The Emperor's Legion (Watchers of the Throne #1) - Chris Wraight Page 0,19

your motion it would die. I’m quite used to killing things.’

‘You are bound, lord, to vote in the interests of the Imperium.’

Fadix smiled dryly. ‘I’ve done more for the Imperium than you’ll ever know,’ he said, and his teeth glinted like burnished iron in the dark. ‘I’ve sent my sons and daughters into the hell of Cadia, and almost none return. For every target we eliminate, we lose twice that number of priceless operatives. Do I think Dissolution would change that?’

‘That is the matter before you.’

He shrugged. ‘For me, I have no view. I care little for laws, only that they bind my hands. Suppose you release the Custodians from their vigil here. They say there are ten thousand of them. The enemy numbers in the billions. A lion is a poor hunter to set against so many jackals.’

I remembered Harster’s bleak face then. There’s strength in the ­universe even greater than theirs.

‘The same argument applies to the Angels of Death,’ I said. ‘We’ve always needed elites.’

‘And so we have them.’ Fadix reached for the leaf of parchment before him and brandished it. I could see reams of close-scrawled text, stamped and restamped with the great seals of the Adeptus Terra. ‘This is the warrant, under the Lex, for an Eversor to be unleashed. It has taken two years to secure. This night, it will be activated, and the stasis pod will be launched into the void. It is the deadliest weapon in my arsenal, honed over ten thousand years of experience. It will kill and kill until it reaches its target. It will cause terror to set against terror. What have the Custodians done to prepare themselves for such fighting, save patrol these walls and polish their spears?’

I knew that they had done far more than that. I guessed that Fadix knew too, but the point was still well made.

‘If you mean to oppose,’ I said, feeling that I had come here at such personal risk only to see my endeavour thwarted, ‘then you are within your rights.’

‘Hah. If I wished to wound you that way, it would have been sweeter to do it at the Council, and watch your hopes crumple at the moment of completion.’ He replaced the parchment lightly. Every one of those sheets was a warrant for the death of some proscribed soul, and he shuffled them like a banker shuffles notes of promise. ‘No, I have in mind a subtler punishment for you. I know you’ve already spoken to the Adeptus Custodes. You do not wish to return to them. I would not wish to return to them either, and yet you will have to, for I plan to abstain. And you understand what that means.’

I did. If he were telling the truth, the votes would remained tied at five each. The twelfth place would have to be filled in order to break the deadlock. I would have to, somehow, speak to the Captain-General.

I could see now what Fadix had done. My interest in the result had been uncovered. Going anywhere near the Custodians would be dangerous for me now, and yet doing nothing risked the chance slipping away. I could pursue it, but it endangered everything I had striven to build over eighty years.

The matter had always been delicate. Now it had become perilous.

‘I do not yet know the intentions of the Adeptus Custodes,’ I said, almost to myself.

Fadix placed his hands on the tabletop, folded neatly, sheathed in cuffs of purest silk.

‘Then, chancellor,’ he said, bringing the interview to its terminus, ‘if you value your reputation, and care anything for this project of your Council allies, I think you had better find out.’

Valerian

I ran down the long corridor. I was deep within the Inner Palace, where the ground itself was hallowed. The high vaulted roof was hung with battle-standards, hundreds of them, all stiff with age. Tall windows let a poor light slip across the flags, etching silver across skull-faced gargoyles.

My guardian spear, Gnosis, crackled in my grip. I could feel my heart thumping steadily, my lungs working, my blood coursing. My armour swam with lines of static electricity, feeding thin lines of energy from the snarling blade. I was like a star in the void.

He was ahead. I could smell him now. This enemy was not one for concealment – he had been built to level walls, and now he was inside them. I had few illusions over what he was capable of – for all that our cultivation was in