Sometimes, when Jask gazed out through one of the small, circular reinforced windows and into the deep, dark and faintly blue expanse of water beyond, into the dust and the plankton and the boundless shadows, he would see a flicker of something grey-green in the far distance.

He had never seen what the devils looked like up close ― none who did ever lived to tell of it ― but like everyone, he had heard their cries. They came to people of the Ocean in their sleep, those deep dreams where they drifted on great currents and sunk farther into darkness, dreams of cracks opening in the seabed, and of the low mourning wails of the devils, ever out of sight.

And for all they defined the lives and the fears and the dreams of humanity, there were only three things known for certain of them.

They were grey-green in colour.

They were the deadliest predators in the Ocean.

They did not come near the Sanctuary.

Whenever Jask saw one of those far off flickers, he would step away from the window, unable to shake the notion that if he looked at them, the devils would notice, and they would see where he was, and for the first time in all of history they would come to the Sanctuary, and that would be the end of humanity, and it would be his fault.

That shift, he saw three flickers of grey-green in quick succession, like a faint, flashing light, far off through the murk. He thought they looked as though they might be chasing something, though really there was no way to tell. With a suppressed shiver, he turned away from the window and set off once more to where he was supposed to be going.

Pages did not often go to any of the docking bays. The fact that he and a few of his peers had been called there said one thing for certain: somebody very important was arriving.

Jask could not say he knew how it was decided who was important and who was not. People sailed in from the Ocean all the time, in battered and broken vessels heavy with the loss of life. No matter how many arrived, there were always more out there, and they had all always been sailing for their entire lives.

As far as Jask could tell, they all started out much the same. Only, at some point in the Sanctuary’s long, long history, it had been decided that if you were like he was, if you were born nameless, down in the dingy lower decks of an iron shark to parents you never really knew, you would be a servant.

Anyone else was a guest. In fact, most people were guests, and Jask was never quite sure how. His memories from the iron shark he had arrived on were hazy, but he was sure there had been many, many more people from the lower decks than the upper. Nonetheless, here in the Sanctuary, somehow, the guests outnumbered their servants ten to one.

It was not simply a guest that was coming, though. There was only one class of person whose arrival was met by a retinue of pages, whose coming riled up so much gossip as was buzzing around the metal halls of the Sanctuary while Jask hurried down towards the docking bay.

Nobles only came in perhaps once every hundred or so shifts. They were the rare people with more than just one name. They came from great families, houses, they were called, with lineages stretching back thousands of years, and impressive claims to fame through the exploits of their ancestors in the time before the devils came.

Or so it was said. Jask wasn’t convinced there had been such a time.

The docking bays were huge. They protruded out from the sides of the Sanctuary in vast iron hallways, two hundred metres long, fifty wide and fifty tall, each with upwards of a hundred berths to its name, and they were always bustling with new arrivals.

As one of those arrivals, Jask had been terrified he would lose track of his group in the chaos, but over the years of working in the Sanctuary, he had grown accustomed it and could navigate his way through the throng with ease. It helped that every berth had its number nailed above it in red metal lettering.

The rest of the pages were already there and lined up, along with several guards, that sector’s majordomo, and one or two of her delegates. None of the important people noticed as Jask slipped onto the end of the line and stood to, hands clasped behind his back. By a stroke of bad luck, though, the page who had until that moment been at the end of the line was one he knew.

Pellad was a couple of years older than Jask and always acted as if he was somehow a higher rank because of it. So as Jask arrived, Pellad shot him a stern glance and murmured, ‘You can’t even be on time for a noble. You’re lucky we didn’t get counted.’

Jask didn’t reply. He wasn’t really lucky. Pages were rarely counted for something like this. As long as it wasn’t obvious there was anyone missing, it didn’t seem to bother the higher-ups too much if someone was. But he didn’t say any of that, because Pellad had a knack for winning arguments even when he was wrong, usually through the use of words he’d learnt from eavesdropping on nobles, and which Jask didn’t know the meaning of.

It was only a few minutes after Jask’s arrival that the noble’s vessel docked. Peering around the line a little, as subtly as he could, Jask was able to watch as the water in the berth rippled and sloshed onto the platform, displaced by the movement of the ship floating in from the ocean outside.

It wasn’t possible to see much in the darkness of that water, but from the length of time it took for the chains to find purchase on the vessel’s hull, and the clanking and screeching complaint with which the exit shaft rose to rest against the side of the berth, Jask could tell there was heavy damage. There usually was; few ships escaped devil territory unscathed.

It was obvious who the noble was when she emerged, though she wasn’t the first person to step onto the berth, instead coming in the wake of a number of well-dressed but shaken-looking servants who all trailed past without getting so much as a glance from the majordomo. Jask recognised their expressions right away. Their eyes were wide and gazed at nothing, their mouths downturned, their hair and clothes a mess, and their skin stained with dirt, sweat and blood.

The noble was a stark contrast. She wore a long red dress and a silver tiara, with a fur-trimmed mantle draped around her shoulders, and walked in a stately manner with her head held high as though nothing was remotely wrong. In one white-gloved hand, she carried a black suitcase, which Jask thought was strange, because servants usually carried luggage. Nonetheless, she carried it, and it seemed to him that her grip was very tight.

