I laugh at that, the first proper laugh I remember for a long time, and scoop some up, smoothing it over my hands, flaking and cracked by the desert winds as they are.

‘Listen, Doc,’ Falco says. ‘We’ve been here for three days, waiting on someone to rob. While we were waiting we helped Gilli get the place straightened up. Peg even fixed the wire. We read the news.’ She works cream into a spot on her wrist. ‘Afraid Moloney’s boys were less than discreet about your capture.’

So, she knows about me, about the past. I meet her gaze.

‘What,’ she says, ‘think I never suspected you were a Lifer? Scar like that?’ She sighs. ‘So far, the news is only out on the tangle, not the proper wire. But once folk hear Moloney’s dead, you’re going to have every scalper in this quadrant down on this place, looking for those hundred thousand credits.’

‘And you?’ Falco has a price – she has never denied that – I just don’t know what it is.

‘Don’t know what you did to get put away for that long. But if it was done during the war, you’re not special. We all did bad things. Difference is, you lost.’ She smiles a little. ‘Accord can keep their bounty. I’ll siphon it from them some other way.’

‘Mala!’ Pegeen bursts through the curtain, their face white beneath the sunburn. ‘It’s Gabi.’

Gilli’s bedroom is cramped, barely a cupboard. The General lies twisted on the bunk, convulsions shaking her skinny frame while Gilli watches from the corner, hands over her mouth. ‘Get Silas,’ I tell Peg, ‘tell him to bring whatever medical supplies he has on the ship.’

The General’s boots clack and thud against the boards of the bed, and I do my best to hold her steady, to make sure she’s not biting her tongue. She’s a terrible colour, like old ash, running with sweat. The wound in her side is burning hot, even through the bandage. Infected.

‘Don’t you dare,’ I hiss, as her breathing becomes more laboured, horrid wrenching gasps escaping her throat. ‘Don’t you dare do this now.’

Silas comes running. His eyes go wide when he sees what’s happening, before tumbling an armful of medicines onto the rag rug beside me. ‘What can I do?’

‘Hold her,’ I bark. ‘Tranquillisers?’

‘Ampules of Jix and a bottle of blockers.’

I hunt among the mess of drugs, much of it alley-grade, cut and watered. But I find the ampules of J-I10 he means, load up an injector gun and shoot one into the General’s arm.

It doesn’t help, and she’s getting worse; I can hear the breaths clack and stop, clack and stop in her throat. ‘Is there anything—’ I ask desperately, but Falco appears, holding out another object. The medkit from the abandoned mare.

I swear with relief when I see what’s inside. Silas’s drugs might be cheap, but Falco’s are proper army supplies, unwatered and pure.