‘The vassals pin them here for the dead,’ Calyth says, when she sees me looking. ‘As a mark of their passing.’

I say nothing. I am watching a man wearing Navy colours as he affixes another scrap of cloth to the wall. This one is red as blood. His hand lingers on the fleur-de-lys for a long moment before he turns away.

‘I think it is like a meadow,’ Calyth says. ‘Don’t you?’

I shake my head. ‘I have never seen a meadow,’ I say, looking away from the wall. ‘I was born on Ophelia VII, where all is marble and memorial, and all I have seen since are the fields of war.’

‘Truly?’ Calyth asks.

I nod. ‘Truly.’

Calyth’s pale eyes go distant. ‘I was raised amongst meadows,’ she says. ‘On a world that was made to grow the flowers for a system’s worth of memorials. Golden heartfires, eagle’s claws and cloud-lilies. Every colour imaginable, from horizon to horizon.’

‘Is that why you come here?’ I ask her. ‘Because it reminds you of the world where you were born?’

She nods slowly. ‘In part, I suppose. But that is not the only reason why. I come here because it is simple. Quiet. Because of the words, too.’

‘Which words?’

‘Come,’ she says. ‘I will show you.’

She nods for me to follow her, and together we go to the middle of one of the chapel’s rows. Just like in our worship halls, there are no benches. Here, though, there are small, thin cushions to spare the congregation the cold of the deck. Each cushion has a stitch-bound text lying on it. They are well-thumbed and dog-eared, and when I kneel beside Calyth and open the book, I catch the scent of reconstituted parchment. The lettering inside is so haloed and faded that it can only have been copied from a copy. My eyes snag halfway down the list of verses, and I flip gently to the middle of the book. On the page turn, my fingertips linger under the faded header.

‘The Virtues of Service,’ I say, softly. ‘My mother used to sing this verse to me when I was a child.’

Calyth looks at me. ‘Are you certain?’

I let my fingertips trail down the page. The act conjures the sound of my mother’s voice, high and clear. The darkness of our tiny hab, lit only by a single candle. The smell of ink and of old parchment. Copies of copies.

‘Yes,’ I say. ‘She would sing it to me when I could not sleep. It was one of her favourite verses.’

‘It is one of my favourites, too.’ Calyth smiles absently, her pale eyes contemplative. ‘Was she kind, your mother?’

I think of my mother’s ink-stained hands, and her low, intelligent voice. Her eyes a vivid green, like Adelynn’s were. I think of how she always seemed to be smiling, especially when she looked at me.

‘Yes, she was.’ I glance at Calyth. ‘Wasn’t yours?’

Calyth shakes her head. ‘I do not remember my mother,’ she says. ‘Nor my father. I do not remember anything much from my time before the convents, save for the meadows. The sound of all those flowers, moving in the wind.’