Most of them, anyway.

He wiped the ashen residue of the incinerator from his face with a mixture of the water and his own sweat. The taste of cinders and fat was always at the back of his throat, but it never occurred to him to do anything else. Without any meaningful civic authority, bodies were a common sight on the streets of the Petitioner’s City, those who had given up or simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Death could take you in any number of ways, too many to count.

The millions of people coming to Terra filtered through the mountains en route to the Palace, but only a fraction of those numbers made it this far. That still left thousands who clamoured at the gates, beseeching the faceless warriors who marched along the battlements to grant them passage. The streets of the Petitioner’s City were filled with those who sought meaning in their life, answers to their questions or those who simply came to view the magnificence of the Emperor’s demesne.

Palladis remembered a time when the Petitioner’s City had retained a semblance of an ordered community, when it had been small enough to maintain a form of order and stability. But as more and more people found their way to the walls of the palace, its ordered structure had begun to break down. The buildings that appeared overnight and pushed the city limits further down the mountains became steadily more temporary, more numerous and altogether more squalid.

Then the gangs had moved in, sensing opportunity amongst the desperate petitioners like vultures circling a wounded man in the desert. Gangs from the mountains, gangs from the plains and gangs from the battlefields of Unity were drawn to the ever-expanding city, sensing vulnerable people ready to be exploited. The killings had begun, bloody and designed to spread fear like a contagion.

Babu Dhakal’s gang had been the worst. His men were stronger, faster and more ruthless than any others, and there was no level of mutilation and degradation to which they would not stoop. Palladis had seen one of his men stabbed though his eyes and left to bleed to death on the steps of a medicae facility. That man’s killers had their limbs hacked off and their broken bodies left impaled on tall spears for the carrion birds to devour. Revenge killings, honour killings, random killings. None of it made any sense, and by the time the worst of it was over, only Babu Dhakal was left standing.

No one knew where the feared gang warlord had come from, but there were many rumours. Some claimed he was a member of the Legio Custodes who had never come back from a Blood Game. Others said he was one of the Emperor’s thunder warriors who had somehow survived the end of the wars of Unity. Yet more claimed he was a Space Marine whose body had rejected the last stage of his elevation to post-human and had fled before he could be put down. Most likely he was simply a ruthless bastard who had proved to be more of a ruthless bastard than anyone else.

But his evil reputation didn’t put off those who desperately sought entry to the Palace, and day by day, year by year, the Petitioner’s City grew ever larger. Armed forces from the palace periodically swept the streets of the city, gathering up the dregs and lowlifes too slow or too stupid to hide, but it achieved little more than salving the consciences of the noble born lords of Terra. For all intents and purposes, the Petitioner’s City was a law unto itself.

Imperial heralds escorted by hundreds of armed men occasionally ventured as far as the Proclamation Arch to read the names of those whose luck had finally turned and would be allowed to enter the Palace. Few of those called ever made their way through the archway to the Petitioner’s Gate. Most were either lying dead in a nameless alley or, having given up all hope of ever attaining entry, had simply returned to whatever corner of the globe they had once called home.

Palladis had been one of the lucky ones, called to the palace with his family while the Petitioner’s City was still a place of quiet order. He had come from the southern lands of the Romanii, where he had plied his trade as a crafter of stone and worker of marble in the palaces of the burgeoning technocratic cartel houses that rose from the drift sand at the edge of the dust bowl. But as the megastructures rose higher and higher and steel and glass replaced the ancient weight of stone, Palladis found himself forced to seek work elsewhere.

With his wife and newborn sons, Palladis had crossed a landscape still bearing the scars of global war that had raged for as long as anyone could remember. Only now was it beginning to reveal the potential glory spoken of by the Emperor’s heralds. In search of that glory, he had crossed the peaks of Serbis and followed the Carpathian Arch before entering the homeland of the Rus and following the trade caravans along the ancient Silk Road across the plains of Nakhdjevan. There they turned east through Aryana and the newly-fertile lands of the Indoi, before the ground began to rise and the mountains that marked the edge of the world came into view.

It had been an awe-inspiring sight, one that would be forever etched on his memory, but one that had become bittersweet in the years that followed.

Palladis turned from the memories of murder and pushed through the plastic slats that kept the worst of the ash from leaving the crematorium. The air was thick with it. The incinerator would need to be emptied soon, as the remains of the dead were backing up in the firebox. He hung up his rubberised apron and removed his heavy canvas gauntlets. The wetted cloth around his mouth and nose came off next, followed by his ash-smeared goggles.

Taking a moment to run his hands through his unkempt hair, Palladis stepped through the doorway into the main area of the temple. As always, it was crowded with mourners, and the soft sound of weeping women and men drifted to the stoic angels worked into the eaves. Palladis felt his eyes drawn to the smooth curves of the Vacant Angel, and placed his hand on its cool marble surface.

The dark nephrite was from Syrya, hand finished and polished to a degree of smoothness that only an artisan’s love could fashion. And yet Vadok Singh had rejected it and cast it aside. He felt his hands bunch into fists at the thought of the Emperor’s warmason. So obsessed with his art was Singh that he cast aside anything that did not match his exacting demands: materials, tools, plans or people.

Especially people.

His gaze was drawn to the featureless face, again wondering whose likeness had been planned for its unfinished surface. It didn’t matter now. It would never be completed, so the question was immaterial. He dragged his eyes from its blank countenance as he heard someone call his name, and looked across the chamber.

Roxanne sat with Maya and her two surviving children, both of whom had responded well to the counterseptics she had obtained from Antioch. The woman’s husband, Estaben, sat to one side, and Palladis felt a stab of annoyance. He had forbidden the man to distribute more of his Lectito Divinitatus leaflets, knowing it was unwise to attract additional attention to a place people insisted on calling a temple.

Roxanne raised her hand, and he returned the gesture, knowing it was only a matter of time until she brought trouble down upon them. Someone like her could not remain hidden forever, even in a place like the Petitioner’s City. No one here knew it, but she was an exceptionally rare woman, and her family would eventually demand that she return to them. By force if need be.

He walked over to her, giving smiles of sympathy to those who mourned and nods of understanding to those who stood with them. Roxanne looked up as he approached and put her hand on the head of the child nestled in Maya’s arms.

‘Looks like the medicine is working,’ she said. ‘I think they’ll both be fine.’