Sleek and deadly, the Seekers’ crafts roar over our heads once more. No charges this time, but a searchlight, blinding, inescapable. They have us in their sights now and won’t risk puncturing good organs. Squinting through one eye, I see the shapes of gunners hanging precariously from the open doors, night-vision goggles lit red. The nearest one lifts a rifle, hair flying, ready to shoot.

Momentarily, among the noise and dust, I see Esterházy’s face, her eyes hard as burned metal as she tells me, it means you have been marked. I drag the coat and scarf aside, baring my neck and collarbones. The searchlight blinds me, and I shut my eyes, waiting for the end.

Nothing. Just the savage cough of the overhauled engines, just the churn of the air. I open my eyes a crack. The Seeker hanging from the craft has put up their arm in some kind of signal.

Dimly, I’m aware of Joliffe hauling on my leg, trying to drag me out of the searchlight, back towards the buzzard, like a dog with a carcass. Then there is a single shot, and the tugging stops.

With an effort, I raise my head. The crafts have landed close by and figures emerge from the dust. Joliffe gibbers, crawling away, his leg pumping blood into the sand.

At the edge of the light, one of the Seekers stops. I can’t see their face, covered by a mask and goggles. Their clothes are old and sun-faded, a patchwork stolen from the dead, tell-tale signs of stab wounds and bullet holes darned over and scorched closed. But there’s something familiar about the way they tilt their head; did we meet before, out in the Barrens? Did they carry the General and I from purgatory in the Suplicio?

The skin of their hands is cracked and rough, the flesh marked with thousands of tiny black lines. A tally, I realise in horror and fascination. Beneath their ragged collar is an old scar: two longer lines and a slash across.

Silently, they raise a hand and point to the matching marks on my chest.

‘Alive?’ they ask.

I nod desperately. ‘Yes.’

The Seeker gestures at Joliffe, who still crawls, spluttering towards the edge of the light.

‘Him?’

I remember the torture he exacted, his threats to Esterházy and Falco, the way he hurt Peg, the feverish excitement in his eyes as he drove his boot into my flesh.

‘No.’ I look into the shadows where the Seeker’s eyes should be. ‘He’s dead.’

Four: The Book Of Hel

FOUR

THE

BOOK

OF

HEL

IN THE STARK mid-morning light, Angel Share is desolate. Smoke still drifts in places, the dirt scorched and disordered. Few ships remain; no doubt they took what they could of value and departed.