“What about the madness? Do you know when that will come?” Her hand traced the bone ridge above each eyebrow. Hellequin tensed at the sensations she stirred in him.
“Approximately fifteen years after the Daxware’s activation. The weaker soldiers went first. The stronger ones held out a year or two beyond that.”
“So you must be one of the stronger ones.” Her hand was at his hairline, fingers teasing in. His eyepiece stole small pieces of her – her tongue’s tip at a corner of her mouth, the swell and ebb of breath across her ribcage, heat at her temples.
“I’m strong enough to protect you from further pain.” Hellequin spoke like a soldier. And he meant it that way, in part.
“Without pain, there would be nothing left for me.” Nim’s hands went to her hips. Neon blazed from the heart of her. She softened though as he stayed silent, applied both hands to his face, and worked its angles with the caress of each thumb.
“Death will be a friend to both of us,” she said wistfully.
“Not I.” Hellequin saw her small capture of breath as he disagreed. “I’ve witnessed enough death in all its fine and nasty detail. Layers upon layers, a great stinking jigsaw taking up my mind. I want to see light, masses of the stuff, until it’s all that fills my eyes.”
The clutching in the pit of his stomach was as close to real rage as Hellequin could muster. Rage at D’Angelus for his pursuit of them. Rage at the surgeon at her attempts to manipulate their flesh. Rage at Nim for making him so enthralled by her.
She reached for him then, pushing up onto tiptoes, her hand sliding around his neck. He allowed himself to be guided and lowered his face to hers. Their mouths met, pressed and parted. He moulded his tongue into the soft wet of her inner cheeks. The HawkEye mechanism was a slow pulse of movement. He pulled away and fed on every frame of her – the river of colour beneath her blouse, her pupils blossoming. She sat down on the bed. Her fingers opened the tie at the neck of her blouse. She eased the garment up and over her head in one well practised movement.
“I told you, I do not intend to collect on your debt,” Hellequin told her, though the hardness at his groin told him otherwise.
“Am I to take you against your will?” Nim moved awkwardly into the centre of the bed. Her bandaged arm restricted her ability to ease down the pantaloons she wore.
“Help a girl out, can’t you?” she shot on the cusp of angry tears.
Hellequin sat on the edge of the bed. He took his bowie knife from his belt and laid it on the small table. Moving gently, a tin man in fear of rusting, he helped Nim out of her clothes.
“Look at me,” Nim demanded. Hellequin had retracted his eye’s zoom to give Nim her modesty. “See me now,” she told him, and he glanced up, taking in the creamy skin, the spill of breasts, each long thigh, the triangle of down in-between.
She grasped one of his hands and guided it over her like a wash rag. Under her will, his hand passed from the bud of each nipple to her secret, swollen places.
“I’m underneath the lights,” she told him.
He unbuckled and stooped over her, arms braced either side of her head. His frock coat had been discarded, bathed in his blood. The wound to his shoulder was an angry web of stitches. Beneath it, the regimental tattoo of the HawkEye branded him like any other member of a flock.
He eased inside Nim, his breath stolen by the encompassing heat of her sex around his. “Is this where you are?” he asked, wrapping his arms around her shoulders and tugging her down, and himself further in. “Are you in the darkness?”
She caught his mouth to hers. He bucked, a match to the rhythm of her hips. The coarse fabric of his loosened pants rubbed his lower spine. His boots were an awkward weight on the mattress.
He gasped and felt the sweet, metallic flow as he came.
The light worked up beneath their sweat and static. Nim began to burn with a saintly purity of light. Hellequin shut his natural eye against it. The HawkEye implant filled with brilliance.
Tension filtered through the zoo platform. Hidden in their city of pipes, the roo rats whittled at one another in their soft strange mews. The wrinklenecks kept their heads tucked under their wings and stayed still as carved sandstone. Usually impassive and lumbering, the clothhods were restless. They pawed at the sage that carpeted their stall, interwove their long necks and tossed their heads.
The disturbance woke Rust. Her eyes widened, pupils retracting to slits. She raised up onto her fingertips and listened. Just as any other animal in the zoo, she sensed something off kilter in her surroundings. The motion of the circus in flight was more exaggerated than usual; her stomach rose and fell away on waves of movement. But that wasn’t what put the animals on alert. A new scent was detectable – dry and toasted like beet chips – and she had an instinctual impression of danger.
“Lie down, Rust. If I’m to heal, I need to sleep some,” mumbled Pig Heart from his nest.
She hissed to hush him. Her eyes glinted in the half-light.
“Moody dog.” Pig Heart eased back in his sleep. The pig genes from his borrowed heart hadn’t heightened his awareness.
Rust moved to the front bars of her cage. She peered out into the gloom, breath heavy in her lungs. Listening past the distress of the roo rats and the clothhods pacing in their stall, she heard the sound of something being dragged. Also a dry click-clack, and in reply, a rasping. Two voices, thought Rust. Communicating with alien mouthpieces in sucks and whistles of breath.
“There’s blood in the air,” she whispered.
“What’s that?” Pig Heart grumbled, not quite conscious.
“If not now, soon will be.” Rust cocked her head. Who else would see what was afoot? Not the pig with his keelhauled spine. Not the roo rats in their tunnels, not the stone-still wrinklenecks or the dull-brained clothhods. There was only she – a lone wolf sent ahead of the pack.
Picking her way over the sage, she slipped out of the door. She slid the bolt across, less to cage Pig Heart in than to protect him from what lay without.
The sounds were coming from the hoppers’ wagon, parked a few metres to the right of Rust’s. Slowly she approached the cage, which was shuttered up behind its ornate screens. She flinched at a small swish of movement from inside and, again, the long drag of something pulled across the floor. Crouched in front of the screen, Rust listened intently. The click-clack utterances from inside definitely suggesting some level of communication.
Her hands and feet grew cold as the blood channelled to her heart, preparing for fight or flight. A dribble of calcified spit oozed under the screen. It teased down to the ground in a long drip.
Blood is in the air. Rust uncurled to stand on her two feet, her posture stooped and unnatural. She fed a filthy hand around the handle of the screen. Her heartbeat quickened. In one swift motion, she dragged the screen sideways.
The cage inside was in semi-darkness. Rust returned her hands to the floor to assume her preferred position. Her nose twitched. She stuck out a tongue and tasted the air. The scent of the nymphs lingered in their droppings and calcified bedding. Otherwise they might as well have been shipped out and replaced with very different beasts – which, in effect, they had.
A lone gas lamp hung off a nail alongside the clothhod stable. By its dim glow, Rust made out two great hulking shadows that traipsed and swayed about the cage. She brought her face closer.
Down below, the lift rig suddenly ground into motion. The sound tore through the tight atmosphere like a knife. A huge black wing razored out from the semi-dark of the cage, clattering against the bars. Rust leapt back. Crouched on all fours, she retracted her lips and snarled. She knew about self-preservation and all of her senses told her that there were bad things coming out of that cage.