Mounted on the galleon’s prow, the dragon’s eye emitted a thin veil around the ship. Unlike the dragon’s lung installed within the ship’s innermost compartment, the eye’s barrier was useless to keep in the vital air. Instead, it glowed with threads of sunlight as Nova Quattor’s light, with no atmosphere to filter it, struck the veil.

At their distance, Quattor was less like a sun and more like a distant star, lighting the Odessa as much as a moon would a planet. Hepsa looked up to the veil, and then back to see the dragonwing trail thinning away into space. Oh, to be a beam of light, free to traverse the empty reaches of space and see everything there was.

She began pulling off her dragonskin suit, first letting her shoulders and then her back feel the air surrounding the ship. It was the closest thing she had to the freedom of space.

“What are you doing?” her father asked, staring at her.

She understood intellectually the dangers of the Sickness. The light of the stars, even incredibly distant ones from across the Cluster, emitted some unknown power. Ships with cracked or faulty dragon eyes had been known to arrive at port with a dead crew, completely consumed by tumours and other transformations.

Yet in her heart she felt no fear when she hung her arms over the rails, letting her naked olive skin come as close to space as possible.

“The Odessa’s eye is flawless,” Hepsa said, still staring off to distant stars.

“You still shouldn’t tempt fate,” her father urged her. “You know, we don’t have to play. We can take the dragon’s blood now and get it over with.”

“Good. I don’t have the mood to play, anyways.”

“Hepsa,” her father started.

But she cut him off. “No, don’t give me that. This is never going to work, I can’t live my life pretending to believe in their nonsense.”

“We have to.”

“This is the fourth planet. How many more times do we have to face the Inquest?”

“It’s just prayer,” he said. “Whisper a few words, put on an act once a week, that’s all you have to do.”

“I wouldn’t have to act at all if you’d let me sail. Devad doesn’t pray. Orwith and Treta don’t either. The Inquest doesn’t find out because sailors are always in space.”

“We can’t always be in space,” her father said. “Ships need to restock and refuel. Where would we get dragon’s blood or stardust for the wings? We don’t have a fleet of hunting ships to snare a star dragon for ourselves.”

Hepsa folded her arms. “That doesn’t mean we have to stay on-world.”

“You know, despite what you think, most of the crew really do believe,” he said. “They play it down for your sake.”

“Sailors are superstitious, they’ll believe anything.”

“I suppose you’re right. I know I did.” He nodded towards Nova Quattor. “It made sense back then. What kind of force could create dragons from dying stars, if not a divine one?”

Hepsa looked to her father, who was now staring off as wistfully as she had. “What was it like? Having faith?”

“Well, it was like anything else, I suppose. I’d clean my teeth, eat breakfast, and go on about my day.” He laughed, though Hepsa didn’t see the humour. “Still, there was a certain comfort in knowing that when our bodies are buried in a star our spirit would be united in the body of a dragon.” He paused. “As long as you were deserving.”

Hepsa held her voice and let the silence between them linger. It was one thing to not believe, and quite another to shirk off the conditioning given from childhood. She had gone through the motions of prayer and worship, even read every book the Watchful Sisters assigned, just like any other child, but she never believed, and it was all on account of her father.

On the days when the Odessa had no shipments to ferry, her father would let her into his study and pick from the shelves his collection of books. He was well travelled even by then, and had turned their house on Lumnos into a private library. From those books, Hepsa learned there were things the Church did not teach about its own faith, philosophers and scholars whose criticisms were silenced.

Even their own Star Scripture, Hepsa gradually realised, had holes and inconsistencies. Before she was ten, she had already doubted Novoastrianism and its Church.

“Is that we keep settling down on new planets?” she asked him. “Does going to church feel like home, even if it’s just an act?”

Itham scratched his rough beard, which he let grow whenever he sailed as a small defiance against the Church’s mandates on shaving.

“I never thought of it like that,” he said. “I can’t deny there’s something assuring about having a routine. But I doubt it. I didn’t read apostate books out of my love for the Church. And in any case, that doesn’t change the fact that enrolling you in a new school will give you choices in life that being a sailor can never provide.”

Challenging him again on that point would have been useless. As much as the Watchful Sisters pressed theology into students, they also taught other things. Real things. The physics of motion, astronomy, dracology, calculus, the vital sciences, all which her father had cited to her as reasons to return to school.

“What if I choose to be a sailor anyways?”

Itham did not answer immediately, but Hepsa gave her father time. Eventually, he merely shrugged. “Then it’ll be your choice. But can it really be a choice until you know what options lie ahead?”

When it was her turn to hesitate, Itham simply handed over her dose of dragon blood. “Enjoy the Sleep. We’ll talk again in a year.”

#

Hepsa returned to her cabin and sat slumped over in her cot, turning the vial around in her hand.

In the corner of the room, having been tossed around from their acceleration into orbit, was a book bound in plain leather with rough-cut papyrus pages. She picked it up and wiped the dust from its cover.

Spiritalis. A simple mistake, leaving the book in her school bag, had led a Watchful Sister to find it and accuse her of apostasy. It was “authored by a heathen” the shrill woman had told her, despite the fact Ketil the Senior was well-attested as a devout Novoastrian.

Hepsa took a breath to steady herself and opened to a folded page. Spiritalis—Ketil’s final work—challenged the Church’s dogma and called for scepticism. It was half travel log and half philosophy, recording the lives of non-believers from his time and forming his own doubts on the accepted truths of the Church.

Of all her father’s books the Inquest burned, Hepsa was glad she could at least save this one. It wasn’t the strongest criticism of the Church, and Ketil himself remained a loyal follower by the end, but it was an assuring reminder that even a devout Novoastrian could find flaws in his own religion.

Hepsa rubbed her eyes when she reached the final page and closed the book. Had hours passed, or minutes? She could not tell. Not that it mattered, since the entire ship would be asleep for a year. What was a few hours?

She pulled an arm out of her suit to touch the book with her own skin, remembering the feel of the lettering stitched over the cover. She wanted to remember every part of it. In one year, their orbit would intersect them with Delta Phi. In one year, she’d have to sing praises to an ancient fable. In one year, she’d have to look over her shoulder if she ever felt like reading her book again.

Hepsa laid her head down and emptied the vial into her mouth. The dragon’s blood burned her throat, tasting bitter and metallic, but this time she welcomed it. Her disgust kept her awake, even as her eyelids immediately felt like lead.

She wished the Dragon Sleep would come with a dream, even a short one, just so she could escape her own thoughts. But the Sleep was instant, as quick as a blink of the eye. She would have to make do with her own consciousness and steal every moment she could while she was still in space.

Hepsa fought hard until her eyes began to tear up and dry. Do not blink. She tried repeating it aloud, but her tongue and mouth had already gone slack. Hold onto this moment.

Finally, the pain was too much, and she was forced to close her eyes. The next sound she heard was of waves slapping the hull of the ship. The Odessa had landed on Delta Phi.