Watchers of the Throne: The Emperor’s Legion Read online

  ‘If there’s time, lord,’ she said, bowing and withdrawing.

  The doors opened.

  My reception chamber was a wonderful place. It ought to have been – I had eighty years to refine it. The objects within it were the most exquisite, the decoration a study in good taste. On occasion, despite all the changes, I still spend time there, enjoying it. The High Lords have their own palaces, and the spires of the Sena­torum are the most magnificent in the entire galaxy, but I still prefer the oasis I made there. It acts as the exemplar of the message I wished to send at all times – that we are more than guns and fury. We are an ancient species with subtle tastes. We are intelligent. And we are still here.

  ‘My greetings, Master,’ I said, closing the doors behind me.

  Kerapliades was standing before a sandstone fireplace. He gave no indication he had any comprehension of how valuable it was – over twelve thousand years old, fashioned in pre-Unity Francia, literally irreplaceable – but I could not blame him for that. He spent his days in iron-ribbed spires determining how many thousands of human souls would be fed into the mechanisms of the Throne and how many hundreds would be doled out to lives of unremitting duty as sanctioned Imperial psykers. I might have been less than equable, had I been in his place.

  ‘Is the chamber secure?’ Kerapliades asked.

  His long face, a bony white-grey with sunken black eyes, regarded me mournfully. He was nearly two metres tall, with high-bunched shoulders and long slender arms. His robes of office were simple – black, heavy fabric hanging in long swathes. He was flanked, as Jek had warned me, by his two nulls, whose psychic dampening aura was palpable even to me.

  ‘All my chambers are secure, Master,’ I said. ‘You know this.’

  ‘I know nothing any more.’ Kerapliades leaned on a steel staff with an iron eye at its tip. ‘I took a risk, coming here.’

  He looked at me with rheumy eyes. I had never managed to find out just how much he could see through them. Almost all astropaths are blinded by their creation ritual, and those who retain some visual function are damaged in other ways, so they say. I never liked to speculate too closely on what his eyes must have seen since his own soul-binding.

  ‘We speak in confidence,’ I told him, and that was true. Anything told to me by one of the Council would never be disclosed to another unless they wished it to be.

  Kerapliades limped away from the mantelpiece. There were chairs everywhere, but I knew he wouldn’t sit.

  ‘It’s Cadia,’ he said, as if that conveyed everything that needed to be said.

  Well done, Jek, I thought.

  For as long as the Imperium had existed, Cadia was ever at the forefront of its deliberations. Over the last two hundred years – my lifetime – the High Lords had devoted an ever-increasing amount of time to that one world. Regiments had been thrown into the void to bolster it. Space Marine Chapters had been petitioned to reinforce its approaches. Armour-wrights and strategeos had been seconded to augment its walls and its fortresses. There were other battle zones of import – Armageddon, Badab – in which we were stretched, but in truth none of them mattered besides Cadia, for if that world fell then the balance of power we had cultivated for ten thousand years would be ended at a stroke.

  ‘You have tidings from the sector?’ I asked.

  ‘None.’

  ‘Well then,’ I said. ‘In the absence of that–’

  ‘You do not understand me.’

  It was then that I first truly noticed the Master was not his moribund, desiccated self. I was used to seeing him gloomy. I was not used to seeing him scared. His long grey fingers clutched at his support, and even that did not quell the faint trembling.

  ‘We can handle the visions,’ he said, and he no longer looked at me. I do not think he was looking at anything in the chamber just then. ‘I do not ask any of my alpha-level astropaths to undergo what I would not myself. I witness what they witness. I undergo the same trials.’

  I let him speak. I will be truthful – his manner disturbed me. ­Kerapliades was not the confessional sort. I wondered if his mind had finally been cracked by the strain put on it, yet he did not show signs of mania, just a kind of dread.

  ‘Probing that close to the Eye has always been perilous,’ he went on. ‘But now – nothing. No terror. No screaming visions. A curtain has been drawn across it.’

