Hel's Eight E-Book

Stark Holborn

• Herausgeber: Titan Books
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Beschreibung

Ten Low and her ragtag comrades take on an ultra-rich tycoon who owns entire planets in this high-octane clash of law and lawlessness across the stars, for fans of Gideon the Ninth, Anne Leckie and Becky Chambers. Who controls the future, controls it all... Ten "Doc" Low is a medic with a dark past, riding the wastes of the desert moon Factus, dispensing medicine to the needy and death to those who cross the laws of the mysterious Seekers. Cursed by otherworldly forces, she stays alone to keep herself safe, and to keep others safe from her... But when she experiences a terrifying vision of conflict and the deaths of those she once called friends, she must drag herself back to the land of the living to stop a war before it begins. With rebellion brewing, the Accord's grip on the Outer Moons weakening and a sinister tycoon buying up all land in sight, Ten must find allies where she can and face the past in order to save the future. The cost will be greater than she could ever have imagined... A wild, adrenaline-packed, whip-smart crash of storytelling and shoot-outs, ideal for fans of Becky Chambers' Wayfarers and Alex White's Salvagers.

Leseprobe

CONTENTS

Cover

Praise for Hel’s Eight

Praise for Ten Low

Title Page

Leave us a Review

Copyright

Dedication

Prologue

One: The Book of the Doctor

Two: The Book of the Traitor

Three: The Book of the King

Four: The Book of the Seeker

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Also Available from Titan Books

PRAISE FOR HEL’S EIGHT

“A real brutal tour de force, pulse pounding action and eye-opening ideas.

ADRIAN TCHAIKOVSKY, AWARD-WINNING AUTHOR OFCHILDREN OF TIME, DOGS OF WARAND MANY MORE

“Sharp, addictive, tightly-paced, with every word in the right place. I've loved this author since Nunslinger, but they just get better and better”

JOANNE HARRIS, BEST-SELLING AUTHOR OFCHOCOLAT, THE GOSPEL OF LOKIAND MANY MORE

“A gritty, transgressive cyberwestern adventure that feels like Sergio Leone crossed with Mad Max. Glorious!”

PAUL CORNELL, AUTHOR OF THESHADOW POLICEANDWITCHES OF LYCHFORDSERIES

“With scalpel-sharp prose, Holborn carves beauty out of a brutal world where possibilities are both a blessing and a weapon. For all the sand-blasted action and brawls against an unknowable terror, it’s ultimately the tale of a main character—a double-sided coin of grace and gruffness—on a journey for redemption. Holds all the grit of Mad Max: Fury Road with a smoky mezcal chaser that lingers long after the final page.”

NATHAN TAVARES, AUTHOR OFA FRACTURED INFINITY

PRAISE FOR TEN LOW

“Holborn shows what a rich imagination she has.”

THE TIMES

“Packed with wildly memorable female characters, the pacey prose keeps things whip-cracking along.”

SFX

“Stark Holborn continues to impress. Great characters and a blistering pace.”

GARETH POWELL, AUTHOR OF THEEMBERS OF WARSERIES

“Ten Low showed me the most vibrant desert world since Dune. [It] leaves the old guard masters in the dust.”

ALEX WHITE, AUTHOR OF THE SALVAGERS TRILOGY

“Stark Holborn’s writing is clever, original and thrilling.”

R. J. BARKER, AUTHOR OFTHE BONE SHIPSANDAGE OF ASSASSINS

“An action-packed SF adventure with an intriguing majority female cast? OH, HELL YES!”

STINA LEICHT, AUTHOR OFPERSEPHONE STATION

“I loved this from beginning to end. Stark Holborn grabs you by the throat on page one and never lets you go!”

CAVAN SCOTT, BESTSELLING AND AWARD-WINNING AUTHOR

By Stark Holborn and available from Titan Books

Ten Low

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Hel’s EightPrint edition ISBN: 9781803362298Ebook edition ISBN: 9781803362304

Published by Titan BooksA division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd.144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UPwww.titanbooks.com

First Titan edition: March 2023

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Copyright © 2023 Stark Holborn. All rights reserved.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

For Nick

Lay the coin on my tongue and I will sing of what the others never set eyes on.

“DESERT FLOWERS”, KEITH DOUGLAS

PROLOGUE

THE TRADE POST stands alone, a dying ember in a hearth too vast for warmth. Not that any trade happens here; when someone will only part with your salvation on credit, it’s theft, whichever way you look at it.

