"Guard your tongue at all times. Speak not the words of evil. Say not their names. Guard even against the risk that they might form in your mind. They are a beacon, twisting the soul and the mind away from righteousness.

"Do not question the Imperial will. Do not permit yourself even a moment of doubt at the righteousness of his Ecclesiarchy. For doubt is the doorway to sin and sin is the doorway to death and death is the doorway to eternal damnation in the Emperor's holy sight.

"Do not take the risk!"

- Extract from A Father's Advice to His Child, 3rd Edition

----------------------------------------

'Did you know there's a rumour going around about you?' asked Lancet, sotto voce, leaning across from his desk. Dire had revised his opinion of Lancet, recently. He really didn't have a subtle bone in his body, unlike Manchurian. If he cut the future churchman in half, Dire thought he might just find a smaller Manchurian inside him, and a yet smaller one inside that, in ever-decreasing sizes, so impossible was it to be sure where the loyalties of his rotund collaborator lay.

'I'm sure there are many rumours about me,' agreed Dire, not turning his head, lest he attract the attention of the duty Drill Abbot.

They were in the fourth floor common room. It was a circular chamber - well, dodecagonal, to be precise, with each side said to represent a member of the Chamber of High Lords - with cramped desks facing the walls, six to a side. At the centre of the room sat a single Drill Abbot observing them. His name was Grillinger and he was one of Chimaera College's corps of Drill Abbots who had college duties on top of his teaching ones. He taught mathematics and mechanical ritual to the third floor, so it was only in his college duties that Dire and his peers ever saw the man. He was generally thought to be a lazy master who rarely paid much attention to his duties. Even his punitive actions were chosen to serve him the least possible trouble in their execution. As a result, when he was supervising night work, the progenii tended to be a little more relaxed. Right now, if Dire had wanted to risk looking over his shoulder, there was a good chance that Grillinger would be fast asleep in his chair.

'Which particular rumour are you talking about?' Dire asked Lancet, as he put the finishing touches to transcribing Ecclesiarch Pontus III's sermon in answer to a question about the theological justification for the beautification of cathedral interiors. Answering questions exclusively with the words of dead men was considered a requirement. To hold or express an opinion on any legal, theological, procedural or strategic issue that wasn't entirely consistent with the opinions of respected sources at least a century old and preferably older was to risk a heft penance for arrogance.

'They say you're joining the witch hunters,' said Lancet, only just saying the words out loud.

That was interesting, Dire thought. Obviously someone, somewhere had either read or heard that he had applied for the Inquisition but, thinking the idea too ludicrous even for the Schola's feverish rumour mill, had toned it down to something within the realms of technical likelihood. All the same, Dire scoffed, quietly.

'Is it true?' Lancet pressed.

'Of course not,' said Dire. 'Me? Stomping around in armour and a big hat setting people on fire? Are you insane?'

The witch hunters were technically an unofficial branch of the Ecclesiarchy. They had no real leadership or hierarchy and they answered directly to the Ecclesiarch in theory but, in practice, to the cardinals. Their members were mostly drawn from the Frateris Templars, but with their leaders coming mostly from the priesthood or the Missionaria Galaxia. They had a terrifying reputation and had largely supplanted the mythical Inquisition in the minds of most citizens and the plenipotentiary investigators, whose brief was to root out mutants, aliens and - worst of all - the ever-present threat of witches.

"Witch" was a word almost never said out loud in the Schola and, when it was, with enormous care and invariably various gestures of piety to accompany it. It was widely believed that even the word itself could attract their attention. According to the preachers, witches looked like normal citizens, but they wielded foul magicks granted to them by the nebulous "enemy" with which they would murder and corrupt fellow citizens and enrich or otherwise indulge themselves right up to the point at which whatever dreadful pact they made was due payment. Because that was the point at which they would go mad, their bodies twisting into the horrid and alien forms as eldritch forces poured form their fingertips. And that was the point at which you had to pray the witch hunters had turned up to deal with them in time because the only other outcomes were too awful to contemplate.

