The Chamber of Sail is cold. So cold that my words mist the air as I kneel and pray with Lady Oraylis. This time, my hands are not laced in hers. The Novator Primus’ wrists are bound to the arms of her throne, just as Okash said they would be. The priests have washed her skin and bound her blinded mortal eyes. They have doused her robes with the scent of flowers. They intend it to restore a fraction of the lady’s nobility. To me, though, it just makes the Chamber of Sail seem all the more like a funerary hall, and the Lady Oraylis entombed here.
‘O God-Emperor,’ I say, completing the prayer. ‘Surround me, restore me and deliver me so that I may serve you always. In life and in death.’
I look up at Oraylis. The Navigator takes a shuddering breath that gurgles in her chest like water at the foot of a well.
‘In life. And in death,’ she says, and then her head lolls as if she is looking down at me. ‘Thank you, Evangeline. For praying with me.’
I shake my head. ‘It is as I said before. You are not alone.’
Oraylis nods her head. ‘None of us are.’
‘Will you sail, Lady Oraylis?’
The question is a formality. A courtesy. We both know the answer to it.
‘I will sail,’ she says. ‘I will deliver you to Dimmamar. It is His will.’
I frown. ‘You will stand on Dimmamar with us,’ I tell her. ‘Under the cardinal world’s sun. Ravara foresaw it.’
Oraylis smiles faintly. Sadly. ‘Oh, my dear,’ she says. ‘Ravara was lying.’
I blink, suddenly as cold as the room around me.
‘How can you be certain?’
Oraylis’ breaths come in a wet rasp. ‘Because nothing hurts any more,’ she says. ‘Even though it should. Because the tidesong is getting further and further away. Because I am dying, Evangeline.’
I shake my head. ‘But why would Ravara lie?’
‘Because she needed me to sail,’ Oraylis says. ‘She just told me what I wanted to hear.’
I think of my own conversation with the inquisitor as we overlooked the Convent Prioris. Was that, too, just her telling me what I wanted to hear?
‘It is what He made her for, Evangeline,’ Oraylis says. ‘To lie. To hide things, and to seek what is hidden by others. Just as He made you to fight, and me to sail.’ Oraylis shifts in her seat and takes another one of those guttering, clotting breaths as the ship’s bells begin to chime. ‘Speaking of which,’ she says. ‘It is time.’
The priests return as I get to my feet, Ravara’s lie still large in my mind.
‘You cannot hate her for it,’ Oraylis says. ‘No more than you can hate a falcon for flying.’
I nod, and then bow my head as the priests slide cables into the tethers in the Navigator’s skin.
‘God-Emperor guide you, Lady Oraylis,’ I say.
Oraylis looks at me, though she is blind.
‘And you, Sister Evangeline,’ she says.
The warp jump lasts for one solar week. One week of utter darkness, where candles offer the brightest light and the Vow is filled with the sound of weeping. For the entirety of the journey we patrol the decks that are left to us, waiting for the shadows to resolve into devils. There is no chance to rest. To reflect. There is certainly no time to seek out Ravara and speak with her. I do not see the inquisitor once during my patrols. Not Zoric, either. I catch sight of her bladeward once or twice, though. Yumia stalks the corridors like a felid might. Alone, and distrustful.
I am patrolling the spinal corridor with Qi-Oh and Ashava when the weeping becomes a long, protracted scream that can only, impossibly, be Lady Oraylis. The Vow does its best to tear itself apart as it tears its way out of the warp, juddering and shaking and resounding to a series of deep, thunderous explosions as the hull breaches in multiple locations along the ship’s five-kilometre length. We lose every level below deck twelve, along with another fifteen per cent of the crew.
In the days following the destruction, my Sisters and I tend to the survivors while the Vow’s diminished crew attempt to reset the warp drives and shore up the hull for our next jump. We pray, and we give up our rations. Ashava tells stories. Even Qi-Oh spends time amongst the people. But it is not enough. The crew starts to come apart, just as Quinn said it would. First come suicides. Then murders. Then bloody, desperate riots. My Sisters and I stop our singing and our stories and we go to the furnace halls to assist the remaining naval security troops in suppressing the unrest. We suppress. We destroy. We burn what is left, or eject it into the cold of the void.
