Chapter 13
M42.014
On the Unwavering Resolver
The quiet of Briar's quarters was interrupted by the blaring of the voxcaster. He groggily woke from his slumber.
"There is something that you need to see," the monotone voice of his Vanus operative Klara Santhius came over it.
"Alright, I'm coming," he replied. The Inquisitor got dressed in his synthskin suit, and put on a black trenchcoat before he left his bedroom.
As he walked down the hallways, he mused on his most recent achievements. First was the bloody massacre of the traitorous Grimmaldus family. The High Lords had approved the kill-order for the bloody fools after hearing of their ties with the Dark Eldar. The event had played out as usual; a drop-pod in the front yard of the family estate, followed by terror and mayhem as the Eversor operative CLXXI-XII had cut down the guards at the front door. He proceeded to make the building an abattoir of severed limbs, decapitated heads and corpses everywhere, before he was recovered and returned to his cryostasis tank.
The second event was the assassination of the traitorous Fabricator General of Mordax Prime; he had attempted to secede so his disciples had the freedom to experiment with what the rest of the Adeptus Mechanicus had completely forbidden; innovation. His Skitarii legiones was fanatically loyal to him and to forcibly remove him would cause numerous rebellions, so Dagon Lachirus was deployed. It was a resounding success, as Dagon had laid in wait for eight days before he had shot the fool in the head during an inauguration speech. It had the desired effect of dispersing the movement that this heretek had worked so hard to establish.
The third event was the termination of the Chaos sorcerer Mithrel Khaol. He had stolen several important artifacts, and was planning to use one of them to summon a powerful daemon called the Shifting Tongue. Dillard Whitebelt had been inserted onto the ship through the false pretense of a meteor shower, and he slowly made it to the bridge, killing the heretic's followers as he moved through the ship. He then killed Khaol with a couple of psyk-out grenades and a precise Animus Speculum blast.
However, he still had so much to do. There were traitors and heretics that had yet to be rooted out and Briar was determined to do it, even if it cost his life. He wondered what was so urgent that Santhius would contact him over the voxcaster.
Epsilon Regalis
Marcella Snow looked up at her childhood home; as soon as the Graceful Star had come out of the Immaterium into the orbit of her homeworld, she had nursed feelings of giddy anticipation. From the little history that she had recalled on the building that was her childhood home, it once had been owned by a minor family, the name long forgotten by the people of Epsilon Regalis. No one knew what happened to the family, only that they had angered the previous royal family at some point and was wiped out.
She had found traces of the building's previous history during her exploration of the house while she was a child. From what she had recalled, there used to be statues depicting a lion on several plinths through the building. They had been depicted in the old drawings stashed in the attic. When Mother and Father moved into this estate the first renovations they had done was to demolish most of them, while a couple of them situated in alcoves in the buildings had the statues melted down, and the plinths turned into altars dedicated to the God-Emperor of Mankind.
They then stripped the building of much of its gilded baroque decorations, before they had rebuilt it in a simpler and more functional manner that they had called New Mission Revival. Marcella, in her opinion had preferred the newer décor; from what little she had recalled, the unnamed family wasn't afraid to show off their wealth in every imaginable way, from the ornamentations, to the wild parties that they had held every week.
She had theorized that this shameless flashing of wealth had drawn the royal family's ire, and it was unknown how the family had met an ignominious end. She had her suspicions that it had involved some elaborate intrigues of some kind.
"Finally. Home, sweet home," the young woman sighed.
"Was that where you were born?" Irri Kelash asked.
"Yes. Spent most of my childhood in that house," she replied.
The group of six approached the front of the building. Marcella pushed aside the door, before she let the others in.
"MOTHER!" she ran toward a stern-looking woman clad in the attire of a high-ranking Arbites. The woman nearly stumbled before she turned to see what had caused that reaction.
Myrcella Tyrell was shocked to see her daughter. Had it been fourteen years since she had last seen her little social experiment of a daughter? She also saw the new companions that the girl had brought along. There was a Catachan devil, a Tallarnese tech-priest, an astropath, a navigator who was obviously voidborn, and a rogue trader.
Marcella seemed to be friends with them as she seemed to be at ease with these people. She could remember that when her daughter was a child she couldn't make any friends because her presence often cause pain and torment in many people. Her time under the Arbites was not much better; despite her talents in applying Imperial laws, many of her fellow enforcers feared the girl. The only two that had seen her for her talents were Chatham and Taremann, although the latter had reluctantly given up the girl to Briar and Foules' care.
