Rue frowned, watching as the supply lines targeted her ship. The Spotted Custard didn’t require all that much. “I haven’t signed off on any of this. Where’s the tower steward?”

Only then did she register the fact that a group of her own staff and crew – including sooties, greasers, firemen, deckhands, decklings, stewards, and scullery maids – trailed in their wake like school children out for a jaunt in the park. It was an odd spectacle and made Prim and Rue, at the head of the procession, feel suddenly conspicuous.

Rue became aware of a new kind of bustling. The workers parted before her to reveal an officious elderly gentlemen wearing full evening attire and a red sash across his breast like a military general. He held a leather ledger and a long double-ended stylus. He was using both, rather indiscriminately and not as designed, on any dockworkers who did not get out of his way quickly. “Bad minion!” he shouted at one boy, snapping the lad’s ear with the stylus.

Behind him stomped two men in uniform guiding between them a steam-powered tea trolley loaded with devices, boxes, aetherographic transmitting slates, and other necessities of bureaucracy. Rue thought it a grave misuse of a perfectly nice tea trolley.

The man with the sash stopped, snapped his heels together, and stood to attention, blocking their path. He looked Rue and Prim up and down and then turned to Quesnel, dismissing the ladies as mere fripperies.

“Your ship, sir?” he asked without introduction. “Travelling gypsy barge? Circus troupe? I don’t have anything in the annals expected for today under entertainment or ladybird.”

Quesnel gave him a funny look. “Her ship, sir,” he said, tilting his head at Rue, emphasising the sir as a marker of the lack of proper conversational approach.

The little man’s eyebrows went up but he turned to Prim and Rue. They were quite the pair, parasols closed and masquerading as walking sticks, hats tilted forward although there was no need for shade, arms linked, expressions disapproving. Rue carried her mother’s parasol, which was too ugly to match any of her outfits, but was more sturdy than any of her fashionable ones. This one, felt Rue, could really cause damage to a noggin if applied with enough enthusiasm. Somehow this made her feel more secure about life in general.

The ladies regarded the man with eyes of steely disinterest. Well, to be fair, Prim’s eyes were more a melted cocoa of mock reproach, and Rue’s were the twinkling tawny of barely contained amusement. But it was hard to see this fact through the hats. Rue spared a moment to wonder if Aunt Ivy’s insistence on hats wasn’t a precaution against sub-par acting abilities.

Rue adjusted hers to a steeper angle, the better to hide her twinkle.

The officious man cleared his throat as though expecting them to speak first.

They continued looking at him in silence.