The very idea of such a thing was so terrifying to the common citizen that it was worth it to see witches found, exposed and burned by the witch hunters of the Ecclesiarchy. Anyone could spot a mutant or an alien, and the hunting of heretics and traitors was the everyday business of the Frateris Templars. But witches...

Dire had given little thought to witches. He'd never seen or heard of one but, now that Lancet mentioned them, he thought he'd quite like to. The idea of being able to shoot lightning from one's hand, or lift heavy weights with the power of the mind, or manipluate the minds of others to do your bidding... it was undeniably appealing. If it appealed to those who were already blessed with strength and charisma, how much more attractive would it be to someone like him.

But part of the narrative was always that these powers were somehow contingent upon some lopsided agreement with the unnamed enemy. Dire had his doubts about how dangerous an enemy could be that one could neither see nor even name, but he saw no advantage to be had in brief, temporal power - however flashy - followed by the sacrifice of one's human nature, shortly before being put to the flame by the witch hunters. It struck him as a life of brief, intense paranoia followed by a potential eternity of torment, which was no deal at all to speak of.

'I am, in any case, in the Administratum continent,' he replied in a low mutter. 'I really don't know what people insist on trying to see what isn't there.'

'There's something going on,' Lancet persisted. 'The Drill Abbots...'

'Still give me the same amount to do everyday as they do you, Lancet,' Dire complained. 'And I would dearly like to get mine finished.'

Barely had the words left just mouth though, than there was a knock at the open common room door and every head instantly turned to see a lanky senior in the red uniform of the Finishing School.

'What?' snapped Grillinger, woken from his doze and grumpy for it.

'I have a message for you, sir,' said the young man. Dire thought he was vaguely familiar before he realized that he was one of last year's sixth floor boys - too lofty for Dire to have ever known his name, but he remembered the face. He nodded his head to the Drill Abbot in such a way as to make it clear that it was not a message for transmission in front of the progenii.

'Oh, fine,' grumbled Grillinger, clambering up from his chair and lumbering to the door. 'You lot stay quiet!'

He stepped out with the Finishing School boy and an immediate hubbub of whispering began as the door clicked shut. From the chatter nearby, Dire learned that the boy's name was Angstrom.

But it didn't last long. The door clicked again and the conversation immediately died as Grillinger came back in, no sign of Angstrom. He paused at the door, casting an eye over the assembly, who all hurriedly turned back to their work as he stomped to his chair. But then, as Dire dipped his will into the inkwell once more, he realized that Grillinger's paces hadn't stopped at the chair and were coming closer.

A hand fell upon his shoulder.

'Dire, isn't it?' asked Grillinger, quietly. 'Top of the Administratum continent?'

'Um, a-am I, sir?' asked Dire.

'Well, it's hardly that notable an achievement, I suppose,' Grillinger conceded. 'But it seems I need a messenger boy, so you'll likely do the job.'

The words were calculated to be cruel, but the tone lacked enthusiasm for the job.

'O-of course, sir,' replied Dire, laying the quill back down again careful not to let it smut his manuscript. 'How m-may I serve?'

'Follow me, boy,' Grillinger muttered, turning back towards the door. 'The rest of you, stop acting like you think I'm a deaf idiot. I can hear you through the blasted door and if I catch so much as a peep out of you, we'll cut you preparation time short and go for a few circuits of the gymnasium. Understood?'

There was a uniform response from the progenii as the door opened, he ushered Dire through, and then closed again.

To Dire's surprise, Angstrom was waiting in the corridor.

'Go with Angstrom,' said the Drill Abbot, curtly. 'Return here when you are done. Even if it takes past midnight, return here. Got it?'

'Y-yes, sir,' Dire confirmed, casting uncertain glances at Angstrom, who leaned casually against the wall just a little way down the corridor. 'Where am I-?'

Grillinger's expression shut the question off mid-flow and Dire turned to Angstrom instead, who simply peeled himself away from the wall and began walking away.

Dire, still smaller than most of his contemporaries, had to stretch his gait to catch up with the senior.

'S-senior Angstrom, where -'

Angstrom lightly cuffed him on the back of his head.

