Trusko put a lot of stock in my reports, and the things he had me sending out, but I didn’t need years of experience to see that most of it wasn’t worth the cost of lungstuff. It’d been different on the Monetta. Rackamore’d had friends and allies on lots of other ships, and they were always swapping titbits and confidences, even though they were technically in competition with each other. What mattered was that none of them were combine, or too cut-throat. They had a code of conduct, and it was natural to feed favours back and forth. But Trusko wasn’t part of anything like that, and it was only crumbs and scraps that seemed to come his way, more by pity than anything else. If you listened to him, there was no other ship he didn’t know, and all the other captains were close personal acquaintances. I’d have swallowed it too, if I hadn’t had Prozor to put me straight. Trusko wasn’t a bad cove, she said – it wasn’t that he’d done anything bad to the other captains. But he also hadn’t done anything to make them think of him as their equal. You could buy a ship and a crew, but you couldn’t buy respect.

He was like that child who always wants to join in the others’ games, but wants it too badly, so that the other children wonder why they don’t already have friends of their own, and end up even less likely to invite them in. The titbits of intelligence that came in, those that were meant for Trusko, were mostly sent in sympathy and I knew there wasn’t much value in them. It was the same with these three baubles he’d put so much stock in. If they’d been worth a damn, other ships would have been squabbling over Opener rights.

At least I was able to pick up on the signals that weren’t intended for the Queen Crimson. But even then, the majority of them were of limited use. Being told that a bauble was about to pop was no use if you were the wrong side of the Congregation, which the Queenie had a habit of being. Trusko took my reports eagerly, smoothing his thumb over my transcripts as if fortunes were nearly in his grasp. But I knew most of it was worthless. Still, I was happy to humour him. He was hanging off these little titbits so eagerly that I had to fight not to mention the Fang. The time had to be right – not a moment too soon or too late.