"No," she says slowly. "But... she has. Been with me. In times when I was desperately lonely."

She looks down. "Perhaps I was only mad. But if I was not... she was kind. I do not understand how she can be..." She shakes her tight-shorn head, not looking up. "Perhaps I am everything the Ninth is feared to be. Heretic. Shadow cultist."

"That is why my parents..."

She trails off; her stiff-backed recitation of history, dispassionate and controlled, has deserted her entirely.