First published in Great Britain in 2016 by Electric Monkey,

an imprint of Egmont UK Limited

The Yellow Building, 1 Nicholas Road, London W11 4AN

Text copyright © 2016 Eugene Lambert

The moral rights of the author have been asserted

First e-book edition 2016

ISBN 978 1 4052 7735 8

Ebook ISBN 978 1 7803 1695 6

www.egmont.co.uk

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

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To Martin

who shares my DNA

and my dreams

CONTENTS

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

PART ONE PEACE FAIR

1 GIRL WITH DARK GREEN EYES

2 HIGH SLAYER

3 UNWRAPPING

4 THE ROAD BACK

5 AWAKENING

6 NEVER SAY THAT WORD

7 A BAD DECISION

8 I SAY SOME TERRIBLE THINGS

PART TWO ON THE RUN

9 WAITING

10 CAPTURED

11 IN THE SLAYER WARPLANE

12 HATCH CLOSED AND LOCKED

13 CUTTING LOOSE

14 CRASH

15 HEALING AND DEALING

16 MAKING TRACKS

17 CROSSING OVER

18 GOING HOBO

19 OLD FRIENDS

20 LEAP OF FAITH

21 DEBT PAID, TRADE MADE

22 HAGGLETOWN

23 PICKING UP THE PIECES

24 SANCTUARY

25 MAN BEHIND THE GRILLE

26 ANSWERMAN

27 TRUTH

28 CONSEQUENCES

29 DECISIONS

30 CHANGE OF PLAN

PART THREE ENDGAME

31 TRADE

32 IN THE PALACE

33 THE FACILITY

34 A TWIST OF FATE

35 ONE LAST EFFORT

36 A GAME CALLED SCREAM

37 PAYBACK

38 A FINAL RECKONING

39 WIND STILL BLOWS

Acknowledgements

Back series promotional page

PART ONE

1
GIRL WITH DARK GREEN EYES

The Cutting was yesterday. We missed it. Soon as we hit the trail out of our valley, I knew we would. I’ve seen dirtworms slither faster than some of our lot walk. Three boggin’ days it’s taken us to get to Deep Six. On my own I could hike it in one, but that was never going to happen. Out here in the Barrenlands, you go mob-handed and in dayshine or you don’t go at all. Our wildlife’s too nasty and there’s always the chance of running into Reapers. It’s a curse, missing the Cutting, but at least we’ve made it to the Peace Fair in time for tomorrow’s Unwrapping.

‘C’mon, Kyle,’ Nash says to me. ‘You done yet?’

Our men have cleared off to do some catch-up drinking, the women and the girls to check out the merchants’ stalls. Nash and me, we’ve been left behind with the wagons, stuck with setting up camp and finding fodder for our fourhorns. Now we’re supposed to sit tight and look after everything. Don’t think so.

I hammer the last guy rope in. ‘All done.’

We head towards the roars of delight from the nearby fairground. I feel sick with excitement and sweat pours off me. See, this is my first Fair.

‘I’m going to tell them,’ says Nash.

He’s only a year older than me, but he’s been to loads of Fairs already. We both know I could be flogged for not attending sooner. Once you’re ten, the Saviour’s law says you must go, at least once every three years.

‘Give us a break, Nash.’

He sniggers. He’s such a gommer.

It’s Rona’s fault. She won’t say why, but she never attends the Fair. She gets away with it because she’s the only healer in Freshwater. Which is fine, I guess, and none of my business. Except every year she comes up with some excuse why I can’t go neither. Last year, I kicked up. Told her I was going, no matter what. Next thing I know, I’m flat on my back with swamp pox, the only dose in the three valleys. Rona denies it, course she does, but I swear she gave it to me deliberate. And you can die easy from the swamp pox. It’s a miracle I wasn’t scarred for life.

Well, she might be my mother, but I’m sixteen now.

At the gate, we hand over credits and flash our ID tags. I worry the gate man will figure out mine is fake, but this is the Barrenlands – he couldn’t care less.

Nash keeps his poisonous little mouth shut, for once.

We hurry through a dark tunnel to emerge blinking back into evenshine, halfway up some stone-built terraces, which curve round to form an immense arena. The size of the crowd rips the breath out of my lungs – I’d no idea there were this many people on Wrath, let alone in the Barrenlands. Stalls and show tents stand out like brightly painted islands in a boiling sea of bodies. It’s fierce loud. A madhouse of hoots and rough laughter and merchants yelling their wares.

‘Are those the idents in the cages?’ I ask.

‘What do you think?’ says Nash.

At the far side of the fairground is a stage, loads of cages stacked like crates around the back of it. Even from here I can see each cage has two child prisoners inside. So it’s true. We get to gawp at them between Cutting and Unwrapping. They can’t mess with their wounds without someone seeing.

Nash dives into the crowd. I follow him to a food stall.

Surprise, I end up paying for both of us. A credit buys a beer each and steaming bogbuck steaks wrapped in purple leaf. While I wolf the meat, I stare at the faces around me. Most are thick-fingered grubbers like us, but I see plenty of hunter and scavenger folk too. The locals are easy to spot, their pale miner faces scrunched up against the sun. Nearly as many women wander around as men, many with straw still plaited into their hair, to celebrate the recent harvest.

‘You don’t eat the leaf, you donk,’ says Nash.

‘Oh,’ I say. It was chewy.

I watch him as he takes a long pull from his beaker. His eyes water, but he doesn’t drop dead or anything, so I sip mine. It’s fierce strong beer and tastes foul, but he’s watching me back. I smack my lips and pretend to like it.

‘Rona’d kill me if she saw me drinking this.’

‘Rona ain’t here.’

After I finish it, I feel floaty. Can’t stop smiling, even at strangers. It’s like the hoots and yells and laughter get louder too. The crowd’s excitement is more catching than swamp pox. My heart starts pounding.

Why was Rona so worried about me coming here?

We bump into some girls from our valley then – Vijay, Mary and her little sister, Cassie. They tag along, which is no hardship. After a while, we end up near the stage and its wall of cages. Nash and the girls push on to watch jugglers, but I see two pale faces peering from the nearest cage and hang back.

Hairs stand up on the nape of my neck.

Both these girls have exactly the same long red hair, the same blue eyes, the same lips pulled down at the corners. One face two times. Twin sisters. Despite the muggy air, I shiver. I bet even their own mother couldn’t tell them apart.

Identical. But one is a monster.

I make the Sign of One. Our sign against evil.

‘Oh, come on,’ says Nash, back at my elbow. ‘Don’t go all pious on us.’

Mary and Vijay snigger, safe behind him.

I shake my head, feeling stupid. The cage looks solid enough and is covered in wire mesh. Both girls have iron leg shackles. They’re going nowhere.

And the thing is, neither looks evil to me, only scared.

‘Never seen idents before,’ I say. ‘That’s all.’

‘Not even baby ones?’ says Mary. ‘Doesn’t Rona heal them?’

I shrug. ‘She does, but always goes on her own. To spare the families.’

Even back in Freshwater, so tiny compared to this great big mining town, we have five families now cursed with ident babies. Rona’s helped deliver all of them, but won’t do the marking. Says chopping fingers off infants is no job for a healer. Sometimes I’ve heard these babies crying as I passed by, but I’ve never seen any of them. The shame is so great and guys like Nash would throw stones, so the unfortunate families raise them inside, behind bolted doors. Four long years of despair and misery before Slayers take them away to the ident camps.

What must it be like to be their parents? Just cruel.

And yet where would we be without the Saviour’s law to protect us?

‘Hey, see the bandages?’ says Nash, pointing.

Further along, two ident boys stand in their cage, gripping the bars. I see their forearms, bandaged from the Cutting. I see too that both bear the telltale mark of the ident, the little finger hacked from their left hand. Sick but clever that. Word is, back in the early days of the Saviour’s law, desperate parents would hide their ident offspring by splitting them up. No way to hide a missing finger though.

I look back at the redheads, but they see me staring.

Although I’ve paid good money to be here, I have to look away. Okay, so I know these girls are freaks, but it still feels wrong to gawp. Just does.

‘C’mon,’ says Nash, making to head off, ‘I’ll show you something better.’

‘Wait,’ I say. ‘Those girls.’

Nash stops and stares, obviously not bothered in the slightest that they can see him looking. ‘Yeah. Cute, but not my type. What about them?’

‘Which do you think is the evil one?’

Nash frowns at me, like I’m some kind of drooling idiot.

‘Well, my money’s on the redhead. Oh wait – they’re both redheads!’ He slaps his forehead, and this sends Vijay and Mary into fits of laughter. ‘Look, we’ll find out tomorrow at the Unwrapping. Now are you coming or what?’

I let him drag me away.

But the look on those girls’ faces, it dents my mood.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m still buzzing, but I’m not so dazzled now by everything I see. Maybe that’s why I start noticing faces in the crowd that aren’t red and shiny with having a good time. I nudge Mary and point out one such woman. She’s got a little boy by the hand. To look at her long, grey face, you’d think she was at a funeral, not a fair. Her brat looks fed up to the back teeth too.

‘You can’t please some people,’ I say.

Mary winces, surprising me. ‘The Saviour giveth, the Saviour taketh away,’ she says, quoting Freshwater’s preacher, old Fod. ‘Even idents have families.’

Cassie catches up and grabs my hand. She’s shaking.

‘Hey, what’s up?’ I ask her.

‘I’m glad there’s only one of me,’ she whispers.

‘You wait till you see this thing,’ says Nash, with a weird laugh.

‘Is it scary?’ squeaks Cassie, her brown eyes wide.

Nash leads us out of the crowd, towards an alcove set deep into the stone wall of the arena. As we get closer, I see wrist-thick iron bars sealing this space off and turning it into another cage. A torn canvas awning flaps above it, filling the alcove with scuttling shadows. Off to one side, a sun-scorched old man sits cross-legged on a mat, watching us. Sharp-eyed kids are hanging about.

‘Is it some wild animal?’ I ask Nash.

‘Wait and see.’

One brat is slow clearing out of our way. Nash shoves her aside. I expect screeching and swearing, but the girl hardly notices. She just keeps staring at the cage, her grubby face a muddle of fright and teeth-bared anticipation.

Weird. All I can see is a heap of rags and bones.

Until the rags and bones move.

The rags are rags, but those bones still have skin on them. As my eyes adjust, I see a mottled hand clutching the rags around a filthy wasted body.

A skull-like head slowly lifts to regard us.

‘Oh – my – Saviour!’ I make the Sign of One again.

I’ve never seen a real-live twist before and my guts tie themselves into cold knots. Idents I expected to see, wanted to see. But this monster with twisted blood – this I’m not ready for. I take several steps back despite myself.

Cassie pulls free, turns and runs. Don’t blame her.

Nash sneers, but I’m not fooled. He can act tough, but he’s eyeing those bars same as me, gauging their strength. He’s scared too. Who wouldn’t be?

The bane of Wrath, a devil in human form.

Those iron bars are the only reason we still have throats.

I force myself forward. A breeze shifts the awning and shadows scatter. I see the mad hatred in the creature’s bloodshot eyes as it watches me. I’m so close now its stink shoves up my nose. The twist’s skin is covered in muck and a rash of angry red scars, its waist-length hair filthy and matted. I thought I was a bit skinny, but this thing’s nothing but skin and bone. Male or female? Impossible to say. It hisses at me like a rock viper and shows me its teeth, all filed to sharp points.

Nash elbows me, scaring the crap out of me. ‘They always have one here.’

I nod, not trusting myself to speak.

Behave – or the twist will come in the night and get you!

It’s what grumpy old folk like to growl at naughty little children to scare them. Seeing this disgusting monster is like having my worst nightmares made flesh. It’s horrible to think one of those redhead ident girls will end up like this.

But that’s why we have the Cutting and Unwrapping.

‘You scared, boy?’ asks the twist’s keeper, the old bloke.

‘Not me,’ I say, grimacing.

‘Y’ought to be.’ He cackles, pulls a leather cosh from his belt and rasps it along the cage.

The twist lets out this blood-curdling scream, bounds to its feet and hurls itself at him. Its skeletal arm shoots out between the bars, bony fingers clawing for the man’s throat. Only just in time, he steps back out of range.

It happens so fast – inhumanly fast.

Behind me, I hear children’s delighted shrieks.

‘See what I mean?’ says the man. He spits into the dust at my feet, then looks at me, unblinking and seemingly uncaring, as the twist thrashes to reach him. ‘Some folks, they don’t believe in evil; they gotta see for themselves.’

Mary tugs my sleeve. ‘You got a credit?’

The man elbows her out of the way. His breath stinks as bad as the twist. ‘A credit and you can make it dance.’

‘Do what?’ I say.

‘Just pay the man,’ says Nash, shoving me.

They’re all sneering at me now, so I toss the man a credit.

He makes a big show of biting the coin, then fetches this long pole with an insulated grip at one end. A thick cable snakes away from it through the dirt, towards an ancient power pack. On the grip is a crude trigger.

‘Done this before?’

I’ve no idea what he’s on about and shake my head.

The twist sees the pole; it howls and flings itself to the back of the alcove. The man presses the trigger and I hear an electric whine. Casually, he touches the pole’s tip against one of the bars. BANG! There’s a blinding flash. Showers of yellow sparks make us all duck and I smell the familiar hot stench of arc welding.

The iron bar glows red where the tip touched it.

Oh my Saviour. The twist’s skin, all those wounds. I know why now.

‘Have fun,’ says the man, handing me the pole. ‘You got one minute. And don’t get too close. If the twist tags you, that’s your problem not mine.’

I think I’m going to puke, but Nash’s face is a mask, stretched taut with anticipation. He licks his lips and pushes me forward.

‘You heard him – make it dance.’

‘I don’t want to,’ I moan. ‘Somebody else do it.’

