains of Zander were still on the landing. From the foot of the stairs, I could see one of his arms jutting up, soaked in blood, the hand splayed in protest.

I knew what I had done.

I couldn’t move. I had no direction. I had nowhere to run from myself, no way to shield myself from the enormity of my crime. I couldn’t even weep. Malveil had killed my children so many times in the night, and I had grieved so many times, all I felt now was the most monstrous kind of emptiness. I looked back and forth between the stairs and the open doorway of the librarium. I took half a step in one direction, then the other, and then I stood still again. If I did not move, time would stop. I would not have to make any decisions. I would not have to think. Something would make this present moment go away.

All too soon, I knew, the emptiness would be filled. I would feel what I had done. If only oblivion would come for me before that happened. If only Malveil was capable of that tiny mercy.

Instead, there came the heavy iron clang of the door knocker. It sounded like judgement.

Still I didn’t move. It took the second knock to jerk me into tentative motion. Very slowly, I turned to the door and stumbled towards it. Stupid, half-formed thoughts from a lifetime ago tumbled through my mind.

I’m covered in blood. I should clean. They’ll see and know. What if it’s Stavaak?

What does it matter?

Nothing mattered. Not any more. Why hide? I deserved judgement. I would welcome the human form. That would be the most extraordinary of mercies.

I opened the door, and found myself facing Veth Montfor.

She was alone. There was no sign of her driver. She must have left him and her vehicle at the entrance to the grounds.

I discovered that I was still capable of surprise. I was so startled, I reacted with defiance, as if there were still a battle to be fought with her. ‘What are you doing here?’ I demanded.

She gave me a long, evaluating look. She showed no surprise. She showed no emotion at all. ‘You’ve done it, haven’t you?’ she said.

‘Done what?’ Pointless, automatic reflexes had me ready to fight. My response was painfully absurd. I was standing there covered in my children’s blood.

The chainsword is in the librarium. That’s not far. Montfor can’t move quickly. I can kill her and silence her. I can…

The impulse faded, disappearing in the fog of despair.

I was not going to attack, and Montfor knew it.

‘Done what?’ she repeated, mocking but not amused. ‘Your atrocity,’ she said. She did not sound satisfied. She sounded cold, and oddly tired. ‘It’s always an atrocity.’

I stepped to one side of the door. ‘Do you want to see for yourself?’ I asked bitterly. ‘Come in. Why not savour your victory?’

‘I will never cross that threshold,’ she said. ‘Nor will you, I think.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Can you leave?’ She took a step back on the porch. ‘Can you join me outside?’

I had trouble understanding what she meant. It was as if the concept of a space beyond the walls of Malveil was becoming strange to me. I tried to do as she said. I could not take another step forward any more than I could levitate.

Montfor’s sigh rattled from her larynx. ‘Then it is truly done,’ she said. That buzzing monotone somehow sounded relieved. ‘We are finished with you. Solus is safe.’

The absurdity of her statement blew upon a faint ember of anger. ‘It will never be safe until your family is destroyed,’ I said.

‘You are wrong. The Montfors are its guardians. We have long stood for it against the Strocks, and the foulness your house has unleashed.’

‘You protect Solus from us?’

‘You seem surprised. How is that possible? Which of us is covered with blood? The blood of your children, if I am not mistaken?’

I said nothing.

She nodded. ‘I thought so. And yes, we stand on the ramparts for Solus. I will go further. We are the ramparts. Only the Montfors are strong enough to do all that must be done. The discipline of corruption is our weapon against the Strocks. It is how we resist. We know how far we can go.’ She pointed to the threshold. ‘I know what line must not be crossed.’

‘Why haven’t you turned us over to the Inquisition?’ I asked dully.

‘That has been tried. The Inquisition does not remember, but we do. The Montfors are the only ones who remember. Malveil rules by silence, but we remember. Even you, we will remember.’

‘Then you could have stopped this.’

‘No. We cannot stop Malveil. All we can do is try to contain the worst. We knew where to stop there, too. We know when not to stand in the way of what cannot be fought.’

‘You are cowards.’

‘We are not fools.’ She gave me her serpent’s smile. ‘Do not misunderstand me. I enjoy the life I lead. I will not give it up.’

It didn’t matter. I didn’t care any more. Let her drain Solus of all its wealth. I could no longer grasp the importance of others’ losses. ‘And who comes for me now? Stavaak?’

