Trevenza Reach turned to a pinprick and then it was just a star, and a glimmery one at that. Days and days passed while I played the good girl. I went to the galley with Quindar and we ate at the same table, although to be frank there wasn’t much in the way of warm banter. When he was off doing his own shady business – whatever that was – I’d borrow books from the clipper’s library and sit by a porthole, reading. It wasn’t anything to put against Rack’s library but a book was a book and I wasn’t one to sniff. Now and then I’d strike up some sort of conversation with one of the other passengers or crew, but I could tell my glowy made them wary, like they might catch it or something.

There were all sorts on the ship. It wasn’t just monkeys like me. There were a few aliens, a couple of Crawlies and at least one Clacker – although since they all looked the same it was hard to know if there was just the one. I found my thoughts drifting back to the Crawly in Quell’s room, and how it had sniffed and fondled my money. Avaricious wasn’t quite the word for it. There was something in that money that almost drove the Crawly mad with desire and anticipation. It wasn’t what the money was worth, but what the quoins actually were.

Since I didn’t trust the lock on my room, I kept that bag of quoins with me all the time. I took one of them out now, holding it in my fingers, feeling the heaviness of it, and looking down past the pattern of bars into the dizzy depths of it. One of the things coves like Rackamore or Jastrabarsk were hoping to find in baubles was a trove of quoins, left there by someone else. Now and then it happened. Every quoin in circulation now, no matter the value of it, had been found by someone, either on a world or a bauble. And it was anyone’s guess as to how many more of them were out there. You hoped no one found too many in one go or that would upset the economy, devaluing what was already going around. Though a little now and then was all right, and it made up for the quoins that got lost or damaged. But it wasn’t the Crawlies or the Clackers going around finding those quoins, it was us, ordinary monkeys, with our ships and expeditions. The quoins didn’t come into contact with the aliens until they got deposited in their banks. Often that was where they stayed, with the aliens issuing notes and bonds and so on in exchange for the actual quoins, almost like they were doing us a favour so we didn’t have to lug the heavy things around.