which the Mother Nest fell a light-second behind Nightshade , a message came across the ship’s intercom. It was politely aimed at Felka; she was the only Conjoiner on the ship who was not routinely tuned into the general grid of neural communications. The message instructed her to move up the ship, ascending in the direction of flight towards the prow, which was now above her head. When she dallied, a Conjoiner, one of Skade’s technicians, politely ushered her through corridors and shafts until she was many levels above her starting point. She refused to allow a map of the ship to be burned into her short-term memory — such instant familiarity would have denied her the boredom-alleviating pleasure of working out Nightshade’s layout for herself — but it was easy enough to tell that she was closer to the prow. The curvature of the outer walls was sharper, and the individual rooms were smaller. It did not take her long to conclude that there could be no more than a dozen people on Nightshade , including Remon-toire and herself. Her companions were all Closed Council, though she did not even attempt to unwrap their minds. The rooms were spartan, usually windowless chambers that the ship had denned according to the current needs of the crew. The room where she found Remontoire was on the outer edge of the hull, with a blister-shaped observation cupola set into one wall. Remontoire was sitting on an extruded ledge, his expression calm and his fingers steepled neatly above one knee. He was deep in conversation with a white mechanical crab that was perched just below the rim of the cupola. ‘What’s happening?’ Felka asked. ‘Why did I have to leave my quarters?’ ‘I’m not quite sure,’ Remontoire replied. Then she heard a volley of muted clunks as dozens of armoured irised bulkheads snicked shut up and down the ship. ‘You’ll be able to return to your quarters shortly,’ the crab said. ‘This is just a precaution.’ She recognised the voice, even if the timbre was not entirely as she remembered it. ‘Skade? I thought you were…’ ‘They’ve allowed me to slave this proxy,’ the crab said, wiggling the tiny jointed manipulators between its foreclaws. It was stuck to the wall by circular pads on the ends of its legs. From under the crab’s glossy white shell protruded various barbs, muzzles and lacerating and stabbing devices. It was very clearly an old assassination device that Skade had commandeered. ‘It’s good of you to see us off,’ Felka said, relieved that Skade would not be accompanying them. ‘See you off?’ ‘When the light-lag exceeds a few seconds, won’t it be impracticable to slave the proxy?’ ‘What light-lag? I’m on the ship, Felka. My quarters are only a deck or two below your own.’ Felka remembered being told that Skade’s injuries were so severe that it required a roomful of Doctor Delmar’s equipment just to keep her alive. ‘I didn’t think The crab waved a manipulator, dismissing her protestations. ‘It doesn’t matter. Come down later; we’ll have a little chat.’ ‘I’d like that,’ Felka said. ‘There’s a great deal you and I need to talk about, Skade.’ ‘Of course there is. Well, I must be going; urgent matters to attend to.’ A hole puckered open in one wall; the crab scuttled through it, vanishing into the ship’s hidden innards. Felka looked at Remontoire. ‘Seeing as we’re all Closed Council, I suppose I can talk freely. Did she say anything more about the Exordium experiments when you were with Clavain?’ Remontoire kept his voice very low. It was no more than a gesture; they had to assume that Skade would be able to hear everything that went on in the ship, and would also be able to read their minds at source. But Felka understood precisely why he felt the need to whisper. ‘Nothing. She even lied about where the edict to cease shipbuilding came from.’ Felka glared at the wall, forcing it to provide her with somewhere to sit down. A ledge pushed out from the wall opposite Remontoire and she eased herself on to it. It was good to be off her feet; she had spent far too long of late in the weightless environment of her atelier, and the gee of shipboard thrust was wearying. She stared out through the cupola and down, and saw the lobed shadow of one of Nightshade’s engines silhouetted against an aura of chill flame. ‘What did she tell him?’ Felka asked. ‘Some story about the Closed Council piecing together the evidence of the wolf attacks from a variety of ship losses.’ ‘Implausible.’ ‘I don’t think Clavain believed her. But she couldn’t mention Exordium; she obviously wanted him to know the bare minimum for the job, and yet she couldn’t avoid talking about the edict to some extent.’ ‘Exordium’s at the heart of all this,’ Felka said. ‘Skade must have known that if she gave Clavain a thread to pull on he’d have unravelled the whole thing, right back to the Inner Sanctum.’ ‘That’s as far as he’d have been able to take it.’ ‘Knowing Clavain, I wouldn’t be so sure. She wanted him as an ally because he isn’t the kind to stop at a minor difficulty.’ ‘But why couldn’t she have just told him the truth? The idea that the Closed Council picked up messages from the future isn’t so shocking, when you think about it. And from what I’ve gathered the content of those messages was sketchy at best, little more than vague premonitionary suggestions.’ ‘Unless you were part of it, it’s difficult to describe what happened. But I only participated once. I don’t know what happened in the other experiments.’ ‘Was Skade involved in the programme when you participated?’ ‘Yes,’ she told him. ‘But that was after our return from deep space. The edict was issued much earlier, long before Skade was recruited to the Conjoined. The Closed Council must have already been running Exordium experiments before Skade joined us.’ Felka eyed the wall again. It was entirely reasonable to indulge in speculation about something like Exordium, Felka knew — Skade could hardly object to it, given the fact that it was so central to what was now happening — but she still felt as if they were on the brink of committing some unspeakably treasonous act. But Remontoire continued speaking, his voice low yet assured. ‘So Skade joined us… and before very long she was in the Closed Council and actively involved in the Exordium experiments. At least one of the experiments coincided with the edict, so we can assume there was a direct warning about the tau-neutrino effect. But what about the other experiments? What warnings came through during those? Were there even warnings?’ He looked at Felka intently. She was about to answer, about to tell him something, when the seat beneath her forced itself upwards, the suddenness of it taking her breath away. She expected the pressure to abate, but it did not. By her own estimation her weight, which had been uncomfortable
