Silvera’s eyes fall back to the road and I notice for the first time that the Master of Trails wears a pair of barbed clasps around his ankles. The bonds of penitence. The wounds they make are bleeding slowly, staining his feet red as well as black.

‘What all of us hope for,’ he says. ‘Forgiveness for foolish mistakes.’

Then Silvera turns away and slips back into the procession. I watch him go. Watch the bloodied footprints he leaves behind.

‘He seems full of guilt,’ Yumia says, her hand resting on the short sword belted at her hip.

‘Don’t we all,’ Zoric replies.

Yumia smiles humourlessly. I don’t. I stay focused on Silvera, waiting for my threat-sense to stir. But it doesn’t. I feel nothing, save for the anticipation of what’s to come. I exhale slowly, and rest the flat of my hand on Sofika’s cradle-casket as it drifts forwards beside me, propelled by grav-suspensors that mean it is virtually untouched by the dirt of the roadway. The machine hums beneath my palm, helping Sofika breathe as she sleeps, coiled in its cables. She is even paler now than she was aboard the Vow. Barely more than bones, just like Canderum. As I watch, the display mounted on the machine’s carapace depletes again.

Nine hours left.

‘At the end of this day, she will stand with you once more.’

My father is walking on the opposite side of Sofika’s machine to me, his robes a riot of teal and gold amidst all of the grey. The further we go, the more resolved his image becomes. His edges more refined, like a painting under­going restoration.

‘The cost to do this will be great,’ my father says. ‘Greater than just Evangeline. But you have always known that, haven’t you, Ahri?’

I let my hand fall away from the machine and look at the faithful, stumbling through the ruins around me. At the commandery, marching with fierce joy in their eyes. At Zoric and Yumia. The two of them are walking just a little way ahead now, talking in low voices. Arguing, good-naturedly. I think about everything they have done. Everything they have become, simply because I asked it of them. I think of blood and death, but of laughter, too. Comradeship. Respect.

Trust.

The vox buzzes in my ear, then, and Evangeline’s voice cuts through.

‘Inquisitor,’ she says. ‘I need you to come to the head of the column.’

‘Are we close?’ I ask her.

There is a moment in which I clearly hear Evangeline breathe before she speaks again. It sounds as though it hurts her to do it.

‘I believe so.’

Evangeline

EVANGELINE

The roadway opens in the footprint of what must have once been a spire.