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  In my eyes, he was a blinkered zealot with psychotic streak. In his, I was the spawn of witches and a heretic.

  No courtroom argument for us on Kuuma. A little war instead. It lasted an afternoon, and raged through the tiered streets of the oasis town at Unat Akim.

  Twenty-eight latent psykers, none older than fourteen, had been rooted out of the population of Kuuma's sprawling capital city during a purge, and sequestered prior to their collection by the Black Ships. They were recruits, a precious resource, untainted and ready to be shaped by the Adeptus Astropathicus into worthy servants of the God-Emperor. Some of them, perhaps, would have the ultimate honour of joining the choir of the Astro-nomican. They were frightened and confused, but this was their salvation.

  Better to be found early and turned to good service than to remain undetected and become tainted, corrupt and a threat to our entire society.

  But before the Black Ships could arrive to take them, they were spirited away by renegade slavers working in collusion with corrupt officials in the local Administratum. Vast sums could be made on the black market for unregistered, virgin psychic slaves.

  I followed the slavers' trail across the seif dunes to Unat Akim with the intention of liberating the youngsters. Tantalid made his way there to exterminate them all as witches.

  By the end of the fight, I had driven the witchfinder and his cohorts, mosdy foot soldiers of the Frateris Militia, out of the oasis town. Two of fhe young psykers had been killed in the crossfire, but the others were safely transferred into the hands of the Astropathicus.

  Tantalid, fleeing Kuuma to lick his wounds, had tried to have me declared heretic, but the charges were swiftly overturned. The Ministorum had, at that time, no wish to court conflict with their allies in the Inquisition.

  I had expected, known even, that Tantalid would return sometime to plague me. It was a personal matter now, one which his fanatical disposition would fix upon and transform into a holy calling.

  But the last I had heard, he had been leading an ecclesiarchy mission into the Ophidian sub-sector in support of the century-long Purge Campaign there.

  I wondered what had brought him to Lethe Eleven at so inopportune a moment.

  * * *

  By the time I was back on my feet, two weeks later, the Darknight was over and I knew the answer, in general if not specific terms.

  I was hobbling around on a cane in the private mansion I had rented in Lethe Majeure when Aemos brought me the news. The great Ophidian Campaign was over.

  'Great success/ he announced. The last action took place at Dolsene four months ago, and the Warmaster has declared the sub-sector cleansed. A famous victory, don't you think?'

  Yes. I should hope so. It's taken them long enough.'

  'Gregor, Gregor… even with a force as large as the hallowed Battlefleet Scarus, the subjugation of a sub-sector is an immense task! That it took the best part of a century is nothing! The pacification of the Extempus sub-sector took four hundred y-

  He paused.

  You're toying with me, aren't you?'

  I nodded. He was very easy to wind up.

  Aemos shook his head and eased his ancient body down into one of the leather chairs.

  'Martial law still dominates, I understand, and caretaker governments have been established on the key worlds. But the Warmaster himself is returning with the bulk of the fleet in triumph, setting foot in this sub-sector again for the first time in a hundred years/

  I stood by the open windows, looking out from the mansion's first floor across the grey roofs of Lethe Majeure which seemed to coat the hills of the Tito Basin like the scaled hide of some prehistoric reptile. The sky was a magnolia haze, and a light breeze breathed. It was almost impossible now to picture this place beset by the filthy, permanent shadows of the Darknight.

  Now, perhaps, I knew why Tantalid had returned. The Ophidian war was over, and his holy mission concluded with it.

  'I remember them setting out, don't you?' I asked.

  A foolish question. My savant was a data-addict, driven since the age of forty-two standard to collect and retain all manner of information thanks to a meme-virus he had contracted. There was no possibility of him forgetting anything. He scratched the side of his hooked nose where his heavy augmetic eye-pieces touched.

  'How could either of us forget that?' he replied. The summer of 240. Hunting the Glaw clan on Gudrun during the very Founding itself/

  Indeed, we had played a particular role in delaying the start of the Ophidian Campaign. The Warmaster, or lord militant as he had been back then, had been all but set to launch his purge into Ophidian space when my investigation of the heretic Glaw family had triggered a mass uprising later known as the Helican Schism. To his great surprise and displeasure, the Warmaster had been abruptly forced to redirect his readied forces in a pacification of his very own sub-sector.

