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‘We have already ascertained that your messenger never reached me.’

‘Then I can present you with my credentials when we have returned to my palace.’

‘Your palace?’

‘I have requisitioned a fitting domicile for myself and my staff,’ said the cardinal.

‘Perhaps you would be good enough to present them to me in person,’ said Macharius. The two men stared at each other, locked in a battle of wills. ‘At your earliest convenience.’

‘Of course,’ said Cardinal Septimus, after the lapse of ten very long heartbeats. ‘It would be my pleasure.’

Macharius nodded as if he had expected nothing less and swept ahead, through the massed ranks of troops, leaving the generals and the Imperial dignitaries to follow in his wake.

* * *

The airship carried us over the ancient city towards the palace that had been prepared for Macharius. I watched the city slide by through the portholes while I eavesdropped on the conversation of my betters. Starscrapers that resembled great ebony tombstones drifted by. Alien runes appeared on their sides and vanished with no apparent reason. Black flames danced through the sky overhead. In the shadows of these monstrous xenos artefacts the human buildings seemed smaller, shabbier and more impermanent.

Many of them had an abandoned half-complete look that showed how recently they had been put up. It had been the intention to make Acheron the capital of the newly created sector. Its strategic position across the interstellar routes made it suitable as such. Now I doubted the city would ever be complete.

Beneath us I could see vast makeshift camps containing the forces of the generals. Around the edges were parked Baneblades, Shadowswords and other Imperial armour. There was no sign here of the shortages we had known on Loki. I recalled Macharius’s suspicions of a conspiracy against him and the gathering of generals here had proved that correct. I wondered if he was correct, too, about supplies being withheld and the supply chain being sabotaged. He was a man who made few mistakes about such things.

‘We can’t assume that just because they are not here they are loyal,’ Drake was saying. His voice was low, urgent, pitched for the ears of Macharius. ‘They may, as Septimus says, simply have not gotten the message.’

‘Or they may be lying low, afraid to commit themselves, until they see what happens.’

‘Equally you cannot assume that just because they are here the officers present are against you. It is difficult to ignore a direct summons from the Imperium.’

‘Particularly if one is ambitious,’ said Macharius. There was a note of irony in his voice. ‘Tell me what you know about Septimus.’

‘What does anyone really know about a man like him?’

‘I am sure you can tell me more than common scuttlebutt. I am sure your network of agents has been busy here for some time.’

‘He is a powerful, clever, ambitious man,’ Drake said.

‘The fact that he holds the position he does tells me as much,’ said Macharius. ‘The Imperium would not have sent a fool here.’

‘He will not thank you for making him present his credentials to you.’

‘What was I supposed to do? Take him at his word?’

‘You could have been more diplomatic.’

Macharius shrugged. ‘How do you think this will be played?’

‘You will be sent home, summoned to Terra, loaded with honours.’

‘My work is not done.’ Macharius sounded completely convinced of that.

‘Clearly there are those in the Administratum who feel differently.’

‘If I am replaced no one will be able to rein in Tarka and his ilk. The crusade will disintegrate as they try to achieve their ambitions unfettered. Give them a decade and they will tear the army apart, it will be the Schism all over again.’

‘You cannot be sure of that.’

‘I picked those men. I have commanded them for decades. Believe me, I know them and have done so since I humbled every last one of them on the battlefield.’

‘There are some would say that was a flaw in your plan,’ said Drake. He was not a man afraid to put forward opinions that might have got someone else shot. ‘A bid to make yourself irreplaceable. Some would say it was a sign of a lack of humility, of disloyalty to the Imperium even.’

‘Some would say, inquisitor? What would you say?’

‘I am just setting out the arguments that will be used against you. Septimus will be able to present himself as just someone seeking to sort out a succession crisis.’

‘In order for there to be a succession, I would have to die.’

‘You are planning on becoming immortal, are you?’

‘I am not planning on dying any time soon.’

‘Has it occurred to you that there may well be others who are planning on your death?’

‘People have been doing that since I was eleven years old. I am still here.’

‘You won’t be forever. No man can be.’

‘Has it occurred to you, inquisitor, that there are those who would profit by the return of the old Chaos, of a new Schism.’

‘Yes. That is why I think some of your command decisions have been unwise.’

Macharius laughed. ‘I found those men leading armies that had conquered scores of worlds. They swore loyalty to me. They are the best generals in the Imperium for the kind of war we are fighting. It was not simply vanity and megalomania that made me choose them. They chose themselves. Of all the men in all the worlds, they are the ones who had survived and been victorious. They have conquered more worlds for the Imperium than any men since the time of the Emperor.’

Drake nodded. Macharius clearly had a point. ‘You could have replaced them.’ He was not about to give up.

‘With men just as violent, just as ambitious and perhaps less competent? You don’t get to be an Imperial general by being a herbivore, inquisitor. You didn’t survive on the killing grounds of the Schism by being the toughest sheep in the herd. You survived by being a wolf.’

‘And now your pack is turning on you.’

‘You have made your point.’

‘I hope so.’

‘You think we are approaching a point where I may be of more use to the Imperium as a dead hero than a live general?’ There was a trace of mocking humour in Macharius’s voice.

‘I am sure there are some who might.’

‘They will change their minds when I have dealt with Richter.’ Once again it was there in Macharius’s voice, that note of querulous obsession. He seemed to have convinced himself that overcoming his nemesis would put everything right, would regain any lost prestige, would make things as they once were. Could he really not see how broken things were?

‘I have had my people sweep your palace. It is clean, as far as they can tell.’ That meant that it was as secure as was mortally possible.

‘That is always good to hear,’ said Macharius. I knew he had his own people checking as well, just in case. I would see reports about it soon enough.

* * *

The airship docked with Macharius’s palace.

We accompanied the general to his penthouse chambers and were dismissed.

Knowing there would only be a short respite before the tidal wave of generals and bureaucrats descended on us, we headed down towards the apartments that had been assigned to us. All around an army of servants went about their business, padding through the marble-walled corridors, clad in green tunics, carrying themselves with the bearing of ancient aristocrats. Here at least were those who were still in no doubt of Macharius’s status. His glory reflected on them and they looked the part.

‘I wonder what they all do when we’re not around,’ Anton said as we strode past another arrogant-looking houseboy.