‘My greetings, Master,’ I said, closing the doors behind me.
Kerapliades was standing before a sandstone fireplace. He gave no indication he had any comprehension of how valuable it was – over twelve thousand years old, fashioned in pre-Unity Francia, literally irreplaceable – but I could not blame him for that. He spent his days in iron-ribbed spires determining how many thousands of human souls would be fed into the mechanisms of the Throne and how many hundreds would be doled out to lives of unremitting duty as sanctioned Imperial psykers. I might have been less than equable, had I been in his place.
‘Is the chamber secure?’ Kerapliades asked.
His long face, a bony white-grey with sunken black eyes, regarded me mournfully. He was nearly two metres tall, with high-bunched shoulders and long slender arms. His robes of office were simple – black, heavy fabric hanging in long swathes. He was flanked, as Jek had warned me, by his two nulls, whose psychic dampening aura was palpable even to me.
‘All my chambers are secure, Master,’ I said. ‘You know this.’
‘I know nothing any more.’ Kerapliades leaned on a steel staff with an iron eye at its tip. ‘I took a risk, coming here.’
He looked at me with rheumy eyes. I had never managed to find out just how much he could see through them. Almost all astropaths are blinded by their creation ritual, and those who retain some visual function are damaged in other ways, so they say. I never liked to speculate too closely on what his eyes must have seen since his own soul-binding.
‘We speak in confidence,’ I told him, and that was true. Anything told to me by one of the Council would never be disclosed to another unless they wished it to be.
Kerapliades limped away from the mantelpiece. There were chairs everywhere, but I knew he wouldn’t sit.
‘It’s Cadia,’ he said, as if that conveyed everything that needed to be said.
Well done, Jek, I thought.
For as long as the Imperium had existed, Cadia was ever at the forefront of its deliberations. Over the last two hundred years – my lifetime – the High Lords had devoted an ever-increasing amount of time to that one world. Regiments had been thrown into the void to bolster it. Space Marine Chapters had been petitioned to reinforce its approaches. Armour-wrights and strategeos had been seconded to augment its walls and its fortresses. There were other battle zones of import – Armageddon, Badab – in which we were stretched, but in truth none of them mattered besides Cadia, for if that world fell then the balance of power we had cultivated for ten thousand years would be ended at a stroke.
‘You have tidings from the sector?’ I asked.
‘None.’
‘Well then,’ I said. ‘In the absence of that–’
‘You do not understand me.’
It was then that I first truly noticed the Master was not his moribund, desiccated self. I was used to seeing him gloomy. I was not used to seeing him scared. His long grey fingers clutched at his support, and even that did not quell the faint trembling.
‘We can handle the visions,’ he said, and he no longer looked at me. I do not think he was looking at anything in the chamber just then. ‘I do not ask any of my alpha-level astropaths to undergo what I would not myself. I witness what they witness. I undergo the same trials.’
I let him speak. I will be truthful – his manner disturbed me. Kerapliades was not the confessional sort. I wondered if his mind had finally been cracked by the strain put on it, yet he did not show signs of mania, just a kind of dread.
‘Probing that close to the Eye has always been perilous,’ he went on. ‘But now – nothing. No terror. No screaming visions. A curtain has been drawn across it.’
I did not know what to say to that. We had been at full-scale war over the Cadian Gate for over five years, and during that time we had relied on the Adeptus Astra Telepathica for the vast bulk of our knowledge of how our forces were faring. There had always been interference, and ambiguity, and often contradiction, but never silence. In my naivety I even wondered whether it might be a good thing – that the nightmares unleashed by our enemies there might be finally abating.
Then I looked at the Master again, and saw immediately that it was not a good thing.
‘Tell me what you need,’ I said.
‘Need?’ Kerapliades barked a dry sort of laugh. ‘I need a thousand more psykers – stronger ones, not the dross I get from the Black Ships now.’ He blinked. His breathing was shallow. ‘This is different, chancellor. I can’t read it yet, but my blood tells me true enough. Don’t be misled by this calm – it comes before catastrophe.’
