Briefly, it seemed like there was no other topic of conversation in Chimaera except where Dire had gone that night.

His roommates badgered him endlessly about it, but Dire resisted every effort to extract the story from him for several days until, just as Lancet was about to give up, to his amazement, Dire suddenly agreed to tell him, privately and on the absolute understanding that it went no further.

They were in their room, while Manchurian was about his ritual obligations. It had been a long time since anyone had bothered them, interfered with their things or tried to break into their wardrobe. Lancet was on top of the world. Spared the usual casual beatings and abuse - thanks, he was under no illusion, to his closeness with the newly and enigmatically elevated Dire - his results had started to improve and his perception by the Drill Abbots as a bit of a dullard had been challenged. But so far there had been no consequences worse than a brusque check-in with Magister Solomon, Head of Chimaera, checking that he was sure he wanted to stay with the Administratum contingent.

'You will?' he said in astonishment to Dire's sudden pronouncement.

'You have to understand, Lancet: I was sworn to secrecy. It is all terribly serious. I wanted to tell you straight away, but I had hoped they would act by now. I'm worried you'll get hurt if you don't know what's going on, though, so I can't keep it from your any longer. I will be in terrible trouble if the High Magister finds out I've told you.'

'I see,' Lancet replied, taken aback. 'The High Magister. Well, yes. I understand. I won't tell a living soul.'

'There's a...' Dire paused, dramatically, checking that the door was shut fast and glancing around the room as if - against all reason - someone might be hiding there. 'There's a heretic in the college!'

'What? Are you serious?' he retorted.

'Oh, I know what you're thinking,' sighed Dire, waving a hand around. 'Sure there are lots of people who maybe don't quite recite the litanies in the right order. Or the proper intonation. And, OK, that's technically heresy, but I don't mean that.'

He paused for dramatic effect.

'I mean a proper heretic!'

'How d'you know?' Lancet demanded. 'Who is it?'

'People don't see me, or at least they didn't,' explained Dire. 'I heard some things. I saw some things. But it was just... It was like the Drill Abbots say. I just had a feeling that something was off. Not right.

'So I spoke to a Drill Abbot, and then he spoke to a Magister, and...'

'And the High Magister spoke to you?'

'Turns out my instinct was good,' shrugged Dire. 'You know how rumours are. That's probably where that nonsense about me joining the witch hunters came from.'

'Ssshhhh!' hissed Lancet, looking towards the door in a panic. 'You can't just say that sort of thing out loud!'

Dire fought back a smile. Lancet was pretty bright when it came to leaning things by rote. But he was rubbish at leaping to conclusions.

'Well, anyway, that's what it was all about,' said Dire, rolling off the bed and starting to get his nightshirt out for ablutions. 'Now you know.'

'Know?' he complained. 'You haven't told me who the heretic is!'

'And I don't intend to!' retorted Dire. 'What if I'm wrong? Leave it to the authorities. Draw your own conclusions.'

*

Lancet told Manchurian, of course. Manchurian, of course, didn't gossip. Gossip was an anathema to the Emperor's ears in which no true aspirant to the priesthood would indulge.

But he did gather intelligence. And he did share that intelligence with other such aspirants - just so that they could make appropriate choices and decisions about the lectionary and rituals, of course. It was only right that they should be aware of imminent threats and dangers and that the prayers and chants of the acts of worship be adapted accordingly, after all.

Such intelligence, though, did not disseminate itself evenly and soon there were a hundred stories. There was a mutant at large. One of the Drill Abbots was a witch. There was a heretic in one of the other colleges and he'd already been taken away. There was a heretic in Chimaera and the Drill Abbots were just waiting for the right moment to strike.

But whatever version of the story passed through someone's hands at any given time, one factor was almost always consistent.

Somehow, Dire was involved.

It was interesting to him that he never heard anyone suggest that he was the heretic. Surely, he thought, it must have been said or, at least, thought by someone. It wasn't as if he was universally known, as infamous as he had become recently. And it would, obviously, be true enough. But somehow, into whatever shape of form the speaker moulded the narrative, if Dire featured at all it was as a witness.

Dire knows who it is.

Dire saw something.

Dire has been made an investigator.

Dire was attacked.

