A moment later she sways, catching herself on the wall.
‘Give me a shot. That kid has worn me out.’
I grab the medkit, brought from the Charis.
‘I should check the wound too,’ I say, as I inject a booster into her arm. ‘Does it still feel hot?’
‘Don’t fuss, medic,’ she snaps, looking around. ‘Is this the best command could come up with? I’m not accustomed to such quarters.’
With dismay, I see the confusion on her face, the heightened colour, the racing of her pulse. ‘You should rest, General.’
‘No, I must review the consignments.’ Her eyes cast about the room blindly. ‘Where are they?’
Pity jabs at my insides, like a pin worked loose. ‘Here.’ I hand her a tattered almanac from beside the bed.
She takes it solemnly. Then, her face clears and she stares up at me in abrupt, terrible clarity.
‘Low?’ she whispers.
‘I know.’ The pain jabs at me again, as I fill the syringe with cognitive enhancer. ‘Don’t worry. You’ll be alright.’
She’s quiet, after that. I let her be. In any case, the time to rest has passed. It’s as Esterházy promised; like insects that favour the coolness of the night, dusk brings ships to Angel Share.
Not many, but enough to make me anxious. Some seem to stop only to refuel, others to visit the ramshackle stores, which open their doors at sundown. Most come for Ma Esterházy’s. From the second-storey window, I watch them swagger or hurry up the dirt drag, towards the blue house. This is the beating heart of Angel Share, giving out as it does sex and drink and news and authorisation; relief and warning in equal measure.
Bebe and Thrip run the brothel between them, renting out rooms to freelance workers who arrive on the ships. Ma Esterházy sits in her office off the bar, dispensing stamps brought to her by the consignment runners. The cargoes themselves come from all over; meat and dairy from Brovos, oil from the great floating belch of the Delos refineries, scrap from Tin Town, airtights and water from Prosper… Among the tags, I even spot the austere white and blue symbol of the Congregations, though what anyone on Factus would want with the handcrafted prayer beads and religious pamphlets of my home planet I have no notion.
Falco is right; this is a dangerous place for us to be, and yet I feel small enough to be lost in all the activity. We soon find ourselves seated around Ma Esterházy’s private table, set in an alcove from where we can see the whole bar. Silas smiles when he sees me; he’s also cleaned himself up some, washed his hair and trimmed his beard and moustache into what is more or less a style. Falco looks more herself, scalp freshly shaved, wearing bright orange lip-paint that she must have found somewhere. Peg too is clean, hair brushed for once, frizzing thanks to the dry air. And yet, each time the door creaks on its hinges, I see the two of them tense.
I was expecting the usual Factus fare of protein steaks in old fat and grains hard as teeth from long-storage, but I’m mistaken. Esterházy obviously has access to wares that most do not, and has spared no expense for her guests.
For the first time I understand where Falco’s seemingly limitless supply of airtights must come from; here are tins of sardines from the fishvilles of Prosper, and blue corn from the vast roof fields of Jericho’s agri warehouses. There’s a bowl of long-fermented greens, soft-shell smoked beetles, and meat, actual meat: huge Brovian steaks, cut into slivers. And – in a nod to local custom – there are dishes of cooked witchetty grubs, their skin crisp and their innards soft as boiled egg yolks, and dishes of real salt.
Esterházy sits at the head of the table, quietly watching us eat. She herself eats little, picking at the odd piece of sausage and drinking cups of liquor from her unmarked bottle. Every so often one of her workers appears and whispers to her. More than once, I realise I am staring only when she catches my eye. I look away and drink down the beer in my glass – miraculously cold – and try not to rub at the marks on my chest.
The others forget their tension with each bite. The General, who was at first silent and troubled, eats ferociously, like a feral cat who fears her meal might be snatched at any moment.
‘My god,’ she says, mouth smeared with grease from the steak, ‘real food.’ She takes a slurp from the cup at her elbow. It seems she has forgotten her sulk at not being allowed beer like the rest of us. ‘Real milk.’
‘If you call rat milk real.’ Silas shrugs.
The General stops dead, the cup halfway to her mouth. ‘Rat milk?’
‘Sure.’ Silas spears another beetle. ‘Milked from Chansatorian udder rats. Most useful creature, very popular here on the border moons.’
‘Ha ha,’ the General says, but I notice she takes a surreptitious sniff of the milk.
Falco is the only one who doesn’t fully let her guard down. Her eyes keep flicking to the door, to the darkness outside the windows.
‘Problem?’ I ask her quietly, as I reach for the dish of grubs.
‘Horse said he won’t be done with the ship ’til midnight at the earliest.’
‘Ah well.’ Silas drains his cup. ‘The night is young.’
‘Exactly.’
Silas ignores her. ‘Hey, Ms Esterházy, aren’t you worried about the Seekers out here?’
Esterházy looks at him hard. ‘The Seekers?’
‘Yeah. I hear other settlements in the U Zone get hit hard.’
The old woman gives a small, dismissive smile. ‘They tend to leave us alone.’
‘How come?’
‘There was… an agreement made. A long time ago.’
Silas snorts. ‘An agreement with the Seekers? Right, and Hel the Converter signed it in blood.’
‘Don’t be silly,’ Esterházy says lightly. ‘Hel doesn’t exist.’
‘Falco said you were among the first to come to Factus.’ The words are from my mouth
