Jaz finished working out and, having freshened up after, was disturbed to find someone had apparently stolen his wardrobe – three guesses who – and replaced it with rough, bag-like items of clothing made from plant fibres and animal hair, skin, bone and such like. Part of him was tempted to just walk butt naked into the common room of the ship and demand the return of his proper clothes. It was the kind of response this deserved. But, what the hell. It would only mean another argument with Blondie – which Jaz would inevitably lose on some technicality and the result would be the same.
Teeth gritted, he made himself the sincere promise that as soon as this with Avilon was done he would walk away and never have anything more to do with Durban Chola. He fought his way into the clothing, fingers stumbling, clumsy from ignorance, over the strange fastenings.
The final effect, observed in the mirror, was – interesting. The animal origin of some of the fabrics was something most in the Coalition would have found pretty disgusting, but Jaz had been raised in a place where wearing leather was an accepted necessity and you didn’t ask what animal the skin came from either. Despite the rough fabric and hand-stitching the outfit looked as if it belonged on him.
That would be Chola’s doing. He would have worked from Jaz’s measurements to ensure the final result looked natural. The man was one of the best people he knew at judging to perfection how to dress for any given occasion. At first, Jaz thought him some kind of shallow, artsy, fashionista. But he came to realise it was nothing so trivial or one dimensional. Blondie wasn’t so much fashion conscious as appearance aware: it was all about disguise and not at all about fashion. The blond man knew exactly how to create a look in any setting, to blend in or stand out as he chose and could always create exactly the impression he wanted.
When Jaz finally emerged from his cabin and went into the common room, Chola was also dressed in local style, but much more elegant and perhaps overdone, including a long brown coat with lots of gold wire and orange glittery stones sewn onto it. Jaz half- expected there to be a silent gloat in the blond man’s eyes, that he’d complied without protest. But there was nothing more sinister than critical appraisal, lurking behind a smile of approval – like an artist looking over a nearly finished sculpture.
“I’ll sort those lacings for you in a bit,” he said. “You’ll need to learn how to tie a double bow. But all in all, I think you’ll do as my mute bodyguard.”
“Mute bodyguard?”
“Yes. Not an unknown role here. Some gentlemen of business prefer not to have personal servants in close attendance who might be able to share privileged trade information. And since you can’t speak the language it works. You just have to remember you can’t speak. And on no account remove that hat – the scalp-port would be an instant give away.”
There were times Chola went well beyond careful to the point of being patronising.
“Yeah. I figured,” Jaz said, restraining himself.
“And you really must drink this.”
A mug of tea that smelt like over-spiced mud and shit. Jaz pushed it away as he sat down.
“I’ll pass.”
The blond man shook his head.
“You don’t understand me, Jaz. You must drink it. This contains much of the local biology and biochemistry. It’s a recipe Gernie developed years ago, though I have to say I prefer the flavour of Pan’s – she manages to cover a lot of the bad taste with spices. If you’re going to get ill or have allergies to the prevalent microbes of this world, I’d rather we found out here in Keran where I can nurse you through it, than out in the wide world where it could hit when we could be in some very bad place.”
The thing about Chola – the most annoying and irritating thing about him – was that he was always right. Well, almost always. Jaz drank the tea. It tasted like it smelt – spiced up shit and mud. Bearing in mind what Chola said it contained, Jaz figured the taste probably was pretty close to the reality. Meanwhile, of course, the blond man carried on talking. He loved to talk.
“I did think of trying to pass you off as Zoukai, you would look really good all decked out in their embroidered gear, you wouldn’t even need a hair extension, your hair is naturally long enough to braid and it would allow you to wear as much weaponry as you could cram in. But if anyone saw you on a pony – the illusion wouldn’t last long.”
Zoukai – that was in the third lecture. They were the brotherhood of riders who guarded the trade caravans. Named after some local bird of prey. Jaz was surprised he actually remembered.
“I’m going to be wearing my belt anyway, Blondie. I’ll have all the weaponry I need on that.” It was a cutting edge, military-grade, armaments belt with built-in kinetic shielding and any number of other useful features.
“True. And anyway Zoukai tend to stick with the caravans not go for private hire. But you will still have to learn to ride.”
Jaz finished the tea and forced himself to swallow the dregs before putting the mug back on the table.
“It can’t be that hard – if the locals here can master it, I’m sure I can be as good.”
Chola looked at him with something that could only be deliberately ill-concealed amusement.
“I’m sure you will be – given time.”

