The rig reached the third platform, known affectionately as ‘the zoo’. Pig Heart stepped off and made his way down the central walkway. Either side were stalls, sectioned off from one another by a patchwork of corrugated iron sheeting. That high up in the tent the air was fresher and tinged with the earth scent of purple sage lining the beasts’ beds.
To his left, the stalls were dedicated to livestock. Roo rats bickered in their city of interconnected pipes, ramps, scratch posts and dust baths. Their nutty flesh served the soup pot well. Next door were giant tortoises, the meat of which was fried in spiced oil or dried into thin gnawing strips, the shell made into bracelets or trinket boxes for sale during pre-show parades. Next were the wrinklenecks, shoulders hooked and feathers ruffled like Jeridian medicine men, and, after, red horned goats that tore at dry grass in wall-mounted mangers.
To his right, every stall was occupied by clothhods. The creatures stayed in the shadows, necks looped back to allow their long muzzles to rest in the folds between their broad shoulders. One moved to drink from a high trough. Keratin hoofs swished through the strewn sage.
The larger beasts were housed to the rear. Where the hoppers’ wagon was usually located, the floor was littered with calcium deposits; the giant nymphs wept milky bile from their ever churning mandibles. Rust’s wagon was parked alongside.
I hear the wind making music in their wings, she had told him. Gore at her lips. Lice in her hair.
One side of Rust’s wagon faced out from the wall and was masterfully carved with jewel coloured mouths and eyes that served as the face of the circus during pre-show parades. It also provided Rust with privacy should she desire it. Of course, she wasn’t really quarantined to the zoo, but free to come and go as she pleased about the tent. But she preferred to keep to her own. As Pig Heart understood it from the brief moments she was more woman than wolf, she’d crawled from the ruins of her parents’ desert dome when it and her entire family were lost to one of the great dust storms. The lone survivor, she had found shelter with a pack of cave wolves until she reached puberty. Only when hunters shot dead the alpha-female of the pack did she skulk back to her own kind, furred, spit-jawed and fit only for the circus.
I bring you freaks, strange people, weird people, and some that aren’t people at all! Herb’s patter. Pig Heart grabbed the banister and swung up onto the step at one end of the wagon. He prepared for her backlash; Rust hated to be disturbed, which was how some young grunt off the pitch crew usually got stuck with the task come show time. The rush of claws coming at him through the bars made him flinch in spite of himself.
“Rust! It’s me. I gotta talk to you. I gotta let you know somethin’ and we ain’t got long, baby.”
Eyes pulled up to the bars. Wet, black, spider-lashed.
“Pig Heart.” She touched her tongue to a corner of her mouth. “Is it here to rut with me?”
Pig Heart shook his head. He was used to her distanced treatment of him. For Rust, the only creatures she truly associated herself with were those in the adjacent stalls and cages. He, on the other hand, was still an unknown. An ‘it.’
The spider eyes ate him up. “What’s it want with me then?”
“Rust. I gotta tell you. There’s men among them marks down there. Bad men. Want to cage you for real. Want to let other men rut with you without your will or say so. I ain’t the sort of mucker to want that to happen. I’m putting it to you now...”
He shut off midsentence, hearing the rattle of the lift rig alongside the muffled noise from the main tent area. The lift didn’t ascend to their level, presumably having conveyed a fresh batch of pitch crew to the mess hall. Pig Heart returned his attention to Rust.
“I got money. Not much but it’s enough to get us part passage on a desert caravan. Maybe we’d get as far as Zan City before they dump our asses.”
“Zan City is a nest of blood worms. The bare-man, Herb, says it often.”
Pig Heart scrubbed at his bristled head. He was sweating profusely. How long until D’Angelus and his men invaded backstage with their rock rifles? How long until they strong armed some poor grunt into showing them the lift rig that led to the zoo?
“Yeah, Zan City’s a hole. One you and me can get lost in.”
She put a hand through the bars and batted his cheek. “And why’d I come with it? Why’d I leave my stink bed?”
“The men, Rust. Saints almighty, Rust, the men!” The pitchman was slopping spit now. His borrowed heart swelled and flabbed.
Rust swung open the door to her cage. Her face was a breath’s distance from his in an instant.
“Wolves don’t run to Zan City when the lion tracks us over the dunes or when the storm comes and we have to take to the caverns if hoppers swarm there or not. The bare men cannot tear me from my stink bed. I will claw out their eyes, bite the skeletons from their flesh.”
“But they have guns, Rust. Rock Rifles. They will take you down just enough to keep your mauled body fit for rutting. We got no choice, baby. They’re coming for Nim and they’re coming for you.”
The wolf girl cocked her head. “Nim. What do the bare men want with Nim?”
“They want her back, Rust!” he spat in her face. Had her time with the wolves sent the girl stupid? She seemed unresisting to her fate, like an exhausted jackrabbit in a trap. And still she eyed him with that liquid gaze.
“Nim smells happy now. She smelt sad when she came, but she likes it here. You will tell her about the bare men too.”
“I can’t, Rust. No time. Besides, she’s got Hellequin for a shadow, whether she wants him or not.”
Rust thumped at an ear with the back of a hand, chasing an itch. “The HawkEye.” She seemed to roll the words around in her mouth, tasting their texture. Her gaze flicked past Pig Heart’s shoulder. “It says there’s bare men coming for Nim and me.”
Pig Heart sensed a presence behind him. His breath stuck in his throat and he slowly turned around.
The HawkEye stepped from the shade. He held two squirming roo rats by their tails in one hand, a blood stained mallet in the other. Striding down the walkway, he unfolded an extra couple of vertebra. His grip slacked on the roo rats. The creatures fell to the floor and scampered back to the seeming safety of their roo rat city.
“D’Angelus has located Nim then. I wonder who helped him do that.” In the centre of Hellequin’s steel eyepiece, a bud of amber light strengthened.
THREE
D’Angelus tossed aside the glowing nub of his smoke stick. He adjusted the angle of his trekker hat. “Come on. I’ve seen enough.”
Earl wore his disappointment like a child deprived of sweet root. “Nim ain’t going nowhere, boss.” His gaze wandered back to the ring where the Scuttlers propelled themselves from one tent pole to another in a great clanking of giant pincers. “Nimble little vermin,” he snorted and, tucking his thumbs into his waistcoat pockets, rocked back on his boot heels and chuckled. He glanced at D’Angelus. His face drained of pleasure.
“I’ll send in our guys.” Earl deposited fresh leaf in one cheek. “You want it to go softly or us to mess things up back there?”
D’Angelus eyed the crowd. “No need to cause a ruckus. We don’t want to ruin the show for these good folk.” He showed the tics of his teeth. “Softly does it. We want to keep the merchandise pretty.”
Earl strode away, signalling his men to move off to the stage curtain.
D’Angelus stayed behind. Knowing the wolf girl would spit, claw and buck in his bed that evening sent a crush of blood to his groin. As for Nim, she’d be enjoyed in a dark room where her erotic circuitry would guide many hands.