Silence met her question.
‘Before you were made into this,’ she tried to make her smile more friendly. ‘Who were you?’
‘No.’
‘No, you don’t recall, or no, you won’t tell me?’
‘No.’
Cyrene sighed. ‘Fine. Go, then. See you tomorrow.’
‘Yes,’ it replied. Feet shuffled. The door hissed closed again.
‘I shall name you Kale,’ she said to the empty room.
Xaphen had visited her twice since the first day, and Argel Tal had come three times. Each meeting with the captain had played out much the same as the one preceding it: with stilted conversation and awkward silences. From what Cyrene gathered, the Legion’s fleet was en route to a world they were supposed to conquer, but were denied the order to begin the assault.
‘Why?’ she’d asked, glad to have even this uncomfortable company.
‘Aurelian remains in seclusion,’ Argel Tal had said.
‘Aurelian?’
‘A name for our primarch, spoken by few outside the Legion. It is Colchisian, the language of our home world.’
‘It’s strange,’ Cyrene confessed, ‘to have a nickname for a god.’
Argel Tal fell silent for some time. ‘A primarch is not a god. Sometimes the sons of gods, despite the power they inherit, are demigods. And it is not a “nickname”. It is a term of kinship, used only among family. It translates loosely as “the gold”.
‘You said he remains secluded.’
‘Yes. Within his chambers on our flagship,
‘Does he hide from you?’
She heard the Astartes swallow. ‘I am not entirely comfortable with this line of discussion, Cyrene. Let us just say that he has much to contemplate. The God-Emperor’s judgement is a burden upon many souls. The primarch suffers as we suffer.’
Cyrene thought long and hard before what she said next. ‘Argel Tal?’
‘Yes, Cyrene.’
‘You do not sound upset. You don’t sound as if you’re suffering.’
‘Do I not?’
‘No. You sound angry.’
‘I see.’
‘Are you angry at the Emperor for what he did to you?’
‘I have to go,’ said Argel Tal. ‘I am summoned.’ The Astartes rose to his feet.
‘I heard no summons,’ the young woman said. ‘I’m sorry if I offended you.’
Argel Tal walked from the room without another word. It would be four days before she had company again.
Argel Tal regarded the headless body with momentary consternation. He hadn’t meant to do that.
Decapitated, the servitor toppled to its side and lay on the floor of the iron cage, shivering in fitful spasm. The captain ignored its lifeless twitching, instead focusing on the slack-mouthed head that had flown between the iron cage’s bars and thudded against the wall of the practice chamber. It watched him now, its dead eyes trembling, its augmented maw open – tongueless, with a jawbone of bronze plating.
‘Was that necessary?’ Torgal asked. The sergeant was stripped to the waist, his muscled torso a geography of swollen, layered muscles, formed by the biological tectonics at work in his genetic code. The fused ribcage robbed him of much of his humanity, as did the lumpen physicality of his musculature. If there was anything that could be considered handsome in the laboratory-wrought physiques of the Astartes subspecies, it was lacking in Torgal. Scars decorated much of his dark flesh: ritual brandings, tattooed Colchisian scripture, and the slitted valleys from carving blades that found their marks over the years.
Argel Tal lowered the practice gladius. The smeared redness along its length reflected the overhead lighting in wet flashes.
‘I am unfocused,’ he said.
‘I noticed, sir. So did the training servitor.’
‘Two weeks now. Two weeks of sitting in orbit, doing nothing. Two weeks of Aurelian remaining in isolation. I was not made to deal with this, brother.’
Argel Tal hit the release pad, opening the training cage’s hemispheres and stepping from its boundaries. With a grunt, he cast his bloodied sword to the ground. It skidded, rasping along the floor and coming to a rest by the dead slave.
‘It was my turn next,’ Torgal muttered, looking down at the slain slave with its six bionic arms. Each one ended in a blade. None bore traces of blood.
Argel Tal wiped sweat from the back of his neck, and tossed the towel onto a nearby bench. He was only
