Mersadie caught the hurt look in Loken's eye and instantly regretted her words. In previous times, Loken could often be found sparring with fellow officers, the smirking Sedirae, whose flinty dead eyes reminded Mersadie of an ocean predator, Nero Vipus or his Mournival brother, Tarik Torgaddon, but Loken fought alone now. By choice or by design, she did not know.
'Anyway,’ continued Mersadie, 'it's getting bad for us. No one's speaking to us. We don't know what's going on any more,’
'We're on a war footing,’ said Loken, putting down his armour and looking her straight in the eye. 'The fleet is heading for a rendezvous. We're joining up with Astartes from the other Legions. It'll be a complex campaign. Perhaps the Warmas-ter is just taking precautions,’
'No, Garviel,’ said Sindermann, 'it's more than just that, and I know you well enough to know that you don't believe that either,’
'Really?' snarled Loken. РўРѕР№ think you know me that well?'
'Well enough, Garviel,’ nodded Sindermann, 'well enough. They're cracking down on us, cracking down hard. Not so everyone can see it, but it's hapВpening. You know it too,’ 'Do I?'
'Ignace Karkasy,’ said Mersadie. Loken's face crumpled and he looked away, unable to hide the grief he felt for the dead Karkasy, the irascible poet who had been under his protecВtion. Ignace Karkasy had been nothing but trouble and inconvenience, but he had also been a man who had dared to speak out and tell the unpalatВable truths that needed to be told.
They say he killed himself,’ continued Sindermann, unwilling to let Loken's grief dissuade him from his course, but I've never known a man more convinced that the galaxy needed to hear what he had to say He was angry at the massacre on the embarkation deck and he wrote about it. He was angry with a lot of things, and he wasn't afraid to speak of them. Now he is dead, and he's not the only one,’ 'Not the only one?' asked Loken. 'Who else?' 'Petronella Vivar, that insufferable documentarist woman. They say she got closer to the Warmaster than anyone, and now she's gone too, and I don't think it was back to Terra,’
'I remember her, but you are on thin ice, Kynl.
You need to be very clear what you are suggesting,’
Sindermann did not flinch from Loken's gaze and
said, 'I believe that those who oppose the will of
the Warmaster are being killed,’
The iterator was a frail man, but Mersadie had never been more proud to know him as he stood unbending before a warrior of the Astartes and told him something he didn't want to hear.
Sindermann paused, giving Loken ample time to refute his claims and remind them all that the Emperor had chosen Horus as the Warmaster because he alone could be trusted to uphold the Imperial Truth. Homs was the man to whom every Son of Horns had pledged his life a hundred times over.
But Loken said nothing and Mersadie's heart sank.
'I have read of it more times than I can rememВber,’ continued Sindermann. 'The Uranan Chronicles, for example. The first thing those tyrants did was to murder those who spoke out against their tyranny. The Overlords of the Yndonesic Dark Age did the same thing. Mark my words, the Age of Strife was made possible when the doubting voices fell silent, and now it is hapВpening here,’
'You have always taught temperance, Kyril,’ said Loken, 'weighing up arguments and never leaping past them into guesswork. We're at war and we have plenty of enemies already without you seeking to find new ones. It will be very dangerous for you and you may not like what you find. I do not wish to see you come to any harm, either of you,’
'Ha! Now you lecture me, Garviel,’ sighed SinderВmann. 'So much has changed. You're not just a warrior any more, are you?'
'And you are not just an iterator?'
'No, I suppose not,’ nodded Sindermann. An iterВator promulgates the Imperial Truth, does he not? He does not pick holes in it and spread rumours. But Karkasy is dead, and there are… other things,’
'What things?' asked Loken. You mean Keeler?'
'Perhaps,’ said Sindermann, shaking his head. 'I don't know, but I feel she is part of it,’
'Part of what?'
'You heard what happened in the Archive ChamВber?'
With Euphrati? Yes, there was a fire and she was badly hurt. She ended up in a coma,’
'I was there,’ said Sindermann.
'Kyril,’ said Mersadie, a note of warning in her voice.
'Please, Mersadie,’ said Sindermann. 'I know what I saw,’
'What did you see?' asked Loken. 'Lies,’ replied Sindermann, his voice hushed. 'Lies made reaclass="underline" a creature, something from the warp. Somehow Keeler and I brought it through the gates of the Empyrean with the Book of Lorgar. My own damn fault, too. It was… it was sorcery, the one thing that all these years I've been preaching is a lie, but it was real and standing before me as surely as I stand before you now. It should have killed us, but Euphrati stood against it and lived,’
'How?' asked Loken.
That's the part where I run out of rational explaВnations, Garviel,’ shrugged Sindermann.
'Well, what do you think happened?'
Sindermann exchanged a glance with Mersadie and she willed him not to say anything more, but the venerable iterator continued. 'When you destroyed poor Jubal, it was with your guns, but Euphrati was unarmed. All she had was her faith: her faith in the Emperor. I… I think it was the light of the Emperor that cast the horror back to the warp,’
Hearing Kyril Sindermann talk of faith and the light of the Emperor was too much for Mersadie.
'But Kyril,' she said, 'there must be another explaВnation. Even what happened to Jubal wasn't beyond physical possibilities. The Warmaster himВself told Loken that the thing that took Jubal was some kind of xeno creature from the warp. I've lisВtened to you teach about how minds have been twisted by magic and superstition and all the things that blind us to reality. That's what the Imperial Truth is. I can't believe that the Iterator Kyril SinВdermann doesn't believe the Imperial Truth any more.'
'Believe, my dear?' said Sindermann, smiling bleakly and shaking his head. 'Maybe belief is the biggest lie. In ages past, the earliest philosophers tried to explain the stars in the sky and the world around them. One of them conceived of the notion that the universe was mounted on giant crystal spheres controlled by a giant machine, which explained the movements of the heavens. He was laughed at and told that such a machine would be
so huge and noisy that everyone would hear it. He simply replied that we are born with that noise all around us, and that we are so used to hearing it that we cannot hear it at all,’
Mersadie sat beside the old man and wrapped her arms around him, surprised to find that he was shivering and his eyes were wet with tears.
'I'm starting to hear it, Garviel,’ said Sindermann, his voice quavering. 'I can hear the music of the spheres,’
Mersadie watched Loken's face as he stared at SinВdermann, seeing the quality of intelligence and integrity Sindermann had recognised in him. The Astartes had been taught that superstition was the death of the Empire and only the Imperial Truth was a reality worth fighting for.
Now, before her very eyes, that was unravelling.
Yarvarus was killed,’ said Loken at last, 'deliberВately, by one of our bolts,’
'Hektor Varvarus? The Army commander?' asked Mersadie. 'I thought that was the Auretians?'
'No,’ said Loken, 'it was one of ours,’
'Why?' she asked.
'He wanted us… I don't know… hauled before a court martial, brought to task for the… killings on the embarkation deck. Maloghurst wouldn't agree. Varvarus wouldn't back down and now he is dead,’