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  ‘It’s the glowy,’ the first representative confided to my father. ‘It’s taken quite a hold. Perhaps we ought to draw on the doctor’s services, for her rest and well-being?’

  ‘I suppose,’ Father said.

  The first representative walked to the back of the room and knocked gently on one of the wooden panels. It opened, revealing itself as a cleverly concealed little door with no handle on this side. A moon-faced pepperpot of a man stooped under the already low threshold, carrying a small black bag.

  ‘Doctor Morcenx,’ said Father. ‘I’d hoped not to trouble you, but I’m afraid we may have need of you after all.’

  ‘Not at all, Mister Ness,’ Morcenx answered, kneeling down to creak open his bag. ‘It’s for the best, after all. What this girl needs now is recuperation, and lots of it. A little rest, and she’ll be right as rain. And we’ll soon have that bothersome parasite flushed out of her.’ The doctor had a little stoppered vial in his pudgy hand. He opened the vial and squirted its contents into a white pad, like a miniature pillow.

  I thought of fighting him, and it was hard not to, especially as I’d added an extra grudge to his account for the bracelet that was still weighing down my arm. But I wanted to keep up the act that I was a good girl glad to be home, and that there wasn’t a single bad or dangerous thought between my ears. The doctor smiled disarmingly as he came near. Then it was on me, and he kept the pad pressed down gently but firmly, covering my nose and mouth, all the while his large, kind eyes looked at me from that moon-face, as if everything was going to be all right from now on. I didn’t want to breathe, but in the end it was all I could do.

  And I passed into unconsciousness.

  They had put a picture of Adrana up on the shelf at the foot of my bed, so that she’d be the first thing I saw when I woke up. I recognised the dress she wore, the way she’d had her hair done. Her hair always looked nicer than mine, even when we’d been in space.

  The picture had been taken a couple of years ago, during a birthday celebration. I looked at it for long hours, not caring to do anything else. I knew I’d been drugged, and I knew it was the drugs making me not care, but even so, I couldn’t manage a spark of indignation about it. I just lay there thinking I ought to be cross, but that being cross would have taken more energy than I had.

  I studied the wallpaper, tracing my gaze across the patterns on it, seeing connections and symmetries that had slipped by me before. I frowned to think of how many years I’d spent in this room without giving the wallpaper the attention it was due. I went to sleep and dreamt I was lost in the wallpaper, and that I wouldn’t be too sorry if I never found my way out.

  After endless grey hours Doctor Morcenx came.

  He fussed by my bedside, took my temperature, hummed tunes and muttered thoughts to himself. I stared at him with blank disinterest, not even flinching when he slid a needle into my arm. We didn’t have one good word to say to each other. Mazarile turned to night and I fell into a dreary, dreamless sleep that was all about orbits and the paths between them, which left me feeling more worn out than before, as if my brain had been doing maths when it should have been resting.

  The doctor returned and I observed him going about his business. I listened to his humming and wondered that he didn’t get bored of the same few tunes. But I didn’t say anything to him because to speak would have been more bother than it was worth.

  A bit later – or maybe it was a day, or two – Father came. He brought in a tray, clinking with glass and metal.

  ‘It will be better now, Fura,’ he said softly, and he took my hand again and spread my fingers. ‘Much better, for both of us.’ Then he lifted the tea to my lips; it was strongly scented with honey. ‘Try to drink. You need to get your strength back, so you can face the world again.’

  But it was the drugs that were making me weak, I wanted to say, like that was the punchline to a joke, and I’d only have to get it out and he’d see the funny side. But all I could do was look at his old grey face and wonder why he was telling me I needed to get my strength back, not the other way round.

  I slept again.

  Night again, then morning. The doctor visited once more. Something had changed in me, though, because this time I had the gall to rise from my pillow and address him before he’d set down his little black bag.

  ‘Whatever you do to me, it won’t make any difference.’

