The Dog and Onion, was situated at the heart of what counted for the bad side of town in Viriconium. Here small retailers selling dubious items were squashed between nightclubs, gambling rooms and scantily disguised brothels. Above, between and around these were some of the cheapest rooms and apartments to let in the city.
Like most of the business and homes on its street, the taberna was a narrow fronted building which went back a long way. The street itself was also narrow with barely room for two vehicles to pass. Alleyways and car park entrances cut between the buildings, under the tunnel of their first floor rooms.
Most of the buildings were old and ill-maintained. If it had been in Eboracum, Dai reflected, they would have called it something interesting and turned it into a tourist spot, refurbishing the buildings, replacing the sex shops with gift shops, the brothels with fashionable boutiques,  and the nightclubs with eateries of various descriptions catering to broad tastes. If it had been in Londinium they would have gated the road at either end and thrown away the key. But here in Viriconium it provided habitation, employment, and what passed for entertainment, to the lowest strata of society. And any of the rest of society who liked to indulge themselves in such a way.
The last time Dai had been here it had been in broad daylight and then the area had looked grimy, run down and insalubrious. But night time was its element. There wasn’t enough street lighting to illuminate more than patches, but the various establishments made up for it with illuminated signs promising any variety of vice. There were shifting, multi-coloured lights emanating from the same open doors as the zing-tinkle of slot machines, and bursts of loud music as the bouncers opened and closed the doors to the nightclubs. The deep background thump-thump of loud bass beats, accompanied them, like an external heartbeat. The smell was a mix of overcooked streetfood, spilt alcohol, cheap perfume and fresh vomit.
Bryn seemed completely at home and even exchanged reserved nods with a couple of the local denizens. But that was to be expected. It was his job to know this place and fit in. For a moment, watching the older man stride confidently on, turning sideways to avoid a gaggle of half-drunk whores and their present companions, Dai felt a stab of envy. This had been him a year ago, prowling the streets of Londinium with the same superb assurance. But here in Viriconium his role was no longer that of street Vigiles and there were times he missed it badly.
Which was the real reason why, when Bryn suggested he come along, Dai hadn’t protested.
The taberna was busy, but not overwhelmingly so. The two of them managed to spot an empty table which they were heading towards when a large man wearing smartish tunic and trews and an ugly scowl intercepted them, grabbing Bryn by the arm.
“Not a good idea for you to be in here. We don’t cater for your kind.”
“My ‘kind’ being?” Bryn asked politely.
The large man nodded at Dai.
“Well, his kind to be precise. You would do better taking him along the road to the Aureum Pomum. They got things a bit more classy there. We don’t cater that way.”
Then Dai realised and felt an irrational sense of anger. Before he became a Citizen he was forever judged on his lack of status and now he was being judged on an excess of it. Bryn must have felt his mood shift because he smiled broadly at the large man blocking their way, then spoke in a pleasant and friendly tone.
“I suggest you let go of my arm and take your assumptions and stick them in your twll tin. Because you’ve read this so wrong it’s like you’ve mixed up the business news with the sports pages.”
The big man moved, but in the wrong way, and a moment later he was on the ground gasping with Bryn standing over him still wearing a friendly smile. Dai stepped forward and trapped his wrist with one foot, quite casually, as the downed man tried to reach for some weapon or other.
Around them people had pulled back chairs and stools, some edging away and some moving in. The atmosphere was as raw as blood on knife blade and Dai spared a moment to feel grateful they had a wall to their backs. Beneath his jacket he had a nerve whip, the non-lethal Citizen-only weapon, but he was reluctant to draw it here. Instead he shifted his stance to something more defensive.
Bryn was talking to the prone man.
“You must be new in here, fresh from the sticks?”
The man made a muffled grunt and tried to get up. Bryn might have been minded to allow him to, but before that could become clear, the gathering group around them parted and a woman who had to be in her late fifties or early sixties, with a plump figure and hard eyes, flanked by men with hard bodies and even harder eyes, kicked at the prone man quite viciously.
Any possible lingering idea that this was a sweet, rosy-cheeked middle-aged landlady vanished as she opened her mouth and demolished the unfortunate on the floor with a tirade of vicious profanity. When she had finished he seemed to have withered to half his original size and he scurried off, doubled over, vanishing through a door marked for staff use only.
The woman looked around at the audience they had gathered and made a circling gesture with one finger. “Show’s over. You can all get back to your drinks.”
The clientele of the place dispersed to the tables and conversation picked up almost immediately, with only the odd glance cast in the direction of Dai and Bryn to indicate the topic might not yet have moved on.
“So why is it every time you come in here you make trouble SI Cartivel?” The hard tone had gone to be replaced by a warm, friendly one with a hint of flirtation. That last became more obvious as the woman shifted her gaze to take in Dai – slowly, from head to toe. She was so clearly mentally undressing him that for a moment he almost felt naked.
“I wasn’t the one making trouble, Aoife,” Bryn protested. We just came by for a drink and a chat and your man decided to put himself in my face.”
“You’ll be ruining my trade bringing a Citizen in here. But don’t I remember him? Good looking bachgen like that is hard to forget. Isn’t he one of your Vigiles?”
“Something like that,” Bryn agreed easily. “Now about that drink and that chat.”

