‘Get on the squawk,’ I said. ‘If there’s a ship bleeding out down in the Sunward processionals, word’ll reach the Emptyside soon enough.’ I slipped the neural bridge back onto its hook. ‘I know what I heard, Captain. It came through bell-clear, too. I didn’t even have to work at it. You’ve got yourself a good skull here, whatever worth Grestad’s made of it. Now all it needs is a sharp Reader.’
‘I will get on the squawk,’ Trusko said. ‘And I will have word of something going wrong with that ship, if it even exists. You’d better pray that it does, Fura. I don’t take kindly to having my time wasted.’
‘Nor do I, Captain.’
There was a silence, which he curtailed with a contemptuous snort. ‘I’ll prove you wrong. But since my time is precious, I may as well have the pleasure of seeing the rest of the crew sound you out first. They’ll plumb you, Fura.’
‘Plumb away.’
I understood why he had his doubts. I’d have had my doubts as well. But the shivery part was that I hadn’t needed to fake a word of it. It was all real, even though I’d never heard of Resparis, his stricken ship, or the Daughters of Blood and Milk. I was getting better at reading the bones, just like Cazarary said I would.
Scarily better.
The crew had gathered in the galley. It was aft of the bone room, smaller than the one on the Monetta, but it served the same function. There were six of them in the room when we arrived, and five of those faces were totally new to me. I endeavoured to treat the sixth no differently.
‘Take a seat,’ Trusko said, indicating the long double-sided bench that spanned most of the galley. ‘But don’t get too comfortable. I think you’ll be back on that launch soon enough.’
‘I didn’t know we needed a new cleaning girl,’ said a snide-looking man.
‘That tin hand of hers looks pretty,’ said the woman next to him. She had a famished, sucked-in look about her, as if there were a vacuum under her skin. ‘Pity about what it’s stuck to.’
‘She’s got the glowy about her,’ said another man, sucking on an ornate clay pipe carved into the form of a sunjammer. ‘I don’t likes the glowy.’
‘I had the glowy in me once,’ said an older woman, with a lopsided look to her face, one eye staring out wider and crazier than the other.
‘And look how you worked out,’ said the snide one.
‘What’s your name, cove?’ asked Prozor, who was squeezed in next to the pipe man. ‘Got a tongue in your gob, ain’t you?’
‘Fura,’ I answered delicately, looking Prozor right in the eyes. ‘And you’d be?’
‘Never you mind me.’ I gave her as long as I dared, measuring the ways she’d changed and not changed. It hadn’t been long, I told myself. But Prozor looked harder and meaner than she had before, and that was like saying a rock looked rockier. ‘What’s the story with this one, Cap’n? I didn’t think we were signin’ anyone on.’
‘We may not be, Prozor,’ Trusko answered her. ‘That’ll depend on a number of factors. Fura wants to crew with us – thinks she might be able to get something more out of the bones than Grestad.’
The snide man scoffed out a laugh. ‘That’s not much of a benchmark.’
‘We won’t speak ill of Grestad when she’s not in our presence,’ Trusko said, but I could tell he had lost that argument before it was begun. ‘Fura can read the bones. That’s not in doubt. But as to how deep her abilities go, I’m just waiting on a squawk that might . . .’
‘Speaking of the squawk,’ said the famished-looking woman, ‘there’s a ship bleeding out in the Sunwards. Nothing we or anyone else can do about it, neither.’
‘When did you hear about this, Surt?’ Trusko asked.
‘Just now. Couple of minutes gone. General squawk, emergency channel. Reached half the ships in the Congregation by now. Not that there’s a chaffing thing any of them will be able to do.’ The woman – Surt – turned to the pipe man. ‘Do me a favour, Tindouf. We ever start bleeding out like that, all our lungstuff whistling away, you rig them ions to blow up so we get a quick and easy exit. I ain’t suffocating.’
‘If suffocating’s a problem,’ said the snide man. ‘Maybe you ended up in the wrong line of employment.’
‘We’re all in the wrong line,’ said the lopsided woman. ‘Wouldn’t be teaming up with a weasel like you if I had any choice in it.’
‘Where did this ship end up in trouble?’ I asked.
