Who am I?
She had been ripped into pieces and put back together so many times only to be torn apart again, that she didn’t know the answer any more. If she ever really had.
Raine Perselle stared through the window at the dark clouds overhead. It was raining. Heavily. She hated it. It made her think of the few days she spent in school where she’d been unwanted from the moment she crossed the yard.
Her guardian dropped her by the gate and told her to go in and find the teacher. There were a group of kids in the yard, playing despite the fine drizzle falling from a grey sky. Two were twirling a rope and the others jumped in and out. She’d thought it looked fun and was going to ask if she could join. Then she heard the chanting.
Raine, go away.
We want to play.
We don’t want you
Raine here today.
She’d felt so bad inside she wanted to scream. Instead, she’d piled into them fists flying. After that, no one wanted her in the school for real. So her guardian took her out again. And then it was just the two of them in the small ex-prospectors cabin halfway up a mountain. The two of them and the hollow emptiness where her mother should have been.
Except she wasn’t Raine’s mother. But Raine hadn’t known that back then. Back then it had been different. Memories of being held and feeling safe. Of playing daft games. Of being happy. Yes, there had been the boyfriends who came and went and yes, they’d moved around a lot. She said it was so they could see a lot of interesting places. But it had meant Raine never got to have many friends, except a few she’d got to know through links. But Raine had always known she came first. Then one day she just wasn’t there. And Raine was left with the cold-eyed woman who said she was Raine’s guardian.
It might have been yesterday the memory was so clear in her mind, not years ago when she was still a little kid. They’d been camping out in a cabin on a wilderness world as she wanted to paint the unspoiled mountains. A kind of vacation. Just the two of them for once. There was nothing much there apart from the wilderness. Not even any link access.
The cabin was very basic, it had a room with two beds and a bigger room with everything else. There was no proper hygiene suite, just an outbuilding with a hole in the ground and water had to be pumped up from a bore. She loved all that, but Raine liked it better when they were in proper places.
Raine had gone to bed with the usual hugs and smiles from her but woke to find herself alone in the cabin. Alone except for an old woman with cold-eyes who was doing something to a dead animal with a knife. She’d put the knife down and wiped the red from her hands on a cloth, then crossed over and looked down at Raine.
“You’re awake. Good. Go fetch some wood. Be sure it’s dry.”
“But…”
“Don’t you dare argue with me you little bitch. Just get the wood.”
She’d been too shocked to be frightened. “I don’t have to do what you say. Where’s my mother?”
The slap had been hard enough to make her stagger back. Raine wanted to shriek, to cry. But she’d stood there, nursing her sore face with one hand and glared back at the old woman. For some reason that seemed to change her mood. Almost as if she was pleased Raine stood her ground.
“You will get the wood,” the old woman insisted. “Then we can eat. Then I will tell you.”
Var Tynacar.
That was the old woman’s name. If she had a first name, Raine never discovered it. That first day, after Raine gathered the wood and followed instructions to help cook their meal, Var Tynacar told her that she was the older sister of her mother’s last boyfriend. She said that her mother had left Raine there as she had needed to go away for a while and she had appointed Var Tynacar to be Raine’s guardian. At the time, Raine had believed it. Now she wondered if it had ever been true. Any of it.
Life on Tranch, as the planet was known, was not all wild woods and people panning for precious metal up in the mountains. There was a half-way decent settlement with a spaceport, medical clinic and the school. Tranchtown. It was all grey block buildings, but then just about everywhere on the Periphery was like that. Their cabin was not even too far from the place. Near enough that Raine could have gone to the school. If they’d have taken her. But that hadn’t worked out. So she had learned from her guardian.
After that first slap, she’d not ever been hit again. Var Tynacar sometimes seemed to quite like her. She’d even smile when Raine did well. And as most of the lessons were things Raine found she liked to learn and was good at, she often did well. The lessons had names different from what she was used to. Tracking. Surveillance. Agility. Endurance. And when they got a passive link set up in the cabin she was able to study regular stuff too. Like any regular kid. She realised her guardian wasn’t as old as she’d thought. Older than her, but not old. No one as fast, fit and athletic could be that old.
Once, four of the prospectors who lived well up the trail rolled up at the cabin high on recs and wanting sex. When they didn’t take no for an answer, her guardian had killed them all. Her only weapon, the gutting knife. The men were all wearing snubs. Raine helped her drop the bodies down a sinkhole. So no, Var Tynacar wasn’t old.
Each cycle they’d go to the town for supplies and then her guardian would leave Raine in an eatery with free run of the menu whilst she went to the spaceport. Raine knew that because she’d followed once, using the skills she’d been taught to keep out of sight. But what her guardian did in there, Raine had no idea.
It was a bit over three years since she had arrived on Tranch when on one such visit, her guardian came back to the eatery looking like she was ill. She’d not stopped to eat and had made Raine leave half her own meal, ignoring Raine completely until they were back home. Then she had still ignored her questions.
“Just pack what you need for a few days. We’re leaving.”
“But we can’t leave. What if my mother…?”
“She wasn’t your mother and she isn’t coming back.”
And that was that. In those few words, Raine had all that remained of her life, who she was—who she’d thought she was—scooped out from inside her. Like when Var Tynacar was scooping the guts out from an animal she’d killed to eat.
“All I know is the Perselles bought you from a stranger on some planet called Temsevar. So I’m taking you back there. Maybe you can find your real family. Someone to take care of you. I can’t. I have work to do.”
So that was how her guardian had really seen her? Taking in a stray and then sending it back when it became inconvenient?
Raine didn’t say much all the way to Temsevar.
She couldn’t.
Someone had sliced her open, taken her heart out and put it in cryostorage.

