‘Captain,’ I said, turning to Trusko. ‘I know this is tough, but I think it would be for the best if you weren’t wearing one of the suits. You’ll be the one who meets her. She’ll expect to find you, having heard you on the squawk, and she’ll want to keep you alive as she finishes off your crew.’

Perhaps Trusko had gone through some barrier of fear into the calm air beyond, but I had the sense that something had changed in him. Or perhaps he just didn’t think the armour was going to make that much difference, and he was damned either way.

‘All right,’ he said. ‘I’ll meet her. But I want one of those knives with me when I do.’

‘You’d need to move quickly to take Bosa,’ Prozor said.

‘It wasn’t Bosa I was thinking of,’ Trusko said.

Something donged against the hull.

‘She’s on us,’ Prozor said.

‘How big a party?’ I asked.

‘Take your pick,’ she said. ‘Could be individuals, could be a launch. No way of knowing with our hull burned out.’

‘Drozna,’ I said. ‘Can you fetch the lookstone, the one we pulled out of the first bauble?’

Drozna met my eyes for a second, then nodded. He was back quickly, with the little shard of lookstone bundled in cloth like a holy relic. He slipped it from its protection and offered it to me.

I held the lookstone before me and squeezed it gently, as I’d been shown. Gradually the view through it changed: the walls of the room melting away, the wires and cables behind them next, the insulation and gubbins between the wires and the outer armour, then the armour itself, and then I was looking out to empty space. I swept the lookstone slowly, picking up the bauble, the folded edges of sail-control gear, the distant spangling of the Congregation – which we’d all be lucky to see with our own eyes again, never mind breathe the lungstuff of any of those worlds. Then my sweep found a sharp knot of bony angles and spines, only a bit less black than the space behind them, and I knew I was staring right at the Nightjammer. She couldn’t be more than ten leagues off us. I moved off her, picking up a brassy cylinder, flanged along its sides and with fins at the back, docked onto our ship at right angles, and I knew it wasn’t any part of the Queenie.

The lookstone showed the outside of the docked launch. But I squeezed a tiny bit harder and it peered all the way through, into her guts, and I found myself looking at the coves inside, tiny and neat as paper dolls.

‘I see ’em,’ I said quietly, like I might break a spell if I raised my voice. ‘There’s eight of them inside it, and they’re moving out.’