‘Master, I do not–’

‘We have a duty to perform before we follow our orders. This spear-tip fleet is almost in the core of the system. We have tracked it, and we have bled it, but it will still strike like a bolt of thunder.’ Jubal paused for a second, weighing his decision for a final time. ‘We must take the heart of its strength before then.’

‘Master, five thousand ships… We cannot destroy that many even if we harried them for ten thousand years…’

‘I said we needed to take the heart of its strength, and that is not a ship. It is a man, a warrior like you and me. Great and terrible, and weak and vulnerable, as we all are…’ And then he told the young warrior what would happen.

At the end, Changshi bowed his head, but his face was grim.

‘What weighs on you?’ asked Jubal.

‘You said we had a duty, but how can we have a duty that drives against our orders?’

Jubal laughed and let the sound drain away slowly.

‘Which matters more, to obey the word, or to obey the spirit?’

Changshi held his gaze still.

‘When the words are the Great Khan’s and Primarch Dorn’s, is there a difference?’

‘Always,’ replied Jubal. ‘Words are the weak children of the will and the soul. To see them truly, we must look through them, and ask what spirit moved to make those words.’

He reached down to his belt, drew his knife, tossed it up in the air, caught it by the blade and threw it to Changshi. The young warrior caught it. The blade was the length of a mortal human’s forearm, curved like the moon, polished to a mirror sheen. Opals gleamed on its pommel.

‘Put it in my heart,’ Jubal said.

Changshi looked at him sharply.

Jubal grinned.

‘Or at least try to,’ he said.

Changshi was still for a second and then turned, his weight dropping, the curved blade vanishing behind his body. His eyes had gone distant, fixed on nothing, but seeing everything. Jubal waited, relaxed, his hands at his sides, smile still in place. Changshi nodded to himself as if deciding, then paused and opened his mouth to ask a question.

He snapped forwards.

Wind of truth, but the boy was fast, thought Jubal. The cover for the strike had been good too, combining timing and subtle misdirection. But he was Jubal Khan, and he had faced and bested many of the greatest weapon masters of the age. He half turned his torso, let the blade go past, brought his hand up, clamped Changshi’s knife hand and wrist, and threw him with a sharp twist. The young warrior came to his feet in a blur. Jubal tapped the flat of the knife on Changshi’s head as he rose.

‘Not quite,’ he said.

Changshi closed his eyes, and Jubal could almost hear the silent self-chastisement held behind the warrior’s teeth.