There are some things in life you don't properly appreciate until they're gone, and Theodora's ludicrous bathroom was one of them. Had I gone days, weeks even, without a shower when I was a Commissar? Of course: being deployed sometimes meant being cut off from such things. But then two years of civilian life had gone by, with adequate facilities always at hand, and for the last — what had it been? Two months? Three? I had gotten used to that bloody waterfall and its accompanying toy-sized swimming pool. The trek through the jungle had left me sweaty, dirty, and after the evening fight I was pretty sure I'd find some blood in places where there shouldn't be any. Not my own (mostly), but bodygloves aren't waterproof and close combat is messy. And, after the whole thing with the dead eldars, I was feeling covered in the sticky spider webs of plots within plots. Like everyone else, unfortunately, I had to be content with a swift dip in cold water — courtesy of the stream that ran through the encampment — and I ached for thirty minutes of warmth under my own private cascade.

Guard duty was soon dispatched. Pasqal declined the offer to sleep at all, having already done so earlier in the week for about an hour (nearly a sin of sloth, had he done so tonight again!), and offered to patrol the perimeter, great axe at the ready. For obvious reasons, I wanted to keep Yrliet under Abelard's surveillance, and he was more of a morning person, so their pair got the second half of the night. Argenta, having been so severely wounded, I ordered to sleep through the night — despite all of her grit, it was obvious she was still in pain, and I feared would remain so until we could get back to the Emperor's Mercy. So that left Heinrix and I to play sentries until night grew deep. We sat, our backs against the rough steel shacks, where we could see the path, and I lay the portable auspex on the ground, hiding its glowing screen behind a shield of stacked branches. The smallest of Janus's two moons, a small irregular thing barely strong enough to whip up tides, wasn't to rise before a few hours and starlight made the jungle into a world of black and grey. The evening chorus of night insects had receded — only a few stubborn things kept at it, scratching their elytra now and then out of pure doggedness, unless it was insomnia.

Did I feel bad keeping the two dead eldars from Heinrix? No. It was a rational decision — a tactical one, although I would have been hard pressed to explain it. In truth, ever since including Yrliet in my party, I had felt I was playing two sides, and perhaps I was. It was strange, not being bound to fully serving the Imperium anymore; having the leeway to do things differently. In popular fiction, Rogue Traders fall into a few standard stereotypes: grandiose self-serving scoundrels, hardcore explorers with an unshakeable faith, morally bankrupt reprobates prone to be seduced by heresy… and none fit me. I just wanted to do the right thing for those who looked up to me, and right now fixing things on Janus appeared more important than going apeshit at the sight of a xenos.

'You do feel at home here in the wild,' said Heinrix, keeping his voice low — but it still resonated in my chest.

I shrugged. 'Parinus — you know, my homeworld — is fairly hostile. Few jungles, but plenty of cold forests and tundra, and of course mountains, too, where a misstep can kill you. The Schola used to send us on training missions here and there, get a Commissar cadet shepherd younger students around and get all of them back in one piece and such. It was a pain in the ass, but I liked being outdoors.'

'Live fire exercises, too?'

'That, too. It seemed — was — normal at the time.' I hesitated, but ultimately swallowed what I would have said next. It was the second time he prodded me on the subject; he wanted to know, but I didn't want to tell him of my greatest shame. Not yet. Better that, in his mind, I remain the inflexible Commissar who shot a Lord Inquisitor for incompetence, instead of… this. To get him off my back, I added: 'All this — forest, night, hiking — must be unusual to a hive worlder like you.'

'The Inquisition taught me many things,' he said, 'and tracking the xenos and the heretic sometimes requires going off the beaten track. I would be lying if I said I could manage it on my own but, thankfully, local guides are easy to get.'

'The rosette must help with that. I must confess, I believed only full-fledged Inquisitors got one.'

'Interrogators sometimes do; rarely, though, and it is a great honour indeed. Xavier — Lord Inquisitor Calcazar — entrusted me with one only after many years of faithful service, when he felt I could be relied on to carry out his will on independent errands, such as the one I was sent on when we first met. No other of his retinue has been thus singled out.'

