Absolution Gap

TWENTY-FOUR

That night, strange lights appeared in the skies over Ararat. They were vast and schematic, like the blueprints of forbidden constellations. They were unlike any aurorae that the settlers had ever seen.

They began to appear in the twilight hour that followed sundown, in the western sky. There were no clouds to hide the stars, and the moons remained almost as low as they had during the long crossing to the iceberg. The solitary spire of the great ship was a wedge of deeper blackness against the purple twilight, like a glimpse into the true stellar night beyond the veil of Ararat’s atmosphere.

No one had any real idea what was causing the lights. Conventional explanations, involving beam weapons interacting with Ararat’s upper atmosphere, had proven utterly inadequate. Observations captured by camera from different locations on Ararat established parallactic distances for the shapes of whole fractions of a light-second, well beyond Ararat’s ionosphere. Now and then there was something more explicable: the flash of a conventional explosion, or a shower of exotic particles from the grazing lash of some stray beam weapon; occasionally the hard flicker of a drive exhaust or missile plume, or an encrypted burst of comms traffic. But for the most part the war above Ararat was being waged with weapons and methods incomprehensible in their function.

One thing was clear, however: with each passing hour, the lights increased in brightness and complexity. And in the water around the bay, more and more dark shapes crested the waves. They shifted and merged, changing form too rapidly to be fixed by the eye. No sense of purpose was apparent, merely an impression of mindless congregation. The Juggler contact swimmer corps specialists watched nervously, unwilling to step into the sea. And as the lights above became more intense, the changes more frequent, so the shapes in the sea responded with their own quickening tempo.

Ararat’s natives, too, were aware that they had visitors.

Grelier took his position in the great hall of the Lady Mor-wenna, in one of the many seats arranged before the black window. The hall was dim, external metal shutters having been pulled down over all the other stained-glass windows. There were a few electric lights to guide the spectators to their seats, but the only other source of illumination came from candles, vast arrays of them flickering in sconces. They threw a solemn, painterly cast on the proceedings, rendering every face noble, from the highest Clocktower dignitary to the lowliest Motive Power technician. There was, naturally, nothing to be seen of the black window itself, save for a faint suggestion of surrounding masonry.

Grelier surveyed the congregation. Apart from a skeleton staff taking care of essential duties, the entire population of the cathedral must now be present. He knew many of the five thousand people here by name—more than many of them would ever have suspected. Of the others, there were only a few hundred faces that he was not passingly familiar with. It thrilled him to see so many in attendance, especially when he thought of the threads of blood that bound them all. He could almost see it: a rich, red tapestry of connections hanging above the congregation, drapes and banners of scarlet and maroon, simultaneously complex and wondrous.

The thought of blood reminded him of Harbin Els. The young man, as Grelier had told Quaiche, was dead, killed in clearance duties. Their paths had never crossed again after that initial interview on the caravan, even though Grelier had been awake during part of Harbin’s period of work in the Lady Mor-wenna. The Bloodwork processing that Harbin had indeed gone through had been handled by Grelier’s assistants rather than the surgeon-general himself. But like all the blood that was collected by the cathedral, his sample had been catalogued and stored in the Lady Morwenna’s blood vaults. Now that the girl had re-entered his life, Grelier had taken the expedient step of recalling Harbin’s sample from the library and running a detailed assay on it.

It was a long shot, but worth his trouble. A question had occurred to Grelier: was the girl’s gift a learned thing, or innate? And if it was innate, was there something in her DNA that had activated it? He knew that only one in a thousand people had the gift for recognising and interpreting micro expressions; that fewer still had it to the same degree as Rashmika Els. It could be learned, certainly, but people like Rashmika didn’t need any training: they just knew the rules, with absolute conviction. They had the observational equivalent of perfect pitch. To them, the strange thing was that everyone else failed to pick up on the same signs. But that didn’t mean the gift was some mysterious superhuman endowment. The gift was socially debilitating. The afflicted could never be told a consoling lie. If they were ugly and someone told them they were beautiful, the gap between intention and effect was all the more hurtful because it was so obvious, so stingingly sarcastic.

He had searched the cathedral’s records, scanning centuries-old medical literature for anything on genetic predisposition to the girl’s condition. But the records were frustratingly incomplete. There was much on cloning and life-extension, but very little on the genetic markers for hypersensitivity to facial microexpression.

