Apparently he been clubbed into unconsciousness outside the stables. That he wasn’t dead Kate put down to good luck but Axl privately figured was more than that. momaDef wanted him alive for some reason: or else she didn’t want him dead yet, which maybe wasn’t the same thing at all.

He’d been found with his face matted with blood, which was standard. What wasn’t was his coat had been sodden with other people’s piss. Which was the point Axl began to worry. They did that, PaxForce grunts. It was about marking territory. Only any grunts were so far off-territory on Samsara that Axl couldn’t help but wonder what level of deniability they had built into their mission.

Unless they were about to go legitimate. Which would explain why Kate was jumpier than a roo on speed. If she knew who they were.

‘You shouldn’t go upsetting outlaws.’ The woman said furiously.

Outlaws?

‘Why not?’ Axl asked. Upsetting people was something he specialised in. And if Kate didn’t know that yet, well, she’d find out. As for her ‘outlaws’, it was obvious the Cardinal would be running back-up, but momaDef wasn’t it, she just didn’t feel right. Too full of herself. And somehow Axl couldn’t see His Eminence subcontracting anything to PaxForce.

‘How long have the outlaws been around?’

The woman sucked at her olive cheeks as if thinking hard. ‘It’s the first time they’ve been to Cocheforet, I think. But I hear the bastards ride from village to village, looting, thieving ...' Her dark eyes were seeing things that weren’t there.

‘Still,’ said Kate tightly, ‘it could be weeks before we see them again. If we get lucky.’ There was real anger in her voice.

‘Well,’ said a girl’s voice from the doorway. ‘Is the idiot awake yet?’

‘Yeah,’ said Axl, pushing himself up on one elbow to peer round Kate. ‘He is. And feeling shit.’

The kid from the stables grunted.

‘This is…’ Kate hesitated too long to recover gracefully.

‘I’m Juanita and I found you,’ the half-Japanese girl said smoothing a grey cotton smock across small breasts, as if brushing away crumbs. She looked suddenly furious but Axl found it hard to tell what about.

‘Juanita?’

‘Apparently that’s my name.’

Mai didn’t acknowledge the hard-eyed glance Kate shot her, at least not openly. ‘I shouldn’t be here,’ she told Axl, 'I belong in the kitchen.’ There was such contempt in her voice that Axl thought Kate was about to say something. Instead she just ignored the girl. To Axl it was obvious there was some kind of war going on and he was flat on his back in the middle of it.

‘You found me?’

‘Yeah,’ said Mai, shooting an evil glance at the older woman. ‘Aren’t you lucky?’ Whatever battle those two were fighting, it looked like the kid was capable of keeping up her end of it. What she didn’t look was strong enough to carry a grown man up a gravel path without help.

‘And you just happened to be around?’ Axl asked innocently.

‘I was taking some night air,’ Mai’s accent was a mocking imitation of Kate, her fussy choice of words intentionally irritating.

‘You mean you went walkabout?’

‘Yeah,’ she grinned sourly. ‘It’s a little ritual we have. I go for a walk and she sends her pet Clone out to drag me back.’ She glanced at Kate, her brown eyes sharp as glass. ‘You’ll find they’re big on ritual round here.’

Flakes of plaster fell from the wall as she slammed the door behind her, hard enough to make the whole room shake.

‘Sweet kid,’ said Axl.

Kate flushed. ‘Antagonising a patrol wasn’t the most intelligent thing to do, but that’s not really your problem, and nor’s she…’ If Kate realised she’d referred to the momaDef’s group as a patrol she didn’t let it show. ‘We do have our problems, though.’

Yeah, thought Axl, I bet you do.

Half the planet thought Kate was the sister of a saint, the other half wanted her on trial for reformista war crimes committed when 20,000 pre-teens took over Northern Mexico in Joan’s name.

Twelve-year-olds with antiquated Kalashnikovs had been a feature of subSahal warfare for two centuries. Ever since the animist army of the SPLA first took Islamic Khartoum with ex-Soviet AK47s donated by a Bible Belt baptist show. The Children of God were something new. At least they were to Day Effé and to Washington politicians who thought that kind of shit didn’t happen in what was still laughingly called the First World.

‘Anything I can help with?’ Axl made it sound like he always went round offering aid to complete strangers, which would have amused the Colt. But from the look on Kate’s face, it seemed his help wasn’t something she needed.

The onions made his eyes water but Axl kept at it, cutting out the rotten bits and tossing the onion flesh that was still edible into an iron bucket. He was sitting on a bench in the kitchen at Escondido preparing supper.

The Hideaway.

Axl didn’t know if it was Kate who’d called the place El Escondido. He only knew Father Sylvester wasn’t based there and the monastery was unoccupied except for Kate, the kid, Kate’s servant Louis and the Clone. And except for the kid they were all down in the village, doing something he wasn’t meant to know about.

There was nothing of value in the enormous house, unless you liked old statues and musty wall hangings that reeked of damp and dust. Axl knew. He’d laboriously checked every room from the slab-floored cellars to the empty attic with its broken roof tiles that let heat out and rain in.

Mind you, Axl hadn’t expected to find some elegant little smartbook belonging to Kate, still powered up and containing details of transparent bank accounts at Hong Kong Suisse in Zurich. Not straight off. Unlike His Excellency, Axl didn’t believe in miracles. He believed in sex and cheap drugs and all the other shallow gratifications that made life bearable.

Only you couldn’t get 4-MTA in Cocheforet. In fact, from what Axl remembered from the newsfeeds back home, you couldn’t score anywhere on Samsara. The wheelworld was a drug-free zone. Privately, Axl doubted that. All he needed to make life bearable was a heat source, some fairly basic chemicals and a half-intelligent twelve-year-old amateur chemist. And if crystalMeth was off the menu then someone somewhere had to be cooking china white. All that took was bloody poppies, for God’s sake, the kind Kate kept doping him with.

But if the kid was to be believed there was no meth, no china white and not even any cooking sulphate. There would be—of course—somewhere. In one of the tourist towns just outside Vajrayana. Some makeshift kitchen would be turning out meth by the tray. The big problem for Axl was he didn’t know where that town was and couldn’t afford the time to get there even if he did.

On the other hand, supplies aside, he could hardly claim life wasn’t interesting. In the last week he’d got beaten up, fucked somebody’s wife without even bothering about retro Virus, taken down that fat sergeant… What was even better, he’d made contact with Kate without having to leap through too many hoops. All he need do now was get into the Japanese girl’s confidence and find out what the fuck was making Kate so jumpy.

It was hardly a difficult assignment. He went in, he found Kate and grabbed her. Then he revealed himself as a member of the Rights Police, pulled a Section 53i on Tsongkhapa and took the woman to Vajrayana for repatriation. The job was so basic even a kid could have done it. Axl knew that for a fact, the Cardinal had told him so.

Axl tossed down his knife.

Slouched next to him on a bench in the kitchen, a mound of raw onions at her feet, Mai grinned sourly. She was meant to be peeling the onions and he was only there to keep her company, but so far he’d done all the work.