The Emperor left the way weather changes—pressure easing from lungs, light stepping back a pace, sound thinning until even the rain decided to fall more softly. His fleet unstitched the sky in quiet tiers, and Nostramo did not cheer. It watched with its black eyes and practiced stillness.
Curze did not watch the fleet go. He stood at the edge of a terrace of poured obsidian and regarded the city as if it were a wound he intended to close without stitches. Below, his Legion assembled in a new geometry. The old Terran numerals lived on slates and manifests, but aloud the Nostraman tongue began to name things—talons, packs, claws. Vox discipline tightened until the air learned not to echo.
Kael stood at the hinge of a formation that had learned to hold a line in any light. Rain tracked his helm and made tiny rivers in the matt finish. Nostramo's lamp-glow struggled against the void-dull plates; it lost. In the street shadows beyond the parade ground, faces nested behind bars and shutters: white as paper, eyes wholly black, a city bred to look like the night already owned it.
Curze moved.
He did not march. He arrived. The first "judgements" fell on men whose sins were visible enough to be arithmetic: a guild master who bought screams, a Watch captain who rented knives. The Primarch found them without being told, pressed them to stone with the calm of a teacher moving a hand from a flame, and broke them with the neat, economic sounds of work done exactly once. The rain took the blood as if it were part of the lesson plan.
Instruction, Kael thought. Not theatre. Curze did not luxuriate. He edited.
When the crowd breathed again—a thin, relieved whine—Curze's gaze crossed ranks and fixed on Kael with the inevitability of two lines finding their intersection. He beckoned. No retinue, no heraldry. Kael followed into the under-ways where the ceiling sweated and the water tasted metallic.
"You teach with absence," Curze said. His voice lived in concrete. "Your men leave rooms smaller than they found them."
"We leave them usable," Kael answered.
"To whom?"
"To order."
"Whose order?"
"The Emperor's."
Curze stopped. Water ticked his gorget. "The Emperor does not live here," he said, turning his head so black lamps wrote planes along his cheekbones. "I do."
Kael's twin hearts kept time. "Then we agree: my order will not contradict yours while it serves His."
Curze regarded him the way a surgeon regards an anomaly that might be useful. "You will adopt my structure. Companies become claws. Cadres hunt as packs. You will speak like us, move like us, bleed what we bleed."
"We will," Kael said. "And we still serve the Throne."
Curze's mouth made a shape that was not quite a smile. "You will sit in the Kyroptera," he said. "You do not crave it. Good. Ambition makes men noisy."
"I am sure you are," Kael replied, not as a challenge but as inventory.
"I have sons who want to be me," Curze said. "I need one who can be himself."
They emerged into a square where a thousand eyes pretended to be wet stone. Curze raised his hand. Habit lowered heads. "Bring me your knives," he told the city. "Bring me your books. We will keep what can be used."
Kael's vox throbbed with the quiet of men working: Malchion's breath measured to a metronome; Joras counting in the back of his mouth; Silas humming machine-hymns until power returned as obedience. He stood close enough to be example, far enough to be lesson, and never once let his men see him look away.
Nostramo learned new rituals. Lamps took shades. Doors relearned polite knocks. Shutters lowered early and quiet. The Night Lords cut the city into sectors and apportioned responsibility the way a mason apportions mortar—enough to hold, not enough to stain.
Curze's aesthetic arrived with function: armour plates repainted midnight, trim erased to shadow, icons simplified until fear could read them at a distance. The bat's wing appeared—curved, economical, two points and a purpose—on banners, bucklers, bulkhead stencils.
Kael refit his company in that image because psychology is a tool. Their ceramite became a matte midnight that swallowed neon and took lightning like a benediction.
The white lightning bolt over black field sat on the left pauldron by Curze's writ; on the right, subtle bat-winged flanges grew from the rim—not gaudy, not fragile, just enough silhouette to be seen by the part of the brain that counts predators. Helm-visors sharpened into skullish angles; vox-slit baffling re-tuned for a whisper that carried farther than a shout.
He stood the men in the training dome whose lumens were permanently blue as a bruise and spoke in both tongues. "You will terrify criminals," he said. "You will not terrify citizens. If you cannot hear the difference, you will learn at a cost you will hate."
