The body collapsed, pumping blood. Behind stood Asenath, her scimitar held towards the gaslight and greased red.
“Moj nagradu!” she growled. “My prize,” she told him, hard about the eye.
Hellequin didn’t dwell on the Jeridian’s victory. His eyepiece refracted to take in events across the room. Nim had been grabbed by one sharp-suited Showmaniese. The man had a blunt block resting on her skull; one tap and Nim’s brains would spill. Apparently the hostage taker had lost faith in making it out of there alive. Hellequin understood the man’s panic. The Jeridian gang seemed newly invigorated now the giant had fallen. As Asenath took out the ribs of one with a swish of her scimitar, the other three female Jeridians formed a lethal collective. Back to back, the women joined in the fray. Fight stars whirred in from the Showmaniese contingent; as one mass, the three Jeridians bowed back at the spine, the blur of lethal metal passing millimetres from their faces. In a deadly dance, they bent, wove and sidestepped as one. Three scimitars whipped high, down then up again. Blood glossed each blade. Showmaniese heads rolled.
“Mi smo victorios!” cried the women and they knelt down, washed their hands in the blood of their enemy and smeared it in streaks down their cheeks.
“Slice another head, bitches, and I’ll do for the whore here!” yelled the Showmaniese holding Nim hostage. It was distraction enough for one of his fellows to smash a blunt block into the chest of one male Jeridian. The man said “Oumph!” with the sickly tone of one who is shocked to greet death so quickly. He crumpled, choking on blood-filled lungs. No one intervened when the Showmaniese brought down the blunt block a second time. Better to finish it, even as the Jeridian women used the pain of loss to fuel their high-pitched eerie war cries.
“Shut it, you fucking red bitches! What say you, Solomon? Gonna let these jackasses slice your customers?” demanded the man with the block at Nim’s skull, his black eyes buzzing every which way.
Hellequin wondered the same thing. While Lulu poked his nose over the lip of the counter, the bartender took his time, wiping up gore from the same surface. “I’m more neutral than most in this nest of blood worms. Your kind wanna sell mine out. Well, I reckon it’s fair to slice a few heads in return.” He glanced up from his macabre housecleaning. “Want my advice? You and your buddies should ease on out of here for the night.”
“Screw that! Ain’t no guarantee any of us Showmaniese are escaping this joint in one piece tonight if these red bitches have their way. I say let’s even up the odds.” The man raised his arm. “Seems this whore means something to some of you.” He started to bring the blunt block down, Nim cringing in his foul embrace.
A hand broke the descent of the blunt block. Fingers gripped the handle, yanking it aside. Hellequin had seen the way of things at the exact same instant the man had taken action. Soft as a sidewinder, he’d slunk over. By the time the Showmaniese had sensed the HawkEye by his shoulder, he was already in the process of slamming down the blunt block. Now the soldier’s hand forced the block back up at force. The Shomaniese took a face full of the weapon, nose shattering on impact. He wasn’t going down without a fight though and drove his teeth into Nim’s neck. She gave a sharp cry.
Hellequin backed off, hands raised. The Showmaniese stumbled back towards the door, passing between the terrified whores and Johns, his teeth dug in just short of Nim’s jugular. The surviving Showmaniese fell in step with him. Weapons poised, they backed up to the exit.
None noticed Asenath slink the whores and Johns in and out. She stepped up, scimitar raised, and slid the blade in at the back of the hostage taker’s neck. The man fell away from Nim like a dried up tic. Inside seconds, Asenath had withdrawn the blade and swept it around on a descending trajectory. The remaining Showmaniese lost their heads. Their corpses hit the ground and the bar fell silent.
Asenath drew Nim up from the floor. The courtesan was gasping, a hand pressed to her neck in an effort to staunch the wound.
The Jeridian delivered Nim to Hellequin, passing her into his embrace with insistence. She walked across the blood-slicked floor, interwove her fingers in the hair belonging to the giant and held up the severed head.
“Moj nagradu!” she cried. My prize.
Solomon and the rest of the Jeridians opened their throats and offered up the same strange prayer.
TWELVE
“I’m not extravagantly shy and when a nice young man is nigh, for his heart I have a try, and faint away with tearful eye!” sang Lulu.
“Are you trying to wake all the blood rats of Zan City?” Hellequin muttered.
Lulu giggled and fussed at the HawkEye’s coat sleeve as they walked.
“Word’s out by now. Cyber Circus boasts some of the finest brawlers in all of Humock.” The ladyboy stumbled into Hellequin, who pushed him up.
“How much Jackogin you had back there?” Hellequin went to take his arm away. When Lulu started to fall again, he was forced to hold the ladyboy upright.
“Oh, ain’t no Jackogin, my pretty soldier boy. Remember when I slipped outside a while back at the bar? Well, I encountered a lovely gentlemen, robust and more than a little rabid.” The ladyboy floated his hand before his mouth in mock alarm. “He slipped me a little Dazzle dust,” Lulu confessed, his strung out eyes confirming the fact.
“You don’t say,” said Hellequin dryly.
“You okay back there, Lulu?” Nim called from where she walked alongside Asenath ten metres or so out in front.
“I’m peachy.” The reply came out as slurred, accompanied by a fresh stumble.
Hellequin pulled the ladyboy back up. “He’s jacked up on Dazzle Dust,” he called.
“Ahhh, don’t tell her,” Lulu groaned. He put his forehead in his hand.
“That old poison, hey, Lulu?” Nim shook her head and gave her attention back to the uneven path of salt bricks. They were passing through one of the medina’s unlit spots, an alley thick with shadows.
“She’s pissed now.” Lulu muttered something about the HawkEye wanting Nim and sacrificing all others. His chin dropped onto his chest, the weight of his head a burden.
“I’m a soldier. I deal with facts,” Hellequin offered half-heartedly. He could wish Lulu’s soul to Hell and the ladyboy would still cuddle closer.
But Lulu surprised him. Peering up into Hellequin’s face, he looked freshly earnest.
“Ask me, you’re more fond of us freaks than you’d like to admit. This whole ‘Daxware makes me protect you’ argument is just a way to stop us guessing the truth. That while you’re wired with electrical conductors, a small part of you remembers the man you once were.” Lulu poked Hellequin’s stomach, the other man tensing at the contact. “You’re just a soft belly when it comes down to it.”
Hellequin exhaled heavily. He put his hand to the back of the ladyboy’s neck, steering him. Staring up at the great cavern of starry sky, he muttered, “Maybe you’re right.” He felt no different inside though, only filled to the brim with nothingness.
“How’s your neck?” asked Asenath.
Nim kept the makeshift bandage of Lulu’s handkerchief applied to the spot. “Not as bad as it looked. Bleeding has eased up.”
“Why’d you let men paw you like that, like they did back at the bar?”
Nim stared over, struck by how the woman at her side seemed to take on all sorts of angles in the darkness. The Jeridian’s eyes sparkled. She’d the look of a devil.