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‘And it isn’t just passage she’ll be offering you. It’s a job on her schooner too.’
    Lana ignored Calder’s anger, reaching down to scratch the head of the wizard’s hound. ‘You still with this old reprobate, Buddy? Thought you might have traded up to a better class of master by now?’
    ‘Pah,’ said the dog, half a resigned growl of agreement.
    ‘My hound,’ said Matobo.
    Calder shivered in superstitious fear. ‘You expect me to demean myself by working as a common sailor, wizard? I have the honour of my house to uphold. You cannot mean me to flee my own land in this pauper manner?’
    ‘You call this a little favour?’ laughed Lana Fiveworlds. ‘Taking his neo-barbarian slipped-back ass on the Gravity Rose ? Is the man even housetrained? Shit, it’ll be quicker teaching that pet monkey of Polter’s to be crew. What kind of retards were his ancestors anyway, settling on this bastard world?’
    ‘Wasn’t their fault,’ said Matobo. ‘Didn’t you read the wiki on this world? The first settlers came in racked, stacked and packed on coffin ships. Overpopulation excess, poor as dirt. Too poor to pay for a decent survey of the Hesperus system. When they set down, this world was a paradise. Forty years later the interglacial ended, and a full-bore ice age started. I still have the original brochure from nine hundred years ago. Fragrant pine forests and sandy beaches. Of course, the settlers were too poor to afford a mass lift-out from Hesperus, even if they could have found a civilised planet willing to stamp a quarter of a million no-money colonists’ entry visas. The mining combine backing them shrugged its shoulders, pointed to the emigration indemnity waiver and walked. So here their descendants stay, and here they shiver.’
    ‘Jeez,’ said the strange gold-skinned sailor. ‘You just have to look at the forests here. Steel-tough trees you need a plasma cutter to fell. Any biologist worth a shit in the park could’ve told you what kind of weather pattern that’s going to mean. Wasn’t any beach and bikini settlement.’
    ‘You got that right,’ the wizard turned back to Calder. ‘This is how it is, your highness. Exile is never easy. Take it from someone who can’t go home himself. But it’s either my friends here, or execution by burning if you stay. Trust me, working as crew isn’t as bad as it sounds. Not when you’re on a magic vessel.’
    Calder was feeling recovered enough from his injuries for a flash of anger towards the sorcerer. ‘Trust you! The last time you asked me to trust you, all I ended up losing was my love, my kingdom, my crew, my ship, and now my honour.’
    ‘You put it like that,’ said Lana Fiveworlds, ‘and I might start liking you. What with us having so much in common and all.’
    The golden sailor, Zeno, laughed. ‘Anyone who’s met Rex Matobo has that story in common. You should be ashamed of your flammy ass, old man, coming down here and pulling your Wizard of Oz scam on this failed world.’
    The wizard raised his hands placatingly. ‘It was for the locals’ good. Could’ve got them real organized if the horse I’d backed came in. This place is mineral rich. Drag it back to the carbon age, set up a freight sling in orbit, and the same mining combine that dumped this hole would be clamouring for cargo boosts from us. Give it a hundred years and we’d be streaming out minerals, a line of solar sails so tight that traffic control would need an upgrade to handle them. And best of all, you do the mining here old school-style, and you’d be pumping out so much CO2 that soon enough the place’ll be global warming itself back to short sleeves and cocktails by the beach.’
    ‘Yeah,’ said Lana Fiveworlds, ‘you’re a real philanthropist, Rex. But seeing as how the reality is you’ve got everyone here all steamed up at you, same as normal, how come you’re not running out and taking prince charming with you? I pegged your ship in a crater on the