Seconds of forced laughter were long as an eternity. Then a hand grabbed me by the collar, and the madness ceased. The sorcerer's aura brushed against mine. He put me back on my feet, but I reeled backwards and flopped to the ground again. Recuperating, I reached for my hat and wiped my eyes.

'A smile is always better than those sour pious grimaces of your colleagues.' The sorcerer clapped his hands. 'It helps you to see the other side of life.'

'The brighter side, you'd say?' I growled, my hand already on the bolt pistol.

Bolts popped with warp sparks before they could hit his shiny form. He stood over me grinning, the silken robe thrown over a whimsical suit of armour in bright cerulean and gold. Runes on his pauldrons shimmered with all uncolours of the warp, bird heads on his power pack breathed emerald fire.

'New groove?' I pushed away his gauntlet and got up by myself. 'You'll have to find a new staff as well.'

'Just the opposite.' His tone was friendly even when he squeezed my arm that held the weapon. 'A little ritual helped me to recover the last unsold bits of my possessions, and now we set off to find the rest.'

The pistol slipped out of my numbing hand. I clenched my jaws not to show pain. He giggled as if it all was another funny game. 'Girl, I'll die laughing at the sight of this pathetic face.'

'Why don't you just kill me and go after your junk?' I kicked his polished greave.

'I treat you as a friend but you hope to fool me. You tried to shoot me. But I'm a good-natured man and will do without harming you too much. I bet you love travelling. And fireworks!' He chuckled as he shouted the last phrase, smiling from ear to ear. The very air around him swayed and flickered with colourful lightnings. Loiterers froze up, too shocked to scatter.

A disc of glimmering metal appeared swirling in the middle of the square, incandescent eyes stared at us from the carved surface. It hovered over the pavement, supported by jets of fire gushing from rows of blade-spikes around the edge. The sorcerer jumped up to the back of the mind-blowing mount and gave me his hand.

'A unique chance to ride such a droll thing! Come on, girl, to admire the undescribable unseen, until you lose your mind! Just joking, you don't have one, the best known privilege of your Ordo.'

I picked up the pistol and climbed up on the shivering surface. Everything shifted and blurred before my eyes, my body lost weight and shape amid a giggling abyss with no up and down, where the very idea of reason and structure was anathema.

There was motion. Motion of vertiginous speed. Under impossible angles, in random directions. I gripped the sorcerer's hand as the warp tides nearly swept me from the disc. Spectral towers grew from nothing and dissolved into twisting clouds of mist, blotches of unlight weaved into leering faces and distorted beasts. Warp-sick to the point of fainting, I still couldn't but stare into the depths of the Ocean of Souls.

Then it all died out. Formless haze gave way to a hillside meadow. Pale clouds floated low over a rust-coloured ridge in the distance, lush grass wet with rainwater was steaming in the hot air. The nearest hills looked like a quilt of evenly drawn squares of green, orange and yellow. An agri-world.

A surveillance drone buzzed above, but the sorcerer snapped his fingers, and it continued its way.

'Welcome to Myristica.' He closed his eyes reaching out with his psyker-sight. 'A great journey through space and time let us arrive in advance and snatch the staff once your ship appears in orbit.'

'Are the Rubrics also yours?' I asked unwrapping my scarf.

'My own squad. Sold out like a bunch of tin cans. Thanks to Limax for that.'

'After he captured and bound you?'

'He wouldn't have done that without a nasty cinnamon roll-selling blank from your office.' He frowned. 'Yes, I decided to postpone the payment for my ship he repaired on Medrengard. But working as a free engine machine was a way more expensive kind of service. While I was chained to the reactor, one of my own mortal assistants discovered three out of four warp storages with my property.'

I sighed. 'Another person screwed by Plodia.'

'It's her innate ability that lets people forgive her behaviour, dubious at best. You spoke to Limax in her name, and he didn't kill you even though most would have done it in his place.'

