I half rise from the table. Falco has already intercepted Peg and strides back towards us.
‘What is it?’ I ask.
‘Well, the good news is, I might have bartered you passage for tomorrow,’ Peg says, breathless. ‘Uan said he could take you both as far as one of the transport satellites, with a shipment of rat pups heading for Prodor.’
I nod, trying to ignore the stab of reluctance and fear in my belly. ‘The bad news?’
Falco is tense. ‘The Marshal’s in town. Peg just saw his craft.’
‘The crazy one?’ the General says sharply. ‘He know who we are?’
‘You’d better pray to anything you believe in that he does not.’
Instinctively, I turn to look at the saloon. It’s crowded now, the tables filled with people playing stabberscotch and Chuck-a-Luck; folk from off-moon who don’t know or care to fear the Ifs with their games of chance. Franzi goes from group to group with a box that contains his fighting beetles, taking bets, his mother is working the tables and Esterházy… Through the crowd I see the limping, wavering shape of the old woman. A wind I do not feel blows, whipping her dress, and for a moment I am back in the Suplicio, back in that endless waste of sand, and she’s coming towards me across the dunes…
Tap, tap, tap.
The hand that grips the cane is dripping with blood. The eyes that bore across the distance are my own.
I push myself away from the table. Someone catches me. Silas.
‘Ten, what is it?’
I look back again. There’s nothing there.
‘We have to get out of here, now.’
Even before I finish speaking, I hear it: the cackling drone of a low-altitude engine, coming to rest outside the saloon. We all look at each other.
‘You three,’ Falco says, ‘get back upstairs—’
The door crashes open. A man stands on the other side, swathed in a long coat. When he pushes it back, dust cascades from his shoulders. Beneath, a rusted metal badge glints, in the shape of a gibbous moon. He spits and looks around, eyes quick as flies.
Peg swears. ‘Too late.’
* * *
The bar goes quiet, as more than one pair of hands hurriedly slip cargo tags into boots or pockets and come to rest on weapons. The Marshal’s face is wind-burned to leather, white creases fanning from the eyes, as if his skin is splitting to reveal a pale and grub-like body beneath.
‘That’s Joliffe?’ the General whispers.
‘Peg,’ Falco’s lips barely move, ‘go find Esterházy.’
The man has not yet looked our way, half-hidden as we are. As slowly as I can I slide one of the steak knives from the table. Silas’s stare is hostile, alcohol hot within him. My own head thumps with liquor and adrenalin. Not a good way to fight. And yet, my muscles tense, ready.
‘Where is she?’ the man bellows into the room. ‘Where is the old bitch?’
No one speaks, but I see a ripple of undisguised loathing run through the patrons, as the Marshal walks towards the bar. That gibbous moon badge – symbol of the Consortium of Freight Underwriters – is the only thing keeping him in one piece. Sullenly, the bartend thumps down a cup and pours a shot of something brown into it. The Marshal seizes it up and knocks it back.
‘Now, Peg,’ Falco hisses, and the G’hal slips from the table into the corridor beyond.
The click and whine of a gun charging makes everyone freeze, including Peg. The Marshal aims a pistol at them with one hand, the other clamped around the cup.
‘Another step,’ he says. ‘And I blow that sweet face off.’
Falco moves in front of Pegeen. ‘Joliffe,’ she says derisively. ‘Still sucking air?’
He sets the cup down, and brings out another pistol. ‘Malady Falco,’ he sneers over its whine. ‘Lady Sickness. Heard you were in town.’ Lazily, he jerks the second gun at her. ‘You gonna come in quiet, or do I gotta damage the old woman again? Her leg still ain’t recovered from the shot I gave her last time.’
‘What?’ Falco spits.
The Marshal’s lips twitch. ‘Old Pec didn’t mention where she got that limp, huh? See, when you didn’t stick around, she had to answer on your behalf. Leg for a leg, as it were.’
‘If you touch her again, I’ll slice your guts open and leave you for the Seekers.’
Through the open door, a tendril of wind creeps, like a wild animal into a house. It sets the tags on the walls rippling, raises the hairs on my arms. I close my eyes as a sweat breaks out on my neck. Not now. The sound of a gunshot that has not yet been fired echoes through my head, the pressure building.
‘Big words for a woman with empty hands,’ Joliffe jeers. ‘Reach for a weapon and I shoot. I’m taking you in, along with that trashcan out there you call a ship.’
‘That trashcan is mine,’ Silas starts. ‘You have no right—’
‘I have every right!’
Perspiration cuts channels through the dust on the Marshal’s face, and I feel it in my blood now, how his mind is slipping, how control is leaching from the room with every breath. Soon, something will happen and the paths across realities will spill and tangle and they will be here, waiting to gulp down all those different worlds.
‘If she don’t come with me,’ the Marshal yells to the room, ‘I’ll burn this shithole to the ground, and all your goods with it!’
A flash of movement: Falco reaching for her gun. I leap up, just as the Marshal fires.
With a cry, Pegeen crashes back against the wall, clutching at their chest. Falco screams in rage and grief and sends two charges flying, hitting the man twice in the shoulder, before dropping to her knees beside Pegeen. But the Marshal is still standing, and – with a wild grimace – aims the pistol directly at Falco’s head.
A path opens before me.
The knife is in my hand as I lunge, throwing myself across