"This is Scevola Ippolito Angelino Bellini, but we call him Ippo. He's the rogue trader who rescued me. The tech-priest is Hafza Fadia Al-Farsi. The mercenary is Syvas Brondell, he came from the 172nd Catachan Devils. The Navigator is Renata; she was orphaned at birth and grew up on a giant-ass merchant vessel. The astropath is Irri Kelash. She is from Malfi," the introductions were made, as her daughter had gestured to each individual in turn.
"Follow me," Myrcella gestured as she led the group to the main living room. The group followed.
Briar stood at the desk of his office. Klara Santhius, a skinny woman of around three decades in ages stood impassively as she turned her emotionless face toward her master.
"When I was collecting intelligence for potential assassination missions I stumbled across an interesting find. A infocyte stationed on Stromark Prime sent me a closed-circuit vid involving an incident in a bar. Apparently, he was monitoring a potential threat to the world's security," she gestured to the holomat servitor.
The mindless cyborg begun projecting information. Briar crossed his arm as he begun reading the streaming info.
Name: Mik'eel Bandhan
Gender: Male Birthdate:M Birthplace: Estebanos Hive, Stromark Secundus
Known Affiliations: Stromark Liberation Front, Decius Amarillo, the Hisollen Clan, Balucha Revolutionary League, and the Sethlock Clan.
Info: A vile rebel well known for attempting to incite rebellions. Tried on many occasions to encourage revolts, but these were successfully supressed by Arbites. In recent years, he seems to have begun gathering followers at an alarming rate.
Monitoring on subject begun in M. The information gathered indicate that a Vindicare may be the best option if his revolt proves successful. However, he was reported deceased as of M, apparently, because of a murder in the drinking establishment known as Gigi's.
"Now watch the video that was bundled with this heretic report," she instructed.
The holographic information display changed to vid-mode; Briar watched the event of the vid. The heretic was spewing vile revolutionary sentiments; he had paused, before he was about to begun another wave of anti-Imperium catechism. An all too familiar female stood up from the table that she was seated with five others and stepped toward the heretic. She took out a throwing knife and threw it at the traitor; he dropped dead the moment it had hit him in the forehead. Many patrons in the bar panicked as they had just seen a murder in the bar, with a few individuals fleeing the bar outright. She then searched the man, exposing the tattoo that the man had been known to possess. She stood up, muttered something before she returned to her seat. The rest of the patrons stared at her before returning to their business with the deceased victim's cadaver on the stage.
He had instantly recognized her as Marcella Snow. However, the last time he had seen her, she had her hair cut in a simple fringed pixie cut to fit her head in the Animus Speculum. But in this vid, she seemed to have grown out her hair to her original shoulder-length, and styled it in the same way that she had at thirteen.
The outfit she was wearing consisted of a maroon zipped stretchy crop top, skinny pants of the same color with decorative lacing over olive green panels on the sides. On her feet were gray riding boots. He had noted the absence of the Animus Speculum; it had been replaced by something that he had seen on Federation null operatives before. It was a pair of suppressive goggles designed to suppress the disturbing auras of their subjects. She had worn a brown grox leather holster belt that held several throwing knifes over the pants.
"I believe that it is Operative XXXIV-IX. She is definitely alive and well, as confirmed by this vid you managed to find," he replied.
"What is the plan now?" Santhius asked.
"Investigation of her whereabouts and a recovery mission once she has been located," Briar replied.
As he turned his thoughts toward the next steps, he had figured that she had made the decision to flee the ship. It was a smart move considering the circumstances that she had found herself in. Many assassins had made the decision to abort their original missions in such dire circumstances, as they knew that if they were to be captured by the vile xenos they would likely suffer endless torture in the Dark City.
Dagon Lachirus had made one such decision as a young operative freshly out of training; when he was assigned a mission on the Hive world of Melo-Xanthius, the Kabal of the Forked Tongue had raided it. He had turned his focus toward the Dark Eldar, using his Exitus Rifle to kill the archon, succubi, haemonculi and the lhamaeans attacking the world in rapid succession. The raid soon fell apart because of his timely intervention, and the PDF could repel the force, but at an enormous price. One-third of the world's populace had already been abducted, including his objective, a corrupt Ecclesiarchy deacon who was raising illicit armies of Militia Fraternis.
