‘No,’ I said carefully. ‘There’ll be no mention of that. We’ll need to do this together, Proz. It’s going well in the bone room. I think I can start drip-feeding him some juicy intelligence about the Fang, just enough to pluck his interest. Sooner or later, if he bites on what I’ve given him, he’ll want to know how the auguries lie. You might need to sugar that pill a little.’
‘Sugar it a lot, I’d say.’
‘I’m sure you’re up to it.’
‘Dicey one, all the same. Got to make it seem attractive to ’im, enough to dig himself out of the hole he’s in, but not too attractive, or he’ll sniff that there’s a rat.’
I smiled. ‘Two of ’em.’
‘He just don’t know it yet. And the longer he don’t know it, the better it suits Proz.’
I settled my good hand on her shoulder. ‘The better it suits me as well. I never thought you’d be as good a friend to me as you’ve become. But I’m grateful.’
‘Rackamore didn’t know the trouble he was unbottlin’ when he signed you on, Fura. None of us did. But I’m not sorry to be around to see it.’
18
I slipped the neural bridge onto my scalp. I’d cut my hair a little more, where it had grown back since my time on the Monetta, and the bridge fitted good and tight now. The skull, rum at first, full of quirks, now felt like the only one I’d ever touched. Being a Bone Reader, I supposed, was a bit like playing a musical instrument. The instrument had to be in tune, but you also had to tune yourself to it, and that wasn’t done in a day or even a month. But once you bent yourself into the right shape, no other instrument would ever feel like the right one.
I got to know the skull’s habits and moods. Whether it was luck, or some prickly intuition, I got better at guessing which node was going to be the talkative one, even without trying out all the peripheral inputs. I could close the bone room door, spin the locking wheel, jack in, and start teasing out whispers inside of a couple of minutes. Trusko liked his intelligence, and it suited me fine to spend long hours in that room, especially as those were hours when I wasn’t having to keep up a front around the others.
Trusko put a lot of stock in my reports, and the things he had me sending out, but I didn’t need years of experience to see that most of it wasn’t worth the cost of lungstuff. It’d been different on the Monetta. Rackamore’d had friends and allies on lots of other ships, and they were always swapping titbits and confidences, even though they were technically in competition with each other. What mattered was that none of them were combine, or too cut-throat. They had a code of conduct, and it was natural to feed favours back and forth. But Trusko wasn’t part of anything like that, and it was only crumbs and scraps that seemed to come his way, more by pity than anything else. If you listened to him, there was no other ship he didn’t know, and all the other captains were close personal acquaintances. I’d have swallowed it too, if I hadn’t had Prozor to put me straight. Trusko wasn’t a bad cove, she said – it wasn’t that he’d done anything bad to the other captains. But he also hadn’t done anything to make them think of him as their equal. You could buy a ship and a crew, but you couldn’t buy respect.
He was like that child who always wants to join in the others’ games, but wants it too badly, so that the other children wonder why they don’t already have friends of their own, and end up even less likely to invite them in. The titbits of intelligence that came in, those that were meant for Trusko, were mostly sent in sympathy and I knew there wasn’t much value in them. It was the same with these three baubles he’d put so much stock in. If they’d been worth a damn, other ships would have been squabbling over Opener rights.
At least I was able to pick up on the signals that weren’t intended for the Queen Crimson. But even then, the majority of them were of limited use. Being told that a bauble was about to pop was no use if you were the wrong side of the Congregation, which the Queenie had a habit of being. Trusko took my reports eagerly, smoothing his thumb over my transcripts as if fortunes were nearly in his grasp. But I knew most of it was worthless. Still, I was happy to humour him. He was hanging off these little titbits so eagerly that I had to fight not to mention the Fang. The time had to be right – not a moment too soon or too late.