  Warmaster Honorius. Honorius Magnus they were calling him. I had never met him, nor had I much wish to. A brutal man, as are so many of

  his kind. It takes a special mindset, a special brutality, to crush planets and populations.

  There is to be a great Jubilation on Thracian Primaris/ Aemos said. A Holy Novena congregated by the Synod the High Ecclesiarchy. It is rumoured that the Imperial Lord Commander Helican himself will attend, specifically to bestow upon the Warmaster the rank of Feudal Protector/

  'I'm sure he'll be very pleased. Another heavy medallion to throw at his officers when he's annoyed/

  You're not tempted to attend?'

  I laughed. In truth, I had thought to return to the Helican sub-sector capital before long. Thracian Primaris, the most massive, industrialised and populated world in the sub-sector, had wrested capital planet status from ancient Gudrun after the disgrace and foment of the Schism, finally achieving the preeminence it felt its size and power had long deserved. It was now the chief Imperial planet of this region.

  There was work to be done, reports to be filed and presented, and those things could best be achieved by returning to my property on Thracian, my base of operations, near to the Palace of the Inquisition. But I had little love for Thracian Primaris. It was an ugly place, and I only made my headquarters there out of convenience. The thought of pomp and ceremony and festivals filled me with quiet dread.

  Perhaps I would go to Messina instead, or to the quiet of Gudrun, where I maintained a small, comfortable estate.

  The Inquisition is to attend in great strength. Lord Rorken himself…'

  I waved a hand in Aemos's direction. 'Does it appeal to you?'

  'No/

  Are there not better uses for our time? Pressing matters? Things that would be more easily achieved away from such overblown distractions?'

  'Most certainly/ he said.

  Then I think you know my mind/

  'I think I do, Gregor/ he said, rising to his feet and reaching into the pocket of his green robe. And therefore I'm fully prepared for the fact that you're going to curse me when I give you this/

  He held out a small data-slate, an encrypted message-tile whose contents had been received and stored by the astropaths.

  The official seal of the Inquisition was stamped across its front.

  THREE

  Capital world.

  The Ocean House.

  Intruders, past and present.

  Thracian Primaris, capital world of the Helican sub-sector, seat of government, Helican sub-sector, Scams sector, Segmentum Obscurus. You can read that description in any one of a hundred thousand guidebooks, geographies, Imperial histories, pilgrimage primers, industrial ledgers, trade directories, star maps. It sounds impressive, authoritarian, powerful.

  It does no justice at all to the monster it describes.

  I have known hellholes and death-planets that from space look serene and wondrous: the watercolours of their atmospheres, the glittering moons and belts they wear like bangles and jewels, the natural wonders that belie the dangers they contain.

  Thracian Primaris
is no such dissembler. From space, it glowers like an oozing, cataracted eye. It is corpulent, swollen, sheened in grey veils of atmospheric soot through which the billion billion lights of the city hives glimmer like rotting stars. It glares balefully at all ships that approach.

  And, oh! But they approach! Shoals of ships, flocks of them, countless craft, drawn to this bloated cesspit by the lure of its vast industrial wealth and mercantile vigour.

  It has no moons, no natural moons anyway. Five Ramilies-class star-forts hang above its atmosphere, their crenellated towers and buttressed gun-stations guarding the approaches to and from the capital world. A dedicated guild of forty thousand skilled pilots exists simply to guide traffic in and out of the jostling, crowded high-anchor reaches. It has a

  planetary defence force, a standing army of eight million men. It has a population of twenty-two billion, plus another billion temporary residents and visitors. Seven-tenths of its surface are now covered by hive structures, including great sections of the world's original oceans. City-sprawl fdls and covers the seas, and the waters roll in darkness far beneath.

  I loathe the place. I loathe the lightless streets, the noise, the press of bodies. I loathe the stink of its re-circulated air. I loathe its airborne grease-filth adhering to my clothes and skin.