This is sick. In my head I see Rona’s I told you so face.

‘You big, soft gom,’ growls Nash. ‘The thing’s not human. Doesn’t matter how bad you burn it, it’ll be okay tomorrow. These monsters heal so fast.’

Not human. But it was once, wasn’t it?

I stare in horror at the twist as it grovels and whimpers at the back of its cage. Okay, so maybe it is a monster now, like they keep telling us. What do I know? I’m a nobody from the arse end of the Barrens. But it sounds human.

‘Come on,’ says Vijay. ‘Don’t be a wimp.’

I look at Mary, but her lip curls.

‘Stop wetting yourself. Get stuck in!’ shouts Nash.

The old man wants the business too. He thrusts his face real close.

‘Y’ain’t no stinking twist-lover, are ya?’

Faces in the crowd are staring now. My skin crawls, but what can I do? Nothing. I know – we all know – what happens to twist-lovers, those fools who preach the heresy that twists aren’t evil, just another human species. They end up hanging from trees, their eyes pecked out. I grit my teeth, step up to the bars.

Only for my legs to be kicked out from under me.

The ground leaps up and smashes into my back. For several seconds all I can do is lie there groaning, struggling to catch my breath. Too late I remember the pole I’m holding is a weapon, before a booted foot grinds that hand into the soil. I look up to see my attacker standing over me – a little guy with white dreads, shabby leather overalls, eyes hidden by mirrored sunglasses. In each lens, I see my shocked face, gob open, gasping for air. Two me’s, like I’m an ident too.

He pushes the shades up into his dreads and he . . . is a girl.

A girl with death in her dark green eyes.

‘So you like torturing twists, do you?’ she hisses.

‘Drop dead,’ I say, wheezing.

Big mistake. I see now what she’s pointing at me – a snub-nosed flamer, a weapon so lethal it’s banned even on dump worlds.

She leans down and presses the flamer’s barrel into my forehead.

‘Wrong answer.’

The gun’s a blur, so I focus on the girl’s face. Pale, tough-looking, about my age. Black thumb-thick bars painted across her cheekbones. Teardrop tattoo dripping from her left eye. Those long, greasy dreads, bleached white.

And she looks mad as hell.

‘No, wait!’ I say. ‘I –’

A bald guy in matching leathers and face paint hauls the girl off me. He’s massive, double ugly and looks even meaner than she is. I like him already.

‘What the hell are you doing, Sky?’

He wrenches the flamer from the girl’s hand and shoves her away. She glares at him like she’ll argue, but settles for making a gun shape with her hand and pretend-shooting me.

She stalks off then, limping badly.

Baldy waves her flamer at us. ‘Anybody see what happened?’

Nobody wants to die so nobody answers.

The man grunts with obvious satisfaction. ‘Good. You keep it that way.’

He pockets the gun and follows the girl towards the exit. Our stunned silence is broken by a slow, leathery slapping sound. The twist is sitting up at the back of its cage now and it’s clapping.

Slowly, miserably, I pick myself up.

‘Wow, Kyle,’ says Nash, poking me with his finger. ‘You just got your head kicked in by some gimp windjammer girl.’

‘That right?’ I say.

He opens his mouth to make another smart-arse comment.

I don’t give him the chance.

All my life I’ve been scared of thugs like Nash, but it’s like I’m suddenly possessed by rage. Or maybe it’s shame. I snap his head back with a punch. He staggers and goes down. When he gets back up, he’s clutching his mouth and cursing me, blood dribbling thick and red between his fingers.

‘You so had that coming, Nash,’ I say.

2
HIGH SLAYER

It’s not like I want to go, after everything that happened. I volunteer to look after our campsite. But Clayton, who’s as close to a leader as we’ve got, and no fool, says I go to the Unwrapping and Nash stays as punishment for fighting. So here I am the next day, wedged inside the arena again, ten rows or so back from the stage. We’ve been here for hours already. Today’s another hot one, and I see storm clouds gathering out west on the horizon. The mood is serious now. Apart from a few stalls selling spiced meat snacks, the merchants are gone. The bars are all closed too.

Clayton says we’re here to witness, not be entertained. He’s warned us to be on our best behaviour.

I’m standing with the Reeve family, including a squirming Cassie. Since I took the girl’s hand yesterday, she’s attached herself to me like one of those nasty little suckerfish you get in our lakes. On the stage, men are covering an altar with crimson cloth. Suspended over the cages at the back, a massive vid-screen made from loads of little screens shows our glorious leader, the Saviour himself.

He stares down at us, magnified a thousand times.

Me, I’ve only seen him on faded posters before, where he looks old and severe. Here on the screen though I see he’s still barrel-chested, strong and vigorous for a man his age. A mane of thick grey hair falls over his broad shoulders and he’s got a mouthful of the whitest teeth I’ve ever seen. We get to see a lot of them too, with him smiling as he does his famous ‘reaching out to the people’ pose that Rona hates so much. Like he’s a father figure, not the dictator she’s always saying he is.

It’d be confusing if I could be bothered thinking about it.

I stop watching him and look out instead for that scowling girl with the white dreads and the flamer. In this crowd it’d be easy for her to sneak up behind me and slide a knife between my ribs without anyone seeing.

Turns out Nash was right. The leathers and those marks on the girl’s face means she’s windjammer crew. Me, I’ve never seen a windjammer, but like all kids, I know about these ridge-running glider transports. Cobbled together from the scrapped orbit-to-surface dropships that dumped us here back in the day, they’re crude enough flying machines, but as hi-tech as it gets here. Worlds like Wrath are where whoever runs the galaxy disposes of criminals, and that’s a locked-down, marooned and forgotten kind of deal. We’re left to fend for ourselves.

So folk say anyway, but what do I know?

I’ve wanted to be a windjammer pilot since forever.

Down on sleep after a bad night, I yawn. Whenever I closed my eyes, I kept seeing that flamer. But that wasn’t the worst thing – I wish I’d had the guts to tell Nash and that old man to drop dead. I should never have picked up that pole thing. Okay, so the twist looked nasty, but – and I know this is heresy – wouldn’t being tortured and tormented, day in, day out, turn anyone into a monster?

A trumpet sounds. At least, I think it’s a trumpet. We don’t go in much for music in the Barrenlands – it’s nice, but you can’t eat it.

‘What’s happenin’?’ squeals Cassie.

People file on to the stage. I can tell straight off they’re important because they’re sleek and fat and wear rich-looking clothes. You have to be a big deal on Wrath to be fat. One by one they waddle along and crush their seats.

‘They look down, we look up,’ somebody hisses.

The crowd starts muttering now.

I’m twisted round, trying to hear what’s being said, when I hear gasps. I look back and have a gasp sucked out of me too. A raven-haired young woman stalks across the stage, swaying her hips, a long brown cloak draped over her shoulders. Under this she wears a fancy black-leather uniform, trimmed with shimmering nightrunner fur, cut tight and clinging to show off her figure. She stops at the altar, turns and faces us. Even from here I see her fingers clenching and unclenching. She reminds me of a spider – all long, spindly arms and legs, waiting to pounce. Trumpets blast, then fade away. Cassie kicks me in the shin.

‘All right!’ I hoist her on to my shoulders.

The people behind us moan, but I ignore them. Cassie’s thrilled. I’m not – she stinks. She also thinks it’s okay to hold on to my ears.

‘Who’s the tall skinny woman?’

‘A High Slayer.’

I’m pretty sure, seeing how much gilt she’s got on her uniform.

The only Slayers I’ve seen before are those who come for our idents, when it’s time to cart them off to the camps. Everybody always turns out to watch because, let’s face it, nothing else happens in Freshwater. Rona says they’re stone-cold killers, the Saviour’s special forces from the war. They’ve got some other fancy names too, like Preservers of Human Purity, but I like Slayer better.

‘What’s her name?’ Cassie asks me.

‘How should I know?’

‘Commandant Morana,’ whispers Mary, Cassie’s sister. ‘High Slayer for the Barrenlands.’

‘Nasty piece of work,’ adds Mary’s mother, quiet-like, out of the side of her mouth. ‘Eats babies for breakfast.’

I shudder, and try to imagine what babies might taste like. Disgusting, if Cassie is anything to go by.

The Saviour fades away and the big screen zooms in on the woman’s face. She is beautiful, but there’s a harshness stamped into her features no creams or powders can hide. Her eyes stare back at us, so cold and bleak I shiver, even though I’m hot. And when she starts talking, her voice is impossibly loud. Her words crash around the arena, like thunder echoes around our hills. I’m gobsmacked, until I see the microphone clipped to her collar and the speakers up on poles.

‘Good afternoon, citizens of the Barrenlands,’ she booms. ‘Welcome to Deep Six on this, the last day of this year’s Peace Fair. It is . . . gratifying to see how many of you have chosen to make the difficult journey here.’

I can’t help sniffing. Chosen? Okay, so I chose, but it’s the law.

‘I would like to begin,’ she continues, ‘by asking you all to show your appreciation for our hosts, the loyal and industrious mining community of Deep Six, who once again have made this year’s Fair such a success.’

The bigdeals haul themselves up from their chairs and the crowd starts clapping. Hardly deafening though – nobody will be going home with blisters on their hands. And this lack of enthusiasm isn’t lost on Morana. Magnified on the screen above her, she stiffens and her scowling face lifts to look behind us. Uh-oh. Turns out that she isn’t the only Slayer in Deep Six today. When I look, I see loads more have spread out behind us around the rear wall of the arena. Some are only carrying non-lethal shockers, but most are armed with pulse rifles.

The clapping gets louder – some creeps even cheer.

Deep Six’s Elder, a red-faced woman with a whiny voice, makes a speech. She thanks the High Slayer, then bangs on for boring ages about new productivity records for the iron-ore mines. It’s worse than studying maths, so I’m glad when she eventually sits down and Morana returns to the centre of the stage.

The crowd, which had started muttering again, quiets.

‘We are gathered here today,’ Morana announces, ‘to celebrate thirty years of the Saviour’s peace. A peace which has allowed us to rebuild our shattered world and raise new generations of pureblood singleton children. A peace which sees us looking forward from our dark past towards an ever brighter future.’

She pauses. The speakers blast out the first verse of ‘All Hail the Saviour’.

We chant it back, like good little citizens.

What follows is a history lesson from her that makes me sigh. I mean, as if I haven’t had this drummed into my head a thousand times already by our preacher, Fod, back in Freshwater. Anyway, Morana reminds us how the outbreak of ident births was first considered a blessing as we struggled to survive in those early days after being dumped here and needed all the strong hands we could get, to clear the fields and labour in them. Then the realisation that only one twin was pureblood human, the other a less-than-human twist. And yet still we tolerated them. Only for our generosity to be rewarded by the Twist War, when the twists showed their true monster faces by rising up against us purebloods and almost wiping us out, being faster and stronger and entirely without pity. How we purebloods survived only because one man among us would not be beaten: the glorious leader we are now pleased to call our Saviour, who saved us from our doom.

Yeah, yeah. I’ve heard it all before.

The whole time she’s talking, the screen shows grainy footage from the war. Seen that before too. Women and children torn limb from limb by half-naked soldiers, who look human, but aren’t. Slayers leading regular troops in devastating counterattacks. It looks staged to me. Why was somebody filming it instead of blasting away with a pulse rifle? But like I said before, what do I know?

Cassie buries her face in my hair. ‘It’s horrible.’

The crowd starts getting twitchy and excited now. Most people will have been to Fairs before. They will know what’s coming after the speeches.

‘Yet today is not only a celebration,’ Morana says, at last. ‘Today serves another, far more important purpose. We are gathered here . . . for the Unwrapping.’

‘Un-wrapping! ’ roars the crowd.

The screen cuts to Morana’s half-smile, half-sneer.

‘For we must never relax our guard against the bane of Wrath.’

‘The bane of Wrath! ’

She glares at us and I, like everyone else, stick my believer face on.

‘There are some who claim not to believe in the curse.’ Her voice becomes menacing now, a stern mother explaining something for the very last time to a witless child. ‘To those doubters I say – BEHOLD THE BANE OF WRATH!’

There’s a disturbance at the rear of the stage, where a gap in the stacked cages forms a tunnel. Using long chains attached to a collar around its neck, four muscular guards drag out the twist we saw yesterday. They fasten the chains to anchors in the stage floor then step back, panting and sweating.

And the crowd goes mental.

‘The bane of Wrath! The bane of Wrath! ’

The stark-naked twist raves and claws at its collar. It is a monster, I do see that now. Even so, I can hardly watch – it’s too cruel. But the effect it has on the crowd is as shocking. It’s like I blink and suddenly I’m drowning in a sea of contorted red faces, eyes bulging, mouths gaping as they bay for the twist’s blood.

Even Mary, always so precious, screams her head off.

‘What’s wrong with it?’ asks Cassie.

‘It’s possessed,’ I explain, wincing. ‘Taken over by demons.’

Morana strolls towards it. The creature screams and hurls itself to meet her, skeletal arms outstretched, fingers like talons – only for the chains to snap taut, jerking its head back. The High Slayer doesn’t flinch, but stands just out of reach at a red line painted on the floor. She shakes her head as if disgusted and holds up one black-gloved hand. A guard steps forward with a disruptor tube. There’s a blue-white flash and the twist freezes, mid-snarl. On the screen I see it’s still twitching, its mad eyes full of hate, but that’s all it can do now.

‘Hard to believe,’ booms Morana, ‘that this evil, this monster, could once have passed for human. Yet I assure you it did. This is why these foul caricatures of humanity are such an insidious enemy. Why we must always remain vigilant and work so tirelessly to preserve the blessed purity of our human bloodline.’

‘Un-wrapp-ing! ’ howls the crowd, growing impatient.

‘What’s insidyus mean?’ asks Cassie.

