Axl had been around enough to know what punishment looked like. Since it was unlikely anyone else had imposed this cell on Kate, she had to be inflicting it on herself. Which, maybe wasn’t so unusual from the sister of the Pope who had cleared St Peter’s of all its art treasures and thrown open the gates of the Holy City to all comers. And God did they come. Hyps, Ishies, the Wild Tribe. The influx made the medieval crusades look like ordered outings.
‘Sweet fuck.’
Axl looked round to find Mai sitting on the bed tossing bubblepacs back into the tray, one after another. ‘Dandelion, arnica, teatree oil…’ She read a few more out in disgust and then scooped the rest noisily back into the tray and slung it under Kate’s bed. ‘You’re out of luck.’
‘Maybe,’ said Axl as he slid the drawers out of their runners and skimmed his fingers across the backs. Nada. Nothing taped to the underside of the desk either.
‘What you looking for?’ Mai’s head was hooked to one side, her smile quizzical. She was definitely interested.
‘Whatever the fuck she’s got,’ said Axl shortly and Mai laughed. The only problem was Kate had nothing worth taking and less than nothing hidden. No decent drugs, no weapons, no illegal comms kit, no smart book.
Sliding the drawers back onto their runners, Axl took down the wooden crucifix to check that it wasn’t hollow and that Kate had nothing interesting taped to the back.
‘You know,’ Mai said suddenly, ‘you don’t act like a ‘fugee.’ She blushed. ‘It’s like, you look like shit but you don’t act like you’ve lost everything…’
He could still kill her, of course. That was Axl’s first thought as he reached the bed. Get her body out of the house before the others got back. Or just stack it in one of the tiny storerooms in the cellar. The second thought to cross his mind was to do a runner, exit Cocheforet. Axl’s third thought was the right one—empathise, loop the emotion and feed it back. That was what they’d all been taught in basic psych. So that was what he did.
Axl shrugged. ‘I haven’t lost everything,’ he told Mai, dropping to a crouch in front of her. ‘When you start out with fuck all, there’s fuck all for anyone else to take away. If you know what I mean.’
Casually Axl let one finger brush the back of Mai’s wrist.
Check the eyes. Examine the mouth for signs of disbelief. Now was when he was meant to flick back his hand and slam fragments of nasal bone up into her brain, if that’s what he was going to do. While she was still considering.
But Axl didn’t need to. And more to the point, he realised, he didn’t want to. Looking at the Japanese kid was like looking across race, gender and age into a mirror image of himself. She wasn’t someone who remembered her past, she survived it.
He knew when a kid was wearing scars like armour. When real anger burned so fierce it had to be kept smothered under glib dismissal or a sullen sneer. She could walk though a crowd and they’d notice her but not smile. Want to bed her, yes, but no more. Something in those dark eyes filtered out friendship and cut her loose.
But if he wanted Kate he was going to have to reel the kid in.
‘What’s your real name?’ Axl asked.
‘Mai,’ said Mai. ‘That’s the first one I remember.’ Mai’s gaze was level as she looked him over. ‘What about you?’
‘Axl Borja. I don’t know my real name.’
They shook.
‘You planning to stay here long?’ Mai’s question wasn’t as simple as it seemed. They both knew that. And this time it was her fingers that reached out to touch his wrist.
‘Long as it takes,’ said Axl. He didn’t say what it was. Just as he didn’t ask what she meant by here.
‘Well, make it fast. I want the fuck out.’
‘So we just set out over the high plateau, hand in hand?’
‘No,’ Mai grinned. ‘We ride on your horse.’ She had the grace to blush at that.
He’d been right, Axl realised. She had tried to take his mare and the beast hadn’t let her. That at least explained why she’d bothered to stick around while Clone dragged some stranger back to the house for Kate to treat. He was her ticket out of there.
Axl had a pretty good idea what she was offering by way of payment.
‘I don’t have a problem with that, if you don’t…’ Mai said simply.
He didn’t. Though he’d have to deal later with telling the kid he planned to stick around for a few more days yet, maybe longer.
Mai took off her top herself, undoing its clumsy buttons and sliding out of the red jacket to reveal high olive-tipped breasts, each tiny enough to be cupped in a single hand. She had slightly full hips and a belly button that sank into the curve of her soft stomach.
And then Axl stopped looking as Mai’s arms tightened around his neck and she pulled him in close. She smelt of onions, sweat and smoke from the yak-dung kitchen fire. He’d known expensive perfume smell much worse. And then even that thought was forgotten as Mai began to undo his tattered cotton shirt.
Her fingers started at the bottom and never once touched Axl’s skin as she threaded each tiny button through its slit until there were no more to undo.
His own fingers fumbled as they found the waist of her leggings and began to push them down over her hips.
Beneath the black leggings she wore a rainbow thong, so out of place on Samsara that Axl looked twice at the tiny triangle of thermo-reactive material that pulsed with her body heat, its silk so tight against her flesh that Axl could make out the soft mound of her naked mons and the flame orange outline of her labia.
Mai grinned and Axl briefly wondered if this was planned in advance. Either way, he didn’t really care too much about anything except the feeling of her breasts squashed tight against his bare chest and her back tensed beneath his hand as he pulled her against him.
Soon that wasn’t enough and so Axl slid one hand down the girl’s leg to caress her thigh and then moved it slowly up to cup the curve of her behind. Mai giggled, softly biting Axl’s shoulder as he slid his hand up again to edge one finger under the strap of her thong until his finger vanished between the cheeks of her arse. Any lower and Axl could reach the puckered black rose of her anus or the waiting lips below that but Axl stayed where he was.
Thinking nothing.
Remembering nothing.
Just inhaling the musk that rose off Mai’s body like smoke.
One of them was holding their breath and Axl had a feeling it was probably him. He didn’t see the Clone, Louis or Kate struggling up the path from the village, just as they didn’t see him even though the shutters to Kate’s bedroom window were wide open.
Axl didn’t hear them enter Kate’s room either. All he knew was that Mai froze in his arms and then a vast man with a shaved head and a knife scar that circled his thick throat like a necklace stood beside the bed. And behind the man, almost hidden by his wide shoulders, stood Kate, her eyes wide with shock and bitter with fury.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Outriders
Two facts saved Axl’s life. The first was that everyone from Kate to Clone was too busy searching for the missing bits of the dead Pope’s mind to want the added complication of killing him.
Axl didn’t know that, just as he had no idea he was the person with Pope Joan’s missing memory stuffed deep in the piss-drenched pocket of his greatcoat. But then splitting Joan’s senses into five and stringing the memory beads on the wires of a kid’s dreamcatcher had been Father Sylvester’s way of keeping them not just safe but also anonymous.