Oh that man, that damnable man. Each and every time I began thinking he might be more than his job, that he might have hidden depths, that he might have genuine feelings and genuine wants, he somehow managed to bring back the image of the cool, dogmatic servant of the Inquisition. How to reconcile the raw desire with which he had begged me to slap him again with the facade he insisted on presenting?

A warm breeze drew one great sigh from the jungle, before it settled back to perfect calm. The sky over us had become so dark it was grey with suffused light, the galactic plane a path of broken stars — so many of them unreachable because of the Great Rift. They said the Fall of Cadia had caused it; they said Cadia had fallen because we had not been virtuous enough; they said we had lost our ways and that only through blind obedience could we regain it. But the Emperor is dead upon His Throne; eons have passed since He last spoke His will, and I beware of those who pretend to know His mind. Inquisitors topping the list.

Morning came with a clamour of singing birds that roused me from my bedroll too early for comfort. A pale silver light, however, creeped into the shack where we had made our sleeping quarters, betraying the coming sunrise. Argenta had curled into a ball; I'd have to make sure Abelard found something to charge an autoinjector with, and ease her day. Power armour servos may help with getting around while wounded, but we had a long, long walk ahead of us, and I needed my Emperor-botherer in shape. Besides, despite the distance she put between us, I still had enough empathy to do a little more than my duty. The sister deserved it, and the woman needed it.

Heinrix slept on his back, his perfectly cut profile more peaceful than I had ever seen, revealing the tension he lived under during the day. Gone was the hard line that barred his brow. Gone, the strict mien he kept always, even naked. In this relaxed state, I was reminded of the gentle smile I had seen once, that time in my office, when he came back, when we had tea and he spoke of his baroness love. He moved in his sleep, and I rose silently before I was caught staring.

While I had braced myself for another day of harsh travel through a pathless jungle, I was pleasantly surprised that a semblance of bush track led the way we wished to go. So the encampment we had raided had not, perhaps, been a temporary thing, that vehicles had marked the way in such a fast-growing environment. It meant we should beware; wisdom would have been to walk parallel to the tracks in order not to fall accidentally upon rebels, but I wanted to hurry. Along the way, we had to defend ourselves against three predators — some sort of lacerax, said Abelard, who had gone hunting once on Janus with Theodora, although he remembered them as placid creatures rather than homicidal leonids — and, while I feared the noise would attract unwanted attention, we were able to progress unimpeded. Our lunch we had on a rocky outcrop where we saw the sky and felt the wind on our faces, but our path mostly led beneath a green canopy forty-meter high. Unlike the previous day, there was little to no climbing: we were going down the valley towards marshes that gave a natural protection to the rebel leaders' base. By late afternoon, the jungle had thinned in a clear forest where trees with purple crowns swayed like feathers in the breeze. The air was cooler, too, as we neared the coast, and I allowed us half an hour of rest. It had been well earned: we had made very good time, and although no one complained we were all tired — except, perhaps, Pasqal.

We had taken shelter by what appeared to be, at first sight, a cliff surmounting a clear spring, where we refilled our canteens with water so cold it made my teeth ache. Once we were all done, I plunged my hands in the spring and washed my face, washing away my sweat and my doubts, numbing my hands in the diminutive cascade where the newborn stream sang in a silver voice. Moss grew around it, catching droplets and rainbows, nurturing pale flowers small as a pin, hiding the mud below: beneath the reflecting light, below the purest water I had seen in ages, the fountain was dark as earth — a darkness that drank everything, a secret not meant for prying human eyes.

'Those are ruins,' said Argenta, pointing. 'Look.'

Carved stone, hidden by creeping vines, white as bone. The cliff was a wall of some long-lost place; palace, temple or house of pleasure, it had been filled, year after year, by fallen leaves and growing dirt while rains eroded whatever stairs had led to the suspended archway that caught Argenta's gaze, and it was now a filled-out tomb. I thought I guessed the outline of a statue — now but a ghost of what it had been, but its limbs spoke still of strange proportions and the lithe, lethal grace of a night sphynx.

'Eldari ruins.' Heinrix's voice was flat, and then was strangely filled with… restrained humour? 'Better keep Jae confined to the palace grounds, or she might steal the whole planet from you and sell it on the black market, Katov.'

Hearing this, Yrliet bristled. 'The world you call Janus was once created by the will my kin. I have far more right to be on the Lilaethan than any of you.'

