‘Jesus, you really need ice, don’t you?’

Ice, a life, some guaranteed way off Samsara… Axl got through a lot of his life on nodding, and the bits where a nod didn’t work could usually be covered by silence or a simple shake of the head. Chuck in the trademark looks that ran from quizzical to coldly amused and in many ways his working vocabulary was no better than it had been back when he was nine.

‘Kate’s got medical drugs,’ Mai told Axl. ‘Want me to look for you?’

Axl did, though he went along with her, climbing the narrow back stairs from the kitchen to a small landing so slowly that Mai had to stop to let him catch up Axl didn’t mind taking his time. The kid had a nice arse and it helped that all she wore on her bottom half was a pair of thin black leggings so tight they edged between her buttocks with every step she took. On top Mai had a short red jacket machined from cloth that looked like it had started out as a dog blanket.

Axl kept watching her arse until she paused at the landing. And then he looked at what she was looking at. Attached next to a door in the far wall was an open padlock, hooked over a clasp. Both were new.

‘My room,’ she said bitterly. ‘Kate has this one,’ Mai jerked her thumb towards a single door behind her. To the right of the narrow landing were two other doors, both shut.

‘And in there?’ Axl asked, as if he hadn’t already looked.

'The Clone and Louis ...'

‘There’s no one else living in this house?’

The girl looked at him.

‘How about nearby?’

‘Kate’s followers,’ Mai said sourly, making it obvious she had little time for the other ‘fugees in Cocheforet. ‘No one else, okay? Or I’d have found them, believe me…’ The smile on her childlike face wasn’t kind. But then she wasn’t doing this to be nice to Axl, she was doing it to spite Kate. Which didn’t matter a fuck to Axl, because complicity was complicity.

‘Look,’ said Mai. ‘You want to help me find some stuff or not?’

Stuff, when they found it, was in a cheap plastic tray inside a folded blanket crammed under Kate’s bed. Mai crawled under to get it while Axl searched the almost-bare room a second time, moving fast.

A wooden crucifix was nailed up above a wood-framed single bed that sported only one sheet and a tattered low-tog quilt over a mattress of uncovered foam that was no thicker than a smart book.

The walls were white, with no pictures or rugs. The floor was also bare, its faded red tiles cold as ice to the touch. Apart from Kate’s bed, the only other item of furniture in that room was a simple wooden desk made from oak. It had three drawers down each side, all empty of everything except dust and dead insects. What clothes Kate had—and there weren’t many—rested in neat piles on one side of the door.

Axl had been around enough to know what punishment looked like. Since it was unlikely anyone else had imposed this cell on Kate, she had to be inflicting it on herself. Which, maybe wasn’t so unusual from the sister of the Pope who had cleared St Peter’s of all its art treasures and thrown open the gates of the Holy City to all comers. And God did they come. Hyps, Ishies, the Wild Tribe. The influx made the medieval crusades look like ordered outings.

‘Sweet fuck.’

Axl looked round to find Mai sitting on the bed tossing bubblepacs back into the tray, one after another. ‘Dandelion, arnica, teatree oil…’ She read a few more out in disgust and then scooped the rest noisily back into the tray and slung it under Kate’s bed. ‘You’re out of luck.’

‘Maybe,’ said Axl as he slid the drawers out of their runners and skimmed his fingers across the backs. Nada. Nothing taped to the underside of the desk either.

‘What you looking for?’ Mai’s head was hooked to one side, her smile quizzical. She was definitely interested.

‘Whatever the fuck she’s got,’ said Axl shortly and Mai laughed. The only problem was Kate had nothing worth taking and less than nothing hidden. No decent drugs, no weapons, no illegal comms kit, no smart book.

Sliding the drawers back onto their runners, Axl took down the wooden crucifix to check that it wasn’t hollow and that Kate had nothing interesting taped to the back.

‘You know,’ Mai said suddenly, ‘you don’t act like a ‘fugee.’ She blushed. ‘It’s like, you look like shit but you don’t act like you’ve lost everything…’

He could still kill her, of course. That was Axl’s first thought as he reached the bed. Get her body out of the house before the others got back. Or just stack it in one of the tiny storerooms in the cellar. The second thought to cross his mind was to do a runner, exit Cocheforet. Axl’s third thought was the right one—empathise, loop the emotion and feed it back. That was what they’d all been taught in basic psych. So that was what he did.

Axl shrugged. ‘I haven’t lost everything,’ he told Mai, dropping to a crouch in front of her. ‘When you start out with fuck all, there’s fuck all for anyone else to take away. If you know what I mean.’

Casually Axl let one finger brush the back of Mai’s wrist.

Check the eyes. Examine the mouth for signs of disbelief. Now was when he was meant to flick back his hand and slam fragments of nasal bone up into her brain, if that’s what he was going to do. While she was still considering.

But Axl didn’t need to. And more to the point, he realised, he didn’t want to. Looking at the Japanese kid was like looking across race, gender and age into a mirror image of himself. She wasn’t someone who remembered her past, she survived it.

He knew when a kid was wearing scars like armour. When real anger burned so fierce it had to be kept smothered under glib dismissal or a sullen sneer. She could walk though a crowd and they’d notice her but not smile. Want to bed her, yes, but no more. Something in those dark eyes filtered out friendship and cut her loose.

But if he wanted Kate he was going to have to reel the kid in.

‘What’s your real name?’ Axl asked.

‘Mai,’ said Mai. ‘That’s the first one I remember.’ Mai’s gaze was level as she looked him over. ‘What about you?’

‘Axl Borja. I don’t know my real name.’

They shook.

‘You planning to stay here long?’ Mai’s question wasn’t as simple as it seemed. They both knew that. And this time it was her fingers that reached out to touch his wrist.

‘Long as it takes,’ said Axl. He didn’t say what it was. Just as he didn’t ask what she meant by here.

‘Well, make it fast. I want the fuck out.’

‘So we just set out over the high plateau, hand in hand?’

‘No,’ Mai grinned. ‘We ride on your horse.’ She had the grace to blush at that.

He’d been right, Axl realised. She had tried to take his mare and the beast hadn’t let her. That at least explained why she’d bothered to stick around while Clone dragged some stranger back to the house for Kate to treat. He was her ticket out of there.

Axl had a pretty good idea what she was offering by way of payment.

‘I don’t have a problem with that, if you don’t…’ Mai said simply.

He didn’t. Though he’d have to deal later with telling the kid he planned to stick around for a few more days yet, maybe longer.

Mai took off her top herself, undoing its clumsy buttons and sliding out of the red jacket to reveal high olive-tipped breasts, each tiny enough to be cupped in a single hand. She had slightly full hips and a belly button that sank into the curve of her soft stomach.

And then Axl stopped looking as Mai’s arms tightened around his neck and she pulled him in close. She smelt of onions, sweat and smoke from the yak-dung kitchen fire. He’d known expensive perfume smell much worse. And then even that thought was forgotten as Mai began to undo his tattered cotton shirt.

Her fingers started at the bottom and never once touched Axl’s skin as she threaded each tiny button through its slit until there were no more to undo.