In the aftermath, when the drives are cycling and the Navigator has stopped screaming and the ship is preparing once more to sail the tides, I find Haskia in the armoury, attending to the links of chain around her vambrace. I sit and watch as she runs together a new loop of chain made of tarnished copper links. It is almost crude, compared to the others. I count the links as she winds the chain around her vambrace, just as I did before. This time, though, I do not lose count. I memorise each copper link, and each loss along with it.
The second warp jump is even darker than the first. More violent. The lights aboard the Unbroken Vow this time are those of blades and of gunfire. This jump ends with a breach, just as the first one did. This time it is the sternward cathedral quarter that comes apart at the seams. Three worship halls are destroyed in the explosive decompression, and hundreds of faithful souls are lost to the void. More murders follow. More suicides. More riots. The shipmaster orders curfew. He orders double-rotation, then triple-rotation. He orders penitent service and execution after execution, and then barely moments after the voidlocks have expelled the turncoats and cowards, Vallien orders another jump. The senior navigation officer answers by shooting the shipmaster four times in the chest.
The mutineer is killed by naval security, but it comes too late to save the shipmaster. Arcoh Vallien dies in the throne he spent his life serving, and then his body is allocated for the furnaces, along with the rest of the faithful dead. It is left to Ulivar Okash to take the position of shipmaster. The throne, and the responsibility that goes with it. It is Okash who sits in a seat still tarnished with his predecessor’s blood and repeats Vallien’s last order, to make the jump towards Dimmamar.
No matter the cost.
During the third warp jump, the Unbroken Vow’s training halls and corridors and hangar decks are repurposed as refuge halls and holding pens and makeshift hospitaller’s wards. People pack into them as if they are seeking sanctuary, though there is nowhere to go to escape the storm. They lay out bedrolls and build temporary altars for prayer. They huddle around snapped and twisted candles, their hands outstretched for warmth and for any kind of light.
As I walk through what was once the tertiary training hall with Ashava and Qi-Oh, I see Order vassals and armourers. Priests and serfs. Ship’s crew whose responsibilities disappeared when the lower decks were breached. I see the old and the young. Those who are alone, and the rare but inevitable families that arise when an old ship is served by the same crew for long enough. Some are wounded. Some are dying. All are desperate. They huddle together, wrapped in blankets and jackets because the temperature is falling with each passing hour. There is little talking, so the chamber resounds to the groaning of the Vow’s tormented structure, and her labouring engines. To the sounds of murmured prayer, and of weeping. As I pick my way carefully through the crowd, I hear my name whispered amongst the prayers, though I never catch sight of those speaking it. It seems to surround me, like the wind might. Follow me, like smoke might follow fire.
Evangeline, they say. Evangeline.
‘Eva,’ I hear Ashava say softly. ‘Look.’
I look where she is looking, and I see them. Dozens of people in amongst the crowd, watching me. In the dim and wending candlelight I see that they have all painted their faces with chalk or blood or dirt. The old and the young. Those who are alone, and those who are not. They all wear the same markings.
Spread wings, around hollow eyes.
‘This is idolatry,’ Qi-Oh says in a low voice.
Ashava shakes her head. ‘No,’ she says. ‘This is hope.’
At her words, one of the marked figures slips through the crowd and approaches me. It is a girl, too young to be of the crew. Too young to be without a family. She seems tiny to me. Just skin and bones, wrapped up in an outsized tunic and trousers and a Navy jacket that is larger still. Her pale brown hair is cut roughly, as if by hand, and her feet are bare and bruised. She is holding a single, unlit candle in her hand. I can hardly stand to look at it. At her.
‘Sister Evangeline,’ she says, her words misting the air.
The Vow seems to quiet itself at her words. The marks on the girl’s face are smeared and smudged. Between the streaks of ash, her eyes are dark and wide. Intent on me. I crouch down in front of the child as Qi-Oh and Ashava continue the patrol ahead of me.
