Lord of the Night

The scouts spoke of death and blood and horror. Of whole townships ripped to cinder, populations driven before the clubs of riot-mobs, warriors ground beneath tanktracks and booted feet. Of Preafects with electric shields, charging down fleeing townsfolk, breaking heads and snapping bones.

One spoke of a brothel, half collapsed, as its shrieking women were shot down one by one, soot and blood staining naked flesh, whilst they crawled to escape the flames.

One had watched an alliance between rival mobs — a friendship born in shared peril — only for both to fall to the last man and woman, sliced to slivers when vindictors bottled them in and killed and killed until none remained.

One saw a child throw a stone at the Preafect column, and watched the youth's village burn in retribution.

One saw the kutroaches pick the flesh clean from a rioting mob, gassed in their dozens when they turned on the armoured aggressors torching their homes.

One saw blood running as thick as a stream.

And one... one saw the Preafects regroup and confer, and finally — gore-drenched, exhausted, spent — turn back for the hive above.

The Shadowkin shuddered with relief at this last mercy, embracing one another and praising the God-Emperor, and when the final scout had hurried from the circle of firelight before Sahaal's throne he stepped down from his platform and addressed the crowd. The opportunity was too good to ignore.

'You see?' he told them, claws splayed. 'You see now? You see how the hive is corrupted? How the Preafects themselves are hungry for murder and blood? It is the taint, I tell you!' A shiver raced across the crowd, like a breeze rippling through withered trees. They reach out to crush the innocent, and we alone — we, the faithful, the chosen ones — are spared! We alone, in this place that I led you.

You see now? You see?

And oh, they praised him so hard that it all but cut through the bleakness, the loss, the aggression, and for one fraction of one moment Zso Sahaal remembered what it had been to be adored without fear.

And then he asked the scouts if they brought word of the Slake Collective, and that ancient terror came back into their eyes, and the adoration was buried beneath a dozen layers of fear.

None of them brought news.

The crowd dispersed after that, when long moments of silence had passed, when it was clear finally that the lord's displeasure would not over-boil with violence — and there was hidden relief on their faces as they returned to their homes to hunt and cook.

Silence settled in the swamplands.

Sahaal sat and brooded, and beside him Chianni fidgeted in her chair, casting anguished glimpses in his direction, shivering.

His patience for her unspoken anxiety did not last long.

'You are troubled, sister,' he said, grateful — grudgingly — for the distraction. 'And yet we are spared. Explain.'

She struggled to find the right words, crippled by awe at the closeness of his attention. 'The Preafects, my lord... Their... their anger is so mighty. They must hate you a great deal.'

He sensed the curiosity behind her words and sighed, anticipating yet more ugly lies and false devotions in the Emperor's name. The falsehood that had secured the Shadowkin's loyalty had grown to a yoke around his neck, and his gorge rose at the thought of strengthening it further.

'It has ever been thus,' he said, dismissive. 'The unjust have always despised the righteous. Their loathing for me is no greater than my disgust for them.'

That, at least, was truth. He was the righteous one. Was it not their ''glorious'' Emperor that had betrayed his master so cruelly? Was it not they who worshipped a weakling, a coward, a traitor?

It was not enough to sate Chianni's thirst for answers.

'My lord,' she quailed, fingers curling together. 'How can we hope to... to prevail in the face of such anger?'

'With focus,' he said, and realised as he said it that it was advice for his own sake, as much as hers. 'With conviction in the cause.' He twisted to stare down at her, hearing his master's words echoed across the gulf of time. 'Doubt breeds fear, child. And fear is our weapon, not our flaw.'

'But—'

'We strive towards our goals. We strive with every ounce of our flesh, with every bloody tear, every bead of sweat. And though we may fall in the trying, we are undertaking the work of the righteous!'

Fine words. Stirring words. He felt a glimmer of fire return to his belly.

'And... our goals, my lord? The goals we must strive to meet...' she glanced up at him, eyes brimming with hunger. 'W-what are they?'

'I have told you. To find the Slake Collective.'

'Y-yes lord...' Again a glance — first up then away, a sliver of eye contact — and this time Sahaal could see a dangerous recklessness, a desire to comprehend at any cost, that underpinned her fear. 'W-what I meant was... why?'

He considered killing her, briefly.