place was secure from listening devices, but immediately thought better of it. He had brought me here. Of course it was.
‘I hear reports from every corner of the Imperium,’ I started, trying to control the shake in my voice and remember who I was and whom I worked for. ‘In truth I hear more than anyone else, even the High Lords, for they all have their fiefs to watch, and I have allegiance to both none and all. And, though I risk telling you what you already know, I see a tipping point being reached now. I see the losses we’re taking becoming irrecoverable. And I can’t stand back and do nothing.’
He was silent as I spoke, but slowly reached up to his helm and took it off. I don’t know what I was expecting to see – perhaps something like Valerian had been, with his smooth skin and pleasant complexion.
Valoris was nothing of the kind. His visage was hard-edged, broken by scar tissue, the skin veined and vivid. His lips were thin, his nose flared, his neck sinewy. In that low light, no doubt amplified by my own fear, he looked almost ghoulish.
‘It is not your task to tell me this,’ he said. Once free of his helm, his voice was low, considered.
‘In the normal run of things, yes, that’s right,’ I said, working to keep my composure. ‘But the composition of the Council is within my purview, and the Lord Brach is gone – Throne preserve his soul – and there’s no consensus on who should replace him. And then there’s Dissolution, which has been discussed and discussed but never been ruled on.’
Valoris placed his empty helm on the altar beside him. He leaned his great spear against one of the columns, and the cutting blade clinked against the stone. Then he regarded me with those terrible bloodshot eyes.
‘And you wish me to settle the issue,’ he said. ‘None of this is new to me.’
‘But since then, lord, we have had word of catastrophe on Fenris. And two fleets have been lost en route to the edges of Segmentum Solar to reinforce the supply lines of Warmaster Katask. These are hardly trivial setbacks. And then there is–’
‘Cadia. The Gate into the Eye. You seem to think, chancellor, that we are unaware of this.’
‘No, not at all, but you may not have the perspective I do.’
His gaze, as unbending as the granite around us, never wavered. I wondered what it might look like if he tried to smile.
‘I know what you wish for,’ Valoris said. ‘And you know we had this chance before, when Speaker Lestia died. We did not take it then. The reason was simple – the High Lords rule the Imperium, and we are not of the Imperium.’ I remembered that Valerian had said the same thing. ‘There was a time when His vision was manifest. All you see around you now, all that has been built over ten thousand years, none of that is His. While you have forgotten, we remember.’
‘But there were captains-general on the Council before.’
‘When the need was greatest.’
I could not help myself – I let slip a wry smile. ‘And now the need is great, lord. The need is very great indeed.’
‘For the Imperium,’ Valoris agreed. ‘If my first duty were to your mortal realm, the case would be strong. But my first duty is to the Emperor. We are His guardians, not an army under the Council.’
‘Yes, that is what you have become, but it was not always the way.’
And then, for the first time, I detected the smallest indication of surprise. Knowledge of the Great Crusade was vanishingly rare even in the highest levels of the hierarchy, but I had access to many obscure libraries and had made it the subject of much study. Once, I knew, the Custodians had waged war in the farthest reaches of the galaxy, and not invariably with the Emperor at their head.
‘Things were different then,’ he said.
‘Of course they were. The many ages are always different.’ I was somehow forgetting my fear. The debate had reignited something within me – love of an argument, perhaps. ‘But how can the Throneworld remain safe if its fortress worlds fall, one by one? I hear the entreaties from those we send out into the void. One of them, a fine man who is almost certainly dead now, said that we can no longer afford our old laws. He’s looked the Enemy in the eye. I’d trust