‘Thank you,’ the woman watches them go, ‘it’s been months since he saw anyone even close to his age.’
‘Do not start crying, Bebe,’ Ma Esterházy says, limping over from the bar, an unlabelled bottle in her hand. ‘Not when we have friends here.’ She thumps the bottle down and drops into a chair.
‘It is only right,’ she continues, pouring clear liquid into small metal cups. ‘That we begin with a drink. Xenia, the ancient Greeks used to call it, the sacred law of hospitality. Or translated for Factus, “liquor first, questions later”.’
Bebe rolls her eyes good-naturedly as she takes a cup and leans back against a table. It seems compulsory that we all do the same.
‘Egészségedre,’ Esterházy announces, looking us all in the eye.
‘Egészségedre,’ I mumble, forcing myself to meet her gaze. Her expression flickers, just for a moment, before she raises the cup and drinks.
Whatever the liquor is, it stings my lips and makes my eyes water, but it’s good, somehow clean, scouring the dust from my throat.
‘Now,’ Ma Esterházy says, refilling the cups. ‘We may talk. What brings the great Malady Falco so far from Landfall?’
‘Ran into some trouble at the Pit,’ Falco says carefully, sipping at her second cup.
‘So have many of late. I hear this Augur has a new way of seeing to business.’
‘Valdosta’s mad,’ Silas says, cleaning out the bowl of his pipe. ‘Anyone gets even a nick, it’s into the Seekers’ cages.’
‘Was this your experience?’ Esterházy asks, her eyes flickering over me.
‘That or worse. They chased us clean the other side of the plateau before they left off.’ Falco looks down into the cup. ‘Lost a G’hal because of it.’
Esterházy reaches a worn hand across the table and clasps Falco’s bare arm. ‘I am sorry.’
‘As am I.’
‘You will seek retribution?’ There’s a tension in the old woman’s words.
‘The person responsible has already paid the price.’
‘And that was?’
A shadow of a smile lifts Falco’s lips. ‘Dru Moloney.’
They all swear, Esterházy, Bebe and the barman, and Falco laughs. As we drink, Falco and Pegeen tell – if not the truth – a version of Moloney’s death from which the General and I are carefully absent. I stay quiet, and look out the window instead, trying to avoid the old woman’s gaze without truly knowing why.
Outside, the street is listless as before, but beneath the shade of what looks like a locked water tap I see the General and Franzi. The General drinks long from a cold bottle of soda before hesitating, then passing the rest over to the boy, much to his jubilation.
‘Horse is seeing to your ship?’ Esterházy says, so abruptly that I look back.
‘Yes.’ Silas grimaces. ‘Can’t say I am easy about it. The Charis is—’
‘Capricious?’ The old woman smiles at Silas’s surprise. ‘Do not trouble yourself. Horse is a good mechanic, if not a whole man, any longer.’ She casts a look at us, suddenly commanding. ‘You will have shelter beneath my roof for as long as the repair takes. Though I cannot, I’m afraid, promise safety.’
Falco nods. ‘We will take shelter, gladly. Though I hope we’ll be long gone by sundown.’
Esterházy shakes her head. ‘Rest while you can. Night comes fast in the Barrens.’
* * *
For all the woman’s words, I can’t rest. Though – with a vapour shower and a change of clothes, courtesy of Esterházy – I begin to feel calmer. Less like a dog with hackles raised or a soldier who dares not remove their boots at night, for fear of waking to a screamed command.
Bebe comes by with some clothes for the General, and a box of make-up. I stare at the cosmetics. It’s been so long since I wore any… I touch the little tubes and boxes, remembering how on Prosper I once had a bag, cluttered with these, had once patted and blended and buffed my skin, shared them with others among the chatter and good humour of a barracks bathroom before a rare evening’s leave. I had made myself up for a night in Prosper’s shining bars, painting a face over the mask I already wore every day: comrade, friend.
Traitor.
Slowly, I take up a tin containing a homemade mascara cake – soap, black dye and maybe oxides, if Bebe has been able to get any. I use it to black my lashes, then pick up a little pot of rouge and dab it on my cracked lips. For a moment, I glimpse the woman I once was, the one who made the choice that led me here.
I sit on the bed, listening to the gentle clank and hum of Esterházy’s establishment. Could I stay somewhere like this?
Would I be satisfied with it, or would the tally drive me on? Would they find me, as they always do, and tamper with the workings of my life to spin it off course? Is that what they had done, in the Edge?
The door creaks open and the General slopes in, grimy and smelling of cooking fat.
‘I should kill you,’ she says, sinking onto the bed, but she doesn’t seem to mean it. Seeing me, she frowns. ‘You look… different. Like a person.’
I smile, nodding to the bundle of clothes at the bottom of the bed. ‘Bebe left those for you. And there’s wash water in the bucket.’
‘Thank god.’ The General sheds the filthy jacket and shirt, wincing at the pull of the wound in her side. On her chest and arms I see, once again, the scars of making and remaking, criss-crossing her flesh. ‘Poor kid,’ she says, scrubbing at her neck. ‘He showed me his battle beetles. I will admit, they’re better than those sorry-looking ants. These actually fought. They threw each other onto their backs, and he won three fights, but I won the last. And he let me name one. I called it Voivira after the camp.’ She stops, looking at me. ‘What?’
‘Nothing. I just forgot, for a moment.’
‘Everybody does, when I want them to.’ Awkwardly, she pulls on the too-big,
