‘Unless they’re suited,’ she corrected me. ‘And while my visor’s raised at the moment, it would only take a micro change in the pressure to drop it again.’

‘You’ve lost, Bosa,’ Strambli said. ‘We took your crew apart. We cut through them like they were lungstuff.’

‘I’ve still got the Dame Scarlet.’

‘You think you have.’

The voice had come from behind Illyria, not from one of us. Her face tensed, the smile tightening, curling up at the edges in a way that wasn’t entirely natural, as if there were little hooks digging into her skin. Those steely eyes rolled back as far as they would go.

‘Ah,’ she said.

It was Surt, wrapping a hand around Illyria’s throat and touching the edge of the Ghostie blade to the front of her helmet, level with the eyes. We could hardly see her, and even the idea that this shattered, sketchy form belonged to Surt was difficult to keep in the head from one thought to the next. But it had to be her. The rest of us were accounted for. She had been in the bridge all along, even when Bosa was in there trying to operate the squawk.

‘Let go of the Firefist,’ I said.

Illyria’s face slackened. The smile relaxed, settled into a look of weary resignation. She murmured a sound of surrender, and seemed about to cast aside the jewelled device. Then her thumb twitched and prongs of ruby light flared out from her fist, branching between her fingers, a dozen of them shooting away at all angles, stabbing out through the lungstuff and into the surrounding material of the Queenie’s hull.

Illyria was fast, but Surt was quicker. She was pulling the Ghostie blade back through the open faceplate even as the ship began to vent pressure. She touched the bridge of Bosa’s nose, drew a bubbling line of blood.

‘No,’ I said, before the howl of escaping lungstuff drowned out any possibility of speaking. ‘Not yet.’

Surt hesitated, then pulled the blade away. The silver visor came down again, masking Bosa’s face.

‘Cut me free!’ Trusko shouted, and I realised that the captain was still bound to his chair. The lungstuff was screaming out, as if the hull was fraying open like an old pair of stockings. It tasted cold and thin in my throat, more like metal than gas.

I got the Ghostie knife and slipped through his restraints.

‘Sorry it’s come to this,’ I said, not really knowing if he could hear me.

Surt had slipped around Illyria while she was preoccupied with her helmet. Trusko stretched a hand out to me. His lips moved. He was saying something, but the cove barely had the strength to get it out.

‘Gun,’ he said. ‘Ghostie gun.’