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Negotiations were their own form of warfare.
The relation between diplomacy and combat was simple: two combatants put their skills to the test, with one side hoping to prevail and advance a position that favored their best interests at the expense of the other party's. And neither was without risk, as Injury - and death - came in blows to the ego. Most importantly, strategy was an integral part of both. Theoretical outcomes, simulations, and data were as necessary in war as they were at the table.
And Roboute Guilliman, the Avenging Son, the Master of Ultramar, the Imperial Regent, had done his proverbial homework on Isha von Valancius and the so-called “von Valancius” doctrine she espoused. Her words and deeds, like seeds born on summer wind, had scattered through the blackness of the Koronus Expanse and were now threatening the holy grounds of Holy Terra.
The source of Imperial law and its defining codes started with Sol, and Sol would be its final and only arbitrator. Therefore, he'd had no choice but to bring the full force of the Ultramarines past the darkness of the Cicatrix Maledictum and restore order where order had been lost. (And if it so happened that he encountered his brother prowling these parts, the lion's mane of his hair as unkempt as Roboute remembered, then all the better. Guilliman would welcome the Lion and his geneseed sons, the Dark Angels, on his crusade.)
In the Empyrean, he'd had plenty of time to think through the outcomes and upon his arrival in the Koronus Expanse, he had found himself pleasantly surprised. Few things were more sublime than accounting for all the permutations. Though the chance had been small (Guilliman would not call it chance, but rather, cold, hard math), there had always been the possibility that this show of force was unnecessary. That he would be met with acquiescence to Imperial law, rather than sullenness or, worse, outright rebellion.
The Ultramarines had not gone unnoticed by the various denizens of the Koronus Expanse, but it had been the woman he'd been searching for that reached him first. The Rogue Trader Isha von Valancius had invited him and advisors of his choosing to her dynasty's homeworld for a proper discussion. And, once there, he and his retinue had been feted and feasted as Imperium heroes, the cheers of the people of Dargonus so loud that not even the thunderous cacophony of a thousand space marine footsteps could be heard.
“The streets,” he had overhead Isha's seneschal say with his keen hearing from many steps away, “aren't made for that sort of weight, Lord Captain!”
“Then we will rebuild them. Again and again, if necessary. Though I would hope,” Isha's lips - which had been painted a deep red that they were almost dried blood brown - had curved into a sly smile, “that we would choose someone to get it right the first time.”
If Dorn had been there, he probably would have clenched his jaw and nodded his head. It was the closest thing to a smile anyone would have gotten from him. But Dorn was gone, so Guilliman allowed himself a quick twitch of his lips in his brother's honor at another’s appreciation for civil engineering. To the credit of whomever had designed the streets, they had held. Even the marble tiles of the palace survived the heavy tread of his power-armored feet.
The same was not true of the furniture, however.
The first chair she had brought him had shattered under his full weight.
At the offer of a second chair, he had swiftly raised a blue-clad hand. “I will stand.” If he felt the need to sit, he would bring his own chair. But he had no need for it.
“Then I will do the same,” Isha had declared, and had removed all of the chairs from the breezy, sun-filled room she'd selected for their first meeting. Her advisors had looked around nervously at the absence of their comfortable, cushioned thrones, but Isha von Valancius had only smiled, a grand table between them and atop which had been layered maps, treatises, warrants, and all things that might prove useful to the discussion.
One day turned into two, then three, then a week. Then two weeks. Then a month, by all standard calendars. To the Primarch, it was a handful of seconds spent in a long life that had seen mostly war, though for the slender neck atop which the Rogue Trader’s clever head rested, he was sure that the month had gone by slowly and with much tension. Even when fighting his much taller brothers - their sizes enhanced thanks to the powers of Chaos - Guilliman’s own corded neck muscles had felt the strain from looking up into their merciless faces.
Advisors came and went. Some days, Isha was attended by one or two, other days, it seemed her entire court was present. They shifted from foot to foot, fabric rustling, bones creaking, mouths whispering, as they watched the delicate game of life and death their liege lady played with him. None of them spoke directly; it was the Rogue Trader whose sole voice dominated their meetings. If she had questions of her court, she called recesses or adjourned them early. But those moments were rare.
