I must make some noise, because he looks up, and sees me in the shadows.
‘Ten,’ he says loudly. ‘Come and have coffee.’ He pours the dregs from the pot on the stove. ‘We were just deciding where to go.’
‘“We”?’ I ask, with a half-smile.
‘Seems I have been hijacked again.’ He passes me the mug, and his hand is warm against my chilled skin.
‘East,’ I tell them. ‘We should fly east.’
* * *
It’s obvious from the moment we take off it is not going to be an easy ride. Falco stalks around the Charis, poking at the wiring, inspecting every hiding place and cupboard.
‘Amazed it stays in the air,’ she mutters, but there’s a note of amusement in her voice, something like respect. Until we have been flying for an hour or so. Then, a torrent of curse words pours from the corridor, followed by the sound of clanging, and the hiss of the vapour shower turned to full.
‘Hey!’ Silas yells, straining away from the nav controls. ‘What the hell are you doing? We can’t waste water, we need it for the cooling systems.’ He gives me a pleading look. ‘Ten?’
I find Falco standing outside the bathroom pod, hosing it down with vapour.
‘Revolting, hophead slob,’ she mutters. With a laugh, I leave her to it.
Later, after changing the dressing on my chest and helping Pegeen take a weapons inventory, I go to look for the General. I find her at one of the portholes, staring at the hot, hissing desert that slides by below. She does not look up when I join her, but takes a deep breath.
‘You, Low, are a traitor and a murderer who didn’t even have the courage to answer for her crimes.’ She shifts uncomfortably. ‘But, if we ever find anyone mad or stupid enough to take us off this moon, I will pay your passage. In return you… will do your best to keep me alive. Until I can find an answer for whatever is happening to me.’
Her hand is pressed to her side again. She’s suffering, not only from the wound, I realise. Were the artificial enhancements within her breaking down, like the Commander had said?
‘Agreed.’
We look out at the passing desert.
‘We shouldn’t be here,’ she says.
‘I know.’
‘We were dying. I couldn’t have walked another step, let alone crawled out of the desert.’ Her hazel eyes are still bloodshot. ‘How are we alive?’
I remember the way the dice had fallen, one, one, one, one. ‘I wonder if we are.’
‘What do you mean?’
I hesitate. It’s one thing to let such thoughts whisper through my head, but to voice them? ‘What if we did die, there in the Edge? But somehow, we have moved across to another reality, one where we lived.’ I cannot look at her. ‘All I know is that when I feel the Ifs I see different futures, or different possible futures or… realities that are happening, simultaneously. What if they lifted us from one to another, crossed two worlds over? How would we know? We wouldn’t, perhaps we would only feel that something is wrong.’
She stares at me. ‘Those… things you’re obsessed with, they don’t exist. They’re just superstition.’
I catch her arm as she turns away. ‘They showed me Moloney’s death before it happened. It’s why I went with him. I knew he would die.’
‘And they didn’t mention that we would too?’
‘The Augur did. Don’t you remember? They said we had to walk through hell.’
‘You’re insane, you know that?’
But there is something in her face, guarded and fearful. The mark carved into my chest prickles.
‘What did you see,’ I demand. ‘In the Suplicio? I saw Moloney. I saw bodies. I know you saw something.’
‘Nothing,’ she says, trying to pull away from me, her voice shaking. ‘Nothing, it was just an hallucination.’
‘It was more than that. What did you see?’
‘I didn’t.’
I shake her. ‘Tell me!’
‘I can’t!’ she bursts, her face reddened and terrified. ‘Don’t make me, please.’
Abruptly, I let go. I see it then, in a way I had not before; how much she carries for someone so young, a weight and responsibility she should never have had to bear, but does, all the same.
Hesitantly, I reach out again and place a hand on her shoulder. ‘I’m sorry. You were right. We were just hallucinating.’
She wipes at her eyes. ‘Don’t patronise me, traitor.’
I smile a little. ‘I wouldn’t dare.’
‘You’d be dead before you got the words out.’ She sniffs. ‘Now, what the hell is Peg doing with those weapons?’
She hurries away.
Rubbing at the pain in my chest that seems to come from within and without, I follow.
* * *
The sun is setting and across the endless stretch of the Barrens every rock casts a distorted shadow. Silas stealthily lights his pipe, taking advantage of Falco’s temporary absence from the flight deck, and my eyes are heavy with the bitter smoke. The light drips like hot honey through the windshield to where I sit, a battered almanac in my lap.
It’s only five years old, but might as well have come from another century. In it, there is an article about Factus, filled with alluring pictures of majestic sand dunes and spectacular sunsets, an image showing the vibrant, free-wheeling architecture of Otroville’s main street. Is this what had drawn Silas here, from his safe, comfortable, enclosed life on Jericho?
I let out a breath of laughter, turning the page. What the article does not mention is that the buildings in the photograph of Otroville are not real; just facades stuck to the front of container stacks, Accord propaganda built to reassure new arrivals. Anyone arriving at the port these days can see right through them, literally, to the grit-blasted metal beneath. Neither does it mention the Market of the Innocents – a gauntlet run between port and town – where quick tongues and nimble fingers wait, ready to strip any new arrivals bare as they gasp, dizzy and sick from the lack
