“The Imperium of Man will forfeit any and all cims to any territory they hold within the Jericho Reach. The Achilus Crusade will be disbanded, and Wardenship of this side of the Jericho Maw Warp Gate will be handed over to you.” Octavian spoke without pause, without hesitation, ignoring the squawks of outrage or the disbelieving looks. He only had eyes for Echidna. No one else in this room mattered.

  The woman in question paused, blinking at him owlishly as her false grin faded, turning into something much more genuine. Octavian sensed the humans who’d gathered behind him tremble as the monster wearing the face of a human showed a sliver of her true self. It was cold, calcuting, hungry and paranoid. He did not doubt that the eldritch mind behind that pretty facade dissected everything about him — every word, every twitch of a muscle, every inflexion.

  He had long ago learned to spot the signs of when he was talking to someone who could think faster than humanly possible, and Echidna was a bring arm bell to that gut instinct of his. He wouldn’t have been surprised if she spent an entire year of retive time thinking, pnning, plotting between one heartbeat and the next.

  He saw her face warp with suspicion. She found no sign of falsehood in his words — because there was none to be found — and decided that it meant Octavian was just better at hiding the truth than she was at uncovering it. Troublesome. Yet, understandable. He did try to kill her the st time they met, and he doubted he was even the one who came closest to ending her.

  The paranoia was deserved, and likely the only reason she was still here and not in a shallow grave … aside from her ridiculous powers. Those likely also proved to be of some assistance in keeping her alive.

  The mask snapped back in an instant, a Cheshire grin radiating intense smugness taking its pce across her well-sculpted features. Octavian gnced to the side, hearing a grinding noise he associated with someone grinding their teeth, and the weight of his gaze smmed into Ebongrave before the man could put his foot in his mouth. The Lord Commander paled, and whatever words he was about to spout dying in his throat. He managed to turn the aborted action into a thick gulp.

  If it were possible, Echidna’s smile turned even more smug, that vulpine grin pulling her lips just a bit too wide to be humanly possible. Had anyone else been in her pce, he’d have wiped the expression off their face with the butt of his spear, likely taking their jaw off along with the insufferable grin. As, Echidna was not someone he could ‘scold’ for acting childish and besmirching his honour as a member of the Adeptus Custodes, and thereby, besmirching his Lord’s honour.

  She knew. She was testing, prodding to see how far she could push; she was feeling out Octavian’s boundaries, looking for the line in the sand. He wasn’t sure whether she’d pull back if she found it or jump right over, hoping to start a fight. It had become apparent after the first few exchanges that she was certain of her victory not only over him, but over the entirety of the Imperium’s forces in the Sector — Single-handedly.

  The only things she seemed genuinely worried about were the Shadowkeepers and something else he couldn’t yet figure out, although that tter fear was fading with each passing second. Somehow, talking to Octavian was making her dismiss something she’d been wary of.

  Curious, but not something he could push or investigate.

  “That’s a generous offer,” Echidna said. “I only wonder how honest it is, or how able you are to provide what you promise. The good Lord Commander over there certainly has … objections.”

  Octavian figured Ebongrave wouldn’t survive the meeting. He’d expected it a while ago, calcuted it into his pns. Letting Echidna and the Tau have the head of someone so famously opposed to the Tau would be a nice way to show how genuine his attempts at peace were. The man was, in essence, a peace offering. One that he hoped could earn him some goodwill, if not something better.

  As things stood, he might just get his head popped like an overripe grape, and Echidna would bme him for bringing along such a firebrand, then ask for further compensation. Maybe ownership of both sides of the Warp-Gate, which … Octavian was willing to give, but only as a st resort.

  Constructing something simir to the Iron Halo on the other side to contain Echidna’s expansion into the sector beyond the Gate would be costly beyond belief, and likely require him to lean heavily on his political capital.

  “Making the High Lords decre the Achilus Crusade defunct and over is well within the scope of my abilities,” Octavian said. “Without funding, those who refuse to pull back would be mopped up with ease. I have detailed reports on all important fortifications, their weaknesses and how best to dismantle them.”

  Echidna had alluded not only to having met the Lion, the Lord of the First but also to having made a deal of some kind with him. It was possible that everything Octavian was doing was redundant, but since there existed a reasonably high possibility that it was not, he had to continue with the assumption that it had either been a lie to throw him off, or perhaps a half-truth.

  “And all you’d want in return is my goodwill?” Echidna asked with a raised eyebrow, looking at Octavian much like how one would look at a child they were indulging on a whim.

  Everything she did seemed aimed at shaking him in some way, trying to elicit an emotional response, or something resembling that. She was likely still trying to figure him out, still suspicious of his words and intent. It wasn’t like it was a novel method of negotiation for one who knew themselves to be dealing from a superior position, nor was it anything close to subtle.

  It worked though, if only because she took it to such an outrageous extreme. Even a Custodian of Octavian’s quality wouldn’t be able to stay stoic in the face of a faux-Primarch, or at the cim of one coming back from the dead, and making backroom deals with an enemy of Mankind instead of returning to the Imperium.

  Octavian wasn’t ready to unpack that can of worms. There were hypothetical pns for if Roboute Guilliman betrayed the Emperor and the Custodian Guard would have to protect their Lord against the Lord Regent. The number of various ‘what if’ scenarios they had pnned around could be counted in the thousands.

