It did not resurface.

Janer no longer knew how he felt about Keech, now he had seen him try to kill someone. It gave one a very different perspective when you saw someone behave like that. You realized how, on an emotional level, they amounted to more than the sum of what you had previously seen, that they had connections and commitments to a life of their own in which you played just a bit part. As for the monitor, Erlin was tending to him: sealing up his arm with a portable cell-welder, closing a wound that reached right down to the bone.

‘Janer, my boy.’ Ron came up to stand at the rail beside him.

Janer eyed him, this jolly hey-ho bit seeming a bit contrived. ‘Not the happy ending we were aiming for,’ he commented.

‘No,’ said Ron, ‘we’ve just discovered some endings long overdue.’

Janer studied him more closely. ‘You mean Ambel?’

Ron shook his head. ‘I don’t mean endings in the terminal sense — at least not for him, but for the Skinner, yes.’ He paused, studying Janer’s puzzled expression, then continued, ‘It’s not dead, you know, and we know where it’ll go.’

Janer pursed his lips to keep his immediate retort reined in. He’d just seen a disembodied head sprout wings and fly right into the sea, so he wasn’t going to argue about its likelihood of being alive.

Ambel had now come out on deck and was looking about himself with a guarded expression. Janer noted that some of the crew were deliberately facing away from the Old Captain, and the cold way that Keech was staring at the man.

‘So what now?’ Janer asked, as Ambel approached them.

‘We go to the Skinner’s Island,’ said Ambel.

‘And there we hold Convocation too,’ Ron said.

Ambel nodded slowly. ‘I’ll be wanting to sail there as a captain, not as a prisoner. Might be the last journey I make.’

Ron nodded. ‘I’ll leave any who don’t want to come with us on the Ahab, and I’ll send the sail across here.’

‘Thank you,’ said Ambel, then, ‘How you going to call it… the Convocation?’

Ron turned to Janer. ‘Your link? Through it you can communicate with the Warden?’

‘You getting this?’ Janer asked the Hive mind.

After a brief buzz the mind replied, ‘All of it — and very interesting it is.’

‘Will you contact the Warden?’

‘I can, but nothing is for free,’ said the mind, which puzzled Janer until it went on.

‘OK, I’ll consider it,’ he said, once the mind had finished. He turned to Ron and Ambel. ‘What do you want of the Warden?’

‘The Warden can call the Convocation for us,’ said Ron. ‘Some of the Captains possess transceivers, so word can be spread quickly enough.’

Janer nodded, and again listened to the dull flat buzzing, which went on for a little while before being interrupted by another voice. ‘A Convocation has already been called on another matter,’ said the Warden. ‘It is little enough trouble to have them relocate it. I will inform Sprage immediately. The Captains should be with you at the Skinner’s Island within days.’

Janer informed the two Old Captains of this latest news, then watched them exchange a look before turning back to him.

‘Why was this first one called?’ asked Ron.

Janer waited for an explanation, but all he got from his link was the flat buzzing. He shrugged. ‘Didn’t say.’

Ron sighed. ‘Best we get things moving.’

There were ten ships now moored beyond the reefs, with two more coming over the horizon, and yet another sweeping round from the other side of the island. Tay climbed aboard, then turned her attention to the creaking winch being used to haul up her precious cargo. That Sprage had even agreed to let her bring aboard this empty coffin-case was indicative of the fact that he had been one of Hoop’s original captives. For all such men agreed that no punishment was excessive when it concerned the Eight. Sprage moved to her side as the case swung over and was lowered. It was too big to drop through into the hold, so some crewmen worked to secure it to the main deck with straps and rope.

‘Old Cojan was an imaginative fella,’ observed Sprage.

‘He was that, and I think it was imagination that finished him in the end. He could never forget, and that’s why he committed suicide,’ said Tay.

‘He didn’t kill himself,’ argued Sprage.

‘No, he did not. He did suicide though, by allowing himself to be killed. It’s the same way a lot of people in the Polity go. When they’re very old they look for more and more danger, thinking this is intended to relieve them of boredom, when in truth it is to relieve them of life.’

Sprage only grunted noncommittally. Tay noticed the Old Captain was peering beyond her towards the forecabin. Turning her attention in that direction, she saw Lember carrying the Captain’s rocker down to the main deck. The crewman positioned the chair by the mast, directly facing Windcheater’s crocodilian head.

‘I take it you’ve yet to cut a deal with the sail?’ she asked.

‘Thought I’d wait for you,’ said Sprage. ‘It’s history.’

As Tay stared at Windcheater, she wondered if having to hold its head in that position — its neck curving back on itself — was a physical strain for the sail. She grimaced at the thought of its discomfort. Sprage’s crew were now gathering round the mast. These Hoopers wore bemused expressions, but there was almost a party air about the gathering. This was something different; few of them had ever before encountered a sail like this.

Tay pulled out her holocorder unit, tapped instructions into it, then detached the holocorder itself and tossed it into the air. It stabilized immediately, then panned around, before Tay had it focusing in on the mast area as Sprage moved to his rocker and sat down.

‘So,’ said the Captain, taking out his pipe and starting to fill it. ‘You told me that you do the work of five crewmen and a fabric mainsail, so should earn an equivalent percentage of the ship’s profits.’

‘Yes,’ agreed Windcheater.

‘Let me see then… Most captains, being the owners, take the first twenty per cent, and the rest is equally divided — in the case of this ship, amongst ten crew. So you consider yourself worth five of my crew. By my calculation that’s the remaining eighty per cent divided into fifteen, of which you take five shares, one-third. Am I right?’

‘Yes, I get five shares,’ said Windcheater, but the sail now sounded a little less sure of itself.

‘So you are telling me you deserve twenty-six and two-thirds per cent, which is even more than a captain’s percentage? I don’t think so. The sail you scared off earlier was quite prepared to work just for the meat we provided. Why should we deal with you?’

‘Because you have to — just as all captains will have to deal with other sails in the future.’

‘Ah, so you speak for all sails now?’ said Sprage. He put his pipe in his mouth, flicked at his lighter for a while, then swore quietly and gave up. Taking his pipe from his mouth he studied Windcheater.

The sail went slightly cross-eyed for a moment. ‘Yes… I will be speaking for all sails,’ he explained.

Sprage frowned and shot a look at some of his crewmen.

‘In that case,’ he said, ‘it’d be best we get the bargain struck now, though it’ll have to be ratified at this coming Convocation. But I’m prepared to offer any sail the same amount as is given to crew. Eight per cent of the journey’s net take, and the same contractual obligations apply.’

‘What obligations?’ asked Windcheater.

‘Well, I think the one that mostly applies here is that if you go AWOL you forfeit your percentage. Too often we’ve been left without a sail, because the one we had got bored and flew off.’

‘Twenty-five per cent, and I want to see the contract.’

Sprage turned to Lember. ‘In my desk — you’ll find a sheaf of them,’ he said.