‘Speak,’ I tell her. ‘Please.’
‘I mean to ask you something,’ she says, and she glances at the crowds of people. All silent. All watching. ‘They mean to ask, too. But they don’t. They won’t.’
‘Ask me what?’
She looks down at the candle in her hand. The flame is weak and flickering, the wick burned nearly away. ‘For a miracle,’ she says.
‘What is your name?’ I ask.
She looks up from her candle. ‘Kati,’ she says.
‘For Katherine?’ I ask.
She nods.
‘That is a good name,’ I tell her. ‘The name of our saint. She was brave, and she was strong. Full of faith.’
‘Like you?’ Kati asks.
‘I am not a saint,’ I tell her.
She shakes her head. ‘The others said you were,’ she says. ‘They said that your marks came from the God-Emperor. They said that you would deliver us from the abyss. That it would be a miracle.’
My scars burn, as if they know they are being spoken of.
‘My scars did come from the God-Emperor,’ I tell her. ‘But I cannot perform miracles, Kati. Nor am I a saint. Saints are martyred. They die and live again, by His grace.’
Kati looks at me, her dark eyes catching the firelight.
‘Then what are you?’ she asks.
Something left behind, I think. Something hollow. But I can say neither of those things to this child who wears my scars by choice, so instead I give Kati the only truth I have.
‘I am a child of the God-Emperor,’ I say. ‘Just like you.’
Kati blinks and nods. She glances once more at the candle in her hands. ‘Then you can’t deliver us from darkness,’ she says.
I go to one knee, then reach out and put my hand on her shoulder. She really is just skin and bones beneath that woven jacket.
‘We will find our way out soon enough,’ I tell her. ‘You will see.’
‘You promise?’ she asks.
Once again, I give the child the only answer I can.
‘I promise.’
A chill wind stirs the candle in Kati’s hand, then. It pulls at the weak, tiny flame, snuffing it out. I hear her whimper as the other candles in the chamber all blow out, too, plunging the vaulted space into darkness. I start to tell the child not to move. To stay with me. But my voice is stolen by an ear-splitting roar that sounds like a whole choir of devils. It is so loud that I can hardly hear the people scream as the deck flexes and bucks beneath us and objects made invisible by the darkness crash down all around us. I cannot see. Cannot hear anything but the roaring. So I take the child into my arms and I hold her tightly and I murmur words that are as lost to the noise as the screams.
‘God-Emperor,’ I say. ‘Deliver us from darkness.’
And then the roaring stops, and the shaking with it. There is a moment where all is silent, save for breathing. Then people begin to cough and cry out for one another.
‘Eva!’ Ashava shouts.
‘I am here,’ I reply, as one by one the Unbroken Vow’s overhead lumens flicker back on, illuminating the chamber once more to reveal the deep cracks crazing their way up the walls. The clouds of dust, spiralling in the air.
And the three jagged spars of shipsteel that have buried themselves deeply in the deck around me, missing Kati and me by inches.
‘Blood and tears,’ Qi-Oh says, putting her fingertips to one of the pieces of twisted metal. It is almost as long as she is tall. ‘That was close.’
I look up at the Vow’s vaulted ceiling, and the ragged hole that remains of one of the supporting arches. Dust spirals outwards from it like an exhaled breath. I release my hold on Kati.
‘Are you hurt?’ I ask her.
She shakes her head, her eyes wide. I get to my feet and bring her with me, away from the site of the collapse. Kati stays in my shadow, one hand snarled tightly in my vestments. Around us, those who can are stirring. Sitting up, or getting to their feet. Others stay where they have fallen, their bodies broken open in the collapse.
Qi-Oh spits on the deck, her skin and hair greyed with dust. ‘That felt like an exit.’
‘Like an ending,’ Ashava says.
The vox-emitters crackle, then, for the first time in days. A sound emits over them. The clear and bright pealing of the ship’s bells fills the chamber. Everyone stops and looks and counts each ringing, and when it stops, the people around us begin to murmur and smile and embrace one another.
‘Twelve bells,’ Ashava says.
‘Taken in threes,’ Qi-Oh finishes.
