The Grand Bazaar was alive with endless possibility. Anything could be bought within its tiered floors stretching up to the great ceiling that marked the boundary between the Second Tier and the First. The Bazaar housed hundreds of stalls, each a wonder of decoration designed to entice the eye and distract from the poorer quality goods. Within these halls, lit only by the occasional lumi-lamp and possessing an almost mystical atmosphere as a result, anything could be bought.

The poorest of the Bazaar’s stalls sold chunks of sandstone carved into the shapes of saints and heroes, while the better off made similar images from glass formed from the desert sands. The accoutrements of worship were omnipresent: devotional beads and crowns, books of prayers and catechisms, and fine cloth for tailoring into robes hung from the walls, advertised by the eager cries of their salesmen.

At a respectable distance from this holy site were the less pious stalls, equally as omnipresent and frequented by some of the less-scrupulous students, or their overworked lecturers. Stout bottles of alcohol, brewed from imported grain, were a popular choice, requiring only time to make, but in the darkest corners of the market even baser goods could be found. Glitterstim or obscura was sold in the darkest shadows, whilst the truly desperate peddled their daughters or sisters to the attentions of the worst of humanity. It was the Imperium in microcosm, all the glory and piety reflected by tragedy and despair.

Helena Brazier moved through these stalls like an eager tourist, still fascinated by the colourful place even after six months spent on the planet. The street peddlers found her an eager haggler, more interested in playing the game than in any actual deals, and they greeted the beautiful woman with familiar cries of joy, or well-meaning lamentations about particularly good deals she had squeezed from them. They did not cry out the name Helena Brazier, naturally. Here she was Lara Cafferty, debutante and rising star of the Harkon Trading Guild sent to expand their presence on Sumer by making inroads into the world’s wealthiest city.

The deception had served her well these past few months, having allowed her discrete inroads into the highest places of power. She revelled in her newfound reputation, and replied to the peddlers’ cries with good-natured retorts about the quality of their goods, and on the miserliness of peddlers in general. Still, she found herself taking one peddler’s offer of fried lizard on a stick for a tenth of a throne and she enjoyed the juicy dish as she wandered through the bazaar. It had become her habit, whenever possible, to ensure her route brought her through the magnificent building.

She offered her lizard to her ever-present bodyguard, who simply shook his head in mock dismay. Qaboos Al’Said may have been dressed in the familiar attire of the Tallarn Desert Raiders but he had never felt more out of place. This desert, as familiar as it was to his home, was different enough to unsettle him. Its familiar features, the struggle for survival and the simple piety of its citizens were rendered unbearable by the distinctions. It was the little things that bothered him the most, the folds of the locals’ shemaghs, or the cut of their robes. It was like looking into a circus mirror, and seeing your distorted reflection looking back at you.

Al’Said was a true son of Tallarn, a stoic and a conservative. It was perhaps unexpected that he should have found love in Helena’s arms, for her open and outgoing personality was the exact antithesis of his values, but perhaps he loved her because she was so different to Tallarn and so could not remind him of the home he had lost. He sometimes wondered if she too missed her homeworld but, as he watched her practically bounce around the bazaar, he came to the conclusion that she loved each new place they visited far too much for that. Sometimes, when she thought she was alone, he saw something of the old Helena, the quiet mouse of a girl who was so desperate to avoid any attention, but those moments left as frequently as they came.

In time he was able to coax the Throne Agent out of the bazaar and they made their way along Iram’s gently curving avenues out of the market districts, and into the rows of office-blocks and fortified compounds that made up the foreigners’ quarter. It was here that the cartels and merchant families of the Imperium held court, a district of impeccably clean streets and well-dressed people where each facet of society was aimed at impressing the client. The hooded Enforcers of the Faith were seldom needed here, for the merchant families that held these halls paid through the nose for the privilege of bringing their own armed guards to the city, and those professional thugs ensured that any trouble stayed out of sight and out of mind.

