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Gaunt’s office was as spartan as Mabbon expected, the only luxuries — a squishy chair in front of an expansive desk of quality wood — clearly a legacy of the fact that the room happened to be part of a palace. Gaunt glanced up from something he was writing, and his eyes flicked between the storm trooper guards flanking Mabbon.
“Leave us, wait outside.”
The guards hesitated.
“Now.”
Mabbon could see one of the guards begin to sweat, but the man managed a token protest. “My Lord Executor, what if he—”
“And if he did, you wouldn’t be able to stop him. Please don’t make me repeat myself again.”
They left.
Mabbon tilted his head. “What if that was my plan all along? Get you defenceless—”
The Scion guards behind Gaunt began to bristle, but he stood them down impatiently. He shot Mabbon a flat look and gestured for him to sit. “Did Sek rework your sense of humour at the same time as your body, or were you always like this?”
Mabbon sank into the incongruously plush chair, belatedly realising that the chair that Gaunt himself sat in was bare, severe wood, clearly salvaged from a less august part of the building. “No, this is just me.” The comfort of the chair was an odd sensation after the prison; the building had been hastily repurposed, but the floors were just as hard as those of Camp Xenos.
“No wonder you get along with Varl.”
There was a pause. Mabbon looked at Gaunt. Gaunt looked at Mabbon. Mabbon forced himself to speak. “Are they…?”
“Alive? Rawne, Varl and Oysten, yes. Just.”
Mabbon let out a shaky breath. Relief, but guilt. S Company had been so much larger.
“Rawne’s report is why you’re here,” Gaunt said. “We wouldn’t know nearly as much — and, it turns out, barely anything about you — without it.”
Mabbon nodded.
“I also understand now why you were so keen for us to secure the eagle stones,” Gaunt added. Mabbon wasn’t sure if he dared ask, but Gaunt read the question in his eyes. “Yes,” he said. “They are secure.”
Mabbon sank back into his chair, relaxing slightly for perhaps the first time since he had translated the V’heduak vox chatter aboard the Armaduke. “Thank…” Not the Imperium’s Emperor. Certainly not the Chaos Gods. Most likely the Tanith First. “Thank feth for that.”
Gaunt smiled, though it was strained.
That changed…a lot. Mabbon studied the quilted pattern of velvet on the arm of his chair, aware that he was probably getting it both dirty and smelly. “May I ask what will become of me?”
Gaunt sat back in his own chair, which remained unyielding. “I’m not honestly sure,” he said. “Obviously I’m aware that our efforts to restrain, imprison and guard you all this time have been about as necessary as a prick on a priest. Part of me resents the waste of manpower.”
Mabbon shrugged apologetically. “I would have told you, but—”
“Yes, that would have gone about as badly as you imagine.” Gaunt scratched at his stubble on one cheek. “You’ll receive more freedoms, though I’m sure you can guess that many parties — including myself — would quite like more information, since you seem to possess it.”
Mabbon sagged. “I will not talk about how the eagle stones work. That is not information anyone should ever have. The only thing that needs to be known about them is that anyone who intends to use them should not have them.”
“We can discuss what we will or won’t talk about another time,” Gaunt said. “The change in your circumstances is not contingent upon that.”
Mabbon frowned. “The inquisition…does not wish me executed any more? I doubt I have much to offer beyond…what I will not give.”
“The ordos have transferred you back to the Astra Militarum. Well. To me. They have plenty to think about.”
“And you don’t wish it either?” Mabbon asked. “I’m still…what I am.”
Gaunt suddenly looked very tired. “I don’t wish to make the universe a darker place by pretending that your actions — and the context into which they put your past actions — don’t make a difference. But it’s still precarious.” He sighed, then asked, surprisingly gently, “Do you want to die?”
“No,” Mabbon heard himself say. “I don’t think so. I did. I was tired, and it was absurd. I…didn’t want them to die for me. Don’t.” He eyed a loose thread in the embroidery on the chair without touching it. “But so much has changed.”
Gaunt grunted. “You’re telling me.” He paused. “Is there anything you want?”
