I think the General might have been asleep, but when I glance down her eyes are open, staring blindly at the strips of light that come through the scratched windows. She looks a thousand miles away. But where? On the command bridge of a ship, watching in grim satisfaction as the Free Limiter field hospitals on Roseinvale are bombed, one after another? Behind a desk in a glass-and-chrome office, ready to give a killing order? On an operating table, smiling as the Accord surgeons cut into her body to make it stronger and faster?

And where was I? I close my eyes. I was a young woman again, dreaming of life beyond a small cluster of satellites, hearing discussions of liberty and autonomy and new ways of living that made my heart beat faster. I was on Prosper, in the hospital vault, about to become a murderer. I was on Tamane, surrounded by the fallen, by the evidence of my sin. I was in the cell on the hulks. I was staggering, wounded from a lifecraft. I was here. I was nowhere. Is that why they follow me?

The hours pass with neither of us speaking. I twitch, sorely regretting giving the showman my remaining beads. The sun slides across the carriage, people barter and laugh and sob and argue with each other, and on the walls above us the Accord posters speak of loans to repay our war debts, advertising seed banks and land grants, emblazoned with slogans like Time to Heal, and For the Future. I turn my head away.

Beside me, the General sleeps, the dead ant crushed at her feet.

* * *

I’ve not been to Landfall Five in many months, and sure enough it’s already changed. Here is the new-found prosperity brought by restitution payments; here are real blacktop roads and buildings made from girders and concrete. There are mules and crafts that aren’t a decade old and clogged with dust. Here there’s trade, official and bootleg, pumping life onto this dry moon. Here are people from across the now-Accorded Nations, more than I have seen in a long time, all scrambling to make a home, to remember themselves and their ways however they can.

At the edges, the original stinking, hardscrabble town of Landfall remains; evidence of those who first arrived here as convict work parties, huddling against the army for food and warmth. Had I been on my own, I would have run for those shadows. As it is, I have no choice but to keep my head down and walk the new, sticky roads towards the centre of the town: the army base where the ships had first touched down, thirty years ago.