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‘It’s armour,’ Prozor said. ‘Ghostie armour. And there’s more of it. All these upright boxes. They all hold armour.’

‘Been here before, have you?’ Strambli asked.

‘I just know it.’

Before the conversation took a swerve it oughtn’t, I went back to one of the other open boxes. I glanced away and back again, until I made out a pile of long, glassy things with thick
mid-
sections and handles at one end.

Not handles, exactly, I decided.

Grips and stocks and triggers.

I reached into the box, closed my fingers around something tangible. I drew it out. The Ghostie weapon was invisible and as light as if it were carved out of frozen smoke. It still felt as real and solid in my fingers as any crossbow.

‘Guns,’ I said. ‘Ghostie guns.’

Trusko didn’t say anything for a few moments. I could hear his breathing over the squawk. We were all breathing fast, lugging twice our usual weight around, and the prickly feeling of the vaults wasn’t doing anything to settle our nerves. But Trusko was at least as excited as he was frightened.

‘We’ve done it,’ he said, the words coming out hoarse between breaths. ‘After all the failures, all the busts. This changes everything.’

Strambli couldn’t mask her own enthusiasm, but it was tempered by realism. ‘We’ll take what we can. Leave the boxes, if necessary, and just take what’s in ’em. But even then, we’ll never shift more than a fraction of what’s here. And it’s no good saying we’ll come back another time. The rumour’s already out there. Some other coves’ll be here before we can blink, clean the place out . . .’

‘We can seal the doors,’ Trusko said. ‘Make as many trips up and down the shaft as we can, then seal everything up. Make it harder for them, at any rate.’ He was still bewitched. ‘Just a few trinkets of Ghostie stuff changed the fortunes of whole crews. What’s here’s enough to change a whole world, a whole economy.’

‘Better hope the market doesn’t get flooded,’ Prozor said drily.

‘We’ll get back to the worlds. Get a good price for the loot, before the price dips. We’re still ahead of the game.’ He pivoted around, throwing his arms wide. ‘Fura – I had my doubts about that intelligence you threw me, but I thought it worth taking a chance on. Rest assured you’ve earned your share of this. And, Prozor – your auguries told us this was feasible. If ever I had my doubts about either of you . . .’

‘Perhaps,’ I said, ‘we ought to start moving it up the shaft.’

Trusko raised his hand in
good-
natured surrender. ‘Of course, of course.’

We were down to fifteen hours and spare change. Fourteen before we needed to be in the launch and on our way. I couldn’t see us making more than one round trip up and down the shaft in less than five hours, which meant we had time – just – to make three trips to the surface, three loads of Ghostie stuff in the bucket.

By then we’d be cutting it plenty fine.

‘Strambli’s right, I think,’ I said. ‘Ordinarily, the boxes alone would be worth an expedition. But they’re too heavy for us to shift more than one at a time. I say we take this one, the one with the guns, and move the armour out separately. If two of us ride the bucket, we can easily squeeze four or five of those suits of armour on it.’ And seven would be nicer, I thought to myself: one for each of us. Six if we assumed Drozna wouldn’t fit, five if we took Surt out of consideration as well.

Trusko might not have taken kindly to his Bone Reader dictating the order of operations, but Strambli wasn’t going to quibble with me now that I’d thrown her a biscuit.

‘The guns it is,’ the captain said, cocking his head sidelong at the box. ‘Do you think they . . . still operate?’

‘There’s power in ’em,’ Prozor said. ‘Or whatever counts as power with the Ghosties. If there wasn’t, you’d just be looking at piles of twinkly dust.’

Trusko had one of the glassy guns between his hands. He looked like he was miming it, not actually holding anything, until you squinted away and caught the shivery sense of it, like a heat haze or mirage tricking itself into the form of a weapon.

Something wrong. Something against the natural order of things.

‘I wonder what one of these could do,’ Trusko said.

I reckoned he’d find out soon enough.

