She walked across the inner courtyard. The fleshy doors leading deep into the derelict were partially open. For a moment, she suspected it may be some kind of deception. Then she remembered the child, the one she had passed on the stoop. She found it hiding just inside the door, huddled in one of the heaving, slimy crevices of the living ship.

The girl’s eyes were squeezed shut, and she stank of urine.

She took the girl by the collar of her tunic and dragged her down the long corridor with her. The girl shrieked once, then squealed like a tortured puppy.

It meant they knew she was coming, and she did appreciate the aesthetics of a grand entrance, even after all this time.

They waited for her deep within the bowels of the ship, so deep she could feel the ship’s heartbeat beneath her feet. Most of it had long since been reworked by conjurers far more powerful than she, centuries or millennia before, so their original purpose was unknown. The room they convened in was called Shahnaz, after some dead man. But older Family members called it the Heart of Umayma. It was here the Families met to decide how the world would be run. The Queen may have some power over everyday Nasheenian government, but she was just one pawn on a very great field.

As she had expected, it was not the full assembly today. Only her own Family, house Hadiyah. Thirty-nine members in all. Most were already standing when she arrived. Most already knew their fate. They were surrounded in the most potent weapon her people still possessed, but not one of them still had the power to shape it.

None but her.

Which was why they had condemned her.

She threw the squalling child at them. The child rolled across the floor. One of the men, Abdah, reached forward and scooped the child up. They all wore traditional clothes. Billowy white thobes for the men, and creamy khameezes for the women. They wore their hair long and covered—black turbans for men, and black hijabs for women. Within the pulsing dome of the ceiling ran several lines of silver prayer script that read, “God the Creator, the subduer, the provider, the forbearer, will return for you and light your path to the stars.”