And there we were, about to go mucking around the Koronus Expanse in the hope of finding again the three systems that made the von Valancius protectorate. Had you asked me before, I would have thought it about impossible to misplace something that size. I was aiming to reach Janus first, the agri-world, in order to organise those food shipments to Footfall, but the Emperor alone knew where we'd end up. Besides, Cassia hadn't been very clear as to whether she could share her rediscovered path with other Navigators. I hoped she could, as my promise to Tocara would be an empty one if my ships ended up lost to the Warp.

My ships. A strange thought.

Before we left Footfall, I had taken advantage of a byline in some dusty codices from Theodora's library and celebrated myself a mass of thanksgiving to the God-Emperor — much to the displeasure of the Ecclesiarchy representatives aboard the Emperor's Mercy. True, this provision was made for smaller vessels that couldn't afford to carry a priest at all times, and not for frigates the size of a small town, but my encounter with the Reverend Hieronymus had opened my eyes to a few things. While my personal faith remained firmly lacking, I had seen first-hand how religion could work to keep up civilian morale, particularly where the military way of doing things couldn't be applied. In my own defence, I had never had much to do with civilians before: when I was a Commissar, they were just those who came to complain about theft, rape, and littering by soldiers (sometimes the breaking of noise ordnances, too), and it was quite easy to keep them happy with a swift dispensing of justice. And once I'd been discharged, I had mostly kept to myself, the bartender of my favourite bar, and the wedding agency that employed me. The Atrium mob had shown me a glimpse of what angry civilians could do, and I'd have taken angry troopers over them any day: a shot in the back is a cleaner way to die than lynching. With several thousands of those in my near vicinity for the foreseeable future, I needed to learn fast how to placate people who'd never heard of the chain of command. A spoonful of prevention being better than a jeroboam of cure, it meant I had to create some good old fashioned feelings of feudal loyalty.

So, I pulled rank on the chaplain, learned by rote over an hour and a half worth of prayers in High Gothic, put on a garish dress uniform, doubled the number of candles in the Warrant Chapel, stuck van Calox in full Inquisition garb in one corner and Argenta in power armour in the other for decoration, got pictcasters to relay everything live to the lower decks, and hated the whole farce. The sermon alone I had left to the chaplain, but I had written it myself, and the glazed look on my face while he droned on wasn't due to an excess of devotion but to the bad memories of hundreds of such services at the Schola Progenium. All in all, though, it made for a pretty celebration of our luck in making it to Footfall in one piece. Abelard puffed up in piety through the rite, bellowing hymns like a church-warden on a bender and, while I still wasn't Theodora and therefore still a mild annoyance, I felt I had marked a point.

A small crowd bath had followed, marked with my gifting double rations to all aboard and Jae (in a mantilla of such exquisite taste even I appreciated it) distributing alms (I don't think she embezzled any). Argenta and I visited those wounded still in the care of the medicae, who made sure to remind everyone that I had personally paid for all augmetics required — and good quality ones, too. I had given the order weeks ago, as soon we had reached Footfall and its chirurgeons, and Jae had all but curled up in despair when she learned the fact hadn't been publicised. Meanwhile, Pasqal and his red-robed gang had had their own ceremony somewhere away from prying eyes — probably more sincere than mine, and certainly more subdued. If they kept all of their organs intact, I would have found the life of the adepts of the Cult of the Machine an enviable one.

Shortly before dinner, the last of the clamps that held us were released to the singing of tech-priests. From atop the command throne, giving my best profile to the 'casters, I ordered us forward (first sideways and then obliquely, in truth), and that was it. Reaching the outskirts of the system, where we could make the translation to the Immaterium, would take us about ten days: four days less than when we arrived, thanks to the enginseers' repairs. The Emperor's Mercy was back in business.

