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“You and your sons have served me loyally,” the Emperor of Mankind said, seated regally on his new throne. “I would reward you.”
Jaghatai Khan did not respond immediately. The Emperor had chosen the chamber behind the Eternity Gate as his new seat of power, and in the years since the Siege of Terra had been broken, countless artisans had laboured to cover up the mechanisms and gild the walls, hauling in enough artwork and trinkets to beggar half a subsector. For all the wasteful opulence surrounding them, however, there was little confusion about what the Emperor intended as his reward.
His brother, Magnus, knelt naked at the foot of the Emperor’s throne.
The Khan had not seen him since Horus was named Warmaster. He had seen the shattered ruins of Tizca, had seen others among his brothers defeated and brought low. He had heard Ahzek Ahriman’s choked account of what had become of the Thousand Sons. He had held suspicions. Still, it was different to see the truth in the flesh.
When they parted ways at Ullanor, Magnus had been proud and high-spirited, full of life. Now he huddled on the ground, his shoulders hunched. His thighs were streaked with Russ’s seed, his hair matted with older fluids. His whole body twitched erratically, wracked by spasms, scarred from wounds that had never been dealt in battle where he wasn’t dark with bruises. He stared at the floor and did not raise his head.
As a show of power, it was crude, but then the one who called himself the Khan’s father had never been subtle. To flaunt one of his disobedient sons so, to announce that even a Primarch could be made a helpless pleasure slave — yes, that was typical of the Emperor. The empires the Khan had conquered had put more effort into dressing and perfuming the concubines they sent to appease him, but then, none of those had ever had Magnus’s glory. Perhaps the Emperor thought that sufficient.
His gaze had lingered too long. The Emperor rose, took Magnus by the shoulder, and in one casual movement tossed him forwards to sprawl at the Khan’s feet. When he spoke next, his tone was indulgent, as though bestowing a favour he knew had been long sought-after.
“You may take him for the night, until noon tomorrow. After that, he has more of his sentence to serve.”
His sentence. The crime in the official records was treason, though the timing was suspicious, and Arvida and Ahriman both had sworn that the Thousand Sons were loyal. It mattered little. The Golden Throne lurked at the far end of the chamber like some grotesque, ravenous monster. Lorgar’s muffled screams must have been audible even to the mortals hurrying about its mechanisms.
At his feet, Magnus attempted to push himself up with shaking arms. He wavered, collapsed, and with a visible effort managed to turn his head enough to press his lips to the Khan’s boot. His face was blank, his single eye filled with despair.
“A generous gift,” Jaghatai Khan said, in the politest language Terra used. “I am grateful.”
***
The teleportation shock went through Magnus like a body-wide dislocation.
He’d never minded it before. Even if another had initiated the teleport, he’d been able to feel their intentions, to get a sense of destination and duration from his own foresight. Back then it had even been invigorating to skim the surface of the Immaterium so directly, to see the workings of fate and mind so clearly. Now, with his powers locked down, it was only disorienting.
He pressed his cheek to the scuffed rug overlying the teleport pad they had materialised on — Chogorian-style, worn ragged by the passage of Space Marines — and heard the distant hum of engines in a stable orbit. Shipboard. Father was far away, and he was alone with Jaghatai.
Jaghatai.
He had been close to Jaghatai once. Closer than he had been to any of his brothers save Sanguinius and Perturabo; as close as he had thought he had been to Father. But Father had his home burned and his people slaughtered and Magnus himself raped and enslaved. Perturabo was chained in the bowels of one of Dorn’s fortresses, somewhere far away, and Sanguinius…
Perhaps it was a mercy that he hadn’t been given to Jaghatai before, but now he didn’t know what to expect. If Jaghatai really had wanted him for a long time, then it would take a great deal to satisfy him, but perhaps Magnus would be fortunate. Perhaps, when Jaghatai was done with him, he might be allowed to sleep. He had no way of knowing. The future was a canvas of invisible horrors.
“Magnus.” Jaghatai crouched in front of him, searching his face. Magnus kept his eye obediently downcast, watching the shadow of Jaghatai’s hand reach for him and withdraw. “Can you stand?”
