I set Paladin’s head aside and slipped the bridge over my head, as best as I could, being effectively one-handed.

‘That tin arm of yours is a little stiff.’

‘It worked fine before my creditors decided to leave me with a parting message,’ I said, trying to make as little of it as I could. ‘Anyway, you’d be paying me to read bones, not knit. This is the skull?’

‘No, it’s tonight’s dinner.’

I stroked a hand along the skull’s ridge. It was in better nick than the one on the Monetta, although not necessarily newer. It was a clean yellow-white in colour, with no major cracks or areas of repair. I leaned in to peer through the eye holes. Constellations of coloured lights flickered back at me.

‘I’ve seen bigger. But it’s in fair fettle.’

‘It’d better be, the packet it cost us. A new set of sails took a smaller dent out of our accounts. Question is, can you find the active node? I know where Grestad hooks in.’

‘Where Grestad hooks in, and where I might choose, are two different things.’ With my good hand I worked the end of the neural bridge into one of the central nodes. All pretence dropped away now, as I fell into the receptiveness that I’d learned under Cazaray. I closed my eyes, flung wide the doors of my skull, and waited for shivery whispers to skirl through those chambers of alien bone.

Nothing came.

‘It’s not this node,’ I said softly. ‘No matter what Grestad might say.’

‘Continue.’

I shifted the connection. Nothing on the second node. But a possible hit on the third. It was a scratchy presence, an itch or a skincrawl under the roof of my brain.

I said nothing. I kept my eyes tight. But the set of my face must have shown itself to Trusko.

‘You have a signal?’

‘Let me work.’

I circled around the peripheral nodes, returning to the third as a comparison. Faint traces on three of the peripherals, but nothing as strong as that first contact.

‘You have partials on four and five. But three’s where Grestad should be hooking in. For now, anyway. That skull’s like any of the others I’ve worked with, there’s no such thing as a fixed pattern.’

‘No,’ Trusko allowed. ‘It moves, shifts around from one month to another, like there’s something restless trapped inside it. Grestad’s usually able to follow it.’

‘Usually?’ I asked, sneering out my question. ‘I was right about Grestad, wasn’t I? Combine fodder. Fine when the skull’s fresh.’

‘This one is.’

‘But I doubt Grestad’s pulling the faintest signals out of it.’

‘We don’t miss anything.’

‘You wouldn’t know you were missing it, would you? Wait.’ I raised a silencing finger. ‘Something’s swelling up. Might be your call, Captain Trusko.’

‘Give me a ship and a name,’ he whispered.