Moreover, I am even ready to support this decision. And in the future, if we succeed, I am ready to give you disproportionately greater influence and territories under your control. You understand the territory I'm talking about.

As my contribution to our long term relationship and first step, I will give you a small gift.

I'll help you keep your place and your current, I'm not afraid of the word, gains. With a kind word.

Which you won't be without in the next few days.

The good word is in the information you will receive in this letter.

Metropolitan Samoh will be raiding one of your subordinate sectors the other day. Not the one you've settled in personally. But a neighboring sector. He's trying out his forces, so to speak.

Neither the imperial army nor the SCIU will offer him any resistance.

But his ultimate goal is right next to you. And a week or two later, he'll show up with a raid on you. Believe me, he's not interested in you personally. He's after the high-ranking plagues of the CCC. But when he deals with them, you can be sure that your achievements will be nullified soon and everything will go back to the way it was before.

Now you are aware of the danger ahead of you. I have no doubt that you will find the right solution and come out of all this victorious.

Upon reading it, burn this letter. And I hope that my help will make you from a human prefect to a Mr. Prefect respecting the holy faith of Jah."

He didn't burn the letter, of course. How could such a thing be burned. It might still be useful, and there were a thousand ways of doing it… The person who wrote it was evidently very much afraid that it might fall into the wrong hands. So much so that he didn't even write it in the plague language. That nice remark that he didn't want to waste a person's time translating is nothing more than a basic digression to confuse.

And it is particularly interesting that it seems to be, indeed, someone from the highest circles of the plague Church. The confrontation between the Church and the CCC was no longer a white spot in the architecture of the plague empire. It permeated all areas of the plagues and over time became an increasing problem in maintaining stability.

From the material received from Shinhra, Gora saw several denunciations within the structure of the SCF on the activities of individual members reproached for collaboration with the Inquisition. This was all the more significant because the nature of such denunciation contained as high a degree of disgust at what had been done as the importance of stopping it. The SCF must have been very wary of the Inquisition, and apparently lacked a full-fledged plan of action.

As for the humans, the people of the Church, much less the Inquisition, were understandably not accountable at all, which was most likely why the Mountain Prefecture had expanded so much in the past few months. The CCC feared the Inquisition more than they feared the people.

At the same time, the priest who leaked such valuable information to the Mountain with this letter is obviously playing for the SCK in this case. It's still hard to understand his motives, but it's certain that the current Samoh raid won't play into his hands. Maybe it's a matter of personal animosity, maybe it's some far-reaching plans, but one thing is clear — the information about the Inquisition's swift act against SCK in the Diza sector is reliable.

And there can't even be any doubt that the local target of the Deez sector is Anankhr.

Gora has over the past six months well studied and realized how Ananhr is an important bird in the SCK hierarchy. In all likelihood, she is someone's protégé with high hopes for the future. At the same time, it was highly likely that she had family ties somewhere in the highest circles of the imperial administration. This was evidenced by the fact that female chums were simply not assigned to similar positions, and this was an obvious exception. To assume that this exception was born of personal qualities rather than connections was too unrealistic. 1 in 100, if not 1 in 1000… No, it was obviously some kind of connection. And that's also why the Inquisition wants to strike here, getting a valuable hostage.

There was a knock on the door:

— May I?

It was Konstantin Bogatyi, now as deputy prefect he was in charge of production in 7 mines, fulfilling the specified norms exactly on time.

— Yes, come in, darling.

Rich walked in and stood almost at attention. He had long been uncomfortable when he entered this room. As time went on, his gaze became the same as it had been when he used to look at the plague-wardens.

— Gavi, it's done. We met the deadline. — Rich was instructed to organize a drilling rig at one more mine, and at two others to prepare them for work in case of need. Now the miners did not work with picks and shovels in the face sector — now everything was done by diesel-powered machines. And it was not a problem for all seven mines to submit production figures, and the free hands were used for new repair and construction works or in Tikhomirov's units. Actually, half a thousand of his fighters now seemed not such a luxury — it looked like it was time to create local units of territorial defense.

— Is the second route holding the load?

— Yes. It's even stocked up. There's enough capacity there even if we double the supply.

The second route is the same route that the Mountain once advocated to Cobre. That they had to use it, that it created difficulties, that they should use the outer transportation