The winds crash in vast swells against the walls, as if they want to bear the building away, sweep it from the edge of the moon into the Void. Inside, three mercenaries sit at a table and don’t speak.

All have been corroded by the system, pinballing their way between conflicts across the stars, before guttering here, at the bad edge of the system. Lunar Body XB11A, otherwise known as Factus.

One of the mercs has greying hair and a pair of blue fibreglass teeth that don’t sit right. The other is younger, marked out as a former terraform rigger by his radiation-damaged face and his hands, swelled to twice the usual size. The third has a shock of blonde hair, shaved on one side to show off a tattoo of allegiance: a silver infinity symbol with her name beneath it. Gris. She reaches into the pocket of her grimy yellow uniform and takes out a canister of oxygen, snuffing air from the spigot.

The younger merc looks on, resentfully. A bottle recently full of lurid pink liquid stands on the table before him. Throat Paint, people call it. About the only thing it is good for, swilling grit from a gullet, making you forget your dry mouth and chafed flesh for half a night. He pours the last measure sloppily, splashing his hand, and winces. His knuckles are raw from giving out a beating.

‘You,’ he slurs. ‘Another.’

Across the room the bartend swallows and decants cloudy liquid into a second bottle.

The oldest mercenary watches the younger suck spilled liquor off his hand.

‘Clean yourself for love’s sake, Matchet,’ he says. ‘You don’t know where they’ve been.’

‘Sure, Vas.’

Matchet downs the last inch of liquor from the bottle and spits a fine spray across his outstretched fingers. The liquid spatters the walls, but most lands on a fourth figure who slumps in the corner, shackled to the stove pipe. One blue eye looks out through tangled, oxide-red hair. The other is swollen shut.

‘At least spit it into my mouth,’ they croak.

‘Shut up, rat,’ Vas says.

The figure lets their head fall back, revealing two telltale scabs on their throat from a recently removed prison collar. ‘I told you, it’s Weasel.’

‘Gotta pay for this, Mx,’ the bartend says, placing the second bottle down on the table.

Gris shows her teeth and throws a silver token at him. ‘Lutho-Plex are paying.’

The bartend turns the silver in his fingers. ‘Don’t take scrip,’ he mutters.

Vas stops pouring and gives him a look; the threat so simple it doesn’t need speaking.

The prisoner watches the bartend scuttle away. ‘Is this how you plan to find the Seekers?’ they ask. ‘By drinking rotgut and staring at the walls?’

‘Told you to shut up,’ Vas growls.

‘If you’re the best hunters Delos has to offer—’

Matchet tips out of his chair and drives a crusted boot into the prisoner’s side, once, twice, three times, his face growing pink with exertion in the tinny air.

‘Enough,’ Gris barks. ‘Don’t bust any organs. Lutho-Plex’ll cough a hundred if they’re alive, dead’s only fifty.’

Matchet drops back, agleam with violence, as if all the wrong done to him is bundled in the person at the end of his boot.

The prisoner retches and spits a precious gobbet of fluid, their jumpsuit stained by pale boot prints.

‘Water,’ they croak.

Gris jerks her head at the bartend, who unlocks a tap with a key from his belt, and dribbles two inches of water into a cup. She takes it and contemplates for a moment before spitting into the liquid. ‘All yours, shackleworm.’

The prisoner snatches the offered cup and drinks it down while the mercs roar with laughter.

As if in answer, a gust of wind wracks the building, dampening their amusement.

‘What was that?’ Vas asks.

‘The wind.’

‘No.’ He raises his head like a cat sniffing air. ‘That.’

There’s another sound outside, a harsh, throttling cough. The bartend squeaks open the shutter.

‘A light,’ he murmurs.

Gris strides to the window. ‘Seekers?’

‘No. Looks like a mule. Someone alone.’

Jaw tight, she takes out her charge gun and arms it. The others do the same. The sound of the engine grows louder until it wheezes and stops somewhere near the stable. Silence stretches, like fabric pulled taut, before a fist bangs on the door. Once, twice, three times.

At Gris’s nod, the bartend shoots the bolt and the door flies back, wind screaming in as if it has been waiting outside all this time, furious. It batters the place, sends faded posters flapping, the mercenaries swearing as grit gets in their eyes. Finally, leaning bodily on the door, the bartend is able to shove it closed.

