Oraylis’ breaths come in a wet rasp. ‘Because nothing hurts any more,’ she says. ‘Even though it should. Because the tidesong is getting further and further away. Because I am dying, Evangeline.’

I shake my head. ‘But why would Ravara lie?’

‘Because she needed me to sail,’ Oraylis says. ‘She just told me what I wanted to hear.’

I think of my own conversation with the inquisitor as we overlooked the Convent Prioris. Was that, too, just her telling me what I wanted to hear?

‘It is what He made her for, Evangeline,’ Oraylis says. ‘To lie. To hide things, and to seek what is hidden by others. Just as He made you to fight, and me to sail.’ Oraylis shifts in her seat and takes another one of those guttering, clotting breaths as the ship’s bells begin to chime. ‘Speaking of which,’ she says. ‘It is time.’

The priests return as I get to my feet, Ravara’s lie still large in my mind.

‘You cannot hate her for it,’ Oraylis says. ‘No more than you can hate a falcon for flying.’

I nod, and then bow my head as the priests slide cables into the tethers in the Navigator’s skin.

‘God-Emperor guide you, Lady Oraylis,’ I say.

Oraylis looks at me, though she is blind.

‘And you, Sister Evangeline,’ she says.

The warp jump lasts for one solar week. One week of utter darkness, where candles offer the brightest light and the Vow is filled with the sound of weeping. For the entirety of the journey we patrol the decks that are left to us, waiting for the shadows to resolve into devils. There is no chance to rest. To reflect. There is certainly no time to seek out Ravara and speak with her. I do not see the inquisitor once during my patrols. Not Zoric, either. I catch sight of her bladeward once or twice, though. Yumia stalks the corridors like a felid might. Alone, and distrustful.

I am patrolling the spinal corridor with Qi-Oh and Ashava when the weeping becomes a long, protracted scream that can only, impossibly, be Lady Oraylis. The Vow does its best to tear itself apart as it tears its way out of the warp, juddering and shaking and resounding to a series of deep, thunderous explosions as the hull breaches in multiple locations along the ship’s five-kilometre length. We lose every level below deck twelve, along with another fifteen per cent of the crew.