Two Women and Some Books
Advice on growing old disgracefully from an elderly delinquent with many years of expertise in the art – plus free optional snark…
You are old, and you are a disgrace
Should be modest and downcast of face
It is so deeply wrong
That you’re wearing a thong
And a peephole in black silk and lace
Where the beer flows, there go I
In the pub snug bar I lie
Drinking beer until the cry:
‘Last orders, please’ when I sigh.
Until summer merrily.
Verily, merrily
Shall I go then
Into the beer garden, to drink with friends!
One of the poems you can find in In Verse
A sci-fi story of love, betrayal and Space Pirates!
So home was now an underground lair on a nameless, tempest ravaged dust world.
And although she knew that all she touched was soaked with the blood of freetraders, Pan found it surprisingly easy to push that away and focus on the work she was expected to do.
The hard part, the really hard part, was sleeping with her betrayer as if nothing had changed between them.
At first someone shadowed her all the time, checking what she had been doing. They were being careful despite accepting her as one of their own. Usually it was Tolin or Daiyu who would at least chat a bit. Sometimes it was the silent Goldie, who Pan was beginning to believe might be mute. Once, about a cycle in, it was even Dekker himself who came to check some upgrade work she had been doing on his ‘girl’ the systems interceptor.
“How you settling in?” he asked, slipping into the copilot seat as she was running the final link interface checks. She glanced at him, those brutalised eyes belying the friendly smile.
“So-so.” It was an honest answer.
“I’d have left you and Tols out there running for us if I could’ve. The work you two had going was awesome. Finest runners ever. But…” He gestured to the ship then lifted a finger and circled it to indicate the underground hanger and the habitation attached to it. “This place needs nursing along. Randja said it needed a lot of babying to keep the old tech up and running.”
Pan finished the last check and set the system live, watching for anything to suggest she might have made a mistake. But the upgrade was installed well within the tolerance of the smart-assist AI to compensate for any clumsiness or oversight on her part.
She sat back in the pilot’s seat and turned it slightly to face in towards Dekker’s chair.
“Then Randja was talking bollocks,” she said. “I think he just didn’t want to be out there in that dangerous galaxy – the one that eventually killed him. He wanted to be safe here while you and the others were out there doing the dirty stuff. Ready to take his cut when the time came. The systems they put in here were built with more back ups and fail safes than you can imagine and constructed to last.”
She had his attention now and his eyes had taken on a feral look. They were so dark she could see herself reflected in them.
“You saying Randja was lying to me?”
She gave that a few moments consideration before replying.
“Being a little creative with the truth maybe. Of course this all needs maintenance, but he had tech mechs doing most of that. You don’t need someone sitting here watching it all the time.”
Dekker grinned.
“That’s good news. We badly need a runner out there and to tell you the truth before you hitched up with him, Tols was flailing around most of the time. The two of you together, though. Sweet.” He leaned forward and ran a hand up Pan’s thigh. “Very sweet.”
He caught the slap with the same hand, well before it reached his face. Pan cursed herself silently as something primitive and ugly stirred in the depths of Dekker’s gaze. He released her wrist as if it burned him and sat back, the grin gone.
“I just lost a bet. Daiyu said you were Tols’ and his alone. Guess she was right after all.” He pushed himself to his feet. “If, as you say, this place could get by without you for half a cycle or so, I think you two lovebirds should spread your wings and hunt us up some trade.”
Roguing Thieves is a Fortune’s Fools story by E.M. Swift-Hook. There will be more Roguing Thieves next week…
They called her Nanny Bee, although as far as anyone knew she had never been a wife or a mother, let alone a grandmother. But she was popularly believed to be a witch – so Nanny it was. She lived in a pink-walled thatched cottage that crouched between the village green and the vicarage. The Reverend Alphonso Scoggins (a person of peculiarly mixed heritage and a fondness for large dinners) joked that between him and Nanny they could see the villagers from birth to burial.
Nanny’s garden was the most verdant and productive little patch you could ever imagine, and she could be found pottering in its walled prettiness from dawn to dusk almost every day. People came to visit and were given advice, or medicine, or other potions in tiny bottles or scraps of paper – but they always had the sneaking suspicion they were getting in the way of the gardening.