Helena paused before the guard at the entrance to their own building, spending what Al-Said saw as an unnecessary amount of time chatting about inane things like his family or weather his back was playing up again. This social wrangling may have gotten them far, but Al-Said missed the simplicity of an assault squad, an interrogation cell and a psychic interrogation. Still, he had to recognise that Helena’s efforts had built the Harkon Trading Guild an impeccable reputation for openness and good manners, and what helped the Guild helped the Interrogator.

The Harkon Trading Guild was a real company, albeit somewhat new, having formed from the conglomeration of several smaller corporations on Valedor, where the company traded on the planet’s primary stock market. When the elevator brought them to the top three stories of the building, which had been rented some six months ago for the company, they were greeted by a secretary dressed in the grey shirt of the Harkon Trading Guild’s bonded servants, with the guild’s logo on her sleeve. Behind this first barrier, and discretely off to the side, were a small team of corporate security officers in simple flak armour and armed with autorifles.

The ground floor of the company’s offices was largely aimed at impressing the company’s guests, with an expansive atrium aimed to mimic the comfortable lounges of Valedor, with wood-panelled walls (an expensive investment in the deep desert) and rich red-leather furniture. Beyond this space were dining rooms, meeting rooms and opulently furnished offices aimed at wooing clients. Similar rooms would be found in offices across the Imperium, and every other cartel on Iram likely had a similar space.

The second floor, where no guests would ever tread, was more utilitarian. Its walls were steel, or locally sourced stone, and most of its space was given over to an extensive series of cubicles, within which clerks and servitors in Harkon uniforms worked at managing the Guild’s trading operations on Sumer. It was within this space that the logistics of moving steel, water and, from the next shipment, mutants from out of the Sector and onto Sumer were coordinated. Through categorisation and delegation that would have been the envy of the finest Administratum outpost this titanic effort was made manageable and the trade flowed uninterrupted.

It was on the third floor, past a sealed steel bulkhead and an automated gun-servitor, that the masquerade finally fell. The Harkon Trading Guild had an accredited history of trading stretching back fifty years, but five years ago the company hadn’t existed. The Inquisition had access to data-cyphers and advanced Mechanicus hunter-killer code that made a mockery of even the most stringent data-defence, and it had been a trifling task to edit the records of dozens of larger companies. The end result was a false shell with a reputation for small-scale trades in very large numbers, and an accredited history that would impress their prey. The uniformed staff were Inquisitorial acolytes playing at being guildsmen, just as their two merchantmen were cleverly deployed and renamed to create the illusion of a fleet of dozens of ships.

If an intruder reached the third floor, at the very top of the eight-story building, then there was no point in continuing the masquerade. Red banners hung from the walls, proudly displaying the sigil of the Inquisition, whilst a squad of Stormtroopers sat idle in their carapace armour. The ostentatious décor of the previous floors had been replaced with familiar utilitarianism and darkened lighting. The rooms here had been soundproofed, and some had been laced with psi-inert materials for conversion into cells. These cells, and the torturer who manned them, were unoccupied out of use, the torturer himself currently manning a desk downstairs. Still, the safehouse was far from inactive; at a row of advanced cogitators a pair of Mechanics adepts were sifting through the files lifted from a few of the competing guilds, and a constant stream of Helena’s adepts were cross referencing physical data.

Including the Guild decoys, a total of three dozen acolytes worked in this facility. There was a diverse collection of gangers and assassins employed in covert criminal activity, adepts and data sifters, stormtroopers and a small group of more specialised staff including the Chiurgeon, the torturer and the diminutive blank who, in spite of her limiter and her deliberate efforts to remain unnoticed, was fixed with irrationally prejudicial glares as she crossed the room on the way back to her small chamber, clutching a greasy sandwich like it was some trophy. The blank was a necessary countermeasure, and a valuable asset, but she was insufferable to be around. Al’Said hadn’t even bothered to learn her name.

Helena moved through the cluttered space, greeting each acolyte she passed by name and pausing occasionally to provide a sympathetic ear. That was the dichotomy they had settled into over the past decade, Helena was the approachable people-person who kept an eye on their team’s psychological health while Al’Said was the disciplined manager who motivated them to be better. Above both of them was the Interrogator, the inviolate captain of this ship, and it was to her chambers, strategically placed as far from the blank’s as possible, that she now moved.

