Two large shadows fell over Lady Cichlasoma. She didn't bat an eyelid when Fluffster and Angel appeared on either side of her. Fluffster put his paw on her shoulder.

'Enough, my lady. She learned her lesson.'

'Lord Crinitus, not even my grandsire approves of this experiment by now.' She lowered her spear with a grimace of vexation.

'She led us out of the dark shrine without falling to its temptations.'

'You were allowed to leave, for a reason yet to find out. Miss,' she addressed me, 'how were you going to explain the latest accident?'

My lips barely moved as if frozen by the null aura. 'The sorcerer told me he was a captive librarian. He assured me he'd fought for the Emperor before. His tattoo was absent from the app database. And his actions before he went to a cultist hideout...'

'Enough.' She stepped back to let Fluffster pick up his rifle. 'I will have to report about your transgression to your Conclave. No annual bonus for this year. Lord Crinitus will have to supervise your behaviour in your next missions. Next time you fail you'll have to face disciplinary trial.'

'My lady, your contacts with the Harlequins are also quite scandalous in the eyes of strict Puritans,' said Fluffster.

'We're all grown-up enough to understand it's not effective to deny Radicalism but not at the expense of such epic fails. I'll send Ystlum and his squad to intercept the sorcerer. Up to you to warn the locals.'

She turned to the door and left the owl without goodbye. I grabbed Angel's gauntlet to get up.

'Thank you for rescuing me, brother.'

His face was all reproach. 'No need to thank me.'

'They who make no mistakes, do nothing. If you haven't intervened, this mistake could have been my last.'

'It's all fine.' He shook his head and looked down at his feet.

Fluffster only chuckled observing the ravaged locker. 'That's already become a good tradition.'

Sister squeezed between Fluffster and Angel. With tear-filled eyes, she handed me a package of wet wipes. 'You were such a devoted follower of the Emperor before. First you started doubting His mercy and even existence under the influence of your new friend. Then, you were tempted to commit a heretical deed by a traitor. A traitor despicable and pathetic in the face of the Emperor. You were offered blessed martyrdom but lack of faith made you choose mortal existence.'

'I must stay alive so you all have job and home. Yes, I messed up like shit. But every honest person we meet can turn out to be a traitor. I asked him protocol questions and followed the established rules of identification.' I threw a crumpled wipe to the garbage bin but missed. 'Do as you wish, and I need to get back to work.'

Uncle met me at the owl door and opened his mouth to say another worried tirade but I stopped him. 'Uncle, hope at least you can be wise enough not to cry over spilled milk. Good advice, yes. Effective help. But not whining or clucking.'

'We were all hurt by your credulity used by the traitor,' Sister sobbed from behind. 'Angel is so sorry and sad as the sorcerer who killed his men has come for us.'

'Fine, Sister, we'll punish the traitor.' I nodded. It was hard to avoid asking Angel a few delicate questions about the fateful battle. Back in the sands of the Casbah, he hadn't shared that even if he knew something about the monstrous entity within.

'You take too many risky decisions that can drag us to certain doom,' Angel grunted. 'You have to consult us and abstain from things we deem heretical.'

'Now, I'm going to find out more about the attack on the park. The gangs who threaten the Spice King must have clues to the enigmatic buyer of Chaotic relics.'

Drying bloodstains on the grass trailed to the dark of nutmeg trees. The sudden arrival of Lady Cichlasoma and the rest of my crew had scared the raiders but one of them was gravely wounded by Uncle's gunfire. I browsed the latest criminal news. Surprisingly, the gangs operated all across the farming area, blackmarket devices allowing them to be a step forward the official security. Illicio complained in his interviews that they threatened his new initiatives to explore the swamps they had used for their smuggling dens.

The suspicious moment was the unusually small amount of damage at such frequency. They didn't plunder storages or destroy any infrastructure. Just constant unrest, carefully maintained for their own purposes. Mobsters seldom used vehicles, and after every attack they scattered to return to their well-hidden dugouts. Even shacks like the one on the meadow stood abandoned for most of the time

I looked around searching for Cichlasoma. She had more authority than me and would speak to the tycoon way more effectively. Too late. I frowned but found Melitara in my contact list.

