The bauble field had dropped weeks ago, according to the auguries, but if anyone had been here in the meantime there was no trace of them. Privately, Prozor assured me it was unlikely that we had been beaten to our prize. For most crews the Fang would not have been an enticing target, with its high vaults cleaned out and the deeper levels too much trouble to bother with. ‘But they didn’t have Mattice to get through the doors that stumped ’em,’ she said. ‘Nor do we.’ ‘The problem on this ship isn’t Strambli. I’ve sniffed around her and I reckon she knows her trade – and what she doesn’t, I’ll be able to fill in with what I gleaned from Mattice.’ I thought she was done, but she added: ‘And Githlow, too. He was our Assessor, but on any good team, an Assessor and an Opener aren’t leagues apart.’ She had been willing to utter the name of the Fang since we joined Trusko’s crew, but this was the first time the name of her husband had come out of her lips.