‘No one comes. No one enters until you are no longer a memory. Stavaak will forget too. I think, in his dreams, he may understand more than he knows. Or at least enough not to seek more understanding than is healthy. No, what comes for you is your destiny. I will let the house devour you, and we will rest in the hope that, its appetite sated, it will be quiet again for a time. Until the next Lord-Governor Strock comes from another branch of the family. There will always be another one of you, and we will always be ready.’

She turned to go, then stopped. ‘Would it please you to know you achieved your ends? Some of my allies overstepped the mark in their greed, and I did not rein them in. It was wrong to let Solus slip so far from its full responsibilities to the Imperium. That will be corrected.’

‘No,’ I said. ‘That makes no difference to me.’

‘I didn’t think so. Farewell, then, Lord-Governor Strock. I am grateful to see you destroyed.’

Montfor walked away, her cane tapping the ground. She did not look back. I watched until she disappeared around a curve of the drive. She was the last human I would see.

The door closed slowly, and when it shut, the clank of the lock was final. That was when the whispers began, calling my name, summoning me to my final task. There were many voices. Eliana’s was among them. I did not know the others, but I felt a connection to them. They were human, and I sensed a bond of blood and grief between us.

Respect the silence, the voices said. Obey the silence.

The house had fed, but it was hungry still. It had consumed my children and my wife. It had eaten most of what constituted Maeson Strock, and was eager to finish the task. It devoured our bodies and our souls, and it devoured our histories. As I responded to the commands of the whispers, I finally understood that the great masses of discards did nothing to force the horrors of the house down. That was another of its lies. The heaps and the great cyclone in the Old Tower were feeding it, funnelling the legacy of the Strocks completely into the jaws of Malveil.

I began to sob, finally, as I got to work. I had to climb the stairs and see what I had done to my son when I went past him to collect all that was personal, all that might tell the careful observer anything at all about me. I worked with the mindless persistence of a servitor, hauling everything from my tower down to the ground floor, seeing Zander again and again.

I tossed everything onto mounds in one of the rooms beyond the dining hall. Then the whispers grew in urgency, and ordered the worst thing.

One last task. One last journey. The hardest one.

I dragged Zander’s body down the stairs. In the librarium, I lifted Katrin’s corpse, slung it over my shoulder, then picked up her head. Cradling it, bowed under the weight of her body, I shuffled out of the librarium. I grabbed one of Zander’s feet and began the long, agonising voyage to the Old Tower.

All of you. Eliana’s voice stood out from the whispers. All of you at once.

I did as I was bid. I fell numerous times. I crawled a lot of the way, pulling two bodies at once. But at last I reached the Old Tower, and the door was open for me. Inside, I pushed the corpses of my children off the stairs. They fell to become part of the vortex. It was turning again, and from far below, beneath the whispers, came the chants and snarls of deeper, inhuman voices.

I descended, not because I accepted my fate but because I had no choice. I reached the platform where Devris had committed his great sin. Rivas’ body lay there in scattered pieces, his flesh and organs laid out along the lines of the eight-pointed star. At the centre of the rune stood the sundial I had seen earlier. When I stepped onto the platform, the arms of the gnomon twisted against each other, and the gnomon began to turn. A portion of the wall slid aside with a rumble. Inside the chamber beyond, things glowed with the unlight of the warp.

I crossed the final threshold, pulled by the chains of my fate, the chains that drew every Strock inexorably to the jaws of Malveil.

Eliana was waiting for me. For the moment, she was not the monster I had last seen. With her were scores of other phantoms, and I had seen their faces on the portraits in the halls. I was surrounded by my forgotten ancestors. They were gathered to welcome me among their number.

Then the wall closed again, taking away the last true light I would ever see. As the great dark came, the spectres changed, their features melting and distorting into the abominable shapes the house had given them.

‘Shhh,’ Eliana whispered. Her grin widened as her head caved in and her eyes vanished. ‘Shhh.’ Whispering. Hissing. ‘I’m here now. I’m here now.’

I screamed as they came for me. I screamed as Eliana wrapped her talons around my neck.

