Impressive. It took a lot to outsmart Harlon Nayl, especially when he had a gun to your head.

‘I’ll be leaving now, Gregor,’ said Karyl.

I shot at him. My blasts withered in mid-air. Karyl – or whatever his true name was – was a high-function psyker. That’s how he’d floored Nayl, and why he had seemed so confident. He’d hidden the power earlier, but now it was boiling out of him. I took the brunt of it, and it hurled me back into the wall.

I felt several ribs break.

But, at last, someone had underestimated me. I was a high-function psyker too. Karyl had power, but Chase should have sent someone with considerably more. Staying in the dark places had its advantages. People didn’t know what I was truly capable of. Chase did not appreciate who she was dealing with.

My power had been blocked earlier by the Inquisition’s mind-shields. Now it was free, and it was fuelled by my anger and frustration.

I yelled a single word of power.

The force of it, like a flaming shock wave in the air, struck Sejan Karyl, and threw him not just into the chamber’s back wall but through it. Stonework ruptured. A terrible, blinding light shone in through the demolished hole.

I pulled down my glare shields, and helped Nayl to his feet. He pulled on his goggles too, and we drew up the heavy hoods of our coats.

Outside, the desert was too bright to look at. The heat was immense. While we had been inside the palace, lowday had ended, a brief night had flickered past, and burnday had begun.

Karyl lay on his back on a heap of rubble. Every bone in his body was shattered, but he was still alive. Blood from his wounds was cooking off him, and his exposed flesh was frying. He held the packet of Euphrati Keeler’s ancient manuscript in one blackened claw of a hand, but the paper was already burning.

He was trying to put it out, but he was on fire too.

I watched his body burn, the papers with it.

‘Get Medea on the vox,’ I said to Nayl. ‘Tell her to bring the gun-cutter in. We need rapid extraction.’

He nodded, and I heard him speaking Glossia into his vox-headset.

I opened my mind.

+Cherubael? Can you hear me?+

+Of course, Gregor.+

+I need your assistance.+

+My, my, Gregor. Do you need me to come and kill lots and lots of people for you?+

I hesitated. I thought for a moment of the Tempestus Scions and Inquisition teams ploughing through the palace at our heels, just minutes away from finding us.

‘Yes,’ I said, with great reluctance.

+I didn’t quite hear that, Gregor.+

+Yes.+

Nayl and I took the armoured carry-casket, and set off into the burning desert. Medea was en route, less than a minute away.