The stormtrooper guard who stood vigil over their lord and master snapped to attention as the two throne agents approached, and Al’Said returned his salute. With a pneumatic hiss, the reinforced door slid open, and they were entered the Interrogator’s chambers. The Interrogator occupied a small suite of three rooms, a bedroom, an office and the large chamber in which they now stood. This room was almost entirely occupied by machinery. Strange and wonderous technology lined the walls, and a nest of wires stretched across the ceiling before running down the side of a great cylindrical tank entirely coated in heavy steel plates that concealed psi-conductive materials.

‘Throne Agents,’ came the synthesised voice of the Tech-Priest Narthex, ‘the Interrogator is currently indisposed, and has instructed me not to interrupt her.’

Narthex was somewhat of a typical tech-priest, with only the rust orange colour of his robes speaking of his heritage on the Forge World of Ryza. He was a recalcitrant man who was wholly focused on his task of maintaining the complicated machinery in the Interrogator’s chambers, which suited everyone else just fine.

‘If you would wait in the office, I am assured she will be out momentarily,’ spoke another voice

The second of the Interrogator’s servants was her steward, Ophelia. She was a hard woman in her early thirties, dressed like a high-ranking servant in a noble household with a coatee in the Inquisitor’s red and grey and tight-fitting white breeches. She was respectful, but her proximity to the Interrogator gave her airs and graces beyond her station. Still, an argument was pointless and so the two Throne Agents took seats in the Interrogator’s office.

There was a silent form moving throughout the City of the Pillars, invisible to all who lacked its gift. Those who could see it, and there were none in the city, would see a ball of green fire, passing effortlessly through walls. Amelia flew on the ethereal winds, and basked in the spiritual essence of the holy site at the heart of the city. The Warp is far from constant; it has a different character in every place, defined by the people that live there. The Oasis at the heart of Iram was the site of a miracle, and the warp was thick with the golden light of the Emperor. It was a wonderous thing, that burned Amelia’s soul when she drew towards it. This was the faith of humanity; it did not belong to Psykers, even sanctioned ones.

She swung away from the plateau and flew around the lowermost ring, buffeted by the currents that came wherever humanity was densest. There was faith here too, the simple faith of simple people. It was pure, uncorrupted by reason or intellect, and she drew it in as she flew. She passed through the five metres of metal and stone that divided the two tiers, and sped up as the fast-paced signature of the industrious heart of Iram caught her. The faith here was less pure, for these people were more concerned with worldly matters than spiritual, but there were still concentrations around the parish temples.

The highest tier proved the strangest of the city, for its currents were a result of the collision between the holy sites and some hidden rot that she had not yet been able to determine. She flew towards the open-air colosseum that was the College of the Purifying Blade, taking in the lines of apprentices going through battle-prayers and sword-drills. She flew beneath the sands of the arena, and into the warren of tunnels beneath. Here the dichotomy was clear, for these tunnels stank with the taint of the deviant, the heretic and the mutant. She passed even deeper, coming to the loading bay at the very base of the structure.

Here, dozens of mutants were being forced out of their cages by the electro-staves of eager attendants, tasked with handling the wild animals and human, or inhuman, stock. Her consciousness drifted towards a female mutant, one of the few whose head was held high. Luka had given much for her, and she would continue to give until the day she found redemption in death. Amelia could feel the concern that lay beneath her brave exterior, and her consciousness subtly caressed Luka’s mind. The act was not pleasant, for her soul was twisted by her mutant heritage, but Amelia was able to turn her fears and harden her resolve.

Amelia was her acolyte’s unseen follower until she was placed in a cell with a dozen others of the new shipment, joining twenty other occupants. She watched as Luka went about her duties, working subtle machinations that would ingratiate herself with the existing fighters and hopefully impress the Fellows of the College. She watched as the mountainous Confessor Sacharine walked along the slave-pits, and she felt a degree of satisfaction as his eyes lingered on Luka. Satisfied that events were proceeding according to her design, she took flight again, leaving the mutant infiltrator alone.