  He looked at me with a sort of pleasant-but-nasty expression. ‘What won’t, my dear?’

  ‘I read about lightvine contamination on the crossing from Trevenza Reach. It takes much more than three months to get it out of someone’s system.’

  ‘I don’t doubt that you are right,’ he said, preparing an injection. ‘But what does three months have to do with anything?’

  ‘You know exactly what, Doctor. I get to decide my own destiny. In three months I can leave this room, this house, do whatever I like, and there’s nothing you can do about it.’ But even this outburst had pulled more out of me than I had to give. ‘Just do whatever you mean to do,’ I said, slumping back onto the pillow.

  ‘The law is a complicated matter,’ he said, slipping the needle into my arm.

  I barely had the energy to question him. ‘What do you mean?’

  He withdrew the needle, dabbed at the wound, patted me on the wrist. ‘In flesh and spirit, Arafura, you’re still a child. You have the impulses of a child and the moral compass of a child. That’s to be expected. There are brain connections in your skull that are still not yet fully formed. But soon enough these disturbing factors will lose their hold, and you’ll see that the people around you were only ever showing love and affection.’

  He gathered his things and left my room, leaving me certain that something had transpired, but unable to puzzle out the clear shape of it. All I knew was that I didn’t think I’d like it.

  Maybe it was my strength creeping back, or just my wits, but I was starting to take in more of the room and I didn’t care for what had happened to it. On shaky legs I got out of the bed and examined the shelves and cupboards that had once been so cluttered and heavy with possibility. Now they were as neat and orderly as you could ask, but only because a lot wasn’t there any more. All the atlases, all the picture books, all the stirring accounts of ships and travel between worlds beyond Mazarile, all the tall tales of high adventure in the Empty, they were all gone. So were our puppet theatres, with their dread pirates and swaggering space captains and proud painted sunjammers. So too were the histories and gazetteers, even the household’s copy of the Book of Worlds, which had always been left on my shelves. What remained were heavy, dull books with titles like A Social History of Mazarile or Banking and Prosperity in the Thirteenth Occupation or even A Child’s Treasury of Economics or The Young Person’s Illustrated Omnibus of Fiscal Prudence.

  My rage swelled. I felt the itch in me again. I dragged a nail across my hand, scratching deep enough to draw blood.

  I flung open cupboard doors. Maybe the books and pictures were in there, stuffed lazily out of sight. The cupboards were empty. I stalked the room, searching every drawer, every other cupboard. I wanted to find some link to my earlier self, something that hadn’t been censored. Even some connection to Adrana, beyond that out-of-date photograph. I found some clothes, some bedding, but nothing that suggested that there was anything worth thinking of beyond the eight leagues of our own little sphereworld.

  ‘You couldn’t do this,’ I said, not caring that no one was there to hear me. ‘You couldn’t.’

  Because I knew, deep down, those books hadn’t just been put away somewhere else in the house. They’d been thrown out.

  There was one last cupboard, tucked to one side of the door. I opened it out of a sense of obligation, certain that it would be as empty as all the others. When I found three big boxes, balanced one on top of the next, I refused to believe that they held anything other than
more bedding and clothes.

  The top box was heavy. My heart lifted. Had it been stuffed with books and maps, it would feel the way it did. I struggled it to the ground and opened the flaps in the top. A curve of red metal gleamed back at me, as if the box held some large item of cooking equipment. I dug my fingers down into the box and came out with a battered chunk of red machinery, about the size of a large wastebasket.

  It was Paladin. Or part of Paladin.

  I pulled the other boxes out of the cupboard. The largest of them held Paladin’s lower section, the part with his wheels. The wheels were loose, and there were other broken or disconnected parts jammed into the box. I set these pieces next to the first, which I’d identified as Paladin’s central torso. Where the two had normally been connected was a mess of severed wires and tubes.

  I opened the last box. It was packed with shredded paper, protecting the glass dome of his head. I lifted it out carefully. In one place the dome was staved in, and starred by a large crack, reminding me of the assault Paladin had sustained at the hands of Vidin Quindar.

