Nagasena looks towards the torn entrance to the block, sliding down to sit with his back to the wall. He leans to the side and rests his head on the floor, feeling the last lingering trace of warmth from a human body.

‘We’re on a damn hunt, and you’re lying down,’ snaps Golovko. ‘They were just here, and we need to get out there to find them.’

Nagasena ignores him and the Black Sentinel moves towards him.

‘Are you listening to me?’ says Golovko.

Kartono steps between them, and Golovko’s face crumples in disgust. ‘Get away from me, freak,’ he says.

‘Call him that again and I will let him take you to task for your rudeness,’ says Nagasena.

‘I’d like to see him try.’

‘Ulis Kartono was trained by the Clade Masters of the Culexus,’ says Saturnalia, as though speaking to a child. ‘You would be dead before you could raise your rifle, Maxim Golovko.’

Golovko spits a wad of saliva, but turns away, unwilling to rise to Saturnalia’s challenge.

The Custodian kneels beside Nagasena and follows the direction of his gaze.

‘Kai Zulane lay here?’ he asks.

‘Yes,’ agrees Nagasena.

Saturnalia nods. ‘I found blood by the entrance. Mortal blood, still wet.’

‘It is Zulane’s,’ says Nagasena, reaching beneath a pile of tumbled blocks of permacrete that fell from the roof an indeterminate time ago. His fingers encounter crushed fragments of stone and dust, but then he feels the cold touch of metal and smooth glass and pulls out the still-wet remains of a pair of augmetic eyes.

Saturnalia smiles as Nagasena holds them up, the thin cables dripping with bio-oils and optical fluids.

‘How did you know?’

‘Asubha tore out Zulane’s eyes here, and he is left handed,’ says Nagasena. ‘It seemed logical he would discard them in this direction.’

‘So you have his eyes,’ asks Saturnalia. ‘Does that help us find him?’

Nagasena stands, pats his robes free of grey dust. ‘Possibly. It is a breadcrumb that neither you nor I can follow, but perhaps others can.’

‘The telepaths?’

‘Just so,’ says Nagasena, as Saturnalia beckons Athena Diyos and Adept Hiriko to enter the ruined tenement block. Both women are frightened, and they do not want to be here: on the hunt or in the Petitioner’s City. It is an environment that is utterly alien to them, and Nagasena wonders if he will have to coerce their co-operation.

Athena Diyos looks up at the sagging roof, imagining it looks ready to collapse, while Adept Hiriko stares straight ahead, moving like an automaton. The death of her fellow neurolocutor hangs around her neck like a lead weight, but this hunt has no time for compassion. Nagasena hands the torn augmetics to Hiriko and she grimaces in revulsion.

‘Are those Kai’s?’ asks Athena Diyos.

‘They are,’ says Nagasena, and Hiriko places them in Athena’s outstretched manipulator arm as though they are poisonous serpents. The astropath brings the torn augmetics closer to her face, studying them intently.

‘And what do you expect us to do with them?’

‘I had hoped you would be able to use them in locating Kai Zulane,’ says Nagasena. ‘I understand from your file that you do not specialise in the arts of the metron, but you have some talent in that regard.’

‘Once maybe,’ says Athena. ‘But ever since the destruction of PhoenicianI haven’t been able to read things like I used to. You’d be better off getting one of the metronfrom the City.’

Nagasena cannot tell for sure if she is lying, the corrugated scar tissue of her face contorts her features in unusual ways that conceal the usual telltales of a liar. He decides she is bluffing and says, ‘You will attempt to make a reading on those augmetics or there will be dire consequences.’

‘If you’ve read my file then you know my psychological profile says I don’t respond well to threats.’

‘I did not mean for you,’ says Nagasena. ‘I meant the Imperium.’

‘You’re being melodramatic,’ she says, but Nagasena sees the crack in her reluctance.

He kneels beside her silver chair and places his hand over hers. The skin does not feel like skin, it has the unpleasant hairless texture of artificially grown flesh.

‘Do you think we are hunting Kai Zulane?’ he says. ‘We are not. We are hunting seven of the most dangerous men imaginable. Men who have killed hundreds of loyal soldiers of the Imperium. Kai is their prisoner, and they mean to take him to Horus Lupercal. You understand? Whatever it is that Kai knows, the Warmaster will know. None of us know for sure what Mistress Sarashina placed within Kai’s mind, but do you really want to risk it falling into hands of our greatest enemy?’

‘Is that really true?’

Nagasena stands and draws his sword in one smooth motion. The blade glitters in the half-light of the ruined tenement, the blade an arc of polished silver and its black and gold wrapped handle wound in soft leather and copper wire. Athena and Hiriko’s eyes widen at the sight of the weapon, but Nagasena has not drawn it with violence in mind.

‘This is Shoujiki,’ he says. ‘Master Nagamitsu crafted it for me many years ago, and its name means honesty in a dead tongue of a long lost land. Before this sword came to me, I was a fool and a braggart, a man of low morals and wicked temperament. But when Master Nagamitsu presented this blade to me, its truth became part of me, and I have never spoken falsely or dishonoured its name since. I do not do so now, Mistress Diyos.’

He sees the acceptance of his words as she nods slowly and transfers the eyes from her augmetic arm to her other hand.

‘Hiriko,’ she says. ‘I’ll need your help.’

‘Of course,’ says the neurolocutor. ‘What do you need me to do?’

‘Place your hands at my temples and focus your mind on everything you learned from Kai, every dream you shared, every word you spoke. All of it.’

Hiriko nods and does as Athena says, standing behind her and placing a hand on either side of her head. Athena’s fingers close over Kai’s plucked eyes and she rolls the glassy orbs dextrously around in her palm like a conjurer. Dried spots of blood smear her skin, and Nagasena wonders if that will help her divine Kai Zulane’s location.

‘How long will this take?’ asks Saturnalia.

‘As long as it takes,’ says Athena. ‘Or perhaps you would like to try?’

Saturnalia does not reply and Athena’s head sinks to her chest as she enters a nunciotrance. Her breathing deepens, and Nagasena moves away, feeling a sudden chill as her mind reaches out into invisible realms he cannot even begin to understand.

While Golovko’s men kick down nearby doors and barrage any inhabitants they find with questions, Nagasena casts his eyes around this squalid refuge, and feels nothing but remorse for the fate that has seen these men condemned as traitors.

Nagasena scabbards his sword as Saturnalia approaches. Though their goals are aligned, it is never wise to bear an unsheathed blade in the presence of a Custodian.

‘How could the World Eater have known they were being observed?’

Nagasena shakes his head. ‘I do not know, but in the end it is irrelevant. These men are Space Marines and I am coming to realise that we have underestimated them.’

‘How so?’

‘They were created to be the ultimate warriors, and it is easy to assume they are nothing more than gene-bred slayers whose only purpose is to kill and destroy. But they are far more than that. Their minds have been enhanced beyond mortal comprehension and their brains work in ways I will never be able to replicate.’

‘Are you saying you cannot hunt them?’ asks Saturnalia.

Nagasena allows himself a small smile. ‘No, nothing of the sort. For all their genhancements and physical superiority, they are still men at heart.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘What is the biggest factor slowing their escape?’ asks Nagasena.