Ciaphas Cain: Choose Your Enemies

– Like a lot of psykers, Rakel’s grasp of reality was tenuous at best, meaning that she tended to express herself indirectly, or by metaphor. I’d be lying if I said this wasn’t frequently frustrating, not to mention irritating, but the occasions when her insights proved significant more than made up for the inconvenience.

– A reference to a fortune-telling tradition which holds that clues to the future can be discerned in the pattern of residue left in the bottom of a tea bowl, although the only thing which can reliably be predicted by the practitioners of the art appears to be their imminent acquisition of cash from the gullible.

– Cramp in the wrist, actually, though they seem not to have minded.

– Again, it’s not quite as simple as that.

– Like most Imperial worlds, Drechia had a small delegation from the Adeptus Arbites overseeing their local law enforcers – in this case a single arbitrator with a small clerical staff, entrusted with keeping an eye on all the inhabited moons of the Avernus subsystem, and none too pleased, as I recall, at the sudden and massive increase in their workload.

– Not openly, at any rate.

– Quite literally, as his or her legs had been replaced by a gravitic repulsor unit, leaving the enginseer’s torso floating about a metre from the floor.

– Though serving with, and occasionally alongside, Imperial Guard units, the enginseers assigned to them remain first and foremost members of the Priesthood of Mars, and thus outside the chain of command. Not unlike commissars, come to think of it, but with more metal bashing and meditation on the Omnissiah, and less shooting people who step out of line.

– A slightly disparaging nickname for tech-priests common among the lower ranks of the Astra Militarum (and the higher ones too, actually), referring to the cogwheel sigil of their calling.

– Up to a point.

– Another indication that Cain has skipped over a fair amount of intervening time without bothering to mention it, since the scouting parties the regiment despatched earlier had presumably returned by this point.

– I most certainly did not.

– A pointed remark about pots and kettles springs to mind here.

– A Valhallan creature proverbially so slow and clumsy even the most inept of hunters can’t possibly miss.