Ten Thousand Years

'Ten thousand years!' screams the tannoy on the bombed out old grocer's.

'Ten thousand years!' howl the juves as they roar by on their rigs, spiked up and thrusting into the night, horns blaring like a choir of diseased angels.

'Ten thousand years!' reads the banner on the old recaf house. It is the last in the City. Its design reflects the old, elegant lines of the Carpaccian era, some two millennia ago. A simpler age, without the baroque of the Autocracies that followed, or the destructive purges of the preceding Republics that took the head from its exquisite bust of St Aquilinas.

A better age.

Today's clientele consisted of the usual customers. A group of artists, sketching on their frantically hoarded paper. A violinist and her friends, snatching glances about the place. Two peddlars, whose pipe smoke filled the place with an aroma that entirely drowned out the wretched, ration book recaf.

And, in a little alcove of their own, two gentlemen who were agents of the Inquisition.

Both were quite old, and both had the yellow pallor that suggested little in the way of a natural sun. They had between them a regicide board, on which they now focussed.

'Chaplain forward two spaces,' said one, flicking the disc forward with one finger.

The other raised an eyebrow.

'Aggressive.'

'That is how I work, my dear fellow. And it falls to you to counter.'

They both lean back.

'Ten thousand years,' said the second. 'Which brings us neatly to the work of my Order.'

'And also,' the first replied softly, 'to mine.'

A silence. They stir their recaf.

'I thought it might,' said the second.

And then:

'What now?'

'They celebrate the liberation of their world,' said the first, 'by the Emperor's forces on the Great Crusade. The anniversary is coming in seven days time.'

'Praise be.' Both make the sign of the Aquila.

'But very few,' the first continues, 'or, at least, very few amongst the well informed, would state that it was taken by the Emperor himself. We have multiple picts, vox transmissions and two sermons that place him far closer to what is now the Cadian Gate. I'm sending them to your data-slate, if you're interested.'

'Enormously. It is a central duty of my Order that we be interested.' The second one considers this. 'So it would have been one of the Primarch's Legions. My reading of, I believe, Hector's Travels suggests that this was one of the Five Redoubts of the Cincassians. A grave obstacle indeed to our divine forces.'

The first one snorted. 'Divine forces? but of course-forgive me. They were led by a Primarch. Standard scholarly readings here suggest it to be Sanguinius and the Blood Angels.'

'Very true, I have had a hand in the festivities. There's a splendid exhibition to be held in the St Victor's Hall, if you're interested. I am curator-well, my Interrogator. Promising chap, recovered some marvellous bronzes from the period. Superb.'

'No bronze is still extant from that time. It is a scientific improbability.'

'Does it matter? It's what is commonly believed.' The second one opens his lho-stick case, offers one to the first man; he accepts.

'So, to the crux of the matter,' he said. 'That is, in fact, that Sanguinius did not liberate this world. He liberated its twin.'

'I see.' The second one yawns. 'Some Praetor instead, I imagine. Well, you know the provinces. They do love to grab attention.'

'Not a Praetor, no.'

'Then who did?'

'Horus.'

So it begins. The Ordo Redactus and the Ordo Originatus are the two most under-used ordos of the Inquisition, so my inner history student feels behoved to give them some limelight.