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The fog came down suddenly: sleek and white and thick and cold. It felt like being draped in a clammy cobweb, and it became impossible to hear one’s own footsteps on the grassy pathway. If it wasn’t for the feel of the warm fur of the great dog who paced majestically at her side Amal would perhaps have been afraid. But she had walked worse than this with Chin-Cha as companion and protector. She wove her fingers into his great ruff of grey and silver hair, leaning on his strong presence as she had been able to do for so many years. Chin-Cha, she thought, the love of my life and my biggest single regret. She knew that the great dog now pacing at her side was a shape changer trapped in his present form by a powerful bear witch, who had then ensorcelled him to the service of a six-year-old girl. That child had grown up to be Amal the healer and witch-woman. A woman who loved her protector with every fibre of her being but would rather die than burden him with the knowledge of that love. As the fog grew even denser, a voice spoke in her ear, it was woody and breathy, and sounded like a poorly tuned wind instrument. “People ahead. Hiding. Ill intentioned. Those who have been hunting you since harvest moon Yuri thinks.” Yuri was a frost imp and trusted friend. Amal put up a hand as if to touch him, and he blew on her fingers. Surprising warmth. “How many?” “I will see” and the sense of his presence was gone.
Chin-Cha pressed himself against her leg, silently urging her off the path. She allowed herself to be guided to the rough trunk of a big tree. He pushed her thigh with his nose, indicating that she should climb. Doing as she was bid Amal soon found herself on a wide branch beside a sheltering hole in the trunk. Wrapping herself in the blanket from her pack she crept into the very heart of the tree. She could no longer see her companion, but had the reassurance of his spirit as he hunkered down in the brownish bracken. Then he was coming towards her. Fast. She felt him bunch his muscles and erupted out onto her branch. He made a prodigious leap and she grasped his harness to steady him. They both crawled into the tree cave and huddled together for warmth and comfort.
It was not long before Amal got the sense of Yuri’s presence. She was about to speak when a small icy hand was placed on her lips. “They are here” the woody windy little voice whispered, seeming to come from right inside her head. “Be still and silent and listen.”
At first Amal heard nothing, then she made out the sound of laboured breathing. There was a noise as if a heavy boot hit flesh. “Where is the woman, tracker?” a harsh voice demanded. “She came this way. She can’t be far. But I can no longer feel her presence. It must be the fog.” “You had better not be lying to me. Gopal get the hounds. They will track her dog, and the old woman said that once we kill it the witch woman will lose her magic.”
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Ante Diem Nonum Kalendas Aprilis MDCCLXXIX Anno Diocletiani
I
The working office of the Magistratus had changed considerably since Sextus Catus Bestia had taken over the role in Demetae and Cornovii six months previously. Dai Llewellyn, Submagistratus for the same area, still fondly recalled the simple and yet tasteful decor the previous incumbent had preferred. Bestia, by contrast, favoured opulence over simplicity and substituted extravagance for good taste. But then, unlike his predecessor who had risen through the administrative ranks, Bestia had transferred into the state sector after enjoying a successful career as a commercial lawyer. Dai assumed that impressing business clients required such an ostentatious display of wealth, but the same sat ill with the kind of civic dignity expected of Bestia’s present role. Not that the man couldn’t easily afford the expensive artwork lining the walls, the rarewood furniture, the bejewelled and gilded bust of the Divine Diocletian and the elaborate full-length golden-framed painting of himself and his wife of a few weeks. That marriage had surely made him one of the wealthiest men in all of Viriconium. Which was why this present meeting was beginning to make Dai move from frustration into anger. Bestia was sitting in his throne-like desk chair, hands resting on the carved lions that adorned the arms. The late afternoon sun had painted the window behind him with glowing light, adding to the regal impression. He also looked regally bored, as if he found the whole business of overseeing the administration tedious in the extreme. “I see no reason to bend the rules just because your Senior Investigator has a gut-instinct about something. Cartivel must be close to retirement age and is probably just dyspeptic.” He smiled as if inviting Dai to share the joke. “I’m not asking you to bend any rules. I’m asking you to sign-off further resources to investigate properly. I would if I could, but have already authorised this case to the limit of my authority.” Bestia glanced down at the file on his desk. “Indeed. I see you granted SI Cartivel and his team an entire day in man hours. Time they have used to ascertain little more than that this woman was known to be a lupa and known to be willing to take money from clients who wanted more extreme practices than the usual. But there are no grounds that I can see here for me to extend the investigation any further. It would be a waste of public money.” “If Malina Tesni was a Roman Citizen…” For the first time, Bestia sounded annoyed. “If the woman was a Roman Citizen, she would not have been a common British puta who was paid well by an over-vigorous client.” “Over-vigorous?” For a moment Dai saw the start of a red haze clouding on the edges of his vision and with a supreme effort of will he fought it down, drawing a deep breath and counting silently. “Distasteful as it is, there was nothing to suggest she had been abused against her will. She was also found with what I am assured would be a substantial payment for a street woman. No doubt an incentive to allow her client more leeway in his behaviour.” “She was beaten half to death. The autopsy said she died of those injuries having caused severe internal bruising and swelling.” “It was not murder. There was clearly no intent to kill or why pay the woman and let her go home? At very best it was an accidental death. No one has denied that she was a prostitute and that is a profession that we all know carries certain occupational hazards.” His expression softened suddenly and his voice shifted to something more like friendly cajoling. “You are a good man, a good Citizen and a good administrator, Llewellyn. I do understand why you feel so strongly about this, but you must let it go. It’s for the best.” Dai had been sitting but now he shot to his feet. “Let it go? Dominus, the man who did this is somewhere in Viriconium and he could do the same to another woman.” Bestia lifted one hand from its lion’s head resting place. “Stop right there. Firstly, I already said that I completely understand where you are coming from with this. Who could not be appalled at by it? But where is the crime? There is no law against prostitution.” He leaned back and shook his head, looking saddened. “If anything the dead woman is the criminal here. The only prosecutable offense I can see is failure on her part to have purchased a license to practice her trade. And, of course, the subsequent charges of tax evasion that would lead to, especially seeing how well she was being paid.” Dai struggled to find some way to frame things in terms that could penetrate Bestia’s lawyer logic. “If she was a Citizen there would be unlimited resources made available to uncover the man who did this whether it was deemed consensual or not. What if the man is local and his next victim is a Citizen?” Bestia was frowning now. “You should know better than that, Submagistratus. We can’t run the Vigiles on ‘what ifs’. There is no reason to think the man was local, indeed it is more likely someone passing through, staying the night and wanting some entertainment. And even if he was local, you have already spent public money on investigating something that is not a crime. Instead of asking me for more perhaps you should apologise and be grateful that I’m not going to mention that you did so on any official report.” The red haze rose and this time Dai could do nothing to stop it. His last conscious act was to turn and start walking towards the door. Better to be rude to his superior than get arrested for attacking him.
