The main doors to the staterooms opened. The tall silhouette of Aksinya, the bodyguard, stood framed by the amber glow of lumen-strips. Pale eyes met Mersadie’s gaze for a second. Something in the cold intensity of that stare reminded her of something, a fragment of an image lost in the cracks of the past. Aksinya jerked her head, and turned back to the corridor.

‘Follow,’ she said. Mersadie complied.

They walked in silence for long minutes, descending ladders and stairs into spaces that smelled of raw oil and hot metal.

‘Where are we going?’ asked Mersadie. Aksinya did not answer, but keyed a control on a heavy door crossed with chevrons. The door released with a hiss and thump of pneumatics. The smell of human sweat and breath washed out. Aksinya moved aside and gestured for Mersadie to go through.

The light beyond was a different hue, dim but cold, like a stab-light running on low power. They were standing in the corner of a cargo hold. Its roof arched up to a flattened apex some ten metres above her head. It was small compared to the vast holds on a macro-transporter or warship, but somehow it felt even smaller to Mersadie as she looked at those who waited there. A loose wall of people faced her, staring eyes set in exhausted faces. She saw every age amongst the faces, children peeking out at her from between parents’ legs, the old, the young, all staring with a little curiosity and a lot of fear. They wore fabric of every kind and quality: the vulcanised rubber and oil-smeared suits of void dock-luggers, jackets of velvet dotted with brass buttons, smocks of service-stencilled drab, all grubby and stained with days of wear. None of the faces moved, most eyes barely seemed to blink. She heard sounds coming from the other side of the crowd, and realised that there must be people that she could not see, filling the hold space. Ribbons of cooking smoke coiled into the air. She coughed as the smell of excrement and urine touched the back of her throat.

‘Who are you?’ asked a clear voice from down near the floor. Mersadie looked down, and saw two brown eyes looking up at her from beneath a matted mass of ash-white curls. Mersadie glanced up at the adults standing next to the child, but they did not move or speak. They and all those others that she could see were looking at Aksinya, who had come to stand just behind her. She looked back at the child and bent down, so that she was level with that big, brown gaze.

‘I…’ began Mersadie and stopped, not sure what to say. ‘I am called Mersadie. I used to tell stories.’

‘What kind of stories?’ asked the child.

‘True ones.’