‘Show Mr Clinker what you’ve got. He won’t run off with it.’

I spilled my earnings onto the little low table between the chairs. ‘Go on, then. Tell me if there’s enough there.’

The Crawly bent forward in its chair, tilting so that it could bring its forelimbs onto the table and start piecing through the quoins. Then it bent down even more so that its hood drooped forward and I could only see the tips of its mouth parts whisking in and out, kissing and tasting the quoins in a way that made me feel a bit like I wanted to lose my breakfast. It shuffled through the money, trying one bit after another.

‘Well?’ Hasper asked. ‘Put the girl out of her misery. Is there or isn’t there?’

‘This would suffice for an initial examination,’ the Crawly said, holding up the most valuable quoin of the lot. ‘Any further costs would need to be addressed once the nature of the ailment was established.’

Prozor whispered: ‘That’s half your money down the swallower before you even know they can do a thing.’

‘I was going to take it home eventually whatever happened.’

‘But you would still need to pay for your passage somewhere else, wouldn’t you?’

‘If I sign up with a crew, I’ll be earning from the outset and I won’t need to pay for passage.’

‘You won’t have much choice where you go, either.’

I still couldn’t tear my eyes off what the Crawly was doing to the quoins, how it was fondling and licking them. ‘A down-payment, then,’ it said. ‘If you need more time to consider the full amount.’

‘Fond of your father in Mazarile, are you?’ Hasper Quell asked me.

‘I didn’t say anything about my father.’

‘You didn’t need to.’

The Crawly put down the quoins and lifted up its hooded head to face the door we’d come in by. Everything went slow then. That’s what people always say when something like this happens, but that doesn’t make it any less true. I saw one leg coming through the door, then another, and on top of those long thin legs was a long thin body, with a black coat flapping back from it, and on top of the body was a head and face I’d hoped never to see in Trevenza Reach.