‘Dunno,’ I say. ‘Something bad. Shut up, will you?’

Morana raises her voice, so loud it hurts. ‘Let the Unwrapping begin!’

3
UNWRAPPING

More blaring trumpets. Morana takes her place on a seat behind the altar. A tall man in a cloak, nose and mouth hidden by a black mask, emerges from the cage-tunnel and stalks centre stage, his boots thumping the wood. I overhear someone behind me telling a buddy that this guy does the Unwrapping. The masked man fumbles under his cloak and a screech of feedback almost takes our heads off.

One fool laughs out loud – he must be drunk.

‘Bring forth the first subjects!’

Subjects. I wondered what he’d call them. We try not to say words like ‘double’, or ‘couple’, or ‘two’ here on Wrath. It’s bad luck. There’s a rhyme we’re taught as kids: One, three or four, that’s the score. More than four is greedy.

Now some more guards emerge from the tunnel.

Held between them, ankles shackled so they can only hobble, are the first idents to be unwrapped. Skinny brothers, stiff with fright, both wearing a sort of sleeveless white smock, which covers them down to their knees. Thick leather belts go round their waists. If they’re any older than ten, I’d be amazed.

Scared little boys, who happen to be spitting images.

‘The family Anderson,’ declares the man in the mask, and now he turns towards the steps at the front of the stage, as if he’s expecting something.

‘What’s he waiting for?’ I ask Mary.

‘The parents.’

Oh yeah. I see a man and a woman climbing the steps now, grubbers like us, from their round shoulders and farm clothes. They bow stiffly, before shuffling to the side of the stage, away from the still-frozen twist. A murmur spreads through the crowd, which sounds like sympathy. On the screen, the mother sobs. And I see now what the belts are for – each boy has his right arm, the unbandaged arm, bound behind his back to a loop in the leather. Nobody’s taking any chances.

One of these idents may be a lot stronger than he looks.

A man with a camera scurries forward to get close to the action as the guards force the boys to kneel facing each other, either side of the altar. The boys hold their bandaged arms out, palm down on the cloth. The big screen switches to a view looking down from above. It zooms in nice and tight so we can see the bloodstained dressings on their puny, hairless forearms, then tracks along to show us their hands.

Only four fingers, of course. Little finger gone.

Bile fills my mouth. Guess I see now why they use a red altar cloth.

‘My money’s on leftie,’ whispers Mary.

‘You what?’

Stunned, I hear whispered wagers and watch as credits change hands around me.

‘Five says it’s the left one. He looks meaner.’

‘I’ll take that. Check out the eyes of the one on the right.’

On the stage, the masked man steps up to the altar. He pulls a curved knife from his robes and brandishes it for our inspection. Steel glints in the bright dayshine. And the crowd roars, nearly deafening me. ‘Un-wrapp-ing! ’

The man turns, his cloak swirling, and bends over the altar. His back is to us, but the screen shows us what he’s doing. I watch, cringing, as he slips the blade under each boy’s bandage and slashes it loose. With a practised flourish, he rips both bandages off at the same time, then leans in and inspects. After he steps aside, the camera lingers, teasing, then zooms in. Both boys have a single bloody slit across their forearm. An ugly, still-open wound. No signs of any healing.

The crowd sighs with obvious disappointment.

Thank the Saviour, I think, biting my lip.

‘First-timers,’ says Mary. ‘They hardly ever manifest that young.’

‘What’s that mean?’ a voice says in my ear.

I’d almost forgotten Cassie who’s still on my shoulders; she’s been so quiet. ‘It means we can’t tell which one is evil yet.’

‘Why can’t we?’

Quick as I can, I tell her how twists are sneaky – exactly the same as us purebloods when they’re little, so impossible to tell apart, but how when they’re older they start to show signs of the monsters they will one day turn into.

‘Like being faster and stronger than us?’ says Cassie.

‘Yup. And they heal quicker too. Impossibly fast. That’s how we tell.’

She shuts up at last, seemingly satisfied.

I catch myself rubbing my forearm as the parents are led away, both sobbing. They aren’t allowed to visit their children in the camps, so this is the one time they get to see them every year. How must this feel? Relief that both their children are spared for another year, or regret they don’t get one son back today? Or just despair at the whole proceedings? Despair – it’s got to be.

‘Bo-ring!’ sings Cassie.

That does it – heartless little maggot. I yank her off my shoulders.

She complains loudly, like I care. I fend her off as she tries to clamber back up again. In the relative hush, this makes quite a commotion. When I look up, my heart pounds. I hold my breath and freeze. Morana is looking towards our section of the crowd. I can’t be sure, but it seems like she’s staring straight at me.

Cassie kicks me again, but I hardly notice.

The High Slayer looks away and I breathe again.

The guards drag both boys to the front of the stage. They parade them around together now, holding their arms up to the crowd, making sure we all get a solid look at their unhealed wounds before they pull them offstage, back through the tunnel, back to their cage and another year in the ident camps.

Next up, two much older boys are hauled out for their unwrapping.

‘The family Bachmann.’

I crane over the heads of the people in front of me, but this time there’s nothing to see. No slope-shouldered, sad-eyed parents haul themselves on to the stage. Which makes me wonder – do these idents have no parents, or have their parents chosen to stay away? I’ll never know. But, for some reason, it matters.

Me, I’d have thought it impossible to look defiant in leg irons, dragged along by four brute men to be tested for evil. I’m scared half to death just watching them, safe out here in the crowd. But these lads manage it. Where the Andersons were white-faced and petrified, these idents hold their heads high and meet the curious gaze of the crowd. I stare up at the expressions on their identical faces, magnified massively on the big screen. I shouldn’t be impressed, but I can’t help it. I see scorn and contempt, but not a flicker of fear.

‘One good, two e-vil, one good, two e-vil,’ chants the crowd.

The ident on the left, just before he’s forced on to his knees before the altar, pulls away from his guard and sends a big gob of spit into the front row of the crowd. The people there don’t appreciate it. They howl and throw stuff at him.

The guards drag him back to the altar.

Mary’s dad grins at me. ‘A credit says it’s the spitter.’

‘You’re on,’ I say. What else can I do? I can’t look like I feel sorry for twists.

The masked man wields his knife again. When he steps back, we have a winner. Or a loser, I should say. And I’m shiny, up a credit. The kid who spat has five scars and one open wound. His brother – or the twist pretending to be – only has five scars. A big yellow crust comes away, stuck to the bandage. Where the cut would have been is smooth, pink skin. A deep cut healed overnight.

Don’t need to be a healer’s son to know that’s unnatural.

The arena erupts. A thousand little fingers slash the air with the Sign of One. All around me, people jump up and down, emptying their lungs in an orgy of hysterical shouting and screaming. I scream too. I yell nonsense until my throat is raw from yelling. It’s impossible not to – fear needs a way out.

Suddenly, the crowd starts chanting something new.

‘Pu-ri-fy! Pu-ri-fy! ’

Now what? This time, only the twist is paraded. On the screen, I see his brother watching, mouth turned down, as a guard removes his leg irons. They push him towards a fire basket, but he struggles so they have to force him.

‘If I was him,’ I say, ‘I’d be jumping for joy that my blood isn’t twisted.’

‘You don’t have a brother, do you?’ says Mary’s mother.

‘He’s not a real brother,’ says Mary.

Her father scowls and hands over my credit. Mary winks at me, obviously delighted, maybe hoping I’ll spend it on something for her later. She’ll be lucky. Up on the stage, one guard holds the innocent youth. Another, leather gloved and aproned, pulls an iron rod from the hot coals. Without any hesitation, he plants the glowing tip on to the boy’s left bicep. I wince, seeing smoke curl and hearing the amplified hiss. The boy staggers, but doesn’t cry out.

‘Scabb-er! ’ chants the crowd now.

Scab. That’s what we call the pureblood ident. The lucky one.

‘Why’d they burn him?’ asks Cassie, as guards haul the boy off the stage.

I let go a breath I hadn’t known I was holding. ‘Now they’re sure he’s pureblood, they brand him with a big P. Like your dad brands fourhorns.’

‘So they can tell who owns him?’

‘Nobody owns him.’ I sigh. ‘It’s so he can prove he’s pureblood. He gets his life back today, but if we didn’t mark him people would see his missing little finger and think maybe he’s an ident on the run. This way, he can just roll his sleeve up, show his brand and you know he’s all right. Now do you get it?’

‘But won’t the mark heal and go away?’

I scowl down at her. ‘It won’t, mud for brains. You saw him unwrapped. Only twists can heal a scar away. That mark’ll be on him till the day he dies.’

Cassie sucks her thumb doubtfully.

‘What will he do with no family to go to?’ I ask Mary.

‘Who cares?’ She laughs. ‘It’s what happens now that makes it worth dragging ourselves all this way. You get to see what the Peace Fair is all about!’

Even as she says this, a tall frame hisses up from the floor of the stage. I stop wondering when I see the noose hanging down from the cross member. It’s a gallows. The guards drag twist-boy over, both his hands bound behind his back now. He struggles, his bare feet hammering the stage, but they stand him up, slip the rope round his neck and give it a vicious tug to tighten it.

No way – I’m going to witness an execution.

‘Pu-ri-fy! Pu-ri-fy! Pu-ri-fy! ’

Desperate to see, Cassie starts climbing up me, but I push her away.

Commandant Morana stands. She holds her fist out, palm down. The crowd shuts up in a heartbeat. After the uproar, the silence is so empty, I feel like I’m teetering on the edge of a cliff. A lammerjay caws high overhead.

She opens her hand.

Thunnkkk! A trapdoor opens in the stage.

The boy drops like a stone into the dark hole and out of sight. The rope jerks iron-bar taut, then twitches and swings as he kicks his life away. I want to look away, but I can’t. The crowd around me hoots and applauds.

Twists are fighters, I’ll say that. It’s a minute before the rope goes still.

In the Barrenlands nobody dies from old age, so I’ve seen plenty of death. Like that old guy gored by a bull blackbuck, who died screaming, still trying to shove his guts back in. Or my mate Keane, after they pulled his fish-gobbled body out of the lake. I thought I was used to death, but this is just so . . . cold-blooded. Sweat stings my eyes. I can’t stop my legs shaking.

This I did not see coming.

Maybe I should’ve done. Twists are the bane of Wrath. If we take our foot off their necks, they’ll gang up again to slaughter us. I do get that. That’s why the Saviour’s law demands we mark idents and cage them and test them when they’re old enough. All this, when the simplest thing would be to kill both. Proof of the Saviour’s infinite benevolence, Fod likes to preach. A system put in place to protect us, while sparing the innocent. Harsh and cruel perhaps, but merciful.

I knew all this before I handed over my credits.

But knowing is one thing; seeing the grim limits of the Saviour’s mercy another. I swallow hard, grateful at least for not having to watch the twist thrashing at the rope end. Why the hell hadn’t Rona told me about this Purification?

‘What’s with you?’ says Mary, eyeing me. ‘The thing was evil.’

‘Yeah, I know,’ I say. ‘Sure.’

My eyes stray to the back of the stage. The idents are making some kind of fingers-crossed salute to the dead kid through the bars of their cages. Slayer guards are rushing up and down, clubbing at them with their rifles to stop them.

The crowd sees and jeers even louder. All part of the fun.

But the screen shows none of this. It sticks with the bigdeals on stage clapping their delicate hands, then pans to Morana, hiding a yawn with her gloved hand. Over the next hour, twenty more pairs of idents are unwrapped. Seven more twists test positive and make the drop into the trapdoor, three of them girls. The youngest, a girl with a face full of freckles, looks about eleven. Even she gets a cheer from the crowd when she drops. The scabs are branded, but only four are claimed by their families. Mary, enjoying herself hugely, pulls my leg about my long face. Cassie stuffs her face with sweets and pesters me to try one as Maskman summons the Lynch family. The crowd has a big laugh at the unfortunate surname, but I can’t join in. The Lynches are those redhead ident girls I saw yesterday. A woman, an older image of the girls, hauls herself on to the stage, but collapses. Last time I saw these girls they were petrified, but now they look calm and resigned. It’s the loving look they give each other as they’re forced to kneel at the altar that undoes me. I can’t watch any more – just can’t. I’ve had it with the Unwrapping.

I peer round at the Slayers, wondering if they’ll blast me if I make a run for it back to camp. I don’t care what people think. I have to get out of here, away from this madness. And that’s when Cassie’s greed does me a favour.

She pukes her guts up, all down her front.

‘Oh, Cassie, no!’ says her mother.

‘No bother,’ I say, hastily. ‘I’ll take her back and clean her up.’

4
THE ROAD BACK

Such a nice young man. That’s what Cassie’s mother is telling everyone, ever since I hauled her puking daughter out of the arena for her. I reckon she’s got her eye on me as a match for her Mary. Well, one person who disagrees is Nash.

Surprise, surprise – he isn’t taking his split lip well.

It’s three days after the Peace Fair and we’re almost back to Freshwater. Five klicks back, we crested the pass through the foothills. Nash is still picking on me every chance he gets, which is loads. Thing is, the few men with enough spine to tell him to leave me be are out on the trail, scouting ahead for trouble.

I’m looking forward to seeing my girl Jude. Okay, she might not be quite so pretty as Mary, but she likes a good time and I can talk to her about anything. She’ll kill herself laughing when I tell her about the windjammer girl.

I wonder, does she miss me like I miss her?

The trail drops down, following the bank of a tumbling peaty river through forests of hash-willow. By midday, we’re less than ten klicks out. Even the fourhorns hauling our wagons – the dumbest animals on Wrath – sense this and pick their pace up without me prodding. Best of all, the sun comes out at last. These past days we’ve been battered by storms; now we can put our rain gear away.

I sniff the air. ‘Do you smell that?’ I ask the Zielinski woman.

