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.

Cazaray, Mattice, Trysil and Hirtshal had died outside the ship, before Bosa ever set foot on it. I won’t say they were the lucky ones – what happened to Trysil and Hirtshal was nothing you’d wish on someone – but at least they weren’t face to face with Bosa when she killed them. Jusquerel and Triglav hadn’t been so fortunate, though. They’d got crossbow bolts for their trouble; Jusquerel above the sternum, through a soft part of her suit, and Triglav through the throat. There was blood all over the walls, spattered in little stars and craters, and there was more blood just floating around, in gluey red clots. If the blood wasn’t enough of a clue, I didn’t need much more to tell me that they were dead. Their bodies had stiffened up and their eyes were fixed open but not really looking at anything. It was cold in the ship and for once I wasn’t sorry, because the cold had kept them from decomposing too quickly.

Prozor was next. She’d been bludgeoned. Bosa had smashed her across the side of the skull with something blunt and heavy, like the stock of a crossbow. The wound was a knot of blood and hair, and as I touched it I felt a yielding, like wallpaper giving way over a patch of rotten wall.

Prozor and I hadn’t exactly been close. But I touched another hand to her, willing her some peace, and turned to Rackamore.