We only managed two return trips. On the first one, we took the gold box and the weapons, Trusko and me nursing it back up to the surface while Prozor and Strambli stayed behind in the vault to lighten the strain on the line and get the next load ready. We loaded the box onto the launch, and then went back down the shaft. I couldn’t say I much liked the idea of going back into the bauble. The squawk wasn’t working as well as it had when we landed, even from the surface, and I knew that squawk breaking up was often a herald to the field starting to thicken over. I was expecting it to make Trusko jittery, but he just put it down to the vagaries of his equipment, the cove still convinced he had a few more days of grace before the bauble closed up. At least we were still getting word to and from the
Queenie
, even with the signal breaking up. Drozna hadn’t given the captain anything to trouble his noggin over.

Ten hours were left on the clock by the time the winch brought us back level with the door. We trooped through to the vault, pleased when we met up with Prozor and Strambli. They’d spent their time profitably, going through more of the boxes and sorting the loot into rough categories. They’d found five of the suits of armour, and they were laid out onto the floor now, a blurry presence that you had to
not
look at to stand any chance of seeing. They made me think of those dead cells that float through the liquid of the eye, those swimmy seahorses you can barely see unless it’s bright – except instead of seahorses these were shaped into breastplates and gauntlets and so on. Next to the armour they’d organised some detachable items; visors, helmets, knives and pistols. ‘Be careful with the sharp things,’ Prozor said. ‘Just ’cause you can’t see ’em, don’t mean they can’t take a piece off you.’ She held up her gauntlet, wiggling the fingers. There was a deep gash in the material of her palm, almost enough to break all the way through and allow the lungstuff out.

‘You’ve done us proud,’ Trusko said, surveying the spoils. ‘We’ll be up and down that shaft more times than we can count, but it still makes me shudder to think what we’ll need to leave behind. If I had atomic munitions I’d think of collapsing the shaft itself!’

Someone else flooding the market with Ghostie stuff wasn’t going to be the cove’s most immediate and pressing problem, I thought. But I kept my trap shut.

The armour was light, so we didn’t need to leave anyone behind in the vault on the next trip up. Prozor would have found a reason to come up anyway, knowing as she did that we were down to our last ten hours, but at least she was spared the strain of coming up with something.

By the time we got to the bucket Trusko was still drunk on the idea of his fortunes taking a swerve. ‘We’ll need to act with the utmost discretion,’ he was saying, his mind racing ahead to wealth and fame. ‘Even the small amount that we’ll take back with us on the
Queenie
, it’s no good trying to get a price for all that in one go. We’ll maximise our gains by selling on one item at a time, never hinting at the true haul . . .’

‘They’ll get a whiff of it as soon as we sell two bits of Ghostie stuff,’ Strambli said, folding up the bucket’s connecting bridge.

‘Then we’ll need to be
even more
discreet. Secrecy clauses. Never dealing with the same broker twice. No one allowed to speak of what they’ve bought off us, for a year or three . . .’

Prozor took something out of her utility belt. I only got a glimpse of it before she leaned over the side of the bucket and let it fall into the shaft. Because there wasn’t any lungstuff in the shaft, and we were already under two gees, it went down fast.

‘What was that?’ Trusko asked.

‘I was just thinkin’ of them that came here before us, and them that’ll come here later,’ Prozor said.

I think what she dropped into the shaft was a flower, with red petals, and the vacuum must have turned it into something like glass.

But I never asked her and she never spoke of it.

We loaded the Ghostie armour and equipment onto the launch. We were properly tired by then, ready to drop, but I think Trusko still had the spur in him to go back into the bauble at least once before we rested. But when he contacted Drozna, everything changed.

‘Don’t want to make more of it than I should,’ Drozna said, his voice coming over the squawk console inside the launch. ‘But we got something a little while ago.’

‘Got something?’ Trusko asked.

‘It was on the sweeper for a moment. A return, nearby. Something large, but not clear either. All ragged, like it was made up of bits. Then it was gone, and there’s been nothing since.’

‘Probably a fault on the sweeper,’ Trusko said, like he wanted someone to pat him on the back and tell him to stop worrying.

Prozor looked at me. I could only see the middle part of her face through that
grilled-
over porthole, but it was enough. She didn’t like the thought that was forming in her head. A return meant that another ship was near. It couldn’t be the
Nightjammer
, though, because the
Nightjammer
didn’t know we were taking a look at the Fang.

