I am unsure of her.

Ashava limps over to me slowly and stops, less than an arm’s reach away. This close, I can see the way the frames around her legs are secured by pins that go straight into the bones. All that I can think about is how swift she was before, and it makes me want to weep.

‘Sister–’ I begin, but Ashava cuts me short with a sudden and fierce embrace. Her crutches fall against the deck with a clatter. She falls against me a little, too, without them. I hold her up, and hold onto her, and for the first time since waking in the hospitaller’s ward I don’t feel quite so alone, or quite so empty.

‘It is good to see you, Eva,’ she says in her soft, edgeworlds burr.

‘And you, Sister,’ I say, and I mean it.

Then Ashava lets me go, and I stoop down and give her back her crutches. She leans on them anew, and I can see the relief written plainly on her face. Merely standing is agony for her, now.

‘Do you want to rest?’ I ask her.

She shakes her head. ‘As I recall it, Adelynn bade me to stand.’

A small, sad smile finds its way onto my face. ‘Yes, she did.’

‘And Melanya bids me to walk,’ Ashava says. ‘So, let us walk.’

I nod, and together we walk the training hall deck. I slow my pace to match hers. Neither of us acknowledge it.

‘They were set to take my legs,’ Ashava says. ‘To carve me like a kill and replace the broken parts.’ She shakes her head, her face set in a scowl. ‘They said it would be less pain.’

‘And what did you say?’ I ask her, though knowing Ashava I can guess.

‘That it would be kinder to kill me,’ she growls. ‘That I would stand again on flesh and bone or not at all.’

The answer does not surprise me. The world where Ashava was born is far from the galaxy’s heart. Triumph is dominated by a singularly martial understanding of the Faith that sees them raise warriors without peer. Ashava’s people see the body as an extension of the God-Emperor’s will, scars, wounds and weaknesses all. That is their creed, and even after being taken from there and raised in the convents, she has not forgotten it.

‘They could have gone against my wishes,’ she says. ‘But they didn’t.’

‘Do you think that the Canoness intervened?’

Ashava shrugs. ‘Or perhaps they did not wish to take anything more from me.’

‘Perhaps,’ I allow.

We are quiet for a moment then, accompanied only by the rapping of Ashava’s crutches on the deck.

‘The mark,’ she says, after the moment passes. ‘You truly can see the God-Emperor’s sign in it.’

I cannot find words with which to answer her, so I don’t.

‘It troubles you, doesn’t it?’ Ashava asks.

‘The mark does not trouble me. It is everyone else. They watch and whisper and look to me as though I am blessed. As if I am worthy of praise.’