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  ‘Then why do you need a new one?’ Adrana asked.

  Rackamore looked surprised. ‘Didn’t Mr Quindar outline our situation while he was bringing you to the docks?’

  ‘Getting anything straight out of that grinning spider was more of a challenge than it was worth,’ Adrana said.

  ‘Mm.’ Rackamore set his features in a troubled grimace. ‘Tell them, Cazaray.’

  The younger man was dressed as well as Rackamore, and his voice, although higher, was also that of an educated man. His face was scrubbed and pink, his hair blond, raffishly tousled. ‘Even the best of us don’t last for ever in the position, Miss . . .?’

  ‘Adrana,’ she answered levelly, meeting his gaze.

  ‘And I’m Arafura,’ I put in.

  Cazaray nodded and looked at us in turn, a touch bashfully, before settling his attention on Adrana. ‘We start young – the sooner the better, generally speaking. As our brain circuits harden into place, it becomes knottier to maintain coherence with the skull, or to adjust to changes within the skull itself. And almost impossible to learn to work with a completely new skull.’ He leaned back in his seat. ‘There’s no tragedy in it. I’ve had a good run, and I don’t mind saying that I’ve been well rewarded for it.’

  ‘What are you going to do next? I asked.

  ‘Train up my successor first – no small business. After that, I should be very content to retire. I’ve earned enough.’ I noticed now that there was a distance in his eyes, the same one people said they saw in ours. ‘Under someone like Captain Rackamore, on a good ship like the Monetta’s Mourn, ten years is enough to set you up. Provided you don’t have exorbitant tastes.’

  ‘We’re not looking to sign on for ten years,’ Adrana said.

  Rackamore moderated the curl of his lips with a smile. ‘I’m not looking to sign a pair of green unknowns on a ten-year contract either. Quindar should have mentioned a six-month term? Shorter than that, and it’s not worth Cazaray training you up. But in six months, you’ll have time to prove your worth, as well as decide whether the shipboard life’s one that suits you. It’s not just about being able to pick up the whispers. A good Bone Reader needs a fair hand, too, to set down transcripts quickly and neatly, and they’ve also got to be able to send as well as receive. The question is, do you want to take your chances in space?’

  ‘We’re not afraid,’ Adrana said.

  ‘Quindar wouldn’t have brought you here if he didn’t believe you had potential. What do you think, Cazaray? Could you work with them?’

  ‘We’ve not exactly been spoiled for choice with candidates,’ Cazaray said. ‘And they’ve got to be better than Garval, at least . . .’ But then he clamped his lips tight.

  ‘I’ve heard of siblings working the bones on other ships,’ Rackamore said, looking at us thoughtfully, stroking the quoin as he spoke. ‘If these two can work together to pull some sense out of that skull, they might give us an edge.’

  I drew the ledger closer to our side of the table. ‘These numbers,’ I said, tapping a finger against one of the columns. ‘Is this what you’d pay one of your crew members?’

  ‘Per year, and assuming a certain level of success with baubles, yes.’

  ‘It’s a lot of money.’

  Adrana pulled the ledger nearer to her. ‘Divide that number by two, for six months, and then double it again because there are two of us. You don’t get a discount because we’re sisters. That’s already eighty bars worth of quoins. I’m not saying that would undo all our losses, but . . .’

  ‘Losses?’ Rackamore enquired gently.

  ‘Our father made some bad investments,’ I said. ‘Sunk money into Malang Lar’s expedition.’

  Rackamore’s expression was one of muted sympathy. ‘Yes, a regrettable business all round. We’re cautious – I won’t deny that. But Lar took caution to unheard-of depths, keeping to the shallow processionals, the Sunwards, the well-studied baubles. The trouble is, those are the ones most likely to have given up their prizes already.’ He gave a non-committal shrug. ‘So it proved. Was it really bad for your family?’

  ‘Our parents came to Mazarile before we were born,’ I said. ‘They’d escaped one economic slump and thought to better their fortunes on Mazarile.’

  ‘Just as Mazarile was entering a slump of its own,’ Adrana said. ‘The crash of 1781.’

