Minka looked at her lieutenant as though the bomb had shaken her brain. There was a blood clot in one of Dido’s eyes that was slowly spreading. It reminded her, horribly, of the Eye of Terror. She thought she was going to be sick. She turned away and breathed deep. It took a long moment, like dragging herself up from deep water.

It was them against the galaxy, and Cadians were a dying breed.

‘No,’ she said. ‘It’s not!’

Later, in the dorm, Minka had thought through what she wanted to say. ‘It’s like another death,’ she said at last. ‘They’re destroying what we were. Who we are. We stared into the Eye of Terror. We lived under its shadow. We never forgot our duty. We could never forget!’

Dido cradled her head in silence. She had nothing to say against this.

Minka went on. ‘That is what it means to be Cadian. It’s a state of mind. It’s a duty. Not a bloodline. There is no bloodline! How many times has Cadia been left lifeless? Each time we were resettled with veterans from across the Imperium. It was the planet that shaped us.’ She kicked the wall. It was so flimsy she left another hole in the flakboard.

‘I know,’ Dido said at last. She looked exhausted by the day.

Minka looked about at the others in the room. Siku and Doxa had both come in. They sat silently as Minka ranted. They were all agreed. Another insult to the memory of Cadia.

Minka paused. ‘You know what’s worse? When I saw that cadet this morning I thought he was my brother.’

Dido was silent. Minka felt compelled to go on. The last time she had seen her brother was in the muster yards of Kasr Myrak, standing tall and proud in ill-fitting military cast-offs, his helmet too big for his head, his cheeks hairless and soft.

‘His name was Tarli,’ she said. ‘I always hoped he’d made it. I always told myself that I would have felt it if he was dead. But, of course, if he lived then there’s no way he’d still be a Whiteshield.’

Dido pulled a bottle of amasec out from under her bed. Her eye was dark with the blood clot.

‘Here,’ she said, pouring a pair of heavy shots. One for her and one for Minka. ‘I think we both deserve one of these.’

Twelve

TWELVE

As a youth Minka had spent months out in the arctic wastes of Cadia, trekking from pylon to pylon, camping in the shelter of the vast graveyards – keeping out of sight of the priests as they made their way from headstone to headstone.

Their route was predictable. They bent over each tombstone and then moved onto the next one.

‘What are they doing?’ Minka had once asked one of the older cadets. ‘Are they looking for someone?’