'You spoke to the daemonhost/
'Nooo!'
Then how else would you know its name, because I sure as hell never told you!'
He shrieked out and staggered back to his feet, his face locked in a grimace of pain and shame and fear.
'It was there in the pages!' he cried. 'Close like a whisper in my ear! So soft! It said it could help! It said it would tell me everything I needed if I could only arrange its release!'
'Oh, God-Emperor! Everything you've told me today you learned from that bastard thing Cherubael!'
'It was true!' he screamed. True! Yssarile! Yssarrrrilllle!'
The clock began to chime furiously. A glass pitcher and three tumblers on the bureau shattered. One lens of Aemos's eyeglasses cracked clean across.
He collapsed onto the floor.
I summoned servitors and took him to the sickbay. For safety, we locked him in an isolation bay. His safety, and ours.
The damn clock was still chiming when I went back to his room to burn the papers.
EIGHTEEN!
Meeting at Jeganda.
Misplaced loyalties.
To the last, to die deadi.
Aemos. All that last week of travel, he was my primary concern. I kept a watch on him in the infirmary, but he was generally unresponsive. He woke a few hours after the confrontation, and then said nothing. He refused to eat at first, and remained awake, day and night, staring at the locked door of the isolation chamber.
I dearly wished I hadn't had to lock it.
After a day he took food and drink, but remained silent. We all attempted to get some reaction from him. Both Medea and Maxilla tried for hours at a time.
By the time we reached Jeganda, a day ahead of schedule, our mood was low.
I had never realised before then how central to our team spirit Aemos had been. We all missed him. We all hated what had happened.
I hated myself for allowing it.
Aemos had been careless where I should have been able to trust him, but even so… it was my doing. I hated myself.
And I hated Cherubael, whose baleful influence had been cursing my life for too long. I wondered if I would ever – could ever – be free of it.
I made a resolution. If I lived, if I vanquished Glaw, I would destroy the Malus Codicium and then return to Gudrun and destroy Cherubael. I would take my runestaff and annihilate it, just as I had annihilated its kin Prophaniti on Farness Beta.
* * *
Jeganda system is dominated by a huge, ringed gas giant. In orbit above it is an semi-automated waystation established and maintained by a consortium of trade guilds and Navigator houses as a stop-over and service facility.
The Essene coasted in. There was no sign of any other vessels. Maxilla made contact with the station master and a drone tug led us into one of the wide docking gantries that extended from the rim of the dish-shaped station.