"I . . ." I don't know him – that's what waited on her tongue, what she wanted to say, but something nagged at her. She looked around for any other opinion, but the flies had driven most of Sweet Water's survivors away and those closest were busy making pyres out of the buildings smashed when the train arrived, eager to cook the dead before new flickers spawned inside them.

"When did a corpser ever go looking to help someone?" Remos Jax asked, proving that perhaps he had his own kind of crazy. A grown man didn't want to go looking to rile a corpser, a boy still less so. And these were no ordinary corpsers.

George found a broad smile for Remos. He took a step closer and looked down at him. Remos set his hand to the knife at his belt. "You're right, boy, corpsers look out for their ownselfs, pain will turn a man that way, and in any case I was out for number one long before my first bullet found me." He put a hand on Remos' shoulder. "Best thing about children? Nice soft skin. Easy to stitch on – stays good for months."

"But we got a different kind o' need today." Billy Ay came to stand behind Remos. The boy made no move. What Sally felt off him wasn't fear, more a kind of readiness. Ronson Greeves had some of the same flavour. "We're contracted, see? This Eben Lostchild's got a value to us. Alive. So we'll keep him that way. Now where is he, boy?"

Remos looked up, meeting the dead man's eyes. "Lostchild's an orphan name. Mister Tully's got most every orphan in his workings at the ruins."

"Workings?" George asked.

"Mines," Sally said. "There's ruins out in the desert. Half a day from here. Blocks and arches near as big as pillars. The mayor has workings underneath, scratching out what's left there. Copper, gold, even rail-metal. Can't be melted or worked, but rail-metal will sell for more'n copper ever will."

"So the ruins then." George pulled his hat lower. "Gonna be our guide, Miss Sally?"

"They ain't all in the mines." Daveos tore his gaze from Larrs' maggoty remains. "There's sick ones out in the shack. The Mrs Walmer holds . . . soirees. Parties for rich ladies. They put money in for the cripples. My ma waits on the tables, serves drinks. She says none of them ever go and see the crips, but it makes 'em feel righteous, having a good cause to talk about."

"Our boy ain't gonna be in there." Billy spun his gun from his holster, spun it back, fluid moves no dead man should ever be able to make.

"It's close though." George stretched, bones popping and creaking between his shoulders. "Best place to start looking is right at home. Lazy man once told me that."

The boys led off, eager to be of use, Remos a child again, scampering as if the horrors of the morning had shrunk like noon shadows. The two corpsers followed, and Sally too, though all her instincts told her to get back to the Horn, back to what was solid and secure. To Ed and his yucca and the whiskey and the tricks. But despite all that, she came too. A small voice worried at the back of her mind, telling her the hunska had no call for pack, telling her to leave these boys and dead men and not to let ska madness lead her. She thought of the gold waiting for her beneath the floorboards in her room, nuggets, dust, double eagles, heavy dollars minted in Ansos, all of it gleaming in the dark, accumulated year by year. Hunska watch for themselves, that had been an early lesson, the last her mother taught her. Her future, her security, lay back in that tiny room in Cobson's Hotel. Sally stopped in the street, skirts swishing around her legs as if they wanted to keep following. The gleam of gold filled her vision, but something drowned out its call. The advance of a train, quiet at first, then louder, then crashing through buildings, splintered wood exploding on all sides as she replayed the corpsers' arrival. What had seemed solid and dependable the night before, solid as timbers and foundations, solid as Ronson Greeves, had been found wanting in the light of this morning. Sally hugged herself, a brief clench of hands to upper arms, spat, and hurried after the Ay brothers.

She caught up by the edge of town and walked between the Ays as they approached the shack. Remos and Daveos had reached the building already but hung back at the open door. Sally wrinkled her nose at the stink of the place. It made corpsers seem bearable. George strode up between the boys. "I smell brains. Someone's been here before us!"

George ducked through the doorway and disappeared into the gloom. Sally half expected shots and flinched when the shutters banged open. The corpser sauntered out a few moments later, licking his fingers. "Dead girl, dogman pup dead on the floor, rest of them are fucked up good, but looks like they were born that way. Nothing for us though." He shrugged. "Best get out to these ruins of yours."

Billy made to go in. George set a hand across his chest. "Ain't got time for collecting, brother. We're on a schedule here. The train won't wait."

"You going out on that train again?" Remos looked impressed. Sally thought it might be the first time.

"You shot that kin. They won't let you ride," Daveos said, as if the rules on kin-shooting were well established. Sally hadn't heard of anyone killing a kin. Ever.

