It was warmer on the Courtesan, maybe because there were more people on her, or just because Jastrabarsk ran it that way. When we were in our quarters Prozor only wore her underwear, a pair of shorts and a sort of vest, and both items had that grubby grey look that old clothes’ll take on no matter how hard you clean them. When she was turning from me I could see her shoulders, the top of her back and a bit of the way down it, and there was a scar under her shoulder blades like nothing I’d seen before. I couldn’t see all of it, just the edges, but what I could see made me think of a crater on a world, and the fingers of debris radiating out from the middle. The scarred-over skin had a thick, glossy look to it, and I wondered when I’d know Prozor well enough to ask her how it had happened.

Not yet, anyway.

‘I suppose you trust the Crawlies with your money,’ I said. ‘Or you’ve trusted them until now.’

‘Not exactly spoilt for choice, was I? Who else runs the banks, if it isn’t the Crawlies, or the Clackers?’

‘People say it’s because our money doesn’t interest them, so they wouldn’t ever misuse it. But when I spoke to Captain Rackamore, I had the feeling he didn’t think it was as simple as that.’

‘Nothing’s ever that simple. What did Rack say?’

‘That it was funny that the Crawlies hadn’t really shown up until just before the big crash, the one in 1566. We were doing all right, weren’t we? And then we had the crash and the Crawlies had to step in and sort out our banking institutions, throughout all the worlds. That’s what it says in the books, anyway – what we were taught. But the way Rack was going on, it was almost like he thought the Crawlies had something to do with the crash in the first place, like it suited them for it to happen to us. And now it’s not just them; the Hardshells and the Clackers also got their feelers stuck into our financial systems. I don’t understand it, Proz. Why would aliens want to handle our money, if it isn’t worth anything to them?’

‘Ours ain’t to ask, Fura. That’s what life’s taught me. Provided my share of it’s still in my accounts where I left it, why should I care what the Crawlies or the rest of ’em really want?’

‘Because someone should.’

‘That’s the glowy speaking,’ Prozor said, nodding wisely. ‘Didn’t think it’d been in you long enough to cross into your grey, but maybe you just got unlucky when you noshed on the Monetta.’

‘What’s the glowy got to do with money?’