Through them, it could be determined a Lieutenant Powhatan Rucker did actually serve at that post, though the return made no mention of his death.[2] Further research into City records finds that a Filena Rucker owned a large fishing fleet during this time, but a further connection could not be established.[3] Lieutenant Brakespeare, of course, is familiar to the reader from history, where she is more popularly known as the Butcher Brakespeare.[4] Lieutenant Fyrdraaca went on to a much more heroic career: in 2-Tecaptl-72 she led the rebellion against the Huitzil Occupation and helped restore The Warlady Sylvanna Abenfaráx to the Warlord’s chair.[5]
No information whatsoever could be unearthed regarding the officer known as Polecat, but this historian finds it hard to believe that such an ineffectual leader would have lasted long on the frontier. The portrait painted of Lieutenant Brakespeare is an intriguing glimpse of a woman not yet corrupted by power, and still with the potential for greatness, a potential that she chose instead to squander in tyranny and blood.[6]
The legend of the water vampire is a common one in arid Arivaipa. To some extent this affliction can be tied to the iconography of the Flayed Priests of the Huitzil Empire, who are allergic to darkness, not light, and who consume flesh, not blood.
[1] Hawkins, C.S. “Stop that Flush!: A Surprising Discovery in a Very Surprising Place.” Journal of Philology, Pedagogy, & Practicum. Temescal: Society of Philology, Pedagogy & Practicum Press, 11-Acatl-156-17.
[2] Post Returns of Ariviapa Territory Garrisons, Record Group 93, Box 17, Ledger 12.
[3] Anon. Directory of Persons & Businesses in the City of Califa, Año Abenfaráx 10. Califa: Alta Califa Publishing.
[4] General Court Martial Proceedings of Cyrenacia Sidonia Brakespeare ov Haðraaða, Alacran Regiment, Army of Califa. Califa: Army of Califa Press, Año Abenfaráx 22.
[5] Cassidy, K. Buck’s Saber: Juliet Fyrdraaca & The Flamingo Rebellion. Fishtown: Roswell & Trillian Press, 6-Ocelotl-156-17.
[6] Proceedings of the Capital Trial of Cyrenacia Sidonia Brakespeare ov Haðraaða Before the Duque de Espejo y Ahumado. Cuidad Anahautl: Privately Published.
Metal More Attractive
Queen. Come hither, my dear Hamlet, and sit by me.
Hamlet. No, good mother, here’s metal more attractive.
Hamlet
Act III, Scene II
BOOK I
Thy Baited Hook
I.
So, here we have Hardhands in a bar. It’s not exactly entirely a bar, but then he’s not exactly entirely Hardhands either, at least not yet. At this moment, he’s only fifteen years old and his hands are still white and tender; so too is his conscience. Both hands and head are soon to get much tougher, but right now he’s still rather sweet.
Ice cream is the joint yummy, not bugjuice, but to the back there is a bar-like counter, thus a bar in spirit if not in name. Having strode through the swinging curtain of beads which hides the door, forward to this bar-like counter sails young Hardhands for to get the barkeep’s attention. The clientele at Guerrero’s Helados y Refrescos is thick both in person and in odor, so Hardhands must push and breathe lightly, but he’s not to be stopped once he’s started. Eventually he reaches his objective, which is well scarred from digging spoons and sliding glasses.
Achieving his goal, Hardhands-Who-Will-Be leans on the bar, very cool-like, and he says to the barkeep, very cool-like: “Have you seen Jack?” He has to shout because there’s a tin-pan band playing in a darkened corner, off-key and whinier than love, and this shouting somewhat scotches his suave effect.
The barkeep can hear Hardhands, but she has not seen Jack. Nor has she seen Hardhands’ money, or heard his order, so she pays no never mind to his question, but, rather, spits in the glass she holds, and rubs around the rim with a towel. Thus clean, or at least cleanish, the glass is hung on the rack above and the barkeep spits into an entirely new dirty glass. There’s an identical woman hanging on the wall behind her, doing the identical same thing, only somehow that woman seems a bit nicer, as though she’d probably answer Hardhands’ question, but facing away, as she is, she doesn’t even notice him, so there’s no help there. Even staring at his own splendid reflection, he’s pretty much on his own.
Someone falls off the balcony with a crash, and the barkeep flicks her towel. An egregore built like canister shot, with tusks the size of plantanos and floppy basset ears, rumbles out of the darkness and hefts the splattered form outward. Too much sugar, not enough catch.
