there is a majority in favour, we may proceed with further discussion. If not, then there are many other matters to detain us.’
This was the moment. With Valoris in play, I had the votes I needed. I felt a sudden lurch of fear, as if I were looking over a cliff at the waves crashing below. After so many long years of labour, we were finally at the point of decision.
‘Place your votes, if you will, my lords,’ said Haemotalion.
One by one, the High Lords put their hands out before them. An upward palm indicated consent, a downward palm dissent, a clenched fist abstention. Raskian and Kerapliades were first, on opposite sides of the argument. Then the others followed suit, some forcefully, some with more reserve.
Soon eleven hands were on the table. Fadix was the only abstention, and the Master of Assassins looked at me coolly as he placed his fist on the stone. Just as predicted, five votes either way were placed, leaving only Valoris to cast his.
I looked up at him, my heart thumping. I could already see it happening. I could see the old Legio Custodes reborn at this moment, taking the fight at last to the Enemy, and it would be my work. Even if only a fraction of them took ship, I had seen what they could do in combat – there could be nothing, surely nothing, that would stand against them.
I felt my palms grow sweaty. All eyes turned to the Captain-General, who waited calmly, as if he were listening to something beyond our hearing. The tension became unbearable, and I had to restrain myself from blurting out something unwise.
And then he moved, lifting his massive arm from the stone and extending it outwards. With a lurch of pure horror, I saw his heavy palm turn over to face the tabletop.
But he never placed it. Just as he moved, every one of the High Lords suddenly received the same burst of tidings from their own private comm-feeds. Adjutants leapt out of their seats, frantically checking and then double-checking what they had just heard, before racing to confer with their masters.
The doors at the far end of the chamber slammed open, and robed officials raced in, ignoring the shouts of the Lucifer Blacks.
For a moment I genuinely had no idea what the commotion was about, until I saw Kerapliades shouting out in dismay and suddenly knew, with terrible certainty, what must have happened.
Only one piece of news could have halted that Council in mid-session, for the astropath relayers would never have dared to disturb them for anything less. By the time I had activated my own external channel and heard Jek’s frantic voice at the other end, I already knew what she would tell me.
‘My lord!’ she cried, her voice cracking with anguish. ‘It’s gone! It’s gone.’
‘Tell me plainly,’ I snapped. I could feel everything collapsing around me, everything I had worked and risked so much for, gone in an instant, and it made me desperate.
‘Cadia,’ Jek said, already in tears. ‘It’s fallen. It’s over, my lord. It’s all over.’
Valerian
It happened so quickly.
Time, space, matter, thought – we had known for so long that they were a seamless weave, but perhaps we had not fully understood just how close the bonds were between them. A great plan, thousands of years in the gestation, came to its completion, and we were the generation to witness hell being freed from its boundaries.
I remember looking up at the skies, and seeing them change. The skyscapes of Terra are grey and occluded, forever churning in a soup of drifting smog. Those who live there learn not to look up. Why would they? There is nothing to see but the filthy evidence of our own destructiveness.
But then, on that day, those clouds became the red of arteries – vivid and virulent, their innards glowing as if lit by fire. Mortals ran to the ramparts of the Palace, staring wide-eyed into the burning atmosphere, crying out to the God-Emperor to save them from the madness they were seeing.
I stood where I was, high on the parapets of the Tower of Hegemon, and witnessed the sky burn. The air was filled with screaming. I saw great arcs of electricity, as bloody as the skies above, slam and skip across the reeling cityscape. A thousand war-horns were going off, sending spikes of clamour into an already reeling firmament. I saw aircraft lose power and collapse into the towers below, their systems scrambled by