But there again, digging is second nature to gnomes.
It was one of those winter evenings when your own fireside is the best place to be when Nanny’s dream of bee-loud summer was interrupted by a quiet tap on the door. It was the vicar’s housekeeper. She dropped a small curtesy and Nanny wondered why her prickles didn’t tear holes in her flowered gown.
“The vicar asks if you could spare him a few moments ma’am.”
“What? Right now?”
“If you please.”
Nanny shoved her feet into her bright red rubber boots and wrapped herself in a cloak of fine combed wool.
“Lead the way, Tiggywinkle.”
In the vicar’s study, the formidable bosom of the village’s premier gossip was accompanied by her daughter – who didn’t look too happy to be there.
“Ah. Bee. I’m being asked to call out Farmer Greengrass in church as an adulterer and the father of the baby Amelia here is carrying.”
“I’m not asking Reverend, I demand that you put my daughter in place of that man’s barren wife.”
Nanny sniffed. “Adulterer he may well be. But the child ain’t his.”
“Are you calling my daughter a liar?”
“Egg it how you please. The babe ain’t his.”
The bosom loomed.
“How dare you?”
Nanny grinned. “It ent his wife what’s barren.”
Then she went home.
The circus wagons move from town to town, with the brightly-arrayed creatures tumbling and dancing about them – animated only by the strangely compelling music of the singing oil drums. And all the while, the masters collect money in their horny palms.
Do we ever feel the joy of the dance? No. It is not permitted. We must remain with the freak show, alongside the moustached lady who flaunts her tattooed self and the strangely misshapen beings whose birth was unfortunate and whose lives have rarely been more than burdensome.
We sometimes wonder if we were born as we are now. Truth to tell, we do not know. Although we sometimes speak of where we might have come from none of us has even an idea of before we were as we are.
But our life isn’t hard. Not now. Not if we can manage not to mind the staring eyes.
We speak of that, too, in the quiet of the night – understanding that, hate the eyes though we might, they are less troublesome than the hurled rocks and stones that were overwhelming us in the only other place we can remember. We still feel the hurt to our bones, and the strangeness of relief when the masters drove our persecutors from us with cudgels and harsh words. They removed us from the place and we understood that we became their possessions from that day on.
Our present owners are never truly unkind, although they think of us as animals who have no more comprehension than the heffalumps and the prancing unicorn.
So we stand in our wagon, and those with a brown penny to spend come to look and enjoy their own revulsion. Sometimes those with coins of silver or gold pay to come into the place where we are. They are permitted to do certain things to us. Things that are unpleasant, but never as painful as the rocks of those who sought our deaths. We endure, and are rewarded for our stoicism with treats of honey and brief walks in quiet woodland glades.
Sometimes we think of escape. If we ever get a chance.
Opportunity comes to those who are patient, though, and ours knocked in a most unexpected way.
It was a hot summer night and the circus was leaving town in a hurry. There were whispers of inquisitors in the district and the dark ones had no mind to lose any of their pets to the heavy hand of such as those. The procession hustled along as fast as was possible given the need for discretion. The only sound to be heard was wagons softly creaking in the darkness, while the rising dust clogged our nostrils and besmirched our robes. Nobody capered in a foolish dance, and no music heralded our movement. All was tight-lipped quiet and care to be unobserved.
At a certain place in the deepest shade of the trees our party left the road and turned its face to the hidden ways, where the old trees moved their limbs aside making a path between themselves for the swaying wagons.
We judged it to be coming towards dawn when the wagon beneath us lurched and broadsided itself across the barely discernible byway. There came a horrid cracking sound and we shuddered to a stop.
“Blasted, buggering axle.”
The master who had been driving the patient burden beasts swore in a bitter undervoice. For a few moments there was sufficient chaos to awaken the hungry flesh eaters in their shiny cages. But the masters are resourceful and they soon regained order although we feared certain of the chattering ones would have felt the lash of a stock whip before they quieted.
And we?
We stood in our customary quietude whilst they argued the best way forward.
“Leave them. We can return for them tomorrow night.”
“Leave them, and have them run away? What foolishness is this.”
