Talos gestured to the sweep of worlds and suns in the hololithic display. ‘Humans die every night. They die in their millions, in their billions, feeding the warp with emotion at the moment of death. Astropaths are no different, except by virtue of degrees. An astropath dies, and a psychic soul cries out that much louder upon final death. The warp boils around those souls, when they are unleashed from their mortal shells.’
The hololithic image turned, refocusing on several worlds not far from the warship’s current location. Population and defence data, almost certainly outdated, spilled out in static-blurred lines.
‘Purely by excruciating the astropaths, we could have created a song of screams, loud enough to be heard and felt by psychic souls on several nearby worlds. But it wouldn’t be enough. The butchery of astropaths is hardly a rarity. How many Legion warbands have done the same over the millennia? I couldn’t even begin to guess. Raiders have used the ploy since time out of mind, as a means to cover their tracks. What better way to mask your escape than to stir the cauldron of the warp, thickening the primordial ooze to slow any pursuers? Even with the risk of daemonic contagion, it often works well enough to be worth the risk.’
Talos walked around the chamber, addressing the mortal crew, meeting their eyes in turn. ‘All this power and pain at our fingertips. Weapons that can level cities. A warship capable of breaking entire fleet blockades. But that means nothing in the Long War. We can leave scars on steel, but so can any ragged pirate vessel with a battery of macro-cannons. We are the Eighth Legion. We wound flesh, steel and souls alike. We scar memories. We scar minds. Our actions must mean something, or we deserve to be forgotten, left to rot amongst ancient mythology.’
Talos took a breath, his voice growing soft again. ‘So I gave voice to the song. The song means something: a truer weapon than any laser battery or bombardment cannon. But how best to twist this silent song into a blade that might bleed the Imperium?’
Cyrion watched the crew’s faces. Several of them seemed keen to answer, while others waited with eyes lit by interest. Throne in flames, it was really working. He’d never have believed it possible.
Uzas was the one to answer. He looked up, as if he’d been paying attention all along. ‘Sing it louder,’ he said.
Talos’s lips curled into the same sick smile as before. He looked to several of the crew, as if sharing some jest with them.
‘Sing it louder,’ he smiled. ‘We turned our singers into a screaming chorus. Weeks and weeks of pain and fear, condensed into the purity of absolute agony. Then add the torture of others to their own torment. The butchery of thousands of humans is nothing – a drop in the warp’s ocean. But the astropaths drank it in. They had no choice but to hear, and see, and feel what was taking place. When the psykers finally died, they expired as husks bloated by genocidal suffering, blinded by the ghosts of the dead all around them. We fed them agony and fear, night after night. They screamed it out as psychic pain. They screamed it out upon the moment of death, right here, into the astropathic duct. World after world is hearing it, even now. The astropaths on those worlds magnify it with their own miseries, adding verses and choruses to the song, sharing it with the other worlds in line.’
Talos paused, the smile finally fading. His eyes slid from all others, now reflecting the bluish gleam of the hololithic.
‘All of this was possible because of one final gamble. One last way to make the song louder than we could ever have imagined.’
‘The Navigator,’ Mercutian breathed. He could scarce give the idea countenance.
Talos nodded. ‘Octavia.’
She awoke to find she wasn’t alone.
One of the Night Lords stood nearby, consulting an auspex reader mounted on his bulky vambrace.
‘Flayer,’ she said. Her own voice horrified her, to hear it so scratchy and weak. Her hands went to her stomach on instinct.
‘Your progeny still lives,’ Variel said distractedly. ‘Though by all rights, he should not.’
Octavia swallowed the lump in her throat. ‘He? It’s a boy?’
‘Yes.’ Variel didn’t look up from his scanner, still making adjustments and turning dials. ‘Was I unclear? The child is in possession of all attributes and biological distinctions implicit in the term He. Thus it is, as you say, a male.’