She says she doesn’t.

A musky stink, but it’s gone now. Animal maybe?

Apart from this, the forest smells fresh after its scrubbing by hail and rain. There’s plenty of shade here too, so we don’t go from cold to boiling hot. The hash-willow leaves look incredibly yellow. Wildflowers sway in the ever-present breeze. Reds and pinks and whites and blues. I even recognise some of them too, the ones Rona grinds into her healing pastes. I don’t know their names, but they look so bright and cheerful you’d swear some kid’s been at them with a brush.

I’m not going to sing or anything, but I’m cheering up.

And I need to. I picture our isolated little shack, tucked away under the trees, and me walking through the door with a long face on. Soon as she sees this, Rona will launch straight into one of her I told you so routines. You won’t listen to me, what do you expect? On and on. I mean, as mothers go, Rona and I get along pretty well, way better than most, but still. I’ll never hear the bogging end of it.

That’s not what’s been dragging me down though.

I’ve always been a bit of a loner – I guess because of all that moving about we did when I was younger – but now I feel even more left out and alone than usual. It’s like I don’t know these guys any more, even the ones I’d almost call friends. I watch them as they walk or ride the trail, happy and laughing, teeth flashing as they chat away. Okay, so everyone’s keeping a wary eye out too, but it’s been like this ever since we left Deep Six. Even when the hail was rattling down, everyone was banging on about the Fair and how good this or that was. Hey, look, see what I bought? The food was crappy this year, wasn’t it?

Blah, blah, blah. And – I – just – don’t – get – it.

See, I couldn’t give a toss what the fishcakes were like, or what such-and-such might make from that reel of synth-cotton she bought. How can they laugh and joke so soon after seeing such horrors? Am I the only one here who wants to talk about what really happened? Am I the only one still feeling sick to my stomach?

I was freaked out by what I saw at the Fair, but they loved it.

Maybe Nash is right – maybe I’m the weirdo.

I know what he’d say. We live on a dump world. Life is hard, get over it.

And speak of the devil . . .

‘What’s the matter, Kyle?’ says Nash, sidling up to me where I’m leading the fourhorns hauling one of our wagons. ‘Missing your girlfriend?’

I ignore him. Best way with bullies, Rona says.

Tell the truth, I’m not so scared of Nash and his thug mates now, after the Fair. I know they’ll give me a kicking and I know it’ll hurt. But here’s the thing, I feel kind of numb about it. What’s a few bruises compared to a hanging?

‘Took you apart, didn’t she?’ he says.

Oh right – he means that psycho windjammer girl with the dreads. I taste bile again, remembering being sure I was going to die. I’ll be glad if I never see her again.

And there it is again on the breeze, that weird musky smell.

‘You wait,’ says Nash. ‘We’re going to give you such a beating. You’ll still be sucking your food through a straw when the snows come.’

I stare at the hash-willows by the trail. Did something move there?

‘You hear me?’ he says.

‘No,’ I say, distracted. ‘Something’s not right.’

That’s when I hear Clayton shout, his voice high and scared.

‘Rea-pers! ’

Next thing, I hear the thump, thump, thump of our scouts’ pulse rifles rapid-firing in the woods high to our left, and glimpse several bright acid-green flashes through the trees. A woman screams from somewhere up front.

Nash clutches my arm. Not such a tough guy now.

The Reapers leap up from hiding places in bushes and drop down from branches overhanging the trail. Everywhere I look I see more, loping towards us like human wolves, howling and shaking their spears and long knives. I’m rooted to the spot by the sight of their half-naked bodies, plastered in filth and twigs and swirling blue tattoos, their savage Reaper faces all twisted with bloodlust.

Too many – I see that straight away. We’re screwed.

‘Don’t run. Fight!’ roars Clayton.

I can’t do either. I can’t even breathe. It’s like I’ve been zapped by that Slayer muscle-lock. All I can do is stand here, gawping like a fool as Clayton leaps down from his wagon. He drops to one knee, aims his pulse rifle and snaps three thumping shots off before an arrow gets him in the throat, toppling him sideways into the mud. With a curse, Nash knocks me aside and sprints forward along the trail. He snatches up Clayton’s pulse rifle, throws himself down behind our leader’s crumpled body and starts shooting. Thump! Thump! One Reaper, almost on him, flies backwards, a huge hole in his chest.

‘Ammo!’ screams Nash.

He fires again and again into the charging Reapers. One goes down. Another spins round and screams, half his arm gone. Other men are firing now, but the Reapers are on top of us. My muscles unknot themselves. I gulp a huge, sobbing lungful of air. Every nerve in my body screams at me to run, but I swear and dash back to the wagon. If a gommer like Nash can fight, I have to help him. Spare pulse-rifle magazines should be in a box by the bench seat. I clamber up, straight-arming the panicking Zielinski woman out of my way. But I can’t open the box. Some idiot has padlocked it. I plant my feet and howl curses and pull like crazy, ignoring the pain in my fingers. The hasp gives way in a shower of splinters.

No mags in the box, only dirty grey bugwebs.

I look up, just in time, as a Reaper spear flashes towards me. How I twist myself out of the way I’ll never know, but it hisses past. I throw myself across the seat, drop down on the far side of the wagon and pull my hunting knife out. It looks so small in my hand – a child’s toy compared to that Reaper spear.

Sweat pours down my face and screws with my seeing.

The shouts and screams suddenly get louder. I can hear the desperate grunts and scuffles of hand-to-hand fighting now. Something else too, which makes me pant with disbelief – the bang and crackle of a blaster. I grovel in the dirt for a look under the wagon. Through the wheel spokes, I see a man’s boots staggering backwards, surrounded by bare Reaper feet. The boots lift and hang quivering in mid-air. I hear his death shriek, then his body falls to the ground.

It’s Nash I think – or what’s left of him.

The wagon bounces on its springs as something lands on it. A shadow flickers over me and I hear a splash as feet land in the mud behind. I whip round, wheezing with fear, and I’m face to face with a Reaper.

Once, I electrocuted myself. Got careless hooking up a live fuel cell. This feels like that as a jolt of pure terror rips through me. I stagger to my feet, meaning to run, only to find my legs are rubbery and useless.

‘Stay away from me!’ I shout.

This Reaper is short and scrawny, not much older than I am, although it’s hard to tell, he’s so plastered with mud and feathers. He comes at me, leading with his knife. I twist out of the way and he cuts my side, but not serious. I grab his wrist before he can have another go. We pant into each other and wrestle back and forth. He’s way stronger than he looks, however, and fights dirty too. When we end up face to face, he rocks back and headbutts me. I stagger and drop my hands.

What saves me is that Reaper boy’s a gloater.

He steps back, grinning from one filthy ear to the other. And I feel that terrible ferocity shudder through me again, same as when I punched Nash. When he struts back in to finish me, I’m not just ready – I’m looking forward to it.

If I die, then so does he!

I look into his bloodshot eyes and hurl myself at him.

Next thing I know, I’m shaking and down on my hands and knees. Reaper boy is on his back in front of me, legs kicking as he tries to slide further away. The bloody hilt of my knife is sticking out of his chest. Not a killing wound, but he looks as shocked as I am. His knife is beside me. I grab it, the handle slick and warm, and scramble up. His face goes rigid – he must think I’m going to finish him.

I should . . . but I can’t. It’s just not in me.

On the far side of the wagon, the fighting sounds almost over. I gulp air and try to think what to do. Behind me is the fast-flowing brawl of the river. I don’t swim too good, so that’s no use. But I’m the fastest runner in the three valleys. If I can get past their spears, I reckon no half-starved Reaper will catch me. The forest is their world, so it’s the trail or nothing.

But how to get past their spears?

I scramble to the front of the wagon. On the trail, I glimpse hell. Swarming Reapers. Bodies everywhere. A woman screams as she’s dragged away by her hair into the trees. Behind me, Reaper boy starts yelling. I hold my breath and dodge between the rearing, plunging fourhorns. Somehow, their lashing hooves miss me as I reach up and slash their trace ropes. I hack at their flanks. The stink of blood and Reaper does the rest. The maddened fourhorns, free from their harness, red-eyed and frantic with terror, stampede. Reapers scatter. I see one tossed into the air, but daren’t stop to watch. I slip along to the front of the leading wagon, pull my head down into my shoulders and take off running like I’ve never run before.

I make it past the spears, only to trip over a root.

Soon as I hit the ground, I know I’m hurt bad. I scramble up, but my ankle won’t take my weight and I cry out as Reapers come running. I limp backwards and they follow me. They’re in no great rush now, seeing I’m hurt.

It hits me then, like a knife in the guts.

I’m dead.

Something clobbers the back of my knees and sits me down hard. It’s a shelf of rock above the river. I haul myself backwards up on to it, sobbing, staring in horror at the red smears my hands leave on the limestone. My blood, or Reaper blood, or fourhorn blood? Guess I’ll never know.

I think about throwing myself into the water. But I can’t.

‘Not much meat on this one.’

I look into their hateful Reaper eyes. And I don’t know what shocks me more – that Reapers can speak, same as you and me, or that this is the end. Reaper boy struggles up to join them, grinning, my hunting knife in his hand.

At least I left my mark on him. That’s something.

I loved that knife. It’s about the only thing Rona ever gave me, apart from that dose of swamp pox. Slowly, painfully, I haul myself to my feet.

The sky’s so blue – not a cloud in it.

Biggest Reaper points a blaster at me and pulls the trigger.

5
AWAKENING

Agony. Raging and cruel, sinking its razor-sharp fangs into my jaw, neck and shoulder. Tormenting me. Dragging me down, deeper and deeper into the cold, wet darkness. Whispering give up, Kyle, time to die . . .

I scream and scream, but the pain shows no mercy.

A long darkness.

Maybe I come to. Or maybe I just open my eyes.

Either way, I’m staring at feet, sliding free of rushing green water. One booted, one naked, white and shrivelled. My boot. My foot. My legs attached. Dimly, in the small part of my mind that isn’t roaring red with hurt, I realise I’m still alive and someone is hauling me backwards out of a river.

I squeeze my eyes shut again.

Put my hand to my jaw and feel bone, slick and wet.

Shouting. Lots of shouting. And someone calling out my name.

‘Kyle! Can you hear me?’

I try to answer, but all that comes out is spit and groans. I’m cold – so cold.

All I want to do is sleep, but the shouters won’t let me. They lay me on my back on to something hard. When they pick me up, the agony comes scuttling back. It leaps on to my chest, hot and heavy, much more alive than I am, crushing me so I can’t breathe, tearing at my flesh again.

After that, I only remember bits and pieces.

The sky bouncing around.

Crying out as they drop me, seeing the old door that’s my stretcher.

A crash as they kick a gate open.

Hard hands lifting me, putting me carefully down. Whispers and curses.

A man’s voice, strained: ‘Where the hell is she then?’

Somebody running out.

Rona rushing in and gasping as she sees it’s me, dripping gore all over her clean kitchen table. Next thing I know, she’s pushing a needle into my arm. A wonderful soothing warmth as whatever stuff she’s pumped into me trickles its way through my veins. The room spinning round and round my head.

I sob with relief as the drugs chase the agony away.

‘Am I going to die?’ I ask her later. I don’t sound like me. I don’t even sound human. My voice is this weird, paper-thin rasp. It’s only because Rona’s leaning over me, cutting off the remains of my shirt, that she hears.

‘Don’t try to talk, Kyle,’ she says. Her healer voice wobbles.

Someone lifts my head gently on to a pillow. The way I’m lying now, I can see how messed up I am. Blaster spatter has caught me high across my chest, collarbone and jaw. The skin is mostly burnt away, the flesh below red and white and ugly yellow, charred to hard black in a few places. There’s a finger-wide crack where the swollen flesh has burst apart. Everything’s wet and oozing stuff. All around the edges are these huge, angry red blisters and there’s blood everywhere.

I groan. I knew I was hurt bad, but –

‘I’m surprised he can talk at all,’ a man says.

Rona steps aside. Vaguely, I watch the ceiling fan’s blades swish round, until two blurry faces lean in and stare down at me. One is old Fod, Freshwater’s preacher. His gaunt face looks more suspicious than sympathetic. The other face, wide-eyed and nervous, belongs to my girlfriend Jude.

I think it’s Jude squeezing my hand.

‘Does it hurt?’ she asks. Then her hand flies to her mouth.

‘What-do-you-think?’ I manage.

Rona shoves her roughly out of the way. ‘Apart from the blaster wounds, he’s in shock, he’s been stabbed, he’s got some broken ribs and I’m worried his skull might be fractured. Of course it bloody well hurts, Jude.’

She slides another stinging needle into my arm.

Out of the corner of my eye, I think I see faces. It’s torture, but I roll my head to look. Some must be the men who carried me here. The rest are our neighbours – the Clancys, the whole Ferguson brood, some of the Smiths. The men stand there, shuffling their feet and scrunching their hats, as if they’re in chapel. The women wince, look mournful and swap whispered remarks. The children fidget, nudge each other and gaze at me curiously, their eyes like saucers.

Even though I’m struggling to keep my eyes open now, I get it.

They’re here to pay their last respects.

When I come to my senses again, Rona has kicked everybody out, except for Jude. It’s dark outside, but I’m warm and dry and propped up in my bed. A tube snakes from the needle in my left arm to a bottle hanging on a hook. I can’t see my wounds now – they’re smothered in lime-green dressings, which stink of those powerful herbs Rona calls painsuckers. I’ve got to say, they’re doing the job. The pain still gnaws at me, but I don’t feel like screaming the whole time now. Rona is rooting through her battered old medchest. Jude sits cross-legged on the floor beside her, as if she’s waiting to be handed stuff. She’s chewing her fingernails.

Both are way too preoccupied to notice I’m awake.