They listened because he made listening require less fear than noncompliance. He learned their clipped Nostraman speech—its warnings, its soft fatalism—and returned it clean of the idioms that made cruelty sound clever.
In return, he made them recite the old Terran commands—file, section, line; intake, egress, datum—until the vowels fit their mouths. On the mess wall he posted two phrases, both languages, equal size: Fear is currency. Spend it wisely. And beneath: You will be remembered by what you leave working.
Curze called the Kyroptera in the second week.
They gathered on glass floors set over slow black water. Terran captains: neat as old oaths, scar-etched faces composed in habit. Nostraman captains: pale, tattooed with letters that meant owed and collected, eyes like windows painted shut. Helmets rested on the table edge; fingers tapped in rhythms that meant nothing and everything. Kael felt their regard the way cloth feels a knife edge—pressure without cut. For now.
Curze entered last. Iron arrives when iron is ready to be struck. The glass under his boots considered becoming stone. "You will hunt," he said. "Not armies. Sickness. You will make order cheap." His eyes cut to Kael. "You will keep maps. When doors require keys, you will have them."
"We already do," Kael said, calm as ledger math.
A Nostraman with cheekbones like blades laughed without sound. The glass carried it. Terran keys for a world that forgot locks, the shape of his mouth said.
"Terrans bring spare doors," Kael replied, still not looking at him.
Curze let the moment breathe, then killed it. "You will speak Nostraman when you bleed," he told them. "You will sign your kills in this tongue. When you count, you will count in the Emperor's numbers. Do not mistake my city for a world."
Agreement, disagreement—both performed correctly. The council ended with edges sheathed, none blunted.
Under the portico, a Mechanicum courier waited with a crate whose seals made men put their hands behind their backs without knowing why. The red-robed priest at its side wore brass peeled back from one cheek to show etiquette at the bone.
"Delivery by writ of Lord Malcador," the magos intoned, presenting a slate with the Sigillite's personal cipher beside the Imperial aquila. "To Captain Kael Varan, Eighth Legion, Fifteenth Cl—Company." The correction was soft but doctrinal.
Several captains lingered, learning how to keep score without saying jealousy. Kael signed with the iron ring. The seals took the ring's permission like a habit learned too young and parted with a sigh.
Inside, wrapped in oiled cloth blacker than void, lay three things and a writ.
The writ: a charter etched into adamantine foil with a neat, legal hand. Strike Cruiser Designate: Watcher Above. Hull: dagger-form, void baffles integrated. Launch: boarding torpedoes and stealth landers. Auspex signature: diminished, patterned to drink. Control hierarchy: bound by gene-key to Captain Kael Varan under Imperial Warrant, Mars concurring. By Malcador's hand and the Fabricator-General's courtesy.
The first thing: a blade. Single-edged, long, a patient spine and a fuller that absorbed light like water. No ostentation. Not humble. VEILRENDER, inscribed inside the guard in letters you had to choose to see. On the strip of card beneath, written in actual ink: For work, not witness. — M.
The second: a suit of artificer armour on a cradle like a bier. Varanshade Mk.III, the plaque read in High Gothic, with subscript strings in Mechanicum binharic that sounded like gratitude held at gunpoint.
The plates were midnight, true matte; trims and circuit-venae veiled under black enamel. The left pauldron bore the white lightning over black field; the right carried a bat-wing in low relief, not gaudy, a silhouette more felt than seen.
Helm: angular, vox-distorter tuned to a carrying whisper. Joints: overbuilt and servo-silent. Chest: optical-dampening plate where an aquila would be on another man. Interior cogitator core keyed to Kael's bio-signature. Beside it, a compact field-shroud emitter like a pilgrim's relic.
The third: people.
A small cohort of Martian tech-adepts, oil-scented and red-robed, filed out from the shadow of a second crate—twelve in all, plus a senior Magos with a spinal hunch that looked like a machine learning when to bow. They carried tools as if they were liturgies. Each helm-cowl bore a black oil-sigil—Mechanicum red subdued to Nostraman shadow.
"Magos Lamiad Threx," the leader said, vox burred and precise. "By writ of Mars and seal of the Sigillite, attached to Captain Varan's command for maintenance of Watcher Above, optimisation of weaponry, and field-engineering tasks as directed. As directed," he repeated, a doctrinal novelty that made nearby captains look down and recalibrate their envy.
