The hospitaller’s ward is a ruin.
Over half of the antechambers are locked down, or sealed behind closed bulkheads. Some are guarded. Those that are still in service are crowded with the wounded and the dying. With those who cannot stop weeping, or pulling at their hair. Sisters Hospitaller pace to and fro unceasingly, healing and soothing. Giving mercy.
‘There are so many,’ Ashava says, looking out across the chamber.
I do the same, but I cannot see Eugenia. I do see a familiar figure, though. One clad in hospitaller’s robes, her long hair bound up with a series of rings. I pick my way through to Sister Lourette with Ashava at my side. The Sister Hospitaller’s gloves and smock are slick with blood. Her face and hair are dashed with it as though she has been anointed. When I speak her name over the noise and she looks up, I see that her pale eyes are circled with shadows.
‘Evangeline,’ she says, and she smiles as you might at the dawn. With relief.
‘I am looking for Sister Eugenia. She was wounded during the incursions,’ I say.
She was wounded to spare me, I think.
Lourette nods, removing her bloodied plastek gloves with a snap. ‘Come with me,’ she says.
As Ashava and I follow Lourette through the chamber, I notice a change in the people around us. A quiet that spreads like fire does, tracking quickly through the chamber in the wake of our passing. And then, a moment later, a chorus of whispers.
‘Evangeline,’ they say. ‘Evangeline.’
Ashava’s limping pace slows, and she looks around the chamber. ‘They speak your name,’ she says, as if I cannot hear it.
I do not slow my pace. I do not look around. I cannot bear to.
‘I know,’ I say.
The antechamber in which Eugenia is being cared for is reserved for those of the Sisterhood. It is small, and spare, and blessedly quieter than the main wards. Nobody here whispers my name. Lourette indicates where Eugenia is resting.
Eugenia is sitting upright in her cot, her head bowed. Her face is patchworked with bruising, her left eye concealed by thick pads of sterile dressing that are taped to her cheek and to her scalp. They have had to cut away a good deal of her hair to do it. More bandages show at the collar of her gown, and around her slender arms.
‘Most of her wounds will heal with time and with treatment,’ Lourette says, in a low voice.
As I watch, Eugenia lifts her hand and moves it from left to right, in and out of her narrowed field of vision.
‘And the eye?’ I ask.
‘It was too badly damaged to save,’ Lourette says. ‘We have replaced it with an augmetic. It is crude, but much kinder than the alternative.’
It is the answer I was expecting, but it settles on me like a penitent’s weight nonetheless. Ashava is discomforted by it too. By the word replace. I can feel it in the way she shifts her weight from one foot to the other as the vox-bead Lourette is wearing pips insistently.
‘I must return to my duties,’ the Sister Hospitaller says.
I nod and thank her. Lourette bows her head and goes, leaving Ashava and me alone with the wounded. With Eugenia.
I approach her cot, slowly. Speak her name. Eugenia’s hand falls away from her bandaged eye, and her face lifts to look for me. She throws back the sheet and stands before I can stop her. Eugenia wavers on her feet, but she does not fall. She salutes me, instead. One bandaged hand over her heart.
‘Sister Superior,’ she says, her hoarse voice carrying the same misplaced awe as the whispers did on the other wards. She looks to Ashava next, and nods. Smiles, as best she can. ‘Sister Ashava,’ she says.
Ashava nods in return. ‘Hello, Geni,’ she says.
Eugenia looks back at me. She does that as best she can, too. Her good eye is so lidded by the bruising that it is almost closed.
‘You broke the monster of mirrors,’ she says. ‘Spared the Navigator.’
I nod. ‘The Navigators Awaiting were killed, but the Lady Oraylis will sail. She will get us clear of the Rift.’
Eugenia nods. ‘I know,’ she says. ‘Qi-Oh said as much, when she came to see me.’
I blink. ‘When was she here?’
‘Before the ringing of the bells,’ she says. ‘She told me of the purgation. That she left the lowdecks, though she shouldn’t have.’
‘She told you of Calyth,’ I say.
Eugenia nods. ‘Qi-Oh said it was an ugly death. Meaningless.’ She shakes her head and frowns, as much as her injuries allow. ‘But there are no ugly deaths. No meaningless deaths. To die is to know His grace. To have served the purpose He set for you. You cannot reach the God-Emperor’s side otherwise.’ She pauses, and looks at me, her good eye fixed on mine. ‘Is that not so?’
My heart thumps slowly in my chest, and I find that I cannot answer her.
‘Yes,’ Ashava says, in my stead. ‘Of course that is so. We all know it.’