'Glad to hear you're fine, my lady.' Her cold tone didn't promise much. My team couldn't but share the news.

'Captain, you're an honoured guest in the Spice King's mansion. Please, tell him the Inquisition needs to talk to him.'

A long pause. Husky coughing from the earphones. Then a male voice spoke to me. 'My lady, Guildmaster Illicio on the line. I hope I won't take much time.'

'What do you know about the gangs, Guildmaster? The planetary government provides you with excessive funds to solve the problems, but your farmlands are the worst endangered territories nevertheless.'

'My lady, are you going to accuse me of purloining the money? You may look through the latest reports on security budget.'

I shrugged my shoulders. 'They attacked my men less than an hour before. In close proximity to your dwelling. Worse, they are suspected of heretical activities as we got a confirmation of forbidden trade in the local underground.'

'Heretics, my lady. The most blasphemous kind of heretics. They likely resort to the Ruinous Powers to deceive the security systems. I hope you will succeed in purging their lairs before they destroy the new construction site. I'm ready to lend you my own security forces, in case you haven't brought along a large army of your own. The fight will be tough.'

His momentary shift from mistrust to combat readiness didn't bode well. A purely intuitive thing. 'Thank you for your devotion. We will send you a heads-up once we need your men.'

Incoming message. A large archive of documents. I sent them to Fluffster's cogitator and asked him to check his main financial channels. And one thing worth a closer look. The timing of attacks and how they were connected with the whole thing felt like trivial corruption, when merchants deal with crimelords to share the profit from subsidies. But a ready accusation of heresy was something new. Probably the current gang leaders had demanded too much. So he wants to get rid of them with the best for his reputation.

I took Uncle's reserve pistol and swallowed a capsule of stimulators. The wounded bandit couldn't have gone too far. Angel's augmented senses and armour sensors will locate the hideout even after nightfall.

Beyond the circle of park lights everything drowned in hot darkness. The electric fence between the grassland and the nutmeg wood was stained with blood and mud. Angel touched the chain link.

'They've switched off the power. It's safe to climb over.'

Evergreen spice trees grew in even rows, thin beams of the rising moon falling on the path through the lush canopy. Background warp buzz reached my mind, too feeble to find its source. Angel followed the trail that zigzagged back and forth but didn't cease. If there were any other mobsters in the vicinity, they had left this area. But the wounded man decided to stay. We had yet to learn why. And more important, what for.

I opened the map and connected to the tracking record of Angel's armour. A meandering line that got closer, turn by turn, to the former swamps. The black cleared land beyond the nutmeg greenery. There was a place ahead where we could intercept him. A small site camp between the plantation and the clearings, built a fortnight ago. I recalled a line from another local news brief about a party of workers invited by Illicio from the northern continent to build facilities for the future plantings.

When we came up to the camp, the site was crowded and noisy. Two workers stood before the gate over a pool of fresh blood, clutching cheap stubber guns. Once Angel appeared before them in the grove shadows they raised their weapons screaming in horror. I dashed forward to the circle of light. They saw my hands folded in the holy sign. Silence fell over. Angel stood next to me, and the others froze up behind the nettings staring at the scarlet colossus.

'I have come in the Emperor's name!' I shouted. 'He sent His Angel with me to find and punish the criminal!'

'The goon didn't lie about the giant,' said one of the guards. 'He's run here, bleeding and nuts with terror.'

'The swamp bogeys have scared him.' The other pointed at the clearings. 'They're getting back at people for destroying their den.'

The first guard nodded. 'A bad place, everyone says. That's why the big boss didn't hire locals.'

I showed them the rosette. 'Lead me in. I have to see the man.'

We found the wounded bandit curled up in mud between two camp trailers. With wild howls he was throwing lumps of clay at everyone who tried to come close. I made a sign to Angel and Uncle to hide behind a trailer and approached him with Sister. A handful of bloody mud splattered over my carapace but I sent him an order with the Will. The backlash did hurt, to put it mildly. Full might of a latent psyker, unleashed by pain and fear, amplified by something else. I did my best to keep the pokerface so Sister's clucking didn't frighten him into setting us ablaze.

