But it is a rare day in Zan Prison that music fills the air. Let freaks be freaks, the men decide, their spirits bouncing.
And this next one is the real deal, they know that instinctually. Womanness pours off her like molasses. Seated in an extravagant carriage, Nim is a picture of allure. Her hair is scarlet, her eyes glassy red. The jacket of her riding suit is unbuttoned, providing a glimpse of décolletage. Her riding skirt is knee-length and teasingly modest. She rests a black parasol over one shoulder.
Only a keen observer – or a HawkEye – would notice the accelerated rise and fall of her chest. She breathes through the panic that threatens to break her ribs. Too many bad souls crammed into that baking space, with its salt walls rising on all sides. Nim fights to shut her demons out while the wardens electrocute the over-amorous. Grown men yelp like pups. The stench of hot meat rises.
But Nim needn’t worry. Tantalising as she is, Herb saves the queerest for last. The largest wagon passes through the gate, a tremendous steel cage divided in two. The framework is adorned with grotesque figures boasting mirrored eyes, antennae, garish stripes and spines. And inside the cage? The men gasp, beat on a neighbour’s shoulder, pat their breasts and shake their head. Hoppers! Two of them. Giant scraping creatures that twist awkwardly around inside the cramped quarters. Calcium deposits litter the floor like anthills.
“Get the buggers back!” The handler calls to the prison wardens. His whip cracks overhead as the wardens plunge their batons into soft sides and bellies. “Easy, gents,” they coo, as if the words are a salve to counteract the wounds.
But it is too much for some prisoners. After the relentless white of their cells, they find it hard to process the strange sight. And it’s worth the sting of the baton to nose closer to the beasts. Hoppers, they whisper, hands reaching for the bars.
“I’ll cut you with my whip, gents!” The handler’s voice is laden with alarm. He runs alongside the cage, yanks on a handle and tries to unfold a screen across the bars. “No more for you, gents. No more for you!” he hollers.
But the prisoners are having none of it. They want to peel off one of the hoppers’ hoary scales, or secure themselves a tuft of the head filaments. Souvenirs like that’d be worth a dime on the prison’s black market. Enough to buy a good few packs of smoke sticks, maybe even a poke with one of the street whores who trades their flesh for cash with the wardens.
“Just a glimpse, Jo,” they say in sing-songy voices, appealing to the charitable nature of the warden nearest, every one of whom bears the nickname of ‘Jo’ on the inside. “I ain’t had a turn to see,” they argue, and “Just a gander. Just a stroke of it.”
Electro-batons bite at the men. But there are more prisoners to replace those who fall. As the handler succeeds in dragging the screen halfway across the bars, the prisoners became a determined swarm.
“You gotta back up!” The handler flails his arms. “This is precious cargo.”
He pushes to the front and steps up by the driver. “Herb!” he calls, and cracking his whip, catches prisoner and warden alike. “Herb, we gotta get these fellas off. The hoppers are getting choppy with each other!”
The wagon sways. The hoppers squeeze off loud chirrups. Their wing cases and hoary limbs clatter against the bars.
Climbing onto the roof of the wagon, the handler kneels, stretches a hand down and tries to shift the screen the rest of the way across. A shadow falls over him and he squints back over a shoulder.
A tall figure in silhouette blocks out the sun.
“What’s the priority?”
The handler shielded his eyes with the flat of a hand.
“Blackout screen. It’s jammed.”
Hellequin indicated the man aside. He lay down in the handler’s place, stretched a long arm over the edge and tried to grab the handle of the screen. It was impossible to get a good grip with the prisoners crowding close and rocking the wagon. Gaze whirring, he took in the action. Hands clustered at the bars of the cage. Flesh bruised like Black Fruit. Several wrists had gang tattoos, similar to the dark blue sickle blade he’d spied at Asenath’s earlobe a day earlier. His amber lens revolved a few degrees in its socket and he stared into the cage. One of the hoppers was hurt; a front limb leaked a thin green gore where thieves had torn off fistfuls of the hessian-textured exoskeleton. The creature rubbed against the divider between the two pens and its neighbour responded in kind. Their chitinous bodies rasped off one another, like blunt saws juddering through petrified wood.
Hellequin noticed a hunk of calcified spit caught in the runner; a prisoner stretched eager fingers towards it, hopper chalk being quite the prize. Hellequin gripped the gilt piping that edged the roof with one hand. Retrieving his bowie knife from its sheath, he swung down, his legs dangling loosely just above the prisoners’ heads. He drove the knife down into the runner, flicked out the calcium lump into the grateful hands and swung back up onto the roof – just as the screen shot across the cage on spring release, skinning any fingers in its path.
There was a roar of pain and disappointment. But with the freak show closed, the mob finally backed off. Wardens buzzed the prisoners nearest for good measure, but most inmates stood and stared up in awe. The HawkEye unfolded on top of the hoppers’ wagon, bowie knife in hand, steel eye flashing under the fierce white sun.
TEN
The moon rose high and fat over the salt plains. At the edge of the desert, a cluster of yurts had been erected from poles of dark twisting petrified wood and draped in white canvas. Inside was carpeted in wool from the caravan’s small herd of humpbacks. Incense smouldered in metal bowls. Pierced metal lanterns were strung up in the eaves and gave off a muted glow.
The chieftain nestled in oversized robes, peering out from his headscarf with a toothless grin and glistening eyes. Another elder piped a snaking melody from a cane flute while the women danced, laughed and flirted, grateful for the company of men who still had fat across their bones. Handsome women, they wore black robes cinched at the waist with braided gold, and more gold thread stitched into their hair. Charm bracelets chinked at their wrists. Bells jangled at their ankles. They wove in and out the men, offering up the stem of a hookah pipe or entwining themselves in a lap. A fistful of dollars had secured D’Angelus food and shelter for his men for the night, with the chieftain throwing these, his youngest wives, into the bargain.
Smoke off the hookah pipe fogged the air. The atmosphere inside the tent wavered. Jaxx felt hazy, a sensation which reminded him of the sweat huts favoured by Sirinese mystics. Around him, bodies coiled, mouths pressed. The ecstasy of it all filled his belly like rotten meat. He found his way to the doorway and stepped out into the night.
Leaving behind the pool of light off two large tar torches and the slumbering humpbacks, he entered the twilit plains. Under the huge moon, the salt flats stretched to the horizon. Stars blazed; Jaxx navigated his way north by them. The further he got from camp, the quieter the desert became, until he grew aware of his own footsteps. Shapes ran across his path, roo rats scurrying back to their burrows. Otherwise, his only companion was the vast noiselessness.
The position of the heavens told him that it was the hour of Last Prayer and he stopped walking. Taking four small engraved brass discs from a purse at his waist, he laid them out to form a square on the ground. He knelt inside the square, raised his hands in invocation and began to chant. In his mind’s eye, he thanked the spirits for the joy and bitterness of his day – in the case of the latter, recanting of the blood he had spilt and the pain he had caused. His voice flooded out into the illimitable dark. The prayer circled. His sins turned to dust, and blew away.