‘But your Sisters are not afraid, Canoness,’ she says. ‘They are not broken. The people are starving and wounded. They are coming apart, just like the Vow.’

‘We will aid them.’

I speak the words so instinctively that I hardly realise that they are mine until everyone looks at me.

‘We will lead prayer for those who are fearful,’ I say. ‘We will give up our rations to feed the hungry and we will ease the passing of the injured.’

Quinn looks at me, but not quite in the eyes. Her gaze, like everyone else’s, alights on my scars. ‘Blessings be with you, Sister Superior,’ she says, as if I am benevolent, and not selfish. As if I have not made the offer in order to quash my own guilt at the deaths and the torment and the blood spent.

It is all because of you.

‘It is settled, then,’ Elivia says. She straightens up from the table and looks at Okash. ‘We go onwards to Dimmamar.’

‘No matter the cost,’ Ravara says.

Okash’s dark eyes are shiny. Reflective, like polished armour plate, but he does not argue. He merely nods.

‘Aye, lords,’ he says. ‘No matter the cost.’

Evangeline

EVANGELINE

The Chamber of Sail is cold. So cold that my words mist the air as I kneel and pray with Lady Oraylis. This time, my hands are not laced in hers. The Novator Primus’ wrists are bound to the arms of her throne, just as Okash said they would be. The priests have washed her skin and bound her blinded mortal eyes. They have doused her robes with the scent of flowers. They intend it to restore a fraction of the lady’s nobility. To me, though, it just makes the Chamber of Sail seem all the more like a funerary hall, and the Lady Oraylis entombed here.

‘O God-Emperor,’ I say, completing the prayer. ‘Surround me, restore me and deliver me so that I may serve you always. In life and in death.’

I look up at Oraylis. The Navigator takes a shuddering breath that gurgles in her chest like water at the foot of a well.

‘In life. And in death,’ she says, and then her head lolls as if she is looking down at me. ‘Thank you, Evangeline. For praying with me.’

I shake my head. ‘It is as I said before. You are not alone.’

Oraylis nods her head. ‘None of us are.’

‘Will you sail, Lady Oraylis?’

The question is a formality. A courtesy. We both know the answer to it.

‘I will sail,’ she says. ‘I will deliver you to Dimmamar. It is His will.’

I frown. ‘You will stand on Dimmamar with us,’ I tell her. ‘Under the cardinal world’s sun. Ravara foresaw it.’

Oraylis smiles faintly. Sadly. ‘Oh, my dear,’ she says. ‘Ravara was lying.’

I blink, suddenly as cold as the room around me.

‘How can you be certain?’