Did it?

‘Something’s not right,’ I said.

And Prozor answered: ‘I think we’re agreed on that.’

I’d played out in my head how and when we might get round to informing Trusko that his ship and crew had been turned into bait for Bosa Sennen, but the time had always been of my choosing, when we were good and ready for it. And somehow, as I ran that little exchange through the toy theatre in my head, I’d got over the knotty part about breaking it to Prozor that the
Nightjammer
already knew where we were. Exactly how I got from one side of that conversation to the other, I hadn’t figured.

I guess it was time to find out.

‘Captain,’ I said, still meeting eyes with Prozor, still aware of her face bottled behind that glass, all angles and fury, ‘there’s something you and I need to have a little chat about.’

‘Fura?’ he asked, not getting the tone of what I was saying.

‘I’d listen to her,’ Prozor said.

Strambli had taken off her helmet now that we were inside the launch. Her madder, larger eye was on me, doubt swimming behind it.

‘What?’

‘You’re in trouble. We’re in trouble. All of us.’ I had to take a breath, forcing myself into something close to calm if not quite calm itself. ‘You’ve been tricked,’ I went on. ‘By me. I’m not what you thought I was, and neither’s Proz. But we’re not your enemy. The enemy is the return Drozna just got on the sweeper.’

‘What,’ Trusko said slowly, ‘would that return be?’

‘It’s Bosa Sennen’s ship. What she calls the
Dame Scarlet
and what the rest of us call the
Nightjammer
.’

‘No,’ the captain said, with a flat certainty. ‘I’ve never crossed orbits with her. Never given her a reason to take an interest in me or my operation. I’m not even sure she exists.’

‘You soon will be,’ I said, reaching up to unlatch my helmet. ‘We’re not going back into the bauble. The auguries weren’t what you thought anyway. Less than seven hours from now, the field starts firming up again. Mainly, though, you need to get us back to the
Queenie
before Bosa closes in for her attack.’

‘Attack,’ Trusko repeated.

It was like he was hearing me, but the words weren’t quite drilling into his noggin.

‘She wants your skull,’ I said. Then, smiling like he might have taken that the wrong way, I added: ‘The one in the bone room. Hers is duff. She blew it taking the
Monetta
.’

‘
Monetta
,’ Strambli said. ‘There’s that name again.’

‘Prozor and I crewed on it,’ I said, lifting off my helmet. ‘We were shipmates, and we survived Bosa Sennen.’ Then, to Trusko: ‘I wasn’t kidding, Captain. We really do need to be on our way. I can explain how the rest of it’s going to work out as we cross over.’

Prozor turned to him. ‘Fura and I’ve got a few little points of order to settle between us. But she’s right about one thing. We do need to be up and off the bauble. You noticed how blurry those stars were starting to look, before we got back on the launch?’

‘I thought it was my helmet,’ Trusko said. ‘Getting all smeared over.’

‘It wasn’t. It’s space is what’s starting to smear over. Just a bit, not enough to stop us leaving. But the one thing we don’t want to do is sit around here bumpin’ our gums.’

‘Are you . . . serious?’ he asked, his gaze switching between the two of us.

‘Never been more serious, Captain,’ I told him. ‘But everything’s all right. I didn’t set you up to be torn apart by Bosa. She’s the one who’s in for a surprise.’

22

We lifted from the bauble, Trusko pushing the rockets all the way they’d go, the gees squeezing us into our seats, the engines roaring behind the aft bulkhead and the frame of the launch moaning and groaning like it was having bad dreams of its own. The ground fell away fast, the horizon bending into a curve that got sharper and sharper with every league we climbed. The one thing to be said for baubles was that it didn’t take long to put some distance from them. Only a minute after departure, we were already high enough for the field not to be a concern, even if it snapped back there and then.

Trusko eased back on the engines and began to lock us in for rendezvous with the
Queenie
. ‘I’ll squawk Drozna,’ he said, already reaching out to flick switches. He had taken off his helmet, but other than that he still had all of his suit on. ‘Warn him to start running out the sails.’

‘You can do that,’ I said, from the seat behind his control position. ‘But if you want to make it through to the end of the day, don’t say a word about it being Bosa. Don’t even sound as if you’re all that concerned – just that you’re coming back as a precaution.’

