In a way, that was why I had come. I didn’t want the Keeler image. I wanted to see it, but I had no desire to own it. It was too dangerous to exist. I had come to see who the offering of it might bring out.

One in particular.

And I was sure I had found her. Karyl, with his sharp, augmetic eyes, had spotted her already. Halanor Kurtecz. She was no inquisitor. Sensor templating and psionic pattern recognition had registered enough positives: disguise, masking, juvenat treatments… They could all hide a lot.

But I was reasonably sure that Halanor Kurtecz was in fact the arch-heretic Lilean Chase.

The Cognitae, the oldest, greatest and most pernicious cult of Chaos in history, was present in the person of their legendary and elusive leader. Only something like the Keeler image of Horus Lupercal had the power to draw her out of hiding.

My long and bloody work was about to be completed.

Half an hour before the start of the sale, I was summoned to see Medonae.

He was in a private chamber. His mouth, all smiles as before, greeted me at the door and led me in.

Medonae the Eater had stopped being a functional human being many years ago. His appetite had got the better of him. His pallid, physical bulk, a pyramid of flesh that weighed over nine tons, was supported in a frame of suspensor pods and lifter bars. He no longer had discernible limbs. Gangs of slaves worked to massage oils into his flesh to keep it supple, a never-ending process, while trains of servitors carried in a ceaseless procession of foodstuffs that were fed to him by hovering cyberdrones high in the framework rigging.

It was hard to make out his actual face: just a small dot near the summit of the mountain of meat.

‘My dear Inquisitor Eisenhorn,’ he said, using his mouth. ‘I wanted a word. I have a feeling that today will not end well. I want your assurance that you will not seek to prosecute me.’

‘You have staged a sale, Medonae,’ I replied. ‘I know of no laws you have broken.’

‘Your assurance, please, sir.’

‘You have it. May I say, Medonae, that if you feel this auction will go badly, you should not have orchestrated it.’

‘I would not have,’ his mouth said, smiling. ‘I worked to arrange a private sale for the image. A private sale. But it was not to be.’

‘What do you mean?’ I asked. My psychic powers detected a slight tremor. Fear, perhaps, or trepidation. The infinitesimal artificial delay between Medonae’s thought process and its delivery by his mouth avatar gave me a window into his mind.

‘I decided an auction would be best,’ his mouth was saying.

I was forced to arrange this sale against my will, his mind was thinking.

I threw myself to the left.