Well, good to know I wasn't the only one under whose skin he knew how to get.

The closer to our goal we were, and the more we found traps: on wooden makeshift bridges, in narrow passages between trees… Someone wasn't taking any chance with their wider perimeter security, and every mine was of xenos design. We were able to defuse most of them, thanks to Yrliet, and I murmured to Heinrix to keep his urge to slay the xenos in check. I was by now pretty sure we'd find at least some of them with the rebel leaders, and I reminded him we were there for peace talks, not a purge.

'Yes, Rogue Trader,' he agreed formally, before adding, even lower, so that only I heard: 'I wouldn't want you to slap me again. Unless you might be contrived to enjoy it?'

My cheeks blushed with the fire of a thousand burning suns, and my first reflex was to think I've shot better men for less. My second was a very inappropriate hell yes. But I guess we had gone so far beyond regulations there was no saving — how had I not remembered regulations in the first place? What had been wrong with my head, that I had let myself go that way? The first time I had fucked him, all right, he was meant to be gone afterwards, I could excuse. But the second was indefensible. Ever since, I had tried to pinpoint the flaw in my character that had lead to that decision — how horny Katov had overcome reasonable Katov without so much as a hint of a struggle. How? Why?

Because you haven't been a Commissar in a long time, suggested a little voice in my head. Because you have lost your sense of duty. But it was wrong. I refused to believe I had changed that much. He was the disruptive factor, the pebble in my shoe. Yesterday night, he was a dutiful, rosette-carrying, interrogator, and now, swinging the pendulum right the other way, he played tempter again. The thought that he might be just as confused as me, I didn't entertain for long: the notion that such a faithful minion of the Inquisition could lack a grip on his desires was laughable.

The comm-bead in my ear, however, saved me from further disagreeable thinking. Abelard, having taken point some time ago, signalled he had the rebel leaders' camp in sight. We crept closer, carefully, and looked.

The headquarters for the rebellion were surrounded by marshes, where water reflected sky, impassable on foot save on one wooden bridge. It was a weird mix of hollowed-out ruins and corrugated iron shacks, those much like the encampment we had cleansed the night before, but the ruins had only a little in common with those we had passed along the way, although they evoked a similar feel. They were better preserved, and a free-standing archway occupied the middle of the camp: twin arcs of bone-white stone, higher than trees, inlaid with red jewels visible even from the distance, so slender that a strong wind should have brought them down. They were the perfection reached when there is nothing left to remove — the very idea of an archway, an architect's dream. In my spyglass, I could get my first good look at the rebels: men and women, going about their day — but a few of them were tall, too tall, their bodies subtly out of proportions.

Well, we had gotten that far without being detected, but now came the part of my plan that gave me cold sweats: walk right into the rebels' midst, and hope not to get shot before I had time to open my mouth. I banked everything on the fact that I could satisfyingly project an aura screaming 'inspection day, tuck in your shirts and hide the booze': the kind of self-assuredness that promises everything will be all right as long as you listen to the lady in the fancy hat. Not that it had been a success on the previous evening, but those had been particularly trigger-happy — and I had looked like an ordinary trooper. I shouldered down my kit, and pulled from it a package carefully folded in a layer of silk: my Rogue Trader disguise — my uniform.

Turns out, I needn't have worried, and our entry was very much underwhelming. Yrliet, that underhanded pointy-eared conspirator, knew the rebel leaders, who were xenos. She hadn't accompanied me; we had accompanied her, helping her carve her way half a planet from the Vyatt estate, just so that she could give a stern talking to to some arsehole eldar called Muaran. 'All shall be revealed in time,' my arse. They bickered in their language. They glared at each other. I tried very hard not to look at Heinrix and give him an excuse to say 'I told you so.' Once, I tried to interrupt, only to be met with a twin pair of green eyes both surprised and angry at the fact that a lowly human would dare to do so — and then they started again with the grandiloquent declarations in eldarish, eldarese, or whatever was the name of their dialect. Fingers were pointed. Accusations, obviously, were made and received with scorn. I was tempted to shoot at someone in order to get their attention, and I believe it is a credit to my character that I didn't.

