I say hours, but without a watch it was a knotty thing to know how much time was passing, and my own heartbeat was about as useful as an over-wound clock. I thought back to the boredom of long, dreary lessons and afternoons of study. If it felt like an hour, it was probably only ten minutes. Garval had said that I ought to wait two days if I could stand it, but I began to wonder if I had the fortitude to last a fraction of that time.

It was bad when the ship was noisy, because at least then I knew they were still out there, still wandering her passages, knocking on doors and panels, shouting and barking to each other. I picked up tongues and accents and rumours of accents, and without catching one sensible word I got an education in worlds and places I never knew or dreamt of.

The worst was when it got quiet.

An hour went by, maybe another, when there was nothing to hear but the common noises of the ship, sounds of wood and metal, creaking and complaining. And then even those sounds got quieter, with more space between them. I started to think that maybe they had gone. And because my fear lost its lead over the discomfort, I started unpicking myself from one position to another, my toes and fingers tingling as blood vessels and nerves untwisted themselves. Not really meaning to, I pressed my back against a rib in the ship’s outer wall and it seemed to twitch and shiver, sending a metallic sound racing away from me like a tin giggle. I froze again.

A voice sounded. It was some way off and I caught nothing of what was said, but it was one of the voices I’d heard before and I knew with a stone certainty that Bosa’s crew were still aboard.

A minute, maybe two, and I sensed movement passing my hiding spot. A fist knuckled a panel. A voice grunted out an oath. Another voice pushed out a handful of words that sounded defensive and threatening.

I kept so still that the lungstuff in my lungs started settling, like dust in a room no one enters.

Then the voices and movement went away and there was another silence.

I can’t say how long it was before that silence hardened and I began to believe that they had finally left. But I didn’t make the error of trusting in it too quickly. I stayed put, and when the discomfort and pain had built up inside me like a hard, hot knot, I imagined pushing that knot out through my skin, until it was floating outside me like a little angry star, and I could stand it a bit better that way. By the time I was done, though, I was surrounded by little angry stars.