Prozor had slipped off her own helmet. She was sitting in the seat next to mine, across the narrow aisle that ran the length of Trusko’s launch. ‘Fura’s right,’ she said, squaring her jaw as if the words had given her toothache. ‘It’s fine to react – Bosa will have picked up Drozna’s squawk about the sweeper return. But you can’t let Bosa know you’ve any idea it’s her that’s coming in. She ain’t even crossed your mind yet. You’re still thinkin’ this is some other ship that wants a sniff at your claim and might not be too polite about it, but another part of you’s not even convinced that return wasn’t a phantom.’

‘We don’t even know it is Bosa,’ Strambli said, with a quivery desperation in her voice. ‘Do we?’

‘It’s Bosa all right,’ Prozor said, taking a kind of malicious pleasure in it, the way some people just love delivering bad news. ‘Ain’t it, Fura? Go on, ask the Bone Reader. She’s the one that called Bosa in.’

I slid my tongue over my lips. ‘I wasn’t planning on lying to you, Proz – any more than you were planning on lying to me about the auguries.’

‘What about the auguries?’ Trusko asked.

‘Call Drozna,’ I said. ‘Then we’ll talk. And remember – not a word about Bosa, or she’ll know something’s rum. We’ve got an edge on her now, but we’ll take the shine off it if we’re not careful.’

Trusko flipped the switches. ‘Drozna,’ he said, swallowing hard before carrying on. ‘That return may or may not have been real. Probably there’s nothing out there, but we’re coming back as a matter of routine. Have Surt check the sweeper. We’ll be in dock in fifty minutes.’

‘It was real,’ Drozna said. ‘Whatever I saw. But Surt’s looking into it anyway.’

‘Very good.’ Trusko closed the connection, then twisted back to look at us. ‘Tell me what you meant about the auguries, Fura.’

‘Ask Proz,’ I said.

He switched his gaze onto her. ‘Well?’

Prozor sighed, shook her head slowly. ‘You’d have found out in a few hours. The window’s tighter than I said it was. Much tighter. We’d have had time for one more trip into the bauble, and that’d have been cuttin’ it nice. The way those stars were starting to quiver, maybe not even that much time.’

‘Why?’ Strambli said. ‘Why did you lie about that?’

‘Because we needed the Ghostie stuff, and you wouldn’t have gone into the bauble if you’d known the odds,’ Prozor said.

‘
We
,’ Trusko said. ‘So it’s true. You’ve been working against us, both of you, this whole time . . .’ Then a dark thought seemed to settle behind his forehead. ‘Gathing. Surt. Please don’t tell me . . .’

‘Surt’s fine,’ Prozor said. ‘She had to be put out of commission, that’s all. And I didn’t see none of you shedding any tears over Gathing.’

Trusko made to reach for the console.

‘What’re you doing?’ I asked.

His hand stilled over the switches. ‘Calling Drozna. Telling him to make arrangements to put the two of you in irons, soon as we dock.’

‘I wouldn’t,’ Prozor said. ‘For a start, it’ll clue Bosa in that there’s something odd goin’ on, and that’s the last thing you want. Secondly, the only way you’re getting through to the end of this day is by doin’
exactly
what I tell you. You think we wanted the Ghostie stuff ’cause we’re short of a few quoins? I had my share of quoins and Black Shatterday showed me what they’re worth. I ain’t in this for money.’ Prozor shot me a guarded look, not hostile but not exactly what you’d call companionable. ‘Nor’s she. What we’re in this for is payin’ back Bosa, and it’s the Ghostie stuff that’s key to it. Bosa won’t be ready for it.’

‘And we will be?’ Trusko asked. ‘If Drozna’s already picked up a return on the sweeper, she can’t be far out.’

‘Probably ain’t.’ Prozor shrugged. ‘Bosa’s way, she doesn’t show herself until it’s too late to cut and run. She ain’t showed herself proper yet, so what Drozna saw was probably a mistake. Runnin’ out her guns to test ’em, or something. Or putting out a launch and boardin’ squad. Now, I was countin’ on having a little more time for us to familiarise ourselves with the Ghostie stuff. Like, weeks or months more time. But seein’ as Fura’s decided we only need minutes, that’s what we’ll be workin’ with.’