Meanwhile, I listened to the whispers. Over the days I came to recognise some of the senders, picking up a certain signature in the way they pushed their voiceless messages into the superloom. Sometimes I knew which ship or world they were on, but as often as not there was no way of telling where they were or how far it was. But I always formed a clear mental image of them, certain in my head when it was a girl or when it was a boy, and I imagined them a year or two older than me, but rarely very much older than that, and always in their own windowless bone room, sharing their thoughts with the wire-strung bones of a skull that had once known dreams of its own. Some were sharp senders, and they came through like pure notes in an orchestra, and what they were sending was always clear and precise. Others were fuzzier, and you had to strain to get what they were pushing, but that wasn’t always the fault of the sender. Their skulls might be small or old or broken, or the glinty stuff in them might be flickering away to darkness. Or they might be trying to send on a bad channel, using the noise instead of fighting it, so there was less chance of another cove listening in.
The thing that never crossed my mind was that, just as I was getting used to the way the other Bone Readers worked, somewhere out there might be someone getting used to me.
We were three days out from the second bauble when she whispered through.
‘Fura. Tell me it’s you.’
I felt a surge of joy and hope that was like the Old Sun’s light breaking through a knot of worlds.
‘Adrana! It’s me, yes! I said I’d come for you, didn’t I? I know it’s taken a while, but I had to find another ship, and . . . oh, never mind – what’s happened to me doesn’t matter. Are you all right? It can’t be too bad, can it, if she’s letting you use the bones?’
‘She won’t hurt me – not willingly. It’s the only saving grace, the only thing that’s stopped me going mad or doing something desperate. She has to treat me pretty well, and she can’t risk running me to exhaustion or she’ll start getting inaccurate reports. So I’m fed and kept warm and allowed to sleep good hours and she daren’t do anything bad to me in case it shuts down my aptitude. But it hasn’t been good. She knows that we lied, Fura – Garval and I. And that means she knows you might have survived.’
‘Has she punished Garval?’
‘Did you see Father? They were taking you back to Mazarile. Is he all right?’
‘I . . . yes. I saw Father. It’s not good, Adrana. He’s . . .’
‘Weak, I know. He always kept the worst of it from you. He didn’t want you worrying all the time. Do me one last favour, Fura. Whatever ship you’ve weedled your way onto, get off it and back to Mazarile. Go to him and promise you won’t leave.’
‘I can’t,’ I said, hoping she didn’t pick up on the terrible emptiness in me. ‘Not now. What about Garval? What happened to her?’
It was a cold mercy when my sister turned from questioning me about Father, to speaking of Garval. ‘It’s awful, Fura. Worse than I can describe. Bosa doesn’t often get the chance to make an example of a traitor, someone who’s got that close to her under the cover of a lie . . . but now she’s making up for it.’
‘Has she killed her?’
‘She’s killing her, Fura. Slowly. Horribly. There’s a drug, a chemical that does things to bones. Monkey bones. While you’re still alive. She’s got it running into Garval, and each day we get to see what it’s done to her, the change since the day before . . . and we all know where it’ll lead. Where it’ll end. I’d kill her if I could, Fura – honestly I would. I’d do her that kindness, and kiss her while I was doing it. But Bosa’s too sly. No one ever gets close enough to put Garval out of her misery, and
most of her crew wouldn’t care to anyway. And if I did, she’d turn her rage on me, Bone Reader or not.’
‘If you’re trying to make me forget about Bosa, that’s not the way to go about it.’
‘No, Fura. I meant it. I’m glad that we’ve found each other again – better than glad. You’ve given me a reason to go on. But I’ll find a way out of this on my own. You can’t get involved.’
‘I already am. And I was going to find Bosa one way or another. We’re coming for her, Adrana.’
‘It won’t do any good. Do you remember how it was with Rackamore?’
‘Rackamore wasn’t prepared for her,’ I said. ‘And he wouldn’t have destroyed the Nightjammer even if he had the means.’
‘And you think you could?’
‘Hurt her,’ I said. ‘Badly. Yes, I can do that. And if she wants to play that game, I can start dreaming up cruelties as well.’
‘Then listen. I made a mistake, and you got caught up in it. For a while I thought I had your death on my conscience, and that was worse than anything Bosa could come up with for me. But now I know better, and whatever she does, she can’t take that knowledge from me. But I won’t see you put in harm’s way again.’
