‘Okay,’ said Mai. ‘You and me are going to get the fuck out of here, right?’ She knew which animal to choose by its size. The beast was smaller than the other two, not as tall or thick shouldered and it didn’t have crude tufts of hair round its hooves like moonboots.
‘I’m Mai, okay?’ She stood in front of the animal and tried to remember what else Kate had said about making friends with horses. Introduce yourself, and then something about noses and blowing. Kate was happy Mai’d asked about animals, she imagined it meant the girl was settling in.
Mai snorted.
‘I’m Mai,’ she told the horse. ‘Well, I was Mai. Kate says I’m Joan but she’s wrong…’ Mai stared at the animal’s silhouette in the darkness of the stables but its head was lost in shadow and she had no idea if it was listening or not.
Okay, next bit. The girl crouched in front of the animal and then blew out, sending a puff of warm breath deep into the horse’s nostrils. The mare jerked back fast and shook her head from side to side, ears flat back to her skull, long neck shivering. Mai sighed and shook her own head. Apparently no one had told this animal that was how humans said hello.
‘Sorry about that…’ Mai put up her hand and hesitantly brushed the mare’s neck, whispering all the while. That was the other thing Kate had said, keep talking. So Mai did, until the mare reluctantly brought her ears forward and nudged her head against the girl’s fingers.
‘Sweet fuck,’ the girl whispered. ‘At least you can just hotsoft a hover…’
The other two animals were designed to haul things. She knew that from Louis. Mai didn’t need anything hauled, just some transport to carry her off that plateau she’d ridden across and back to the next big town. The only thing was, it wasn’t going to happen ...
Mai heard the chink of a bridle first, sharp as glass in the cold night air. Seconds later, someone large pushed open the stable door and a torch swept the stalls, passing through the spot where she’d been standing.
‘Three,’ a woman said roughly.
‘Two drays, yes. Is the other a black stallion?’
The yellow beam flicked over the mare, who lazily turned her head away from the light but kept chewing.
‘No,’ said the original voice, sounding cross. The woman was white, had broad shoulders and a bush hat with a wide brim that hid her face. In her right hand she held a long silver torch, big as a club, and she sounded seriously pissed.
The second woman was whipcord thin and carried a staff. Her tight black T-shirt wasn’t just clean, it was pressed. Either that, or it was straight from a packet. She looked no taller than Mai, with tiny braids that were pulled back along her skull like tightly twisted wire. And she wore gold wireframe glasses. Which looked odd, but maybe that was what she wanted. Rejecting sight correction could be affectation or religious principle. Or it might be poverty, Mai could understand that. Though the thin black woman came across as too secure, too understated for that.
Anorexic all the same. Her small breasts starved down to nipples and nothing more.
‘Not Father Sylvester’s,’ Wireframes said looking at Axl’s horse. ‘But we’ll take it anyway…’
‘That’s probably not a good idea,’ said a voice from outside the darkened doorway, and up in the rafters Mai grinned. Life was finally getting interesting.
‘Hi,’ said Axl, stepping into the stable. ‘I don’t think we’ve met.’ Absentmindedly, he kicked aside a green canvas bag.
Axl’s voice was polite but his Spanish was slum raw. Although Mai didn’t recognise the man’s accent, she could tell when someone had grown up in the projects, no matter what part of the world it happened in.
The newcomer lazily shut one eye against the sudden stab of a torch beam, closing a crude pupil. The black pit of his other eye made Mai shiver just to look at it. There was a steel-bladed knife gripped lightly in his right hand and as Mai watched he dropped the blade to his side and relaxed into a weird crouch, which made him look floppy as a rag doll.
What he didn’t do was open his eye.
It was a Chin Mai fighting stance, but the girl didn’t know that. The heavy woman with the hat didn’t know it either but Wireframes obviously did. Or at least she knew attack readiness when she saw it.
‘You new round here?’
Axl twisted his head slightly, as if listening. And Wireframes took that for agreement.
‘Well, we run this bit of the high plateau,’ she said flatly.
You do? Mai twisted her lips in surprise, If that was true, it was the first she’d heard of it and Kate and Louis did nothing but talk boring shit about how life was in the valley.
‘Isn’t that strange,’ said Axl. ‘And there I was thinking Tsongkhapa ...'
‘Yeah, I know… No police, no army, no guns, only self-governing autonomous settlements,’ the woman recited the wheelworld litany like it was an Ad jingle. ‘Well, we’re none of those.’ She sounded pleased with herself, so much so that Mai wanted to climb down and slap the smile of her face.
‘We’re a wolf patrol.’ Wireframes spun her staff, touching a spot near the middle. Instantly, a blade slid from each end.
‘And that’s a wolf killer,’ said the large woman, nodding at the weapon. That was when Axl opened his eye and blinked in surprise. He’d just recognised the voice of Wireframes’ companion, though the last time he’d heard it the bitch had been wearing a sergeant’s uniform and he’d been tied to a chair.
Which meant that maybe the… No, the Colonel would be tucked up safe in La Medicina and, besides he had things closer to home to worry about, like a kid’s dreamcatcher with a snapped leather thong half-hidden in the straw at the sergeant’s feet.
If Wireframes saw it she’d want to know where it came from and then things would get complicated, and Axl hated it when things got complicated.
‘I think you should leave,’ Axl said, more for something to say than because he really cared. At the same time, he edged towards them both-very slowly-making sure the one thing he didn’t do was accidentally glance up at the rafters. Axl had a plan and item one was to step over that necklace and get it on their blindside.
Managing it proved easier than he expected.
‘Far enough,’ said Wireframes.
Axl shrugged, knife still loose in his fingers and dropped to one knee, ostentatiously retying the ragged lace of one sodden boot. ‘Can’t get the clothes out here,’ he said flatly and stood again, Mai’s feathered charm tucked safely in his other hand. ‘You know how it is…’
Axl yawned. He knew what was coming. They all did…
Blood pumped slowly through his arteries. His heartbeat had dropped even as he stepped forward and the other two tensed up. Cobras and Pitbulls. When the Cardinal chose his tools, he chose wisely. One out of five people have a metabolism that slows before combat. They are those who instinctively go still the way that cobras do. Viral augmentation could provide it. And the skill could be learned—hell, most of bushido was hung around passing on the skill—but it was better to be born that way. Cold in combat, detached, dysfunctional, deadly. . .
‘Now.’ Wireframes nodded and the sergeant swung her torch hard towards Axl’s head, the weighted metal tube hissing as it cut air. Except her victim wasn’t standing there any more. He was rolling in towards the sergeant to finish at her feet, coming up out of the roll hard and fast to slam his hunting knife into the gap between her heavy breasts. Not blade first, but hilt forward so the brass boss split her sternum, cracking free the lower two ribs.