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alive.
    For later.
    General Luc sits with Aptitude, under the shade of a striped awning, on one of those double seats that swings backwards and forwards from chains hooked to a bar overhead. He’s keeping the seat swinging with the lazy kick of one boot.
    One arm is draped over the back of the seat.
    The fact he’s watching to see if I’ve noticed doesn’t help. Although it’s the fact his other hand rests lightly on Aptitude’s wrist, and she’s sitting very still indeed, and pretending not to mind, that makes me want to wring his neck.
    Only he is Debro’s guest. She’d object. People like Debro always do.
    ‘Going for a walk,’ I tell them. ‘See you in a minute.’
    Pushing back a rattan chair, I check my pockets for cigars and sling my holster over my shoulder rather than belt it round my waist. The SIG stays silent. But you can bet it’s got an opinion on everything that’s happened so far.
    ‘I’ll join you,’ the Wolf says.
    Anton and Debro look at each other.
    ‘It’s a free world. Sir.’
    Actually, it isn’t. But to point that out is treason. So I smile, while he pretends to take my comment at face value. And I stand back; to show the steps down to the gardens are his. A quick push and we’d have the problem solved.
    ‘Sven . . .’ says Debro.
    Yes, I know.
    Behave.
    *
    Luc takes a cigar and my offer of flame without comment. Leaning against the back of a bench, in the shadow of a twisted cork tree, he manages to look both relaxed and dangerous. He has the confidence of someone who’s never lost a fight.
    I have.
    I’d like to say I learn from mistakes. It’s probably bullshit. The only thing I learn is to repeat them more inventively next time. Turns out the Wolf wants to talk about my losing my arm.
    At least, that’s how he starts our conversation.
    ‘What happened?’
    ‘A ferox, sir.’
    General Luc checks I’m not mocking him. ‘You escaped from the clutches of a ferox?’
    ‘Killed it.’
    Now he’s really looking.
    ‘It was old,’ I say. ‘Almost dead. It took my arm and I took its head. Carried the damn thing back with me through the desert. Needed proof I hadn’t injured myself intentionally.’ Self-inflicted injuries are a capital offence in the Legion.
    ‘You were a sergeant?’
    That tells me he knew who I was before Anton introduced us.
    ‘Ex-sergeant, sir. I got busted for punching an officer.’
    Another capital offence. So now he knows there’s more to the story than I’m saying. Otherwise I wouldn’t still be alive. ‘Out there,’ the Wolf says, ‘is a crashed cargo carrier.’
    ‘So you said.’
    ‘Unlicensed. You know the penalty?’
    ‘Death, I imagine. That’s the penalty for everything round here.’
    General Luc scowls. ‘Exactly. Could you protect a family who found themselves charged with such a crime?’
    ‘Without question.’
    ‘How?’ he demands.
    ‘Kill the man who accuses them.’
    On our way back, he stops to point to the horizon. ‘That’s where my land starts,’ he says, indicating a low line of hills. ‘A thousand square miles of high plain, canyon and scrubland. Five towns, one city and a hundred villages. Lady Aptitude will inherit eight hundred square miles of—’
    General Luc pauses.
    ‘You know,’ he says, ‘Debro never said how you met.’
    He’s right. She didn’t.
    ‘We met on Paradise, sir. That’s—’
    ‘I know what it is.’
    Yeah, he would know. I had to be sent there to discover it’s a prison planet.
    ‘I heard you traded OctoV’s gratitude for their freedom. What did they do, save your life?’
    It was the other way round.
    Three dozen exiles, dissidents and failed revolutionaries meet a common criminal. Who turns out to be the only thing keeping them alive. And then he’s a common criminal they need. That’s liberals for you.
    ‘Well?’ General Luc demands.
    ‘Something like that, sir.’
    It’s the answer he expects. ‘So you only met Lady Aptitude recently?’
    ‘I arrived here