At the sight of us, Beatris breaks the line and approaches me, asking of those who are injured. I tell her that my wounds will wait and ask her to see to Eugenia, and to Qi-Oh. She nods and sets to work as I approach the Canoness with Ashava at my side. Ravara follows me, but her retinue do not. They both look as exhausted as the armsmen do. Zoric leans on the wall, sliding down it until he is sitting. He produces a crumpled packet of lho-sticks from the inside pocket of his tattered jacket and lights one as Ravara’s bladeward, Yumia, busies herself by binding her own wounds with strips torn from the sleeves of her tunic.

‘Evangeline,’ Elivia says, her voice hoarse. She has been cut badly across her face from her jawline to her nose. A new scar to keep the old one company. ‘The Navigator?’

‘She will sail,’ I say. ‘But she is weak. Injured. Her retainers are dead.’

Elivia nods. ‘I will call for the priests we have left to us. They will care for her, and pray for her.’

‘What of the incursions?’

‘The devils either broke or fled,’ Elivia says. ‘We were defending the bridge when they shattered, like so much weak glass. Early reports suggest it happened all at once, on every deck.’

‘As though the tether that kept them here had been cut,’ Ravara says.

Elivia nods, and I think back to the thunderclap, and the mirror-daemon falling away like dust.

‘Do we have a measure of the casualties, Canoness?’ Ashava asks.

Elivia shakes her head. ‘It is too early to say, but we have certainly suffered. Liana’s and Sheemah’s squads are below half-strength, and I have heard nothing from Mikah or her Dominions since the lumens went out. The crew decks are a slaughter, and a great deal of the Vow’s hull integrity is compromised. There is little more than tenacity holding the ship together.’

‘She is too stubborn to die,’ Ashava says.

Elivia nods. A brief, thin smile passes across her face.

‘What of the shipmaster?’ I ask.

‘Vallien will survive long enough to get us clear of the Rift,’ she says. ‘Your Sisters?’

I remember what I saw in the daemon’s mirrored flesh. The pushing, thrashing crowd. The thunder of bolters. The screams.

‘I do not know,’ I tell her.

‘Find them, if they are still standing,’ she says. ‘I need purgation squads to clear the ship, deck by deck.’

‘Clear the ship of what, your grace?’ Ashava asks, from beside me. ‘I thought the devils had fled.’

‘She isn’t talking about the devils,’ Ravara says, looking at Elivia. The inquisitor’s face is bloodless, and she has one hand over the tightly wound cloth bandage at her waist. ‘She is talking about those who saw them. The crew, and the vassals. Anyone whose mind has been broken.’

Elivia nods. ‘It is a mercy,’ she says, without a trace of cruelty.