The remains
The years begin here. They begin with burials and mourning. From the rubble of the city, tombs will be the first things to be built. There will be splendid mausoleums for the mighty and the great, each marked by fine words and noble epitaphs, and mass graves for the unidentified, each marked by lonely cenotaphs and eternal flames. There will be no salute of guns, neither for the great nor the unknown, for the guns have spoken too much already. There will be a new breed of remembrancer, a whole species of them, who will spend their lives remembering other lives, and who will make their deeds the solemn recovery of other deeds. There will be stories, of giants and guardsmen, of demigods and mortals. The immortals have begun to die, but the dead will become immortal.
The years begin here, as the silent Angels of the IX walk the body of their fallen lord to his rest. Flames swirl from the tops of their staves, and they swing the lamps of night. Raldoron leads them, and behind him come Azkaellon and Satel Aimery, Taerwelt Ikasati and Zephon Sorrow-Bringer, Khoradal Furio and Nassir Amit, and five hundred others. Like all of his brothers, Raldoron has dreamed of this hour. None of them will speak of those dreams. They hope that their shame will be interred with the body of their primarch. Their ceremonies are simple. To hymn one single death, even the Great Angel’s, when there is not a life in the world untouched by death, would be unseemly.
Sanguinius would not have wished for that.
Purple and amaranthine shrouds drape the statues of the Palace. Lists are made, lists of impossible length. They are made to number the dead, for that is only right, but they are also made to calculate the living who remain, for that number will be vital in the years just now beginning. The equations of war must be recalculated without delay.
The years begin here, with an elderly man listening to his pocket watch, and discovering that it is running again. Kyril Sindermann winds his pocket watch, but has no idea how to reset the hands. There is time again, but no way of telling what that time is.
He stands on the steps of the library. The air is paper-white with smoke, and every surface is coated in dust and debris. Explosions still thump in the city around him. Light, as strong as sunlight, is strobing and flashing overhead, muffled by the clouds. Mauer says it’s a void war. Ships engaging in close orbit. Thousands of ships. She’s learned this from the vox.
Sindermann can hear her in the courtyard below, trying to maintain a signal, trying to contact the Prefectus or the Hegemon, trying to gather information. Any information.
They’ll be told in time, Sindermann thinks. They’ll be told what they need to know. He turns and looks back at the library’s scorched facade. From this day on, in the years that are beginning here, on this bleak morning, knowledge will become the most precious thing of all. Who has it. Who does not. What can be learned, and what must be unlearned. Secrets, more than ever, will become currency, and those who get to keep the secrets will be the architects of the Imperium as it is rebuilt.
There are things that mankind must know, and there are things that mankind must never know. Deciding one from another is a task that will rest, he thinks, with a wiser head than his. He does not envy them. He has always upheld the idea that knowledge exists to be shared without discrimination.
He is no longer sure of that. He’s no longer sure of anything.
Mauer’s calling to him. Sindermann looks back at the archivist, watching him from the doorway of the library.
‘Will you come with us?’ he asks her. They’re going to attempt to get to the Hegemon.
‘I must stay here, sir,’ she replies. ‘The collections can’t be left unattended.’
‘It won’t be safe here,’ he says. ‘It’s probably as dangerous as it was when we arrived. The enemy–’
‘Someone must keep the books safe,’ she says.
He nods. Smiles.
‘We’ll send people to assist you,’ he says. ‘Prefectus probably. I’ll return when I can. So…’
Mauer calls his name again impatiently. He turns to go. Then he looks back, with a rueful grin.
‘I’m so sorry,’ he says. ‘So rude of me. I never once asked you your name.’
‘Chase, sir,’ she replies. ‘It’s Lilean Chase.’
He nods again, and walks down into the courtyard, a handkerchief across his mouth to keep the smoke at bay.
The archivist watches him go, and then closes the door.
Many, too many, will care not what these new years will bring. Emhon Lux lies dead beside his damaged lifter chair beneath the shattered arch of Teclis Gate. He stares up at the sky. From where he lies, the bisected half of the gate’s arch that is still standing looks like a broken wing. His eyes see nothing of the sky, or the arch. He has lost his final battle, not against the traitor foe, who litter the rubble around him, but against his own ruined body, over which his rage and will to fight could not prevail.
His corpse will not be found for eighteen weeks, when the workgangs finally advance into the zone.