I screamed as the first moments of forever began.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

David Annandale is the author of the novella The Faith and the Flesh, which features in the Warhammer Horror portmanteau The Wicked and the Damned. His work for the Horus Heresy range includes the novels Ruinstorm and The Damnation of Pythos, and the Primarchs novels Roboute Guilliman: Lord of Ultramar and Vulkan: Lord of Drakes. For Warhammer 40,000 he has written Warlord: Fury of the God-Machine, the Yarrick series, and several stories involving the Grey Knights, as well as titles for The Beast Arises and the Space Marine Battles series. For Warhammer Age of Sigmar he has written Neferata: Mortarch of Blood. David lectures at a Canadian university, on subjects ranging from English literature to horror films and video games.

An extract from The Wicked and the Damned.

The sky was on fire.

As beginnings go, I think it has poetry. We were at war – when are we not? – and the world was burning beneath us. Beneath me. The air tasted of smoke and the heat pressed down on me, like the hand of the God-Emperor. My ears were ringing, but I could hear men screaming, up and down the trench-line. They were always screaming. Crying and wailing. My regiment was mostly made up of cowards and children, much to my chagrin.

The ferrocrete duckboards buckled beneath me as I pushed myself to my feet and fumbled for the laspistol on my hip. The mud – we’d taken to calling it ‘the soup’, for obvious reasons – beneath the duckboards was boiling from the heat of the barrage. The trench was sloughing into a new shape around me as I stumbled towards the nearest screams. The walls bubbled, bulging outwards or collapsing inwards. The ferrocrete frames of the line were cracked and pushed out of joint. Sometimes whole sections of the line – and everything in them – vanished into the soup. Like they’d never existed at all.

War is a hungry beast, and it gobbles its prey. A regiment can die in a moment, triumph can turn to tragedy, victory to defeat. Only by maintaining discipline can the hunger of war be held at bay. But discipline, like ferrocrete, can crack and burst, and vanish under the mud, unless someone tends to it.

Men moved around me, but I barely saw them – grey shadows, uniforms coated with mud and ash, environment masks giving everyone the same inhuman features. I didn’t often wear my mask, despite the way the heat bit at my lungs and sinuses. I wanted them to see me. To see my face. To see that I wasn’t like them. They needed to be reminded of that. I needed to be reminded of that. Standards – discipline – had to be maintained.

Coughing, I stumbled down the line, shoving men aside. They didn’t protest, or I didn’t hear them if they did. They saw my face, the black peaked cap, the coat – stained with mud though it was – and they knew me. Knew who I was, what I was. And they straightened at their positions. They went quiet. Like good soldiers.

But where there are good soldiers there are bad soldiers. There are always bad soldiers, in every regiment. The lazy and the cowardly. The unscrupulous and the mad. The God-Emperor saw them, and I saw them too. I had been trained my whole life to see them. To see the signs of faltering courage in a man, sometimes before the soldier in question even realised it. And then, to act.

Cowardice could spread like an illness, if left unchecked. And not just cowardice. Licentiousness, disrespect… these found fertile soil in untended souls. If not dealt with, they could bring a regiment to its knees. Cripple it, or even destroy it.

But not that day. Not then, with the sky burning with chemical fire and the trenches turning to soup around me. The screaming was bad for morale. Bad for the regiment. And I knew my duty.

Laspistol in hand, I swept down the line, moving quicker. The longer the screams went on, the worse the effect would be. Another lesson learned in the schola progenium. They’d taught me so many valuable things, there. I give thanks to the God-Emperor every night for those times, gruelling though they were.

The trenches I passed through were irregular canyons of mud, bolstered by support slabs of ferrocrete. In places, pre-fab bunkers of stone and metal had been sunk into the mud, their regimental markings obscured by grime and damage. Heavy environment netting had been strung over the tops of some places, in order to keep out the worst of the inclement weather. It didn’t work here – it rarely worked anywhere. But we strung it regardless, as the manuals insisted. We dug our trenches to regulation depth, despite the mud, and set our guns and placed our emplacements.

There is a right way to do things, and a wrong way. I know this. Another lesson, and one I took readily to heart. The right way was the way the God-Emperor wished it to be. The wrong way was the way of heresy, of disrespect and ill-discipline.

Armaplas firing pavises lined the top of the trenches, and men lined up behind them, standing on overturned crates or ferrocrete slabs. The sound of las-fire split the air as the soldiers vented their frustrations on the unseen enemy. It was always the same – during or just after a barrage, they would expend valuable charges from their lasrifles. The officers had given up trying to stop them from shooting at ghosts.

