Aboard the hired transport – a small, grey cargo-gig with whistling fan-cell engines – we moved west through the hive city. Carl linked his data-slate to my chair’s input, and I reviewed his information concerning the scholam.

It had been running for many years, ostensibly a worthy charity school struggling to provide housing and basic levels of education for the most neglected section of Urbitane’s demographic. There were millions, nay billions, of institutions like it all across the Imperium, wherever hives rose and gross poverty loomed. Many were run by the Ecclesiarchy, or tied to some scheme of work by the Departmento Munitorum or the Imperial Guard itself. Some were missionary endeavours established by zealous social reformers, some political initiatives, some just good, four-square community efforts to assist the downtrodden and underprivileged.

And some were none of those things. Carl and I inspected the records of the Kindred Youth Scholam carefully. On the surface, it was respectable enough. Its register audits were a matter of public record, and it applied for and received the right grants and welfare support annually, which meant that the Administratum subjected it to regular inspection. It was approved by the Munitorum, and held all the appropriate stamps and marques of a legitimate charitable institution. It had an impressive portfolio of recommendations and references from many of Urbitane’s worthies and nobles. It had even won several rosettes of distinction from the Missionaria.

But scratch any surface…

‘You’ll like this,’ said Carl. ‘The Prefect, he’s one Berto Cyrus. His official file is spotless and perfectly in order. But I think it’s a graft.’

A graft. A legitimate dossier that has been expertly designed to overfit previous records and eclipse them. Done well – and this had been done brilliantly – a graft would be more than adequate to bypass the Administratum. But we servants of the Holy Ordos had greater and more refined tools of scrutiny to bring to bear. Carl showed me the loose ends and rough edges that had been tucked away to conceal the basic deception, the long, tortuous strands of inconsistency that no one but the Inquisition would ever think to check, for the effort would be too labour-intensive. That was ever the failing of the Imperium’s monumental Administratum. Overseeing hives the size of Urbitane, even an efficient and ordered division of the Administratum could only hope to keep up with day-to-day processing. There was no time for deeper insight. If one wanted to hide something from the Imperial Administratum, one simply had to place it at the end of a long line of diversions and feints, so far removed from basic inspections that no Administry clerk would ever notice it.

‘He’s older than he pretends to be,’ said Carl. ‘Far older. Here’s the give away. Three digits different in his twelve-digit citizenry numeric, but changed here, at birth-registry date, where no one would ever go back to look. Berto Cyrus was actually a stillborn infant. The Prefect took over the identity.’