his lace handkerchief from the cup of his bustier, went to dab his temples then remembered his manners and offered it to Nim first.
She shook her head vehemently. “I volunteered, Lulu. Those men down there, they stole time from me, and other stuff. I’m here because I want to be. Understand?”
The ladyboy nodded and sucked a corner of his handkerchief.
Nim took the lead. “I want you to destroy all but one bit of the rubber silk. Secure that last length over the side here. I’ve a use for it.”
When the ladyboy looked dumbfounded, Nim took one of his delicate hands in hers. “Get me that strand before the bastards yank us any lower.”
Lulu swallowed, his Adam’s Apple betrayed. His mouse-like eyes drank Nim in. “A valet doesn’t desert his mistress. Even when she opts to flee. You and me, Nim. We’re never gonna be free of our bondage to D’Angelus until the day we break that fucker’s skull open.”
The ladyboy disappeared over the side. Nim heard the roar of the flame hose. Her heart punched in her chest. She heard the whistle of rock ammo, listened for Lulu’s scream as the bullets struck. But the roar of the flame stayed constant.
She said a silent payer, to whom she’d no idea. The Saints? Crusted divinities from a time period when things still grew in the ground and when Soul Food referred to a lovingly prepared meal and not the diseased plant feed which had spoiled the land. Likewise, she’d no capacity for the spirit beliefs of the Sirinese, harbouring enough ghosts of her own. Or the blood voodoo of the Jeridians. Although she had a taste for their murderous instincts.
Rock ammo speckled the sky. The sound of the flame hose ceased. Nim felt the twist of dread in her gut. What if the ladyboy hung below from a tangle of silk, belly popped by a rock slug? Was it worth risking her neck to a bullet to peer over the side?
Nim’s riding skirt pooled about her knees as she crouched. She brought her chin to the very edge of the roof, where the brass vein wove around the circumference like a rose stem. The ladyboy’s face appeared directly opposite hers; she felt a surge of panic followed by blind relief.
Lulu clambered over. His shoulder was bleeding where rock shot had smashed the flesh off the bone. He dragged a thick rope of rubber silk onto the roof.
“I’ve torched the root. The rope’ll still stretch and bind for you though. So what now, my darling?”
“Now we fight free of the devil.”
A minute later, and despite Lulu’s protest, Nim had the rubber silk tied around her waist. Where she’d split the weave in two, she knotted it up over both shoulders and behind her neck.
“Thank you, Lulu.” She tossed him her umbrella. “We’ll be out of here before you can count the rings on your fingers and bells on your toes.”
She leapt en pointe and began to circumnavigate the fat brass vein. Faster and faster she ran, looping the fantastical rubber silk around the metal rim. She tried to forget the rock rifles. What was the point in D’Angelus pursuing her if only to have her gunned down? But he could instruct his snipers to inflict a superficial wound, or shoot out her footing and have her dangle off the edge, tangled in the silk and helpless.
Nim stepped off the edge, feet pointed in that beautifully contorted way of the dancer. She was plummeting then, and the sensation was as sweet as it was terrifying. Nothing could contain her. Not even air. But then the rubber silk whipped tight and she was spinning around the side of the circus in a wide arc. Grabbing hold of the silk rope with both hands, she tensed her arms to gain control over the swing.
Strength had been built into her. Years of drawing water from the well as a child, and playing punchbag for a father who came home vomit-soaked and drunk on Jackogin. She circled the underbelly of the ship, and she saw them – two gobs of rubber silk. Enough to keep Cyber Circus tethered while fresh gobs were released from the tremendous clanking burrower below.
Rocking out beneath the ship, back out and then in, she built momentum like a pendulum. She reached over her shoulder, extended the hose of her flame thrower backpack, aimed at the parasitic bundles and fired.
Hellequin stalked back and forth before the glass wall, his steel eye telescoping in on events below.
“For the love of the Saints!” spat Herb, doing battle with the ship’s wheel, his face shiny-red as a jewel fruit pip. “Hellequin, do what you soldiers do best. Stick your nose in where it ain’t wanted.”
It was as good as an order to Hellequin. He exited the bridge and strode down the narrow gangplank where pitch crew leant over the side, firing off rock rifles as well as their own makeshift missiles; dried dung-cakes from catapults and splinters torn off the frames of old scenery flats and fired from short bows. He even saw the oilskin liner from the zoo dung dump set alight and tossed overboard.
“We got a boatswain on board?” he demanded.
“Yep’um,” grunted a man with the dust handler’s stoop. A worn-in type. Hard working.
“Can you disconnect any methane pipes around here?”
The boatswain batted his hands off one another and gestured towards the fat bottomed end of the ship, located off down a walkway behind the backstage lift rig. “Majority feed out via the engine room. But there’s a couple up here we can unhook.” The man squinted. “Thinking of giving our friends down there something to complain about?”
Hellequin nodded. He walked off down the gangplank. Inside the minute, the clank of the boatswain’s pliers and the rip of brass panel work echoed through the hull.
He paused on the gangway and stared over one set of railings. The expanse of the main tent gave out onto empty air and the burrower below with its skirts made up of D’Angelus’s men. Hellequin’s amber lens took in fingers at the flintlock of a rock rifle, the pump of kinetic muscle as a huge Sirinese worked the winch to wind the circus in. He was distracted by the appearance of a rope of rubber silk that dropped away from the ship, threads thrashing at its severed end. The rope landed in the dust below with a tremendous whip-crack. Seconds later, he saw a second rope swing in under the ship. His steel eye focused in to see Nim hanging in a makeshift rubber silk harness, flame hose retained on a short blue lick of light.
“No!” Hellequin threw himself against the rail. The boatswain had done as asked – the unscrewed methane pipes hoisted off their brackets and directed at the gaping hole below, their streaming gases set alight. Except Nim wasn’t meant to swing in at that instant, her safety rope of rubber silk scorched by flames from above. Now she hung suspended under the ship, a drop of flesh on a fraying line.
The pitch crew panicked and yanked up one pipe by its lagging, a stream of flames burning up the side of the hull. Cyber Circus bucked. Struggling to rein in the makeshift weapon, one man was crushed hard against the rail then flung over as the pipe flailed. The man dropped away through the open hull, clawing for a handhold.
Hellequin didn’t stay to watch the fire fighting.
Nim heard the voices of D’Angelus’s men below. There was laughter, and comments made in a filthy tone she recognised. She was suspended in the remains of her harness at a savage angle, head lolling, spine bowed. It was impossible to even attempt to reorganise her limbs and climb up. She hung under the ship by a sliver.
Lulu appeared at the edge of the roof, one arm extended down in a desperate bid to reach her. Counting off the seconds before the last thread snapped, Nim prayed the fall would kill her.
The angel, when he came, had faded blue wings. He leapt between the circus guide ropes, spectacularly fast, phenomenally accurate, propelling off each to catch the next with strong momentum. Swinging down, around and underneath, he scooped her up into a solid grip. At the same instant, Cyber Circus broke free of its weakened bonds. They rose in an incandescent whirl, light streaming off Nim’s skin in neon blues and pink and orange.
She looked into the face of the angel. He was flesh and metal.
The ship melted away at the horizon.
“I can’t take Wanda-Sue under Zan City. That devil’s playground is built on a solar strip.” Das ran his hands down his sunken cheeks, adding to the smears of oil there. “Ain’t a burrower in existence can take on salt laid that thick or the sea of brine beneath.”
“Indeed there isn’t. So it looks like I’ll be following the Spirit Man philosophy today.” D’Angelus glanced across at Jaxx. The Sirinese was slick with sweat from winding the huge winch.