An odd word, that. Ghosts. But appropriate, I think, given our foe. They pounded us from afar, rarely daring to draw close. Rarely deigning, I should say. I couldn’t remember a day without their guns. Without that hateful rhythm. Even when they were silent, the air echoed with them. I couldn’t escape, even in sleep. If not for my training, I might well have been driven mad by it.

Some, among my charges, had been. The incessant bombardment ate away at their simple psyches, breaking their minds and spirits. When that happened, I had to be quick. I couldn’t allow the weakness to spread.

I reached the source of the screams after a few moments of laboured stumbling, and shoved my way through the grey crowd of masked loiterers. ‘Back to your positions,’ I growled, shoving men against the sides of the trench. ‘Get back. Back!’

They muttered darkly, their voices muffled by their masks, but they knew better than to argue. Arguing with a commissar was the equivalent of sleeping beneath a battle tank – one could get away with it, but only rarely.

When the space had cleared, I saw the screamer. He was young, and had torn his mask off, exposing milk-pale features and eyes so blue that I thought at first he’d suffered some injury. His uniform was spattered with mud and ash, and his weapon was nowhere to be seen. A medical corpsman crouched beside him, the caduceus on his shoulder plate faded and all but scraped away. The screamer did not appear to be injured. I holstered my weapon.

‘Why is he screaming?’

The corpsman looked up at me, eyes wide. He mumbled something, his voice muffled by his mask. I had never met a corpsman of any use. I shoved him aside and caught the screamer by the collar. He thrashed in my grip, boneless, like a worm. He babbled nonsense in that slurring dialect of Low Gothic shared by most of the regiment. I had never bothered to learn it, as most of them eventually figured out the right way to talk.

‘On your feet,’ I said, dragging him upright. ‘Answer me.’

His hand flapped uselessly at the wall of the trench, where bones were being squeezed from the mud like excrement. Skulls and femurs and shattered ribcages. The refuse of the battlefield. The mud cooked the dead, if the corpsmen didn’t get to them first. It boiled away the meat and muscle, leaving only bone. I paused, taking in the sight.

Sometimes, when the trenches clenched just right, the bones surfaced. They poured down and pooled across the floor of the trench. Most were reabsorbed before the trench settled, but sometimes they remained. I shoved the man back and plucked a steaming skull free of the soup. I held it up before him.

‘This? This is what you’re screaming about?’ I caught him again, before he could turn away. He was a coward, then. Like all of them. What use is a soldier that can’t face death? Like a gun that won’t fire.

The air shuddered as the dull crump of enemy artillery sounded. The trench shook and twisted as men lost their footing or fought to brace the ferrocrete slabs that held the bulk of the mud at bay. Fearful eyes darted in wild circles behind masks. A babble of voices rose. Between the mud and the screamer’s wails, they were on edge.

Discipline had to be maintained. And I had to be the one to do it.

I caught him by his flak armour and dragged him close. ‘Be quiet,’ I said. ‘Quiet!’ But he didn’t stop. Perhaps he couldn’t. I am no expert in the ways of the mind. Perhaps his had broken in such a way that the world about him had been reduced to something so infinitely terrifying that he could think of no other option than to scream and scream and scream… the noise of it was like a knife, digging into my head. Worse than the guns, almost.

I had to silence him. For the good of the regiment. For the sake of discipline. I dragged him towards the collapsed wall of the trench, and the bones. He tried to twist away, hands flapping at my arm. Weak blows. Weak mind. Weak link. I tossed the skull I held aside, and drove him face-first into the tide of bones.

‘Idiot,’ I snapped. ‘Coward. The dead can’t hurt you. But I will, if you don’t stop this foolishness.’

He struggled in my grip, whining. The corpsman had fallen over and scrambled back, and the others were watching. Staring. I wanted them to. I wanted them to see that there was nothing to be frightened of here. Nothing except me.

His scream changed, became a wail of desolation – a child’s cry. Weak, as I said. Too young for the battlefield, perhaps. But the God-Emperor had chosen him – had brought him here. The least he could do was show some courage. That was all He asked of His servants. The courage to do what was necessary, whatever the cost. I said this to him, to them all, as I held him there, in the mud, ignoring his struggles. The opportunity to impart a lesson was not to be ignored, even amidst the confusion of an artillery barrage.

His struggles grew more frenzied. I forced him deeper, until the bones were tumbling over my arms and slapping against my chest. His boots caught me in the shin as his hands dug futilely into the mud either side of his head. He clawed at the wall of the trench, still screaming, though I could only hear the barest edge of it over the guns.