George shrugged again. "It don't matter to kin. Death interests kin right enough, but not so's they care if it happens to them or not. You know how that grey bastard looked when I jabbed my shotgun into his guts? Puzzled. And when I put both barrels through him? Puzzled. And when he hit the ground? Dead. Kin won't hold a grudge though. Train'll be leaving on time, with us or without."

He turned and led off. Sally paused. She didn't want to look in the shack. She'd been not looking for years. The hunska would leave malformed kits out on the saltpan to die. Men chose to draw the suffering out, on both sides, fuel for the fires in which they burned, self-righteous congratulations for Mrs Walmer in her nest feathered with mining shares, an aimless malice for Ruben Twist, misery for the children, no happiness in it anywhere. Sally didn't want to look, but she did. There had been a young domen trailing them when they went down to view the taur's corpse this morning. And here another one? The same one? She set her hand to the wall planks, the splinters rough beneath her fingertips. And looked in.

A girl's corpse sprawled across one bed, brains decorating the far wall, grey and lumpy and running in sluggish rivulets. Vomit surged in Sally's throat. She forced herself to look again. The domen boy lay almost at her feet, curled in his blood, watching her from one slitted eye. Corpsers never could tell the living from the dead. Four broken children survived. One rocking, tied to a wall ring, biting his fingers bloody. A twisted girl, near choked by the tangle of grey sheets around her. A red haired boy twitching on his bed. And . . . for a heartbeat only she saw the worst of them, first his eyes held her, watching with a curious intelligence, then she took in the rest, a child distorted by knotted and useless muscles, limbs turning in at each joint, head lolling, kept upright only by the board they'd strapped him to. For one heartbeat she saw the ruin of his body, and then as he unfurled his mind toward her a bright and pure torrent washed over her, through her, filling her so swiftly and so fully that she overflowed, blinded with tears, the strength taken from her and the bitterness, both stolen away along with the old rage that had frozen and set in place long ago. The flood of that light lifted all hurt from her, wounds she understood and wounds to which she had become blind - the ones she had wrapped herself about, becoming as broken and distorted as the child before her. The boy's blinding aura expanded through her, past her, a shell pushing beyond the shack until, entirely enveloped, she could see him once more, only now his eyes saw nothing, glazed and unfocused. Sally pressed the heels of her palms to her eyes, blinked away tears and stepped in closer. The boy made no signs of noticing, but in the core of her she knew that if he was no longer watching her it was because he watched something else, somewhere else.

Sally reached out, set a hand to the boy's face. As she touched him the change rippled away from her, first fingers, then palm, wrist, and on, reaching to her elbow. She'd worn man skin so many years that she saw it herself when she looked in the mirror. Now though the short grey fur of a hunska past her first flush of youth lay revealed, the points of her claws visible at the tip of each digit. The contact erased both the limited physical change and the larger illusory disguise, her body laid as bare as her mind had been moments before.

"George Ay, get in here!" She shouted it without looking away from the boy. She didn't want to turn from him, though his brokenness scraped raw against ancient hunska instincts. The brilliance of that first moment still hung in the air and the shack for all its death and stink seemed somehow holy as if the One of the Hunska had returned to keep his promise and gather the hunska to him once more. Against every instinct some part of that memory turned her toward the domen boy, made her want to help him.

"Why you messing with the dogboy?" George stood silhouetted in the doorway. "He ain't gonna make it."

"Not if we don't get him some help he isn't." Sally slid an arm under the boy's neck then reached over to hook the other behind his knees. She could already tell he was too heavy for her to lift.

"I don't got time for this. 'Sides, it ain't the hunska way. Hunska sooner step over a bleeding man than help him. It's part of your charm. 'Less there's a profit in it of course, but that one's in off the Dry. He ain't got nothing for you but fleas, girl. C'mon."

Sally strained to lift the domen, pulling him close in, feeling the tension behind her knees.

George shook his head. "Hunska don't help no-one, lessen they're . . . you ain't pregnant are you, Sally? Carrying a bunch of kits and all crazed up on mother-juice?"

"Just help me carry him." She gritted her teeth and heaved, lifting the boy an inch or two before returning him to the floor, both of them grunting.

"Things I touch are apt to die, missy." George glanced around the shack again and poked a finger into the pooled blood by the girl's remains. "You didn't call me back for the pup." Billy stood in the doorway now throwing his shadow into the room.

Sally glanced up at the both of them. She didn't trust either one more than a rattlesnake but then she'd yet to trust anyone, ever. The boy was clearly in danger – how he'd survived whoever killed the girl she didn't know – she recalled the bite wound on Purbright's leg, her glance caught on the gleam of the domen's teeth, still bared in the pain she'd given trying to lift him. "You're here to help this boy, Eben?"

"Told you that, missy." George flicked his hat back, face hidden in shadow.

