We were on ship’s time from then on. It’d been night in Hadramaw when we left, but it was mid-afternoon here, and that gathering in the galley hadn’t been more than a light meal between duties. The next six hours were our own, and then we were to gather again in the evening. Rackamore said we should explore as much of the Monetta as we liked, provided we took care. Adrana and I went back to our quarters and we spent an hour sewing up our dresses so that they were less cumbersome in weightless or near-weightless conditions. ‘I don’t mind blending in,’ Adrana said, speaking with a needle between her lips. ‘But I draw the line at wearing rat-eaten clothes.’

‘I haven’t seen any rats yet,’ I said, trying to inject an optimistic note. ‘How would rats get on a ship like this anyway?’

‘How do rats get anywhere? How did rats end up in the Congregation?’

I shrugged, unwilling to follow that line of thought too far. ‘How did anyone?’

When the dresses were ready we set off again. We went from room to room, up and down levels (not that ‘up’ and ‘down’ had much meaning now), slowly building a map in our heads.

The ion engine wasn’t exactly powerful. It put out five-hundredth of a gee, and you had to work hard to notice that. For a long while it didn’t seem possible that we’d ever get anywhere. But the sly thing about it was that it was continuous, and over hours and hours, while we were busy doing other things, it was easy to forget that the ion engine was still giving out its push. When Adrana and I came across a window on the side of the ship facing Mazarile, it was jarring to see how small our world had become. We’d already travelled tens of thousands of leagues, turning Mazarile into a barely significant speck, a double-horned dot slowly losing itself against the greater mass of the Congregation.

We were heading out, into the Empty.

‘I don’t like not knowing where we’re headed,’ Adrana said, in a low whisper, as we watched our world turn tiny.

‘Bit late for misgivings now.’ I put a hand on hers, wondering why it had fallen on me to comfort her, not the other way around. ‘You wanted adventure, Adrana. Don’t be too sorry when it happens. I’m actually starting to enjoy this.’

‘You’ve gone soft for Rackamore. Or maybe Cazaray.’

‘I’m going soft for what we’ve got ahead of us. Baubles. Prizes. Quoins. We’ll come back from this richer than we ever thought possible. Even Father’ll realise we did the right thing. And we’ll have adventures, Adrana. We’ll see things no one on Mazarile ever saw.’

That was when we heard the screaming.