“The same as I did before, really.” Mabbon shrugged. “Answers. An end to the madness. Peace.” He looked up. “But I’d settle for a shower for now.”
Gaunt barked a laugh. “That, I have the power to grant.” He cast a rapidly sobering glance over Mabbon, taking in his grimy, yellow-stained skin. He’d been given new fatigues since his previous ones had been reduced to worse than shreds, but there was no hiding that he had been an afterthought beyond the issue of containment.
Gaunt opened his mouth to say more, but Mabbon shook his head. “There have been more important things.”
Gaunt nodded. The grief in the lines of his face was plain. For a moment they sat in silence, the only sounds the gusts of wind against the palace windows, and Gaunt’s adjutant Beltayn scribbling on a data slate in the corner.
Mabbon made a decision. “I do…have another request.”
“Yes?”
“I would like to see Colonel Rawne.”
“He may not be awake.”
Mabbon frowned. “But his report…?”
“He’s not unconscious any more, but if he’s asleep I doubt the medicae will rouse him.”
“I see. Then may I wait at his bedside until he awakes?”
Mabbon knew that few people found themselves able to meet Gaunt’s new eyes. He’d supposed it was because they were uncanny, or an unpleasant reminder of Jago. They looked like real eyes, the finest augmetics, but for a glow of green deep in the pupil. Certainly he himself, having gazed upon what passed for the faces of the Ruinous Powers and returned with his mind arguably intact, had never previously had any issue. But it turned out that when Gaunt was looking at you like he was casually flaying you open and having a browse through your soul, it was not so simple. He suspected that the new eyes had simply called attention to a phenomenon that predated them entirely.
Gaunt nodded.
Rawne awoke again somewhat resentfully, eyelids peeling slowly open to reveal one corner of his room in the makeshift infirmary. Everything hurt when he was conscious. His abdomen hurt, first and foremost, from the shot that had nearly killed him and the surgery that had repaired it. His bandaged torso hurt from the grenade shrapnel that had nearly got the last of them. His whole body hurt from the various scrapes and bruises of battle that simply hadn’t healed yet due to blood loss. And his heart — when he would admit to having one — hurt with the chill of grief. Death was his business, his gaming opponent. He was no stranger to it, none of them were. But so many, so many non-combatants, and in such ways…
A light touch on his hand. His head whipped around to look to his other side, so quickly that his vision swam for a moment. There was a figure sitting there next to him, and the next second it had resolved into-
“You’re alive?” The last thing he remembered back then was the two monstrous Qimurah, one bent on the destruction of all of them, the other ready to die for them, locked in a fatal embrace, both sinking to the ground to rest forever. No, no, there was more. The lifter, Oysten calling his name. And a body curled up at his side in the sheeting rain. Not Varl. It was human again now, but the clothing was tattered scraps, and yellow gore flowed sluggishly from uncountable wounds. He recognised the pattern of scars on the scalp.
Mabbon smiled sadly. “Unexpectedly.”
Rawne felt pressure on his hand, and realised he’d clasped Mabbon’s immediately on recognising him. He sank back on the bed, but didn’t let go. “Feth,” he breathed. Then he frowned. “Bastard Hark didn’t tell me you survived, just let me think you’d- Ah, feth it. I’ll have to kill him later.”
Mabbon smiled. “You look like shit, colonel.”
Rawne laughed. “Thanks,” he said. “I feel like it.” He cast a look over Mabbon, at his clean — and more importantly whole — fatigues, and clean — and more importantly whole — skin. “You look good though, what the feth’s with that? I thought you and Hadrel tore each other to ribbons.”
Mabbon shrugged one shoulder. “We did. But Qimurah’s healing capabilities are…abhuman.”
“Funnily, I did notice. But that much, that quickly? And- Wait, what about Hadrel—”
“I watched the light in his eyes die,” Mabbon said, oddly soothing. “And it did take me a good couple of days to heal. The damage was…fairly catastrophic.”
