I watched him go, then finished spinning the wheel so I could let myself into the bone room. I sealed myself in, then took stock. Just as it had been with the Courtesan, there wasn’t anything here that exactly matched the set-up on the Monetta. But I was starting to feel I’d know my way around any bone room in the Congregation, and there wasn’t anything here that fazed me. A nice clean skull, all neat and white, and neural bridges that felt expensive and delicate at the same time, like pricey jewellery. I dimmed the lights, plugged in, and chased the whispers.

There was a lot of chatter. Ships were whispering to ships, worlds to worlds via ships. A lot of people were changing plans and schedules. It was more than a week since Black Shatterday but the after-effects of the crash were still being felt. Now it was a quick scramble to make some kind of profit, any profit, and crews were taking on bigger risks than they’d have countenanced a month ago. Debts and favours were being called in across the Congregation. Grudges and scores settled. It was a bad, nervous time.

But Adrana wasn’t sending.

That didn’t mean she wasn’t out there. Bosa wouldn’t have cause to communicate with other ships, not as a routine, but she’d have every reason to listen. So if I wanted to make contact with Adrana, I would have to do the sending, at least to start with.

I’d always been told what to say, and now there wasn’t any captain giving me lists and instructions. But I thought about Adrana and the sort of thing she wouldn’t be able to ignore, and then it was plain to me what I needed to put out.

I put the words together in my noggin, and squeezed them into the bony box of the skull.

‘This is Monetta’s Mourn, under Rackamore. Answer if you read.’

I went back the next day, and the one after that, and then a whole week of days, always making sure Quindar was busy and no one was going to spot me going in and out of the bone room. As best as I could, I tried to spread the times around, so that I had the best chance of overlapping with Adrana. Once, when Quindar was snoring so loudly I feared he’d shake the ship apart, I stole out of my room and spent thirty minutes with the bones. And still she wasn’t there.

But the day after, she was.

The chatter after Black Shatterday was starting to die down, and maybe that helped me pick out one voice above all the others.

‘Fura. It’s you. I know it’s you.’