‘Then I’ll prove mine,’ I said, folding my arms across my chest. ‘Took a chance on her, didn’t you? Then you can do the same with me. Doesn’t mean the cost of lungstuff to me whether she likes me or not. She can take the quoins I make. And I will make quoins.’

‘Say one thing,’ Drozna rumbled. ‘No lack of self-confidence in the waif.’

‘I’m signing her,’ Trusko said. ‘Provisional term. Say – six months. We’ll crack a few baubles and see how she fares. Can’t say fairer than that, can I? You’ll just have to lump it, Prozor. Who knows? Maybe the two of you’ll end up the best of friends.’

‘Old Sun’ll draw its last breath sooner’n that,’ Prozor said.

Trusko took me to his cabin and we completed the paperwork. ‘I have to go back down to Mazarile,’ he said. ‘If you’ve affairs to close down there, you can join me on the launch. But my thinking is Mazarile is the last place you’d want to go back to.’

‘I’ve got what I need.’

‘You came with nothing, except a bag of quoins, that hand, and the clothes you’re wearing – what there is of them.’

‘You’ll give me somewhere to sleep, and feed me, some clobber if you can run to it, not much more I need.’

He tapped the bottom of the one of the papers. ‘Put your name here.’ A sudden alarmed thought crossed his face. ‘You’re literate, aren’t you? You can read and write? A Bone Reader that can’t transcribe isn’t worth the cost of lungstuff to me.’

‘I can read.’ I scratched my name onto the document with my right hand, which wasn’t the one I normally used for writing, so the letters came out a bit crooked and stiff.

‘Fura,’ he said, blowing on the ink until it dried. ‘That’s really all there is to it?’

‘All I need.’

‘You’re an uncommon one. Can’t say I’m entirely persuaded by you, yet, but the crew live and breathe loot and they seem to think you have the necessary cut about you.’

‘Except Prozor.’

‘Don’t concern yourself too much with Prozor. She came on with us at Trevenza Reach, which was only one world ago. We haven’t required her to read a bauble yet, so she’s not had a chance to prove her worth. Not that I doubt it, but until she’s demonstrated that faculty . . . Prozor has to assert herself. Turning against you is her way of doing that. But you mustn’t take it personally.’

‘I don’t.’