'He's too afraid of the warp and tries to appease at least one available null, Plodia herself told me. That's why I decided to play the card of her cartel.'

'It was risky.' He smiled again. 'But your unconventional decisions are worth respect.'

He sniffed the air and pointed at a hill to the right. 'There's an old shack there. Local mobsters use it as their hideout but they won't mind if we squat in it for a few hours.'

He bent over to pass through the small door of the wooden shack overgrown with wild grapes. Leaves had already started to turn, red flashing here and there in the greenery between ripening bunches. Rays of afternoon sun broke through the veil of clouds. I stepped into a stripe of sunlight falling through the only open window. Broken furniture was covered with a thick layer of dust but chains of footprints lead to the entrance to the basement. The sorcerer tore off a curtain and wiped the faded sofa.

'It might be even cozy here, especially when they light a small lamp in the evening, when night birds are singing under the autumn stars,' he said sprawling on the couch that creaked under his weight.

'Poetic. Almost like the place where I grew in. But there was the sea. Fresh breeze in the morning. Gulls soaring over the sea smooth as a mirror.'

He nodded. 'We have something in common.' He took his helmet off from his belt, and I saw it was shaped like a gull head. A curious coincidence, or not?

'Brother Pterophyllo told me about a sorcerer on a gull-ship who set a trap for them on a cursed xenos planet.'

'He's a good example of how being a pompous asshole brings nothing but problems. He swore to vanquish me while I hadn't laid a finger on him. Do you know his captain found him crawling among what little remained from his squad, licking his own blood?'

'The daemonic guards slew them and cursed him with furious blood-hunger,' I answered.

'Not even he himself can recall whether he tore his Battle-Brothers to pieces in a bout of fury, or he had to fend them off as they had got driven insane by the ancient madness. What I can say for sure, their armour was ripped by his claws but none of them had managed to land a single blow.' His tone was unexpectedly sad.

I shook him by the shoulder. 'Maybe you know what was hiding there, in the shady valley. And in the Casbah.'

'I propose that we choose another topic. For example, your surprising luck in retrieving my staff. It haven't devoured your mind like it often did to non-soulbound psykers. I carried you through the warp to check up a stray guess.' He grabbed me by the shoulder. A glistening metal thing appeared in his other hand, a long golden pin topped with a clear crystal. Before I could cover my neck, he pricked me under the jaw. I felt a jab in the midriff, and the crystal turned opaque black.

'Exactly what I thought.' He stuffed the pin into an inner pocket of his mantle. 'It's still better to turn into a Chaos Spawn.'

'Imudon said about the mark. And his... lieutenant as well.' I shivered as if I'd got from the sunlit shack to the evercold of the undervaults.

'Imudon, the old fake daemonbinder. Someday he'll get what's coming to him. He belongs to a funny kind of people who believe their tiny bubble is an eternal fortress,' he chuckled back. 'Were you surprised that he didn't have visible mutations?'

'Like you.'

'A totally different thing. My friend's fateful invention tied us all together with a strand of sorcery. Earlier, the plague of flesh-change had followed the legion wherever we went, but even our father was unable to solve that. But after the Rubric... Those who had the gift, we're blessed with stability and might. The unlucky ones are down to dust sealed within their armour. None of us can die for real, both curse and blessing.'

He finished the last phrase and turned away to the window. My dataslate slipped out through a hole in his mantle and fell to the floor. Trying to get my head together, I turned it on and connected to the local network with my Inquisition password. Boring news on the start page, as always. 'Latest video. The Spice King is indignant about the growing activity of gangs in the vicinity. A series of outrageous assaults in the area of planned planting.' I scrolled down. 'First trade ships arrive to Myristica with the start of the harvest season.' A long list of privileged clients. 'Lord Illicio, Master of the Spice Guild, is delighted to welcome Captain Melitara, the honoured delegate of our long-term partners, the Interpunctella cartel of Uebotia.' A pict of a plump man in an obviously luxurious vacation outfit, shaking hands with Lady Melitara.