‘I’m so sick of searching for thirty-year-out-of-date miracles in here,’ Rona says, sounding tired and cross. ‘No antibiotics. No synth-skin. Nothing useful at all. It’s like being back on Earth during the Dark Ages.’

Jude spits a nail. ‘Can I help?’

Rona glares at her. ‘Can you change the fact we’re on a dump world?’

‘Just asking.’

‘Hey, what’s going on?’ I sound almost like me again.

Jude’s freckled face lights up with pleasure and relief. She jumps up and hurries over. I flinch, half thinking she’s going to give me an agonising squeeze, but she stops at the foot of the bed and hugs herself instead.

‘Rona’s been wagging her finger at me.’

‘Um,’ I say, not surprised. ‘How long have I been out?’

‘Best part of a day. Rona says the danger now is infection. If I hug you or kiss you, I could kill you. Then she’ll have to kill me too.’

‘Sometimes you have to be cruel to be kind,’ says Rona. She holds a packet of stuff up to the light and squints at the label on it, before cursing and slinging it back into the medchest. ‘Are you feeling more comfortable now?’

I nod. Big mistake. Even with the soothing painsuckers and injections, the stab of agony in my neck leaves me gasping and wheezing. Through an eyeful of tears, I see Jude start chewing her fingernails again.

‘It’s only a scratch,’ I tell her. ‘Honest. I feel better already.’

Rona scowls, like I’ve said something stupid.

Jude tries to smile. ‘Trust you to get shot in the gob.’

I try to return her smile, but only the left side of my face seems to work. ‘Was that you holding my hand before?’

‘No, it was Fod.’

She darts a glance at Rona, then comes closer and takes my hand. My eyes go blurry again – but not from hurting. I want to tell Jude how badly I’ve missed her, to thank her for being here and trying to cheer me up, but I can’t, not with Rona around. Instead, I blurt out the question that’s been tap-tap-tapping away at the back of my mind. ‘How come I’m not dead?’

‘You’ve the luck of the devil, that’s how,’ Rona says, with a frown. ‘I don’t know much about blasters, but either it misfired or was low on power. Probably old and half-broke, like everything else on this godforsaken planet. The cold river water probably helped too – with the burns, I mean.’

‘Who found me?’

‘Cal Ferguson. You were tangled up in a fallen tree, close to the bank. He fished you out. How you didn’t drown or bash your brains out drifting down through the rapids, we’ll never know. I didn’t think you could swim.’

‘I can’t hardly.’

‘You don’t remember going into the water?’

‘All I remember is the blaster.’

Rona takes her glasses off and rubs her eyes. In the dim light from the glowtubes, I see how tightly the wind-burnt skin on her face is stretched. Her eyes are dark pits from lack of sleep. She turns away to the sink and starts rinsing what look like soiled bandages. Jude hops up on to the bed beside me and plants a kiss on my forehead. Even this hurts, but I’m not complaining.

She reeks of soap and strong antiseptic.

‘We were hanging about,’ she says, ‘twiddling our thumbs until you got back, when we heard the pulse rifles. Some men grabbed guns and rode out straight away. I wanted to go too, but they wouldn’t have it. You should’ve heard me screaming and swearing – but I’m glad now. They say there was nothing anybody could do. By the time they got there, the Reapers were long gone, but it was an awful sight. Bodies everywhere, torn to pieces. Carts stripped clean. Cal was on his way back here to fetch help when he spotted you in the water.’

Reapers. The word makes me shiver, even though I’m safe now.

‘Any others survive?’

‘Uh huh. Four. Although young Meg Zielinski and Todd Patenaude are both hurt bad. Rona’s doing what she can for them, but –’

She shuts up as I have a coughing fit. I feel like I’m suffocating again. Rona hurries over, shoos Jude off the bed and tries her best to soothe me. She manages to pour a mouthful of some sweet drink into me and that helps.

‘I told you. You shouldn’t talk,’ she says.

‘What about Clayton?’ I croak. ‘I saw him get an arrow in the throat.’

Rona shakes her head. ‘They didn’t find his body.’

We all know what that means – we’ve heard the stories. I shudder as I remember that dreadful hungry look I saw on the Reapers’ faces.

‘What did they look like?’ Jude whispers later, behind Rona’s back.

‘The Reapers?’

She shivers. ‘I’ve never seen one.’

‘Be glad then.’ In between coughs, I describe them to her.

‘Human though, same as you and me?’

More carefully this time, I nod. ‘Only more savage.’

I don’t blame Jude for asking. I’d always wondered about Reapers too. Out here in the back of beyond, our handful of farmsteads scattered around the freshwater lake, a lot of what you hear is ignorance and superstition. That’s what Rona says anyway. Like some folk swear Reapers are half-men, who’ve bred with Wrath animals. Others say they’re mutants, turned weird and mad by radiation, whatever that is. Rona, always so sensible, says nobody on Wrath knows for sure what Reapers are, only that they’re out there and fierce dangerous.

There’s not many like me who’ve seen Reapers and lived.

Rona comes back and clicks her tongue. ‘Look, don’t just stand there moping, Judith. You’re getting in my way and Kyle won’t shut up while you’re still here. He needs to rest. You can visit him tomorrow, when he’s feeling better.’

‘See you later then,’ says Jude. She squeezes my hand.

The door shuts behind her and I close my eyes. For a long while, all I hear are the small sounds of Rona faffing and the hiss and rattle of my breathing.

I clutch at what Rona told Jude. The danger now is infection.

So does that mean I’m not going to die?

When I open my eyes, Rona is staring down at me. She has this weird look on her face – like she’s looking at me, but seeing a ghost.

‘What’s the matter?’ I say.

She starts. Gives her eyes a rub again, but says nothing.

Whatever Rona keeps pumping into me knocks me out all right, but fills my head with nightmares. I’d have thought they’d be about Reapers, but instead I’m back at the Peace Fair. Only now I’m looking down at the jostling crowd. I’m on the stage and I see the fear and hate in people’s eyes as they stare up at me.

They hoot and jeer and make the Sign of One.

Suddenly, I’m on my knees, the altar digging into my chest. Vice-like fingers hold me down, crush the side of my face into the blood-red cloth. I see my bandaged arm, stretched out in front of me. It itches, itches like crazy.

Across the altar, another me stares back.

The same lopsided face. The same greasy brown hair flopping over his forehead and falling into his eyes, the same gap between his teeth.

His arm is stretched out and bandaged too.

‘Who are you?’ I ask him.

He smiles – a sneery smile – like he knows something I don’t. They cut his bandage off and his wound is deep and gushing blood. He winks at me.

Strong hands pick me up, haul me towards the gallows.

‘No!’ I scream. ‘You’re making a mistake!’

The crowd goes crazy as the executioner drops the noose over my head. A hatch bangs open under my feet and I plunge into the darkness and –

And wake up, choking and clawing at my throat.

The glowtubes flick-flicker on. Rona comes running. She holds me down until I stop thrashing, then gathers me in her strong arms and rubs my back, like she used to when I was very little. She looks all crumpled and baggy-eyed.

‘You’re all right, Kyle. You had a bad dream, that’s all.’

‘I wish I’d never gone to that stupid Peace Fair,’ I say, when I can talk.

‘Well, I did tell you,’ she sighs.

I pull away. ‘Why didn’t you tell me they killed them?’

‘And if I had told you?’

I shift uneasily. ‘Everybody else goes. I’m sick of being the odd one out.’

Rona smiles at me sadly. ‘What’s done is done, I suppose. But you could have been killed; it’s a miracle you weren’t.’

‘That’s hardly my fault.’

‘No, of course it isn’t,’ she says slowly, ‘but you’ve no idea what the consequences will be. How impossible this makes things.’ She reaches over, checks my dressings are secure, touches my cheek.

‘Impossible?’ I say, not sure I heard right.

Rona gives herself a tired little shake and stands up. ‘Look, it’s the middle of the night and I’m bone-tired. We’ll talk about this tomorrow.’

She goes and fetches me a glass filled with some cloudy-looking liquid.

‘Drink this. It’ll knock out a fourhorn.’

She makes sure I swallow it all, then goes back to bed.

But I don’t go back to sleep. I’m too scared to. I toss and turn, staring up into the darkness, my wounds itching like crazy under their dressings.

Itching, just like my arm did in the dream . . .

6
NEVER SAY THAT WORD

The next day, I’m itching so bad, I nearly go out of my mind. Rona has to bind my hands to stop me tearing at my wounds. She tries all her ointments to soothe me, but nothing works. And she can’t even knock me out – it’s like my body goes all hyper and won’t shut down. I howl like a baby, even in front of Jude, but Rona says that if she gives me anything stronger she’s scared I won’t wake up.

She reckons itching is good – a sign of healing.

But if so, why’s she so cranky? She bites Jude’s head off so many times that Jude storms off. She doesn’t come back either. Anyway, the day after, I finally do get some sleep. When I wake up, the itch is gone. The pain too. I can lift my right arm and move my head without whining. Rona gets some of my favourite grilled tubenose fish inside me and I even manage to chew. I feel tired and incredibly stiff, like Nash and his mates have kicked the crap out of me, but that’s about it.

If I moan, it’s about wanting to see Jude. Only Rona isn’t listening and Jude stays away the whole day. I stop worrying about dying and start worrying how bad my scars will be. No girl wants someone who looks like a monster.

The third day since they brought me in with half my face and shoulder blown off, I wake up feeling almost strong again. A bit fed up with Jude though, for not standing up to Rona and coming to visit me, but otherwise good.

‘When can I get up?’ I ask for the hundredth time.

‘When I say so. Don’t ask me again!’

Rona’s extra cross because she’s caught me out of bed once already. Okay, so maybe I should do what she says – she’s the healer after all. But my legs are twitching with all this lying about and I’m sick of pissing into bottles. Somehow I’m still alive. I want to see the sun and breathe fresh air again.

‘But I feel so much better,’ I say, yawning.

Crash! The sound of glass shattering pulls my head round. I see Rona has dropped one of her ingredients bottles. An oily pool at her feet bubbles and smokes on the wood floor, but she’s staring at me, wide-eyed.

My mouth goes dry. ‘What?’

She frowns, then purses her lips. I call this her decision face.

‘You really don’t know, do you, Kyle?’

‘Know what?’

She sighs, such a big sigh it’s like she shrinks letting that much breath go.

‘Right,’ she says. ‘This has gone on long enough.’

I watch, amazed, as she bolts the shack door and closes all the shutters. The glowtubes flicker on automatically.

‘Do you feel well enough to travel?’ she asks me.

Before Jude stopped coming to visit, she told me the gossip that’s going around. Freshwater is history – we’re going to have to hit the road and find someplace new. Folks are sweating that with so many killed we’re way too few now to bring in the harvest, look after all the animals and fight off Reaper attacks.

‘Think so,’ I say, not wanting us to be left behind.

I struggle up, but she shakes her head and gently pushes me back down. She fetches her curved bandage scissors and holds them up so I see.

‘Stay still,’ she says, grimacing. ‘This might hurt.’

I cringe as she slides the cold blade under the dressing on my neck and starts snipping through the layers of gauze, but it’s not so bad. When she peels it off, I hear a nasty sucking sound, but it doesn’t hurt. She hands me a mirror.

‘I’m so sorry, Kyle. I should have told you.’

Her face is whiter than the bleached bedsheets. I hesitate, but I have to see the damage some time, so I bite my lip and hold the mirror up, fingers trembling.

I tilt it back and forth, searching for the wound.

Only . . . there is no wound.

‘What’s going on?’

I take another look. All I see is the livid pink flesh of my nightmares, bits of crusty yellow scab hanging off and a smear of green painsucker. No scorched flesh, no pus-filled blisters. By some miracle, I’m almost completely healed.

Then I get it – this is no miracle.

No. This can’t be happening. Not to me! I’m no ident!

I leap out of the bed and rip my other dressings off, careless of any pain. Rona tries to stop me, but I lash out and send her flying. And my chest and shoulder are the same – pink and shiny, no sign of a scar even. My jaw still looks all ugly and raw, but there’s flesh over the bone now, which wasn’t there four days ago.

I tear at myself, but the healing is part of me.

‘Stop that!’ shouts Rona.

In the end, I just stand there, panting and sobbing, my head thumping. ‘What am I?’ I hear myself say.

Rona grabs me by my wrists, shakes me until I look at her.

‘You’re human, Kyle. As human as I am.’

‘How can I be? Look at me. Only a twist can heal so –’

‘Never say that word!’

She slaps me across the face. So hard it stings.

I’m so shocked, all I can do is stare at her. She’s never hit me before. In her bloodshot eyes, hiding behind all that anger, I see guilt now.

‘You knew all along, didn’t you?’ I say.

She lets go and crumples into the chair by my bed. In the dim spill of glowtube light, her face looks old and exhausted. ‘Yes. No. I mean, there was always a chance it was you.’ She dries her eyes with the heels of her hands. ‘I suspected it last year, when you recovered so fast from that swamp pox. Look, I know you don’t understand. How could you? There’s so much I need to tell –’

She stops. Footsteps crunch across the dry grass outside our shack.

A second later somebody hammers on our door. The latch lifts and rattles; the door shudders in its frame as whoever’s outside tries to open it. We both hear a man’s loud grunt of surprise at finding the door bolted.

‘Hello-o-o! Is anybody there?’

It’s Fod’s gravelly voice, our self-appointed preacher, the very man who’ll put the rope around my neck if he finds out I’m a twist.

‘One minute!’ shouts my mother. ‘I’m changing Kyle’s dressings!’

The next few seconds are frantic. I dive back into bed. Rona scuttles around, picking up the dressings I ripped off. She tapes them all roughly back into place. When she’s done, she pulls the sheet up so only my eyes show.

‘Remember when you were bad with the swamp pox?’ she whispers.