"That's him, on the board." She nodded to the cripple across the shack. The domen's eyes widened, fixed on hers, more teeth appeared. "This one's important too. You've got to get him on that train."

Billy snorted in the doorway. In the shadow of George's face a white grin appeared. "We're looking for a warrior, girl." He turned toward the door. "Billy."

"Wait!" She shouted it at his back. "He's the one. More power in that boy than all the witches in Ansos put together."

George looked over his shoulder, Billy at the door, Remos and Daveos poking their heads in from either side. "What's your game here, girl? There's more hunska and dogmen in this shithole village than you'd find in a whole pillar-town. No kind of magic's gonna stay hidden for long without them sniffing it out. You're the damned one told me about this place. Trying to say you walked past a hundred times and didn't notice?"

"Dogmen sniff it out," said Billy in the doorway. "Hunska see it. Ain't that right? You see a glimmer on a person, kin tell if they've got a touch of hex on 'em."

Sally narrowed her vision briefly, closing her inner eyelids to bring on the sight. The corpsers looked like nothing more than rock, or timber cut so long ago that every trace of life had left it, but behind them the boys glowed with living energies. Remos had the faintest gleam of the thrill, a violet tinge of it in the fires that burned across him. Hunska could see the thrill in their own kits best, and in others of their kind. The seers were known long before they were old enough to discover their own talents. Hunska found it harder to see those signs on domen or taur, harder still on a human, but if a child held enough of it, of what men called the hex, then a hunska would see it. Sometimes you had to look into a child's eyes to see it, burning back there in the darkness of each pupil. Only the females ever had a sizeable measure of it. A large talent would escape the flesh, like flames licking across the skin, an aura that could be seen across the street. Once, long ago and in a different place, she'd seen a girl so deep in the hex that her power raged about her, a bright inferno of amber flame reaching yards to either side. That one's talent had shown even to her family and she'd found herself on a train to Ansos quick enough.

On Eben Lostchild she saw nothing but the fierce currents of his pain, his vital forces twisted beyond repair, choking themselves, flickering and guttering from one moment to the next.

"I saw it . . ." Something bright and fierce and wonderful had reached out from him, expanding in all directions, reached through her, past her. And in that moment she knew. The realisation took her breath. She stood inside Eben Lostchild's aura – they all did, so deep in it that it lay everywhere and went unseen. Its bounds must lie outside the shack . . . outside Sweet Water even. "It's him! He's the reason we're here."

"Well obviously—" George began.

"The reason we're all here. Sweet Water. Why we've not been rubbed off the map along with Raven Ledge and Green Sands. "Gods! We're all inside—" The whole town lay inside the Lostchild's aura, when the sect came south out of the dry . . . when their thoughts started to crawl through man-town and hunska-cave alike, mindworms eating reason and turning each neighbour against the next . . . it had been Eben Lostchild who kept them from Sweet Water, not Station Rock, not the tracks, just this broken boy. "He's been protecting the whole town all this time!"

"Ain't done such a good job of it." Billy glanced at the strip of scourged flesh that ran from Remos' ear to the opposite collarbone. "Kid here told it that a death-scarab ripped up on a taur shaman last night?"

"Look at him. He just bones. Half dead. No better off than this dogboy." Sally's grip tightened on the domen, she'd never set hands one of his kind for more than a moment before, and it felt odd. "Maybe he's getting sicker, let his guard down for a few hours and the sect got in. That's why you're here isn't it? Why you were sent? To protect him."

Billy shrugged and looked at George. The older brother stepped forward, caught now by the light through a filthy window. He scowled, leaned in to peer at Eben on the board. "Really?" He looked her way.

Sally met his gaze. "Really."

"Best get them onboard then. Billy, get the dogboy. I'll take Speedy here."

Sally stood as Billy took the domen. "Easy with him. He's called Hemar." The name came to her as the contact between them ended.

George reached over and hauled the board, with Eben still on it, into the air.

"Watch him on the ceiling—" Sally tried to catch hold.

The corpsers got Eben and Hemar out of the shack without adding to their injuries and started back toward Station Rock.

Sally followed, wondering once again why the hell she cared. The corpser's words returned to her as she tramped across the cart ruts dried into the mud. Pregnant, are you? Men couldn't put babies in a hunska. Everyone knew that. Ed always said it was the main reason he only kept hunska whores. And the hunska didn't think much of the quick gruntings men called sex, a pale thing compared to the ferocity of a mating night locked to another hunska, a nothing that might be tolerated for coin and comfort. Pregnant? She was in season. As long a ska season as she'd ever heard of – but not pregnant. She'd left the plains before an males came to her. Sally pushed the idea aside and hurried to catch up.