“Stop shaking, or you’ll bleed harder,” the Skinwelder said. Bee couldn’t, still wet and filthy in the dark.

“Sorry,” she stuttered, trembling. “I’m sorry.”

Its thickly lensed eyes turned back to her braced arm. With a hand made up of a thousand thorny needles, it knitted loose pieces of her flesh back together, the joint a mess of sliced skin, bone and sinew. Its second arm ejaculated gluts of caustic gel, hissing and burning, glueing flesh back together. Its third arm tugged at the wound's edges with delicately hooked claws, exploring the damage.

It hurt - the amputation, the tourniquet, everything. Bee tried to stop whimpering. She couldn’t.

The Skinwelder’s workshop was dirty, one of the smaller, newer buildings on the outskirts of the Oasis. It was an outsider, one of the dwellers of the desert, but unlike most, it was quite willing to deal with those fleeing the city-slug - taking what they had while they were still here rather than waiting for them to drop dead out there.

A freak was slumped over in one corner, between a flesh bank of spare augs and a shelf of preserved biomass. Bee was almost certain it was dead.

Impatient, Ay inhabited the doorway to the world beyond, blocking out the hot sun with his massive body. The hunter kept an eye out, analysing everyone that dared pass, two arms folded, and the other hand vanished into the pockets of his rags. The tip of his tail twisted side to side, lashing with barely suppressed rage.

“All done.”

“Um… Thank you. T-thank you...”

Ay swept across the room, standing over them both. He took Bee’s welded wound in one hand, turned it this way, and saw the results for himself to make sure it wasn’t fatal. It must have passed his inspection.

“Well,” he croaked down to Bee. “Are you going to pay the freak?”

Bee cringed. She didn’t have anything to pay him with. The Skinwelder leaned back, then stood up and paced around the room, looking unimpressed. It wiped what passed as its hands on a spoiled rag.

“No?” Ay asked, raising his voice.

“I can’t,” Bee said.

Ay grunted. He pulled out her mother’s steel bowl from under the wraps about his chest. Ay then pulled the world out from under her when he produced her severed hand, dumping it into the vessel and offering it out.

“Should work,” he told the Skinwelder, who turned, picked up the hand and appraised it with distorted eyes.

“Bit small,” it said.

“Still has growing to do,” Ay countered.

“It’ll do,” the Skinwelder decided after inspecting the exposed tendons and ligaments. Then, retreating to the aug bank, it went about stitching its new prize into the enslaved creature so that it could be kept nourished. The aug bank groaned, but it knew better than to flinch.

They left the skin welder to its work, continuing their journey through the maze of the Oasis.

Bee clung to Em with her good arm. Back on their wagon, they made slow progress through the crowds, heading immediately out of what passed as the centre of this town, escaping back into the furnace. Even Em had the sense to be silent. Bee was cold, despite the harsh sun. She had been told to sit in the back and stay there this time. Ay worked the lash, shouted out to clear the way. The starving freaks did – slowly, reluctantly.

“We don’t have any food,” Bee said, voice weak and unsteady. A moment passed, then another. Then, finally, she realised he hadn’t heard her or was ignoring her.

“We need food,” she repeated more loudly, desperation seeping into her voice.

“We have food,” Ay said. Bee looked to her other sisters, still bundled up. The fear, which was becoming a persistent state of being for the child, robbed her of words as she realised what Ay had implied. Her right hand, wherever it was, felt as if she had plunged it into a pool of hot oil and glass.

Bee tried to spy Ay’s lance in the wagon whilst he was distracted. She looked around the bone and the steel reinforcements, but she struggled to find it in her daze despite how hard she searched.

“Don’t even think about it,” Ay said without looking back, catching Bee off guard. She had thought he wasn’t paying attention. Frozen still, she hugged Em close again.

“Please... We need something else to eat,” Bee struggled with the words.

Ay looked back, and the fleshy eyes between his beaks narrowed.

“Fine.”