'You blew it.' I showed the pict to the sorcerer.

He just smirked. 'I've always been bad at calculations. But it means we don't have to wait till their arrival.'

'One way or another, you're embarrassing me. I'd hate to read in the following digest about the Hereticus operative who robbed her own owl.'

'We'll make up something for sure. But only when the staff is in my hands.' He clicked on the map app and closed his eyes again. A flickering point appeared on the plain over the hill ridge. The sorcerer traced the route to our current location. 'That's a trailer park for petty traders. Between the main storages and old plantations of cinnamon and nutmeg. I bet your crew decided to pose as simple passengers as the Spice King mistrusts the Inquisition.'

'Man, Angel will rip off your head once he sees you around.'

'Girl, your naivety is so charming.' He showed his teeth in a smug grin. 'You'll do everything by yourself.'

Two shiny trinkets floated out of his mantle pockets, sparks scattering as they hovered above the table. A small seer crystal with a tongue of pink warp-flame inside and a blue glowing disc. The sorcerer caught the crystal and pressed it to my coat lapel. Cheerful cackling jammed into my thoughts as the unholy relic stuck to the fabric.

'Distilled essence of a Pink Horror who doesn't like to be disturbed,' said the sorcerer. 'Once you try to get rid of it or cry out to your buddies, a hearty smile will bloom on your sweet face. What's fine about that, your last minutes will be full of laughter.'

'Laughing like a fool at a funeral.' The disc jumped towards me, and I caught it in mid-air. A Vortex detonator I'd seen in Fluffster's catalogue of relic armaments.

'Wanna be smart? I'd strongly recommend against it. Once I encountered a colleague of yours. He thought himself to be an extraordinary intellectual genius and believed it would be easy to smash a moron like me. I sent him a single ciphered message. He went nuts after reading it.'

'Another warp ruse?'

'You overestimate me.' He threw up his hands, mocking dramatic actors. 'Random nonsense. It took me a few minutes to write it. The man's hubris didn't let him admit there was no way to solve the riddle with his famous logical mind. Admit he's but another fool at the neverending funeral that's going on for ten millennia.'

When I left the shack, sticky afternoon heat enveloped me. I unzipped the coat and waved my hand in front of my face to brush away the choking humid haze. The blessed tropical world where seasonings for Plodia's cinnamon rolls grew under the merciless sun. A highway crossed the meadow, where trucks carried spices and fruit to the port storages behind my back. The owl should have ridden there, when Lady Melitara accepted Illicio's invitation.

I marched along the highway, descending to the roadside grass when another truck drove by. Green squares of fruit trees, golden squares of vineyards, orange and red spots of unfamiliar exotic plants coloured the flat slopes. The sun was already low over the horizon, slowly drowning in blushing heaps of clouds. I quickened my steps to cross the ridge before nightfall. At the bottom of every hill hundreds of harvest machines and cargo servitors were sorting freshly gathered fruit and packing them for dispatch under large glass domes. I recalled the gardens in the old town I had lived in, where branches hung over sidewalks, and any stranger could pick an apple or orange on the way.

A kilometre left till the spice plantations, the road went down to a vast valley. I saw another lone hill towering over the sea of evergreens below, a castle of pink and white marble on the top basked in evening sunlight. A large area to the left was black, soil ploughed and ready for new plantings. I needed to get to the right, to an island of grass among cinnamon shrubs and nutmeg trees, with tall storage towers built in the center. Trailers were tiny spots from the distance, but I saw the brown roof of the owl almost on the edge.

The road split in three. One lazy step after another, I walked past the even row of nutmeg trees, still hoping to get out of this without irreversible damage to my cause and my reputation. At the entrance to the trailer park I lingered for a few seconds. My dataslate was in the sorcerer's hands, the same with my weapons. When I stepped back, cerulean and red flashed among the evergreens. The sorcerer stood leaning on a tree, his arms crossed on his breastplate.

