V2 Chapter 48: I Will Take Good Care of You
They did not have to wait long.
A sound of steps, heavy with mechanical force and utterly unhurried, preceded the great alloy doors of the conference hall being pushed open without ceremony from outside.
Belisarius Cawl's enormous mechanical frame entered, carrying the pressure of something that did not adjust itself to fit its surroundings. He came directly to where Duvette and Heinz stood. The countless mechanical servo-lines beneath his red robes moved with a slow, continuous rhythm.
Cawl did not acknowledge Marshal Blackwood. He fixed his attention on Heinz Werner and moved immediately to his position without any diplomatic preamble.
"I am Archmagos Belisarius Cawl of Mars. Whatever factional disputes exist within the Inquisition, I have come here today for one purpose. I am taking Duvette Erdmann, and the Ash Watchers-Eisenmark 112th Regiment under his command. They will constitute a strategic asset of the Mechanicus."
The sheer presumption of the statement was such that it amounted to a direct insult to the Inquisition's face. Marshal Blackwood's breathing went slightly unsteady. He braced for the Lord Inquisitor to respond with immediate hostility, possibly enough to summon escort warships.
Heinz Werner showed no sign of being offended.
He maintained his pleasant bearing and looked up at Cawl's terrible face with a small, easy nod.
Then he spoke, in a tone of calm that struck everyone in the room as being considerably more unsettling than any outrage would have been.
"I have no objection to the Archmagos's request."
Absolute silence in the conference hall.
Heinz appeared to sense the incomprehension around him. He shook his head slightly and let his gaze move from Cawl to Duvette.
The warmth in that gaze was gone. What replaced it was the precise, fixed intensity of something behind glass in a display case, the sharp fanaticism of a dissecting instrument that had found exactly what it was designed to open.
"I said it before. I did not come here to kill Commissar Duvette." Heinz's voice was clear in the empty hall. "Rather than burning him on a pyre, I want to understand what has actually happened to this man."
He extended one blunt finger and pointed at the cold floor of the conference room.
"If Duvette Erdmann were simply kept in an Inquisitorial interrogation chamber facing polygraph instruments and restraints, he would in all likelihood give me a perfectly constructed standard answer in the voice of an Astra Militarum commissar."
The muscles in Heinz's face shifted very slightly. Something long-suppressed and religious was moving under the surface.
"What I want to see is not answers. I want to see him on the battlefield. In genuine extremity. When his soldiers are on the edge of breaking completely. I want to see what he becomes. I want to know whether, when a mortal mind is pushed entirely into a corner, the presence concealed inside his frame will surface again."
A brief pause.
"If what I observe is tactical instinct, I will record it. If it is contamination, I will cleanse it. If it is a genuine miracle, I will protect it. And if it is something wearing the face of a miracle..."
"I will dig it out myself."
He turned to face the mountain that was Cawl and spread his hands in a gesture of straightforward agreement.
"In this particular regard, Archmagos, I believe our positions are almost entirely aligned. You wish to observe the secret he carries across the coming years. I wish to observe his soul. So. I permit you to take the 112th and Duvette."
Cawl's internal logic arrays had barely begun to register a favourable outcome when Heinz withdrew every trace of warmth from his expression.
His heavyset frame straightened with a sudden and complete change of register. The absolute authority of a Lord-grade Inquisitor came off him without restraint.
"However. I am coming with you."
Heinz looked at everyone in the room with the particular quality of someone delivering a verdict that has already been written.
"Until I have established every secret this man carries, I will not release him. I will not forcibly remove him from the expedition's command. But I will accompany the 112th as a highest-grade Inquisitorial observer. That authority is a sacred duty granted to me directly by the will of the Emperor himself. Unless Warmaster Slaydo and the Inquisition issue a joint negation, no one in this sector has standing to strip me of the right to observe."
Cawl went still. This was not in his original calculation. A Thorian Lord Inquisitor accompanying his operation meant that any research he conducted into the Primaris-related secrets he hoped to investigate through Duvette would carry an extreme risk of exposure.
But Cawl's processing arrays ran the calculation at speed and reached their conclusion in seconds. If he refused this condition, Heinz had full capability to deploy the sector Inquisition's fleet assets and seal the transit routes.
