Two Women and Some Books
If your mood’s for wild romance
With you I’ll swoon
Beneath the cold moon
Does love lead you a merry dance?
When icy is your lady’s glance
Beneath the cold moon
I’ll sing of your sorrow
Your pathos I will borrow
Enchant your sad tomorrow
Oh gloom, gloom
Beneath the cold moon
The Insulae Nero was in the poorer end of Viriconium. One of a number of squat blocks with an external staircase leading to each floor’s front balcony. In some attempt to create an impression of a pleasant environment, the blocks were set out in quadrangles around what might have once been central gardens, but which now had the odd broken piece of playground equipment and banks of overgrown weeds with litter blowing through like tumbleweed.
Had this been in Londinium, Dai would have regarded it as decent enough non-Citizen accommodation. Indeed both himself and Bryn had lived in insulae not so very different from these in their time there. But here in Viriconium, it was anything but. They had parked up on the edge of the estate under a security camera and walked through attracting attention from local dogs and children. The adults saw them and seemed to either melt away or lurk threateningly as if daring them to approach. At one point a bottle smashed close behind them, but they just kept walking.
“Hello, SI Cartivel.” The speaker detached himself from the insula wall he’d been supporting and stepped into their path. Beneath a mop of dark brown curly hair, he was thin faced, with one ear and one nostril pierced. His tunic and trews seemed too stylish for the locale. Dai moved his hand to push back his jacket intending to both grip and reveal the nerve whip at his belt. But beside him he felt rather than saw Bryn sink into the casual stance that offered no aggression but left him ready to respond to any attack. Unlike Dai’s approach, Bryn’s was de-escalatory. Taking his lead from the man who knew this area best, Dai let his hand drop back.
“Hello Cas. Not your usual playground. You been barred from the Dog and Onion again?” Bryn sounded almost as if he cared.
The man called Cas, hawked and spat as if the name tasted bad. “You know I don’t run with the Broanan’s SI Cartivel, they are not nice people. And I’m here visiting my *llys-tad.”
“Which one would that be? You had a few growing up, so I’ve heard.”
Cas pulled his face into an expression of sorrowful hurt.
“What are you implying about my mother, SI Cartivel? She was a good woman. The best. Gave me a good upbringing.”
“I heard she was a generous soul,” Bryn agreed mildly. “Just a shame she weren’t so successful at teaching you the difference between right and wrong.”
“You insult me,” Cas sounded pained. “I’m a good man. I look after my own. There’s never been any crime laid at my door.”
“Well that is because you just feed on the profits of other people’s crime, isn’t it. Cas? You point them where to go and when. They do the deed and you sell it on. Worse thing is it’s the local kids you get to do it. They don’t even understand the consequences. You know we’ll get you for it one day.”
“Is that a threat, SI Cartivel? My lawyer told me you aren’t supposed to threaten me. I could report you for it. Get you suspended.”
“No, it’s not a threat,” Bryn told him, his tone still mild and amicable. “In your case, Cas, it’s a promise.”
He walked on and Dai stayed put, fixing the curly haired man with a cold glare until he turned away and loped off towards one of the insulae.
“Nice place,” Dai said when he’d caught up with Bryn. “Not sure I’d want to come visiting alone after dark.”
“Cas Ofydd is a cunnus. But a clever one. If he’d put that intelligence into something honest he’d have made good. Instead, he uses it to recruit kids to commit crimes he sets up for them. But there is never anything to link him to it all except their word if we catch them. I’ve seen the court send two teens to the arena in the last year thanks to that bastard, though that was as much the Magistratus’ fault in pressing the letter of the law on them when he could have chosen not to.”
“The Magistratus feels he has no choice.” Dai wondered why he was defending his superior. Perhaps because he had faced some really difficult judgements himself and knew how hard it was to draw the line in the right place. He got no reply and was left with the impression he had somehow failed a test.
“The people here are used to seeing authority coming in hard with nerve whips and menaces,” Bryn explained as he led the way up the stairs of one of the blocks. He gestured along the first balcony. “Most of the front doors have been forced so often they don’t lock properly anymore, so it’s not too hard if someone wants to walk in and take stuff.”
“Forced by…?”
Bryn shrugged and jogged up the next flight of steps.
“Most often Aiofe’s lot or one of her competitors collecting on illegal loans, though it is as likely to be the angry drunken ex-spouse or the drug-warped teenager who forgot their key. And our boys and girls, of course, though we only do it when they refuse to open up.”
He turned onto the next landing and made his way along the exposed balcony. Faces stared at them from the windows beside the doors – those that weren’t boarded over.