Curze arrived without footfall. He did not look at the gifts. He looked at the watchers. "Does anyone object," he asked mildly, "to tools suited to work?"
No one objected. Not because agreement reigned. Because training did.
"Varan will take the Watcher Above," Curze said as if announcing rain. "He will crew it with hands that do not shake. He will carry my law and the Emperor's quiet."
The murmurs the rain failed to hide were professional: Sigillite's leash; Terran pet; Kyroptera outcast. Kael let them land. The blade felt correct in his hand; the warplate's weight promised obedience. The Mechanicum contingent smelled of hot metal and trusted work.
He inclined his head to Curze, to the Magos, and to no one else. "Acknowledged."
Curze's eyes flickered like lightning deciding where to strike. "Function first," he said. "Fear follows."
Kael looked once at the Varanshade's helm—the subtle bat-winged crest not vanity but psychology—and accepted it the way he accepted a tool with a useful handle. He did not enjoy wearing a face. He enjoyed making enemies decide not to use theirs.
"Captain," Magos Threx said, turning slightly so the red-robes behind him shivered in practiced unison. "Your ship awaits."
Kael gestured, and his men formed without a word into an escort that looked like inevitability. The Kyroptera watched them go with the quiet men use when they are deciding how long to keep their knives clean.
Nostramo's rain turned the dock spires into daggers. The Watcher Above lay in her berth like an idea made of black math—long, lean, her hull a drinking surface. Auspex masts were hooded like executioners.
Launch cradles held torpedoes with the patience of predators chained on purpose. The name sat low on her prow in letters that wouldn't reflect: WATCHER ABOVE.
Kael stood before her and let the ship look at him. Something in the deck hum realigned to his pulse. He felt the gene-key handshake through the soles of his boots and up the needles in his Carapace ports. Ownership was the wrong word. Responsibility fit.
"Bring the armour," he said. "Stow the blade in the armoury. Magos Threx—your adepts will billet adjacent to the main cogitation spine. You answer to me in operations. In ritual, you answer to your oaths. We will not tangle them."
"Accepted," Threx said, and the binharic chorus behind him made a sound that meant unexpected, approved.
Kael walked the embark ramp. The ship's throat smelled of oil and intention. Lights did not flare to greet him; they lowered themselves to his favourite register without making a point of it. In the forward gallery, a wide viewport cut the city into a geometry he could use: arteries, choke points, the sheen of rain that outlines traffic like veins.
"Fifteenth," he voxed, voice a calm instrument. "We integrate. Armour refit per Curze's directive—midnight plates, lightning left, wing right. Helm baffles set for whisper. Cloaks keepers of silence, not costume. Language: Nostraman in the street, Terran on the line. We train to count in both."
"Acknowledged," Malchion replied, already making lists.
"Maps to Sector Khar," Joras added. "Old judges still writing prices. I'll draw their halls with doors."
"Power and drives to my hand," Silas hummed, happy the way machines made him. "The dagger will be quiet."
Kael rested his palms on the viewport sill. Outwardly, he was what the Emperor and Nostramo had both made: exact, economical, without ornament. Inwardly, he counted: fear, names, rooms that would be smaller next week, the seconds before choices, the smoothing weight of a ship tuned to a captain.
Behind him, a bulkhead speaker clicked once with the softest authority on Terra or Nostramo. Malcador's voice did not enter the room; it existed there.
For work, not witness, it said, and ended.
Kael did not turn. He watched the rain, watched the city practice breathing in the right rhythm, and let the dark gather at the edge of the glass like a dog choosing the correct doorway.
"Make it quiet," he said.
The ship answered in the language only men who have been sharpened can hear.
Part II
Sector Khar wore its crimes openly: old court houses converted into counting rooms, alleys strung with wire that made good nooses, balconies with the cement-dark outlines where men had dried. The rain here came down heavier, as if the sky tried to scrub something the ground insisted on keeping.
Kael stood in the umbra of a collapsed arch and let the world measure his new armour. The Varanshade took the rain without shine; water beaded and slid with the obedience of drilled men.
The helm's vox-diffuser breathed a whisper that carried three streets; the chest-dampener made him read as absence to cheap optics; the servos, under Mechanicum constraint, moved without complaint. The pauldron's white bolt sat like a statement on law; the bat-wing silhouette on the right was purpose, not pageantry—something the animal brain saw and filed under predator.