  But fate and duty bring me back there, time and again.

  The encrypted Inquisitorial missive had been quite clear: I, and a great number of my peers, was summoned to Thracian Primaris to attend the Holy Novena, and wait upon the pleasure of the Lord Grandmaster Inquisitor Ubertino Orsini. Orsini was the most senior officer of the Inquisition in the entire Helican sub-sector, a status that made him equal in rank and power to any cardinal palatine.

  I was not about to decline.

  The voyage from Lethe Eleven took a month, and I brought my entire entourage back with me. We arrived just four days shy of the start of the Novena. As a tiny pilot boat led my ship in to anchor through the massed ranks of orbiting starships, I saw the dark formations of Battlefleet Scarus, suckling at a starfort as if they were its young. This was their heroic homecoming. There was a taste of victory in the air. An Imperial triumph on this scale was something to be savoured, something the Ministorum could use to boost the morale of the common citizenry.

  Tour itinerary has been prepared/ said Alain von Baigg, a junior interrogator who served as my secretary. We were aboard the gun-cutter, dropping towards the planet.

  'Oh, by whom?'

  He paused. Von Baigg was a diffident and lustreless young man who I doubted would ever make the rank of inquisitor. I'd accepted him to my staff in the hope that service alongside Ravenor might inspire him. It had not.

  'I would have presumed that the preparation of my itinerary might have included my own choices.'

  Von Baigg stammered something. I took the data-slate he was holding. The list of appointments was not his handiwork, I saw. It was an official document, processed by the Ministoram's nunciature in collaboration with the Office of the Inquisition. My timetable for all nine days of the Holy Novena was filled with audiences, acts of worship, feasts, presentation ceremonies, unveilings and Ministorum rites. All nine days, plus the days before and after.

  I was here, damn it! I had responded to the summons. I would not allow myself to be subjected to this round of junkets too. I took a stylus and

  quickly marked the events I was prepared to attend: the formal rites, the Inquisitorial audience, the Grand Bestowment. "That's it/ I said, tossing it back to him. The rest I'm skipping.' Von Baigg looked uncomfortable. 'You are expected at the Post-Apostolic Conclave immediately on arrival.' 'Immediately on arrival/ I told him sternly, I'm going home.'

  Home, for me, was the Ocean House, a private residence I leased in the most select quarter of Hive Seventy. On many hive worlds, the rich and privileged dwell in districts high up in the top-most city spires, divorced as far as possible from the dirt and crowding of the mid and low-hab levels. But no matter how high you climbed on Thracian Primaris, there was nothing to find but smog and pollution.

  Instead, the exclusive habitats were on the underside of the hive portions that extended out over and into the hidden seas. There was at least a tranquillity here.

  Medea Betancore plew the gun-cutter down through the traffic-thick atmosphere, threaded her way between the tawdry domes, dingy towers, rusting masts and crumbling spires, and laced into the seething lanes of air vehicles entering a vast feeder tunnel which gave access to the hives' arterial transit network.

  Bars of blue-white light set into the walls of the huge tunnel strobed by the ports. In under an hour we had reached a great transit hub, three kilometres down in the city-crust, where she set the cutter down on a massive elevator platform that sedately lowered us and a dozen other craft into the sub-levels of Hive Seventy. The cutter was then berthed in a private lifter-drome and we transferred to a tuberail for the final stretch to the maritime habitats.

  I was already weary of Thracian Primaris by the time I reached the Ocean House.

  Built from plasma-sealed grandiorite and an adamite frame, the Ocean House was one of a fhousand estates built along the submarine wall of Hive Seventy. It was nine kilometres beneath the city crust and another two below sea level. A small palace by the standards of most common Imperial citizens, it was large enough to house my entire retinue, my libraries, armoury and training facilities, not to mention a private chapel, an audience hall and an entire annex for Bequin's Distaff. It was also secure, private and quiet.

  Jarat, my housekeeper, was waiting for us in the entrance hall. She was dressed, as ever, in a pale grey gown-robe and a black lace cap draped with a white veil. As the great iron hatch-doors cycled open, and I breathed the cool, purified air of the house, she clapped her plump hands and sent servitors scurrying forward to take our coats and assist with the baggage train.

