“Are we dressing for dinner?” Lady Maccon resumed fussing with her hair.

Rue gave her father an evil look. “Might as well.”

She heard him groan as she closed the door behind her.

Dinner went off without incident. Paw behaved himself. More to the point, so did Mother. Primrose and Tasherit ignored one another. Quesnel was as engaging as ever, and Percy as lacklustre. After pudding, everyone trooped to the forecastle for cigars and drinks – brandy for the gentlemen, sherry for the ladies. The moon was a bulbous yellow orb over a fairy-tale city below.

Tasherit and Paw were obviously unnerved at basking in full moonlight, no curse shining down alongside.

“I forgot how very beautiful she is.” Tasherit was moved to something approaching sentiment.

“We could buy a silver cutlery set now, couldn’t we, wife?” Paw sounded as though Lady Maccon had done nothing their whole marriage but lament the fact that they must use brass at the dinner table.

Rue’s mother made a funny face. Rue was in no doubt that Alexia Maccon had never given cutlery a second thought.

Rue went over and touched first her father and then her werecat friend with a naked hand to the cheek. Nothing happened. The numbness was still on her. There came no indication of gaining supernatural abilities with her touch. No strength. No shift. No nothing.

“Odd,” she pronounced. “Paw, are you normal strength now?”

Lady Maccon laughed. “Infant, look at him. He’s still built like a Clydesdale.”

“Thank you, wife.”

Rue smiled. “You know what I mean. Tasherit, what about you?”

“Normal. Slow healing and all else that goes with mortality.” Tasherit examined her snifter with pursed lips. “Susceptible to alcohol, too, I suppose. What bliss is that.” She drained the last of her brandy. She didn’t hold with sherry. She’d been offered a cigar as well, since brandy was already quite manly, but declined, muttering something about hookahs being preferable.

Tasherit twirled the empty glass. “To tell the truth, younglings” – Rue supposed there was a good chance even Paw was younger than Tasherit – “it makes me feel odd and exposed.” She shivered, although the evening was warm. “I’m for bed. I shall enjoy the novel experience of sleeping at night.”

Rue finished her sherry. “Me too.” She gave Quesnel a slight smile.

He lowered his eyelids in a blatant lure. Pansy eyes glittering from behind fair lashes.

She wanted to nibble the back of his neck as she passed.

Lady Maccon gave Rue a dour look as she made her way to the stairs.

“Leave it, wife,” she heard Paw say.

Despite whatever it was her mother thought was happening, Rue entered the captain’s quarters alone. She changed into a tight red velvet top, beaded about the neck, and a narrow satin skirt. Remembering Quesnel’s reaction back in India, she put a bit of kohl about her eyes and rouged her cheeks and lips. With her abundant curves, Rue looked like a ladybug and felt silly. But Quesnel had liked it so much last time. She had this notion that if she dressed for him now, he might wear his leather workman’s apron and nothing else for her later. Privately, of course. She was rather too intrigued by the idea of a smudged and sweaty Quesnel wearing leather on the front and nothing at all over his back.

She sat on her bed and waited.

Rue was not a bad captain, not by any accounts. Spoo would not hear a word against her. She always posted a watch. Tonight it was a light watch, as they were moored at the top of an obelisk on the outskirts of town, only a long rope tying them to the world below. The spire could not be ascended; unlike other mooring posts, the red quarantine obelisks had no lifting platform, no tracks, no stairway winding about, not even a rope ladder. The Custard shared the obelisk with two fat luxury merchant vessels with skeletal crews and disinterested staff. No one would have thought any risk inherent in such an isolated position.

No, Rue could be excused for not being wary while they were in quarantine.

They were attacked anyway.

ELEVEN

In Which Percy’s Unbearable Smugness Is Revealed

It was a much fairer fight this time. Rue and her crew no longer had a werelioness or a werewolf on their side. Although, no one tried to stop either former werecreature from rallying round.

Tasherit was spoiling for some kind of battle, tetchy from arguing with Primrose. Lord Maccon was never one to sit idle and waded in, meaty fists flying. Rue might have said something, not sure if Paw was up for it. Lady Maccon might have said something, because she was accustomed to an immortal husband and not particularly fond of the idea of losing him. But both had been with him long enough to know that any attempt at mollycoddling would be met with outraged disgust.

These men were different from those at Wimbledon. These were comprised of some species of bandit in native Egyptian dress, all swirling robes, fierce dark skin, and bearded faces.

Rue supposed that could all be faked – beards, swirls, and skin colour. But they spoke to one another in some form of Arabic, so she had to assume they were of local extraction.

Percy and Primrose, showing admirable restraint, poked their heads out of the main hatch, ascertained the violence of the activities, and disappeared back below. In this the twins agreed: fisticuffs were not worth their time.

The decklings took potshots at the fray from various vantage points. The crew was mainly represented in combat by deckhands, two footmen, and the cook. Rue worried about the cook. Good cooks were hard to come by, and this one was a whizz with puff pastry; she didn’t want him damaged. Still, he seemed to be enjoying himself, brandishing a nasty-looking cleaver in one hand and an iron skillet in the other. Lord Maccon had acquired a cutlass from some unfortunate. Tasherit held forth employing a weaponless kicking technique that turned her into a blur of vicious intent. Lady Maccon wielded her ugly parasol with remarkable precision both as a blunt instrument and via emission of various darts. It also sprayed acid, which Rue’s mother used to admirable effect, backing a couple of bandits up against the railing and then over it, in their desperation to avoid the burning liquid.