Marcus looked around at the crowd, sifting passers-by until he saw Beaugent and Bronagh approaching.
‘Beaugent,’ said Marcus, ‘it’s been a while.’
They walked until they both stood facing Marcus, and Beaugent ignored Marcus’ outstretched hand.
‘What we carrying?’ said Beaugent.
‘Straight to the point as ever. As we discussed, Beaugent, that would...’
‘Fuck discussions. Tell me what it is, now, or you can piggy-back it down there yourself and we’ll be on our way.’
Beaugent caught sight of movement in the tent and then two very large men stepped out.
‘Problem?’ said the taller of the man mountains.
Marcus looked at Beaugent.
‘Yes,’ said Beaugent.
Bronagh tensed.
A big cheer went up from the adjacent tent as a competitor’s forearm smacked onto wood.
‘Either tell me what it is we are carrying, or we’ll be on our way and you’ll have the problem.’ Beaugent folded his arms. ‘So what’s it to be.’
Marcus gestured for them to go inside the tent with a faked casual wave.
Beaugent and Bronagh did not move a muscle.
‘Not out here, boys. OK?’ said Marcus.
Beaugent and Bronagh did not move.
‘You’ve asked the wrong question,’ Marcus whispered. Beaugent and Bronagh leaned slightly closer.
‘It’s not a “what”,’ said Marcus, ‘it’s a “who”.’
The two large men went back inside.
Bronagh shook his head almost indiscernibly, his eyes were wide and Beaugent noticed the muscles in his bow arm were bunched and shaking with tension. They followed them in, ‘Let’s get out of this depressing drizzle if nothing else. Eh Bronagh?’
*
‘Hello,’ said Leonora, ‘the Governor and I will be with you shortly.’
Beaugent, usually equanimous, looked disorientated. Bronagh’s eyes widened, he went to say something to Beaugent but the words lodged in his throat as if they were bricks bound in sandpaper.
Leonora smiled, used to the reaction, and withdrew to an inner chamber at the rear of the tent where low mutterings could be heard as bags were packed.
Marcus tried to hide his amusement, ‘You understand that now the nature of your ‘cargo’ has been revealed, you are obliged to accept the terms and conditions of service.’
‘I’m obliged to do shit.’
‘I don’t think you understand the gravity of the situation.’
‘Gravity, Marcus, is one of my areas of expertise. I understand exactly what’s happening here. And...’
‘Now you listen,’ said Leonora, emerging from the tent’s inner room, ‘I don’t care what kind of jumped up excuse for a Captain you are, or indeed what the weather is doing, you show some respect in your present company or you’ll be leaving here minus that tongue. Understand?’
Beaugent glared but said nothing.
Bronagh looked at the floor.
‘Now put your dicks away and let’s get on with packing.’ She picked up a small travel bag then gestured for her Security Chief, Cowlin, the tallest and quietest of the bodyguards to collect the rest of their things.
‘Marcus, thank you for brokering this trip. We’ll see you on the other side. You know how to contact us, should the need arise. Aahmeri will run things until we’re back.’
She turned to Bronagh. ‘You, take those.’
Bronagh looked at Beaugent who nodded. He then picked up two items of luggage and followed the bodyguard outside.
‘You’ll have to carry those.’ Leonora said to Beaugent pointing at two smaller holdalls, desperately trying to live up to their name.
‘As I have said, I don’t have to...’
‘They contain your credits,’ said Governor Rose, looking every inch like she was used to making an entrance.
‘Bring them or leave them, it’s up to you.’
She nodded, ‘Let’s go, Leonora, and see how fast they have to pedal to get this thing off the ground.’
They put up their hoods to conceal their identities and left the tent.
Beaugent was staring at the credits.
‘Problem?’ said the bodyguard.
He couldn’t hear Beaugent’s mumbled reply, but had a vague idea of its meaning.
He smiled as he watched him collect the bags and leave.
However smooth the surface, guilt will find a ledge.
Little Symphonies.
Baernard Getty.
CHAPTER 40
I had no idea why I was standing outside her place. I had awoken late, ate an enormous breakfast at a greasy café that served awful food but a lot of it, washed down with a gallon of tea. I returned to my room, showered, careful not to disturb the setting scab on my head, changed clothes again and discarded my old ones in a side alley skip. I made a mental note to buy some more if I passed an outlet selling clothes. I headed back to the interchange to check for signs of the taxi driver in the tunnel. There was no blood or evidence of a scuffle. Seemed like they may have let him go. Either way, don’t suppose I would ever know. Then, not really sure why I was heading there, I caught a taxi and found myself outside Pan’s apartment building. The front windows had been boarded up, but the building was already open for business. I could see another no-hope receptionist already installed, with massive dreads in his hair, and a stained vest visible beneath an ill-fitting blazer. I did not want to attract attention, but out of curiosity I checked in the alleyway up the side of the block and though most of the stained glass had been swept up, small square and triangular chunks winked daylight back at me as I peered into the relative darkness. One of the bin’s lids was squashed from breaking my fall. I craned my neck to see the wood filled hole that had been Pan's stained glass window I had fallen from. She was probably up there now cursing the lump on her jaw and her messy apartment.
