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“Much as I respect the advice of an Exceptional Initiatives agent,” Verricks replied, “command of this vessel rests with me . . .”

“She’s right.”

They turned to Director Thriftmor, both elbows resting on the table as he massaged his temples. An untouched cup of coffee sat beside him. “Leaving thousands of refugees to fend for themselves in the middle of the ocean is an unconscionable act,” Thriftmor went on, lowering his hands to regard Verricks with tired eyes. “One I can’t support or, more importantly, justify to a public whose passions will no doubt have been inflamed by a hostile press. You may have command of this ship, sir, but I am a Board member and senior shareholder of the Ironship Syndicate. To all intents and purposes this is my ship and so is”—he waved a hand at Trumane, trying and failing to remember his name—“his.”

Thriftmor turned away from Trumane’s glare to offer Madame Hakugen a smile. “Your ships will join with us, madame. Together we will sail for Feros where, if fortune favours us, safe harbour will be found.” He got to his feet and made a slump-shouldered progress to the door. “I’ll be in my cabin. Please knock only in the direst emergency.”

* * *

She found Makario at the rear of the mid–upper deck, following the sound of the flute he had somehow obtained during the voyage. Meeting here had become something of a nightly ritual. Since first meeting him in the odorous pit of Scorazin she had noted his aversion to serious conversation, something she now welcomed as a reprieve from the worries crowding her head, as was his music. It transpired that Makario was as accomplished with the flute as he was with the pianola and she had no difficulty in recognising the tune.

“Illemont again?” she asked, moving to rest her arms on the rail beside him. The long-dead Corvantine composer had been a particular favourite when Makario played for the largely unappreciative patrons of the Miner’s Repose. “One might suspect you of nurturing an obsession.”

“One would be correct,” he replied, lowering the flute. “But what is love, if not obsession?”

Makario pointed the instrument at the ships following the Profitable, the many freighters and Blue-hunters arranged in two long rows that extended for at least two miles. “I didn’t know we were expecting company.”

“We weren’t.” Lizanne cast her gaze over the darkened hulks of the refugee fleet. Whatever misgivings Captain Verricks might harbour about taking charge of this rag-tag collection of vessels hadn’t prevented him from issuing strict and sensible orders regarding its organisation. All lights were to be doused and each ship appointed a slot in a prearranged sailing formation. Every ship had also been strictly forbidden to stop for any reason. “I don’t care if the skipper’s grandmother falls overboard,” Verricks had said. “I’ll shoot any captain who stops their engines.”

“Keep playing,” Lizanne told Makario, keen for the distraction. “Please.”

Makario gave a gracious bow and raised the flute to his lips. Soon the lilting interlude from Illemont’s supposedly lost “Ode to Despair” was drifting across the warship’s pale wake.

“Have you finished it then?” she asked when the flute fell silent. “Your reconstruction of the great lost work?”

“I doubt if it can ever be finished. All I can do is record my guess-work and perhaps in time more talented souls will take it further.” He fell silent, face uncharacteristically sombre as he gazed at the following ships.

“Wishing you’d stayed behind?” Lizanne asked.

Makario gave a short laugh and shook his head. “We both know I had little choice. The Electress would have settled accounts with me sooner or later. It’s not in her nature to forgive a betrayal. Besides, I always had a yen to see the rest of the world, even if it is about to catch fire.”

“You never told me how you ended up in Scorazin. Your presence there seemed so incongruous.”

“I was a thief.” He shrugged. “Thieves go to prison.”

“Not to Scorazin. Not unless they’ve somehow offended the Emperor.”

Makario looked at the flute in his hands, slim fingers playing over the keys. “My obsession, as you call it, has always been more of an addiction, and an addict will go to extremes to sate his need. That old student of Illemont I told you about lit a fire in me, a fire that could only be quenched by seeking out everything I could find that the great man had written or touched in his lifetime. Sadly, amassing such a collection requires a great deal of money and my parents had selfishly conspired to ensure I was born poor. My talent brought money in time, and a modicum of fame in certain circles, but it was never enough to quench the fire.

“It was small things at first, an item of jewellery from a box left carelessly open the evening I had been contracted to play for the amusement of the lady of the house. Then there was a pocket-watch taken from the drawer of a viscount who had probably forgotten how many he owned. Many of the more valuable trinkets were not so easily plucked of course, but my access to the homes of the nobility enabled a first hand reconnaissance before a stealthy night-time intrusion.

“It transpired I had a facility for climbing; musicians tend to have strong hands and I have always been fairly spry. I found a delightfully awful old reprobate in one of Corvus’s seedier quarters who was more than willing to teach me the finer points of lock picking, as long as I kept him well supplied with ale and opium.

“Thanks to my new-found skills I soon had sufficient funds for a fine and growing collection of Illemontaria, and a decent fortune to go with it. I also had a name for my larcenous alter ego, the Moonlighter they called me. Corvus society was publicly alarmed and secretly delighted by his exploits. Ladies harboured entirely misplaced fears of being ravished in their own beds and servants were denied their meagre sleep ration to keep armed watch on the great houses lest the Moonlighter come calling. There was a lot of theatre to this, of course. Half the valuables that went missing during this period were never stolen by me, if they were stolen at all. And any family who did fall foul of the Moonlighter’s attentions found their cachet suddenly enhanced, invitations to grand occasions and exclusive dinners would follow. Everyone wanted to hear more about the Moonlighter. There was even a series of vulgar periodicals about him which I fervently hope the Cadre have since seized and burned. The prose was dire and the illustrations terrible, but even the nobility bought them.

“The wealthy are a strange breed, dear Krista. Like children in many ways with their pettiness and susceptibility to flattery, and there are few creatures in this world more susceptible than a once-handsome man of privilege. Burgrave Erbukan wasn’t a bad man, not really. Just bitter about getting old and fat, and he was far too trusting of the many artistic young men he invited to his home, a home which happened to contain one of the largest collections of original sheet music in the world. He was happy to show it to me, encouraged by an enthusiasm I, for once, didn’t need to fake. The collection had been inherited from his late wife, a woman in whose company he spent as little time as possible. It was clear the old dullard had no notion of what he had. Original handwritten sheets penned by some of the greatest composers who ever lived, and there amongst it all, not even properly catalogued, no less than four previously undiscovered pages from Illemont’s ‘Ode to Despair.’ I had to have them and, once the Moonlighter paid a visit to the Burgrave’s mansion the following night, for one precious week I did.”