After waiting for a decent amount of time — once we passed the last Footfall buoy and the bridge settled in what looked like its usual routine — I made to leave, giving Abelard the conn, with more than half a thought to an early night. Unfortunately, I immediately bumped on Argenta; she had changed from her power armour to a deep blue tabard emblazoned with fleur de lys, and had clearly been waiting for me with the strong intent to debrief me on the day's events. She gushed about the formal beauty of the mass, about the chaplain's strong sermon, about her joy to see House von Valancius on the path to righteousness. Later — much later — I would curse myself for being so blind and failing to see what underlay her joy, but then I was merely cranky by virtue of my delayed dinner. I had thought, when we first me, she could have been a friend — that we could have bonded over similar childhood experiences in our respective Scholas but, the more I thought I knew her, and the more she retreated behind a wall of religion. Everything she brought back to devotion, only rarely allowing for other topics — with me, as I heard her chit-chat with Abelard and, to a lesser measure, Idira. This aloofness, strangely mixed with an eagerness to discuss fine theological points, was beginning to put me off.

After extirpating myself from Argenta's views on Calixian rite, I would have made a bee-line for the exit if not for Cassia. Her own enthusiasm felt lighter than Argenta's; it was youthful, tinted with the excitation of one who discovers the world, and for that I became instantly more gracious. Cassia had seen the gold, the candles, and heard the songs. She wanted to gush about it but, after a few sentences, interrupted herself.

'A halo of red guilt and purple shame surrounds you, Katov, like an acrid mist. It is so unusual for you, and now I think about it, it was there today, too, beneath the copper of your guarded pride. Did something happen?'

Damn the kid and her gift! I hated being read like an open book, when my survival had often depended on my ability to hide my feelings: fear, anger, distaste, and guilt, yes. Cassia must have caught my irritation, because she lowered her eyes and apologised. It would have been easy to crush her, I had seen that in the library: for all her aristocratic arrogance, she was sweet and desperate for human kindness. I knew the words that would break her in an obedient ball of apprehension — I had used them before, in my old life, and then I justified my violence by thinking the front was no place for the gentle and the meek, and that they had better crawl back to non-combat roles. But a voidship wasn't war and I would have hated for Cassia to fear me, so I breathed through my nose and composed myself.

'Thank you for you watchfulness,' I said with a smile. 'I'm weary, mostly, and my heart wasn't fully in today's celebrations. It was a duty, more than true zeal.'

'Then you should be commanded. Theobald always said that accomplishing one's duty despite one's feelings, for people like us, is the highest form of achievement. Your feelings of guilt honour you, but are unwarranted.'

There was novelty in letting myself be consoled by someone so young and I smiled again, more truly this time. After talking some more about the day, Cassia took her leave, calling for her man Uve, who had been standing a few paces back as usual.

'Yes, my lady,' he replied, with the metallic tone of a vox-caster. I was tired, and nearly failed to notice the change. Clasping my hand behind my back, I said: 'Good night, Cassia. As of now, your access to the library and the officers' mess is restored in full. Good night, Uve.'

'Good night, lord-captain,' he said, bowing his head.

It was when I reached the elevator to my quarters that truth hit me. I didn't want to go back to those empty rooms, have my meal delivered by an orderly, and eat it alone before going to bed in thick silence. I wanted… I wanted my regiment, without fuss, where I had been outside the chain of command, free to befriend and advise everyone equally (and sometimes sanction, of course), and where things were simpler. After being kicked out, I had missed them like my right arm; despite all the agitation I had gone through since, it was still true.

On a whim, I removed my greatcoat. I unfastened the golden braids that barred my tunic. I removed the useless trinkets on it: the von Valancius brooch, the thing that said I captained a frigate, the pin I just found pretty. All this I put in the arms of one of the elevator guards, who had the professionalism to remain unfazed, and I asked him to get these to my quarters. An afterthought — I added my cap. It wasn't a Commissar's anyway. My weapons I kept, out of lifelong habit.