From Iconoclast: A Necessary End by E.M Swift-Hook, the final book of Fortune’s Fools.

As a responsible adult
It’s your destiny
To protect the world
From eejits like me
To not allow my mind and pen
To cut the stupid deep
And not write stuff so horrible
It bubbles in their sleep
As a responsible adult
You are sensible and kind
And I’m the jester in your court
With the twisty rhyming mind

©️jj 2022

Prunella teaches you how to cook like a toff!

You know a bad day is about to get worse when you are in the kitchen quietly chugging the cooking brandy and the Hon. Rodney invades your space with a fatuous smile running down his pinkly chubby chops. He looks at you with the Fundador in your fist and his smile fades, leaving behind only the vague mulishness of a public school boy with a secret. You attempt a smile and he perks up instantly.
“I say, old girl, I’ve bought one of those outdoor kitchen thingies. Thought it was about time yrs truly helped out with the old commissariat.”
This is the point where your heart attempts to drop out of your bottom, and a headache beyond even the power of brandy from the bottle leaps into action behind your eyes. But there is worse to come. Because the urge to burn food in the garden is not to be denied. Sadly, this is not the time to for the normally effective spousal veto, and nor will it avail you to offer to meet him halfway. He will have spent what amounts to the national debt of a small Slav republic on a metal monstrosity, and he Will use it – say what you will.
My advice is to get out a couple of heavy-bottomed tumblers and propose a toast in his best single malt. He’ll be so relieved that you are being ‘sensible’ that he won’t even grumble about you glugging back about a hundred quid’s worth of whisky in one swallow.
When the awful thing arrives, and is installed (almost inevitably by a bunch of young men with man buns and body ink and names like Bullfinch and Labrador) your deluded spouse will immediately decide to throw a party. No amount of reasoned argument will persuade him to have a practice run first. And nor will he even consider reading the instruction book (which runs to 3000 pages of very fine type badly printed).
At this point you have two courses of action open to you.
Plan A. Leave the stupid overgrown adolescent to sink in his own ordure.
Plan B. Make your own stratagem to save his face.
I, personally, lean towards the second. Having an indebted spouse is infinitely more satisfying (ultimately) than the short pleasure of watching him sink in a midden (even if it is of his own making) until the sewage closes over his prematurely balding cranium.
And what is plan B?
It’s pretty simple. Obtain, without grumble, whatever meat your deluded spouse proposes cremating and also offer to be responsible for such irrelevances as bread and salads. He will be thrilled with his wonderful wife, so much so that daily depredations to his whisky will be overlooked smilingly.
But now the crafty bit. Also purchase suitable numbers of boned chicken thighs and some bags of those skinny chips our colonial cousins call fries. Set the chicken to marinade in olive oil, garlic, herbs, and cooking brandy. When the Hon. Rodney throws the first offerings to the gods of ineptitude onto the hot coals, slide trays of chicken into the oven (after liberally daubing with someone or other’s proprietary barbecue sauce). When the flames in the ‘outdoor kitchen’ are at their highest throw the chips into the deep fryer.
They should be about ready when your red-faced and embarrassed spouse appears in the kitchen. In desperate straits.
Pat him kindly and bring out the chicken.
Help him to carry chicken and chips to the buffet table. Then help yourself to a very large whisky….

