‘Mr Ness,’ Rackamore said, with a calming tone. ‘I’m sure we can resolve this. I am impressed with your daughters, and I wish to sign them on to my ship. They’ll be well looked after, and they’ll have every option to return home in six months.’

‘They aren’t of age.’

‘I am,’ Adrana said. And after glancing at me, she went on: ‘And if Arafura wants to assign herself into my guardianship, she’s free to do so. That’s all legal. You can’t stop it.’

Father touched a hand to his chest. His heart was weak, we both knew that, some defect that the Mazarile physicians weren’t confident enough to repair, but he’d developed a habit of playing on that weakness at moments like this.

‘You wouldn’t,’ he said.

‘Captain,’ Adrana said. ‘May I examine that quoin?’

Rackamore handed Adrana the fat metallic disc. She turned it this way and that in her hand, staring down into the shifting lattice of patterns that seemed to play beneath its surface, as if the quoin’s disc were an aperture into some higher, multidimensional realm.

‘You were using this as a paperweight, Captain,’ Adrana said.

‘I was.’

‘It’s a valuable quoin, isn’t it?’

‘One hundred bars.’

Adrana looked at Father. ‘That’s almost what you sunk into the Lar expedition. Fura and I could go out and earn eighty bars in six months – more if we’re lucky. Couldn’t we, Captain?’

Rackamore took the quoin back from Adrana and slipped it into a pocket in his waistcoat, where it made a circular bulge. ‘I can see you care for your daughters, Mr Ness,’ he said, directing his attention at Father. ‘I understand also that you find yourself in hardened circumstances. Let me make matters plain. The moment your daughters commit to my crew, I will place a bond of twenty bars in the Bank of Hadramaw, assigned solely to the Ness family. In six months, regardless of what happens in space – regardless of how your daughters fare, or however many prizes we do or don’t find – that bond transfers to you.’

‘While you shoot off into space with my daughters,’ Father said, drawing a finger along the clammy edge of his collar.