"There you are!" Andre called cheerily, as he dropped down beside his wife, who had apparently slipped right back into her role as tailor. "How's my lovely bride?" he asked her kindly. "I just checked in with your mother; she says William's fine."

Spider smiled at him and turned her face up for a kiss. "Good." And she did, in fact, look genuinely relieved. "I want to see 'im but the last time I cried for half an hour and then tried to shove Uncle through a door."

Even remembering it made her lower lip tremble in a threatening way. She bit down on it, then scooted her box between her feet to make room for Andre. "Da' better not be dead when we find 'im because I'm gonner kill him for this shit," she said more cheerfully.

Andre rubbed her shoulder. "He'll be fine, Cherie; I'm sure of it," he said reassuringly. "At the moment, I'm more worried about this ghost. Er, ghosts. It...it's a bit malevolent."

She leaned into his hand. "Malevolent is bad and benevolent is good, right?" She sighed. "It figgers. How bad?"

"Yes," Andre answered. "Mal is bad. I'm not sure how bad," he admitted. "It hasn't actually hurt anyone, er, other than..." He rubbed the bruise on his face. "Nothing serious, though. It won't tell me enough for me to help it; it won't tell me what it's angry about. It just wants us to burn the ship, and it doesn't seem happy to wait until we finish this run."

"No offence, leannan, but . . . duh." She rolled her eyes, more irritated than anything else. "Judes says late tomorrow before we catch up, at the most. If it'll let us hold off burnin' the place down 'til we reach shore again, I'll strike the first spark."

"I've no objection to setting this monstrosity on fire once we're off it," Andre pointed out, looking a little hurt. "It's the bit where it doesn't want to wait for us to get off it. It says this used to be its ship. But Kullie didn't kill it." His forehead was turning into a series of creases. "And neither did we. And it...it knows things about Rosemary," he added. "Things from her past."

"That sort of narrows the options of what it is, don't it?" She put her hand up to his forehead. "Could it be lying? What sort of things does it know?"

"About things she did when she was younger," Andre answered. "It...she was with me," he said. "I..." He frowned. "She's burnt down houses. Two. She claimed no one was hurt, either time, but it was talking about her setting fires, and she broke down a bit."

Spider flinched. "That's sort of more evidence for the idea that's it's followin' her around. Rosemary in particular, I mean. If we could get rid of her maybe this would go back to normal? I'm not sayin' pitch her over the side or nothin' . . . "