From Haruspex:A Walking Shadow a Fortune’s Fools book by E.M. Swift-Hook.

The old man dribbles
Where his teeth don’t fit
His daughter wipes his chin
And smoothes his hair
A biscuit he nibbles
While his eyes beg her to sit
And smiling she gives in
Beside his cushioned chair
Thank you he tells her
With a lopsided smile
And taking her hand holds it fast
As he rests his cheek on her head
It’s almost as if his old nose smells her
I’m happy when you sit with me a while
Says the old one as he breathes his last
I love you, Dad, was the last thing she ever said

©️jj 2020

An extract from  How To Start Writing A Book brought to you courtesy of E.M. Swift-Hook and Jane Jago.

If you tuned in expecting advice from Moons, you are out of luck this week. Instead, you’ve got me again, Jacintha Farquhar, hag of this parish.

All right you load of miserable excuses for human beings who fancy yourself the next Stephen King, pin back your lugholes and be prepared to learn. You are all very keen on writing epic battles and knights in shining armour and all that crap, but I’m willing to bet there isn’t a one of you has ever actually even seen a fight leave alone dirtied your precious pinkies by being involved in that most working class of pastimes that is a bloody good bundle.

Life Lessons for Writers – Two: Fisticuffs

Okay then. Here’s the deal. This week’s lesson is entitled fisticuffs and is intended to give you at least the vestige of an idea about what happens when adult human beings set out to beat the crap out of each other.
First things first. If you want to really understand your knights in shining and their trusty steeds, join a re-enactment society. Get your feet stomped on by something that feels like Mummy’s best le Creuset Marmite, crawl around in mud and snot and tears for a while, watch as the bloke on the horse breaks every bone in his body when he hits the ground from a height of seventeen hands. Then go rewrite your crappy medieval fight. Similarly, should you be romanticising the English Civil War, go join the Sealed Knot and enjoy the delights of a pre-dawn melee on a frozen moor. I’m sure those of you living in the colonies have something similar recreating your own local battles. Want an idea of modern or futuristic combat? Try laser-tag or go paintballing.
The more mundane sort of present-day scuffling is a little more problematic to become personally involved in. For two reasons.

One: there is the potential to get hurt quite badly (and should some middle-class twat turn up and randomly start throwing punches, everybody will forget their grievances with each other and unite to beat the living crap out of him or her).

Two: the real possibility of getting arrested exists.

For the above reasons I have chosen not to suggest you seek personal involvement. Instead, I’ll let you learn from my experience and debunk some of the popular and misguided myths that pepper the writing of the fight virgin.

1. It is extremely difficult to knock somebody out with one punch. And should you manage to do so the chances of having inflicted serious and life-threatening injury are very high.
2. It is almost impossible to punch someone and cause sufficient pain so that your opponent will admit defeat. This is because most people in fights are seriously impaired by drink or drugs and have had their pain threshold raised to somewhere in the stratosphere
3. If you knock somebody down, don’t be thinking that makes them not dangerous. Nine times out of ten they will get up. Fucking furious. If you should ever manage to put an opponent on the floor the only sensible action is to leg it.
4. Please do not ever think that any sense of chivalry can be found in a Saturday Night Special. When they are in the moment, men will hit, men, women, OAPs, cats, dogs, toddlers, their own mothers. You have been warned.
5. Nobody. But nobody walks out of a mass punch-up with their hair/make-up immaculate and their clothes in apple pie order. It. Does. Not. Happen. Participants (even those accounted victorious) will be dirty, bruised, smeared with blood and mucus, and, in the case of the female of the species, inevitably missing one shoe (almost always the left).

So, there we have it Jacintha’s guide to the grim realities of physical combat. Read, learn, inwardly digest and get your fucking act together. Now you have no excuse to get it wrong so go and rewrite that last fight scene and leave me to my prosecco.

Jacintha Farquar, unfortunate mother of Moonbeam Farquhar Metheringham IV

The phosphorescent sea was so beautiful, even by day, that it defied description, but, when twilight fell, the oceanic sheen also stained the darkening sky with fingers of pulsating light. It was such a sight as to bring even strong men to  tears.

Every day the sea performed her magic, and the extent of her glory grew a little with each dawn. 

People began to swim in the liquid light, coming out of the waves with the wide eyes of children and a glow that looked as if it came from within.