Rawne shook his head wonderingly. A couple of days, said as if it was some enormous duration. The Qimurah were — had been — was — something. “At least you were able to do that in an actual infirmary, rather than Camp Xenos.”
Mabbon tilted his head. “No.” He sounded confused. “That prison was a write-off after Hadrel’s efforts — and yours — but they found a replacement building near the palace. It’s much the same from the point of view of being inside it.”
Rawne frowned deeply. “What? You weren’t here already?” He compulsively checked around him and — yep — they were the only two people in the room. He eyed the door. “Then…your guards are allowed to let you in here on your own?”
Mabbon suddenly looked awkward. “They’re apparently my ‘escort’ now, according to Gaunt,” he said. “As of this morning. Partly to keep an eye on me, but also partly to keep me safe, of all things. I have assured them that it’s just as weird for me as it is for them.”
Rawne snorted, and found that it hurt too, but too late to stop it. “Gaunt’s read my report, then.”
Mabbon nodded, though Rawne saw him fail to hide a flicker of concern on noticing his pain. “It’s caused no little chaos, from what I’ve heard. You should feel proud; you’ve been awake less than a day.”
Rawne snickered. “Well, if I’d known you were alive, I wouldn’t have been nearly so nice in it.”
Mabbon laughed at that. Rawne smiled. He wasn’t sure he’d ever seen Mabbon laugh with anything lighter than cosmic irony. It made him look less tired, less empty.
But as he regarded him, Mabbon’s gaze slid off into the blankets. “I seem to now be the recipient of…trust. I don’t know how I feel about that.”
“Most people would feel relief,” Rawne pointed out dryly. “Happiness, vindication, shit like that.”
“I don’t think it’s facetious to say that my situation is fairly unique.”
“Doubly so, now you’re the only Qimurah left.”
Mabbon’s head snapped up and he fixed Rawne with an intense stare. “The only… Then, Corrod failed entirely? Sek…? Gaunt told me the stones were secure, but…”
“It came at a price,” Rawne said. “Like it did for us. Pasha’s lot got them all in the end, though. Like us, I guess. As for Sek, his stronghold and flagship were destroyed by the fleet.”
Mabbon let out an unsteady breath, his hand tight in Rawne’s while he blinked rapidly, eyes casting aimlessly around. “I knew we hadn’t lost, or we would not be here. I knew you had the stones. But I hadn’t imagined…” He paused. “He probably isn’t dead,” he added reluctantly.
Rawne grunted flatly, both an acknowledgement of his own suspicions and an invitation to continue.
Mabbon went on. “His ability to manipulate the warp would probably allow him to escape given the smallest amount of warning. But still, with his resources obliterated, he will surely be no more than a footnote for years.”
Rawne nodded grimly. If nothing else, it provided room to manoeuvre and a chance to catch up with the lost decade. At least, for those who were left.
“Thank you, by the way,” he said eventually.
Mabbon shook his head, apparently knowing exactly what he meant without him elaborating. “I’m not proud of—”
“Well I am. Fething honoured, actually.”
“I still broke my oath.”
Rawne eyed him. “You’ve broken a few oaths in your time.”
“This one mattered.”
Rawne softened. “An oath to yourself rather than to shit you don’t believe in, I know.” To never fight again. He’d broken that oath a few breaths after telling Rawne. For Rawne, and Varl. “But — and I don’t say this lightly — it matters to me, that your loyalty to us superseded that.”
“But this is how it starts, this slippery slope,” said Mabbon bitterly. He gestured sharply with one hand. “Violence to protect a person. Then to protect a group. Then a country, a planet, a species… Then we’re back where we started, where there is only war.”
“But I know you tried everything. You tried to talk Hadrel out of it, for feth’s sake.”
Mabbon glared at the sheets. “Not everything. If I’d had more time, more—”
“Options you can’t take are not options,” Rawne said sharply. “You know that, etogaur. You didn’t have more time. You didn’t have more of anything.”
Mabbon cast him an angry glance, but then quickly subsided, conceding the point with a tilt of the head.
“You offered to go quietly, if he left us alive,” Rawne pointed out.