And as for himself? He had his remembrancers and scribes, but his own lieutenants he had ordered to scour the nearby planetary systems for remnants of ancient enemies and to uncover any hidden truths about their host.
One by one, their transmissions had returned to him over the days: nothing of note. Xenos engagements were joined by the defense force Isha von Valancius had mustered with the aid of the stranded Navis Imperialis fleets. All worlds pledged fealty to the Emperor. The von Valancius shrine world operated within normal parameters. All tithes were accounted for, according to the Adeptes Arbites.
It was almost too good to be true.
But there was one question yet unanswered. And this Macragge's Finest Son sprung upon his host at the conclusion of their most recent discussion. The sun hung low in the sky, its shape distorted by the distant hive cities that made up Dargonus. Isha was gathering up her notes, her long, pale fingers sifting sinuously through the papers to mark those ones she would review again, so as to be fresh for their morning meeting.
Placing an armored index finger as thick as Isha's wrist onto the stack of papers, he pinned it to the table and looked upon her with the impassivity of a statue. “And what about the presence of the Inquisition?”
There was no coyness in Isha's expression. Just the opposite. The lines in her face deepened, the hollows in her cheek darkened. “The business of the Inquisition is better addressed in private.”
“And are we not in private?”
“You know as well as I that we are not.”
She referred to, of course, the very delicate dance of the nature of rulership. What they were discussing was not secret. That they were meeting was not secret. They were only private because their negotiations were not broadcast so that every plebian in a hive could watch it. Most would not even understand the importance of what was transpiring; could probably not even realize how one wrong word uttered from red lips could seal their doom.
“If you wish to discuss Its business,” Isha added, “then you may follow me to somewhere that is private.”
“You refer to your personal quarters.”
“The very same.”
He raised an eyebrow the color of wheat from Nethamus. “Do not think it is lost on me the stories your spinners might weave of such an event.”
“My dear Lord Guilliman,” Isha was looking at him over the curve of her shoulder, already on her way to depart, “I would never besmirch the honor of the Lord Regent of the Imperium by taking him unwillingly to my personal quarters. Come if you wish to have your questions answered. Otherwise, I will see you tomorrow.”
To his brothers, he voxed his delay. As Primarch, he need offer no explanation to anyone, but as Primarch, his absence would be keenly felt. Better an ounce of precaution to prevent an event that, once unfolded, could not be taken back.
His footsteps shook the paintings affixed to the walls. Rogue Traders and other nobles long dead. Behind them, there was the clatter of splintering wood and tearing canvas.
“I never much liked the decor in this hallway,” Isha said, not even glancing back. “I've meant to change it. This will be a good reason to begin renovations in earnest.”
The nearer they came to the Rogue Trader's suite of rooms, the more the style of the palace began to change. Sea hues, dark wood, and fresh flowers began to dominate the space. There was no salt sea within the vicinity, yet he heard the low crash of waves and could smell the tang of an ocean breeze.
Isha gave a great sigh of relief as she pushed open the doors to her inner sanctum, and held them open long enough for the Primach to pass through before shutting them.
The scan for threats revealed nothing of worth. Antique swords. Flame from candles. Poison - alcohol. He had been burned by the rot of Nurgle. Had his throat slit by the blade of his own brother. This armor he wore, though not quite a resurrection machine, would be more than a match for any such trifles in this parlor. She was no danger to him.
Setting her papers on a small tray on a console table, Isha rounded the room towards a low couch with thick cushions in a muted blue fabric. As she moved, she pulled from her hair a pair of ornate pins, and sent a cascade of auburn curls scented with rose oil dangling down her back. The color paired well with the deep sea-green of her coat-dress, the top buttons of which she opened. White silk and lace lay just below, against a pale and smooth décolletage.
“The wood is sturdy,” she assured, patting the seat cushion next to her. “On Fydea, we call it ironwood. They say the first ships that went to space were made from it.”
