"Come in, Shek," he said.

He was aware of the tension that was spreading through Armada, the uncertainty, as if Hedrigall had spilled a poison behind him as he left. Tanner wanted to offer Shekel a place where it could dissipate.

There were reasons for people’s growing fears. Tanner had heard strange rumors. Three times now he had heard that some man or woman, some yeoman or Garwater engineer, had disappeared, their house and things left untouched (food half-eaten, in one story). Some said they, too, had fled, and others claimed that these were the depradations of spirits from the Hidden Ocean.

When he was in the water, Tanner’s sense that things were wrong, dangerous, or uncertain dissipated with the currents. He offered Shekel the same respite. He persuaded the boy to swim with him. The pools between Armada’s vessels were almost empty now. Shekel was excited to be one of those brave enough to go in. The great flitches of the ships moved above and around them sedately: they would not be left behind. Shekel struggled with his aggressive, ugly paddle, and Tanner tried to show him better strokes and realized that he did not know any suitable for those who had to breathe air.

Shekel slipped heavy goggles over his eyes and plunged his head below for as long as their imperfect seal kept out the water. He and Tanner would stare at the shoals of fishes, species they had never seen. Colored and finned intricately, as intense and bizarre as tropical species, here in these more temperate waters. Like scorpion and ratfish, their forms were broken with spindly appendages, and eyes that glowed with unlikely colors.

When Shekel and Tanner hauled themselves out again, Angevine would be waiting, with maybe a bottle of beer or liquor. And even if Tanner and Angevine still spoke to each other a little warily, and realized that they always would, what they shared in Shekel, and the way they had learned to share it, gave them a respectful connection.

It’s kind of a family,Tanner thought.

It was not hard for Bellis to find Uther Doul again. She had only to wait on the deck of the Grand Easterly, knowing he would appear eventually. She was stiff with resentment and incensed by her own hurt. She could not believe how he had dropped her.

As she approached he stared at her, but not with the disgust that she feared. Not with hostility, or with interest, or any kind of connection or recognition. He simply stared.

She drew herself up. She had tied back her hair again, and she knew that the look of stunned pain was ebbing gradually from her face. She still moved stiffly, but nearly two weeks since her flogging she had regained much of herself.

Bellis did not greet Doul. "I want to see Fennec" was all she said.

Doul thought for a second, then inclined his head. "Alright," he said.