Nisato shook his head. 'I do not believe so, my lord. While I don't think Ventris was lying, there was definitely more that he wasn't telling you. He was vague about how they arrived on Salinas and what planet they'd just come from, and when a person is being vague, it's usually because they know that the specifics will hang them out to dry.'

'So you think we should press them for details?'

'That depends on whether you want to create a fuss,' said Nisato.

'No,' agreed Barbaden, 'a fuss is something I should like to avoid, Daron. Very well, look into the ambush this morning, make some arrests, shake the tree and see what falls out. I want some heads on spikes by this evening. I don't care whose, you understand?'

Nisato nodded and turned from him. As the enforcer left he whispered something to Shavo Togandis, but Barbaden could not hear what passed between them. The governor smiled. Poor old Nisato, always trying to tie up those loose ends, but never astute enough to realise that some loose ends didn't want or need to be tied up.

With Nisato gone, Barbaden turned towards Mesira Bardhyl, noting the shabbiness of her appearance and the haggard look in her eyes. He tutted. The least the woman could have done was make herself a little more presentable before coming to the palace.

Barbaden had seen the same look on the faces of many astropaths and wondered if such hangdog expressions of misery were common to psykers throughout the Imperium. He pushed the thought from his mind as irrelevant.

'And you Mistress Bardhyl?' he asked. 'Can you shed any more light on what was said here today?'

Mesira Bardhyl shook her head, keeping her eyes studiously fixed on a point of the floor between her feet. Barbaden reached out and lifted her chin until their eyes were locked together.

'When I ask a question, I expect an answer, Mesira,' said Barbaden. 'It would be such a shame if I was to suspect that your psychic ability had allowed a sliver of the warp to enter your pretty little head and I had to have Daron put a bolt round through it, wouldn't it?'

Tears gathered in the corners of her eyes and Barbaden's lip curled in distaste. Tears angered him, women's tears especially, and he leaned closer as she mumbled something inaudible.

He slapped her hard across the face.

'Speak up, Mesira,' said Barbaden. 'I thought you would have sense enough to know that your hysterics this morning had irritated me to the point where you would curb such theatrics in my presence.'

'Yes, governor,' said Mesira. 'Sorry, governor.'

'There you go,' said Barbaden, wiping tears from her hollow cheeks. 'Now that you are composed, can you tell me anything of value? And, please, spare me the hyperbole you were spouting earlier.'

Mesira Bardhyl composed herself with visible effort, reaching up to rub her eyes and take a deep breath.

'It's… It's hard to describe,' she said.

'Please try,' he said, leaving her in no doubt that this was not a request.

'Enforcer Nisato was right,' said Mesira. 'Captain Ventris wasn't lying, but nor was he telling you everything. He believes his truth, that much I can tell, and I sensed no taint to his words, but whatever he and his friend travelled on…'

'What about it?' asked Barbaden.

'I don't know what it was, but it was powerful, so very powerful,' said Mesira. 'It ripped its way through to this world and then tore a hole back through the gates of the Empyrean, and a lot of energy came through as it did so.'

'What does that mean? In real terms?'

'I don't know,' said Mesira, her entire body pulling in tight at this admission. 'I think that's why they appeared in the killing… in Khaturian.'

'Explain.'

Mesira looked up at the people around her, looking for support in their faces. Finding none, she pressed on, and Barbaden could see the resignation in her eyes as she spoke. 'We all know what happened at Khaturian, what we did… The scale of it… Things like that don't just get forgotten, in this world or any other. When a person dies, his… soul, for want of a better word, is released into the warp, and it usually dissipates into the maelstrom of energy there. Sometimes, though, when a person dies, their soul has enough rage, fear, anger or some other strong emotion to remain coherent in the warp, and that exerts its own attraction.'

'Attraction to what?'

'To wherever they died,' said Mesira. 'Whatever it was that brought Captain Ventris here was something terrible, something that feeds on death and bloodshed. Khaturian was like a magnet to it.'

'You say it's gone, this thing that brought Ventris here?'

Mesira nodded. 'Yes, it was barely even here, but its power was so great that the walls that separate us from the warp were worn much thinner, and they were already thin enough.'

'Superstitious nonsense,' blurted Shavo Togandis. 'This is a pious world, Mesira. Yes, we have our troubles, but we are conscientious in our suppression of psychics.'

Barbaden chuckled at Togandis's unspoken accusation.

'Our faith keeps the warp at bay,' said Togandis, 'as it always has and always will.'

'You think so, Shavo?' cried Mesira. 'Then you are a fool. Why do you think this system is so fractious? What do you think brought us here in the first place? The warp bleeds into the nightmares of this system's people, stirs their sleep and twists their dreams with thoughts of death and war! And now it's in ours.'

Mesira was wringing her hands, as though desperate to scrape the skin from her bones or clean them of some imagined taint. Barbaden saw the light of madness in Mesira Bardhyl as fresh tears coursed down her cheeks.

'You must have felt it,' she wailed. 'We were there! Oh, Emperor save us, we were there!'

Barbaden stood before Mesira and took her shoulders in a tight grip.

Her words trailed off and she looked up into his eyes. 'I'm sorry… I'm sorry, please,' she whispered. 'I don't want to live like this, please… I can't.'

'Shhh,' he said. 'Be quiet now.'

She nodded jerkily, hugging herself tightly, and Barbaden shook his head at such a pitiful display of weakness. He returned to his seat and slid into the comfortable leather, a sure sign that the audience was at an end.

Verena Kain handed him a snifter of vintage raquir, the one thing on Salinas he had actually developed a taste for, her desire to please him as transparent as her desire to succeed him. He smiled and sipped the liquor, enjoying the biting crispness at the back of his throat.

'You are dismissed,' he said.

Chief Medicae Serj Casuaban had spent so many years in the House of Providence that he no longer noticed the smell of blood. The very walls, though scrubbed regularly by rusting and wheezing servitors were so ingrained with the vital fluid that no amount of labour could completely erase it.

How many lives had ended in this wretched place, he wondered.

The answer leapt immediately to his mind: too many.

His boots rapped harshly on the grilled walkway as he made his way through the wards that ran the length and height of the central tier of the facility. It was a daily irony to Casuaban that three Capitol Imperialis, an example of the mightiest war machines ever created by the Imperium, should be shackled together to create a medicae facility.

He snorted at such a description. True, many people did leave the House of Providence alive, but they were shadows of their former selves, most with limbs missing, their bodies covered in hideous scars or otherwise disfigured by the infernal ingenuity of mankind in wreaking harm on one another.

Ten years of conflict between the administration of Leto Barbaden and the Sons of Salinas had cost the people of Salinas dear.

Casuaban was a tall man and was forced to stoop several times as he made his way through the facility, the sounds of people dying all around him. His hair was the colour of the iron walls and his face was craggy and lined, like worn leather left out in the baking sun. He had the bulk of a former soldier, but age and ten years without weekly fitness standards to meet had added flesh to his bones.