Chapter 286: The Banquet
Kian hadn't been back long before the invitation arrived.
The Planetary Governor's new chief steward came in person to General Zeppelin's tower and extended a formal request for Kian's presence at dinner.
Zeppelin gripped his shoulder before he left.
"The whole Hive is calling you a living saint right now. This dinner is the Governor getting ready to grant your formal honours. Remember: military command, title, land grants, take all of it without hesitation, it's yours by right.
But if he offers you a government administrative post, turn it down. No matter how it's framed."
"Why?"
"Because the moment you enter the planetary civil administration, you acquire a vote in the Governor's succession process. If the current Governor dies in office, you become eligible for selection as his replacement.
And Planetary Governor is not a position anyone should want. It looks impressive from the outside. In practice it's a ceremonial target. You spend decades drowning in paperwork, and if you fail to deliver the tithe, the Adeptus Terra burns you alive.
Whereas we, the noble houses beneath the Governor, eat well, drink well, and don't carry the weight of anything we haven't chosen to carry. When the tithe fleet arrives in a bad year, we sacrifice a Governor, install a replacement, cover the shortfall, and carry on. The music keeps playing."
Kian absorbed this. It reminded him of something he'd read once: in the Imperium, almost everyone suffers, the Governor suffers, the common soldiers suffer, the ordinary citizens suffer, but the middle nobility somehow always manage to be comfortable. A simplification, certainly, but not without truth.
He went with the steward.
Zeppelin lent him his antique groundcar for the occasion. Kian settled into the cabin and found a grooming kit in the side compartment, including a small pot of pomade. He worked it through his close-cropped hair and checked the result in the compact mirror.
"Presentable. Very."
"Young master, we've arrived."
The car stopped. The driver opened the door. The Governor's steward led him through the Spire's interior to the dining chamber.
Kian had expected some kind of formal ceremony. Instead the steward walked him directly to a dining table.
A long Western-style table, set with the appropriate cutlery, but configured for a small gathering rather than a state occasion. Two people were already seated.
One he recognised: the Planetary Bishop, the Confessor's protégé and current head of the Ecclesiarchy on this world.
The other was the forty-thousandth-something successor to his lineage, the current Planetary Governor of Secundus-496b.
There was something about the Planetary Governor's seat that transformed whoever occupied it. It didn't matter whether the candidate had been a soldier, an athlete, or a noted beauty before taking the position. Give it twenty years and the metabolism surrendered unconditionally. The Governor currently at the table was the definitive result of this process: a vast, luxuriously upholstered man in a purple-black ceremonial coat that was performing remarkable structural work simply by remaining fastened.
He was already eating. Both hands. No cutlery. The front of his coat was a historical record of every meal he'd eaten in recent memory.
He glanced up at Kian with the unhurried assessment of a man who had not needed to impress anyone in a very long time, and went back to his food.
"Ha. Our great hero, our living saint, graces us with his presence. You're not easy to get to a table, I'll give you that."
The tone had thorns in it.
Kian pulled out his chair, sat down, picked up his cutlery, surveyed the spread, and turned to the nearest attendant.
"Why isn't there any roast suckling pig? I love a good roast pig. The kind you put in whole and it comes out crackling and dripping. Best thing there is."
The Bishop froze.
The attendants froze.
The Governor, mid-handful, froze.
The entire table was composed of steamed dishes. Not a roasted or fried item in sight. The reason for this was not culinary preference: the Governor had a well-documented psychological aversion to open flames, for reasons that anyone familiar with his tenure would understand immediately.
The Governor stared at Kian for a long moment, then started laughing despite himself. A fat finger extended and pointed across the table.
"You've got nerve, I'll say that. All right. Let's talk. You've made yourself the most famous man in this Hive. Half the population thinks you've been personally endorsed by the Emperor. So tell me: what are you actually after? What are you trying to say? What are you trying to dismantle? What's the agenda? Who's behind you?"
Kian set down his fork with perfect composure.
"The agenda is drawing attention to genuine social problems. The message is the expressed needs of ordinary people. What I'm dismantling is the entitlement of those who treat equality as an inconvenience. The motivation is fairness and accountability in this Hive. And behind me is the citizenry of this city."
The Governor's brain visibly stalled. He'd expected deflection or flattery, not a clean rhetorical counter that answered every question in sequence. He sat with it for a moment, then fell back on aggression.
"I think you're a small-time opportunist who found a flashy trick with a glowing sword and is using it to manufacture a reputation for purposes you haven't disclosed."
"The trick? You mean this?"
Kian picked up his dinner knife and flicked his wrist. Golden flame bloomed along the blade.
He picked up his fork. Another flick. Golden flame.
He picked up a glass of high-proof spirits from the table setting, touched the golden flame to it, and drank the burning liquid in one swallow.
The Bishop had gone completely still.
He had studied under the Confessor for years and had developed enough sensitivity to perceive psychic resonance. What was currently filling the dining room was not a trick. The Emperor's presence was radiating off Kian like heat from a furnace, and the Bishop's every instinct was telling him to get on his knees.
He turned to the Governor with an expression of firm theological conviction.
"My lord. I find this quite sacred. I believe you may be mistaken."
The Governor looked at Kian lighting a cigarette with a golden finger-flame and rubbed his face.
"Where exactly is the sacred part?"
Kian exhaled contentedly and extended the glowing finger across the table.
"Here. Emperor's own fire. Can I interest either of you in a light?"
The two men stared at each other.
Several seconds later, all three of them were reclined on the sitting room sofas, smoke rising toward the ceiling.
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