I nod, and she walks away with Zoric, leaving me alone in Meridia’s silent halls with rainwater dripping from my armour in whispers.

EVANGELINE

I have sailed the sea of storms many times since my ascension to the Sisterhood, but never like this.

After just one day, every soul on the ship seems subdued, as if in mourning, despite the protection of the ship’s Geller field. I have seen warp-sickness before, but this is more than that. After two days, thirty per cent of the food stores have spoiled. After three, the weeping starts. It comes from the Navy crew, and the Order vassals. From the cherubim in the rafters. The augmented familiars refuse to fly. Instead, they take refuge amongst the ironwork beams in little flocks, pulling out clumps of their own feathers with their pale, necrotised hands. Sisters Hospitaller walk the decks offering guidance and comfort, but the quiet never lasts long, as though the ship itself is wracked with sorrow.

I endure the journey by meeting with my remaining Sisters. First I take repast with Joti in the refectory halls after morning prayer. We sit together at a long table eating gruel from shallow dishes, accompanied by dry, heavy pieces of grey meal-loaf. The food reminds me of my time in the convents. Of early rises and howling gales, and hours spent at prayer, or at lesson. Joti talks and talks, but she hardly mentions herself at all. Instead she fills every empty second of air with kind words devoted to the others. About their strength, or their ferocity. Their skill-at-arms. Their devotion. She says it all with a smile, and with light in her eyes. When I ask her of herself, she merely shakes her head.

‘There’s nothing much to tell, Sister Superior.’ She picks up her piece of meal-loaf, and smiles. ‘I am just glad to serve.’

Haskia awaits me in the armoury quarter.

The chamber in which we meet is one of several where the armourers perform the decoration and sanctification of the commandery’s armour and weapons. The chamber is cool and quiet in a way that reminds me of a chapel. Not a single one of the dozen armourers looks up from their task as I enter and cross the room to where Haskia awaits me at one of the wooden workbenches. She is bending pieces of lightweight, silvered metal with her hands to create tiny loops of interlinking chain like those that are already secured around different parts of her armour. Haskia keeps working even as I take a seat beside her, and when she speaks, it is in a low voice, so as not to disturb the armourers in their work.

‘I started making them after Veridia was injured,’ she says. ‘After she lost so much of herself in an instant.’

‘Then they are meant as memory,’ I say. ‘The chains.’

‘As memorial,’ she says. ‘I make one after every warzone to commemorate those we lost.’

She pauses in her work and gestures to the chain around her right vambrace.