Look out for more tips on how to cook like a toff next week!

There was panic in the garden. Granny had lost a knitting needle. Nomes scuttled in every direction hunting high and low.

“We gotta find it or the ole bat’ll make our lives a misery.”

“We have but it’s a puzzle to me how it got lost. Her don’t hardly move from that bliddy tidstool.”

Brenda stopped dead. “Her don’t, do her.”

She strode back to where Granny sat, rigid and complaining.

“Stand up.” 

Even Granny obeyed when Brenda used that voice.

The needle fell from the mouldering haystack of Granny’s clothing. She grabbed it and life went back to normal.

©jj 2021

Somewhere in a Wild West that never was…

The railroad formed the first leg of the great trek to the rich lands beyond the desert, and it was rumoured that, long ago, the tracks ran from coast to coast. Nowadays, however, the railroad came to an abrupt end in a place of cattle yards, whorehouses, and bars. Hard-eyed women, and conscienceless men, preyed on the stream of humanity that poured out of the cross-continental trains as they puffed and wheezed to a halt alongside the ramshackle platform.
A dispirited-looking Church Army Band played hymns and waved collecting tins, more in hope than expectation. Behind them, a twice life size head of General Stonejaw Johnson, with his piercing eyes and pointing finger, adjured ‘upstanding young men’ and ‘modest females’ to join the Army in its fight against Shaitan and all his works. Which might have been ironic if any of the denizens of Trail End were of a mind to enjoy irony.
The Friday train came all the away from south-eastern ‘civilisation’, and its passengers had endured the swaying, clanking ride for the best part of ten days. Those who were in the first half dozen carriages fared better than their less affluent cousins in the rest of the train – whose accommodation more resembled cattle trucks than anything else.
When the train shuddered to a halt, the doors of the rear carriages burst open and a stream of humanity walked, crawled, or fell into the merciless light of the midday sun. They were converged upon by the whoremasters, slave drivers, and purveyors of dubious modes of transport who found it worth their while to endure the discomfort of a rail-end town in the name of profit.
The unsatisfactory daughters, disappointing sons, and con artists just ahead of the law, who occupied the front carriages exited the train in a rather more leisurely fashion, and most were met by family members, pre-appointed guides, or the representatives of the wagon masters retained to carry them west. There was a good deal of hand shaking and back slapping at this end of the platform, and while the sharks of every kidney circled each other a figure slipped quietly out of the train on the opposite side.
It was a slight scarlet-haired woman, dressed in functional leather boots and a khaki frock coat. She jumped lightly to the ground and reached back inside for a sturdy leather back pack. Adjusting the straps of the pack she pulled a pair of smoked goggles over her eyes and walked purposefully away from the crowds.
She crossed the goods yard and squatted down in the shadow of a ramshackle warehouse. Pulling the hood of her coat up to cover her flaming red hair she composed herself to wait. In time, the train was pulled away from the platform while its engine was laboriously turned around on an iron turntable powered by indentured labourers – humans being cheaper and more expendable than horses.
The woman sat, barely breathing and becoming less and less visible as the hours crawled past.  As far as she was able to ascertain only one person noticed her: a tall muscular stevedore with brown skin and eyes the colour of the desert sky. He nodded just once, before dropping an eyelid in a swift wink. She wondered if he might be her contact, but as thinking about it required more effort than she was prepared to expend with a long night ahead of her, she simply withdrew her mind from the surrounding area and sat motionless.

From The Redhead, the Rogue and the Railroad by Jane Jago which is available all through February for 0.99.

Because life happens…

Life is, as the poets do say,
A time to wassail and make hay.
Your time’s better spent
With joyful contempt
For those who deny themselves play.

E.M. Swift-Hook

Dying to be Innocent is the ninth Dai and Julia Mystery from Jane Jago and E.M. Swift-Hook. You can listen to this on YouTube.