  But Lion El’Johnson? As much as Guilliman was touted as the Avenging Son, and was among the most famous of his brothers, up there only below Sanguinius, the man was not the best fighter. Among his brothers, he was average at best, a good all-rounder who wouldn’t be caught cking in any part of combat, but who excelled in warfare, not up-close and personal combat. The Lion was among the most dangerous of his brothers, eclipsed only by Sanguinius himself on the Custodes’ danger rating. The man was who the Emperor had sent after the worst monsters humanity had to kill to cim the stars during the Great Crusade.

  Octavian just knew this new bit of information would spark countless new discussions and frenzied pnning.

  But that was not his concern now. He had someone across from him who might be even more of a danger to the Imperium than the Emperor’s eldest son. Someone who could be of even greater help to the Emperor than any of his returned sons.

  “Goodwill,” Octavian said with deliberate slowness. She probably knew just how hard he wanted this negotiation to succeed, but he didn’t want to be too obvious about it. He still had some pride. He was not here to grovel or beg. “Would be a good start. It makes for fertile ground for further cooperation.”

  “Do you want me to heal the Emperor, too?” Echidna asked, her voice casual as if she was asking about the weather. The ensuing silence was interrupted by sharp gasps and confused mutterings from the Imperial and Tau sides, respectively.

  Octavian narrowed his eyes. “Is that what the Lord of the First traded his biological sample for? A promise of healing the Emperor?”

  “Among other things.” Echidna smiled easily, visibly delighting in the fbbergasted expressions on Ebongrave and Veil’s faces, her lips twitching into an amused smirk when she saw Cain nearly fainting. The man had an impressive level of skill for hiding his emotions, but not nearly good enough to hide them from either Octavian or Echidna. “But as I said to him, I will not be fulfilling that promise until someone finds a way to mend his soul and heal his mind. The st thing I want to do is wake the Dark King instead of Neoth, or the Emperor.”

  It was Octavian’s turn to suck in a sharp breath while even the Inquisitor looked confused. Those were things no one outside of the Custodes and the Emperor’s own should have known. Perhaps not even them.

  “Was it an empty promise then?” Octavian asked sharply. Clearly, the Lion was working towards a goal more worthy than any other. Would Echidna jeopardise it? Perhaps that was why he was meant to be here, to curb her possible treachery?

  “No,” the woman said, still smiling, though it was sharp now. “The possibility exists, however faint. I can only heal the body, not the mind or the soul, though I am making attempts to learn, not that it’s going particurly well.”

  “I see,” Octavian said after a moment’s pause, practically an eternity for both him and the woman across from him. “How do you know his mind or soul is injured? The Emperor is perpetual; he’s lived for longer than Mankind knew how to write. Cataclysmic as his battle with Horus had been, his soul should have been more than strong enough to weather the storm.”

  “Well, it likely didn’t help that he kept throwing pieces of it away,” Echidna said. “Did you know he tore out his own humanity and capacity for empathy to gain the resolve to sy Horus? It didn’t help that you stuck his mangled soul into the spiritual torture chair for ten millennia. He’s in rough shape. If we woke him now … well, I think I’d be skipping Gaxies as fast as I could and leave whatever the fuck happens after to be all of your problems. He came damned close to Ascending during his fight with Horus, you know? Civilisation would be thoroughly fucked on the gactic scale by now if the Dark King was truly born that day.”

  She knew too much. Things that should have been impossible to scry or find out, she just spouted like they were common trivia. Things even the Custodian Guard could only specute about, she said as if they were obvious. He would have called her out on pulling facts out of her backside had they not been so ruinously close to the truth. It made no sense, but he shelved that mystery for ter.

  Octavian finally noticed that the other people in the room were looking at the two of them with confused frowns, some moving their lips without any sound coming out and the Inquisitor tapping something … an invisible wall, a force-field?

  He turned a look at Echidna; it was somewhere halfway between questioning and accusatory.

  “I don’t think they are quite ready for those kinds of info-dumps just yet,” she said with a smirk. “And I’d hate it if you’d be forced to kill Amberley and Cain to keep some secrets.”

  The fact that it took Octavian so long to notice spoke of how rattled he was by the revetions and the topic at hand. The Custodes have spent the st 10,000 years mourning, bming themselves for not being good enough to protect their Lord. They all failed the day the Emperor sat on the Golden Throne after his fateful duel with Horus, and that failure haunted them all even to this day. The possibility of making up for it, healing the wounds his Lord suffered … it was beyond words. Octavian had known no greed before this day, but he doubted any man born before him had ever wanted anything as much as he wanted that.

  If he somehow ruined the possibility, if he somehow ruined the Lion’s efforts … he’d never forgive himself, and nor would his brothers ever forgive him. Failure here would be all but treason. If he were that incompetent, death would be preferable.

  He saw a glimmer in the woman’s eye and knew she’d seen through him. She had seen his desperation and tensed up in response, expecting an attack. He made doubly sure he didn’t move a muscle, appearing as non-threatening as it was possible for someone like him.

  She studied him, head tilting slightly, eyes narrowed as that glimmer twisted and warped. Wariness remained, but there was a returning amusement and a mean gleam. Soon, she’d realise he had no backup that could threaten her, and then she’d know she had him cornered.

  A lesser man would have shed out, achieving nothing. Octavian was no lesser man; he was a Custodian Guard, one of the Emperor’s Companions. He had no fear, no doubt. His survival instincts were suppressed, his fight-or-flight response smothered to death. Neither would help him, so he let neither affect him.

  If her growing grin was anything to go by, she was starting to arrive at that conclusion too. Octavian wanted to sigh, knowing by now that she’d be ruthless in her demands, and knowing he’d give her whatever she asked without a question or compint.

  After all, there was no price too great for Hope.

  P3t1