I’d left the yakuza stacks buried in the sand under Brasil’s house on Vchira Beach, and I hadn’t expected the pocket to fill again so soon. Had even, on the voyage east to Millsport, caught myself taking occasional, momentary pleasure in the strange new lack of carriage, until the memories of Sarah and the habit of hatred came searing back.

Now the pocket was weighted again, like some fucked-up modern day variant on the Ebisu-cursed trawl net in the Tanaka legend, destined forever to bring up the bodies of drowned sailors and nothing much else.

There didn’t seem to be any way for it to stay empty, and I didn’t know what I felt any more.

For nearly two years, it hadn’t been that way. Certainty had coloured my existence a grained monochrome. I’d been able to reach into my pocket and weigh its varying contents in my palm with a dark, hardened satisfaction.

There was a sense of slow accumulation, an assembly of tiny increments in the balance pan that sat opposite the colossal tonnage of Sarah Sachilowska’s extinction. For two years I’d needed no purpose other than that pocket and its handful of stolen souls. I’d needed no future, no outlook that didn’t revolve around feeding the pocket and the swamp panther pens at Segesvar’s place out on the Expanse.

Really? So what happened at Tekitomura?

Movement on the rail. The cables thrummed and bounced gently. I looked up and saw Sierra Tres maneuvering herself forward, braced on the rail with both arms and hopping on her uninjured leg. Her usually inexpressive face was taut with frustration. Under different circumstances, it might have been comical, but from the hacked-off trousers at mid-thigh, her other leg was encased in transparent plaster that laid bare the wounds beneath.

We’d been skulking in Eltevedtem for nearly three days now, and Brasil had used the time as well as the limited battlefield medical gear we had would allow. The flesh beneath Tres’s plaster was a black and purple swollen mess, punched through and torn by the swoopcopter’s machine gun fire, but the wounds had been cleaned and dusted. Blue and red tags marched down the damaged portions, marking the points at which Brasil had inserted rapid regrowth bios. A flex-alloy boot cushioned the bottom end of the cast against outside impact, but walking on it would have required more painkillers than Tres seemed prepared to take.

“You should be lying down,” I said as she joined me.

“Yeah, but they missed. So I’m not. Don’t give me a hard time, Kovacs.”

“Alright.” I went back to staring into the water. “Any word yet?”

She shook her head. “Oshima’s awake, though. Asking for you.”

I lost focus on the fish below me for a moment. Got it back. Made no move to leave the rail or look up again.

“Oshima or Makita?”