'Do as you're told and speak when spoken to, boy,' snapped Angstrom. 'Every one of us is but the messenger of one even more lofty and you... are that the very bottom of a very, very heavy heap indeed. So know your place.'

'Y-yes, Senior,' relied Dire.

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

It was true, he thought. Even though his stock may have risen, and his plans to make an example of Codzecher had advanced pleasingly, he was still only on the fourth floor. He could ruin everything if he got ahead of himself.

They walked in silence, leaving Chimaera and crossing the estate of the Schola, corridor after corridor, hall after hall. In the gloomy vaults above them, the putti scampered and fluttered, their strange voices ticking and buzzing at each other. Here and there, half-human servitors, rarely seen by the progenii who were responsible for menial tasks in the collegia, moved about on a diversity of limbs and wheels, cleaning and polishing the gilt and varnish, dusting the stone, all in mechanical silence, their heads not so much as twitching at the passage of the two boys.

Eventually they entered a wide thoroughfare Dire had only passed through on a handful of occasions, usually at the Feast of the Emperor's Ascension that marked the passing of one standard year into another.

He froze in place as Angstrom proceeded without him, unsure of whether he should speak up or not. But Angstrom immediately noticed his ceased footsteps and turned back to raise his eyebrows questioning at the junior.

'I-I'm not p-permitted into the antechamber,' he said, then added, 'of the High Chapel.'

The thoroughfare's size was to permit the passage of the Presentation of the Relics, which Dire had only seen once, in his second year in the Schola. It had seemed incomprehensibly large to him, then, that immense, golden palanquin, borne upon the shoulders of two hundred senior progenii, shirtless and symbolically (but also actually) whipped by the Drill Abbots along the massive corridor from the shrine where the relics usually lay and into the High Chapel. They had been introduced to the reliquary at length on the days preceding the ritual, forced to pray at and meditate upon each relic. Bones of saints, a fragment of the robes of Sanguinius, the head of a servitor said to have gazed directly upon the Golden Throne... there were dozens of them, each in its own crystal box. Even a handful of brass casings etched with markings that declared them to have been expended from the boltgun of a space marine.

Since then, Dire hadn't been into the reliquary chapel, nor had his contingent been invited to the Presentation. But with five thousand progenii in the Schola it was only feasible for a fifth of them to attend every year.

Angstrom rolled his eyes.

'You're with me, boy,' he snapped. 'Now get a move on. We are keeping the High Magister waiting.'

Dire clamped down on his instinctive response, having embarrassed himself enough before the senior. The High Magister?

The master of the whole Schola was an ordained priest, not a Drill Abbot, although it was said that he taught in the Terminus and a handful of lessons for sixth floor Ecclesiarchy candidates. He had the status of protopriest - first among equals in the order of priests of this world. It was said he was a candidate for the cardinalcy, but the post of sector Cardinal had been vacant for several decades. It was said that the post had been left vacant out of respect for the unassailable sanctity of the previous incumbent. Dire, though, suspected that either the interregnum served the political interests of some distant cleric, or the politicking around the appointment of the successor was so intense that any decision might lead to open conflict.

Or both.

They emerged from the corridor out into the wide atrium, open to the sky. This night, a thin, stinging drizzle fell relentlessly, acidified by the distant factories and whipped across the mountain tops by the season's prevailing winds. Angstrom advanced confidently across the space and Dire stuck close to his heels, ignoring the tingling of moisture on his pale skin.

In a few minutes they obtained the shelter of the High Chapel's porch. Its imposing main door was shut tight, but a much smaller door opened to Angstrom's knock and he stepped through, followed by Dire.

A human servant, his face hidden deep within his cowl, held the door, wordless, and whilst Dire gave him an uncertain glance, the senior progenius ignored the man entirely, marching deeper into the chapel. Only duty candles were lit: just enough by which to navigate. The rest of the Chapel's intimidating depths, extending to every side and far over their heads, were consumed in blackness. The distant sound of chittering, mechanical wings echoed at the edge of Dire's senses. He did his best to ape Angstrom's air of confident certainty, moving as if his presence in that place, at that time, was both natural and proper, as if there were nowhere else he could possibly be.

