‘And what is that?’ Ngiri asked. DeShelle opened her mouth as if to respond, then looked at Chetta.

Chetta flicked her fingers, irritated at the delay. ‘Go ahead. Lady Vass has ably demonstrated her loyalties this evening.’ Which were to the Emperor, not House Brobantis, but Chetta considered that to be unimportant for the moment.

‘I don’t exactly know, your ladyships,’ DeShelle said, after a moment where she was apparently trying to marshal her thoughts into words. ‘It was one man, so far as I could see. He could move… unnaturally, is all I can say. The hallway was dark, but he was in places he should not have been, and not in places that he should. The only explanation that I can muster is that he was a witch.’

The blasted stars take it all! Chetta ground her teeth. Witchcraft was a popular explanation for the mysterious or sinister amongst the laypeople of the Imperium, but DeShelle was bright, well educated and distinctly lacking in superstition. She wouldn’t make such a statement without reasonable evidence.

‘Is the intruder still at large?’ she demanded. They’d reached the main security centre now, and the thick plasteel doors swung open to admit her party.

‘We don’t know for sure,’ DeShelle admitted. ‘We have teams searching the building, but how can we declare an area as clear, when we think he can move as he pleases?’

The Vaults. The thought struck Chetta like a warp storm front. The chambers beneath the palace where the elders of Brobantis, those Navigators too wracked by catastrophic mutation to leave any more, languished in luxurious isolation… and where the disastrous genetic by-blows of failed marriages were examined by the house’s gene-scholars, the strands of their identities and very existence teased apart to understand what went wrong, and why, and how to avoid it in the future. If the intruder reached the Vaults, the house itself could be as good as lost. They were sealed and guarded so tightly that most foes would require a small army to get in, but a single man who could teleport would have little trouble in gaining access. The security measures inside might give him pause, but then again, they might not.

Brobantis’ only hope was that the intruder wouldn’t know of them. Very few of the servants were even aware of their existence. Chetta certainly couldn’t start talking about them in front of an inquisitor.

‘Mama!’

Felicia and Ranovel came running towards her as soon as she got through the door, trailed by a pair of anxious-looking guards who’d clearly been assigned to them. The tightness in Chetta’s chest loosened a touch as her children reached her, slowing before they embraced her so as not to knock her off her feet, for they knew how frail their mother could be. She hugged them one at a time with her left arm, taking some small comfort in their presence and good health.