When he had returned to the Officio Assassinorum waypoint he had explained what had happened. The fact that the xenos had forced his hand had not been lost upon the masters of the Vindicare temple, although they were not entirely happy with his failure to kill his target.
Ippo looked at the pictures hanging in the room. A few had made him chuckle, including one picture of a younger Marcella scowling at the camera while dressed up in an obviously uncomfortable child's formal dress. Others were much older, but just as awkward, like the one of a man tripping down the stairs of the local Ecclesiarchy shrine while his brothers looked on. From what Marcella had told him, the unfortunate person was a great-great-uncle who was a Ministorum cleric. He was well-known for his clumsiness and his eccentric habit of obsessively wearing a hat until it fell apart at the seams.
A photo of a beautiful woman hung next to the hilarious picture. She had her dark hair in a cascade of finely curled ringlets; a pair of pink flowers was placed carefully on the left side of her head. She seemed quite sad, he mused as he gazed at her visage.
"That was my great-aunt Kynassa Snow. She wound up as one of many victims of an Eversor attack at her wedding. Her head was ripped from her body right at the altar," Marcella answered grimly.
The mention of the dreaded temple never ceased to horrify him. He recalled that one time his father had recovered what he thought was an escape pod. But when the crew in the cargo bay had opened it they had unwittingly unleashed one of the temple's infamous killers on themselves. The assassin had gone on to kill over one half of his crew before he exploded in a gory mess. When his father had seen the carnage, he had sworn never to anger the Imperium lest he find himself facing one of these monstrosities again.
Other rogue traders weren't as lucky. Recently, one dynasty had tried to profit off forbidden artifacts; when the Inquisition had found out, an Eversor had been deployed on their flagship. He proceeded to massacre the entire family, including their servants. The event had clearly sent the rogue trader dynasties a strong message; comply with Imperium law or we'll bring the fullest extent of Imperial justice upon all of you.
Most did, but a few continued to flout the rules; They had met equally gruesome ends. One dynasty had been killed because of sabotaged life support machinery on their flagship, while a second had been killed by an Callidus assassin posing as his advisor. A third one, an unsanctioned psyker, was killed by a Culexus operative after he had evaded previous attempts to assassinate him through foreboding visions he received in his sleep. Even now, Ippo greatly feared what the Officio Assassinorum would have in store for him if he did similar things.
"When I was on that ship the Dark Eldar attacked, it was approaching Cestus Majorus. I believe that the world, as well as an Eldar craftworld nearby were both plundered," Marcella murmured softly, "I've had nightmares of the events ever since."
"I've seen one raid first-hand, Marcella. It was on Malabar IX. They swooped upon us and took nearly two-thirds of my regiment, including the commissar and his staff. I was one of these who were lucky enough to hide from them for the duration of the raid," Syvas Brondell replied.
"I've seen a raid on the St. Peregrine, once. Took the entire command staff, as well at three-quarters of the populace," Renata answered.
"One of my colleagues in the Mechanicum was taken by a Dark Eldar raid force ten years ago. I never saw him again," Hafza added.
"One of my friends witnessed a raid firsthand a long time ago and he still has screaming fits in the middle of the night because of the trauma he witnessed," Irri Kelash nodded.
"I recall that when I was a young woman on Gehenna Prime, a raiding force swooped upon the world. They took the entire nobility, but left the rest of us alone," Myrcella Tyrell added, crossing her arms, "I still find the possibility of a Dark Eldar raid too terrifying to even think about it."
Ippo wrapped an arm around Marcella, causing her to blush a nice shade of tomato red. This scene wasn't lost upon the rest of the occupants, and they teased and needled the rogue trader about it all afternoon.
Unnamed World
Father Theophilus Fulgrim stood on the pedestal; thousands of Fraternis Militia stood before him; He had sent six years building up this army, and he had levied another six million. His ambition was to bring the Ecclesiarchy back to its zenith of power during Goge Vandire's reign; he had secretly planned this for the last eleven years, ever since he had joined the Temple Tendency.
"The priesthood has grown complacent! They believe that Thor is their hero, but Vandire is worth more! Let us march in his name, and tear down the fools that govern the false priesthood, and return the Ecclesiarchy to its glory!" His speech roused the crowd.