I get it. Look like I’m out of it.

Rona gives me one last urgent check to make sure no healed skin is showing, then opens the door. Through half-closed eyes I see Fod bustle inside. With his stoop, long-nosed, wrinkly face and straggly hair, he looks like one of those giant wader birds as he twitches his narrow-eyed, suspicious gaze around the room.

He looks at me. I do some moaning and squirming.

‘What’s the meaning of this?’ he demands.

‘This?’ says Rona, all raised eyebrows and innocence.

‘Your door was bolted, your shutters closed.’

‘And is there a law against that? Can’t you see I’m busy here?’

He stiffens – even with my eyes half closed, I can see he’s not best pleased. He’s more used to people bowing and scraping to him than talking back. Rona will get into trouble if she keeps on like this. I fake a louder groan, to distract him.

‘I’m simply doing my rounds,’ he growls through gritted teeth. ‘Checking on my flock at this difficult time, to offer my prayers and support.’

Rona scowls. ‘And I thank you, Preacher. But I was changing my son’s dressings and didn’t want to be disturbed. Can’t you understand that?’

They face off against each other.

Even with his stoop, he towers over her, but Rona bristles right back at him.

‘Of course,’ he says at last, in that stiff way people have of saying things they don’t mean. And now he stalks over to my bedside, twitches the sheet away from my face and stares down at me. ‘Kyle, will you join me in prayer?’

I squeeze my eyes shut and groan. I can only hope my scared face looks sick enough, and that Fod is every bit the idiot people whisper he is. Rona’s only slapped my old dressings back on. How won’t he see that they are far from fresh?

‘He can’t hear you,’ Rona says. ‘I’ve done all I can for him, but –’

The sheet lands back on me. I risk a peek and Fod is staring at Rona, who’s got this mournful-but-trying-to-be-brave look on her face. Her chin trembles.

She’s good. I worry for a second that I am dying.

‘You can’t save him?’ says Fod.

‘Not with a few herbs, I can’t. All I can do is ease his passing.’

I moan again, extra loud and pitiful.

‘I’m sorry,’ he says. ‘I’ll pray for you both.’

‘It’d be more useful if you helped me bathe him,’ says Rona. ‘He’s fouled himself again – he can’t help it, the state he’s in. Perhaps you could spare us a minute or three of your valuable time?’

I groan for real this time, but Rona knows what she’s doing.

‘Any other time, I‘d be glad to help,’ Fod says quickly. ‘But I’m in a rush. Many more people to visit; the day’s getting shorter. I’d better be leaving now.’

‘Of course.’ Rona’s voice could curdle milk.

I wait until I hear the door slam and bolts going home before I open my eyes. Rona glares at me, her back against the door, a finger pressed to her lips. We listen to Fod’s crunching footsteps as they almost run from the shack.

Rona puts her hands to her mouth. Me, I feel like laughing and crying.

‘What d’you want to tell Fod that for?’ I ask Rona as she peers through the shutters, making sure he’s gone. I sit up and start gingerly pulling the dressings off.

‘Tell him what?’ she says, obviously only half listening.

‘That I’m dying.’

‘I had to, to get him to bugger off.’

‘But now he’ll go and tell everybody I’m dying. And I’m not.’

Rona eases the shutter closed and comes over to sit by me on the bed.

‘Listen,’ she says, ‘we got lucky just now, but sooner or later someone will get a good look at you. Like your Jude. Especially if we have to up sticks and trek someplace else. They’ll realise your healing is . . . unusual.’

She sighs and shakes her head.

I stare down at my new skin again. Impossibly smooth and pink, glowing with health where only days ago I saw sickening wounds. Unnatural healing. The manifestation of evil.

My head is spinning, like I’ve stood up too fast.

‘But can’t we say you healed me?’

‘Won’t work. Those men who carried you back here, they all saw how bad your injuries were. Even if they could maybe believe I pulled you through, they’d expect you to be badly scarred. They’d soon figure it out. And then –’

I suck my teeth. Rona doesn’t have to paint me a picture. A real live twist found hiding in their midst – that would explain Freshwater’s run of evil luck. We’d both be dragged to the nearest tree and hung. The whole settlement would gather to watch us swing. I kind of doubt Fod would call the Slayers in to deal with us. When it comes to idents and twists, blame has a way of sticking too widely.

My flesh, new and old, tries to crawl off my bones.

‘We have to get out of here,’ I moan.

‘We will, but you’ll have to die first,’ says Rona. When she sees my stunned look, she dredges up a sad smile. ‘Not really die. We fake it. If everybody thinks you’re dead, they don’t miss you and they don’t come looking. See?’

‘Everybody?’ I say, thinking of Jude.

‘Everybody.’

I grimace. ‘But won’t they expect to see my dead body?’

My mother’s eyes go narrow and cunning. ‘Oh, these old wooden shacks with their home-made log burners – accidents waiting to happen. What with the Reaper attack and everything else, I can’t see anyone poking through the ashes.’

‘We burn this place down?’ I say, shocked.

A ghost of a smile haunts her lips. ‘Got a better idea?’

7
A BAD DECISION

‘Don’t just sit there. Get dressed and give me a hand moving this,’ says Rona. She pulls at our cast-iron log burner, but can’t move it on her own.

The enormity of what’s happened to me, and what will happen if anyone finds out, is sinking in. I hear the air roaring in my ears with every breath I take. I reckon we should be hitting the road, not shifting stoves around.

‘What for?’ I say. ‘I don’t understand.’

Rona puts her hard face on and grits her teeth.

‘Kyle, every second counts. I need you to help me. Now.’

I still feel like screaming, but the desperation in her voice gets me moving. I throw my clothes on. Working together, we walk the stove back and lever up its hearthstone. Hidden in a hollow beneath this, smothered in bugwebs, is something wrapped in an oil-stained rag and a small electronic device.

More secrets Rona has kept from me.

‘What’s all this?’ I ask.

She picks the device up, blows the worst of the dust off and powers it up.

‘My old comm. Hoped I’d never have to use this.’

Amazingly – because it looks like it’s been down there for ages – the communicator beeps and boots up. Looking satisfied, Rona powers it down, then buries it in her healer basket. The other rag-wrapped thing, she pockets. The shape of it and the weight dragging her jacket down all say blaster to me.

‘Where’d you get tech like that?’ I say.

Either she doesn’t hear me or pretends not to.

‘See if you can put the burner back the way it was,’ she says. ‘I have to go out now. You bolt the door behind me and let nobody in. Okay?’

I shrug. ‘Where are you going?’

Rona frowns. ‘I’ll check my other patients, then call some old friends of mine from a lifetime ago. With luck, they’ll be able to help us.’

‘But if they find out I’m a –’

I stop myself from saying ‘twist’ just in time, as Rona glares at me. ‘Trust me,’ she says. ‘I’ll be back quick as I can.’

Last thing she does is stick some fresh dressings on me. I whine, saying I don’t need them now, but she insists, telling me it’s a precaution. She heads off then, her healer basket on its strap over her shoulder. I bolt the door behind her, like she said, open the shutters a crack and watch her trudge away, head down and back bent, along the track towards the other farmsteads.

She glances back once, but doesn’t wave.

I get that, but only later. Why wave to someone who’s supposedly dying?

Now I’m on my own, my thoughts run riot. I mean, how do you handle finding out that you’re evil and a monster? The bane of Wrath. A foul caricature of humanity, like that High Slayer Morana woman said at the Peace Fair.

Don’t ask me – I haven’t got any answers. All I’ve got is a fever of questions and a lump of dread in my stomach.

After a while, I start thinking that bolting the door behind Rona wasn’t such a slick idea after all. What if Fod comes back? Or somebody else pops round looking for Rona? Won’t it look suspicious if the door’s bolted and Rona doesn’t answer? It’s not like I can let them in; I’m supposed to be dying. Maybe it’d be better if I unbolted the damn thing, hunkered down under my sheets and took my chances.

Yeah right. And hope if I get a visitor they’re not too curious.

In the end I chicken out and leave the door bolted.

The day limps by. The sun goes down and still there’s no sign of Rona coming back. I’m on my bed, hugging my knees, moaning and trying not to puke. I stare at where my wounds were and more questions hammer inside my head.

What am I? Who am I? How can this be?

Thing is – I don’t feel evil. Okay, I look at my skin and I see twist, but I’m still me, Kyle. Unless the becoming evil thing happens later? When I was little, I once stuffed my face with some mushrooms I found. Their purple was all over my face when Rona caught me. She went mental, terrified I’d eaten poisonous ones. I sat there, cringing and crying, wondering when the poison would kill me.

That’s what this feels like now. An evil within, waiting to possess me.

You’re human, Rona said. But she would, wouldn’t she?

I’m so busy feeling sorry for myself, I don’t hear the footsteps. The knock at the door is only a tap, but I nearly die of fright. I cower, wondering if it’s Jude at last, or Fod again, before I hear Rona’s whisper telling me it’s only her. I draw the bolts back and open the door. She slips inside past me. In the glow from the tubes, I glimpse some colour back in her face. She looks tired but satisfied.

‘You got hold of your friends?’ I ask her.

She nods and smiles at me. ‘Everything’s going to be all right.’

‘How come?’

‘We need to be ready tomorrow,’ is all she’ll say.

I throw more questions at her – like who are these friends of hers and how come I’ve never heard of them before? – but she’s not in a talking mood. And when I wake the next morning, after a long night of tossing and turning and dreams I can’t remember, I find her gone again. There’s a note waiting on the kitchen table. In her loopy scrawl, it tells me she’ll be back very late, that there’s food in the cool store, and to put together a day pack with my trail gear and be ready to go. Bolt the door, the note says, and don’t let anyone in, no matter what they say.

That means Judith too is double underlined.

A second day of waiting stretches out into forever. A thousand times I shrink inside, sure I hear footsteps again on the path. I endlessly pack and repack my rucksack. In the end, I lie on my bed, Rona’s rusty old hunting blade beside me.

What’s Rona up to?

Where will we be going?

I stare at my little fingers. How can I be a twist?

Questions, questions. No bogging answers. It’s doing my head in.

The room gets darker and darker and so does my mood. Through the cracks in the shutters I see the sun set again, but still no sign of Rona. I’m going out of my mind with being lonely and frightened and not having anybody to talk to.

As the glowtubes flicker on, I think of Jude.

I miss her. And that’s when the thought strays into my head . . .

I just have to say goodbye to Jude. I know it’s mad, but I can’t clear off forever and leave her lonely and thinking I’m burnt to a black, charred crisp. Rona will kill me, but Jude’s not just my girl, she’s my only real friend.

The Flint farmstead is ten klicks away. It’s cloudy, so neither the little dogmoon or the bigmoon to shed any light, but I find my way easy enough. Should do – I’ve worn a groove in this trail these past few months. A rain shower rattles through, but that’s good. Less chance of anyone else being out. It feels great to be outside, breathing fresh air deep into my lungs. My skin tingles with the damp and the moving. With every step I take, I start to feel stronger.

Only . . . what’s causing that? I shiver.

To cheer myself up, I think about how Jude and I got together last winter. I was over at her father’s place, fixing his threshing machine. This curly-haired girl, about my age, was chopping firewood – I couldn’t take my eyes off her. When I asked her name, she gave me this lopsided smile, said it was Jude, and asked me mine. I teased her, told her she was proper handy with an axe for a girl. She teased me right back, said I’d fix her dad’s thresher a lot quicker if I quit staring.

We’ve been together ever since.

I don’t know if I love Jude or if she loves me. All I know is, Jude’s the only person, other than Rona, who smiles when she sees me. And I need to hold her one last time.

As I creep into the farmstead, their dog Bram woofs off a few half-hearted barks and rattles his chain, but he knows my Kyle stink and soon shuts up. Across the yard, the loaf-like outline of the thatched house appears out of the darkness. No lights are on. They’re all in bed already. As the only daughter, Jude has a sleeping place to herself in the lean-to at the far end. I tiptoe round there and do the soft tap-tappety-tap-tap at her window that tells her it’s me. Soon as I hear the telltale creak of her floorboards, I scuttle off to wait in the hay barn.

Jude takes her time.

Long enough for me to worry she’s not coming. Or telling her father.

Finally, she slips inside the barn to join me. I flick on the solitary glowtube and see she’s alone, a threadbare work jacket thrown on over her night stuff.

She scrunches her face up against the light.

‘Is that really you, Kyle?’

‘In the flesh, or what’s left of it.’

I open my arms out to her and hold my breath.

‘It is you!’ she says. She comes running, throws her arms round me and buries her face into my bandaged neck. I’m so relieved, I hoist her up off her feet and spin her around. When I put her down again, she smiles up at me.

But as I go to kiss her, she pulls away.

‘I don’t get it,’ she says, looking confused. Her chin wobbles. ‘The last thing Rona told us was that you were close to –’

‘I’m tougher than I look.’

Jude gives me her slow-nod sceptical look. ‘What’s going on?’

‘I’ll tell you later, but first things first.’ I pull her closer, slip my hands under her jacket and feel how she’s still lovely and warm from her bed.

‘Ew! You’re all cold and wet,’ she laughs.

I kiss her and she kisses me back, pressing herself against me. Her hands are at the back of my neck now, pulling my head down so she can reach me. How it happens I’ll never know, but she knocks one dressing off. It’s only loosely taped on, more for show than anything, and comes away with a slight sucking sound.

‘Oh my Saviour, I’m sorry.’ Jude pulls back, her eyes big with concern. We both glance down at the bandage lying in the straw. ‘Did I hurt you?’

‘No, I’m fine.’ I try to turn away, to stop her seeing, but I’m too slow.

I feel her go rigid. ‘Kyle!’