Nobody remembers when the first swimmer grew gills… 

©️jj 2020

“All hail Emperor Sulieman and his Empress Leonore.”
People ran from their homes and businesses to line the streets and stare at their dark emperor in his dented armour and drink in the beauty of the velvet-clad empress.
At the palace, they rode through the wide open gates, and if the empress saw the heads that decorated the walls above the gatehouse she gave no sign. The first sign of any interest came as they progressed through the dragon’s garden.
“Husband,” she said in a wooden little voice, “why is that Drake so chained?”
“He always has been.”
“Always?”
“For a hundred and half a hundred years.”
She frowned. “Then it is past time to strike off his chains.”
“And let him fly away?”
“Whether he flies or does not fly is immaterial. He should not be thus imprisoned.”
Sulieman shrugged. “Very well. I will give the order.”
“And I will stay to see it done.”
She slipped from her horse and went to stand at the dragon’s head. Those who gathered in the garden were later to swear that it was as if the Ivory Empress and the green/gold dragon were communicating on some subliminal level too deep for mere humans to comprehend. But that was much later. Truth to tell nobody saw anything to remark save the straight tall figure of the Empress with one hand on the dragon’s neck as the smiths struck off the chains that held him captive. Once he was free the firedrake inclined his head to the Emperor, almost as equal to equal, before curling himself into the soft grass and closing his eyes.
Sulieman was curious. “Why does he not fly away?”
“On wings unused for more than a hundred years? It will take time before he can fly. If indeed he ever can.”
A shadow passed over Sulieman’s face and he tugged his intricately plaited beard. “I shall be sorry if that is true. Bad enough to be tricked and held prisoner, without being maimed.” He turned his handsome head towards the dragon. “Good firedrake,” he said with extreme formality, “if it should so be that the actions of my father’s father’s father have maimed thee. I would apologise and make such reparation as I can.”
For the first time since his capture the dragon spoke. His voice was like the crackle of flames around the Yuletide fire and it made one think of woodsmoke and autumn. “I think myself unhurt, Magister, it is just to think of whether I wish to go or stay a while and observe.”
Then he shut his mouth and closed his eyes.
Sulieman looked at his Empress. “He can speak, habiiba, why has he never spoken before?”
The Empress sighed. “For the same reason you did not beg your captors for water.”
Sulieman bowed his head. “That is hard hearing, and I feel shame that I had not thought that a firedrake may have his pride too. I should have freed him long since.”
For the first time in their too brief acquaintance, Leonore reached out a hand to her husband. It was a massive step forward and Sulieman smiled.

From ‘The Chained Dragon’ one of the stories and poems in Pulling The Rug III by Jane Jago

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

Remotes

Everything today has a remote and I for one am delighted by that. From the comfort of my arm chair I can control the world, and that’s without having to put up with what I call a sycophantic smartarse – and my technologically enthused great-niece refers to as ‘Alexa’.

But remotes are a bloody pain at times because…

They. All. Look. The. Same.

How often have I reached for the device to control the TV and found I was changing the temperature in the room instead?

I suggest standardised colour coding to avoid all possible confusion.

Black and white for the telly (obviously), red for the thermostat (self-explanatory), blue for the radio (get it?) and so on.

In the meantime, until the designers catch up to the needs of their customers, stick something on it yourself so you don’t wind up answering a call on your land-line by talking into your Amazon Fire Stick…

The sirens split the air, as the lights rent the sky asunder. People ran and dodged. Women screamed and children cried. One man stood watching the unforgiving bombs fall and the tears ran down his soot-streaked cheeks. His home was one of the blackened skeletons and his wife and his children were among the thousands who died in the fires that crisped the city.
He raised his hands and did the one thing he had sworn never to do in this life. He spoke a single word of power and the earth shook beneath his feet, before a chasm opened in the river and the waters boiled around it. A flaming hand was raised into the murky sky and it grasped the flying bombers one by one, dashing them to the ground to where they lay as charred and broken as the city they were menacing.
When the last bomber was dispatched to hellgates the chasm closed. But not before the head and shoulders of the river master reared up and the creature stared at the wizard with cold antipathy.
“There is,” it grated, “a price to be paid”.
The wizard nodded his head, just once.
“Paid willingly,” he whispered, before clutching his throat and dropping to the ground as dead as his wife and children.

Jane Jago

Art by Ian Bristow

Gabriel Newsome walked the streets with no fear. He was big, strong and vicious enough to subdue anyone who stood in his way physically, and his perfect face ensured that the government cameras lay him pass unmolested.

