I pick up my pace, and so do the rest of my squad. Smoke billows and coils around us as we reach the lowdecks chapel and go inside. This place too is anointed with ashes. The fleurs-de-lys pinned to the wall are all grey with it. But in amongst the ruin and destruction I see them. My Sisters are bruised and battered, their vestments torn, but they are still standing. I was right. What the daemon showed us was a lie. Relief rushes through me like cold, clean air and I cross the chapel to greet them. I start to smile. Open my mouth to speak. But then I realise that I am looking at four Sisters and not five. That I see Joti and Veridia. Sarita and Munari.

But not Calyth.

‘Where is she?’ Qi-Oh asks the question before I can. She is right beside me despite her injuries, her voice as taut as the muscles in her face. ‘Where is Calyth?’

Not one of them says a word, they merely step aside to let us see the shallow steps leading up to the chancel. Calyth lies on her back on the steps, her armour punctured and split. Scored, by dozens of blades. Blood has spread around her like the wings of the saint, running down the steps in thin red rivulets. Her hair is dyed dark by it.

Qi-Oh lurches forwards as if she is being propelled. She goes to her knees beside Calyth on the steps and puts out her hand, resting it on her fallen Sister’s brow. I do not move. Nor do I look away. I am held in place by an ugly, shameful feeling. One that has no place in the chapel, or in my heart.

Envy.

‘How did it happen?’ I ask.

‘The darkness drove them mad,’ Joti says, without a trace of a smile in her voice. ‘The crew. The vassals. Even the chapel wardens and the priests.’

‘She was killed by civilians,’ Qi-Oh says, without looking up. ‘By those she was sworn to protect.’

‘Yes,’ Sarita says, and she nods. Her slender face is a mess. Her nose is badly broken, and her left ear has been as good as torn off. ‘They were many.’

‘And we were few,’ says Munari. She is as much a mess as her twin, her lips split and ragged, and her teeth pinked with blood.

Qi-Oh looks up. Not at Joti, Sarita or Munari, but at me.

‘You need not have been,’ she says. ‘You should not have been.’

‘Qi-Oh.’ I say her name in warning, but she ignores me. Instead Qi-Oh gets to her feet and stalks down the steps towards me. She is breathing fitfully from her injuries, and from her anger.

‘Daemons lie,’ she snarls. ‘That is what you said.’

‘It is the truth.’

‘Calyth is dead!’

Qi-Oh bellows the words. They echo around the ruined chapel, and echo between us, too. I stare at her in disbelief.