From Dying on the Mosaics by E.M. Swift-Hook and Jane Jago The seventh Dai and Julia Mystery, set in a Britain where the Roman Empire never left..

Somehow. Somewhere.
In these pages
I have found
The wealth of ages
Understood
The old and wise
Found their words
Beneath my eyes
Somehow. Somewhere
In this book
I’ve laughed. I’ve cried
Come see. Come look

©️jj 2020

I am, in case you had failed to notice, of an age where suntanned skin resembles nothing more than a pair of worn out walking boots: wrinkled, crumbling and deeply unattractive. Which is just one of the many reasons I don’t sit in the sun….

For more reasons I don’t indulge read on.

It’s boring. You can’t read because the sun gets in your eyes. You can’t hold a conversation because your brain is too hot to be arsed. And even Gyp won’t entertain you because he has sufficient sense to have sought shade.

It’s sweaty. Your undertit area will be sticky. Your armpits will be miniature waterfalls. And even your hair will be sweating.

It’s bad for you. If the spectre of melanoma doesn’t scare you, fine. Me? I’m in enough trouble with the ciggies.

So then. The advice on the sunbathing front is – don’t do it.

If the sun is hot take yourself somewhere shady and equip yourself with an ice-cold beer. 

But. But. Do I hear you say?

A suntan looks healthy. It doesn’t. It just looks like a suntan.

Being tanned is slimming. It just isn’t. 

Need I say more?

However. If you really must feck with your skin colour there are options that don’t involve self-barbecuing.

Sunbeds. Just as boring as ordinary sunbathing, and arguably not any better for your health.

Spray tan. Almost always weirdly orange.

Self-tanning lotions. Streaky and stinky and orange.

Moisturiser with a hint of self tan. Probably the least obscene option if still a tad satsuma in colour. 

To conclude. Do. Not. Sunbathe. And think carefully before you apply any sort of fake tan. There are horrible warnings out there. Look at them and think.

To celebrate our third birthday at the beginning of July, the Working Title Blog held a drabble writing competition.

As it is our third birthday completion we have three runners up! This is by science-fiction and fantasy author Sharon Wong.

“But it’s not my birthday,” says the child.

“No matter,” Alibeth coos, setting the frosted wonder down on the kitchen table. “It’s yours.”

The child approaches the cake with wide eyes, her gazed fixed as though she cannot look anywhere else. Once she takes a bite, she won’t be able to think of anything else. Alibeth has made sure of that.

On the kitchen floor, the corpses of the child’s parents grow cold. Alibeth will deal with them when the child sleeps. She will clear the house of any trace of them. Her house, now.

The child begins to eat.