I fought it, but the shame must have been plain on my face.

Trusko moved his hand from the console. The cove was still nervous, thrown into a dizzy spin by what had happened. He’d steered away from real hazard all his life, and now hazard had come knocking anyway, like it was due an invitation. I thought of how Rackamore had taken the news of Bosa’s return. He hadn’t gone looking for trouble, either, but the difference was he was ready to stare it in the eye when it showed up.

‘I had to move us along,’ I said. ‘If we’d gone to the trouble getting the Ghostie stuff, and then been jumped by
another
ship, or gone to port and sold it all on, before Bosa had a chance to find us . . . anyway, I wasn’t going to wait months. She’s still got my sister, and after what she did to Garval . . .’

‘Who the hel—’ Trusko started.

Prozor raised her voice. ‘We’ve all got questions we’d like answerin’, Cap’n. Some more’n others. But now’s not the time for it. You’ve got to get us safe and sound in the
Queenie
, before Bosa closes in. That means you’ve got to be fast while not lookin’
too
fast.’

‘Because she’d go away, pick another target?’ Strambli asked.

‘No,’ I said, smearing
that
hope like it was a bug under my thumb. ‘Bosa’s after your skull, mainly, and she can’t damage the ship too badly without damaging the goods. She’ll soften you up, then board. By then, the game’s usually over and she won’t be counting on much resistance. That’s when we’ll take her. If we give her reason to spook, she’ll just turn all her
coil-
guns on you from a thousand leagues out. And we ain’t got any defence against that, even with the Ghostie stuff. Close action’s the only edge we’ve got over her, and for that we need to lure her inside the
Queenie
.’

‘Fura’s right,’ Prozor said.

‘The armour’s the key,’ I said. ‘And the sharp things. She won’t be expecting any of that. But we’ve got to be ready by the time we dock. Now for the bad news.’

Trusko gave a gallows laugh. ‘You mean we haven’t already had it?’

‘We’re going to have get into that armour. Five suits is all we’ve got, but five’s all we need. Prozor tells me the armour will fit around us and make us hard to see. The catch is our suits are too bulky. We can’t wear ’em, and that means we can’t do without ship lungstuff.’

‘Could we put the armour on inside the suits?’ Strambli asked.

‘Not if your suit’s already as tight as mine is,’ I said. ‘Anyway, that would rob us of half the benefit from the armour, which is being slippery on the eyes.’

‘Captain,’ said Prozor. ‘Can you keep us on a steady headin’ for a few minutes, while we try on our new toys?’

‘Yes, yes,’ Trusko stammered. ‘We’re lined up for the time being. But I must keep in contact with Drozna. I’d do so normally.’

‘Fine,’ I said. ‘But a word out of place, and Bosa’ll give you cause to regret it. Strambli: lay out the armour and figure out which bit goes where. Prozor and I’ll start getting out of our suits. Watch your hands on those sharp things.’

We’d stowed the armour and guns inside the launch, in the compartments ahead of the aft bulkhead. The launch was still on a whisper of thrust, so it wasn’t properly weightless, and that helped with getting everything organised. Prozor and I got on with the sweaty, grunty business of shedding the rest of our suits, helping each other out, but not making too much in the way of pleasant conversation while we were about it. I wasn’t surprised. We’d both kept stuff from each other, Prozor with the auguries and me with the
Nightjammer
, but if I was blunt with myself, mine was the slyer of our deceptions.

I’d been honest in my explanation, too. I wasn’t prepared to drag things out with Bosa. But I think it was going to take a bit more than a word or two to square things with Prozor. I wanted her back on my side, though. I’d come to like thinking of her as a friend, and I didn’t much care for the idea that she felt I’d betrayed her.

Even if that’s what I’d done.

‘I don’t understand why it had to be us,’ Strambli was saying, while she laid out the armour, mostly by feel rather than sight.

‘I might ask the same question,’ Trusko called back.