A stranger stands among the settling dust. No one saw them step inside. They look like the Barrens made flesh: every item of clothing sun-bleached, from the cape of ancient thermal blankets to the old flight helmet, bearing a large dent in the back. A shiver lifts the fine hairs of the prisoner’s neck before the stranger reaches up to remove the helmet, dust cascading from their shoulders. The hair beneath is grey, frizzed and flattened.

‘Bad night,’ a rough voice says.

The prisoner stares. The stranger is a woman, perhaps in her sixties, older than anyone they’ve seen on Factus. Her face has been toasted by the elements, the lines at the edges of her eyes deep and deliberate, as if etched by an artist’s hand.

She looks around, sees the prisoner and the guns and raises heavy brows in surprise. Gris smiles slow, spelling out every thought as she takes in the old woman’s clothes, her well-laden pack. ‘Easy, grandma. We’re all friends here.’

‘What a storm,’ the woman says nervously. ‘Thought it’d have my skin clean off and carry it away.’

‘Most like,’ Vas agrees. ‘Nothing to do but sit tight and wait it out.’

Cautiously, the woman pulls out the only free chair and sits down with the three mercenaries and their guns. ‘Can’t tell you how glad I am to find shelter,’ she says, ‘travelling gets harder every cycle.’ She smiles at the bartend, a real smile, not a threat. He looks almost taken aback by it. ‘Do you have pálinka?’

He grunts. ‘Throat Paint or brine. Or syrup.’

‘Oh, Paint’s fine,’ the woman says, shaking her wiry hair, sending dust flying.

Matchet is still staring, as if she has fallen from the sky. ‘What you doing out here?’ he demands.

‘Right now, asking myself the same thing.’ She shrugs out of the overcape, revealing a heavily stained jumpsuit below. ‘I’m on the way to Redemption, to visit a friend. She’s a working girl there, just had a child. Made her the toast of the settlement, that. Never thought I’d live to see children on Factus. Poor thing picked the wrong moon to be born on.’

She searches her pack as she speaks. It’s stuffed full with water bottles, a canister of oxygen, even the gleam of an airtight. Oranges. Vas licks his stolen teeth.

‘Ah,’ the woman says, and pulls a packet free. ‘Here we are.’ She untwists it to reveal a pile of grubs, still greasy with frying oil. ‘Care for one?’ she asks. Gris inclines her head and picks one out. Matchet shakes his head, disgusted, looking from the woman to his boss.

‘Does that offer extend to me?’ the prisoner croaks.

The woman hesitates. ‘What’s the crime?’

‘Weasel Monroe here tried to escape a work camp. As you can see, they didn’t get far.’ Gris leans back, satisfied. ‘We’ll be escorting them back to justice.’

Weasel gives her a withering glance. ‘Can I have a grub?’

She picks one from the table. ‘Catch.’

The fat grub tumbles to the floor an arm’s length away from Weasel. They stare at it for a long moment before worming onto their side, trying to scrape it towards them with shackled ankles across the filthy floor while the mercs jeer.

‘You’re working for Lutho-Plex?’ the woman asks, once the laughter has subsided. ‘I didn’t think they patrolled this far out.’

‘We’re freelance.’ Vas smirks. ‘On a special detail.’

He reaches into his jacket and takes something out. A much-handled bulletin sheet.

WANTED

BY ORDER OF LUTHO-PLEX

ANY MEMBER OF THE FUGITIVE GANG KNOWN AS

THE SEEKERS

ALSO THEIR LEADER

HEL THE CONVERTER

A SUBSTANTIAL REWARD FOR HER APPREHENSION

The stranger frowns at the words. ‘I thought Hel was just a folk tale.’

‘Bounty on her’s real enough.’

Anxiously, the bartend slides a cup before the stranger.

‘Thank you,’ she tells him. ‘I’ll settle up when the evening’s done.’ She raises the cup to the room, meeting each eye, even the prisoner’s as they chew sullenly. ‘Egészségedre.’

‘Eggy what?’ Vas barks.

The woman winces at the taste of the raw liquor. ‘An old saying, where I came from on Earth.’

She has their attention. Even Matchet’s hostility flickers, a sliver of the boy he must have been showing through, as he learned his planets from the murals on the walls of satellite rest-stops. ‘Earth?’ His hand rests on the gun he knows he’ll use before the night is out. ‘Real Earth? Then what are you doing here?’

‘What’s anyone?’ She sighs. ‘I needed work, went where I could find it. Bounced all the way to this end of the system.’

