The conversation broke up. Alva Clay stormed off to the armoury, to oil and polish the weapons racked on the walls. It was how she dealt with stress. Laura Petrushka wheeled herself away in the opposite direction, to contemplate the churns of the hypervoid from the Trouble Dog’s observation deck.

And I returned to the galley.

“All right,” I said to the man welded to the deck, “suppose I gave you a chance. What could you offer me in return?”

Ashton Childe looked up from the floor, his expression that of a man hardly daring to hope. “What would you want?”

“Complete specs on this hypothetical weapon?”

“I don’t have them.”

“Then how about you level with me about the real aim of your assignment?” I put my hands in my pockets. “Because if you were willing to try ’jacking a Carnivore, I reckon it had to be an objective of some pressing importance.”

Childe laughed. “I was looking for a poet.”

This was not a response I had anticipated. “Seriously?”

“I’m afraid so.”

For a moment, I considered walking out of the room. But curiosity got the better of me. “Why?”

“I don’t know.” He wrinkled his nose. “Because I was ordered to.”

“And last night?”

“A mistake.” He cast around for inspiration. “A terrible misunderstanding. It won’t happen again.”

I flexed my troublesome shoulder.

“You threw me across the room,” I said with as much quiet dignity as I could muster, given the circumstances. “Now, I don’t care how fucked up you are, I’m going to need a cast-iron guarantee that will never happen again. Otherwise, I’m going to ask my friend Alva to put a shell from her Archipelago pistol right through the back of your skull.” I drew back. “Do we understand each other, Mr Childe?”

He smiled up at me. “Of course.”

“You’re not going to do anything stupid?”

“I’ve learned my lesson.” He looked solemn. “Besides, you’re my last hope. If I can’t find a place in the House, I’m pretty much screwed six ways to Sunday. I’m not going to do anything to jeopardise that.”

“You’re sure, now?”

“Yes, Captain.”

* * *

I called Nod to release the welds, and the Druff came grumbling up from its lair in the engine room, its hand-faces padding on the metal deck, its six limbs flailing in unpredictable waves, like the thrashings of a drunk octopus trying to climb a flight of stairs. It smelled like peppermints and seaweed. In one mouth, it clasped a welding torch.

“Where, want?” it asked with one of his feet.

I circled a finger at Childe’s recumbent figure. “I think we can release him now.”

Nod quivered. It raised some of its hand-faces to the air, lowered others to the deck. “Think or know?”

I sighed. “Matters, how?”