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The name’s Nero, Sam Nero. Me and my associate, Miss Sugar Kane, operate from an office on the fifty-fifth level of The City…
It was a funny old day. For starters, the climate computers were on a go-slow, so we’d been enduring a sickly sort of pre-dawn for around three hours. Down at street level the lamps were jittery, and the half light was offering all sorts of interesting opportunities for those inclined towards criminality. Being a law-abiding sort, I was studying the inside of my eyelids as I warmed the cracked leather of my desk chair and halfway wondered whether there was any work in the situation for yours truly. My reverie was interrupted when Sugar oozed in from the outer office. Today she wore lipstick red that might have been painted on her curves and ankle-breaking heels that made her walk even more dangerous than ever. “Sam,” she said in that breathy little girl voice that conceals a mind like a steel trap. “Sam. There’s something going down on the street corner…” She was cut off by the sound of high-pitched screaming coming from below. I took the stairs three at a time and reached the bottom just as the street door burst open and three figures barrelled in. Two were by way of being friends of mine, Myk and Zig, the gigantic mute twins who work for Katie Scarlet O’Halleran and her Daddy. I didn’t know their companion, a skinny guy with a big head and a wispy white beard who looked right in the edge of collapse. I slammed the door behind them and Myk helped me to slip the two plasteel retaining bars into their slots in the wall. As the second bar clunked home something very heavy hit the door. It made a kinda wet splatter. Zig shrugged, and slung the skinny guy over his shoulder. We made our way back up to my office where Sugar hovered in the doorway, looking worried. “What gives?” She spoke to the twins, and her voice was no longer meltingly sexy. Myk signed his reply, with a speed that had my eyeballs rolling in my head. Fortunately, Sugar gets it no matter how fast the fingers. While Myk did the talking, Zig put his burden down on my visitor chair. The little guy sat up, with unease in every line of his scrawny body, breathing shallowly and darting glances around him from a pair of shifty little eyes. “Sam,” Sugar sighed, “our new buddy here is Doctor Arlo Petersen.” “You sure, honey?” She nodded her platinum blonde head. “I’m sure Sam.” This was a puzzle, as Petersen was the original poor boy made good and the last I heard of him he was relocating, upwards, to level ninety-seven to head up a fancy clinic where the wives and girlfriends of the wealthy would go for their facial tune-ups. I frowned. “So what’s he doing this low down the pyramid?” “Nobody knows. He got a message to Mister O’Halleran asking for help. The big guy sent Myk and Zig to fetch Petersen, and they got there just in time to prevent his untimely demise.” “Right.” I turned my attention to the unimpressive figure cowering in my visitor chair. “Okay Mister Petersen, who’s face did you mess up?” He glared at me with a ratlike contempt that brought up my hackles. “I don’t talk to lowlifes.” Myk clipped him sharply around the head, and Sugar clicked her tongue against her insubstantial teeth. “Naughty, naughty,” she chided, lifting a shoulder in a way that was guaranteed to have her principal assists doing all sorts of interesting things under the scarlet skin of her dress. Petersen licked his lips, and I cuffed his head. “Less lechery more explanation.” He tried to make a run for it, but I put out a hand and grasped him by one skinny arm. “What is it with you? You really wanna go outside and get smeared across the sidewalk?” “The big apes can protect me. I’m paying enough for their services.” His voice was high-pitched and nasal, and it made the hairs on the back of my neck bristle. Myk gave him the stink eye and Zig signed something very rude. Sugar pouted. “It isn’t safe outside even with protection.”
The opening of ‘Sam Nero and the Ladykiller’ the first story in Pulling the Rug IV by Jane Jago and is free to download today 14 December 2022.
