From the shifting, refracting ripples within this tide, you beheld the ward upon the wall: it was steaming. Its bottom whorls sizzled and sparked like malfunctioning machinery where they touched the water. Showers of blue sparks pattered into the greasy water like rain.

“The ward has lasted for one minute, forty seconds,” said Mercymorn. “One minute forty-one.”

God said, “Two commendations for the lieutenant.”

She called out, “One minute forty-four.… One minute forty-five,” and in the space between forty-four and forty-five, the ward exploded. The dried blood came off the wall in flakes of brown confetti. It left behind a burnt, warped indentation as it slithered away to dissolve in the rising current. Next to you, Ianthe arched her spine so acutely that she folded up in the middle, as though she had been electrocuted. The light from the panels limned her in amber; her hood had come loose and her long pale hair floated about her shoulders like a caul. You propped yourself up on your elbows, distracted by something nudging against the plex viewing panel where Mercy sat piloting the shuttle. The star-pocked blackness of space had retreated entirely: the shuttle looked as though it were sinking down into a murky, obscure ocean.

Another nudge. Then something slapped two wet and rotting hands on the plex.

“Ick! Bleff!!” said Mercymorn, quite calmly. “Three minutes remaining.”

“I hate this part,” said God.

A nude, fish-eaten body thudded down hard atop the plex, leaving a momentary bloom of blood before it bounced off again. Another hit a few seconds later, but this one stayed put; it was a torso with the legs gone and the face eaten away, leaving the shiny skull to bang against the surface. It pressed one hand down, as though beseeching, but was sucked away again into the deep water outside the shuttle. The water inside now sloshed up to the Emperor’s shoulders, washing over Mercymorn’s hands. She did not bother to take her fingers away from the controls.

Ianthe’s face remained slack and unfocused. You rounded your spine up cautiously and looked around the shuttle, underwater, at the dissipating blooms of brown and red in the liquid, as though someone were bleeding out into it. At the back of the shuttle, you thought—you thought you could perceive a high and keening wail, at the very edge of your hearing—but neither God, nor the elder Lyctor, and certainly not Ianthe reacted to it.

The wail was coming from within the shuttle. It had a hard, pained edge to it, like frustration. You cast around trying to figure out from where. There was another big wet thump as a fourth body slammed itself on the plex, and this one managed to hold on, scrabbling gruesomely; but you focused on the thin cry of violence. You found yourself saying, “Someone’s crying, Lord,” but he just made a nonsense sound beneath his breath, a mumbled word that you didn’t recognise.