He looked up at her at last. ‘You have a long list of biorhythmic anomalies and physiological deficiencies that need addressing in the coming weeks if you are to regain full health. Your attendants have been briefed in full of the sustenance you require, and the chemicals you are to ingest.’ He paused for a moment, watching her with his pale blue eyes never blinking once. ‘Am I speaking too quickly?’
‘No.’ She swallowed again. Truth told, her head was swimming and she was relatively sure she’d be throwing up in the next couple of minutes.
‘You do not seem to be following me,’ Variel said.
‘Just get on with it, you son of a bitch,’ she snapped.
He ignored the insult. ‘You are also risking dehydration, Kings’ Disease, rachitis, and an acute scorbutus flaw. Your attendants are aware of how to treat the symptoms and prevent further development. I have left the relevant medicinal narcotics with them.’
‘And the baby?’
Variel blinked. ‘What of it?’
‘Is it… healthy? What will all of these treatments do to him?’
‘What does that matter?’ Variel blinked a second time. ‘My mandate is to ensure your continuance in serving as the ship’s Navigator. I have no interest in the misbegotten fruit of your womb.’
‘Then why haven’t you… ended it?’
‘Because if it survives gestation and infancy, it will eventually undergo implantation to serve in the Legion. I had thought that was obvious, Octavia.’
The Apothecary checked his narthecium readings one more time, and made his way to the chamber door, boots thudding as he went.
‘He won’t be one of the Legion,’ she said to his back, feeling her tongue tingle with a rush of saliva. ‘You’ll never have him.’
‘Oh?’ Variel turned enough to look over his shoulder. ‘You seem very certain.’
He walked from the room, scattering her attendants before him. Octavia stared at the bulkhead as it whined closed in his wake. Once he was gone, she threw up a thin trickle of sticky bile, and blacked out again, slumped in her throne. That was how Septimus found her, almost half an hour later.
By the time he entered, Vularai and the other attendants had connected the nutrient feeds to the implanted sockets on Octavia’s limbs.
‘Move aside,’ he told them as they barred his way.
‘Mistress is resting.’
‘I said, move aside.’
Several of them started to reach for their scavenged pistols and the shotguns concealed beneath dirty robes. Septimus drew both of his pistols in a smooth movement, aiming them at two separate hunched attendants.
‘Let’s not do this,’ he said to them.
Before he even knew Vularai was there, he felt the keen edge of her blade at the back of his neck.
‘She needs her rest,’ the attendant hissed. Septimus had never paid heed to just how snake-like her voice really was. He wouldn’t have been surprised to learn her tongue was forked beneath all that bandaging. ‘And you are not supposed to be here.’
‘And yet here I am, and I am not leaving.’
‘Septimus,’ came Octavia’s weak voice.
All of them turned at the whispered word. ‘You woke her,’ accused Vularai.
He didn’t bother answering. Septimus shrugged her off, and moved to sit by Octavia’s throne.
She was pale – as pale as if she’d been born to this life – and she was almost cadaverously thin, but for the swell of her stomach. Blood scabbed her forehead and nose, where it had dried after running down from beneath her bandana. He wa
sn’t sure why, but one of her eyes wasn’t opening, and she licked cracked, split lips before speaking.
It must have shown on his face.
‘I look that awful, do I?’ she asked.
‘You… have looked better.’
Her fingertips managed a weak brush along his unshaven cheek, before she sagged back into her throne. ‘I’m sure I have.’
‘I heard what they did to you. What they made you do.’
She closed her eyes and nodded. When she spoke, only one side of her mouth moved. ‘It was quite clever, really.’
‘Clever?’ he asked, his teeth clenching. ‘Clever?’
‘To use a Navigator,’ she sighed. ‘The secret sight. To rip their souls from their bodies… with the purest, strongest… connection to the warp…’ She laughed without breath, doing little more than shivering. ‘My precious eye. I saw them dying. I saw them torn loose. Souls cast into the warp. Like mist. Pulled apart by the wind.’