She flew over, and sometimes through, a dozen other colleges whose warp signature was thick with youthful exuberance. Each college was a world in microcosm, with its own quirks and politics, and her team were only beginning to gain a handle on each, not to mention the dozens of other factions vying for influence in the City of the Pillars. Street fights between students from rival colleges were common, and the Ecclesiarchy and the Arbites had regularly come into conflict over jurisdiction for these misdemeanours.

The College of the Penitent Priest loomed above her, a baroque edifice built to the maximum height allowed by the Emir of Iram and specifically designed to prevent the Oasis being deprived of sunlight. What was to all appearances a rather standard, if somewhat self-flagellating, organisation had a subtle undercurrent of energy that Amelia had learned to recognise as the taint of corruption. Either a member of the student body was dabbling in forbidden lore, or one of the faculty had become corrupted by power. She flew inwards, following the warp-stench deeper into the bowels of the College, passing rooms that grew less ornate the deeper she travelled.

It was through this journey that she found a discrete cargo-entrance that stank of humanity. This vehicle bay was linked to a long line of cells in which hooded penitents sat bound. As Amelia passed along the line, she skimmed off the essence of their soul. This cursory inspection revealed souls that seemed universally young, in their late teens or early twenties, and each stank of fear. These were not penitents. They held no hidden guilts or the vital desire for absolution, all they desired was freedom. As Amelia turned her spectral eye on the bound figures, she saw that the majority were women and the few whose faces were exposed seemed more beautiful than a sample size of twenty should merit.

This was unsettling, and the implications disgusted Amelia, but it was not in and of itself damning. Amelia passed further in, following some undetermined hunch upwards until she arrived in a richly furnished chamber, with plush carpet surrounding a section of what looked like plastic. The room was empty, save for a woman who knelt in the centre of the plastic between two metal posts. Amelia’s gaze was drawn to the barbed whips and stout rods that lined the walls, and she reached out to the woman’s mind. Unlike these unfortunates in the basement, she was seemingly a willing pennant, remorseful over abandoning a brother during some personal crisis.

She felt two minds approaching, one young and the other old, and she flew out to inspect these visitors. The first, whose mind was a picture of piety and dedication, was a senior student, judging by the bands of red on his apprentice robes, while his companion, a full Confessor of the college, practically reeked of the warp’s taint. The Confessor had his arm around the student’s shoulder, and was bolstering the younger man’s resolve in the face of his first confession. It sickened Amelia to see this pious man take solace in the words of his corrupted teacher, but she could not risk exposure by interfering. The Confessor left his Student at the doorstep, before stepping into a room with a bank of monitors displaying the confession chamber.

Amelia watched in revulsion as the pious citizens interacted, the student kneeling before the penitent and listening to her confess her sins. As the student rose, the penitent unclasped the collar of her robe and let it fall, exposing her back. She grasped the posts in her hands and waited while the student, hesitation evident on his face, took down a cat o’ nine tails. In the next room, unseen by all except Amelia, the Confessor’s face shifted into a rictus of satisfaction as he thumbed a rune. Slowly, imperceptibly, a chemical cocktail was pumped into the room, unnoticed by the two occupants.

The drugs appeared to have no effect, but when the student brought the whip down on the penitent’s back, he struck with far more force than he intended, and the penitent offered a low moan as her skin was sliced. It was as if a manic rage fell over the student, and he brought the whip down again and again until the penitent’s moans became screams, then sobs and, finally, nothing. Amelia did not move to help, but she couldn’t look away. It was within her power to kill the confessor and bolster the mind of the student but some horrible rational part of her mind knew that saving one woman would only jeopardise her mission, and watching her demise was the only way of honouring her sacrifice.

As the drugs dissipated, the student was left standing over a pile of viscera that bore little resemblance to the human form. He fell to his knees, running his hands through the chunks of bloody flesh and shattered bone as if searching for some remaining scrap of humanity, and wept with great despairing moans. The Confessor was through the door almost immediately, wrapping his arms around the student and offering comfort and solace. Amelia watched as the first chink in the student’s faith was created, and the first essence of corruption entered his soul.