The First Heretic

‘I have always wondered if you were handsome. It is so hard to tell with only touch to rely on.’

The thought hadn’t really crossed his mind before. He was bred above such matters. He told her so now, with an amused addendum: ‘Whether I was or not, I have looked better than I do now.’

Cyrene lowered her hands. ‘You are very gaunt,’ she noted. And your skin is too warm.

‘Sustenance was in short supply. As I said, the rumours were true.’

When silence reached out between them, she found it awkward and unsettling. Never before had they struggled for words to share. Cyrene toyed with a lock of her hair, which her maid had painstakingly arranged only half an hour ago.

‘I have come for confession,’ he said, breaking the silence at last. Rather than soothe her, it sent her heart racing faster. She wasn’t certain she wished to know what depredations had occurred on the Orfeo’s Lament.

But Cyrene, above all else, was loyal to her Legion. Hers was a cherished role, and she was honoured to perform it.

‘Speak, warrior.’ A friendly formality came over her voice. ‘Confess your sins.’

She expected him to relate how he’d butchered his brothers and supped their blood to survive. She expected tales of horror from the warp storm – a storm she’d never seen herself and had only the poorly-worded descriptions of other crew members to rely on.

The captain spoke slowly, clearly. ‘I have spent decades of my life waging war in the name of a lie. I have rendered worlds compliant to a false society. I need forgiveness. My Legion needs forgiveness.’

‘I don’t understand.’

He began to describe the last year of his life for Cyrene, just as he had for his father. She interrupted a great deal less often, and once the retelling was complete, she focused not on the greater ramifications, but the moment that she’d heard Argel Tal’s voice wavering more than any other.

‘You killed Vendatha,’ she said, keeping her voice soft to rob the accusation of its bite. ‘You killed your friend.’

Argel Tal looked into her blind eyes. Since returning from the storm’s depths, looking at living beings had a strangely pleasant edge. He’d always been able to hear the liquid rhythm of her heart, but now the sound was accompanied by the teasing sense of her blood running through her veins. All that warmth, all that taste, all that life: scarcely beneath her fragile skin. Looking at her, knowing how easy it would be to kill her, was a guilty pleasure he’d never felt before.

And it was so easy to imagine. Her heart would slow. Her eyes would glaze. Her breath would shiver as her lips trembled.

Then...

Then her soul would fall into the warp, screaming in that tumultuous abyss, to shriek into those thrashing tides until it was devoured by the neverborn.

Argel Tal looked away.

‘Forgive me a moment’s distraction, confessor. What did you just say?’

‘I said, you killed your friend.’ Cyrene touched a hand to her plain silver earring. A gift from her lover, Argel Tal suspected – Major Arric Jesmetine.

The Word Bearer didn’t reply right away. ‘I did not come to be forgiven for that.’

‘I am not sure you can be.’

The captain rose to his feet once more. ‘It was a mistake to come here so soon. I had feared this hesitance between us.’

‘Feared?’ Cyrene smiled up at him. ‘I have never heard you use that word before, Argel Tal. I thought the Astartes knew no fear.’

‘Very well. It is not fear.’ Those words spoken by any other might sound petulant and defensive, but she heard no such emotion in Argel Tal’s voice. ‘I have seen more than most Imperial souls will ever see. Perhaps I possess a greater understanding of mortality – after all, I have seen where our souls go when we die.’

‘Would you still give your life for the Imperium?’

This time, there was no hesitation in his answer. ‘I would give my life for humanity. I would never offer my life to preserve the Imperium. Day by day, we have sailed farther from my grandfather’s empire of lies. There will be a reckoning for the deceptions he has draped over the eyes of an entire species.’

‘It’s good to hear you speak this way,’ she said.

‘Why? You delight in hearing me speak blasphemy against the Emperor’s dominion?’

‘No. Far from it. But you sound so certain of everything once more. I am glad you made it back from that... place.’

Cyrene offered her hand, the way a Covenant priestess would offer her signet ring to be kissed. It was an old ritual between them; with no signet ring to kiss, Argel Tal’s cracked, warm lips met the skin of her knuckles for the briefest moment.

‘War will come from this,’ she said. ‘Won’t it?’

‘The primarch hopes it will not. Humanity has only one choice, and it must be made by those who have sought out the answers.’

‘Such as yourself?’