He stroked her hair back from her sweating face. Her skin was ice. ‘Enough,’ he said. ‘It’s over.’
‘My father told me there was no worse way to die. Nothing more painful. Nothing more damning. A hundred souls, driven mad by fear and torture, killed by looking into the warp itself.’ She gave another quivering, breathless laugh. ‘I can’t even imagine how many people are hearing those mortis-cries now. I can’t picture how many are dying.’
‘Octavia,’ he said, resting his hand on her stomach. ‘Rest. Recover your strength. We’re getting off this ship.’
‘They’ll find us.’
Septimus kissed her wet temple. ‘They are welcome to try.’
XIX
FALSE PROPHECY
Talos reflected alone, sat in the silence of First Claw’s arming chamber. After the activity of recent weeks, he craved the calm.
The Echo of Damnation remained in its sedate drift, waiting for its Navigator to recover before they risked the flight back to the Great Eye. Even a short flight was likely to kill Octavia in her current condition, let alone a journey lasting months or years, sailing across most of the galaxy.
Talos was all too cognisant of the fact she’d never sailed into a true warp storm. The Eye was an unwelcoming haven, even for experienced sorcerers. An untested Navigator, especially an exhausted one, was a liability he had no wish to test until he had no other choice.
He still saw the eldar when he closed his eyes. Their lithe figures danced in flickering after-images, shadows against shadows – black and silent one moment, silver and screaming the next.
The eldar. He no longer needed to be asleep to see them. That, too, was a problem. Was Tsagualsa to blame? If that was the case, breathing the carrion world’s air had done the opposite of what he’d hoped. Despite gifting him with the inspiration he’d desired, had it also accelerated his degeneration like some cure for cancer that did nothing but fuel the tumours’ black spread?
He’d argued with Variel in the apothecarion all those weeks ago, but the truth had a cold core. He needed no auspex reading or biorhythmic scan to tell him he was falling apart. The dreams were evidence enough. They’d been growing worse since Crythe – more crippling, less reliable – but even that had been manageable. For a time, at least.
No. The eldar dreams were different, because they were more than mere dreams. He no longer needed to be asleep to feel them. The howls and blades of mad aliens were becoming as real as the walls around him, as true as the voices of his brothers.
What plagued him most was the question of why he still saw them at all. Since Hell’s Iris, when the dreams had first come, he’d been unashamed in his reluctance to return to the Eye. Now, though, the prophecy seemed void. Xarl couldn’t die twice. He’d never been so relieved to be wrong.
It wasn’t easy to decide how much to tell the others. Too much, and they’d never follow him. Too little, and they’d yank at their chains, resisting his guidance.
‘Talos,’ said a shadow at the edge of his vision. Instinct forced him to glance left. Nothing. No figure. No sound. As he exhaled, he heard the clash of a blade against ceramite, as faint and misty as a memory. It could have been coming from somewhere nearby on board the ship; it could have been in his mind.
His brothers’ objections coiled amongst the eldar-thoughts. The other legionaries wanted to run right away, heedless of killing the Navigator in the process. Lucoryphus had advocated pushing Octavia as far as they could, then simply trusting the warp’s currents to lead them home once she was dead. Voices from among the other claws raised similar desires. Even if the warp carried them elsewhere, the risk was better than remaining here for the certainty of Imperial vengeance.
He’d calmed them down, forcing himself not to show disgust. They sounded craven, either without realising or simply without caring. Imperial revenge would take a great many months to arrive, at best. Warp flight close to the afflicted worlds would be ruined for a long while yet. Then subsector command nodes would have to realise a pattern in the planets affected, which would take months – even years – leaving them here, untouched, with impunity. Even after the pattern was recognised, the Imperium’s own disparate worlds would take an unknowable age to seek the song’s origin in the telepathic duct.
No, there was nothing to fear just yet. Not from the Imperium, anyway.
