He unclenched his jaw. His hands had formed themselves into tight fists without him noticing. Rage. Good – that kept him on the correct course. That would see him through.

He uncurled his fingers, and let out a long, calming breath.

A soft fanfare announced the intention of Captain Felix to speak with him. A cyber cherub clattered in a clumsy search pattern around the scriptorium on metal wings. Such things were grotesque, techno-alchemy far removed from the purer machinery of his day. The madness of Mars had infected everything. Guilliman let it flap about pathetically, its underpowered ocular senses gridding the scriptorium as it searched for him.

The pallid flesh of the cherub’s torso and arms was sore where steel cables plunged into the skin. The rest of it was mechanical, with metal wings and legs. A bare child’s skull made in perfect silver capped a neck of woven copper.

It wove jerkily under one of the arches into the cloister, and thereafter found him soon enough. It came to a halt and hovered, wings noisily beating.

‘My lord, Guilliman.’ The thing’s skeletal jaw was cast shut, and Felix’s voice crackled out of a brass trumpet stitched into a dead hand. The cherub’s emerald eyes flashed at each word. The sensibilities of this age did not appeal to Guilliman. Hateful art for a hateful time.

‘I am sorry to disturb your work,’ continued Felix, ‘but the priest is here.’

‘He is early,’ said Guilliman.

‘He apologises, my lord – he merely wished to be on time.’ Behind the tinniness imparted by the cherub’s augmitter, Felix’s voice was unnaturally deep: a mark of the Primaris type. ‘He says he is happy to wait, my lord, but I thought it best to inform you.’

‘There are many vices, Felix. Earliness is not one that troubles me,’ said Guilliman. ‘I will see him now.’ Guilliman looked into the eyes of the cherub. ‘I am taking a short respite from the tedium of other men’s ramblings. Send him in. I will be glad of the change that conversation will bring.’

‘Even with a priest?’ It was a rare wry comment from the seneschal. Captain Felix was a serious creature who never made light, as was to be expected from a man who had spent ten thousand years in and out of stasis.

‘Even with a priest,’ said Guilliman.

‘As you wish, my lord.’