“This,” Bryn said stopping outside a door that had several cracks in it and a hole where the lock should be, “is Villa Gillie. A commodious residence with views over the local park…” he paused to gesture dramatically to the small square of mud and weeds with a couple of vandalised benches, “and built-in air seasonal air-conditioning.” Bryn put his hand above the absent lock, hooked his fingers through it and held it, braced against the frame. Then he knocked hard on the door a couple of times.
There was no reply so after a few moments, he knocked again a bit harder. The window beside the door was still in existence and a face appeared there briefly. Bryn let go of the door and it swung slightly open as he did so.
‘Dying to be Born’ is one of the exclusive bonus short stories The Third Dai and Julia Omnibus by Jane Jago and E.M. Swift-Hook
Biker, biker roaring past
In the street, night before last
What the hell possess-ed thee
To wake me up at half-past three?
On what distant motorway
Did you begin your ride that day?
On what tarmac didst you roll
From whence came you my sleep to troll?
And what hard shoulder fast depart
Could twist your manifold apart?
So that the popping of the sound
Could so reverberate around?
What did hammer your bike chain
To make it thunder in the rain?
What did make you choose my road
To burden with your heavy load?
When the stars – or sparks more like,
Flew from the tailpipe of your bike,
Did you wonder what fell fate
Left you back-firing by my gate?
Biker, biker roaring past
In the street, night before last
What the hell possess-ed thee
To blast me up at half-past three?
Listen to Granny because Granny always knows best!
Yesterday I got invited on a ‘ghost walk’ around town. For a moment I was gobsmacked sufficiently to be unable to refuse, but I recovered quickly enough so that when the heavily moustached female licked her biro and brightly enquired how many tickets she should put me down for I replied ‘none’ and closed the front door. But not before Gyp piddled on her Ugg boots.
Back in the sanctuary of our own fireside, I turned to Gyp and sighed.
“What in the name of freaking nonsense was all that about?”
He raised a ginger eyebrow but forbore comment – which is unsurprising as he is a dog, albeit one of dubious parentage – and returned his attention to an itchy spot to the left of his scrotum.
I found myself, not for the first time, questioning the grip on reality of many of my fellow humans.
The merry sound of ‘Born to Be Wild’ played off key broke into my reverie and I picked up the phone. Having ascertained it was my chum, Beryl, I answered the bloody thing.
“Have you,” she asked without the usual preamble of greeting, “yet been visited by a moustache wearing very ugly boots? I thought you might have because the left boot looked as if a dog had pissed on it.”
“I have,” I said guardedly. “The boot decoration may even have been Gyp’s contribution to the conversation.”
I spoke with more care than usual, as Beryl has been known to dabble in the murky waters of weej and amateur witchery – but I need not have worried.
“Ghost walk,” she snorted. “Tomorrow night. When the weatherman promises gales, heavy rain and a maximum temperature of seven degrees. In what alternative universe is that happening?”
“Not mine. Or yours by the sound of you. Even with the lure of the supernatural.”
She snorted out a laugh. “I would think the supernatural might have sense enough to stay indoors on a filthy night like it promises to be. And anyway I’m off the spiritual stuff. It’s becoming a bore. I’m thinking of joining the folk club. Why don’t we…”
The words ‘folk club’ and ‘we’ in the same sentence were enough to have me put an abrupt end to the phone call.
Me and Gyp turned off the bloody phone and went to the chip shop for supper.
The Elf King was owed a princess, and a princess he was going to get. Just not the one he expected. Princess Marianne was a delicate fairylike beauty, and, in her father’s estimation, far too valuable to waste on a promise. Princess Ella, by contrast, was plain and meek and only too aware that her father had cheated.
It took all her courage to look into the Elf King’s face. To her surprise the tall brown-skinned monarch laughed.
“I do not,” he said, “value human beauty highly. But I am enamoured of bravery.”
He held out his twiggy hand.
“You are,” she said, “a remarkably patient person.”
He grinned. “There are some things in life that are worth patience.”
“But what about if I’m not one of them?”
“Then I have lost nothing, because I’m enjoying your company immensely.”
“But what if I can’t? I mean never. Kissing and cuddling and stuff ”
Mike turned his hand over on the table so that it was beneath hers and their hands rested palm to palm. He offered her a gentle smile.
“Palm to palm is holy palmers’ kiss,” he said gently.
The sweetness of that pierced Jenny’s armour in a way she didn’t think was possible any more. She awaited his next move warily.
It was a mark of the man that he made no attempt to press home any advantage that he may have accrued. Instead he pushed the plate or chocolates towards Jenny.
“You going to eat any more or will I have them make you up a doggy bag to take home?”
“Doggy bag, please. I might like to eat them in bed with a cup of hot milk.”
“Then you shall.”
His smile was a complicated thing, but warm and comforting too.
“Thank you, Mike.”
He leaned across the table. “Don’t thank me, just be comfortable with me.”
