The warriors were two hundred amid a sea of thousands of other Imperial servants. Navigators, psykers, astropaths, tech-magi, bureaucrats, High Lords or their representatives – although a few hundred of the lesser lords of the Senatorum Imperialis had come in person, hoping for advancement, only three of the High Twelve had dared make the dangerous journey – planetary commanders and other potentates.

Not so long ago, thought Mathieu, this gathering would have represented the very apex of Imperial power.

Not anymore – not when a primarch walked among them and led them. A son of the Emperor had returned. Everyone else was at best an assistant, at worst an impediment, to the efforts of the Imperial Regent, may the Emperor forever bless him.

Faith suffused Mathieu from the crown of his head to the soles of his feet. It held him upright like a scaffold. Without faith, he thought he might collapse, a boneless man, overwhelmed by the glory of the Imperium ranged before him. Such colours there were, and so many great engines of war. So much faith!

He could not imagine himself without faith. It gave him strength, and it gave him purpose. When he was with Roboute Guilliman, that faith burned in him so hot that his skeleton seemed afire like molten iron. Miraculously, the heat did him no harm but instead filled him with power­ful energies. When he felt like that, he would gladly have shot down the entire chattering mass of bureaucrats flocking on the balcony if it would have allowed the Emperor’s son a freer hand.

He hid these feeling from the primarch, of course. His role in the Emperor’s plan meant he had to. There was no shame in that.

Reason was Frater Mathieu’s gift. He was no stranger to introspection. He knew himself better than most men did. In the scholum missionaris, he had questioned his faith, and it had nearly ended his life. When his teachers saw that he questioned it because he marvelled at it, and not because he doubted it, he was let be, though still discouraged from probing too deeply. He had continued to do so, of course, because to Frater Mathieu the one thing better than faith was its affirmation. In the library, he had learnt lessons that the Frateris did not intend to teach. He kept his thinking to himself, but through his youthful explorations he came to the philosophy that shaped his beliefs.

The Emperor had a plan for him. It was obvious. Guilliman had chosen him because of that plan.

He had tested his faith and found it sound. He could not fault it. The Emperor was real. He was a god. He was a force for good in a galaxy of horrors, and Mathieu had pledged himself fully to His service. Faith was real; faith was power.