‘Agreed,’ said Erlin with a smile.

Janer opened his wallet, but before he could remove any money, Keech laid one bony hand over it. ‘You neglected to mention the required power cells. Does your price include them as well?’ he asked.

‘You are all thieves!’ shouted the shopkeeper.

Keech stepped back and left the bargaining to Erlin.

With the door to his cabin firmly closed, Ambel sat on his bed and stared over at his sea-chest, the bait meat held in his right hand like a bloody hankerchief. He tilted his head as if listening to something, then shook it in annoyance, before abruptly rising and stepping across his cabin to stand before the chest itself. With his free hand he opened the lid and took out an oblong box a metre long and a third of that wide and deep. This he placed on his table then took a key for the lock from his top pocket. After unlocking the box, he returned the key to his pocket, then stepped back a bit before flipping up the lid. The thing inside did not leap out, though there were signs of movement.

It was blue and filled the box. It was a head. Once it had been a human head, but now it was so horribly enlarged, stretched out and distorted that it was difficult to recognize it as such. It was more like the head of some bastard offspring of a baboon and a warthog. Ambel stood and glowered at it as it shifted in its box, and one of its insane black eyes blinked open and returned his look. It was still alive, and he questioned the impulse that made him keep it so. That the historian, Olian Tay, had offered him a fortune for it, he now knew as incidental — he wasn’t keeping it for her. Perhaps he kept it out of sadism. No one could be more deserving of punishment than this… individual. Ambel dropped the piece of bait meat in the box and slammed the lid shut. Next time he looked, he knew the meat would be gone, as the Skinner retained a tenacity for life. After wiping his hand, Ambel locked the box then placed it back in his sea-chest before slamming and locking the lid of that. He left his cabin speedily, as one glad to be away from some unpleasant but necessary task. Peck was standing just outside, gazing at him strangely. He held the panga in his right hand and was spattered with purple blood and flecks of turbul meat. Even to Ambel he was a disquieting sight.

‘Turbul all chopped, Peck?’ Ambel asked.

The crewman took a moment to reply. ‘How… is the bugger?’ he asked.

‘Alive,’ said Ambel. ‘Still alive.’

Peck nodded slowly. ‘Can still hear ‘im muttering,’ he said.

‘We’ll always hear that,’ said Ambel, reaching out and carefully slapping Peck on the shoulder. ‘Let’s get that turbul pickled and stowed, man.’

As Ambel walked past Peck, the crewman stared at the door to the cabin with his face screwed up in an expression that might have been remembered pain or might have been longing.

‘How many barrels?’ Ambel asked Anne as she lowered a full net down to the hive of activity in the hold.

‘Twelve in all, with enough spare to do us for a week or so. Good run,’ she added.

Ambel studied her face. The leech scars there had not detracted from her rugged attractiveness, and her long black hair showed not a speck of grey despite her many years. The virus affected different people in different ways. Some became wrinkled prunes with grizzled hair; some, like Anne, stayed at their peak; others lost all their hair and sometimes their teeth too. Ambel himself had been like Anne, long in the past. Over the numerous years since, he had, like many of the Old Captains, incrementally increased his muscular bulk. Now he had cropped white hair, a young-looking but wide face, and the overall appearance of someone who could snap deck timbers between his fingers — and it wasn’t a deceptive appearance.

‘We going after another run?’ Boris asked from below.

‘Nope, lad,’ said Ambel. ‘It’s a night moon and we’ve still got time to get to the sands. I don’t want all our barrels filled with turbul. It only pulls down a few skind and the market’ll be flooded.’ He looked up. ‘We go east,’ he spoke loudly so the sail could hear him.

‘Amberclams?’ asked Pland, picking bait meat from under his fingernails with a skinning knife.

‘Amberclams,’ Ambel confirmed.

‘That’s a relief,’ he said. ‘I thought you were thinking of a hunt.’

Ambel grinned at him, then went below to help Boris and the juniors stow the barrels.

The voice from his Hive link had a hint of buzzing behind it but Janer reckoned that was just showmanship. Hornets did not communicate by buzzing, and Hive minds certainly did not. He suspected that this ersatz buzzing was the mind’s idea of a joke.

‘I would like you to travel with this Erlin. I find her interesting,’ the mind told him.

It wasn’t an instruction any more. The mind had ceased to issue instructions when his indenture had run out two decades back. The request, though, was backed by the promise of unlimited credit, travel and lack of boredom, and for Janer boredom could be a problem, as it was for so many Polity citizens now.

‘I thought you wanted me to stick with the reif,’ he whispered, conscious of the people all around him.

‘The reification, I suspect, will go with her. If he does not, he will find her again in the future. His story and hers connect.’

‘You haven’t told me his story yet.’

‘In good time, in good time. Let us watch this fight for the present.’

The two Hoopers facing each other in the dirt ring had stripped naked and oiled themselves from head to foot. The crowd was baying for blood, yet there seemed an insincerity about their shouting.

‘You note that they strip off their clothing first,’ said the mind.

‘So?’ said Janer.

‘Their bodies repair themselves. Clothing has to be repaired.’

Janer absorbed that and nodded to himself. A passing tout assumed the nod was for him and he turned to Janer.

‘Domby or Forlam? Shillings, yen, dollars — or skind if you have to. What bet?’

The man was short and powerfully built. He seemed to have none of those distinctive Hooper leech marks visible on him. Janer recognized his accent as off-world.

‘What are the odds?’

‘Domby’s a three-fifty and Forlam a one-fifty, with an impressive list of recent wins. Thirteen to one on Domby for an E, and ten to one on Forlam for a pop. Either of them drops from a vaso, and you lose. The fight is two hours limited.’

‘I’ll put ten shillings on Domby for an E,’ said Janer.

‘Very good, sir.’ The tout looked worried as he wrote out a betting slip and accepted Janer’s ten-shilling note. Others in the crowd were eyeing Janer speculatively.

‘That was a high bet here,’ said the mind. ‘Your average Hooper would have to work half a year for such a sum.’

‘Really. If you know that much, perhaps you can tell me what Es, pops and vasos are,’ said Janer.

‘An E is an evisceration and a pop is a burst eye. A vaso is when one or both of the contestants collapse through loss of blood,’ the mind replied succinctly.

‘Oh, very nice. What are my chances of winning?’

‘You heard the odds.’

Janer glowered at the two hornets in their case then returned his attention to the fight. Domby, whom Janer presumed to be the one showing the most leech scars, had stepped into the ring with a long curved dagger in each hand. Forlam then stepped in to face him. His weapons consisted of a stiletto and something that looked like an ice-axe. As soon as they were face to face, someone rang a dull-sounding bell. The volume of the shouting immediately increased as the opponents began to circle and feint. Domby was the first to get a hit. He opened Forlam’s arm through to the bone, and blood jetted for a moment before abruptly ceasing to flow. Forlam backed away then leapt forward to jam his stiletto in Domby’s stomach. In reply, Domby cut Forlam’s ear so it was hanging by a thread. Forlam managed a low blow that cut Domby’s scrotum in half. Five or six more blows followed before the two parted and circled again. Janer stood with his mouth open and a sick feeling in his gut as he watched Forlam shake his head in irritation and with his forearm press his ear back into place. When the Hooper moved his arm away, the ear remained in position again, if slightly askew. On the other side of this dusty arena, the crowd had parted round an off-worlder who was spewing vomit on to the dirt. Janer was a little harder than that. He’d seen some horrible things in his time, but this…