No, Magnus thought, with a flicker of panic. Father had been very clear about this over the last years. Standing was a privilege, and Magnus had lost it. It was foolish to refuse even an implied order, particularly so soon, but standing —
It was a moot point, anyway. He couldn’t stand. The aftershocks from the Throne wouldn’t begin to fade for some time yet, and until then it was all he could do to crawl. He shook his head.
Jaghatai muttered a curse. Magnus would have flinched if his body had been his to command. The whole night still ahead, and his brother was already displeased. Whether Jaghatai was angry or merely disappointed was immaterial; Magnus would be the one to bear the brunt of it.
But the expected blow didn’t come. The grip Jaghatai took on his shoulder was surprisingly lenient, firm but not to the point of bruising, and his brother’s movements were brisk. An armoured arm around his shoulder, another under his legs, and Jaghatai straightened up with Magnus cradled against his chest.
“I’m taking you to my chambers,” he said, striding out of the teleportation chamber. “It’s not far.”
His chambers. Of course. Magnus closed his eye against the shocks wracking through him and did his best to lie obediently still.
A bedchamber. That was something. Magnus didn’t want this, not with Jaghatai who he had once called a friend, but what he wanted hadn’t mattered for a long time. A bedchamber would at least be more comfortable than being bent over a mess table in front of his brother’s astartes, better than being raped on the floor in front of Father’s throne. It was better by far than the Golden Throne feasting on his soul.
His head knocked gently against his brother’s breastplate as Jaghatai walked, but that was fine. It was better — far better — than being thrown over Russ’s shoulder when the Wolf King grew impatient. Like this, Magnus could see the corridor ahead, could breathe as regularly as his erratically-spasming diaphragm was willing. The ship’s serfs who hurried by, stopping dead in their tracks when they saw the two Primarchs — mercifully few of them, and Magnus was grateful for whatever impulse had driven Jaghatai to teleport to a less-trafficked part of the ship — couldn’t so easily see the use he’d been put to. (He should have been past caring. He wasn’t.)
It was better. Except —
His head knocked against Jaghatai’s breastplate again, harder.
— except he couldn’t stop twitching. Worse, he couldn’t stop thrashing.
He knew better than to struggle. He knew better, he wouldn’t fight, but the aftershocks were still spiking through him, making him jerk and kick despite his best efforts to lie still. It felt like they were getting worse — they did that sometimes, receding and then building again after he was dragged off the Throne — but Jaghatai couldn’t know that, and might not care if he did. To him, it must look like Magnus was trying to get away.
Even if Jaghatai harboured some lingering fondness for him, he wouldn’t be able to overlook that. This thrashing would mean punishment. Magnus knew that, and yet he was helpless.
“Easy,” Jaghatai said quietly, adjusting his grip on Magnus’s shoulder after a particularly vicious spasm nearly sent him flailing out of his brother’s arms. His new hold still wasn’t tight enough to bruise, and Magnus squeezed his eye shut, clinging to that lack of cruelty as desperately as he clung to the lack of anger in his brother’s voice. This unaccountable patience couldn’t last — wouldn’t last once they were behind closed doors, he knew that much — but it was the closest thing he could have to a respite.
Jaghatai came to a halt, and stooped to press Magnus’s shoulder against something. He heard a gene-scanner chime — Father had never rescinded his accesses; why would he? — and a door hissed open. He made himself open his eyes as Jaghatai carried him through.
Jaghatai’s chambers were familiar. He had spent time in these rooms, before — before. He knew the shape of the walls, the style of the sparse decorations; he had passed long hours here, debating folklore and the nature of the Warp, drinking wine at the table while Jaghatai laughed, his brother occasionally jumping up to pace while he explained his point. Some things had changed, but —
Someone gasped.
Magnus couldn’t turn his head, but his eye flew to the source of the sound. To the bed, and the figure rising from it.
His face was too thin, and bore new scars. It didn’t matter. Magnus would have known him anywhere. For a moment, it was more than aftershocks that made him struggle to breathe.
“Sire?” Ahzek Ahriman whispered, a book slipping from his hands.
