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

A tale of angels, demons and dragons…

They broke their fast quietly with one eye on the sky, but in the end it was full noon before a gleaming speck in the sky announced the return of the dragon. She landed quietly this time. No histrionics. No wild wind or storm clouds. Aeva knew this boded no good to anyone and she was glad of Adamo’s strength at her back.
“Aeva Darkstar. It seems your instinct was faultless. The desert draca do indeed have a mortal male in their nest…”
“But?”
“But they will not give him up.”
“Will they not?”
“No Invigilator. They will not. They say that he is theirs to do with as they choose. When he has done that for which they borrowed him they propose eating him.”
Aeva sighed. “Thereby provoking a mortal versus monster war. I wonder why they are intent on doing something so potentially disastrous.”
If it was possible for a dragon to look puzzled the golden female on the sand would have done so. When she had come to the end of her train of thought she looked at Aeva and shook her head slowly. “I had thought it just the usual contrariness of the draca. But now I am having more thoughts. I think there are questions to be answered.”
“There are, indeed.”
“I will return, anon.” The dragon threw herself into the sky.
Aeva turned to Adamo. “This is going to get dangerous.”
“It already got dangerous, my lady. Look.”
He turned Aeva to face the northern skyline where four hooded figures sat astride tall horses. Three of the mounts were as dark as the midnight sky. The fourth was as pale as milk and his rider carried a scythe across his back with its curved blade gleaming in the noonday heat.
“We need help, Adamo. And we need it quickly. But how…”
Adamo lifted her hand, and placed her marked palm against the diamond wings where they lay against her throat. Lucifer’s voice echoed crisply in her mind.
“Aeva Darkstar asks for help. The price may be high.” He began to laugh, but then something changed his mind. “Of your goodness lend me your eyes.”
Aeva felt herself put gently to one side as the dark lord took over her faculties. It was a strangely chastening experience to understand for a moment the breadth of intellect, and the sheer power took her breath away. Then he was gone and her mind was her own once more. She reacquainted herself with her eyes, to find Lucifer standing before her. He looked at her sombrely.
“Who called the horsemen?”
“I don’t entirely know. But I would guess that it was whoever is responsible for the draca thinking they can get away with eating the Messenger they borrowed.”
“Eating the Messenger? Do they not know who he is?”
“Either they don’t know, or they don’t care. I rather wish I knew which.”
Adamo spoke from behind her. “I think the queen dragon has gone to find out.”
Lucifer spoke quietly. “Even though we do need to know, knowledge alone may not be a great deal of help. We need a big stick.”
He threw back his head and howled into the heavens.
“That should fetch him.”
“Fetch whom?”
Lucifer laughed and put a finger to the side of his nose.
Aeva felt like slapping him, but decided not to push her luck, instead looked to the east. “Oh. Oh.”
It was as if her gaze drew Lucifer’s dark eyes. The dark lord put a huge hand on her head in an oddly protective gesture as the dunes to the east filled with silent dragons, who stood watching Aeva with their whirling multicoloured eyes.
While she was processing the implications of that, a portal opened and three figures stepped out onto the sand. Lord Draco, with his oddly lizard-like head poking out from the shifting swirling chaos of his cloak, Gabriel dressed from head to toe in white and with the desert sun reflecting in the iridescence of his wings, and Athena bearing the scales of her position as the judge of mortals in one large white hand. They came to where Lucifer stood with his hand on Aeva’s head.
“You called?” Gabriel spoke mildly enough, but the brazen trumpets were back in his voice.
“I called Draco because his children are misbehaving.”
“How so?”
“They have the missing Messenger, but they are not prepared to give him back. When he has done his duty as a fertile male they propose to eat him.”
Gabriel groaned and Athena slapped Lord Draco hard across his head.
“Explanation please.”
The god of half-monsters rubbed an oddly-jointed hand across the bony plates of his head. “I don’t have one right now. But I do have an idea who might know.” He rolled his lips back from his teeth and made a strange hissing noise. For a moment nothing happened, but then the wind picked up and the sand spun itself into whirling dervishes of heat and spite. Gabriel raised a hand, and the desert stilled. The dragon that landed was black, and sleek and beautiful. She was also visibly annoyed. As her feet touched the sand she stared about her pushing out a petulant lip, but before she could utter a word Lord Draco dropped his cloak and spoke a word of power. In the place of the beautiful dragon there stood a strangely-jointed biped with a dark, leathery skin and small crumpled wings.
Lucifer stepped in front of Aeva and stood with his arms folded.
The Guardian of all half-mortals hissed at his creature and she dropped to her knees.
Adamo bent his mouth to Aeva’s ear. “What is she?”
“Draca, in true form. But hush now.”
He subsided, but Aeva could almost taste his curiosity.
Lord Draco looked at the half-dragon, and when he spoke his voice was laden with contempt. “Well, my pretty. What have you been up to now?”
“Nothing, dear my lord.”
He hissed a polysyllabic at her and she seemed to become too small for her skin.
“It was just a joke. He said it would be fun to set the mortals and the monsters at each other’s throats. There will be plenty of carrion to feed on too.”
“Who said?”
The creature opened her mouth but no sound came. Lord Draco looked helplessly at his peers. “I think she will die before she can tell me who put her up to this. But if that is what it takes.”
Lucifer shook his head. “It won’t help. More to the point my lizardly chum, how much authority did you allow that one to usurp?”
Draco hung his head. “Rather a lot.”
“Meaning?” Athena sounded dangerously irritated.
“Meaning the nest has my sanction to take the mortal, and do with him as they will.”
Aeva hadn’t even known that angels could swear. When Gabriel calmed down he turned to Lucifer.
“What now, my brother?”
Lucifer shook his head. “That depends on the courage of one half-demon doesn’t it.
Aeva sighed. “A duel? To the death maybe?” Then she squared her shoulders. “It is my burden.”
She felt Adamo stiffen at her back. “You are not considering fighting a dragon. Tell me you are not.”
“No amore mio. I will be fighting the draca who borrowed the missing Messenger. In her true form.”
He relaxed fractionally. “That’s still not good. But at least it is not an automatic death sentence.”
Lucifer snorted. “I dislike being the puppet of a badly disciplined female and whoever is pulling her strings.”
Aeva chuckled. “As opposed to pulling strings yourself?”
“You are really much too intelligent for a half-mortal,” Lucifer sounded amused, indulgent and almost affectionate. He opened his mouth as if to say somewhat else but obviously thought better of it. He looked down at Aeva and his mouth twisted before he spoke in an entirely different voice. “If you are going to have to fight this draca, let us at least ensure it’s a fair fight.”

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

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

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 idiot who brought you to a sushi restaurant