He screams, staggering back, dropping the pistols. Stepping behind him, I seize his greasy collar and bring the serrated blade against his throat. I see Falco stand and level her gun.
‘Stop.’
The voice cuts through the beating of the blood in my head, and at once I feel it, the violent shaking of the man’s body, the hot, clean iron of his blood, the stench of him: body odour and stale breath and urine. The blade has bitten into the surface of his skin, and it wants to bite deeper. Falco’s teeth are bared, her finger on the trigger.
‘Let him go.’
Esterházy stands in the doorway, the night behind her, a rifle levelled at the man who is almost a corpse in my arms.
At once, the clear path vanishes, leaving me stranded in a place without roads. I let the Marshal go.
He sinks to the floor, clasping at his bloodied face with his good hand. The bullet wounds smoulder in his shoulder, my knife cut him from chin to eyebrow, splitting one of his nostrils.
‘Get out,’ Esterházy tells him coldly. ‘And do not forget to tell your employers that I saved your worthless life.’
Shaking and gasping, the Marshal snatches up the guns and flees.
* * *
‘Will they be alright?’ Silas asks, as I close the door of Pegeen’s room, where Falco sits, her face tear-stained.
I nod wearily. ‘Peg is lucky. The bullet lodged under the collarbone. I was able to get it out. If it had been a charge pistol…’ I don’t need to say it. Instead, I stare down at my hands, rimed with dried blood.
‘Here,’ Bebe says, handing me a damp cloth.
The blood will not come off. For a few hours I had forgotten myself and what I was. What I had done. I feel tears rising in my chest and know I won’t be able to keep them back.
‘Come on,’ Silas says suddenly, guiding me away. ‘You can wash up in my room.’
As soon as the door closes behind us, the first sob escapes. I press the blood-stained cloth against my mouth, but more rise, hot and violent.
‘I can’t outrun it.’ The words come out thick. ‘I try to keep the tally, I try to preserve life, but everything I do…’
Silas doesn’t answer. Instead, he sinks onto the bed, lights the bowl of his pipe and takes a deep drag. ‘You think that bastard didn’t deserve it?’
‘It’s not that.’ I let the cloth fall to the floor. ‘I swore that I would save lives, not take them.’
‘A man like Joliffe doesn’t give a damn about what you swore.’ He looks at me through the smoke. ‘You did what you had to, Ten.’
‘You’re still calling me that.’ Wearily, I sit down beside him and when he offers the pipe, I take it. ‘Why? You know it isn’t real.’
‘Real or not, it’s what you told me, that first day.’ He shrugs. ‘I can call you Low, if you prefer.’
‘It doesn’t matter now.’
Slowly, the terror and pain ebb from me, the century fills my head, making everything soft and distant.
‘I should go,’ I murmur at last, but don’t move. Silas’s arm presses against mine, so that I feel the warmth of his skin through the threadbare shirt.
‘I don’t want to be alone,’ I say. ‘Not tonight.’
‘And tomorrow? Will you leave?’ He traces a pattern on my knuckles. ‘I meant it before. If you wanted to stay on the Charis…’
There’s no good answer I can give. Instead, I turn towards him, so close that I feel his breath on my cheek, sticky with smoke and liquor. I lift a hand to touch the fading bruise on his eyebrow. In turn, he reaches out to brush a hand across my scalp, the scars on my temples.
‘Who are you?’ he whispers.
I lean in and meet his lips.
* * *
I’m back in the desert, in a storm of sand, and around me something terrible is happening. Cries, screams. One by one, figures appear from the murk, some fumbling for guns, others peppered with blood and burns. I look behind me and see Pegeen, lying empty-eyed; Falco spinning to the ground, lit up by a hail of charges; the General, face down, blood seeping from her middle. I watch the Charis crash horribly into the sand, all the trash and clutter of the flight deck spilling out around Silas’s lifeless body.
A figure looms above me, her eyes dark and merciless as a raptor’s, her hands gloved in blood…
I open my eyes and the dream fades. I’m shaking, my naked back slick with cold sweat. What have I seen?
Silas stirs in his sleep, reaching for me. I look down at his shape in the sheets, wishing that I could separate this small corner of reality from the rest, tear it away as easily as paper and live within it, forgotten.
But I can’t. Quietly, I pull on my clothes and boots and slip from the room.
The saloon is silent. It’s dark outside, but I sense that night is losing its grip, beginning the slow slide towards morning. When I open the back door, the wind picks up, like dogs that have been waiting for someone to come, tangling about my ankles. I breathe it in, wondering why I’ve left the comfort of Silas’s bed.
‘It’s as I thought.’
The ragged voice comes from the darkness. On a bench against the wall, Pec Esterházy sits, a cigarette burning dully between her fingers.
I feel no surprise. Somehow, I knew she would be here.
My shirt hangs open at the neck, the raw cuts illuminated by the momentary glow of the cigarette.
‘What does it mean?’ I ask.
‘It means you have been marked.’
Sweat is cold on my torso. ‘Marked.’
‘By them.’
‘The Ifs?’
A flare of the cigarette. ‘Is that what you call them? Yes. Perhaps by them, indirectly. Human hands cut your flesh. Though many would not call them human any longer.’
‘The Seekers did this?’ Her head
