‘I’ve come this far,’ I said. ‘You only have to do a little bit more, and then everything’s going to be all right.’

‘I’ll try.’

‘You’ll succeed. I know. I’ve got faith in us both.’

And I did too, though I couldn’t say where that faith had come from, or how deep it went. Just that it was the only thing that was going to get both of us through that day, so we might as well make the best of it.

I signed off from the bones and set off back through the Queenie to the launch. I was halfway there when I remembered what I’d left in my quarters, and although time wasn’t exactly on my side there wasn’t a power in all the worlds that would have stopped me making that detour.

I found the broken head, the glass dome of it, and I cradled it to me like it was my own newborn, because I wouldn’t have been here otherwise and I owed Paladin more than abandonment on this wreck.

‘You’ll speak again,’ I said, making a promise between the two of us. ‘I know it. We ain’t done with each other yet.’

The other thing I took was Rackamore’s Book of Worlds.

The launch was still there, Prozor’s thumb twitching on the thruster control. As soon as I was through the lock she poured on the rockets and we made smart work of crossing over to the Nightjammer, doing it with the kind of swagger her crew would be expecting. That made it tricky for us, too, because we had to get out of our suits and back into the Ghostie armour. But the armour obliged in that, seeming to want to get back on us almost without our bidding.

My heart was in my throat the whole way over, though. I’d no way of contacting Adrana, no way of knowing how cleverly she’d been able to dupe them.

All I can say is, they weren’t expecting us.

Not at all.

When the launch returned, its silence made perfect sense to them. There might be no operable squawk on either the launch or the wreck of the Queenie, but Bosa had their prize, and was coming back with it. Open the locks and prepare to cut out on ions and main sail, boys and girls.

That was what they had been told, anyway. What they got, when we docked, was a quick and bloody tuition in all the forms of mutilation possible with the armour and weapons of the Ghosties, and they had nothing that made a difference to us.