By the time he returned to Mobayi, Malika was dead.

“SHE WAS THE world to me,” said Lemuel as he finished his tale.

“I’m so sorry,” said Camille. “I never knew. I mean, I saw something of her when I touched you on Aghoru, but I didn’t know. Why did you never tell us about Malika?”

Lemuel shrugged.

“I don’t like telling people that she died,” he said. “The more people I tell, the more it sinks in that she’s really gone. It makes it more real and more unchangeable, somehow.”

“You think you can change that she died?”

“For a while I thought I could,” said Lemuel. “Some of the books I read spoke of bringing the dead back to life, but they were maddeningly vague. Nothing worked, but when the opportunity came to be selected for the Remembrancer Order, I jumped at the chance to petition the Thousand Sons.”

“Why the Thousand Sons?”

“I’d heard the rumours,” said Lemuel. “Hadn’t you?”

“I don’t listen to rumours,” said Camille, smiling. “I just start them.” Lemuel chuckled.

“Touché, my dear,” he said. “I spent a long time listening to rumours in my search for a cure for Malika, and I’d heard a great deal spoken about the sorcery of the Thousand Sons. I heard whispers of how a great many of them had been horribly afflicted with dreadful mutations, and of how Magnus had saved his Legion. I thought that if I could learn from them, I might learn how to bring Malika back.”

“Oh, Lemuel,” said Camille, taking his hand and kissing it. “Trust me, there’s no bringing anyone back. I know; I’ve touched the dead and I’ve listened to their lives. I’ve felt their love and their pain. But, through all of that, I’ve felt the joy they took in life when they were alive, the people they knew and loved. In the end, that’s the best anyone can hope for, isn’t it?”

“I suppose so,” agreed Lemuel, “but I tried so hard.”

“She knew that. Through everything, she knew you loved her and were trying to save her.”

“Could I give you something of hers?” asked Lemuel. “Maybe you could read it?”

“Of course, whatever I can do, Chaiya. You know that,” said Camille, her voice drowsy.

Lemuel frowned. “Did you just call me Chaiya?”

“Sure… why? That’s your… name…” said Camille. “Isn’t it… my love?”

Lemuel’s stomach lurched as Camille’s hand fell from his and her eyes widened. She gasped for air, and the entire left side of her face seemed to slip, as though invisible hands were moulding her flesh into a lopsided grimace.

“Oh, no! Camille! Camille!”

Her hands bunched into fists as they wrung the sheets on the bed, and her body stiffened with the force of the seizure. Her eyes stared with manic fury, and blood-flecked saliva drooled from the corner of her mouth. Camille’s face was a mask of wordless pleading, her entire body wracked with pain.

Lemuel turned towards the door.

“Help! Throne of Terra, help me please!” he yelled.

“CAN YOU SEE them?” asked Phosis T’kar.

“Yes,” replied Hathor Maat. “Seeing them isn’t the problem. It’s doing something about it that’s the problem.”

“Please,” begged Lemuel. “Whatever you can do.”

Camille’s room had become a hive of activity since he’d called for help. Chaiya had returned, not with medical staff or any form of imaging equipment, but with two captains of the Thousand Sons. She had introduced them as Phosis T’kar of the 2nd Fellowship and Hathor Maat of the 3rd.

Evidently she didhave friends in high places.

While Phosis T’kar held Camille motionless with the power of his mind, the absurdly pretty Hathor Maat placed his hands on either side of her skull. His eyes were closed, but from the motion of his pupils, it was clear he visualised with other senses.

“There are six of them, buried deep and growing fast,” he said. “Ugly white things. They’re not yet larval, but it won’t be long before they pupate.”

“Can you save her?” asked Chaiya, her voice as brittle as cracked crystal.

“What do you think we’re trying to do?” snapped Phosis T’kar.

“They’re cunning little bastards,” hissed Hathor Maat, twisting his head and moving his hands around Camille’s skull. “Organic tendrils, like anchors, are burrowing into the meat of the brain, tethering themselves to the nerve fibres. I need to burn them out slowly.”

“Burn them out?” asked Lemuel, horrified at the idea.

“Of course,” said Maat. “How else did you think I was going to do it? Now be quiet.”

Lemuel held onto Chaiya’s hand, and she to his. Though they had not met before today, they were united in their love for Camille. From the straining muscles in her neck and arms, Lemuel could tell that Camille’s body was trying to thrash out its agony on the bed, but Phosis T’kar kept her immobile without apparent effort.

“I see you,” said Hathor Maat, curling his finger as though hooking a fish. Lemuel smelled a sickly aroma of something burning.

“You’re hurting her!” he cried.

“I told you to be quiet,” barked Hathor Maat. “The tiniest fraction of a misstep and I may end up burning out the mechanism that allows her to breathe or pumps blood from her heart. I have its body and am slowly boiling it alive.”

He laughed with relish.

“Oh, you don’t like that do you?” he said. “Trying to dig your hooks in deeper, eh? Well, let’s see about that.”

Hathor Maat dug his fingers downwards, spreading the tips wide and smiling as the smell of burning meat grew stronger. He worked within Camille’s skull for over an hour before nodding to himself.

“One. Two. Three. And four… Got them,” he said.

“You got them all?” asked Lemuel.

“Don’t be foolish, that was just the tendrils of the first egg. They’re tenacious and aren’t going without a fight. It’s loose now, but we need to get it out fast before it reattaches. Phosis T’kar?”

“Got it,” said the Captain of the 2nd Fellowship.

Phosis T’kar placed his hand beside Camille’s ear and twisted his extended fingers as though attempting to pick the most complex of locks. His fingers were incredibly dextrous, and Lemuel held his breath as Phosis T’kar gradually drew his fingers back towards his palm.

“Inkosazana preserve us!” cried Lemuel as something wet and wriggling emerged from Camille’s ear. It looked like a spined slug, and its slimy body writhed as it was drawn forth by Phosis T’kar’s incredibly precise power.

The slug-like creature plopped down into a gleaming kidney bowl, leaving a sticky trail of blood and slime behind it. Just looking at it made Lemuel feel sick.

“Would you like to do the honours?” asked Phosis T’kar handing Lemuel the kidney bowl with a grin.

“Oh, absolutely,” replied Lemuel. He tipped the bowl and dropped the pre-larval psychneuein to the tiled floor of the medicae bay.

He stamped on it and ground it to a gooey paste with his heel.

“One down, five to go,” said Hathor Maat, his skin streaked in sweat. “Just as well I love a challenge.”

BEYOND THE PYRAMID of Apothecaries, a light rain fell over Tizca. Rain was uncommon over the city and its inhabitants came out onto the streets to feel it on their skin. Children played in the rain, and the streets echoed with squeals of delight as they splashed in puddles and stood beneath spouting gutters.

It continued for days, drowning the city every morning.

No one knew where it came from, for the techno-psychic arrays built into the mountains were normally an entirely reliable means of predicting and controlling the planet’s climate.

Some rain was, of course, necessary to keep the ecosystem in balance, but this was beyond anything the inhabitants of Tizca had ever experienced. The buildings glistened with rainwater and the streets flowed with gurgling rivers.

Questions were asked of the Thousand Sons, but no answer was forthcoming as to the cause of the unseasonable rains. Fully half the Legion’s captains were in absentia, and those who remained had no answer.