It was still dark when the tiny clock in the wall beside Ig’s face bleeped. He wished he could ignore it, but he knew from bitter experience that he had five minutes maximum to be out of bed and dressed or face the consequences.
“Lights on fifty percent.”
Light filled his cell making him blink owlishly. If that was fifty percent, he was a sewer rat, but at least the fragging lights had come on.
He rolled out of bed and turned on the tap in his chipped wash basin. Good. There was water, and it was even warm. Ig briskly sluiced his hands and face before scrambling into his clothes.
He was just adjusting the braces on his coverall when the door banged open with so much force that it bounced off the wall. One of the new intake of sergeants stood in the doorway eyeing him suspiciously. The man’s hard little eyes roamed the cell looking for violations. Ig stood wooden-faced and quiet, looking at a point somewhere between the sergeant’s red face and the twin belts of rank that held up a big, jutting belly. The non-com stalked away, allowing Ig to join the queue for the latrines.
Our hero’s day went downhill from there. The breakfast oatmeal was garnished with burnt bits, and then he found himself under the command of a new intake corporal. It wasn’t good. Corporal Legolas had about as much idea of guard detail as Ig had of the world above ground. First of all they had almost left without the gas rats in their cage, and then the man had attempted to stroke one of the Wardens. Okay, Wardens looked like dogs, he’d give the corporal that much, but not knowing the difference had cost more than one man a hand or arm. Finally he wanted his men to march into the fragging tunnels. Ig got the distinct impression that the explanation of harmonics and echoes had passed over the man’s head, but once the Guard Captain made it a direct order they were okay. Or as okay as a detail under the command of a complete greenhorn was ever going to be.
The attack came as they were almost at the tunnel exit. Twenty or so humanoids rose from their place of concealment among a jumbled pile of rocks. Ig and his companions drew their battle sticks and began the methodical process of beating their assailants about the heads and shoulders to force them back from whence they came. Then Legolas panicked and started shooting – he had a sidearm in either hand and he just let rip. The men in his detail cursed pungently and threw themselves to the ground.
A while later, guard detail AlphaZero exited the tunnel dragging the body of their corporal behind them. He was so full of holes as to resemble one of cookie’s colanders. Ig poked the body with one booted foot.
“Ricochet,” he grunted.

©️ jane jago

Pearls of wisdom from an octogenarian who’s seen it all…

Chewing Gum

I have no philosophical objection to gum chewing. If you wish to masticate plastic then that is fine by me.

But.

Effing well dispose of it properly.

That means. 

Not. 

On the pavement. 

Under the edge of the pub table. 

Stuck to the wall next to wherever you are sitting.

Etcetera.

Remove the disgusting globule from your gob. Wrap it in a tissue. And put it in the bin!

The other thing is more about aesthetics. You may think that chewing gum makes you look like James Dean. It don’t. You look like a fucking llama.

A stupid fucking llama.

Even on a crowded beach she brought her bone-chilling solitude with her. It wrapped her in its grey tendrils leaving her unable to feel the sun, or hear the sea or the children’s laughter. Instead, she sat with her thin arms wrapped about her shins and stared into the water.
It was as if by staring enough into the green depths she might see him laying on the shifting sands with his pockets weighted with lead and his pretty throat slit by the unkindness of a knife.
The weekend went on around her unseeing eyes and unhearing ears, and after a while her abstraction rendered her so insubstantial that the playing children ran over her and through her without either knowing she was there or disturbing her reverie. Day drew into night and still she sat watching as the sun fell and the moon rose, delineating a silver pathway from the breaking waves beside her cold, bare feet.
Called by some voice from who knew where, the woman rose and walked into the silvered water. It was, she found, surprisingly warm even as it grew deeper and her skirts began to float about her like the petals of a drowned flower.
“Where are you?” she whispered in a voice grown thin and pallid from lack of use.
For a moment, she thought she heard familiar laughter in the salt-laden air,  then she became sure this was just one more illusion. But it didn’t matter anyway. She was too tired for any of it to matter any more. It would, she thought, be a blessing when the waves closed over her head. The madness would pass then, and she might no longer be alone.
She pushed her face into the water, trying to suck the killing waves into her lungs, but she felt her face lifted by cold rough-skinned hands.
“Be brave,” the voice of her dead love spoke in her ears and that was the last thing she heard before the sea accepted her sacrifice and drew her thin, cold body into its heaving bosom.
And was her love awaiting her in the ever shifting deeps?
Who knows…

©️JaneJago

They had come so far.

