‘They’d already have been awake for much more than a day,’ I said.

Triglav nodded vigorously. ‘But nothing’ll put a spring in your step quicker than a room full of loot. Believe me, they don’t all share his caution.’ He took a swig from his tankard – it was never very far from him – looking like a man drowning a multitude of sorrows. ‘But caution’s what’s kept them alive until now. Isn’t it, Hirtshal?’

The master of sail glanced up from a puzzle of knotted strings. He ruminated on the question for some moments.

‘Yes.’

‘There: a resounding show of support from the ever-loquacious Hirtshal.’

‘Too much caution, I say,’ Prozor mumbled. ‘Weeks to get out here, why not use all the time we have?’

‘You know why,’ Triglav answered. ‘Sometimes you can push things too far. If anyone knows that, it’s you.’

Hirtshal placed a hand on Triglav’s wrist. ‘Enough.’

But Triglav wriggled out from under the master of sail and helped himself to more bread and beer. ‘Why not? We all know what happened. If the Ness sisters are going to be part of this crew, they’ll end up knowing sooner or later. Why not now?’

‘Are you talking about the Fang?’ I asked.

‘Mattice wasn’t always our Opener,’ Triglav said. ‘That was Prozor. And do you know our dark secret? Proz was the best of them all. Until Captain Rackamore overreached himself, and our old Bauble Reader wasn’t as reliable as Proz is now—’

‘Shut up,’ Prozor said.

Triglav took another swig. ‘They’ve a right to know what can happen.’

‘Not now,’ Hirtshal said.

‘Never will be a good time for it, will there? But it’s part of what we are, and none of it was Proz’s fault. That you can blame on the Bauble Reader we had back then.’ Triglav rubbed a hand across his scalp, as if reassuring himself that it was still hairless. ‘And don’t worry – I wouldn’t stain the ship with his name. Enough to know that the estimate was wrong, the auguries all cockeyed. You tell ’em, Proz.’

She scowled at him – or made more of the scowl that was her normal expression – but now that the story had been dredged half into the light I could tell she needed to finish it off, the way you needed to finish lancing a boil once you had started.

‘You were right,’ she said, nodding at me. ‘It was the Fang. Just a name for a bauble. It’s still out there, somewhere, although I don’t care to remember the orbit it was on. Ordinary enough place, to begin with. Nothing shivery about it. Bone-coloured rock, all smoothed over with no craters. Been cracked a few times, some loot, but no one had ever gone really deep.’

‘Until we hauled in,’ Triglav said. He passed Prozor a beer.