Bebe sings a song, an old one from Earth with half-remembered lyrics that speak of forests and mountains. Even the General Store man comes to witness the ceremony along with the other survivors, bringing with them what tokens they can spare. Falco makes another flower from protein wrappers; Silas drops a bit of scrap metal hammered into the shape of a crescent moon. Bebe pours a glug of mezcal into the dirt at the old woman’s feet.

And then it’s over, and people hurry back to their walls and roofs, chased by the gathering night.

In the shadow of the ruins of Esterházy’s saloon, Bebe pulls me aside.

‘She left this for you,’ she murmurs, handing me something wrapped in a rag. ‘Before she died, she said you were to have it.’

She watches me unwrap a scalpel; ancient by Factus standards, dented and tarnished, sharpened to thinness at its edge. The same sort of scalpel that hangs from the belts of the Seekers, that they wielded to take the Marshal apart with brutal efficiency.

We are all Hel.

‘You understand what it means?’ Bebe asks.

My fingers tighten around the blade’s handle. ‘I think so.’

I rejoin Falco and Silas and Pegeen in the General Store, where they poke dismally at plates of fried grubs.

‘Here.’ Silas hands one over. ‘It’s all the old tightwad will spare. They’re better with some pseudosalt.’

‘Better than what?’ Falco grumbles, washing one down with a swig from a bottle of mezcal.

I stare at the plate without seeing it, imagining the expression of disgust the General would make now if she were here, confronted by a dinner of witchetty grubs.

‘We have to go after her,’ I say.

Silas shrugs helplessly. ‘We don’t know where they took her.’

‘We know they went east.’ I look up at them all, one of my eyes still blurry. ‘Joliffe was planning to take me to the Air Line Road. Surely the Peacekeepers will go there too?’

Bebe watches me, a strange expression on her face as she nods slowly. ‘The Air Line is the nearest place with an Accord presence. Doubt they would go much further than that, Peacekeepers don’t like to stray outside the Zone. Most of them are wanted too.’

‘What’s the closest station?’

‘Drax. About a day and a half’s ride, on a good mule.’

I nod, and tip the greasy fried morsels into a twist of paper. Shoving them into the pocket of the Marshal’s coat, I gather up whatever can be spared from the floor around us: a roll of bandage, the Charis’s medkit, a packet of dried snake meat.

‘What are you doing?’ Falco demands. ‘We don’t even know if she’s still alive.’