Behind him, his company stood in a staggered line that looked accidental at first glance and became geometry when you tried to map it.
"Grid," he said softly.
Magos Threx's reply came on a thread-thin channel, decorous as a catechism. "Local auspex blinded by weather and amateur jamming. We supplement." A string of binharic followed—servo-skulls left the Watcher Above and took to the rain in a patient V, their lenses fox-bright under hooded housings.
"Four heat masses of consequence: the old high court, the southern pump-station, a tram hub disguised as a soup hall, and a transit tunnel blocked by deliberate collapse. Recommend we begin with the place that lies about what it is."
"The soup hall," Kael said.
Veyra's voice came over ship-comms like a steady metronome inside a quiet room. "Crowd patterns confirm. Lines formed three hours early, guards in plain clothes keeping malnourished people from seeing where the food goes. We're staging pallets off the Watcher. If you open the lanes, I can flood Khar with grain before the old judges can finish being offended."
"Open them," Kael replied. "Malchion, left. Joras, high. Cloaks tight. We go in like rain—the kind that gets through roofs."
They moved. The null-thread flowed over their midnight plates; even the sound of plates kissing under strain had learned to be shy. Kael's five seconds arrived in their usual simple film—a doorway with a man behind it wiping a knife, the angle of a shotgun appearing in a window, a child's head lifting at the wrong time. He filed each and adjusted stride by millimetres. The Varanshade complied as if it had been taught his gait.
The soup hall had once been a tram concourse: high arched ceiling, slatted windows, stone staircases worn concave by generations of urgent feet. Now barrels had been cut to fire-pits, steam rose from cauldrons where broth went thin and then thinner, and three men in dock coats carried off sacks through a gate marked Storage in a hand that spelled Tax. The guards wore white gloves. White gloves are for theatre and for blood you don't intend to keep.
Kael stepped into the queue. No one noticed until their bodies remembered they should have. Heads turned, then ducked. He said, "Hands down," not loud; the whisper carried.
The guards reached for pistols in that trained slow way which means I've been paid to look like I'm deciding. Malchion's muzzle touched the back of one neck. Joras sighted on a seam of daylight and made the shot if it became necessary. It didn't.
Kael walked to the storage gate. A man stood there with a pencil and a ledger and the courage of someone who believes ink is an ally. His eyes were Nostraman black, but they reflected—Kael saw himself inside them, small and sharp.
"Show me your numbers," Kael said.
"You have no writ," the man answered, the pencil steady.
Kael laid Veilrender on the ledger. The blade ate light without fuss. "This is a writ," he said. "You can read it by what you no longer have to say."
The pencil trembled. The ledger opened. Columns: names, chits, fines for scooping late, bribes disguised as 'equipment rental'. The arithmetic of power laying its small lies to look like fairness. Kael turned a page. The storage room smelled of grain and damp and men who fear they'll be asked to carry. He could feel the district's hunger waiting like weather behind a door.
"Veyra," he said on ship-band. "How fast can you park a crane at Gate Three with a pallet line down to street level?"
"Four minutes. Three if you accept a reprimand from dock control."
"I accept the reprimand."
He cut the locks. Men in the line outside began to push before they had been told, because hope makes people unprofessional. His marines held the line with hands, not guns—calm strength applied where panic pooled.
The first sacks came down like a decision. Veyra's voice rode the chaos without needing volume: "One per head, two for families, no cutting, the children first." The queue learned quickly. People who had never been first learned to let someone else be. The white gloves disappeared the way expensive things disappear when the market changes.
Kael found the three dock coats in the back and had them carry sacks until their breath arrived ragged and honest. He let them keep carrying after that and learned their names as he does, committing syllables to memory as if they were dimensions for later measurements.
"Captain," Malchion voxed on a needle-fine channel, restraint braided into the word. "High court. Windows lit. Faces behind glass. The old judges are counting their losses and calling them 'contributions'. Permission."
"Denied," Kael said. "Not yet."
"They're buying time."
"Let them. We're selling the one thing they can't afford."
He stood at the mouth of the soup hall and watched water turn to work. For a minute—no more—he allowed himself the indecency of satisfaction. Then he moved.
