Ravara nods. ‘It’s not just the paths we might take that number in the thousands. It’s the steps we take on those paths, too. Choices, events and actions that seem unrelated, but they aren’t. They are all a part of the journey. That is why I do what I do, and say what I say, because I have to.’

‘Whatever the cost,’ I say.

She nods again. ‘I will make it right,’ she says. ‘I will make it all right.’

Her words are convincing. Tempting. Yet still, I hesitate. Ravara sees it in me, and she glances back out at the stars for a moment. I see that same flicker in her eyes that I saw when we first met in the Convent Prioris. An instant of guilt, and of grief. She exhales a slow breath, and then looks back at me.

‘You ask how it is you can trust me,’ she says. ‘I will show you.’

She turns away then, heading back down the transitway towards the main stairwells.

‘Come, Evangeline,’ she says. ‘There is someone I would like you to meet.’

I follow Ravara through the ship to a chamber at the sternward end of the hospitaller’s wards. The bulkhead door is sealed additionally by a voice-print system.

‘Ahri Ravara. Clearance code, nightsky,’ Ravara says.

The door locks transition to green, but before she opens the door, Ravara looks at me.

‘This is me trusting you,’ she says.

I do not know what to say to that, so I just nod. Ravara spins the lock, and opens the door, and we both step into the chamber beyond. It is small, and temperate, and dimly lit by dozens of flickering candles. In the centre of the room is something it takes me a moment to understand. A large matt-black machine mounted with tubes and bellows and monitron screens. It hisses and clicks and it sounds as though it is breathing, and I realise swiftly that that is precisely what the machine is doing. Breathing, for the still figure at the heart of it. The woman, coiled in the nest of cables. What is left of her is clad in blue robes. Her skin is as pale as a dove’s feathers, and her hair is tangled and blonde. A pendant glitters around her neck. One that matches Ravara’s own.

‘She is who you spoke of in the bell tower,’ I say. ‘The one you lost.’

Ravara approaches the machine, and the woman at the heart of it.

‘Sofika Vorros is my interrogator,’ she says. ‘She helps me to determine the meaning of my dreams. But she is so much more than that.’

Ravara reaches up and brushes Sofika’s hair back from her face.