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her simply as a friend. He smiled as he realised that he didn’t think he’d ever had a woman as a friend before.
    ‘To answer your question seriously, my dear,’ he said, ‘I hope the Warmaster will be here soon. My mouth’s as dry as a Tallam’s sandal and I could use a bloody drink.’
    ‘Ignace…’ said Euphrati.
    ‘Spare us from those of moral fibre,’ he sighed. ‘I didn’t mean anything alcoholic, though I could fair sink a bottle of that swill they drank on Sixty-Three Nineteen right about now.’
    ‘I thought you hated that wine,’ said Keeler. ‘You said it was tragic.’
    ‘Ah, yes, but when you’ve been reduced to drinking the same vintage for months, it’s surprising what you’ll be willing to drink for a change.’
    She smiled, placing her hand over whatever lay at the end of the chain around her neck and said, ‘I’ll pray for you, Ignace.’
    He felt a flicker of surprise at her choice of words, and then saw an expression of rapt adoration settle over her as she raised her picter at something behind him. He turned to see the door flap of the yurt pushed aside and the massive bulk of an Astartes duck down as he entered. Karkasy did a slow double take as he saw that the warrior’s shining plate armour was not that of the Sons of Horus, but was the carved granite grey of the Word Bearers. The warrior carried a staff crowned with a book draped in oath paper, over which wound a long sash of purple cloth. He had his helmet tucked into the crook of his arm, and seemed surprised to see all the remembrancers there.
    Karkasy could see that the Astartes’s wide-featured face was earnest and serious, his skull shaved and covered with intricate scriptwork. One shoulder guard of his armour was draped in heavy parchment, rich with illuminated letters, while the other bore the distinctive icon of a book with a flame burning in its centre. Though he knew it symbolised enlightenment springing forth from the word, Karkasy instinctively disliked it.
    It spoke to his poet’s soul of the Death of Knowledge, a terrible time in the history of ancient Terra when madmen and demagogues burned books, libraries and wordsmiths for fear of the ideas they might spread with their artistry. By Karkasy’s way of thinking, such symbols belonged to heathens and philistines, not Astartes charged with expanding the frontiers of knowledge, progress and enlightenment.
    He smiled to himself at this delicious heresy, wondering if he could work it into a poem without Captain Loken realising, but even as the rebellious thought surfaced, he quashed it. Karkasy knew that his patron was showing his work to the increasingly reclusive Kyril Sindermann. For all his dreariness, Sindermann was no fool when it came to the medium, and he would surely spot any risqué references.
    In that case, Karkasy would quickly find himself on the next bulk hauler on its way back to Terra, regardless of his Astartes sponsorship.
    ‘So who’s that?’ he asked Keeler, returning his attention to the new arrival as Tsi Rekh stopped his chanting and bowed towards the newcomer. The warrior in turn raised his long staff in greeting.
    Keeler gave him a sidelong glance, looking at him as though he had suddenly sprouted another head.
    ‘Are you serious?’ she hissed.
    ‘Never more so, my dear, who is he?’
    ‘That,’ she said proudly, snapping off another pict of the Astartes warrior, ‘is Erebus, First Chaplain of the Word Bearers.’
    And suddenly, with complete clarity, Ignace Karkasy knew why Captain Loken had wanted him here.
    S TEPPING ONTO THE dusty hardpan of Davin, Karkasy had been reminded of the oppressive heat of Sixty-Three Nineteen. Moving clear of the propwash of the shuttle’s atmospheric rotors, he’d half run, half stumbled from beneath its deafening roar with his exquisitely tailored robes flapping around him.
    Captain Loken had been waiting for him, resplendent in his armour of pale green and apparently untroubled by the heat or