In a modern-day Britain where the Roman Empire never left, Dai and Julia solve murder mysteries, whilst still having to manage family, friendship and domestic crises…

Dai carefully unfolded the hanging and held it up for Aelwen to inspect. She put her head on one side and her brow drew into tight lines, as if she were a critic appraising the latest offering from an acclaimed artist.
The thing was lovely. From the carefully beaded knotwork pattern that bordered the edge to the gloriously vivid designs. It glittered in the light as the brilliant colours of the glass beads were both muted and set off by the softer metallic looking ones in silver and gold effect.
Satisfied, Aelwen then felt the hem where the carefully placed weights were sewn in disguised by quilting and the braided fringe.
“What are they made of, the weights?”
“In the past we’d have used lead,” Marta told her, but today we use stainless steel.” She reached over to a box and pulled some of the contents out so Aelwen could see. “Here take one.”
Warmed by the spiced tea (a local blend of fourteen fruits, herbs and spices, half-price Saturnalia special and an extra discount for the dominus if he’ll take two packs—so he did), they paid for their purchases. The hanging was wrapped in tissue paper and popped into one of the paper bags that the workshop had printed with their own name and logo (probably onsite, Dai decided), the Llewllyns took their leave.
As Dai was guiding the all-wheel out of the gate, he caught sight of Marta, in the rear view, back in the doorway of the workshop and waving enthusiastically. She looked red faced and took a few steps out into the yard. Dai lifted a hand in farewell and a moment later they were around the corner and beginning the precarious descent.
They were about halfway down when Aelwen said, decisively, “I liked that shop and the spiced tea. But not the dogs. And do you think mam will like that hanging?”
“I think she will love it.”
Aelwen smiled then her face fell.
“I wanted some pictures to show where we went to get it.”
Dai heard the tone and knew what the outcome would be, but tried anyway.
“If we go back we’ll be very late, cath fach. And your nain is cooking for you, remember.”
The silence and the drooping head were more than he could bear. Then he saw a pull in a short way ahead, which offered a stunning vista from the zig-zag road. He was already decelerating as he said, “Why don’t we get some pictures of the view here? That would be much more spectacular?”
It was touch and go if the alternative would wash with Aelwen, but maybe the thought of her grandmother’s baking fresh from the oven was enough to sway the balance, because she nodded as Dai parked up.
The wind was cold, but not bitter. Not yet carrying the smell and taste of snow. Instead it brought hints of coal smoke from the hearths of the cottages below, looking like dolls’ houses with toy goats and chickens in the garden. Aelwen fussed around for a couple of minutes like a professional portrait photographer, positioning Dai and getting him to help her with the settings so she could zoom in to show the more distant mountains, capped by cloud.
But they were eventually back in the all-wheel and driving back along the narrow mountain road.
Dai didn’t think anything of it when he saw a rugged and long-lived all-wheel barrelling up the slope towards them. There were a few isolated farmsteads along potholed tracks which turned off the decently surfaced road. But when it showed no sign of slowing, he silently cursed the arrogance of the locals and their assumption of right of way and aimed his vehicle for the passing place between them.
Incredibly, the all-wheel coming up accelerated, almost as if it wanted to cut him off from reaching the wider bit of road. Suddenly aware that he had no other choice to avoid the mad driver, he speeded up too, and for a moment it was as if they were playing a game of chicken. He just pulled out of the way as the other vehicle reached them, but at the last moment it slid and there was a shriek of tortured metal and a scream from Aelwen as the two vehicles graunched together.
Aelwen screamed again and Dai swore, fighting to turn the all-wheel back onto the road as the cliff edge approached at a frightening speed.
The sheer momentum of the heavy vehicle made Dai’s task impossible. He could see no way to force the turn and even as he fought the inevitable, his thoughts seemed to lift away from his body with images of Julia and the children. Then it hit him in the stomach. This was not just his life, Aelwen was with him. There was no way he was going to let her end up at the bottom of the cliff being picked over by scene of crime officers.
No.
Way.

From the The Dai and Julia Mysteries, Dying for a Present, a novella by E.M. Swift-Hook and Jane Jago.