I felt the stub of my forearm, jammed into the tin sleeve of my false hand. I felt the glowy itching through my skin, and pushing inquisitive little tendrils into my skull. I thought of Morcenx and Quindar, the men I had left behind on Mazarile, yelping and screaming on the ground, pawing at their sightless eyes.
‘It’s a little late to keep me out of harm’s way.’
We closed contact, but only after we had found a time in our respective duties when we would both be on the bones in the same watch. I knew there was much left to be said, and much that could never be said, at least not until we were together again. Inside, I was a turmoil of stirred-up feelings, and none of them were good. I felt all shivery and sick, as if for the first time I grasped what I was setting myself up for. Bosa Sennen was real, and if I’d begun to let the fact of that slip from my attention, now it had been rammed home. She was real and cruel, and her dark phantom of a ship was somewhere out there, sending through the superloom, and I was stupid enough to think I could take on both Bosa and the Nightjammer.
Prozor saw me when I spun the wheel on the bone room, locking the door from the outside.
‘Somethin’ changed,’ she said, looking at me harder than I liked. ‘Don’t know what, but somethin’ did.’
‘My face is that easy to read?’
‘You ain’t a bauble, Fura. You don’t cloak your secrets too well.’ Prozor took my tin fingers in her own. ‘I figured it was a matter of time, assuming she was still alive. You two being such naturals, when it comes to the bones. How’s she?’
‘Alive. Beyond that, I’m not sure.’
‘What did you tell her?’
‘That I’m coming.’
Prozor looked away sharply. ‘And it never occurred to you she might not be your sister any more? Not in any way that matters?’
‘It was her.’
‘Ain’t saying it wasn’t. Just that her loyalties might have shifted.’
I almost slapped her. She must have seen the spite in my eyes, because she tightened her grip on my hand.
‘I know her,’ I said, squeezing the words out between my teeth.
‘Thought I knew you, too,’ Prozor said. ‘But you changed. You became something you wasn’t, and it didn’t take months and months. You think your sister can’t change the same amount? Adrana’s strong, but then, so was Illyria.’
‘She became the new Bosa. I know. But that can’t happen to Adrana. You said it yourself: Bosa uses drugs and surgery, and she wouldn’t risk either of those things with a Bone Reader.’
‘I told you somethin’ else, too, which is that she uses psychology. Bosa’s poison, and she poisons them around her. They ain’t all working for her because she’s got ’em hurt or terrified. She makes ’em love her, like a disease, and once that loyalty gets in their blood, they start seeing things Bosa’s way.’ But Prozor closed her eyes, held them like that for a few moments, then opened them in a slow and wary way, as if there was a chance that things might have improved while she had her eyes shut. But the bitter resignation on her expression said things were exactly as they were before. ‘Dwellin’ on what can or can’t be changed doesn’t get you far. You mention any of the particulars of your plan to her?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘Nothing about the Fang, or the Ghostie stuff.’
‘Good. Keep it that way, if I were you. You think you can out-sly Bosa, but you’re wrong. You give her even half a reason to guess that you’re setting a trap, she’ll see through you like you’re made of lookstone.’
‘It’s no good just being ready for her,’ I said.
‘Which we’re not.’
‘But we will be – soon. But even then, we can’t just keep sailing from bauble to bauble until Bosa sets her sights on Trusko. She had history with Rack, and she wanted new Bone Readers. There’s no reason in all the worlds that she’d ever pick this scummy ship as a target. You heard Gathing: what they found in that bauble won’t buy a new set of sails, let alone allow a cove to retire. So Bosa won’t come to us. Not unless we give her reason to.’
‘And you’ve got a plan for that, have you?’
‘The start of one. We’re going to feed misinformation to Trusko, to get him to do what we want. Adrana can do the same to Bosa. Spin her a story that makes the Queenie a target she wouldn’t be able to pass up.’
