‘No.’ He spat out the word. Too close. He almost thought of the name. Be careful.

Wyntor was so deep in his fear that he almost stumbled over the temporary barrier that had been erected across the access ramp to the pad. He flinched away and a breath of wind caught his hood, pulling it back to let the long, jet streaks of his hair fall loose. He gripped the cypher key so tightly that it cut into the palm of his hand.

The landing stage was gone.

Blinking, he cast around, momentarily afraid that he had made a mistake and set off on the wrong path along the Eagle’s Highway; but no, he knew for certain that was not so. The griffon statue confirmed it. He was in the right place.

But the flyer pad was not where it should be. How could it be gone? He inched forward, pushing at the barrier, and looked down at the sheer drop where before there had been a marble platform ringed with auto-servicers for transit craft, aeronefs and civilian ornithopters.

Then he understood. The stone had been cut with the harsh mathematics of a laser, with nubs of reinforcing flex-steel protruding here and there where the framework had been forcibly removed by combat engineers. It was another of Dorn’s works, something else the Praetorian had carved off the Palace to repurpose to his military whim.

I should have known that, Wyntor told himself, frustration rising to the fore. Why did I come up here? Why did I think this path would take me away?

A troubling possibility occurred to him. Perhaps he had made Wyntor follow this route from the very start. That would be like him, to build an elaborate scheme just so he could prove a point, rather than merely speak the words and be done with it.

The panic Wyntor had been holding in broke the banks of his self-control, and he felt himself tremble as he turned back.

Blocking his path was a legionary in full battle armour of the Corvus iteration, his war-plate cast in the unadorned slate-grey of the Chosen. A Knight-Errant.

‘Stay where you are,’ said the warrior. He almost sounded uncertain.

‘I won’t go!’ called out the man, jerking backwards in shock. Humans were often surprised at the stealth with which a legionary could move, and this combined with the shock effect of seeing a transhuman at close quarters could terrify even the hardiest of them.

This one did not seem robust by any measure, as he opened his long-fingered hands in a gesture of not-quite-surrender. A datum card dropped to the stonework at his feet and the wind pushed it away, out of reach.

‘That choice is not yours to make,’ said Tylos Rubio, keeping his tone level as he removed his helmet. He hoped that looking the man in the eye might make this easier.