The last of Thul’s guardians turns and lunges towards her, but Zoric is already moving. My marksman draws his pistol, loads it, settles his sights and fires in a series of brisk, practised actions as Yumia looses her second dart. The Valedictor’s high-calibre round lands first with a wet crack and a spray of blood and bone fragments. The last of Thul’s guardians turns on his heel, trailing smoke, before crashing unceremoniously to the floor.

Yumia stands up, looks at Zoric and tuts. ‘I had him,’ she says.

‘I know,’ he replies, and he smiles thinly.

Thul’s hand goes to his face. He puts his fingertips to the blood scattered there, and then looks at his hand in dumb shock.

‘You dare,’ he stammers. ‘You dare to spill blood in my Reverie?’

Thul puts his hand into his robes, draws a gilded pistol and fires it at me. I knew he would do it, and not just because of his obvious, telegraphed movements, but because of my abilities. The precognition gives me a moment’s warning. An instinct for imminent threat. In a swordfight it would save my life, but here it has an altogether different application.

Intimidation.

I don’t blink, or move. I just let Thul’s las-rounds burst harmlessly against the disruption field projected by my armour plate.

‘Oh, Throne,’ Thul says, and he scrambles away from me amongst the silks and bolsters, putting his hand to the brooch on his robes. I don’t move to chase him.

‘Viskia,’ he says, into the vox-relay concealed there. ‘Viskia. Answer me.’

‘She can’t hear you,’ I tell him. ‘Your transmitter is being blocked.’

Thul is sweating now. His dark eyes are wide and full of tears.

‘Sit down,’ I tell him.

Thul stops scrambling and does what I say, slowly. His eyes keep sliding to the dead bodies of his guardians. I can smell their blood over the incense burners. It has a sour note that comes from geneboosting and stimm-shunts.

‘They must have been very valuable,’ I say to Thul.

He nods dumbly. ‘They were.’

‘Not valuable enough,’ I say, then look at my own guardians. ‘Mind the doors, would you?’

‘Aye,’ they say in unison.

‘You are not highblood,’ Thul mumbles, still watching me and not them. ‘You are not a vice-seeker or a dream-eater.’

‘No.’

‘What are you, then?’

I watch him carefully when I speak again.

‘I am an inquisitor,’ I say. ‘Of the Ordo Hereticus.’

The noise Thul makes then is almost animal. A shapeless, frightened groan of dismay.

‘You know, then, what it is that the Inquisition does?’

He nods. Those tears slide free of his eyes and paint their way down his face.

‘Good,’ I say. ‘Now, I will ask you once more, Master Thul. Show me the eagle ablaze, or I will burn you and your Reverie to the ground.’

‘It will kill them all,’ he says softly. ‘My choir.’

I glance down through the armaglass floor at the dreamers, murmuring beneath the surface. My own words come back to me.