Eventually, Dire realised, their path took them right up to the imposing high altar that looked at them suddenly from the darkness. The massive golden statue of Saint Abel Gratian, patron of the whole Gratian Sector, seemed momentarily alive in the faint flickerings of the candles, his contorted face twitching and writhing in the light.

But Angstrom turned to circumnavigate the altar, heading to a small door, concealed behind a curtain to one side of the altar itself. There, at last, he paused, knocked and waited. Dire saw the door click open, apparently off it's own accord, and Angstrom stepped back as it swung open just a few inches.

'Go on then,' he ordered Dire, gesturing at the open portal. 'His Holy Reverence is expecting you. Don't keep him waiting.'

Dire gathered his wits, nodded sharply and pushed the door open wider, stepping across the lip of the doorstep. The room in which he found himself was... modest. At least he supposed it was by the standards of the grandiose spectacles to which he has so far been treated in the night's strange journey. The thick red carpet was luxurious under foot. The walls were lined with bookshelves and cupboards in profusion, rising to a ceiling perhaps ten feet overhead. It was vaulted and plastered, with a design of gold vines on a vibrant blue field. The room was, perhaps, twenty feet deep and, at the far end, a pair of armchairs stood either side of a low table set with a gold jug and matching goblets. One of the armchairs was occupied.

He was old, but in a different way to that of the Drill Abbots. Most of them had received some form of limited rejuvenat, and extensive organ replacements to sustain their lives in service. But the High Magister had a look about him that Dire had only read about: the smooth, sightly peeled look of one who had received the full treatment. It was said to be reserved for only those whose value to the Imperium was irreplaceable. But Dire had always thought that argument at odds with the common refrain that all were but dust and even the mightiest merely a passing glimmer in the eyes of the immortal God Emperor. He suspected that the Cult Mechanicus, the tolerated heretics of Mars, whose gifts controlled the fleets and equipped the armies, and who ultimately controlled the workings of the enigmatic rejuvenat machines, simply charged vast sums for the privilege, placing it beyond the reach of all but the most powerful.

Had the High Magister really had the procedure? Or had he simply had a procedure to make it look as if he had?

'Come, Junior Dire,' said the High Magister, gesturing at the vacant armchair next to him with a hand unmistakably bionic. His voice was mellifluous and soft. 'Sit with me a while. I think we need to have a chat.'

Dire advanced a few paces, then paused and offered a deep bow.

'Yes, very good, young man,' said the High Magister. His head twitched slightly along with his words, which would be almost indiscernible but for his long, hooked nose, the tip of which bobbed up and down hypnotically as he spoke. 'Now get a move on and pour me a drink.'

Dire straightened and approached quicker, his feet feeling strange to be sinking into the plush carpet at every step. His advance stuttered briefly, as a rotund putto crept out from beneath the High Magister's robes and clambered up onto the high back of the armchair, where Dire realised two others of its kind were lounging, their dead and glassy stares fixed upon him.

As instructed, when he reached the table he carefully took up the jug and poured a goblet of what turned out to be a strongly-scented wine. With the liquid a finger's breadth from the top, he stopped and placed the jug back down before passing the goblet carefully to the clergyman. His green priest's robes - the colour of his order - were trimmed with gold to indicate his status as protopriest, and the smooth, slim left hand - the organic one -that he extended to accept them offered goblet was be-ringed with a plethora of gold and gems of no-doubt potent theological significance.

'Sit, child,' said the High Magister, impatiently, and Dire hurried into the embrace of the other chair. It was almost incomprehensibly comfortable to someone whose definition of comfort for years had been the thin foam mattress on his iron bedstead. The cushioned red velvet seat welcomed his gaunt backside and the slight angle of the padded backrest almost embraced him as he rested his hands on the carved, gilt armrests.

'So you are the Goge Dire about whom I have heard so much these last few weeks,' said the High Magister, almost to himself.

Dire saw no prompt in his words for an answer, so he held his peace.