‘Talos,’ another voice whispered. Something black and slender flitted across his vision. He glanced its way to see it vanish.
‘Talos,’ the air whispered again.
He lowered his head, breathing slowly, perversely enjoying the pulsating throb of veins in his skull. The pain was a reminder that he was awake. A small blessing, but one he was thankful for.
‘Talos.’ There was a click, followed by a soft metallic whine as a laspistol charged.
With his head still in his hands, he felt the threat of a smile tease the corner of his lips. So it was finally happening. He’d been expecting this for so long now: the seventh slave had changed since the eighth came aboard, and this was a confrontation he’d been anticipating with very little relish.
‘Septimus,’ he sighed. ‘A poor choice of moment to make your move.’
‘Look at me, heretic.’ The voice wasn’t his slave’s. Slowly, he lifted his head.
‘Oh,’ Talos said. ‘Greetings, archregent. However did you find yourself here?’
He watched the old man with an almost distracted air. The liver-spotted hands shivered as they held the stolen pistol. Blood flushed the old man’s cheeks; blood that in a true warrior would have flooded to the muscles, ready for battle. Here was an old fool thinking with his head, not fighting with his heart. Talos doubted he would even shoot.
‘As a point of interest,’ the prophet said, ‘from the angle of the weapon, you are aiming too low.’
The Archregent of Darcharna, still clad in his filthy robes of state, lifted the pistol higher.
‘Better,’ Talos allowed. ‘However, even if you were to shoot me at this range, it is still unlikely to kill me. Humanity breeds its demigods from hardy stock, you know.’
The old man kept his silence. He seemed caught between the urge to cry, to pull the trigger, or to flee the room.
‘I would be intrigued to learn how you are here,’ Talos added. ‘You should be on Tsagualsa with the others we spared. Did one of the other Claws bring you up here to serve as a slave?’
Still no answer.
‘Your silence is vexing, old one, and this conversation grows increasingly one-sided. I would also like to know how you managed to survive several weeks on board without meeting an unpleasant demise in the Echo’s halls.’
‘One of… of the others…’
‘Yes. One of the other Claws brought you aboard as a toy. I had guessed. Now what brings you to this ill-advised assassination, so painfully destined to fail?’
For a moment, just a moment, the old man’s face
pulled taut, lengthening into something inhumanly elegant that regarded him with soulless and slanted eyes. Talos swallowed. The eldar visage vanished, leaving only the old man.
The archregent didn’t reply.
‘Did you intend to speak, or did you simply come here in order to aim that useless weapon at me?’
Talos rose to his feet. The gun followed him up, shaking more noticeably now. Without any sign of haste or impatience, Talos took the pistol from the old man’s hands. He crunched it in his fist, and dropped the wreckage to the decking.
‘I am too tired to kill you, old man. Please just go.’
‘Thousands of people,’ the archregent whispered through spit-wet lips. ‘Thousands and thousands… You…’
‘Yes,’ Talos nodded. ‘I am a terrible creature likely to burn in the eternal fire of your beloved Emperor’s judgement. You cannot imagine how many times I have heard similar threats, always whispered by the downtrodden, the powerless, and the desperate. They change nothing, neither the words nor the people that weep them. Is there anything else?’
‘All those people…’
‘Yes. All those people. They are dead, and you have been broken by what you saw. That is no excuse to whine at me, human.’
Talos picked the old man up by the throat and hurled him into the corridor beyond. He heard the twiggish snap of brittle bones breaking, but couldn’t bring himself to care. Irritating old fool.
‘Talos,’ said a voice within the room. His eyes flicked left and right, revealing nothing. He wasn’t surprised.
As he lowered himself down again, hanging his aching head, he heard the dream-sounds of rainfall and female laughter drifting back once again.
No, the thought came unbidden, cold and rancid with sudden truth. The Imperium will not come to answer this atrocity. Someone else will.
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