Hardhands glares, a fifteen-year-old glare that has the entire force of being the only grandson of the Pontifexa of Califa behind it. Spit, rub, spit, rub is what he gets for his efforts, and his more urgent repeat of the question, which is really now a demand, gets rub, spit, rub, spit. The drover at the other end of the bar warbles drunkenly for another Choronzon’s Delight, heavy on the caramel whip, and the barkeep abandons her spitting and rubbing to bob to his bidding. She’s not deaf at all, the tin-pan band is not that loud; she just doesn’t like uppity young men who stride into her bar and plunk down attitude instead of cash.
The dangling mirror has suddenly gotten more interesting, and Hardhands is a tad distracted. He came to the most notorious helado joint in the City to try to hire the most notorious plunger in the City to do a dirty deed at a cut-rate price, but he’s now mesmerized by the slinky entity in the slinky silk ribbands now slinking before the band. It’s not the slinking itself that enthralls, no, it’s just that the slinkster seems to have tentacles instead of arms; boneless and tendril-like, they wiggle and wave. Its head is rather pointy, and its eyes rather low set and round, squid-like, its skin glittering like coldfire in the cigarillo smoky darkness—a water elemental way out of its element.
“I’ve seen Jack.”
Hardhands turns sideways, away from the loligo gyrating before him in the mirror, thus behind him by the band. The muleskinner probably hasn’t had a bath since the midwife dipped his squalling infant-self in milk minutes after he was born, and his face is a beach of rippling wrinkles, but his little marble eyes are quite alert. He’s been sloshing the complimentary bread into the complimentary olive oil, and he’s left little oily dribbles on the bar top and squishy black finger marks on the bread. Handhands is pretty darn glad he’s already had nuncheon with his beloved grandmamma, whom he is going to hire Springheel Jack to kill.
“But just ’cause I’ve seen Jack,” continues the muleskinner, “don’t mean that Jack wants to see you.”
“I daresay he’ll want to see my money,” says Hardhands loftily.
“My throat wouldn’t mind seeing your divas.” The muleskinner nudges his parfait glass. Whipped cream is just a memorable smear around the top edge of the glass, and there is a little tiny smudge of melted ice cream in the bottom. Another suck on the straw and the glass will be dry, oh dear.
Handhands is stuck now. It’s gold or information. He digs reluctantly into his purse, which practically squeals when he pries it open, and, fancy that, the barkeep has suddenly found her ears, and with them her hearing.
“You want?” she asks, sliding back, looking lively. She’s abandoned two miners fresh in from the fields, gold dust flecking their eyelashes and hair, blisters raw on their hands, who are playing a friendly game of mumblety-pegas they sip their sodas at the far end of the bar.
“Pink Lady Parfait,” says the muleskinner, who’d been drinking something cheaper before, but the Pontifexa’s grandson can hardly expect to fandango into a bar, even one that doesn’t serve booze, and not pay for what he gets, and pay well, too.
The preparation of the Pink Lady Parfait is temporarily halted by a dust-up. The mumblety-peg knife has slipped, and one of the miners is now very friendly with the wooden bar top. She wrenches her hand free with a whistle of pain, and cracks foreheads with her friend. For a moment things look pretty rough, and Hardhands wishes he had not worn white. But when the barkeep raps her blackjack down on the counter, the reverberating whackety-whack noise is enough to make the pugil
ists reconsider their fun. They sheepishly thump fists together in apology and go back to digging for the cherries in their Cheery Cherry Freezie-Slurps. The music continues to whine, but the loligo elemental has slithered off.
“So, Jack,” says Hardhands, who has now patiently sat through the stirring and shaking of the Pink Lady Parfait, the dipping of the spoon, the slurping of the straw, the chewing of the soggy caramel corn that always sinks to the bottom of the glass. Lacking the requisite teeth, this last action really qualified as gumming, not chewing, but the old muleskinner gets the job done, and then he’s feeling pretty darn frisky. Not frisky enough to actually give Springheel Jack’s location up to this uppity young pup who just swirled in like he owns the place (which technically he does, well, at least his grandmamma does, as she owns every square inch of the City), all champagne shiny boots and gleaming bone-white hair, expensive as hell. But frisky enough to continue to pretend that he knows where Springheel Jack is, even though he has hell-all of a clue.