We knew that cold, harsh voice. It belonged to the ringmaster, who was heavily handsome in the way of humans, and whose anger all the circus feared. Or almost all.
Around him, the talk subsided, until only one was left to brave, or foolish, enough to argue. It was the old one. The one whose voice rustled like last years desiccated leaves and was so discordant as to make our mouths and throats feel as if we had been thirsting for many a day.
“Have them run away? Think again grandson of my son. Where would they go?”
The silence fell heavily cold into the breathless heat of the night, but then he laughed. “Where indeed.”
In a very short while they were gone and around us there was no sound save for the noises as the forest herself awoke. Emboldened by our unaccustomed aloneness we sat swinging our feet over the sides of our broken home.
The air grew cooler and the scent of grass came to our nostrils.
“Such beauty,” one of us spoke into the softly verdant air.
We watched as the sun rose and the creatures of the day took over from the night fliers and crawlers.
Another of us spoke into the pinkness of the dawn.
“Do we dare?”
“Do we dare what?”
But we knew. We knew that if we would ever leave the wooden prison in which we dwelt, now was our time.
Nobody moved, though, and our hands stroked the smooth wood of familiarity.
It must have been high noon before yet another found voice.
“After all. Where would we go?”
This story was inspired by the image created by Paul Biddle
The Dog Days are the high days of summer and a perfect time to celebrate our canine companions in verse and prose.
“Listen here, bonehead. They are talking about castration if you don’t stop.”
Scraps pawed his phone and the screen flashed up a message.
“Stop what?”
“Stop harassing bitches and offering violence to random males. It’s taking up too much of their time.”
He licked his scrotum meditatively, but the message must have got through, because he was much more careful about his phone use thereafter.
So careful that it wasn’t him hailed off to the veterinarian in a dog van.
No. It was his arch enemy Jaws whose testicles were removed.
Learning to hack enemy phones had been worth it.
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 door slammed shut behind him and the solid sound of bolts shooting home followed, reinforcing the sense of finality. The room was a depressing dull grey from ceiling to floor. It was square with two beds, bunks, running the full length of one sidewall and essential facilities in the far corner. Zero privacy from either his cellmate or, through the door hatch, from the custodius. Above the door a vent the size of his fist was vibrating with an annoying humming-whine as it reluctantly circulated fresh air.
“Llewellyn? What did they drag you in here for? Sticking your nose too deep in someone else’s business?”
The voice was vaguely familiar, though Dai was slow to place it as the shaven head of the man sprawled on the lower bunk was not. His puzzlement must have shown because the man swung his legs over the side of the bunk and sat up.
“I don’t suppose you remember me. It was some months ago and I’m sure you’ve been a busy Submagistratus since then.”
“I’m sorry, but I really don’t…”
The other man laughed, which turned into a cough part way before he was able to speak again. “Gods! Politeness. Not heard a word of that since they locked me in here.” He pushed himself to his feet and straightened the green tunic, before offering a formal greeting. “Tertius Cloelius Rufus. It is an honour to share my captivity with you. A pleasure. You may recall we met in Viriconium before these unfortunate events.”
Dai found himself shaking the outheld hand as if they were at a social event or meeting, as his memory searched desperately for the name and face. When it came, he snatched his hand away and stepped back involuntarily.
“You were the cunnus of a medicus involved with a group holding vicious sex parties that led to the death of young streetgirls.”
“No need to use titles here,” the older man said brightly and then smiled at his own joke. “You can call me Rufus. It’ll make a change from seven-eight-one-one-two-six. It’s those little things you get to miss the most in this place. By the way, I hope you’re not hungry, you missed the evening meal. Nothing til tomorrow now.”
Dai felt a curl of cold revulsion in his guts.
“You disgust me.“
“Really?” Cloelius sounded unconcerned. “At least I’m not a traitor like you. That tends to evoke more outrage in our society at every level than any sexual adventures a man might embark on.”
“The difference is,” Dai snarled, unable to keep the contempt from his voice. “I am not guilty of the faked-up charges against me, but I know for a fact you are guilty as charged. I caught you red-handed, literally. And the blood of a good Vigiles was shed that night too.”