The great metal head gave a single slow inclination.
"Logic assessment: accepted. Your request to accompany is approved."
Both Cawl and Heinz turned to look at Marshal Blackwood.
The Marshal exhaled. He had the particular expression of a man handing over custody of something he was not at all comfortable surrendering.
"Warmaster Slaydo has responded." Blackwood straightened his spine and put as much iron into his voice as the situation would support. "The Warmaster approves Archmagos Cawl's request and approves the material exchange for three heavy armour companies. However, the Warmaster has attached one non-negotiable condition."
He looked directly at Cawl's enormous frame and put each word down with deliberate weight.
"Three years. Maximum. Whatever conclusions your observation and research produce, Duvette Erdmann and the complete order of battle of the 112th Regiment must be returned to the Sabbat Crusade intact and without losses, within three years."
The Marshal's voice took on a coldness that was entirely his own.
"If the 112th is not returned at the end of those three years, Warmaster Slaydo will personally file formal complaints with Terra, the Departmento Munitorum supreme command, the Admiralty, and the High Lords' Council. He will escalate this matter into a full strategic dispute between the Martian Mechanicus, the Inquisition, and the Sabbat Crusade forces. Without hesitation."
Cawl was silent for a moment. For a being who had lived ten thousand years, three years was barely a long clock cycle in a Cogitator Array.
"The contract is accepted. In three years, I will return this blade to you."
Duvette stood to one side and listened as three institutional powers settled an agreement about him in the space of a few minutes, with the casual finality of people trading an object whose preferences were not a relevant consideration.
He allowed himself one very slight raise of an eyebrow.
And his opinion on any of this?
In this cold universe of power, faith, and steel, apparently no one had any particular interest in the views of the individual at the centre of the arrangement. Even if that individual was the commissar the agreement was about.
He was, at this moment, an extremely valuable and dangerous piece of war materiel. The military affairs branch had sold him to the Mechanicus, with a compulsory Inquisitorial quality-assurance inspector attached to the transaction.
No one asked a commissar what he was willing to do. Not even a legendary one.
Marshal Blackwood finished what he had come to do. He turned and walked to Duvette's side. The tiredness in his eyes was not entirely concealed, and neither was the guilt beneath it.
He brought his hand down heavily on Duvette's shoulder. He exhaled once. He did not produce any words of comfort. He turned and walked out of the conference hall with a heavy tread, leaving a room that was no longer under Astra Militarum jurisdiction.
Cawl's frame resumed its low mechanical hum. He bypassed Heinz entirely and issued his orders directly to Duvette.
"Go and notify the 112th immediately. They are to gather all equipment and board a dedicated transport vessel in waves within one hour. They will proceed to the Ark of Omen." The augmetic eye beneath the red robes held a cold light. "As for you, Duvette. You are coming with me first. There are certain critical logical inconsistencies that require a deep review in my private array."
Duvette understood. The real negotiation had not happened yet. The private conversation aboard the Ark of Omen would be what determined the shape of the next three years, and possibly whether he left that ship at all.
He came to attention without expression, and nodded to indicate he understood.
The Lord Inquisitor Heinz Werner, standing to the side, gave a very easy shrug, apparently entirely unconcerned with the logistics of military movements.
"Go about your business." He smiled pleasantly. "I will be following your fleet's transit track closely in my own Inquisitorial black cruiser."
Duvette turned to leave the conference hall and head to the communications room to issue the boarding order.
Heinz Werner moved at the same moment.
As the two of them passed each other in the corridor, the amiable expression on the Lord Inquisitor's face disappeared without leaving a trace.
In a tone pitched so low that only Duvette could hear it, Heinz spoke into his ear.
"Stop hoping in the back of your mind that Juno Karol will come running to explain herself on your behalf, Commissar."
The breath behind those words carried the edge of something controlled but deeply hungry.
"I gave you my word I would not harm you physically, Colonel-Commissar Duvette."
A brief pause.
"At least... until I have established through whatever extremity the coming period requires, whether you are genuinely a sacred instrument of the Emperor's will, or some nameless Warp entity wearing an instrument's face... I give you my word. You will live. I will take very good care of you."