Nonetheless, he had still gone to the trouble of analysing Harbin’s blood sample, looking for anything unusual or anomalous, preferably in the genes that were associated with the brain’s perceptual centres. Harbin could not have had the gift to anything like the same degree as his sister, but that in itself would be interesting. If there were no significant differences in their genes beyond the normal variations seen between non-identical siblings, then Rashmika’s gift would begin to look like something acquired rather than inherited. A fluke of development, perhaps, something in her early environment that nurtured the gift. If something did show up, on the other hand, then he might be able to map the mismatched genes to specific areas of brain function. The literature suggested that people with brain damage could acquire the skill as a compensatory mechanism when they lost the ability to process speech. If that was the case, and if the important brain regions could be identified, then it might even be possible to introduce the condition by surgical intervention. Grelier’s imagination was freewheeling: he was thinking of installing neural blockades in Quaiche’s skull, little valves and dams that could be opened and closed remotely. Isolate the right brain regions—make them light up or dim, depending on function—and it might even be possible to turn the skill on and off. The thought thrilled him. What a gift for a negotiator, to be able to choose when you wished to see through the lies of those around you.

But for now he only had a sample from the brother. The tests had revealed no striking anomalies, nothing that would have made the sample stand out had he not already had a prior interest in the family. Perhaps that supported the hypothesis that the skill was acquired. He would not know for certain until he had some blood from Rashmika Els.

The quaestor had been useful, of course. With the right persuasion, it wouldn’t have been difficult to find a way to get a sample from Rashmika. But why risk derailing a process that was already rolling smoothly towards its conclusion? The letter had already had precisely the desired effect. She had interpreted it as a forgery, designed to warn her off the trail. She had seen through the quaestor’s fumbling explanation for the letter’s existence. It had only strengthened her resolve.

Grelier smiled to himself. No; he could wait. She would be here very shortly, and then he would have his blood.

As much of it as he needed.

At that moment a hush fell on proceedings. He looked around, watching Quaiche slide down the aisle in his moving pulpit. The upright black structure made a faint trundling sound as it approached. Quaiche remained in his life-support couch, titled nearly to vertical and carried atop the pulpit Even as he moved down the aisle, the light from Haldora was still reaching his eyes. An elaborate system of jointed tubes and mirrors conveyed it all the way down from the Clocktower. Robed technicians followed behind the pulpit, adjusting the tubes with long clawed poles. In the dim light, Quaiche’s sunglasses were gone, revealing the painful framework of the eye-opener.

For many of those present—certainly those who had arrived in the Lady Morwenna in the last two or three years—this might well be the first time they had ever seen Quaiche in person. It was very rare for him to descend from the Clock-tower these days. Rumours of his death had been circulating for decades, barely checked by each increasingly infrequent appearance.

The pulpit swung around and moved along the front of the congregation before coming to a halt immediately below the black window. Quaiche had his back to it, facing the audience; In the candlelight he appeared to be a chiselled outgrowth of the pulpit itself, In bas-relief, vacuum-suited saints supported him from below.

“My people,” he said, “let us rejoice. This is a day of wonders, of opportunity in adversity.” His voice was the usual smoky croak, but amplified and enhanced by hidden microphones. From high above, the organ provided a rumbling, almost subsonic counterpoint to Quaiche’s oration.

“For twenty-two days we have been approaching the impasse in the Gullveig canyon, slowing our speed, allowing Hal-dora to slip ahead of us, but never actually stopping. We had hoped that the blockage would be cleared twelve or thirteen days ago. If it had, we would have lost no ground. But the obstruction proved more challenging than we had feared. Conventional clearance measures proved ineffective. Good men died surveying the problem, and yet more lives were lost in planting the demolition charges. I need hardly remind anyone present that this is a delicate business: the Way itself must remain substantially undamaged once the main obstruction is cleared.” He paused, the circular frames around his eyes catching the candlelight and flaring the colour of brass. “But now the dangerous work is done. The charges are in place.”

At that moment, the choir and the organ swelled in unison. Grelier’s hand was tight on the head of his cane. He squinted, knowing exactly what was coming.

“Behold God’s Fire,” Quaiche intoned.

The black window flared with wonderful light. Through each chip and facet of glass rammed a tangible shaft of colour, each shaft so intense and pure that it slammed Grelier back to a nursery world of bright shapes and colours. He felt the chemical seepage of joy into his brain, struggling to resist it even as he felt his resolve crumbling.