Cloelius sighed and sat back on his bunk. “Appearances can be very deceptive Llewellyn, and like it or not your guilt or innocence will be decided in a court of law not by whatever you might choose to say or believe.” He lay back as if reclining on a lectus. “You might discover that I am in fact the innocent one and you turn out to be guilty. Now that would be an interesting outcome, don’t you think?”
The chilling realisation that the corrupt medicus spoke the truth staggered Dai. The words leeched all strength from his muscles and he sank down to sit with his back against the cold grey wall.
“Why are you still here?” he demanded, when the moment of weakness had passed.
“What a strange question. It’s not as if I can just stroll along to the atrium or visit the baths, is it?”
Dai lifted a hand in protest. “You know what I mean. You must have been here for months. Yours was an open and shut case. I signed off all the evidence myself back in Martius. It only needed a hearing before an independent Magistratus to…”
“Sentence me to death?” Cloelius gave a rasping laugh. “You show yourself the true Briton, Llewellyn. There are people I’ve met who have been held here for the last ten years.”
Dia bridled at that.
“But it’s against the law. No Citizen can be deprived of his or her freedom. They are tried and if found guilty, sentenced either to death or whatever fine is due.”
“Ah, British logic,” Cloelius said, his tone shifting to that of a teacher explaining simple facts to a schoolboy. “Those I speak of are Citizens who stand accused of capital offenses and are awaiting their day in court. They all have powerful friends in Rome using every legal wrangle there is to keep them from coming to trial. Some of the crimes have to be prosecuted within a certain time limit, so if they can delay that day long enough they can walk free. Others are commuted by prolonged negotiation from death to a fine. Everyday is a barter day. But you worked here in Londinium as a Vigiles so you really should know that.”
It was true that he had heard the rumours so it was not really a surprise. But his day-to-day clientele at that time had been almost exclusively non-Citizen criminals.
“You have powerful friends?”
Cloelius hunched one shoulder in an exaggerated shrug. “Perhaps I do. Or powerful enough to keep me from trial so far. Don’t you? I am assuming you must do to have secured both Citizenship and a plum administrative appointment.” He leaned forward as if offering a confidence. “At the very least they might be able to have your Citizenship rescinded which would give you the chance of commuting your sentence to hard labour instead of the arena.”
That was something that had not occurred to Dai as a possibility before. It was true that committing any serious crime could lead to an application for the revocation of an awarded Citizenship – something given could be taken away. An option not open to those born with Citizenship status. But the kind of hard labour criminals were condemned to was brutalising.
“I don’t see that would be much better,” he said, hearing the bitterness in his own tone. “Just a slower way to die.”
“Perhaps. But at least, my British friend, you have options. Who knows? We may even grow old together in this cell.”
From Dying to be Innocent the 9th Dai and Julia Mystery by Jane Jago and E.M. Swift-Hook.
Advice on growing old disgracefully from an elderly delinquent with many years of expertise in the art – plus free optional snark…
I am old I have noticed this fact
There’s no need to approach it with tact
I don’t bother that you
Will have noticed it too
But stop smirking or you will get smacked
His tractor is green and he drives it too fast
For he knows the summer is not gonna last
There’s crops to be brung in from fields that are steep
And he’s hardly a moment to shit or to sleep
Come winter, come summer, come autumn or spring
The roads are so narrow and the tractor is king
A tractor of yellow drags machinery wide
No room to pass him he touches the sides
And he’ll never pull in and he’ll never give way
Because he’s on his phone and there’s plenty to say
Come winter, come summer, come autumn or spring
The roads are so narrow and the tractor is king
This little blue tractor is lacking a cab
Because it’s being driven by a twelve-year-old lad
He’s bouncing about and he ain’t thrilled to bits
To be towing a trailer that’s piled high with shit
Come winter, come summer, come autumn or spring
The roads are so narrow and the tractor is king
We’re behind a red tractor and he’s going so slow
Coz his wipers have failed and it’s pissing with snow
But we’re not going to curse him no never, not we
For he’s ploughing a path so we get home for tea
Come winter, come summer, come autumn or spring
The roads are so narrow and the tractor is king
But whatever the day from the spring to December
There’s one tractor driver we always remember
A beast of a man built of anger and bones
Who lived in his tractor was never at home
Come winter, come summer, the children all know
That they’d better be careful of old Tractor Joe
Sometimes when the moon is as fat as a sow
You can still hear his tractor coming over the brow
The engine is racing as downhill it goes
And into the river to drown Tractor Joe
Come winter, come summer, one thing you can betcha
If you lose concentration your tractor will getcha
Come winter, come summer, wherever you go
When it’s moonlight at midnight you’ll hear Tractor Joe
A sci-fi story of love, betrayal and Space Pirates!