'It has been a long time since a progenius of this Schola went... to the dark orders,' said the High Magister. Even he, it seemed, would avoid saying the word "inquisition" out loud. 'That we know of, anyway.

'The last time, a woman appeared bearing the correct letters and devices, and spoke the correct words, and she simply instructed us on the progenius to release. He wasn't even in the Terminus at the time. He was expected to join the Commissariat. He had no idea who she was.

'Our records say that there was another who, like you, actively invoked their name.'

He sipped his wine.

'He waited and waited. He passed through the Terminus. He went on to the priesthood. As far as I am aware, he died unremarked and unnoticed.

'As a rule, I do not like to draw their attention. Do you know why?'

'No, sir,' said Dire, although he thought he had a good idea.

'Mm,' said the High Magister, taking another sip. 'I think you are lying. Your kind lies easily, especially about what they know and how much. I find it is a good rule of thumb that the agents of the dark orders are always lying and whilst you may not be their agent, I think you are, perhaps, the best candidate for them that I have seen in a century.

'Now you will tell me why. If you say "I don't know" I will reassign you to the Temple Orders on the basis that the dark orders would have no interest in such a dull mind.'

'When they c-come, they p-purge,' said Dire. 'They never s-stop. They never t-turn a blind eye. Their agents ar-are ev-verywhere. If they c-come, people will d-die. Prog-genii. D-rill Abbots and servants. Maybe even p-priests.'

The High Magister peered at him over the rim of his goblet and Dire sensed more was expected of him.

'Or m-maybe they don't,' he admitted. 'M-maybe they just t-take what th-ey want and go. Y-you just d-don't know.'

'Unpredictable,' said the High Magister, gesturing at imaginary shapes in the air before him. 'Capricious. Disorderly. Heterogenous... The dark orders are the Jesters in our intricately constructed tower of cards, young Dire. I say this to you confident that you have already put the pieces together: the Imperium is fragile. The Administratum, given the power to do so, would nail every one of us to the floor, would fix every star in the sky and have the machinery of life grind to a screaming halt, and spend a trillion years making its interminable spreadsheets balance before it allowed us to move so much as a micron.

'Meanwhile, the Ecclesiarchy bursts forth with passion and life! Given our head, we would explode into the galaxy in a torrent of humanity, as our glorious Master on Earth intended, but - ' The High Magister emphasized his paused with the metallic snap of his right hand shutting on air. '- we would leave our core and our souls exposed to forces we could not possibly hope to understand or contain.

'It is the dynamic tension between the two that we fight to sustain and in which humanity's salvation lies.'

Dire sat transfixed. The High Magister's explanation was exactly the conclusion he had reached from all of his studies and observations. It was a reality never directly touched upon by the Drill Abbots but implied in any careful attempt to read between the lines of Imperial history and structure: the ever-present tension between chaos and order.

'The Inquisition,' said the High Magister, finally articulating the word, 'should keep its distance from the affair of mankind. They belong in the outer darkness, at the fringes of our domain, fighting a war that cannot be won but which must never be lost. There, they do the Emperor's work, unfettered by laws of conventions, held to account only to their own judgement and that of their enigmatic peers.

'But you,' he turned his face back to Dire. 'You are flying a copper kite in a thunderstorm! And your actions put my Schola and its people at risk, so I will ask you - ask you, as one loyal Imperial citizen to another - to rescind your application. Pull back your kite. It may be too late, but it cannot be too early.

'It is not too late. Join the Ecclesiarchy contingent or the Administratum one. The posting of your choice will be yours. You aren't a warrior or a fanatic, Dire, every Drill Abbot who has ever taught you has confirmed to me that you are no more than an Imperial citizen seeking to do his duty as well as he can without looking for trouble. You can be comfortable and safe, in a role of honour, for the rest of your career.

'Or you can continue to tug upon the tail of the diretooth and risk the lives of everyone around you.'

Dire stared back at him.

Everything he had always wanted was being offered to him on a plate, as a fourth floor progenius, by the High Magister of the entire Schola. And all he had to do was take it.

How hard could the decision be?