Surt gave me a chilly stare. ‘Near the twins. The Daughters of Blood and Milk.’
‘They’s baubles,’ the pipe man said, pausing to tap his clay utensil against the table. ‘One’s red, one’s white. Orbits each other, they does. Got swallowers in the both of ’em.’
‘My information was correct, then, Captain Trusko. Surt said the report just came in. We’d have been in the bone room, so there’s no way I’d have heard that squawk ahead of time.’
Trusko worked his lips. He looked up and down the length of his table. Some of his crew were hanging off his next words. Others could not have looked less interested if quoins had depended on it. The lopsided woman was using the end of a knife to lever something out of her teeth. ‘I tested her with a general send from another ship,’ Trusko said. ‘She got that. She also picked up a secondary send coming through on the same node. My initial reaction was that it couldn’t be real, but . . .’
‘She’s that good,’ Surt said, ‘you should sign her up.’
‘There’s more to a new crew member than just being able to do a given task,’ Trusko answered. ‘Her skills are still debatable. We can run some more tests, certainly. But there’s a cut about her that makes me doubt she’d fit in.’
‘And we are, after all, such a happy family,’ the snide man said. ‘Wouldn’t want some scowly one-hand coming along and ruining that, would we?’
‘I can fit in,’ I said. ‘Seen enough ships and crews to be certain of that. You ain’t anything special, none of you. But even if I didn’t mesh, would it really matter? Put me in your bone room, and I’ll bring you all the loot and quoins you asked for. And it’s loot and quoins that puts the spur into us, ain’t it?’
‘She talks like Prozor one minute, like some high-educated prim and proper madam the next,’ said an over-muscled man with heavy earrings and a geometric tattoo on his forehead. ‘Don’t know what to make of that.’
‘You don’t know what to make of most things, Drozna,’ said the snide man. ‘Best stick to rigging.’
‘S’long as it keeps me away from you, Gathing, there’s not much I wouldn’t stick to.’
‘You say you’ve seen enough ships,’ Drozna – the muscled man – said. ‘Name some of ’em.’
‘The Harpy, under Zemys. That was the first. The White Widow, under Rinagar. The Murderess, under Rhinn. Then under Palquen, when Rhinn died at the Poisoned Eye. You want more?’
‘You looks awful green to have been on all them shipses,’ said Tindouf, the man with the pipe. ‘Awful green. T’aint proper for someone to be green, if they’ve been on so many shipses.’
‘Make your mind up,’ I said. ‘One minute you don’t like me because I’ve got the glowy in me, the next it’s because I don’t look old enough.’
‘She’s got your mark, Tindouf,’ said the lopsided woman.
‘Shuts yourself up, Strambli,’ the pipe man said.
‘You can check those ships,’ I said. ‘Speak to their captains. See what they made of me. They’ll tell you the same thing. They’ll never see a better Bone Reader.’
‘They’ll never see anything,’ Gathing said with a knowing smile. ‘Unless I’m mistaken, all those ships are gone now.’
‘Ships don’t last,’ I said, with an unconcerned shrug.
‘Still, awful handy if you didn’t want anyone checking up on your past.’ But now Gathing gave his own shrug. ‘I don’t care. If she can read a bone or t
wo – and do it better than Grestad – which isn’t asking much – then I’ll share a hull with her.’
‘How’d you lose the hand?’ Surt asked.
‘I asked too many questions.’
Strambli laughed.
‘Well, I’ll say one thing for her,’ Drozna put in. ‘She’s going out of her way to win friends. There’s something shivery about her, no doubt. But – and I’ll only say this once – I agree with Gathing. If she can read, and read good, nothing else matters.’
Tindouf tapped at his pipe. ‘We could use some good intelligences.’
Surt drew in her already sucked-in cheeks. They seemed to disappear into her, like matter falling into a swallower’s horizon. ‘Verdict’s out, as far as I’m concerned. But I don’t suppose I’ve got to like someone to draw my share of the quoins they bring us.’
‘Glad to see your mercenary spark is undiminished,’ Gathing said.
‘And you’re not in this for the money?’ Surt asked him.