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Always the cuckoo in the Billings family nest, it was time for Helena to fly. She studied the woman within the fussy parlour for any acknowledgement but her mother stared resolutely out a window from her position in an ornate, uncomfortable armchair. Her hair cinched into a tight ordered bun and her expression forbidding. Helena’s travelling cloak draped from her shoulders, curtaining the growing mound of her abdomen, and she deliberately resisted straightening her bonnet that sat slightly askew upon her head—red hair escaping in unruly ringlets tickling her face and back of her neck. The disarray would annoy her mother. A baby on the way and no husband to support her, Helena expected no help from those she had called family for nearly one-and-twenty years, but her mother blaming Helena and refusing to acknowledge her stung less than her father not standing up to his wife. Helena’s only recourse had been to write to her beloved grandfather in Lincolnshire. She would be eternally grateful to George Stockton of Redway Acres stable, for welcoming her with open arms. Helena spoke sadly, “Goodbye, Mother.” Two figures shuffled in the hallway to Helena’s left, pulling at her attention. Her father’s appearance was rather haggard—the hair at his temples greyer than ever, his dark hair now more salt and pepper. No doubt his wife’s complaints about their daughter exacting their toll. Helena’s younger brother’s hair was as dark as their father’s had once been, and he filled the space with a midriff almost as large as her own. They nodded goodbye, then followed their father outside to the coach their grandfather had sent for her. “Am I to write, Papa?” Helena asked, searing every line of his face to memory lest she never see him again. “No, it will only cause her, and therefore me, more angst. Ask George to advise me of your safe arrival. That is all.” The tension in her father’s voice caused hope to flicker that perhaps he, more than anyone else, felt the pain of her leaving. If that was the case, he chose not to show it. She kept her tears and fears in check. “Goodbye, Papa.”
Two days later, the countryside became more familiar as Helena rubbed her rounded stomach with relief. The prolonged days of travel caused an ache in her back, and she longed to stretch her legs. Helena and her companions enjoyed three days of good weather during their sixty-mile journey. Accompanying her was Ruth Robertson, the Billings’ cook, and Ruth’s two young children. Following behind, driving a cart heavy with their belongings, Helena occasionally spied Ruth’s husband, John, her greater concern the large, grey stallion hitched to the cart tail. Thankfully, Perseus maintained the leisurely pace with ease and equanimity. Helena, who shared her grandfather’s love of horses and had spent much of her time in her family’s stable helping John, held a fondness in her heart for the couple. “Baby should be ‘ere in October, ma’am,” Ruth spoke kindly to her new mistress. “It sounds strange when you call me ma’am. I hope it’s a girl.” “Am I to call you Mrs. Andrews, then?” Ruth smiled. Helena’s left thumb toyed with the ring on that hand.
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Defeat was always a bitter cup from which to have to swallow, but Kahina Sarava determined from the first that it should not define her. True, she now had to endure exile in the grand house she liked the least of all she owned. It was a sprawling, over-ornate residence built in the heart of great natural beauty and originally intended as a place where she could entertain and impress the powers of Central. It suited her political enemies to have her there, isolated and cut off from any place of influence. But, it was not entirely without benefit. Freed from the endless need to joust for political advantage, she had considerably more time for some of the other things that mattered. Such as pursuing her lifetime’s work: Future Data. So she stood, back straight, defying her age as the fussily dressed man climbed from his vehicle and walked the short distance to where she waited in front of the main door to her house. The security people who flanked her on either side, guards set to both protect and contain her, stiffened visibly as her visitor approached. “Garn, what a delight to see you.” She had been expecting him. Though when the brief message informing her of a visitor had come through earlier that day, his name had not been mentioned. “I think this must be the first time we’ve had a get together since you arrested me. What would bring you all the way from Central to visit me in person? I am sure you could gloat quite adequately over link.” He was a big man in many uses of the word, and it amused her to make him feel uncomfortable. There was little enough by way of human entertainment for her here and no small responsibility for her incarceration rested on his shoulders. “Right,” he said, and she could see he was sweating despite the temperature being pleasantly cool. “Maybe we could go in and talk somewhere a little more private.” “I can offer you anything here, except privacy.” She made an elegant gesture with her hands, unfolding them to indicate the attentive security detail. “I am not permitted that even when I sleep. My link connections are watched and my conversations monitored.” Garn Jecks seemed unperturbed, but then his mind was not very flexible. If he had arrived with a fixed idea of some objective he wished to achieve, that would be both the full extent and narrow focus of his thinking. Laser like — if a laser were some solid substance and not fluid photons. Such inability to embrace the broadest view whilst still keeping the details in sight irritated Kahina. Her own mind suffered no such limitations, and she tolerated it poorly in others. “I will make the necessary arrangements,” he told her. Matching actions to words, he turned to issue brief orders to the security detail, then added more by link to the invisible watchers who controlled the remote monitoring of her residence. They all moved quickly to obey, but then he was their supreme commander, the man in charge of the Coalition Security Force. A short time later, Kahina found herself sitting