Prozor’s face tightened. It was like someone did up little screws under her skin, making all the angles sharper. ‘No Ghostie stuff on this ship. If there was, we’d know it.’

‘There isn’t,’ I agreed. ‘But we know where to find some.’

‘No,’ she said. ‘We ain’t going there. Not back to that one. Not back to the Fang.’

Over the weeks of the crossing, the bone room became my private kingdom. It wasn’t a hard one to defend. No one else wanted to come anywhere near it, and if their course through the ship took them past the wheeled door to the bone room, they picked up their pace. It was all mine – I didn’t even have to share the bones with my sister, or take tuition from Cazaray.

The drill was simple enough. My duty watch ran for twelve hours. But I wasn’t expected to be in the bone room that whole time. Trusko wanted two hours out of me in the morning, two in the afternoon, two in the early evening watch before I signed off, plus any other intervals at his own discretion. Sometimes that meant waking me up, or pulling me away from the galley when I was supping with the rest, but mostly he didn’t ask much of me outside of those twelve hours. Six hours on the bones was still a long stint, even with gaps between the sessions, but by then I was strong enough to take it.

My routine was always the same. Hook on the neural bridge, plug in to whatever node was best the last time, then search the peripherals in case there was a better signal. Sometimes there was no signal at all, and sometimes it was coming in off one of the nodes at the far ends of the skull, which hardly ever talked to me.

If Trusko had a particular transmission he wanted sent back to the Congregation, or to another ship, that was always the next thing. Needed care, too. It was no good just screaming his message out. I had to tune in and listen for the recipient – the friendly bones somewhere out there in space. That would be a ship Trusko knew, or a broker or something on one of the worlds. It was like sifting through a sea of whispers for the one that was whispering your name, and your name only, and then the two of you had to tune in close to each other, like a pair of lovers, and say your piece before someone else got nosy.