I blame myself for that. I had let him run on for too long. For the best part of eight decades he had escaped my attentions, and in that time he had grown immeasurably from the minor warp- dabbler I had once let slip away.
My mistake. But I wasn't the one to pay.
On the 160th day of 386.M41 a nobleman in his late one sixties appeared at the Examination hearings held in the Imperial Minster of Eriale, the legislative capital of the Uvege in the south-west of Durer's third largest landmass.
He was a landowner, widowed young, and he had built his fortune in post- liberation Durer society on a successful agri-combine venture and the inherited wealth of his late wife. In 376, as a mature, successful and highly eligible newcomer amongst the gentry of the Uvege, a prosperous region of verdant farmland, he had made a socially-advancing second marriage. His new bride was Betrice, thirty years his junior, the eldest daughter of the venerable House Samargue. The Samargue family's ancient wealth was at that time seeping away as the efficient land-use policies of Administratum-sponsored combines slowly took control of the Uvege's pastoral economy.
The nobleman's name was Udwin Pridde, and he had been summoned by the hierarch of the See of Eriale to answer charges of recidivism, warpcraft and, above all, heresy.
* * *
Facing him across the marble floor of the Minster was a dignified Inquisitorial body of the most august quality. Inquisitor Eskane Koth, an Amalathian, born and bred on Thracian Primaris, one day to be known as the Dove of Avignon. Inquisitor Laslo Menderef, a native of lowland San-cour, Menderef the Grievous as he would become, an Istvaanian with a cold appreciation of warp-crime and poor body hygiene. Inquisitor Poul Rassi, son of the Kilwaddi Steppes, a sound, elderly even-handed servant of order. The novice Inquisitor Bastian Verveuk.
And myself. Gregor Eisenhorn. Inquisitor and presiding examiner.
Pridde was the first of two hundred and sixty individuals identified by Lord Rorken's work as possible heretics to be weighed by this Formal Court of Examination. He looked nervous but dignified as he faced us, toying with his lace collar. He had hired a pardoner called Fen of Clincy to speak on his behalf.
It was the third day of the hearings. As the pardoner droned on, describing Pridde in terms that would have made a saint blush for want of virtue, I thumbed half-heartedly through the catalogue of pending cases and sighed at the scale of the work to come. The catalogue – we all had a copy – was thicker than my wrist. This was the third day already and still we had not progressed further than the preamble of the first case. The opening rites had taken a full day and the legal recognition of the authority of the Ordos Helican here on Durer, together with other petty matters of law, yet another. I wondered, may the God-Emperor forgive my lack of charity, if Lord Rorken's illness was genuine or just a handy excuse to avoid this tedium.
Outside, it was a balmy summer day. Wealthy citizens of Eriale were boating on the ornamental lakes, lunching in the hillside trattorias of the Uvege, conducting lucrative business in the caffeine houses of the city's Commercia.
In the echoing, cool vault of the Minster, there was nothing but the whining voice of Fen of Clincy.
Golden sunlight shafted in through the celestory windows and bathed the stalls of the audience gallery. That area was half empty. A few dignitaries, clerks, local hierarchs and archivists of the Planetary Chronicle. They looked drowsy to me and I knew their account of these proceedings would be at odds with the official log recorded by the pict-servitors. Hier-arch Onnopel himself was already dozing. The fat idiot. If his grip on the spiritual fibre of his flock had been tighter, these hearings might not have been necessary.
I saw my ancient savant, Uber Aemos, apparently listening intently, though I knew his mind was far away. I saw Alizebeth Bequin, my dear friend and colleague, reading a copy of the court briefing. She looked stately and prim in her long dark gown and half-veil. As she pretended to turn the pages, I glimpsed the data-slate concealed inside its cover. Another volume of poetry, no doubt. The glimpse made me chuckle, and I hastened to stifle the sound.
'My lord? Is there a problem?' the pardoner asked, breaking off in mid-flow.
I waved a hand. 'None. Please continue, sir. And hasten to your summary, perhaps?'
The Minster at Eriale was only a few decades old, rebuilt from war rubble in a triumphant High Gothic style. As little as half a century before, this entire sub-sector – the Ophidian sub-sector – had been in the embrace of the arch-enemy. In fact, it had been my honour to witness the embarkation of the great Imperial taskforce that had liberated it. That had been on Gudran, the former capital world of the Helican sub-sector, one hundred and fifty years previously. Sometimes I felt very old.
I had lived, by that time, for one hundred and eighty– eight years, so I was in early middle age by the standards of privileged Imperial society. Careful augmetic work and juvenat conditioning had retarded the natural deteriorations of my body and mind, and more significant artifice had repaired wounds and damage my career had cost me. I was robust, healthy and vigorous, but sometimes the sheer profusion of my memories reminded me how long I had been alive. Of course, I was but a youth compared to Aemos.
Sitting there, in a gilt lifter throne at the centre of the high table, dressed in the robes and regalia of a lord chief examiner, I reflected that I had perhaps been too hard on that duffer Onnopel. Any reconquered territory, taken back from the taint of the warp, would perforce be plagued by heresy for some time as Imperial law reinstated itself. Indeed, ordos dedicated to the Ophidian sub-sector had yet to be founded, so jurisdiction lay with the neighbouring Officio Helican. An Examination such as this was timely. Fifty years of freedom and it was right for the Inquisition to move in and inspect the fabric of the new society. This was necessary tedium, I tried to remind myself, and Rorken had been correct in calling for it. The Ophidian sub-sector, thriving in its recovery, needed the Inquisition to check on its spiritual health just as this rebuilt Minster needed stonemasons to keep an eye on its integrity as it settled.
'My lord inquisitor?' Verveuk whispered to me. I looked up and realised Fen the pardoner had finished at last.
'Your duty is noted, pardoner. You may retire/ I said, scribing a mark on my slate. He bowed.
'I trust the accused has paid you in advance for your time,' said Inquisitor Koth archly. 'His assets may be sequestered, 'ere long.'
'I have been paid for my statement, sir,' confirmed Fen.
'Generously, it seems,' I observed. 'Was it by the word?'
My fellow inquisitors chuckled. Except Verveuk, who barked out a over-loud whinny as if I had just made the finest jest this side of the Golden Throne. By the Throne, he was a sycophantic weasel! If ever a windpipe cried out for a brisk half-hitch, his was it.
At least his snorting had woken Onnopel up. The hierarch roused with a start and growled 'hear, hear!' with a faux-knowing nod of his many
chinned head as if he had been listening intently all along. Then he went bright red and pretended to look for something under his pew.
'If there are no further comments from the Ministorum/ I said dryly, 'perhaps we can move on. Inquisitor Menderef?'
Thank you, lord chief examiner,' said Menderef politely, rising to his feet.
The pardoner had scurried away, leaving Pridde alone in the open expanse of the wide floor. Pridde was in chains, but his fine garb with its lace trim seemed to discomfort him more than the shackles. Menderef walked around the high table to face him, turning the pages of a manuscript slowly.
He began his cross-examination.
Laslo Menderef was a slender man a century old. His thin brown hair was laquered up over his skull in a hard widow's peak and his face was sallow and taut-skinned. He wore a long, plain velvet robe of selpic blue with his rosette of office and the symbol of the Ordo Hereticus pinned at his breast. He had a chilling manner that I admired, though I cared not at all for the man's radical philosophy. He was also the most articulate interrogator in Sakarof s officio. His long-fingered, agile hands found a place in the manuscript and