With the toe of my boot, I scuff uncertainly at the straw. When I look up, I’ve made up my mind. I can’t just say goodbye. It’s mad, but all the horror, the fear and loneliness, I can’t keep it inside – I need to tell her. Maybe if I can make Jude understand that I’m still me, everything will be all right again.

I sit her down on a hay bale. ‘I can trust you, can’t I?’

She nods stiffly, but I see her wondering.

‘Don’t be scared,’ I say.

I unbutton my shirt. One by one, I peel off the rest of Rona’s dressings and show Jude how my wounds have almost completely healed. I hold her tight when her eyes flood with panic. I shush her and stroke her curly hair.

She’s petrified, trembling like a newborn lamb.

‘It’s not what you think,’ I say.

Thank the Saviour she doesn’t scream, but when I relax my grip, anxious not to hurt her, she makes a break for it and I have to grab her again.

‘Jude, stop. I’m not going to hurt you.’

A long time goes by like this. I do everything I can to calm her. I whisper she has no reason to fear me. Her mouth opens and closes, but no words come out, only a low moan. It’s an ugly feeling, me making her skin crawl. Not that I can blame her. She sees my unnatural healing and that means only one thing – human on the outside, inside a monster. No wonder she’s terrified.

‘Let – go – of – me,’ she says.

This time when I release her she cringes, but doesn’t run. She won’t let me touch her again, but she looks able to listen. Quickly, I make up some crap about Rona finding an ancient wonder drug in her medchest.

Jude stares as I babble on, her chest heaving, until I run out of words. She knows I’m lying, I can tell.

‘If anybody sees you like this,’ she says shakily, ‘you are dead. They won’t listen; they’ll kill you. And Rona too. You know that, don’t you?’

‘Uh-huh,’ I say. What else is there to say?

We sit there, in the circle of light, the darkness crushing in on us. I try to read her face, but there are too many shadows. On the way here, I had so much I wanted to say to her. Now, it all seems so pointless. My impossible healing shouts more loudly than any words can.

‘What will you do?’ she says.

I hesitate, wondering what I should tell her.

‘We’re going away, to someplace nobody knows us. We’ll be okay.’

‘Going away? Where?’

‘I don’t know. But that’s why I came, to say goodbye.’

Tears shine in Jude’s eyes now.

‘It’s too late for that,’ she says, very quietly.

‘What’s that mean?’ I say.

But she won’t look at me and I get it now – she thinks I’m gone already.

‘You’re wrong,’ I say. ‘I know what it looks like, but I don’t feel any different inside. I’m the same as ever, I just heal faster. I’m not evil, Jude, not even bad!’

I try to smile and reach for her hand, but she snatches it away.

‘Don’t touch me!’

I curse and she flinches, like she thinks I’m going to rip her head off or something. Next thing, she’s on her feet and backing away. I scramble after her, sensing she’s about to run. And I can’t help it, I’m angry now.

‘Look, this isn’t my fault!’

She trips over something in the muck and straw.

I swear I only grab her so she doesn’t fall backwards, but she gasps loudly and I’m sure she’ll scream. Without thinking, I clamp my hand over her mouth. She flails against me, tries to push me away, but I’m too strong. Her eyes bulge.

I pull my hand away, brace myself.

‘You said you wouldn’t hurt me,’ she sobs.

I shake my head and try to get a grip on my temper. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to. But you mustn’t scream. If your father finds us here, sees me like this, then it’s like you said – I’m dead. And so is Rona. You don’t want that, do you?’

She stares at me, but says nothing. Which says it all.

‘You won’t tell, will you?’

Jude shakes her head, but I see her little finger trace the Sign of One. I’m so stunned, I let go of her. She gives this huge gulp and darts to the side door. Beyond the spill of light, I hear her fumbling at the latch and her ragged breathing.

The door creaks open, then bangs shut behind her.

The drizzle eases as I make it home. The nearly full bigmoon finds a gap in the clouds and paints our shack silver, nestled in our herb and vegetable gardens. I’m wondering if this is the last time I’ll ever see it like this, when I notice the sliver of light sneaking out from under the door. Oh great, that’s all I need. Rona’s back already, probably waiting behind the door with a hatchet.

I bang inside, slam the door behind me, determined to make no excuses.

‘Look, I don’t care. You can’t keep me –’

Rona looks up from stuffing something into my backpack. Her glare could stop a charging fourhorn.

‘Where the hell have you been, Kyle?’ she growls.

And that’s when I see we have a visitor.

She’s sitting, her legs stretched out, in the chair by the stove. Those leathers, the long white dreads, the teardrop tattoo, her dark green eyes. . .

My mouth drops open. So does hers.

‘You!’ we both say.

Windjammer girl launches herself to her feet.

‘No way. I’m not flying this scumbag anywhere,’ she says to Rona.

Rona looks from me to the girl and her eyes go wide.

‘What? You know each other?’

8
I SAY SOME TERRIBLE THINGS

I shrug. The windjammer girl stands there all twitching and snarling. I wonder if she has that nasty little flamer on her. What did that bald bloke call her? Oh yeah, Sky. A stupid, made-up kind of name if you ask me.

She grabs her rain jacket off the back of the chair.

‘No way. I’m out of here.’

She steps around me, but hasn’t reckoned on Rona, who puts her back to the door to block it. I’ve never seen my mother look more fierce.

And that’s saying something.

‘Where do you think you’re going?’ she snaps.

The girl hesitates. She scowls, looks me up and down. ‘Not him,’ she says, spitting the words. ‘You don’t understand.’

Rona groans. She runs her hands through her hair in obvious frustration. ‘Show her,’ she says to me.

‘Show her what?’ I say, confused.

‘Your dressings, Kyle, take them off. Show Sky your healing.’

My collar is still turned up against the rain, so Rona can’t see they’re gone already. ‘Are you out of your mind?’

‘Just do as I say!’

I throw my hands up. If Rona asked me to sing ‘Oh, My Saviour’, all twenty verses, I couldn’t be more gobsmacked. Show this stranger my twist healing? Yeah, sure. Why not? For the second time this evening, I unbutton my shirt.

Rona twitches, seeing my already bare neck and chest.

The girl’s eyes narrow as they flicker over what’s left of my wounds. She purses her mouth as if choking poison down. I expect her to scream or make a run for it like Jude. Instead, she just frowns, as if she’s seen this before.

‘Blaster burns, that what you said?’

‘A week ago, low power maybe, but point-blank range,’ says Rona, all healer matter-of-fact now. ‘He was in a terrible state, but now look at him.’

Sky darts one last venomous look at me, then throws Rona a little nod.

‘O-kay then,’ she says, sounding half-strangled.

‘Okay,’ echoes Rona. ‘Good.’

Whatever they’ve agreed, it looks like it’s on again.

‘Will somebody please tell me what the hell is going on?’ I say.

Rona ignores me. She marches over to the table and starts stuffing my backpack again. She’s got her back to me, but I can tell from how stiff it is and the way she’s punching the gear in, she’s furious.

Well, I don’t care. I’m angry too. At her – at Jude – at the whole world.

‘Off you go,’ she says to me, handing me my pack with a grunt. ‘Follow Sky; she knows the way. I’ll join you later, soon as I’m done here.’

‘No.’ I sling the pack back on to the table.

‘Oh, don’t you start,’ Rona says, her voice rising.

‘This is crazy! I’m not going anywhere,’ I say. My voice wobbles. I see the windjammer girl out of the corner of my eye, sneering. ‘I’ve had it with not knowing what’s going on. I’m staying right here until you tell me everything.’

Rona twitches. ‘We haven’t got time for this, Kyle.’

I shake my head and stare at the floor until I hear my mother’s sigh.

‘Sky,’ she says, ‘maybe you could give us a minute?’

I look up now. The girl stares at Rona, then at me. I see the hostility, but something else too. Curiosity? Maybe, but a blink and it’s gone. She shrugs her jacket on over her thin shoulders. ‘Whatever, but remember we ain’t got all night.’

The door bangs shut behind her.

Silence. My heart thrashing, my head thumping. Neither of us able to look the other in the eye. I feel numb and empty inside.

‘Sit down,’ Rona says at last. ‘And button your shirt.’

I do as she says. She sits opposite me and sighs again. My heart tries to batter through my ribs, but I stay quiet. I don’t want sighs – I want answers.

‘Please tell me you didn’t go see Jude.’ she says.

I roll my eyes. She curses, making me jump, but then takes my hand.

‘Listen, I’ve sorted us a trip out of here on that girl’s windjammer, no questions asked, to somewhere safe. I can’t imagine how you know each other, but she can be trusted. You must do as she says though. Promise me that.’

‘Fine,’ I say through gritted teeth.

‘Good. That’s good,’ says Rona.

She glances at the closed door, as if she can see through the wood to Sky waiting impatiently outside.

I pull my hand away. ‘Why is this happening to me?’

‘It’s too long a story,’ she says, with a tired shake of her head. ‘Try and be sensible, Kyle. I’ll tell you everything later, I promise you I will.’

Try and be sensible?

Oh sure. Turns out I’m the bane of Wrath.

A monster so awful that I make my girlfriend’s skin crawl.

I smash my fist on to the table, sending stuff flying. I jump up, sweep my backpack to the floor, kick my chair across the room. ‘This is all your fragging fault! You should have told me. You should’ve stopped this happening. You –’

And I say some terrible things.

Rona doesn’t flinch, just watches me as I rage and stamp about. When I stop, panting and helpless, she’s there to gather me in her arms. She pulls me close. I sense then how she’s trying to be strong for both of us.

‘I’m sorry,’ I whisper, ashamed.

‘So am I,’ she says. She pulls back and does her best to smile, but her eyes are shiny with sadness. ‘More sorry than you can ever know.’ She dabs at her eyes with a rag.

I feel a stab of guilt. I’ve seen her bleak before, but never cry.

‘When you were little,’ she says, ‘I told myself the less you knew about your past, the better it would be. Life’s tough enough, I thought.’ She clicks her tongue. ‘When you got older, I think I’d just got into the habit of keeping secrets.’

She takes my hands again. This time I don’t pull away.

‘Right or wrong, everything I did, I did for you. You must know that.’

A tear escapes down her face, drips off her chin onto my wrist.

‘I didn’t mean those things I said,’ I tell her.

‘I know,’ she says. ‘Kyle, you’re frightened and you’re confused. With everything that’s happened to you, I can’t blame you for being angry. And we all say things we regret when we’re angry. It’s only . . . human.’

‘You’re sure I’m not a monster?’

‘Kyle, you’re no monster,’ she says, looking me in the eye. ‘Believe me.’

I think about that caged creature I saw at the Peace Fair.

‘But what am I then?’

She gives her head a little shake. ‘Just a boy who heals quickly. And maybe you’re stronger and faster than other boys. Different – that’s all. No twisted blood. Not evil. On any other world, it wouldn’t be a curse, it’d be a blessing.’

I’m shocked. ‘Isn’t that heresy?’

‘Heresy? Hah, that’s what they’d like you to think.’

She leads me back to the table and puts her hands to her cheeks, which drags her skin down so taut she looks a hundred years old. ‘You must understand, this whole rotten world is built on lies. Our so-called Saviour is the biggest liar of all. Nothing is what it seems, not even me. But the biggest lie of all is that kids like you will grow up to be monsters. Whatever happens, never believe that.’ She sighs. ‘Just listen to me, droning on all self-righteous about lies. I may not have lied to you, Kyle, but I’ve hidden the truth and that’s just as wicked. I’ve been a fool.’

I reach over and cover her cold fingers with my warm ones.

‘So tell me the truth.’

Rona shifts uneasily, looks past me, at something that isn’t in the room.

‘The truth? The truth is that you’re in great danger now, Kyle. And not only because of what you are, but because of who you are.’

‘Huh?’ I say, not sure I heard this right.

But Rona doesn’t explain. Instead she throws her head back and stares up at the ceiling. I look too. For one mad second, I half expect to see her secrets carved into the rough-hewn rafters, but all I see are bugwebs and shadows.

‘Okay,’ I say, fighting to keep frustration out of my voice, ‘when I asked if you knew about me being different, you said you weren’t sure. You said something else like there was always a chance it was me. What did you mean by that?’

I squeeze her hand, until she looks at me.

‘Even as a healer I couldn’t tell,’ she says, her voice a whisper. ‘After you shrugged off the swamp pox, I thought it likely. But I wasn’t sure until a few days ago. You see, Kyle –’ She hesitates, a vein squirming at her temple. ‘I suppose deep down I’d always hoped that it wasn’t you, that it was your brother.’

My next heartbeat is a long time coming. ‘My brother?’

More tears wriggle down her face. ‘Your identical twin. Colm.’

I stand up so fast, my vision goes all blurry.

‘What? I have a brother ?’

Rona reaches for me, but I recoil.

‘Kyle,’ she pleads.

The door bangs open. Sky sticks her head inside, looking real tense.

‘We’ve got company!’

Somehow, Rona beats me to the door. I’m trying to peer past her when her whole body stiffens. I hear her sudden intake of breath. When she turns round, I see she’s bitten her lip so hard it’s bleeding. I squeeze past and look outside. In the distance, I see a column of flaming torches, slowly winding its way towards us.

No three ways about it – it’s a lynch mob.

‘Oh, Jude,’ I groan. ‘What the hell have you done?’

‘Time to go,’ hisses Sky.

Rona runs, grabs my parka and my daypack and hurls them at me.

‘Don’t stand there!’ she yells. ‘Get out by the back window.’

She rips open a cupboard and grabs a plastic container. Stunned, I watch as she tears the cap off and starts sloshing liquid over walls and floor.

I know that stink – it’s surgical spirit.

‘I’m not leaving you,’ I shout.

Rona throws the empty container down. ‘I’ll catch up with you at the old landing ground. Now please, Kyle, do as I say for once. And hurry!’

What old landing ground?

