"This is new," he said. "You brought guns. This we ain’t had. I seen mercs. You ain’t mercs."

"You won’t see anything ever again, you don’t piss off," said Pomeroy. He aimed his big musket with amazing calm. "You could take us, but how many of you’ll go too?" All the party, even Drey, had a fReemade in their sights.

"What are you?" said the chief. "Who are you lot? What you doing?"

Pomeroy began to answer, some bluster, some fighting pomp, but something abrupt happened to Cutter. He heard a whispering. Utterly intimate, like lips breathing right into his ear, unnatural and compelling. With the words came cold. He shuddered. The voice said: "Tell the truth."

Words came out of Cutter in a loud involuntary chant. "Ihona’s a loom worker. Drey’s a machinist. Elsie’s out of work. Big Pomeroy’s a clerk. Fejh is a docker. I’m a shop-man. We’re with the Caucus. We’re looking for my friend. And we’re looking for the Iron Council."

His companions stared. "What in hell, man?" said Fejh, and Ihona: "What in Jabber’s name…?"

Cutter unclenched his teeth and shook his head. "I didn’t mean to," he tried to tell them. "I heard something…"

"Well, well," the bandit chief was saying. "You’ve a long way to go. Even if you come past us-" And then he broke off. He worked his jaw, then spoke rhythmically in a different, declamatory voice. "They can go. Let them pass. The Caucus is no enemy of ours."

His troops stared at him. "Let them pass," he said again. He waved at his fReemade, looking quite enraged. His men and women shouted in anger and disbelief, and for seconds looked as if they might ignore his order, but then they backed away and shouldered their weapons, cursing.

The fReemade chief watched the travellers as they continued, and they watched him back until their route took him out of sight. They did not see him move.

Cutter told his comrades of the whispered compulsion that had taken him. "Thaumaturgy," said Elsie. "He must’ve hexed you, the boss-thief, gods know why." Cutter shook his head.

"Didn’t you see how he looked?" he said. "When he let us go? That’s how I felt. He was glamoured too."

When they came to the market town they found tinkers and traders and travelling entertainers. Between dry earth buildings were battered and half-flaccid gas balloons.

On Dustday, as they ascended over the steppes of grass, stones and flowers, Drey died. He had seemed to be mending, had been awake in the town, had even haggled with the air-merchant. But in the night his arm poisoned him, and though he had been alive when they went up, he was dead not long after.

The nomad tradesman tended the gondola’s droning motor, embarrassed by his passengers’ misery. Elsie held Drey’s cooling body. At last with the sun high, she extemporised a service and they kissed their dead friend and entrusted Drey to gods with the faint unease of freethinkers.