That seemed unlikely; organic matter burned in atmospheric reentry. But he had seen stranger things. A woman with white hair and burnished, burning wings. His father, both alive and dead. Gardens made of rot. Trusted brothers driven to their basest, vilest of passions. Perhaps a tree that was made into a starship was not so odd. “It will be your expense to cover.”
“Of course.” Isha patted the seat again. “But humor me. Sit. Please.”
His power armor neither creaked nor groaned as he approached and lowered himself down beside her. Mentally, he had braced for the cracking of wood. Yet, it held. There had not even been a shudder. It was as solid as iron.
Isha von Valancius seemed all too pleased with herself. She had her legs curled up on the seat, knees pointing towards him. She cushioned her pointed chin in the palm of her hand and wore a smile that badly hid her expectation of success. “Comfortable?” she asked.
Macragge's Favorite Son only raised an eyebrow. But, he was not entirely an automaton. He shifted left, then right, as if to assess the seat. “It suffices.”
Like the rumbling of earth, solid and steady, she laughed deep in her chest. “If you need more pillows, do let me know.”
Silence fell. He regarded her with a tactician’s eyes. She had changed the battlefield. These rooms were hers; a home terrain advantage. Of course she would do this. As Princess Royal of Fydea and among its pre-eminent diplomats prior to her abduction by the Inquisition, she would know better than to forgo an advantage.
“Now there is a look I am familiar with,” she said, smiling a saintly smile that revealed the soft pearl-white of her teeth. When he said nothing further, wielding silence like a chainsword, she added, “You are calculating probabilities, are you not?”
“It is my very nature to do just that.”
“And what math are you doing in that handsome head of yours right now, hmm?” She sat a little straighter. “I watched you look around this room when we entered. Are you thinking about the likelihood of me attacking you? Gauche, I think.”
“Very,” he agreed, deep voice solemn. “And would you be surprised to know that there’s a non-zero percent chance of success in injuring me in doing so?” He felt grim satisfaction at the slight widening of her eyes. Statistical improbability did not mean statistical impossibility. “But, no, that is not on my mind right now.”
"Then perhaps,” her green eyes narrowed in consideration, “the cost of taking Dargonus? It won’t make you very popular in the Koronus Expanse if you start dismantling the institutions of the Rogue Traders.”
“Then the Rogue Traders had best give me no reason to bring them to heel under the Emperor’s standard.” He had already mapped the supply chains. Squeezing the Rogue Traders into compliance could be done in a span of months. Even for old wolves like Calligos Winterscale.
Her heart-shaped lips pursed in consideration, “And is that what you want? To ‘bring’ us to heel?”
“If a dynasty is not adhering to the Warrant of Trade, then yes. The Warrant will be revoked.” His gaze was stern, his tone brooked no reproach. “Rogue Traders are not above the Emperor’s Divine Word and His laws. Whatever was done in the dark will be brought to light.”
Isha's tone remained steady, but there was an extra crispness to her words, suggesting offense. “Investigating Rogue Traders does not seem to be worth the time of the Lord Regent of Terra.”
“No, indeed. But,” he paused and let her be embraced by the cold and dispassionate silence, “it can become the purview of the Inquisition.”
“Ahh, so we return to your original question.” The sigh she released smelled of the sweet mint candy she had sucked during the last hour of their negotiations. “If you want to know my secrets, my dear Lord Regent, then I will need your full, undivided attention.”
“You have it.”
“Do I, though?” Her intelligent eyes narrowed. “Even now, your thoughts are far away. When you look at me, you do not see me as the woman I am. You see me as a number in an infinite sea of calculations. You are thinking of tactics and strategy and counters.”
“What ego,” he remarked, tone mild. “Putting yourself above the arithmetic of the Imperium.”
“Ego, Lord Guilliman, is the mandate of the Warrant of Trade. But,” she leaned in, and the perfume of roses and sea salt came with her, “I am not asking for your attention for the sake of my ego. I am asking for your attention because it is polite.”
There was a sharpness in her words that brought to mind his mother. A rebuke to mind his manners in polite company. To speak with careful, methodic pace. To wash his hands before he ate, after having touched so many strange tokens of strategy and war on the consul’s grand map of Ultramar.
