Six hours must have gone by that like. Then six more. Sleep had been impossible at first, between the discomfort and the fear, but now I was too tired to fight if off. Whether I napped for minutes or hours, I couldn’t say. Only that the near-silence remained, and the darkness, and I believed at last that I was truly alone.

Bosa Sennen had taken what she wanted.

Bosa Sennen was gone.

I still moved quietly. When I finally dared touch the panel I worked my fingers into the gap and levered it away with great care, scrunching my eyes against the dim glow of the corridor’s lightvine. Then the panel slipped from my fingers and drifted across to the other side of the corridor. I snatched at it but was too slow. It clattered into the wall.

I held my breath. It was pointless to hide again. If I’d been heard, they’d find me, as sure as Paladin always found Adrana and me when we used to rope him into our games. But after minutes of waiting I began to accept that the ship really was empty.

I went to the galley, where I’d last seen the others.

I could tell you how I’d have wished to have reacted, when I found the bodies; how I’d have liked to have been all bold and dignified, keeping a respectful composure – or I could tell you what really happened, including the vomit and the tears and the self-pity.

But when I started scratching this thick red ink down onto this rough and leathery paper, I vowed that I’d stick to what happened, not what I might have wanted to happen. Setting down these letters and words is hard enough as it is, the way my fingers work, and I don’t want to waste my time by putting out anything but the solid truth of it, as I see it. It can’t be The True and Accurate Testimony of Arafura Ness unless I give it to you straight, so that’s what I’ve got to do.

So I suppose I’d best stick with the facts.

The fact that there were bodies wasn’t the main shock of it. I’d been expecting as much. I couldn’t see Bosa killing people and then going to the bother of disposing their corpses, like she was tidying up after herself.

I was also expecting – hoping, I suppose – not to find Adrana or Garval among the bodies. That wasn’t me being selfish in not wanting to see them dead, or not liking the idea of my sister taking her own life in desperation, just that them not being here meant there was a good chance they’d been taken, and if that was the case then it meant – for the time being, at least – Bosa had swallowed Garval’s lie.

No, the bad part was what she’d done to these people.