“May I ask where we are going, lord?” Derrida asked, glancing sideways at the Duke. The two men stood alone in a gold-paneled lift, ascending together to the Spire of Apprehension. It was the only tower of the palace which Derrida had never visited—and for good reason. The spire was strictly off-limits to all except the Duke. Popular opinion supposed that Marius housed a secret vice in the arcane building. A lover, some supposed, a princess beautiful beyond compare, but forbidden because she was a close relative or, and this thought was uttered only in the quietest of whispers, a Xenos. Derrida had countenanced the opinion before. The Duke’s contempt for Imperial dogma extended to almost every facet. The soldier would not put it past the Duke to repudiate even the singular holiness of humanity, something the prelates of the Ecclesiarchy insisted upon.

  “I already told you, Captain,” the man chided, smoothing his elegant robes of state. He had, of course, as if Derrida could possibly have missed the armed guards, their wild eyes shining with the fervor of Chaos.

  “Of course, lord, forgive me. I meant…why are we going there?”

  He had expected that they would travel together to the dungeons. The traitor called Miles Absalom was being held there, his guards under strict orders to leave his interrogation to Marius himself. The order surprised Derrida when it came. He boasted an impressive record when it came to extracting information from prisoners. The usual methods of torture, he found, rarely produced satisfactory results. His own tact relied upon a more subtle approach: he told them the truth. He outlined in clear and extensive detail the situation which faced all who opposed Marius. He began with the Duke’s long history, explaining his rise to power and his elimination of his enemies. He presented evidence of the numerous other rebellions which had tried and failed to unseat their overlord. His final blow, which never failed, consisted of revealing the extensive knowledge which the Duke held regarding the identities of the Children of the Emperor. They did not know everything, of course. Still, they knew far more than most rebels suspected. How many times had he watched the hope die behind a person’s eyes as they realized that everything they had accomplished, every supposed victory, took place only because the Duke tolerated it? Too many to count.

  The Duke looked at him and smiled. “To meet an old friend. Be at ease, Captain. I honor you, in doing this.”

  Derrida did not feel he was being honored. He felt that they were wasting time. In the week since the attack on the Electric Heart, they received transmissions indicating an unprecedented assembly of rebels taking place near the South Pole. This massing, coupled with a lack of further attacks, suggested to Derrida that the final battle now approached. Buoyed into overconfidence by the presence of a Space Marine—who ducal forces had not been able to track down since his disappearance—the Children presumed to reveal their full might. They would be crushed, obviously and inevitably. Guerilla warriors like the Children would crumble and scatter when faced with the might of Luce Prime. But they would wreak considerable havoc in the process. Derrida wanted to prepare for that conflict, not indulge Marius’s eccentricities.

  Still, he was curious. He could not deny that fact.

  The door to the lift slid open and the ceiling light flickered out. Derrida blinked, surprised. He saw nothing. The space ahead was totally and completely dark. He drew his sidearm and was about to press the stud on its underbarrel lumin when he felt the Duke’s hand grip his wrist. The Captain started, then relaxed. The man’s grip was firm without being anxious. He felt something strange in the air. It seemed to buzz with invisible energy, permeated by some unseen force.

  “We greet thee,” intoned Marius, his voice solemn, “O great Nimgursum.” Something slithered in the dark. Scales rasped, piling over one another with a dry hiss. “Heed our voices.”

  +Heed, heed, the words of Lady Meed, who smothered the plowman and silenced his creed. One of you I know, the other I do not.+

  The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

  The voice chilled Derrida to his bones. He had consorted with the Neverborn before in his service to Marius. Indeed, he often interacted with the Duke’s private cult, so many members of which had perished in the battle in the Reliquary months before. That experience did little to dull the terror he felt in the presence of this thing, whatever it was.

  “You know him, great prince,” said Marius.

  +Am I so easily caught? Spindling out the little threads, ripped from the unquiet dead?+

  Marius’s voice rang out calm and clear, “I require your assistance, noble one. Tell me your price.”

  A deep baritone laugh resounded, followed by an insectile hiss.

  +And this woman, unlike all the others, gave all she owned.+

  “No,” replied Marius, his tone wavering briefly, his grip tightening around his servant’s wrist. Derrida shuddered. He had never heard the Duke speak as he spoke to this creature. He seemed…reverential. “You ask too much. You know it.”

  +Narrow is the gate that leads to Terra.+

  “Then let us speak of wider paths, of ways that diverge from those contemplated in ages past.”

  +The boy?+

  “Do not toy with me, I warn you,” Marius said. His voice carried an edge now and Derrida saw that he had recovered his earlier poise. “Yes, the boy.”

  +Toys, boys, I will grant you this boon.+

  “I ask again, then, what is your price?”

  +Is it right, O child of most might, that I dwell in shadows on a world of light?+

  Now it was Marius who hesitated. Derrida felt the man’s hand stiffened, paralyzed by indecision. Then, slowly, the fingers gripping his arm relaxed and fell away. “Do it, then,” commanded the Duke. Trembling, Derrida pressed the stud.

  A mouth, its vertical lips wet with hunger, parted in front of his, and a fleshy red throat croaked with amphibian desire. He staggered back, slamming into the wall of this lift and sliding to the ground. His gun dropped from his hand, which fumbled its way across his eyes. He felt the thing press itself against him, felt its wet scales, felt its hot breath on his skin.

  “Do you want me, Tommy?” A soft voice whispered, laden with terrified anticipation. It was a voice he had forgotten, a voice dredged from the corners of his mind. “No one has to know.”

  Images flashed in his mind. A dark street, the pale gleam of his undressed body, the feel of glass punching into his toes as he fled, something hot and wet running down his thigh. Shame and anguish, a hand behind his neck, a horrible twisting in his loins, blossoming into an oily fire.

  “My best friend,” a hurt voice quavered, turning icy with rage. “You are a whore, you know that, Tommy? A disgusting kregging whore.”

  +A whore, yes, and so much more. I love you, Thomas. I always have. And I always will. We can be together forever, you and me, and so many others. Would you like that, Thomas? Do you want me, Tommy?+

  “Enough!” said Marius. He said something else, a syllable that warped the air and clanged in Derrida’s ears like the blow of a hammer against an anvil. A shriek emanated from the creature and it recoiled, its scales shredding the Captain’s uniforms and leaving deep crimson gouges in his skin.

  +Two, then, shall it be. Two questions ripped from the boy soldier’s mind.+

  “Where on Luce Prime is Melancthon?” Marius demanded.

  +He is twelve-hundred meters away.+

  “What?” Marius recoiled, stunned. Derrida barely noticed. He was shaking, overcome with the ordeal, with the honor which his liege had bestowed upon him. He had, however briefly, touched the Other side for a moment. Only, it had not been the kind of pleasure he had expected. And yet he longed for it, still.

  +The boy has no knowledge of this second question. My debt is paid.+

  “Stop, no—” Marius began, then hissed, unable to contain his boiling rage. “

  The last thing Derrida heard before he lost consciousness was Nimgursum. It was laughing.