Almost of its own free will her hand came up to briefly touch his cheek. “I’m beginning to think I won’t be comfortable without you.”
He signalled for the bill and Jenny phoned her usual cab company. As he walked her to the end of the road she looked up at him and put on her best hard girl face. “I’ll understand if you don’t want to see me any more.”
“Silly woman. How about lunch tomorrow?”
“Only if you come to mine, and I cook for you.”
“I’d like that.”
“Okay then. Come as soon as your hotel throws you out.” She scrabbled in her bag and handed him a card. “Here’s the address.”
She got into the waiting taxi and left him looking down at the little piece of pasteboard as if she had given him the world.
Jenny got up early the next morning and spent a happy hour in her shining kitchen before she sat herself down to a breakfast of brown toast and honey.
Her phone bleeped and she saw it was a text from Mike. She felt something sour in her gut at the idea he might be cancelling their lunch date.
Is half eleven too early? What can I bring?
She found herself smiling mistily as her thumbs flew. Time is fine. Just bring yourself.
With the answer sent, she went back to her interrupted breakfast, but not before mentally chiding herself as a silly cow to even think about getting attached to another man.
Putting that aside as irrelevant for now, she ran down the road to the mini-market where she bought certain necessities for a traditional roast dinner.
By half-past eleven all was in readiness and Jenny had even managed to shower and change into a very becoming flowered silky dress. Right on time, she heard the sound of a car being parked outside her gates.
Unwilling to admit, even to herself, how much she was looking forward to seeing a man she had seen only the night before, Jenny resisted the impulse to run to the front door. Instead she waited for his knock.
When it came, she trod lightly to the door to find Mike had stepped back and was eyeing the little house appreciatively. He had his hands behind his back, and when he saw Jenny he stepped forwards.
“Pretty house and pretty lady.”
He took a very attractive bouquet of simple garden flowers from behind his back and presented it with a half bow. Jenny chose to ignore the ‘pretty lady’ comment, instead focusing on the flowers in her hands.
“Oh. How lovely. However did you?”
He grinned with exaggerated pride. “Internet. Last night. Independent florist down on the quay. I described you and she made the bouquet.”
Jenny felt herself blush, uneasy at the idea of the implied compliment, but Mike carried on speaking as if nothing had happened.
“Told her you were a country girl at heart, and as prickly as a briar rose.”
It felt to Jenny as if he would always know what to say to ease her over the rocks of her crippling memories, which left the overriding worry of for how long she could trespass on his patience and kindness.
“It must be a terrible place to live,” Oliver observed as the documentary went on, “I mean, having a social score based on who you’re friends with and what you buy, determining whether you can get a train ticket.”
Krista nodded agreement and finished leaving a bad rating for the delivery driver. He’d been five minutes late. Some pathetic excuse about traffic. “Just glad we live in the free West.” Her fit-watch vibrated and she sighed. “I’ll have to leave you to it. If I don’t get enough steps done today they’ll cancel my health insurance – or quadruple the price.”
Brenda pouted and lifted the cream cake with tongs, before dropping it into a box.
“No, I meant that one. The one beside it. The one with the bigger cherry.”
Biting back a retort, she carefully returned the original cake to the display plate and picked up the one requested. There were days she thought she’d go insane if it weren’t for VRP.
End of the working day and she walked through the rain, half her attention on trying to avoid being splashed by passing cars or treading in too many puddles, but the rest already lost in anticipation of what was to come.
An ordinary looking house in an ordinary suburban street, Brenda slid her keycard into its lock and stepped inside.
“Hey Brenda? Who you doing this evening?”
Jake was getting changed, struggling a little to get into the skin-tight VRP suit. Getting her own suit out of her locker, Brenda thought for a moment.
“Fallon Stardasher,” she said decisively.
“Oh cool, I’ll go for Cyber Cheetah then – that’ll work well.”
A few minutes later, suited up, virtual reality headsets donned, the two set out to save the world – again.
She loved him. It was that simple. Plain, dumpy Annie loved her handsome husband.
So why was she crying as she peeled potatoes?
She gave an unladylike sniff as he breezed through the door bringing an earthy smell and a hint of snow. He came up behind her and nuzzled her neck.
Annie turned into his embrace and allowed herself to be seduced by his kiss.
He took her hand and slid something shiny on her finger.
“Diamonds last forever,” he smiled down into her bemused eyes. “And that’s about how long I’ll love you.”
He kissed her tears away…
The tattooed face broke into an ugly snarl, as the spearhead nearly grazed one shoulder of its owner’s powerful frame. He lunged forward, the double-headed axe swinging and the crowd yelled as he claimed his kill, severing the arm of the spear-wielding warrior at the shoulder in a fountain of scarlet and removing his head with a backswing, as effortlessly as a chef might slice through a soft cheese.
