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do with it,’ Adrana countered. ‘That ship’s just small.’
    The launch veered, bringing the orbiting Monetta to my side of the windows. Adrana hadn’t been exaggerating. It did look tiny. Worse, we’d be putting our lives in the care of that fragile- seeming thing. The thought put an extra twist in my belly.
    What we were looking at was just the hull of the ship, as the sails and rigging hadn’t yet been run out. It was just a dark little husk, pointy at one end, flared at the other, lodged against the twinkly background of the Congregation like a paper cut- out in a lantern show.
    Put a crossbow to my head and force me into describing it, and I’d say Rackamore’s ship was fish- shaped. The hull was longer than it was wide, and all curvy along its length, with hardly any angles in the thing at all. There were ridges and flanges all along it, just as if it had been made from planks, curved and joined neat as you could ask. But like a fish – like some bony, poisonous, bad- tempered fish – it also had all manner of fins and barbs and stingers and spines jutting out this way and that. Some of them I could guess had something to do with her rigging. And like a fish, it had a big gapey jaw at one end, and a pair of bulgy eyes near the jaw – they were big windows – and at the other end of the hull was a thing like a lady’s fan, stiffened with ribs, that couldn’t help but look like a tail.
    We sidled in closer. Rackamore used the rockets like a miser, quickly tapping them on and off to cut our speed almost to zero.
    ‘See? She seems bigger now. As she should. Four hundred spans, prow to stern. Seventy- five spans across at the widest point. She could swallow twenty of these launches and still have room in her belly. Prow is the open mouth where we’re about to dock. Stern is the other end, where the ion exhaust fans out. She moves both ways, and up and down, and sideways if need be, but we have to agree on something – you never know when your life might depend on it. Do you like her?’
    ‘Still doesn’t look big to me,’ Adrana said.
    It didn’t look big to me either, even up close, but now that she’d stated her mind I saw a chance to get one over on my sister.
    ‘It’s big enough. What were you expecting, a palace?’
    Adrana glared at me.
    ‘She’s a good ship,’ Cazaray said. ‘Whatever you make of her now, she’ll feel like home before you know it.’
    Someone on the Monetta’s Mourn must have been alerted to our arrival, for the jaw gaped wider, cranking open to reveal a red- lit mouth, a red- lit gullet, into which we slid like a fat morsel, no quicker than a walking pace, until the launch clanged against some restraint or cradle and all was still.
    We stayed weightless. Rackamore and Cazaray came out of their chairs and indicated that we could unbuckle, but that we should move with caution until we were confident. ‘One kick in the wrong direction,’ the captain said, ‘and you’ll be nursing a bruise until Mournday week.’
    Through my porthole, I watched the jaw close up again, squeezing out the last glimmer of the Congregation. Now all I saw were the red walls around us, ribbed with metal and strung with guts of pipes and tubes. Figures moved around outside, just beyond the launch. They wore brassy spacesuits with armoured parts and complicated hinged joints, their faces hidden under metal helmets with grilled- over faceplates.
    ‘We can pressurise the launch hold,’ Rackamore said. ‘But most of the time it isn’t worth the trouble. Easier to suit up.’
    There was another clang, then some metal scraping and scuffing noises, conducted through the fabric of the hull, and then a squeal as the lock was opened from outside.
    A small, wiry woman, not wearing a suit, popped her head into the launch.
    ‘Welcome back, Cap’n.’ Then a nod to the younger man. ‘Cazaray. These the recruits, is they?’
    ‘The Ness sisters,’ Rackamore said. ‘Treat them well, for they may turn