in her favourite room, ambianced to remind her of her mother’s study with shelves of books and curios, heavy looping curtains at the windows and the antique wooden desk. She had chosen not to occupy the desk, Jecks wasn’t someone who would be in the slightest bit intimidated by her doing so. Instead, she sat in one of the comfortable, deep-cushioned chairs set either side of a beautifully carved and inlaid table. Jecks sat opposite her having just dismissed the last of his entourage. He was visibly discomfited. Kahina played the perfect hostess. “Can I offer you any refreshments? It’s not the shortest of hops here from Central.” “Right. It’s not. But thank you, no. I’m a bit pressed for time.” She couldn’t resist another dig. “I am fully accessible by link, you know.” Jecks didn’t trouble to answer that. His preoccupation was blinding him and Kahina wondered if the poor man was even aware how much that showed. “There has been a — a development.” “A development?” He almost squirmed. “I have just received some information which has brought into question our previous conclusions regarding the Future Data project.” Kahina considered feigning surprise. “Oh?” Jecks looked as if he had swallowed something that settled ill in his stomach. For a moment, he glared at her. “So you already knew.” She didn’t trouble to reply, instead allowing her expression to reflect the untroubled confidence she was feeling. Jecks muttered something under his breath then started pulling up a remote screen of what appeared to be some security surveillance. Not the best quality and from a static camera, but when he zoomed the image and froze it, the result was perfectly clear. “Oh dear,” Kahina said gently. “How very embarrassing for you. I wonder what you plan to do about that?” Jecks pulled at his neckline as if it were too close about his throat. “It’s not what you…” “Oh, but I rather think it is.” The first taste of victory after such a bitter defeat and three years of exile was so sweet. She leaned forward, unable to suppress her delight and not caring that it showed. “I rather think you need me again.” Jecks physically recoiled from her. “Kahina, I — “ “Var Sarava,” she corrected him. He looked as though she had slapped him hard across the face and Kahina smiled. “You are of course quite right. I knew already. Or should I be more accurate and say that Future Data informed me of there being a high probability that those two would resurface in this timeframe.” “Then you know why I came.” Jecks sounded defeated now, resigned to some inevitable and inescapable fate. Which, Kahina supposed, was not too far from the truth of things. “Of course I don’t know,” she snapped. “I’m not a mind reader. Future Data may inform me what is likely to occur, but it’s not yet capable of attributing motive to the behaviours it predicts. Why did you come?” “It wasn’t my first choice, but Ilke Dray suggested…” Jecks stopped himself and took a breath instead. Wise man. Kahina could feel the pressure of her fingers closing into tight claws. “How is dear Ilke these days?” Then she lifted a forbidding hand, forcing the fingers to uncurl, as Jecks opened his mouth to tell her. “No. I really don’t want to know. I’m sure she will be going about her busy little life in her busy little way. And of course you don’t need to tell me why you are here, that much is obvious. What I want to know is what do you have to offer me in exchange for my assistance at this time?” Jecks wore the look of a man being asked to sell his mother. “Var Sarava, you can’t seriously intend to turn the security of the Coalition into an auction?” “Why not? I have what you need, and you can procure it nowhere else. That would seem to me the basis of a price negotiation. I am sure you have authorisation to offer me something or you wouldn’t have come.” “I can’t reverse the decision of the courts. I can’t turn back the clock and restore your good name. I can’t undo what has happened.” He sounded quite upset about it too. Kahina got to her feet as gracefully as her age allowed and crossed the room to the antique desk. She loved the smooth feel of the polished wood as she slid her hand beneath it to release a secret catch. It was a wonderfully archaic hiding place. She slipped the data stick into her hand and turned back to Jecks, holding it up for him to see. “This is everything you need to know to deal with them — if you are willing to pay the price I ask.” “I’m not authorised to offer you anything.” He sounded in pain. “Then it’s good that I’m not asking you for any ‘thing’. I have only one demand to make.” “The head of Ilke Dray?” Jecks suggested, his voice slightly strangled. And, for a moment, Kahina had to wonder if he was being serious. Perhaps he was. “I have no idea what I might do with such a completely vacuous item,” she told him. “No. I couldn’t care less about Ilke. And the price I’m going to ask isn’t unduly expensive. I merely need to know you will pay it when the time comes.” “What is it?” “I want Durban Chola.” She wasn’t sure if it was relief or appalled amusement that motivated his response. “Chola? What the…? I mean, why?” “I really rather think that’s my business, don’t you?” Jecks looked as though he was being forced to swallow a large, irregularly shaped solid object. “Right. Yes. Of course. I think we can do that.” It was that easy. Crossing back to the chairs, she settled herself comfortably again before holding out the data stick to Jecks. He took it as if it were a sacred relic, then busied himself with his links for a few moments as he prepared it to read. She could tell when he had done so. His expression shifted. Hardened. “This contains nothing. Just two names.” “That is more than enough for now, I assure you. If you were intelligent enough it would be all you needed, but I am quite aware you will be returning to ask me for further guidance.” It was why she felt so confident that he would pay her price in the end. Jecks was frowning as if trying to read some deeper meaning into what he had been given. “One is someone I know quite well and I can see the sense in it, they’ve worked on this before — but who in the name of all sanity is Halkom Dugsdall?” Kahina, her objective achieved, sat back serenely and smiled.
