These were not considerations for Drakan Vangorich. The Grand Master cut through the clusters of officials like a dark knife. Few people on the Senatorum floor wanted to talk to an Assassin or be seen to talk to one. This suited Vangorich perfectly, and was why it surprised the Grand Master all the more when he was accosted.
‘Master Vangorich,’ a hooded aide said. ‘A word with you, sir.’
Vangorich slowed and turned. A frown, the result of simultaneous curiosity and annoyance, sat on his face. He said nothing. The aide was dressed in drab, dark robes but carried herself with the confidence of one who knew she was addressing the deadliest man in the room, and didn’t care. She was tall. The depths of her hood seemed to hide some kind of extravagant hair arrangement, as well as her face. Above the glint of dark intelligence in her eyes, a third optic — implanted in her brow and glowing a cold blue — created a triangular constellation in the shadows.
‘So you’re Kalthro’s replacement,’ Vangorich said, before turning his back on the Inquisitorial agent and setting off once again across the crowded Senatorum floor. The hooded operative’s strides brought her alongside him only a moment later. ‘Shame about Kalthro,’ Vangorich said. ‘I enjoyed our little games.’
‘There will be no games to be had with me, my lord.’
‘Nonsense,’ the Assassin told her. ‘We’re just getting started. What’s your name?’
‘You do not need my name.’
‘Nonetheless, I want it,’ Vangorich said as they weaved through the officious masses. It seemed that Wienand’s new bodyguard was no less secretive than her mistress. ‘Is there not enough tedium in this chamber for you already? It will take nothing to learn it by other means.’
‘And yet you don’t already have it,’ the woman said. ‘Disappointing, Grand Master.’
‘So you’re their best?’ Vangorich prodded, not rising to the taunt. ‘After Kalthro, of course. What am I supposed to tell my best? Should I be warning them to look for you behind them?’
‘That’s what you’re going to have to tell Esad Wire, formerly of Monitor Station KVF, Division 134, Sub 12.’
Vangorich narrowed his eyes. ‘Nobody serves me under that name,’ he said. It was the truth, as far as it went. Wire’s operative name was Beast.
‘Call him what you like,’ the woman said, ‘but keep him off my cloak tails.’
‘May I remind you that your predecessor got himself killed tailing my people, not the other way around,’ Vangorich pointed out.
‘My lady wishes to avoid further entanglements between our organisations,’ the woman said.
‘Understandable,’ the Assassin said, ‘considering the result of our last misunderstanding.’
‘Lady Wienand considers it just that: a misunderstanding. There will be no retaliatory action. In fact, she appreciates your attempts to be of service during these difficult times. It is my impression that she even likes you, my lord — though for the Imperium, I cannot think why.’
‘Is there a point to this?’
‘She also implores you not to meddle further in these affairs. The Inquisition, in its investigatory capacity, will interrogate the present problems and take appropriate action. Protecting the Imperium from enemies within and without was the purpose for which the Inquisition was created. Lady Wienand urges you to honour this and restrict yourself and your agents to the parameters of your officio’s own remit.’
‘Do not lecture me on parameters and remits,’ Vangorich bit back as he parted a throng of petitioners mobbing the Navigators’ Paternoval Emissary. ‘The Inquisition and its ill-recommended allies have denied the Senatorum intelligence essential to the Imperium’s security. Billions have suffered for these machinations. Scores of worlds have been lost to an alien enemy, the existence and threat of which the Inquisition has kept hidden from the Imperium.’
‘My lady apologises for not taking you into her confidences, my lord,’ the Inquisitorial agent said. ‘She sees now that you would and still could be a valued partner in our endeavours.’
‘Yet her apologies fall from your lips?’ Vangorich snapped.
The Inquisitorial agent gestured to the dais of thrones at the centre of the Great Chamber, one of which Inquisitorial Representative Wienand was occupying.
‘She regrets that she is otherwise engaged, my lord,’ the woman said. ‘However, as a sign of good faith she has authorised me to share with you intelligence she knows you not to have.’
Vangorich gave the hooded operative the hardness of his eyes.
‘Lady Wienand knows that the fleet movements that the Lord High Admiral announced today were procured by your good self through Ecclesiarch Mesring,’ she went on. Still, Vangorich gave her nothing. ‘As a courtesy, she wishes you to know that her eyes and ears within Navy command are aware of the full scope of the Lord High Admiral’s manoeuvres.’
‘And?’ Vangorich said.
‘Lansung will not redeploy his fleets,’ the operative warned.
‘The Lord High Admiral just announced, with Master Udo at his side, that he was recalling the border fleets,’ Vangorich said, taking a chalice of fortified wine from a passing servitor-servant. His nostrils flared for a moment as he raised the wine to his lips, testing for potential toxins out of long-ingrained habit, before he drank it down and handed the empty vessel to another ceremonially-dressed vat-slave.
‘Recalled, yes,’ she said. ‘Redeployed, no. Lansung is amassing an armada in the Glaucasian Gulf, off Lepidus Prime. There will be no deployment of Abel Verreault’s Astra Militarum. The Ecclesiarch will honour his promise to you and declare a War of Faith.’ The operative gestured once more to the High Twelve on their thrones. ‘Just as soon as Lord Udo has completed his endless commendations of the Lord Admiral’s foresight and decisive action. But with the Navy at void-anchorage in Glaucasia and the Chartist Captains pricing all but the wealthiest of the Ecclesiarch’s crusaders out of passage across the rimward sectors, Mesring’s war of faith is no more than a faithless war of words.’
‘Why are you telling me this?’ Vangorich said, his voice tight with anger.
‘Lady Wienand wants your faith,’ the agent said. ‘The threat these dangers pose to the Imperium is beyond your meddlings and the operational scope of the Officio Assassinorum. Allow the Inquisition to fulfil its purpose. Stop creating ripples in the water. Even the best-intentioned actions could compromise our efforts. Trust in our determinations. Our organisation is young but able and best suited to meet this threat in its myriad forms. Leave us to our calling.’
‘And if I don’t?’
‘If you are not part of the solution,’ the operative said, ‘and have no illusions, Grand Master, you are not, then you become part of the problem.’
Vangorich abruptly turned on the agent. A flash of alarm showed in her poise, though she tried to conceal it, and he felt a certain satisfaction at that. ‘It seems appropriate that you should threaten me here, on the chamber floor of the Senatorum Imperialis,’ he said, the coolness of his words at stark odds with the suddenness of his movements. ‘You see, when the Emperor first envisaged the sprawling bureaucracy of such an organisation, many decried the fault in its design: the difficulty in harnessing the trust and concordance of so many factions and parties of interest. What they failed to appreciate was that the Emperor never wanted me to trust you. He never wanted you to trust me. That’s the damnable beauty of it all. Our divisions and contrary motives are the checks and balances that such a large and powerful empire requires to keep it on course.