‘If I am, I’m on the wrong ship.’ But Gathing made a cynical saluting gesture. ‘No disrespect, Captain.’
‘We’ll make our quoins in good time,’ Trusko answered. ‘For now, it’s only Fura that concerns us. I sense the winds are blowing in the direction of hiring her. But you haven’t said much, Prozor.’
‘My word won’t carry much, will it, being the newest on the ship?’
‘That’s as maybe. We’d still value your opinion. You’ve crewed extensively. How do you plumb her?’
‘Something don’t add up,’ Prozor said after a silence. ‘Drozna’s right – she’s all one thing, then she’s something else. No crime in that, I suppose. And I did hear that they had a tolerable Sympathetic on the Murderess, a girl too young to look the part. Maybe she even had one hand.’ Prozor leaned in confidentially. ‘But I don’t like her, Captain. Reading bones ain’t the be all and end all. You’ve got to be able to trust the bony. Got to be able to sup with ’em and know they’ve got the same interests as you.’
‘What do you do?’ I asked sharply. ‘I’ve figured some of the rest of you. Drozna’s your master of sail. Tindouf’s your ion man. Gathing – you’ve got the look of an Opener to me. Maybe an Assessor, if that isn’t what Strambli does. Certain thing is you’re no Integrator.’ I nodded at his hands. ‘Never seen an Integrator whose fingers weren’t worked down to stubs.’ I settled my gaze on Surt for a moment. ‘That’d be you, I think. Got the fingers for it. But I still don’t know what Prozor does. That was your name, wasn’t it?’
‘Prozor’s our new Bauble Scanner,’ Trusko said. ‘And a good one, by all reports. Thought our luck was in, when we heard that Prozor was looking for employment. But it wasn’t that Prozor.’
‘Then she’s second-rate,’ I said. ‘Trading under a better name. Untested.’
‘We’ll know the value of her soon enough, when we’ve finalised our next set of targets,’ Trusko said. ‘And I don’t doubt she’ll prove her worth.’
‘Then I’ll prove mine,’ I said, folding my arms across my chest. ‘Took a chance on her, didn’t you? Then you can do the same with me. Doesn’t mean the cost of lungstuff to me whether she likes me or not. She can take the quoins I make. And I will make quoins.’
‘Say one thing,’ Drozna rumbled. ‘No lack of self-confidence in the waif.’
‘I’m signing her,’ Trusko said. ‘Provisional term. Say – six months. We’ll crack a few baubles and see how she fares. Can’t say fairer than that, can I? You’ll just have to lump it, Prozor. Who knows? Maybe the two of you’ll end up the best of friends.’
‘Old Sun’ll draw its last breath sooner’n that,’ Prozor said.
Trusko took me to his cabin and we completed the paperwork. ‘I have to go back down to Mazarile,’ he said. ‘If you’ve affairs to close down there, you can join me on the launch. But my thinking is Mazarile is the last place you’d want to go back to.’
‘I’ve got what I need.’
‘You came with nothing, except a bag of quoins, that hand, and the clothes you’re wearing – what there is of them.’
‘You’ll give me somewhere to sleep, and feed me, some clobber if you can run to it, not much more I need.’
He tapped the bottom of the one of the papers. ‘Put your name here.’ A sudden alarmed thought crossed his face. ‘You’re literate, aren’t you? You can read and write? A Bone Reader that can’t transcribe isn’t worth the cost of lungstuff to me.’
‘I can read.’ I scratched my name onto the document with my right hand, which wasn’t the one I normally used for writing, so the letters came out a bit crooked and stiff.
‘Fura,’ he said, blowing on the ink until it dried. ‘That’s really all there is to it?’
‘All I need.’
‘You’re an uncommon one. Can’t say I’m entirely persuaded by you, yet, but the crew live and breathe loot and they seem to think you have the necessary cut about you.’
‘Except Prozor.’
‘Don’t concern yourself too much with Prozor. She came on with us at Trevenza Reach, which was only one world ago. We haven’t required her to read a bauble yet, so she’s not had a chance to prove her worth. Not that I doubt it, but until she’s demonstrated that faculty . . . Prozor has to assert herself. Turning against you is her way of doing that. But you mustn’t take it personally.’