Anna carrying baby Nin while Caradoc had their few worldly goods and Gryff followed loyally. But now the way ahead was barred by a river they could see no way to cross.

Caradoc put his arm around Anna’s shoulders.

“We tried, lass. But life’s not a fairytale. Sometimes the bad people win.”

She buried her face in his shoulder to hide the tears that sprang into her eyes.

Gryff’s sharp bark made her look round.

There was a boat hidden in the reeds.

“So it was a fairytale after all,” Anna always told the grandchildren.

E.M. Swift-Hook

“How long you friend to Avilon?” In the flickering light from the fire, it was hard to see the other man’s face clearly, but there was genuine curiosity in his tone. It was odd, though, how he pronounced the name with the emphasis on the wrong syllable.
Jaz gave a slight shrug. “If you add it all up – including our time in the Specials I’d say around fourteen, fifteen years.”
The other man seemed thoughtful.
“Avilon have many?”
Friends, presumably. That was easy.
“No. I think I was about the only one for most of that time. Now – he has more. And a woman too.”
“He is – change? Not the same?”
There was clear concern in the question. Concern Jaz couldn’t lay to rest. He nodded briefly and felt his breath escape in a slight sigh.
“Yeah. Much changed. Not the same at all.”
“But – he is Avilon?”
Jaz had no idea how to answer that. It was something he struggled with himself over the past few years. There had to be something or he wouldn’t have kept with the grindingly thankless task of nurturing the empty shell he found in the Specials. But sometimes – and more often now than before – he was left wondering how much of that had been wishful thinking and how much had been real. How much he needed it to be Avilon as opposed to how much it actually was.
“Sometimes it’s like you can see a ghost of who he was,” he said, at last.
“Ghost?”
“Uh – yeah – like a shadow of who he was.” Jaz moved his arm so the firelight sent his own shadow reaching away and gestured to that with his other hand. “He’s like a walking shadow of the man he used to be.”
“Shadow – yes.” The Overlord nodded, moving his hand to match the shadow. Jaz noticed the triple line of scarring on the back of the hand, identical to the scarring Avilon had brought back from Temsevar. He put a finger towards it, running his hand through the air as if drawing three fast lines.
“What is that about? Avilon has it also.”
The Overlord looked at him as if he wasn’t sure that the question could be a serious one, but he must have seen from Jaz’s expression that it was. Then he nodded slowly and shrugged off his coat, pulling at the sleeve of his shirt so his shoulder was exposed. Jaz saw a crude raised mark that he took a moment to realise was caused by some kind of strike branding process. He knew Avilon was similarly scarred but not with the same design. The other man covered his shoulder again and pulled his coat back on. “Slave mark,” he said. Then closed his fist so the three scars on his hand stood out. “Fighting slave mark.”
Jaz had no idea what he could say to that, but the other man went on, hunting for words. Clearly struggling, but wanting Jaz to understand. His gaze intense with it.
“Avilon make him – made him -” The Overlord broke off and started again. “He made his choice. To be fighting slave – to find me. To free me.”
Something shifted in Jaz and he suddenly understood what this man must have meant to Avilon and had no doubt at all what Avilon was to him. He held the intense gaze and gave a slight nod, then reached out his hand. The other man took it, his grip strong.
“You’re my brother’s friend,” Jaz said, making each word clear so he could be sure he was understood. “That makes you my friend.”
The other man nodded.
“My friend.”

From A Walking Shadow, the final book in Haruspex Trilogy of Fortune’s Fools by E.M. Swift-Hook.

Pearls of wisdom from an octogenarian who’s seen it all…

Sushi

Rice. Rice with vinegar. Rice with vinegar and seaweed and (often) raw fish.

What the feck is that all about?

Yeah, fish and vinegar. That’s all good. But we’ll have the fish wrapped in batter and served with chips shall we?

Okay. 

Sushi, and all the other stuff, comes from another culture and I accept that. 

I just don’t want to eat it.

The texture is strange. The taste is odd.

And then there are chopsticks – for which uses are limited. You can use them to eat with.

Or

Stab the fucking idiot who brought you to a sushi restaurant