‘But to murder a ship, Benzamir! Such a thing has never happened before.’
‘And they will pay for this as much as they will pay for all the other lives they’ve snuffed out. They were my friends, Ari. How could I have misjudged them so badly? How could I have not seen this?’ His voice dropped to a whisper. ‘It could have been me, tearing at this door, lobotomizing this beautiful ship.’
‘It could never have been you.’
‘We wanted the same things.’ Benzamir hit the bulkhead with his fist. It hurt; it felt good.
‘You would have stood here, blocking their way. You would have died before you let them do this.’
‘I want to believe that. I don’t know if I can.’
‘Finish your job, Benzamir. Do your best.’
He worked methodically, taking each disturbed duct in turn, only pausing to wipe his eyes and blow his nose on his sleeve. He was on the last duct, the last couple of modules, when he heard footsteps running up the corridor. It sounded like Wahir.
‘You’ll have to wait.’
‘But master, you must come quickly. The princess . . .’
Benzamir pushed a module home, felt it click. He gently picked up the remaining cube and turned it so it presented the correct face to the socket.
‘What about the princess?’ He was cold and cramped, and hadn’t thought about Elenya for the entire time he’d been working on Persephone.
‘She has one of your magic devices.’
‘What? What does it look like?’
‘Small, round. It has yellow writing around the middle.’
He took a deep breath and steadied his hand. The last module slotted home. ‘I’m coming.’ He started to crawl back out of the space he was in.
Wahir didn’t wait for him. ‘Hurry, master.’
‘Stop. Don’t go near her. Just tell me where she is.’
‘She’s in the lake.’
‘In?’ Benzamir squeezed back through the door, caught up with Wahir, ran past and kept on going, tearing down the corridors and stairs, almost always on the point of falling. ‘Ari? Did you show Elenya how to work an o-space bomb?’
‘No.’
‘Then who did?’ He was in the cargo bay. Va was at the open doors. ‘What did you say to her?’ he shouted.
‘Nothing. I—’
‘Elenya’s going to kill herself.’ Benzamir jumped down, scrambled over the rocks to the lake edge, skidded to a halt and was only kept standing by Said clutching at him.
She was waist-deep in water that was barely above freezing. It pulled at her cloak and wicked up her dress, turning it black. Her hair rat-tailed down over her shoulders, and in her hands she cupped the little black orb banded with yellow.
Her passage through the water was marked by slow, swirling ice-crystals that turned the lake glassy and dark.
Said reached out and entangled Wahir as he tried to wade out to her. ‘No, little one. This is not for you.’
‘Where’s Va?’ called Elenya.
‘In the ship,’ said Benzamir. He splashed out a little way. A broken chunk of thick ice smacked against his shins. He kicked it away and watched it bob back from under the surface. ‘Why are you doing this?’
‘Because it’s over. I thought that he’d be different. After five years in a monastery, he’s spent months on the road with me: he needed me, my talents and my money. But he hasn’t changed. He still doesn’t love me. I know now that he never will.’
‘And this is reason enough to kill yourself? Which you won’t do with that, I have to say.’
She held up the bomb, a thumb hovering uncertainly over the button. ‘I know what this does. Death is certain.’
‘Oh, yes. Set it off and in seconds you’ll find yourself in hard vacuum somewhere above the plane of the ecliptic. If you hurry, you might even find the point of light that’s this planet before the gas bubbles forming in your blood reach your brain or your heart. That’s what’ll kill you.’ Benzamir felt the sandy lake-bed shift under him. ‘Do you really mean to do this?’
‘I thought I should try. It’s the only thing I have any control over.’ Elenya smiled. ‘I said I’d do something just for myself, rather than what everybody expects me to do.’
Benzamir lost sensation in his toes; he wriggled them, driving his feet deeper into the wet sediment, then pulled himself free with two sucking noises. ‘I can’t stop you, you know. You could activate the bomb long before I could get close enough to disarm you. Ariadne can’t stop you either, and neither can anyone else here.’
‘I know.’ Her lips had turned blue. She was shaking.
‘Remember when we talked in the garden? I promised you that no one, not even God, would destroy you. I’ve kept my word as best I could.’
She nodded, a spasm of shivers running through her.
‘I don’t know what else to say. It’s been a hell of a day. I fought the unmakers, rescued you from the emperor’s guards, tried to rebuild a ship’s mind with my bare hands, and I’m so exhausted I’m weepy and indecisive. Watching you dispatch yourself to oblivion would just about top things off nicely. Elenya, I’ve saved your life once already. I didn’t do it so you could throw it away a few hours later.’
Elenya tried to talk. Her teeth were chattering too much for Benzamir to catch all that she said. ‘ . . . ask you . . .’
‘No, you didn’t ask me to. You weren’t conscious, and I assumed you wanted to live. I was wrong.’ He bowed low. ‘Apologies, Princess.’
Benzamir turned away and started to walk back to Said and Wahir. He’d lost all feeling below his knees, and he stumbled and fell. He waved away any attempt to help him. He crawled from the water like a beast and hung his head low.
‘Master?’
‘Yes, Wahir?’
‘Should I get the holy man?’
‘He’s the only one who can save her, but look – he’s not here. Neither is he coming, though I expect he’s on his knees just like me, railing at God for having put him in such an impossible situation.’
‘But . . .’
‘Just don’t watch when it happens. Why do you think I’m down here?’
Alessandra was walking towards them, her robes fluttering like flags in the wind. ‘If you’re looking for someone to blame, Benzamir, you can blame me.’
He looked up. ‘What?’
‘Ariadne has been teaching me how to fight with your weapons.’
‘How did you make her do that?’
‘Make her? I didn’t make her. She suggested it,’ she said, ‘because neither of us will stand by and watch you die. Elenya must have overheard us. I didn’t know she could speak Arabic.’ She carried on walking, past them, to the lake’s edge.
‘If you were on Ariadne, it wouldn’t have been Arabic to her.’
‘That’ll be it.’ Alessandra gathered up her skirts to her thighs and gasped at the first touch of water. Then she ploughed out into the lake until she was no more than an arm’s length away from Elenya.
‘I’m going to lose them both.’ Despite everything, Benzamir rolled onto his backside and held up his arms. ‘Said? Wahir?’
They pulled him up, barely daring to breathe. Alessandra faced Elenya, who had been in the water so long, she could no longer move.
‘How can you stand this?’ asked Alessandra. ‘The water is so cold.’
Elenya’s hands still cradled the bomb, but she did nothing with it.
‘If you kill yourself, you’ll kill me. I don’t know if you even care, but I choose life.’
Alessandra’s hand stretched out slowly. She took half a step closer. ‘Princess? Elenya?’
She found that she was able to reach out and pluck the bomb as if she were taking an apple from a bowl. She held it for a moment in front of her face, then threw it into the deep water.
The men on the beach stood nonplussed, then Said patted Benzamir’s arm. ‘I’ll fetch them out.’
He too waded out towards Elenya, creating a wave, white with foam, that flowed around his legs. As he approached her, she fell backwards into the black water and vanished with barely a ripple.