‘I was just about to send for you,’ he said. ‘Interesting times.’ He turned to regard the new sail, that had swung its head round the mast to watch the two of them.

‘They are that,’ agreed Tay.

Just then, Sprage spotted the holocorder sliding around them in a wide arc.

‘I would guess you know about Frisk?’ he said with a raised eyebrow.

‘I know about her - and I want to be in at the kill.’

‘Like you were with Grenant?’ Sprage asked, fixing his attention back on the sail.

‘If possible,’ said Tay, trying to keep an impassive face.

Sprage nodded as he once again puffed at his pipe. After a moment he said, ‘Welcome aboard, sail, how are you called?’

‘The name’s Windcheater,’ said the sail. ‘And I’ll want paying for this.’

* * * *

The sun edged over the horizon, and turned umber clouds to turquoise silk. About their business over the sea, three sails glided across the face of this orb as its light revealed a ship far out on the water, and decked it blue with gleams of emerald. Ambel stared at the vessel for some time, then turned to Peck, crouching by the rail and staring down into the water. Peck looked distinctly unwell in this morning light. The scars on his face were livid and his eyes were dark with blood.

‘What is it, Peck,’ Ambel asked him at last.

‘Bugger,’ muttered Peck.

Ambel waited for him to continue. It took him a while.

‘It calls me, Captain,’ Peck said.

‘It calls to us all. It’ll call to any who listen.’

‘It called and I went,’ Peck confessed.

‘What have you done, Peck?’ Ambel asked calmly.

Peck rested his forehead against the rail. ‘Wouldn’t stop. It had its hunger. I fed it to shut it up,’ he said.

Ambel glanced back at his cabin and considered, having spent the night in there, how the head had been strangely silent.

‘Did you release it?’ Ambel asked.

‘No, Captain.’

‘What did you give it, then?’

‘Remains of the baiting steak.’

Ambel was about to make a reply to that when Boris yelled down from the nest, ‘It’s the Ahab!’

Ambel shaded his eyes to gaze out at the distant ship.

‘Now what’s Ron doing out here? Last I heard he was off after a load of turbul,’ he observed.

‘Maybe it calls him, too,’ said Peck.

Ambel stared down at his crewman and wondered if that might be true - for the Skinner called in different ways. Perhaps Ron was coming to deliver some long-avoided Convocation decision on the matter. But he would soon know, as the Ahab was heading straight towards them. Ambel walked back to the door of his cabin and locked it. The next time he went in there, he would take with him a harpoon wet with sprine. He didn’t like to think about what might be going on inside his sea-chest.