They were all staring at him. Thidias stood by the wall, his hands across his chest, his weapons locked to the thighplates of his armour. Carmenta stood in the corner, a still shadow in her ragged black robe. Kadin sat on a thick pipe, watching Ahriman out of the side of his eyes. A purple bruise and swollen flesh covered much of Kadin’s face and the broken bones beneath made him look even less human than normal. Astraeos stood at the circular hatch of Ahriman’s chamber. Ahriman could not shake the feeling of being on trial. In a sense, of course, he was. They are angry, thought Ahriman, and at some deep level they are afraid of what I have pulled them into. Only Carmenta’s mind was calm. In fact it was blank to a worrying degree, almost as if part of her thinking had shut down. The ship is eating her humanity, he thought. At times she was more human than any tech-priest he had ever met, but then would become withdrawn, or confused.