“What you ask,” he replied after a long moment of consideration, to show her that he was thinking of her, “is difficult for me.”
“But not impossible.”
A grim smile carved itself on the fullness of his lips. “Of that, I am not so certain.”
“Then allow me to assist.” She raised first her left, then her right hands. A faded knot of silk around her slim wrist disappeared down her arm and into her sleeve. Some token from a lover, perhaps.
She moved to touch him. He saw her trajectory in his mind. She would place her hands upon the neck of his powersuit. But there was no clasp she would find there. No way to remove it. No, that would require a host of loyal attendants. He saved her the disappointment of such a discovery. He captured both her hands in the gentle grasp of one mighty fist. How easy he might break them! Yet, like the delicate, winged creatures that used to roost in the friezes of his adoptive father's home on Macragge, he held them with care. “You cannot.”
“I cannot?” Her head canted to the right. “Because it does not remove, or...?”
His armor was a miracle of the Adeptus Mechanicus. Life saving, though not in the ways he had asked for, he supposed. But only foolish men thought resurrection would be easy. “It does.” They were being honest, and it would be silly to pretend as though he was welded into his suit permanently. “Though not for long. I am uncomfortable without it.” Old wounds, long healed, ached. He could train - had trained - to be free of it from extended periods. No warrior should rely on his shield and armor alone. But there was no date certain as to when he could ever set the ceramite armor aside completely and walk free.
“We are all vulnerable without armor,” Isha said slowly, her dark-lashed eyes looking at him with great intent. “Physical or...” A delicate lift and fall of her slender shoulders, “not.”
“The vulnerability creates a question of trust.”
“And do you?” She freed one hand to gently grasp his gauntlet. A nail scraped against a scratch in the vambrace; even polished and painted, it was as though she instinctively knew where the flaw once was. “Trust me?”
Had she earned his trust? She had been gracious and shrewd and pleasant, yes. But they had known each other for no more than a month. They might share a common cause. He could even call them allies, after a fashion.
But trust?
And, so, he gave her a non-answer. “As much as I trust any other loyal servant of the Imperium.”
She did not like his answer. But she had expected it.
“I shall phrase this another way.” The hand on his gauntlet moved up his arm, the fingers resting on the thick bodysuit in the joint of his elbow. “Perhaps, then, you will give me an honest answer.”
He said nothing at the rebuke.
“Will you submit yourself to me?”
The Primarch understood, then, why the Cult Mechanicus likened things to machinery, for her words caused him such pause that he might as well have had a short-circuit in his cerebral faculties. Echoes of Fulgrim. Of Magnus. Of his brothers submitting to Chaos and asking him the same. “Elaborate.” The word was a command, issued in the tone of voice he’d used to quell rebellions and silence questions on the lips of planetary governors.
Isha clucked her tongue in reproach, not even flinching at his bark. “Do not raise your voice at me, Lord Guilliman.” There was Tarasha Euten again, staring at him with eyes unafraid of the man he had become; undeterred by his stature; and thoroughly unimpressed at the identity of his true father. What sort of woman was Isha, to suffer the wrath of a Primarch - a Son of the Emperor - even momentarily - and not know fear? What trials had she faced in her life that she could bring herself to scold him rather than retreat and cower?
So many questions! He inhaled slowly and deeply through his nose. The force of his exhale ruffled an auburn curl at Isha’s forehead. “You selected an interesting choice of words for your question.”
“I meant nothing nefarious.” Her fingers continued their path upward, and she was forced to shift closer as she dragged them over his bicep, to the pauldron bearing the seal of the Ultramarines. “Merely to offer you a respite. A chance to live in the now and not in the multitude of possibilities you constantly weigh.”
“Elaborate,” he said again, softer. It seemed to him that perhaps her interest was of a prurient nature, and he might have to disabuse her of it. But there was a significant possibility, that, perhaps instead it was -
Isha’s fingers flirted with the collar of his gorget. It rested over the scar Fulgrim had left on his near-immortal person. They traced the line of metal, back and forth, and then, finally, made their move.
