Clenching my teeth, I add another two beads to the pile. Just as the man sweeps them into a lined box, the front door bangs open. Another figure stands there, holding a flimsy-looking cage. Within it, snakes writhe in knots.
‘Who the hell’s here?’ he snaps, eyes roaming the room. He is younger than the other man, leaner, more alert. My shoulders tense.
‘Ralf,’ the older man says hurriedly. ‘We got guests. This here’s Tennille and little Gabi. We just finished trading.’
The man looks me over, sneering at my shaved head, the scars on my temples. Though when he sees the General, his eyes flicker.
‘You shouldn’t be out here,’ he tells me. ‘They said on the wire there were a shipwreck, other side of Redcrop, something big. Seekers are out, I’ve seen their lights.’ He stares at me, hard. ‘You come from that way?’
I shake my head. ‘From Gulch. But we’re on our way to Landfall Five.’
‘Landfall ain’t no place for a child.’
‘Nowhere is, on this rock.’
The man grunts, and reaches behind him to close the door. It’s pitch dark outside, the desert wind in full voice, roaring over the ranch. And then, without warning, it happens.
Wind whips into the room, guttering the fire, sending the snakeskins writhing. The old woman staggers from her chair with a howl, staring about her.
‘They’re here!’ she shrieks. ‘They’ve come for us again!’
‘Ma, don’t,’ Del steps towards her, ‘it’s just the wind.’
But his voice shakes, terror plain on his face. Because the woman is right. They are here. I feel it, the sick, spinning sensation as if the world is being wrung around me.
‘Leave us be.’ The old woman covers her head. ‘We have no doubt. Our thoughts are clear!’
In panic, I turn towards the door only for a gust of wind to blast grit into my face. I stagger back and fight my eyes open to find myself face to face with the woman. Her clouded eyes are huge, seeing far more than what is before her.
‘Not us,’ she sobs. ‘They want you. Deathbringer, Troublecrow. Rook, Longrider, Hel!’
Ralf drops the cage with a clatter and pulls out a gun, while the older brother makes a grab for the General.
‘No!’ I shout. Fear leads to panic, panic to violence, and to any of the thousand blood-soaked consequences that fill the air around us.
‘Call them off,’ Ralf shouts, even as I see another version of him club me over the head, as another runs for the door. ‘Call them off, witch!’
I try to speak, but I can’t. It is already too late. I see Ralf fire and hit me in the gut, see the pulse ricochet from the wall into the skull of his brother, into the neck of the General, into his mother’s eye, the snakes loose from the crate, their fangs sinking into flesh, the wind fanning the flames in the open stove and the old woman screaming as the hem of her gown catches fire…
‘Low!’ the General’s voice cuts through the chaos, and I see the way: my own hand seizing a metal pitcher and flinging it through the air towards her.
There’s the sound of an impact, and a grunt. I turn in time to see Del slide to the floor. The General drops the pitcher, leaping over his body onto the table. Ralf gapes in confusion, swinging his gun around, but he is too slow: the General boots the weapon from his hand, before driving her elbow, hard and sharp, into his temple. He hits the floor like a lump of lead.
The moment he does, I feel a rushing sensation, like being caught in an updraught, and as quickly as they appeared, they are gone. Behind us, the old woman begins to wail.
* * *
The mule’s headlamp is weak in the darkness, guttering and flickering at every bump in the ground. Travelling by night is suicide in the Barrens, an invitation to the Seekers, but we have no choice. We have to get away from the ranch, and the chaos we left behind.
I have no idea how long we’ve been riding when a burst of wind screams us off the trail. I keep control of the mule – barely – gripping the hat to my head with one hand, and steering with the other, into the lee of a huge slab of rock. The wind is so strong it almost pulls the vehicle over as I climb onto the back.
‘Hold this!’ I yell to the General, dragging out a piece of tarp. ‘Get underneath.’
Within moments we’re huddled together, the tarp pulled over both our heads – our only chance of weathering the dust storm with skin intact.
‘How long will this go on?’ the General shouts.
‘No telling. But at least it will hide our tracks.’
‘What the hell happened back there?’
In the rush of escape, in the frenzy of retrieving my beads and stealing what we needed from the ranch, I’d been able to avoid giving her an answer.
‘Just superstition.’
‘That was not superstition, that was fear.’ The General’s voice is hard. ‘What did the old hag mean by “them”?’
I let the wind howl for a few breaths.
‘People on Factus believe in beings,’ I say. ‘They call them “Ifs”. But I have heard them called other names. Dybbuks, Zabaniyya—’
‘Ifs.’ The General is scathing. ‘What are they supposed to be?’
I swallow, trying to unstick my dry throat. I feel as if the wind is listening, its hundred ears pressed up against the tarp.
‘People say the Ifs are… invisible demons. Like spirits that make bad things happen.’ I grip the tarpaulin tighter. ‘People say they feed on possibilities, on doubt, on chance. They say the Ifs are attracted to chaos and influence the world to feed themselves. When they are present, reality changes course…’ My voice dries up. ‘I have heard it said they can haunt people, follow them, push them into danger at every turn, so they can feed.’
Through the wind, I hear the old woman’s cries again, see her terrified face as she stares at me,
