‘Yes, it did,’ said Mersadie. She turned towards the centre of the room. The other woman still had her back to her, but Mersadie could see that she was busy with something that sat on the low table in front of her. ‘Who are you?’ Mersadie asked. ‘I don’t remember you. So why am I dreaming you?’

The woman laughed, the sound brief and clear.

‘Don’t you recognise me?’

Mersadie blinked, then started forwards.

‘Euphrati?’

The woman on the floor turned to look at her and smiled.

‘It is good to see you.’

Mersadie stopped. Even in this dream, Euphrati Keeler looked different to how she remembered. The smile on her face was sad, her features lean and drawn, her hair cut short and streaked with grey and white. The beautiful remembrancer who had shared Mersadie’s time amongst the Luna Wolves, and their fall to darkness, was gone, replaced by something harder, something defined by purpose.

Mersadie looked around again, then back to Keeler.

‘This is not a dream, is it? This is like before, when you spoke to me about Loken.’ That dream had come years before, but Mersadie had been able to remember it without effort. It had been more real than real, a moment of connection made possible by means that Mersadie could not explain without reaching for words like ‘miracle’. ‘You are really here, aren’t you, in my dream?’

Keeler was still for a second, then nodded. ‘I need to tell you something, and then I am afraid I need to ask something of you.’

‘What?’

‘First you must understand,’ said Keeler, looking back to what was on the floor in front of her. Mersadie moved around until she could see. She stopped and frowned. A disc of brass sat on the top of the polished wood. It was as wide as a dinner plate and divided into rings. Circles of polished stone and metal had been slotted into depressions in the wood, and Mersadie could see more discs cupped in Keeler’s left hand.

‘Those are the signs of the planets and moons from–’

‘From the time before Old Night, yes,’ said Keeler, slotting more of the discs into place in each of the rings. ‘The Planet of War, the Maiden of Dreams, the Bringer of Joy. And these beside them are the phases of the heavens, the symbols used by the scryers of the Suund – the Burning Tiger, the Bloody Sagittar, the Weigher of Souls, the Crown of Oceans, and so on.’

‘I know them,’ said Mersadie. ‘I read the Chaldeantis scripts while I was in the Conservatory towers of Europa.’