One ship is familiar. The Charis waits on one of the docking platforms, unattended and silent. Nearby, Peacekeepers – four of the twelve who made up the original posse – guard the gate. There’s no sign of Horse or his metal dog.

Beneath me, the buzzard cackles unhappily after being pushed so hard across the desert. I feel the same. With water and food and drugs I have deceived my body into forgetting some of its damage, its maimed flesh and pain and rising infection. An illusion, but one I need to maintain for a little longer.

As I approach the dock, I reach for the pouch of breath and carefully crack one between my teeth. A rush beats through me, the amphetamine in the beads more powerful than any I’ve encountered. A lawman’s perk.

Joliffe’s hat hides my battered face, his reeking coat covers the blood and filth upon my clothes. As I bring the buzzard to earth a dozen paces from the Peacekeepers, I check the blanket around the bundle at my side.

The engine dies away with a splutter. One of the Peacekeepers steps forwards, peering through the settling dust.

‘Joliffe?’ she calls. ‘Where’s the fugitive?’

I climb from the buzzard, taking up the bundle. Face lowered, I limp forwards.

‘Joliffe?’ another says uncertainly.

I throw the blanket to the sand. The cloth unravels and the Marshal’s head – eyeless and tongueless – rolls to a stop at the Peacekeepers’ feet.

I look up at them then, one hand on the pistol at my waist, the carved Seeker marks visible on my chest.

They scatter.

Gathering the head under one arm, I limp across the scarred earth onto the main street of Angel Share. My muscles fizz with artificial energy, head light from blood loss. All around are signs of the devastation wrought the night before last, yet to be cleared: a few dead grubs left in the sand, an empty window frame, a door sagging on one hinge, like a tooth on sinew. The air is thick with the wet-dog slap of sodden concrete drying in the sun.

The saloon is a ruin. The blue-painted walls are lapped with smoke stains and soot, the roof gone, the windows gone, only the breeze blocks remaining. A group works in the wreckage, pulling at what can be salvaged. Beneath the shade of the water pump are two blanket-wrapped figures. Swaying on my feet, I walk over and bend to turn back the cloth.

Pec Esterházy lies dead. Her arms have been folded onto her chest, her eyes closed. Soot catches in the strands of her grey hair, on the lined face of this woman who took her first breath on Earth eighty years before; who journeyed across the universe and took her last on Factus, here, at the known system’s limit.

I drop the Marshal’s head before her lifeless body.

‘For you,’ I croak.