It was fortunate that the Throne had stolen his voice. If it hadn’t, Magnus would have replied.
Ahriman. His First Captain, Magister Templi of the Corvidae, first and most beloved of his sons — Ahriman was alive.
I shared him with my men, Russ’s voice jeered in his memory. My captains took turns with him. He crawled and begged like a born whore, your prized Magister, he swallowed my cock and he wept.
He had stopped bragging, eventually. Magnus had feared the worst then, and wondered if it would truly be worse if Ahriman were dead — but no. No, Russ must have made a gift of him to Jaghatai, and now — now he was here.
He didn’t dare blink as Jaghatai crossed the room in a handful of strides. His brother took the time to lower Magnus to the bed beside Ahriman, even though the fall was not so far, and the mattress was soft, and Magnus — though broken — was a Primarch, and he even touched Magnus’s shoulder lightly before stepping away to remove his armour. Ahriman’s knee bumped his shoulder. Magnus would have to pay attention to Jaghatai while his brother took his pleasure — unless Jaghatai meant to have both of them together? — but while his brother was distracted — he looked back towards his son, and found Ahriman hovering over him.
His son’s face was thin, too thin — but not starved, and if the White Scar duty robes he wore hung too loosely from his shoulders, they were clothes and they were clean; it seemed Jaghatai was a kinder master than Russ. He reached out to Magnus, moving with the stiffness of old injuries but not fresh ones, and stopped a bare moment before touching him, his hands hovering over his chest. There was a life in his face that Magnus knew was gone from his own, and it showed in the emotions flickering through his shadowed eyes as he took in the state of his Primarch — horror, rage, something almost like betrayal.
“What did you do to him?” he whispered, and the barely controlled fury in his voice shattered Magnus’s fragile relief.
He couldn’t talk. The Golden Throne had stolen his voice and Father had taken his powers; it would be hours yet before he could speak, and until then he had no way to communicate with his son except for expressions he could only partially control, no way to tell Ahriman no, don’t provoke him, behave.
Ahriman might not have listened, anyway. The fury coming off him would have crackled the air, before.
“Nothing,” Jaghatai replied grimly. “The Emperor had him powering the Golden Throne.”
Ahriman’s mouth twisted. Even bereft of his sixth sense, Magnus could see his son examining the scratches and the seed Russ had left on him and concluding that Jaghatai was responsible. It wasn’t true, but…
But Jaghatai would be doing the same soon enough. Magnus had developed a keen ear for the stages of power armour being removed, and Jaghatai was almost done disrobing. They had no more time. He tried to plead with his eye for Ahriman to back down — probably failed — did his best to make his body go limp, and reluctantly dragged his gaze away from his son to look at his approaching brother.
It was nothing he hadn’t endured before. His son was here, and well. He could—
But instead of climbing on top of him, Jaghatai picked him up again, gathering Magnus against his bare chest.
“With me,” he told Ahriman, and started for the bathroom.
Oh.
His punishment.
Magnus had been trapped below water before. When he had been — as he once had been — it had been as uneventful as teleportation; it was a trivial matter then to hold his breath or to utilise his third lung. Now, when he was unable to reliably control his breathing, it was terrifying. It wouldn’t kill him — Father would never allow him to die — but —
Jaghatai didn’t dump him into the bathtub. Jaghatai carried him into the shower space and knelt down there, arranging Magnus in his lap until he was straddling Jaghatai’s knees with his chin propped on his brother’s shoulder. The angle was wrong for Jaghatai to slide him down on his cock, but Jaghatai didn’t seem to mind. Jaghatai wasn’t even hard, Magnus realised, and he braced himself for pain as Jaghatai wrapped an arm around his jerking shoulders and reached up for the showerhead with the other.
“I’m sorry for this,” Jaghatai said quietly. “It’s the only way I can hold you in place.”
Magnus couldn’t even begin to parse that. His mind was still spinning in place, scrambling for understanding, when Jaghatai looked up over his shoulder and said, “You will need to clean him.”
And…water.
It was tepid, not too hot, not too cold. It poured over his shoulders and soothed the throbbing bite in the side of his neck. Magnus blinked, and blinked again, and smelled soap, and then Ahriman pressed a rough washcloth to his back.