  ‘Their timing wasn’t very good,’ I said. ‘But they did the best they could. Arrived with a few belongings, some credit, an old robot. After the recession, they had to take us out of school. The fees were too expensive. So now we study at home, under the robot. Father hoped the Lar expedition would dig us out of that hole.’

  ‘We shouldn’t downplay Malang Lar’s accomplishment,’ Rackamore said, with a touch of forced charity. ‘Every sliver of history we recover is a little less ignorance. A beacon in the darkness.’

  ‘But it’s not worth anything,’ Adrana said. ‘And when you open a bauble and bring back relics, proper relics that are actually worth something, you usually bring back some history as well.’

  ‘It tends to happen,’ Rackamore said.

  ‘But not to Lar,’ Adrana said. ‘Which is why Adrana and I have to join your ship. We’ll sign on, and Cazaray will train us. And we’ll earn your pay.’

  ‘And then after six months you’ll leave us?’

  ‘A lot can happen in six months, Captain,’ Adrana said. ‘Perhaps you’ll be glad to see the back of us. Or perhaps we’ll take to the life . . .’

  ‘Cazaray?’

  He leaned in confidentially, while still looking at us. ‘I say we sign them, Captain. Standard six-month trial. Usual terms.’

  Rackamore tapped the quoin against the desk, like a judge delivering a verdict. ‘All right, we’ll get the paperwork drawn up. Subject to concluding my business with the sailmaker, we’ll be looking to break orbit in a day. Are there affairs you wish to settle, either of you?’

  There was a knock at the door, and a long, pale face pushed through the crack.

  ‘Quindar,’ said Rackamore, irritated. ‘I asked you to remain outside. We’re not finished here yet.’

  ‘Beggin’ your pardon, Cap’n, but you might want a little chinwag with the cove who’s just shown up. Calls himself Mr Ness, says he’s the father of the lovelies, and he ain’t too thrilled about developments. Oh, and there’s constables too.’

  Rackamore gave a sigh. ‘Show the fellow in.’

  Father pushed past Vidin Quindar, and two constables loomed behind him, epaulettes still flashing. Father had loosened his collar, and his hair was dishevelled with worry, as if he had pushed his hand through it too many times. He looked grey.

  ‘You ran away,’ Father said, shaking his head at the words, as if they had no business coming out of his mouth. ‘You ran from me. Both of you. The constables found what was left of Paladin! That robot was worth half the cost of our house, and now it’s in pieces. The shame you’ve brought on me, on your mother’s good memory . . .’

  ‘Mr Ness,’ Rackamore said, with a calming tone. ‘I’m sure we can resolve this. I am impressed with your daughters, and I wish to sign them on to my ship. They’ll be well looked after, and they’ll have every option to return home in six months.’

  ‘They aren’t of age.’

  ‘I am,’ Adrana said. And after glancing at me, she went on: ‘And if Arafura wants to assign herself into my guardianship, she’s free to do so. That’s all legal. You can’t stop it.’

  Father touched a hand to his chest. His heart was weak, we both knew that, some defect that the Mazarile physicians weren’t confident enough to repair, but he’d developed a habit of playing on that weakness at moments like this.

  ‘You wouldn’t,’ he said.

  ‘Captain,’ Adrana said. ‘May I examine that quoin?’

  Rackamore handed Adrana the fat metallic disc. She tur
ned it this way and that in her hand, staring down into the shifting lattice of patterns that seemed to play beneath its surface, as if the quoin’s disc were an aperture into some higher, multidimensional realm.

  ‘You were using this as a paperweight, Captain,’ Adrana said.

  ‘I was.’

  ‘It’s a valuable quoin, isn’t it?’

  ‘One hundred bars.’

  Adrana looked at Father. ‘That’s almost what you sunk into the Lar expedition. Fura and I could go out and earn eighty bars in six months – more if we’re lucky. Couldn’t we, Captain?’

  Rackamore took the quoin back from Adrana and slipped it into a pocket in his waistcoat, where it made a circular bulge. ‘I can see you care for your daughters, Mr Ness,’ he said, directing his attention at Father. ‘I understand also that you find yourself in hardened circumstances. Let me make matters plain. The moment your daughters commit to my crew, I will place a bond of twenty bars in the Bank of Hadramaw, assigned solely to the Ness family. In six months, regardless of what happens in space – regardless of how your daughters fare, or however many prizes we do or don’t find – that bond transfers to you.’

