‘Swing your legs round.’ He tentatively put his hand behind her shoulder. ‘I’ll help you.’

As she stood, she felt her insides settle into different positions. She looked around properly for the first time. ‘Where am I?’

‘You’re onboard a starship called Ariadne Shipsister. We’re in a low polar orbit with a period of six hours, and we’re currently at apogee over what’s marked on my maps as the Arctic Ocean.’

She stared at Benzamir. ‘Pardon?’

‘You’re safe, and that’s all that needs to be said at the moment. I’d like it if you ate something, because I need to check that you’ve got peristalsis back.’ He ran his hand over his face. ‘It’s a good job I have a rule that there are no stories without beer.’

‘Where’s Va?’

‘Eating,’ said Ariadne in Russian, ‘like a starved man.’

‘He lived,’ Elenya said. ‘After all that death, he lived.’ Her face grew pensive, then she blinked slowly. ‘Who said that? Who – what – are you? Are you a ghost?’

‘Though I’m supposed to be a machine with infinite patience,’ said Ariadne to Benzamir, ‘even I’m getting tired of that question.’

Without reference to Benzamir, Ariadne spun Elenya a new dress of deep green silk and a woollen cloak of russet, neither of which were silk or wool.

They were clothes finally fit for a princess, and when she entered the room, she appeared embarrassed by the others’ reactions to her. Once, she would have taken awe as her due. Years of living in Va’s shadow had made her forget.

Said got to his feet, knowing he was in the presence of greatness. Wahir stood too, and not because someone else had.

Alessandra did not stand. She closed her eyes and wiped away the tear that rolled down her cheek. She took a deep breath and then looked up at Elenya. She smiled, even though it was anguish for her.

Va turned away in his chair, looking as if he had just seen a glimmer of what he could have once had and then rejected. His face was set like stone, unwilling to show any emotion in case he showed them all.

Benzamir didn’t know what to do. He hovered, undecided. He looked at his plate and felt nothing in his stomach but a strange fluttering. Elenya sat in the empty seat next to Va, and he could see the man wince.

Into the silence she said: ‘Please, sit down, sirs.’

They ended up all looking at Benzamir. He felt sick, but steeled himself and reached forward for the jug of beer and refreshed his drink. Then he took a long pull and settled the glass back down in the ring of spilled liquid that marked its place.

‘I don’t know what to say. We’ve all got here by different routes, but you’re all welcome. I’m sorry. I can only apologize for involving any of you. This fight isn’t yours. It’s mine, my people’s, my past and my future.

‘My name really is Benzamir Michael Mahmood, and I was born on a city-ship that was circling another star, far away from here. My parents and my parents’ parents were all born on city-ships, or on other worlds, and this beautiful place was a only a memory. It held a special place in our hearts. It was the birthplace that we had come from seven centuries earlier; that we had sworn on our lives to protect and preserve.

‘It wasn’t enough for some of my people. They wanted to return and show you what we’d become; what you could become with their help. You die of disease. We don’t. You grow old. We don’t. You get mud under your fingernails and splinters in your hands and you have to work or you starve. Sometimes you starve despite all your efforts. We don’t.

‘So we talked about it, all of us together, for years. In the end we decided that you should be left alone to make your own way. We didn’t know what we might find: you could have all died, or you could be making rockets that would take you to the Moon.’

Wahir leaned forward, rapt with attention. ‘Master? A rocket to the Moon?’

‘It happened before. It’s just an engineering problem. We just didn’t know how far you’d fallen or how far you’d climbed back up, but we decided that you should guide yourselves.’

Ariadne spoke: ‘What Benzamir isn’t saying is that he argued for making contact. He wanted to come back – come home, as he saw it – to breathe the air and swim in the sea. He was broken-hearted when the decision went against him, but he accepted it. Unlike some others. They persuaded a ship to come here. I chased after them. I – I could have stopped them, but they got away. The fault was mine.’

Benzamir gave a tight-lipped smile and continued: ‘It took a long time for everyone to decide that I could follow them. There was no guarantee that this was where they’d end up, but I knew it had to be. All I had to do was find them. But in the end I was too slow. I made a great number of mistakes. I underestimated them and what they’d try to do to take over. I never expected them to kill so many.’

His voice died. He reached for his beer and knocked the glass over. A wave of froth, buoyed up on a golden brown tide, raced across the tabletop, breaking on bowls and plates.

‘Crap,’ he said softly. Alessandra started to use the hem of her dress to soak up the flood, until Benzamir shook his head. ‘Leave it.’

He set his glass upright and poured more beer in.

‘My mission was supposed to finish with taking the rebels back to face those they’ve betrayed. It’s clear that they won’t come quietly. But neither can I just leave them and get help. While I’m away, they could do anything. They’ve shown themselves more than capable of wild cruelty. So I have to stop them, and stop them now.’

‘What do you want us to do?’ asked Alessandra.

‘I don’t want you to do anything. They have worse things than unmakers, and none of you can stand up to them. You will all stay here. I will do what needs to be done. Then I’ll take you anywhere you want to go.’

‘What if they kill you too?’ she pressed.

‘Then Ariadne will take you back before she goes to report to those who sent me. I won’t have any of you come to harm.’

Va stirred uneasily. He looked at his scarred hands before momentarily balling them into fists. ‘Where do the User books come in? Why did your people steal them from us?’

‘To tell you the truth, I still don’t know. Every ship holds records of everything we know. They shouldn’t need your books.’

‘So my brothers died for nothing?’ he said. A vein on his shaved head started to pulse.

Benzamir glanced up at the ceiling, to where he always imagined Ariadne to be. He hoped she was right when she said the monk didn’t present a threat to them.

‘I still have a vow I need to honour. The books must be returned to the patriarch.’

‘I’ll get you the books,’ said Benzamir. It was simple enough to say.

‘Va,’ said Elenya, ‘when are you going to admit to yourself that you never made any sort of vow to the patriarch? You sneaked off on your own. This vow is a figment of your imagination, and why should Benzamir help you in any way?’

‘Because he is an honourable man?’

Elenya suddenly smashed the flat of her hand down on the table. Plates and beakers jumped in the air. ‘Damn you, Va! You told me you were going to die. It never happened. Now you have the mighty Benzamir doing your bidding, it never will.’

‘I didn’t promise you anything. I said I might die. I said you could watch.’ Va tried to stay calm, but he screamed out: ‘What I wanted was for you to leave me alone!’

She punched him straight in the nose with her fist. Said was on his feet, climbing over the table, throwing himself between them. Elenya got in two more strikes, one to Va’s stomach, the other into Said’s cheek. Va made no attempt to defend himself. He seemed to welcome the blows. Alessandra joined Said and together they pushed her away.

‘You ungrateful bastard. You wouldn’t have got on that first ship if it hadn’t been for me. You would have got nowhere. Who ended up sweet-talking everyone, who paid for everything, who got us this far? I did everything, and you still don’t want me.’