They sat on deck, sun-awnings rolled back above, just the two of them, neither avatar present. She watched the stars where they showed between the dark, unseen masses of the silently towering cloud masses. He sat with his eyes closed, listening to the slow wind and the slower waves and feeling the gentle lift and fall of the great raft. Even past midnight, the air remained warm and sticky.

“What?” she sniffed, wiped her nose on the back of her hand.

“The Warm, Considering probably felt insulted that the Anything Legal Considered brought you here.”

“Really? But …”

“The Warm, Considering likes to think it is very protective of me.” QiRia drank from his glass. “It is very protective of me. But certain sorts of protection, even care, can shade into a sort of desire for ownership. Certainly into a feeling that what is being protected is an earned exclusivity of access for the protector, not the privacy of the protected.” He looked across at her. His eyes were the colour of the sea, she remembered. Dark now. “Do you understand?”

“I suppose. But I thought they were friends. The two ships.”

“Well, they share an interest in me, perhaps, but whether they are friends … Even if they are, they might still … manoeuvre round each other. Wrestlers, body-fighters, looking for advantage, even if they would never press home fully. And old ships can be quite … quirky, shall we say.” He sighed. “I have outlived one ship who was my protector, back at the start, bade farewell to another who’d had enough of me – can’t say I blame it – and now perhaps the Warm, Considering feels vulnerable. So it strikes out at any perceived threat. It may imagine the Anything Legal Considered wants to replace it.”

“But it’s unfair. On me, I mean. What did I do?”

“Be nosy. Be a fleetingly alive day-fly child showing an interest seen as being undeserved, insufficiently respectful. And the Anything Legal Considered might be seen as presumptuous, making you the elevenstring. That was taken as the attack, even if it was meant innocently; Sklom playing so well, making you look inferior, squashing any interest you might have had in ever wanting to master the instrument … that was the counter-attack.”

Cossont took a deep swallow of her drink. She coughed, then sniffed again. “Yeah, but I bet the ALC isn’t as upset as I am.”