‘Second Occupation technology,’ Gathing said drily. ‘Never duplicated, in all the subsequent eras. No one has a glimmer of a clue as to how it works. There’s no machinery in that lookstone, nothing any of our artisans can detect, at least. You can cut it open, if you’re rich or foolish enough, and all you’ll find is the same hazy glass all the way through it.’ He nodded. ‘That piece’ll bring in about six hundred bars. There you go, Drozna: you’ll be able to afford approximately one new square league of sail.’

‘It’s still a good find,’ Drozna said doubtfully.

They sifted through the rest of it. The total accounting, when they were done, was that the bauble had brought in about eighteen hundred bars, assuming the current market valuations. There was no loot in there that wasn’t familiar, or already the kind of thing in circulation on the markets. Nothing that had not been seen before. Nothing that was going to change anyone’s fortune, for better or worse.

‘It’s not the best haul we’ve made,’ Trusko said. ‘But it’s an honest start and we’ve another two baubles ready to pop for us. Think of this as a warm-up.’

‘Yes, I can really feel our fortunes picking up,’ Gathing muttered.

So we sailed for the second. It was a twelve-day crossing, barely time for Drozna to run out the sails, trim then, and then haul them in again.

But a lot happened in those twelve days.

Prozor was going through the motions of appearing to accept me. She couldn’t rush it, or the others might have started to grow suspicious. But in a hundred small ways she began the slow process of treating me as just another member of the crew, even if that meant dishing out the exact same surliness that she reserved for the rest. It was the role she had found for herself on the Monetta and it seemed to suit her just as well on the Queen Crimson. Gradually our public exchanges increased from a word here, a word there, to full-blown sentences. When we were alone, we still had a lot more to say.

‘That hand hurting?’ she asked, when she caught a tenseness in me.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘But it’s what I was told to expect. I can move some of the fingers a little now, as well. The nerve connections are establishing themselves. I don’t think there’s any infection.’ I showed her what I could do. ‘It’ll only get better. Eventually I’ll get touch through the sensors in the fingertips.’

‘Took some spine, doin’ what you did.’