As he launched another anti-Ecclesiarchy tirade, he didn't notice the scope of a certain model of rifle aimed directly at his head three kilometers away. The female assassin wielding it pulled the trigger; the shieldbreaker round weaved it way through lines, openings and buildings before penetrating Theophilus's head. He dropped dead as the crowd watched in shock and horror.
She climbed down the building she had chosen as her sniping ledge, before she ran toward the shuttle hidden nearby in an alleyway. Her thoughts turned to her father; he was currently laying in wait for the daemonically possessed scion of the Rutherford Family. The young man had been an unsanctioned psyker who gifts had just came in. He didn't have the strength of will to fight off the Keeper of Secrets that took control of his body. Briar had personally assigned Dagon that mission, while Julores Ronnherig had been given this mission to eliminate this renegade cardinal.
She turned to her Exitus sniper rifle, cleaning it; During the four days that she had laid in wait, she had heard rumors about things regarding her target that she had found disturbing. It had something to do with an alleged sexual preference for young boys around the age of 7 to 11. When Julores had voxed her father about the rumors, he had explained that this type of preference often showed up frequently in the cults of the Prince of Pleasure. During his career, he had encountered a few priests with this predisposition; both Eisenhorn and Briar had ordered that these deviants be eliminated as quickly as possible.
The thought of these sickos molesting children made Julores ill, even after years serving alongside her father in Briar's retinue. The fact that they looked up to these priests for guidance, and yet the perverts chose to violate it by raping their victims reminded her too much of a scandal that had surfaced on the world of her birth years after Dagon had took her with him. It involved a ring of deacons and cardinals hand-picking sex slaves from the local Progena populace and repeatedly abusing them over an unspecified number of years. When this event was uncovered by an inquisitor it sent shockwaves through the populace and a set of brutal raids by Adeptus Sororitas were initiated to purge this deviancy.
"Briar, I have completed my objective. The target has been neutralized," she spoke into the microbead of her spy mask. It had been optimized to her DNA, as well as her rifle and pistol. Around her thighs were several holstered throwing knives, to compensate in case both guns ran out of ammunition.
"Good. We're waiting for the confirmation of the next mission," the Inquisitor replied over the link.
"I've heard that Theophilus Fulgrim was a pedophile. Can you please do an investigation to confirm these rumors?" she asked, "I've talked with Father and we both overheard them, Briar."
"If the info being passed around proves to be accurate, I may need to investigate further to see if there are other priests with similar deviant tastes," Briar's voice let out a sigh, before he replied, "Often the presence of pedophilia in an Ecclesiarchy district is a sign of Slaaneshi corruption there. Over the years I've encountered cults like them and there were often people who often enjoyed indulging in sexual activity with children there."
"Such disgusting perverts deserve to be purged," she agreed.
"My objective has been terminated, Briar. Exiting immediately," her father's monotone voice chimed into the conversation. He was always abrupt and emotionless, only replying when it was needed. She could still recall when she was a child, he often responded to her questions and demands with the briefest possible responses. Even then there were questions that he absolutely dreaded, and with good reason. The one about the metaphorical birds and the bees was one such thing, and it was somewhat awkward for him to explain to Julores when she was six.
Cue the snickering from the rest of Briar's retinue much to Dagon's chagrin. Even years later he was still embarrassed by the memory, although the hypno-doctrination had suppressed much of his emotions. Looking back upon the moment she had also found it hilarious that a killer trained from childhood onwards would find such things to be awkward.
She had to suppress a rather crude snicker at the thought; it would not do well to give herself away.
The office of Kevin Snow was tastefully decorated; The bottom half of the room had been panelled with ebony wood panelling, while the walls were covered in a sage green damask wallpaper. There was a small window behind the desk; it had blackout roman blinds covered in a rich brown silk.
The industrial pendant lumen fixture was flinched from an abandoned manfactorum that hadn't been in service for the last forty years, while Marcella could see that the desk there had been moved from Father's office. The chair was an old fixture that had been brought down from the attic; It hadn't been used for the last twenty years. Kevin had reupholstered it in a grox leather the same color as the wood panelling.
Ippo and Marcella were seated in neo-classical black-painted chairs with minimal decorations. As the Culexus operative felt his hands brush hers, she blushed a faint shade of pink.
"Let's begin the marriage contract discussion," her brother entered, behind her was a buxom young woman with carefully arranged raven hair in a curled bob and a yellow cocktail dress. She had blue eyes that glittered with mischief and happiness. On her left hand was a huge princess-cut diamond ring, a priceless heirloom that had been passed down to her from her grandma.