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The door of the staff dining room banged open and the handsome figure of Launcelot Gribble stood in the doorway with his romantically tousled head held high. “I think I’ve just broken my geek,” he announced. The Bursar sighed and looked up from the column of figures she was conning. “Again? And what makes you think this one is broken?” “He’s just sitting staring into the middle distance and making strange sheep-like noises.” Matron gave the dramatic figure in the doorway a look of deep dislike before grinding out her evil-smelling cheroot and heaving herself to her feet. She headed for the door, and as she passed Gribble she smacked him solidly across the back of the head with one large red hand. “Ouch. That hurt.” She didn’t even bother to answer him, just stalked along the dusty corridor like a vengeful leviathan. Gribble dropped his pose of romantic ennui and ruefully rubbed his head. “Why’d old iron tits decide to smack me around the head?” Democratic Runes looked up from the volume of arcane verse he was studying and regarded his colleague in disbelief. “Why wouldn’t she? You break geeks and she gets to fix them. How many is it this year?” Gribble studied his feet and muttered something unintelligible. “Come again?” “This one is number thirteen.” “Who else is egotistical enough to break geeks at that rate. Thirteen down and it’s only the ninth moon. You are a fucking liability, my friend.” Gribble hunched a shoulder and turned his startlingly green gaze on the sturdy figure of the Bursar. “I’ll just go choose another geek then, shall I?” “No. Indeed you will not. There have been complaints. The University has generated a memo. Allow me to read it to you. ‘It has come to our attention that the Chair of Ancient Scrolls is somewhat careless of the technicians who assist him in his work. This is unsatisfactory. Should any more instances occur, the choice of assistant is to be removed from his remit’.” “What are you saying?” “I’m saying that you don’t get to choose. You will be assigned a geek. And proper contracts will be signed.” Gribble bridled. “I don’t sign contracts. It’s an honour to be chosen to help me.” “As of now you do sign contracts. Because if you don’t, you don’t get a geek. And shut your mouth – you look stupid with it half open.” The Bursar got up and jerked a thumb at the gaping professor. “My office. Now.” In the skinny, cluttered office, Gribble looked around for a seat. He found no surface that wasn’t covered with paper. “Why do you have so much paperwork? Surely most of your accounts and stuff could be done on the computer.” “It could, if the University was not averse to The Motherboard knowing all our business. But we aren’t here to discuss my conditions of employment, it’s the conditions under which you employ your geeks that are in dispute.” “Dispute?” Gribble pushed out his lip in a show of boyish petulance, before he remembered that the Bursar was not of an ilk to be cajoled or seduced by the likes of him. Instead he hunched a shoulder. “Where do I sign?” “I thought you might see sense,” her smile was just on the acceptable side of smug. But only just. Scrabbling about in the teetering pile of paper on the windowsill, she dragged out a sizeable parchment and unfolded it. “You sign here, here, here and here.” Gribble pulled a pen out of his pocket and signed as indicated. The Bursar inserted the signed document in a slot in the wall and after a few seconds a disembodied voice filled the air. “Contract duly witnessed.” The unwieldy parchment slowly reversed out of the slot to fall unnoticed to the floor. Gribble eyed the Bursar. “Right. When do I get my geek?” “Tomorrow morning.” He opened his mouth to argue, then his face caught up with his brain and he snapped his teeth together. “Good thinking. Now cut along. I’ve got work to do.” The Bursar waved a wrinkled hand in dismissal. Even an ego as colossal as Gribble’s recognised the pointlessness of arguing with a tetchy female colleague who was not only senior to him in the University hierarchy, but who also disliked him quite a lot. He left the dusty confines of the office, shutting the door behind him with exaggerated care before stomping along the disorienting curve of the corridor cursing and kicking random pieces of furniture. Behind him, the Bursar listened to muffled swearing and assorted crashes. The smile that spread across her face made her look like a crocodile that smells fresh meat. “You, my temperamental young colleague, ain’t seen nothing yet.” She returned to her figures, obscurely comforted by the hard lesson Gribble was about to be taught.
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They were having a fine day out on the hills. Felix had mastered the rudiments of riding quickly and today he was managing to control his stubborn little mount so well that Caudinus had abandoned the leading rein. Having eaten the lunch Cookie packed for them, Felix was running around playing at being a legionary soldier whilst his father and Dai shared a half-bottle of local wine and the ponies chomped contentedly at the grass nearby. The land here was bleak but beautiful, with ridges of rock, mantled in greenery, jutting into the sky and limiting the horizon from roughly rolling hills. A brisk breeze ruffled hair, lifting the heat of an unclouded sun and somewhere above them a bird keened as it traced an invisible circle overhead. Scant sign of human habitation disturbed Dai’s view, aside from the odd isolated dwelling, little more than drystone shacks with crude slating culled from local stone where crofter families lived. Their sheep, made small by distance were puffs of grey, like dandelion seed heads, against the scrub. This was the hinterland of Britannia, never one of the richer or more developed provinces, at its most primal. “I’m sorry to spoil the day.” Caudinus voice broke into Dai’s thoughts. “But this wasn’t only about taking Felix for a riding lesson.” Dai was not too surprised. He had caught the note of significance in the older man’s voice when he had called yesterday suggesting he brought his family over to Villa Papaverus and that the three of them should go for a ride. “So what’s up?” Caudinus shifted his position on the rough wool blanket they had thrown over the grass and thistles. “I’m not sure it is anything, but it might be and I didn’t want to worry Cariad or Julia so this seemed the best way we could talk without either of them realising we had been.” “I can see that,” Dai agreed. The last thing he would want for Julia, so close to her due date now, was anything to worry about. “What’s the problem?” “I have had a couple of anonymous threats delivered to my admin staff in the last few days. Unpleasant things – one found their cat mutilated and a message attached to it saying they should tell me to back the right people. Then night before last another was jumped by two masked men and told to tell me that I shouldn’t get in the way of progress.” He broke off. “I might even have some idea who might be involved. A man called Aled Blaenau. He came to see me at the end of last month on behalf of some clients of his, he said. He was hinting heavily that he would be willing to bribe me to nod through a substantial transaction on some potentially contaminated land for his backers. He never actually came out and said so, of course, or I’d have nailed him for it and he denied that was what he meant when I threw it back in his face. I sent him away in no doubt that his efforts were more likely to be counter-productive than anything. At the time I thought he was just a lobbyist who had been over enthusiastic, but now…” “You didn’t report any of this to Bryn?” Caudinus shook his head. “I wanted to bring it to you rather than do anything official. As I said, I don’t want our families to become alarmed.” The sunny day seemed to grow darker and Dai felt a cloud pass over his soul. “Alright I’ll get on it soon as I’m back in work tomorrow. Nothing official until we have something solid to go on.” Caudinus nodded and got to his feet. “Thank you, I appreciate that. But now we’d best get these ponies back home.” A few minutes later they began heading back to the farm. Their easiest way led through a small wood of stunted oaks and ash trees and that was when it happened. Dai vaguely recalled something stinging his neck and as he lifted a hand to swat it away, the world had turned upside down and slid out of sight into a dark tunnel.
