> I’ve found your missionary, Zido. It’s Elina. Elina Gurgev. She was at Vostoka station a few years back. Now transferred to the Ministorum seminary out at Yvem Tora. You can thank me when you get back.

So that was good news. Maybe it would lead to something, maybe it wouldn’t, but Kharkev had seemed like a decent judge.

He reviewed the rest of the bulletins he cared about. More raids of Vidora cells. Vongella was really knocking the message home. At this rate Yuti would be at the table before the end of the day.

Milija wasn’t in bed beside him. An early shift. She’d been distracted all night, and they’d danced around the issue, both too weary to take it head-on. The moment would come, though. They’d always used to talk, the two of them, about everything, planning out their glittering careers – the law and the bone saw, they’d said. You lock them down, I’ll patch them up. Now they barely saw one another. The shifts just kept getting longer. Had they allowed that to happen? Or was there a part of both of them that, subconsciously, found it easier that way?

He got up, dressed, shaved, grabbed some carb-bars and caffeine, got in the Luxer. Soon he was out in the drizzle, kicking up spray as he weaved between the traffic on the out-east spine route, climbing steadily, the towers of the central habclaves falling behind and the terraces of the upper slopes rising around him. The urban carpet became frayed after a while, broken up by the harder landscape underneath it. Rocky outcrops jutted up between residential towers like fingers clutching at the veneer of civilisation. Dwelling units hung precariously from long arched viaducts, weaving a three-dimensional web across the crumple of broken ground.

A large chameleon-screen swept past him in the rain, sponsored by the Ecclesiarchy, which owned a lot of the land around here.

Believe In The Power Of The Throne! it said, above a brightly coloured image of a rosy-cheeked family in matching military uniforms gazing up at a dawn sky studded with the silhouettes of battleships. They looked healthy, well fed, beaming with pride and happiness. Good for them, thought Zidarov.