Idibus Augustus MDCCLXXIX Anno Diocletiani

Julia Llewellyn was on her way home from the Asclepieion on Ynys Mon at last. She had been there, or thereabouts, for most of the last two months and hard as it was, she pushed down the turmoil of emotions which revolved in her stomach every time she thought about that and focused hard on the future.
 Firstly, she had endured a very difficult pregnancy from mid-term on, requiring extensive bedrest and the inevitable boredom and frustration that had meant. Despite all that, her son, Rhodri, had still been born six weeks early needing to be hailed off to an incubator. Then he was discovered to have a hole in his diaphragm requiring immediate surgery. Several sleepless nights followed with herself and her husband keeping watch over his tiny form, before he was declared on the mend. And then Julia had to wait for him to grow big enough to leave his incubator and come home…
She was glad for more than the obvious reasons. Her husband, Dai Llewellyn was a Submagistratus for the region of Demetae and Cornovii and she knew he was keeping something from her, holding back to protect her, as he would think. It was hard to pin him down in his brief visits, once home she was sure she would get to do so.
At last the great day had come and she was seated decorously in the back of a burly all-wheel being piloted by her friend and bodyguard, Edbert. If she had been an expecting sort of a woman, she would have expected Dai to be sitting beside her.  But he was conspicuous by his absence. She sighed a tiny sigh and kissed the downy head that rested on her breast.
“Not his fault.” Edbert’s unfeasibly deep voice broke gently into her reverie.
“What’s not who’s fault?” Julia kept her voice even for fear of waking Rhodri.
Edbert laughed softly. “It’s not Dai’s fault that he isn’t sitting beside you, you cross-grained little person.”
Julia found herself relaxing. “Catch a hot case did he?”
“Nope. Having refused to see or speak to Dai, or either of his Senior Investigators – Bryn or Gallus – for the best part of a month, Magistratus Sextus Catus Bestia called a meeting for this morning. Messaged just before we were setting out to fetch you.” His voice dripped sarcasm. “If I didn’t know better I’d think it was timed to cause maximum inconvenience.”
Julia sighed again. “He is such a petty man. I keep hoping things will improve. But it’s not likely.”
“Isn’t. And his attitude to ‘servants’ is beyond despicable.”
Julia held the baby carefully as she leaned forward and put her hand on his shoulder. 
“Bestia really is a piece of work, isn’t he? But he is just petty and that can’t hurt us.”
“I wouldn’t place any bets on that.”
“Me neither, honestly. But I can’t afford to think like that.”
“No. Nor you can. My bad. How is the little one standing up to the journey?”
“He’s fine. Had his prandium before we set out. Sleeping now. The medica said something to me just before you rolled up that was very comfortable. ‘Rhodri Ddu is a fighter and as tough as they come’. She says not to treat him any different to any other baby now. He’s all healed and a hundred percent fit.” One tear escaped and ran down her cheek, but it was a tear of thankfulness not sorrow. Her precious baby was well and could take his place in the nursery where he and his sister Aelwen would be in the care of the nursery maid Luned, who was as brave as a lioness and as tender as the touch of silk. All things considered, Julia thought today was a good day, even if the pinpricks from Dai’s boss were getting sharper and less disguised. She wondered if they were what was behind her beloved’s withdrawn mood.
The rest of the ride home passed in silence, save for Rhodri’s tiny snore. 
Just before they were due to turn onto the private road to the Villa Papaverus, Edbert stopped the car and screwed around in his seat to look at Julia with deep wisdom in his winter grey eyes. 
“A word of warning. There’s about half a hundred people waiting to greet you. If I was you I’d wait in the all-wheel and hand the little one off to Luned before you get out. What with dogs and in-laws, and that madwoman Domina Lavinia, it would be easy for you to take a tumble. Luned and me put our heads together and she has found a big old high-wheel baby carriage so everybody can see young Rhodri without crowding.”
For a moment, Julia didn’t know what to say and she felt her throat constricting. Edbert smiled and touched her cheek with the back of one huge hand.
“All a bit overwhelming ain’t it?”
“It is. And thank you my friend.” 
“Always got your back small stuff.”
“Always got yours, you big ape.”
With the shoals of emotion successfully navigated Edbert started the engine again.

Jane Jago and E.M. Swift-Hook.

You can keep reading by clicking here to snag a copy of Dying to be Innocent!