His eyes closed at the touch of her fingers. Skin on skin.
“I know a thing or two about loneliness,” Isha said. “And the simple luxury of...” Her fingertip traced from neck, to jaw, to cheek, to throbbing temple, “touch.”
The theoretical was as useful as the actual. That was true for war and for a lot of other things.
But there was no theoretical situation that prepared him for this. Nor any actual situation, either, for when he scoured the long years of his memory, he could recall no such equivalent moment.
Perhaps the last time someone had touched him not as Guilliman the Reborn, Guilliman the Primarch, Guilliman the Emperor’s Thirteenth Son, had been during those last golden years before the Emperor had set foot on his planet and signaled Guilliman's inevitable deification.
Had it been his mother? When he had knelt at her feet while she sat on her comfortable stool, her wrinkled hands upon his head as he told her of his worries of the day? It must have been. Though Isha's touch was... different. He would never call the caress of Isha von Valancius matronly, nor her hands those of an old woman's. Nor would he call her attention impersonal. She did not touch him in the way of an attendant. Hers was a touch of familiarity, though she laid no claim upon him.
He felt himself tensing.
Isha was very close now. Her arm was resting on his. From the shifting of the cushions, he could tell she had moved from sitting to kneeling, using him as a prop to lean against while she tended to him. “Unclench your jaw, Lord Guilliman.”
“That will be,” he replied dryly, “difficult. I have thousands of solar years of grief and anger in those muscles.”
“Are you not supposed to be a master of your own body and mind?”
He had to open his eyes, to see if she was teasing, for her tone was deadpan. And, yes, it did appear that she was, as her eyebrows were lifted in challenge and she smiled as she held his gaze. One thing was certain: the number he had assigned her in the calculus of the universe had changed. And he had no doubt that her clever mind would savor that success, if she ever came to know it.
“Well, my dear Lord Regent?” Her tone invoked challenge. “Have I rendered you speechless?”
“No.” He swallowed. “But your audacity continues to surprise me.”
“Audacity?” Isha feigned offense, her lips forming a delicate “o” of scandal. “In a Rogue Trader?” Her expression returned to that confident, cat’s smile. She was tracing the line of his throat now, where his pulse beat strong. Her eyes, those bright, intelligent green eyes, followed the path of her finger. “One cannot bring the Emperor’s light to dark places without having a little audacity. And a healthy dose of luck, for those times when faith alone is not enough.”
“Faith,” Roboute intoned, “was not something I wrote into the Codex Astartes.” He swallowed. He watched her eyes consider the corded muscles of his neck.
“I have glimpsed only passages from your great work, though I have heard about it in greater detail. Not just a treatise on war, but also on logistics. Chains of command. But less, I have heard, about the soldiers that make up those links. What they are to do when battle is over; when their scars heal.” And now one hand was on his cheek, while the other steadied herself against the center of his ceramite chestplate. It was a point of fragile contact in a universe of unyielding forces. “Perhaps you might write another chapter on just that subject.”
He blinked as her thumb caressed his cheekbone. It was an alien touch, despite it being distinctly human. He wondered at the true extent of her endgame. But he would never know it, unless he acquiesced to her request. To submit. Fighting this advance would fracture the very groundwork of their tentative peace, to turn a negotiation into a battle he was not prepared to wage. “An hour,” he said. “The Imperium can spare you that.”
Could spare him for an hour.
“An hour,” Isha said, moving one leg over his, “can be a lifetime.” Astride his thigh, her dress pooling between them, she took stock of him. Even raised up on her knees, she did not quite come to eye level with him. Still, it was easier for her hands to touch his face, her fingers gliding up the sides of his nose and across his brow as she mapped his features with her fingertips.
He closed his eyes again.
It felt... nice.
The word itself was an understatement, but he again had no real basis for comparison. Her cold fingers on his skin was like a fresh breeze on an agriworld, and her pleasant scent was like the perfumed temples of the Ultramarines. These things both brought him contentment. Isha von Valancius’s touch did the same.