  It was just a robot, but that robot had been there with me throughout my childhood, and I’d never known a kinder or more patient guardian. Paladin had been there for Adrana too, and for our mother before either of us. It had always made me teary, the way Adrana mocked the robot’s weaknesses, as if a machine couldn’t have feelings. But I’d never had the guts to challenge her about it. And why would I? Paladin had only ever been a machine, and a slow and battered one at that, given to jamming and falling over.

  Now Paladin had been dismantled and boxed away, like he was ready to be thrown out but Father hadn’t quite got round to it.

  ‘You were only trying to protect us,’ I said. ‘And I’m grateful, Paladin. You didn’t deserve to end up like this, all broken and smashed. Not after all the years you saw.’ Then I thought back to Peregrine, and what that other robot had said to me. ‘I heard you might have been a hero, Paladin. But that they didn’t treat you right. I want to believe it. I do believe it. And I wish I could ask if you remember the Last Rains of Sestramor.’

  Eventually it was more than I could stand. I gathered the parts and put them back into the boxes, more or less as I’d found them. I stuffed the shredded paper back around the globe and squeezed the flaps down on the boxes. But I was too tired to lift them back into the cupboard for now.

  ‘Arafura?’ my father asked, when he came to see me with more strong, honeyed tea. ‘Can you hear me? It’s been long enough since you returned. There’s something I need to tell you. It concerns you directly.’

  ‘What did you do with my things?’ I asked.

  ‘I kept the things we knew would mean the most to you,’ he said, as if I was expected to believe that. ‘The good things. Not the ones that would keep reminding you of the awful experience you’ve been through. The awful experience we’ve both been through.’ He cocked his head, looking at me with all the gentle affection a daughter could have asked for in a father, and it hurt that I wanted to escape from him and his house. ‘I can’t lose another thing so precious to me,’ he added.

  ‘A thing?’

  ‘You know what I mean. When we came to Mazarile, your mother and I, we had all the plans and dreams anyone could ever wish for. A new world, a new life – a chance to start anew. I could see our new life stretching ahead of us, filling this house with laughter and happiness, and with two daughters who’d grow up to make us proud. We weren’t asking for so much, were we? Just a little contentment, a good and happy family around us. We never wanted more than that, your mother and I.’ His hand closed on my wrist and I heard a break in his voice. ‘When the plague took your mother from us, it nearly broke me. Through all the hard times we shared, all the worries and uncertainty before we came to Mazarile, we never lost our love for each other. I know things like that will break some people, but if anything it only made us stronger, more content, more grateful for the things we had. And when Adrana came into our lives, and then you, we only felt more blessed. We were never going to be as rich and grand as some, but it didn’t matter. We had two beautiful daughters, and we felt like the king and queen of all creation.’ He swallowed hard. ‘And then she was taken from us, and all I had left was the two of you. If you’d been precious to me before, it was nothing to what you meant to me after Tressa died. I saw her in you, and while you were with me, there was a part of her still sharing this house – still giving out her love and kindness.’

  He hardly ever mentioned our mother by name. It was like her name was a sacred thing, something that’d be worn out if you used it too much.

  ‘We didn’t leave because we didn’t like it here,’ I said. ‘It was to help you. To make money, so we wouldn’t have to worry all the time. After that investment went wrong . . .’

  ‘That was a small loss, compared to what Vidin Quindar has cost us.’

  ‘I was coming back eventually. You didn’t need to waste your money on that spider. Oh, Father. Can’t you see we did this out of love, deep down? We just wanted to help – even if it meant hurting you in the short term.’

  ‘I know that your intentions were sound.’ He squeezed my wrist again, emphasising that point. ‘You are good, and Adrana was good. But that does not alter the fact that you placed yourselves in tremendous peril. You were fortunate – Adrana less so.’

