Kallista Eris stood beside the table, her fingers clutching the back of her chair, her knuckles white with the effort. Her skin was flushed and tendons pulled taut in her neck. Her eyes rolled back and a trickle of bloody saliva ran from the corner of her mouth.

“No,” she hissed.

“Oh, Throne, Kalli!” cried Camille, reaching for her. “Lemuel, catch her!”

Lemuel reacted too slowly to catch Kallista as her legs gave way. She loosed a screeching wail of agony and spun around, crashing down onto their table, sending empty glasses and bottles flying. The table overturned and she landed in the debris, thrashing like a lunatic. The crystal bottle of oil shattered along with the glasses, and the sharp scent of berries and melon filled the air.

Camille was by her side in an instant.

“Lemuel! Get her sakau, it’s in her bag!” she cried.

Lemuel dropped to his knees, all traces of intoxication purged from his system as adrenaline pumped into his body. Kallista’s bag lay beneath the overturned table, and he scrambled over to it, emptying its contents onto the cobbled ground.

A notebook, pencils, a portable vox-recorder and assorted items a gentleman wasn’t supposed to see fell out.

“Hurry!”

“Where is it?” he cried. “I don’t see it!”

“It’s a green glass bottle. Cloudy, like spoiled milk.”

“It’s not here!”

“It must be. Look harder.”

A crowd of concerned onlookers had gathered, but thankfully kept their distance. Kallista howled, the sound shot through with such agony that it seemed unthinkable a human throat could produce it. Amid the detritus of her bag and the broken glass from their table, Lemuel saw the bottle Camille had described and lunged for it. He scrambled over to Camille, who was desperately trying to hold Kallista down. The pretty remembrancer was stronger than she looked, and even with the help of a man in the red-trimmed robes of a physician she was able to throw them off.

“Here, I’ve got it!” he shouted, holding the bottle out.

Kallista sat bolt upright and stared directly at Lemuel. Petechial haemorrhaging filled her eyes with blood, and thick streamers of it poured from her nose and mouth. It wasn’t Kallista looking at him; it was a monster with snarling fangs and predator’s eyes. It was older than time, stalking the angles between worlds with immeasurable patience and cunning.

“Too late for that,” she said, slapping the bottle from Lemuel’s hand. It broke on the cobbles, the viscous liquid mingling with the spilled dregs of wine.

“The wolves will betray you and his war dogs will gnaw the flesh from your bones!” cried Kallista, and Lemuel lurched back as she lunged towards him, clawing at his eyes. She landed on him, her legs clamped around his waist and her hands locked around his throat.

He couldn’t breathe, but before she could crush his windpipe, she screeched and her back arched with a terrible crack. The killing light went out of her, and she flopped back, her hands scrabbling for her notebook.

Lemuel saw the awful pleading in her eyes.

“Get her some paper!” yelled Camille.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

The Thousand Sons/Into the Desolation

THREE DAYS AFTER Kallista’s attack, Ahriman finally spoke of the origins of the Thousand Sons. Lemuel wasn’t in the mood for remembrances, having spent a couple of sleepless nights with Camille at Kallista’s bedside. She lay in a medicae unit in the Pyramid of Apothecaries, hooked up to a plethora of machines, the purpose of which Lemuel didn’t know. Some appeared to be specialised devices of the Corvidae, but Ankhu Anen refused to say what they were doing for her.

The attack had leeched the strength and vitality from her, as though she shrank within herself before their eyes. Every time Lemuel tried to rest, he saw her blood-red eyes, and sleep eluded him. Seeing Kallista like that had terrified him more than he liked to admit.

Malika had suffered seizures like Kallista’s in the months before she…

No, don’t think like that.

No sooner had Lemuel thrust the pen and notebook into Kallista’s hands than she had filled page after page with nonsensical doggerel.

Ankhu Anen was examining it even now, hoping to divine some truth from it, and Lemuel hoped he would find something. At least it would make Kallista’s pain meaningful.

“Do you wish to hear this?” asked Ahriman, and Lemuel focussed on his words.

They sat in one of the high terraced balconies of the Corvidae temple, an arboretum with an angled glass roof overlooking the city far below, though the temperature was precisely modulated to mimic the sensation of being outdoors. The terrace was positioned at the southern corner, allowing Lemuel to see the pyramid of the Pyrae cult and the Titan battle-engine guarding its entrance. He’d heard it was a prize of battle, taken by Khalophis on the field of Coriovallum, and that it had once belonged to the Legio Astoram. It seemed in somewhat bad taste to have an Imperial war machine taken as a trophy, but from what he knew of Khalophis, that seemed about right.

“Sorry, I was just thinking of Kallista,” said Lemuel.

“I know, but she is in good hands,” promised Ahriman. “If anyone can decipher Mistress Eris’ writings, it will be Ankhu Anen. And our medicae facilities are second to none, for we practise ancient as well as modern branches of medicine.”

“I know, but I can’t help but worry, you understand?”

“I do,” replied Ahriman. “More than you might think.”

“Of course,” nodded Lemuel. “It must be hard to lose comrades in battle.”

“It is, but that is not what I meant. I was referring to those who die not in battle.”

“Oh? I was led to believe the Astartes were more or less immortal?”

“Barring battlefield injury, we may well be. It is too soon to tell.”

“Then how could you possibly know how I feel?”

“Because I too have lost someone I loved,” said Ahriman.

The surprise of such words coming from an Astartes shook Lemuel from his bitter reverie, and he narrowed his eyes. Ahriman was once again unconsciously touching the silver oakleaf cluster on his shoulder-guard.

“What is that?” asked Lemuel.

“It was a talisman,” said Ahriman with a rueful smile. “A charm, if you will. My mother gave one each to my twin brother and I when we were selected as student aspirants to the Thousand Sons.”

“You have a twin?”

“I hada twin,” corrected Ahriman.

“What happened to him?”

“He died, a long time ago.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” said Lemuel, finding the notion that Astartes warriors had lives before their transformation into super-engineered post-humans something he hadn’t considered. Such were the enormous divergences from the human norm that it was easier to assume the Astartes sprang full-grown from some secret laboratory. It put a human face on an inhuman creation to know that Ahriman had once had a brother, a relationship that most mortals took for granted.

“What was his name?”

“He was called Ohrmuzd, which means ‘sacrifice’ in the ancient tongue of the Avesta.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“Because it will be useful,” said Ahriman. “For both of us, I think. The doom of Ohrmuzd is also the story of how the Thousand Sons came to be. Do you wish to hear of it?”

“I do,” said Lemuel.

“FROM THE VERY beginning, we were a troubled Legion,” said Ahriman. “The primarch tells me our gene-stock was harvested at an inauspicious time, a time of great cosmic upheaval. The warp storms that had all but isolated Terra in the lightless age of strife were resurgent once more and the effects were felt all across the world: madness, suicide and senseless violence. The last of the pan-continental despots had been toppled and the world was only just lifting its head from the ashes of that global conflict. It seemed like these were the last, dying paroxysms of the wars, which was true to an extent, but there was more to it than that.”