“Sew buttons,” says the muleskinner. His straw slurps air with a forlorn rasp. The barkeep is ready with another Pink Lady; she knows this game by heart, string along the sucker until his money runs out. She knows exactly who Hardhands is, of course—Banastre Micajah Haðraaða, Duke of Califa—but she’s a Radical Chaoist and likes to skate on political thin ice, so she plunks the Pink Lady down and gives Hardhands a bit of a smarmy grin. Hardhands returns the smarmy grin with an ice blue stare, a thin cold look that suddenly remembers the barkeep that the Pontifexa’s grandson is both quick on the trigger and pretty much above the law. She’s used to the first, she and her bulletproof bouncer can handle that just fine, but that second—she sidles back to the miners. The muleskinner is on his own.
II.
So, here we have Hardhands at home, if you can call a four-hundred-room monstrosity, all soaring blue minarets and towering arches, fifty bathrooms with fifty ice-cold floors, home, which he does, quite happily. Bilskinir House, looking out over a lazy ocean, its back to the City and thus to the known world.
Hardhands leaves his horse carelessly cropping daisies on the front lawn, vaults front steps, and races into the Entrada, the bang of the door behind him, thunderously. He tears by Paimon, in a rush, in a hurry, in a snit the size of the deep blue sea, scattering the Butler’s brushes and leaving elegantly smeared boot tracks on the Butler’s foamy white floor. His braids are crackling with annoyance, his sack coat flaps like the wings of an irritated bird, he’s pissed because he bought that muleskinner five Pink Lady Parfaits and two plates of jamon y guava sandwies and all he got for his philanthropy was the sobbed story of the death of Evil Murdoch, a mule who had been the very epitome of mules, the beauty of the world and a fantastic spitter with teeth the size of dinner plates. The story had been sad, all right—flippy ears, shifting earth, skittering hooves and a long long fall to a very large splat—but Hardhands is interested not in dead mules but in living outlaws and soon-to-be-dead grandmammas, and he had sat through the woeful tale impatient and annoyed. Afterwards, he and the bereft muleskinner had strolled to the cruddy sinks at the back of the bar, where strenuous exercise (on Hardhands’ part) then elicited from the weepy skinner the admission that he had only once seen Springheel Jack at a distance, in a bagnio long ago closed, and never again.
Now Hardhands is late, and he’s in a fury because he’s late, and his visit South of the Slot has been for naught, and he’s down twenty-seven divas in gold, and the muleskinner has gotten strawberry syrup and blood on his new white sack coat. Also, because if he doesn’t find Springheel Jack, he’s going to have to kill his grandmamma himself. He’s fond of the old girl and would rather not, really, but she has given him no choice. Regretful, but true.
He races up the wide marble steps, two-by-two, and happily they are already dry, not that he cares, as washing them is someone else’s job, someone else’s knees. A sheaf of staff officers are descending downward, the Pontifexa’s afternoon briefing is done, and they are laden down with redboxes, round files, lapdesks, and dispatch cases. Hardhands tears through the yaller dogs, sending skirts and lovelocks flying, barking at them mockingly. The officers, wary of Hardhands’ stunningly perfect aim and hair-trigger temper, do not dare yip back, but continue down the stairs, mumbling derisively under their breaths.
It is sixteen hundred and Hardhands is supposed to be at the Blue Duck by seventeen for sound check, yet he still needs to bathe, to change, to redo his hair, to kiss his grandmamma good evening. Cursing the muleskinner, he storms up the second flight of stairs and down the narrow hallway, his urgent shadow rippling off glass cases, the woven roses beneath his feet muffling his tread. In his bedroom, he chucks his hat on the red velvet bolster, disturbing the cat curled in a circle on his pillow. He flings his shoulder holster on the dresser and hops out of his skirts, into his dressing gown. The cat has awakened, irritated at the noise, and is now scratching at a carved pineapple on the four-hundred-year old bed. Hardhands was born in that bed, fifteen years before, but if he continues down his path, he certainly will not die there.
“Paimon!” he hollers, ceilingward. “I need you to arrange my hair!”
Back down the hall he goes, not quite as fast, unfastening his braids, snarling the skeins of ivory hair with clawing fingers. He’s thinking hard, young Hardhands is. If not Springheel Jack, then who? He once had to shoot a horse that broke its neck trying to jump a cow, but that’s not the same as killing a sweet little grandmamma with imperious red hair and a darling pink smile. Can he do it? Can he not?