  ‘She isn’t dead.’ I pushed myself up a bit, so I could look him squarer in the eye. ‘I know it. I picked her up on the bones. She’s still out there and I mean to find her again. Taking away all my books isn’t going to make me stop thinking of space and her still being out there. It won’t be long before I can do what I like – leave this house, leave Mazarile, go back out on a ship.’

  ‘You’re still a child,’ he said. ‘Legally, I mean. In the eyes of the law.’

  ‘Not for long.’

  ‘That’s what I wanted to discuss.’ He teeth moved over his lips, as he tried to work out how to get the words out, the words it was plain I wasn’t going to like. ‘I love you too much, Arafura. That’s why I’ve been speaking to Doctor Morcenx, discussing the options. Doctor Morcenx agrees that, what with everything taken into consideration, and the tuition you’ve lost, it wouldn’t be right to force adulthood on you just yet. You need time to get over it all. In three months you’ll be of age, it’s true. But the law has some flexibility in this regard. It accepts that a date can’t be regarded as some immovable gateway between one state of development and another.’

  I started to get the gist of what he was saying, and it was like someone was pouring ice down my spine.

  ‘No.’

  ‘It’s all right,’ he said, reaching out to hold my hand. ‘It’s nothing harmful, and the treatment can be given in tandem with the drug for the lightvine. It won’t be permanent. But just for a few months . . . say half a year, a year at most . . . and I’ll get to keep you as the daughter I should never have lost.’

  I wrenched out of his grip. ‘No!’

  ‘It’s already done,’ my father said tenderly. ‘So there’s no point protesting about it. I knew you wouldn’t take it well, to begin with. That’s understood, and I don’t think any less of you because of it. I see your mother’s spirit in you. But you have to see things from my perspective as well. Something terribly precious was torn from me. I got you back, but if you were left to yourself you’d be leaving me again. And I couldn’t bear that.’

  ‘You can’t do this,’ I said.

  ‘I can,’ Father said. ‘Doctor Morcenx knows all about the law, and I’ve discussed it with my legal representatives. There’s no stigma, no scandal, in this. And in the long run it’ll be for the best for you, the best for all of us.’

  13

  I tried to escape. To start with, at least they did me the dignity of not locking me in my room. On my first attempt, in the long-shadowed purple of dusk, I got as far as the front steps of the house before my
father blocked any further progress. I struggled, but I was still weak and even though he wasn’t much stronger it didn’t take much effort to bring me back under control.

  Afterwards, he had to sit down on a chair in the hall, mopping the sweat off his brow.

  ‘Oh, Fura,’ he said. ‘You’ve got your mother’s fight in you, and it’s to your credit that you’d do this for your sister. But the sooner you accept that she’s already gone, and she’d never have wanted . . .’

  ‘Don’t ever tell me what Adrana would and wouldn’t have wanted,’ I said. ‘I knew her. You never did.’

  I think it was the cruellest, hardest thing I ever said in my life, and once those words were out of my mouth nothing in the worlds could take them back.

  But they’d needed to be said.

  I tried again the following night. That time I only got as far as the connecting passage to the front hallway, and found it locked. My father had been waiting for me.

  ‘It’s no good,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to make this house a prison, Fura, but if you won’t abide by my wishes . . .’

  I kept trying, night after night. Each time I got a little less far. The house was large and rambling and there were passages and stairways that were rarely used, as well as back doors and service entrances, but I soon exhausted all the obvious possibilities. I began to entertain silly fantasies of climbing out of rooftop windows, working my way down drainpipes, but even if I got out of the main building, I’d still have the main gates to face.

  I was tormented by the thought of letting Adrana down. I should never have let Vidin Quindar bring me home; should have fought him in Trevenza Reach, or escaped him on the clipper. But I’d tried, hadn’t I? The same futile, dispiriting thoughts chased each other in a spiral of deepening misery. All I wanted was to slip under them and reach the dark, healing fathoms of deeper unconsciousness.