Chapter 6: Quintana's Lane

The Tangle looks like a graveyard somebody forgot to bury.

Ten thousand wrecks hang in it, from the first colony ships to last year's gunboats, turning over each other in a slow drift.

It eats compasses.

Sensors don't work in it, and neither do maps.

"The main road runs through the centre," I said. "That's where the Resolute is waiting."

"And the other road?" Havrik said.

"There isn't one."

I put the ship's nose at a black gap between two hulks the size of cities.

"Except this."

Biscuit chimed, soft and surprised.

"Captain, you are using the old lane."

"I'm using the only lane."

He sat in the second seat, with his knees against the dash and his gold eyes on the viewport.

His whole attention was on the dark ahead, and on me.

I wrapped my hands around the stick.

"My father surveyed this when I was nine," I said. "He took me with him because there was nobody to leave me with."

"He drew the chart on your wall."

"Every wreck, every drift, every place where the mines sleep."

A hull the colour of rust rolled past our wing.

"Left of the third wreck she sings," I said. "That's his note."

"If you go too close, the old comms beacon howls, and every mine in range wakes up."

"He named things."

"He named everything. He called the whole lane Quintana's Lane, because he was a vain man and he'd earned it."

I said it lightly, and I felt Havrik go very still beside me.

When I glanced over, he had turned his face to the window.

It was a small movement, just a man looking away, and I felt it.

"Are you all right?"

"It is nothing," he said. "I am thinking of the dead."