I thrust my sword into his chest, then pull it free again. Blood soaks my hands and my sleeves as I lower Thul to the floor amid his finery. I am aware of Zoric and Yumia staring at me, but I ignore them, dropping to one knee beside Thul as he shakes and snorts more blood onto the silks.

‘Monster,’ he slurs accusingly. ‘You are a monster.’

‘Perhaps,’ I mutter, as the light goes out of his eyes. ‘But a necessary one.’

We leave none alive in Thul’s Reverie. This too is necessary. Yumia killing the power to the constantly pouring fountain in the lobby is less so, but I do not stop her doing it.

That, at least, feels right.

Once it is done, we leave the Reverie and the snow-capped heights of Tashkent Hive behind. As the Crypsis lifts off from her stanchions and points into the freezing, smog-choked wind towards the Fortress Meridia I expect one of them to say something about Thul’s last words, but they don’t. They speak only when spoken to, Yumia busying herself with cleaning the blood from her killblades, and salting her wounds with grains from a pouch she wears at her waist. It’s an old Illithian practice that’s meant as much to remind the fighter of their mistakes as anything else. Yumia barely flinches as she does it, though it must hurt. Zoric sits beside her, lost in his own routine, methodically etching another in a series of tiny twin-headed eagles into the stock of his battered rifle. He started doing it after he came into my service. At first, I’d taken them for kill-marks, but I know better now. There is one nick out of the paint on Zoric’s rifle for every day he has spent in my service.

Or at least every day that he is aware of.

They both keep their quiet even upon landing, saying nothing as we leave the Crypsis and cross the platform back into the fortress under a deluge of dirty rain and runoff from above.

‘I need you both to report to Efrayl for debriefing,’ I tell them, once we are inside. ‘I must speak with my contacts at the Convent Prioris about what I saw.’

They both nod, but neither of them move. Instead they just stand there dripping rainwater onto Meridia’s obsidian floor. The silenced fortress makes the drumming of the droplets into little more than whispers.

‘Unless there is anything else?’ I ask, knowing full well that there is.

As I expect, it is Yumia who speaks. She is the more wilful of the two. The less fractured from being rebuilt in the name of service.

‘The Master’s last words,’ she says.

‘What of them?’

‘Mia,’ Zoric says, calling her by the short of her name. ‘Leave it.’

She shoots him a glance. ‘Danil,’ she says. ‘Do not pretend that you do not care what happened to Madame Sofika.’

‘We know what happened,’ he says. ‘I was there. So were you. You saw the storm that took her.’