It hurt to be cleaned. Ahriman’s hands were careful, but Magnus was caked with old sweat and dried blood and he no longer healed as he once had. The soap stung the abrasions littering his skin, and his bruises ached when Ahriman scrubbed over them despite his son’s care. He was still twitching uselessly, and whenever he did his knees slipped on the wet tile and Ahriman’s hands slipped on his back.
But the pain was not so bad. He’d endured far worse. Jaghatai’s arms around him weren’t even tight enough to bruise. His brother didn’t seem too interested in causing pain. Perhaps…perhaps he simply wanted Magnus to be a compliant partner.
And it was Ahriman cleaning him. Jaghatai could have had a servitor do this, but he was allowing his son to do it instead, was allowing Magnus see him and feel him. It was more kindness than anyone had shown him in more years than he cared to think of. Magnus would have to repay him for it later, of course, but he was grateful nonetheless.
When his back was clean, Jaghatai turned him around. The spasms were easing now, and Magnus was more of a dead weight than a thrashing one as Jaghatai reseated him in his lap.
Ahriman has rolled his sleeves up. His arms were scored with wolf bites — his left forearm in particular was a mess of them — but they were old, scarred over, and Magnus couldn’t see any fresher injuries; perhaps Jaghatai really didn’t have a taste for pain. His son’s face was still a mess of helpless fury that made Magnus’s heart race, but he held his tongue as he washed Magnus’s front — even his limp cock, Ahriman’s lips pressed tightly together at the sight of the bruises ringing it — and when his whole body was clean, Jaghatai tilted his head down for Ahriman to run the water through his hair.
It was this that made him finally weep. The water felt pleasant, and Ahriman’s fingers were gentle as they combed the mats and filth from his hair, and it had been so long since Magnus had seen him. He leaned forward to rest his forehead on his son’s shoulder and he wept.
A moment later he realised what he had done, and he froze.
Nobody was kind to him now unless they wanted something. Father sometimes touched him gently, or allowed others to do so, when he wanted Magnus to show how grateful he was (and he was grateful). With how lenient Jaghatai was being, he must want Magnus to be responsive — and he was always meant to focus on the person he had been given to.
And now that Magnus could move, he had reached for Ahriman, not Jaghatai.
His arms were more or less under his control again. Magnus slid one trembling hand down to rest on the outside of Jaghatai’s thigh, then carefully eased it back towards his hip.
Jaghatai caught his hand and squeezed it gently. “Do you feel better?”
His voice was warm. Magnus sagged in relief against the arm still holding him up. Speech was still beyond him, but he nodded clumsily, and Jaghatai squeezed his hand again.
He expected Jaghatai to lift him onto his cock once he was clean. He almost wouldn’t have minded, even; the shower floor was hard and Magnus couldn’t possibly avoid slipping, but that was a small price to pay when his brother had been so patient with him. But Jaghatai helped Ahriman wring out the mass of his hair and then scooped him up yet again, carrying Magnus back into the bedroom.
Magnus struggled to keep his eye open and focused when Jaghatai lowered him to the bed. The weight of his exhaustion was suddenly overwhelming. He could not sleep when the Throne was draining him, and when he was off it, he was rarely permitted to. In the absence of cruelty, the need for rest bore down on him, but he forced himself to stay awake. He needed to thank Jaghatai properly.
He heard Jaghatai moving around the room, and roused when his brother returned to the bed. Jaghatai was dressed in duty robes and carrying his dressing gown; Magnus dutifully did his best to cooperate with being dressed in it, though his confusion was growing by the minute. When the robe was finally tied around his waist, he slumped back against the pillows and did his best to smile up at Jaghatai.
Jaghatai smiled down at him and tugged the blanket up over Magnus’s shoulders. “I have matters to attend to. You should rest.”
Magnus was more confused than he could ever remember being, but Jaghatai turned and walked away, and the door clicked shut behind him. Ahriman climbed under the blanket to curl up against him. His son was solid and alive in his arms, and the bed was soft and warm.
Sleep washed over him like a dark tide, and Magnus let it drag him under.