Through the dust, heretic silhouettes drifted closer to the tank. ‘The Warrior-Kings of Ultramar’, Cyrene had murmured in that moment. ‘The XIII Legion.’

Blasphemers, all. Their resemblance to the Bearers of the Word only compounded their impurity.

Planetary vox was down. She’d heard from a street vendor that the invaders destroyed all of Khur’s satellites before they came through the clouds. True or not, contact with other cities – even within Monarchia itself – was limited to word of mouth.

‘They rose up in Quami District,’ the vendor insisted. ‘Not just Tophet. Gulshia, too. Hundreds dead. Perhaps thousands.’ He shrugged as if such things were mere curiosities. ‘I’m leaving tonight. There’s no hope fighting devils, shuhl-asha.’

Cyrene said nothing, though she smiled at his gentlemanly use of her profession’s archaic title. But what was there to say? The invaders had the city in lockdown. The seeds of rebellion would never take root in such unfertile ground.

District by district, the exodus from Monarchia began after those first purges. Once the gates were opened, a ceaseless flood of humanity spilled from the city.

By nightfall, the mass evacuation was fully underway. Monarchia’s wealthiest citizens – most of them merchants or high-ranking clergymen serving as Speakers of the Word – secured their own transportation, leaving the city for secondary estates in other towns. The morning air above Monarchia was dense with shuttlecraft boosting away to other havens, ferrying the rich, the important, the economically vital and the spiritually enlightened to sanctuary elsewhere.

Cyrene hadn’t left yet. In truth, she wasn’t certain she would leave. She stood on the balcony of her second-floor habitation pod – somewhere between a room and a cell in the Jiro Apartment Block, in one of the cheapest parts of town.