“All right,” said Tom. He smiled, stroking her mouth, her cheek, the kink in her eyebrow where the scar cut through. “All right. We’ve seen enough of northern skies. Let’s go.”

But it was not to be so simple. When they reached strut seventeen there was a man waiting beside the Jenny Haniver, sitting on a big leather pack. Hester, still smarting a little from Masgard’s mockery, hid her face again. Tom let go her hand and hurried to meet the stranger.

“Good day!” cried the man, standing up. “Mr Natsworthy? Miss Shaw? I gather you are the owners of this splendid little ship? Golly, they told me at the harbour office you were young, but I didn’t realize quite how young! You’re barely more than children!”

“I’m almost eighteen,” said Tom defensively.

“Never mind, never mind!” beamed the stranger. “Age makes no difference if the heart is great, and I’m sure you have a great heart. ‘Who’s that handsome young chap?’ I asked my friend the harbour master, and he told me, ‘That’s Tom Natsworthy, pilot of the Jenny Haniver.’ ‘Pennyroyal,’ I said to myself, ‘that young man may be just the fellow you’re looking for!’ So here I am!”

Here he was. He was a smallish man, balding and slightly overweight, and he wore a trim white beard. His clothes were the typical outfit of a northern scavenger — a long fur coat, a tunic with many pockets, thick breeches and fur-lined boots — but they looked too expensive, as if they been run up for him by a fashionable tailor as a costume for a play set in the Ice Wastes.

“Well?” he asked.

“Well what?” asked Hester, who had taken an instant dislike to this posturing stranger.

“I’m sorry, sir,” said Tom, much more politely. “We don’t really understand what you want…”

“Oh, I do apologize, I beg your pardon,” the stranger babbled. “Permit me to elucidate! My name is Pennyroyal; Nimrod Beauregard Pennyroyal. I have been exploring a little among these great horrible towering fire-mountains, and now I am on my way home. I should like to book passage aboard your charming airship.”