I am still looking up at the emitter, though it has fallen silent now.
‘We found our way out,’ I say. ‘That was the last jump.’
‘The miracle.’
I look down at Kati. She is still clinging to my vestments.
‘They said you would deliver us from darkness,’ she says. ‘That it would be a miracle.’
I make to speak, to tell this child who wears my scars by choice that she is wrong, but my words are stolen from me by another sound. Not a roaring. Not a devil’s choir, but a swelling murmur that steals between the people in the chamber like smoke.
Miracle. It is a miracle.
Those who can stand, do. Those who cannot, crawl or drag themselves closer. They crowd around me, putting themselves between me and my Sisters. Qi-Oh starts forward, but Ashava holds her back as the crowd close around me. As they reach for me, fingertips brushing against my greaves and trailing across the edges of my vestments.
Evangeline, they say. Evangeline.
I hate the sound of my own name. I hate the whisper of their robes and clothes, and the gentle trailing of fingertips along my armour plates. My scars burn constantly, and my heart even more so. It feels perversely like the Contemplation to me. Pressed in on all sides, and surrounded by whispers. The pressure of it makes me want to scream. To lash out. But I cannot, because Qi-Oh was right. They are all here because of me. So I do not scream. I do not push them away, or turn my back. I stand. I endure. I suffer their devotion until the vox buzzes in my ear and I finally have cause to slip its grasp. As I move, the crowd parts before me, that whisper still following me.
Evangeline. Evangeline.
‘Evangeline.’ Elivia speaks my name too, her voice undercut by static. ‘I need you to come to the Navigation quarter immediately.’
‘Of course,’ I say. ‘For what cause?’
I hear Elivia breathe over the link.
‘The Navigator is dying,’ she says. ‘And she is asking for you.’
It is not just cold in the Chamber of Sail, now. It is frozen. Entombed in ice. It patterns every surface. The deck. The walls. The shuttered viewport and the Navigation throne.
It patterns Lady Tornella Oraylis, too, turning her skin and her blood-spattered cerise robes to silver. The priests attending to the Navigator take their leave as I make my way up the steps towards the foot of her throne. Oraylis is so still that for a moment I think I must be too late. That the God-Emperor has already seen fit to take her. But then the Navigator stirs, cracking the frost on her robes. She smiles, though she cannot see me.
‘Evangeline,’ she says, her voice hoarse. ‘You came.’
I kneel in front of the throne.
‘You called for me,’ I say.
‘He will come for me soon,’ she murmurs, and I notice the thin, dark trails of blood running from her ears. The fitful rise and fall of her chest. ‘But I had to speak with you. To tell you.’
I frown. ‘Tell me what?’
Oraylis moves, then, though she should not be capable of it. She leans forward in the throne and puts her thin, cold hands on my face, her spread fingers making a second set of wings.
‘The darkness here is absolute,’ she says urgently. ‘The beacon too dim to see. And yet I found the way. I knew exactly where to place my feet, though I could not see the path.’
Her hands are trembling, now. So cold they make my scars burn.
‘I do not understand,’ I tell her. ‘What are you trying to tell me?’
‘That I found a path through the abyss and beyond it,’ Oraylis says. ‘That it shouldn’t have been possible, but it was.’
My scars burn more fiercely. ‘Like a miracle?’ I ask her.
‘Like the draw of a tide. Like the pull of something inescapable,’ Oraylis says, and then she coughs. Gasps for air she cannot get. The Navigator’s hands fall away from my face and she falls back in her throne.
‘E-Evangeline,’ she stammers.
I take her hands in my own and hold onto them tightly as her body trembles and her breathing falters and blood runs from her nose. Her ears. Her sightless eyes.
‘He is coming for me,’ she murmurs, through chattering teeth. ‘The G-God-Emperor.’
I cannot help it. I have to ask. I have to know.
‘What do you see?’
Lady Tornella Oraylis smiles again, despite the blood and the tremors and the rattle of her chest.
‘Light,’ she says. ‘N-nothing but l-light.’
And then the Navigator falls completely, blessedly still.