Trusko touched a hand to his belly, as if he had indigestion. ‘Now I have some difficult business to attend to. Grestad was expecting to meet me at Hadramaw. I’ve got to explain to her that we’ve just hired a better Bone Reader, so she won’t be returning to the Queenie. You’d better not let me down, Fura.’

‘I shan’t.’

‘We’ll be cutting out on ions in less than a day. I want you in the bone room as quickly as possible. Make your rounds of the ship, get to know it, smooth over your relations with the others as best you can . . . and start getting to know that skull. It’s yours now, and I want you to get the very best that you can out of it.’

‘Depend on it,’ I said.

‘You haven’t seen the best of us,’ Trusko reflected. ‘We’re not a bad crew. But we’ve drawn a string of dud baubles these last few months, and that saps the will. Morale’s not what it could be. The ship needs repairs, the crew need their bonuses . . .’

‘Perhaps your luck’s about to change,’ I said.

The next day was difficult.

There was nothing I wanted more than to crawl into a quiet corner with Prozor and natter about our plans. Prozor must have had a million questions for me. But we had to keep up the act. The slightest slip would give us away.

I found my quarters. It was a curtained slot about three-quarters the size of the equivalent accommodation on the Monetta’s Mourn. As the newest member of the ship, I had been assigned the smallest and grubbiest sleeping space. Prozor, with her nominal superiority, had gone up a grade. Now she had Grestad’s space, which was just around the corner from mine, and boasting a few additional comforts. It was impossible to avoid each other, but in the interests of keeping up our act all we did was brush past each other with the odd bad-tempered oath. But it was a dicey line we walked, and Prozor’s dislike of me couldn’t risk seeming too irrational. Once, on that first day, Drozna pulled me aside and said: ‘If you two have some history we ain’t been told about, now might be the time to share it. Been enough bad blood on this ship without adding more of it.’

‘I don’t know her,’ I told him. ‘What she’s got against me ain’t my concern.’

‘There you go trying to sound like you were born on a ’jammer. But it don’t quite roll off the tongue with you, does it?’ He had a hand on my arm, gently enough, but not allowing me to continue on my way. ‘Someone asked me to put quoins on it, I’d say you was a rich girl playing at this life.’