‘She knew,’ Sofika says. ‘All along, she knew that you would have the strength to bear it. You, who bore the light through the darkness to find your purpose.’

Then Sofika’s eyes flutter closed, and she falls quiet. Ravara lets her go gently.

‘What did she mean?’ Ravara asks. ‘About you bearing the light.’

‘It was how I found my way into the Sisterhood,’ I tell her. ‘I carried a single candle to the Convent Prioris. They tried to send me away, but I would not leave.’

‘And that was when she took you in,’ Ravara says. ‘Adelynn. She was the one who knew.’

I nod.

‘A thousand paths,’ Ravara says. ‘A thousand actions, and choices, all of which have led you here.’

It takes me a moment to answer her, because I am not looking at Sofika any more, but at the candles around the base of her machine, all of which have extinguished themselves.

Save for one.

‘To my purpose,’ I say.

Ravara nods.

‘And it will all end as it began,’ she says. ‘With you bearing the light.’

Book Four

BOOK FOUR

PURPOSE

Evangeline

EVANGELINE

‘This is it. The Vow is dying.’

It is Shipmaster Okash who says the words, though we can all feel that they are true in the way the ship’s drives labour as she limps towards Dimmamar’s orbit. In the rattling and guttering of the air filtration, and the flickering of her remaining instrument panels. The cathedral world is large in the bridge’s front viewport. Large in my head and my heart, too, because this is it. The set ending. The place where I will find my purpose.

‘It seems she will not be the only one to have died in Dimmamar’s orbit,’ Ravara says.

She is standing on the opposite side of Okash’s command throne from myself and Elivia, watching the planet approach, just as we are. Watching the slowly turning circle of wreckage haloing the cathedral world.

‘What am I looking at, helm?’ Okash asks.

The Vow’s helm officer refers to the auspex registry, juddering in time with the data feed as it spools directly into his cognitive link. It occurs to me that he might be dying, too. Just as the Vow is.

‘The ring consists of the remains of the p-planet’s orbital defences, sir,’ he says, his voice juddering too. ‘And of their g-guardian fleet. Imperial-classes. Gothic-class. Lunar-class. A-Armageddon-class. Some unregistered silhouettes.’

‘Unregistered,’ Okash says. ‘Identify.’

The helm officer twitches fitfully. ‘N-negative, shipmaster. Insufficient data to identify. They are old. Their standard t-template constructs out of s-service.’

‘Are they enemy ships?’ Okash says.

The helm officer makes a wet, pained sound through his teeth.

‘T-they are old,’ he says again, as though it is an answer.

‘But they are all dead,’ Elivia says. ‘There are no energy signatures within the debris.’

The helm officer twitches again. His jaws crash together, saliva stringing his teeth.