‘Bounced all the way to the hulks,’ the prisoner mutters. ‘That a collar scar on your neck?’

‘Is Weasel a warden-name?’ she retorts.

‘What’s your name?’ Matchet demands.

The woman looks over her cup. ‘Me? Oh, everyone just calls me Pec.’

‘Pec.’ Gris squashes a grub’s head with her thumbnail. ‘Aren’t you afraid to travel alone?’

‘Afraid of what?’

‘Lots of bad people in the Barrens. It’s a hungry place.’

‘Lots of bad,’ Vas agrees. ‘What with the Seekers waiting to rip you open and take your liver, and then there’s those… things.’

‘You believe in the Ifs?’ Pec raises a brow.

‘Heard the stories.’

‘Yeah and that’s what they are, tap-licking, air-starved babble.’ Gris snorts into her glass. ‘Invisible luck demons.’ She laughs again. ‘The only things out there are escaped convicts and lunatics.’

Pec only shakes her head. ‘I’m not sure. You hear such terrible tales. Like that beetle hawker and her family, near Nozhovka, shot all to pieces for a few miserable gallons of fuel. Tragic.’

Matchet jerks, as if stung. Gris tilts her head at him to stay silent. Unsaid words fill the room like smoke. Even Weasel goes still, aware of the tension, of every breath being taken.

‘To think we might be stuck here all night.’ Pec sighs.

Gris’s fingers inch towards her gun, only to stop dead when something clatters onto the table. A heavy silver coin, etched with a crude representation of a snake eating its own tail. The stranger flips it over to reveal an infinity symbol. In the fitful glow of the sodium lamps, the loops look dark as scabs.

‘Anyone for a game?’ she asks.

‘Where the hell did you get that?’ Vas asks, frowning at the coin. It looks just like the scrip in his own pocket, but older, un-refined. ‘You work for Lutho-Plex too?’

Pec laughs. ‘Lux, no. Someone gave it to me. So how about it?’

‘No.’ Vas draws back from the table. ‘It’s dangerous.’

‘To play at chance?’ She toys with the coin, sending it dancing over her scarred, worn fingers. ‘What could happen?’

Vas stares ahead fixedly. ‘It’s banned in the camps.’

She smiles and sends the coin spinning through the air. They all flinch – but the coin simply clatters to a stop, resting on the snake.

‘Snake eats all. I’d win, if we were playing for anything.’ She nods to Gris. ‘How about your jacket?’

Gris squints. ‘In exchange for what?’

Pec reaches into her pocket and brings out a leather sheath. Inside, is an old, worn scalpel. ‘This is quite precious. An heirloom.’

‘Why not.’

With a nod, Pec goes to ask the bartend for a rag to clean the spilled liquor. Immediately, Vas lurches from his chair.

‘Gris,’ he hisses. ‘Don’t do it. Those things—’

‘You saw. She tossed. Nothing happened.’

‘I don’t like it. Don’t like her.’

Matchet shifts so that his gun is in easy reach. ‘You don’t need to much longer.’

‘Let’s do it now, then. I swear I seen her face somewhere before. And she knew about Nozhovka—’

Gris pats Vas’s cheek hard and shoves him away as the woman returns. ‘Let’s play.’

‘Best of three?’

Pec sends the coin spinning above the table. It lands on infinity.

‘Eight,’ she murmurs.

Gris shakes the coin like someone in supplication before thumbing it skyward.

Eight.

Weasel watches as the stranger reaches for the coin. For a moment her fingers look red, as if slick with blood.

Eight.

Gris bares her teeth in anticipated triumph as she grabs the coin. For an instant, her hand is that of a corpse, the knuckles scraped to dull white nubs, tossed into a bucket with a hundred others.

Eight.

She scowls. Outside, something tumbles in the wind. Vas looks up, jumpy, but his boss is focused, her pupils pipped as the stranger prepares to throw. The bartend wrenches at the shuttered window, peering out nervously.

The coin spins and sparks, clattering to the table.

‘Snake,’ Pec says.

It happens instantly, so fast the prisoner doesn’t even have a chance to scream. Their awareness is ripped from their skull as the world turns inside out, as things, numberless, vast beyond imagining, rush upon them. The mercenaries are screaming, firing wildly at the air. Only the stranger stands untouched, her eyes dark and inhuman as the mouth of a gun. The world is splitting apart, realities tangling in seething mass, but she moves through them all, sharp and deliberate – a needle threading worlds.

