‘This bolt’ll go through your mush like it was piston-driven. They’ll be cleaning your grey off the walls for weeks, and picking bits of your bones out of their teeth after that. But you can save yourself that. We’re near the middle of the ship. Where’s the skull?’

‘What skull?’

I got a jab of the muzzle against my skull for that bit of back-talk, but I reckoned it was worth it for the cheek. If I was going to get a bolt through my brain, I’d rather be getting on someone’s nerves than going all bendy-kneed and pleading, like that was going to make a difference.

‘The bone room,’ the voice said. ‘Show me it.’

‘You can’t talks to her like that,’ said a voice I knew very well. ‘T’aint proper. T’aint respectful. She’s our Bone Reader, she is, and we’s very pleased with her service.’

There was a click, but it was the crossbow having its safety latch put back on. I turned around slowly, leaving the stabbed one to get on with bleeding out. Tindouf had reached over the shoulder of the man behind me and taken the crossbow from him, but not before slicing right through the top third of his helmet, so that his skull and brains were laid open like a wax model of someone’s insides.

‘Thank you, Tindouf,’ I said.

‘Ain’t necessary, Fura. But there’s more of them’s need killings, and I still needs some notches.’

‘Honestly, Tindouf, I didn’t know you had it in you.’

‘Peoples think I’s a harmless idiot,’ he said. ‘They’s only half right.’

By the time we met Prozor and made an accounting of our progress, we’d killed five of the boarding squad. Their blood was already bobbing around the ship, bits of it drifting through in odd coagulations, following lungstuff currents like it was taking a sightseeing tour.

We found Strambli not long after, and while we were glad to see her, and even gladder to find her alive, she hadn’t had a chance to get close to one of Bosa’s people.

‘I saw one,’ she said, breathless. ‘But the cove spooked, and he was quicker’n me. He was heading back to the prow when I last clocked him.’

‘There were eight of them,’ I said, as we crouched together in one of the wider corridors, not far from the kitchen where Prozor had been stationed. ‘If Surt hasn’t taken any, that still leaves Bosa and two others. They must still be in the galley, but they’ll be getting the shivers now and I wouldn’t want to guess what that’ll push Bosa into doing.’