When he verified that he was an engineer, the liaison officer for the Garwater Dock Authority had eyed him greedily, and had asked him in child’s Salt and pantomime hand gestures whether he would learn to be a diver. It was easier to train an engineer to dive than to teach a diver the skills that Tanner had accumulated.

It was hard work learning to breathe the air pumped down from above without panicking in the hot little helmet, how to move without overcompensating and sending himself spinning. But he had learned to luxuriate in the slowed-down time, the eddying clarity of water seen through glass.

He did similar work now to that he had always done-patching and repairing, rebuilding, fumbling with tools by great engines-only now, well below the stevedores and the cranes, it was performed in the crush of water, watched by fishes and eels, buffeted by currents born miles away.

"I told you that Coldarse is working in the library, didn’t I?"

"You did, lad," Tanner said. He and Shekel were eating below an awning at the docks while the deluge continued around them.

Shekel had arrived at the docks with a little group of raggedy-arsed youngsters between twelve and sixteen years old. All the others, from what Tanner could tell, were city-born; and that they had let a press-ganged join them, one who still struggled to express himself in Salt, was evidence of Shekel’s adaptability.

They had left Shekel alone to share his food with Tanner.

"I like that library," he said. "I like going there, and not just because of the ice woman, neither."

"There’s a lot worse you could do than settle into some reading, lad," said Tanner. "We’ve finished Crawfoot’s Chronicles; you could find some other stories. You could read them to me, for a change. How’re your letters?"

"I can make them out," said Shekel vaguely.

"Well, there you go then. You go and have a word with Miss Coldy, and get her to recommend some reading for you."

They ate silently for a while, watching a group of the Armada cray come up from their hivewreck below.

"What’s it like under there?" Shekel said at last.

"Cold," said Tanner. "And dark. Dark but… luminous. Massive. You’re just surrounded by massiveness. There are shapes you can only just see, huge dark shapes. Subs and whatnot-and sometimes you think you see others. Can’t make them out properly, and they’re guarded, so’s you can’t get too close.

"I’ve watched cray under their wrecks. Seawyrms that saddle up sometimes to the chariot ships. The menfish, like newts, from Bask riding. Can’t hardly see them, the way they move. Bastard John, the dolphin. He’s the Lovers’ security chief below, and a colder, more vicious sod you could not imagine.

"And then there’s a few… Remade." His voice eddied into silence.

"It’s weird, isn’t it?" said Shekel, watching Tanner closely. "I can’t get used to…" He said nothing more.

Neither could get used to it. A place where the Remade were equal. Where a Remade might be a foreman or a manager instead of the lowest laborer.