Advice on growing old disgracefully from an elderly delinquent with many years of expertise in the art – plus free optional snark…

If your’re old then you should keep to this
And not be caught having a kiss
With a handsom young buck
Who just had a luck-
Key escape from a much younger miss!

Eleanor Swift-Hook

Battleship of red plasteel from Alpha Centauri
Making warp speed easily above a dead star
With a cargo of human slaves
Rarest furs, jewellery
Golden lace, silver shoes and racing cars

Supersonic cruiser coming from a black hole
Slipping through the galaxy without time to stay
With a cargo of statuary
Painted whores, exotic goods
Platinum, sapphire rings, and velvet grey

Grungy earthling trader with a pockmarked dark hull
Crashing through the atmosphere and killing trees
With a cargo of tractors
Isotopes, scrap lead
Diesel, uranium and prosthetic knees.

Jane Jago

A tale of angels, demons and dragons…

He lifted his handsome head and bellowed skywards. Almost at once the dragon audience found itself mirrored by a line of demons, while a portal opened somewhere behind Aeva and she could hear the sound of marching feet.
“Please tell me he didn’t do that,” Aeva moaned.
Adamo looked over his shoulder. “He did,” he said shortly. “But it seems that he has set some kind of a gaes on them because they are silent and lining up quietly.”
“Oh. I see. Holding them in reserve.” Aeva turned to look at rank upon rank of mortal berserkers armed to the teeth but silent and expressionless. “That,” she said, “is just plain creepy.”
Adamo wrapped his arms around her.
“I love you,” she said, allowing herself to burrow into his heat for a moment before straightening and drawing her pride about her like a cloak.
“And I you,” he whispered.
Gabriel said something to Draco who nodded. He waved negligent claw and two large, iron cages constructed themselves in front of him. The cringing draca scuttled into one of the cages and the door slammed behind her with an iron clang. The other cage was only empty for a matter of seconds then it’s door clanged shut too, imprisoning a blond mortal who was curled in a foetal position and keening piteously.
“Gudrun,” Aeva called, “is that your brother?”
“Sounds like him by the bloody awful noise.” But the warrior woman trotted out across the sands for a proper look. “Yup. That’s him. And if anybody gets killed trying to retrieve him I will beat him to death with my own hands.”

