The salesman sneered at their humble clothes and work roughened hands.

“Help you?”

His contempt was clear in his voice.

The old man studied his feet, but his wife looked into the man’s eyes.

“We want a car.”

“Secondhand stock is round back. I’ll call one of the juniors.” 

He all but ran from the old couple to where a much painted blonde teetered in on skyscraper heels. 

The junior was young and freckle faced and friendly. 

He sold the lottery winners their first Lamborghini, while the blonde cost  the salesman a very expensive dinner and a course of antibiotics.

©️Jane Jago  

Because life can be interesting when you are a character in a video game…

A few minutes later they were stepping off the boat onto a stone dock which fronted onto a settlement that looked a lot more substantial than Wrathburnt Sands. There were people everywhere, all races, Locals and Visitors. Locals, noticeable by the slightly bored, long suffering expressions and rather plain outfits that most wore. Visitors, marked out like brilliantly coloured butterflies, clad in glamorous outfits with swirling runes and sparkles. Most boasting weaponry which seemed so powerful that their wielders might slice and dice the very air with them.
Milla felt overwhelmed and held back, gripping onto Pew’s hand like a lifeline as Glory vanished into the throng. Pew frowned at her reluctance.
“Are you alright? You look a bit ill.”
“I… I…” She struggled for words to explain how she felt both crushed in by so many people and buildings, and at the same time vulnerable and exposed as if too far out in the open.
“It’s not some odd after effect of you zoning is it?”
She shook her head.
“I just need to sit down a minute.”
A short time later she was sitting in a dockside tavern with a solicitous Pew and feeling a bit better.
“I never thought there would be so many people in one place.”
“Yeah? Well Liberation is a game hub and a starter city so it tends to get a bit busy.”
A bit?
Milla just nodded and wondered if she should have listened to One Eye and stayed at home after all.
“Look. We won’t be here long. Glory is finding out the fastest way to get to Lustrous Lake and soon as she gets back we’ll be on our way. You think you can manage?”
She nodded again. She’d have to manage. This was a venture. So she drank the odd tasting ale and tried to give Pew a reassuring smile.
Glory dropped into an empty seat opposite them and picked up a tankard of ale, swilling most of it down before setting it back on the table. “Good news. They seem to have extended the airship run out over Seersucker Swamp to the griblins quest camp. That’s just a short run to Lustrous Lake. We can be there pretty quick. But you’ve still not told me what we’re doing when we get there.”
“Air ship?” Milla tried to put the two words together in her head in any way that made sense – and failed.
Glory gave her an odd look.
“It’s only been in the game since the first update in vanilla, flies across all the original lands – you know like a dirigible thing? Very steampunk.”
“OMG. Do you remember the flame-fest when they did it?” Pew laughed at the memory. “Half the player base complained it was pressing the ‘easy mode’ button on transport and half were up in arms because it was a fracking air ship and that wasn’t purist fantasy enough for them.”
“And the other half hated on it for being too slow still, even though it more than halved the time it used to take.”
“Oh yeah and another half thought it was too much to have to do an access quest to use it, so they ditched that with the first expansion…”
“…which meant half the players were back to complaining about lowering the amount of significant content or some such BS.”
Milla decided it wasn’t going to help matters if she pointed out that five halves didn’t make a whole, and as that was the only aspect of the entire conversation she felt qualified to comment on, she said nothing.
“So are we ready to go then?” Pew asked.
“Well that depends. Will this take long? I need to log over to my main to do the dailies and then I’ve got to raid later.”
Pew was frowning and Milla wondered what Glory meant.
“I don’t know if it’ll take long or not. But it’s a bit more important than doing dailies.”
The elf looked doubtful and sucked in her cheeks.
“I’m not so sure. But I can always use a catch-up on them.”
“So we’re ready?”
Glory shrugged and then nodded. “I guess.”
“Good. Let’s go.”

We will return to Wrathburnt Sands by E.M. Swift-Hook next Sunday.

Return to Wrathburnt Sands was first published in Rise and Rescue Volume 2: Protect and Recover.

Can we hide from history?
Close our eyes as all around
the world reshapes itself
And leaves us,
marooned,
Helpless to help.

Can we change the way things are?
Reach out and grip the desperate hands
begging for our aid
And feel that
maybe,
There is a chance.

We style ourselves as free people
And yet our freedom is too slight
to make much difference
We can not
alter
The way things are.