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Carnival, the night when the unrestrained appetites of the barrios would come leaping and prancing up the cobbled alleys into the very heart of to the city. The night when the fountains in even the meanest streets would run blood-red with wine, and masked women in diaphanous dominos would flirt with danger under sulphurous lanterns. Papa Ouedo always leads the dance, with his huge bare feet slapping out a staccato rhythm on the hot stones and his face painted as white as chalk. Behind him, the boys and girls of the samba schools strut and posture – their semi-naked bodies slick with sweat and other effluvia. On this one night of the year, when the sky is lit by a million shooting stars, and the city by a thousand hissing gas lamps, the dancers will come right into the Piazza del Innocenti, polluting the atmosphere with their raucous music and the acrid aromas of sweat and sex. Like every year since time immemorial, the balconies around the great square are set to be packed with the wealthy and aristocratic citizenry, who have their own traditions of lechery and gluttony to uphold as they celebrate Carnival in the safety of their marble-walled palaces. When the music was at its hottest and most demanding, a small figure slipped unnoticed through the servants’ door of the noblest of all the noble houses. She was dressed as Columbine, in clinging cloud-grey draperies of the finest silk, and masked in exquisite feathers of black and white through which her eyes shone like blue diamonds. All she knew was that He would be dressed as Harlequin, and He would know her as she knew Him. Her heart pounded with some little fear, as it was dangerous to be out alone on any night, even here in the pampered streets of the uber-wealthy, but tonight it was pure insanity for a gently-bred virgin to be under the faraway sky. She knew this just as surely as she knew her own name, but it very quickly came not to matter. The music and the danger, and the sounds and scents of Carnival filled her blood like the bubbles in her father’s oldest champagne – and she felt alive. She accepted the loan of a cup to scoop rough red wine from the nearest fountain and felt its thickness caress her throat. She tossed the cup back to a satyr with very prominent male parts and ran off laughing. For the most part, she ignored the plucking hands and caressing fingers, although it did amuse her to permit a kiss here and there – mostly, it must be said, from the blood-red lips of other Columbines. If there were a hundred more Columbines out there in the streets, there must have been a thousand Harlequins, many of whom called her and stretched out their hands towards her slender form. But she evaded them easily, slipping in and out of the dancers like a monochrome ghost. There were so many that her head spun. So many multicoloured costumes, so many black masks, so many who would have gladly borne her company, but none called to her soul. For a moment her shoulders drooped, but she was of high courage and she plunged into the narrow twisting alleys that led ever downwards to the darkness and danger of the slums that fringed the city like grubby skirts. As it grew darker she became aware of a subliminal pull that was leading her eastwards towards one of the towered gates in the city wall. When she got there, the gate stood open and the only guard to be seen was leaning on his pike and peering owlishly at the flood of humanity that ebbed and flowed through the portal. She had never ventured beyond the gates of the city but now she knew her way led over the narrow stone bridge that spanned a mile-deep gorge. Out she went, keeping to the centre of the causeway away from the beckoning edge. She felt more than a little envy for those who pranced along the stone parapet but feared that her own vertigo would cause her to cast herself into the abyss should she venture too close to that tempting drop. Once back on firm ground, her feet took her, unresisting, in the direction of a huge bonfire on which some sort of an animal seemed to be roasting, sending oily smoke up into the blackness overhead. For a moment she felt completely disoriented and her fear seemed to communicate itself to the crowd around the fire, as they turned their smoke-blackened faces towards her and she could hear the sound of their teeth snapping together. A woman swore harshly at the interloper, but Columbine could hear nothing, all she understood was that the speaker’s mouth moved and a gobbet of greenish phlegm landed on the hem of her cobwebby gown. The very air around her thickened with danger and she knew not whether to run or stay. A group of young women began to move towards her, with malice brightening their faces, and outstretched grasping fingers, and eyes full of contempt for her white softness. At that, even Columbine’s bright courage failed her, and she felt her heart leap to her throat. She was about to pick up her skirts and run for her life when she saw Him. He was wading through the crowd towards her like a fisherman wades the shallows of the river. He was a huge tatterdemalion figure, whose bright silks barely covered a body muscled as an ox and tattooed with strange symbols. She looked into the black lightlessness of his eyes and thought he would not be gentle with her, although she made no resistance when he bent and lifted her high against his chest. As it turned out, she maligned him. His treatment of her was almost tender and although there was pain it was no more than that which was inevitable. He returned her to her father’s house just as dawn was lending a sickly yellow light to the eastern sky. As she put her hand on the latch He opened his mouth to speak, but she stopped Him with her small fingers against his lips and went inside. In the fullness of time, an heir to the great banking house of Grimalka was born and there was rejoicing in the city. On the night of Carnival, Serena Grimalka sat in a brightly lit window with her son in her arms. There was one more duty for Columbine to accomplish. She scanned the crowd, wondering if he would even come. When the proceedings in the square were at their loudest and most debauched, she saw Him. It was as if the crowds parted and made way for the bulky figure to come and stand by the window. Impelled by who knew what impulse, Serena curtseyed very low before turning the child to face the glass. The baby opened his black eyes and for a long moment he and his father looked at each other. Then the tattered Harlequin turned away. Serena did not ever see Him again, and she settled into a quietly happy marriage with the gentle scholarly cousin her father chose for her. She never sought to venture out on Carnival night, even though the rhythm of the drums was like a drug in her blood and she knew that half her soul belonged to a tatterdemalion Harlequin with huge dirty hands…
‘Columbine’ from Pulling the Rug iii, a collection of short stories and poems by Jane Jagowhich is free to download today 10 December 2022.