It was a very popular kill. This animal, who had the fighting-name ‘Therloon’, had been the new darling of the Alfor crowds since he had arrived in the arena a couple of moons after the Fair. He was of the nomadic folk from the Eastern Continent and had their renowned tenacity and powerful build combined with a flair for the theatrical and a spectacular viciousness that was all his own. Playing to the crowd like the professional he was, Therloon swung his axe around his head and roared, his face contoured into a hideous grin which must have been visible even to those who stood furthest from the edge of the arena. The crowd responded to his signature salute and roared his name.
The powerful Easterner turned to where one opponent remained facing him. The smaller man held his sturdy frame prepared, the curving sword he gripped in one hand looked as frail as a blade of grass against the life-harvesting scythe of Therloon’s whirling axe. But the crowd expected good sport before they had their final glut of blood. For this was no ordinary combat unfolding before them and the money that rode on the outcome of this single bout would have paid the wages of half the troops Qabal Vyazin had been mustering on the outskirts of Tabruth. This was the kind of match that men waited years to see and could only be provided by this, the most prestigious Arena in Temsevar – that of the city of Alfor.
It occurred to Torwyn, watching this display as he ran a hand through his short terracotta-coloured hair, that there were many places better to be than standing less than ten paces away from the axe-wielding maniac and on the wrong side of the high barricades which protected the crowd from the fighting-slaves within.
Facing Therloon, now alone, stood the one they called the Sabre, whom the crowd had just seen defeat his own previous opponent with a classic display of athletic grace and skill. Now, invisible to all except those in the audience closest to where he stood, he shifted his weight very slightly, as if knowing what to expect. The charge, when it came, made him move quickly aside and turn to duck under the axe whilst bringing his own, lighter, blade across to cut at the bigger man’s back. It was not sufficient to do any real damage to his opponent, but enough to gain an appreciative call or two from the crowd and Torwyn could tell it had angered the Easterner.
“Sabre! Sabre!” He evidently had supporters out in strength, probably as many as were there to cheer for Therloon, but then few fighting-slaves were as well-known as the Sabre because few survived six years in the Arena as he had. Few overcame for that long the ever more creative and dangerous demands made on a crowd-pleasing favourite which turned life and death combat into gore-fest theatre or blood-drenched farce.
If it had not been for the coming war this fight would never have been allowed so soon. To end deliberately, the career and crowd-pulling earning power of a top fighting-slave was not a decision made lightly by the lanista of an Arena. More especially when the lanista was well renowned for being a tight-fisted miser, who kept his fighting-slaves in the minimum conditions and invested all his money in crowd-pleasing exhibitions and expensive exotics.
The dance of death continued on the blood-stained sand of the stadium between the unwieldy axe, made agile and serpentine in the hands of the powerful Easterner, and the insubstantial blade of the sword weaving the will of the man who held it. From the first, it had been apparent that the sword was no real match for the heavier weapon with its much longer reach. It was only because the man who held it seemed to possess almost precognitive reactions and a creatively robust athleticism, that the inevitable end was being delayed so long. The tension became palpable and the focus of the two men was absolute. For them, the world had shrunk to the circle of sand and the sweep of feet, hands and weapons.
Normally, the element of drama would have featured far more in any performance by either man. The Easterner was famed for his love of blood and to watch him fight was to watch a butcher at work in a slaughterhouse – but a butcher with a malicious streak of sadism – and the crowd, never sated, loved that. By comparison, the Sabre was known for the humour and finesse he brought to his savagery, playing with his opponents in burlesque ways which would have the crowd fired up with laughter and then stunning them into silence by the breath-taking skill of his acrobatic agility.
Even now, apparently pressed to his limits, Sabre found time to dance a brief step or two with a flower in his teeth, thrown by one of the crowd. It proved to be an expensive crowd-pleaser as the Easterner seized the moment to strike and Sabre, ducking under the blow, raised his own weapon ineffectively to deflect the lethal weight of the axe. It barely turned the heavy slicing blade but at the price of being smashed away from its owner’s grip.
Disarmed, the Sabre dived into a desperate, ground-covering roll that brought him distance from the certain death of Therloon’s backswing, and a few more precious moments of life. But his move was accompanied by the groans and boos of the watching throng. Those who had placed their money on the Sabre were most vocal in their disappointment. The fight was lost and many who had bet on the old favourite knew they would go home the poorer. But the let-down was soon overlaid by a fresh building of anticipation. There remained the catharsis of the kill itself, and Therloon was a master of spectacular, messy killing. That was something to look forward to. The Sabre’s last show would be an essay in violent, agonising death and those he had just robbed of their winnings would enjoy that revenge.
From Dues of Blood part three of Fortune’s Fools Transgressor Trilogy by E.M. Swift-Hook
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