at Soul Food Farm and despatched my platoon to move on in. The procedure eased the guilt. There are limiters built into my circuitry which inhibit my emotions. Also the imaging process of the HawkEye stores memories in a more compartmentalised format than the brain is capable of. Non-tactical memories are given less priority, their sharp edges blunted.” Hellequin threw back the remainder of his Jackogin. He sighed and rubbed a hand up into his fleshy eye, muttering, “So, that’s my history.”
“Here. Let me buy you another.” Lulu indicated to the bartender. The Jeridian nodded. Uncorking one of the dark blue apothecary bottles collecting dust on a shelf behind him, the man sluiced new measures into their beakers.
Lulu inclined his beaker towards Hellequin and smiled weakly. “So the poor darling is emotionally stunted. I knew there had to be a reason for the cold shoulder.” His smile broke into a coy grin. “You and Nim make a good pair.”
The Zen monk stood a short distance away. In the silvered twilight, the monk’s habit appeared even more grotesque. The sackcloth hood was a scarecrowish thing brought to life by eyes that glittered while the belt of relics resembled the tools of a witch.
The monk’s stillness unnerved Jaxx. Had the man come to see a Sirinese at prayer? To stand and watch and judge, the only form of condemnation available to a member of a silent order? Jaxx lowered his fists and stared at the monk, perplexed.
“What you doing here?” Eerie confusion settled over him. The monk couldn’t have followed him from the camp. There was nowhere to hide out on the salt plains. There was only endless distance. The crunch of boots over the salt surface, the tug of air at a person’s lungs, the quiet swallow of saliva... he would’ve noticed these things – and not only because he was attuned with the world, but because a man in his profession could not afford to let a stranger creep up.
The monk remained motionless beneath the huge desert moon.
“Sorry to disappoint, but I am a spirit man, father. No disrespect to you, your order, or your followers, but the Saints are too heavy-handed in their laws and precepts to lure me in. Any effort to unsettle me in my prayer will be futile.” Jaxx instinctually brought his fists to his hips again. He felt the depth of the desert pressing in.
His mind swam as the monk untied the belt of horrors from around his waist and cast it aside. Jaxx tucked his fists beneath his armpits, unnerved and wary as the monk gathered up the folds of his robe at the thighs and pulled the garment over his head in one swift movement. In the process of doing so, the monk exposed smooth white thighs, a triangle of down, the concave run of flesh from the hip to the waist, the bud of breasts and nut- brown nipples, and, as the garment was cast aside, a young woman’s face. She threw down the robe and stared at him. Her mouth was overgenerous, her eyes wide and knowing.
She walked over to him, her bare feet making small shushing noises on the salt. Jaxx tensed his fists tighter. Blood drove inside his eardrums. She was in front of him suddenly. Her scent, a mix of hops, sweat and the dark, sweet wine offered by the desert tribe. The young woman cupped his face, fingers touching the stitched flesh at his brow plate. She drew his face to hers.
Their lips touched, parted and remoulded. The hands slipped from his face, leaving heat there. Moving down to his waistband, they dug in and dragged the loose linen shirt up. Jaxx let his arms rise. The press of breasts against his chest made him chew the fat of his lower lip. He breathed heavily; it was as if the salt itself had crept inside his lungs. Her mouth was on him, wetting the eaves of his throat, the scarred clavicle where the knives and nails of others had fought back, the brass rings at his nipples.
“Haram.”
“Do you speak?” he asked. She was tangling herself in his lap now, easing onto his sex and pressuring down. He gasped, eyes coruscated and drawn to the dome of stars overhead. He went to buck against her, but she pressed her heels to the ground behind, leant back on one hand and forced her own movement, a rhythmic rocking like a grain sheaver passing its blades over crops.
“Do you..?”
The nut of a nipple was crushed into his mouth. He wanted to bite down, feel the choke of its red heart inside his throat. Resisting, he lapped the dappled areole, felt the agonising, glorious tug and slide at his groin, and smashed his hands up beneath her buttocks, clutching her to him.
A name escaped her lips. It began with V, tailing off to a whisper. She broke his mouth feel of her breast and her tongue was a wisp of flavour at his inner cheek, a probe where his top lip met his teeth. He shivered as his mind flooded with snapshots: a huge gridded eye, tiny strands of sensilla at mouth parts, a chitinous thigh. More images came, torn and grainy like burnt-edged photographs. A fibrous wing taking out a slice of teeth. Crabbing insectile limbs that battered and suffocated. Bright blood sprayed against stone. He heard such screaming – the screaming of men – appalling, protracted, dying out. At that same instant, he clawed the soft skin beneath his fingers, felt the high blaze of release, tensed, and at last, softened.
The woman unsaddled. She stood awkwardly, legs cramped, and stretched out.
Jaxx was crying. As tears drained from his eyes, he found it hard to pinpoint why. He forced himself to stand and dress, then stagger over to the spot where her robe lay.
“Here.” He offered it.
She gathered the robe to her but didn’t attempt to put it on. Jaxx understood that once the mask was back in place, the silence would flow again between them. He rubbed the wetness from his eyes.
“Zen monks are eunuchs. You are not ordained into the order.” His waist-length black hair had slipped free of its band. He bunched it back and retied it. When he got no reply, he stared at the woman with a new level of demand.
“Did you see the future?” she said in a rush of words. Softly though, as if the noise of them might cause the sky to fall.
“Future?” He was cautious. He had heard of men returned from the desert and lost to rambling incoherency. Men who claimed to have imbibed fantastic potions, or tasted the lips of seductresses, or bargained away their soul to a crone.
“Did you see him? Tall as a porch post, just as thin. Eyes like lead shot.”
“I didn’t see a man. I saw... death.” The grotesque images were still laid across in his mind: the crisp fold of a wing case, the slash of flesh, chalk mess and shit across a rock face.
He refocused. “Lead shot? That’s a rare breed of ammunition. Most folk rely on rock shot or the blade since the civil war. You’re a stranger. That much is in your accent.”
“The land changes but the dust is everywhere. And it breathes. You hear it?”
Jaxx listened. He could have sworn he heard the long ahhh of air where there was no wind.
“Why the guise of a Zen monk?” His raised eyebrows pressured against his brow plate. “Silence is a dark undertaking. Just you alone with your mind.” To Jaxx, the idea of squashing up inside the flesh case he walked around in was abhorrent.
She was more girl-like then. Generous mouth loose, her mind on other things. “Zen monks accompany the mining worms below ground, and that’s where I lost him. So I search the bore tunnels and, one day, the caverns...”
“The caverns?” Jaxx was still haunted by the mess of images she had conjured in him. “Who’d take you there?” No one in their right mind navigated the caverns. Stories told of a warren of natural caves, otherworldly and bioluminescent. Home to dark things that crawled.
“Not many,” she admitted. “There are places I haven’t managed to explore yet. Wormholes where only a child would fit. A child without bones,” she added eerily.
“Who are you looking for?”
He knew even before she answered that she searched for a lover. Her use of him had demonstrated her loss, alongside a need to remember the taste of masculine skin and feel another’s pulse inside her belly.
“I suspect he’s salt and ore and other minerals by now. The flesh will be gone,” was all she managed on the subject before striding over to him. She touched a hand to his cheek.
“You and I, we’re in the wrong place,” she said softly.
Jaxx felt the world tip. His mind battened down. A great wind howled, dust blew against his skin and he drifted into blackness.
