it – or possibly a speeding elephant – and judging by the dry tightness of my cheek it was appropriately blood- splattered. Added to the bandaged remains of what had once been an ear, the slashes and scars across cheeks and forehead, the aching wounds – messily fixed-up – in my left arm, right shoulder and nape of my neck, I imagined I was starting to look just as patchworked as my coat. One of these days, I decided, I was going to have to find a functioning shower.
I tottered to my feet, lost the battle with my gyrating inner-ear, and barfed like a trooper. I was hungry enough to consider asking someone for a spoon.
Nate watched me cautiously, like he expected me to fall down any second. His pupils looked even bigger than usual, pushing against the bright whites of his eyes, and he was clinging to a red plastic box – like a power drill case – like it was a lifeline. Where he'd got it and what the hell it was were queries I never got around to asking. My surroundings swam into focus, and my senses came online.
The prevailing sound was: engines.
I was back at the Wheels Mart. The same raggedy little tent, by the looks of it, that Malice met me in before. Through the tattered openings I could hear the braying crowds and see the spastic danglings of the MC, shouting out his endless stream of nonsensical bid-acceptances. The smell of cooking meat underwritten by the heady chug of noxious fumes, the whooping and arguing of punters. It made my head hurt, if possible, even more than it already did.
'Brought you here in a car!' Nate whooped, doing a little dance. He was clearly on something. 'Borrowed it, yes we did. Fucking Clergy, heh!'
'What… what happened?' I murmured, wincing at my own voice. 'What happened to the priests?'
'Fucked off!' Nate sat down suddenly, cross-legged, and nodded like a flapping wing. 'Trucks, hidden-away. Took-off all at once. You scared 'em off! City's free!'
Then he slumped against the wall of the tent with no warning and just… switched off, smirking. He dribbled a little.
High as a kite.
Hmm.
The young man in the leathers stood nearby, leaning against a tall wooden pole, arms folded; watching it all without movement. I found myself looking for the bow and quiver of arrows over his shoulder – hating myself – and dipped my eyes back up to his own to cover the up-and-down staring.
He didn't move a muscle.
'You saved me, huh?' I said, remembering the red and blue blur behind Cy, the knife cracking through his skull.
He shrugged. 'You needed saving.'
Nate tsked quietly behind me, then giggled again.
I held out a shaky hand to the boy, which he took with a suspicious sort of glance and shook firmly.
'Hiawatha,' he said.
I nodded. 'Pleasure. Want to tell me what you were doing on the thirty fourth floor of a hotly-contested building swarming with insane priests, Hiawatha?'
He smiled. Sort of. I don't think there was much humour there.
'Saving you.' he said.
Uh-huh.
Which is around about when Malice came in. Different.
She looked bigger, for a start. It took me a while to figure she wore body armour beneath the black threads. Pointy football-pads over each shoulder, skateboarding shields on elbows and knees, and a bloody enormous anti- stab vest that made her look like a samurai. Guns and knives poking from belts and straps on every conceivable surface – and that included the baby's wicker support-cage, still humping from her back like a dorsal fin.
She looked like an ice hockey player who was too hardcore to bother with a helmet.
Oh, and someone had beaten the shit out of her.
'Still alive then,' she said, not even bothering to make eye contact. She sounded disappointed, dumping an angular bag on the floor with a metallic crash.
'Uh. Yeah. Yeah, I guess.' I tried to stop staring at her bruised face. 'What happened?'
She rummaged industriously in a couple of crates nearby, then paused to glower at me. 'Clergy happened, retard. You're a popular guy.'
I suppose I should've guessed. Back before The Tag and the siege and all that, when Cy dragged the big Mickey-chief back to the UN with tales of the Limey psycho driving about on a clapped-out quad. Wouldn't have taken the Choirboys long to work their way back to the Wheels Mart.
I wondered whether she'd told them anything worth a damn.
'Sorry,' I said.
'Skip it. We're ready to roll when you are.'
'Excuse me?'
'We're loaded-up and ready. Awaiting your pleasure, your majesty. And payment, of course.'
'Sorry, I'm… I'm not with you…'
'I said,' Nate grumbled. 'Didn't I say? Let him wake up, I said! Just goddamn wait! Let him decide himself!'
Malice ignored him, hooking a thumb towards Hiawatha. 'Last of the Mohicans here said you'd want a ride. Long distance. Heavy protection. No expense spared.'
Hiawatha stared at me.
'But…'
'North-west,' Malice said. 'That's what he told me. You saying he's been wasting my fucking time?'
She didn't look in the mood for games.
I groped in my pocket and felt the crumpled sheet of paper I'd taken from the Secretariat with its REASSIGNMENT LOCATION and the smooth photograph. Undisturbed, right where I'd left them.
I stared at Hiawatha.
'How did you know that?' I said, off-balance. 'What's…how… how did you know?'
'Lucky guess,' he said, then turned back to Malice, pointing a finger at the bag she'd brought with her. 'That's mine.'
'And?'
'They confiscated it at the door.'
'And now I'm bringing it back Tonto. Keep your fucking scalp o…'
'No, I mean… I mean you might as well keep it. It's for you anyway.'
He strolled over and kicked open the drawstrings, letting dozens upon dozens of glossy guns – rifles, pistols, autos, semis, weird spiky things I didn't recognise and antique bloody revolvers – spill into the dirt.
'Figure that'll cover the rental costs,' he said, into the silence.
Malice gaped.
The Inferno was waiting for us outside.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The kid came too.
Right before we left, I had a half-hearted sort of attempt at talking Malice out of it. Over the roar of the fire- truck's engines (extensively tinkered with, a sweaty little man called 'Spuggsy' told me, to 'purr like a lion on stee- roids an' go like a cheetah got a rocket up its ass'), I appealed to her sense of responsibility, reminded her we were taking the Inferno instead of some suped-up speeder because we might easily blunder into trouble, and finally had a stab at convincing her the little brat would keep us awake at nights.
It was pretty lame.
Malice just glared, scratched absent mindedly at the split lip the Clergy's goons had left her with – as if to remind me whose fault it was, and who therefore had no fucking right to be suggesting anything – then went back