The old high court rose out of Khar like a tooth that had decided to be a tower. Porticoes where verdicts had been announced now housed men with accurate rifles. The statues of dead law wore fresh stains that rain hadn't owned yet. Kael walked as far as the steps and stopped. Fear moved under the stone like old electricity.
"Joras," he said, "count windows."
"Twenty-four with lines. Six dummy. They took their cues from a city that thinks it remembers war."
"We'll teach it an update."
He did not order a breach. He ordered quiet. Silas's servo-skulls drifted to the eaves and blew a fine mist into the gutters. The mist foamed, expanded, and turned to a wax that flowed into drains and sealed air intakes.
The court's lungs closed without drama. Watcher Above pulsed a carrier wave that made the court's cheap vox decide it was tired. Inside, men tried to call friends and found out they didn't have any.
"Knock," Kael said.
Malchion's first charge went off like a cough in the east wing—no fireworks, just a door forgetting what kept it closed. The hallway beyond fell dimmer as Kael's other shadow arrived, unasked and obedient, drinking lumens without show.
Five seconds: a guard slipping on wet tile, a second looking at the place where the first should be, a third placing a barrel where his friend's ribs would be. Kael moved through the film and ended it neatly—one butt to a jaw, one round low to make a man sit, one palm under a chin with the exact pressure that turns breath into a negotiation.
He found the bench where law had sat and seen itself elevated. Three men were there—their coats clean, their collars pretending they belonged to ages with better lighting. Their eyes were black like all eyes here, but intemperate: they reflected only what they wanted to see.
"Sector Khar is under Curze's rule," Kael said, helm angled so the bat-crest wrote its silhouette on the room. "You've been charging the hungry for the privilege of listing their names. That ends."
"This is a misunderstanding," one said smoothly. "We are judges. We moderated chaos."
"You monetised it," Kael corrected.
Malchion's restraint burned in the channel. "Permission."
"Denied," Kael said again. He let the word accrete weight. "You'll stand at the soup line and distribute until your arms shake. Veyra will sign your names on the manifest. If a child waits because you pause, I will run your ledger through your teeth and you will learn how long numbers can be."
The second judge tried for dignity and found it too heavy to lift. "We have a charter."
Kael laid Veilrender across the desk. The blade's edge drew a line through the polished wood by existing. "So do I."
They went pale—not fear of death; that they understood. Fear of labour; that, less. He marched them out between ranks of people who had learned to stand for the correct reasons. Someone spat, a soft sound in the rain. He did not sanction it. Spit can be a receipt.
Kael left two squads to hold the hall by the easiest method—making it useful—and turned to the south pumps. The station had been held more cleverly: a dozen men with the quiet of ex-military, a lockout code stubborn as a bad habit, a floor grating slick with a film of oil spread deliberate to make Astartes lose purchase.
His five seconds showed one of his initiates about to slide; he corrected with a hand at the elbow at the right time and took the man's weight like a promise.
"Magos," he said, "your language."
Threx's adepts moved as if woken by the correct name. Three opened panels and began speaking to the pump spirits in binharic, voices droning with that particular austerity that means don't interrupt. One unrolled a filament like a prayer mat and laid it across the slick to drink the oil.
Another, face impassive in its hood, placed a myomer wedge under a jammed valve and breathed a litany that sounded like remember your purpose. The valve remembered. The pumps coughed, resented, then fell into cadence. The men holding the room looked at the red-robes with an anger usually reserved for taxes; then, when the water surged, they looked at the floor instead. Useful outcomes end arguments.
Night—Nostramo's perpetual version of it—folded over Khar in a slightly darker shade. The Watcher Above lowered cranes with floodlights hooded to become moons that obeyed Veyra's hand signals. Pallets moved like facts. Men who had learned to steal learned to schedule.
The old judges found out they could be useful before they could be dead and did so in public—arms shaking, paper hats collecting water, faces fixed in the grimace men wear when instruction replaces tradition.
Kael walked the high balcony of the court and let the precinct work under him. His armour hummed as it learned the building's temperatures. The darkness at the edges of the hall tried to climb his calves like a dog gone too long ignored.
He let it rise to the knee. "Enough," he said, and it sank back with the loyalty of a thing that wants to be used and respects being told to wait.
A figure waited where the balcony met shadow shaped on purpose: Nostraman black, helm under his arm, jaw tight with the kind of strength used too often. Captain Kest, Kyroptera-ling, tattoos on his cheekbones that spelled debt settled in the local shorthand.
