‘Was that what they called it?’ He snorted. ‘How very predictable the methods of oppression become.’ He shook his head and took another spoon of broth. ‘Where was it?’

‘Titan, I think,’ she replied.

‘But here we are somewhere off Uranus, hoping somehow that this bucket of rust doesn’t catch a shell in one of the biggest void engagements in history.’

‘They were taking us somewhere,’ said Mersadie. ‘For whatever reason, they decided to move us. When the invasion started they must have decided–’

‘To kill us all rather than let such a dangerous set of prisoners fall back into the hands of the enemy.’ He laughed. ‘They thought very highly of us all.’

He shook his head and stabbed his spoon at the surface of the grey broth.

‘Why were you a prisoner, Nilus?’ asked Mersadie again, after a moment.

‘Why were any of us? Why are we alive, here and now? Wrong place, wrong time.’ He laughed again, the sound hollow and high. ‘You actually want to know?’

She nodded.

‘I was a Navigator on board a warship,’ he said, and shrugged. ‘Not even the prime Navigator, but that ship was called the Akontia, and it was–’

‘Part of the Sixty-Third Expeditionary Fleet,’ she finished.

He nodded.

‘Indeed. One of the Imperial Army vessels honoured by the Warmaster to accompany him to war… An honour that does not bring kindness to its crew or Navigators when they fall into the hands of the Emperor’s loyal servants.’ He spoke the last words through bared teeth.

‘You… The ship fled to the Solar System?’

‘Hardly,’ he said. ‘The officers mutinied after Isstvan. Half of the military commanders and units on board were diehard Horus loyalists. But the captain and the other half wanted nothing to do with it. They came to us, to the Navigators, saying that they needed our help to get out… and we agreed. My house does not like this war, not any part of it or any side of it. So, when we can remove ourselves from it, we do.’

He paused and shivered. Mersadie found herself wondering what could make a creature that looked out on the immaterium afraid.

‘The next time we translated into the warp we took the ship off course,’ said Nilus eventually. The diehards were supposed to be dealt with then, but… they lived up to that title. It became a battleground inside the ship. Storms came, and… something else, too. By that point we were lost on the tides, rolled by the storm. So, we… I… dumped us back out into reality. And here we were, within touching distance of the light that shines on Terra. They, the ones that found us, killed the rest of the crew I think. Clean sweep, fire and screams…’

‘But they kept you alive,’ said Mersadie.