‘She isn’t dead.’ I pushed myself up a bit, so I could look him squarer in the eye. ‘I know it. I picked her up on the bones. She’s still out there and I mean to find her again. Taking away all my books isn’t going to make me stop thinking of space and her still being out there. It won’t be long before I can do what I like – leave this house, leave Mazarile, go back out on a ship.’

‘You’re still a child,’ he said. ‘Legally, I mean. In the eyes of the law.’

‘Not for long.’

‘That’s what I wanted to discuss.’ He teeth moved over his lips, as he tried to work out how to get the words out, the words it was plain I wasn’t going to like. ‘I love you too much, Arafura. That’s why I’ve been speaking to Doctor Morcenx, discussing the options. Doctor Morcenx agrees that, what with everything taken into consideration, and the tuition you’ve lost, it wouldn’t be right to force adulthood on you just yet. You need time to get over it all. In three months you’ll be of age, it’s true. But the law has some flexibility in this regard. It accepts that a date can’t be regarded as some immovable gateway between one state of development and another.’

I started to get the gist of what he was saying, and it was like someone was pouring ice down my spine.

‘No.’

‘It’s all right,’ he said, reaching out to hold my hand. ‘It’s nothing harmful, and the treatment can be given in tandem with the drug for the lightvine. It won’t be permanent. But just for a few months . . . say half a year, a year at most . . . and I’ll get to keep you as the daughter I should never have lost.’

I wrenched out of his grip. ‘No!’

‘It’s already done,’ my father said tenderly. ‘So there’s no point protesting about it. I knew you wouldn’t take it well, to begin with. That’s understood, and I don’t think any less of you because of it. I see your mother’s spirit in you. But you have to see things from my perspective as well. Something terribly precious was torn from me. I got you back, but if you were left to yourself you’d be leaving me again. And I couldn’t bear that.’

‘You can’t do this,’ I said.

‘I can,’ Father said. ‘Doctor Morcenx knows all about the law, and I’ve discussed it with my legal representatives. There’s no stigma, no scandal, in this. And in the long run it’ll be for the best for you, the best for all of us.’

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