‘Qi-Oh knows it, too,’ I say belatedly, feeling as though I am talking about myself as much as I am her. ‘I will speak with her. But first I must know of you, Sister. How do you feel?’
What I can see of Eugenia’s face flushes. Her hand strays up towards her bandaged eye.
‘There is some pain from the eye,’ she says. ‘But such is to be expected, given the trauma, and the work done to replace it.’ She pauses. ‘It is hard to sleep with an eye that won’t close, but the Sisters Hospitaller say that is to be expected, too. That it will get easier as I grow used to it.’
I try not to imagine it. Eugenia lying awake, waiting for sleep that never comes.
‘How long until you may return to service?’ I ask.
Eugenia frowns again. ‘The hospitallers say a fortnight, to allow time for the augmetic to settle. Though I do not know how I can grow used to something without using it.’
‘I will speak with them, as well,’ I tell her.
She smiles faintly. ‘That is a kindness, Sister Superior,’ she says, and then her smile falls away again. ‘Though I fear it is one I do not deserve.’
It is my turn to frown. ‘What do you mean?’
‘You asked me to defend you in the Navigation quarter,’ Eugenia says.
My frown deepens. ‘You did defend me,’ I tell her.
‘I allowed the creature to land a blow,’ she says. ‘To knock me down. I left you exposed, and then I lay here sleeping while you undertook the purgation.’
‘You did more than defend me,’ I tell her. ‘You spent your blood and sacrificed your sight to get me close enough to kill it.’
‘And that is enough?’ Eugenia asks, her voice a whisper.
I remember asking Adelynn the same question all those years ago as we looked over the convent’s spires and the sun sank low in the sky. I remember how I felt as I asked it. The yearning for approval. For a place. For a purpose.
For a family.
I realise then that the hollowness at the heart of me has always been there, really. That I was merely made whole for a time by my Sisters. By Adelynn. By acceptance. A temporary fix, like a mortar patch for broken stone. I cannot show that, though. Not to Eugenia. Not even to Ashava. So instead I nod.
‘You did well, Eugenia,’ I tell her.
Before I can react, or prevent her, Eugenia moves. She embraces me, though it must hurt her to do it. It certainly hurts me.
‘Thank you, Sister Superior,’ she says, and that hurts me too. Not because of my wounds, but because of that hollowness at the heart of me.
‘She looks up to you, Eva.’
Ashava says the words to me the moment we leave the hospitaller’s ward and go back out into the spinal corridor. It is half-dark, the deck fouled by filthy water from leaks and breaches. The air is soured with the smell of it. That, and the smell of blood coming from the waiting wounded. There are dozens upon dozens of them, all sitting huddled against the walls, bruised and bandaged and as filthy as the water on the deck. As we pass by, the people fall quiet, just like before. The whispering of my name begins again, a constant susurrus like oath-papers caught by the wind. Just like before, I cannot stand the sound of it.
‘As I once looked up to Adelynn,’ I reply. ‘I know.’
‘It sounds as though that troubles you,’ Ashava says.
I stop walking and look back at her.
‘All of this troubles me.’
I find Qi-Oh in one of the lowdeck training halls. The same one where we fought before. When I enter the chamber she is not training, or pacing. She is not moving at all. Qi-Oh kneels in the heart of the training circle with her head bowed, tending to the toothed blade of her chainsword with a set of precision tools. All around her lie the remains of combat servitors that have been hacked to pieces. The deck is slick with oil and vitae, but I see as I approach her that not a drop of either has crossed the circle’s edge.
‘Sister Superior,’ Qi-Oh says, without looking up. Her tone is cold.
‘So you do recognise my rank.’
She raises her head and looks at me. Her eyes are cold, too. ‘Are you here to reprimand me?’
I try to think for a moment how Adelynn would answer such a question, but I realise swiftly that I do not know, because I never once saw her disobeyed, or disregarded. Not once.
‘You would deserve it,’ I say. ‘You disobeyed me, Qi-Oh. You let your anger get the better of you.’
‘My anger,’ she says. ‘You know nothing of my anger.’
Qi-Oh gets to her feet, standing a head taller than me, her chainsword held loose in her gauntleted hand.
‘Daemons lie, Qi-Oh,’ she says. ‘That is what you said.’ She starts to pace the circle, her voice hoarse and raised. She punctuates every word by pointing her finger at me. ‘But you are the one who lied.’
‘I have never lied to you.’
‘You promised me vengeance!’ she shouts. ‘In the chapel. In this circle. You swore it.’
‘Enough!’ I shout back at her. ‘I will not have this from you, Qi-Oh.’
I stare her down.
