Captain Morthan had vanished a few minutes after their arrival, looking irritated and tired. She hadn’t returned since.

‘It’s been, what, an hour? More?’ asked Bartiman. ‘They could at least have offered us some sort of refreshments, couldn’t they? Its barbaric.’

‘You think they seem barbaric?’ muttered Olt. ‘Better hope no one in this pretty place asks me to take my cloak off. Your God-King don’t like those who worship the competition, does he?’

Romilla shot the tribesman an irritated look but kept her peace. Hendrick was relieved. Since Olt had joined their company a year before, he and Romilla had nearly come to blows over matters of faith several times. To Olt, Sigmar was not the god, just another god, whereas Romilla had almost died for her beliefs more than once. Here in the heart of the regent militant’s palace was not a place for them to revisit that old dispute, however.

‘We’re for the cells after all,’ said Borik, sounding morose.

A door swung open at his words, and Captain Morthan beckoned them from beyond it.

‘Maybe not,’ said Hendrick.

They followed the captain down a long corridor, then into a grand hallway crowded with columns, statues, icons of Sigmar and beautiful religious artworks. At its end, beyond a cluster of palace guards, arched stained glass doors led into a softly lit chamber from which choral singing echoed.

Morthan led the Swords of Sigmar past the glowering guards and on, through the glass doors.

The chamber beyond was roughly one hundred feet square. Its vaulted ceiling rose high above their heads and was illuminated with a beautiful bejewelled frieze of Sigmar sat upon his throne in High Sigmaron, surrounded by clouds, stars, cherubs and Stormcast Eternals.

The singing came from a choir of children arranged in a pulpit partway up one wall. Incense smoke drifted from censers that hung from the four fluted columns that held the ceiling aloft. Beyond them rose three marble steps, atop which the regent militant sat upon a metal throne.

‘That’s sigmarite!’ blurted Eleanora. Hendrick couldn’t imagine what strings the regent would have had to pull to have a throne of that most precious of metals crafted for him, or even who might have had the skill to do so.

The regent militant himself was a large man in every respect. Tall, broad of shoulder and wide of middle, he had a mane of white hair shaved in a line straight down its centre, a large nose and a wide, generous mouth that looked made for shouting or smiling. Hendrick could see he was old, old enough to have liver-spotted skin and more than his fair share of wrinkles, yet as he stood and opened his arms wide in greeting, the regent appeared to have the vitality of a much younger man.