Roxanne was astonished. ‘People know what I am?’

‘Yeah, I heard people talking about it weeks ago.’

She sat back on the bench and let the weight of secrecy fall away from her. All her life she had been taught that the common man feared her and would seek to persecute her if given the chance. The words of one small boy and the actions of the people around her had given the lie to that notion in one fell swoop, and the sudden lightness of being that filled her was like an elixir of purest light poured into her veins.

She looked at the plain, unassuming, ordinary faces that surrounded her, seeing them now for the wonderful, powerful and determined individuals they were. She was accepted amongst them simply because she was here, not through any familial connection, trade agreement or covenant of service.

‘Is it true you’ve got another eye under that bandanna?’

Roxanne nodded. ‘Yes.’

‘Can I see it?’

‘No, I’m afraid you can’t, Arik.’

‘Why not?’

‘It can be dangerous,’ explained Roxanne.

‘I hear you can kill people with it.’

Roxanne ruffled the boy’s hair. ‘You shouldn’t believe all you hear about Navigators, Arik. Yes, people can get hurt by looking at it, but that’s why I keep it covered up. I don’t want to hurt anyone.’

‘Oh,’ said Arik, but shrugged off his disappointment to ask, ‘But you can see the future, right? With your hidden eye, I mean?’

‘I’m afraid not,’ replied Roxanne. ‘We just guide starships, that’s all.’

Arik nodded, as though he fully understood the complexities and nuances to being one of a caste that was both shunned and required for the Imperium to function. A group that was both powerful and wealthy, yet could never take a rightful place amongst the people they served.

A sudden thought occurred to Roxanne, and she said, ‘Does Palladis realise that everyone knows?’

‘Nah, he thinks he’s the only one,’ said Arik. ‘I think losing his boys must’ve rattled some of the marbles loose in his head. He don’t trust anyone.’

‘I think you might be right,’ whispered Roxanne. ‘You’re a clever boy, Arik, do you know that?’

‘That’s what my mum always tells me,’ he said with a proud smile.

She pulled Arik close and gave him a kiss on the forehead.

‘You have no idea how precious a gift you have just given me,’ she said.

He looked confused, but nodded with a child’s seriousness.

‘Here, let me give you something in return,’ said Roxanne, tugging at her finger and placing something in the centre of his palm. She closed his fingers over it before anyone could see what she’d given him.

‘What is it?’ asked Arik.

Roxanne smiled. ‘It’s a magic ring,’ she said.

THE WHITE SANDS of the Rub’ al Khali rose and fell in endless dunes beyond the walls of the fortress of Arzashkun. Kai wandered the empty ramparts and deserted towers with a pleasant aimlessness to his steps. The sands beyond the walls were silent and dusted by a warm sirocco that carried a pleasing scent of roasted meat, mulled wine and exotic perfumes.

He trailed his fingers over the silver-gold battlements, letting the peace and emptiness of his surroundings calm him. Nothing moved in the sands, no shadowy hunters or buried memories threatening to burst to the surface, for Kai was merely dreaming. His metacognitive powers were developed enough that he could understand he was dreaming and shape his surroundings to a degree beyond most sleepers.

Though Arzashkun was his refuge from the dangerous presences of the immaterium, it was much more than that. It was a place where he could find peace and a measure of solace and isolation. No one else could come here, save by his express invitation to a shared dreamspace, and Kai revelled in the silence that filled every vaulted chamber and domed cupola of the ornately decorated structure.

Kai descended the steps to the courtyard, his steps light and the black mood that had been his constant companion since the disaster on the Argolightening by degrees. The fear was still there, lurking at the threshold of his perceptions, but he refused to acknowledge it. To remember was to feel, and to feel was to experience. Ten thousand deaths screaming in his head had unhinged his mind for a time, and he wasn’t entirely sure it had returned to him intact.

Yet the few times he was able to escape to Arzashkun were where he could heal in private, where he could experience all the human mind could conjure without fear of dreadful memories and sympathetic terrors. Kai pushed open the doors to the main hall, and breathed in the aroma of scented lanterns and fresh growths. A circular pool glittered in the centre of the hall, its base tiled with a gold and scarlet lozenge pattern, and a silver fountain in the shape of a trident-bearing hero shimmered in the sunlight drifting down from a stained-glass dome.

Palm fronds waved gently in the breeze from the opened door, and the scent of lemongrass and hookah smoke was strong. The air was redolent with the fragrances of distant kingdoms of long ago, and the connection with the past was a potent anchor to Kai in this realm of imagination and dreams. Had he wished, Kai could conjure anything his consciousness desired into being, but this was all he needed. Peace and solitude and an end to the thousands of voices that clamoured for his attention.

Pillars of marble and nephrite supported the roof, and Kai wove a path through them as he made his way to the wide staircase that swept up to the cloisters above. Battle flags of crimson, emerald and gold hung from the graceful arches, honours won in battles no one now remembered. Strange how something so terrible and vital to the lives of thousands of people could so easily be forgotten. The men who had fought in these battles were naught but the sand of the Empty Quarter, but their lives had mattered once. No matter that the tide of history had ground each of them down to insignificant specks of grit, they had once been important, they had once made a difference.

That the difference existed now only in a dream did not lessen their lives. Kai recalled them, even if it was a borrowed memory from a primarch’s writings. In time, he too would be forgotten, but instead of frightening Kai, the thought made him smile. To be forgotten in times like these would be a blessing. To be lauded by everyone, to be depended upon by so many would be a burden no one should ever have to bear.

Kai wondered how people like Malcador, Lord Dorn or the Choirmaster stood it.

He paused by at the bottom of the wide staircase, closing his eyes and letting the burbling sound of the fountain wash over him. His blindsight trembled and a breath of wind sighed across the skin of his face, as Kai inhaled the scents of a land long since consigned to history. Smell was one of the strongest senses in the dream landscapes, and the heady aroma of alinazik, habesh and mahlab transported Kai’s thoughts to an open-air souk, its thronged pathways filled with jostling, sweating bodies: chattering vendors, haggling customers and slit-mouthed cutpurses.

Kai could taste the smoke of cookfires, the billowing clouds of hashish and the potent reek of papazkarasi as it was poured from clay ewers into pewter mugs nailed to drinking posts. So real was the sensation that Kai had to hold onto the carved balustrade to keep himself from sinking to his haunches at the aching sadness he felt.

Tears pricked at the corners of his eyes, and Kai wondered at how he could know these sounds and smells. This was no fantasy conjured from the depths of his imagination, these were sense-memories that belonged to a mind other than his own. These sensations had been dredged from the depths of a memory so ancient that it staggered Kai that any one mind could contain so much history.

Kai gasped and opened his eyes. The world wavered as his grip on its solidity faltered for an instant. His breath came in sharp hikes, though he knew in this dreamspace he was not truly breathing. Kai’s body lay asleep on his cot bed, but certain laws still held true in the world of dreams as they did in the real world – though such a term was almost meaningless to one whose existence was lived in a world beyond the comprehension of most mortals.