At the bathroom door, above the happy noise of blessed hot water, Hardhands’ consideration is arrested by a piping voice, a wispy little lisp, the high-pitched sound of doom, of gloom, of bloody destiny, of horrific fate, of—
“Bwaaaan!” He turns reluctantly, and a fat little whiteness is hurtling through the air upon him, all bubbling curls and floaty lace. He catches, awkwardly, a fat little chin hitting his own square chin, a bare white foot connecting hard with his kidneys.
“You should be in bed,” he says, gritting through fifty fathoms of thundering pain.
“Baftime is funtime,” says his Little Tiny Doom. Little Tiny Doom smells like milk and toast, is somewhat grubby, and Hardhands will be damned if he will marry her, not a wit of it. Not a jot, not a tiddle, not at all. Period. Finale. Punto. That’s it. The end.
“Quack quack!” adds Little Tiny Doom, in case Hardhands has missed her point.
Hardhands has been on this boat before, and he’s eager to get off before he gets soaked. Bathtime is not funtime when it involves red rubber ducks, slippery soap, and shampoo wigs. He doesn’t have time for this; the band will be waiting for him, the show is sold right out, and he still has to evoke a drummer to replace their previous percussion dæmon, which spontaneously combusted during The Tygers of Wrath’s last gig. He tries to disengage from Little Tiny Doom, but Little Tiny Doom has arms of steel and toes of clinginess and she will not let go of him.
Little Tiny Doom—that is to say, Cyrenacia Sidonia Haðraaða ov Brakespeare, as she is known on the official documents she is too young to sign—adores Hardhands. She loves his height, his splendid glittering clothes, and his splendid shining hair which reminds her of the flossy white candy she gets when she goes to Woodward’s Gardens to ride on the Circular Boat. One fat little hand grabs a wad of braid and into her mouth it goes, to see if the shiny white floss tastes good, which thanks to judicious use of bay rum hair oil, it does not.
“Paimon!” Hardhands hollers, and there Paimon is, bearing warm towels and his favorite hairbrush, the one with the badger bristles and the gold loligo crest.
“Sieur Duke?”
“She’s eating my hair.” A duke should not sound so whiny. Authority is equal parts arrogance and confidence, which Hardhands knows full well but has forgotten in his trauma of being cannibalized by a three-year-old.
“Madama,” Paimon says in his dark blue voice. Cyrenacia knows this tone; it is the tone of bed without
story, of bread without milk, of bath without duck, and she spits and smiles sweetly in the Butler’s direction. She’s three years old but she’s no fool.
“I’m in a hurry, take her and get her clean or whatever you are going to do with her, and hurry about it because I need you to do my hair. I want a chignon tonight and I haven’t got much time—ooff.” This ooof has naught to do with time and everything to do grabby hands and dangling gold ear hoops. “Stop it!”
“Bwaaanie—” says Cyrenacia, so cutely. She is a darling child even if she does have only a few wispy curls and a tendency to burp loudly at the dinner table. Her lisping version of Hardhands’ name is just darling, too, but darlingness is wasted on Hardhands, who feels it has no place in his carefully cultivated dark mysterious image. Ban, as he is called by his grandmamma, his leman, and the cheap yellow press, is tolerable, but Bannie is beyond the limit.
“Take her—!” Disengaged, and out-thrust, Tiny Doom dangles towards Paimon. Her mouth is starting to squeeze together in a little pink pout. The pout is a prelude to howls and the howls a prelude to a furious grandmamma and then they shall all be in that boat, only it will now be sinking and, battered by grandmamma’s ire, they will have forgotten how to swim.
“Sieur—”
The howl is as high pitched as the whistle of steam from a kettle and as hot. Hardhands freezes. He’s manifested a Tunnel of Set in his bedroom, he’s jumped off Battery Sligo into the boiling sea one hundred feet below, and once he set his hair on fire for a triple dog dare, but now he’s stuck like glue. His nerve is being yanked out of his body by the thread of that ghastly sound, and if there were a well nearby, he’d drop Tiny Doom into it and slam the lid shut. Alas, no well, only a brimming bath, toward which, in a burst of desperate creativity Hardhands now turns, but before he can drown the child, Paimon retrieves her from his panicked grasp.
Prophecies, Libels & Dreams Page 5