He could walk right past a posse of android cops, and their ‘eyes’ would see only perfection – even if he was covered in the blood of a murdered victim.

Gabriel had the world at his feet and he knew it, until the day a discarded lover threw acid into his perfect face and he learned to know what it was to be hunted.

©️jj 2020

It was like walking around with a bomb in your head.
That wasn’t such an unfamiliar feeling for someone like Jazatar Baldrik who had served time in the Special Legion. There they plumbed a direct link into your brain and set it so that you had to keep connected to the data network lattice or it would fry out and kill you. Even if you made it through the five years of hell so you could qualify for release from the convict unit, as very few ever did, the device had a bad effect on the brain tissue it was implanted in and would kill you eventually anyway. Jaz had personal experience of that too. He had recently lost a friend that way. A man he had once considered as close as a brother.
But this was different.
Different because this bomb wasn’t going to go off and kill himself. When it went off, it was going to kill one of the very few people he actually cared about. Getting that news had been the most unexpected event of the day. But still only one in series of unexpected events. and that in a place where the unexpected was so rare it never happened. 
For the past two cycles Jaz had been effectively imprisoned. Initially against his will and now with a kind of grudging acceptance, he was held in a secure clinic run by the terrorist organisation known as The Legacy. It was the kind of place where today was the same as yesterday and tomorrow wouldn’t be too much changed from that. Running to its own quiet, pre-planned patterns, nothing was allowed to penetrate which might risk breaking the steady rhythm of daily life. It was the sort of protected and predictable environment Jaz had never known any time in his forty-two years of life. He had even begun to feel safe.
Which was a mistake.
When they told him he had a visitor, he’d been a bit puzzled, but mostly just curious. It wasn’t like anyone he knew had any idea he was even here. So he didn’t expect it to be the kind of visitor most of the other inmates of this place got now and then. 
It wasn’t going to be some family member who would look all concerned. Or even an awkward work colleague, checking up on how he was doing because someone had to and they had drawn the short straw at the office. Jaz had seen those kinds of people in the reception area sometimes, waiting to be taken through to see one of the inmates – or guests as the staff smilingly called them. There was even an elderly couple standing there now, the look of worried parents clear on their faces. Obviously distracted, they didn’t even notice him. He walked right in front of them and into one of the therapy rooms.
It took him a moment to realise who his visitor was and when he did, his first reaction was to turn himself around and walk right out again. He had to use some real willpower to make himself stand still and not do that.
Car Torbalen.
The man ultimately responsible for Jaz being put in this place and being taken very much out of circulation. Even thinking that was enough to make Jaz tense up all over. But, in a place where yesterday and tomorrow were both so much the same, he was curious enough about this sudden shift to see what it might be about. 
Torbalen greeted him with a slight smile, holding out his hand like some formal event.
“Jaz. I was delighted to get your message that you wanted to see me today. Let’s go for that walk you suggested, eh?”
Something was wrong. 
Jaz was more than sure he’d sent no such message. Even if he had the faintest idea on how he might have set about trying to get in touch with Torbalen, he would never have been inviting him over for a cosy one-to-one, walking in the grounds.
This man had effectively betrayed him. But the fact was Torbalen was standing there and knew that. He must also know he wasn’t going to make it on to Jaz’s link list in any conceivable future. Which made Jaz wonder enough that he didn’t deny or challenge what Torbalen had said. 
There was nothing to read in the pleasant smile, because Torbalen was an operator with a lot of skill, but there had to be something important behind this. For him to step away from his so-busy life drawing in ever more fanatics for The Legacy, there had to be something pretty big on his mind. So Jaz took the offered hand briefly in a firm grip and said nothing. Then he went through the door which Torbalen had opened and walked out into the secure grounds around the clinic.

The opening of Iconoclast: Not To Be the eighth Fortune’s Fools book by E.M. Swift-Hook.

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

Coyly euphemistic advertisement speak

What the heck is, ‘Itching Down There’?

Is it scratchy anus time?

Does it indicate something stirring in the lady garden (okay itchyfanny)?

If the advertiser of the cream known only by number means itchyfanny why don’t they bloody say so, not make me think the whole of Australia has impetigo.

And while I have your attention. What the fuck is ‘feminine leakage’? 

Is it menstrual fluid, or maybe urine? But it can be neither as it’s blue. (Hint: if you are leaking something blue seek medical aid. Now!)

And finally. 

Stop sending me Viagra adverts. I. Don’t. Need. It.