‘Still alive?’ he says, buttoning his trousers awkwardly. ‘Just as well. If you can stay that way another day or two I’d be obliged. Wanted alive, that’s what it said on the wire.’

I spit again, reaching up a grazed hand to wipe at my face. ‘I’m dying.’

‘Yeah, but dying is alive, isn’t it? Until dead.’ He peers around. ‘We’d be making better time if that bitch kid hadn’t maimed my buzzard.’

‘Where?’ I choke.

He kneels beside me. He looks terrible, the bandages that slant across his face gummed with pus and old blood, a bulky dressing on his shoulder.

‘We’re taking a trip to the Air Line Road.’ His stale breath wafts across my face. ‘Heard a rumour see, about what your carcass might be worth to the Accord, specially still sucking air. I reckon for a hundred thousand credits I can hold off on a killing blow.’ He reaches out, and pokes the wound in my shoulder.

I retch in pain and he stops pressing, but leaves his hand there, fingers dabbed in blood.

‘Hundred thou credits,’ he says, gaze going somewhere else. ‘I’ll finally get off this backwash moon. Buy out my pension and retire, somewhere green, green as old copper.’ He presses down again, absentmindedly.

‘You will rot here,’ I tell him.

His lips shake and he drives his fist into my head.

Hours later, I wake again. The same place? Impossible to tell. Night has fallen, and above I see the scattering stars, fading out towards the Edge. I smell smoke. A cook fire. The same as I lit many times out in this wilderness, hunching in its glow, trying not to feel the night at my back.

After half a dozen attempts, I manage to roll over in the net. A short distance away, Marshal Joliffe sits on an old ammunition box, his face lit by flames. He has removed the bandages and dabs at the livid cuts, muttering to himself. I clench my good hand. This pathetic, vicious, broken man will not be the one to destroy me.

‘Hey,’ I wheeze, barely able to speak. ‘Water.’

He looks up as if, for a moment, he forgot I am here. With a smile, he takes his canteen and pours it over his mouth, slavering the liquid from his face.

‘Water,’ I beg again. ‘I will tell you how to treat your face.’

‘Treating it just fine.’ He picks up an unmarked bottle from the ground. Liquid glugs out into his palm.

‘The cuts need attention,’ I say. ‘You should clean them, close them with sealant, unless there is infection…’

I barely know what I’m saying, muttering medical words almost at random, but it doesn’t seem to matter. Joliffe looks up suspiciously.

‘How do I know if it’s infected?’

‘Let me out and I’ll see.’