'Mean of you.' He pointed at the owl. 'You gave me a promise.'

'There's no way to do it quietly.'

'Very soon they'll have something to worry about.'

I looked out from behind an empty trailer next to the owl. Uncle was sitting in the owl's shadow with a dataslate and a bottle of beer. He'd just finished cleaning and reassembling his gun that lay on the grass at his feet. Other guests nearby were carrying travel tables and dishes out of their vans to dine under the flaming sunset skies. Almost as majestic as the sunsets over the desert where nobody admired them now. Where I'd done my first attempt to vandalize Fluffster's property, though with better use than today. If I survive, I have to ask him for a key, to clear my conscience for the future.

Dry clicks of gunshots broke into the evening idyllia. An elderly woman who had just gone out of her trailer with a lunch box in her hands, dropped her meal and rushed back screaming. Cries of terror and sounds of awkward gunfire filled the park. A gun turret popped out from the grass twenty steps away but a bolt shell hit it the next second, and it exploded with a dazzling blast. Uncle grabbed his gun and took cover behind the open owl door. Shots came from other directions, and he moved from trailer to trailer with short runs, stopping for another burst of fire.

The sorcerer waved his hand from inside the owl. I showed him my middle finger and stepped in. The others were away, probably with Melitara or Cichlasoma. I knocked on the safe, ran my finger down the lock.

'Come on, come on!' the sorcerer's voice giggled in my head. 'You know what to do with the detonator.'

With a sigh I stuck the disc to the lock. Swirling spirals of azure and purple ran over the surface. Psychic frost covered the metal lid, lightning sparks cracked in the air. I found a bunch of rose grapes and a ham sandwich in the fridge and sat on Fluffster's mattress. The lid vanished with an outburst of warp energy. A volkite gun, an arc rifle, tool boxes. On the lower shelf, hidden behind crates of spare parts and oil cans, there was a long stasis container of opaque black material.

'Good girl.' The sorcerer held out his spectral hand, and lightnings formed a whirlpool of unlight in the middle of the owl. 'Throw the case into the vortex. And don't forget to send me something to munch from your fridge. Grapes like this, a bottle of wine and some salami I saw there.'

'Your contemporary peers gobble up trash like cardboard and don't whine.' I let the case slip into the flickering rift, and it vanished. Half of our food stock followed, and only then the sorcerer was content.

'I'd advise you to leave the place before your friends find this mess,' he said. 'Psykers can find a job everywhere, especially non-soulbound like you, so...'

Before he could finish the phrase, a gust of icy wind rushed through the owl. The sorcerer's psychic projection swayed and dissolved. Shots and cries died out. I grabbed the arc rifle from the forced locker but everything went dark before my eyes when a null field of crushing power struck my mind. The rifle hit the floor. I fell to my knees pressing both hands to my mouth to keep the snacks within. Blood trickled from my nose, ran down my wrists and forearms.

Armoured boots thumped on the owl floor. The null-warrior who stood over me wore the Vratine armour of the Silent Sisterhood but her suit was jet black, and instead of the signature topknot she had her grey hair knotted in a neat bun. Golden sigils of the Inquisition shone on her gorget and her pauldrons in the dim lamplight. When I tried to get up, she put the obsidian tip of her spear to my heart. Once it touched the carapace right over the mark, I shuddered at the proximity of a power even stronger than human blanks, a power that was anathema and bane to witches and daemons.

'No doubt you've had fun, dear,' she said dryly. 'After dinner comes the reckoning.'

I wiped my mouth and cleared my throat, struggling with furious headache in the pariah's presence. 'Nice to meet you, Lady Cichlasoma. This is awkward, but I can explain everything.'

Cichlasoma gave me a wry smile when she noticed the crystal on my lapel. With a null's ease, she grabbed the daemonic trinket and crushed it under her boot. 'Every single scoundrel can explain what he's done. Crinitus is too fond of playing with fire. Don't move, Miss Volentia. Soon my Grey Knights will find your instigator.'