Vangorich picked up the slate. The Black Templars seal had already been bypassed.
‘A list of possible Ecclesiarchs,’ Krule said. ‘Drawn up by the Adeptus Ministorum at Bohemond’s request. Give me the night and I can whittle that list down for you. The High Marshal too, naturally.’
‘Eager for a little light exercise?’
‘The High Marshal’s going to be a problem, sir, in the long run. We both know it.’
‘And there I was thinking you wanted a contest with arguably the greatest warrior in the Adeptus Astartes. No.’ Vangorich tossed the slate back across the table. ‘No. I’m prepared to give the new Ecclesiarch the benefit of the doubt.’
‘Very… magnanimous, sir.’
‘Thank you, but I have enough here on Terra to deal with the entire Ecclesiarchy leadership a hundred times over without needing to call on my best. No.’ He leaned in, and Krule inched forwards. ‘The Twelve’s meeting with Koorland was about more than my investiture, overdue as it was. He’s gathering his assets for some kind of covert strike. To draw the Beast out, I presume. Inquisition, Militarum, Deathwatch, even the Mechanicus — he’s assembling an execution force for which he wants the deadliest men he can get, and so naturally I recommended you.’
‘Too kind, sir.’
Vangorich flashed a modest grin and sat back. ‘I’d go myself, but I can’t oversee everything in person. I hope to get a message to the Culexus Temple, but it’s a long way away from here and who knows if they’ll receive it in time. I’d like to have something to offer Koorland on his return, something to keep Wienand and the Lady Brassanas on their toes. That temper of Koorland’s is the only thing keeping them all off each other’s backs right now, but seeing me across the table from now on might remind them of the knife at their throats.’
‘Metaphorically, of course.’
Vangorich felt his smile subtly alter. He had a cultivated public image of urbanity, but the smile he wore now was of a man who spent every day in a mask, the sort of smile that no one wanted to see on the face of a Grand Master of the Officio Assassinorum. ‘Metaphorical knives, you’ll find, cut every bit as sharp. Mesring’s fate won’t be soon forgotten.’
Krule nodded reluctantly.
‘Second thoughts?’
‘Koorland wasn’t the only one on Ullanor when the primarch died. A primarch, sir.’
‘Alcazar Remembered breaks orbit in an hour. Be on it.’ Vangorich slid a briefing packet back across the table. Krule scooped it up in his big hand and turned away. ‘Keep him alive, Krule, whatever his plan is. Right now, he is the Imperium. Oh, and one other thing—’ A shimmer against the portrait on the wall near the door betrayed the movement of Krule’s head. ‘Be sure Wienand keeps herself out of trouble.’
Terra — the Imperial Palace
Check 0, 04:13:39
‘You disapprove.’
Wienand stood with hands clasped behind her back, watching the Inquisitorial gunboats that slowly crisscrossed the Palace skyline through the silvered tint of the armourglass. Their black, slab-hulled bodies patrolled the surrounding spires, weapon hardpoints twitching, the deceptively ponderous sweep of their rotors mirrored across plasteel and glass. She watched a moment longer, then looked over her shoulder when she got no reply.
‘You have a way of being silent when you disapprove.’
Veritus nodded stiffly, the pallid skin of his neck creaking like old leather. ‘I can think of wiser places to be than on the Abhorrence in the middle of a new Crusade.’
‘It’s not exactly my first choice.’
‘Sigismund was a maniac. Even the Sigillite was overheard saying so. His successors are almost worse, striving to preserve a philosophy they lack the wit to inherit or the skill to prosecute. They will be at the forefront of any battle, and your protection will be far from their priority.’
Wienand’s ghostly reflection in the glass smiled in amusement. It was not so very long ago that she and Veritus had been trying to kill one another. ‘Koorland has ceded control of the Deathwatch, but through gritted teeth, and the Deathwatch will know it. I will have to earn their respect before they will follow an order without first taking it to Koorland or Thane.’
‘Or the new Watch Commander.’
‘Or him.’
The armourglass rattled as a gunboat passed close, flak turrets smoothly tracking it until it was gone. ‘Koorland is charismatic but naïve. I don’t doubt that his first act after the current crisis ends will be to dissolve the Deathwatch as he has always claimed he will.’ She turned fully from the window, hands still clasped behind her. ‘I can’t let that happen.’
‘Why?’
Wienand was pacing before she realised it. She could never sit while others stood, and Veritus almost never sat. Others assumed it good manners on her part, but that was only a front. A seated individual had further to move to react to a threat than a standing one. And she didn’t trust Veritus quite that much.
‘For the Imperium. The Inquisition is too important to fight amongst itself, or to depend on the resources of others, and our current arrangement seems to work well. You and those that think as you do attend to the Chaos threat, and I to that of the alien. Perhaps it’s time it was formalised into something permanent, so that an argument over who or what represents the greater threat to mankind will never again cripple us as it nearly did.’
Veritus nodded, accepting the unspoken charge.
‘Consider the possibilities,’ Wienand went on. ‘An alien-hunting strike-force that pools the greatest talents of the Space Marine Chapters, one that can be deployed anywhere in the galaxy, to arenas too hostile even for an Inquisitorial rosette to provide safety.’
‘That is a tremendous amount of power for you to wield. Power that you promised the Lord Commander would be shared.’
She took a deep breath and stopped pacing, turning to face Veritus fully. ‘Perhaps that power could be balanced by a force of Chaos hunters drawn along similar lines.’
Veritus’ suit sucked and wheezed around his corpse neck like a ventilator. It blew out an odour of cinnamon-scented oils and formaldehyde, and made the cuneiformed papyrus strips hung from his armour flutter like spirits with secrets. His eyelids fluttered drily. It was a tic, the tired rattle of an ancient cogitator, one that Wienand had come to associate with the deep dredging of ancient memory. ‘There is a Space Marine Chapter, based on Titan, that might serve.’
For a moment, Wienand found herself at a loss for words. She turned back to the window and looked out over the scarred, quake-blistered skyline.
‘An entire Chapter? Here? What in the name of the Throne were they doing while orks invaded Terra and Mars threatened outright rebellion?’
‘They have… special interests. Their existence is known only to a few.’
Wienand was long resigned to the fact that Veritus specialised in things known only to a few.
‘I will make the necessary overtures,’ he said after a moment, his lips animating to peel open in something too cadaverous and black-centred to be called a smile. ‘And I will ensure that power does not rush too strongly to Vangorich’s head. Though he flatters himself to think so, Malcador he is not.’
‘Don’t worry about Drakan. It’s out there, with Koorland, that things hinge now. He’s been fixated on the High Lords’ problems for so long that I think the changing centre of gravity has passed him by.’
The old inquisitor’s lips settled back into their corpselike repose. His eyes, now unblinking, found the reflection of hers. ‘Do not forget Krule. I doubt that Vangorich intends to be a complete bystander.’
‘I will have Raznick with me.’
‘Take more.’
‘There will be more waiting.’
‘You suspect. Koorland reveals nothing of your destination.’
‘Though it’s with a fleet of Inquisitorial barges that he intends to get there. I will be as safe as I can be.’