"Let's talk later, Hon," she told Kevin. Marcella had assumed that this woman was her brother's wife.
"Can you please remove the googles," he asked. She complied, and the disturbing presence Marcella had begun to take effect; both men began to feel dizzy and nauseous.
"It really is her," he nodded toward her, "Ever since Marcella was a baby she had this kind of presence. She nearly killed our elder brother when she was just a newborn. He was smart enough to flee the scene. Our grandpa tried to kill her a few times."
When she had replaced her suppressive goggles, the men then turned to the papers; they had already been written up. Marcella picked up her copy; reading it she could see that it was a marriage contract. She blushed even harder at the thought of spending the rest of her life with Ippo. The details stipulated that the engagement was to last a full year, with the wedding occurring around the first or second quarter of the following year.
"What do you think, Marcella?" Ippo asked her. She nodded, still speechless over the relevation that she was to be married. He took it as a yes, before he signed his name on the contract. Marcella then did so, signifying her consent to this union.
Irri Kelash wandered around the Snow estate; The décor in this house was not particularly fancy, with simple wooden trimming and an absence of gilded or gold elements. Her house had been full of them, and much bigger, with well over 600 rooms. She could recall that it had a 62,000 square feet ballroom, eight entertaining parlors, four massive dining rooms, and a basement swimming pool that was thirty feet wide and eighty-five feet long. It was forty feet deep at the deepest end.
The wrought iron chandliers brought out the simplicity of this house; She had noted that they were much sturdier than the crystal chandliers she recalled seeing at her home back on Malfi. And the wooden elements were easier to maintain than gold, another sign of practicality that she admitted saved the Snow family a lot of money.
Irri still missed the luxuries of her old life. The purple gown that she wore now was admittedly better than the astropathic robes she wore. It had faux gold threads, and orange sleeves that could be exchanged with other gowns. The material was still common quality, and still not good enough for a woman of her caliber.
During her time at the Adeptus Astra Telepathica, they had removed her ears and replaced them with grilles. This was because Irri was particularly sensitive to the whispering of daemons, as well as the melodies that she had grown up listening to and playing ever since she was a child. This had reduced her hearing capabilities. She had a horn that acted as a hearing aid for certain situations, although she could hear normal conversation. To her they were murmurs that she could barely make out.
She saw Hafza looking over a vase; the tech-priest seemed to be bored.
"I like this house. It is homey," the astropath noted. Walking up to a door, she noticed that there were holes on one door; it looked as if something had been screwed on once. Pushing the door aside, she entered the room.
The room was square, with truncated corners in the right side. There was a deep pink wallpaper with gold damask motif on all four walls, with white wainscoting on the bottom. On the ceiling hung an expensive-looking chandelier that Irri could tell was three hundred years old, give or take a few years. When she reached out to it with her mind she had a brief flash of a beautiful young woman purchasing it on a Forge-World. A canopy bed was pushed against the back wall, while a large expansive window let in light.
A vanity was pushed against the wall behind her; when she opened one drawer she found a diary. Inside it she saw a name written on the front cover.
Sirella Maria Snow
Reading the diary entries, she found them interesting although a little alarming. The girl was trying to get into the nobility. She had been turned down by every man she had attempted to date for various reasons; some deemed her vapid and uninteresting, while others had perceived her as being fit for a low-class whore.
Using her ability of psychometry on it Irri drew up the image of Sirella from the memories surrounding it. She was much prettier than Marcella, with an oval face, long eyelashes and green eyes. Her hair was arranged in an similar style to the photo of an great-aunt that she had seen in the living room. When the astropath had compared the two in her mind, she could see how strikingly similar their features were.
In comparison, Marcella's face was plainer and it was easy to forget her face, as she looked more like the average hiveworlder. No one ever remarked on the assassin's face all through the journey to Epsilon Regalis.
Moving to the wardrobe and the ensuite attached to it, she had seen that everything in the room had been cleaned out.
'Did the girl snap after too much rejections?' her thoughts turned to this question; It would explain why this room was empty. If this fact was accurate, she was sure that the girl had either committed murder or suicide.
Using her psychometry on the diary in her hands again, she was suddenly greeted with a vision.