None can hide from history
It laps our shores from distant lands
their tragedy is ours
We must keep
trying
To make a change.

E.M. Swift-Hook

Dying to be Roman by Jane Jago and E.M. Swift-Hook is a whodunit set in a modern day Britain where the Roman Empire still rules. You can listen to this on YouTube too.

“Who is it?”
“Treno Bellicus. You may have heard -”
“Of course I have.” She cut across him rudely as if wanting to reassert herself after the moment of weakness he had witnessed. “He is one of the contestants. He was reported missing days ago and now he is dead but you useless vigiles have done nothing about it.”
Dai took a breath and met her accusing glare with his own brand of gravitas.
“Well, you can be certain we are giving the matter our full attention now,” he assured her.
She snorted and stalked off.
“It strikes me that after two thousand years of unbroken Roman rule and all the incredible technological advances that has brought to the world, they would have figured simple things like that,” Bryn said, watching her retreating figure.
Dai glanced at his decanus, saw his expression and decided to bite.
“Things like what?”
“How to run a decent criminal investigation service. I mean clearly these vigiles she speaks of are cack. That poor woman, having to deal with such incompetents. It must be very trying for her.”
“I’ve met a few who really are,” Dai agreed, grinning, “but Roman Citizens just have to man up and make do with the inefficiencies and restrictions of Imperial rule out here in the provinces. She should just be glad we have the most essential basics like hovercars and the internet.”
“Yeah. I don’t know how the poor dears manage here in this primitive and barbarous land, so far from Rome where everything is always perfect.”
“If I didn’t know you better I might think you were abandoning Stoicism to become a Cynic, Bryn.”
“What? You have met my half-Roman wife? My mother’s half-Roman too. With those women folk I’m a Stoic, man, through and through. I have to be.”
Dai laughed and shook his head, then they both turned their attention back to the very unfunny reality of the corpse at their feet.

Action replay.
Same arena.
Twenty four hours later.
This time, though, there were two bodies.
One was another British contestant, Tam Docca ‘Fly Boy’, from the Valentia Game team, but it was the second corpse lying as if awaiting funeral rites that had Dai’s fullest attention. Quintillas Publius Luca – son of a Roman Senator and a proper one at that, from proper Rome – not one of those who sat in Augusta Treverorum, giving themselves airs.
Trev, as Dai and most Britons thought of it, was the capital of Prefecture Galliae, home to the man who ruled Britannia and much of the Northern and Western parts of the continent as well. It was one of the four original Prefectures, each governed by its own Caesar, established by the Divine Diocletian under his sole rule as God-Emperor of a new Roman Empire.
According to the information Dai was getting, Luca was not supposed to even be in the province. There were media images which showed him in some small provincial town, identified as Lutetia in Gallia Lugdunensis, sipping cocktails on a terrace overlooking a river, with his gorgeous patrician bride of a year, one Marcella Tullia Junius. The same article claimed Luca was away from Rome on a long-term project to regenerate and oversee the family’s estates in Gallia.
“You would think,” Bryn observed dryly, “that after last night they would have kept a watch. Security cameras all down still and I bet no one saw a thing, just like before. That’ll put a sour look on the face of that jobsworth Flavia.”
Dai shot his decanus a look.
“Shut up, Bryn, you spado. I’m thinking.”
The decanus chuckled.
“It ain’t often I can get the Bard to swear,” he remarked happily. “Let’s see if I can shake a few more curses out of those pure Celtic lips. You know they’ll sic a Roman on us? This is too big for us local yokels.”
“Yeah. Just as long as it isn’t Titillicus…”
“Oh, course you won’t have heard. Titillicus is no longer a factor. He got in a ruck with the Tribune, who sent him home to his mammy.”
“In disgrace?”
“Nah. In a body bag. Seems he pulled a knife.”
“Moron. But what was the row about?”
“As if you couldn’t guess.”
“He didn’t?”
“Yep. The Tribune’s wife under the very eyes of the family lares.”
Dai grinned viciously. He had never liked working with Titillicus, the kind of Roman who assumed he ruled the Province and owned every provincial he encountered. Surely whoever they sent from Trev HQ would have to be better than that?

