on the floor beside me and slipped it into his pocket before the others could see it. Later, aboard the Spirit of Wysten, he'd handed it back to me privately
'I don't want to touch it again,' he said. 'I don't think I want to see it again.'
I was unhappy at his reaction. His life was devoted to the acquisition of knowledge – it was an actual clinical compulsion in his case – but there he was rejecting a source of secret data, albeit dark, that could be found
almost nowhere else in the galaxy. I thought he alone might appreciate its worth.
'It's the Malus Codicium, isn't it?'
Yes.'
They never found it. On Farness Beta, after Quixos fell, the ordos searched for it and never found it/ That's true/
'Because you took it for yourself and never told them/ 'Yes. It was my decision/
'I see. And that's how you learned to control daemonhosts too, isn't it?'
'Yes/
'I'm disappointed in you, Gregor/
Maxilla was, as ever, the perfect host, and the general spirit did pick up a little once we were in his company. He met us at the Essene's fore starboard airgate, dressed in a chequered sedril gown-coat, a blue silk cravat pinned with a golden star pin and a purple suede calotte wifh a silver tassel. His skin dye was gloss white with black hearts over his eyes, and a fine platinum chain ran between the diamond earring in his left lobe to the sapphire stud in his nose. Behind him, gold-plated servitors waited with salvers of refreshments. He greeted us all, flirting with Medea and making a particular fuss of Crezia and Eleena, two females he had not met before.
"Where to?' was his first question to me.
'Let me use your astropath, and set course for the place we first met/
I sent word, in Glossia, to Fischig, telling him to alter his route to avoid Gudran and meet me at a new rendezvous point. Thorn wishes Hound, at Hound's cradle, by sext/ Maxilla's cadaverous, nameless Navigator performed his hyper-mathematical feats of divination, and set the Essene thundering into warp space as fast as its potent drive could carry it.
As always, I was unable to rest easily while travelling in the hellish netherworld of the warp, so instead I retired with Maxilla to his stateroom. He was a terrible gossip and always relished a few hours catching up whenever we were reunited. Surrounded as he was by a crew that was more servitor than human, he did so crave company.
But I had been looking forward to a private talk. I'd never confided in him particularly before, but now I felt he might be the only man in the Imperium who would give me a fair hearing. And if not fair, then at least one free of harsh judgment. Maxilla was a rogue. He made no excuses about it. His entire life had been devoted to testing the ductile qualities of rules and regulations. I wanted, I suppose, to find out what he thought of me.