Hellequin watched his father crow, heard his mother praise the Saints and start planning her spending – new apron material, beading for his youngest sister Lily-Anne’s Sunday Best dress, a flock of peckers to lay enough those delicious lemony eggs of theirs, plus a book of Southern Plain Ornithology for her bedridden momma in the room next door. All the while, Hellequin’s siblings had joined in with the mood of triumph. Twin boys clambered out their boots and bounced on the low divan. Second eldest, Hellequin’s sister, Lu-Georgia, held onto her curls and sucked her fingers, wild-eyed at the family’s nonsense, but lit up on the inside no doubt by the thought of ninety dollars a quart. Hellequin was sure she joined their mother in thoughts of all they could buy – the dresses, the scents, the smart jackets, the jacquard curtains, not to mention a Sirinese man servant to shine the silver and wind the clocks.
“What about the crops that died out at the west hill?” Hellequin asked softly. His statement swept the room silent.
“Faulty batch. Test crop from early on in the season.” Jackerie got narrow-eyed. “You want to brawl with me again over that? Today, boy?” He snatched the document back from his wife and shook it close to Hellequin’s face, forcing his son to blink. “This piece of paper makes a world of difference to your mother and I, to this family and to this homestead.”
“I’m just asking you to analyse the soil up on the west field. It’s dry and grey, more dust that dirt. And the greenbacks? Yesterday I saw one grown as big as a man’s fist. Creature like that could feed on a hundred times the quantity of crops as its ancestors.” Hellequin felt his own voice scattering like dust in the wind. None of his family wanted his sourness to ruin their good fortune. Every one of them stared at him with distaste and one wish. Just go away.
Only Jackerie voiced the sentiment. “I think that’s the barracks I hear calling your name, son. Time to suit up and boot up. And let me tell you, once you step outside this house, you’d best keep on walking. ‘Cause in our memories you’ll be no more alive anymore than the sloughed skin of a rattler.”
Half an hour later, Hellequin had arrived downstairs with his pack and best boots on. His mother and sisters cried and moaned at his departure. His twin brothers lay asleep on the divan, sucking thumbs like liquorice sticks. His father rocked backwards and forwards on his heels as if to use up the minutes remaining.
“On your way, son.” Jackerie opened the door. Beyond the world was on fire beneath a sunset.
Hellequin stepped out onto the porch. The wind whipped up, driving dust into his eyes. He heard the beat of hoppers’ wings, Nim’s cry of suffering, the sorrowful pipe of the calliope, and Herb’s cry of “Come one, come all!”
The dream fractured. He swam back to the surface.
Slowly he focused in on a gas lamp swinging overhead.
“Hello Lieutenant Rongun. Pleasant dreams?”
A face interrupted the blaze of light. The pale green eyes were familiar, as was the scar at one eyebrow where a skirmish early on in the civil war had seen the man take a slice of flint courtesy of a well-aimed rock rifle.
“Corporeal Lars.” Hellequin didn’t need to test the restraints which bound him to the table; an ex soldier like Lars was capable of securing an unconscious man. He also understood how he had been brought down. It was only when attacked from multiple vantage points that his Daxware had lost perspective, and, with it, the advantage of advanced defence systems. It would take a soldier in the know to hijack a HawkEye.
“How you been, Lieutenant? Good? Yeah, I can see that. You’ve got a sweet deal with the carnie crew. Stand up and tell a tale or two? Bet they got you shooting holes in bits of paper they shower down too, hey? Yeah, I heard about your gig on the grapevine, but I never thought you’d hawk it here in Zan City. My lucky day, huh?”
Hellequin swallowed. His throat was dry as baked clay. That face! It had haunted him over the years, belonging to Corporal Jay Lars – the soldier he had left behind in Zan City all those years before.
“I see you carved yourself a new life in Zan City, Corporal.”
“Carved is the right word.” The man sneered, showing two great holes in his cheeks. He poked his tongue through one, wiggled it and sneered again. “Took a bullet clean through my face that first night. Whaddya make to that, Lieutenant?”
“There was protocol to follow,” Hellequin embarked but Lars interrupted, keen to tell his tale.
“I was left for dead in a ditch for three nights. Swept out the very bar I saw you in this evening. No more significant that a pan full of dust.”
Hellequin remembered the figure who had occupied the shadows at Solomon’s bar that evening. Now he understood why the silhouette of the man had seemed so familiar. The distinctive angles of the Humock Guard duster coat had struck a chord, once worn by the hundreds of foot soldiers who’d fought tooth and nail on the government’s behalf. His own faded blue frockcoat had been part of a uniform peculiar to the HawkEye – as if the aim had been to despatch his kind to the heavens in their lung baskets and have them blend with the blue skies. Sometimes it made the HawkEye too clear a target. Just like that evening.
“Ah, the dreams I had in that ditch,” continued the Corporal. He braced his hands either side of the table and leant over Hellequin, his pale green eyes hard with the lust for vengeance. “I dreamt about my wife believing I was dead and shacking up with another man. I dreamt about my young son being raised by my replacement – a red-skinned Jeridian bastard with his hands on everything I owned.”
Lars grimaced. He appeared to ride a wave of untenable grief. “When I woke, I was left to the squalor of Zan City’s residential district. The coat, see.” Lars pinched the lapel of his duster coat and gave it a disgruntled tug. “There’s folk here who still respect the guard for winning the war. There’s folk who’ll still pick a soldier up out of the gutter, pack his shot-out cheeks with herb-mix and minister to him ‘til the flesh heals. And there’s others who’ll leave a man to die when he gets jumped and can’t get back to his platoon on time.”
“Protocol,” Hellequin repeated. He was still soggy with the fumes off the rag that had been applied to his mouth and nose earlier.
“Protocol? Bloody mindedness more like.” The ex-soldier’s hand loomed large over Hellequin’s face. It poked at the HawkEye implant; the lens telescoped out to focus on the whorled fingertip then retracted. “All this vision and you still couldn’t see your way to rescuing me.”
The hand disappeared. Lar brought his face back close to Hellequin’s. “Fortunately for me, I’m the resourceful type. The old maid who fixed me up had these tales of how she’d rescued me from blood worms who traded in living flesh. Demand was high thanks to the biomorph specialist in residence just a few short streets away. Didn’t take me long to realise there’s only one way to protect yourself against blood worms in this city. Become one.”
The ex-soldier smiled, showing off the great lacerations in his cheeks. “Let me introduce my boss, Miss Yalda Danan.”
He stepped out of Hellequin’s sightline, allowing a new figure to move into view. The woman was Sirinese, her hair tucked up under a blood-stained bandana. Wisps of it escaped to frame her face, like shreds of clothhod fleece caught on barbed wire. Her nose was hooked, the nostrils large and flared – holes into her soul. She was crumpled with age, the necklace of small, bird-like bones around her neck betraying witch doctor inclinations. Smiling, she showed off the dull black stubs of her teeth.