The memories are washed with darkness, merging into one another, but I remember faces; smoke-stained, fibreglass teeth, bloodied armour. Boots, metal-toed and thick with dust that drove into my body, that drove bile and blood from my stomach into the sand. Fists, thickened by the long exposure under the sun without water, that collided with my face and head until I stopped resisting and sent my thoughts to them, wanting them to take my body away, to make me like them, vast and hungry and untouchable.

But they did not. They set me on this path that was paved with violence, and feasted silently on their choice. Is this penance for Tamane finally visited upon me? If so, I can’t fight it. Perhaps I have been wrong to fight death, all this time. Wrong to keep the tally when this is the only price I can pay.

I open my eyes. One of them obeys.

There is sand below me, sand and a shadow like a bird. I try to raise a hand to touch it, but agony redoubles through my limbs and oblivion takes me again. Too soon I return, and with me, realisation.

I’m in a net, folded like a calf and swaying in the air. A net made from tightly woven cables, too tough to think of breaking. The desert rushes by some distance below.

Blood coats my front, dried stiff on Silas’s jacket. When I move there’s pain, and the fabric grows wet again. I inch my fingers across my chest.

The Marshal may have missed my heart, but the bullet wound in my shoulder is deep and ragged. An old metal slug, dirty and vicious, not clean, not quick and searing like charges. The wound dribbles blood. Without care, it will kill me.

I roll my head away from it, though my neck screams like rusted metal. I try to open my lips. They are swollen too, crusted with blood that flakes into my mouth. How long has it been since I rose from Silas’s bed, since we ran from Angel Share?

Inch by inch, I check my clothes. They’ve ransacked the pockets, pulled out anything that could be of use or aid. The only thing I find, deep in the lining, is a small, worn bone dice. I close my hand around it, and let my eyelids fall.

The ground wakes me, the hard thump and scrape of it bringing a fresh surge of pain. I cry out and my mouth fills with dust. Finally, we come to a stop. I lie still, ears ringing in the sudden quiet. Other sounds drift: the click of cooling metal, the clang of compartments, the scrape of boots coming towards me. I close my eyes, feigning unconsciousness.

Liquid splatters my face. For a brief moment I think it’s water, but then the smell reaches me and I spit and gag, knowing it’s urine. Above me, Marshal Joliffe laughs.