  I did not know what to say to that. We had been at full-scale war over the Cadian Gate for over five years, and during that time we had relied on the Adeptus Astra Telepathica for the vast bulk of our knowledge of how our forces were faring. There had always been interference, and ambiguity, and often contradiction, but never silence. In my naivety I even wondered whether it might be a good thing – that the nightmares unleashed by our enemies there might be finally abating.

  Then I looked at the Master again, and saw immediately that it was not a good thing.

  ‘Tell me what you need,’ I said.

  ‘Need?’ Kerapliades barked a dry sort of laugh. ‘I need a thousand more psykers – stronger ones, not the dross I get from the Black Ships now.’ He blinked. His breathing was shallow. ‘This is different, chancellor. I can’t read it yet, but my blood tells me true enough. Don’t be misled by this calm – it comes before catastrophe.’

  He had told me similar things before. I might have learned to ignore the warnings, if it were not for the horrendous expression on his mournful face.

  ‘The Twelve must meet,’ he said. ‘And Dissolution must be enacted.’

  So that was it. Another throw of this old die. Despite myself, my heart sank. The arguments had been scoured over and over for more years than I had been alive, and there had never been a resolution.

  ‘I do not think that will be easy,’ I said, already determining how such a thing could be done. ‘Camera inferior is not scheduled for another three months.’

  Kerapliades whirled around, fixing me with his strange, swimming eyes. I felt a brief tremor, just for a moment – a flash of insight into his colossal psychic power. It was not meant as a threat, I think, just a momentary lapse in control, but the effect was still startling, like placing one’s hand on static electricity.

  ‘You can make it happen,’ he said.

  Possibly so. ‘Have you spoken of this to any of the others?’ I asked.

  ‘None,’ he said.

  ‘Then I beg you – do not. Not yet. I will make my approaches – it would be best coming from me.’

  ‘I know,’ he said, and a grim smile cracked his features. ‘You have wormed your way into the confidence of us all, doorkeeper. Sometimes I think you are the most dangerous man on Terra.’

  Perhaps he meant that to be flattering.

  ‘You give me too much credit,’ I said. ‘I merely accommodate.’

  ‘So you say.’ The hollow look in his eyes returned. ‘Do it, though. Do what has to be done. If you need coin, if you need anything, let me know.’

  That was an amusing thought. I had more coin than any of them knew. I could have bought half the Council with it already, were any of them remotely interested in such things, but, to their credit, none of them were. If they had vices then they were all connected to power, not avarice, and baubles held little sway over such souls.

  ‘Of course, there is one difference, this time,’ I ventured cautiously, knowing that I was telling Kerapliades something he already knew. ‘The Lord Brach has not yet been replaced, and so one seat is empty.’

  ‘Yes, and you know now what must be done, do you not?’

  ‘I do not choose the High Lords,’ I said.

  ‘Go to see him,’ he said.

  ‘I do not think he will receive me,’ I said.

  ‘You will find a way,’ he said.

  And that was it. That was why he had come – to plant this idea in my head, to give it his blessing. I judged from this that he had
support from others of the Twelve – he would not have advanced it if not. He was bound by the Lex Imperialis from making overt approaches himself, as were all his peers in the Council, but that would never stop them from making their views known.

  It put me in a delicate position. Half the Council had always been against Dissolution, half for it. A reconfiguration might not change that, and by intervening now I risked aligning myself with a losing cause – a dangerous thing, even for a man like me.

  I would need time to think. I would need time to confer with Jek and plot a route through this. The tides of intrigue in the Palace could rise fast and fall fast – the trick was not to be carried by them.

  I bowed. ‘I’m honoured that you came, Master,’ I said.

  Kerapliades did not return the bow.

  ‘I’ll be waiting,’ he said, limping towards the chamber’s doors. His nulls went with him, making my flesh crawl as they passed me.

