Ichor burned, all remaining trace of the unclean with it.
‘I have not long returned to the Throneworld,’ Adio replied, turning his back on the firestorm to follow Cartovandis with his eyes. ‘It’s good to see you too, Syr.’
‘Out protecting priests and politicians, eh?’
‘The Aquilan Shield goes where it is directed,’ Adio replied with good humour. ‘But you already knew that.’
Cartovandis grunted in response. He stopped when he reached one of the ablutionals in a separate antechamber appended to the vault but separate from it.
‘Those chains and sentry guns are active for a reason,’ said Adio, a hint of mild accusation in his voice.
‘And they neuter the foe.’
‘You feel the need to test yourself.’
Cartovandis paused.
‘Don’t you?’ he asked, but didn’t wait for an answer. ‘I did not require or ask for your intervention, Adio,’ he continued, reverently laying down his weapons on the rack provided. He quickly stripped off his armour and other trappings, leaving them for the serf who scurried to attend him, and stepped naked into a metal cubicle. ‘I had the better of it.’
‘Feigning weakness so it lowered its guard. Dangerous.’
‘It’s a dangerous galaxy. Much more so of late.’
A scalding blast of water from a spout above struck Cartovandis across the back of the neck and shoulders, so violent and raucous that he bowed his head.
‘You don’t need to prove anything to me,’ said Adio, once the purification ritual had ended. ‘I apologise if I acted pre-emptively, old friend.’
Cartovandis took a deep breath, inhaling the steam billowing off his body. His skin had reddened. The horrific scar that ran from his left shoulder almost to his groin looked more pronounced.
‘Meroved saved your life that day at the Gate,’ Adio uttered softly. He, like the rest of the Ten Thousand who fought in that battle, still held the horror of it in his eyes.
‘He did,’ Cartovandis replied, turning to the serf and taking a proffered robe, which he pulled over his body. ‘Hykanatoi, Kataphraktoi and Tharanatoi all fighting together. Quite the sight, with Valoris at our head. Do you remember it?’
Adio’s face darkened.
‘Do not ask me that.’
‘How many perished?’
‘Too many.’
‘Half. Almost two thousand of us.’
‘Then it is by the Emperor’s will that you and I lived, and serve still.’
‘Meroved should have let me die.’
‘Perhaps.’
Cartovandis turned to the serf once more. Her head had been shaved, an aquila fashioned into the left temple. She bowed before the Custodian, out of respect and awe.
‘Siris, you need not attend me further today,’ said Cartovandis, not unkindly. ‘You may leave.’
Siris bowed again and scurried quietly away. Cartovandis waited until she was gone.
‘I have not heard His voice since my wounding, Adio.’
‘I know, brother.’
‘It leads me to questions that I am loathe to learn the answers to.’
‘You assume there are answers. If it is His will, you shall hear Him again – but let us speak of this away from this wretched place. I would hear of events in the Palace since I left. In the cerebratory?’
‘I’ll meet you there.’
Cartovandis called out as Adio was leaving.
‘Old friend,’ he said. ‘It is good to see you too.’
Adio nodded, and continued on his way.
Chapter Three
The Imperial Palace, Tower of Hegemon, Terra
The dominion of the Adeptus Custodes on Terra was absolute, yet if there was one place in the populous districts of the Imperial Palace that could be considered the beating heart of their order, then that place was the Tower of Hegemon.
The Throneworld faced many threats, both within and without, and so vast was the urban sprawl that it rivalled many continents in terms of its sheer size and scale. This, together with its pre-eminent status as the founding seat of all mankind, necessitated unique measures of protection. The tower saw all. It knew all. Through a complex array of data-engines and monitoring systems, the Custodians maintained supreme vigilance over the Palace and its confines. All of its security augurs and scrying devices fed into this one nexus, and from here potential threats were analysed and, if necessary, acted against. Defences were tested and retested. Crisis scenarios were devised and implemented. Blood Games were fought.
Pilgrims flocked to Terra in their billions, every man, woman and child desperate for a glimpse – just a glimpse – of the Immortal Emperor, or at least the fabled Eternity Gate behind which He resided. Few accomplished this holy quest: most perished before they even set foot on Terra’s sacred soil; others died when they encountered the cruel realities of the gangs, the hidden cults and the massive overcrowding. But every day more ships arrived, and every day the population edged closer to a critical mass. Any one of those vessels might harbour a danger to the Golden Throne and so the tower and its incumbents maintained their vigilance.
Yet, although the main function of the tower was to act as the watch station of the Emperor’s Custodians, it had other purposes.
Cartovandis had donned his armour to meet Adio in the cerebratory. Though its halls were not given over to violence and battle training, there was a certain ceremony that required observation in the quietude of this place. It had a peaceful air about it. Relics of Terra’s lost culture could be found in the art and architecture on display. A forum in many respects, its walls and chambers were adorned with tapestries and portraiture; sculpture and the fossilised remains of ancient beasts inhabited its alcoves. Here a Custodian could seek counsel with his fellows, or debate, if he so chose. Others came for solitude or reflection, for war had never been the principal role of the Ten Thousand.
Of his brotherhood, Cartovandis found few. A warrior of the Solar Watch conversed in hushed tones as the grim spectre of a Custodian of the Dread Host listened intently. The Solar Watch were one of the Hykanatoi’s shield hosts, the warrior bands that defined the Adeptus Custodes. They garrisoned the fastness of Sol’s borders at Luna, Jupiter and beyond. They had much in kind with the old VII Legion, praetorians and wall watchers in the mould of Dorn’s own. To have come from the outer strongholds meant tidings of import. Cartovandis assumed those tidings pertained to a matter necessitating the attention of a ready sword, if the presence of the Dread Host was any barometer. The helmed warrior looked up as Cartovandis passed, his regard forbidding. Judgement burned in the eyes behind those retinal lenses.
Cartovandis had no desire to know their business, but knew it must be serious to provoke such a meeting. He pressed on, and overheard the muttered conversation of a cohort of Emissaries Imperatus debating insights derived through mediation, both pertaining to what was known as the speculum certus and the speculum obscurus: the first concerning the Emperor’s words and His meaning, the second concerning His will.
These too Cartovandis avoided, for they reminded him of the silence he now endured. He had almost died at the Lion’s Gate. It was the second time such a desperate battle had been fought in its shadow. The first was over ten thousand years ago; the second, the one at which Cartovandis had stared death in the face, had taken place scarcely more than a century past. Daemons had come to Terra and he, like so many of the Ten Thousand, had taken up arms against them. A Legion still in mourning had mustered for the first time in millennia and cast back the hellspawn of Old Night. It had left Cartovandis with grievous hurts, and so close to death that he felt it still, some one hundred years or so later. Meroved had intervened and turned the hand of fate aside, sparing Cartovandis from his doom but condemning him to this misery instead. The silence had followed not long after. He had feared it meant the Emperor’s death but the Sanctum Imperialis had not been breached. The Master of Mankind endured, enthroned everlasting, His voice denied to Cartovandis.