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We here at the Working Title Blog think that as things have been pretty gloomy and expensive lately we can cheer everyone up with a FREE GIFT every day until Christmas!
So break out the hot chocolate, the mulled wine or the festive spirit of your choice, find a comfortable place to curl up and start reading today’s free gift – then click the link at the bottom to download the entire book for free and keep reading.
Have a fabulous festive season!
The first time he had seen it, from above, Stin thought the far-spreading sprawl of low rise, square, flat-roofed buildings looked like someone upturned a truckload of children’s play blocks. Or not. The shapes were too uneven. Maybe more like a skip full of builders’ rubble, emptied out in the middle of nowhere. The buildings were all shades of ochre, the newer ones more brown or orange, the older ones yellowed and greying. Some close pressed along narrow streets. Others, more segregated in their own patch of land with courtyards and walls. The double dome of the tiny spaceport bubbled up, incongruous, in the midst of it all and anywhere else in the galaxy there would be ninety million health and safety regulators screaming that the residential buildings were too close. Here, though, there was no one with sufficient authority to object – even if anyone had actually cared. From the domes, a street ran to the main square and then continued pretty much straight on until it came to the only other building of real substance. Dominating the mud-brick built housing and offering a kind of low-tech counterpart to the spaceport domes, the stone-built citadel stood as a testament to local architecture, with its odd half-cylinder tower and its own microcosm of courtyards and housing gathered around the curtain wall. This was the city of Keran. The planetary capital of Temsevar which was surely the most grimly benighted world in known space. It stood – or more sort of slumped – in a vast plain which stretched, dizzyingly, as far as his eyes could see in every direction, bleak and empty with nothing taller than knee-high bushes and an odd grey-green grass which grew all over. Someone told Stin that before the spaceport, the settlement had just been a trading post centred on the citadel. Back then, it had only a scant handful of permanent residents and a high turnover of the weird tattoo covered nomads, whose tribes ranged the plains around, moving all the time to avoid their livestock over-grazing the sparse foliage. In some ways, he reflected, nothing much had changed – only the city had grown and now the nomads came from beyond the sky and were much fewer in number. During the short summer the locals told him Keran was a dust bowl and throughout the long winter, it was a frozen hell. For Stin, it was all alien. A place of exile. First impressions always count and he had been left here in the winter. Adjectives that sprang to mind when he thought how he would describe it to people when – if – he got home again were: bleak, desolate, barren and bitter – like finding himself stranded in a gigantic cold-storage compartment. The memory of standing in the vacant dock looking at the empty space that had been occupied by the ship he arrived in earlier that same day, was still vivid. And that of the voice behind him full of friendly sympathy. “She left without you? Well, no worries, it happens here. You’re not the first and I’m sure you won’t be the last. You’ll get off in a year or two, just might have to earn yourself a bit to pay the passage.” He turned to see the speaker, a short man with a round face and a balding fuzz of dark hair. “I don’t know why she – “ The round face broke up into a gnomish smile. “You’d not be standing here if you did, would you? Anyway, I’m Agernilio Tavi, but everyone calls me Gernie. I’m the one-man band who keeps the port here running.” “Stin. Stinian Sabas. I’m the dumb fool who just got dumped by his girlfriend. Now I guess I’m stranded.” “You and me both, only I’ve stuck it out here the last two and a half decades. Oh man, your face. Don’t look so worried – I chose to stay.” Gernie, he discovered, was the unofficial deity of the spaceport. He ran the place as his own private business venture and that made him the most important person in the whole of Keran. He was the gatekeeper. The one who controlled access to the rest of the galaxy, the one who could arrange for cargos to be shipped in or out. Everything offworld was prized here – as long as it wasn’t high-tech dependent. The most highly sought after offworld items were weaponry and medical supplies. These would be purchased or exchanged for whatever local trade could offer – exotic food and drink, art and artefacts, some semi-precious stones and metals. Most of what was traded out didn’t come from Keran or even from the same continent. Most trade came – and went – on the backs of the local beasts of burden. These ponies were ugly beasts, with short, stubby ears, broad backs and thick coats, but had peculiar looking split-hooved feet which could spread and grip on soft ground or ice. They would carry trade goods in pack trains, along the single broad road which stretched to the seaport of Vinbrith, just out of sight over the horizon. Stin went to Vinbrith the once. It had a pretty sounding name and looked totally picturesque from a distance, the cute cottage-like dwellings clinging to the cliffs above the harbour, the little ships bobbing on the tide and the huge wooden wheels turning slowly. It was perhaps only when you saw the wheels, used to lift the cargos on wooden platforms up the sheer cliff face, were treadmills with three ranks of six men chained in together, that the illusion began to