  Once he was gone, I waited awhile, pondering what to make of the visit. His fear had not been feigned. I still found it unsettling to witness fear from a High Lord, and that alone weighed more heavily on me than anything he had said.

  After a suitable interval, Jek reappeared, looking curious. ‘Anything of importance?’ she asked.

  ‘Not sure yet,’ I said.

  I was aware I had guests waiting. I placed my hands on Jek’s to thank her for her concern, but could not linger to consult her then – that would have to wait for a few hours, by which point I might have settled the issues more clearly in my own mind.

  I went back towards the dining chamber, gradually resuming my appearance of joviality as I walked. By the time I re-entered, my face was full of smiles again.

  ‘What kept you?’ asked the woman sitting on my left, just as the final courses were being delivered. ‘Great matters of state?’

  ‘A little indigestion,’ I said, reaching for the sorbet. ‘Not that there’s much difference.’

  Valerian

  We were never soldiers.

  Whenever we are seen outside the walls of this place, as rare as that is, it is in our martial aspect. We are clad in gold, just as we were in the earliest days when He was our living captain, and mortals fall on their faces as if before gods. To them, it must seem as if we are wrath incarnate. To them, it must seem as if we were created for destruction and nothing else.

  But we were His companions, once. We were the ones in whom He confided. We were His counsellors, we were His artisans. We were the first glimpse at what the species could become, if shepherded aright and unshackled from its vicious weaknesses.

  Of course, we were taught to fight. He knew that war would come. It was a necessary part of the ascension, though it was never destined to last for eternity. We were the guardians of a new age, and had to be strong enough to keep it secure.

  We failed in that, and now wear the mark of that failure in the black robes that cover our auramite. It is a permanent reminder, replacing the cloaks of blood-red that once adorned our battleplate. It weighs heavy with every one of us, for we know more of the nature of the fall than most. We still recite the old stories, and we study in the lost archives where we alone are suffered to tread, and so do not have the comforting illusions of ignorance to salve the wound. In a galaxy defined by ignorance, we remember. We cultivate the shards of the thing that was broken, and remain aware of what would have been.

  I think sometimes that this knowledge is the most severe of our many burdens. Any brutal soul may fight if he has the goal ahead of him. We fight knowing that our truest purpose lies behind us, and all that remains is faithfulness to an extinguished vision.

  But still we preserve. We tend the things of value that have survived. We seek to embody His will in all things. We cleave to His light as the darkness gathers. We interpret, we study, we delve into the philosophy of the ages.

  We have many duties. But that is just as it should be, for we are not simple creations. The aeons have changed us in many ways, but not in that.

  We were a thousand things to a thousand souls, but we were never soldiers.

  I am Valerian, Shield-Captain of the Palaiologian Chamber of the Hykanatoi. Like all my brothers, I have many other names, carved in a long trail one after the other along the inside of my breastplate. Some names were earned in combat, many more were earned after contemplation of the mysteries. We cleave to this old practice, though I do not know for certain if we observe the rituals correctly. So much has been lost as the millennia unwind, and most significant of all is certainty.

  In our theology, we talk of the speculum certus and the speculum obscurus. The first of these is the study of what is already known. If this strikes you as pointless, allow me to respectfully demur, for it is one thing to know what the Emperor said, and quite another to know what He meant.

  He left no written testimony. The entirety of what we know of Him is revealed either through the records of remembrancers or the ecstatic visions gifted to the faithful. And thus, when a thing is placed in the canon of the certus, the intention behind it can never be fixed with surety. There are arguments nearly ten thousand years old concerning single utterances committed to parchment a hundred years after He spoke last from mortal lips. There are savants in the Tower of Hegemon who have devoted their entire lives to the interpretation of such fragments, and we do not scorn them, for their study is the study of fate’s weft itself. Even now, it is possible to gain enlightenment through meditation on the words of those who lived then.

