I told myself it didn’t mean much, at least not yet, because if Bosa was as sly and furtive as her reputation made out, she’d be keeping her use of the skull to a minimum to begin with. But I couldn’t stop myself fretting about all the other things it might mean as well, such as Garval’s lie being found out, and Adrana being punished for going along with it. The trouble was, the more I dwelled on it, the more I got my head into a spin. I couldn’t allow myself to get into that state, not if I was going to be a help to my sister. So I forced the worry out of my grey for now, and vowed that I’d keep checking the bones when I had the chance, and draw no dark conclusions until there was evidence.

But no matter how many times I talked my way into the bone room, she wasn’t sending.

‘Don’t believe half the stories,’ Prozor said to me, as we looked out the window at the nearing spindle of Trevenza Reach. ‘And of the half that’s left, don’t believe half of them, neither. It’s just a place, that’s all. Ain’t the worst or best of worlds, and for every fortune it’s made, it’s taken two or three.’

‘They say it’s very old.’

She nodded sagely, like I was the fount of all wisdom.

‘Do they now.’

I soldiered on. I’d been reading up what I could, borrowing books and talking to the others. ‘It’s a spindleworld. That’s what they call it. It’s out here on a very strange orbit, not like any of the other worlds. It spends part of its orbit going through the main part of the Congregation, but a lot more out here, looping through the Empty, weeks or months away from anywhere else. And no one’s too sure how it ended up this way.’

‘But you’ve picked up a few theories.’

‘Some say it got knocked off its original orbit during one of the old wars, back in the early Occupations. Others say that it’s an artificial world, older even than the Sundering, and that they kept it on its old orbit even when all the rubble and junk got organised into the worlds of the Congregation ten million years ago. There’s others say it’s a ship, not a world, but it got stalled out here.’

‘Pretty odd ship, with no sails.’

‘It wasn’t like one of our ships. It was meant to go much further, out beyond the deep Empty, into the great, dark sea of the Swirly. But there was a mutiny, the crew getting the shivers at the thought of all that journey ahead of them, and it ended up drifting out here, forever outcast from the trade and companionship of the other worlds.’