Two days later, he found out.
He stood outside the Prefect’s office feeling as if he had been grilled like a flatbread on a griddle. The Prefect seemed to feel it was all Dai’s fault too, on top of which she was seething they had not sent one of her extended family’s clients from Trev. They had sent someone direct from Rome.
“This is a client of the Praetor himself so if you mess this up, Llewellyn, you make one mistake, or upset her at all, you will be stuck in the Pit monitoring security footage until you reach your dotage.”
“Domina.”
The Pit was a room under the main HQ where failed vigiles would be sent to serve out their term going over the endless amount of security footage the AI decided needed a human decision. The chances of making the wrong call were high, and too many of those, would get you a missio ignominiosa – meaning you’d be thrown out of the vigiles with nothing and little chance of getting any decent employment anywhere, ever. The idea of a future life as a nightclub bouncer in one of the shadier suburbs did not fill Dai with a warm fuzzy feeling.
That and the fact this was his turf, his case and he was going to have to solve it somehow, whilst keeping some place-holding sycophantic client of Praetor Marius Aurelius Naribus distracted enough not to get in the way.
In the lift back to the main office he had time to contemplate the implications. Bryn must have seen his mood, because the decanus wisely said nothing when Dai gestured to him to follow. The two of them made their way to the plush reception room where important people from Rome could be properly accommodated and entertained. Dai ignored all protocols and strode in, then stopped so fast Bryn pushed into him and he heard the decanus swear under his breath. But Dai barely noticed because he had just realised that this was going to be worse than he could ever have imagined. This wasn’t a woman, it was a little boy in leather trews and bristling with weapons.

Dying to be Roman by Jane Jago and E.M. Swift-Hook

When did it get to be September?
Where did the summer go?
The wind’s slid out of the gentle south
As autumn begins to blow
The earliest trees are painting their leaves
In hues of russet and gold
While busy squirrels fill their cheeks
And watch the nights unfold
The air round our ears is sharp and clear
Though the sky is still duck-egg pale
It feels like the days at this end of the year
Hear the whisper of winter’s cold tale
When did it get to be September?
How are the nights so cold?
Whose is that wrinkled face in the mirror?
When did we grow old?

©️Jane Jago

Dear Reader Who Writes,

You will recall from our previous acquaintance that I am Moonbeam Farquhar Metheringham IV author of the One Million Bestseller (one million in Amazon Rankings) epic of science fiction and fantasy excellence, ‘Fatswhistle and Buchtooth’. One’s chums tell one that they find the old moniker a bit of a mouthful and for some inexplicable reason few seem able to pronounce it without adding a silent smirk in the middle. Hence, one is usually bespoken of by one’s legions of admirers as ‘Ivy’.

However one is proud of one’s unique and outstanding name. I owe it to my darling Mummie having been a flower-child in her youth and Pater being a frightfully successful stockbroker. Tragically, Pater is no longer with us. He is in a better place, as he assures the world frequently in those Facebook pictures of his suntanned self and the skinny tart he took with him to Barbados.

But enough of my history, you are not here to have your heart bleed for my broken home, you are here to learn from my vast stores of wisdom and humility. I will keep you in anticipation no longer.

How to Start Writing a Book – The Write Equipment

A delicate pun-ette never goes amiss, gentle Reader Who Writes and brevity in insignificancies is a virtue I profess frequently, so you shall be acronymed into my RWW from now on in this piece.

The importance of beauty cannot be overemphasised. One is a follower of the maxims of the sainted William Morris and will have nothing in one’s bijou writing cave that one does not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.

It takes so little effort my beloved RWW to ensure that one writes only on the most perfect sheets of paper, with the most gloriously coloured inks, using pens made from the flight feathers of the Phoenix of one’s imagination.

Oh, would that were true, would that it were.

Instead, we are driven by the exigencies of life in a century that prizes immediacy above the endeavours of gentlemanly artistry. So I have a convenient technological contrivance to enable me to articulate my erudition across the world. From my fingers to your eyes. Miraculous to realise that these words I am typing in my underground retreat shall soon be read by you dear, dear RWW whether you are in Utah or Uzbekistan, Brisbane or Brighton, La Belle France or Lesotho.

So yes, the equipment you most need as a writer is some form of a computer connected to the interwebs. Be sure to have one set up in your chosen writing area before I next grace you with my presence.

And until then, dearly beloved RWW – bon ecrit!

Moonbeam Farquhar Metheringham IV

You can find more of IVy’s profound thoughts in How To Start Writing A Book courtesy of E.M. Swift-Hook and Jane Jago.

