The road leading towards the temple was festooned with offerings, children’s dolls, picts of smiling men and women, wreaths of silken flowers and scraps of paper embossed with poetic eulogies and heartfelt farewells. Hundred of people knelt in supplication, gathered in weeping groups around drum fires placed along the length of the wide road that led towards heavy iron doors that led within. Oil-burning lanterns hanging from the outside of the temple cast flickering shadows that made the statues dance.

‘What is this place?’ said Subha.

‘A place of remembrance and farewell,’ said Kai.

He felt a tremendous surge of emotion as his blindsight took in the full panoply of conflicting auras that swirled around, within and through the building. Enormous sadness washed over him as the weight of grief that filled the street threatened to overwhelm him.

‘So much loss,’ he said. ‘The sadness and pain, it’s too much. I don’t think I can stand it.’

‘Steel yourself, Kai,’ said Atharva. ‘Grief and guilt are powerful emotions. You know this all too well. You have held yours at bay long enough for this to present no problem.’

‘No, there’s something else,’ he whispered. ‘There’s something in there that’s more powerful that any guilt I’ve ever known…’

Atharva leaned in close, so that only Kai could hear his next words.

‘Say nothing of it,’ warned Atharva. ‘Our lives will depend on it.’

Without explanation, Atharva followed Severian into the canyon, and Kai felt the hostile gazes of the mourners turn on them. Their anger was matched by their fear, and though every one of them looked like they wanted to hurl some missile or shout an obscenity, none dared move or open their mouth. There was recognition in their anger, but surely that was impossible.

‘Whoever those men were you killed, I think they were known here,’ he said.

‘I think you might be right,’ agreed Atharva as the shutter doors to the Temple of Woe opened with a squeal of rusting bearings. A tall man with wild grey hair and a face that spoke of a life lived in the open emerged from the building. His aura was so choked with guilt that Kai drew up in shock to see someone burdened with a heavier share than his own.

Kai became acutely aware of the hundreds of people pressing in around them. They had been afraid of them before, but they drew strength from this man, and their anger was building moment by moment. The Outcast Dead were powerful, but could they kill so many without being overwhelmed? More to the point, could they stop the mob from killing him?

‘Get out of here,’ said the man. ‘Didn’t you learn anything the last time you came here?’

‘We are here for the dead,’ said Asubha. ‘We were told this was a place to bring fallen warriors.’

‘You are not welcome here,’ said the man. ‘If you’re looking for the men you left here, you can tell the Babu they went into the fires, same as all the others.’

Tagore said, ‘You will stand aside or you will die,’ and Kai felt the pulsing waves of belligerence surrounding the World Eater sergeant. His anger was a wild dog, kept in check by only the slenderest of threads, and the device in his skull frayed that thread with every angry beat of its mechanical heart.

Atharva stepped forward, and placed his hand on Tagore’s shoulder. Atharva’s golden light bled into the killing red surrounding the World Eater, and the taut aggression of his posture eased a fraction.

‘We are not here for killing,’ said Atharva, altering his voice so that everyone gathered in the canyon could hear him. Its cadence and tone conveyed a calming effect that diminished the anger radiating from the gathered people. ‘And we are not Dhakal’s men. We took this armour and these weapons from Ghota’s thugs when they attacked us without provocation.’

‘Ghota is dead?’

‘No,’ said Atharva. ‘He fled like the coward he is.’

Kai felt the subtle psychic manipulations Atharva was employing, amazed at the power of the Thousand Sons warrior. Like most people, Kai had heard the rumours concerning the Legion of Magnus, but to see him so casually wield such abilities was astounding.

The grey-haired man took a closer look at the Outcast Dead and his eyes widened as he recognised them for what they were.

‘The Angels of Death,’ said the man. ‘You have come at last.’

THE DIMLY-LIT halls of the cryptaesthesians were unpleasant at the best of times, and the Choirmaster’s senses were vibrating like a badly-struck tuning fork. He disliked coming down here, but Evander Gregoras had ignored his every summons and there was work to be done that required him to forego the study of his precious Pattern.

A trio of Black Sentinels had accompanied him ever since the psychic intrusion of Magnus, though he could not decide whether Golovko had assigned them to protect him or to kill him in the event of another attack. Probably both, he thought.

Black walls of bare stone passed him, feeling like they were pressing in on him with every step he took deeper into the lair of the cryptaesthesians. His head ached from the aftermath of a particularly difficult communion, a garbled message that claimed to be from an astropath attached to the XIX Legion, but had no synesthesia codes verifying its truth. The message spoke of the death of Primarch Corax, and Nemo desperately wanted to believe it was false, a piece of deliberate misinformation designed to demoralise the forces loyal to the Emperor. Though the message had the ring of truth to it, he had chosen not to pass it to the Conduit for fear of the damage it might wreak.

Nor was this the only piece of bad news. Rumours had come from the Eastern Fringe of a cowardly ambush sprung on the XIII Legion around Calth, and two score astropaths had gone mad attempting to make contact with the sanguinary Legions of the Blood Angels. What monstrous fate had befallen the scions of Baal, and why could no word penetrate the Signus Cluster without dreams of madness and slaughter afflicting those who made such attempts?

The astropaths of the City of Sight could not cope with the demands the palace was placing upon them. They had reached breaking point, and the Choirmaster needed the cryptaesthesians of Evander Gregoras to take their places in the choirs if the entire network was to be saved. Sifting the psychic debris or hunting for hidden truths in the background noise of the universe would have to wait.

At last they came to the correct doorway, and the Choirmaster rapped his thin knuckles on the shutter, careful to avoid damaging his ring from the Fourth Dominion. He waited, but no answer was forthcoming, and he frowned. He could feel the presence of Gregoras’s mind beyond the door, and could hear the sounds of paper tearing.

‘Evander!’ he shouted, though he hated to raise his voice. ‘Open the door, I have to speak with you.’

The sounds within the cryptaesthesian’s chamber stopped for a moment then began again, more vigorously than before.

‘I need your cryptaesthesians, Evander,’ said Nemo. ‘I need them to ease the backlog of communications. We simply don’t have enough telepaths, and with the Black Ships not coming through, we’re burning out. Evander!’

Clearly, Gregoras wasn’t about to answer, and the Choirmaster nodded to the sergeant of the Black Sentinels.

‘Open it,’ he said, irritated that the master of the City of Sight could not open every door in his city without the say so of the Black Sentinels. No door was barred to them, and the sergeant waved a data-wand in front of the locking pad. The door slid open, and Nemo stepped into Gregoras’s chambers with a shocked expression as he saw the disarray within.

The nature of the cryptaesthesians work made them gloomy and introspective, but given to eccentric behavioural quirks. Gregoras was a cantankerous bastard, but he was the best there was at sifting the Bleed, and thus Nemo had tolerated his obsession with the Pattern. He had seen the work Gregoras had done, but where the cryptaesthesian saw order and meaning, Nemo saw only chaos and happenstance. That work had filled these chambers, every square inch of wall covered with unintelligible script, every shelf bowing under the weight of books, data-retrieval cogitators, statistical compilers, maps, plotters and devices he had devised for the purposes of translating the heartbeat of the universe.