Combing my hair with my fingers, I felt lighter. Now, I looked like a random bridge officer in dark von Valancius blues; not that it would fool anyone. My steps muffled by the carpet in von Valancius colours, I walked in great strides to the other elevator, at the far end of the bridge, underneath a giant von Valancius crest. I would eat in the officers' mess, grabbing whatever was left of the evening buffet, eavesdropping nearby conversations if no one joined me — not out of curiosity, just because I would have nothing better to do — and then some recaf strong enough to promise insomnia if I didn't add a shot of amasec to it. A promising evening.

Next morning, I briefed Jae on the broken lens found under my bookshelves. Still sick with my office, I had commandeered some random conference room close to the bridge, one with less eye-watering decor despite the expected abundance of gilded panels. Perhaps I should have a word with the High Factotum about sending to storage some of Theodora's most obnoxious pieces — clear up the antechamber, at least, because none of these things meant a word to me. Perhaps I should have taken advantage of the many repairs done at Footfall and remodelled — but it would have been a waste of time and resources when my protectorate was somewhere out there, full of people who would presumably do it better and for free, or close to.

Her almond eyes pensive, Jae listened intently, silent for the first time since I had made her acquaintance. When I was done, she said: 'I'm in the xeno trade, shereen. I never touch chaos artefacts if I can avoid it: they're not worth the price in blood and sanity they exact. The Exalted One knows I have my faults, but I value my soul.'

And then, all of a sudden, a salacious grin crossed her face when she asked if van Calox — or, rather, 'my house-trained handsome Inquisition fellow, as dour as a kuzd tart and probably twice as tasty' — knew about this. Her seriousness was gone, and the flamboyant smuggler back with a vengeance.

'He does,' I replied, staring at Jae as if I didn't know exactly what he looked like naked. 'But I'd be a fool to not pursue other avenues of research.' I was glad she didn't have Cassia's gift.

'You are no fool, shereen — Katov. Before we brave the Sea of Souls, I shall send a few messages through my own channels to those fools who both lack the brains both to fear the Archenemy's devices, and the means to avoid trading them. Perhaps someone will have seen this thing before, or another like it, but hope is ever an unsure matter.'

This was all I could ask. It was a long shot, in all cases, but even if it failed I felt adding Jae to my retinue (despite Abelard's huffing and puffing) had been a good move.

Now that the Emperor's Mercy wasn't a decompression accident waiting to happen, I toured what I could, starting with the upper decks in order to preserve Abelard's nerves. Great blast doors had reopened seemingly everywhere and I discovered how large the frigate really was. I had travelled on troop transports that would have dwarfed the Emperor's Mercy, but on those occasions I had kept to the decks assigned to my regiment; having the full run of a voidship as luxurious to its officers as it was deadly to its foes was a first.

After some hesitation, I had perpetually shelved my blue greatcoat. It was time to acknowledge playing make believe wouldn't work: the Commissariat was still behind me, no Warrant of Trade would ever bring back this career, and the coat was a perpetual reminder of it. The dress tunic and slacks of a bridge officer were enough for me, and I purposefully kept them unadorned, save for a small Aquila over my left breast. In a world where people love wearing enough medals to weigh down a cargo servitor (I had issued a medal for those who had assisted in the Rykad Minoris rescue effort, and another for all those who had been aboard for the recent mass), simplicity could easily set yourself apart. That, and the fringeless shoulder-mark displaying my rank insignia.

It was therefore with an unusually light step that I visited the observatorium — new beginnings do that to a woman. It stood only a few decks below the bridge and, as its name warranted, allowed for a wide unimpeded view of whatever expanse of space the ship was sailing into. When I passed its gaudy ornamental gate that had been preserved by the blast doors, the ambient darkness surprised me. Lighting was minimal — just enough to avoid tripping on the tessellated floor — and immense armourcrys bays let in a velvet-black void. When my eyes got accustomed, I understood why.

