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  “There always are,” Rafen replied. “I will be called to account when we reach Baal, and I will face it with a clear conscience. I did what was needed. I regret nothing.”

  “That much is certain,” nodded Ceris.

  “You said you had questions,” Rafen continued. “I would hear them all, kinsman.”

  “An uncertainty nags at me and I must give voice to it. You, Brother Rafen, are the only one who will understand why.”

  “Go on,” he commanded.

  “I fear that Noxx is mistaken, lord. I do not doubt that the man who came to Baal, who robbed our Chapter of that measure of holy vitae, is now dead. I do not doubt that vital essence lives on in you. But I fear the duty is not done. Not to the letter.”

  “More riddles,” Rafen said, his mood turning.

  Ceris came closer. “How many times did you kill him, Rafen? The torn throat. The bolter to the head. Drowned in the ice. The feast for the tyranids. How many of them were him? All of them? None of them?”

  Rafen gave the psyker a hard look. “Do you know the answer?”

  Ceris drew back towards the shadows. “No.”

  “Come to me if you do. Otherwise, keep your silence.”

  Rafen glanced up at his primarch, at last alone with his thoughts, and bowed low. His bandaged hand reached into his sleeve and returned with a small fold of paper, the creased note he had discovered in the derelict hospital within the tau colony.

  Without opening it once again to read the words it bore, he dropped it into the flames and let it burn into dark ashes.

  EPILOGUE

  On the plains of the Crone World, the agony of the modificates was never-ending. It covered the landscape from horizon to horizon, across the fields of the flesh-farms and the cropping houses, though the slaughter tracks and the meat-works. Overhead, the ever-baleful glow of the Eye looked down over everything, and found it good.

  The master of this place moved through the rows, sampling the changed and the mutated in the way that a winemaker would wander a vineyard in search of the best grapes for his next harvest. Thus it was, he halted and became irritated beyond all degree to find a perfect circle among his crops, where the flesh of his most recent captures was spoiled.

  Some arcane discharge of warped energies had merged the meat of the men and women there into a mess of limbs and faces. It was a ruin, an utter waste of good samples. The master’s hand vanished into the depths of his great leathery coat and returned with his rod. He brandished it angrily.

  “Show yourself!” he demanded, the great mechanism upon his back reacting to his anger, pumps churning, blades and splines unfolding into the air. “Give your name to me, creature!”

  The flesh-mass quivered, and spoke in a dozen breathy, screaming voices. “I bring news of value to you, great Primogenitor, first among Chaos Undivided, scion of all—”

  He stabbed the meat with the rod and it rippled with exquisite pain. “Answer me! How dare you break my wards and come here without invitation! I will destroy you!”

  “Hear me out,” bubbled the amalgam. “Know that your grand plan, one of many I do not doubt for so brilliant a mind, your grand plan upon the death world fifth from the Dynikas star has been ended.” The chorus voice simpered.

  “Dynikas…” The rod dipped. “The silence from my proxy…?”

  “The servants of the Corpse-God did this, Great Master.” It keened and whistled. “The Blood Angels.” In saying the name, the morass of flesh vomited with anger.

  He laughed coldly. “Of course. I knew they would come. It was a bold gambit, after all. I should not be surprised they retaliated.” The master glared at the daemon-thing. “Why do you tell me this? What value does this news have to you?”

  “My lord and master only wishes to see you have success in your endeavours,” bubbled the fleshy mess. “And he wishes to help you overcome this setback.”

  “I need no help,” came the angry reply. “I have many proxies. I will send another. Begin again. No single act of interference can destroy my great strategy.”

  “So true. But do not the fires of anger burn in you, great one? Would you not wish to see these Blood Whelps dead?”

  He turned away. “I will kill who I will in my own time. Now be gone.”

  “As you wish,” gasped the flesh-form, the magicks holding it together fading, the skin and tissue melting into slurry. “But remember this offer, Fabius Bile, and know that the Warp Prince Malfallax shares your hate.”