Macharius looked at me. ‘You may want to close your mouth now, Lemuel. You look as if you are trying to catch flies in it.’
‘You sure he said that?’ Anton asked. He sounded as excited as a child who had been told he would get glowberry cake for his Name Day. ‘You sure he said the Adeptus Astartes?’
‘As certain as I am that I am talking to an idiot,’ I said.
‘You shouldn’t speak about Ivan like that.’
We were on the roof. It was night. The cold stars glittered overhead. Macharius had summoned a new contingent of guards and dismissed me. I looked down. Below us I could see the great geodesic jungle dome Macharius had built for his private hunting parties. Ivan unzipped his fly and pissed down on it. ‘Only rain those poor creatures will see on this world,’ he said, as if that explained everything. The metal half of his face was unreadable as always, but when he turned his head I could see the human side was frowning.
‘What’s on your mind?’ I asked.
‘Macharius and Sejanus would not talk about this in front of the inquisitor but would in front of you,’ he said. ‘It doesn’t add up.’
‘You’ve developed a nasty, suspicious mind,’ I said.
‘It comes from having hung around with all these officers and nobles for the past ten years,’ said Ivan. ‘And from not being stupid.’
‘Anton has enough of that for all three of us,’ I said.
‘He must know you would tell us and maybe even your fancy woman,’ Ivan said. I considered the thing, turning it over in my mind. I had not needed to tell Anna. She had already known. So had a lot of other people it seemed. ‘Yes.’
‘And if you tell us, he must know that Anton will tell his highborn bint.’
‘She’s not a bint,’ Anton said. ‘She’s a lady.’
‘You think he wants word to get out?’ I said.
‘That he’s negotiating in secret with the Space Marines?’
‘Did he say which Chapter?’ Anton asked. He was still excited by the prospect of Space Marines.
‘Yes, Anton,’ I said. ‘He drew me pictures of their captains as well. In crayon.’
‘Can I see them?’
Anton was mocking me now, turning my assumption of his stupidity around on me. I walked over to the edge and took a leak myself. The stream of piss became invisible a long way before it hit the dome. It was a long way to fall. I thought about what Drake had said to Macharius.
‘You think it’s going to happen then?’ Ivan asked.
‘I think Sejanus was sent on a secret mission to contact the Adeptus Astartes. That’s what all of those private chats with Belisarius in the past were about. His House has connections with the Adeptus Astartes.’
‘It’ll be the Space Wolves, then,’ said Anton. ‘That’s who it will be.’
‘Most likely, Anton,’ I said.
‘Why? It’s not like Macharius. He avoids contact with the Space Marines if he can. They are the only men in the known galaxy who can steal his thunder.’
‘He doesn’t tell me these things,’ I said. ‘I am guessing it’s because he must feel he needs their help.’
‘Since when has Macharius ever needed anybody’s help?’
‘Since now I guess.’ It was a troubling thought. Macharius was not a man who sought aid from anyone. He was always utterly confident in his own ability to deal with any contingency. That he was reaching out to the Emperor’s Angels told us that something deeply worrying was going on.
‘Maybe he’s looking for allies against the Administratum,’ Ivan said. ‘Maybe he has his eyes on something bigger.’
‘That sounds dangerously like treason, Ivan.’
He answered obliquely. ‘You know the Space Marines will intervene when and where they like. They always do. Maybe he just wants to make sure they see him in the right light.’
‘What could Macharius offer Space Marines?’ Anton asked.
It was a good question. The Chapters of the Adeptus Astartes already had everything they needed. I thought about the Fist and Macharius’s anger at its loss. ‘I think he wanted to make them a gift of the artefact we picked up on Demetrius.’
‘It would explain why he was so worked up about it going missing. I’ve never seen him so annoyed about anything.’ Somehow Ivan’s metal features looked thoughtful. It was something about the eyes.
‘I thought generals like Macharius were not supposed to have anything to do with Space Marines. Separation of powers?’ Anton said.
I imagined what would happen when the lords of the Administratum found out about this, as they surely would if they had not already. I had not spent ten years watching Macharius manoeuvre without learning something about Imperial politics.
‘You ever feel like you have just got into a pool full of piranha-gators? You just don’t know how many or where they are?’ Ivan said. ‘I’m starting to feel that way.’
I knew what he meant.
‘Well,’ said Ivan. ‘It’s getting late, and we’ve got duty tomorrow. It’s the triumph, you know.’
‘As if we could forget.’
Chapter Eleven
The day of Macharius’s triumph dawned.
The crowds roared. Flower petals, paper aquilas and prayer scrolls rained down around us, turning the platform on top of the Baneblade into an altar for the people’s offerings to Macharius. They greeted him like a prophet as well as a conqueror, and I wondered how many were starting to believe the rumours we had been hearing ever since we had returned to Emperor’s Glory: that Macharius was a saint made invincible by the Emperor’s Light and Blessing, fated to reunite humanity under the rule of the Golden Throne.
If ever a man looked the part, it was Macharius that day. Tall and youthful-looking and golden, even though he was old enough to be the grandfather of most of those in the crowd. A wreath of gilded laurel was wound into his hair. His burnished chestplate glittered gold in the sunlight. He looked like he had just stepped out of one of those religious paintings in the cathedral.
Even I would not have been surprised at that moment to see a halo appear around his head. He basked in the adulation of the masses and it seemed to feed something in him. He glowed with enthusiasm and righteous joy. He raised his right hand and waved to the crowd with utter confidence. He smiled with ruthless charm. No sign of the anger and impatience that had been eating away at him since our return from Demetrius showed.
Around the Baneblade, cyber-cherubim fluttered, carrying the portable vision altars that would record this event for posterity and see it broadcast across the world and beyond. Imprints would be dispatched to every army in the field. Remembering my conversation with Anna, I could not help but imagine the gnashing of teeth among the field commanders. There would be those among them who would look upon this triumph with envy and see it as a right that Macharius’s mere presence had denied them. More and more of them were coming into the system for a great conclave. Some of them were in orbit above us, even now.
I kept my hand clutched tight on my shotgun and glanced around to make sure that Anton and Ivan and the others were equally alert.
I was in no fit state of mind for triumphal marches. I saw the use of the Baneblade for something other than the crushing of the Emperor’s enemies as mildly sacrilegious. I looked out at the crowd and every face seemed that of a potential assassin. I scanned every balcony for snipers. Every time something glittered in a window above me, I made ready to throw myself forwards and knock Macharius down and out of line of sight.
The Avenue of the Emperor was lined with statues of Imperial heroes and saints. It led all the way to the Cathedral of the Emperor’s Glory. New stone and plascrete images of Macharius arose on every intersection. Some of them were merely relics of former idols, so old that people had forgotten who they were. They were being resculpted in the image of today’s hero. Some of them were new and rose gigantically above us, largest of all, dwarfing the statues around them as the achievements of Macharius dwarfed those of his precursors.