‘I asked you before we set sail for the Throneworld if you had quarrel with me, and you told me no. Yet you looked me in the eyes and disobeyed my direct orders. You put all of our lives at risk for the sake of your own pride.’
Qi-Oh stops her pacing. ‘Pride,’ she says, in a low, dangerous voice. ‘You think this is about pride?’
She approaches me, stopping just short of crossing the circle.
‘Calyth is dead,’ she says. ‘She was hacked apart by weaklings. By those who shed their faith like a cloak the moment the darkness got close. And for what?’
I hold her stare. ‘For the sake of our duty.’
Qi-Oh shakes her head. Her hazel eye is glossy. ‘No,’ she snarls. ‘It’s all for your sake. The slaughter. Calyth’s death. Everything. It is all because of you.’
Those last six words echo in the hollowness of the training hall. They seem to echo in my head, too. To settle heavily on me, like the cloak on my back and the sword at my hip.
Like the blood, all over my hands.
‘You’re right.’
Qi-Oh blinks. She lowers her sword, just a little.
‘What did you say?’ she asks.
‘I said that you are right. None of this would be happening were we not taking the path laid out for me.’
Qi-Oh shakes her head. ‘Don’t do that.’
‘Do what?’
‘Be so humble,’ she says. ‘So damned forgiving. I disobeyed you. Disrespected you. You said it yourself. I deserve a reprimand. I should bleed for what I’ve done.’
It is my turn to shake my head now, because I see what she wants from me, and I will not give it to her. ‘I won’t fight you, Qi-Oh. Not this time.’
‘Why?’ she shouts. ‘Because you are blessed? Because you are chosen? Because you are so much better than me?’
‘Because you are my Sister,’ I shout back.
Those words echo between us, too. They resonate, like a struck chime. Qi-Oh watches me for a long moment before lowering her blade.
‘No,’ she says. ‘I have no Sisters. Not any more.’
She turns her back on me and limps towards the centre of the circle, and I realise that she is much more than just the anger I saw before. That rage is just the exposed, ragged edge of something buried much deeper. Something she is ashamed of, as I am.
Grief.
‘I know that it hurts,’ I say.
Qi-Oh stops walking. ‘No, you don’t,’ she says. ‘I lost everything on Ophelia VII. My eye. My home. All of my Sisters, save for Calyth. And now she is gone too.’
Her words conjure my own Sisters. Gytha. Isidora. Adelynn.
‘You are not the only one who lost everything.’
Qi-Oh turns on the spot and looks at me. ‘No,’ she says, again. ‘You have Ashava. You have the sword.’
She points her finger at me. At the scars on my face.
‘You gained everything,’ she snarls. ‘The rank. The blade. The mark on your face. You are blessed, Evangeline.’
I try to keep my temper. To breathe, and let her words wash over me, but I cannot. Qi-Oh’s words snag easily on my own ragged edges, exposing my grief. My shame. The hollowness, at the heart of me.
‘I didn’t want any of it,’ I tell her. ‘All that I wanted was to die. To follow my Sisters to the God-Emperor’s side. But I couldn’t. I failed. Everyone praises me and expects of me and calls the mark a blessing, but I do not feel worthy, and it does not feel like a blessing.’
The words are so raw and so shameful and so utterly true that I feel weak in the wake of saying them. It is all that I can do to stay standing, and to answer Qi-Oh when she speaks again. Her voice is different, this time. It is gentle.
‘What does it feel like?’ she asks.
I should lie to her. I should at the very least denounce my doubts. But I find that I cannot. That somehow the answer I kept from Ashava and Elivia and even Arch-Cardinal DiCrimio will not be kept from Qi-Oh.
‘Hollow,’ I say. ‘It feels hollow.’
She is quiet for a long moment, her remaining eye narrowed and unreadable. Then I see her blink. See a tear paint a clean line through the blood on her face.
‘Perhaps we are Sisters, after all,’ she says softly, and she extends her hand. Neither of us says a word as we clasp wrists, in the old way. The way that proves a lack of weapons. As I drop my hand away from Qi-Oh’s arm a loud rumbling splits the air. A wracking of the ship’s bones, as though the Vow is being twisted from bow to stern. The remaining lumens flicker out, one at a time, and when they reassert themselves with the loud thump of activation, they are accompanied by another sound. One that is as welcome and heartening as prayer-time bells.
Re-entry chimes.
‘We are out,’ Qi-Oh says absently, when the chimes die down. ‘We made it through the abyss.’
I nod. All around us, the Vow is creaking from the stress, venting air and coolant and long trails of condensation. Sighs, and tears.
‘Out of the abyss, and into the darkness beyond,’ I say.