'Something bothers you Mistress Sing?' asked Horus, as though reading her mind.

'My lord?'

You seem troubled by my orders,’

'It is not my place to be troubled or otherwise, my lord,’ said Ing Mae Sing neutrally.

'Correct,’ agreed Horus. 'It is not, yet you doubt the wisdom of my course,’

'No!' cried Ing Mae Sing. 'It is just that it is hard not to feel the nature of your communication, the weight of blood and death that each message is wreathed in. It is like breathing fiery smoke with every message we send,’

You must trust me, Mistress Sing,’ said Horus. Trust that everything I do is for the good of the Imperium. Do you understand?'

'It is not my place to understand,’ whispered the astropath. 'My role in the Crusade is to do the will of my Warmaster,’

That is true, but before I dismiss you, Mistress Sing, tell me something,’

Yes, my lord?'

Tell me of Euphrati Keeler,’ said Horus. Tell me of the one they are calling the saint,’

LOKEN STILL TOOK Mersadie Oliton's breath away. The Astartes were astonishing enough when arrayed for war in their burnished plate, but that sight had been nothing compared to what a Space Marine - specifically, Loken - looked like without his armour.

Stripped to the waist and wearing only pale fatigues and combat boots, Loken glistened with sweat as he ducked and wove between the combat appendages of a training servitor. Although few of the remembrancers had been privileged enough to witness an Astartes fight in battle, it was said that they could kill with their bare hands as effectively as they could with a bolter and chainsword. Watching Loken demolishing the servitor limb by limb, Mersadie could well believe it. She saw such power in his broad, over-muscled torso and such intense focus in his sharp grey eyes that she wondered that she was not repelled by Loken. He was a killing machine, created and trained to deal death, but she couldn't stop watching and blink-clicking images of his heroic physique.

Kyril Sindermann sat next to her and leaned over, saying, 'Don't you have plenty of picts of Garviel already?'

Loken tore the head from the training servitor and turned to face them both, and Mersadie felt a thrill of anticipation. It had been too long since the conclusion of the war against the Technocracy and she had spent too few hours with the captain of the Tenth Company. As his documentarist, she knew that she had a paucity of material following that campaign, but Loken had kept himself to himself in the past few months.

'Kyril, Mersadie,’ said Loken, marching past them towards his arming chamber. 'It is good to see you both,’

'I am glad to be here, Garviel,’ said Sindermann. The primary iterator was an old man, and Mersadie was sure he had aged a great deal in the year since the fire that had nearly killed him in the Archive Halls of the Vengeful Spirit. Very glad. Mersadie was kind enough to bring me. I have had a spell of exertion recently, and I am not as fit as once I was. Time's winged chariot draws near,’ A quote?' asked Loken. A fragment,’ replied Sindermann. 'I haven't seen much of either of you recently,’ observed Loken, smiling down at her. 'Have I been replaced by a more interesting subject?'

'Not at all,’ she replied, 'but it is becoming more and more difficult for us to move around the ship. The edict from Maloghurst, you must have heard of it,’

'I have,’ agreed Loken, lifting a piece of armour and opening a tin of his ubiquitous lapping powder, 'though I haven't studied the particulars,’

The smell of the powder reminded Mersadie of happier times in this room, recording the tales of great triumphs and wondrous sights, but she cast off such thoughts of nostalgia.

'We are restricted to our own quarters and the Retreat. We need permission to be anywhere else,’

'Permission from whom?' asked Loken.

She shrugged. 'I'm not sure. The edict speaks of submitting requests to the Office of the Lupercal's Court, but no one's been able to get any kind of response from whatever that is,’

That must be frustrating,' observed Loken and Mer-sadie felt her anger rise at such an obvious statement.

'Well of course it is! We can't record the Great Crusade if we can't interact with its warriors. We can barely even see them, let alone talk to them.'

'You made it here,’ Loken pointed out.

'Well, yes. Following you around has taught me how to keep a low profile, Captain Loken. It helps that you train on your own now.'

Mersadie caught the hurt look in Loken's eye and instantly regretted her words. In previous times, Loken could often be found sparring with fellow officers, the smirking Sedirae, whose flinty dead eyes reminded Mersadie of an ocean predator, Nero Vipus or his Mournival brother, Tarik Torgaddon, but Loken fought alone now. By choice or by design, she did not know.

'Anyway,’ continued Mersadie, 'it's getting bad for us. No one's speaking to us. We don't know what's going on any more,’

'We're on a war footing,’ said Loken, putting down his armour and looking her straight in the eye. 'The fleet is heading for a rendezvous. We're joining up with Astartes from the other Legions. It'll be a complex campaign. Perhaps the Warmas-ter is just taking precautions,’

'No, Garviel,’ said Sindermann, 'it's more than just that, and I know you well enough to know that you don't believe that either,’

'Really?' snarled Loken. Той think you know me that well?'

'Well enough, Garviel,’ nodded Sindermann, 'well enough. They're cracking down on us, cracking down hard. Not so everyone can see it, but it's happening. You know it too,’ 'Do I?'

'Ignace Karkasy,’ said Mersadie. Loken's face crumpled and he looked away, unable to hide the grief he felt for the dead Karkasy, the irascible poet who had been under his protection. Ignace Karkasy had been nothing but trouble and inconvenience, but he had also been a man who had dared to speak out and tell the unpalatable truths that needed to be told.

They say he killed himself,’ continued Sindermann, unwilling to let Loken's grief dissuade him from his course, but I've never known a man more convinced that the galaxy needed to hear what he had to say He was angry at the massacre on the embarkation deck and he wrote about it. He was angry with a lot of things, and he wasn't afraid to speak of them. Now he is dead, and he's not the only one,’ 'Not the only one?' asked Loken. 'Who else?' 'Petronella Vivar, that insufferable documentarist woman. They say she got closer to the Warmaster than anyone, and now she's gone too, and I don't think it was back to Terra,’

'I remember her, but you are on thin ice, Kynl.

You need to be very clear what you are suggesting,’

Sindermann did not flinch from Loken's gaze and

said, 'I believe that those who oppose the will of

the Warmaster are being killed,’

The iterator was a frail man, but Mersadie had never been more proud to know him as he stood unbending before a warrior of the Astartes and told him something he didn't want to hear.

Sindermann paused, giving Loken ample time to refute his claims and remind them all that the Emperor had chosen Horus as the Warmaster because he alone could be trusted to uphold the Imperial Truth. Homs was the man to whom every Son of Horns had pledged his life a hundred times over.

But Loken said nothing and Mersadie's heart sank.

'I have read of it more times than I can remember,’ continued Sindermann. 'The Uranan Chronicles, for example. The first thing those tyrants did was to murder those who spoke out against their tyranny. The Overlords of the Yndonesic Dark Age did the same thing. Mark my words, the Age of Strife was made possible when the doubting voices fell silent, and now it is happening here,’

'You have always taught temperance, Kyril,’ said Loken, 'weighing up arguments and never leaping past them into guesswork. We're at war and we have plenty of enemies already without you seeking to find new ones. It will be very dangerous for you and you may not like what you find. I do not wish to see you come to any harm, either of you,’