‘Teaching you how it works. So what you’re telling Bosa is, no one else came aboard with you at Mazarile? You were the only recruit?’

‘Yes,’ Adrana said. ‘Yes. Just me.’

‘But when we found you, they said there was someone on the other side of that glass. Another girl, somewhere else on this ship.’

‘There’s no one else,’ Jusquerel said, in her slow, calm way. ‘There never was. Your idiots saw her reflection in the glass, that’s all.’

I heard the whipcrack sound again. I waited for the screams, but Jusquerel didn’t give her that satisfaction.

‘You killed her for nothing,’ Adrana said.

‘Bosa was just making a point, that’s all. There’s a bone room on this ship and we’ll find it sooner or later. And if there’s another on board who so much as smells of Mazarile, we’ll have them as well.’ There was a slurping sound, like something being pulled from a pudding, then a kind of mechanical ratcheting, like a clock being wound up. ‘That’s Bosa’s promise, you see. And Pol knows that Bosa keeps her promises. Don’t I, Captain?’

Rackamore mumbled something. I had taken him to be dead by then, but it was clear that she had kept him alive, even as she butchered the rest of them.

‘Oh, Pol. What’s wrong? Don’t you want to look Bosa in the eye? Does it trouble you too much?’ And she let out a sick cackle. ‘Here. Let me help you. Fix your lamps on me, and tell me you like what you see.’

Rackamore let out a shriek, then. There was pain in it, certainly, and I didn’t doubt that she’d hurt him badly. But something more than pain. Something I didn’t care to dwell on too much, because it sounded too much like grief or despair.

Someone tried the door.

The wheel began to turn, the lock being worked from the outside. I moved to the wheel and braced my hands against it, planting my feet against the wall. I had no plan, beyond resisting the turning of that wheel for as long as I was able. For a second or two, it almost felt like I had a chance. The wheel held, and I began to force it back in the other direction, tightening the lock. I only managed a quarter turn before it jerked in my hand and began to turn hard the other way, far too strongly for me to resist.

Garval pushed her head through the widening gap.

‘Come with me,’ she said.

‘How . . .’

‘Just come.’ Garval reached in and pulled me out of the bone room. Then she closed the door and spun the wheel again, tightening it until the tendons popped out on her forearms. ‘Make them think there’s someone in there – give them a reason to waste their time.’

‘How did you get out?’