nothing,’ he told the faceless crowd.
‘Talos?’ a different voice called. He was struggling with the realisation that they couldn’t understand what he was saying. His tongue had turned thick. Was he slurring his words?
The prophet stilled himself, taking a deep breath.
‘I am fine,’ he said.
Each of them looked at him with doubt in their eyes. Variel’s cold gaze was keenest of all.
‘We must speak in the apothecarion soon, Talos. There are tests to be run, and suspicions I hope are not confirmed.’
‘As you wish,’ he conceded. ‘Once we return from Tsagualsa.’
IV
THE THREAT OF WINTER
The city of Sanctuary barely deserved the title, and it deserved its name even less. By far the largest of the settlements on the far-frontier world Darcharna, it was a mongrel cityscape formed from landed explorator ships, half-buried colonist cruisers, and simple prefabricated structures risen against the howling dust storms that blanketed the planet’s face in place of real weather.
Walls of cheap rockcrete and corrugated iron ringed the city limits, patchworked by flakboard repairs and armour-plating pried from the beached spaceships.
The lord of this spit-and-bonding-tape settlement looked out at his domain from the relative quiet of his office. Once, the room had been the observation spire aboard the Ecclesiarchy pilgrim hauler Currency of Solace. Now it stood empty of the pews and viewing platforms, housing nothing beyond the archregent’s personal effects. He called it his office, but it was his home, just as it had been the home of every single archregent for the last five generations, since the Day of Downfall.
The window-dome was thick enough to suppress the gritty winds into silence, no matter how they thrashed and raged at the settlement below. He watched the gale’s shadow now, unable to see the howling winds but forever able to see their influence in the flapping of ragged flags and the crashing of armoured windows slamming closed.
Will we go dark, he wondered. Will we go dark again? Is this the first storm of yet another Grey Winter?
The archregent pressed his hand to the dense glass, as though he could feel the gale blowing through the bones of his junkyard city. He let his gaze drift upward, to the thin cloud cover and the stars beyond.
Darcharna – the real Darcharna – was still out there somewhere. Perhaps the Imperium had despatched another colonist fleet to replace the one that had been lost with all souls in the deepest depths of the warp, only to find itself vomited back into real space in the Eastern Fringe. What little contact existed between this Darcharna, the Darcharna they called home, and the wider Imperium was limited, to say the least. It was also not a matter for the populace. Some things had to be kept secret.
The last had been several years before – another garbled vox message from a distant world, relaying the signal from deeper beyond. Throne only knew how it had reached them. The automated response to several centuries of pulsed calls for supplies and extraction was blunt to the point of crudity.
You are protected even in the darkness. Remember always, the Emperor knows all and sees all. Endure. Prosper.
The archregent breathed slowly as the memory curdled in his thoughts. Its meaning was clear enough: Remain on your dead world. Live there as your fathers did. Die there as your fathers did. You are forgotten.
During his rule, he’d personally spoken to only two souls off-world. The first was the magos captain of a deep-space explorator vessel, with no interest in any dialogue beyond cataloguing the world’s usefulness and moving on. Finding little of worth meant the ship had left orbit after a handful of hours. The second soul was a lord among the sacred Adeptus Astartes, who had informed him this region of space came under the protectorate of his warriors, the Genesis Chapter. They sought a fleeing xenos fleet outside the Emperor’s light, and while the
‘Talos?’ a different voice called. He was struggling with the realisation that they couldn’t understand what he was saying. His tongue had turned thick. Was he slurring his words?
The prophet stilled himself, taking a deep breath.
‘I am fine,’ he said.
Each of them looked at him with doubt in their eyes. Variel’s cold gaze was keenest of all.
‘We must speak in the apothecarion soon, Talos. There are tests to be run, and suspicions I hope are not confirmed.’
‘As you wish,’ he conceded. ‘Once we return from Tsagualsa.’
IV
THE THREAT OF WINTER
The city of Sanctuary barely deserved the title, and it deserved its name even less. By far the largest of the settlements on the far-frontier world Darcharna, it was a mongrel cityscape formed from landed explorator ships, half-buried colonist cruisers, and simple prefabricated structures risen against the howling dust storms that blanketed the planet’s face in place of real weather.
Walls of cheap rockcrete and corrugated iron ringed the city limits, patchworked by flakboard repairs and armour-plating pried from the beached spaceships.
The lord of this spit-and-bonding-tape settlement looked out at his domain from the relative quiet of his office. Once, the room had been the observation spire aboard the Ecclesiarchy pilgrim hauler Currency of Solace. Now it stood empty of the pews and viewing platforms, housing nothing beyond the archregent’s personal effects. He called it his office, but it was his home, just as it had been the home of every single archregent for the last five generations, since the Day of Downfall.
The window-dome was thick enough to suppress the gritty winds into silence, no matter how they thrashed and raged at the settlement below. He watched the gale’s shadow now, unable to see the howling winds but forever able to see their influence in the flapping of ragged flags and the crashing of armoured windows slamming closed.
Will we go dark, he wondered. Will we go dark again? Is this the first storm of yet another Grey Winter?
The archregent pressed his hand to the dense glass, as though he could feel the gale blowing through the bones of his junkyard city. He let his gaze drift upward, to the thin cloud cover and the stars beyond.
Darcharna – the real Darcharna – was still out there somewhere. Perhaps the Imperium had despatched another colonist fleet to replace the one that had been lost with all souls in the deepest depths of the warp, only to find itself vomited back into real space in the Eastern Fringe. What little contact existed between this Darcharna, the Darcharna they called home, and the wider Imperium was limited, to say the least. It was also not a matter for the populace. Some things had to be kept secret.
The last had been several years before – another garbled vox message from a distant world, relaying the signal from deeper beyond. Throne only knew how it had reached them. The automated response to several centuries of pulsed calls for supplies and extraction was blunt to the point of crudity.
You are protected even in the darkness. Remember always, the Emperor knows all and sees all. Endure. Prosper.
The archregent breathed slowly as the memory curdled in his thoughts. Its meaning was clear enough: Remain on your dead world. Live there as your fathers did. Die there as your fathers did. You are forgotten.
During his rule, he’d personally spoken to only two souls off-world. The first was the magos captain of a deep-space explorator vessel, with no interest in any dialogue beyond cataloguing the world’s usefulness and moving on. Finding little of worth meant the ship had left orbit after a handful of hours. The second soul was a lord among the sacred Adeptus Astartes, who had informed him this region of space came under the protectorate of his warriors, the Genesis Chapter. They sought a fleeing xenos fleet outside the Emperor’s light, and while the
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