'You're late getting here today,' said Casuaban without reproach.

'Yes,' said Togandis, 'my somnambulating was plagued with phantasmagoria.'

Casuaban threaded his way through the cardinal's words and nodded as he said, 'You had a bad dream?'

'That scarcely covers the details, my Hippocratic friend.'

'A nightmare?' asked Casuaban, as casually as he could.

'Indeed. Visions of such repellence to make a man believe he is going quite mad.'

'What did you dream?'

'I think you know, my dear Serj.'

'How could I possibly know, Shavo?'

Togandis leaned in close, so that no one could hear. 'I dreamed of the Killing Ground.'

'Oh.'

'An exclamation of one syllable,' said Togandis. 'Well, it will suffice.'

'What did you expect?' hissed Casuaban, taking hold of Togandis's arm and steering him away from the driver's cab of the truck. 'Keep your damn voice down. That's not a subject you should mention out loud, here of all places.'

'Are you saying you do not dream of Khaturian?' said Togandis. 'I fear you would be lying to me if you did.'

'You're not my confessor, Shavo,' said Casuaban, slipping a battered silver hip-flask from his jacket and taking a slug.

'Ah, I see now why you do not recall your dreams,' said Togandis.

'Don't you dare judge me,' snapped Casuaban, taking another drink. 'You of all people.'

'If a man of the cloth may not judge you then who can?'

'Not you,' said Casuaban. 'You don't have the right. You were there too.'

Togandis nodded and stepped even closer to Casuaban. The medicae could smell the cardinal's last meal and the stale odour of his sweat.

'I was there, yes, and not a rotation of this world goes by that I don't regret that fact.'

'Really?' sneered Casuaban, jabbing his finger into the cardinal's chest. 'Then why do you still wear the medal? Pride?'

Togandis at least had the decency to look uncomfortable. 'No, not pride. I wear it because if I did not then what message would that send to Leto Barbaden? You think he would balk at sending Eversham for us if he thought we were plotting against him?'

Casuaban gripped Togandis's robes. 'Keep your bloody voice down!' he whispered. 'Or are you trying to get us killed?'

Togandis shook his head and reached down to prise Casuaban's hands from his chasuble with a grimace. 'I did not come here to fight with you, Serj,' said Togandis.

'Then why?'

'To warn you.'

'Warn me? Of what?'

'I saw them last night,' said Togandis, 'the dead of Khaturian.'

'In your nightmare?'

'No, in the temple.'

'What are you talking about?'

'They came for me,' said Togandis. 'They came for me, but they didn't take me, although I confess I do not know why. They have power now, Serj, real power. It is only a matter of time before they come for us all.'

Casuaban waved his hip-flask in front of the cardinal's face. 'I don't think it's me you need worry about, Shavo. Perhaps you should take a look at yourself first.'

'This is no joke, Serj,' said Togandis. 'Haven't you felt it? Something has changed, and not for the better. This world is different now. I can feel it in every breath I take.'

Serj Casuaban wanted to argue with Togandis, but the image of the small girl lying in his infirmary and the words she had said to him still haunted him. And hadn't he woken in the middle of the night with a pounding headache in the midst of a terrible dream in which a monster with burning eyes emerged from its cave to devour him?

But the dead?

'You have felt it!' said Togandis, seeing his expression.

'And if I have? What can we do about it? You and I both know what we did, what we allowed to happen. If the dead are coming for us then perhaps we should let them take us.'

'You want to die?' asked Togandis.

'No,' replied Casuaban, his shoulders slumping and looking at the hostile faces that called the wasteland of Junktown home. 'Death would be easy. It's living with what we did that's a punishment.'

'I'm not sure the dead see it that way,' said Togandis.

Uriel and Pasanius followed Eversham through the corridors of the palace, their austerity making more sense now that they had met Leto Barbaden. Red-jacketed Falcatas were stationed throughout, their breastplates gleaming and their curved blades shining like silver, though Uriel noticed that none carried a lasgun or so much as a pistol.

Eversham said little along the way, politely and concisely answering any questions put to him, but venturing no information beyond what was necessary. Of the Janiceps, he had said nothing more, simply that Uriel would understand when he saw them.

At last, they emerged on the other side of the palace from which they had entered. High buildings with saw-tooth ramparts stretched away at angles to the main structure to form a triangular courtyard area. Where the palace was constructed of dark, intimidating rock, these wings were fashioned from a smooth pink stone that shone like polished granite. Narrow windows pierced the outer walls of the plain west wing, but no doorways led within and the roofs bristled with antennae.

The eastern wing was of a different character altogether, its age obviously greater than the rest of the palace. The stonework of this wing was more ornate and a tribute to the craftsman's art: a building that celebrated the fulfilment of talent.

Where the rest of Barbaden's dwelling was clean and sharp, this wing had grown old and decrepit, the stonework cracked and weathered like the face of an elderly statesman, its windows grimy with dust and memory. Despite the disrepair, or perhaps because of it, Uriel immediately liked the building, feeling a strange sense of connection to it, or to something within it.

There was a bleak stretch of bare concrete in the space between the two wings, as large as the parade ground before the Fortress of Hera and large enough for the entire Chapter to assemble. Nothing disturbed the blunt uniformity of the space, no statues, no outbuildings and nothing to rescue the eye from the utilitarian nature of the ground save a drum tower that squatted, ugly and threatening, at the far end of the concrete.

'A parade ground?' asked Uriel, as Eversham led them straight across the middle of the open concrete space.

'Indeed,' said Eversham. 'This was the muster field where Restoration Day was declared.'

'Restoration Day?' asked Pasanius.

'When Imperial rule was officially restored to Salinas,' explained Eversham. 'A great day for the regiment.'

'Yet you felt the need to hide it away back here,' said Pasanius.

Eversham glared at Pasanius. 'The regiment died here also.'

Uriel seized upon this uncharacteristic display of emotion and said, 'Died here?'

'We were no longer an army of conquest,' said Eversham, the bitterness in his voice plain to hear. 'We were formally disbanded as a serving regiment and those that remained to bear arms were designated a Planetary Defence Force.'

'That cannot have been easy to bear,' said Uriel, knowing the disdain that most Imperial Guard forces, wrongly, held for PDF regiments. Guardsmen called them toy soldiers, but such bodies of men were often the first line of defence against invasion or uprising. Uriel had met many a courageous PDF trooper in his time, remembering Pavel Leforto of the Erebus Defence Legion on Tarsis Ultra, a man who had saved his life.

Simply because a soldier did not travel beyond the stars to make war did not lessen him in the eyes of the Emperor.

'It wasn't easy,' said Eversham, his pace quickening with remembered anger. 'To be part of something magnificent and then to be nothing; can you imagine what that's like?'

'Actually I can,' said Uriel.

Eversham looked over at him and, realising he had loosened his tongue, simply nodded and resumed his usual guarded expression.