Stars. Stars everywhere, like diamonds. The galactic plane barred the void in a great diagonal of dim light. Constellations burned like white flares over a dusty glow — blink, or look at a lamp, and it was gone. In the absence of atmosphere there was no twinkle, no glitter, no movement whatsoever to those points of light, to those fixed and relentless fires of breathtaking beauty. The more I looked, the more the sheer scale of the galaxy engulfed me. The void called to me. It howled; a silent vertigo seized me. The gravity holding me down was artificial. The air around me was a bubble of insanity maintained by a miracle of technotheology — the meter-thick armourcrys so fragile, the plated hull so thin, our navigation instruments primitive. Humanity was absurd, foolish, barking mad, to venture there, let alone colonise worlds, systems, and whole segments that were nothing but sparks suspended in nothingness. And I was human, nothing but flesh and blood held together by curiosity, and hope, and spite.

After what could have been minutes or an hour, I turned away to take in the rest of the room. I wasn't alone: a few officers sat at game tables, where small luminators provided additional light, or nursed a drink and chatted in subdued tones. Behind me, the only full wall in the room was a vast fresco mural, and a familiar silhouette stood before it, studying it intently. I walked to him and said: 'Good afternoon, master van Calox.'

'Rogue Trader.'

In the observatorium half-light, his eyes were very dark and I could see no shadow betraying a smile when he nodded to me. Even since I had rebuked him in my study, he had carried himself with the most perfectly noble aloofness he could muster — and a lot of it, too. But we were in public. There could be no threat of impropriety, and it would hardly do to ignore a member of my retinue where it could be noticed.

'I didn't know you had an interest in art,' I said. To be fair, what I didn't know about him at that point would have filled several encyclopaedias.

'Art as a whole does not often holds my attention, but this is an outstanding representation of the most sacred places of Holy Terra. I presume the artist must have traveled there themselves.'

Hidden lamps poured their low gleam on swatches of solid colours: blue, green, ochre, grey and gold. Before my eyes, the colours resolved themselves in palaces, temples, hanging gardens and towers; bridges of stone, lace-like, ran through the panorama, and carried diminutive processions of Ecclesiarchs, as well as what I presumed to be the Legio Custodes. It was the Imperial Palace — not that I had ever beheld it with my own eyes, but even the natives of a backwater planet like mine can recognise it at a glance. Soaring over all, in the middle of the composition, the Eternity Gate was flanked by angels. Over and beyond, the Sanctum Imperialis was a dream of perfection carved out of mountains, and a halo of shining gold surrounded it in honour of He who dwells there.

'I suppose you must have been there, once?' I asked, recalling dregs of stories about sanctioned psykers.

'Yes. Black Ships deliver their cargo to the Palace; I am of those lucky few who passed the Eternity Gate and were later admitted before the Golden Throne. Words cannot express the majesty of it, nor how humbling it is to stand in His presence. There, I was soul-bound to Him and began my service.'

I shall admit it is one thing to have been taught faith, but quite another to speak to someone who has witnessed first-hand the object of said faith. I suddenly felt once again ashamed of my shortcomings in the matter, and of having so recently used the Emperor's worship for my own small goals.

'Soul-bound? What does it mean, if I may ask?'

Van Calox stared at the mural without seeing. His lips parted, but he didn't speak at once.

'It is a ritual most holy, through which the Emperor lends a psyker some of His willpower and psychic energy in order to fortify their soul against the daemons of the Warp. This is done after several years of training, and only the most worthy survive the process.'

'Pardon my ignorance,' I said, frowning, 'but I thought the Emperor to be bound to His throne in His deathless state and not… interacting with mere people.'

'One of the Mysteries of the Cult, I am afraid,' he acknowledged with a shrug. 'He certainly didn't grace me with a chat, but I can still remember the searing pain of facing His ineffable might, when directed to me.' There was nothing to reply to this, and I was spared the need to search for a suitable answer when he asked if I had travelled to the Sol System.

'Never. There is little need for the Guard in the heart of the Imperium; besides, until Theodora called me, I had never left the Calixis sector. There are enough wars here, where the Eye of Terror can be glimpsed on dark winter nights, to keep us occupied at home. You of all people must know how xenos remain a perpetual menace in the sector, not to mention the occasional heretical uprising.'

