As they bat insults back and forth, Pegeen hurries into the saloon, covered in dust from the winds that must be spluttering outside. Their eyes roam the place for Falco, quickly, urgently. Something’s wrong.

I half rise from the table. Falco has already intercepted Peg and strides back towards us.

‘What is it?’ I ask.

‘Well, the good news is, I might have bartered you passage for tomorrow,’ Peg says, breathless. ‘Uan said he could take you both as far as one of the transport satellites, with a shipment of rat pups heading for Prodor.’

I nod, trying to ignore the stab of reluctance and fear in my belly. ‘The bad news?’

Falco is tense. ‘The Marshal’s in town. Peg just saw his craft.’

‘The crazy one?’ the General says sharply. ‘He know who we are?’

‘You’d better pray to anything you believe in that he does not.’

Instinctively, I turn to look at the saloon. It’s crowded now, the tables filled with people playing stabberscotch and Chuck-a-Luck; folk from off-moon who don’t know or care to fear the Ifs with their games of chance. Franzi goes from group to group with a box that contains his fighting beetles, taking bets, his mother is working the tables and Esterházy… Through the crowd I see the limping, wavering shape of the old woman. A wind I do not feel blows, whipping her dress, and for a moment I am back in the Suplicio, back in that endless waste of sand, and she’s coming towards me across the dunes…

Tap, tap, tap.

The hand that grips the cane is dripping with blood. The eyes that bore across the distance are my own.

I push myself away from the table. Someone catches me. Silas.

‘Ten, what is it?’

I look back again. There’s nothing there.

‘We have to get out of here, now.’

Even before I finish speaking, I hear it: the cackling drone of a low-altitude engine, coming to rest outside the saloon. We all look at each other.

‘You three,’ Falco says, ‘get back upstairs—’

The door crashes open. A man stands on the other side, swathed in a long coat. When he pushes it back, dust cascades from his shoulders. Beneath, a rusted metal badge glints, in the shape of a gibbous moon. He spits and looks around, eyes quick as flies.

Peg swears. ‘Too late.’

* * *

The bar goes quiet, as more than one pair of hands hurriedly slip cargo tags into boots or pockets and come to rest on weapons. The Marshal’s face is wind-burned to leather, white creases fanning from the eyes, as if his skin is splitting to reveal a pale and grub-like body beneath.

‘That’s Joliffe?’ the General whispers.

‘Peg,’ Falco’s lips barely move, ‘go find Esterházy.’

The man has not yet looked our way, half-hidden as we are. As slowly as I can I slide one of the steak knives from the table. Silas’s stare is hostile, alcohol hot within him. My own head thumps with liquor and adrenalin. Not a good way to fight. And yet, my muscles tense, ready.