‘Though not intimately acquainted with every battle-custom and facet of Chapter orthodoxy concerning the Imperial Fists, my data-files were significantly invested with relevant material before my association with your warriors began. I do not recall any specific blood-debt traditions or requirements, the likes of which you appear to have invoked. That being the case, in absence of other evidence, I assume that you have taken it upon yourself to extend a protective oath in my favour for another reason. I am at a loss to explain what that reason might be.’
Koorland leaned forwards, thick forearms resting on his knees.
‘Let us just call it a hunch.’
The Sigillite’s Retreat.
Vangorich wondered if the small walled garden had been named as a place of repose for the founder of the Council of Terra, or if it perhaps drew on an even more ancient history for its inspiration.
The area was square, about thirty foot across, quite unimposing by the standards of the Imperial Palace. A single log split in two down its length and shaped by carpenters formed a cross-shaped bench at the centre of the garden, at a diagonal to the four archways by which the cloister could be entered. The paths were of pure white gravel between beds of larger stones in dark grey and black, arranged something like a floor plan, though Vangorich suspected a purpose more symbolic or metaphysical informed the layout.
The Grand Master wondered if there had once been plants here. If so, they had died long ago for lack of care; no mouldering leaf or root, or speck of soil remained amongst the sterile rock.
Like many other parts of the Palace, the Sigillite’s Retreat had been cut off by collapsed bastions and fallen walls, isolated by the ruin brought down upon Terra during the Heresy War. Only a chance remark in one of the old annals even admitted its existence, and it had taken three whole years of diligent investigation for Vangorich to identify its position, and a further six to secretly excavate and conceal passage into the garden.
Overhead must once have been open to the sky, but now the only light was dim, filtered through a dirty window mesh dome in the roof of the greater Palace nearly half a mile above. If one looked above the twenty-foot-high walls, the towering edifice of the Palace crowded down, piled up on great columns floor after floor, a teetering mass of dormitories and offices for the Administratum. It was if the garden existed in its own little bubble of reality now, a cave amongst the strata of hab-complexes and scriptoria.
But here in the midst of the bureaucracy and madness was a place of utter charm and utter calm. It was all the more precious to Vangorich because only he knew of its existence. The volume that named the space had been hidden deep within the Librarius Sanctus where nobody else would find it; the convicted criminal labourers sequestered from the Adeptus Arbites had been handed over to the Adeptus Mechanicus for induction as servitors after they had completed their work.
Alone, quiet and undisturbed, Vangorich sat on the wooden bench and considered his options without risk of discovery. It was perhaps the only place in the galaxy he lessened his guard for a moment.
It was, therefore, something of a shock to the Grand Master to hear a delicate cough behind him.
He was on his feet in a moment, las-blade flicked from his sleeve, digital weapons glinting with power as he flexed his knuckles in preparation to fire.
Wienand stood leaning against the inside of one of the arches, her arms crossed, her face a mask of smugness. Her features were young for one of her position, though anti-agapics and age-reducing therapies were a possibility. She was not quite as tall as Vangorich, of athletic build, with short, pale grey hair and a narrow, sharp-boned face. Not unpleasant to look at by any measure, but also not so pretty that she would attract undue attention at a gathering.
She was dressed in a dirty coveralls, much patched, over a chunky shirt of grey canvas-like fabric. Workman’s boots and an oily rag spilling from a pocket completed the disguise. Vangorich realised she must have been forced to masquerade as a menial in order to gain entry to his refuge. He didn’t know exactly where the security breach was, but that fact alone narrowed it down to a few possibilities.
‘Surprise,’ said the Inquisitorial Representative, showing pearl-white teeth in a grin.
‘Surprise be damned, you wretched woman,’ snapped Vangorich, rattled for the first time in many decades. ‘I might have killed you.’
‘Now, now, Grand Master, at least have the grace to admit when you have been outdone.’
Vangorich sheathed his blade and deactivated the digi-weapons. He conceded the point with a single nod of the head and gestured Wienand towards the bench.
