Kai remembered being shepherded through the gallery by a company of Black Sentinels, nervous, excited and unsure of what was to come. He supposed the mirrors were there to give the aspirants a last look at their faces before their eyes were seared from their sockets by a force so potent it was beyond imagining. In the years since Kai had taken that walk, he had never been able to decide if that was merciful or cruel.

He shook off the memory, unwilling to relive such a singular moment in the presence of those who would misread his pained expression as fear of where they were going. Instead, he cast his mind-sense forward, along the flat plane of the road towards the tallest tower of the city. Alone of all the structures around it, the Whispering Tower shone with a lattice of silver light, though it was a light that existed beyond the sight of most mortals.

Yet for all its brightness, its glow was eclipsed utterly by the burning lance of light that speared from the hollow mountain. That brilliance was of another order of magnitude entirely, and Kai was able to tune it out of his perceptions only with difficulty.

‘Why are there no telepaths on the streets?’ asked Tortega. ‘I’m only seeing servitors, sherpa-couriers and a few Mechanicum thralls.’

Kai opened his eyes, and the cityscape of light and colour vanished from his mind, replaced with the prosaic geometry of its mundane stones and stolid angles. Though he had jumped at the chance to have his sight restored, it was at moments like this he almost wished he had not.

‘The students and adepts of the Telepathica mostly travel by means of a network of tunnels and crossways cut into the rock beneath the city. Very few come above ground if they can help it.’

‘Why is that?’

Kai shrugged. ‘Feeling sunlight on your skin is just another reminder of what you’ve lost.’

‘Of course, I see,’ nodded Tortega, as though grasping some complex insight into the human psyche instead of something that should have been obvious.

‘The city walls and the rock below us are threaded with psi-disruptive crystals, which makes it quieter too,’ said Kai. ‘Travelling above ground is noisy for an astropath. You keep hearing undisciplined thoughts, random chatter and wild emotions. You’re taught to tune it out, of course, but it’s always there in the background. It’s just easier to travel where you don’t hear it.’

‘Are you hearing anything now?’

‘Just your incessant prattle,’ said Kai.

Tortega sighed. ‘Your hostility is just a defence mechanism, Kai. Let it go.’

‘Spare me,’ said Kai, resting his head on the soft fabric of the headrest and closing his eyes. His blindsight picked out the shimmering glow of the Whispering Tower and the minds that waited at its entrance.

One was welcoming, while the other bristled with hostility not even a shielded helmet could contain.

The skimmer glided to a halt and the batwing doors hissed as they swooped up with a hiss of high-end pneumatics. Three of the armsmen climbed from the skimmer, while the fourth gestured to Kai and Tortega to disembark with a curt swipe of his shotgun barrel. Tortega hurriedly got out, but Kai poured himself another measure of amasec, taking his time and delaying his inevitable fate as long as possible.

‘Get out,’ said the armsman.

‘One last drink,’ said Kai. ‘Trust me, they don’t have anything like this good in there.’

He drained the glass in one swallow, and coughed as the liquor set his throat on fire.

‘You done?’ asked the blank visor across from him.

‘So it would appear,’ said Kai, lifting the bottle from the chill-bar and tucking it under his arm as he climbed from the comfortable warmth of the skimmer.

The freezing air of the mountains hit him like a blow, and he took a frigid breath that burned his throat more thoroughly than the amasec. He’d forgotten just how bone-achingly cold it was here. Kai had forgotten a lot of things about the City of Sight, but he had never forgotten the kindness of the woman who stepped from the arched entrance to the tower.

‘Hello, Kai,’ said Aniq Sarashina. ‘It is good to see you again.’

‘Mistress Sarashina,’ he said with a short bow. ‘I hope you will not take this the wrong way, but I cannot say the same.’

‘No, I expect not,’ she said with a sad, but wry smile. ‘You never could conceal how much you wanted to be away from this place.’

‘Yet here I am,’ said Kai.

The man beside Sarashina took a step forward, his bullish manner more than matched by the rippling haze of belligerence surrounding him. Encased in beetle-black armour and with the craggy, unforgiving lines of his face concealed by a reflective helm, he wore his power like a mailed fist.

He received a rolled parchment from the lead armsman and broke the waxen seal. Satisfied with its contents, he nodded and said, ‘Transfer is acknowledged, Kai Zulane is now in the custody of the Black Sentinels.’

‘Custody, Captain Golovko?’ said Kai, as a group of soldiers in contoured breastplates of burnished obsidian and tapered helms, not unlike an early make of Legiones Astartes armour, emerged from the tower. Each was armed with a long, black-bladed lance, their hafts topped with sparkling crystalline spearheads.

‘Yes, Zulane. And it’s Major General Golovko now,’ said the man.

‘You’ve gone up in the world,’ said Kai. ‘Were all the senior members of your organisation killed in some terrible accident?’

‘Kai, one does not begin the healing process with insults,’ said Tortega.

‘Oh, shut up, you bloody imbecile!’ said Kai. ‘Just go away, please. Take your precious patriarch’s skimmer and get out of here. I can’t stand to look at you anymore.’

‘I’m just trying to help,’ said Tortega with a hurt pout.

‘Then leave,’ said Kai. ‘That’s how you can help me best.’

Kai felt a soft hand take his arm, and calming energy filled him, easing his barbed thoughts and imparting a measure of serenity he hadn’t felt in months.

‘It’s alright, Chirurgeon Tortega,’ said Aniq Sarashina. ‘Kai is home and he is one of us. You have done all that you can, but it is time to let us take care of him.’

Tortega nodded curtly and turned on his heel. He paused, as though about to say something, then thought the better of it and climbed back into the skimmer. The Castana armsmen followed him, and the doors slammed down with a solid clunk.

The skimmer spun on its axis and sped away as though eager to be gone.

‘What an odious little shit,’ said Kai, as the skimmer vanished from sight.

TWO

The Cryptaesthesian

Temple of Woe

Homecoming

IN THE DEPTHS of the Whispering Tower, a lone figure hooded in a robe of embroidered jade stood in the centre of a domed chamber that echoed with the myriad voices of a departed choir. Garbled and indistinct sounds swirled around him like a corrupted vox-signal or a transmission hurled across galactic space in ages past.

At the dome’s apex was a crystalline lattice pulsing with internal illumination that cascaded from its multi-angled facets in a waterfall of shimmering light. Evander Gregoras stood in the centre of the swirling mist, his arms sweeping out like the conductor of an invisible orchestra. Hazy shapes formed around him, innumerable faces, objects and places. They surfaced in the light like phantoms then faded into the mist, each one summoned and dismissed with a precise gesture.

The voices rose and diminished, snatches of wasted words and redundant phrases that would be meaningless to anyone not trained in the art of the cryptaesthesian. Gregoras sifted the Bleed with the efficiency of a surgeon, discarding that which was of no importance and memorising those items that piqued his interest.

Gregoras was not a man whose company others craved. Though entirely average in appearance, he had seen the secret, ugly face of humanity and such sights made a man melancholy of aspect. Where others might talk of love, truth and a new golden age, Gregoras saw lust, deceit and the same tired melodramas played out in the psychic waste of every communiqué that passed through the City of Sight.