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out clasp the guard’s arm.
    ‘Yes, sir, I do.’
    ‘Then you understand why I have to see her,’ pressed Sindermann, risking the more direct approach and hoping that he had judged these men correctly.
    ‘You’re just going to the medicae deck?’ asked the guard.
    ‘No further,’ promised Sindermann. ‘I just need some time to say my goodbyes to her. That’s all. Please?’
    The guards exchanged glances and Sindermann fought to keep the smile from his face as he knew he had them. The first soldier nodded and they moved aside to let him past.
    ‘Just the medicae deck, old man,’ said the guard, scrawling on a chit that would allow him passage through the ship to the medicae deck and back. ‘If you’re not back in your quarters in a couple of hours, I’ll be dragging you back here myself.’
    Sindermann nodded, taking the proffered chit and shaking both men warmly by the hand.
    ‘You’re good soldiers, boys,’ he said, his voice dripping with gratitude. ‘Good soldiers. I’ll be sure to tell Maloghurst of your compassion for an old man.’
    He turned quickly so that they didn’t see the relief on his face and hurried away down the corridor towards the Medicae deck. The companionways echoed with their emptiness as he made his way through the twisting maze of the ship, an idiot smile plastered across his puffing features. Entire worlds had fallen under the spell of his oratory and here he was smiling about duping two simple-minded guards to let him out of his room. How the mighty had fallen.
    ‘I S THERE ANY more news on Varvarus?’ asked Loken as he and Torgaddon walked through the Museum of Conquest on their way to the Lupercal’s Court.
    Torgaddon shook his head. ‘The shells were too fragmented. Apothecary Vaddon wouldn’t be able to make a match even if we found the weapon that fired the shot. It was one of ours, but that’s all we know.’
    The museum was brimming with artifacts won from the Legion’s many victories, for the Luna Wolves had brought a score of worlds into compliance. A grand statue dominating one wall recalled the days when the Emperor and Horus had fought side by side in the first campaigns of the Great Crusade. The Emperor, sword in hand, fought off slender, masked aliens while Horus, back to back with his father, blazed away with a boltgun.
    Beyond the statue, Loken recognized a display of bladed insectoid limbs, a blend of metallic and biological flesh wrested from the megarachnids on Murder. Only a few of these trophies had been won after Horus’s investiture as Warmaster, the majority having been taken before the Luna Wolves had been renamed the Sons of Horus in honour of the Warmaster’s accomplishments.
    ‘The remembrancers are next,’ said Loken. ‘They are asking too many questions. Some of them may already have been murdered.’
    ‘Who?’
    ‘Ignace and Petronella Vivar.’
    ‘Karkasy,’ said Torgaddon. ‘Damn, I’d heard he killed himself, but I should have known they’d find a way to do it. The warrior lodge was talking about silencing him, Abaddon in particular. They didn’t call it murder, although Abaddon seemed to think it was the same as killing an enemy in war. That’s when I broke with the lodge.’
    ‘Did they say how it was to be done?’
    Torgaddon shook his head. ‘No, just that it needed to be done.’
    ‘It won’t be long before all this is out in the open,’ promised Loken. ‘The lodge doesn’t move under a veil of secrecy any more and soon there will be a reckoning.’
    ‘Then what do we do?’
    Loken looked away from his friend, at the high arch that led from the museum and into the Lupercal’s Court.
    ‘I don’t know,’ he said, waving Torgaddon to silence as he caught sight of a figure moving behind one of the furthest cabinets.
    ‘What’s up?’ asked Torgaddon.
    ‘I’m not sure,’ said Loken, moving between display cabinets of gleaming swords captured from an ancient feudal kingdom and strange alien weapons taken from