Liquid splatters my face. For a brief moment I think it’s water, but then the smell reaches me and I spit and gag, knowing it’s urine. Above me, Marshal Joliffe laughs.
‘Still alive?’ he says, buttoning his trousers awkwardly. ‘Just as well. If you can stay that way another day or two I’d be obliged. Wanted alive, that’s what it said on the wire.’
I spit again, reaching up a grazed hand to wipe at my face. ‘I’m dying.’
‘Yeah, but dying is alive, isn’t it? Until dead.’ He peers around. ‘We’d be making better time if that bitch kid hadn’t maimed my buzzard.’
‘Where?’ I choke.
He kneels beside me. He looks terrible, the bandages that slant across his face gummed with pus and old blood, a bulky dressing on his shoulder.
‘We’re taking a trip to the Air Line Road.’ His stale breath wafts across my face. ‘Heard a rumour see, about what your carcass might be worth to the Accord, specially still sucking air. I reckon for a hundred thousand credits I can hold off on a killing blow.’ He reaches out, and pokes the wound in my shoulder.
I retch in pain and he stops pressing, but leaves his hand there, fingers dabbed in blood.
‘Hundred thou credits,’ he says, gaze going somewhere else. ‘I’ll finally get off this backwash moon. Buy out my pension and retire, somewhere green, green as old copper.’ He presses down again, absentmindedly.
‘You will rot here,’ I tell him.
His lips shake and he drives his fist into my head.
Hours later, I wake again. The same place? Impossible to tell. Night has fallen, and above I see the scattering stars, fading out towards the Edge. I smell smoke. A cook fire. The same as I lit many times out in this wilderness, hunching in its glow, trying not to feel the night at my back.
After half a dozen attempts, I manage to roll over in the net. A short distance away, Marshal Joliffe sits on an old ammunition box, his face lit by flames. He has removed the bandages and dabs at the livid cuts, muttering to himself. I clench my good hand. This pathetic, vicious, broken man will not be the one to destroy me.
‘Hey,’ I wheeze, barely able to speak. ‘Water.’
He looks up as if, for a moment, he forgot I am here. With a smile, he takes his canteen and pours it over his mouth, slavering the liquid from his face.
‘Water,’ I beg again. ‘I will tell you how to treat your face.’
‘Treating it just fine.’ He picks up an unmarked bottle from the ground. Liquid glugs out into his palm.
‘The cuts need attention,’ I say. ‘You should clean them, close them with sealant, unless there is infection…’
I barely know what I’m saying, muttering medical words almost at random, but it doesn’t seem to matter. Joliffe looks up suspiciously.
‘How do I know if it’s infected?’
‘Let me out and I’ll see.’
He snorts, but comes forwards to release the net from the buzzard. As he does, the stench of the wounds reaches me.
‘You try and run,’ he says, ‘I’ll slice your hamstrings.’
Free, I haul myself up on my side, but the Marshal takes hold of my coat and drags me the rest of the way, as I cry out in pain.
‘Well?’ He drops down onto the box as if at a lesson, his good eye bright and fixed.
‘What… is that?’ I wheeze, pointing to the bottle he’s using.
He sets it down at the edge of the fire.
‘Can’t see,’ I murmur weakly.
He moves it closer. DANDICAT’S LINIMENT, the label declares, FINE FOR AILMENTS INSIDE AND OUT.
‘Good,’ I whisper. ‘Now, let me look.’
Frowning, the Marshal hunches towards me.
With all my strength, I grab the bottle and push myself from the ground, though the pain almost makes me pass out. He snarls and reaches for his gun, too late; I’m on him, digging my fingers into his wounded face until he howls in agony. The bottle, I raise up and bring down hard on his skull.
Plastic. It does nothing but spill foul oil over his face. Gasping, I roll away from him, kicking hot embers into his path as he lunges for me.
Get up. I force myself to my feet, though they shake under me. Run. Enough distance, enough darkness, he might not find me…
But my body is hurt, weakened by thirst and pain and blood loss and after a dozen steps I go sprawling. Frantically, I crawl one-armed, though I can hear him staggering after me, swearing and screaming, and I know he’ll make good on his threat; he’ll cut the tendons in my legs, and I will die hanging in a net above the desert, my blood dripping out across the miles to disappear like snakes into the sand. Is this the end they have been leading me towards? Have they saved me a dozen times from the hulks, the Seekers, the Rooks – for this?
My heart is loud in my ears as I crawl, as if it knows it is on its final beats. The Marshal is at my heels, rabid with violence. He grabs my boot and hauls me back, raising his knife.
The noise of my heart explodes, but it’s not my heart at all, it’s engines: the steady pounding strokes of engines. I look past the Marshal’s oozing face to see four crafts hurtle from the night sky.
They open fire, charges of red and pure white lighting the desert. Joliffe staggers back, his arms shielding his head, screaming obscenities. As the crafts bank and wheel for another attack, he looks up. Fear twists his features as he realises what he is seeing.
Sleek and deadly, the Seekers’ crafts roar over our
