I rejoin Falco and Silas and Pegeen in the General Store, where they poke dismally at plates of fried grubs.
‘Here.’ Silas hands one over. ‘It’s all the old tightwad will spare. They’re better with some pseudosalt.’
‘Better than what?’ Falco grumbles, washing one down with a swig from a bottle of mezcal.
I stare at the plate without seeing it, imagining the expression of disgust the General would make now if she were here, confronted by a dinner of witchetty grubs.
‘We have to go after her,’ I say.
Silas shrugs helplessly. ‘We don’t know where they took her.’
‘We know they went east.’ I look up at them all, one of my eyes still blurry. ‘Joliffe was planning to take me to the Air Line Road. Surely the Peacekeepers will go there too?’
Bebe watches me, a strange expression on her face as she nods slowly. ‘The Air Line is the nearest place with an Accord presence. Doubt they would go much further than that, Peacekeepers don’t like to stray outside the Zone. Most of them are wanted too.’
‘What’s the closest station?’
‘Drax. About a day and a half’s ride, on a good mule.’
I nod, and tip the greasy fried morsels into a twist of paper. Shoving them into the pocket of the Marshal’s coat, I gather up whatever can be spared from the floor around us: a roll of bandage, the Charis’s medkit, a packet of dried snake meat.
‘What are you doing?’ Falco demands. ‘We don’t even know if she’s still alive.’
‘The Peacekeepers won’t kill her, not while there is bounty to be had. And to execute her, the Accord will probably need to give an executive order.’ I wince, picking up one of the guns abandoned by the window. A Peacekeeper pistol, it looks like. ‘If they’re travelling by mule, they’ll be moving slowly. It means we have a chance.’
A hand grasps my arm.
‘Ten,’ Silas pleads. ‘Look at you, you’re half-dead. You need to rest. And if the Accord catch you…’
I squeeze his hand, before letting go and shouldering my pack with difficulty. ‘Meet me in Drax?’ I ask them all. ‘You have to pass it to get back to Landfall, in any case.’
‘And where the hell are you going?’ Falco demands.
I stop. I’m tired, more tired than I dare admit, and yet I can’t rest. My hand goes to the scalpel hidden in the jacket.
‘To send a message.’
* * *
The ashes of the fire spiral into the air around me, before falling soft, like the snow I once saw in an old wire-and-picture show filmed on Earth.
Night has fallen as I sit on the sand. I add another piece of debris to the fire, making sparks leap high into the air. I know it will be visible for miles across the Barrens – a spark, a red pointed star. A beacon.
To my right, a vague shape beneath the shelter, lies Esterházy’s body.
‘Will they come?’ I ask, over the crackling of broken furniture.
There’s no reply.
I turn the scalpel in my hands, tracing the tarnished handle, worn to smoothness. How many lives has this blade taken? How many arteries severed, how many hearts cut free? Or am I seeing it all wrong? The blade reflects a narrow strip of my face; just an eye socket, swollen from the beating, and an eye within it, dark as a bird’s. How many lives have they saved, in their bloody trade? Can such things be measured and weighed and balanced in any meaningful way, whether one or a thousand?
I feel the lives that make up the tally rising around me, as they did in the Suplicio. Is this why the Ifs follow me? Do I carry the balance of all those unrealised realities? Or is it a debt that can never be paid?
In another world, Ten Low does not exist. In another world, a young army medic refuses to forget her name and wear another face to spy on the enemy. In another world she never goes to Prosper. She never accepts a mission from a contact on the corner of a lonely street. The virus research never leaves the medical laboratory. And Tamane is never a target, just another moon, home to thousands of young Accord trainees – fighters of the future. And the Free Limits still fight, gathering their scattered allies, forgetting why the fight ever began, and the war goes on.
I open my eyes, looking down to my chest. Which version of me was dragged out of the Suplicio?
When I look up I see a figure standing, staring at me from where the firelight fails. I see grey hair thick with ash and dust, wrinkled skin like the desert from above, eyes that are dark holes. I blink. The figure sways with the wind, always an inch beyond where the light falls.
‘Esterházy?’ I murmur. The fire flares, getting smoke into my eyes. By the time I open them again, the wavering figure is gone, replaced by someone else.
Night-vision goggles glow red, scarred hands grip a belt hung with weapons, reddish hair blows in the wind. As I watch, the darkness gives up other figures. Four, then six, ten. All masked, all staring.
A wave of fear courses through me. Picking up the scalpel, I push myself to my feet.
‘She left me this,’ I call, holding it out. ‘She told me about you.’
They have come on the Seekers’ heels; so silently, so softly, that I had not noticed. They take up space between atoms. One of the Seekers steps towards me.
‘What does it mean?’ I ask, the scalpel trembling in my hand.
The figure stops, six feet away. I can’t see much of the face, only weathered brown skin. Among the hundreds of lines that score their arms, is a fresh one, just below the elbow. A new mark to the tally. An addition, not a subtraction.
Slowly, they hold out a hand in invitation.
‘I can’t,’ I say. ‘I have to find Gabi. I want her to live. They do too.’
The figure takes another pace forwards, until they are
