‘The machine is ready,’ she says. ‘My Sisters and I are unfamiliar with the intricacies of it, but it will support Madame Vorros for forty hours at full capacity. After that time, it will begin to fail. I am sure I do not need to explain what will happen when it does, or if you do not find another way to maintain her.’

I look back at Sofika, sleeping.

‘No,’ I tell her. ‘You don’t.’

‘I would recommend keeping her asleep unless it is absolutely necessary to wake her,’ the Sister says. ‘Transferring her from one machine to another will have put a great deal of stress on her body.’

I don’t need them to tell me, really. I can see it in Sofika’s skin and hair. In the frown that creases her brow, even as she sleeps.

‘I’ll let her rest,’ I tell them.

The Sister nods and she leaves, taking the others with her. My father goes too, though as always, I don’t see it happen. He just disappears between blinks. I stoop down and push Sofika’s hair back from her face.

‘Almost there, now,’ I say.

I straighten up again at the sound of footsteps at my back. They are feather-light, and accompanied by the scent of worn leather and second-hand lho-smoke.

‘I was starting to think you had broken your oaths,’ I say.

Yumia comes to stand beside me, her bare feet near soundless on the deck. It is the first time that I have seen her since revealing the truth about Sofika, though going by that faint smell of smoke, it is only me she has been hiding from, and not Zoric. Her narrow face is pinched and drawn, and the wound she took in the Navigation quarter has healed messily. It will leave a considerable scar.

‘No, lord,’ she says. ‘Once is unforgivable. Twice would be beyond repentance.’

‘Nonetheless, there will be consequences for your actions when this is done.’

She nods. ‘I know.’

‘So, you will serve.’

It isn’t a question, and Yumia doesn’t treat it like one.

‘On my honour, lord. My blades are yours, as is my life.’

‘Good.’

A silence falls between us that is not necessarily companionable, but that is more than merely master and servant.

‘Danil said that you believe Madame Sofika can be restored,’ Yumia says, after a moment. ‘Is that true?’

‘Yes, I believe it is.’

‘I was always taught that what is done cannot be undone,’ she says.

I look at her. At the exile brands that spiral around her arms and throat that she earned when she failed to defend her people. Her family. Her home.

‘If you knew there was a way to undo your greatest failure, wouldn’t you? If you knew that you could excise those brands from your skin and return to Illithia to be with your sisters, wouldn’t you do it?’