A CHILL EVENING had covered the tiers of the city, and under layers of foliage stirred by the ocean's breath, the walkways and pavements were lit with frosty white lamps.

Loken's duty for that part of the night was as perimeter bodyguard. The commander was dining with Jephta Naud and other worthies at the general commander's palatial house. Horas had confided to the Mournival that he hoped to use the occasion to informally press Naud for some more substantial commitments, including the possibility that the interex might, at least in principle for now, recognise the Emperor as the true human authority. Such a suggestion had not yet been risked in formal talks, for the iterators had predicted it would be rejected out of hand. The Warmaster wanted to test the general commander's feelings on the subject in an atmosphere where any offence could be smoothed over as conjecture. Loken didn't much like the idea, but trusted his commander to couch it delicately. It was an uneasy time, well into the third week of their increasingly fruitless visit. Two days earlier, Pri-march Sanguinius had finally taken his leave and returned to Imperial territory with the Blood Angels contingents.

Horns clearly hated to see him go, but it was a prudent move, and one Sanguinius had chosen to make simply to buy his brother more time with the interex. Sanguinius was returning to deal direcdy with some of

the matters most urgently requiring the Warmaster's attention, and thus mollify the many voices pleading for his immediate re-call.

Naud's house was a conspicuously vast structure near the centre of the city. Six storeys high, it overhung one of the grander civic tiers and was formed from a great black-iron frame infilled with mosaics of varnished wood and coloured glass. The interex did not welcome armed foreigners abroad in their city, but a small detail of bodyguards was permitted for so august a personage as the Warmaster. Most of the substantial Imperial contingent was sequestered in the Extranus compound for the night. Torgaddon, and ten hand-picked men from his company, were inside the dining hall, acting as close guard, while Loken, with ten men of his own, roamed the environs of the house.

Loken had chosen Tenth Company's Sixth Squad, Walkure Tactical Squad, to stand duty with him. Through its veteran leader, Brother-sergeant Kairus, he'd spread the men out around the entry areas of the hall, and formulated a simple period of patrol.

The house was quiet, the city too. There was the sound of the soft ocean breeze, the hissing of the overgrowth, the splash and bell-tinkle of ornamental fountains, and the background murmur of the aria. Loken strolled from chamber to chamber, from shadow to light. Most of the house's public spaces were lit from sources within the walls, so they played matrices of shade and colour across the interior, cast by the inset wall panels of rich wood and coloured gem-glass. Occasionally, he encountered one of Walkure on a patrol loop, and exchanged a nod and a few quiet words. Less frequendy, he saw scurrying servants running courses to and from the closed dining hall, or crossed the path of Naud's own sentries, mosdy armoured gleves, who said nothing, but saluted to acknowledge him.

Naud's house was a treasure trove of art, some of it mystifyingly alien to Loken's comprehension. The art was elegantly displayed in lit alcoves and on free-standing plinths with their own shimmering field protection. He understood some of it. Portraits and busts, paintings and light sculptures, pictures of interex nobles and their families, studies of animals or wildflowers, mountain scenes, elaborate and ingenious models of unnamed worlds opened in mechanical cross-section like the layers of an onion.

In one lower hallway in the eastern wing of the house, Loken came upon an artwork that especially arrested him. It was a book, an old book, large, rumpled, illuminated, and held within its own box field. The lurid woodcut illuminations caught his eye first, the images of devils and spectres, angels and cherubs. Then he saw it was written in the old text of Terra, the language and form that had survived from prehistory to The Chronicles of Ursh that lay, still unfinished, in his arming chamber. He peered at it. A wave of his hand across the field's static charge turned the pages. He turned them right back to the front and read the tide page in its bold woodblock.

A Marvelous Historie of Eevil; Being a warninge to Man Kind on the Abuses ofSorcerie and the Seduction of the Daemon.

That has taken your eye, has it?'

Loken rose and turned. A royal officer of the interex stood nearby, watching him. Loken knew the man, one of Naud's subordinate commanders, by the name of Mithras Tull. What he didn't know was how Tull had managed to come up on him wifhout Loken noticing.

'It is a curious thing, commander.’ he said.

Tull nodded and smiled. A gleve, his weighted spear was leant against a pillar behind him, and he had removed his visor to reveal his pleasant, honest face. A likeness.’ he said.

A what?'

'Forgive me, that is the word we have come to use to refer to things that are old enough to display our common heritage. A likeness. That book means as much to you as it does to us, I'm sure.'

'It is curious, certainly.’ Loken admitted. He unclasped his helm and removed it, out of politeness. 'Is there a problem, commander?'

Tull made a dismissive gesture. 'No, not at all. My duties are akin to yours tonight, captain. Security. I'm in charge of the house patrols.’

Loken nodded. He gestured back at the ancient book on display. 'So tell me about this piece. If you've the time?'

'It's a quiet night.’ Tull smiled again. He came forward, and brushed the field with his metal-sleeved fingers to flip the pages. 'My lord Jephta adores this book. It was composed during the early years of our history, before the interex was properly founded, during our outwards expansion from Terra. Very few copies remain. A treatise against the practice of sorcery.’

'Naud adores it?' Loken asked.

'As a... what was your word again? A curiosity?' There was something strange about Tull's voice, and Loken finally realised what it was. This was die first conversation he'd had with a representative of die interex without meturge players producing the aria in the background. 'It's such a woe-begotten, dark age piece.’ Tull continued. 'So doomy and apocalyptic. Imagine, captain... men of Terra, voyaging out into the stars, equipped with great and wonderful technologies, and fearing the dark so much they have to compose treatises on daemons.’

'Daemons?'

'Indeed. This warns against witches, gross practices, familiars, and the arts by which a man might transform into a daemon and prey upon his own kind.’

Some became daemons and turned upon their own.

'So... you regard it as a joke? An odd throwback to unenlightened days?'

Tull shrugged. 'Not a joke, captain. Just an old-fashioned, alarmist approach. The interex is a mature society. We understand the threat of Kaos well enough, and set it in its place.'

'Chaos?'

Tull frowned. 'Yes, captain. Kaos. You say the word like you've never heard it before.’

'I know the word. You say it like it has a specific connotation.’

'Well, of course it has.’ Tull said. 'No star-faring race in the cosmos can operate without understanding the nature of Kaos. We thank the eldar for teaching us the rudiments of it, but we would have recognised it soon enough without their help. Surely, one can't use the Immaterium for any length of time without coming to terms with Kaos as a...' his voice trailed off. 'Great and holy heavens! You don't know, do you?'

'Don't know what?' Loken snapped.

Tull began to laugh, but it wasn't mocking. 'All this time, we've been pussy-footing around you and your great Warmaster, fearing the worst.