Before the window, Quaiche stood silhouetted on the pulpit. His arms were raised, spindly as branches. Grelier narrowed his eyes even more, trying to make out the pattern revealed in the black window.“He was just beginning to tease it out when the Shockwave hit, making the whole cathedral shake. Candles fluttered and died, the suspended chandeliers swaying.

The window faded to black. An afterimage remained, however: a rendering of Quaiche himself, kneeling before the iron monstrosity of the scrimshaw suit. The suit was hinged open along the once-welded seam. Quaiche’s hands were cupped before him, lathered in a cloying red mass that extended tendrils and ropes back into the cavity of the scrimshaw suit. It was as if he had reached into the suit and drawn out that sticky red mess. Quaiche’s face was turned to heaven, to the banded globe of Haldora.

But it wasn’t Haldora as Grelier had ever seen it portrayed.

The afterimage was fading. Grelier began to wonder if he would have to wait until the next blockage to see the window again, but another demolition burst followed the first, again revealing the design. Worked into the face of Haldora, conspiring to look as if it was shining through the atmospheric bands of the gas giant, was a geometric pattern. It was very complicated, like the intricate wax seal of an emperor: a three-dimensional lattice of silver beams. At the heart of the lattice, radiating beams of light, was a single human eye.

Another Shockwave came through, rocking the Lady Morwenna. One final detonation followed and then the show was over. The black window was again black, its facets too opaque to be illuminated by anything other than the nuclear brilliance of God’s own Fire.

The organ and the choir subsided.

“The Way may now be cleared,” Quaiche said. “It will not be easy, but we will now be able to proceed at normal Way speeds for several days. There may even have to be more demolition charges, but the bulk of the obstacle no longer exists. For this we thank God. But the time we have lost cannot be easily recovered.”

Grelier’s hand was again tight on the cane.

“Let the other cathedrals attempt to make up lost time,” Quaiche said. “They will struggle. Yes, the Jarnsaxa Flats lie before us, and the race there will be to the swift. The Lady Morwenna is not the fastest cathedral on the Way, nor has it ever sought that worthless accolade. But what is the point of trying to make up lost ground on the Flats when the Devil’s Staircase lies just beyond it? Normally we would be trying to have time in hand at this point, pulling ahead of Haldora in preparation for the slow and difficult navigation of the Staircase. This time we do not have that luxury. We have lost critical days when we can least afford to lose them.”

He waited a moment, knowing that he had the congregation’s terrified attention. “But there is another way,” Quaiche said, leaning forwards in the pulpit, almost threatening to topple out of the support couch. “One that will require daring, and faith. We do not have to take the Devil’s Staircase at all. There is another route across Ginnungagap Rift. You all know, of course, of what I speak.”

All around the cathedral, transmitted through its armoured fabric, Grelier heard the rattling as the external shutters were drawn up. The ordinary stained-glass windows were being reopened, light flooding through them in sequenced order. Ordinarily he would have been duly impressed, but the memory of the black window was still there, its afterimage still ghosting his vision. When you had seen nuclear fire through welding glass, all else was as pale as watercolour.

“God gave us a bridge,” Quaiche said. “I believe it is time we used it.”

Rashmika found herself drawn to the roof of the caravan again, crossing between the vehicles until she reached the tilted rack of the Observers. The identical smooth mirrors of their faces, neatly spaced and ranked, had taken on a peculiar abstract quality. They made her think of the bottoms of stacked bottles in a cellar, or the arrayed facets of one of the gamma-ray monitoring stations out near the edge of the badlands. She did not know whether she found this more or less comforting than the realisation that each was a distinct human being—or had been, at least, until their compulsion to gaze at Haldora had scoured the last stubborn trace of personality from their minds.

The caravan rocked and rolled, negotiating a stretch of road that had only recently been reclaimed from icefalls. Now and then—more often, it seemed, than a day or so before—they swerved to steer past a group of pilgrims making the journey on foot. The pilgrims looked tiny and stupid, so far below. The fortunate ones had closed-cycle vacuum suits that permitted long journeys across the surface of a planet. Some of the suits even tended to ailments, healing minor wounds or soothing arthritic joints. Certainly those were the lucky ones. The rest had to make do with suits that had never been designed for travelling more than a few kilometres unassisted. They trudged beneath the weight of bulky home-made backpacks, like peasants carrying all their possessions. Some of them had ended up with such grotesque contraptions that they had no choice but to haul their belongings and their makeshift life-support systems behind them, on skis or treads. The suits, helmets, backpacks and towed contraptions were all augmented with religious totems, often of a cumbersome nature. There were golden statues, crosses, pagodas, demons, snakes, swords, armoured knights, dragons, sea monsters, arks and a hundred other things Rashmika did not trouble herself to recognise. Everything was done by muscle power, without the succour of mechanical assistance. Even in Hela’s moderate gravity the pilgrims were bent double with the effort, every sliding footstep a study in exhaustion.

