‘You’ll redo whatever it was brought you to that thirty-hour estimate,’ Jastrabarsk said, jamming a stubby finger in Prozor’s face. ‘And somewhere in the region of thirty hours isn’t good enough for me. If I was even going to think about sending in the launch now, instead of at the next opening . . . I’d want this nailed down to minutes.’

‘I’ll need my paperwork,’ Prozor said.

‘I’ll have Lusquer bring everything that belongs to you. But I’m making no promises. You don’t just turn up on my ship and start dictating terms.’

‘I wouldn’t dream of it, Cap’n. But we’re all here to earn ourselves some quoins, aren’t we?’

Jastrabarsk snorted. But she had dropped the most persuasive argument of all.

The launch dropped to the bauble with a crew of eight. Prozor said we had twenty-seven hours and thirty minutes until the surface baked over again, and if that had been the only calculation on the table my nerves would have been bad enough. But Quancer held that the remaining time – not even the margin – was now only nine and a half hours. That was about enough time to get into the bauble, to reach the point where Rackamore’s crew had found their first haul of loot. It wasn’t anywhere near enough time to get back out again. And yet Jastrabarsk had decided to place total confidence in Prozor’s prediction, disregarding the advice of his own specialist.

It reinforced my sense that these crews had an uncommon approach to hazard. They accepted it – even welcomed it – when danger centred around the business of bauble surfaces and auguries. They were willing to place themselves at tremendous risk where it concerned loot and reward and competition between the crews, and they thrived on the challenges of doors and locks and weaponised security barriers. But they shrivelled at the idea of standing up to Bosa. She put the deep shivers in them, and since she could be avoided or ignored most of the time, they had no incentive to face the fear she embodied. But it would be wrong of me to call them cowards. In their element, there wasn’t anyone braver or more accepting of death’s inevitability.

I wondered if I could ever be like them.

Not today, that was for certain. But Prozor had enough confidence in her numbers that she was ready to join the expedition, and I’d promised I would join her if she went along. They had fitted us into suits from the Iron Courtesan’s own stores, and they were awkward and uncomfortable, but we bit down and made light of the discomfort, knowing it would have been just as bad if the Courtesan’s crew had been stuffed into our own suits.