It’s easy, they said, you’ll be able to keep in touch, they said. So she bought the bloody thing. Laid out a grand and…

Nothing.

Her nephew came along and set it up for her. That was a little better, though not much. It still sat unopened on the dresser smirking at her.

They bought her a course of one-to-one lessons for her birthday. 

A skinny young man with multiple tattoos turned up bang on time. 

She didn’t learn to use her computer, but she had a lot of fun teaching him how to interface with a woman…

©️Jane Jago

‘Spy will get caught in city. Will talk to save own skin. No deal.’ The little man with brown teeth spoke stubbornly, before he spat a stream of malodorous tobacco juice onto the sand between the feet of the person he had come to meet.
 ‘You are being stupid on a lot of levels Hakim. Not the least of which is spitting so close to my favourite boots.’
Hakim squirmed under an icy blue gaze.
‘Better. Now mind your own business. Our representative has all necessary identification, and will not know your name anyway. All we require from you is a train ticket.’
‘If you got papers and identity, why you need me to get train ticket?’ 
‘You don’t want to know. If you knew I’d have to cut out your tongue to ensure your silence.’
Hakim eyed him narrowly. ‘Isn’t so smart to threaten me.’
‘Oh’ the man said mildly. ‘I ain’t threatening.’ 
A heavily veiled woman, who occupied a curtained litter surrounded by the eunuchs who would carry the ornate conveyance, beckoned to her negotiator with one long, gloved finger. He went to her side, and she whispered something in his ear. 
‘My lady loses patience. Do we have a deal?’ 
Hakim scratched his unlovely armpit. 
‘Ticket from Tashkent to the city. Just one?’ 
‘In a manner of speaking. A ticket for a private first-class compartment.’ 
Hakim looked impressed. ‘Will be expensive.’ 
‘So noted. Do we have a deal?’ 
‘We do. Names?’ ‘No. We’ll fill the names in ourselves. You just get the ticket. For the first day of Maj. You have a week. Meet me here with the ticket.’ 
The negotiator turned away, but not before he had seen the crafty gleam in Hakim’s eyes. ‘Don’t double-cross me’ he threw over his shoulder. ‘It takes a long time to die on a cross.’ He had the satisfaction of hearing Hakim swallow audibly.  
The party from the west mounted their horses, and the bearers picked up the lady’s litter. Hakim watched them with equal amounts of loathing and fascination before climbing out of the wadi to where his own men awaited him. He sat on the ground beside his resting camel and folded another wad of tobacco into his left cheek. Nobody spoke. It was many minutes before a couple of men appeared as if from nowhere. 
‘Well?’ Hakim asked. 
‘Forty men. Dozen veiled women. Went back towards oasis at Binti Hammam. Black ninjas with them. Lot of black ninjas.’ The man shuddered. 
‘Makes easy then. We take their money, do their business, and keep our mouths shut.’ 
‘Tightly shut.’
Hakim nodded briskly. ‘Anybody has ideas about making some moneys. Don’t. I promise slow painful death to anyone betraying our honoured clients. And that means all; includes Hanif, and his witch of a mother.’ 
The man so addressed met his boss’ eyes for a moment. He must have seen something there that gave him pause because he paled under his tan, before nodding his assent. ‘Understood my Father. I’ll behave. So will Mother, or I’ll cut out her tongue.’ 
The party prodded its grumpy, sleepy camels onto their feet and mounted up. When they had all disappeared over the horizon, a figure unfolded itself from the middle of a stand of prickly pear and other cactus. It swore briefly, before whistling on two notes. Another man and two horses came quietly over the edge of the wadi. The original man grunted and mounted up. ‘Fucking job. Fucking thorns. Fucking desert. Fucking Hakim. Let’s go get a fucking big drink.’ 
His friend grunted out a laugh and they turned their horses towards the west.

From Billion Dollar Mountain by Jane Jago

Rex had been through several homes so he had no great expectations when he was chosen at the pound that this one would be any different. The woman who had stared at him in his run with an intense piercing look had not seemed that pleased to take him. She wore hard heels that tapped along the floor and didn’t say anything as she put him into the car and drove home.
The man who sat alone in the garden looked very sad until he saw Rex. Then he smiled.
“Charlie? My Charlie!”
Rex decided he liked his new name.

