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The first crushed the laspistol into pieces, grinding them along the deck in a mangled spray of abused metal components. The second rested on Septimus’s back, slamming him face-first onto the decking and knocking the wind from his lungs.
    ‘Give me one reason not to kill you,’ Talos snarled. ‘And make it incredibly good.’
    Breath sawed in and out of the human’s lungs, through the heavy, jagged obstructions of broken ribs. He could taste blood at the back of his throat. Through all his years of captivity, all the years they’d forced him to serve and aid them in their heretical war, Septimus had never once begged for mercy.
    He wasn’t about to start now.
    ‘Tshiva keln,’ he grunted through the pain. Pinkish spit painted his lips as he fought to breathe.
    It was a night for first occurrences. Septimus had never before drawn a pistol on his master, and Talos had never before had one of his slaves tell him to ‘eat shit’.
    The prophet hesitated. He felt his malign concentration suddenly broken by a short burst of bemused laughter. It echoed hollowly around the small chamber.
    ‘Ask yourself this, Septimus: does it seem wise to annoy me even further?’ He dragged the bleeding human up by the back of the neck, and threw him a third time against the sloping iron wall. When Septimus went down this time he didn’t curse, or resist, or do much of anything at all.
    ‘That’s better.’ Talos stalked closer, and knelt by his barely breathing slave. Septimus’s facial augmetics were damaged, the eye lens split by an ugly crack. Spasms quivered through him, and it was clear from the angle of his left arm that it’d been wrenched from its shoulder socket. Blood bubbled from the man’s swollen lips, but no words came forth. That last fact was probably for the best.
    ‘I warned you.’
    Septimus turned his head slowly, facing the voice. He either couldn’t say anything, or intelligently chose not to. His master’s boot pressed down on his back, a veritable weight of absolute threat. It would take no effort at all to stamp down and reduce the human’s torso to a pulp of disordered meat and bone.
    ‘She is the most precious thing on this ship. We cannot sail the Mad Sea with her health compromised. I warned you . You are fortunate I do not skin you and hang your bones from New Blackmarket’s ceiling.’
    Talos lifted his boot from the slave’s back. Septimus hissed in a slow breath, rolling onto his side.
    ‘Master…’
    ‘Spare me any false apologies.’ Talos shook his head, the skull-painted faceplate passionless in its red-lens gaze. ‘I have broken between fourteen and seventeen of your bones, and your cranial bionics need maintenance. The focusing retinal lens also has a longitudinal crack. Consider that punishment enough.’ He hesitated, looking down at the prone human on the deck. ‘You are also fortunate I do not order surgery to eunuch you. On my soul, I swear these words are true, Septimus: if you touch her again, the merest brush of skin against skin, I will let Variel flay you. Then, while you are still alive as a skinless, weeping husk, I will pull you apart with my bare hands, and let you watch your own limbs being fed to the Bleeding Eyes.’
    Talos didn’t bother to draw weapons to heighten the threat. He merely stared down. ‘I own you, Septimus. I have afforded you many freedoms in the past because of your usefulness, but I can always train other slaves. You are only human. Defy me again, and you will live just long enough to beg for death.’
    With those words, he left in a thrum of whirring armour joints. In the sudden silence, Septimus dragged in a wracking breath and began to crawl across the deck of his chamber. Only one thing would have roused his master’s ire like that. The very thing he and Octavia had feared had evidently come to pass, and the Night Lords had sensed the changes in her biology. The revelation wasn’t quite drowned in the sea of pain from the beating he’d