The women set to work in silent concert, removing each piece of my armour with great care. Gauntlets. Vambraces and shoulder guards. My chestplate, cuisse and tassets. My poleyns and greaves. My sabatons. They remove my vestments and the flexible body suit beneath them. Then together they cleanse my skin, this time scattering me not with ashes, but with scented, blessed water. They do all of this without ever looking me in the eyes. Then I dress myself in the heavy white robes that they give me. In soft leather shoes, and the same pale gloves that they wear, which are intended to keep the Archivia’s records from harm. Then the two women step back, their eyes still averted. They bow, as one, and I see that they are trembling.

‘Speak,’ I tell them. ‘Please.’

Neither one of them looks at me, but they do speak. This time, it does not happen in perfect concert, but staggered.

‘Your marks,’ says the first. ‘You are Evangeline.’

‘She who is blessed by Him on Terra,’ says the second.

Even after all this time, I cannot bring myself to say it.

‘I am Evangeline,’ I say, instead.

‘If we may, my lady,’ says the first. ‘We mean to ask a question.’

I nod, and the second woman speaks.

‘What does it feel like to be blessed?’ she asks.

I cannot bring myself to tell them what I told Qi-Oh. Not in this place. Not when I am so close. But I cannot ignore their question, so in place of one truth, I offer another.

‘It feels like an ending,’ I tell them.

Ravara

RAVARA

The Archivia Primus is situated in the upper levels of the spire, so high up that the only view through the arched windows is of the inside face of a thunderstorm. As I stand in the east wing and wait for the others to pass through purification, I watch lightning bolts arcing from the thunderheads to the grounding rods that jut from the spire’s plating on the other side of the reinforced glassaic. They are all colours, and no colours, all at once. Bright, migraine flashes that look for all the stars like questing fingers trying to pry their way inside.

‘Do you remember the mountaintop storms, Ahri? The ones we would see in summer?’

My father does not appear this time. He is already present, just as he has been ever since we set foot on Dimmamar. Following me, closer even than a shadow can. He exists on the edges of my vision, like a mote of dust on the surface of my eye, carrying with him the scent of whisperpines, and of cool air.

‘I remember,’ I reply. ‘The lightning would strike the slopes, and set them on fire.’

Another flash strikes the tower and dissipates before I speak again. Before I ask a pointless question of the spectre conjured from my mind.