‘It’s not safe.’ Leon said the words without thinking.

The mechanic shot him a look. ‘How do you know?’

‘The boy is right!’ Prael went on. ‘Throne and Blood, did you not hear the broadcast, Silas? The war–’

‘Is not our concern!’ Cincade replied. ‘We’re in the arse-end of the Imperium, where neither man nor primarch would bother to turn his gaze! So this sort of sorry panic is pointless. Better we find out what is happening from the colonial governor himself, yes?’ The man turned to Leon and gave him a light shove in the back. ‘Go on, son, get home. Look to your Da.’ He glanced up as he walked away. ‘And the same to the rest of you, too!’

Prael muttered something under his breath as the red-faced woman glared after the mechanic. ‘He’s always swanned around this town like he smells sweet,’ she grated. ‘Now the grease-monkey is giving orders?’

Leon became aware she was looking at him, waiting for the youth to agree with her. He said nothing and went on his way, heading back towards the dormitory.

HIS FATHER WASN’T there when he arrived. Leon took the stairs to the top floor two at a time, brushing his hand over the forever-closed door to his mother’s room as he passed it, as a matter of ingrained habit. At the landing, he went to the suite – it was a fancy name for the chambers, something that seemed too grand for just a nondescript bedroom-balcony-fresher combination. He rapped on the door with the back of his hand, calling loudly.

‘Esquire!’ Leon kept up the insistent pace of his knocks; there were no other residents at the dormitory house, and there hadn’t been for some time. These were the fallow months when the drivers from the far fields stayed at their ranches rather than venture in under the shadow of the Skyhook. ‘Esquire Mendacs, are you there?’

He heard movement through the door and presently it slid open on oiled runners. ‘Young Leon,’ said the man, absently smoothing down the front of his tunic. ‘Such urgency.’

‘The telegraph–’ Leon spoke so quickly he stumbled over his words and had to gulp in air and begin again. ‘The telegraph says the Emperor is dead and Horus has taken Terra! The war is over!’ He blinked. ‘I don’t think it can be true…’

‘No?’ Mendacs wandered back into the apartment and Leon trailed after him. ‘Or do you mean you wishit not to be true?’

The esquire was a slight man, his skin pale in comparison to the tanned natives of the agri-world, and he had long fingers that reminded the youth of a woman’s. Still, he carried himself with a kind of certainty that Leon kept trying to emulate. Mendacs had a quiet confidence that radiated from him; it was peculiar how someone who at first glance could appear unassuming, could also command attention if need be.

He poured a measure of amasec from a flask on the table and glanced at where Leon stood. The young man’s hands kept finding one another of their own accord, knotting and wringing.

Leon repeated the telegraph message as best he could remember it, the words spilling out of him. Emotion coloured every syllable, and he felt his cheeks redden and go warm as he reached the conclusion. Mendacs just listened, and took small, purse-lipped sips from the liquor.

‘Horus’s warships are coming here,’ Leon went on. ‘They may already be close by!’

‘One cannot tell,’ Mendacs offered. ‘The currents of warp space are strange and unpredictable. The passage of time there is somewhat elastic.’

Frustration furrowed Leon’s brow. Of all the reactions he had expected from the esquire, this was not one of them. The man seemed almost… resigned. ‘Are… Are you not troubled by this turn of events? The war comes to us! The Imperium is in tatters! Are you not afraid of what will happen next?’

Mendacs put down the glass of amasec and wandered to the window. His pict-slates and a quiver of stylus-rods lay there in an untidy pile. ‘It’s not that, Leon,’ he said. ‘Any sane man is concerned about the future. But I have learned that you can’t let yourself be ruled by questions of what maybe about to happen. A life lived in the shadow of unfulfilled possibility is inward-looking and limited.’

The youth didn’t understand the man’s meaning, and told him so.

A moment of dismay crossed Mendacs’s face. ‘The dust storms that come during this season. Are you afraid of them?’

‘Not really… I mean, they can be dangerous, but–‘

‘But you understand them. You know you cannot change them. So you take shelter and let them pass, then pick up your life and progress as if they had never been.’ Mendacs made an inclusive gesture that encompassed them both. ‘We are little people, my friend. And the likes of us cannot change the course of wars that span the galaxy. We can only live our lives, and accept what fate presents to us.’

‘But the Emperor is dead!’ Leon blurted out the words, his voice rising. ‘I can’t accept that!’

Mendacs cocked his head. ‘You can’t change that fact. If it is so, you must accept it. What alternative is there?’

Leon turned away, shaking his head, closing his eyes. ‘No. No…’ He felt dizzy all over again, and stumbled into a drape partitioning off part of the bedroom from the main space of the suite. For a moment, he found himself looking into Mendacs’s sleeping area. He saw the low, narrow bed, the rail of clothes hangers.

On the bed there was a case – the small valise the esquire had carried on a shoulder strap when he first arrived, Leon remembered – and it lay open. Inside lay not clothes or more pict-slates, but a conformal array of equipment that resembled nothing familiar to the youth. It wasn’t metallic and greasy-looking like the innards of a rover engine; it gave the impression of being fragile, like fans of black glassaic and silver filigree.

But then the train of thought forming in Leon’s mind was abruptly forestalled by the harsh bark of his father’s voice echoing up the stairs. ‘Boy! Get yourself out here!’ He could hear the trompof boots on the staircase.

‘You should go,’ Mendacs said, without weight.

Ames Kyyter was at the landing as Leon left the room. He gave the other man a terse nod and then glared at his son. ‘I’ve told you before not to pester the esquire. Come on, down with you.’ He gave Leon a cuff around the ear and the youth ducked it, racing back to the lower floor.

His father came at his back. ‘Where did you go?’ he demanded. ‘I told you to stay here, wait for me to come home. Instead I return and you’re gone.’

‘The telegraph!’ Leon piped. ‘Did you hear it?’

Ames’s face soured and he shook his head. ‘That’s got you worked up, has it? I should have known.’

Leon could hardly believe his father’s cavalier dismissal of the import of the message. First Mendacs and now him?‘Of course it has! The war, Da! The war is coming here!’

‘Don’t raise your voice to me!’ Ames snapped back. ‘I heard the bloody spool. I know what it said! But I’m not going to wet my britches over it!’ He blew out a breath. ‘At a time like this, a man needs to be calm. Understand the import of the day, not run around like a damned fool.’

Leon felt a wash of cold roll through him. ‘Da. What’s going to happen to us?’ He hated the way the question made him sound like a frightened little boy.

‘Nothing. Nothing,’ insisted his father. ‘You think the Warmaster gives a wet shit about this colony? You think he even knows the name of this star system?’ He scowled. ‘You think that the Emperor did?’

Despite himself, Leon let his hands contract into fists. It made him angry when the old man spoke about the Emperor in that tone of voice. Dismissive. Disrespectful.

He opened his mouth to answer back, but the thin scream of a woman sounded. Both of them went to the front door, following the cry, and there, out on the street, they found people pointing into the south-western sky, a new shade of fresh fear on their faces. Leon stepped out and turned his head to see.