The Emperor's Legion (Watchers of the Throne #1) - Chris Wraight Page 0,106
of Dissolution? You remember how that went?’ He shook his head. ‘If only that were still the most pressing matter on my table.’
I shot a quick glance at his companion then. She had not been introduced, but I could tell that she was more than a functionary. They were a unit, these two, and she radiated a quiet, steady intelligence.
‘The High Lords have shut down the system,’ Tieron said, wearily. ‘They’re recalling every remaining scrap of defence to the Palace and forbidding off-world movement. The Master of the Administratum is scared. He’s scared of the enemy and he’s just as scared of Guilliman, and he somehow thinks that both can be fended off by hoarding our remaining forces. So let me give you a brief answer to your question – there will be no counter-attack, not from the Council. While the Astronomican remains dark and the balance of power here has yet to be decided, no ships will launch from Terra.’
The fools, I signed.
‘An astute judgement, Sister,’ said Tieron. ‘But they’re close to losing everything now, and that makes them reach for poor policies.’
‘You will inform them, nonetheless,’ said Valerian.
Tieron laughed. ‘I’ll make it a priority, though it won’t make any difference.’ He rubbed his eyes. ‘The Lord Guilliman is here now, and that cannot be altered. When he emerges from his commune with the Emperor he’ll be the undisputed Lord Commander of the Imperium, and nothing Haemotalion can do will stand in the way of that. Until then, though, we’re paralysed, locked into old power games that we should have grown out of generations ago.’
Valerian absorbed this quietly, as if he’d expected the news. I took it rather less well.
Then damn them all, I signed. If they won’t recognise it, we’ll act without them.
‘They’ll come after you, if you try,’ Tieron told me.
Let them.
‘And such action would, of course, be outside the law.’
You truly think I care?
The chancellor chuckled. ‘Careful. I’ve spent my life defending that law.’ He glanced back at Valerian. ‘See, when I tried to see the Lex changed in Council, it was the strangest thing I’d ever done. I still can’t explain why I did it, unless…’ He searched for the words. ‘Unless it reflected a greater design than mine. Perhaps my mistake was to interpret it too literally. The Lex did not need to be changed, because it’s clear now the Lex is destined to be dismantled. But the idea, the idea – that was important.’
He looked down at his hands.
‘To set the Ten Thousand free,’ he murmured. ‘To unleash the Talons of the Emperor. The Council will never allow it. Guilliman might never allow it. I now think that, if it is the right thing to do, you might have to seize the chance yourselves.’
At that point, I do not think Valerian was close to being convinced. He was still so bound to his lifetime’s devotion to duty, interpreted as the labyrinth of rules and customs that had always given him purpose. I was already preparing to storm out, to find some way of getting off-world and forcing the issue myself, but then Tieron said something else that did the seemingly impossible.
‘I have come to believe,’ the chancellor said, ‘that in failure often lies our best sign of truth. I failed in the Council, and only now see that I was cleaving to a doomed course. The harder I pushed, the more I was resisted. I couldn’t cross the threshold. I should have taken that, I think, as a sign to examine my instincts.’
Valerian suddenly looked shaken. He still said nothing, though those words had clearly struck some kind of chord.
I, though, was impatient to be going. It was clear we would not receive any help from this source, and if Valerian could merely give me the names I needed there was nothing to stop me taking matters into my own hands.
We have to act ourselves, then, I signed, uncaring what the chancellor might make of that. We have to defy the law.
The Custodian turned towards me slowly, and it took him a long time to force the next words out. I could see something of his difficulty even then, but now that I know more of him, and now that I know more of the world he inhabited for so long, I think I understand just how impossibly hard it must have been to express them, and that makes me admire him very much for what he did just then.