  But if the matter of the certus provokes debate, then that is nothing to the controversy of the obscurus, for the Emperor left much unsaid that He would doubtless have made clear in time. There were things He would have wished us to know, had there only been the opportunity to place it on record. We look out from our spires at the realm of mankind as it exists now, and we can only speculate what His intention is towards it. This is the study of the Emperor’s Will, revealed in dreams and the patient scrutiny of arcane logic.

  If such matters bore or baffle you, then forgive me, for they are the objects of my very existence. I am named philologus by my ­brothers – the scholar. If I did not have my many other duties, I could imagine a life immersed in the minutiae of such philosophy. That may appear as indulgent, and a waste of the gifts given to me, but such would be to misunderstand the precipice on which we teeter.

  Without Him, we are lost. Everything is lost. Our only salvation is through the interpretation of His Will, and as a consequence of our failure we must divine this much as a blind man might divine the pattern of marks on an unseen page.

  And, in any case, I have never had the luxury of an indulgent life. For a long time now the walls we guard have been crumbling. Enemies assail us from every quarter, striking even at the heart of the most heavily guarded citadel in the Imperium of Man, forcing us to become what we were never intended to be – pure vengeance, pure defiance.

  In that time I took up my spear, and found a different artistry there, but those were not the first battles we fought. They took place within the walls, and were conducted with our own kind amid the very Palace where He yet dwelt, dormant in His deathless vigil. I did not know it then, back before the skies were cleaved and the foundations of all creation were rocked, but it began at that moment, with the arrival of a mortal man to the halls of the undying.

  He was overweight, with a wry face and sparse curls of age-whitened hair. He carried himself poorly, almost apologetically, as if he were somehow surprised to be instantiated at all. His dress, however, was far from modest – a thick robe of purple overlaid with a chasuble of gold. He bore icons of the High Council, the double-headed aquila surmounted by the skull-within-halo.

  I knew his name, but had never met him in person before. That was not especially unusual – even the senior staff of the Administratum ran into many tens of thousands, though this one was more influential than most.

  Out
of long habit, virtually unconsciously, I reached a judgement on the fastest method of killing him. I found the optimal results – less than a microsecond of effort required – slightly amusing.

  ‘Chancellor Tieron,’ I said.

  I did not bow. There are some who see this absence of traditional courtesy as arrogance, but in truth we only bow to the Master of Mankind, for to do otherwise would be the most profound dis­respect. I attempted to be non-threatening, however, and extended my hand to usher him into my private chambers.

  ‘Shield-captain,’ Tieron said, bowing conventionally and going inside.

  I was not wearing armour, only the simple black robes of my order. Even so, I was over a third taller than Tieron and far more heavily built. My rooms were no doubt sparser than he was used to, being un-dressed stone and solely candlelit. The only relief from the austere lines came from my piles of hidebound books, some surrounded by glittering stasis fields to preserve the fragile contents.

  ‘I’m grateful for this audience,’ the man said, settling into the chair I had selected for him. I took my place opposite. I would have preferred to stand, but did what I could to make things less awkward for him.

  ‘There is nothing to be grateful for,’ I said. ‘The chancellor of the Senatorum Imperialis is welcome here at any time. Your burdens must be heavy.’

  He smiled a dry smile. ‘Nothing in comparison to yours,’ he said. ‘I’ll not detain you longer than necessary – I request an audience with the Captain-General. I’m aware it’s difficult, but I’m acting on behalf of the Council. It’s been hard to know who to approach, as I was informed that both tribunes are indisposed, so – I’ll say it again – I’m grateful for you making the time.’

  Tieron was correct – both tribunes were indisposed. Heracleon was performing ritual duties in his capacity as master of the ­Hataeron Guard, the Companions of the Emperor, and would not have responded to a summons from anyone. Italeo, his counterpart, was engaged in holy warfare and was similarly impossible to reach for all but the most vital of causes. The chancellor, I had been told by my amanuensis beforehand, had been prepared for the first circumstance, but not the latter.