She marched back to the shadowy oasis and for a while there was no movement and no sound except sobbing from the caged Messenger. Aeva kept her eyes on the sky and when Adamo laid a hand on her shoulder she understood he had been watching too. The golden dragon appeared to be shepherding another dragon along with her, and to be doing so fairly brutally. They landed with a bit of a kerfuffle and the smaller dragon tried to take off again. Unfortunately for her, Lord Draco wanted words. He said something under his breath and the dragon was replaced by an unremarkable looking creature whose most outstanding feature was a pronounced overbite.
“Now then, female,” he said sternly, “what is this I hear about you and a borrowed Messenger?”
The draca looked at him slyly. “We had your permission, great one.”
He frowned and drew his cloak about him. “You did not.”
She met his stare. “We had the permission of one who speaks for you.”
“Are you sure it speaks for me?” He indicated the caged draca with a lift of his chin.”
“She may be your prisoner now. But when we borrowed the mortal she was your mouthpiece, Guardian.”
“Sophistry.”
“It could be. But it is also a truth.” The draca straightened her shoulders and placed her fist against her chest. “I claim the mortal as my own.”
“You may not do that.”
“Why not?”
“Because you are the pawn of one who would bring war to the worlds. Look about you, foolish child, and see what you would bring upon your sisters.”
The draca first looked at the shifting eyes of the waiting dragons, then at the demon horde facing them, and finally the rank upon rank of mortal berserkers. She swallowed noisily.
“What am I to do?”
Aeva stepped forward. “What would you say to a wager?”
“A wager?”
“Yes. A face-saving wager. I will fight you for the creature now sobbing in the cage next to your erstwhile goddess.”
The draca looked at Aeva’s slender form and sneered. “A wager, do you say? What will you bet me? Will you wager your demon guard? There’s good eating on a demon.”
Aeva snarled. “Oh no, little pretend dragon. The wager is simple. Your useless life for the snivelling thing in the cage. Make up your mind quickly lest I kill you and take your pet anyway.”
The draca howled like a creature deranged, and her skin bulged and writhed. She screamed.
“What is she doing?” Adamo breathed.
“She is trying to Change. But she cannot unless I allow it. I don’t think I’m going to do that.”
“No. I wouldn’t recommend such a course of action.”
Aeva smiled into his eyes, before turning her attention back to the draca who was all but turning herself inside out in her efforts to Change. “Naughty, naughty. You fight as yourself, or die where you stand. Choose!”
The draca screamed wordless abuse and the air suddenly filled with wings and hunting cries as a dozen or so green female dragons arrived towards where Aeva stood. Adamo unsheathed his blades, but had no need of them as the avenging ‘dragons’ fell from the sky like untidy bundles of rags. Each bundle resolved itself into a draca in her true form. And they scuttled to the corner where their sister was still fighting the spell that stopped her from changing.
“The rest of that one’s nest,” Aeva whispered, “but I don’t know why they lost their dragon form so suddenly.”
“Look at Lord Draco .”
Aeva looked, to see the Guardian in the centre of his shifting, swirling cloak, with his taloned fingers playing the air like a musical instrument. He actually winked at Aeva before returning his attention to his children.
“You have disappointed me, and I don’t like disappointment.”
The draca chittered and chattered like frightened mice, but they pushed one of their number forward. She bowed, until her forehead all but touched the sand.
“We are sorry, Master. We was led astray by that one.”
He snorted. “Led astray were you? I take leave to doubt that. I think you were motivated by your greedy lusts and ambitions. And I have no doubt you will misbehave again the moment I turn my back Unless I give you reason to remember.”
The chittering grew higher-pitched and more desperate and the draca huddled together.
“You will just stay here while I decide your future.”
Something pushed the draca into an untidy heap while the sand around them shifted to form a shallow ditch around them.
“How will a shallow ditch…” Adamo breathed.
“Watch.”
As soon as Lord Draco turned his back, one of his draca stuck a foot into the ditch. She dragged it back quickly with a shout of pain.
“It burns. It burns.”
She lifted her foot and even from a distance it was possible to see the blisters on her scaly skin.
Lord Draco rotated his head. “Did I not tell you to be still.” He frowned at the creatures, who subsided. Then it was as if sudden thought struck him. “Gabriel, did not someone say that my ‘lady wife’ suggested that this child of ours was dead?”
“So they did, perhaps we should have words with your lady.”
Lord Draco lifted his arms and made a strange gesture – it was something so complex that Aeva’s eyes could barely discern it as movement. But, as his hands moved the sky changed from the brassy gold of desert heat to a soft peachy pink dotted with wispy clouds. The dragon that spiralled down through the peachy sky was also pink, and her wings looked to have quite the delicacy of gossamer
Adamo bent to Aeva’s ear. “The Lady knows she is in deep trouble. See how she is pulling out all the stops to soften her spouse.”
“I do see. But I also see his face…”
“Me too.” Adamo moved one arm behind him and the sound of booted feet on the sand told Aeva his fighters were joining them. “Insurance,” he muttered.
Before Aeva could respond, Lady Draca landed. “You called, beloved?”
He smiled at her as if one besotted by her beauty. “I believe I did. Ah yes. I have a question.” Then he turned fully to face her and pointed the middle two fingers of his right hand at her face. She flinched as her draconic disguise fell from her, leaving a yellow biped with constantly twitching skin, and oversized leather wings, standing barefoot on the sand.
Draco pressed on, but now his voice was as cold and hard as the ice blocks that float in the northern ocean “I would very much like to know why you told your peers that a draca they wanted to speak with was dead?”
Draca blinked slowly, before gathering herself together. She shrugged. “I didn’t bother to check. Just assumed her dead.”
“Not good enough. Not nearly good enough. You need to remember that I raised you to your current status and I can return you to the gutter from whence you came. Now. The truth of your goodness.”
Draca screamed a scream of real rage and malice and beat her wings thrice so she was standing on the air two man heights above the burning sand. She arrowed downwards like a vengeful bird of prey. Surely, Aeva thought, the creature was not foolish enough to attack Lord Draco.
Of course she wasn’t, and Aeva truly didn’t see her own peril in time, but Adamo was ahead of her and he and his fighters formed a ring of muscle and steel about her. Draca’s outstretched talons were met, not by blood and bone but by slashing blades and pointed darts. As the fighters pushed home their advantage a familiar figure leapt from the group and grabbed the half-dragon from behind.
It was Gudrun, and she bore her prey to the ground, where a calculated tap with the side of a war axe ensured that Draca moved no more. Gudrun had the unconscious figure hogtied before anyone thought to comment. She stood back and called her own challenge to the sky.
Thor arrived from a suddenly black and purple sky, astride a bolt of lightning and accompanied by a chastened-loooking young Northman who wore an iron collar about his brown throat.

