They sought out a new totem, now — a new figurehead — and in the pit of his heart an ugly suspicion as to what it was rolled over Sahaal like a breaking storm.

'Who are they?' he asked Chianni, keeping alive the hopes that he might be wrong.

'J-just... just people, my lord. From the underhive. The Preafects have destroyed half the settlements... They've got nowhere e—'

'What do they want?'

Chianni bit her lip, perceptive enough to know the answer would not please her master.

'They have heard of you,' she said, voice quiet. 'They think... they think you're a myth, but... But they know the Shadowkin escaped unharmed. They know us as... Holy zealots, my lord. They've feared us for decades — as long as the tribe has been here — but... but now we have strength, and they are weakened. They're angry. They don't know what they did to warrant the Preafects' violence. They're dying. They're pitiful. And suddenly they have seen the error of their ways.'

'I did not ask you who they are, priestess. I asked what do they want?'

He knew the answer already, of course.

Chianni's lip trembled as she spoke.

'Sanctuary, lord. They come seeking sanctuary.'

She could not avoid her master's attempts at contact for long. She left the precinct when the chirruping of advancing servitors — snatching at her attention with hivelink comms clutched in piston knuckles — grew tedious, and her excuses became untenable. She knew she was being childish, but the swarm of uncertainties clouding her mind, coupled with the ghosts of exhaustion gripping her, precluded even the most lacklustre of attempts to represent herself intelligibly. For all that, she could tell sleep was not yet an option, so she took to wandering the bustling streets of Cuspseal like an eidolon, a lost spirit seeking absolution.

Preachers leaned from pulpits, holding loosebound books in claw-like grasps, eyes alive with fire and piety. Around them crowds accreted, and as she passed by Mita tasted the cocktail of their thoughts: the bright ember of the zealot, the tepid mundanity of his flock (I believe their minds cried — but always the shackles of doubt, of shame, of sin, weighed their spirits down), and always amongst the crowds she found incongruous minds: the strict focus of undercover Preafects, the darting intentions of pickpockets and outlaws, the fearful disgust of whores, grudgingly seeking custom. She walked on quickly, troubled to find so little purity, so little virtue, amongst this ocean of thought.

At one intersection a knot of boys had gathered around a militia post, recruiting sergeants barking false promises of glory and adventure. The youths shouted and whisded as she passed, even the crudity of their catcalls unable to break through the cage of her worries.

The question that assailed her was as unanswerable as the universe was vast, and amongst its myriad strands of uncertainty she found herself gathering it together, kneading into one shape, one indigestible issue:

Why?

She paced across a hanging bridge and paused to stare at the heads of executed criminals fixed upon each of its stanchions, their eyes and tongues greedily devoured by jewelled beetles and albino bats. The flocks chattered as she passed, stabbing at her psychic senses with needles of ultrasonic sound, and she moved on with only the most cursory glance towards downtown Cuspseal — the hulking cube of the precinct dominating her view, towering above the mighty underhive chasm into the shadows below.

Why does the inquisitor not act?

Why does he restrain me with one hand and wave me forth with the other?

Why does he request my presence then drug me, then lie that he did not?

Why does his mood shift like a tide, ebbing and rising against all stimulus?

Why does he sit day after day, ensconced within the governor's palace?

His actions had hardly been heroic, and that in the face of his noble reputation. And whether he trusted her or not, she would have assumed the mere possibility of a Chaos Marine lurking in the dark would spur him to action. And yet he smiled and sneered, and dismissed the issue, and told her it was being dealt with.

Dealt with! By a single acolyte? A single cowled dissimulus, whatever that was. What if his plans fail?

What if his plans... oh, Emperor, forgive me my doubt... what if his plans cannot be trusted? What if he cannot be trusted?

She lurked in the shadows beneath a tanning factory chewing her lip, and watched as servitor-machines — simian monstrosities with arms like grablifters and thick chords of servomuscle tightening across copper pectorals — hefted tall piles of grox carcasses from uphive chutes into the rambling building. The stench of smoke and tar and burning meat made her retch, and she moved on again. Is there nowhere to think in this damned hive? Was that the problem, perhaps? Had she forgone the process of exhaustive consideration that the tutoria had encouraged? Had she been slack, dumbly clouded by mistrust that had no basis, listening too hard to instincts that had no place in a position of obedience? Where has this paranoia come from? She looped back towards the precinct, more troubled than ever, and when a mugger slipped from the moist darkness of an icemelt-drenched alleyway, blade glittering in his hand, she faced him with an almost indecent joy: relieved to shut out the worries for an instant, relaxed by the simple promise of violence.

The man approached with a sneer, knife weaving mesmeric patterns, holding her attention. It would have been a crude feign even had she not been a psyker, and when his partner, hidden behind her, took her obvious distraction as his cue to attack, she spun a carefully gauged kick into his face, his own momentum snapping the bones of his cheek and ripping an ugly tear across his lip.

The psychic feedback of his surprise and pain was deliciously gratifying.

The first attacker waded in with his knife, all hope of surprise lost, and she ducked beneath his first clumsy swipe to plant a balled fist in his stomach, knocking him down with the breath gone from his lungs.

She rolled aside to avoid any desperate slashing and jumped to her feet before he could groggily arise, imagining Kaustus's tusked face in the place of the mugger's, and half turned with an elegant elbow, dropping him back for a second time, thick ruby fluid gushing from his broken eyeball.

She returned to the first attacker, the broken-lipped nobody, a fraction too late, just as he launched a throwing knife at her head, gurgling on the bloody soup sliding into his mouth. Acting without thought she screwed up her mind and released an impetuous, undirected pulse of psychic energy, deflecting the spinning blade with a clash of blue sparks.

The muggers weren't as stupid as they looked. Seeing what manner of victim they'd chosen, yelping the word ''witch!'' with youthful terror, they fled into the shadows on a chorus of shrieks and moans. Mita huffed behind them, irritated at the brevity of the workout. She hadn't even broken a sweat.

Instinct.

Instinct had saved her. Then, as now...

She realised with a start that it made little difference. The realisation overcame her like some prophetic epiphany, and reduced all her confusions and anxieties to a simple certainty.

Whether she thought it through or listened to her heart, whether she applied the humourless frugality of logic or the unfounded passion of instinct to her troubles, the result would remain the same: