‘From the Fang,’ I said, choosing to speak for everyone. ‘We knew it was there, too. It wasn’t an accident, us just stumbling on it. You’ve been played, Bosa.’

The silver-visored helmet nodded back at me. Blood scudded slowly between us, reflecting in the silver.

‘And you’d be?’

‘We wasn’t properly introduced,’ I said. ‘But you’ve met my sister. I’m Fura Ness. I’m the other Bone Reader, the one you thought were getting, when Garval put herself in my place.’

‘There was one survivor on that ship,’ Bosa said. ‘I know, because I picked up the squawk. But it wasn’t you.’

‘You got it wrong,’ I said. ‘You’ve had it too easy out here, taking your pick of ships. It’s made you lazy. You thought you’d have a bite of Trusko, too. But look who got to him ahead of you.’ Then I cocked my head at the woman next to me. ‘Show her, Prozor. Take off your Ghostie mask and show her how deep she’s in it.’

‘More’n she realises,’ Strambli said. ‘I said it wouldn’t go well for her if she killed Drozna.’

Prozor was following my suggestion. She lifted up her face, presenting all its angry angles to Bosa. ‘I was there when you killed ’em,’ she said. ‘In that same room, when you killed Triglav, Jusquerel, Cap’n Rack himself, and thought you’d done the same to me.’

‘I didn’t kill Rackamore,’ Bosa Sennen said. ‘I’ll take the other names, but not that one. And if you were there to see it, Prozor, you know I’m telling the truth.’

‘We know who you are,’ Prozor said.

‘Let me show you,’ Bosa said, and touched another control on the ring of her helmet. I heard the same wheeze of lungstuff as before, and the same glassy whirr as the visor retracted up into the crown of the helmet. The face that looked back at us wasn’t out of the ordinary at all. It wasn’t scarred or cratered or tattooed or disfigured by radiation or made otherwise strange by the glowy. It was a woman. She had fine features, a proud curl to her lips, a certain steel in her eyes, but there wasn’t anything about her that would have drawn more than a second or third glance in Mazarile.

But it was also a face I knew – or that wasn’t totally unfamiliar to me.

‘Illyria Rackamore,’ I said, voicing the name she’d been born under. ‘Go on, deny it.’

Her look was mild, almost forgiving.

‘I am what I am, child. What would be the sense in denying it?’

‘Bosa turned you,’ I said. ‘Just as she was turned by another Bosa, and another before that. How far back do you go?’