Tjaras Grunli is discovered, by chance, by White Scars riders within a few hours of the Emperor’s return. When they lift up his body, respectfully, to carry it away, it finally exhales the breath it has been holding. They hurriedly check him, believing for a second that he is, by some miracle, alive.
He is not.
Jera Talmada lies near the wreckage of her tread out past Irenic.
Her body is never found.
Others try to fathom the nature of these new years just beginning. Constantin Valdor sits alone in his chamber, and stares at his spear, laid out on the floor in front of him. He wonders if the things that it has taught him are lies. He knows they are not.
Leetu waits alone in an anteroom. He is not restrained, but there are interrogations he must submit to, by order of the Praetorian. He takes out his old deck, and slips into them the new cards he gathered from the burned chamber. They come from two other decks entirely. He sorts them, and lays a spread to see if, in their conflicting voices, he can discern some future for himself, or for the world.
He turns the first card. The Revenger. That much he knew already.
Zaranchek Xanthus, his wound patched with a field dressing, waits in the laboratoria of the Retreat. Aedile-Marshal Harahel and four other Wardens of the Sodality of the Key, grim and silent, have just removed the last of Fo’s work into safekeeping. Xanthus has no idea where they are taking the Terminus Sanction, but the work has been carefully supervised by Khalid Hassan, so the Chosen will maintain close scrutiny. Titan, that’s his guess.
He moves the bank of waste incinerators, and checks their settings. He can feel their heat. All are operating at capacity. Another twenty minutes, and they will have cremated all the genetic material that has been cleaned out of the bio-structor vats. That was the deal. Destroy everything now the work is done.
He looks up and finds Amon Tauromachian watching him. The Custodes move so silently.
‘Are you finished?’ Amon asks.
‘Just another few minutes,’ Xanthus replies. ‘I want to make sure all the materials are purged.’
‘It is time to leave,’ says Amon.
‘Just another few minutes, if you please,’ says Xanthus. ‘I want to make sure everything has been done correctly.’
Amon stares at him, then leaves without a word.
Everything must be checked and double-checked. Nothing must be left behind. The last portion of biomatter placed in the incinerators was the final residue of primary sample group ‘Xanthus’. He loaded it for disposal himself.
The incinerators roar softly, belying the intense heat within. It’s all in there, and not a trace of it will remain when the cycle ends, not a strand of DNA, not a scrap of ash that can be typed.
All of it, including the dismembered body of the original Zaranchek Xanthus.
Xanthus gathers up a few data-slates and a few sheaves of documents, and places them inside a file case. He includes the pages he purloined from the Regent’s notebooks when nobody was looking.
And he adds, carefully, Basilio Fo’s notebooks too, the ones he was allowed to keep during his incarceration (for I will certainly be needing those).
For some, the years wind back, so they will be in the right order when they finally meet the new ones starting here. Erebus, the Dark Apostle, certainly did that with his vicious blade and Loken’s blood. He has completed the circle, just as the Old Four taught him, so that it will turn correctly, and turn forever. The new years will walk beside him.
In a cave, so many years ago it is impossible to count them exactly, John Grammaticus carefully ties the next wolf noose knot the way he was taught. It is summer in the valley outside, a hot sun, a blue sky. The air is fresh, and the forests are thick, an almost emerald green, though it has only been a few generations since the ice began to retreat. Oak, holly, fir and pine, mantling sharp young mountains. One day, this place will be called the Pyrenees.
He puts the ball of thread back in his satchel. Another loop of thread, correctly placed. There are many more to go, and many more to come. This was his promise, to mark the way, all the way from the end to the very beginning, to set out a path he has already travelled once. That path is far, far longer and more complex now than when he made, or will make, that journey. Time and realspace have been restored to their original positions, so some of the steps on the way are now millennia or light years apart. But he has to mark them all, every one of them, or all is lost, or will be lost, or was lost, long ago, in the far future.
He imagines it will take the rest of his life.
He takes out his torquetum, to gauge the bearings of the next step. Satisfied, he draws a last breath of this cool summer air. He pauses to admire the images marked on the rock wall. Figures of men with spears, an antelope, a handprint. The painting was made in the last day or two. The men who made it will be returning soon, their hunt successful. He’s confident they will never notice the little loop of red thread tied to a split in the rock in the dimmest recess of the cave.
Time to go. Time to make his cut. He takes the feather from his bag. Its tip is sharp. Sharp enough. A pure white feather borrowed from an Angel’s wing.