'A pity: you would like it there, I think. I have visited many of the places brought to the Emperor's light... and those sullied by the filth of the Archenemy. In truth, even after all these years spent visiting the various corners of the Imperium and looking beyond its borders, I still consider the Segmentum Solar to be the greatest of all Humanity's bastions.'

How preposterous of him to presume of my taste in worlds. I coolly replied that hive worlds, as a whole, give me hives; places where nature has not merely been subdued, but beaten to a pulp, are unnatural to me.

I spotted a nearby game table that held a regicide board and asked van Calox if he would be amenable to giving me another lesson. With a last glance to the mural, he held out his arm; I took it, and he walked me those twenty paces as if I were nobility. Once I had sat on the chair he pulled out for me, he took his place and picked the pieces from the drawer that held them. As for me, I took out a now battered manual from an inner pocket; Regicide for Dummies had been a great help in occupying my lost hours while docked at Footfall, but I needed practice and he really was the only seasoned player around.

'So you did keep playing,' he said with mild surprise.

'I told you so. For a Master Interrogator, you are strangely slow to recognise the truth.'

'I have learned not to mistake my wishes for reality.'

The small luminator, covered with a green lampshade, drew radiant shadows on the board — which wasn't as refined as the one in my quarters, of course, but was lovely enough, made of white and blue stone. I tut-tutted in disapproval and made the opening move.

'As long as you refrain from using your talents on me in order to find out which is which…' My sentence was cut by the following opening sequence, that I was able to play without referring to my notes. It brought the board to an interesting configuration. I knew I hadn't a hope of beating van Calox — I probably wouldn't have beaten a ten year-old — but I made it my mission to give him as hard a time as I could.

Unlike our first lesson (the end of which still occupied pleasantly my thoughts at night, although I was resolved it would stay a one-time thing), we spoke very little and concentrated on the game, which demanded all my attention. Sometimes, van Calox backtracked a few moves in order to show me combinations I had missed. There was no question of making out over the board. It suited me. A torturer was no regular partner stuff, nor was a spy.

A good regicide teacher, though.

By the time a bell rang, warning us that the first dinner service was half an hour away, I was having more fun than I would have cared to confess. That hellish game held its promises, but I had to excuse myself. 'I need to get dressed for dinner,' I added as an apology.

Eyebrows slightly raised, van Calox remarked he thought I took my meals in my private quarters.

'I did so far, yes, keeping up Theodora's habit. It doesn't suit me, though: I am used to keeping an eye on regiment morale, and I, well, I missed it.' Not just the noise that so displeased Cassia; I missed observing the subtle interactions between officers, I missed the formal informality that required the use of given names instead of rank (unless one was a general or a commissar), I missed the bitching around hidden behind a polite facade… It had taken me more time than it should have to realise I had the power to break from Theodora's way of life.

'Have you warned your seneschal?' van Calox asked while I tidied up the board. 'I fear he might have a stroke, so used is he to be the ranking mess officer, and it would be quite grievous to a man of his age.'

'I told High Factotum Danrok. It should be hoped that he warned all relevant personnel.'

There again was that repressed half-smile of his, the one that lit his eyes and changed his whole demeanour. We rose. I thought he would leave at once, but he waited for me and once again offered me his arm. The tight weave of his jacket was rough under my fingertips. I don't think before that day anyone had treated me as anything else than an officer who, while outside the command hierarchy, was still firmly on top of the local food chain by her laspistol's grace; unless perhaps some random civilians on diplomatic occasions, but that I couldn't remember.

Van Calox walked me through the observatorium and to the elevator that would take me back to the bridge. My mouth felt unusually dry when I vocalised my hope we could make such sessions a regular occurrence.

'So do I,' he replied.

When I let go of his arm, he took my right hand into his — just my fingers against his, hardly a grasp, and bowed. His lips didn't even touch my hand; his breath caressed my skin, and then it was over. He saluted — even Abelard would have been hard pressed to find something lacking in his posture this time.

'Lord-captain,' he said, and left before I could come back to my senses.