I wake to a hum in my ears, and for a moment think I’m still on Silas’s ship, that any moment I’ll smell eggs frying and coffee brewing and hear the General’s hesitant laugh. But when I move, I feel cold metal beneath my cheek and smell nothing but stale oil and fuel and desert air. I open my eyes.

I’m lying in the hold of a ship, one that is thick with grease, stacked with tangles of wires and parts. Pain flares in my shoulders; my wrists are bound behind me, tied to one of the ship’s girders.

It’s Moloney’s ship, the Longrider.

The name brings back the Augur’s words – Spindigo, Hell – and the vision of the king of the Rooks, dead in the desert. I don’t understand, but they don’t seem to care about that.

When I try to roll to my knees, my stomach gives a violent lurch and I retch, vomiting bile onto the hold floor. Afterwards, I struggle upright and lean against the wall, trying to think as my head throbs.

What will the General do, now that she knows the truth about me?

Part of the truth.

She is Accord, right to the marrow. No matter that they want her dead, she still believes in them. Even if we do escape the Rooks, as they promise, will she let me go?

‘Ten?’ a voice calls across the hold. In the gloom, I see the worn sheen of Silas’s flight jacket. He comes forwards cautiously, the way someone might approach a dangerous animal, a cup in his hands.

‘You’re—’ He clears his throat, nodding at the vomit on the floor. ‘See you’re awake.’

‘No thanks to you.’

He hunkers down on his knees. Out of my reach, I can’t help but notice.

‘Here,’ he holds out the mug, ‘they’re eating. Not much, just soup.’

I laugh, a painful noise from my raw throat. ‘You think I’m going to drink that?’

Even in the dim light, I see the strain on his face. His black hair is even more of a mess than usual.

‘Nothing wrong with it,’ he mutters. When I don’t move, he takes a sip. ‘See?’

My throat is crying out for liquid. ‘Alright.’

He comes closer, until he kneels beside me and can hold the mug to my mouth. The soup is weak; a few spoons of unidentified savoury powder and long-desiccated vegetable flecks mixed with treated water. How long ago were carrots harvested from the hydroponic fields of Prosper? Three years? A decade? But as soon as the liquid touches my lips, my body responds and I drink greedily. Silas tilts the mug, careful not to let any spill.

When I’m done, he sits back, and we stare at each other.

‘Is it true?’ he asks at last.

‘Which part?’

‘That you killed people?’