'I am Mersadie Oliton, remembrancer/ she announced with a curtsey. 'If the lord primarch will allow, I will provide a recollection of these events to him.' Oliton pointed to a hololithic projector dais mounted in the floor.

Dorn brought his sword to his chest, fuming. 'This will be my last indulgence of you.'

Sigismund stepped up and directed Mersadie to the hololith. With care, the documentarist drew a fine cable from among the brocade of her dress and traced it along the seamless crown of her hairless, elongated skull. Iacton heard a soft click as a concealed socket beneath the skin mated to the wire. The other end she guided to an interface plate on the dais. This done, Oliton sank into a cross-legged position and bowed her head. 'I am gifted with many methods in which I may remember. I will write and I will compose image streams, and this is aided by a series of mnemonic implant coils.' She brushed a finger over her head once more. 'I open these now. What I will show you, my lord, is as I witnessed it. These images cannot be fabricated or tampered with. This is...' She faltered, trembling, her words thick and close to tears. This is what happened.'

'It's all right, my dear/ said Sindermann, taking her hand. 'Be brave.'

'It will be difficult for her/ explained Keeler. 'She will experience an echo of emotions from the events.'

The hololith came to life with an opaque jumble of images and half-formed shapes. In the dreamlike mass, Qruze saw glimpses of faces he knew and some he did not: Loken, that degenerate poet Karkasy, the astropath Ing Mae Sing, Petronella Vivar and her bloody mute Maggard. Then the mist shifted and for a moment Oliton looked around the room, the hololith screening what she saw. Her gaze froze on Dorn and he nodded.

THE HAZE OF the hololith changed and Garro found his attention was caught by the dance of motion and replay within it. He had only heard Qruze's secondhand explanation of what had transpired in the Vengeful Spirit's main audience chamber, but here he was seeing it first-hand, through the sight of an eyewitness.

Scenes of battlefield butchery transmitted from the surface of the Choral City on Isstvan III hovered before them and Oliton sobbed a little. Garro, Qruze and the men of the Imperial Fists were no strangers to war, but the obvious, wanton horror of the combat was enough even to give them pause. He saw Sigismund grimace in disgust. Then the recording turned as Mersadie looked to the Warmaster upon a tall podium, his face lit with a cold, hard purpose. 'You remembrancers say you want to see war. Well, here it is.' The relish in his voice was undeniable. This was not a warrior prosecuting a necessary battle, but a man running his hands through tides of blood with open satisfaction.

'Horus?' The name was the ghost of a whisper from Dorn's lips, but Garro heard the question in it, the puzzlement. The primarch saw the wrongness in his brother's manner.

Then, through Mersadie Oliton's eyes, they watched the bombing of Isstvan III and the Choral City. Darts of silver surged from the ships in orbit like diving raptors falling on prey, and as the voices of remembrancers long since gunned down by Astartes bolters gasped and screamed, those darts struck home and coiled into black rings of unstoppable death.

'Emperor's blood,' whispered Sigismund, 'Garro told the truth. He bombed his own men.'

'What... what is it?' asked Oliton, speaking in unison with her own voice on the recording.

Keeler's recorded words answered her. 'You have already seen it. The Emperor showed you, through me. It is death.'

The recording jumped and unspooled. In fast blinks of recall, they saw Qruze fight the turncoat bodyguard Maggard in the launch bay, the escape from Horus's warship, the attack of the Terminus Est, and more.

Finally, Dorn turned away. 'Enough. End this, woman.'

Sindermann gently detached the cable from the hololith and Mersadie jerked like a discarded marionette as the images died.

The cold, clear air inside the sanctorum was rich with tension as the primarch slowly sheathed his chainsword. He ran his fingers over his face, his eyes. 'Perhaps... Did I not see?' Dorn looked to Garro and some measure of his great potency was dimmed. 'Such folly. Is it any wonder I would rebel at the reality of so mad a truth, even to the point of killing the messenger who brought it to me?'

'No, lord/ Garro admitted. 'I had no wish to believe it either, but the truth cares little for what we wish.'

Sigismund looked to his commander. 'Master, what shall we do?' Garro felt a stab of compassion for the first captain. He knew the pain, the shame that the Imperial Fist had to be feeling at that moment.

'Convene the captains and brief them, but see this goes no further/ Dorn said after a moment. 'Garro, Qraze, that order includes you. Keep the Eisenstein survivors silent. I will not have this news spread through my fleet uncontrolled. I will choose when to reveal it to the Legion.'

The Astartes nodded. 'Aye, lord.'

Dorn walked away. 'You will leave me now. I must think on this matter.' He threw a last look at Sigismund. 'No one is to enter my chambers until I emerge/

The first captain saluted. 'If you wish my counsel, lord-'

'I do not/ The primarch left them, and after they left, Garro could not help but see the expression of deep concern on Sigismund's face as he sealed the sanctorum shut behind them.

Garro saw Keeler standing by the door and glimpsed a single tear tracing a line down her cheek. "Why do you weep?' he asked. 'Is it for us?'

Euphrati shook her head and gestured to the heavy locked hatch. 'For him, Nathaniel, because he can't. Today you and I have broken a brother's heart, and nothing will ever mend it/

DORN'S FLEET READIED itself for a return to the warp, and the men and women of the Eisenstein found themselves left outside the work and progress, isolated in temporary quarters deep inside the stone

corridors of the Phalanx. Meditation did not come so easily for Garro, and so he prowled the archways and passages of the great star fortress. Once, the Phalanx might have been a planetoid or a minor moon of some distant world, but now it was a cathedral dedicated to the business of war and the glories of the VII Legiones Astartes. He saw galleries of battle honours that went on for kilometres and corridors to whole sections of the fortress that duplicated the conditions of different combat environments for training purposes. Garro dallied in a vast chamber that replicated the Inwitian frost dunes where legend said Dorn had grown to manhood. All around him, warriors in golden armour moved with sober intent, without pause or doubt as he stepped carefully, still smoothing out the limp from his battle injury. He felt out of place, the marble and green of his wargear ringing a wrong note among the hornet-yellow and black trim of the Imperial Fists.

Finally, in such a way that he could almost fool himself into thinking it was happenstance, Garro found himself outside the quarters that had been granted to Euphrati Keeler.

She opened the door before he could knock. 'Hello, Nathaniel. I was preparing a little tisane. Would you like some?' Keeler left the door open and vanished back into the chamber. He sighed and followed her in. There has been no word from Lord Dorn yet?'

'None/ confirmed Garro, examining the spare space of the quarters. 'He has not left his sanctorum for a day and a night. Captain Sigismund maintains command authority in the meantime.'

'The primarch has a lot to consider. We can only begin to imagine how troubled our news has made him.'

'Aye/ he admitted, taking a cup of the pungent brew from Keeler's delicate hands. He shifted, taking the weight on his augmetic. The machine limb was the least of his concerns these days.

'What of you?' she asked. 'Where has this turn of events brought you?'