  ‘While you shoot off into space with my daughters,’ Father said, drawing a finger along the clammy edge of his collar.

  ‘Let me clarify my position,’ Rackamore said, leaning forward slightly – just the faintest degree, but enough to suggest an authority, even a menace, that I hadn’t picked up on until that moment. ‘I am Captain Pol Rackamore of the sunjammer Monetta’s Mourn. I run a tight ship, and I expect both excellence and unswerving loyalty from my crew. I do not promise them wealth. No captain can make such a promise, if the truth matters to them. But I will say this: while there is blood in my veins, marrow in my bones, and fire in my grey, you may trust your daughters with me. I have lost crew members, I have even lost a ship. But I have never lost a Bone Reader, and I do not intend to change my habits.’

  ‘It’s just six months,’ Adrana said.

  The captain was looking at me now. ‘Assuming that the law – the Mazarile law – does allow for this assignment of guardianship, which we’ll know before we leave this dock, do you still wish to go through with this?’

  I glanced at Adrana, at Father, at the bulge of the quoin in Rackamore’s pocket, then back to Father. He looked like he was about to faint, or worse. He wasn’t just grey now, he was starting to look see-through, like something drawn on paper and left out in the rain. I think he was still hoping to wake up and find this was all the result of too much strong drink and food.

  ‘I do,’ I said.

  ‘Her mind seems set,’ Rackamore told my father.

  Father took a step back, almost like he was going to slump to the floor. One of the constables took him by the arm, and Father looked at the man with something between gratitude and resentment.

  His voice was strained. ‘Where are you and your ship going, Captain?’

  Rackamore gave a little grimace of regret. ‘I’m afraid I can’t tell you, Mr Ness. Of course we have an idea of our itinerary. But the baubles we’ve chosen to visit are commercial secrets. There are other ships out there, other crews, and some of them would stop at nothing to jump our claims. I’m afraid it also won’t be possible for your daughters to send you much in the way of news until we complete this circuit.’

  ‘How long?’ Father asked, desperation clawing lines down his face.

  ‘A few months. I can’t be more specific than that.’ Rackamore looked pained. ‘I make no guarantees. But depending on our fortunes there is a fair chance we will stop at Trevenza Reach before we return to Mazarile. If that is the case, your daughters will have every opportunity to send a message home.’

  ‘Arafura,’ he said. ‘I beg you. I can’t make your sister change her mind. But don’t do this. Come back home.’

  There was a future stretching out before, a safe and predictable one, familiar and comfortable as an old chair, and in that moment I nearly gave in and submitted to it. But I thought of the house, of the cupola up on the roof, of the nights I’d spent peering out into space, of the glimpsed worlds, and the fantasies and desires I’d projected onto them. I thought of the magic and the mystery of their names, from Vispero to Dargaunt to Trevenza Reach. And beyond them, to the worlds without number, the tens of thousands of places where people lived, and the sunjammers that chased the photon winds between their orbits, and all the fortune and glory that awaited their crews.

  ‘I’m sorry, Father,’ I said. ‘I love you. You know that. But I’ve got to go with Adrana.’

  ‘I won’t rest,’ Father said, and when he spoke those words it wasn’t clear who they were meant for: us or Rackamore. ‘I’m not a wealthy or influential man. But I’ll move the worlds to bring my daughters home. You can count on that.’ And he held his finger out, but his hand was shaking more than he must have wanted.

  ‘Wait for word from Trevenza Reach,’ I said. ‘And if that doesn’t come, you’ll hear from us when we return to Mazarile.’

  And then I took Adrana’s hand and turned from him, because I couldn’t bear to keep looking.

  There was a rumble as the rockets gained power, a lurch as the dock’s restraining clamps let go, and then we were free, climbing away from Mazarile.

  The launch had four rows of seats, one on each side, with a gangway between them. Each seat had its own porthole. Near the front, where the hull closed into its bullet-shaped end, Captain Rackamore had a control seat of his own, set before an arc of rounded windows. He worked levers and sticks, while dials twitched and readouts flickered across the curve of the console before him.