‘I don’t.’
Trusko touched a hand to his belly, as if he had indigestion. ‘Now I have some difficult business to attend to. Grestad was expecting to meet me at Hadramaw. I’ve got to explain to her that we’ve just hired a better Bone Reader, so she won’t be returning to the Queenie. You’d better not let me down, Fura.’
‘I shan’t.’
‘We’ll be cutting out on ions in less than a day. I want you in the bone room as quickly as possible. Make your rounds of the ship, get to know it, smooth over your relations with the others as best you can . . . and start getting to know that skull. It’s yours now, and I want you to get the very best that you can out of it.’
‘Depend on it,’ I said.
‘You haven’t seen the best of us,’ Trusko reflected. ‘We’re not a bad crew. But we’ve drawn a string of dud baubles these last few months, and that saps the will. Morale’s not what it could be. The ship needs repairs, the crew need their bonuses . . .’
‘Perhaps your luck’s about to change,’ I said.
The next day was difficult.
There was nothing I wanted more than to crawl into a quiet corner with Prozor and natter about our plans. Prozor must have had a million questions for me. But we had to keep up the act. The slightest slip would give us away.
I found my quarters. It was a curtained slot about three-quarters the size of the equivalent accommodation on the Monetta’s Mourn. As the newest member of the ship, I had been assigned the smallest and grubbiest sleeping space. Prozor, with her nominal superiority, had gone up a grade. Now she had Grestad’s space, which was just around the corner from mine, and boasting a few additional comforts. It was impossible to avoid each other, but in the interests of keeping up our act all we did was brush past each other with the odd bad-tempered oath. But it was a dicey line we walked, and Prozor’s dislike of me couldn’t risk seeming too irrational. Once, on that first day, Drozna pulled me aside and said: ‘If you two have some history we ain’t been told about, now might be the time to share it. Been enough bad blood on this ship without adding more of it.’
‘I don’t know her,’ I told him. ‘What she’s got against me ain’t my concern.’
‘There you go trying to sound like you were born on a ’jammer. But it don’t quite roll off the tongue with you, does it?’ He had a hand on my arm, gently enough, but not allowing me to continue on my way. ‘Someone asked me to put quoins on it, I’d say you was a rich girl playing at this life.’
I held up my false hand. ?
??Does this look like playing to you, Drozna? Or the glowy in me?’
His eyes narrowed under the geometric tattoo on his forehead. ‘How’d you come by the glowy?’
I swallowed, glanced away for a moment before meeting his eyes again. ‘Ship I was on got jumped. I hid while the jumping was going on. Would’ve died, except I ate lightvine. Ain’t proud of that, ’specially not the hiding. But I lived, and I’ve got the glowy as a reminder.’
‘First straight words that have come out of your gob since you came aboard.’ But something in him softened, and he moved his hand to pat me once. ‘Ain’t a one of us doesn’t have something we’d sooner have happened a different way. If that’s what spurs us, so be it. When did this happen?’
‘A long time back.’
‘Then that glowy’s been in you a while. Takes some spuds, keeping it the way you have.’
‘They wanted to flush it out of me. I said I wasn’t forgettin’ what happened. And if the itch and crawl of it made me remember, I’d take that and be grateful. I know it’s got into my grey by now. Makes me angry, sometimes, and I start seeing connections between things that I know aren’t always there. But it don’t stop me reading the bones. You won’t tell anyone, will you?’
‘About something that happened years ago?’ Drozna smiled. He had big jowly flaps on either side of his face, but it was still a kind face for a big man. ‘But that arm of yours isn’t as old as you’d like us to think, is it? I’ve seen how you favour the other one. I bet you could barely tie your laces with those tin fingers. You don’t want anyone asking how long you’ve had that replacement grafted on.’
‘I was sold a dud,’ I said. ‘Told it would bind to my nervous system, only it never did.’
‘It doesn’t look like a dud. Looks like quality work to me.’
‘Then fix it, you’re such an expert.’
He gave me a slow, knowing nod. ‘You’re a knotty puzzle, Fura. But I ain’t the one to judge. Truth is, Grestad never did us much good. If you can improve on that, you’ll soon have friends.’