Mabbon shrugged. “One of the few roads available to me.”
“So…imagine.” Rawne gestured as expansively as he could with his free hand, considering he had drips in both arms. “If he had said he would spare us and kill you—”
“Technically, he did.”
“You didn’t believe him.”
“Hadrel was always a liar, but never any good at it.”
“But — humour me here — say he’d had a change of heart while you were fighting. Say you did believe him. Would you have then…let him kill you?”
“If I believed him? Of course.”
“Then there’s no fething slippery slope. Just a bump in the road you have to go around.”
Mabbon scowled at the bedsheets. Rawne almost fancied he saw a glow of yellow behind the man’s eyes, but it was probably just the dodgy lighting.
“I think that’s the most eloquent thing you’ve ever come out with,” Mabbon said eventually. “Maybe you’ve learnt more from Gaunt than you think.”
“Heh, feth off.”
“I’m still sorry though. For what I cost your section.”
Rawne sighed. It felt like it emptied his bones as well as his lungs. “The Suicide Kings knew what they were getting into,” he said. “This was always on the cards.”
“That doesn’t make it any better.”
“No,” Rawne agreed. “But it doesn’t make it any worse. Not like what happened in the undercroft.”
His hand was squeezed. “I heard about that,” Mabbon said lowly. “There’s a lot I haven’t been told, but that…I think everyone knows.”
“I’ve only heard about it second hand myself,” Rawne admitted. “I can imagine what Pasha’s lot went through, since they were fighting Qimurah too, but the rest in the undercroft… To go through that living nightmare and then…Yoncy and Dalin…”
Mabbon nodded.
“In some ways I wish that bastard Asphodel was still alive,” Rawne went on, “so that we could kill him for this. But when I think about it for half a fething second I’m glad he’s dead and gone and can’t do any more.”
There were few words that could possibly do justice to what had happened, and so they sat in silence for a while. Mabbon was quiet and contemplative at his side, hand firm in his. Rawne took in the background noise, the indistinct murmur of the medicae going about their duties and the chatter of the inpatients: life going on, moving forward, healing and scarring over like a wound. The galaxy kept turning, but everything had changed.
“Thought of what you’re going to do first?” he asked.
“Do?”
“Now that you can wander around.”
“Hmm.” Mabbon seemed surprised to be asked. “Well, palaces tend to have libraries. I think I might read.”
“Uhuh. What will you start with?”
“Oh, anything. Everything. Though, now that you mention it…”
Mabbon’s voice rose and fell as he spoke of all the subjects he’d become curious about in confinement, thinking of new ones partway through and following half a dozen tangents for each. Slowly he became more animated, gesturing slightly with his free hand, the light in his eyes now that of possibility. Rawne listened, watched him, and felt warmth slowly return.
When Gaunt turned up at the door, now resplendent in a simple but striking dress uniform, he didn’t seem surprised to find them still there. Mabbon rose, pressing Rawne’s hand briefly, and made to leave to give them confidentiality. But Gaunt stopped him for a moment.
“You can have him back shortly,” he said. For the second time, Mabbon found he couldn’t sustain eye contact with the Lord Executor. “I don’t have much time; there’s a…parade.” The last word was spoken with such resignation and distaste that Mabbon couldn’t help a slight smile; behind him he heard Rawne snort and then regret it, and made himself not glance around in concern.
Outside in the corridor, one of his guards — escorts, right — was sitting on a spindly chair, cup of recaf in hand and two more at his feet. The trooper gestured nebulously along the corridor with his head.
“He’s gone to sort you out some stuff,” he said, correctly guessing that Mabbon was wondering where the other was. A moment’s hesitation, and he held out one of the cups; Mabbon took it on instinct.
He sat on the other chair and stared, unseeing, at the wall. Those forsaken, vergoht stones, secured. And Sek…he couldn’t even begin to hope that such a powerful and warp-gifted being had been destroyed with his flagship, but his resources, his army, the Qimurah, everything that could have brought him and the stones together…gone. He could rebuild, but that would take time, time that could be used wisely.