  If we’d experienced a loss of weight in Hadramaw Dock, it quickly built up again.

  ‘We’ll notch up to three gees on our way to the Monetta’s Mourn,’ Rackamore said, twisting around to speak to us. ‘That’s more than you’re used to, but if you’re fit and well, you shouldn’t find it uncomfortable.’ But seeing our blank expressions must have given him pause. ‘You understand what I mean by a gee?’

  ‘You’d better assume we don’t,’ I said.

  He smiled, patiently enough. ‘Tell them, Cazaray. I need to lay in our vector.’

  ‘A gee is the standard unit of acceleration in the Congregation,’ Cazaray said. Adrana and I were sitting on opposed seats, Cazaray one row in front of us, just behind Rackamore. ‘It’s how it felt to stand on Earth, before the Shatterday – that’s the story, anyway. The gravity on Mazarile, in the streets of Hadramaw, wasn’t far off a gee. But that’s only because they made sure the swallower at the heart of Mazarile was a certain mass, so that you feel a natural weight on the surface. If they’d made the swallower larger – or Mazarile smaller – you’d have felt much heavier. It’s like that on many worlds, whether they have swallowers or not. The ones that spin – wheelworlds or shellworlds or whatever else – it’s often close to a gee. And that’s not because we’ve made them that way recently. They’ve been like that down through all the aeons, because it suits people. Sometimes the tenants came in and altered worlds for their own tastes, sped them up or down, added swallowers or took them away, but the majority never got changed.’

  ‘What sort of world are you from, Mister Cazaray?’ I asked, all proper and polite.

  He grinned back at me. ‘It’s all right, Cazaray is fine. My first name is Perro, but I never liked that much – it’s a very low name. And I’m from Esperity. Have you heard of it?’

  I might have remembered the name from the Book of Worlds, but I couldn’t swear on it.

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Not many have. Esperity’s not a bad place by any means. It’s a tubeworld, a long can full of atmosphere, like a lungstuff tank, with windows to the outside to let the Old Sun in. They say the tubeworlds are some of the oldest in the Congregation, but they’re fragile, so not many have lasted until now. The historians think there was a wa
r, a bad one, between the Second and Third Occupations. Anyway, Esperity was all right, but unless you want to become a banker or stockbroker there isn’t much to do there. I thought I might have the talent, but there’s no one like Madame Granity on Esperity. I had to go all the way to Zarathrast just to have the most basic aptitude test.’

  Then he turned to face the front, because our weight was going up and it must have been a strain even for Cazaray. My seat, comfy when I’d got into it, now felt hammered together out of knives. I wasn’t in danger of blacking out, but even drawing breath was getting hard, and when I tried holding my hand above the armrest, my muscles went all quivery. I couldn’t think of speaking.

  That didn’t bother me at all, though, because there was more than enough to be taking in.

  The little porthole on my left wasn’t quite as big as a dinner plate, but I could already see more of Mazarile than I had at any other point in my existence. It was the same for Adrana, looking out the porthole on her right. The line of her face, the way her jaw was hanging down, told me the view was knocking her sideways.

  I knew how she felt.

  Mazarile had been our world, our universe, all we’d ever known. We’d read of other places in the Book of Worlds, caught glints of them in the night, seen pictures and moving scenes thrown onto our walls by Paladin, heard Father mutter their names as he read the financial pages, but none of it was preparation for this.

  Mazarile was tiny.

  We’d seen the curve of its horizon from Hadramaw Dock, but now that arc had grown into a good portion of a circle. The lights of Hadramaw were like a glowing wound under the lacy scar tissue of the skyshell. I clapped eyes on Bacramal, Kasper, Amlis – smaller cities, each under their own quilt of skyshell. The curve kept on sharpening, and the dayside started coming into view – along with the cities of Incer, Jauncery and Mavarasp. There was Tesseler, the crater that folk said had once held a city twice as large as Hadramaw. Smaller towns were strung out between these settlements, and hamlets that were built out onto the surface, without the cover of skyshell. I couldn’t have named one of them.