ELEVEN
A hand settled on the bar. Hellequin looked down to see red skin and the whorls of tribal scars across the knuckles.
“This is a good bar, ya?” said Asenath, the Jeridian who’d taken over from Pig Heart to head up the pitch crew. With that evening’s performance concluded, it was she who suggested an expedition to one of the city’s drinking holes. Hellequin had agreed to come once Nim had.
“It’s an interesting choice.” Hellequin eyed the Jeridian. In her buckskin vest and pale leather jeans, she looked no different to any other itinerant worker. Except she’d an edge that came from more than her Mohawk, scarification, piercings, red skin, or the gang tattoo at an ear lobe.
Asenath nodded to the bartender.
“Another shot, Solomon.”
The bartender whipped his cloth up onto a shoulder and retrieved a bottle from the shelf. Uncorking it, he poured himself a measure.
“Let me guess. It was your idea to bring the HawkEye here, Asenath.” He threw back his shot, slid the cup over to Asenath and poured her and Hellequin a shot each.
Hellequin regretted the heat of the liquor in his guts. The Jeridian woman had suggested the midnight jaunt to the bar, which indicated what? His eyepiece zoned in on the beads of sweat at her upper lip, her tongue moistening dry lips.
“What you got me into, Asenath?” he said with a dark tone.
“I’ve a score to settle,” she admitted.
“And I’m gonna help out how?” Hellequin focused on the sickle tattoo at the woman’s ear lobe again. The steel lens captured the image as a photo-plate. He shifted his gaze to the left ear lobe of the bartender; the photo- plate shifted angle to overlay the man’s matching insignia. Hellequin also recognised the way the man’s tongue flicked out to moisten his lips.
“Does all your family live in Zan City, Asenath?” he asked.
The two Jeridians exchanged a glance.
Asenath told him, “My brother and I are the last of our family. Zan City’s blood worms took our parents and older sister when the Showmaniese sold us out. Sometimes I come back home to remind myself of the stink of those fuckers. Solomon abides their patronage. This bar is his living. I, however, am under no such restrictions.”
Hellequin reeled in his gaze. He stared at Asenath. “And my role in this?”
“To help me add a Showmaniese head or two to my collection.”
“And why would I break the bodies of men I don’t know?”
“For love’s sake,” said the woman bleakly. She swallowed back the slug her brother had poured and indicated the far side of the bar with her empty cup. Nim was attempting to shrug off the wandering hands of a gang of drunks – suited Showmaniese with lemony skin, womanly hands and tight black shining eyes. They reminded Hellequin of large desert cats he’d seen sprawled over rocks, bellies to the sun. At the same time, Lulu returned from the shitting pit outside. His flushed face suggested either the Jackogin had addled his brain or he’d pressed flesh with another in the minutes he’d been gone.
The ladyboy settled back on the stool alongside Hellequin. His gaze went from Hellequin to Asenath to the bartender.
“What is it?” he demanded, mouse-like eyes wide.
“Asenath wants to know if I am going to defend Nim’s honour again. I’m thinking that since Nim has proven less than grateful for my intervention previously, I may need to leave her to fight her own battles,” said Hellequin. He kept the courtesan in his line of sight though.
The bartender, Solomon, pointed to the group of men. “One of you take the big one’s head for me. He’s got a mouth on him.”
The ‘big one’ was a foot taller than the rest of the Showmaniese. All were tattooed under the throat with a fat ‘V’. In the case of the largest man, the tattoo looked like a clothhod yoke. His face was fattened up like a baby’s.
“And HawkEye, if the whore won’t entice you to fight alongside my sister, here’s added incentive,” said Solomon – and while Hellequin could pre-empt physical impulses, he couldn’t read minds. The bartender shouted up, “You’re the son of Jackerie, purveyor of Soul Food, you say? Well, there’s an interesting thing.”
Hellequin swung around on his stool, taking in the reactions of those surrounding him – rage tucked into creased foreheads, sneering lips, the pinch of muscle between eyes.
The Showmaniese were first to react.
“Son of Jackerie? In this hell hole?” hollered the largest. He approached the bar, the crowd parting either side.
“You the spawn of the bastard farmer who killed the land ‘n’ pocketed our dollar and left us to choke on the dust?” The giant did not direct his gaze to Hellequin. Instead it appeared that Lulu had been taken as the devil’s offspring.
“Lulu’ll never survive. You’ve stitched me up, Asenath,” Hellequin muttered as the Jeridian reached over a shoulder and drew her scimitar from its harness.
“Maybe. It’s written into your Daxware to protect your platoon. You’ve admitted that much. Which means you’re stuck protecting Cyber Circus and all who sail in her, which includes me.” Asenath glanced at Hellequin. Her face was ablaze, not with fear but anticipation of the fight.
So be it, Hellequin told himself. The steel eyepiece interacted with the wires in his brain to map the arrangement of bodies in the room. Directly ahead was the largest Showmaniese. Over by the rock tables, Nim had closed in on herself. Crowded either side were the rest of the Showmaniese, nine men with fight stars, tin swords and wooden handled blunt blocks. To the right of the room were the whores of both sexes and their liquor-pinked Johns. Nothing to fear from those lilies and their overlords. To the left though – and all this taken in by Hellequin’s lens inside the millisecond – a figure in the shadows as well as five Jeridians – three female, two male. Mohawks caked in green reed sap and baked hard. Piercings at the throat. Sickle tattoo at every ear lobe. Friend or foe? Hellequin caught a snarl at one woman’s lips, her gaze bearing down on the Showmaniese in the centre of the room. Friends, he concluded.
Drawing his bowie knife as the largest Showmaniese powered forward, he sliced in front of him and cut the stub of the man’s nose clean off.
His attack acted as a clanger to start the fight. Lulu slid across the bar and ducked under it. Solomon stayed put while Asenath stood her ground.
The giant ignored the spill of blood from his nose to career head-on into Hellequin. An outsized fist mashed Hellequin’s wrist; the HawkEye dropped the Bowie knife, an instinctual reflex to the crush of pain. At the same time, Asenath drove her scimitar towards the giant’s neck. His forearm blocked her attack, the power behind the blow forcing Asenath down. She pivoted on the ball of a foot to avoid slicing into her belly with her own blade.
Dodging blows, Hellequin was distracted by the figure in the shadows. What was it about the silhouette that seemed so hauntingly familiar? Regardless, the figure chose to remain incognito, unlike the remaining Showmaniese who muscled in on the fight against the five Jeridians.
Hellequin refocused. The neuro-feed off his HawkEye enabled him to take in the movements of his attacker and those of his companions. He dodged a slug from the giant, spine arching back. Meanwhile, Asenath sliced the heads from the shoulders of two Showmaniese. Each body crumpled to its knees and collapsed. Blood ran out the newly separated necks like sewage from a spurting drain.
He landed a blow to his opponent’s mouth. The Showmaniese hacked and spat a tooth aside.
“Let me alone, HawkEye,” he hollered, discharging spittle. “It’s the pansy I’ve issue with. Stand aside and let me strangle the rat.”
“Past’s dead,” shot back Hellequin, weaving between the giant’s punches; he saw the trajectory of each blow milliseconds before it landed. “Leave the lad alone. This ain’t his fight. And it ain’t yours.”
