‘Would you try to prevent me if I were?’

Ashava keeps her eyes on the fire too. It doesn’t keep me from seeing the sorrow in them, even in her reflection.

‘No,’ she says. ‘Not if that truly is your purpose.’

Tears threaten at my eyes, making me blink. ‘How long have you known?’ I ask.

‘I was certain of your intent the day we set foot on Terra,’ she says. ‘But in truth I think that I have always known. You have always loved others more than yourself, Eva. Always pushed yourself further than anyone else ever could. Those are the makings of a martyr.’

She shakes her head.

‘So no, I will not prevent you. Death is the greatest glory that we can hope for. Suffering is to be celebrated.’ She catches the eyes of my reflection. ‘I will stand beside you as your Sister, no matter what is to come.’

The lander breaks through the atmosphere and into Dimmamar’s storm-wracked sky, where the fire is replaced with streaks of rain. Bright, to cold, in an instant. The cathedral world stretches out below. Dimmamar is a place of spires and of sanctuaries. A great grey edifice of marble and stone that stretches as far as the eye can see. Worship halls and cathedra completely cover its surface and jut upwards into its stormy skies. Like the Throneworld, Dimmamar, too, has suffered. As the cityscape grows larger and closer, I see the kind of damage wrought by bombardment, and by orbital debris. I see whole wards of the city blackened by fire. Burned, until there is nothing left but bones.

I turn away from the viewport and look at Ashava. My Sister.

‘Thank you,’ I tell her.

She does not smile, or weep. Instead, Ashava draws me into an embrace, just as she did all those weeks ago, when we were reunited aboard the Unbroken Vow.

‘I will miss you, Eva,’ she says in my ear.

A tear escapes my closed eye.

‘I will miss you too,’ I tell her.

The bulk lander puts down at a landing zone inside the borders of the largest cathedral-city in Dimmamar’s southern hemisphere. It is the closest landing point to the approximate location of the light I saw from the Vow’s bridge.