(begin VISON Sequence)
Sirella Maria Snow was simmering with anger. Henry Regulus had rejected her for the twentienth time. He had chosen one of her neighbours as his fiancee. She was determined to prove that she was better than that idiotic bitch.
She had begun harassing the poor girl the day after the engagement. One day she had poured poo and piss on the girl. Another time she had sent a rival family damaging pictures of the girl caught up in another dalliance with a suitor. This had caused Regulus to break off his engagement to the girl, after the family had kidnapped her and sold her to a nearby brothel.
He had then chosen Gisela Rodríguez, a ballerina from the prestigious Vándrueil Opera. Sirella had manipulated events so that she died during a dress rehearsal of a new opera. Then came several young women following after her. They were either murdered by other women vying for Regulus hand in marriage or assassinated by death-cult assassins hired by other rival families.
Soon after their deaths, he had become engaged to Natalia Bhatnagar. She was a rising star in the acting scene. Sirella had tried numerous time to kill the girl, but then her mother had figured out her role in Rodriguez's death, and was collecting the necessary evidence to charge her. When she heard of the wedding, she hatched a plan to complete her ambition; she would murder Bhatnagar then impersonate her.
She had barely succeeded in killing the girl with a bolter pistol filched from a nearby armory when her mother had arrested her on the way toward the shrine where she would impersonate the victim. After she was taken to the Fortress-Precinct where Mother worked at, she had been stripped of all the finery she was wearing and the gun she was carrying. Both items had been taken as evidence.
After her mother had sentenced her to life on Clandenn II, the woman had watched with disappointment as Sirella had been forced upon the penal barge collecting criminals from every corner of the Gehenna sector.
(end VISON sequence)
'So that explains the empty room and why there had been screw holes on the door,' Irri thought. She wasn't surprised that Sirella had tried to murder her way into the nobility. Many people had done so and they had mostly paid with their lives, or worse.
"I am not surprised that Mother and Father chose to disown Sirella. She was too prideful to accept that the Emperor had plans for her to fall into obscurity," Marcella sighed as she entered the room, "I viewed her as a liability, and a vainglorious fool. She was too absorbed in her own dreams of boundless wealth and luxuries."
She took Sirella's diary and paged through the entries before pointing at one particular entry.
My Wedding Day
I dreamed of a big ivory ballgown, but all I got was Grandma Lotnik's mint green dress. Instead of a big new diamond ring from a noble man all I got was a brass wedding band. The altar was not the Ecclesiarchy cathedral that I dreamed about, but the local courtroom. The reception was not the giant party I envisioned, with hundreds of people there; it was filled with only 75 people.
The drinks were beer and cheap amasec, not the champagne I envisioned. And my husband is a really ugly frakker, and low-class at that. I don't care for him. I'd rather let him die than fuck him.
"That diary says a lot about my sister's character," Marcella snorted, "She think living among the nobility is going to be fun. That beauty is everything. That luxury is going to make her feel better."
"I recall that when I was taken from my family, I hated being separated from the luxuries of my family. But when I was turned into a Astropath I found that the simplicity of that life was better than navigating the ever-changing intrigues of Malfi," Irri replied, "although I still long for some of them now."
"I recall that some of the rogue psykers that the Inquisition hunts down often come from the nobility," the Culexus operative noted, "Ever heard of the Burning Princess? She is rumored to be a scion of the Abrendroth Family on Scintilla who abilities came in on her wedding day. That psychic manifestion killed over twenty thousand people, including her entire family, as well as her husband-to-be's. An inquisitor and his retinue tried to capture her but they was also killed in the conflagration that followed."
"I've heard of her too," Irri replied, "looking back on that day I was brought aboard the Black Ships, I realized that my parents were too foolish to look past their ambitions. They tried to conceal me and they paid the price. I had been just newly engaged at the time, and the fact that when the Inquisitors came upon me they decreed that my betrothal was over before they threw me in the shuttles alongside one hundred and fifty others of various classes and professions."
"I've heard that my cousin was throne-wed, while another was sacrificed to the God-Emperor, Irri. I still don't know where my uncle Kostner and my brother Arthur is," Marcella crossed her arms.
"What do throne-wed means?" one of the children of the servants, a young boy of around seven asked as he entered the room.
Both women sputtered as they realized that the child had asked a rather awkward question. He was too young to know what the details of being wedded to the throne really meant, and Irri and Marcella had shooed him on his way.