Such was the custom of most Astartes: the ritual, the gloving, the blessing. They were beings wrought for war, their mindsets particular. Ritual aided their singularity of focus. It refined their purpose.
They were not like custodes at all. Like cousins, perhaps, like kin from the same bloodline, the custodes and the Astartes were similar but distinct. The custodes were the product of an older, formative process, a process, some said, that had been refined and simplified to produce the Astartes en masse. Generally, custodes were larger and more powerful than Astartes, but the differences were only noticeably significant in a few specific cases. No one would be foolish enough to predict the outcome of a contest between an Astartes and a custodes.
The greatest differences lay in the mind. Though custodes shared a familial bond through the circles of their order, it was nothing like the keen brotherhood that cemented the Legions of the Astartes. Custodes were far more solitary beings: sentinels, watchmen, destined to stand forever, alone.
Custodes did not surround themselves with slaves and servitors, aides and handservants. They armoured themselves, alone, pragmatically, without ceremony.
‘Dorn armours the Palace for war,’ Amon said, as more of an observation than a question. Only a custodes of the first circle would refer to a primarch so bluntly.
‘War is expected.’
‘Now it is expected,’ said Amon. ‘Before, it was not expected, never, not from ourselves.’
Constantin did not reply.
‘How did this happen?’ Amon asked.
‘It is not possible to say,’ replied the master of the custodes. ‘As one who knew the Warmaster well, I cannot believe it is overweening pride or ambition that has inspired this infamy, nor resentment. I believe–’
‘What?’ asked Amon, buckling his abdominal plates tight.
‘I believe Horus Lupercal is unsound,’ said Constantin. ‘Unsound of mind or of humour. Something has unseated his rational thought, and the good council of those around him.’
‘Are you suggesting Horus Lupercal is mad?’ asked Amon.
‘Perhaps. Mad, or sick, or both. Something has happened to him that cannot be explained by the scheme of the galaxy as we have come to understand it.’ Constantin looked out through the high windows of the House of Weapons, and studied the line of the Western Ramparts, newly reinforced and obese with additional shield plating and gun platforms. ‘We must prepare for the unthinkable. War will come to us, war from within. Sides are drawn, choices made.’
‘You make it sound matter-of-fact,’ Amon said.
‘It is,’ replied Constantin. ‘The Emperor is threatened. We are his protectors. We will stand against the threat. There is nothing else for us to speculate upon, not even the madness of those we once loved.’
Amon nodded. ‘The Palace is becoming a fortress. I approve. Dorn has done superlative work.’
‘It was ever his skill, and the skill of his Astartes. Defence and protection. At this, the Imperial Fists excel.’
‘But we remain the last line,’ said Amon.
‘We do.’
‘This will require more than strong walls and battlements.’
With their crested helmets held under their arms, they walked across the inner courts of the Palace from the House of Weapons to a tower of the Hegemon where the custodes kept their office of watch.
Custodes had gathered to greet Amon at the entrance of the tower. Heads bowed, they struck the shafts of their Guardian spears against the flagstones, a clattering murmur of welcome and approval.
Haedo stepped forwards, his features hidden by the shadows of his visor. ‘Amon Tauromachian, good that you return,’ he said, clasping Amon’s right hand.
‘You have cut deeper than any of us,’ Emankon said.
They entered the tower through high-arched rooms where the murals were so old and faded they looked like the pencil sketches and cartoons the artist had made in preparation for his work. Information streams from the vast data looms in the sub-levels of the Palace pulsed in the conduits under their feet. Cyber-drones floated under the high vaults, clusters of them moving like shoals of fish, dragged and gusted as if by the wafts of deep marine currents.
The Watchroom was bathed in violet light from the vast overhead hololithic emitters. Data freckled and danced across this smoky dome of light. The comparison/contrast programs running in the central cogitation consoles speared beams of gold and red up into the violet gloom, and roped divergent data elements in lassos of light. The global data sea and the Unified Biometric Verification System were being trawled and panned by the Watchroom’s codifier assembly, and disparate elements were being grouped together, connections made, traces followed. An anti-Unity cell in Baktria had been betrayed by some restricted treatise they had tried to access from a library in Delta Nilus. Pro-Panpacific terrorists had been eradicated in Archangelus, traced by a weapons-buy they had tried to pull off in some backwater Nordafrik shanty. Every day, a billion clues and a million secrets were analysed and examined by the custodes watch, sifted with acute, painstaking precision through the ever-shifting, fluid levels of Terra’s information sphere.
‘What is the chief matter of the hour?’ Constantin asked.
Every sixty minutes, the Watchroom prioritised a dozen of the most sensitive findings for special attention.
‘Lord Sichar,’ replied the custodian of the watch.
He had not hefted a Guardian spear in ten months. He went to the practice chambers in the subterranean levels beneath the tower, and cued up a dozen blade-limbed servitors to oppose him. The spear swung and looped in his hands, his muscles remembering the old skills and training. When the exercise ended, and the servitors were broken and dismembered on the mat around him, he called up fresh units for a second round.
How much of our lives are spent in rehearsal, he considered. The blood games, the training, all of it just pantomime coaching in preparation for the real thing.
Amon hated himself for the tiny thrill of exhilaration that he felt. The real thing was coming. No matter the infamy and outrage of it, the custodes would at last be called from rehearsal to perform the duty they had been created to perform.
To relish the imminent war was unseemly. As he closed out the second round of practice, Amon focused his mind instead on the case of Lord Sichar.
‘The matter is already under inspection, Amon,’ Constantin had told him.
‘I have been out ten months,’ Amon had replied, ‘I am rusty and idle, and eager for a proper puzzle to divert me. I ask your favour.’
Constantin had nodded. The matter of Lord Sichar had been passed to Amon Tauromachian for review.
Lord Pherom Sichar had always been a person of interest to the custodes. Hereditary lord of Hy Brasil, the most powerful of all the Sud Merican cantons, Sichar had often been vocal in his criticism of Imperial policies. His dynastic links, through bloodline and marriage, to the Navis Nobilite provided him with a considerable trade empire off Terra. Sichar was reckoned to be one of the fifty most powerful feudal lords of the colonies. Only the most careful political gamesmanship by Malcador the Sigillite had prevented Sichar’s elevation to the Council of Terra. Of greater concern was the fact that Sichar was a direct descendant of Dalmoth Kyn, one of the last tyrants to hold out against the Emperor’s forces in the dying days of the Unification Wars. It was understood that the Emperor tolerated Sichar’s rule of Hy Brasil – and his barracking and sniping in the Hegemon – in order to heal the old wounds left by the Wars of Unification and encourage ethnic settlement. Sichar was a powerful man, and an articulate, outspoken statesman. He often spoke tolerable sense, in Amon’s opinion, and his policies were pragmatic and robust.