‘Because you weren’t brave,’ I said. ‘You weren’t brave, and you weren’t successful. We needed a crew Bosa wouldn’t think twice about jumping, because you looked like easy pickings. Amateurs, which is what you are. And when you put yourselves in harm’s way, out here around the Fang, it wouldn’t ever have occurred to Bosa that you were luring her in deliberately.’

‘We weren’t,’ Strambli said.

‘I was,’ I answered, colder than the last breath of the Old Sun. Then, feeling that I owed them a bit more of the picture: ‘Bosa took Adrana, my sister. She’s another Bone Reader. She’s better than me, and I’m better than most. Adrana and I’ve been in contact, through the bones. I told her about the Fang, and how she had to slip Bosa the idea about jumping us.’

‘You knew what we’d find here,’ Trusko said, marvellingly, as if he was only now starting to see how thoroughly he’d been played. ‘All along. You lied to me, didn’t you? That intelligence . . .’

‘It was what I needed to do, Captain. But understand, it wasn’t anything against you, not on a personal level. In fact I’m doing you a favour. You and all the captains. You slink around pretending she’s not out there, but deep down she’s got the shivers into you, and that ends now. We’re taking Bosa Sennen. We’re taking the
Nightjammer
.’

Forty minutes is a long time when there’s something you’d rather be doing, but it’s no time at all in a pickle. Truth was, I’d rather have been doing a lot of things other than figuring out the workings of the Ghostie armour. But I also knew we couldn’t count on much grace when we got to the
Queenie
, assuming we got there before Bosa made her jump. We had to work out what we had, what we could use, and just as importantly how to use it – all in the time it took a tram to get from one end of Jauncery to the other.

Getting out of the suits was the start of it. We were stripped down to just a layer of clothes, just enough to stop a cove freezing to death: leggings and vests and not much else. I kept telling myself that the suits wouldn’t have made much difference, not where Bosa was concerned, but it was still hard to let go of the one thing that felt like it might have stopped a crossbow bolt.

With my arms bare – what was left of my arms, anyway – the glowy really stood out. The others noticed it too. It hadn’t been like that before, not even before I started getting treated for it. I could feel the lightvine tingling under my cheeks and brow, too, shining like fierce warpaint.

I felt fierce, too. And if I wasn’t ready for a war, then I was ready for battle.

No: not a battle, exactly.

Close action.

We started trying on the armour. Just being near the Ghostie stuff was making snakes slither in my gut, and now I had to fit it around me like I was trying on a corset. But the armour wanted to help, in its own queer way. Pieces joined up too easily, or adjusted themselves to fit more snugly. There was something quietly wicked about it, like a cove that whispers in your ear too much, earning your trust. We wanted something of the armour, but I couldn’t help wondering what the armour wanted of us.

The armour wasn’t just invisible when it was laid out on the floor. When you fixed it on, the part of the body it was covering became just as hard to see. The sleeve piece made my flesh forearm disappear below the elbow, so that my elbow became a stump and the hand seemed to be floating in the lungstuff on its own. I could see the smoky outline of my vanished arm, but like the armour it hardly showed at all unless you were looking nearly away from it. I had a thermal glove on my flesh hand, but there was nothing like a glove in the Ghostie armour, just an extended plate that covered the area from the wrist to the finger joints. There were other gaps too, and as I was fixing on my own pieces I wondered what the point was of only being
three-
quarters invisible, or
seven-
eighths. It was only when I saw Prozor and Strambli that my doubts were settled. I could see the gaps between their armour, the flesh and fabric of their normal selves, but holding onto the
idea
of those gaps, and joining up the spaces between them to make a monkey form . . . that was harder than it had any right to be. It was as if the fact of them wearing Ghostie armour was making me forget what a person was meant to look like who
wasn’t
inside the armour. It was slippery in more ways than just being hard to see. It was getting into our heads, and I didn’t much care for the feeling.

By the time we’d sorted out the armour, we had about ten minutes left until docking. Trusko had been speaking to Drozna on and off, sticking more or less to script. If they had some secret code worked out between them, Prozor and I weren’t smart enough to plumb it. I didn’t think it likely. Captains only come up with secret codes and procedures when they expect to run into trouble, and Trusko’s whole career was built around avoiding it in the first place.