Dekker walked in, bouncing on the balls of his feet and grinning. Beside him was a heavyset woman, her long hair braided and a younger woman, looking barely out of her teens with a face like the business end of an energy snub, blunt and hard. Dekker waved a hand towards her. “Daiyu, Goldie, this is Panvia, our new engineer. And I’m going to guess Tols has been a bit of a naughty lad and not told her quite the truth.” An edge of menace had slipped into his tone as he finished, banishing the banter. Pan’s brain seized with cold terror, leaving her unable to move or make a sound.
Tolin had taken a step towards the three when they first came in, placing himself beside Pan as he did so. Now he moved to stand between her and the others.
“I already told you, she didn’t need to know. She didn’t…”
“But now she does,” Dekker said quietly.
“I don’t think it’s quite the big deal you two seem to think it,” the heavyset woman, Daiyu, put in. “Why don’t we ask Panvia herself what she thinks instead of you two making like grets in rut at each other. It might come as a real surprise to you both, but she’s got a voice and a mind of her own.”
They were all looking at Pan now and something in Daiyu’s words released her from internal lockdown. The fear seemed to take a step back and she was able to draw breath again.
“It’s just all a bit much to take on board,” she said, hearing how thin and weak that sounded. Tolin put his arms around her and drew her to him. She didn’t resist and turned her head so her cheek was pressed against his shoulder.
“I know,” he said. “And I’m sorry. I meant to tell you. Dek isn’t a regular kind of pirate. He’s been a good friend to me. To others too. And after I lost my ship, it was Dek who set me up with the new one. Without him, I’d have had nothing.”
Pan’s brain was working again – running in overdrive. The odd conversations she’d noticed in the past between Tolin and other freetraders, taking an excessive interest in where they were going and what they were carrying. Sometimes to the point of rudeness. Even asking her to talk to some of the more reticent freetraders to find out for him. It was always explained away as part of sussing out trade opportunities, but now…. Tolin was a pirate’s runner and she had never even realised. She had been working for pirates all that time too, even if she had never known it.
And piracy was a capital offense under Coalition law.
Her mind reached back and reframed all that had happened from the moment they met in the stark and ugly light of that revelation. Even the way they met, like something out of a romantic drama, he must have set that up too. The blood ran cold in her veins freezing her emotions into grotesque ice-sculptures in her psyche. They glared at her with hideous leers – guilt, betrayal, hurt, rage, terror, despair. One day there would be a reckoning needed with each one of them. But none could touch her at this time. With the calm clarity that bestowed, she knew that whatever she said next was going to determine her prospects of survival in the short term and the course of the rest of her life.
Gently disentangling herself from her betrayers arms, she stepped back and gave a nod of acknowledgement to Daiyu before addressing her words to Dekker.
“If Tolin says you helped him out when he was in a bad place, that means we both owe you, big time. I’m not sure what you want of me. But if it’s a just a decent engineer, I can do that.” This time she knew her voice sounded steady and strong.
Dekker’s old-too-young eyes bored into her and she met them unflinching. Then he grinned. Sudden and hard. His fist thumped into her arm, painfully. “Welcome to the crew, Pan.”
Tolin pulled her into a new hug and Daiyu was smiling.
“And yes,” Dekker went on, “what we really need is a decent engineer to keep this place running, fix up the ships we bring home and tweak our best girl so she’s at the top of her game. Randja had an accident on our last run. Didn’t make it home. So we’re sorely in need of your skills here.”
The other woman, the one Dekker had called Goldie, stood slightly apart, her face expressionless.
Roguing Thieves is a Fortune’s Fools story by E.M. Swift-Hook. There will be more Roguing Thieves next week…
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