Momentarily, among the noise and dust, I see Esterházy’s face, her eyes hard as burned metal as she tells me, it means you have been marked. I drag the coat and scarf aside, baring my neck and collarbones. The searchlight blinds me, and I shut my eyes, waiting for the end.
Nothing. Just the savage cough of the overhauled engines, just the churn of the air. I open my eyes a crack. The Seeker hanging from the craft has put up their arm in some kind of signal.
Dimly, I’m aware of Joliffe hauling on my leg, trying to drag me out of the searchlight, back towards the buzzard, like a dog with a carcass. Then there is a single shot, and the tugging stops.
With an effort, I raise my head. The crafts have landed close by and figures emerge from the dust. Joliffe gibbers, crawling away, his leg pumping blood into the sand.
At the edge of the light, one of the Seekers stops. I can’t see their face, covered by a mask and goggles. Their clothes are old and sun-faded, a patchwork stolen from the dead, tell-tale signs of stab wounds and bullet holes darned over and scorched closed. But there’s something familiar about the way they tilt their head; did we meet before, out in the Barrens? Did they carry the General and I from purgatory in the Suplicio?
The skin of their hands is cracked and rough, the flesh marked with thousands of tiny black lines. A tally, I realise in horror and fascination. Beneath their ragged collar is an old scar: two longer lines and a slash across.
Silently, they raise a hand and point to the matching marks on my chest.
‘Alive?’ they ask.
I nod desperately. ‘Yes.’
The Seeker gestures at Joliffe, who still crawls, spluttering towards the edge of the light.
‘Him?’
I remember the torture he exacted, his threats to Esterházy and Falco, the way he hurt Peg, the feverish excitement in his eyes as he drove his boot into my flesh.
‘No.’ I look into the shadows where the Seeker’s eyes should be. ‘He’s dead.’
FOUR
THE
BOOK
OF
HEL
IN THE STARK mid-morning light, Angel Share is desolate. Smoke still drifts in places, the dirt scorched and disordered. Few ships remain; no doubt they took what they could of value and departed.
One ship is familiar. The Charis waits on one of the docking platforms, unattended and silent. Nearby, Peacekeepers – four of the twelve who made up the original posse – guard the gate. There’s no sign of Horse or his metal dog.
Beneath me, the buzzard cackles unhappily after being pushed so hard across the desert. I feel the same. With water and food and drugs I have deceived my body into forgetting some of its damage, its maimed flesh and pain and rising infection. An illusion, but one I need to maintain for a little longer.
As I approach the dock, I reach for the pouch of breath and carefully crack one between my teeth. A rush beats through me, the amphetamine in the beads more powerful than any I’ve encountered. A lawman’s perk.
Joliffe’s hat hides my battered face, his reeking coat covers the blood and filth upon my clothes. As I bring the buzzard to earth a dozen paces from the Peacekeepers, I check the blanket around the bundle at my side.
The engine dies away with a splutter. One of the Peacekeepers steps forwards, peering through the settling dust.
‘Joliffe?’ she calls. ‘Where’s the fugitive?’
I climb from the buzzard, taking up the bundle. Face lowered, I limp forwards.
‘Joliffe?’ another says uncertainly.
I throw the blanket to the sand. The cloth unravels and the Marshal’s head – eyeless and tongueless – rolls to a stop at the Peacekeepers’ feet.
I look up at them then, one hand on the pistol at my waist, the carved Seeker marks visible on my chest.
They scatter.
Gathering the head under one arm, I limp across the scarred earth onto the main street of Angel Share. My muscles fizz with artificial energy, head light from blood loss. All around are signs of the devastation wrought the night before last, yet to be cleared: a few dead grubs left in the sand, an empty window frame, a door sagging on one hinge, like a tooth on sinew. The air is thick with the wet-dog slap of sodden concrete drying in the sun.
The saloon is a ruin. The blue-painted walls are lapped with smoke stains and soot, the roof gone, the windows gone, only the breeze blocks remaining. A group works in the wreckage, pulling at what can be salvaged. Beneath the shade of the water pump are two blanket-wrapped figures. Swaying on my feet, I walk over and bend to turn back the cloth.
Pec Esterházy lies dead. Her arms have been folded onto her chest, her eyes closed. Soot catches in the strands of her grey hair, on the lined face of this woman who took her first breath on Earth eighty years before; who journeyed across the universe and took her last on Factus, here, at the known system’s limit.
I drop the Marshal’s head before her lifeless body.
‘For you,’ I croak.
One of the figures in the wreckage turns. Falco. Her face falls into shock, as if she’s looking at a walking corpse.
‘Doc?’
Then Silas is there, hurrying towards me only to stop, uncertain. Something else is wrong. The General isn’t among them. I look up in question.
‘They got her,’ Falco says, her mouth tight with rage and grief. ‘The bastards got her.’
* * *
As Silas begins the slow work of patching me up, Falco tells me what happened. How the General, upon hearing the Marshal’s gunshot and seeing me fall,
