The Archbishop makes a tiny gesture to the Church guards, which she notices are all saints, and presumably natural ones, made by the hand of the Forge. They cross the gap and one reaches to take Misery’s arm and she flings the marauding hand away. “Don’t touch me.”

“Misery,” the Archbishop says gently.

Their voice floats through her mind like a cool salve, slow and calming. “I’m coming,” she mumbles.

A clatter of boots and metal announces the arrival of a new player in this arena of misfortune. Who else would it be but the Duke of Apis and his retinue of soldiers, brisk-marching into view on the Pyrex Imogen’s side. “Ah, good,” he says as he takes in the sorry mess of the situation. “You caught her.”

Misery is disgusted on multiple fronts: by his reappearance, by his palpable relief, by his casual address of the Archbishop. “How did you get here so fast?”

Lord Argan props his hands on his hips and squints at her in ill humor. “Transport pads. I don’t know where you thought you were going to run off to, Misery.”

Transport pads. Of course the Capital would have transport pads. Misery turns to the side and spits, quietly but vehemently, “Fuck.” She really thought she could defeat this death-taken citadel, but really she knows nothing. Truly. As the silent saints escort her from the chamber, she catches sight of Ruin sat atop one of the recyclers, one ankle dangling loose, laughing. No empathy whatsoever. That voideaten piece of shit.

INTERLUDE 1

Ten thousand years ago humanity set out from the sourceworld to find new places to live in. This fact is not in dispute. No matter how much the Heretics and Faithful differ in their tellings of their history, they agree on this. The first chapter of each book charts the arc of The Cause of Labour as it divests itself of Old Earth and begins its long, solitary trek across the unknowns of space. For fifty generations the denizens of the ship thrived, making art, growing hydroponics, tinkering with physics and genetics. Society shaped itself in its sealed environment. The memory of the sourceworld receded and became legend as the ship crawled further through the void between the stars. Languages and dialects fell away in chunks, and what remained fused into something new under the controlled auspices of ALISS, the ship’s AI, which cared for its charges like a farmer breeding tomatoes.