Roboute Guilliman arrived like a plan written in the air. He was strict in purpose but generous in method; the order he carried was never bruised by design. The Palace learned its cadence quickly: consultation, draft, amend; examine logistics until they confess their weakness; leave behind a system that will run without supervision and then supervise it anyway.
Aurelia, expecting stone, found a man. He gave the Princess both space and attention, measuring her not against an ideal but against her need.
She sat beside him once and did not speak. Paper moved; ink dried; a scribe's hand cramped and was replaced. When the quiet had become companionable, she asked about his world.
"Macragge," he said, and something in his face softened. "Mountains that teach patience. Towns that prefer straight streets. A people not easily fooled." Names followed, worn smooth by love and time. "Konor," his father's duty was his inheritance. "Tarasha Euten," his mother—wisdom as discipline, kindness as rule.
The Princess listened with bright eyes. She had grown inside a miracle of stone and oath, and outside it in a place that was not a place at all. Macragge, spoken simply, was a revelation: bread that rose because time and heat agreed, winters that only asked for wood and forethought, a civil war ended by planning and the refusal to hate efficiently.
"Why do you work so much?" she asked at last, not unkindly.
"Because work is how care behaves in public," he said. "And because poor logistics have killed more dreams than enemies have."
He told her of a charter city that learned to keep records the same way it kept its promises; of a levy that replaced debt with duty; of a road cut straighter, not for the glory of the stone‑cutters but so that grain might arrive before the weak grew weaker. He spoke without boast; the numbers were their own argument.
"If I help," she said, "will your quill be less heavy?"
"You do not need to," he answered. "I am able."
"Malcador teaches me," she said, "to carry weights I would rather never carry. If the day comes, I want to know how."
He looked at her then with the same careful appraisal he gave a treaty: test the structure, trust the intent. "If that day comes," he said, "I hope to be there to help you carry it. As you are offering to help me carry this."
They worked. Her small hand laid out correspondence in stacks that made intuitive sense; his large one signed with an economy that respected every stroke. Between notes, he told her how a supply train can be a kindness if it arrives on time and how a census can be a mercy if it is honest. He made room at the edge of the desk for her ledger. She copied figures with the same care she used when arranging stars.
In the margin of one report, she wrote, make corridors echo kindly. He did not comment on the oddity; he only underlined the line that mattered and moved on. Later, he would ask the palace engineers why the acoustics had improved, and they would say nothing had changed, and he would let the answer be what it was.
When a courier brought drafts from the Administratum, he slid one across to her. "Spot the failure," he said. She read, frowned, and tapped a line where a thousand men were presumed to march as if none would fall ill. He nodded once. "Good. Correct numbers are a kind of mercy."
Aurelia had been wary of interrupting him. She discovered instead a brother who rationed himself the way he rationed ink: precisely, leaving enough over for kindness. He was careful because he knew little of her—Princess, Heir to Our Work, not primarch, not ordinary—but caution was not distance. He remembered to look up when she spoke. He remembered to ask, after an hour, "Are you bored?" as if boredom were an avoidable cruelty.
She asked whether everyone could be brought to their best.
"Not brought," he said. "Built. Supported. Expected to rise, and helped when they fall."
"And me?"
"You will be as you choose and as we prepare you to be," he said. "Both are true, and that is not a contradiction."
She smiled. "I would like to make your quill lighter again tomorrow."
"Then tomorrow I will keep a place clear," he said. It sounded like an edict and felt like a promise.
He surprised her once by asking for a story that did not come from a ledger. She told him about a night on a balcony when Terra learned to wear a laurel of faint lights. He said nothing for a long time, then, softly: "Next time, write down how you did it." She promised and did not.
Between their visits, the Palace kept its own counsel. The Lion's footfalls moved like a patrol through leaf‑shadow, each step a hypothesis tested; Guilliman's presence thinned the clutter of rooms, leaving behind a clean hum of purpose. The Custodes adjusted nothing and adjusted everything; the Silent Sisterhood found the spaces between these great selves and made those spaces hospitable.
Aurelia learned her brothers differently. One was a watch kept for love; the other a ledger balanced for mercy. Both, in their ways, made the world less lonely. She took their hands when she could—one gauntleted in doubt, one gloved in purpose—and walked the gardens they did not know how much they needed.
On a rain‑clean morning, she found the Lion practising forms with a blade that caught no light. His cuts measured the air; his guards measured himself. She watched until he finished and then offered a cup of tea that had remembered warmth. He drank without comment, which was his version of thanks. That afternoon, she watched Guilliman turn a pile of contradictions into a policy that even its enemies would obey; when he finished, she left a single crumb of sweetbread on the corner of his desk like a seal. He did not eat it; he preserved it to remind himself that work had borders.
In Malcador's book, where no ink dried: The Lion—paranoia as prudence; social grace approximated by will; he learns by watching and by walking. The Lord of Ultramar—order as charity; remembers to be kind; his logistics are ethics in motion. The girl plants peace in hard soil; sometimes it grows, sometimes it waits for rain. He closed the book gently, mindful that some balances must be kept by hand.