It was more than enough to make sure that everyone cut him a wide berth, whatever they believed. And even the Drill Abbots - who must, surely, have heard the rumours as well, even if they knew the truth from the High Magister's own lips - seemed to go out of their way to avoid him, not picking him to answer questions or to perform some physical task. He still attended all of his lessons, of course, and continued to struggle his way around the gymnasium. But without every effort being taken to belittle and humiliate him he even found that he was starting to enjoy the more physical side of life in the Schola.

While all of that was amusing and pleasant, though, Dire couldn't afford to sit on his laurels if he wanted his plan to work out as intended.

'I need to move,' said Dire suddenly, standing up in his seat. He looked around himself, where other progenii were still bustling their way into places behind the long desks of the classroom. 'I can't stay here.'

Lancet and Manchurian watched him, bemused, as he squeezed out of the end of their row and scampered up the steps to a seat in the back, while another progenius, who couldn't believe his luck, took the vacant seat. No one wanted to sit at the back. It was dark and cold, and the air became dank and musty. Plus, the Drill Abbots tended to think that the back of the classroom was where the least reputable progenii congregated and, as such, would often target them - with questions, challenges and, sometimes, thrown projectiles as the whim took them.

But the class continued without further outbursts and, afterwards, the classroom emptied as the students scattered to their houses. Lancet and Manchurian waited for Dire as he clambered back down from his lofty seat, but Dire made no comment on his strange behaviour as they wandered back to Chimaera.

Then just as suddenly, Dire stopped, turned around and began walking back the way he had come.

'What the -?' moaned Lancet, watching him go. 'We only get a quarter of an hour, Dire! Where are you going?'

Dire didn't look back. Two dozen paces away, he stopped and turned around, waited a few seconds and then began making his way back to where Manchurian and Lancet were watching him as if he had grown a second nose.

The behaviour continued for a couple of days, with Dire suddenly bolting from situations, taking long routes to get to places and positioning himself strangely in several of their classes, before Manchurian snapped first.

'What in all the hells of torment is wrong with you, Dire?' he demanded. 'No more evasiveness. There's enough talk about there being a heretic in our ranks without yet more mysteries.'

'Can't you smell it?' asked Dire, looking up from his seat. They were in the common room before Last Chime. Until very recently, it had been too dangerous to linger in the shared space after the Drill Abbots retired, and Dire, Lancet and Manchurian had been forced to retreat to their cold cell. But lately it had been easier to make their own space. 'Every time -'

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

He stopped and looked up at a group of progenii entering the common room, brawling good-naturedly as they did so and his face fell.

'Time to go,' he announced, snapping his book shut, standing and making an instant beeline for the door, evading the newcomers.

Manchurian and Lancet stared after him, before their eyes turned suspiciously to the group that had entered.

*

At first, all Codzecher noticed was that Dire had stopped dogging his every move, and he was relieved to have the burden of the strange, pale boy's unwanted presence lifted. Then he started to notice that it wasn't just that Dire wasn't excessively present, but obtrusively absent. Whenever he entered a room, Dire would leave if he could or - if he couldn't - would move himself as far from Codzecher as he could manage. Codzecher had avoided menacing the weird little sprat since his strange confessional, unnerved and unsettled by the disordering of his understanding of the world and how it worked. So why Dire was avoiding him was a mystery - but only briefly because, after just a few days of having noticed this, he realized that it wasn't just Dire.

He would enter a room and several people would leave immediately. He would sit in a class and there was a subtle shifting away from him. And soon even his closest allies were nowhere to be seen. Even his room-mates stayed out of the room if he was in it, until Last Chime.

And no one would admit that it was happening.

'It's just... I don't want to be here right now,' said one, shrugging off his grip, not meeting his eyes.

'There's a weird smell,' said another. 'I'd rather not be here.'

Then things reached a tipping point.

Frustrated and angry, Codzecher had been lurking in the Chimaera lobby in the evening, avoiding going back to his room only for his room-mates to immediately leave. He grabbed a third floor as he entered, yanking him by the arm so he dropped his satchel and back-handing him in the face so the boy tumbled into a corner. He barely thought about it. He didn't know the boy particularly. He couldn't recall his name. He was just a helpful target on which to work out some of his confusion and feel for a moment like the natural order was still in place. And he lifted a foot to stamp on the boy's fingers as he sprawled, when a voice called out:

'What in all that's holy is that smell?'