"You make citizens into a wall," Kest said. Not approval. Not not.
"Walls hold," Kael replied.
"They remember you did not paint them red."
"They'll remember they weren't asked to."
Kest's eyes flicked to the white bolt on Kael's shoulder, then to the bat-wing seal. "You count in the Emperor's numbers."
"I count," Kael said, "so we don't have to come back."
Kest studied him the way a knife studies whetstone. "Curze made you Kyroptera because you don't crave to be." A beat. "Some of us mind your leash."
Kael did not pretend not to understand. "Leashes keep dogs from eating the wrong children," he said, gentle as correction.
The other captain's mouth did the barest curl. "You talk like a Terran. You wear our colours like you were born to them."
"They fit," Kael said. "So does the work."
Kest left him with that and the hum of pumps learning to trust themselves. Down in the square, Veyra's ledger moved faster than the rain. She did not look up when Kael's shadow crossed her, which was correct.
"Two more cranes," she said, pen scratching in disciplined fury. "And your judges need to learn to lift with their legs. If one falls, I will not spare a man to carry him."
"They'll live," Kael said.
"They'll work," she corrected.
By low-cycle, Khar sounded different. Not quiet—quiet is a lie—but paced. The broken tram hall steamed; the court windows bled lamplight instead of gun flashes; the pump houses thumped a rhythm Veyra matched pallets to.
The first time a child laughed—small, honest, involuntary—three men flinched as if shot and then didn't. Kael filed the sound and did not trust it yet.
He returned to the Watcher Above just long enough to let the Varanshade's seals dry and the Mechanicum codifiers purr at his joints with small tools that smelled of ozone. He stood on the command gallery while Veyra briefed him in a cadence that assumed agreement:
"Three lanes open. Grain through till mid-cycle. Offloading ahead of rain. Your men's presence requested at two sub-sectors to discourage theft." She held his gaze as an equal, not a subject. "You'll get your quiet," she said.
"Good," Kael replied. "We can spend it later."
A ping from the planet's spine—Curze's summons—arrived like a taste of iron. The Kyroptera were called to the glass-floor chamber. Kael went in the Varanshade, helm under his arm, Veilrender in its latch; his company's armour still smelled of rain and work. The room filled with captains who had the pleased faces of men who'd just made a lesson. Some of those faces harded when they saw Kael. Envy had learned posture.
Curze stood at the far edge. His eyes flicked across reports as men spoke them, not looking down. Kest spoke for Khar in a voice that did not try to make poetry from numbers. "Compliance underway. Food moving. Pumps secure. Old judges converted to productive labour." A tilt of the head toward Kael, spare as charity. "Credit divided as function demands."
Curze's attention found Kael again, the way a hawk's finds heat. "You did not decorate the walls," he said.
"They'll remember without paint," Kael answered.
Curze's teeth showed, not a smile, a consideration of tools. "Function first," he said. "Fear follows."
He let the room turn that over. Then: "Varan keeps maps. Varan opens doors. Varan spends fear parsimoniously." Eyes sliding to the captains whose envy had learned to stand. "You will learn his counting. It costs less."
No one objected. They wouldn't while Curze told them what things cost.
When it was done, Kael stepped out into rain that had found its favourite register. The city shimmered in bruise-blue and iron, practicing its new breathing. He thought, very quietly, of Terra, of Malcador's neat hand on the charter and the blade; of the Mechanicum adepts who obeyed him because writ said as directed; of Veyra, whose ledger did not make mistakes twice; of Khar, whose water now moved the way doors should—on schedule, for the right price.
He raised his left hand and the darkness rose to meet it like a dog. He let it rest against the bat-winged rim of his pauldron a heartbeat longer than habit allowed. Loyalty sat under the armour like bone. Nostramo fit on top like skin. Both would be needed.
"Captain," Malchion said, the channel as soft as the rain. "Next sectors queued. We can keep this pace for a week before anyone remembers to be brave."
"Good," Kael said. "Then we'll be gone before bravery becomes interesting."
The Watcher Above dimmed her lights by an imperceptible degree, as if pleased by a decision made well. Pumps thumped in time with engines. Far below, a child laughed again and no one flinched.
Kael started walking. The city moved out of his way with the respect people reserve for storms that leave roofs standing.