Sister leaned over him with a syringe in her hand. Luckily, he had no cultist symbols on so she did the necessary procedures without any questions. When he closed his eyes as painkillers and tranquilizers started working, I probed his relaxed mind again. A shadow of another psyker's presence. An intricate sorcerous bind that had sealed his thoughts from sight. Even if he wasn't a cultist himself, the gangs were directed by a powerful witch for sure. The background buzz had grown stronger on the border of the clearings.

'What else can you say about the swamps?' I asked the foreman who came running to meet the inquisitor. The cyber-moth in my pocket was recording the conversation.

'What the locals have told us, ma'am. No one of them could have even got close to this place. It's the home of the bogeys. They send nightmares and plagues to fools who bother them. The Spice King's a madman. He promised fortunes to the northerners to work where everyone else had refused to. More than half of our brigade had died of swamp fever until we drained the land. We've never crossed the border after dusk. Even when the Spice King offered us double wages for nighttime work.'

'Do mobsters come here often?'

'Not at all, ma'am. Everywhere around but not here. A sane man from here will never step in the swamplands.'

Quite the opposite of what Illicio claimed in his interviews. I sent the moth logs to Fluffster. The answer surprised me. 'Found something curious. Not a confirmed accusation but a possible clue. There were a few donations to private charity funds right when the Rubrics were sold. Take a look at the emblem of the biggest fund.' A white gull on a blue background.

I addressed the foreman again. 'Did the Guildmaster visit the clearings?'

'Quite often, ma'am. He made fun of our fears. He spent hours walking to and fro with a little dirty notebook. Mumbling to himself.' He took out a cracked dataslate. One of the latest picts was an evening view of the area. The plump Spice King was standing with his back to the pictographer, his nose in a small book wrapped in crude paper. The size and design usual for paper notebooks adored by merchants crazy with privacy. Save one detail. Where there should be lines of text on the page, stains of neon colours formed a sickening pattern. I zoomed in, and veins of blue and gold turned out to be blurred symbols. Too blurred even for the old slate's screen resolution.

Sister pulled me by the sleeve, her face pale, her lips pressed together. 'The man has just died. May the Emperor forgive his sins. Though I stopped the bleeding and stabilized his condition.'

"Have you found out the reason?'

'Fast-acting poison. Most likely, a remotely activated capsule. Someone didn't want us to know the truth about the gangs. The heretics know we are here.' She clutched her Eviscerator, staring into the dark with wide-open eyes.

'The accursed sorcerer is chasing us,' Angel growled. 'Doom from an unlikely source.'

'Working as a team, that's what is important now,' I said. 'We'll settle the personal matters once the case is solved.'

'Everything is fine,' he answered with a brief nod and walked off towards the fence. Sister gave me a sad look and followed him.

Before I could say anything the lights in the camp went out at once. I drew the pistol by reflex trained for years of service. A moment of silence.

Then gunshots ploughed the ground at my feet. Mud splashed over my coat and face. I leapt back and crouched at the trailer wall. The guards retaliated with random fire.

'His goons!' the foreman yelled over the cries and shots. 'Ma'am, he's serious. You shouldn't have come here. You'll have us all killed!'

'You mean the Spice King?'

The foreman cussed. 'A damn open secret!'

'Tell your workers to run to their frigging trailers!' I shouted and pushed him away to the safe square between the vans.

Lasguns beams flashed next to me. I rolled to the other side but another beam drilled a steaming hole over my head. Angel sent bolter round after round into the dark. The inquisitor and her crew killed by the notorious gangs would have been just another line in the criminal news. If I didn't send the clues to Fluffster. The Spice King had planned his security forces to turn against us in this messy fight. I activated the vox.

'Angel, how many are there?'

'Enough,' he grunted back.

'Where do they come from?'

'The plantations. About to round us up.'

