They sat on the islet, talking and joking, until the sun rose again.

THEY WERE PLAYING cards on the lawn by the light of chemical lanterns. The simple game Mersadie had proposed had long been eclipsed by a punitive betting

game suggested by one of the soldiers. Then the iterator, Memed, had joined them, and taken great pains to teach them an old version of cups.

Memed shuffled and dealt the cards with marvellous dexterity. One of the soldiers whisded mockingly. 'A real card hand we have here.’ the officer remarked.

This is an old game.’ Memed said, 'which I'm sure you will enjoy. It dates back a long way, its origins lost in the very beginnings of Old Night. I have researched it, and I understand it was popular amongst the peoples of Ancient Merica, and also the tribes of the Franc.’

He let them play a few dummy hands until they had the way of it, but Mersadie found it hard to remember what spread won over what. In the seventh turn, believing she had the game's measure at last, she discarded a hand which she believed inferior to the cards Memed was holding.

'No, no.’ he smiled. You win.’

'But you have four of a kind again.’

He laid out her cards. 'Even so, you see?'

She shook her head. 'It's all too confusing.’

The suits correspond.’ he said, as if beginning a lecture, 'to the layers of society back then. Swords stand for the warrior aristocracy; cups, or chalices, for the ancient priesthood; diamonds, or coins, for the merchant classes; and baton clubs for the worker caste...'

Some of the soldiers grumbled.

'Stop iterating to us.’ Mersadie said.

'Sorry.’ Memed grinned. 'Anyway, you win. I have four alike, but you have ace, monarch, empress and knave. A mournival.’

'What did you just say?' Mersadie Oliton asked, sitting up.

'Mournival.’ Memed replied, reshuffling the old, square-cut cards. 'It's the old Franc word for the four royal cards. A winning hand.’

Behind them, away beyond a high wall of hedge invisible in the still night, a flare suddenly banged off and lit the sky white.

'A winning hand.’ Mersadie murmured. Coincidence, and something she privately believed in, called fate, had just opened the future up to her.

It looked very inviting indeed.

Peeter Egon Momus

Lecto Divinitatus

Malcontent

PEETER EGON MOMUS was doing them a great honour. Peeter Egon Momus was deigning to share with them his visions for the new High City. Peeter Egon Momus, architect designate for the 63rd Expedition, was unveiling his preparatory ideas for the transformation of the conquered city into a permanent memorial to glory and compliance.

The trouble was, Peeter Egon Momus was just a figure in the distance and largely inaudible. In the gathered audience, in the dusty heat, Ignace Karkasy shifted impatiently and craned his neck to see.

The assembly had been gathered in a city square north of the palace. It was just after midday, and the sun was at its zenith, scorching the bare basalt towers and yards of the city. Though the high walls around the square offered some shade, the air was oven dry and sti-flingly hot. There was a breeze, but even that was heated like exhaust vapour, and it did nothing but stir up fine grit in the air. Powder dust, the particulate residue of the

great battle, was everywhere, hazing the bright air like smoke. Karkasy's throat was as arid as a river bed in drought. Around him, people in the crowd coughed and sneezed.

The crowd, five hundred strong, had been carefully vetted. Three-quarters of them were local dignitaries; grandees, nobles, merchants, members of the overthrown government, representatives of that part of Sixty-Three Nineteen's ruling classes who had pledged compliance to the new order. They had been summoned by invitation so that they might participate, however superficially, in the renewal of their society.

The rest were remembrancers. Many of them, like Karkasy, had been granted their first transit permit to the surface, at long last, so they could attend. If this was what he had been waiting for, Karkasy thought, they could keep it. Standing in a crowded kiln while some old fart made incoherent noises in the background.

The crowd seemed to share his mood. They were hot and despondent. Karkasy saw no smiles on the faces of the invited locals, just hard, drawn looks of forbearance. The choice between compliance or death didn't make compliance any more pleasurable. They were defeated, deprived of their culture and their way of life, facing a future determined by alien minds. They were simply, wearily enduring the indignity of this period of transition into the Imperium of Man. From time to time, they clapped in a desultory manner, but only when stirred up by the iterators carefully planted in their midst.

The crowd had drawn up around the aprons of a metal stage erected for the event. Upon it were arranged hololithic screens and relief models of the city to be, as well as many of the extravagantly complex brass and steel surveying instruments Momus utilised in his work. Geared, spoked and meticulous, the instruments suggested to Karkasy's mind devices of torture.

Torture was right.

Momus, when he could be seen between the heads of the crowd, was a small, trim man with over-dainty mannerisms. As he explained his plans, the staff of iterators on stage with him aimed live picters close up at relevant areas of the relief models, the images transferring directly to the screens, along with graphic schematics. But the sunlight was too glaring for decent hololithic projection, and the images were milked-out and hard to comprehend. Something was wrong with the vox mic Momus was using too, and what little of his speech came through served only to demonstrate the man had no gift whatsoever for public speaking.

'...always a heliolithic city, a tribute to the sun above, and we may see this afternoon, indeed, I'm sure you will have noticed, the glory of the light here. A city of light. Light out of darkness is a noble theme, by which, of course, I mean the light of truth shining upon the darkness of ignorance. I am much taken with the local phototropic technologies I have found here, and intend to incorporate them into the design...'

Karkasy sighed. He never thought he would find himself wishing for an iterator, but at least those bastards knew how to speak in public. Peeter Egon Momus should have left the talking to one of the iterators while he aimed the wretched picter wand for them.

His mind wandered. He looked up at the high walls around them, geometric slabs against the blue sky, baked pink in the sunlight, or smoke black where shadows slanted. He saw the scorch marks and dotted bolt craters that pitted the basalt like acne. Beyond the walls, the towers of the palace were in worse repair, their plas-terwork hanging off like shed snakeskin, their missing windows like blinded eyes.

In a yard to the south of the gathering, a Titan of the Mechanicum stood on station, its grim humanoid form

rising up over the walls. It stood perfectly still, like a piece of monumental martial statuary, instantly installed. Now that, thought Karkasy, was a far more appropriate celebration of glory and compliance.

Karkasy stared at the Titan for a little while. He'd never seen anything like it before in his life, except in picts. The awesome sight of it almost made the tedious outing worthwhile.

The more he stared at it, the more uncomfortable it made him feel. It was so huge, so threatening, and so very still. He knew it could move. He began to wish it would. He found himself yearning for it to suddenly turn its head or take a step, or otherwise rumble into animation. Its immobility was agonising.

Then he began to fear that if it did suddenly move, he would be quite unmanned, and might be forced to cry out in involuntary terror, and fall to his knees.