And then, all at once, he went still. It was so sudden, I almost released him. But I didn’t. I held him for a moment more. Maybe two. I had to make sure, you see. He needed to understand the crime he had committed. Cowardice was the weed in the garden of victory. Fear, the vice of the weak. And I would suffer no weakness in my regiment.

When I finally hauled him back, it was clear that I had overestimated him. He had been weaker than I had imagined. I knew, in that moment, that I had done him a favour, and it annoyed me. Weakness was to be punished, not rewarded.

He was a deadweight in my hands and I let him fall. His body crashed to the duckboards and lay unmoving. His blue eyes, wide and empty, stared at nothing. I felt the gazes of the rest settle on me like hands and I turned, meeting their bewildered stares unflinchingly.

‘What are you looking at?’ I said, softly.

They said nothing. Could say nothing. Their lives were mine. To weigh and judge as I saw fit. And they knew it. Even as they knew I would not judge them unfairly. Some commissars might – petty tyrants, hiding behind His authority. But I was not one of them. The God-Emperor’s hand was at my shoulder, and His light in me.

Sometimes, I wondered if they could see it. If they can see it. The light, I mean. Or were their souls too simple to perceive such glorious luminescence? A question I have often asked myself, if I’m being honest. Am I blessed among the faithful? Or is such grace the common burden of humanity, shared by all, whether they realise it or not?

I confess, it troubles me.

But at that moment, I was not thinking of grace or light. I was thinking of the dead man at my feet, and the way his eyes stared up past me, as if seeking the stars. Blue eyes. No one in the regiment had blue eyes. I know, because it is my job to know such things. When everyone wears masks for the majority of a thirty-six Terran standard-hour day, you learn to recognise them by their eyes. By their voices, and the way they walk.

I recognised him, I thought. Not by name. But his eyes… had they changed? Minor mutation wasn’t unheard of, in such conditions as these. Another sign of weakness. His crimes compounded themselves, even in death. Or perhaps there was some toxin in the air, or in the soup, that had changed him. The thought sent a chill through me, and I admit, I glanced then at the mask hanging from my belt, and cursed my bravado.

It was only because of this momentary failing that I saw the locket. A little thing of gold. It had escaped his armour during his struggles. It lay across his unmoving chest, the tarnished gilt all but obscured by filth. I reached down and tore it loose.

I let it dangle from my fingers and spin, and I saw that there was a catch to it. Something inside, perhaps. A secret thing. Secrets were another crack in the wall of discipline. Soldiers were not allowed secrets. Their lives were best kept simple and uncomplicated – scraped sharp and straight, like the edge of a bayonet.

More weakness. Another crime for the tally. His death was more justified with every passing moment, and I felt a flush of satisfaction. The God-Emperor had guided my hand, as He had done so many times before.

‘Get him up,’ I said. The corpsman knelt beside the screamer as I studied the locket. Despite myself, I was curious. I wondered what it held. A picture, a message – something else? I closed my hand around it. ‘What are you waiting for? I said get him up.’

‘He’s dead,’ the corpsman said, in a hollow voice.

‘I know. I know a dead man when I see one.’ I stuffed the locket into my coat. ‘It’s just as well. The penalty for contraband is the same as that for cowardice… summary execution. The sentence has been administered.’ I looked around. ‘The rest of you, get back to your posts.’

The corpsman looked up at me. His gaze was unreadable. Brown eyes. Placid. A soldier’s eyes. ‘What about him?’

I looked down at the body. ‘Feed him to the soup.’

WARHAMMER HORROR
A Black Library Publication Imprint

First published in Great Britain in 2019.
This eBook edition published in 2019 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.
Cover illustration by Anna Lakisova.

The House of Night and Chain © Copyright Games Workshop Limited 2019. The House of Night and Chain, Warhammer Horror, GW, Games Workshop, Black Library, The Horus Heresy, The Horus Heresy Eye logo, Space Marine, 40K, Warhammer, Warhammer 40,000, the ‘Aquila’ Double-headed Eagle logo, and all associated logos, illustrations, images, names, creatures, races, vehicles, locations, weapons, characters, and the distinctive likenesses thereof, are either ® or TM, and/or © Games Workshop Limited, variably registered around the world.
All Rights Reserved.

A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN: 978-1-78030-679-7

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

For Margaux, and to the sharing of dreams.

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