Nim swallowed painfully. “You’re trying to pin Pig Heart’s punishment on me? The man betrayed us!”
Hellequin gave a sharp laugh. “And that’s the only thing you take away from everything I’ve just said. Desirous Nim, you are one self-occupied doll. I’m talking about you putting the whole troop in danger and unnecessarily so.”
“You are not my keeper, Hellequin. Said yourself, the need to protect is hardwired into you thanks to Daxware.”
“Just explain this to me, Nim. If everyone in this troop is so convinced they are their own agents – owe no mind to anyone, just keep their eyes on the money – then how come Pig Heart’s guilty of a crime? And if there’s no idea of belonging to something, why’d men die for you today?”
“Because they were in D’Angelus’s way, plain and simple. And don’t forget I wasn’t the only prize he was eying. Rust was on the list too.”
“Rust’s used to having blood on her hands. She can protect herself.”
Hellequin’s hands went to his hips. Nim saw the shift in muscle beneath his tattooed upper arms. She was more attuned to the ebb and flow of the body than most – it was her job to be. Despite the violence she had experienced so recently, she was instinctually drawn to the HawkEye. His arms looked like hard-packed leather with tattoos stitched in.
Lust was alien. She felt immensely tired suddenly. “What exactly do you want from me, Hellequin?” she said softly.
“I want your permission to do as I am coded.”
“You want to stand guard over me?”
“Yes.” Hellequin lost his soldier reserve. He worked a hand around his jaw. “More practical to stand guard outside the door, I suspect.”
Nim wore a faint smile. “I suspect it would be.”
The soldier squatted down at the end of the bed. Nim heard the concentric rings of his steel eye revolve as he examined the carcass of the tassel fly.
“Fragile little bug,” he said softly.
Time was a tumble of hurt bones and muttered half words for Pig Heart as he hung crucified beneath the front rib of the ship. Wind stung each ear flap. Muscles strained. Flesh bled where it had been sliced open at each impact. The scream of air slipstreaming around him was added to suddenly by the drag of chains.
Pig Heart sensed a square open above him. Seconds later, he was drawn upwards at a measured pace. The instant he was winched inside the ship, the hatch bolted back down and the noise cut off. Peace settled around him.
The iron patibulum was dragged aside from the hatch and he was lowered to the floor, a hand guiding the crucifix down so that he lay face up. His head sang with vertigo. And his body – oh, his body! – it seemed to tear into itself over and over. He blinked repeatedly. His vision stayed blurred, the fibrous ceiling overhead reduced to an incongruous mass. He tried to move. The agonies intensified and he yowled.
“Hush, Pig Heart,” said a sibilant voice – salve to his hurt body and mind. “A bad bad thing it did talking with those bare men. But it’s suffered enough.”
The hemp rope slackened then fell away; Pig Heart felt its imprint remain in the blistered flesh at his wrists, upper arms and waist.
“It must crawl now to Rust’s den.”
Pig Heart felt something wet and rough at his throat. Rust raised her head. Tangled hair hallowed her face and spilt down. She kept her tongue poked out, stained with his blood.
“Legs won’t carry me,” he mumbled.
“Pig’s too fat to drag. Crawl.”
Only for Rust. Only for that grime-spattered bitch. Rolling off the patibulum, he felt the stiff matter of his clothing against his raw flesh like hornet stings. It took every last trace of energy to persuade his hands and knees to support his weight.
He started to crawl. Waves of agony broke over him. He hurt down to his soul.
SEVEN
D’Angelus nipped at his smoke stick, temporarily misting the view pane. The drug did little to soothe him. He was all about the flesh trade. This subterranean world was bloodless. No amalgam of fibre, fur, sweat, colour and death. Miles below Humock as they were, there were only the bore tunnels – great caverns blasted out the limestone, which reminded D’Angelus of a flameless hell.
The Sirinese, Jaxx, was strapped into the bench seat to his left. He brushed his elbow against the sleeve of the monk strapped in to the right of him.
“A home fit for the devil himself, hey, Father?”
The monk belonged to a silent order and wouldn’t answer of course. But it didn’t stop D’Angelus wondering if the monk knew something he didn’t about the integrity of the rock surrounding them? The superstitions of the miners certainly suggested as much, which was why a Zen monk always accompanied blast parties to the rock face. But the bore tunnels were well established; any unstable rock had long been mechanically sheared off, or netted and bolted to a seam above.
D’Angelus let back his head and howled. Seeing the monk flinch instinctually, D’Angelus strained against his harness, laughing from the pit of him.
“Forgive me, Father. Don’t think me without faith. But these black pits, well, they give me the willies. Gotta have a sense of humour.”
“Oh yessy,” Das mumbled from the driver’s bucket seat up front. The navigator fixated on the windshield as the burrower’s headlamps glanced off tessellated rock. “Gotta have a joke if you wanna survive the mines. Dust handlers got filthy mouths on them.”
D’Angelus grunted. “Don’t I know it! Come pay day, the fuckers end up in my joint. Wanna trade a dollar for snatch. Not that it’s in my interests to complain. A dollar’s a dollar, hey, Father?” He gave the monk’s arm another knock and showed his ghoul teeth.
But just thinking about the Elegance Saloon brought to mind the rich blaze of chandeliers, his stable of warm, languid girls jacked up on Dazzle Dust, the scold of Jackogin, and his smile drained. He didn’t like it below ground. Didn’t like it one bit.
Seated alongside D’Angelus, Jaxx seemed to sense his boss’s apprehension. “Not long until we surface now. That right, Das?”
“Yep’um. Just entering the old farm tunnels.”
Jaxx glanced across. His eyes were slits of jet. “It’ll be dawn once we surface. Nowhere to hide in that dust bowl. For Cyber Circus or us.”
The farmhouse had long since run to ruin. A windmill that once pumped water for livestock stood motionless. The porch was crumpled in. The roof had sloughed most of its tiles; those that remained were the colour of rust.
Across the yard were a water tower and tumbledown barn. The water tower reservoir advertised ‘Soul Food’ in faded red lettering. The door to the barn stood ajar. Inside were a great many hessian sacks stored for the transport of the plant feed, now buried under dust.
The farm appeared hastily abandoned, with many remnants left in place to rot. Delivery trucks were still parked out back of the barn, tyres fallen in, the sun and wheat sheaf logo bleached across their bonnets. Out in the nearest field of dust, the traction reaper had seized mid-furrow, jaw craned wide, its scythe-like teeth blooded with rust. Chaff plates ran the length of the reaper’s spine. Two squat chimneys sprouted up back like testes. Other machines were scattered as far as the horizon: corrugated burrowers, steel Jack O’Lanterns with their eyes gone out, a stack of reserve trespass mines from the end of the farm’s operational life when it became necessary to guard against the protestors and those whose land had been destroyed.
Dawn brought with it a new intruder – a large dirigible drifting overhead. The unusual craft boasted a brightly striped hide, open skirts that frilled and ebbed like living fungus, and strings of coloured lights streaming from its twin masts. Smoke spilt off the backend, leaving a grey snail’s trail across the sky. As the sun rose over Soul Food Farm, the dirigible advanced with bursts of steamy engine sound and soft putt-putts of expelled air.