The girl starts hauling me away, but I shrug her off.

‘Don’t be an idiot,’ she says.

Next thing I know, Rona is shaking me.

‘Kyle, there’s a gun in your pack. Don’t be scared to use it if you have to. We do still have friends out there, more than you know. Sky will take us to them; we’ll be safe there. I love you. Now, get moving! I’ll follow as soon as I can.’

She crushes her lips to my cheek, then shoves me away.

I want to say, ‘I love you too.’

But a sudden gust of wind rattles the shutters, bringing with it the sound of men’s voices, baying for twist blood. And they’re shouting my name.

It’s like I feel rope around my neck already.

I throw myself out of the window after the girl. I run and run and don’t look back until a whoosh sound overtakes me. I stop then, bent over and panting after the steep climb. Way below me a red and orange fireball leaps high into the night sky. The torches of the lynch mob scatter. I hear angry cries. I think maybe I see a figure flit from the back of the blazing shack and dodge through leaping shadows. Only I can’t see anything but flames now as Sky appears beside me, gasping.

‘Rona knows what she’s doing,’ I tell her. Tell myself.

‘Good,’ she says, sounding disgusted. ‘But you don’t. Where do you think you’re going? The landing ground’s up this way.’

She stomps away off to my left and the darkness swallows her.

PART TWO

9
WAITING

When the sun finally drags itself up in the west, bathing the world in watery dayshine, I reckon I’ve done enough running. I’ve never come this way on any of my hunting trips, so have only the vaguest idea where we are – someplace high in the mountains north of Freshwater. Half an hour ago, in pitch-darkness, the trail crossed over a ridge. We’ve been descending ever since.

Sky’s ahead of me, limping along and not looking back.

It’s been a hell of a night getting up here, cold and hard and scary. How we weren’t stalked and gobbled by gibbercats or nightrunners, I’ll never know.

With a curse, I ease the pack from my aching shoulders. My stomach rumbles, so I find a rock to sit on, take a drink from my canteen and open the pack. Knowing Rona, she’ll have packed food. Sure enough, first thing I find is a bag of nuts and berries. I start munching. Below me, the trail switchbacks down to a plateau and what looks like an abandoned landing ground. The grass runway is overgrown. There’s a barn with a water tower leaning against it, and some fallen-down shacks. At one end of the runway, I see what must be the steam winch, with its boiler, smokestack and cable drums. But what I don’t see is any windjammer. I have another dig in the pack then, looking for the gun Rona said was in there.

It’s at the bottom, still wrapped in its oily rag.

‘No way,’ I say, when I unwrap it.

I’d hoped for a blaster or a flamer, something lethal. But no, this is some ancient slug-thrower from the Long Ago on Earth. A quick fiddle and I get the cylinder thing in the middle to fall open. More disappointment. Three rusty bullets, three empty chambers. It’s not even fully loaded. Just great. The whole world wants me dead and Rona gives me a weapon that will probably blow up in my face if I shoot it. I try aiming it, but it’s so heavy it wobbles all over the place.

Sky turns and slogs back up the trail to me.

Quickly, I stuff the old gun back into my pack. If I’m tired, Sky looks destroyed. Despite it still being chilly enough up here for me to be glad of the parka Rona made me take, sweat is running down the girl’s face. Those painted bars under her eyes are all smudged, dripping down into her hollow cheeks.

‘What the frag are you doing?’ she says, looking mad as hell.

‘Oh, we’re talking now?’ I say.

The whole night, she’s pretty much ignored me. A few times, I asked her where we were going – the most I ever got back was a grunted ‘up’.

I fake-smile. ‘Want some nuts?’

Her dark eyes blaze. For a second, I think she’ll knock them from my hand.

‘Stuff your face later,’ she snaps. ‘We need to keep moving.’

I shake my head. ‘This is as far as I go.’

‘Don’t be stupid.’

‘I’m waiting here for Rona.’

Sky surprises me. I expect her to bite my head off, but she doesn’t. ‘You’ll be waiting a long time,’ she says softly.

I shrug. Sure, I know what she’s thinking – I’ve thought it too. My head is thumping from thinking it. Maybe Rona’s dead, or captured.

‘I’ll take that chance,’ I say.

Her scowl comes back. ‘I don’t think so. You promised your mother you’d do what I tell you. And I’m telling you to move.’

I stand up so quick that she takes a step back.

‘Yeah?’ I say. ‘So tell me how come I don’t see a windjammer? If you’re leading me into some sort of trap, I’ll kill you.’

‘See that?’ she says, sneering and pointing. ‘That’s camouflage.’

There’s a weird cross-shaped mound covered in scrub at the other end of the runway from the winch. Now that I know where to look, I see the windjammer.

‘Okay,’ I say, feeling stupid. ‘But what about Rona?’

‘What about her? She knows where this place is and how to get here. We’ve got loads to do to get ready for take-off. If you help, it’ll get done faster.’

‘And you won’t go without her?’

‘We’ll wait as long as we can.’ With that, she sets off down the trail again.

After a quick think, I hoist my pack and chase after her.

‘Hey, what do you mean, loads to do?’

‘Look at the state of everything,’ she says, over her shoulder. ‘We took a hell of a risk landing here. If we can’t get the winch going, then –’

She shrugs, but I get it. No winch, no flight, and we’re stuck here.

‘I never knew about this place,’ I say.

She spits. ‘You don’t seem to know much about anything.’

I’m fishing for a comeback when a loud bang sends birds screeching and flapping into the air. I duck, sure we’re being shot at, only to see smoke billow from the chimney of the winch. A man leaps from the cab and staggers away, beating at his windjammer leathers. I’m a long way away, but he looks familiar.

We reach the plateau and the path comes out behind the old barn we saw from the ridge. Sky hurries round it, towards the still-smoking winch.

‘Wait here,’ she says.

Fine by me. This is close enough.

Thought so – the man covered in soot and scorch marks is that massive bald guy who pulled Sky off me at the Fair, a lifetime ago. Even from here, I see he’s very red in the face. Sky marches straight up to him and starts shouting. She waves her arms and then points at me. Not good. I wonder if I should run.

He glances at me, but doesn’t seem interested.

Next thing I know, Sky’s on her way back, pinch-lipped and angry.

‘Not going to introduce us?’ I say as she stalks past.

She stops, and definitely thinks about punching me. ‘His name’s Chane. And I’d stay out of his way if I were you. You’d better come with me.’

I follow her the length of the runway.

‘Help me clear this,’ she says.

Coarse netting is draped over the windjammer’s hull and wings, foliage woven in to break up its outline. We pull the greenery clear, then haul the netting off. I help her to fold it. While she’s stowing it, I stare nervously.

‘You’re sure this thing flies?’

Sky gives a short laugh. ‘How do you think we got here?’

I look more closely and wish I hadn’t.

The windjammer looks like an enormous metal bug. Where I expected sleek, the body of the machine is fat and round. The hull is a patchwork of battered metal panels, many stained orange-brown with rust. The wings are thick and stubby.

My heart sinks. ‘Who sold you this scrap? You should get your money back.’

‘Ha ha.’ Sky reaches up and strokes the hull. ‘She may be ancient, but she’s still the finest jammer on Wrath. We call her Rockpolisher.’

I open my mouth, then shut it again. Don’t want to know.

‘Could Chane use any help?’ I say later, after another winch explosion.

‘Don’t make me laugh,’ says Sky.

Annoyed, I wander off to the barn. Inside I find an old cable-retrieve tractor rusting away, roughly the same as the ones we plough with back in Freshwater. The barn’s roof has kept the worst of the weather off it. There are even some mouldy old lumps of coal left in its hopper. Getting my hands dirty working on it is a relief and it takes my mind off Rona and Jude. All it needs is a patch for a leaking high-pressure line and a fill of water, before I light the firebox. Pressure builds nicely. She rattles like a box of nails when I crash her into gear, but goes okay.

Who’s laughing now?

They both come running, gobs open, as I drive her out of the barn.

‘How’d you fix that?’ bellows Chane.

‘It’s what I do,’ I shout back.

See, Rona heals people – I heal stuff. That’s how we put food on the table. Or how we used to, I mean. I peer up through the smoke and steam at the hillside trail we came along, but nothing moves. What the hell’s keeping her?

‘Why didn’t you say you’re a tech?’ demands Sky.

How badly I want to say she didn’t ask me. I don’t though.

An hour later, Chane and me get the winch going. It’s a punch-the-air moment, but scary too. Even at idle, the winch’s boiler runs at far higher pressure than the tractor, but it’s much rustier. Some of the vortex-multiplier pipes look so knackered I swear I could crush them with my bare hands. We both step back as it starts. It coughs and splutters, but keeps chug-chugging away.

‘She won’t last long at full revs,’ I say.

‘No problem,’ says Chane. He slaps my back, nearly knocks me over. ‘She only has to last a few seconds – that’ll get us off the ground.’

I can’t decide if he’s joking or mad. Or both.

We use the tractor to pull the cable out from the winch to the windjammer. I watch, fascinated, as Chane unhooks the looped end of the cable and attaches it to a quick-release hook set into the jammer’s belly. We’re all set now. I know roughly how this works, even if I’ve never actually seen it. It’s like flying a kite – the winch winds the cable in at full power and hauls us into the air.

I think that’s how it goes anyway.

When I look up, I see Sky standing at the edge of the plateau. She’s holding a small device above her head and staring at it. I wander over. One boot-length behind her is the cliff edge, a drop that makes my palms go all sweaty.

‘What you doing?’ I ask.

‘Checking the wind speed,’ she says, chewing her lip.

And that’s when I notice how calm it is, no breath of wind on my cheek.

In the wind-scoured Barrenlands, that’s weird.

Chane joins us. For such a big man, he moves quietly.

‘No wind, no ridge lift,’ he says. ‘Our lift-cells give buoyancy, but to soar we need updraughts from wind hitting the cliff. Launch now and it’s a one-way trip down to the valley floor.’ He grins, showing me teeth green and rotten from chewing shadeweed. ‘Don’t worry. Wind’ll be back, soon as the day warms up.’ He stomps off then and starts checking all the windjammer’s control surfaces.

Sky holds the instrument up again. Still nothing.

‘It wasn’t my fault, you know,’ I say.

‘What wasn’t?’

‘That twist. At the fair, when you clobbered me. They made me do it.’

She looks at me. ‘Who made you?’

‘Nash and the rest. My mates. They ganged up on me.’

‘And poor little Kyle couldn’t say no.’

I shift uneasily. ‘I wanted to, but they’d have beaten me up.’

‘Right,’ she says, staring at me. ‘Better to zap the twist than risk a kicking?’

‘Like you wouldn’t.’

‘No,’ she sneers. ‘I wouldn’t.’

She throws me the wind meter, lifts her left hand to her mouth, makes sure I’m watching, then sinks her teeth into the flesh of her wrist. With a grunt, she pulls her head back and starts peeling her skin off. It comes away with a rubbery sound. I’ve skinned countless rabbits, but I still groan seeing this. One last tug and the skin hangs from her mouth, a fully-formed, inside-out hand. She holds her hands up and wiggles her fingers. Right hand, five of them. Left hand, only four.

No little finger – a stump where it should be. The indelible mark of the ident.

My hand twitches, but I stop myself from making the Sign of One. I stare at the glove – thin, skin-coloured rubber, the fake little finger padded and stitched to sit next to the next finger along. Cunning, that.

Without a word, she tucks it into a pocket.

I shiver. Sky’s a scab. She’ll have watched her twist sister die.

‘Look, I still feel bad about it,’ I say.

‘Oh, I bet you do. Especially now you could end up in that cage with your mates paying to hurt you.’ She points at the wind meter in my hand. ‘Shout out if you see twenty on the gauge. Sustained, not gusts.’

She turns and limps away.

‘We all have to survive,’ I shout after her, but she doesn’t look back.

Just then, I feel a tiny kiss of wind on my cheek, but when I hold the wind meter up, the little spinner thing can hardly be bothered to turn. It’ll come sooner or later, so says Chane. Yeah? Well, I’ll take sooner if that’s okay. . .

Two hours later, the wind has picked up like Chane said it would, the steam winch is up to pressure and he wants to launch. I’ve yelled at him until I’m hoarse, but as far as he’s concerned, he’s already risked his precious Rockpolisher enough.

‘We can’t go,’ I say again. ‘I don’t care what Rona told Sky. I’m not going anywhere until she gets here. You can’t just leave her behind.’

But he’s not having it; says I can stay if I want, but he’s out of here.

It’s Sky who finally persuades Chane to accept a compromise. I get to run back up to the ridge and take one last look, in case Rona is close. If there’s no sign of her, I come straight back. We launch out of here, and that’s that.

Sky follows me up the hill. At the top we stand there and peer down at the track that leads up from Freshwater.

Nothing doing. The trail is empty.

‘I’m sorry,’ she says. ‘We have to go now.’

‘I can’t,’ I say. ‘I don’t care what happens. I’m not going without Rona.’

Sky grabs me by the arm. ‘Don’t be a fool. It’s a tough call, but Chane’s right. We’ve got a long way to go and dayshine is wasting. Look, Kyle, if your mother was coming, she’d have been here hours ago. I don’t think –’

I shrug her off. ‘Don’t think what?’

‘Your shack went up in flames so fast. She won’t have got out.’

‘No way. I saw her.’

‘You saw what you wanted to see.’

I’m about to contradict her when I glimpse movement on the trail.

‘Look,’ I say, excited. ‘Here she is. I told you –’

Only it isn’t Rona.

Two men step out from trees on to the trail, a long way below us. A dog pulls one of them along. Their faces, round under their hats, look up at us. Dog man, who could be one of the Fergusons, points his pulse rifle up in the air.

I see the green flash and hear the thump.

The hunter’s signal – prey spotted.

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