As Gris spins to shoot her, the woman’s arm flies, metal flashing in her left hand to slash the mercenary’s throat before she can cry out. Matchet fires, but the stranger simply pushes Gris’s convulsing body into the path of the bullets, seizing up her fallen gun and blowing Matchet backwards against the wall a second later. Vas writhes on the ground, holding his head and shrieking in agony.

In terror the prisoner looks up, into the stranger’s eyes.

A silver bird crashes into dark sand. War machines stamped with infinity roll over the bones of the dead. A snake eats its own tail. One life, many. Atally…

The prisoner heaves in a breath, choking. Their ears are ringing, their head pounding but they are alive. Through streaming eyes, they look up at the trade post. It is just that, a small dismal shack, filled with sounds of the dying and the smell of blood, and the stranger is just a woman, cold-eyed and bloody but human. Whatever was here has gone.

A pounding at the door. The woman strides to answer.

Seekers step into the place, six of them, seven, carrying the desert on their ragged clothes. Any relief the prisoner feels vanishes when they see the belts, hung with scalpels, hatchets, saws… The Seekers’ boots are blood-stained, their hands cracked with chemicals, their eyes sad and raw from running roads between worlds.

‘Done, Pec?’ asks one, a huge woman with slicked-back red hair.

The stranger jerks her chin at the bartend. ‘These were the mercs who killed the family at Nozhovka?’

The bartend gives a silent nod, pressed against the wall.

With a choke, Vas lurches to his feet and bolts for the back room, sending crates toppling.

‘Alive?’ the Seeker asks, weighing a knife in her hand.

Pec shakes her head coldly. ‘They killed five. Three adults. Two children.’

The Seeker nods. ‘Then he owes.’

Calmly, she follows the oldest mercenary into the back room. There’s the sound of a brief struggle, then a choked-off scream.

In horror, Weasel tries to scramble backwards. They’ve heard the stories. Seekers leave no survivors.

A shadow falls across them. The stranger. She kneels and takes their chin in her fingers, studying the bruises, the collar scars. Weasel feels the tackiness of the blood, smells its overpowering iron tang.

‘You escaped a Lutho-Plex compound?’

Weasel nods frantically. ‘I couldn’t stay there. Inmates kept disappearing, dying…’

The stranger’s grip tightens. ‘They need lives. Do you understand?’

‘Yes,’ Weasel whispers, although they don’t.

Seekers come forwards to release the shackles and haul them to their feet. Upright, they tower over the woman, but there’s nothing they can do to stop her as she unsheathes the scalpel and lowers it to the back of their hand, scoring a symbol into flesh: two sloping lines and one across. Done, she wipes the blade on a piece of rag. ‘So we know you.’

Weasel stands, stunned, as one of the Seekers drops a medical kit onto the table beside them. The trade post has become a scene of slaughter, blood in great pools across the floor, the stench of sundered flesh in the air. But Seekers work fast, and already they are packing the cryo-crates with flesh and blood, carrying the organs away from the mercenaries’ plundered corpses, ready to be sped to the desperate and the damned on this and other moons.

‘Leave the remains outside for the wind to bury,’ the woman instructs the cowering bartend. ‘Show what happens to people who take what belongs to them.’

‘Wait,’ Weasel croaks as she steps towards the door. ‘Are you her? Are you Hel?’

The woman looks back. The wind plucks at her tattered clothes and for an instant her face seems to slip, blurring into another. Her worn lips twitch into a smile.

‘We are all Hel,’ she says.

ONE

THEBOOKOFTHEDOCTOR

THIRTY YEARS LATER

THE SAND IS blood-hot with noon, grey as emptied flesh. It eddies against my boots, settles there in small drifts like a creature seeking shelter from the sky. I nudge it away, staring at the prints that lead away from my heels and out into the wastes, towards the Edge.

Did I walk from there? My skin feels chalky, dust an unwelcome passenger in the seams of my clothes. Maybe I walked from there. Maybe I was dreaming again, following ghosts of my other selves through the walls of worlds.

I blink hard. Too long out here. Too long alone. Sometimes I forget my own face and have to study what looks back at me from the cloudy tin mirror. I’m not sure, these days, which version of me my mind’s eye holds as true – the pilgrim in her coarse woven clothes, the medic in her uniform, the collared-convict, the dead woman of blood and sand… The face I see is none of them. Lean as a century trunk, skin wind-scoured, brown hair hanging in ropes to my chin. But it’s the eyes that are most different. Some days, I feel like I could reach into the void of my pupil and pull myself through, into another self, into another reality where I never made the choices that brought me here.