Glossary of Latin and Other Terms
Please note these are not always accurate translations, they are how these terms are used in Dai and Julia’s world.
Asclepieion – healing spa, hospital
Demetae and Cornovii – Wales and several English Midland counties including Shropshire
Ddu – dark, as in hair and/or skin
Domin-a/us – Ma’am/Sir. Used to superiors both in rank and social status
Magistratus – senior official with legal jurisdiction over an area
Medic-a/us – doctor
Prandium – brunch or lunch
Submagistratus – a more junior official with legal jurisdiction over an area, under the authority of a Magistratus
Villa Papaverus – Poppy House. Dai and Julia’s residence.
Ynys Mon –  or the Isle of Anglesey

The biggers must have had one hell of a party. Big came into the garden with both arms full of cardboard and bright paper. Stopping only to vomit in the herbaceous border he disappeared.
Little Frankie puzzled out the words on one of the discarded boxes.
“Fes Tiv Fa Ther Chris Mas G-Nome. Wassa G-Nome.”
“It’s a nome. The G is silent.”
Frankie stared incredulously at the oldest nome who sat on her toadstool knitting purple bedsocks.
“Is you Ranny then?”
Only the quickness of Big Bertha’s hamlike fists stopped ‘Ranny’ from hurling Frankie into the cement pond.

©jj 2021

Imagine waking up one day unable to recall who you are or where you came from – only to find you are serving a sentence as a convict conscript for crimes you have no memory of ever committing…

Vane thought for a moment. This man being considered for release would bring a huge public outcry – from both sides. It would unearth all the old arguments about human rights and the extremes of compulsory military service. Suddenly he understood why the CSF were involved and why he was being so heavily pressured to give on this.
“This is about the future of the Special Legion, isn’t it?”
Var Tyran smiled, like a teacher with a star student in the making.
“So you see,” she told him, “this way he has his chance to see what life is like on the outside – and inevitably reject it. The Coalition is seen to carry through with just policies on clemency for valorous service, even in extreme cases, which will please the more fuzzy-thinking liberal elements. But, in the end, you will get him back under your command, which will satisfy the hard minded realists. So everyone will win. It all ties up very neatly.”
“My command? Not if he re-enlists in the regular way.”
“There is evidence to suggest it may be the more extreme environment of the Special Legion is one he would seek. And as you are well aware all ex-Legionaries have the right to re-enlist with their original unit. Even the Specials.”
Vane felt his credulity stretching. No sane individual would choose to be in the Specials. Then, he reminded himself, hard as it was to accept, this was a man who had ‘grown up’ in the Legion and to whom it must therefore have some strange sense of ‘home.’ It was a very uncomfortable thought.
“And you would be happy with such an outcome?” he asked.
Var Tyran smiled with real warmth, leaning forward, her eyes bright with delight, and Vane found himself smiling back at her.
“Oh I would get to wear a feather in my cap for a while, I suppose – thanks to you.”
Vane nodded, not wanting to point out he had been speaking of her organisation not her personal feelings on the matter. In fact, he liked she took it that way.
“I wish you’d told me all this before the interview, it would have made me view things very differently.”
“So do I,” she said, settling back with an apologetic smile. “I was in a foul mood – very unprofessional of me – personal matters.” Vane waited, his silence encouraging. After a moment of hesitation, in which her cheeks paled visibly, she ploughed on: “My boyfriend left me last night.”
Vane’s second thought was that the man, whoever he might be, had to be a fool. His first was more to do with his own personal benefit.
“I am sure it must have been difficult for you to deal with,” he told her sympathetically.
She nodded and gave him a brief, tooth-press, smile
“Just so long as my boss doesn’t find out I lost it – I’d be reassigned to data crunching if she did. This is my first big break in the department.”
This, her first admission of vulnerability, made Vane feel suddenly protective.
“She won’t hear anything from me,” he promised. “Var Tyran, I – “
“Cista,” she corrected him, interrupting gently. He smiled and was distracted by the need to acknowledge a security message on his link. Then he gave her his full attention.
“Cista, I want you to know when I finished viewing the data you gave me I put through my recommendation for release. I have just now confirmed the discharge. It should all be officially cleared by the end of the day. Revid should be free to go tomorrow.”
The delight and relief in her eyes were reward enough for him.
“Then we have something to celebrate, Commodore.”
“Isvan.”
“Isvan – I propose we go eat, I know a lovely place downtown from here -” she broke off and her face showed a slight hint of colour. “Sorry, that wasn’t very professional either. I mean –“
He smiled, loving her awkwardness.
“I would be delighted to join you for a meal, Cista – in the interests of inter-agency cooperation and team-building of course.”

From Trust A Few – book one in Haruspex, the second Fortune’s Fools trilogy by E.M. Swift-Hook – which is only 0.99 to buy for a limited period.

Because life happens…

The secret of living is this:
You don’t need ecstasy and bliss,
You just need a good man
Who knows how to – and can
Do the dinner when you are half-pissed.

E.M. Swift-Hook