Something drew her eye, far to what she judged to be the south. She looked sharply in that direction, but caught only a fading nimbus: a blue-violet glow retreating behind the nearest line of hills.

A moment later, she saw another flash in the same direction. It was as sharp and quick as an eye-blink, but it left the same dying aura.

A third. Then nothing.

She had no definite idea of what the flashes had been, but she guessed that the direction she was looking in could not be far from the position on the Permanent Way currently occupied by the cathedrals. Perhaps she had witnessed part of the clearing operation of which the quaestor had spoken.

Now something else was happening, but this time much nearer. The rack on which the Observers were mounted was tilting, lowering itself down towards the horizontal. At an angle of about thirty degrees it halted, and with one eerily smooth movement the Observers all sat up, their shackles unlocked. The suddenness of the motion quite startled Rashmika. It was like the co-ordinated rising of an army of somnambulists.

Something brushed past her—not forcefully, but not exactly gently either. Then another something.

She was being passed by a procession of the same hooded pilgrims. She looked back and saw that there was a long line of them approaching the rack. They were emerging from a trapdoor in the roof of the caravan, one she had not noticed earlier. At the same time, the ones that had been on the rack were filing off it one row at a time, stepping down the gentle slope with synchronised movements. As they reached the roof of the caravan they made their own line, winding back around the rack and vanishing down another trapdoor. Even before the rack was fully vacated, the new batch of Observers were taking their positions: lying flat on their backs, buckling in. The entire shift change took perhaps two minutes, and was executed with such a degree of manic calm that it was difficult to see how it could have been completed any more quickly. Rashmika had the impression that blood had been spilled over every second of that shift change, for here was a hiatus during which Haldora remained unobserved. This was not quite true, she realised then, for she saw no sign of similar activity anywhere else along the caravan: the other racks were still tilted at their usual observation angles. Doubtless the shift changes were staggered so that at least one group of Observers would be sure to witness a Haldora vanishing.

Until now, it had not occurred to her that the Observers would spend any time off the rack. But here they were, filing obediently back into the caravan. She wondered if this was because there were too many Observers to go around, or whether they needed to be taken off the rack now and then for their own health.

Doubtless the sequence of distant flashes had been a coincidence, but it had served to underscore the shift change in a way that Rashmika found faintly unsettling. The last time she had been up here she had felt as if she was spying on a sacred cere-mony. Now she felt as if she had been caught in the middle of it, and had in some way marred the sanctity of the ritual.

The last of the new batch of Observers had assumed their positions on the, rack. Though they had bustled past her, there was no obvious sign that she had spoiled their timing. Now the rack itself was tilting back to the same slope as the others along the line of the caravan, angling to face Haldora.

Rashmika turned around to watch the last of the old shift vanish back into the machine. There were three left, then two, and then the last one disappeared down into the hole. Where the new shift had emerged the trapdoor was now sealed, but the other one remained open.

Rashmika looked up at the Observers on the rack. They seemed utterly indifferent to her presence now, if indeed they had really noticed her at all. Perhaps they had only registered her as a minor obstacle on the way to their duty.

She began to make her way to the open trapdoor. All the while she kept an eye on the rack, but at its present angle it would have been almost impossible for anyone on it to see her at all, even in peripheral vision, and especially not given the fact that they were wearing helmets and hoods.

She had no intention of going down the trapdoor. At the same time she was hugely curious to see what was below. A glimpse would suffice. She might see nothing, just a laddered tube leading somewhere else, perhaps to an airlock. Or she might see… well, her imagination drew a blank. But she could not help but picture rows of Observers, hooked into machines, being refreshed in time for another shift.