She moved, and he reached up his armored hand to grasp her, to steady her. His eyes opened at the smack of skin on ceramite. Isha had slapped his gauntlet. “I will do the touching,” she said, chin raised with imperious intent. “You will not touch me unless you ask my permission first. Do you understand?”
Again, the Primarch's mind faltered as he struggled to understand. He had been engineered for war, and to a lesser extent statecraft. The nuances of... whatever this was... were eluding him, despite all his best guesses. She did not want his help? She was willing to fall off him? Well, so be it. “If those are your terms,” he said, finding the words, “then I agree.” He did not anticipate needing to touch her further for the remainder of the hour.
The Rogue Trader returned to her ministrations, her fingers exploring the edges of his hairline while her thumbs smoothed the wrinkles in his brow. To his surprise, he found the tension there starting to recede. And as her fingers moved to his temples, massaging in circles with such pressure that he wondered if even his bones had limits, he found the perpetual clench of his jaw had started to lessen.
Despite himself, he leaned into that touch.
The corners of her mouth turned up in a smile. “You see?” she murmured, her voice soft like the gentle humming of the air recirculator. “You are still a man, my lord Primarch. Not a living statue.”
His thoughts strayed to his thousands of years of stasis. To his Father, still on His throne. “Some might say there is no difference.”
Isha shifted her weight, and this time he resisted the urge to help her. He felt her warm breath against his ear. “Oh, but there is a difference. Statues are hard. Unyielding. Dead. But you...” Her hair tickled the side of his jaw. “You are most certainly not dead, Roboute.”
That use of his name was personal. Intimate. Weaponized, he would posit. It struck him with the force of Dorn’s fist. In the face of Isha’s probing test, he was surprisingly defenseless. Struck to silence by this vulnerability he had cloaked himself in. But... if he was honest with himself, he did not mind the way she said his name. It flowed easily from her tongue, like a fine honey.
She drew back and lightly tapped her fingers against the underside of his jaw. “I would see you relax into sleep under the touch of my hands,” she said.
“Do I have your permission to touch you, Lady Isha?” His left eye, then his right, opened.
His question was rewarded with a beatific smile. “Of course, Lord Regent.”
One powerfist was enough to wrap around her waist. And this he did, while the other he placed upon her hip as he set her upon the floor. She did not step back as he stood, forcing him to either brush against her or push the ironwood furniture back to accommodate him. Or, he supposed, she might expect him to lose his balance and trip and fall, though it was unlikely.
He tried his luck with the path of least resistance: the slender Rogue Trader. He stood, pressing his mighty frame up and into her. And she, like a strand of playful seaweed, swayed with him.
He moved to grasp her again, to gently maneuver her, but she was shaking her head and tsking her tongue. He did not have her permission.
The ironwood couch bumped against the back of his legs as he shuffled sideways like some oversized crab to free himself and Isha of their tide-locked bodies.
Since it would be impossible for him to “sleep” in such a way that would meet Isha's terms on the couch, he opted for the floor. Lowering himself down and arranging his bulk on the rug that kept her feet warm against the cool marble, he rested supine and gazed up at the ceiling that she'd painted to reflect gray sea clouds, until auburn hair and creamy skin filled his vision.
Isha knelt at his head, her hands cradling its bulk as she adjusted him this way and that, until he found himself pillowed against the tops of her thighs. It was just as well. The back of his head rested comfortably in the seam between them; and it was perhaps the only thing that could feel any sort of cushioning anyway, for the rest of him - from heels to nape - was sunk into his power armor.
Her fingernails gently scratched at his scalp, and he felt tingling alight all along his body. It might have been pleasant, had their position not reminded him of frescoes on Macragge that showed ancient consuls reclined in the same way, being fed grapes by adoring servants. The thought alone of that power and the time spent wasted in luxury made him begin to sit up.
“Roboute.” His name on Isha's tongue was a brand. “Lay still.”
He inhaled deeply through his nose and settled again. Her palms covered his eyes and applied gentle pressure as she leaned forward, while her fingers drummed on his chin.
“You could grow a beard,” she said by way of gentle observation as her smooth fingertips scratched against the stubble he rid himself of every few days. Some of his brothers seemed incapable of growing hair; others grew too much. In this thing, he found himself exceedingly average. “But I am glad you do not.”
