‘Where is she?’ the man bellows into the room. ‘Where is the old bitch?’

No one speaks, but I see a ripple of undisguised loathing run through the patrons, as the Marshal walks towards the bar. That gibbous moon badge – symbol of the Consortium of Freight Underwriters – is the only thing keeping him in one piece. Sullenly, the bartend thumps down a cup and pours a shot of something brown into it. The Marshal seizes it up and knocks it back.

‘Now, Peg,’ Falco hisses, and the G’hal slips from the table into the corridor beyond.

The click and whine of a gun charging makes everyone freeze, including Peg. The Marshal aims a pistol at them with one hand, the other clamped around the cup.

‘Another step,’ he says. ‘And I blow that sweet face off.’

Falco moves in front of Pegeen. ‘Joliffe,’ she says derisively. ‘Still sucking air?’

He sets the cup down, and brings out another pistol. ‘Malady Falco,’ he sneers over its whine. ‘Lady Sickness. Heard you were in town.’ Lazily, he jerks the second gun at her. ‘You gonna come in quiet, or do I gotta damage the old woman again? Her leg still ain’t recovered from the shot I gave her last time.’

‘What?’ Falco spits.

The Marshal’s lips twitch. ‘Old Pec didn’t mention where she got that limp, huh? See, when you didn’t stick around, she had to answer on your behalf. Leg for a leg, as it were.’

‘If you touch her again, I’ll slice your guts open and leave you for the Seekers.’

Through the open door, a tendril of wind creeps, like a wild animal into a house. It sets the tags on the walls rippling, raises the hairs on my arms. I close my eyes as a sweat breaks out on my neck. Not now. The sound of a gunshot that has not yet been fired echoes through my head, the pressure building.

‘Big words for a woman with empty hands,’ Joliffe jeers. ‘Reach for a weapon and I shoot. I’m taking you in, along with that trashcan out there you call a ship.’

‘That trashcan is mine,’ Silas starts. ‘You have no right—’

‘I have every right!’

Perspiration cuts channels through the dust on the Marshal’s face, and I feel it in my blood now, how his mind is slipping, how control is leaching from the room with every breath. Soon, something will happen and the paths across realities will spill and tangle and they will be here, waiting to gulp down all those different worlds.

‘If she don’t come with me,’ the Marshal yells to the room, ‘I’ll burn this shithole to the ground, and all your goods with it!’

A flash of movement: Falco reaching for her gun. I leap up, just as the Marshal fires.