Falco rolls her eyes, motioning Pegeen down as the G’hal snarls and reaches for their gun. ‘I have a name, Carve,’ she calls, squinting up from beneath the brim of her hat. ‘How’re the lice?’
‘Hell, I’m clean as a bean now,’ the man says, even as he scratches at himself. ‘Who ya got with ya?’ He leans down, hands on his scabbed knees. ‘Hey there, Pegeen. When you gonna stop runnin’ with such a bad character and come live with me? I’ll take care a ya.’
‘I’d take care of you first, gutspill,’ Pegeen says. ‘Probably in your sleep.’
‘You gonna let us in?’ Falco demands.
The man’s leer falters. ‘I ain’t supposed to let no one in without the Boss saying so.’
‘Heard y’all had a new boss.’ Falco jerks her head back at the cages. ‘Hard one too, by the looks of it.’
Carve shifts. ‘Boss made a deal with the Seekers. We give them tribute, act as brokers for their offal, they leave us alone. Good deal, good for all of us.’ He does not sound too certain.
‘Doubt those in the cages agree.’
The man spits. ‘They had a chance to turn their minds to it. Anyhow, they’re going to a better place, Boss says. Boss says Seekers ain’t all bad, that people got it wrong about them, that they’re only part of the balance, looking for the truth…’
He lapses into silence, as if he has forgotten the reasons for the prisoners to be cheerful.
‘Air-starved lunatics,’ the General mutters.
Quiet as it is, Carve hears her. ‘Who ya got down there?’ His sharp eyes flick across me to the General. ‘Who’s that? And the brat?’
‘This is the Doc,’ Falco says coolly. ‘And the kid’s a new recruit.’
The man smirks. ‘Ain’t she a mite young to be a G’hal?’
‘Ain’t you a mite dumb to be a sentry?’ the General shoots back.
The man hoots and slaps his knees. ‘She’s the type, alright.’
Falco sighs. ‘Carve, let us in. We got business to see to.’
‘I told you, Falco, I ain’t meant to. Gotta ask the Boss.’
Falco reaches under the seat to pull out a bag. ‘I was going to give you a couple of airtights for the inconvenience, but I guess if you don’t want them…’
She opens the bag to reveal tins, gleaming silver in the desert light.
‘What?’ Carve licks his dry lips. ‘What you got there?’
‘Pears in syrup. Tomatoes all the way from Prosper. Beans in brine. Fish—’
‘Fish?’ The word falls from Carve’s mouth like drool. He tears his eyes from the bag to glance behind him, an agonised look on his face.
‘Alright,’ he blurts out a second later. ‘Throw ’em up and I’ll let ya in. Quick, I’ll be corpsified if they see.’ Rapidly, he turns a wheel, spooling the fuse like a hissing black snake. ‘Go and tie up at Melc’s place, level four. It’s quiet there.’
Falco wastes no time. The second the road is clear, she revs the wagon, and rolls towards a tunnel at edge of the crater, Pegeen following close behind.
‘My fish!’ Carve yells.
Snorting, Falco flings the sack from the side of the wagon. ‘Welcome to the Pit.’
* * *
If my first impression of the Pit was bad, my second does nothing to improve matters. I see the gloom first, then the yawning abyss of a crater so deep that it seems to have no end. Sand and dust blow constantly over the edge, cascading like water through the metal gantries that encircle the perimeter.
The gantry we drive in on has no edge and clanks and shakes beneath the weight of the wagon. Across the Pit, I see a platform: a landing site for ships and crafts. I look away from the vast drop and close my eyes.
The General sees. ‘Don’t tell me you’re afraid of heights,’ she mocks.
I smile tightly, not opening my eyes. Sweat breaks out on my neck. It’s not only the height that troubles me. It’s the structure. For all it’s on solid ground instead of floating through space, the Pit is the very image of a prison hulk.
It makes a horrible kind of sense, I realise. Convict labour built the hulks, and convicts were among the first to settle on Factus, and so they built what they knew. The Pit has the same metal gantries, spiralling around an empty core. No comfort, no relief, just metal constantly clanging and reverberating until the sound found its way into your head, your ears, your eyes, your very soul.
Better any of the work camps than the hulks, people always said. There, at least, there was some pretence at paying off a debt to society, some suggestion of a future where that debt is paid. On the hulks, there was only reality, hard and cold and unyielding. A place for people to be forgotten, to drift in a clanking, shuddering metal cage through space until mind or body gave in. A place for those beyond redemption.
I grip the scarf around my neck, trying to forget the terrible months before I made the decision to live, feeling again the collar bite into my neck as I lay on the hard bunk. Remember the tally.
I only open my eyes when darkness closes over our heads. We are in a sort of cave, carved into the rock. All around are mules and mares, wagons and charabancs, none as nice as Falco’s. We slide to a stop.
‘Melc?’ Falco calls.
There’s a scuffling and a grey-bearded man trips out from behind a threadbare curtain.
‘What the—’ He stares at us, eyes bulging from his head. ‘What the hell are you doing? I didn’t hear the alarm.’
‘Carve let us in.’ Falco jumps from the wagon. ‘Fool will do anything for a tin of fish.’
‘Including lose his damn life if the Boss finds out.’ The man wipes anxiously at his face. ‘Boss ain’t gonna like this at all.’
Pegeen pulls up alongside us, and I
