‘You know how he died,’ said Eisenhorn. ‘Throne, you know too well how he died. The cerebral worms, they destroyed his mind. His judgement. His cognitive function. The doctors said, after he died, that it was hard to tell how long they had been there. Possibly for years, impairing his critical faculties. He had served for far longer than he was fit. Long past the point when the ordos would have demanded an inquisitor’s retirement.’

‘What are you saying? That we were recruited by a madman?’

‘What if we were?’ asked Eisenhorn.

‘I think you’ll find the selection screening for ordo service is a little more rigorous than that,’ said Endor.

‘But he saw something in us,’ said Eisenhorn. ‘In his madness, long before the outward signs were obvious… in that collapsing mind of his.’

‘Yeah? Like what?’

‘The spark of something he’d been hunting all his life. The likeness of the Archenemy he had pursued for so long and so far into madness, he could no longer distinguish between light and dark.’

Endor frowned at him.

‘I’m no heretic, you arse,’ he snapped.

‘No,’ said Eisenhorn. ‘At worst, I think you’re a hedonist who never took anything in his life seriously enough. You liked the power of the rosette, the authority, the opportunities. Then, of course, your own madness came upon you.’

He looked at Endor’s hurt expression. He could still see the worms moving in Endor’s eyes.

‘What does that make you, then?’ asked Endor coldly.

‘I think that’s what I’m being asked to consider,’ said Eisenhorn. ‘I thought this was brainwashing, but it’s not. The Torment, the antigenic, it has no agenda. It simply lays a man bare. It reduces him to his base elements so he can see himself. That is how it breaks will.’

‘You’re kind of babbling, you know that?’ said Endor.

‘I am on fire, Titus,’ said Eisenhorn. ‘You can’t see it. Maybe you can with those eyes. I am in agony. I burn to the marrow from head to foot with a blood-froth. It is so intense now, I can scarcely feel it.’

‘Have a drink,’ Endor suggested.

‘No, thank you,’ Eisenhorn replied. ‘Titus, I’ve always hunted for the truth. My whole life. And now I think I may have found it, and it terrifies me. To see what I am. To see what… I may have always been. Gobleka and the Cognitae, all of them, they’re fools. They want to destroy and torture. They want to annihilate. Their motives were simply to hurt me. But there is, I fear, a truth in their philosophy. Gobleka has shown it to me. It’s more than he knew. He dug into me to find something to break me, but he didn’t have the first clue what he was going to find.’

‘What’s that, then?’ asked Endor.