The ship was juddering faintly from the steam engine below, and the sails were extended. The cliffs of Dancing Bird Island moved past them fast. Tanner moved toward the port side, slowly.

He was surrounded by the men who shared his hold. The women prisoners stood in a smaller group, a little way off. They all wore the same dirty faces and cold stares as him. He did not approach them.

Tanner heard a sudden whistle, a sharp two-tone different from the scream of the gulls. He looked up, and perched on some bulky metal extrusion, scrubbing it clean, Shekel looked down at him. The boy caught his eye and gave Tanner a wink and a fast smile. Tanner smiled back, but Shekel had already looked away.

An officer and a sailor with distinctive epaulets conferred at the ship’s bow, huddled over a brass engine. As Tanner strained to see what they were doing, a stick slapped across his back, not hard but with the threat of much worse. A cactacae guard was bellowing at him to keep moving, so he picked up his feet again. The alien tissue grafted to Tanner’s chest twitched. The tentacles itched and shed skin like severe sunburn. He spat on them and rubbed the saliva in, as if it were unguent.

At ten o’clock precisely, Bellis swallowed her tea and went outside. The deck had been swept and scrubbed clean. There was no sign that the prisoners had ever stood upon it.

"It’s odd to think," said Bellis a little later, as she and Johannes stood watching the water, "that in Nova Esperium we might be in charge of men and women who traveled with us on this very boat, and we’d never know."

"That’ll never happen to you," he said. "Since when does a linguist need indentured assistants?"

"Neither does a naturalist."

"Not true at all," he said mildly. "There are crates to be taken into the bush, there are traps to be set, there are drugged and dead carcasses to lug, dangerous animals to subdue… It’s not all watercoloring, you know. I’ll show you my scars some time."

"Are you serious?"

"Yes." He was thoughtful. "I’ve a foot-long gash where a sardula got nasty… a bite from a newborn chalkydri…"

"A sardula? Really? Can I see?"

Johannes shook his head. "It got me… close to a delicate place," he said.

He did not look at her, but he did not seem prudish.

Johannes shared his cabin with Gimgewry, the failed merchant, a man crippled with the understanding of his own inadequacy, who eyed Bellis with miserable lust. Johannes was never lascivious. He seemed to think always of other things before he had a chance to notice Bellis’ attractions.

It was not that she was seeking to be approached-she would spurn him quickly if he did court her. But she was used to men trying to flirt with her-usually only for a short time, until they realized that her cool demeanor was not an act they could persuade her to drop. Tearfly’s company was frank and unsexual, and she found it disconcerting. She wondered briefly if he might be what her father had called an invert, but she saw no more sign that he was attracted to any of the men on board than he was to her. And then she felt vain for wondering.