  I stood for a moment on the nashemeek rug and looked around at the austere stone walls and the high arched roof. There were no paintings, no busts or statuary, no crossed weapons or embroidered tapestries, only an Inquisitorial crest on the far wall over the stairs. I am not one for decoration or opulence. I require simple comfort and functionality.

  The others bustled around me. Bequin and Aemos went through to the library. Ravenor and von Baigg issued careful instructions to the servitors concerning some baggage items. Medea disappeared to her private room. The others in my retinue melted away into the house.

  Jarat greeted them all, and then came to me.

  "Welcome, sir/ she said. 'You have long been from us/

  'Sixteen months, Jarat/

  'The house is aired and ready. We made preparations as soon as you signalled your intentions. We were saddened to hear of the losses/

  'Anything to report?'

  'Security was of course double-checked prior to your arrival. There are a number of messages/

  'I'll review them shortly/

  'You are hungry, no doubt?'

  She was right, though I hadn't realised it.

  The kitchen is preparing dinner. I took the liberty of selecting a menu that I believe you will approve of/

  As ever, I have faith in your choices, Jarat. I'd like to dine on the sea terrace, with any who would join me/

  'I'll see to it, sir. Welcome home/

  I bathed, put on a robe of grey wool, and sat for a while alone in my private chambers, sipping a glass of amasec and looking through the messages and communiques by the soft light of the lamp.

  There were many, mostly recent postings from old acquaintances – officials, fellow inquisitors, soldiers – alerting me to their arrival on the planet and conveying respects. Few needed more than a form reply from my secretary. To some, I penned courteous, personal responses, expressing the hope of meeting them at some or other of the Novena's many events.

  There were three that drew my particular attention. The first was a private, coded missive from Lord Inquisitor Phlebas Alessandro Rorken. Rorken was the head of Ordo Xenos in the H
elican sub-sector, my immediate superior and part of the triumvurate of senior inquisitors who answered directly to Grandmaster Orsini. Rorken wanted to see me as soon as I was back on Thracian. I responded immediately that I would come to him at the Palace of the Inquisition the follow morning.

  The second was from my old friend and colleague, Titus Endor. It had been a long time since I had set eyes on him. His message, uncoded, read: 'Gregor. My greetings to you. Are you home?'

  The brevity was disarming. I sent an affirmative response that was similarly brief. Endor clearly did not want to converse in writing. I awaited his reponse.

  The third was also uncoded, or at least lacked electronic encryption. It said, in Glossia: 'Scalpel cuts quickly, eager tongues revealed. At Cadia, by terce. Hound wishes Thorn. Thorn should be sharp.'

  The sea terrace was probably the main reason I had leased the Ocean House in the first place. It was a long, ceramite-vaulted hall with one entire wall made of armoured glass looking into the ocean. The industrialisation of Thracian Primaris had killed off a great part of the world's sea-life, but at these depths, hardy survivors such as luminous deep anglers and schools of incandescent jellies could still be glimpsed in the emerald nocturnal glow. The candlelit room was washed by a rippling green half-light.

  Jarat's servitors had set the long table for nine and those nine were already taking their seats and chatting over preprandial drinks as I arrived. Like most of them, I had dressed informally, putting on a simple black suit. The kitchen provided steamed fubi dumplings and grilled ketelfish, followed by seared haunches of rare, gamey orkunu, and then pear and berry tarts with a cinnamon jus. A sturdy Gudranite claret and sweet dessert wine from the vineyards of Messina complemented the food perfectly. I had forgotten the excellent qualities of the house Jarat ran for me, so far away from the hardship of missions in the field.

  Around the table with me were Aemos, Bequin, Ravenor, von Baigg, my rubricator and scribe Aldemar Psullus, Jubal Kircher, the head of household security, a trusted field agent called Harlon Nayl, and Thula Surskova, who was Bequin's chief aide with the Distaff. Medea Betancore had chosen not to join us, but I knew the intensity of the piloting chores down through Thracian airspace had undoubtedly worn her out.