Prozor had been the one who found Surt. She’d been working her way past one of the hydraulically controlled sail mechanisms, when the mechanism – supposedly in its stowed configuration – had sprung out away from the hull. I remembered how Hirtshal had used the Monetta’s sail-control gear to snag the tumbling launch, after Bosa started her attack against us. This was something similar. The gear had sprung out hard, like a catapult or switchblade. The main part of it hadn’t touched Surt – she’d have been pulped if it had – but one of the rigging lines had whipped against her, flinging her back onto the hull, and the impact had damaged her suit and knocked her out. Surt had been lucky – those rigging lines could easily cut through a suit – but she had concussion and a swelling bruise on the back of her head.

‘I don’t remember,’ Surt kept saying, when Prozor got her back into the Queenie. ‘I don’t remember. I was just out there, and everything was all right . . . I don’t remember.’

Which was maybe just as well.

I felt bad about what had happened to her, because I’d found a kindness in Surt and knew she’d done her best with Paladin, even if his head had only come back to me that one time. And I’d felt that she must have seen something in me, too, to ask for my help with reading, and that was a debt that I wasn’t anywhere near discharging. But I had to put that sort of sentiment out of my mind. Surt had been in the way of our plans, and the mercy was she’d only needed to be injured a little.

‘Luck’s got something against us,’ Trusko said, when we gathered in the galley and it was clear that Surt wasn’t in any kind of state to go back into a suit. ‘First our Assessor, now our Integrator.’

‘Surt’ll be right as rain, after a few days rest,’ Drozna said.

‘But she can’t fill Gathing’s boots,’ Trusko told him. ‘And no disrespect, Drozna, but when we’ll already be pushing our lines to the limit, I wouldn’t want the heaviest man on the ship in that bucket. That forces me to fall back on Prozor, I suppose. Normally I wouldn’t countenance sending a Bauble Reader inside one, no matter how much lore she might have picked up. But with Surt out of commission . . . and Tindouf . . .’

‘I knows where I’m most useful,’ Tindouf said, and that was the end of that, to everyone’s relief.

‘I can do it,’ Prozor said, doing a good job of sounding doubtful about it, just so that no one got the idea she was too keen. ‘But if I’m riskin’ my neck in that thing, I’d like to know why the new girl gets out of it so easily.’