Carnelian stepped back and let Naith shut the door. The corridor angled up then down. He edged along it to the door that had been pointed out. He tried to listen at it, opened it, lifted his foot over the threshold and then stepped into the tiny cabin beyond. Tain was there.

Thank the Gods, Carnie. I thought you washed into the sea.'

'Apparently I'm made of finer clay.' Tain looked puzzled.

Carnelian looked around the cabin. The floor curved up to form the bulkheads and then further round to form the ceiling. A single bunk was set into the bulkhead opposite the door. A tiny lantern swinging from a hook in the ceiling easily lit the place.

There's not much of it, I'm afraid,' said Tain.

'I've worn bigger robes,' said Carnelian.

'Can I stay here with you, Carnie?'

'Where are you going to sleep?'

The corners of Tain's mouth turned down.

'Of course you can, but you're having the floor.'

Tain managed a grin. He moved aside to reveal a bed already made on the floor. Carnelian saw that some of their clothes had been unpacked. He took two steps across the cabin, turned and wedged himself back into the bunk.

‘I’d like to see one of the other Masters getting into one of these.'

Tain was staring into space. In his eyes, Carnelian could almost see a reflection of his people on the quay. He busied himself tracing the graffiti carved into the bulkhead. Obscene pictures. Strokes in rows as if someone had been counting days. All the way up his back, he could feel the sway and shudder of the ship.

Carnelian was curled up in the dark, rocking as his stomach turned inside him. He was exhausted. The ship was pressing in. She was whispering. He forced himself fully awake to listen. It was just her body creaking all around him. The bunk was too short for him to straighten his legs. He swung them out and hunched on the edge. He imagined her decks above his head, her tree masts, her bronze machines. Up there against the leaden sky her sails like fans. He made their shape with his hands, stretching his fingers till the skin between them hurt. He slid his feet out until they found the warmth of Tain's body. Below them the belly of the baran swelled into limitless sea. Carnelian recalled what Keal had told him about the sartlar oarsmen. A vision of them writhing in her bowels like worms made him snatch his feet up from the floor.

It was too much bother to have himself cleaned. Besides, Tain was all clammy misery and found it hard to stand up. Carnelian asked only that his brother touch up his body paint where it had rubbed off in the night. When Tain was done he sank back to the floor. Carnelian wriggled into his robes, put on his mask and, shrouded in his travelling cloak, opened the cabin door.

The corridor smelled of men, urine and brine. The swilling sounds of the sea coming down the stairway almost made him retch into his mask. He stepped out of the cabin, closed the door so that Tain would not be disturbed, then padded along the corridor. The faint scent of lilies suggested that one of the Masters had walked there not so long ago. He knocked on Naith's door, and when the man showed himself Carnelian asked if he could take him to Keal. Naith said that he had been forbidden to leave the cabin but that Keal was quartered further down the passage, beside the Master's cabin.

Carnelian followed the directions. The corridor grew gloomier with each step, but his eyes adjusted well enough. He reached a round space with a central column. A yoke of bronze as thick as a man's waist gripped its base. It could only be the shaft of the central mast. Peering round it he saw that the corridor continued on to another stairway down which daylight was filtering. Four doors led off the mast-columned hall. Each had been painted with the warding eye and one of the cyphers of the Masters' Houses.

Carnelian retraced his steps, found the door he thought Naith must have meant and knocked on it. It was opened by a guardsman he knew. The man began to kneel but Carnelian stopped him with a command sign. 'Rale, is Keal here?'

'Yes, Carnie,' the man said and stepped aside to let him in.

Carnelian squeezed into the cabin. It was perhaps twice the size of his own. Men were sitting on the floor playing dice. The six bunks hedged them in. One man lying on his bunk looked green. The others looked sickly, uncomfortable. They smiled, avoiding looking at his mask.

'Get on with your game,' he said more gruffly than he intended. ‘I’d speak with you, Keal.'

Keal stood up from among them. 'I'm sorry, Carnie, but I'm not allowed to leave this room unless the Master sends for me.'

'You can leave with me and tell him if he asks that it was I who commanded you.'

Carnelian squeezed back out into the corridor. He still had to stoop but it was less constricting than the cabin.

His head scraped against the ceiling as he turned to look at Keal. He wondered that his brother could stand unbent. 'Let's go up there,' he said, pointing.

He walked up the steps and coming out of the funnel straightened up to his full height and stretched. He groaned. The luxury of a straight back,' he said into the freezing wind. His cloak lifted around him. The deck grating gleamed with water up to the rails. The foremast blocked his view of the prow. Beyond the narrow solid limits of the ship was the vast blinding sky, mottled and melded into a foamy silver sea.

He turned to his brother. 'How're things?'

Keal was gazing blank-faced at the world. He focused on Carnelian and gave a nod towards the stairway. The lads are well enough down there, but those that are here under our feet…' He tapped the deck grating with his foot, then pursed his lips and shook his head.

Carnelian peered into the space beneath the grating and thought he could make out murky movement. 'What protection do they have down there?'

Keal looked grim. 'Some blankets and tarred tapestries to keep out the spray.'

The other Masters' people?'

They're just as badly off, worse even. One of them was so ill that his Master sent word and he was chucked into the sea.'

'Into the sea?' said Carnelian with horror.

They both looked over the rail at the swirling water.

'Apparently, this was to stop what he had spreading to the others. If you ask me he was just underfed.'

Carnelian peered down through the grating again. 'I should go down there, talk to them.'

'Don't even think about it, Carnie,' Keal said. His voice was tinged with anger. 'It would be unseemly.

Down there, even I'm forced to stoop.' 'My Lord!' A cry in Quya.

They both turned to see a huge shrouded apparition bearing down on them. Carnelian cursed under his breath. Keal collapsed onto the deck as the Master swept up.

'Lord Carnelian, have you no fear of coming up here on deck?' It was Jaspar. 'Fear, my Lord?'

'Sea air burns the skin. Your hands, my Lord, your poor hands.'

Carnelian looked at them. They looked fine.

'You should wear gloves,' said Jaspar and lifted up his hands. Each was sheathed in silvery leather streaked like serpentine, so thin his hands seemed merely painted.

'Is that your only protection, my Lord?'

'Not so, my Lord, not so. But to reveal the other we must needs first clear the deck.'

It was only then that Carnelian remembered Keal. His brother's hands were numbing yellow on the grating. Carnelian almost spluttered out an apology but remembered who else was there. 'Return to your cabin, Keal,' he commanded, biting his lip once the words were said.