He turned to see a lanky, chisel-faced sixth floor boy descending the staircase. Codzecher knew him as a Commissariat candidate called Poldue - usually an enthusiastic encourager of anything designed to keep the lower orders in their place. Codzecher smiled at him.

'I think it's this little creep I caught sneaking in through the lobby, Senior Poldue,' he replied, gesturing at the third floor, staring angrily up at his attacker as he gathered his tumbled books. 'They all smell, don't they, on the third floor?'

But Poldue's eyes were fixed on Codzecher, not sparing so much as a glance for the boy on the ground. And two other sixth floor boys were descending the same staircase.

'No, Codzecher,' said Poldue, advancing, his nose raised to sniff at the air. 'No, I think it's not him. I think it's actually you.'

'Me?' Codzecher retorted in disbelief. 'I don't smell!'

'You do, Codzecher,' said one of the other six floors, close on Poldue's heels. 'You stink.'

'You stink of a lack of faith,' said the third.

'You stink of a lack of honour,' said Poldue. 'You are a stinking stain upon Chimaera.'

Behind him, the third floor stuffed his books into his satchel, made a tactical analysis of the room and fled for the staircase. But even as Codzecher clocked his erstwhile prey escaping, he also saw more of the Chimaera progenii coming down the stairs: sixth floors, fifth floors, his own fourth floor peers...

'What's going on?' he asked, a querulous tone creeping into his voice.

'We don't want you here, stinking up our college with your filth,' said one of the fifth floors, as the small crowd gathered at Poldue's shoulder.

'Wh-what?' gaped Codzecher, shocked and confused how things had so suddenly turned against him.

'We need him out,' said someone near the back.

'We need him gone!' said someone else.

Codzecher didn't see the first fist when it came, the shock and pain of its impact was soon forgotten in the flurry of impacts that followed. He stumbled backwards, tripped and fell and, before he knew it, punches turned to kicks. And the kicks got harder. A toe punched off his cheekbone, squashing his nose, but another one followed it, and he felt a tooth crack and a shocking jolt of pain even as the stamps on his back began to break ribs.

Desperate and petrified, he scrambled for the door out of the college and the mob let him go, chasing him with shouts and kicks and cries of anger and hate, until he stumbled to his feet and felt hands shove him back through the door into the dark corridors. A foot followed him, punting his backside to knock him forwards onto his face, sending fresh jolts of pain through him from his injuries.

'Go!' shouted Poldue. 'If we see you here in the morning, we'll burn you where you stand... heretic!'

'Where?' moaned Codzecher, beyond all hope, staring back at the open door through eyes already swelling and eyelids sticky with blood, struggling to form words with a mouth kicked into an unfamiliar shape.

'Why should we care?' snapped back Poldue.

'Go to the High Chapel,' said a new voice, quietly. To Codzecher's astonishment, it was Dire who appeared at the door, pushing in front of Poldue. 'Go, Codzecher. Confess your sins and receive the Emperor's forgiveness.'

Dire's final words were cut off as the door closed.

*

'What should we do with him?' Drill Abbot Malpas asked the grim-faced Magister Abbot at his elbow.

Codzecher had been found, weeping and moaning in his agony, after wandering for an hour, trying to find his way through the corridors of the night-shrouded Schola to the High Chapel, before a Drill Abbot had stumbled upon him. Recognizing the Chimaera tattoo on the nape of his neck, he had been dragged back to his college, only to wail and scream, begging them not to take him back. So he had been handed to Grillinger as the duty Drill Abbot for Chimaera, who had dragged him to Malpas, who had responsibility for the welfare of Chimaera progenii, who had then interrogated Codzecher at length before calling the Magister Abbot.

'There was a rumour of heresy in our corridors,' said the Magister Abbot.

'We told the High Magister it was nonsense,' pointed out Malpas. 'Were we wrong?'

'Of course not,' snarled the Magister Abbot. They stood either side of a flickering, green monitor that displayed a grainy image of Codzecher, curled up on a filthy mattress in the corner of a cell. The Magister Abbot reached out a gnarled hand to the speaker from which emitted the boys' whimpers and feeble groans and, with the flick of one claw-tipped finger, switched it off. 'But one must consider the bigger picture.'

He stalked away from the monitor towards a dwarfish servitor bearing upon its head, on which stood a bottle and a small glass. The Magister Abbot poured himself a drink and returned to Malpas, swirling the liqueur in the palm of his hand. From beneath the hem of his robe, the metal claws that carried his mangled body flicked out like the feet of a predatory bird.