The caravan swayed and bumped. She steadied herself on a railing, expecting any moment that the trapdoor would be tugged shut from within. She hesitated to go any nearer. The Observers had appeared docile so far, but how would they react to an invasion of their territory? She knew next to nothing about their sect. Maybe they had an elaborate series of death penalties lined up for those who violated their secrets. A thought crossed her mind: what if Harbin had done exactly what she was about to do? She was a lot like her brother. She could easily imagine Harbin killing time by wandering around the caravan, stumbling into the same shift change, being driven by his natural curiosity to see what was down below. Another thought, even less welcome, chased the first: what if one of the Observers was Harbin?

She pushed forwards until she reached the lip of the trapdoor. It still had not closed. Warm red light spilled up from the depths.

Rashmika steadied herself again, making certain she could not fall over the edge if the caravan made another sharp swerve. She peered into the shaft and saw a simple ladder descending as far as her angle of vision allowed her to see. To look deeper, she would have to lean* further out.

Rashmika stretched, letting go of her hand-hold to make the move. She could see a little further into the hole now. The ladder terminated against grilled flooring. There was a hatch or doorway leading further into the caravan—one end of an airlock, perhaps, unless the Observers spent their entire lives in vacuum.

The caravan lurched. Rashmika felt herself tip forwards. She flailed, reaching back for the support railing. Her fingers clasped empty space. She tilted further forwards. The hole yawned bigger, the shaft suddenly appearing much wider and deeper than it had an instant ago. Rashmika started to cry out, certain that she was about to fall in. The ladder was on the wrong side; there was no way she was going to be able to grab it.

But suddenly she was still. Something—someone—held her. The person pulled her gently back from the edge of the trapdoor. Rashmika’s heart was in her throat. She had never understood what people meant when they said that, but now the expression made perfect sense to her.

Looking up into the face of her benefactor, she saw her own mirrored faceplate reflected back at her, and a smaller reflection in that, dwindling all the way to some vague, not too distant vanishing point. Behind the hooded mirror, faintly visible, was a suggestion of a young man’s face. Cheekbones, caught sharply in the light. Slowly, but unmistakably, he shook his head.

Almost as soon as this realisation had dawned, Rashmika was on her own again. The Observer moved around to the side of the shaft where the ladder was and slipped nimbly over the side and then down. Still catching her breath after the shock of nearly falling, Rashmika moved sluggishly to the edge, arriving just in time to see the Observer operate some lever-driven mechanism that brought the trapdoor down. Once snugly in its frame, the door twisted through ninety degrees.

She was on her own again.

Rashmika stood up, shaky on her feet. She felt foolish and irresponsible. How careless she had been to allow herself to be saved by one of the pilgrims. And how unwise to assume that they did not perceive her at all. It was obvious now, crushingly so7 They had always been aware of her but had simply chosen to ignore her as best they could. When, finally, she had done something that could not be ignored—something idiotic, it had to be said—they had intervened quickly and sternly, the way adults did around children. She had been put right without reprimand or caution, but the sense of indignity remained. Rashmika had little experience with rebuke, and the sensation was both novel and unpleasant.

Something snapped in her then. She knelt down on the armoured trapdoor and pounded it with her fists. She wanted the Observer to come back up and make some explanation for why he had shaken his head. She wanted him to apologise, to make her feel as if she had done nothing wrong by spying on their ritual. She wanted him to purge her guilt, to take it upon himself. She wanted absolution.

She kept knocking on the door, but nothing happened. The caravan rumbled on. The racked Observers maintained their tireless scrutiny of Haldora. Finally, humbled and humiliated, feeling even more foolish than she had when the man had saved her, Rashmika stood up and went back across the roof of the machine to her own part of the caravan. Inside her helmet she cried at her own weakness, wondering why she had ever imagined she had the strength or courage to see her quest through to the end.

“Do you believe in coincidences?” asked the swimmer.

“I don’t know,” Vasko said. He stood at a window in the High Conch, a hundred metres above the grid of night-time streets. His hands were laced neatly behind his back, his booted feet set slightly apart, his spine straight. He had heard that there was to be a meeting here, and that he would not be prevented from attending. No one had explained why it was taking place in the conch structure rather than the supposedly more secure environment of the ship.

He looked out beyond the land to the ribbon of water between the shore and the dark spire of the ship. The Juggler activity had not lessened, but there was, strangely, a swathe of calm water reaching out into the bay like a tongue. The shapes festered on either side of it, but between them the water had the smooth cast of molten metal. The moving lanterns of boats meandered away from land, navigating that strip. They were sailing in the direction of the ship, strung out in a ragged, bobbing procession. It was as if the Jugglers were giving them clear passage.