Doing something became urgent, because if I didn't, someone else of my retinue would, and I wasn't sure I wouldn't let them proceed. Abelard was apoplectic, Heinrix had crossed his arms and rested his chin on his thumb, Argenta appeared to wonder if the painkillers gave her hallucinations, and only Pasqal appeared unfazed, but no one really knows what goes on in brains that speak in binharic cant.

'Abelard,' I called. 'Do you have your deck of cards?'

'Yes, lord-captain.' Say what you want about my seneschal, but he's been through so much on the course of his career that nothing surprises him.

'Good. Get it out and deal us all in.' I sat cross-legged on the ornamented marble slab before the slender arch where the dispute still went on, and motioned everyone to sit in a circle. Which they did, after hovering about it for a few moments, probably wondering about my sanity. 'Does everyone here know how to play tarot?'

Argenta did not. Pasqal had a theoretical understanding of the game. Heinrix admitted the had a few notions (which probably meant he could fleece the present company except for Abelard). Chips were replaced by the leaves of a nearby vine, and we got started. Thanks be given to the Emperor, they all appeared to get what I was trying to do: no one so much as looked in the general direction of the eldars, and never has a game of tarot been followed with that much fake concentration from all participants. A few human rebels drifted by, curious, but soon were gone, a vacant expression of enthusiasm on their faces. Some sort of hypnotism, that probably also prevented them from noticing the obvious non-human nature of their leaders.

Abelard had barely finished dealing the second round of cards (he had won the first) when I heard Yrliet exclaim, in Gothic: 'I am a Child of Asuryan, Muaran, not a plaything in the cold hands of fate, which you claim speaks through your mouth! My choice of Path is no worse than yours or any other Aeldari's — and my path calls me to fight our true enemies, not eradicate the mon-keigh! If it comes to it, I will stand with them, for this elantach can see what you are blind to, farseer!' She was seething with rage, her accent stronger than usual.

Argenta made her bet. I raised by half a leaf. I had to elbow Heinrix in the ribs to remind him to place his bet, which he did hurriedly. From the corner of my eye, I could see Yrliet had turned around to point to me, and I like to believe her jaw dropped when she noticed we had relocated ten meters away, on the ground, and were all but oblivious to her. Abelard revealed one of the hidden cards.

Steps, behind me, barely audible such was the natural grace of the eldar, and I heard a tentative: 'Elantach?' I scratched my nose with my cards, evaluating my odds. They were good.

'Elantach?' — and this time Yrliet's tone, instead of bossy, was pleading. I tilted my head and looked at her with raised eyebrows. Her elongated face was more animated than I had ever seen it, torn by a turmoil of emotions each fighting for control.

'Oh, Yrliet? Are you done catching up with your friend?'

'Yes,' she replied, very low. Muaran stood a little way off, gloating as he watched Yrliet humble her tone. Well: to gobshite, gobshite and a half. I rose, dusted off my slacks, and after a few great strides I planted myself in front of him.

Muaran was tall. I looked up, cranking my neck in the doing, and he did remind me of a particularly nasty drill abbott who had later broken his spine falling down the stairs (not my doing). Unluckily for him, I wasn't a scared ten-year old anymore.

'I am the protector of this world,' I spat. Even though a year ago I didn't know it existed. 'It is my duty to defend it — planet, vassals, everything — from its enemies, those from within and from without. If Janus is being threatened by the Archenemy, I will fight to the end. And if that's your goal, too, then we fight on the same side, but before I can do anything about it the rebellions you have been orchestrating need to end.'

The farseer's eyes, a darker shade than Yrliet's, narrowed in disdain. 'The words of a creature whose will is ruled by momentary whims,' he said. 'There is nothing you can do to make me believe in the strength of your convictions.'

By my side, Yrliet laughed. 'You speak of the strength of one's convictions, Muaran? You claim it is your destiny to protect your kin… so then what happened to the one you sent to the mon-keigh ruler before me? His skull is now kept as a trinket in a palace defiled by corruption. Did you see the same fate for me in your visions?'

Oh, sweet, so there was definitely a Chaos cult somewhere, because I didn't think corruption, for Yrliet, was about bribes and tax evasion. Really, finding all my answers in the mouth of two xenos who despised me as a whole was a treat. The longer it went, the more I felt the spare wheel in the story. They reverted again to eldarian (eldarite?) for an exchange of long-winded choice words, and I had enough. I prodded Muaran straight in the chest (about eye-level for me) which, as expected, made him recoil in disgust.

