Most were about secrets. She heard about the chains that dangled below Armada: ancient, hidden for tens of decades; years’ worth of work, and many ships’ worth of metal. "Long before the Lovers made up their minds what to do with them," the teller of one story said, "this was tried before."

Uther Doul was prey to the storytellers, too.

"He comes from the land of the dead," someone said once, conspiratorially. "Old Doul was born more’n three thousand years ago. It was him started the Contumancy. He was born a slave in the Ghosthead Empire, and he stole that sword, Mightblade, and fought free, and destroyed the empire. He died. But a warrior like him, greatest fighter there’s ever been, he’s the only man was able to fight his way out of the shadeworld, back to the living."

Those listening made good-humored, derisory noises. They did not believe it, of course, but then they did not know what to believe about Uther Doul.

Doul himself spent his days quietly. The main person whose company he sought, the only one who came anything close to a friend, seemed to be Hedrigall. The cactus aeronaut and the human warrior often talked quietly at the edge of the room. They muttered in quick undertones, as if they were ashamed of friendship.

There was only one other person with whom Uther Doul was prepared to spend time, and to whom he talked, and that was Bellis.

It had not taken her long to realize that the apparently chance meetings, the brief pleasantries, were not coincidental. In an elliptical and tentative way, he was trying to make friends with her.

Bellis could not make sense of him, and she did not try to second-guess him. She trusted herself to cope. Though a sense of danger always remained, part of her enjoyed the encounters-the formal air, the slightest sense of flirtation. It was hardly coquetry. She did not compromise her dignity with simpering suggestiveness. But she was drawn to him, and she scolded herself for that.

Bellis thought of Silas. Not with any sense of guilt or betrayal-the idea of that made her pout in disdain. But she remembered the time he had taken her to the glad’ fight, specifically to see Uther Doul. That’s what’s trying to stop us leaving, he had told her, and she could not afford to forget it. Why, she asked herself, would you risk spending time with Doul?

Deep in her bag, she felt the weight of the box Silas had given her. She was acutely aware that she had a job to do on this island (one she must plan soon). It placed her very directly against Doul.