Navradaran turned.
‘You are not a fool, Crowl, so do not act like one,’ he said. ‘You speak of the Gate and show your ignorance. There are uncounted mortals alive this day who would willingly die to witness it, and here you stand in blasphemy and ridicule.’
He started to walk again.
‘I will not make the offer again,’ Navradaran said. ‘Follow me now, and I will show you where the Angel stood. Perhaps that will cure you of your levity.’
When she awoke, Spinoza found herself restrained by her ankles and wrists, bound tight to a heavy iron chair. Her temples throbbed, and her veins felt sluggish, as if her blood had somehow been thickened.
She blinked a few times, and the worst of the dizziness went away. She tested her bonds, one by one, but they were fast. They had taken her armour from her, and she wore only her padded shift and greaves. A metallic taste lingered in her mouth, and swallowing it away was difficult. She could feel bruising across her back, her neck, the left side of her face.
‘You woke up fast,’ came a voice from the darkness. ‘They told me it would take a few more hours, but I thought you’d defy them.’
Spinoza squinted into the gloom. It took a few more moments for her vision to clarify. When it did, she saw that she was in a narrow chamber, the walls and floor cut from naked rock. The only light came from an old stained lumen tube that barely kicked out a candle’s worth of illumination, keeping them swathed in semi-dark. There were heavy iron doorways cut into the walls.
Standing in front of her was the man, the False Angel. He had taken off his mask and his robes, and wore standard Imperial garb — a dark grey tunic over a black bodyglove, a half-cloak, worn synthleather boots. He was standing at his ease, leaning against the far wall, his legs crossed at the ankle.
Spinoza tried to salivate, to get her jaw moving. Her heart was beating too fast, her breathing too shallow. The words of the old litanies began to cycle through her mind, steeling her.
He is eternal. Through Him, I endure all things.
She was under no illusion as to what was coming next. She had seen the lithocasts, the autopsy reports, the cadavers brought in from the underhives.
‘Where are the others?’ she croaked.
‘The assassin and your storm trooper sergeant are alive. So are six of the others. The rest were killed in the audience chamber, but you must not hold that against my people, for you killed many, many more of them. Indeed, all told you took a very heavy toll.’ He pushed himself from the wall and walked closer. ‘What is your name?’
‘Luce Spinoza, interrogator, the Ordo Hereticus.’
The man smiled. ‘Name, rank, ordo. And that is all you will tell me, yes?’
‘I am an agent of the Holy Orders of the Emperor’s Inquisition. They will come after me.’
‘Not tonight. Not for some time, given the madness that infects this world. For the time being, interrogator, we are alone.’
Spinoza looked up at him. Her breathing was coming under control. The worst effects of the drug were beginning to drain away, replaced by a more honest, bodily pain.
‘Who are you?’ she asked, lifting her bruised chin.
The man squatted down before her, coming to her level, resting his elbows on his knees and tucking the fingers under his chin. He had a weathered face, with defined muscle mass and smooth skin. This one had not grown up in the lightless habs.
‘The name I was given at birth? Salvor Lermentov. You know what they call me now? The False Angel. Ridiculous. I have no idea where it came from — a kill-tag from the arbitrators, most likely. We used it, though. We turned it into something they could believe in. That is what this is about — belief.’
Spinoza’s eyes narrowed. Quietly, she tested her bonds again, tensing up against the chair’s weight. ‘You believe nothing. I’ve seen what you do.’
Lermentov smiled dryly. ‘What we do? I’ve seen what you do. Your hands are the bloodiest, interrogator.’
‘We do what we have to and take no pleasure in it. Your rites are abominations.’
‘Rites.’ Lermentov looked amused. ‘You mean that screed back there — sin and righteousness. Forget it. It means nothing. We use it keep them motivated. After ten thousand years of superstition, they can only think a certain way. We make do with what we have.’
Spinoza began to push her back gently against the chair, probing for weakness. There was no trace of madness in the man’s speech. He was measured, dry, careful, which was unwelcome for many different reasons.
‘Here is where you tell me you are innocent of all crimes,’ she said, playing for time, wondering where Khazad and the others were being held.
Lermentov placed his palms together for a moment, holding them as if in prayer. ‘No, not all. There were crimes. But not the ones you think we are guilty of.’ He got up again. ‘How long have you served on Terra, inquisitor? I do not think long. You do not have the look about you.’
‘It matters not what-’
‘It matters.’ Lermentov’s eyes briefly flickered with anger. ‘Around us, above us, in the habs, people are dying. They are dying in agony, interrogator, and it is drawn out. They are made to experience pain that I can only begin to…’ He broke off, searching for the words. ‘And you believe we are to blame.’
‘It was confirmed by members of your cells.’
Lermentov laughed bitterly. ‘Yes, your fine techniques of truth-seeking.
Let me guess — they begin with denials, and then you bring out your instruments, and soon they are telling you anything you want them to, and at the end you read your bloody transcripts and comfort yourself that you’ve unearthed this great conspiracy beneath your feet.’ He shook his head, contemptuous. ‘If I wished it, interrogator, I could bring in the skin-saws and the nerve-pins and before the hour was done you’d tell me the Emperor Himself was a daemon of the deepest abyss.’
‘That is heres-’
‘You are wrong about us. You were wrong at the beginning and you are wrong now. All of you, hunting our members and torching our meeting places, never getting closer to the heart of it. Even when you took us alive you learned nothing, because you asked the wrong questions. How could you get it so, so wrong?’ Lermentov came closer again. ‘Because the people down here have learned to fear something more than you. It matters not how many of us you take into your fortresses, because there are more waiting who know that the enemy is not some abstract theological construct, but is here, now. So they look for someone to protect them, and they know that the arbitrators will not do it, and that the lords of the High Spires will not do it, and so it must come from themselves. And so we are arming ourselves and we are organising and we are growing in power, ready to order the underhives as they should be ordered.’
Spinoza gave up her testing of her bonds. They had bound her fast, the chair was solid, and in her weakened state there was no chance of breaking them.
‘To establish structures outside Adeptus Terra is forbidden,’ she said. ‘For that alone you would have earned death, but these other things — raids on the Emperor’s sanctioned agents, taking weapons-’
‘And how do you wish us to do this, if not with tools?’ Lermentov smiled again, but it was devoid of mirth. ‘Soon the Feast will reach its climax at the Gate and the priests will tell us to be thankful for everything we possess. Those with the power will smile, protected by the millions who keep them shielded from the worst, but what have these people got to be thankful for? They love the Emperor. Truly, they do. We ensure that there are no faithless among us, and they will die for Him just as you will. But they will not die for the High Lords. Not any longer. They will have enough to eat, enough to clothe themselves. Above all, they will be protected from the horror. That is why they come to me, and that is why we do what we do.’