Secunda blessed Omnissiah for the switched-off vox-catcher as she waited for the blasted servoskull to shut its stupid mouth before coming into channel.

[i]Everyone is guilty of something[/i].

"Magos Stoll, we have just witnessed Magos Pinel not only buying into the whole 'knowledge is power' aspect of the Creed, but fully indulging in an oft-forlorn 'guard it well' follow-up. This is a respectable level of dedication to her own position, don't you think?", Secunda was proud of a practiced smile her lips slithered into; apparently, her replicae protocol was sufficient to catch and copy even the most minuscule trained reflexes. The smile never quite reached her eyes as she scrolled the comm-terminal for the next call. "Speaking of guarding something well - could any of you, fine Magi, catch me up to speed on more... temporal aspects of Isohedron lately aside from my untimely reincarnation?.. Marshal reported of, and I quote, "[u]scary, creepy things scurrying around[/u]" and "[u]horrible wet rot in the walls[/u]". Not speaking of a most peculiar Motive Force configuration, depowering quite a few systems around here."

[i]Everyone is guilty of something[/i].

[b]Pinel's murder servitor. ZRK-333's displacer field. [/b]Surely, she's bound to find connections to the rest of the Council - assets begged, borrowed, stolen, or sold for unique favours, like cloning the voice of one-in-a-trillion opera diva. Someone was muddying the waters. In prior, more cynical times, Toros would have tried making it less personal, pinning the blame on whoever was the easiest target. After all...

[i]Everyone is guilty of something[/i].

She was no exception herself. You don't survive in the upper ranks without stacking the deck in your favour, tirelessly manufacturing aces for your sleeve, bending most rules where you can afford, breaking some rules where you can dare. Everyone had skeletons in their closet - in fact, she, technically, had three literal skeletons just in this one - and everyone knew everyone dabbles in black projects, unauthorized resource allocations, forbidden lines of research, and trying to push their vision on top of Omnissiah creed. This was tolerated, to a degree. In fact, to a degree, it was encouraged. You never know your limits until you try pushing them. You never train up your purity if you never had to recoil from what you see beyond the light. There was a fine line between what was approved and what has seen you eternally condemned, and Toros was proud to excel in toeing that line.

She was moderately confident that this was the main reason Brackmann made her Archmagos over older, smarter, stronger Rosella much to the chagrin of the rest of the Council. Martian Magi were furious that Arch-Fabricator made the appointment without ever consulting Isohedron. The Draupnir faction was almost ballistic about being forced to report to the stranger from the strange land, fresh off the Explorator Ark. Rosella herself took it as an offense, being an insufferable thorn in Toros back with her attempts to claw back the approval of the powers-that-be with ever more drastic measures over Archmagos head. In a true self-fulfilling prophecy way, she proved Brackmann right when Angels of Death descended onto the world - running the purge on Toros personal orders, scorching the earth and silencing the witnesses before Collegiate Extremis or the Ordo Mechanum were able to build the case against the whole world. Toros was somehow sure that this was exactly the outcome Brackmann had in mind from the very start - quite literally, if her intel on several brilliant young Logis-Oracles disappearing was to be believed. The old beast at the heart of subsegmentum Cog-Church terrified her and, Toros was sure, revelled in it.

Everyone is guilty of something, but they were working together as long as this guilt was kept within the negotiated parameters, stability ensuring consistent results, predictable career paths, and safety from getting riddled with mass-reactive self-propelled shells. In fact, the squeaky-clean consciences and flawless dossiers were always seen as a dangerous anomaly, both by Toros and by the overseers from both sides, for, as one of them loved to quote.

[i]Innocence Proves Nothing[/i].

Secunda sighed as she finally found the contact. Inquisitrix Polla Iconium, the mad cog-dog from Houndclaw Conclave, whose gravitas was solely reliant on how much of a migraine for Toros her peers imagined her to be. Polla knew exactly how far she could press Toros before Archmagos would have the justification to push back. Sometimes she pushed further with good reasons. Sometimes she pushed further just because she was an Inquisitrix and loved reminding everyone of her theoretically unlimited authority. Toros had been compiling a long complaint to the Conclave Lord on Iconium's activities for the last three decades and had arranged at least two sleeper cells primed to take the Inquisitrix out. Well, technically, three, but she didn't like to remember how puzzled she was while investigating how the third one got unconsensually disappeared. 

...all in all, Archmagos Toros had a lively, beneficial, almost criminally friendly relationship with her Ordo Mechanum watchdog based on mutual respect. Secunda hoped that Polla would take that into account. Or, at the very least, be sufficiently surprised by "the military attache of Adepta Sororitas" by her side to immediately start pushing in.