She walked up to the majordomo and gave a very slight dip of the head, reciprocated with a deep, flourishing bow and a whirlwind of eloquent language welcoming her to the Sanctuary. Jask tried to listen, but it was too fast and too posh for him to grasp much of it.

All he caught was a quiet remark from the noble. ‘Yes, I said swarm.’

He decided it was probably for the better that he didn’t hear anything else. It was technically against the law for servants to listen into the conversations of guests and higher-ups, and sometimes having knowledge that wasn’t meant for you could land you in deep, deep trouble.

Soon, however, the majordomo, her delegates and the noble were all striding off, deep in conversation, and as more servants emerged from the ship, it transpired that there was a great deal of luggage besides that strange black suitcase. Jask found himself saddled with two larger, lighter-coloured suitcases, which managed to be even heavier than they looked.

As always, security somehow knew exactly where all the luggage was to be taken. Two guards led the way and two more brought up the rear to ensure no one tried to steal anything, which no one ever did. Jask ended up walking near the middle of the group, a few paces behind Pellad, who had succeeded in avoiding any heavy luggage of his own and was only carrying a couple of quite small bags.

Beside Jask was someone else he knew. Kara was about a year older than him and always looked extremely tired with the world. In carrying three black boxes of varying sizes all stacked atop one another, with ‘FRAGILE’ written on the sides of them in a hideous font, she looked even more so than usual.

As lifts were meant only for guests and higher-ups, they took the stairs. Everyone was tired by the time they made it up to the noble’s new quarters. Jask’s arms were tired; Kara’s face was tired; and even Pellad seemed to be out of breath. Around them, all the pages were much the same, and everyone was quite relieved to be able to put the luggage the room they were directed to, then leave.

On the way back out, the noble was there again, talking with the majordomo. As Jask walked past, he caught another snippet of conversation, ‘Yes, we got hit by a whirler just before that. I thought we had been swept off course, but there was the beacon, still right ahead. Lucky escape, if you ask me.’

The majordomo reached out, tapped one of the guards on the shoulder, and said something to them in a hushed voice. Jask glanced back to try and catch a little more of the conversation, but a glower from Pellad made him look forwards again.

Soon after that, he forgot about the noble. As a page, there was always more work to be done, more duties needing filled, and Jask’s mind tended to wander from one topic to the next quite quickly. It was the same that shift, as he, Pellad, Kara and the others all returned to the jobs they had left. For most of them, that meant acting as waiters for a party three decks down.

The guests were always having parties. Jask supposed that was what people who didn’t have to do anything ended up doing. They stood around and drank wine and talked and nibbled and gambled. Somewhere in the Sanctuary, there was always a party going on ― and Jask, for one, relished the opportunity to serve at one.

No one really noticed the servants at such events. Most of the time, Jask could have been a table and he would not have been treated any differently. People spoke near him, but rarely to him; they only seemed to realise he was there when they needed their drink refilled or a dropped glass cleaned up. The rest of the time he could wander around with a tray in one hand and listen in on whatever conversations he fancied.

And for a while after he and the other pages had returned to their positions in one of those vast ballrooms lined with huge windows looking out into the deep ocean, it was the same as ever.

He stood by and listened to the careless talk of the guests, and found that much of the chatter was about the noble who had arrived. He discovered that her name was The Third Lady Silvon of the Noble House of Paravir, which he thought was much too long for a name, and he said so in a hushed voice to Kara, who agreed.

After a while, things started to change. It began with a couple more guests arriving, wearing worried expressions and hushed words that Jask couldn’t hear properly. He got the sense, though, that they were talking about the Third Lady Silvon as well.

What he did not like was the way their unease spread, and as it spread, how the guests began to become aware of the volume of their voices. They began to whisper to one another and cover their mouths so they could not have their lips read, although Jask wouldn’t have known how to do that. They also began to notice the pages. They glanced at those who passed them by, and stopped talking until they were out of earshot again, and Jask suddenly felt as though he was being watched by one person or another at every second.

Hurrying across the room to where Kara stood by one of the small doors that only the servants ever used, her tray of wine glasses half empty, he found that she seemed more awake than she ever had. Her eyes were flicking about the room with the sort of sudden liveliness one only feels when one is frightened and does not quite know why.

‘I don’t like it,’ she murmured when Jask reached her.

He nodded his agreement. This had never happened before. It was an entirely new thing in a world where new things did not happen. Every happening on the Sanctuary was recycled, like a vessel repaired and given a fresh coat of paint. No event was forged fresh. Until now.

On the other side of the room, the main double door opened before the majordomo, who strode in flanked by two delegates and four guards. She looked about, cleared her throat, and declared, in a loud voice, ‘If all pages would please come with me. We have received word that an individual of unprecedented importance is expected to arrive soon. The welcome retinue must be like no other.’

Jask hesitated at first, but disobeying an order from the majordomo was not something you did, so he complied. Or he would have done, but as all the rest of the pages discarded their trays and began making haste across the ballroom, something seized Jask’s arm pulled him backwards, through the doorway and out into one of the service corridors of the Sanctuary.