Yvem Tora had been built on top of one of the highest basalt peaks, its walls merging with the rock beneath to form an almost seamless upthrust from the maze of streets below. Everything was old around there – it was the site of some of the earliest human settlement on Alecto, they said. Brecht, who liked to study history as well as everything else, had told him that the core of the place, deep underground, was a starship, and that the first walls had been metal and plascrete, before it was all covered over by stone. Brecht knew his stuff, but also liked to believe in romantic notions. Zidarov doubted that any of it was true. He’d never find out, either way – the clerics kept a close watch over the entire place, only allowing the secular authori­ties into the upper levels.

He was greeted at the main gates – a pair of white doors under a tall arch bearing the skull sigil of the Ministorum – by cowled guards in carapace armour. They carried flamers, which struck Zidarov as a ludicrous touch, even for the clerics. The flamer nozzles looked half-rusted in the downpour, and the guards’ cowls ran with dirty rivulets of rainwater.

Their leader pointed his weapon at the groundcar, and a ­snarling ‘Name, and purpose!’ came through a vox-grille clamped over his face.

Zidarov showed them his seal. ‘I have a meeting with ­Missionary Gurgev. And, Throne, don’t point that at the windows – if you get a spark on my scatter-field, I swear I’ll shoot you.’

They consulted, grumpily, then waved him through. He pulled up in a large gravel-covered courtyard surrounded by more firestone walls. Tall campaniles rose up at each corner, encrusted with more skull-inspired decoration. The courtyard’s many doorways also had skulls set in their lintels, as did many of the heads of the stone window frames. If the Church knew how to do one thing, it was to stick to a theme.

Zidarov got out in time to be greeted by a group of three figures – two women and a man – dressed in priests’ habits. All of them were bald, with the Ministorum ‘I’ device branded across their foreheads. Their robes were of simple machine-spun flax, and looked very uncomfortable. One of the women carried a staff with a skull at the top. The man had a penitential collar around his neck, which looked thoroughly nasty.

‘Be welcome here, probator,’ said the woman with the staff. ‘Your request has been transmitted. Sister Gurgev has indicated that she is willing to see you.’

‘It wasn’t a request,’ Zidarov said. Priests brought out the worst in him. ‘I’ll need to see her alone.’