‘I’m going to write out how it began,’ I whispered to Adrana. ‘Starting in Mazarile, the night we escaped from the museum. I’m not going to sugar it up, and I’m not going to pretend I didn’t do things I wish I hadn’t. It’ll take me a while, because I can’t write very easily, but the work’ll be good for my fingers and when I’m done you can read it and we can argue about what’s right and what’s wrong. And we’ll call it something like The True and Accurate Testimony of Arafura Ness, so that it sounds right and proper, and you can always write it the way you saw it, as well, and we’ll call that The True and Accurate Testimony of Adrana Ness, and I know yours will be nicer than mine because you always had a better hand and you knew how to make words fit together like they belonged. But it won’t make one story better or worse than the other, just different.’ I leaned in and kissed her on the brow. ‘We’d need a new name for the ship,’ I added, all teasing and confidential. ‘It’s ours now and we need to start thinking of it that way. A name will help.’

‘You say you’ve the spur in you. Wrongs you want to put right. You should call it Revenger. That’s a good name for a ship, isn’t it?’

‘Not exactly a sweet name.’

‘But then it isn’t exactly a sweet ship, after what you did to take her. Well, sleep on it. Perhaps you’ll think of something better.’

I stroked her hair once more, than bid her rest for a few hours. After that, I went to what used to be Bosa’s cabin, and I looked around for paper or ink or something that would suffice. But there was nothing.

So instead I went back to the bottle room, and with Strambli’s help I got the first of the bodies out.

‘What are you going to do with it?’ Strambli asked.

I had the knife, the one Adrana had held against me, and I used it to hack away a rectangle of skin from the pickled body. It was about the size of one of the pages in the Book of Worlds, if much thicker and rougher than paper. But it would do.

‘That,’ I told Strambli.

She was shocked at first, and I think the thought crossed her mind that maybe I’d gone too far, or was on the way there. Truth to tell, I wouldn’t necessarily have disagreed. But she must have weighed her options and come to the conclusion that the safest, easiest thing was just to let me have my way.