I felt a pang of guilt and let it slip away. The stained glass reminding me that the night’s events, the betrayal, had happened. I knew she didn’t care about me.
Never did.
Anyway, she could handle herself.
I needed to concentrate on me.
I had been behaving like a Mudhead, not a former Slayer, and I needed to focus on unravelling the mess I was in and on working out who the puppets were and who was pulling the strings. I needed to check my flat, to see if the trip had been sprung. My head contained a dull roar of a headache that pulsed behind my eyes and at the base of my neck. It felt like a hangover without the pleasure preceding it. Too much sleep can do that to a man, though I felt like I could sleep for a hundred years more. I rubbed at my temples and decided to walk back to my flat. It was a good two hours away, but the air and exercise would do me, and my leg, good.
As I turned to leave, I jumped as a man on a bicycle used a loud haler to harshly announce that there was a menswear sale two streets away at Crazy Shirts. I ticked my mental note off for clothing, changed direction, resigned to call in on my way back home.
It ain’t lying. Or concealing. Make-up is a trick of the tricks trade, designed to hide the wear and tear put there by men.
The Wrong End of the Whip
Madame Ouzio
CHAPTER 41
‘This is the last time,’ Pan said to her reflection as she went through the usual ritual of applying her mask. Her war paint. A range of colours and hues designed from the most expensive Lowlands ingredients and sold at the highest Edgelands prices. The tricks of the tricks trade, as one of her past Madames used to call them, had done a good job at eradicating the dark swathes under her eyes and the vacant expression that accompanied the nagging thoughts dancing on the periphery of her consciousness, her conscience, since Drake had left.
She looked at herself in the mirror and saw her top lip was curled up. Evidently the paint had made quick work of obscuring her bumps and bruises, but it could not conceal her disgust. She felt hollow as though the events, coupled with the lack of foo
d and sleep had somehow whittled away something more essential, at her core. She felt less of a woman than she had a few days before. She felt as if the real her was trapped beneath the surface and that her silent screams would get lost in the luminescent goop of her potions, powders and paints.
She stuck her defiant, bruised jaw out and watched as a treacherous tear escaped and blitzed a path through the skin coloured powder on her face to collect in a mushy drop at the corner of her mouth. She dabbed the glistening track with a cotton ball to repair the pale line then absently tongued the warm tear away. She leaned closer to the mirror and stared, looked beyond the reflection and into herself, and saw a stranger.
Not physically.
But deeper.
She did not recognise the woman looking back at her, the overwrought frown or distant anguish in that indeterminable space behind her eyes.
She leaned back in her chair and sighed, ‘Who cares if you feel like shit, Pan? Hmm?’ she said to herself in a flat tone. ‘When you look this fine? Now, no more tears.’
And she did look fine.
And that would have to do.
She practised a smile and instantly regretted trying. It looked like a landslide, the kind read about at the Edgelands perimeter that wiped out whole mangroves and elite, expansive homes on the edge of the drop.
Drake had made her betrayal almost justified in the way he had treated her, and used her. He had shown her that he was exactly like all the others.
All of them.
But she knew she did not believe that, despite wanting to.
He had begun to let her in, to see aspects of his life, the Doctor, his nubs, his... his history, that undoubtedly he had seldom, if ever, shared; and she had abused that trust. Regardless of any concern for herself, she felt sad, because she categorically knew the world would be a worse place for that. He had allowed her to see a glimmer of good inside of him, and she had casually snuffed it out.
Then she realised she was lying to herself, trying to make her doubts and sadness seem altruistic; like she cared about the world or Drake’s impact on it.
Her misery grew because it had been a long time since anyone had let her in, unequivocally let her in to something real. Raw. Personal. That was where the real sadness lay.
Her business was in selling blissful detachment, in sailing ceilings on the oceans of desires and compassions and needs; even if they were make-believe.
And she was good at it.
With Drake she had felt trusted, needed, included. And it had not been bought or faked.
That was the real tragedy, the real truth, and now, her mask was slipping.
She sighed again and walked through to her lounge avoiding looking at the red drapes that now hid the boarded up remnants of her stained glass window. She placed two empty glasses on her table.
She did not use coasters.
She was not certain when her decision to retire from the trade had changed from a whim to a cemented idea, but it had. She would not take the standard route of buying out Jacques-Yassar with her hard earned credits either. She would book another job for three days’ time, and not be here when the paunch bellied fuck showed up.
She started a little when someone in the street below, announced a menswear sale at Crazy-some place or other over a loud haler.
She composed herself.
‘Stupid. Come on, Pan, this is just another job. Your last job. You can do this. He’ll be here soon.’
She usually found that her clients were impeccably on time. She hoped that Jacques-Yassar had vetted this one properly, that they would be polite, clean and not too rough. If they could just make it past the carnage of the front lobby and look beyond the internal damage of her flat, then maybe they’d get on with things straight away so this could be over as quickly as possible. She hoped...