E.M. Swift-Hook

Dying to be Roman by Jane Jago and E.M. Swift-Hook is a whodunit set in a modern day Britain where the Roman Empire still rules. If you would like to listen as you read, or instead of reading you can on YouTube.

Anno Diocletiani MDCCLXXVII Maius

“Notebook entry. Confirm date, Post Ides, Maius. Time, night watch, at two twenty three, and location Augusta Arena, Londinium, Britannia Maxima. Looks like the report of a murder was not wrong. He seems pretty deceased to me.”
Under the brilliant lights of the pitch, which turned night into day, the body would have looked gruesome anyway. It had no face. But laid out as it was on a white sheet, the injuries seemed to stand out more. There was no blood but…
Dai wished he had not put quite so much garum on the chips he had been eating less than an hour ago. Even after more than eight years in the job he still found he had little stomach for the messier end of it. At least the hands seemed to still be intact, which made part of the process a lot easier. He pressed the touchscreen of his identipad against one finger and then entered the other necessary details. DNA and fingerprint checks both came up. Which was unusual as most murder victims were unregistered on either database. But when he saw the image he knew why this one was different.
This had once been Treno Bellicus ‘Big Belly’: one of the leading lights of the Caledonian Game team here in Londinium for the Games. That had to be more than ironic.
Dai, like every schoolkid in Britannia, knew that an arena had stood here since before the Divine Diocletian had rebuilt the Empire under his heavy hand, spreading his brand of Romanisation as far as his arms would reach and at the same time snatching back the privilege of being a full citizen from all born outside Italia. Back then, the arena had staged the kind of barbaric and bloody spectacles ex-patriot Romans expected. And now? In all honesty, Dai could not say it was too much different. It might include a ball as a sop to those who wanted to call it sport, but the brutality remained the same. The Games in all their unrelenting savagery. Those who couldn’t be there in person to taste the dust and smell the blood could freely watch the spectacle on the screens on every street corner and in every public building. Bread and Circuses.

The prize that lured the finest athletes of the provinces to risk life and limb was otherwise unattainable Roman Citizenship, and this poor bastard had been a star player. A broad-featured face looked out of the screen on Dai’s wristphone, wearing a manufactured snarl; behind him was a virtual backdrop with sports drink logos and other product placements. Well, those sponsors had just lost one of their money-spinning assets.
Reluctantly, he returned his attention to the body and bent over it to peer at the visible injuries as he made his initial informal observations. It was as much talking himself through coping with the gruesome scene as anything of real value.
“Victim ID biometrics confirmed. Body is supine. Been dead the last four hours. He looks like he has been laid out all ready for anointing and Charon’s obol. But placed on a white cloth that I’m willing to bet half my next salary is going to be a bed sheet. Body was bled out, through the throat – ugly gash there – and cleaned up before being put here. The other half of my pay is going on the certainty there will be nothing on the body we can use to ID the killer. Other injuries I can see -”
One of the disadvantages of being a plainclothes investigator was it seemed to lead to less respect from civilians, especially from Roman civilians.
“Llewellyn?” the voice was coolly condescending.
Even though he had told his decanus to keep everyone away, Dai was grateful for the excuse to straighten up and stop looking at the corpse.
The woman who stood there was in her thirties, with classic Roman features; she wore her fashionably short stola over close-fitting leggings and boots. For someone who must have been dragged out of bed in the small hours, she looked very well turned out and made Dai wish he could cover the small stain on his tunic where he had dropped a chip when the call to attend this crime came through. Her name badge declared her to be ‘Annia Belonia Flavia’ and said she was Curatrix Prima. No doubt in charge of this arena. She was frowning at him and he realised he must be staring.
“That is indeed who I am, domina.”
Behind her back he could see Bryn, his decanus, looking guilty. So he should, but Dai had the feeling this woman was not the kind to be easily put off.
“Do you you know how this happened?” she demanded, as if it was Dai’s fault the body had been left in the middle of her pitch.
“Investigations are already underway,” he told her smoothly. “We have identified the victim and my people are questioning everyone who might have seen anything here.”
He had tried to put himself between her and the body, but she sidestepped and looked. Her hands went up to her face and the skin behind them looked almost as pale as the corpse, leaching into a light hint of green. To her credit, she recovered without vomiting, but she stepped back and took a breath before restoring the gravitas expected of a Roman matron.

Dying to be Roman by Jane Jago and E.M. Swift-Hook