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Soneka laughed, gesturing across at his companion, who was rising to his feet
    ‘I know Dimi Shiban,’ Bronzi said, embracing the Clown het and slapping his back. ‘Zantium, eh?’
    ‘I seem to recall you being there,’ said Shiban. ‘How’re you doing, you fat fugger?’
    ‘Well, well.’
    ‘Have some wine,’ Soneka offered.
    ‘Oh, all right,’ Bronzi replied. His armour was caked in dust. He yanked off his cape and his webbing, and sat down.
    ‘So, this game? It has rules?’
    ‘Many, many rules,’ said Shiban.
    ‘And there’s money at stake?’
    ‘Money and wine,’ said Soneka, pouring a glass for his old friend.
    ‘Two teams,’ said Shiban, ‘Clowns and Dancers, five men each side. They scour the fields and bring back heads. The heads go in a line, by size. Retrievers win a cup of wine for each head. Incentive, you see? Sundown ends the game. Team with the largest head in the row wins.’
    ‘So just get your boys to roll in one of those big buggers,’ Bronzi said, pointing at the boulder-sized heads resting in the sand a hundred metres away. ‘Game over.’
    ‘Ah, but this is a game of finesse,’ Soneka said.
    ‘Really?’ Bronzi smiled, sipping from his wine cup.
    Shiban nodded. ‘If a team brings in a head that is demonstrably smaller than the largest, but larger than the next in line, the larger head gets thrown out.’
    Avery broad grin spread across Bronzi’s face. ‘A game of finesse indeed. Who’s winning?’
    ‘I am,’ said Soneka.
    Bronzi took out his purse. ‘Four crowns on Shiban by sundown,’ he said.
    S ONEKA WON THAT day’s head game in the very last minutes before dark, when Bashaw Lon casually wandered in with a head that displaced the Clowns’ latest triumph. Lon bent his back and cast the Clowns’ usurped head back out into the field where it had been found. Bronzi lost his four crowns. According to the rules of the game, Shiban bought wine for both teams.
    ‘So what are you really doing here, Hurt?’ Soneka asked, later on.
    ‘Let me see that hand of yours,’ Bronzi replied, and studied Soneka’s wound as it was displayed. ‘Hnh. You’ll be good.’
    ‘Hurtado? I asked you a question.’
    ‘I got a furlough,’ Bronzi said, sitting back in the still of the evening. The air went cold very suddenly after dark on Nurth, closing in like lapping black water. They huddled in around the lamps and the peat-fired heaters. ‘Five-day pass, signed by Uxor Honen herself. Just wanted to come check on you.’
    ‘That’s not it,’ said Soneka.
    ‘Why is that not it?’
    Soneka smiled, and waved to Lon to bring them a fresh bottle. ‘Since when did Hurtado Bronzi not have a secret agenda, huh?’
    ‘You wound me, Peto, you wound me. Can’t I come here selflessly to look up an old friend and enquire of his welfare?’
    Soneka stared at him, a wry smile on his face, waiting for the punch line.
    ‘All right,’ Bronzi admitted, ‘there was something else.’
    ‘Excuse me, het?’ a voice cut in. They looked up. A Munitorum aide, the very same aide whose time and patience they had abused so thoroughly during the afternoon’s game, was standing beside them. ‘Yes?’ asked Soneka.
    ‘The staff medicae apologises for this interruption. Sir, there is a dead Dancer she would like you to identify.’
    C ASEVAC HAD BROUGHT the corpse to the cold store at the far end of the Visages camp. The cold store was a long, mud brick building throbbing with refrigeration units. Soneka and Bronzi wandered up in the chilly dark, aware of the stars draping overhead like dust on a desert shawl.
    The frozen, stiff bodies of geno dead were piled up inside like firewood. Each one was wrapped in a plastek shroud. Pairs of bare, pallid feet stuck out of the ends of the stacked shrouds, decorated with toe-tag labels. The hets walked in past them, ignoring the gross stink of embalming chemicals.
    The corpse in question was waiting for them in the next room. Not yet preserved, it was laid