‘Retribution’s one thing,’ Prozor said. ‘Suicide’s another.’
‘We’ll be ready for her. We’ll have the Ghostie stuff.’ I knuckled the corridor wall. ‘This ship isn’t built for permanence, Proz, ’least not under her present captain. Trusko’s just barely holding it together. I ain’t waiting years and years on the off-chance, not when the Queenie could fall apart at any minute.’ I flexed my tin fingers, hearing the creak as the little hinges worked. ‘I’ve got the spur in me now and I want what’s rightfully mine.’
‘We get the Ghostie stuff,’ Prozor said, with deliberation in her voice. ‘If we can get it. That ain’t under our belts yet. First we’ll have to persuade Trusko. Then he’ll have to magic up a team that’s at least as good as the one Rack had. Then we’ll find out if they’ve got the spine to go as deep into that bauble as they’ll need to, and that’s assuming no one’s been there since we did.’
‘Bauble?’ a voice asked.
It was Gathing. He’d approached us along the corridor that ran past the bone room, too quietly for it to be accidental.
‘No law against conversation,’ I said.
‘Didn’t say there was, did I? But you were talking about something in particular. Going deep. That’s an odd line of conversation to have.’
‘Case you forgot,’ Prozor said, ‘I’m the Bauble Reader.’
‘But a Bauble Reader concerns themselves with auguries, surfaces, and not much else,’ Gathing said. ‘Never been a Bauble Reader’s business to talk about what’s inside.’
‘We all share the same profit,’ I said. ‘Stands to reason we’d have an interest in the particulars.’
‘No one’s been there since we did,’ Gathing said, parroting Prozor’s manner of speaking. ‘Those were the words, I think. Care to clarify who’s “we”, and where and when it was that “we” were there before?’
‘You misheard,’ Prozor said.
‘Seems I must have. Well, at least it’s good to see the two of you having a civil conversation, instead of being at each other’s throats. I must remember to tell Trusko how well you’re getting on all of a sudden. Captain could use some good news, after that wash-out at the first bauble.’
Prozor shrugged. ‘Tell Trusko what you like. Had my doubts about Fura, that’s all. Weren’t you the same?’
‘Differ
ence is,’ Gathing said, ‘I don’t let go of my doubts in such a hurry.’ He flashed a quick, cynical smile. ‘I’ll leave you to it, shall I? Expect there’s plenty more you’ve got to talk about.’
We watched him go. I waited until I was certain he was out of earshot before turning to Prozor.
‘He knows.’
‘No,’ she said. ‘He don’t. Just thinks he might, is all, and that’s not the same thing. But we’ll have to keep an eye on that cove.’
‘If he asks me too many questions, he might see through the both of us. I can’t let that happen.’
Prozor looked at me with a wicked fascination. ‘You thinkin’ of killin’ ’im?’
‘No,’ I said, startled that she’d consider such a thing. ‘He’s snidey and I don’t like his face, and if he starts poking around too much . . . but no, not that.’ But now that the thought was out there, it was hard to push it out of my mind. ‘There’d have to be another way, Proz.’
‘It’s a ship. Tends to narrow your options for keepin’ coves quiet.’ She paused. ‘Still, we couldn’t off ’im even if we wanted to, could we? He’s Trusko’s Assessor. And Trusko wouldn’t go into a bauble without his Assessor.’
‘No,’ I said. ‘Not unless he had another one.’
We reached the second bauble, hauled in sail, trimmed our orbit. The routine was the same as the first, the window just as generous. Trusko’s party went down in the launch, while Drozna, Tindouf, Surt, Prozor and I twiddled our thumbs on the ship, stuffing our faces with beer and bread, filling the long hours with the kind of aimless, meandering conversation that sailors get very good at. I didn’t doubt that we were going over ground that had already been trod down a thousand times just in the career of the Queenie, but the point of it wasn’t to arrive anywhere, it was to stop having to think about quoins or bankruptcy or bad auguries or the hungry old vacuum that pressed against our windows, salivating at the thought of what it could do to us.