Aeva’s Challenge by Jane Jago will continue next week.

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

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!

A darkling drabble offers a shiver of horror in a hundred words…

Doug was a little, skinny man who sat in the window of his little, skinny shop mending clocks. He was a fixture in the city, and as reliable as the dawn. So the day he wasn’t there there, a hunt was called. But there was no sign. The city burghers sent for a finder who led them to a half-forgotten graveyard, where a moss-encrusted headstone marked Doughall Snaith’s last resting place.

The mayor had to be revived with smelling salts and burnt feathers.

“But who has been mending our clocks?”

“Who? Or What?”

The finder flew away laughing.

Jane Jago

Poems of puppy Fozzie Jago as he is exploring and experiencing the world!

Today my toof falled out
It bleeded on my toy
Hudad was very worry
Coz I is his favourite boy

Jane Jago

In a modern-day Britain where the Roman Empire never left, Dai and Julia solve murder mysteries, whilst still having to manage family, friendship and domestic crises…

The golden autumnal weather had given way to a chilly November. Dai Llewellyn sat at his desk by the broad window that looked out over the walled garden of his residence. He still struggled to think of it as ‘home’. Maybe it was the eagle over the door that sneered at him every time he crossed the threshold with its silent message that this was a villa designated sub aquila – Roman only. He wondered if he could arrange to get the facade remodelled on some excuse so above the name of the house, the poppies of its name were wreathed there instead.
He had been absently playing with the silver band around his index finger as he thought these near treasonous thoughts. Then he looked at the ring, it’s intricate blend of Celtic knots and Roman letters and symbols. It marked him out as a citizen – as Roman as his beloved wife Julia and without it she could not be his. She had given him this ring to remind him that their worlds were enriched by each other, not diminished.
Days like this he had to be reminded of that. Sighing, he tried to focus again on the information in front of him. A breakdown of the tenancy of a group of insulae on the rougher edge of Viriconium’s expanding commercial area. The buildings were owned by a Britannia wide property agency – Titus Holdings. They provided housing for over four hundred families – most were single-parent households or impoverished elderly folk who either had no family or whose sons and daughters lacked the space and resources to take them in. It was one of the poorest communities in the city and Dai knew that Titus Holdings did little for its tenants except ensure the structural integrity of the building was maintained. And that was only to avoid facing criminal charges if they should collapse.
He had not visited the estate himself since his return to Viriconium after almost a decade living in Londinium, but his Senior Investigator, Bryn Cartivel had done so and his account had been harrowing.
“I’m not saying I’ve not seen as bad – we both have. Think the dreg ends of the Caligula, but that was Londinium and most there were unregistered and criminals. These people are just desperately poor. Most do seasonal work in the farms around or go begging even. Half the kids look like they’ve not had a decent meal in their lives and most all the old folk are ill from the mould and damp. I was told there is a local joke that the estate has to restock each spring ‘cos so many don’t make it through the winter.” Bryn shook his head at the thought. “It’s grim, Bard.”
“Grim – but not illegal.” Dai had a bitter taste in his mouth as he spoke. “The law says no one forces those people to live there, they choose to do so. That means they choose to accept the conditions the owner offers. After all, if they don’t like it they can always leave.”
“I can see it now you put it that way. They are spoiled for choice with alternatives – sleep on the streets, or under a bridge by the river – or maybe in a nice comfy hedgerow.”
Dai sighed.
“Roman logic. People who can’t imagine what it is like to be so poor the very concept of ‘choice’ about anything in life is meaningless.”
“Not all Romans are rich – your Julia was born in a place not so very different, from what my Gwen tells me.”
“That’s true, but it’s the rich ones that make the laws.”

