“You woke it,” Pyrex Imogen repeats, voice roughened by emotion. Real emotion. More emotion than Misery’s ever seen them show, and ever imagined them showing. Their long fingers grip the edge of the holy jade. “It cannot be denied … it is as the signs said. It is you.” They’re looking at her now, with all the intensity of a too-close sun. Misery doesn’t understand what she did, doesn’t know what miracle she performed that’s shaken the steel foundations of the Archbishop of Remus. What did the Tear of Assan do, when woken? Did it flatten the holy jade? Or was the sign simply the awakening of the stone?

“No one’s been able to touch the stone,” they say. “Not saints. Not prophets. Only you. I believe it now, Misery Nomaki. You are the one who was spoken of by the prophet of Calister, many years ago. You are the Last Savior of the Faithful, sent to us to end this war with the Heretics, once and for all.”

CHAPTER 4

Misery’s pad for the night is an anchorex’s cell, a tight little thing in the honeycombed borders of Church headquarters. Walls of holy jade enclose a bed, a simple access panel, a desk, and a hygiene box. A single porthole opens onto the star-freckled void, a scoop of the infinite for the occupant to season their prayer and contemplation with. Misery has no interest in contemplation or holy writing. She lies flat and hyperawake on the reactive glass of the bed, which has molded to her shape but provides exactly no comfort. In between the Archbishop and this cell Misery was sent through the doctors and then fed, so her body has been healed and fortified. Broken things fixed. But rest won’t come and the ghost of an ache haunts her being. She’s made a game of her mother’s amulet, tossing it and catching it before it hits her between the eyes. She moves slower each time, testing how much risk she can take in the station’s weak gravity. Each thunk in her hand, which spares the bones of her face, is a balm.