She kills the light.
‘No point making yourself a target.’
The girl glances round the courtyard and resists the urge to tell me it’s locked and all of its windows are shuttered. In turn, I resist telling her that once you’ve learnt combat skills you keep practising them, even when they’re not necessary.
‘This should do,’ I say, settling myself against a wall.
It takes me a few seconds to struggle out of my coat. And the girl’s eyes widen when she spots my metal arm. ‘Lost it to a monster. Bigger than me, with slit eyes and armour across its chest.’
She thinks I’m joking.
‘I’m serious.’
‘Must have hurt.’
I hide my grin behind the bottle of beer.
Truth is, shock carried me back to the fort, and the lieutenant poured so much brandy down my throat that the entire week after I lost my arm is still a blur. He could have used battlefield morphine.
But we didn’t have any.
‘Come on,’ I say. ‘Sit down.’
She begins to settle herself next to me. Pouting when I pick her up bodily and put her on my lap. Now we can’t see each other and it’s hard to wrap my coat round her shoulders. So I swivel her towards me, by which time I’m definitely interested and she’s grinning.
‘That’s better,’ I say.
Her name’s Mary. She’s nineteen.
Maybe twenty. She’s not sure.
Mary’s father died and then her real uncle died and her aunt married the innkeeper, who isn’t really her uncle. She calls him that because it keeps her aunt happy. She stops to check I’m following.
I am, I’ve known families like that too.
‘So life’s OK?’
She’s not sure she’d go that far. But it could be worse, she agrees.
The bread is stale and the cheese so hard it cracks rather than crumbles. The chilli jam is so hot that sweat breaks out across my scalp.
Just the way I like it.
When I’ve eaten enough I offer her what’s left, and watch as she chews her way through the bread and wolfs down the remains of the cheese. She giggles when I wipe chilli jam from her chin with my thumb. And she doesn’t protest when I take the plate and put it on the ground beside us.
Guess we both know what’s going to happen.
Not surprisingly, her kisses taste of chilli and goat’s cheese and what was left of my beer. She raises her chin and opens her mouth and locks one hand round the back of my head. I like a woman who knows what she’s doing. As the kisses get harder, my hand drifts and she opens my coat to make access easier.
She shivers.
Unfortunately, her shivering is from cold, and not excitement.
There’s undoubtedly a point at which fucking becomes impossible because your brain simply can’t deal with your body being that cold. This isn’t it, and I suspect for me that it’s not even close. Mary, on the other hand, shivers so hard her teeth begin to chatter.
‘Here,’ I say. ‘Let me.’
Fastening her blouse, I wrap my coat tight around her and button it all the way up, ending with the storm fastening at the collar. Then I lift her slightly, until she gets the idea and kneels over me while I undo my combats and snap free her panties. One yank at the hip is all it takes.
Stuffing them into her pocket, I spit on the fingers of my good hand and find one place where she’s definitely still warm.
This time there’s a grin to match her shiver.
Positioning myself, I grip her broad hips through the coat, and then I position her in turn, lowering her onto me.
‘Fuck,’ she says.
The grin on her face is looking less certain. So I hold her frozen in place until she nods, and then lower her more slowly. She takes her weight on her knees. Very slowly, she comes to rest and then lifts away.
I can see the shock in her eyes.
A second later she slides down again and winces.
It takes another three goes before she can drop onto me without gasping. And then she’s away, and her hand comes up to grip my skull and her kisses become fierce and she buries her head against me to muffle her cries.
‘Oh shit,’ she says finally.
I like women who enjoy themselves.
There was a time when I bought my sex in brothels. In the Legion you get the women no one else wants and the ones everyone else has already had. The whores hate us because fucking us tells them how far they’ve fallen.
Mary doesn’t want the coin I offer.
‘It’s not like you asked for it,’ I say, returning the silver to my pocket. Her eyes watch it disappear, but she doesn’t change her mind. Asking for money is my definition of payment. Anything else is a present.
Struggling to her feet, she slides off my coat.
So I stand and turn her to face me. Wide cheeks, full lips and pale blue eyes almost lost in the darkness. The fullness of her body hidden under a shapeless skirt, washed-out blouse and thin jacket.
‘What do you want?’ I ask.
‘Told you,’ she says crossly. ‘Nothing.’
‘I mean from life.’
Mary looks at me strangely. ‘You’re not what I expected.’
Begs a sub-menu of other questions. That’s something my old lieutenant used to say. Although it seems right. ‘What did you expect?’
She gets embarrassed.
‘You know,’ she says. ‘You’re weird.’
Well, she’s got that right. My skull is broad, my eyes wide set. I’m a foot taller than most of the men in the inn behind me. My shoulders sometimes scrape both sides of a door. I heal faster and have a higher pain threshold than anyone I’ve met.
And that’s before we deal with my metal arm, my collection of scars, the symbiont slug that’s taken up home in my throat or the fact I get strange turns when the slug wakes, and information flows through me like water.
But I don’t think that’s what Mary means.
‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘Weirder than you imagine.’
Mary shakes her head and wraps her arms around me.’ Sven,’ she says.
I’m surprised she knows my name.
‘Take me with you.’
‘Can’t,’ I say, watching hurt flood her eyes.
Turning her face to the moon, I wonder idly what I’m seeing.
A girl who sees me as a ticket out of here? Someone so unhappy that anywhere else is better than this? If so, I’ve been there myself. So I can understand how she might want to get out.
‘Now’s not a good time.’
She turns to go and swings back when I grab her wrist. Her other hand is already raised to slap me. She lets it drop when she sees my grin.
‘Listen,’ I say. ‘Weird shit’s going down.’
Mary looks around her.
‘Not just here. Everywhere. Farlight’s a bad place to go right now.’
‘How do you know?’
The answer is, I don’t know how. I just know that I do. It’s a feeling more than anything. Like static raising the hairs on the back of my neck.
‘Just do.’
She nods. ‘You’ll be back?’
‘Should be. If all goes well. In a week or so.’
‘Maybe I’ll see you then.’
She turns for the broken door of the inn, holding my empty plate and her unlit lamp, and this time I let her go. She’s on my fingers and I can taste her on my tongue. Some of the questions she’s asked are wriggling in my head like worms.
But I’ll deal with them later.
Chapter 16
When I go in to breakfast, Anton’s at a table with Sergeant Toro. Leona is sitting opposite Anton, concentrating on her plate. It doesn’t look that interesting to me. Mary comes out from the kitchens, and puts a plate of cold chicken in front of me before I have time to sit.
‘You want coffee with that?’
‘If it’s not too much trouble . . .’
She scowls, then ruins it by grinning when I slap her arse in passing.
The next person to try it gets hot coffee in his lap. Since he, his boss and his oppos are on the point of moving out, and I’m looking over, he decides there’s not much he can do about it.
‘Sven,’ says Anton. ‘Our friend has a plan.’
I’m on the point of saying I’m not interested in plans. I want to get to Farlight, warn Colonel Vijay about General Luc and get Anton back to Wildeside before anyone discovers he’s missing.