'Bigger picture, Magister?' asked Malpas.

'Chimaera's honour is at stake, Waclaw,' the Magister replied, using Malpas's first name affectionately as he rested his free hand on the Drill Abbot's shoulder. 'They say we harbour heresy and - behold! - our diligent progenii have hunted it out and expelled it from their midst.'

'The boy will burn?'

'Burn?' echoed the Magister.

The Magister Abbot turned to gesture at the twisted servitor behind them. Like the Magister Abbot, its original legs were gone. But there the resemblance ended. Instead of the sophisticated and intimidating claws of its master, it had been forced into stumpy pistons that would fold, when ordered, into caterpillar tracks to tackle difficult terrain. Its abdomen had been entirely replaced with a simple power unit and its arms could be exchanged for a variety of utility tools. Whilst a good portion of its shaved scalp had been replaced with metal plating in the lobotomy process, the rest of its visage was coved by a porcelain mask with the face of a singing child. A hairline crack in the glaze ran through one eye and down its cheek.

The Magister Abbot look fondly at the servitor and then back at Malpas.

'No, Malpas. He will not burn,' he said, patting the servitor gently on one cheek, which gesture it accepted without visible reaction. 'He will serve.'

*

Chimaera was subdued in the days that followed. The burning, bright energy driven by fear and anger and hate that had driven them to descend upon the heretic, Codzecher, in violence had dissipated, leaving the dozens who had been there pensive, almost meditative. Those who had not seen it happen whispered stories in corners. Codzecher had been like a cornered animal, they said. He had refused to deny his heresy and tried to snatch some boy off the third floor to use him in foul rites. Poldue was looked at with awe by almost everyone, as the instigator who had tracked the heretic down and summoned the forces of the college against him. Poldue, meanwhile, was spending almost all of his time out of lessons in meditation and prayer, fasting and, it was said, whipping himself to ensure none of Codzecher's blasphemy could cling to his soul.

There heretic was gone. The Magister himself had summoned the college to praise and reassure them and bestow upon them the blessing of the High Magister, moving among their assembled ranks in the gymnasium, swinging a censer of holy incense back and forth, extolling the college's virtues of faith, strength and fearlessness as the progenii grew lightheaded, a gentle euphoria capturing them as they stood and listened.

Only Dire stood apart from it all. For all the praise lavished upon them and the reassurances offered to the progenii that they had done the right thing and driven a heretic from their midst, there remained a miasma of fear even when the incense had faded from their nostrils, and it was a miasma at its thickest in the vicinity of the pale and fragile-looking fourth floor who had spoken with the High Magister, who had been the first to suspect, whose word had condemned...

Dire made camp in the fourth floor common room, claiming the largest and best appointed of the desks as his own, laying out his personal effects upon its shelves, daring his peers to touch them. And one evening, not long after Codzecher's explusion and subsequent disappearance, with Last Chimes approaching, Dire sat upon his desk, his feet resting on the seat of his chair, arms draped across piles of books stacked on his either side, chin resting on one hand as, to one side, Manchurian practised his chant of blessing and, to the other, Lancet made them all redweed tea in a field kettle that he and Manchurian had acquired from somewhere.

Other fourth floor students milled about in the lawless time between the end of studies and Last Chime, but all of them were careful to give Dire his space as he stared, listlessly, into a space only he could see.

And then the noise and bustle of the common room seemed to slow and the chatter dimmed and all but one pair of eyes looked up as Manchurian's chanting stuttered to a halt. In the sudden silence, the whir of tiny mechanical wings could be heard - chrrrrr! chrrrr! - as from the darkness of the vaulted ceiling, through the boiling clouds of Lancet's field kettle, a tiny putto crept its way down the wall. Only Dire ignored it, his mind somewhere else, until the strange creature made its way to the peak of his desk, gripped the edge of it with its cold, dead fingers and lowered itself onto his shoulder.

For a brief moment, he started at the sudden sensation of its cool skin on his flesh, but those watching, wordless and amazed, noted the disturbing similarity in colour between the naked putto - not only the the pale whiteness of their skin and the stark blue of their veins beneath it, but also the unnerving stillness in their eyes.

Then Dire reached up to the putto and stroked its chin before he smiled.