corner of her wagon.
“Rust not finished, but still it bucks her,” she spat, hunkering down on her four limbs. “And after I rescued it from the ship’s belly. After I licked the filth off it. After I pissed on its hurt spots.”
“Aw, come on, girl. It ain’t like that.” Pig Heart levered up onto an elbow, revealing a spine transformed into beaten, raw flesh. The movement seemed to aggravate the wounds anew. With a cry, he fell back and curled in on himself.
Hellequin’s steel eye played a series of images across his retina like a flick book: the bruising over the greater part of Pig Heart’s body, the disjointed snout, the rip and fold of flesh, the metal splinters at a shoulder.
“I can ease him,” he told Rust. Striding up to the cage, he saw a protective glint in her eye.
“Stay out!” she warned with a low hiss. “Rust’s wagon is not for bare men.”
“I’m offering to help your mate.” Hellequin stared her down.
“Let the fucker in,” moaned Pig Heart. Deprived of the anaesthetic qualities of sex, the pitchman was clearly drowning in pain again.
The wolf girl crawled up to the bars. She cocked her head, spider eyes dancing over Hellequin – and for an instant, he understood what drove Pig Heart to take his pleasure from the filth-encrusted creature. He saw intelligence, and sexuality stripped back to its glistening, blooded nub.
“He helps the pig. Nothing more. Else I break every bone the bare man got.”
Hellequin dipped his head. “I hear you.”
Two minutes later, he squatted alongside Pig Heart in the cage, his amber lens magnifying the flesh at the pitchman’s bare shoulder. Using swift, light motions, he tweezed out the metal slivers with his fingernails.
“There, at least, will heal now.” He went to stand but Pig Heart’s bristled hand gripped his arm.
“I’ve been slugged, crucified, and keelhauled for my crime. Every time you step in. I ain’t a flavour you’re looking to sample, so what’s gives?”
Hellequin shook off the hand and unfolded to his full height.
“I’ve seen enough suffering.”
Pig Heart snorted. He shuffled to gingerly rest his spine against the closed side of the wagon. “Haven’t we all, pal?”
Hellequin squatted down, long limbs folding like a hopper’s back limbs. His intensity had Rust shift forward on splayed claws, heckles raised. A hiss escaped her lips.
The soldier spoke in a harsh whisper. “Travelling in my lung basket, I’ve seen flies feast at a dead man’s lips, bruises bloom under a child’s flesh. I’ve seen suffering from a distance and at magnification, and it never. shuts. off.”
Rust crept back onto her haunches. She twitched her head at him.
“Know your problem?” Pig Heart winced at some internal agony. He took a rattling breath. “You signed up to the sight of the Saints themselves. The eye of the holy. Always on watch. Never to rest again.” He showed his tusks. It was a sympathetic grimace. “Now, what the hell did you do that for?”
NINE
The parade trawls through Zan City. Salt workers line the streets. Lured from their dry ghetto, the citizens welcome their queer visitors with quiet gusto.
But it does not last, this well-received stroll through the old town. Soon the cacti tail off and the squeeze of salt block dwellings is replaced with an even starker utilitarianism. The cold heart of Zan City – the mausoleum of a clock tower with its moon face and jagged metal hands slicing off time, the grey slab of City Hall, and the prison’s high outer walls. At the entrance to the prison, the parade falls silent. It takes a number of the Sirenese guards to drag the huge iron gates open. A tremendous roar goes up. The prisoners are pleased to see them.
Herb conducts his hands and struts through. In his wake come the pipers. They pump leather airskins under an arm and manipulate brass valves to produce their tinny folk music. The road underfoot is a slurry of salt edged with cobblestones. Prisoners crowd the sidewalk; wardens shocking them back with electro-batons.
The first wagon rolls in. It is pulled by clothhods, their splayed hooves beating up the salt path. The wagon is decorated with silver knot-work and mirrors, reflecting in, reflecting out. Up top ride the Scuttlers. They clatter about the rooftop, performing head stands and singing rhymes as children are prone. Most of the prisoners applaud. One or two throw stones.
The tall HawkEye comes next, and the prisoners like that. A warrior in their midst! One who sacrificed the freedom of his flesh – and one day soon no doubt, his mind – to fight. They knock elbows in common sentiment. Their crimes might keep them locked up beneath a harrowing sun, but that poor son of a gun would never rest easy again. Look at those tattoos, brand of the HawkEye, and the well-worn boots, and the uniform – that musta been smart once, they tell a neighbour. And what about the steel eye itself – the diametric revolutions of the metal ring stack around the amber lens – and above, the twin bone ridges that protect the inner wiring? The prisoners bow their heads as the HawkEye passes – instinctually respectful of he who fought to preserve society in spite of their enforced removal from it.
Their misplaced pride is replaced with intrigue as Wolf Girl’s wagon rumbles by. Those on one side of the sidewalk are left to guess at the wagon’s contents; they are presented with the closed-in decorative panel and it unnerves them. Why do those prisoners opposite jeer and whistle, yet fall back a little?
Inside the cage, Rust peers out at the savages enclosed in their own white walls. She stretches her underarm to her mouth, flicks out her tongue and wets the fur there. Coating the back of a hand with spit, she drags on an ear while Pig Heart snores under a mound of sage, Hellequin having been unable to persuade the wolf to part with her prize. She guards the pitchman now, squatting on her heels, spider eyes burning out from behind her raggedy mane.
The catcalls get louder as Rust’s wagon gives way to Lulu. In high-waisted shorts and a tasselled bra, the ladyboy presses a palm to his lips and tosses out kisses. For an instant, the crowd are in love. Then Lulu’s coquettishness bubbles over and there is a flash of realisation. Knuckles flex at the trickery.
But it is a rare day in Zan Prison that music fills the air. Let freaks be freaks, the men decide, their spirits bouncing.
And this next one is the real deal, they know that instinctually. Womanness pours off her like molasses. Seated in an extravagant carriage, Nim is a picture of allure. Her hair is scarlet, her eyes glassy red. The jacket of her riding suit is unbuttoned, providing a glimpse of decolletage. Her riding skirt is knee-length and teasingly modest. She rests a black parasol over one shoulder.
Only a keen observer – or a HawkEye – would notice the accelerated rise and fall of her chest. She breathes through the panic that threatens to break her ribs.
But Nim needn’t worry. Tantalising as she is, Herb saves the queerest for last. The largest wagon passes through the gate, a tremendous steel cage divided in two. The framework is adorned with grotesque figures boasting mirrored eyes, antennae, garish stripes and spines. And inside the cage? The men gasp, beat on a neighbour’s shoulder, pat their breasts and shake their head. Hoppers! Two of them. Giant scraping creatures that twist awkwardly around inside the cramped quarters. Calcium deposits litter the floor like anthills.
“Get the buggers back!” The handler calls to the prison wardens. His whip cracks overhead as the wardens plunge their batons into soft sides and bellies. “Easy, gents,” they coo, as if the words are a salve to counteract the wounds.
But it is too much for some prisoners. After the relentless white of their cells, they find it hard to process the strange sight. And it’s worth the sting of the baton to nose closer to the beasts.
