Читаем The Beast Arises полностью

It made him look trustworthy and noble. It made him look good. He liked his rivals’ spies to see that. He knew it irked them beyond measure to hear that he had stopped for a few minutes in a private, unostentatious servants’ chapel to make a discreet act of faith. How it bothered them that he was so unimpeachably wholesome.

The truth was, he probably thought more about how he looked at all times, and what his image said about him, than the likes of Mesring and Lansung. Their activities were conducted publicly, to win popular support; Vangorich’s were conducted simply for the benefit of the ever-circling spies. He performed for his rivals, playing the part he wanted them to see.

How would they see him now, coming to the meeting? As a man of medium height and medium build, dressed in black, with black hair oiled back like a clerk’s across his narrow skull. His skin was pale from the constant twilight of life in the Palace, and he had precious little in the way of distinguishing features, except for his dark, wide-set eyes and the duelling scar that canyoned the left part of his mouth and chin.

Vangorich never spoke of the duel, except to say that it had happened when he was a youth, before he took office, and he regretted it in as much as the matter should not have been resolved face-to-face with rapiers, but rather with him placed behind his adversary, dagger in hand, and his adversary unaware of his presence.

Drakan Vangorich liked to kill things. He liked to kill things as efficiently as possible, with the least possible effort, and he only ever killed things if there was a reason: a good reason, a persuasive reason. Death was the pure solution to life’s greatest and most confounding problems.

This was what so many of the offices and agencies seemed not to understand about the ancient Officio Assassinorum. It was not an archaic killing machine, lurking to spread disorder and mayhem at the whim of some mercurial Grand Master, poisoning here and stabbing there. It was not a thirsty sword hung in a rack, aching to shed blood.

It was a necessary and purifying fire. It was the last resort, the end of arguments. It was hope and it was salvation. It was the noblest and truest of all the Offices of Terra.

The Emperor had understood this, which was why He had instigated the office and allowed it to function during His lifetime. He had understood the necessity for ultimate sanction. He had, after all, permitted the VI Legion of the Adeptus Astartes to exist simply to function in that role as it applied to primarchs and other Legions. Grand Master Vangorich’s office existed to perform that function at a court level.

That was why the other lords were afraid of him. They all presumed he might stab them in the spine. They always forgot that he was their instrument. They got to vote on who he killed. They should spend more time worrying about each other.

‘Good day, Daylight,’ he said as he stepped out of the chapel ordinary to continue his walk to the Great Chamber.

The Imperial Fist, his armour polished and perfect, turned slowly and offered Vangorich a shallow tip of the head.

‘Good day, Grand Master,’ the Space Marine replied, his voice welling up as a volcanic rumble through helm-speakers. He towered over the human lord, ornamental spear in his left fist, litany-inscribed shield in his right. Vangorich felt sorry for the wall-brothers of the VII. They were reputed to be the very finest of all, the most excellent and capable of their Chapter. Yet, because of ritual and ceremony and honour, they were fated to remain here for their entire service lives; the best of the best, one for each of the Palace walls that the Fists had protected, wasting their immense potential, serving out their time in the one place in the galaxy that war would never visit again.

They didn’t even have names. They simply wore the names of the walls they patrolled, every day and night, in perfectly polished armour.

‘I’m probably late for the meeting,’ Vangorich remarked.

‘You have six minutes and thirteen seconds remaining, sir,’ replied the Space Marine. ‘However, I suggest you take Gilded Walk to the traverse behind Anterior Six Gate.’

‘Because they’re not meeting in the Great Chamber?’

The Space Marine nodded.

‘They are not, sir.’

‘They keep doing that,’ said Vangorich, peeved. ‘I think it is unseemly. The Great Chamber was good enough for our ancestors. It was built as our parliament.’

‘Times change, sir,’ said the warrior Daylight.

Vangorich paused and looked up at the grim and unfathomable visor. Light glowed like coals behind the optic lenses.

‘Do they?’ he asked. ‘Do you wish for that, Daylight? Do you wish for the chance to kill?’

‘With every fibre of my soul, and every second of my life, sir,’ the Imperial Fist replied. ‘But this is the duty I have been given and I will perform it with my entire heart and will.’