I also liked Shurfath. There was something about the cold, hard climate of Maelificer that focused scholarly intent. Some of the most learned members of the sector’s ordos had studied there at one time or another: I myself had spent nine months there, trawling its stacks. That was many, many years previously, when I was attempting to do some background research on a matter that had occupied a colleague of mine during a visit to Elvara Cardinal. Though answers had eluded me (and the man was long since dead), I had come to appreciate Shurfath’s atmosphere and learning.

Inquisitor Cyriaque leant towards the chancellor’s way of thinking too, but he was young, and this was one of his first formal duties. He knew that the eyes of seniors were upon him. He could not afford to seem lenient. He could not afford to appear radical.

There’s a potent word: Radical.

The first volume was brought out for examination and discussion, the first of the one hundred and fifty-one in question. It was going to be a long process. Cyriaque had chosen a small lecture room in the upper levels of the vertical palace, a gloomy, wood-panelled chamber of uninterrupted brown. It had once been used by medicae students for anatomy lessons, and there were tiers of seats around the central stage. The tiered gallery stalls, like a little box theatre, were almost as sheer as the cliffs outside. We leant on the wooden handrails and peered down into the gas-lit arena where Cyriaque’s savants, their hands white-gloved, were laying the first questionable book on a piezo-charged neutralising cloth. Voriet, the interrogator, had placed aversive wards around the lip of the wooden stage. There were guards too: Inquisitorial servants in the stern robes of the ordos, and the more ostentatious men-at-arms of House Vecum.

Cyriaque began his review. The book was a copy of a copy of Unacius’ Readings, one from which the notorious ‘poetry’ had long since been expunged. It was undoubtedly harmless, an unloaded gun. The mezzopict illustrations were, however, charming and rare, and deserved to be held for the benefit of students of the visual arts. The chancellor rose and, once Cyriaque had finished his summary, said as much.

The ordos seniors seemed unmoved. Old Karnot Vesher would be, I knew well, monodominant to the end, hardline, bitter. Adrianne Corwal was harder to read. An elegant, diligent woman, she had her psyber drone hover over the pages as the savants turned them, relaying close-ups to her optic implants. Zaul Gaguach seemed bored. I distinctly heard him twice ask an aide what the palace kitchens were preparing for supper.

And then there was him, of course. Faceless, implacable, as unreadable as a blunt. It is not weakness to confess that I felt a certain emotional response when he moved from the shadows, onto the stage. It had been a very long time, and we had once been very close.