On Joon-ho Station, drifting temple of some ancient religion, the pilgrims press in tight, smell of sweat and grime thick even through my rebreather. The procession moves slow, dry shuffling scrape of footsteps beneath the constant murmur of prayer.

Surrounded by this many people my heart rate should spike, but I'm already soaked with adrenaline after Bianca Blanca sicced her subordinates on me to buy herself time to escape. Now they're strewn along the length of a maintenance tunnel, still breathing ... barely.

I scan the crowd — hooded black robes, faded to various shades of gray and repaired with patches of darker fabric. Overhead the roof is a huge clear dome. The local star hangs large in the center of an endless field of black, close enough to fill the room with sunlight. Day and night united in a pane of glass.

Ocho is a warm lump in my hood, purring between my shoulder blades. She grumbles when I take her out and stash her in my satchel, but soon settles. I pull the hood up over my head to blend in, and move with the current of bodies. A flash of color and motion catches my eye — people shoved aside, a sharp cry as someone is thrown to the ground.

Got you now, fucko. Blanca knows she's being tailed, but she doesn't know it's by a pissed-off space witch.

I push through the throng, dodging around knots of worshippers, trying to find a balance between gentle and fast. It's been almost a month since I left Aylett Station, fleeing Mookie, guilt, and the Emperor's Guard; the last thing I need is a commotion. The last thing I need is someone recognizing me.

Drop a hollow-moon on a city and suddenly you're public enemy number one. I don't know the price on my head, but even at one credit for every person I killed on Seward, that'd still be a tempting bounty.

I reach a gap, the crowd parting around an older woman sitting on the ground where she fell, another devotee stopping to help her up. The woman seems to hold my gaze as I push past, and my heart goes staccato. They show my face on every news report, and for a second I think she recognizes me even behind the rebreather, but then I notice the white cast to her pupils. She's blind.

She moves off with the other pilgrim, the two speaking Mandarin, and they rejoin the flux circling the shrine, adrift in the smoke of burning incense. I keep moving, offering apologies as I cut through, following the disturbance Blanca makes as she batters her way past the flow of people.

She reaches the far wall and I'm right on her. I grab her collar and yank Blanca toward me. She spins, her face a mask of rage adorned with thin-line geometric tattoos. Glint of a knife blade protruding from between her fingers as she slashes at my belly. I grab her hand with my mind and squeeze. Her eyes go wide at the series of short, wet cracks as I break every bone in her hand. I let go and the knife tumbles to the ground — I kick it aside where it disappears into the forest of feet and robes.

Her mouth shoots open to scream, but the only thing escaping her maw is the sweetly rotten stench of cheap booze. I put a hand over her mouth, push her back, and slam her head against the wall. Her eyes turn hard and she claws my face with her good hand, blunt pain as nails tear my skin. She pulls the rebreather from my face, stops clawing, and stares.

I smash her head against the wall again and grin. "Do I have to break the other one?" Blanca shakes her head, my hand moving with her face.

"Good."

I peel my hand away slow and she glares at me, rolling her jaw. My satchel shifts as Ocho sticks her head through the opening to stare at Blanca. She yawns and stretches, then disappears back into the bag, circling once before lying down.

"Thanks for the assist, jerkface," I mutter.

Blanca presses her shattered hand to her chest and winces, holding it steady with her other arm. Already the hand is swollen — skin stretched tight over a shapeless mess of fingers.

Her breath turns shallow as she looks at it.

"You'll be fine," I say. "We'll get you to the doc."

Blanca scowls but doesn't resist when I pull her away from the wall.

I fix the rebreather back to my face and we rejoin the procession — easier to float with the current around the huge, sun-lit space than to try and fight against the tide.

* * *

I push Blanca through the door to Doctor Ahlam Ouyahia's clinic, barely able to stay upright, her feet dragging, skin pallid. It's a clean, neat clinic, well lit, every surface white and glossy. We walk through the empty waiting room into the main area, lined with beds along both walls, most of them occupied by patients caught in the dull stasis of illness, overseen by older-model autodocs.

"Ahlam?" I call out.

Her shaved head peers out from the doorway of her office, brow furrowed with concern. "Why is she here? What did you do to her?" Ahlam says rapid-fire as she rushes over.

"She pulled a knife on me, doc, I had to disarm her."

"Why not pull off her whole arm next time."

"I thought about it," I say, and Ahlam scowls.

"You were meant to scare her, not bring her to me broken."

"I didn't know what else to do. Be glad I didn't kill her."

For an instant Ahlam's face twists with anger, then it disappears when she remembers who she's talking to. She lifts her eyebrows and tuts. "Yes, at least you didn't do that."

"She doesn't say much, does she?"

"No."

"Vow of silence?"

Ahlam taps the hollow at the base of Blanca's throat: neat surgical scars. "They say it's one less way to displease the gods. Does not stop her terrorizing me."

Blanca shakes violently, deep in shock — if she knows we're talking about her, she doesn't show it. Doc leads the silent gangster to one of the empty beds along the right wall of her clinic. She lies down with her hand still pressed to her chest. Doc sticks her with a syringe and she relaxes slowly, body melting into the bed, hand falling to her side.

I take a seat near Blanca's bed and Ocho climbs from the satchel to rest in my lap. She starts cleaning herself, body twisted in experimental cat-thing yoga.

Ahlam prods Blanca's mangled hand gently and winces as if they're her broken bones inside the taut red skin. She shakes her head. "I don't know how this will heal."

"Just give her a prosthetic," I say.

"It is not that easy. Besides, she would refuse. Many think those modifications taboo."

"Explains the blind woman I saw."

Ahlam nods absently. She sits beside me and our legs touch. She sighs. We were close once, when she was training to be a doctor, but that was years ago.

"What am I meant to do now, Mars?" she asks.

"Fix her hand," I say. "Tell her if she tries to extort you again, I'll break them both."

"But you will not always be here."

"She doesn't know that."

Ahlam sighs again. "I should not have asked you to do this."

"You needed her off your back and I needed a favor. How's Pale doing?"

"The tests are finished. I was checking over the results when you came in."

"What's the verdict?"

Ahlam pushes up from her seat. "Come along."

I leave Ocho on the seat and follow Ahlam to the back of the clinic, past her office to the surgery. Pale lies encased within a diagnostic machine, wearing nothing but a paper gown. He's still as pale as his name, but he's grown half a foot since I rescued him from Briggs's flagship....