‘This extraordinary session of the Senatorum can now commence, convened at the special behest of Koorland, Lord Commander, in the wake of the death of High Lord Mesring, Ecclesiarch of the Adeptus Ministorum.’ Eckharth cleared his throat once more and hurriedly ceded the podium.
Koorland nodded his acceptance of it.
To his left, six chairs stretched out in a staggered line. Lansung, Verreault, Wienand sitting with Veritus standing behind her like an empty suit of armour, Gibran, Sark and Anwar. And to the right, six more. Tull, Kubik, Zeck, Ekharth as he nervously took his, and two more that stood empty. One belonged to him.
And so, ultimately did the other.
He held that empty seat in his gaze. The banner of the Adeptus Ministorum flapped limply from a rig above it.
‘The Ecclesiarch is dead,’ he began, drawing his eyes from the chair to stare out into the lights, their enhanced musculature adapting quickly and painlessly to the glare. ‘He was killed. Here. By my hand.’ His gaze rose, tier by tier of sudden gasps and mortified silence. ‘He thought to frighten you with truth, but what his church has forgotten is that the Emperor… is… truth!’
He straightened in a whir of servos and looked to those currently sat behind the dais, his own augmitted voice booming ‘truth!’ back to him.
‘Believe that you are better than the Ecclesiarchy has allowed you to be. As the Emperor believed. Many of you will have been here the day that the great Vulkan returned to us. Who remembers the joy they felt at the reunion, the hope?’
Murmured cries of assent began to circulate, the rustling of leaves compared to his augmeticised thunder. His voice became a growl.
‘Know then that it was a joy he did not share. Vulkan did not recognise the Imperium he saw on his return. He saw the values that the Emperor had given us, that he and his brothers had fought for, corrupted or cast aside. He made plain to me his opinion of those that have led you so low.’
The rest of the High Twelve looked distinctly uncomfortable. Only the heavily augmented and thus nigh-unreadable faces of Zeck and Kubik showed anything approximating support. No matter. The tide of history had receded for a time, but now it came again and the Lords could turn or they could be swept away.
He turned back to the fan array of pickups, thumped the lectern with a powered fist to emphasise his next words.
‘Mankind. Is. Better.’
He looked down over the cushioned pews of the minor lords. They would have taken their seats today as the men with most to gain from a reordering of the High Twelve. For all their power, the cocoons of influence that kept them clothed and well fed, they were far more terrified of him than their starving households were of the orks. All but one or two.
Koorland nodded grimly to the familiar faces in the crowd.
‘I know that you are afraid. I know that you suffer. I know that you do not expect me, being as I am, to understand, but know this — I would give my life for any one of yours, as would Vulkan in my place. Mesring feared the Beast, and he was not wrong to do so. I have seen the Beast’s power.’ He licked at lips that were suddenly dry, blinked in the light. ‘I was there when Vulkan fell.’
The Great Chamber erupted with anger and panic, outraged denials transforming the auditorium into a cauldron of noise. One voice was indistinguishable from another, but he could see people screaming, red-faced, others leaningagainst the chair back in front in fervent prayer. Lansung looked white enough to pass out. To his right, Verreault was on his feet, remonstrating with a junior clerk in the third row, though over what, Koorland could not make out. The primarch’s death was no secret. Nothing so profound that had been witnessed by so many could be kept so, but Koorland suspected that most would not have believed the tales until now. He raised his hands and shouted them down.
‘This is truth! No lie can diminish it. Only through facing a truth can we hope to make it good. Vulkan fell, but not in vain. In his name we build a new Imperium. In his name we fight for a new future for mankind, the future that the Emperor dreamed that you would one day have.’ He did not say we. For the Adeptus Astartes, there would always be war. ‘Free of threats from without. Free of lies spread from within.’ He turned towards the empty chair, and pointed at it. ‘It begins here.’ And back. ‘The Adeptus Ministorum will no longer be counted amongst the High Twelve. Their privileges are revoked, their holdings to be levied for men and materiel the same as any other ministry of mankind. We will rebuild!’
Stunned silence made a vacuum in the shape of an ovation, a black hole of stilled incomprehension. He had expected…
He had no idea what he had expected. But he had spoken the truth.
He pushed himself from the lectern, as unaccountably furious as he had been when he had barged through those doors. As when he had executed Mesring. As when he had received the recording that, had he seen it a little earlier, might have saved a primarch’s life. The Lords looked up at him like chastened children, terrified of a suddenly violent, superhuman father.
‘You will join me in the Cerebrium in fifteen minutes. The High Twelve is overdue a change.’ He nodded to the empty chair, and then made his way towards the doors. ‘See that that banner is taken down. And someone summon Vangorich!’
Seven
Drakan Vangorich eased his hands along the carved wooden armrests of his new chair with some considerable pleasure. It was a beautiful thing, all braids and shine, and little bits of gold where the wood met that outrageously forgiving cushioned back. Europan, if he wasn’t mistaken, somewhere around the middle third of M3. He sighed and sat back into it. The leather squeaked in a pleasing fashion.
The window across from the sceptrewood table and antique marble handwash basin opened onto an acrid swirl of fortress spires, lighting twinkling in the smog layer like stars. The many faces of the Emperor looked on from marble walls, friezes carved in rare woods. Artworks hung in golden frames: portraits of women mostly, and not, to put it delicately, in a fit state of dress for their current altitude. Weird, black-skinned statuettes stood on pedestals.
Vangorich studied one for a moment, its proportions artistically imprecise, only looking up when a serving girl, recruited, it seemed, on the grounds of aesthetic perfection, approached through the thick carpet bearing a refreshment tray. Vangorich held up a glass, she filled it with something pink and fragrant from a platinum ewer, and he idly swirled it as she left.
He had visited Mesring’s apartments before, of course, but it felt different this time.
He knocked back the oddly tasteless wine and let the enzyme grafts lining his mouth and throat do their work, cleansing the liquid of alcohol and other toxins before it hit his stomach. Then he set the glass neatly on the table.
‘How does it feel to be one of the Twelve, then, sir?’ asked Beast Krule.
‘Very much the same as before, actually. Power is less about what’s given to you than what you take. And besides, it’s only provisional.’
Krule stood to one side of the table, between a statuette and a pedestal bearing a pottery fragment. A ripple of torso broke the cameleoline illusion of stillness and a data-slate slid across the table. The high varnish barely even whispered ‘friction’ until Vangorich trapped it under his fingers.
He turned it over, face up, and took a long look at the seal.
‘Where did you get this?’
Krule shrugged.