Sister Evangeline’s armoured shoulders rise and fall as she takes a breath, but she doesn’t walk out.

‘We can make it right,’ I tell her. ‘There is more waiting for you beyond the Rift than the Shield. I have seen it.’

Sister Evangeline finally turns and looks at me once more.

‘What have you seen?’ she asks.

I consider my answer carefully, as one should with all answers.

‘In my dreams Dimmamar is cold, and shrouded in darkness. Shadows with teeth and claws draw closer, putting out every light. Every single ­candlefire. Save for one source of light.’

Sister Evangeline watches me intently. Cautiously. ‘What source of light?’ she asks.

The eagle’s cry echoes inside my mind.

‘You,’ I tell her.

Sister Evangeline’s lips part as if she might speak, but she says nothing.

‘Where you stand, you bring the light,’ I tell her. ‘Light as bright as the dawnrise. It pushes the darkness back. Tears away its teeth and its claws. It turns everything to gold, edge to edge.’

Sister Evangeline blinks. ‘How?’ she asks. ‘How do I bring the light?’

I think then not of the eagle’s cry, or the shadows, but of the fire that engulfs her until all that I can see is the white of her scars amid the gold and red.

The eagle, ablaze.

‘Faith,’ I tell her. ‘And sacrifice.’

She holds my gaze for a long moment.

‘Sacrifice,’ she says softly.

I nod. ‘The death you were spared from awaits you on Dimmamar, Sister Evangeline.’

She blinks, her hazel eyes glossy. ‘Thank you, inquisitor,’ she says, and then she goes, leaving me alone with the rain and the rooftops and the distant flocks of birds, grey on grey.

Book Two

BOOK TWO

THE SECOND
PILGRIMAGE

Ravara

RAVARA

The Unbroken Vow is in agony.

I hear it all around me as I walk alone through the ship’s freezing corridors. Her engines are roaring without pause and her superstructure is creaking. Flexing and clicking. Groaning. I stop and exhale a slow breath. I am in agony, too, just as the ship is. My head is pounding and my ears are ringing. My limbs ache as if my bones are growing. The pain might be different, but the cause is the same.

The Great Rift.

It presses in on all sides as it has for three standard days, the tides tearing at the Unbroken Vow as if they are trying to find purchase on the hull. On our souls. Everything shudders constantly and over half of the ship’s lumens have failed. Food has begun to rot. Water has soured. Candles have extinguished themselves, as have several of the ship’s crew.