There was a knock at the door.
She hurried to answer it, straightening her dress and flicking her hair as she went.
She turned to survey the room; it looked clinically clean, tidy and ready. She reflected that she looked the same. She opened the door to two new clients. Both from the Edgelands too, by the looks of them. They filled her doorway.
And though one only had one eye, and wore an old fashioned eye-patch, it was the other man’s stare that was more unsettling.
He flashed a tongue across his rodent like teeth.
‘Yassar sent us,’ he said.
‘Us? Two? Oh... ah... I’ll need another glass.’
Without shuddering, she turned, inviting them in and offered to take their coats, which they politely declined.
This is the last time.
As she went to get another glass from the kitchen, she fought to compose herself. She would be having words with Jacques-Yassar, needed to, if she did not treat him with the usual stubborn disgust she always had, he might get wind she was about to flit.
This is the last time, Pan thought. The. Last. Time.
Never again.
She was right.
Keep your friends close and your enemies under.
Battlestations – A City at War
General Hohm
CHAPTER 42
‘Well?’ said Loopes.
‘Well what?’ asked Bronagh.
‘You gonna tell me who those ladies are or have I got to ask them myself?’
‘They ain’t no ladies, they’re politicians, Loopes, and no concern of yours.’
‘What about him? He’s huge!’
‘Security Chief Cowlin? Harmless, well, more harmless than them anyway,’ Bronagh answered. Cowlin stifled a smirk.
‘What they doing on our ship?’
‘I believe they are enjoying tea and looking out of the observation deck window.’
‘No, I mean how did Cap let them on? He’s got a ‘no women’ policy hasn’t he?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well?’
‘Like I said, they are not women, they are politicians. Besides, we didn’t have a choice on this one.’
‘You said there’s always a choice.’
Bronagh said nothing.
The whir of the Zeppelin’s motors kicked on a notch as they banked into a turn to take them further away from the heights of Nimbus City and ever closer to the ground.
‘Can I meet them?’
‘I am sure you will. They’ve asked us to take a ‘circuitous’ route to the Lowlands North Territory, which is where we are dropping them.’
‘We staying?’
‘No. Beaugent will want to get back in the air quick snap.’
Loopes sighed. He took a drink of water, careful to place the cup back in the circular hollow that stopped vessels sliding around in more turbulent conditions.
‘Why didn’t they use one of the state’s ships, if they are politicians?’
‘They said because they wanted this one off the radar.’
‘My Dad...’ Loopes paused.
Bronagh said nothing.
‘He said a joke about how you could tell a politician was lying if their lips were moving or something.’
‘I’d work on your delivery if I were you.’
‘It was funnier when he told it.’
Bronagh drained his own glass of beer. He had struggled back from Kitchna’s Market with their supplies and the bags he had had to carry for their guests. The straps had left red diagonal marks across his chest and shoulders. Women needed a lot of clothes.
He reached down into one of the ship’s leather bags and took out another beer.
Loopes looked at him expectantly.
‘No,’ said Bronagh.
‘But I’m nearly fourteen.’
‘Nearly’s halfway, and halfway’s...’
‘Nowhere,’ finished Loopes. His shoulders dropped.
Bronagh removed the cap and took three long gulps before dropping it onto the circular drink store hollow at his side of the table.
‘Do you miss them? Your parents.’ He regretted asking the question as soon as he had
said it, more for the stupidity of it than the timing. Loopes surprised him by answering, ‘Yes. Every day.’
Bronagh took another drink and said nothing, not sure how to cope with the answer.
‘It’s weird. Sometimes I hear people say that they wake up and for a brief moment forget that their loved ones have gone. You know, died.’
Bronagh nodded.
‘But I never get that. I know before my eyes are open that they are still dead. Because I dream about them but I miss them in my dreams, whilst my dream is happening. It’s like I know the dream is pretend and nothing is going to change that they are gone.’
Bronagh said nothing.
Loopes’ voice dropped two octaves and he spoke more quietly, ‘I remember the Windshark too, and what it did to them.’
Loopes went distant then, his voice petered off to nothing more than a motor whir somewhere deep in the bowels of a vast ship. He stared at his empty cup.
Bronagh said nothing and bit back the temptation to offer him a beer.
Loopes took his cup and Bronagh’s empty and went into the galley.
‘We’ll catch that windshark one day, Loopes,’ Bronagh whispered to the empty table.
He thunked his bottle back down into the hollow with a loud smack.
‘Promise.’
Loopes looked through the galley window and up at the observation deck. The large viewing window showed rainclouds speeding by in fat blobs of misty bloatedness and the Edgelands receding to a distant smudge beyond the weather and drizzly haze. At one end of the deck he could see Beaugent engaged in maintenance of the flight controls. His sleeves were rolled up and he was spitting unintelligible words out as he worked. His temper was probably nothing to do with the ship, Loopes thought.
He then looked through the glass at the two women on the other end of the deck. They looked deep in conversation and paid no attention to Beaugent or their surroundings.
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