He could perhaps convince himself this was a dream, his hand still warm from where it had clasped Rawne’s. But the recaf was awful, just the way it should be.
The return of the other guard broke into his thoughts.
“You’ve been allocated a billet,” he said as he drew up. Mabbon couldn’t blame him for his curtness; top-security prison guard and protective escort had a surprising amount of overlap, but not in how one addressed one’s charge, and though it was beginning to feel like aeons, it had been a scant few hours since the change. He couldn’t help but feel responsible for trying to help them adjust, but it flew from his mind as he processed the man’s words.
“A…billet?” he repeated numbly.
“Yes,” said the guard. “With the Tanith retinue. Or rather, attached to, but away from them.”
“I…” From years of cells and fear, to a billet and time to breathe, all in one morning. “Thank you. Yes, I think that’s for the best,” he added. The retinue, he thought privately, if not the whole regiment, would have seen enough of chaos monsters to last them a long time. He didn’t say so out loud.
“The room’s small,” the man warned. “Pretty sure it was a broom cupboard in another life,” he added, a transparent but appreciated attempt at levity.
Mabbon shook his head. “Trust me, it will feel like luxury.”
At that moment, the guard had to scoot aside to allow Beltayn to hurry past, now also in dress blacks and with a signal sheet clutched in his hands. He disappeared into Rawne’s room.
The guard took the last cup of recaf. Mabbon offered him his chair, since there were only two, but he was waved back down. The two guards chatted together while Mabbon returned to his musings, and his delightfully terrible drink.
It wasn’t long before the door opened again, and Beltayn gestured him back in. Gaunt was rising, tucking the sheet into his pocket and saying something that made Rawne chuckle. As he turned, his gaze lighted on Mabbon immediately. There was a fierce determination in his face, something that was not joy, but which clearly moved him anew. This time, Mabbon met his eyes and held them. Gaunt nodded to him.
“Eli will fill you in,” he said, and swept out with Beltayn in tow. Mabbon looked back over at Rawne, who had a similar expression on his face.
He thought maybe it looked like hope.
He raised his brows quizzically.
“You’re gonna want to sit down,” Rawne said.
“Afraid my delicate constitution won’t take it?”
Rawne grinned. “Something like that.”
Mabbon crossed to the bedside and sat, his hand moving of its own volition and finding Rawne’s palm up, awaiting his. Rawne chewed his lip for a moment, then turned to look straight at him.
“It was confirmation,” he said. “A verified report. Mkoll was part of it, the tricky fether.” He took a breath. “Sek is dead.”
Mabbon froze.
“He wasn’t destroyed with his ship, like you said,” Rawne was saying. The words were registering, but Mabbon couldn’t have moved if he’d tried. “Ended up on some island in the middle of fething nowhere. Orchidel or whatever. But however he got there, he must’ve taken others with him, Mkoll included.”
“Dead…” There was nothing but that word, circling in his mind.
“Dead and verified,” Rawne repeated gently. “No idea how Mkoll did it, but I guess the icing on the cake is that we’ll get to ask the bastard. Fething unkillable, I swear. Bonin was right.”
Gradually, Mabbon’s thoughts were returning to coherence. He stared down at their clasped hands, but everything was blurred; when he blinked, the tears finally fell, and restored a little clarity. Rawne said nothing, but his grip on Mabbon’s hand tightened minutely.
Anarch Anakwanar Sek, dead. The man he had betrayed Gaur for. The man he had helped exalt. The man he had killed for, again and again. The man who had cursed him with his blessing. The man who had awoken the truth in him with that same curse. The man he had betrayed. The man who would have unleashed the abomination that the eagle stone key could unlock.
Dead.
“It was worth it,” Mabbon managed to whisper. “It was actually…worth it.” He looked up. Elim Rawne was smiling sadly at him.
He never was sure who leaned forward first, but as their lips met and he clung to Rawne’s hand like a drowning man, he thought that perhaps he could start living now.
Somewhere in the distance, a crowd was roaring as Gaunt gave them the news, and the skies over Eltath were clear.