fall away. That and the stench. Pretty as a picture from afar, but close to Vinbrith was worse than Keran – and that was saying something. But from there, wooden-built sailing ships carried goods of all sorts to and from the other continent of the planet, which, Stin had been told, was ruled by someone they called ‘The Overlord’ and held the vast majority of the planet’s population and most all of its resources. Gernie found him the work. There were a lot of things that needed doing which the locals lacked the technical skill to achieve. It wasn’t good pay, but at least it would earn him passage offworld – eventually. Stin was roped in to help keep the port functional and to spell Gernie manning the archaic transceiver which was set up with the one solitary comms satellite in orbit above the planet. The system was so primitive that it couldn’t even access regular link-based FTL transmissions. That meant that the only real contact the planet ever got with the rest of the galaxy came via the few ships that visited Temsevar each year. But those incoming ships had to communicate through the satellite as the spaceport couldn’t talk directly to them, it was too far behind modern link technology to do so. It was when he learned that particular fact that Stin finally realised this place wasn’t just at the back of beyond like most Periphery worlds, it was actually a good few kiloparsecs behind the back of beyond.
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BEING OLD
I have just seen my backside in shorts And it’s almost as bad as I thought It’s as broad is a ship And my bum cheeks have slipped Those are hips built for sitting, not sport
FESTIVE ELD
Deck the house with chains of paper Nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah Clout the kids and cut a caper Nah, nah etc Fill the socks up Drain the money Nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah January isn’t funny Nah, nah etc
ENLIGHTENMENT
She sat outside her cave. Her face was as seamed as the striated rocks behind her, and grime was ingrained into every crusty crack. But still they came. The rich, the famous, the desperate, all seeking enlightened words. To some she vouchsafed nothing and they crept away, ashamed. To others she gave but one word of hope. The third group bathed in the almost sightless seeming whiteness of her eyes and heard her words of wisdom. When the last named supplicant backed away, she plugged her iPhone into its solar charger and offered a silent prayer of thanks for Google.
Growing Old (Dis)Gracefully by Jane Jagois a slim volume of limericks (many limericks), verse and short fiction whose sole function is to stick two fingers up at growing old and the world around us as we grow old. You can download it for free today 8 December 2022.
Come back tomorrow to collect your next free gift!
We here at the Working Title Blog think that as things have been pretty gloomy and expensive lately we can cheer everyone up with a FREE GIFT every day until Christmas!
So break out the hot chocolate, the mulled wine or the festive spirit of your choice, find a comfortable place to curl up and start reading today’s free gift – then click the link at the bottom to download the entire book for free and keep reading.
Have a fabulous festive season!
Turning out for a dawn raid was one of the aspects of his old job as a vigiles investigator in Londinium that Dai Llewellyn had imagined would not be featuring in the elevated role he now held as Submagistratus for Demetae and Cornovii based in Viriconium. He would have been quite happy to leave it in the capable hands of his Senior Investigator, Bryn Cartivel and the small group of grim faced Praetorians on temporary secondment, under their decanus, Brutus Gaius Gallus. But orders were orders and these came from Rome. The Magistratus had been regretful about it. “I know you don’t want to go careering over the countryside at the moment, but this is something a bit more important than just a theft. It’s part of an Empire wide operation against a major criminal organisation and I need you there as my eyes and ears.” It didn’t help that the Magistratus, Lucius Ambrosius Caudinus, was also Dai’s brother-in-law, thus making any excuses to get out of the duty pretty much impossible. Normally he would not have minded, but then normally he was not distracted by worry about his wife. Notwithstanding his reluctance, after a few days of preparation he was sitting in an all-wheel somewhere along a dirt track that led to an isolated villa halfway up a mountain, sipping thermos-tea from a paper cup, whilst out in the dark and the cold his vigiles and the praetorians surrounded the building. Dai knew he was going to miss the extra security that Gallus and his men provided on operations like this. They were well armed, elite troops. His vigiles were non-citizens to a woman and man which meant they were forbidden by law to bear arms and when the praetorian detachment returned to Londinium after its six-month secondment at the end of the month, Dai would be faced with having to request armed support of a much less reliable nature. The door opened, letting in an icy blast and Bryn stood by the vehicle, greying hair tied back and half-hidden under a knitted hat, breath condensing in the dim light. He held a satphone in one hand. “Everyone’s in place. Just need your word to go in, Bard.” Dai reached over and tipped the remains of his tea out of the door, onto the frozen gravel. “Then let’s go wake Vibius up.”
You can keep reading Dying for a Vacationby E.M. Swift-Hook and Jane Jagofor free if you download it today 7 December 2022.8/9 December 2022 (something went wrong so we’ve had to reschedule. Sorry!)
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