Dan Abnett - First and Only

'So this is punishment?'

'This is punishment,' Blenner agreed.

'I'd better let you get on with it,' the boy said thoughtfully. 'I imagine I'm not even supposed to be talking to you.'

He crossed to the open side of the cloister and looked out. The inner quadrangle of the ancient missionary school was paved with a stone mosaic of the two-headed Imperial eagle. The air was full of thin rain, cast down by the cold wind which whined down the stone colonnades. Above the cloister roofs rose the ornate halls and towers of the ancient building, its carved guttering and gargoyles worn almost featureless by a thousand years of erosion. Beyond the precinct of the Schola stood the skyline of the city itself, the capital of the mighty Cardinal World, Ignatius. Dominating the western horizon was the black bulk of the Ecdesiarch Palace, its slab-like towers over two kilometres tall, their uplink masts stabbing high into the cold, cyan sky.

It seemed a damp, dark, cold place to live. Ibram Gaunt had been stung by its bone-deep chill from the moment he had stepped out of the shuttle which had conveyed him down to the landing fields from the frigate ship that had brought him here. From this cold world, the Ministorum ruled a segment of the galaxy with the iron hand of the Imperial faith. He had been told that it was a great honour for him to be enrolled in a schola progenium on Ignatius. Ibram had been taught to love the Emperor by his father, but somehow this honour didn't feel like much compensation.

Even with his back turned, Ibram knew that the older, thicker-set boy scrubbing the tiles was now staring at him.

'Do you now have a question?' he asked without turning.

'The usual,' the punished boy said. 'How did they die?'

'Who?'

'Your mother, your father. They must be dead. You wouldn't be here in the orphanage if they weren't gone to glory.'

'It's the Schola Progenium, not an orphanage.'

'Whatever. This hallowed establishment is a missionary school. Those who are sent here for education are the offspring of Imperial servants who have given their lives for the Golden Throne.

'So how did they die?'

Ibram Gaunt turned. 'My mother died when I was born. My father was a colonel in the Imperial Guard. He was lost last autumn in an action against the orks on Kentaur.'

Blenner stopped scrubbing and got up to join the other boy. 'Sounds juicy!' he began.

'Juicy?'

'Guard heroics and all that? So what happened?'

Ibram Gaunt turned to regard him and Blenner flinched at the depth of the gaze. 'Why are you so interested? How did your parents die to bring you here?'

Blenner backed off a step. 'My father was a Space Marine. He died killing a thousand daemons on Futhark. You'll have heard of that noble victory, no doubt. My mother, when she knew he was dead, took her own life out of love.'

'I see,' Gaunt said slowly.

'So?' Blenner urged.

'So what?'

'How did he die? Your father?'

'I don't know. They won't tell me.'

Blenner paused. 'Won't tell you?'

'Apparently it's… classified.'

The two boys said nothing for a moment, staring out at the rain which jagged down across the stone eagle.

'Oh. My name's Blenner, Vaynom Blenner,' the older boy said, turning and sticking out a hand.

Gaunt shook it. 'Ibram Gaunt,' he replied. 'Maybe you should get back to your—'

'Scholar Blenner! Are you shirking?' a voice boomed down the cloister. Blenner dived back to his knees, scooping the buckle brush out of the bowl and scrubbing feverishly.

A tall figure in flowing robes strode down the tiles towards them. He came to a halt over Blenner and stood looking down at him. 'Every centimetre, scholar, every tile, every line of junction.'

'Yes, deputy master.'

Deputy Master Flavius turned to face Gaunt. 'You are scholar-elect Gaunt.' It wasn't a question. 'Come with me, boy.'

Ibram Gaunt followed the tall master as he paced away over the tiles. He turned back for a moment. Blenner was looking up, miming a throat-cut with his finger and sticking his tongue out in a choking gag.

Young Ibram Gaunt laughed for the first time in a year.

The High Master's chamber was a cylinder of books, a veritable hive-city of racks lined with shelf after shelf of ancient tomes and data-slates. There was a curious cog trackway that spiralled up the inner walls of the chamber from the floor, a toothed brass mechanism whose purpose utterly baffled Ibram Gaunt.

He stood in the centre of the room for four long minutes until High Master Boniface arrived.

The high master was a powerfully-set man in his fifties – or at least he had been until the loss of his legs, left arm and half of his face. He sailed into the room on a wheeled brass chair that supported a suspension field generated by the three field-buoys built into the chair's framework. His mutilated body moved, inertia-less, in the shimmering globe of power.

'You are Ibram Gaunt?' The voice was harsh, electronic.

'I am, master,' Gaunt said, snapping to attention as his uncle had trained him.

'You are also lucky, boy,' Boniface rasped, his voice curling out of a larynx enhancer. 'The Schola Progenium Prime of Ignatius doesn't take just anyone.'

'I am aware of the honour, High Master. General Dercius made it known to me when he proposed my admission.'

The high master referred to a data-slate held upright in his suspension field, keying the device with his whirring, skeletal, artificial arm. 'Dercius. Commander of the Jantine regiments. Your father's immediate superior. I see. His recommendations for your placement here are on record.'

'Uncle… I mean, General Dercius said you would look after me, now my father has gone.'

Boniface froze, before swinging around to face Gaunt. His harshness had gone suddenly, and there was a look of – was it affection? – in his single eye.

'Of course we will, Ibram,' he said.

Boniface rolled his wheelchair into the side of the room and engaged the lateral cogs with the toothed trackway which spiralled up around the shelves. He turned a small handle and his chair started to lift up along the track, raising him up in widening curves over the boy.

Boniface stopped at the third shelf up and took out a book.

The strength of the Emperor…? Finish it.'

'Is Humanity, and the strength of Humanity is the Emperor. The sermons of Sebastian Thor, volume twenty-three, chapter sixty-two.'

Boniface wound his chair up higher on the spiral and selected another book.

'The meaning of war?'

'Is victory!' Gaunt replied eagerly. 'Lord Militant Gresh, memoirs, chapter nine.'

'How may I ask the Emperor what he owes of me?'

'When all I owe is to the Golden Throne and by duty I will repay,' Gaunt returned. 'The Spheres of Longing by Inquisitor Ravenor, volume… three?'

Boniface wound his chair down to the carpet again and swung round to face Gaunt. Volume two, actually.'

He stared at the boy. Gaunt tried not to shrink from the exposed gristle and tissue of the half-made face.

'Do you have any questions?'

'How did my father die? No one's told me, not even Un— I mean, General Dercius.'

'Why would you want to know, lad?'

'I met a boy in the cloisters. Blenner. He knew the passing of his parents. His father died fighting the Enemy at Futhark, and his mother killed herself for the love of him.'

'Is that what he said?'

Yes, master.'

'Scholar Blenner's family were killed when their world was virus bombed during a Genestealer insurrection. Blenner was off-planet, visiting a relative. An aunt, I believe. His father was an Administratum clerk. Scholar Blenner always has had a fertile imagination.'

'His use of live rounds? In training? The cause of his punishment?'