'I want to stop the violence on this planet, once and for all. If you think that fanning the fires of civil war can help, let me tell you: it doesn't.'

'Does the mon-keigh sense its impending, inevitable end, and wills to surrender then?' The eldar was really getting on my nerves, and not just my own: Yrliet's hand hovered over her sidearm, and my retinue had abandoned the tarot game for good, electing instead to spread out, weapons at the ready, in a classical pattern in case things went south.

I graced Muaran with a sneer. 'You're delusional. If this world is in serious danger from the Ruinous Powers, there is no sense in fighting each other.'

'The name of the danger threatening this world is mon-keigh, for those alone have invited Chaos what was once a place fair and pure,' he declaimed in overly thick Gothic, 'and I will see to it that the Lilaethan is purged of those defiling her face! There is only one way for you to prove to me that the mon-keigh truly do care about the well-being of their captured world. Eliminate the corrupt ruler of the mon-keigh sojourning on the Lilaethan, she who has given her soul to She Who Thirsts, and relinquish the governing of this world to me and my kin.'

He was completely gone to the far end. I had known Space Marines who were less obstinate. Hell, he reminded me of Lord Inquisitor Phreon de Tharaal of the Ordo Hereticus — the one who gave stupid orders. I closed my eyes, pinched the bridge of my nose, and breathed out slowly. The sun was shining. The former governor of Janus was a Chaos cultist that, by her heresy, had brought rebellion on her doorstep. The air smelled of flowers, water ran nearby, and I hadn't killed anybody yet. It was a beautiful day on Janus and I was a Rogue Trader.

'We will do things another way,' I said. 'I shall grant my protection to an alliance between xenos and representatives of Humanity. Together, we shall destroy the seeds of Chaos wherever they are on Janus, and then humans and eldari will both flourish on Janus under my patronage.'

The farseer stared at me so intently I could see the cogs turning behind his eyes. He would agree, and then find a way to stage a coup, but he still took his time to answer.

'I am willing to come to an agreement. We will peacefully protect the Lilaethan, which has suffered so many years under Humanity's yoke. We will work for the interests of our race and our world through trusted mon-keighs, while we will remain in the shadows of the forests. This will be safer for everyone.'

Yes, yes, think that I am an idiot, that I won't beware, I thought. I needed peace now, even if the price was more unrest later on, in order to tackle one problem at a time. He declined to shake my hand with a disgusted look — as if it would have given him scabies — and we parted with mutual assurances that our respective words were enough. Well, I could bomb him from orbit, so on my end I was pretty reassured.

When all was said and done, I nodded farewell to Yrliet and gave her back the two spirit stones: as far as I was concerned, she could stay with her kinsfolk. She gave me a long, studying look and, just when I took my first step away from her, she called: 'Wait, elantach.'

'Yes?'

Her voice was rushed. 'Take me with you. To the distant suns. The tale of the Children of Asuryan on the Lilaethan is coming to an end but, somewhere out there, among the cold stars of the cosmos that your kind calls the Expanse, there are others. Deprived of home. Lost. Suffering.' She shut her eyes, and grief twisted her finely sculpted features. 'We can help one another, elantach. You will be my wings, and I your wounding spear. And your voice of reason, should you encounter my kin. And if that is still not enough, I promise you a wondrous reward, elantach: the treasures of my world hidden in the vastness of space in exchange for the rescue of my lost kin. If you remain true to your word and do not go back on our covenant.'

'I have enough treasures of my own.' Why did everyone think I was after credits? After a lifetime on an imperial salary, I found the wealth of House von Valancius, as it stood, already overwhelming. 'And you do not lack boldness, to ask such a favour after deceiving me.'

Perhaps it was the fact that Heinrix was evidently palming his thumb and praying for me to send Yrliet to hell — I am, after all, a contrarian. Perhaps it was Yrliet's evident proficiency with a long-range gun — she would be useful. Perhaps it was my fondness for picking up strays, or a wish to keep a link to xenos who now, for better and for worse, were as close to being my subjects as they would ever admit to be. But, in the end, I said yes.

The hike back to our shuttle would be a long one.