A faint breeze eddies, stirring the trinkets that hang from the leafless century trunk beside the shack. Wishbones and defaced playing cards, dice with their pips chiselled off, vulture feathers, long-desiccated snakes and rats. A tree of dead luck. Once I would have frowned and called it heresy. Later, I might have scoffed and called it superstition. Now, I know it for what it is: protection.

Everything is still. Rowdy sits silently on the front step, taking the sun’s heat into his battered old body, his one remaining ear swivelled towards me. Nothing for kliks. So why do I feel like something is coming?

A dangerous thought. I shake it from my head and go to fetch my hat. There’s work to be done.

I place a hand on Rowdy’s warm back, waking him from his doze. His eyes flash weakly as he recognises me.

Doc, he barks through metal jaws.

I smile back at him, this collection of circuit boards and cobbled together parts who has been my old friend for so long. Both of us leftover from the war, still existing, far beyond the purpose we were built or trained for.

When I walk, he sways after me on bandy legs. I let him. It’s too hot to move fast, anyway, the sun sliding off my hat and onto my shoulders like molten metal as I follow the fuel line that runs from my shack out into the wastes, connecting my generator to a makeshift shelter, half a klik out.

The cryo-cooler sits there in a tiny square of shade. Even a decade old it is one of the most valuable things I own, advanced tech by U Zone standards. There’s only one reason thieves or Road Agents haven’t stolen it: the Seekers’ symbol, emblazoned on the side in crimson paint. Two sloping lines and one across. The twin of the scar on my chest.

Slowly, I kneel and open the lid. Dry ice billows out, vaporising instantly in the day’s heat. The cooler is full of blood. Twelve bags of it, glinting dark and secret red. There are other offerings too, sterile and sealed. By rights, I should be in this box, every useful part of me separated into a Seekers’ harvest. If it weren’t for them, I would be.

I close the lid, unhook the chest and lift those stolen lives into my arms.

By the time we make it back to the shack, Rowdy’s gait has become even more erratic and I am gasping from the heat and the weak oxygen, feeling every hard year lived on this moon. How long now, since I first stumbled, bleeding and delirious from the wrecked escape craft, since I shed the name they gave me on the hulk? Seven years? Eight? Years passed not in time but in hunger and bloody sunsets and the heart-breaking beauty of desert dawns, riding the limits, never staying longer than a night for fear that they will appear at my heels and undo the work I’ve done, the lives wrenched back from death.

Re-hooking the chest to the generator, I wipe the sweat from my face and shake a couple of breath beads from the tin.

Be content, I tell my body as the plastic shatters between my teeth and the dex-amphetamine dissolves, mimicking a rush of oxygen I have not felt in so long. I wash the shards down with a dipper of treated water from the drum, pungent from whatever chemicals the local water baron mixed in to keep it good.

It sloshes against the walls of my belly, reminding me that humans must eat. There are a few unlabelled airtights left; a gift from a patient. I hack the lid from one. Silkworm grubs, I see, far past the expiry date given them on some distant planet.

Rowdy sways in the shade, his grey-brown body clicking as it cools and I drop to the stoop beside him to work the rich, greasy flesh between my teeth. The grubs are full of memories; the face of a child who was not a child wrinkled in disgust, a feast among friends in another life. Recollections that are almost worth the ache of loneliness after I have swallowed.

Just as I scoop a second grub, something sets my nerves to thrumming. These days I can feel the land like a second skin. Licking oil from my fingers, I reach up for the pair of cracked binoculars.

Far off, I see it: a dust cloud, rolling towards me across the flats. It is too high for a mule or a mare. A buzzard of some kind, then. I squint for detail but find none. Road Agents ride buzzards – no one else can afford the fuel.

Tro-uble, Rowdy growls, one of the only words he has left in his bank. Trou-ble.

I lay a hand on his sensor to tell him I’ve heard. He’s right. We have few options. Run and the buzzard would overtake the mule and shoot us down before we got far. Lock the door and risk being burned alive.

And what if it’s a patient or a penitent?

Then I’ll be ready.

First the long, threadbare scarf that wraps my neck from collarbone to earlobe, hiding the brutal scar around my throat but leaving the one on my chest exposed. Second, the scalpel. My only weapon.