He had told me similar things before. I might have learned to ignore the warnings, if it were not for the horrendous expression on his mournful face.
‘The Twelve must meet,’ he said. ‘And Dissolution must be enacted.’
So that was it. Another throw of this old die. Despite myself, my heart sank. The arguments had been scoured over and over for more years than I had been alive, and there had never been a resolution.
‘I do not think that will be easy,’ I said, already determining how such a thing could be done. ‘Camera inferior is not scheduled for another three months.’
Kerapliades whirled around, fixing me with his strange, swimming eyes. I felt a brief tremor, just for a moment – a flash of insight into his colossal psychic power. It was not meant as a threat, I think, just a momentary lapse in control, but the effect was still startling, like placing one’s hand on static electricity.
‘You can make it happen,’ he said.
Possibly so. ‘Have you spoken of this to any of the others?’ I asked.
‘None,’ he said.
‘Then I beg you – do not. Not yet. I will make my approaches – it would be best coming from me.’
‘I know,’ he said, and a grim smile cracked his features. ‘You have wormed your way into the confidence of us all, doorkeeper. Sometimes I think you are the most dangerous man on Terra.’
Perhaps he meant that to be flattering.
‘You give me too much credit,’ I said. ‘I merely accommodate.’
‘So you say.’ The hollow look in his eyes returned. ‘Do it, though. Do what has to be done. If you need coin, if you need anything, let me know.’
That was an amusing thought. I had more coin than any of them knew. I could have bought half the Council with it already, were any of them remotely interested in such things, but, to their credit, none of them were. If they had vices then they were all connected to power, not avarice, and baubles held little sway over such souls.
‘Of course, there is one difference, this time,’ I ventured cautiously, knowing that I was telling Kerapliades something he already knew. ‘The Lord Brach has not yet been replaced, and so one seat is empty.’
‘Yes, and you know now what must be done, do you not?’
‘I do not choose the High Lords,’ I said.
‘Go to see him,’ he said.
‘I do not think he will receive me,’ I said.
‘You will find a way,’ he said.
And that was it. That was why he had come – to plant this idea in my head, to give it his blessing. I judged from this that he had support from others of the Twelve – he would not have advanced it if not. He was bound by the Lex Imperialis from making overt approaches himself, as were all his peers in the Council, but that would never stop them from making their views known.
It put me in a delicate position. Half the Council had always been against Dissolution, half for it. A reconfiguration might not change that, and by intervening now I risked aligning myself with a losing cause – a dangerous thing, even for a man like me.
I would need time to think. I would need time to confer with Jek and plot a route through this. The tides of intrigue in the Palace could rise fast and fall fast – the trick was not to be carried by them.
I bowed. ‘I’m honoured that you came, Master,’ I said.
Kerapliades did not return the bow.
‘I’ll be waiting,’ he said, limping towards the chamber’s doors. His nulls went with him, making my flesh crawl as they passed me.
Once he was gone, I waited awhile, pondering what to make of the visit. His fear had not been feigned. I still found it unsettling to witness fear from a High Lord, and that alone weighed more heavily on me than anything he had said.
After a suitable interval, Jek reappeared, looking curious. ‘Anything of importance?’ she asked.
‘Not sure yet,’ I said.
I was aware I had guests waiting. I placed my hands on Jek’s to thank her for her concern, but could not linger to consult her then – that would have to wait for a few hours, by which point I might have settled the issues more clearly in my own mind.
I went back towards the dining chamber, gradually resuming my appearance of joviality as I walked. By the time I re-entered, my face was full of smiles again.
‘What kept you?’ asked the woman sitting on my left, just as the final courses were being delivered. ‘Great matters of state?’
‘A little indigestion,’ I said, reaching for the sorbet. ‘Not that there’s much difference.’
Click here to buy Watchers of the Throne: The Emperor’s Legion.
In memory of Alan Bligh,
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