The scared workers crammed into the central trailers, as far as possible from the assaulters. We could leave through the gates but the beat-up trailers would be full of holes even before they pass through the gate. But if we broke through the chain link fencing to the clearings, we had a slight chance. I crawled to the closest door. Sister was already inside, treating gunshot wounds and trying to calm down the buzzing, shouting crowd.

I knocked on the wall to get their attention. 'Everyone in?'

'Three full vans! The guards are out!' A few voices answered at once. 'They killed the guards!'

An elderly woman howled clawing at her face. 'Son! My son!'

Sister hugged her by the shoulders. The woman shivered as if in fever, her headscarf slipped down to her shoulders. I took a deep breath and raised my voice.

'We have to leave this place. But we'll return with an army that will crush the heretics. But you'll have to be brave. The only way to safety lies through the former swamps.'

They started protesting in muffled, fearful voices but I squeezed through the crowd and pushed the door to the cabin. Headlamps lit up the black soil outside the fence. A goon in a full carapace suit jumped up to his feet and ran out of the circle of light.

'Uncle, do you copy?' I shouted into the vox. 'You'll drive the second van. Let the foreman take the third. Tell Angel to cover our retreat.'

Before I could start the engine, two bright flares dazzled me. A roar of jets subdued the battle noise. Then the ground under the vans shuddered at a powerful impact. In a minute bolters answered the random fire of the goons.

I turned off the headlamps and sent the moth out through a crack in the side window. First pics arrived to my dataslate soon. Drop pods of the ancient Dreadclaw pattern. Hazard stripes on the blank metal surface. We missed you, Limax. The Iron Warriors stood in a chain firing their bolters until the last shots from the woods died out. Corpses of the goons who'd been stupid enough to stay at the fence lay as a bloody rampart between the camp and the clearings.

The air in the middle of the black field cracked with warp lightnings. A vortex of bluish unlight appeared over the drop pods, a sudden disturbance in the warp resonated with the background buzz. A twisted shape the size of a medium living block stepped out of the portal. It moved forward on two bird legs of brightly coloured metal, the distorted body bore the helmeted skull sigil but the emblems painted around had more to do with the intricate runes on the gull-loving sorcerer's armour than to the crude heraldry of the Fourth. A mighty god-machine captured and corrupted by the traitors long ago.

'Angel, get in!' I commanded into the vox.

'I don't own my life. The enemy has come.' His tone was grim and bleak.

'Get in. Or you'll never take your revenge upon the gull man.'

He stuck his head into the van. The workers folded their hands in the sign of the Aquila, greeting His Angel in awed silence. I sat at the cabin door and wiped my face.

'We have to call Cichlasoma's staunch tin soldiers to get out of here alive.' I said in High Gothic so as not to scare the workers any more.

'Do as you wish.' He turned his back to me.

I sent the emergency signal and leaned on the wall. The Iron Warriors weren't interested in the unlit camp. Another transport descended on the clearing, and even more peculiar and warped machinery was deployed to the field. Giant excavator buckets scooped up the wet soil. The Spice King wasn't going to plant trees here. Spices were just a profitable business to have spare funds to discover what even warlords as mighty as the traitor chieftains strive to obtain. That's who was the rival the bounty hunter had mentioned. Yet to find out what the thing is.

A familiar voice chuckled inside my head. 'Inquisitor, you're grumpy again? The silver fellows roughed me up but I'm still cheerful.'

'The Warsmith wants his power battery back, man,' I grumbled.

'Yeah, he wishes! Look, there's the greatest show unearthed to witness! Aspersum's seer even brought along his precious titan.'

'What are they going to dig out?'

'Another piece of funny tech,' he hummed. 'Something to do with siege, I guess. Well, Inquisitor, you do want to leave this place alive?'

'Strange question.'

'You need to skedaddle, I want revenge. A good excuse for an adventurer and a wannabe-Puritan to team up. We both belong to the same witch-kind even if you try to ignore that.'

I rubbed my forehead. 'You'll screw me.'

'Maybe. Or maybe not.'

'Listen here. If we leave safe and sound, I'll tell you who bought your Rubrics.'