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Hands of the Emperor

Rob Sanders

The cavernous corridors of the Imperial Palace echoed with the rhythmic clatter of armour plate. The foot knights of the Legio Custodes marched with brazen purpose, the synchronised movement of ceramite and gold an elevated heartbeat in the hallowed halls. It was the sound of tranquil urgency – of vigilance, noble and true.

Shield-Captain Enobar Stentonox was part of that vigilance, and had been for a long time. Today was different, however. Today he felt his own heart beating to the same rhythm as his marching step. Today he had the Palace watch: his first. For twenty-four hours, the security of the Imperial Palace – and by extension, of the Emperor himself – was in Stentonox’s hands.

More than just a wonder crafted in blood and stone, the colossal Palace was many things to many people. To the Custodian Guard it was both security-sanctum and protectorate. To the primarch Rogal Dorn it was a bastion to fortify. To the army of ambassadors and Administratum officials that swarmed its halls, it was the heart of human governance. To the trillions of citizens on Ancient Terra and the worlds beyond, it was the centre of the known galaxy. As Master of the Watch, Stentonox would need to meet the competing demands of such roles, whilst maintaining the inviolate preservation of the Emperor’s person within the Palace’s mighty walls.

The shield-captain’s steps were long with pride, but also heavy – not just with the ceremonial bulk of his plate, but also the crushing burden of his responsibilities. As his rattling stride took him through the Belvedereon Great Hall, he passed a marble statue of the Emperor. Couched in metaphor, it depicted the Emperor at the Declaration of Unity, balancing Terra upon one globed shoulder. For a moment, Stentonox allowed himself the indulgence of equating the honour and encumbrance to his own.

As the Great Hall became the Colonnade Simulacrux, Stentonox’s march fell into step with the party of Custodians making their brisk way up the vaulted and pillar-lined passage. The architectural theme of the Great Hall had spilled out into the colossal space, and many heroes of the Unification Wars – including members of the Emperor’s personal guard – were immortalised in the stone of the columns. One of these giants also strode up the grand colonnade in the flesh, leading the party that Stentonox had joined.

Constantin Valdor.

A loyal Terran, Captain-General of the Legio Custodes and Chief Custodian of the Emperor of Mankind – in that order – he walked the lofty corridors of his master’s fortified palace. Brazier light dappled the golden brilliance of his battleplate, while the red of his robes honoured the blood historically spilled in the effort to safeguard his Emperor. Stentonox suspected that there would be a great deal more blood spilled in the near future.

Flanked by members of his Ares Guard, Valdor was attended upon, at Stentonox’s arrangement, by the Sentinel-Securitas Justinian Arcadius. Like a small continent, the dimensions of the Palace were broad and wide, but the Captain-General’s itinerarium – known only to a few, including the Master of the Watch – now placed Valdor in the Upper Ward, which was where Stentonox had intended to meet him for the dawn report. Like a wall of beaten bronze perpetually at their back, the Custodian Dreadnought Indemnion tramped up the corridor with hydraulic menace. Its aged hull streamed with the aegis honours and ribbon banners of its own decorated service to the Emperor.

Despite the early hour, the Captain-General had a smile for Stentonox, though the shield-captain doubted that Valdor had seen the inside of his personal chambers in several days. ‘Your first Palace watch?’

‘Yes, Captain-General,’ Stentonox confirmed.

‘Then I wish you a quiet duty,’ Valdor said. ‘Though they rarely are.’

‘If you have any advice to offer, Captain-General, then I would be glad of its guidance.’

The Chief Custodian grunted with good humour. ‘Don’t get too attached to your protocols and regulata. Schedules are usually shattered by the second hour. Think of the solemn observance of our responsibilities as written in stone – but freshly inscribed in volcanic rock. Each day brings new challenges that test our routines, fresh eruptions that turn the cold certainty of ritual and order to situations that are fast moving and fluid. You must live the contradiction of being adaptable, and yet unyielding. And know that the word that will fall from your lips most often today will be “no”. Anything else, shield-captain?’

‘No, Chief Custodian.’

‘Then let us proceed with the dawn report.’

As Stentonox took his Captain-General through the matters of the day, with Arcadias filling in the blanks, his mind moved from one weighty consideration to another. The morning alone was an agitated crowd of duties and responsibilities to push through, each vying for his urgent attention. There were defensive vulnerabilities created by the Warmason’s work on the Byzan Wall. One of Valdor’s auric-envoys, Abhorsiax, was returning from Old Aethiopia, where the Chief Custodian had sent him to arbitrate the labour wars that had broken out between the Danakil mineral conglomerates and Hive Abyssin. The recently trialled protectorate rotations operating out of the Dolorite quad-bastions still required refinement. Consuls from the Collegia Titanica were requesting a baptismal Palace walk-by, involving the newly constructed Warlord-class Battle Titan Vigilantia Victrum, which the Chief Custodian was almost certain to reject out of committee. Papers, references and pict-files on the forty or so Palace sub-ambassador appointees still required the Chief Custodian’s seal. A consignment of breaching munitions due for delivery to the Palace armouries had understandably not materialised from Mars, but the consignment’s replacement order had similarly not arrived on schedule from the forge world of Phaeton. The Legio Custodes fleet of orbital monitors were well overdue an inspection. The Grand Provost Marshal of the Adeptus Arbites had requested an audience to discuss the dangers posed by a number of seditionist movements, all speaking against the Emperor, as well as a recent incident involving a troubled citizen firing a shot at one of the Palace’s street-level barbicans, only to be killed in return fire by the Custodian foot knight on duty there. Witchseekers of the Silent Sisterhood were convening to discuss the maintenance of the Palace defences that no one could actually see – the Emperor’s immaterial security measures. Beyond these existing matters of gravity, both Stentonox, as Master of the Watch, and the Chief Custodian had several dozen lesser meetings and consultation sessions – more, now that the shield-captain had completed his watch report.

‘Thank you,’ Valdor said to the shield-captain. ‘Arcadius, is there anything else?’

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First published in Great Britain in 2013 in The Imperial Truth anthology.
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