‘How did you get out?’

‘Your sister,’ Garval said matter-of-factly. ‘She came and she undid my straps. She said if something bad was going to happen, she didn’t want me tied up in there.’

It must have been when Rackamore sent Adrana back to make one last check on the bones, while I was being shown the Gunner’s Girdle.

‘I’m glad she did. But I’m afraid it hasn’t helped us much. Did you hear Bosa Sennen just now?’

‘I heard.’

‘She’s killed most of them. Cazaray and Mattice outside, in the launch. Hirtshal and Trysil on the hull, Prozor, Triglav and Jusquerel just now. I don’t know about Rack. But she’s got Adrana, and she knows I’m somewhere else on the ship.’ I drew a heavy breath, and my eyes stung as if I were about to start crying. I thought about the ones who were already dead, and how close I’d come to accepting my own fate, and now this woman I hardly knew was here to help me. ‘Oh, Garval. I’m so glad to see you. But we’re still in trouble – I am, anyway. She’s going to keep looking until she finds me.’

‘She won’t,’ Garval said. ‘Bosa Sennen knows there’s another Reader. But she doesn’t know it’s you.’

I wiped a tear from my eye, wondering what I was expected to make of that pretty distinction.

‘The automatic door closed between us,’ I said. ‘Sealed me down here, Adrana on the other side. Bosa’s people got her. But I’d already given her my crossbow, not that it would have made much difference.’

‘You won’t need a crossbow,’ Garval said.

‘My sister fought them. I’ll do the same.’

‘No. You’ll hide.’

She took me away from the bone room in the opposite direction from that I had come, making our way in a general sense towards the stern rather than the bow. Before very long we’d come to one of the sealed bulkhead doors. Garval hammered the controls, but the door stayed shut.

‘I knew we’d be blocked.’

‘No.’

Garval dug her nails into a slit in the walling next to the door and levered away a whole panel, revealing an opening into a dingy, echoey recess. A person could just about squeeze through the opening before they met a secondary wall clotted with pipes, tubes, cables and wires, some of which glowed with a sickly radiance. I wondered if it was the work of Jusquerel, at some point in her career as Integrator. Some of it ran through the corridors on the other side of the panels, but just as much of it was hidden.

‘Get in.’

‘I’m not getting in there! My sister’s up front with Bosa Senne—’

‘She’s dead,’ Garval said bluntly. ‘Your sister. Or might as well be. Bosa’ll use her up and spit her out. You think they didn’t tell me what Bosa’s capable of? You need to stop thinking about your sister. She was kind to me, but I can’t help her, and I can help you. You hide. Sit tight and quiet. Bosa doesn’t want this ship, she wants two readers. Once she’s got them, she’ll leave.’