“Blood in the air,” moaned Rust, cowering at one end of a fixed trestle table.
Clinging to a table leg alongside, Pig Heart told her, “Don’t worry, gal. Cyber Circus’ll shake them out.”
Do it soon, he prayed. Before a swarm comes.
“Something’s amiss.” Beyond the gauze curtains of the dressing rooms, Hellequin could hear the circus in turmoil.
Nim didn’t stir. Her breathing quietened though, which suggested she was conscious.
“Nim?” he said louder.
“Yes...” She sighed – a bitter sound that suggested peace had been all too fleeting. “I know.”
“I’m heading up to the bridge. You ought to stay put. Avoid whatever mayhem’s occurring out there.”
But Nim was already sitting up. “Last time I stayed here, D’Angelus’s men broke in.” She started to roll up her stockings, wincing against the pain from her arm, which had to be considerable. “Asenath’s right. Its time I had more say over the uses I’m put to.” She stood and tugged on a high-collared field vest with a great many pockets and brass fastenings. Her hair fell about her shoulders, loose, long, the colour of jewel fruit.
“Okay.” Hellequin slid off the bed and fastened his pants.
They slipped out through the gauze curtains. Backstage was littered with broken scenery and a sort of caustic white dung which sizzled as it ate into the floor. Hellequin and Nim stared up in time to see one of the black locusts smash through the rail onto Herb’s private platform then take to the air again.
“Saints almighty, the nymphs have become locusts.” Hellequin got a grip on Nim’s hand. “You remember at the prison when the inmates rocked their wagon? I’d a hunch the beasts had been rubbing up against each other. They can’t do that, you see. After a while, it brings about the metamorphosis. But the handler was sure there’d be no fallout after the prison visit.”
At that instant, a deep drone arose from somewhere far below the tent. It made Nim’s blood run cold.
“Swarm,” she said softly,
Hellequin let go of her hand. He stared at her and asked, “Can you use a firearm?”
“Locusts are terrible creatures. They’ll strip a farm in a day.” Dressed in her monk robes, the woman stood at the open door and watched the huge bug investigate the platform. The creature froze when it saw her. She stared into the black mirrors of its eyes and saw the ringmaster’s pod reflected there, the narrow stairs, the open door. Her reflection was absent. As if she didn’t exist in that world.
In a great puff of chitinous material, the creature powered off its hind legs and swept back out into the air space.
The woman closed the door. She turned around to find the Scuttlers cowering at the back of the room. Their wrinkled faces peeped out from their toughened shells.
“I’ve shut them out,” she told the children – or so she presumed them to be. They were, after all, what had drawn her to Cyber Circus. ‘A child without bones’ was the way she had put it to the Sirinese, Jaxx, describing the one who would search the nooks and crannies of the mines for the lover she had lost. The Scuttlers were the closest match she had found.
They blinked at her through the steamy air, their soft bodies – the turtle meat of them – cocooned in keratin. In the case of all three, one of the front claws would snap on occasion, a spasmodic action. Their wrinkled old faces retained a sense of youth in the snub noses, blue-blue eyes and plump neck folds.
One of the girls shuffled forward and prodded the Zen monk mask on the floor.
“Nasty ugly,” she said sourly.
The woman tied the belt of dried relics around her waist over the top of the rough cassock. “It’s dress up. Nothing more. A peepo thing to scare off witches and other creepers in the dark.”
“I’s try it on,” said the boy. He slunk forward on his belly. His claws were nimble as he worked the cloth mask onto his face. He stared at his sisters then the woman, a grotesque too horrible even for a circus.
“Take it off, Tib,” hissed his other sister, shyer and keeping to the back of the room.
Cyber Circus lurched. The woman laughed as she stumbled. The children rolled with the movement of the ship, limbs tucked up into their nutshells.
The boy, Tib, took off the mask, cheeks puffing as if he was frightened by the fit of it. “Zen monks don’t have titties,” he shot, and all three rolled and snorted at his daredevilry.
“Zen monks don’t talk,” added the shyer, more incisive sister, a squint to one blue eye.
“I’m playing make believe, that’s all.” The woman smiled softly. Wearing the rough dress with its belt of dead things, she looked like a devil from the neck down.
“And your name is?”
“Rind, and ‘tuther one’s Ol.”
“You an angel? One of the Saints’ kin?” asked the bolder sister, Ol.
All three stared at the woman with want in their child eyes.
She sat cross-legged on the floor to match their skilful balance.
“Tell me where you came from?”
The three shortened their necks.
“The father bred us,” said Rind.
“He was a bio-mor-pher.” Ol sounded out the adult word. “Blood worms brought him the bits and pieces he worked with most of the time.”
Tib added, “But we was special. Bred not made.”
“Crossbred. Like the hoppers.” The woman sucked her bottom lip and looked quite the child herself. “Oh, this is some world,” she marvelled.
Her expression grew shrewder. “How did your father come to place you in a circus?”
“Law took him for breeding us. We weren’t the way of what was natural said the government’s man. Herb, he hears and comes and takes us in.” Rind kept a shrewd eye on the woman. “We thought you a Saint come to bless me, he and she.” She used her front pincers like opposable thumbs, indicating herself and her siblings.
“Ah, I do have a gift for stirring the souls of men. And agitating the lay of the land,” said the woman absentmindedly. She took the mask from Tib and wore it over one hand like a puppet. “My gift is a blessing and a curse. I’m sure curiosities like yourselves understand the burden. And the thing I’d like is for us to help one another out.” The woman looked fragile then. Her wide mouth trembled.
The Scuttlers didn’t know how they felt about this mood shift. They were suspicious of the woman’s suggestion they work in some mutual alliance – hadn’t they always been put to work in that manner, by their father, by Herb? But they also appreciated the soft appeal of the woman, how she spoke to them like they had some significance in the world.
“What do you want from us?” asked the shrewd Rind.
SIXTEEN
The swarm rode in on the dust cloud, materialising through it like Hell’s own demons.
D’Angelus and his crew had no knowledge of the strength of the storm or the arrival of the swarm. Wanda-Sue wormed through the dirt twenty metres down; any lower and they would have broken through into the old, unstable mine tunnels. D’Angelus tucked his fear inside. He couldn’t understand why anyone enjoyed tunnelling underground when there was a perfectly respectable quality of life to be had up top. What he did appreciate was how valuable it was to suck the nutrients out of the dirt – gold, silver, and other precious ores. And to be able to burst free of the ground directly below an airborne enemy, weapon primed.