“Rumours spread fast,” the swimmer said. “You’ve heard, haven’t you?”

“About Clavain and the girl?”

“Not just that. The ship. They say it’s started to come alive again. The neutrino detectors—you know about those?” She didn’t wait for his answer. “They’re registering a surge in the engine cores. After twenty-three years, they’re warming. The ship’s thinking about leaving.”

“No one told it to.”

“No one has to. It’s got a mind of its own. Question is, are we better off being on it when it leaves, or halfway around Ararat? We know there’s a battle going on up there now, even if we didn’t all believe that woman’s story at first.”

“Not much doubt about it now,” Vasko said, “and the Jugglers seem to have made up their minds as well. They’re letting those people reach the ship. They want them to reach safety.”

“Maybe they just don’t want them to drown,” the swimmer said. “Maybe they’re simply humouring whatever decision we make. Maybe none of it matters to them.”

Her name was Pellerin and he knew her from the earlier meeting aboard the Nostalgia for Infinity. She was a tall woman with the usual swimmer’s build. She had a handsome, strong-boned face with a high brow, and her hair was slicked back and glossy with perfumed oils, as if she had just emerged from the sea. What he took at first glance to be freckles across her cheeks and the bridge of her nose were in fact pale-green fungal markings. Swimmers had to keep an eye on those mark-ings. They indicated that the sea was taking a liking to them, invading them, breaking down the barriers between vastly different organisms. Sooner or later, it was said, the sea would snatch them as a prize, dissolving them into the Pattern Juggler matrix.

Swimmers made much of that. They liked to play on the risks they took each time they entered the ocean, especially when they were senior swimmers like Pellerin.

“It’s quite possible they do want them to make it to safety,” Vasko said, “Why don’t you swim and find out for yourselves?”

“We never swim when it’s like this.”

Vasko laughed. “Like this? It’s never been like this, Pellerin.”

“We don’t swim when the Jugglers are so agitated,” she said. “They’re not predictable, like one of your scraping machines. We’ve lost swimmers before, especially when they’ve been wild, like they are now.”

“I’d have thought the circumstances outweighed the risks,” he said. “But then what do I know? I just work in the food factories.”

“If you were a swimmer, Malinin, you’d certainly know better than to swim on a night like this.”

“You’re probably right,” he said.

“Meaning what?”

He thought of the sacrifice that had been made today. The scale of that gesture was still too large for him to take in. He had begun to map it, to comprehend some of its essential vast-ness, but there were still moments when abysses opened before him, reaching into unsuspected depths of courage and selflessness. He did not think a lifetime would be enough to diminish what he had experienced in the iceberg.

Clavain’s death would always be there, like a piece of shrapnel buried inside him, its sharp foreign presence felt with every breath.

“Meaning,” he said, “that if I were more concerned about my own wellbeing than the security of Ararat… then, yes, I might have second thoughts about swimming.”

“You insolent little prick, Malinin. You have no idea.”

“You’re wrong,” he said, with sudden venom, “I have every idea. What I witnessed today is something you can thank God you didn’t have to experience. I know what it means to be brave, Pellerin. I know what it means and I wish I didn’t.”

“I heard it was Clavain who was the brave one,” she said.

“Did I say otherwise?”

“You make it sound as if it was you.”

“I was there,” he said. “That was enough.”

There was a forced calm in her voice. “I’ll forgive you this, Malinin. I know you all went though something awful out there. It must have messed with your mind pretty badly. But I’ve seen my two best friends drown before my eyes. I’ve watched another two dissolve into the sea and I’ve seen six end up in the psychiatric camp, where they spend their days drooling and scratching marks on to the walls with the blood from their fingertips. One of them was my lover. Her name is Shizuko. I visit her there now and when she looks at me she just laughs and goes back to her drawings. I have about as much personal significance for her as the weather.” Pellerin’s eyes flashed wide. “So don’t give me a lecture about bravery, all right? We’ve all seen things we’d sooner forget.”

Her calm had undermined his own furious sense of self-righteousness. He was, he realised, shaking. “I’m sorry,” he said quietly. “I shouldn’t have said that.”

“Just get over it,” she said. “And never, ever tell me that we don’t have the guts to swim when you don’t know a damned thing about us.”

Pellerin left him. He stood alone, his thoughts in turmoil. He could still see the line of boats, each lantern now fractionally further out from the shoreline.