Roxanne turned in fright, all thoughts of equilibrium and deserts falling from her mind like leaves in autumn. Three men in heavy furs and rough canvas work overalls lounged on the wall opposite the mural. All three smoked, and clouds of blue hung like a fog over their heads. Swarthy and rough-skinned, they were brutish and clumsy looking, but Roxanne knew better than to dismiss them as common drunks or thugs.

‘I am not looking for trouble,’ said Roxanne, lifting her hands, palm up, towards the men.

They laughed, and a man with thin eyes and a long drooping moustache stepped forward.

He flicked his bac-stick away. ‘That’s too bad, little girl, because trouble’s found you.’

‘Please,’ said Roxanne. ‘If you are Babu Dhakal’s men, you should walk away. It would be better for everyone if you just left me alone. Trust me.’

‘If you know we work for the Babu, then you know we’re not going to let you go,’ said the man, beckoning his companions to his side. Roxanne saw heavy pistols stuffed into the waistbands of their overalls, and crude, hand-made shanks strapped to their thighs. The moustachioed leader pulled a gleaming weapon from his belt, a long knife with the blade angled forward. He lifted it to his lips and ran a yellowed tongue over the cutting edge of the knife. Blood dripped down his chin and he smiled, exposing reddened teeth.

‘You’re from the death church, aren’t you?’ said the man.

‘I am from the Temple of Woe, yes,’ confirmed Roxanne, keeping her voice as neutral as possible. ‘That is why you should leave me alone.’

‘Too late for that, little girl. I’m guessing you’re heading for Antioch’s, and that means you must have plenty of coin to afford his prices. Hand it over now and we’ll go easy on you, maybe only cut you a little.’

‘I cannot do that,’ said Roxanne.

‘Of course you can. Just reach inside that robe and hand it over. Trust me, it’ll be easier for you if you do. Anil and Murat aren’t kind like I am, and they already want to kill you.’

‘If you take my money, you will be killing two children,’ explained Roxanne.

The man shrugged. ‘They won’t be the first. I doubt they’ll be the last.’

With a gesture, the two men either side of the lead thug rushed towards her. She turned and ran for the end of the road, screaming for help though she knew no one would answer. A hand grabbed her robe. She squirmed free. A fist punched her on the shoulder and she stumbled, reaching out to the wall to steady herself.

A portion of the adobe wall came loose and she cried out as she fell to her knees. She found herself face to face with a piece of brickwork bearing the helm of a warrior in armour of red and white. A foot planted itself between her shoulder blades and shoved hard. Roxanne’s face slammed into the earthen street and blood filled her mouth as she bit the inside of her cheek. Rough hands rolled her onto her back.

Roxanne’s hood fell back, along with a knotted bandana, and her assailant leered a gap-toothed grin.

‘Pretty, pretty!’ he spat. His shank caught the light of a nearby torch.

A second pair of hands tore open her robe and Roxanne thrashed in their grip.

‘Get off me!’ she screamed, but Babu Dhakal’s men weren’t listening.

‘I warned you,’ said the leader of the thugs, almost amiably.

‘No,’ said Roxanne. ‘I warned you!’

The thug pawing at her belt suddenly spasmed as though a high voltage electric current was passing through him. Blood-flecked froth burst from behind his teeth and his eyes boiled to glutinous steam within their sockets. He screamed and rolled off Roxanne, clawing at his smoking skull and thrashing as though assaulted by a host of invisible attackers.

‘What did you do?’ snarled the second man, scrambling away in terror.

Roxanne sat up and spat a broken tooth, her anger and hurt too powerful for any thoughts of mercy to intrude. She fixed the frightened man with her gaze and, once again, did the very thing her tutors had always warned her never to do.

The man screamed and bright red blood squirted from his nose and ears. The life went out of him in an instant, and he slumped against the wall like a drunk. Roxanne climbed unsteadily to her feet as the third man backed away from her in horror.

‘You are boksi!’ cried the man. ‘A daemon witch!’

‘I told you to leave me alone,’ said Roxanne. ‘But you wouldn’t listen.’

‘I’ll kill you!’ screamed the man, reaching for his pistol.

Before the weapon cleared his overalls, he fell back with sizzling brain matter leaking from every orifice in his skull. Without a sound, he toppled sideways and his head caved in like an emptied air bladder as it hit the ground.

Roxanne steadied herself against the wall behind her, breathless and appalled at the violence she had unleashed. Swiftly she retrieved her bandana, and pulled up the hood of her robe, lest anyone see her face and recognise her for what she was.

Once again, blood and death had followed her. She was what ancient mariners had once called a Jonah, and it seemed that no matter where she hid, ill-fortune and death would surround her. She hadn’t meant to kill these men, but raw survival instinct had kicked in and there was little she could have done to prevent their deaths.

She saw the clan markings tattooed on the arm of the man she had killed first, and the cold realisation of what she had done flooded her.

These were Babu Dhakal’s men!

He would demand blood in return for their deaths, and the Babu was not a man given to restraint in his vengeance. When retaliation came it would be exponentially worse.

‘Throne, what have I done?’ she whispered.

Roxanne fled into the night.

THE SKIMMER EASED through the City of Sight, its blue and amethyst colours bright in the overlong shadows that filled its gloomy precincts. Few statues were raised here, and though many of the pale, columned buildings were grandly shaped and heroically proportioned, they were brooding, monolithic structures that pressed down on the skin of the mountains like architectural black holes, sucking in the available light and warmth of the failing day.

Kai knew he was being melodramatic, a trait he despised in others, but couldn’t help himself from such indulgence. He had long thought himself done with this bleak place, but here he was again, cast back like a failed aspirant.

The image was an apt one, he realised, for wasn’t that exactly what he was?

The hollow mountain loomed above the city, casting its shadow over Kai. Though he affected an air of disinterest, the idea of being taken there sent breathless jolts of fear through his body. He pushed thoughts of that dreadful place from his mind and concentrated on the road ahead. Tortega had turned away from the window, proving that even a fool could sense the weight of solemnity that pervaded the City of Sight. Kai reached out with the tiniest measure of his psychic senses to determine exactly where he was. Thanks to his augmetic eyes, precision-fashioned ocular implants ground and crafted by Mechanicum adepts bonded to House Castana, he had little reason to employ his blindsight, and it took a moment for him to adjust his perceptions from visual to psychic.

He closed his eyes, feeling the weight of the nearby buildings and the aetheric bulk of the many high towers of psykers. It took a moment to orient himself, but in seconds he had shaped the surrounding architecture into ribbons of light and gleaming threads of colour. The skimmer was passing the Gallery of Mirrors, a vast, cathedral-like building through which successful initiates passed on their way to the awe-inspiring caverns beneath the city. Far beneath the palace, they would kneel before the Emperor and have the impossibly complex neural pathways of their mind agonisingly reshaped to better resist the dangers of the warp.