The reason Bryn had been visiting the Titus estate was the same reason Dai was pouring over complex legal documents relating to the ownership of it and looking at the list of tenants. Over the last month there had been a series of unexplained accidents – lifts failing, elderly people falling down a few steps and being injured but saying they felt as if they had been pushed, people reporting things being stolen whilst they were out but with no sign of a break in, a couple of small fires when people were out and reports of strange sounds coming from the walls. Not surprisingly, the local rumour mill had it that the blocks were cursed or haunted – or both.
Dai had ordered an investigation of the buildings from a structural viewpoint and he had read the surveyors report the previous day. It both utterly exonerated the owners for meeting the minimum legal requirements of upkeep, whilst completely damning them for taking no care or concern for the condition and welfare of their tenants. But that had been a careful subscript and had no legal significance at all. Which would have been the end of Dai’s ability to intervene had a fresh chance accident not occurred – only this one was fatal.
And it wasn’t an accident.
Gedder Blynae had been one of the better off residents of the estate and lived in Insula Cicero. He had returned home early from a family visit in Caesaromagus and found someone – or someones – in the process of emptying his home of its contents into an unmarked and unregistered van. Having served as an auxiliary in his youth, Gedder decided to tackle them himself. Being in the tail end of his seventies, his will was stronger that his way and he was found by his neighbours with severe injuries. Unfortunately for the thieves who killed him, he lived long enough to talk to the first of the vigiles on the scene. She was one of those who had transferred from Londinium with Dai and Bryn.
“He was in his right mind, dominus. Gripped my hand that tight I got bruises,” she had shown Dai and Bryn the imprint of Gedder’s fingers. “He said ‘You tell’em it was them bastards who did it – them was Titus boys. I pulled the mask off the one and he were the same as gets round when the rent is due’. Then he swore a lot and that was it.”
The word of a dead Briton spoken to a non-citizen vigiles against that of a citizen was never going to stand as anything more than inadmissible hearsay in a court presided over by Roman law. But for Dai, it was enough to set him pouring through the affairs of Titus holdings with a fine toothed comb. But so far it all came up squeaky clean legally. What he couldn’t figure was why Titus Holdings had decided to mount a campaign of terror against its own tenants when the profit being made from them was easily tripling any expenditure on the insulae.
So he did what he did whenever something was not working out in his own mind and went to find Julia.

From ‘Dying for a Home’ a short story in The First Dai and Julia Omnibus by E.M. Swift-Hook and Jane Jago.

Advice on growing old disgracefully from an elderly delinquent with many years of expertise in the art – plus free optional snark…

If you’re old then I say this to you
There are certain things that you can’t do
You can’t make your lunch
Alcoholic punch
or have a Slow Comfortable Screw!

Eleanor Swift-Hook

After summer’s glory and October’s golden leaves
In comes bleak November and gaunt, skeletal trees
The winds blow hard, like steel is hard
With neither stint nor quarter
The cold comes in, winter begins
Jack Frost starts his slaughter.

There’s never, in November owt of soft or mellow
It’s not cheery December, coming with a hearty bellow
The mist in swathes, makes people wraiths
And bites with chilling ease
The dark days come, no warmth, no sun
No care that it should please.

Some take the time for fireworks, some for thanksgiving,
Most feel the creep of cold and dark with woeful misgiving
For like a dirge, November’s purge
Sweeps out the summer’s gains
And in its place, no trace of grace
Sets hail and freezing rains.

Eleanor Swift-Hook