The Knife was heavy, heavier than I would have given him credit for, his thin frame resisting my pull.

  I rolled him over anyhow.

  His face was lined, full of dust, his lips covered in sand, his eyes closed, eye-lashes glittering with pale grains. When I pushed up his eyelid with my thumb, the eye stared blankly ahead. No motion. His pupils were small, shrunken. Made his eyes look like broken cameras.

  A weak trail of fog escaped his lips, the artery in his throat pulsing.

  Heartbeat, but no consciousness. He'd burnt his mind.

  I let go of the eyelid, letting it close. His words came back to me, that I had a heart for protecting the Gash, but not a head. He'd believed that. He'd thought I had a better chance of living.

  I'd made him promise to end me, if I burned my mind. The least I could do was give him the same mercy.

  My flameblade hissed out of my scabbard, the blue flames already dancing along the edge. I raised it above his eye. His end would be quick, and painless.

  Hao rammed into me like a naval-cannon round, her hands trapping my wrist in a steel-strong grip.

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  "Crudmucking voidmunger," she yelled. "What are you doing?"

  "Let go," I yelled back. "I'm giving him peace."

  "The crud you are," she yelled back, trying to yank my blade away.

  There was a sizzle of burnt flesh, and she growled like a mad dog. I'd cut her. Crud.

  Conjuring a thread of force was like pulling a hair form a jar of honey, sticky and slow. Finally, it came, and I down-tuned my blades wards, extinguishing the flames.

  Hao didn't let go.

  "Let me be," I told her.

  "I won't let you," she said. "You'll regret it."

  "He's dead, Hao," I said. "His mind is voided. There's no bringing him back."

  "How can you know?" she said. "You got a med scanner? Even an EEG reader?"

  "I know," I wailed, and all my fears came out in those words.

  Hao's grip loosened, but she didn't release me fully.

  "Give me the knife," she said.

  "Hao," I began, but she yanked on my arm, lifting me, almost dislocating my shoulder.

  "The knife," she growled through her teeth.

  I let the blade fall. She picked it up, put in a pocket.

  The tip cut through the lining, gashing her jacket and slipping out.

  "Careful," I told her. "Better let me put it ba-"

  "No."

  Only a word, but with a mountain of will behind it. There even was the sound of distant thunder. Good coincidence.

  "What if I give you my word?" I said. "That I won't hurt him."

  "No."

  "Why?"

  "He is your friend," she said. "You tried to kill him."

  "He's dead!" I screamed. "His mind is gone. I've seen it happen before. He's not coming back."

  "How do you know?" she said, quietly, softly, almost a prayer.

  There was a lifetime of pain in those words. I didn't know where she was coming from, had heard little of her history before I picked her up on Jackson. I'd have to ask her, when we got off this planet.

  But first we had to get off. And that distant thunder sound wasn't thunder, and it wasn't distant.

  The Syndicate army was returning to City.