Any attempt he made to open his mouth to retort or respond was met by the press of a thumb against his lips and a breathy, “Shhhhhhh. None of that, thank you.”
The soft presence of her belly pressed into the top of his head as she shifted forward to massage eyes that had seen too much and the muscles that had held them open to witness all the horror this world had to offer. Even the full force of her weight bearing down on what might be a mortal man's most vulnerable point would never be enough to hurt him. And any discomfort at the pressure on his orbital bones soon melted away as those sharp palms began to walk their way across his cheeks and to the sides of his head. She scraped long lines with the base of her palm, skin against skin, from his ear, behind his jaw, and down the side of his neck, then back.
She was from an ocean world, so surely Isha was familiar with the whims of nature: how waves would batter on the rocks. His jaw muscles were the rocks, her hands the waves.
But, then, didn't waves erode rock over time? Did they not scour away pieces of boulder piece by piece to create sediment and beaches?
He had never been to Fydea and he wondered, just for a moment, how blue the waters were.
Somewhere, a muscle in the side of his neck tensed, puckered, and popped like bolter fire. A feeling of hot relief welled up in him, as though Dorn or Russ or or Khan or Vulkan had walked forth to tell him they had returned. That they would help him with their Father's burden. That he would not have to be Administrator, Warmaster, Praetor, Regent, and Leader all on his own.
A soft grunt passed his lips and his eyes fluttered. He was shocked - shamed? - at his surprising lack of restraint. Even filled with the fire of his father burning away the corruption of the Godblight, he had not uttered a cry of pain. He merely had words of stern rebuke for Mortarion and his master. Why should this touch open his throat?
Isha did not stop his audible groan. Instead, she welcomed it, her hands finding those tense pressure points and their sympathetic muscles and digging until she had brought relief that he felt all the way down to the tops of his mighty shoulders.
If he could sink any further into his power armor, he would have done it. But since he lacked the ability to make himself into amorphous goo, he opted to simply be still under her careful touches.
Her fingers curled up the back of his neck, walking and pressing and spidering their way along the very base of his skull. And in a move that again made his body sing with frisson, her fingers stroked and scraped and combed through his hair like he was some great, tamed beast.
Perhaps he should have allowed for more than one hour of this, for he had no doubts that being so unburdened, he would have room to shoulder more problems. Newer problems.
A fleeting thought passed through his mind: what it would be like to have Isha's hands on other parts of his body, to soothe those troubles that only touch could. But it was as much a question of capability as it was trust, for the suit, this prison of ceramite, at times was as much blessing as a curse.
“You are thinking again,” Isha chided. Her fingers were curled in his hair and as she spoke her grip tightened. To a normal man, it might have elicited pain, but the Thirteenth Primarch was not a normal man.
“The technical request,” he said, and Isha did not stop him from speaking, “was to be present in the moment with you. Not to avoid thinking.”
His eyes opened in time to catch her expression of surprise. “You were thinking of me?”
“I was.” Their gazes locked. Fifty-nine minutes of bliss. The only one cheated here was him. “And of the answer to the question you owe me.”
“Oh, my dear Primarch,” Isha whispered. Her hands slithered down the sides of his face, to his neck, and then planted themselves atop his chest again. Like a perfectly aimed blade strike, she descended. “You see, the business of the Inquisition, Roboute,” she said in the softest of tones, her hair creating a curtain between them as she hovered over him, their noses almost touching, “is me...”
“Lord Inquisitor?”
Lord Inquisitor Heinrix van Calox's head snapped up from the dataslate he was holding. His eyes had read and reread the same line many times over these past few minutes. He cleared his throat. “Thank you for your report, Acolyte. You are dismissed.”
His agent bowed and stepped back, disappearing to Emperor knew where aboard Heinrix's flagship. He had little enough time to spare on the matter, because his eyes were wandering back to the same string of words and the terrible thoughts they brought:
Between Rogue Trader von Valancius and the Lord Regent of Terra, an accord has been reached.