‘I doubt that it’s anything, sir.’ I brushed a hair from my brow, trying to look winsome and innocent. ‘Oughtn’t to have brought it up, not when you’ve got so much on your plate, and everythi—’

‘Spit it out, Fura. I’ll be the judge of whether it’s useful or not.’

‘It wasn’t much,’ I said. ‘I just got this intercept, two ships whispering to each other down in the Sunwards. Combine ’jammers, I think. They were sharing gossip, the way we all do.’

‘Yes, yes.’ He waggled his pudgy fingers at me. ‘Of course. Go on.’

‘It was something about a bauble no one put much stock in. The auguries said it wasn’t due to pop, and the lore was that there wasn’t much worth the bother of going in it for anyways.’

He slumped. ‘If you’re going to throw me crumbs, Fura, at least make them tasty.’

‘There’s more, sir. Thing is, the coves on these ships was trading the idea that the auguries was all wrong, at least the common ones, and that the bauble was all set to pop. Like, soon. But that wasn’t all of it.’ I grimaced. ‘Really, sir, I’m sure it’s all chaff.’

‘When you say “wasn’t all of it” – what do you mean?’

I sighed. ‘These coves were saying there was dark rumours, sir. That there was some righteous loot stashed in the bauble, only no one’d had the spuds to get it out. No stairs, you see. Just a big plungey shaft, going all the way down, with rooms off it. Most crews see that and think it’s too much bother rigging up winches and buckets and so on.’ I swallowed, sensing I might have gone too far. ‘That’s what the coves were saying, is all.’

Trusko ruminated on what I’d told him. He was quiet for longer than I was expecting. It gave me a better chance to drift my eyes around the room, taking in the framed charts and documents he had up on the walls. There were instruments and knick-knacks and gubbins I couldn’t name, but all of it was shiny and expensive-looking and arranged just so. It was like someone’s idea of a captain’s quarters, more than the thing itself had any right to be.

‘It’s interesting enough, Fura,’ he mused. ‘But it begs the question of why these two ships weren’t setting sail themselves.’

‘I only got the edge of it, sir. What I know about sails and orbits you could scrawl on a stamp.’

The fingers waggled again. ‘Go on.’

‘They weren’t in the right place, to begin with. Starting off from down in the Sunward processionals, with all the worlds you’ve got to dodge around . . . even with full sail . . . they couldn’t make it, sir. Wasn’t going to be time, while that window was open.’

‘But you don’t even know where this bauble is, or whether it’s within sailing range of the Queenie.’