Qi-Oh stares at me for a moment, that hazel eye of hers aflame with rage, and I feel this is more a test of me than any number of swordfights.

‘We defend the Navigators,’ I say coldly.

Qi-Oh’s mouth sets in a thin line, but she bows her head.

‘Yes, Sister Superior,’ she says.

Ravara

RAVARA

Death is coming.

The whisper is right by my ear as two of Sister Evangeline’s half-squad brace and pull open the graven doors that lead to the Navigation quarter. A sliver of crimson light spills out from inside. Screams do, too, carried on the warm, damp air. I smell blood, and decay. It’s like looking into an open wound. One that has started to turn rotten.

I follow Sister Evangeline as her half-squad move forward into the darkness in pairs, each covering the other. Sisters Haskia and Ashava, Eugenia and Qi-Oh. I recall their names and temperaments from the briefings and meetings we have had since leaving Terra and from the files I requested under ordo authority, because it pays to know your allies as much as your enemies. As we press forward together, the space resolves from the red light and redder shadows. The chamber is a kind of reception hall. A place where visitors might wait to speak with the Navigators of House Oraylis. There is no bare iron here. Instead the chamber is clad in gold and marble and hung with heavy, void-silk drapes marked with the three-eyed icon of the Navis Nobilite and the House Oraylis crest. Statues cast from coloured glass stand everywhere, depicting robed figures holding handfuls of stars.

It should be regal, this place, but instead it’s a ruin. The gold is running like candlewax, and the marble is split and smoking. The banners are burning slowly, embers consuming the priceless cloth. The statues are shattered. House Guard lie everywhere in slick pools of their own blood. There are dozens of them. More than there should be, as if they were called here just like we were. As we pick our way through the dead towards the next set of doors I see that the guards have been utterly brutalised, even compared to those we found outside. Their faces are a mess of ragged, torn flesh that has peeled back to expose bones and teeth and bloodied ligaments. Their eyes are gone, messily removed as if by the point of a blade.

‘Mercy and grace,’ Sister Eugenia says. ‘They did this to each other?’

Sister Qi-Oh shakes her head, her narrow face set in a snarl. ‘They failed,’ she says. ‘They were weak, and that weakness became rage.’

‘Perhaps that’s what killed them,’ Zoric says, looking down at one of the bodies. ‘But that’s not what made this mess. Something’s been eating them.’

‘We must reach the Lady Oraylis,’ Sister Evangeline says.