‘Yes, sir, the anti-psykers are ready for your word. Veritus’ entourage seems to be mundane. Mostly ex-Guard and ex-Frateris as far as I can tell. Some augmetics and bionics, and quite an arsenal between them. The others have entourages with some muscle but mostly academic and administrative. According to Wienand’s report only Najurita is a psyker, and isn’t she on our side?’
‘Nobody is on our side,’ Vangorich said, more hastily than he had intended. He recovered his composure. ‘Not even Wienand. We are each striving for our own agenda. Never forget that.’
‘Of course. There is a rotating watch being kept on the others, sir. I’ll be handling Wienand myself.’
‘Good. Get some rest, your mark will be busy for the next hour at least, I would say. You’ll be able to pick her up again in the sub-basement beneath the Ice Conservatory.’ The knowledge that he had deduced the inquisitor’s route to the Sigillite’s Retreat gave Vangorich a satisfying warmth in his stomach. ‘Be ready for anything.’
Krule nodded and broke away, heading out of a side door while Vangorich continued towards the end of the chamber. The Grand Master waited at the door for a moment, listening intently. There was no sound outside. He opened the door and stepped out into the empty corridor. Crossing the wide passage to a nondescript door opposite, Vangorich let himself into the dormitories for the former workers of the scriptorium he had just left. Bare wooden cots, small side tables and foot lockers were where their occupants had left them, though the bedclothes had been stripped. The walls were tiled with white, as was the floor, giving the bare room a clinical, sterilised feel.
Vangorich moved aside the bunk at the far end and carefully pulled out a broken wall tile near the floor to expose a keyhole. Kneeling, he slipped a key from his waistband and turned the lock. Part of the wall shifted fractionally into the room. Shuffling back, Vangorich used the key as a handle to lift the hinged portal, exposing the foot of a ladder disappearing below the dormitory. Withdrawing his key, the Master of Assassins replaced the broken tile, ducked into the small alcove behind the wall and pulled the door shut behind him.
In gloom he descended the ladder, counting out ninety-three rungs. The ladder continued down all the way to the sub-levels, another seven hundred and eight steps; he had counted them himself. Still in total darkness he stepped out to the left, swinging himself out into what seemed like thin air. The tip of his boot scraped against a ledge no wider than his thumb while the fingertips of his left hand found a similar purchase just above head height.
He edged spider-like for ten feet, between what he had subsequently discovered were the walls of an Ecclesiarchy chapel and the robing rooms of the female clergy members. He wondered if the small hidden space into which he lowered himself had first been designed by a less-than-chaste preacher or cardinal. It mattered not; the small door that had once led to it from a trapdoor in the chapel had been blocked with ferrocrete.
From here, Vangorich was able to move, bent almost double, through the collapsed catacombs of the Shrine of Imperial Mercies, once the Palatine Tower that had guarded the inner western curtain wall of the Imperial Palace. Still without any light he counted the crab-like steps until he came to an empty tomb. Pulling aside the cover, he pulled himself into the sarcophagus.
Floorboards overhead turned into rafters, in a way only found in somewhere as labyrinthine as the Imperial Palace. Dropping down ten feet to a solid wooden floor, Vangorich straightened and dusted himself off. From here it was just a few feet to the rotating section of wall that left him looking through one of the archways leading to the Sigillite’s Retreat.
Wienand was already waiting for him, as he suspected she would be. The ruddy smoke had been their agreed sign for urgent action. She was bent over a digi-scroll reader.
‘Which one of them do you want dead first?’ Vangorich asked, stepping into the bare garden.
Wienand sat up and her head snapped round in shock. She took a deep breath, shook her head in disapproval of Vangorich’s theatrics, and stowed the scroll reader in a bag in her lap.
‘None of them,’ she said after a moment’s thought. ‘Tempting as it is, I don’t think I want to go that far, and certainly not using one of your operatives. You do know that your department is only meant to act with the approval of the High Lords?’
‘A technicality. The High Lords. A High Lord. Is there a difference? And, as a member of the Inquisition, you bear the Emperor’s sigil. Your voice is His voice. The whole of the Imperium is yours to requisition, should you wish. You only need to ask…’
