Page 79 of Carousel

She nods. “Best of the best.”

She pauses. Lifts her head.

“Do you still want to know why he doesn’t have food privileges?”

“Yes,” I reply instantly.

She nods again. “I’ll take you up to the gardens. No one ever goes up there.”

Riss leads me to the top of the ship, where Chapp was executed, and then up a wooden platform similar to the one outside the airlock, but on the other side of the deck. It really is a garden, with walkways between neat rows of wooden planters, all of which have herbs growing in them. I recognise basil, lemongrass and rosemary. A cart in the middle of the space is full of ceramic pots of bushy chilli plants, the peppers bloodred, fat, and glistening.

I’d love to get a good look out of the glass, as there seems to be so much going on in the sky, and I didn’t get to see this deck properly last time. But it’s not the right time. She’s ready to talk – and, knowing how spiky she is, I know there’s a chance she might not be again. I squeeze next to her on the sun-bleached bench by the glass.

“You said he didn’t do something wrong to lose them.”

“No. Far from it,” she replies, kicking out her legs. “There’s a name for it. SPS. Sky Provision Sacrifice. And it’s just what some soldiers decide to do. I mean, I don’t know any soldiers other than Cosmer who have. But there probably are others, on other ships.”

“What do they decide to do?”

She speaks with animated hand gestures. “If we were on the ground, we’d get Provision, right? Well, up here, you just get fed. Your contribution is your work. So, Hevalla has a problem. It wants soldiers. And there are people who want to be soldiers. But no one with a family is going to leave them to be one Provider down, so they get less rations. While the soldier is up here eating three times a day. You know what I mean?”

“You’re talking about compensation,” I say. “I know about that.”

It was one of the reasons I’d thought had appealed to Cosmer about becoming a soldier. He would have wanted to better support his mother.

“Yes. The soldier’s household gets compensated. But some soldiers, for whatever reason, have two households they want to Provide for. So, they choose to SPS.”

My mouth feels dry all of a sudden. Like all the moisture is being sucked out of me. Not helped by how humid it is up here, under the glass. It’s like being in the Palace greenhouses.

“I don’t think I’m following.”

I feel taut, like my skin is tightening around my muscles.

This sounds…

She rummages in her pocket. Rips off a strip of foil from the mince cake we’d been given for lunch that she was saving for Cosmer.

She then rips it again in two and holds up both pieces.

“Okay, so this is your Provision for your compensated family, right?” she says, waving one strip.

“Yes.”

“So, let’s take it away.” She crumples it in her hand. “Then, this,” she waves the remaining strip, “is your Sky Provision. The free food you would receive the whole time you are on board the ship, working as a soldier.”

“Yes…” I say again.

But inside, I’m saying, no.

“You can donate this Provision – your Sky Provision,” the foil rustles, “to another household on the ground.” She adds, “It obviously makes your life a lot harder, because, like Cosmer, you can then only eat if you’re on a mission on land, or stealing, or scavenging, or whatever.” She sighs, long and deep. “But that’s Cosmer for you. Loves a challenge, doesn’t he?” Lower, she says, with a slight scoff, “Must have really liked the girl he did it all for.”

The air is battered right out of my lungs.

Memories hurtle through my mind, loud and sharp, like gunshots.

The Provision that had improved for us. I’d put it down to my better hauls, and later, Eric’s help. I’d never considered there may have been another reason.

Babba, our donkey, being brought to us one day, to our sheer joy. And surprise.