Ink

by Hal Duncan

  The green fire is still belching from the wireliner's skeleton.

  ——

  As they skirt the flame and flumes of smoke and circle down toward St. Mungo's Square, Joey Narcosis pops another pill. He still doesn't believe it's really Jack, but he doesn't want any memories of the old times getting in the way of his job. He feels the chi running through his body, down the serpent of his spine.

  The gunboat ornithopter's wheels just touch the ground, its wings still beating wide and loud, as Joey Narcosis jumps down onto the cement flagstones of the square. He orients himself; straightening up as the thopter rises back into the air, he gazes calmly around at the three sides of Georgian sandstone shops and offices, flames spouting from windows, skybikes and aircars parked all around the little ludicrous building that sits in the center of the square, a tourist-information place that looks like the turret of some Victorian folly chopped off and dumped where it doesn't belong. SS men stand behind it, using it as cover, while lines of grunt militiamen are ranked as cannon fodder out in the open, guns aimed up the long steps that fill the fourth side of the square and lead up to the mall with its shattered glass doors and burnt-out shopfronts, its majestic glass pyramid of a roof now little more than jagged bits of girders belching black smoke into air already full of darting thopters and skybikes.

  Fucking amateurs, thinks Joey. A thousand sledgehammers trying to swat one fly. He flashes his ID as he pushes through the ranks toward the steps. Sheep in wolves’ clothing, he thinks.

  A Cat Stretching Its Claws

  Out on the stage comes Pierrot, his long hair loose and wild, black greasepaint tears streaked round his eyes with sweat.

  “Outrage!” he says. “That stranger—he was held fast in the stalls, and now he's gone, escaped.”

  He turns this way and that, sees Jack.

  “You! There he is. There is the man! What is the meaning of this? How did you get here? How can you just appear outside my halls?”

  “Stay back,” says Jack. ‘And, easy now, don't lose your head.”

  “How did you slip your leash, get free?”

  “Were you not listening to what I said? That I would be released?”

  ‘Always a smart reply, a question answered with a question, you sly …”

  But his anger's taken over now, the words lost in an inarticulate growl.

  “Who was it?” he demands. “Who set you loose?”

  “The one who makes the vine grow thick for men.”

  Jack twirls his fingers round his flute.

  “You fucker!” Joey says.

  “I'll take that,” says Jack, “as a compliment.”

  Pierrot turns to call out orders to his offstage guards.

  “Bar every door in the stockade. Close the perimeter,” he calls. “Lock every single fucking gate.”

  ‘And what's the point in that?” says Jack. “Can ghosts not walk through walls?”

  Pierrot backhands me out of his way as he attacks Jack, grabs him by his catsuit's leather skin. I pick myself up off the ground, nursing my jaw. I blink. Fuck's sake, I think, that fucking hurt. I look at the tension in Joey's arms, the whiteness of his knuckled fist. The bastard's fucking wired.

  “You're such a wise guy” Joey snarls, “except where actual wisdom is required.”

  “Where wisdom's needed most,” says Jack, “I am most wise.”

  Joey punches him in the stomach, turns to glare at me. Jesus, there's murder in his eyes. He lets Jack fall and crouches down a second, comes back with a metal glint of knife blade in his hand.

  “Wait!” Jack says.

  He points offstage and Joey snaps his head round, glares past me into the wings where Guy, in shepherd costume, stands. Pierrot Joey looks confused.

  “Your messenger comes from the hills with news,” says Jack.

  His words are rushed and out of breath. He holds a hand over his stomach, winded, and I have the seriously scary feeling that it's not an act. Joey has fucking lost it, man; Pierrot's madness—Christ, he's fucking in it. He stands there looking trapped in indecision, gripping the knife and turning now to Guy— who enters as Pierrot's messenger—then back to Jack.

  “I'll keep,” says Jack. “Listen to him, hear what he's got to say to you. I'll wait. I'll not attempt to fly.”

  “You lie,” says Joey, breaking with the script. “You have to die.”

  “Just … listen to your … guy,” says Jack. ‘And afterward, then you can have your pleasure with me, kill me at your leisure.”

  “Pierrot,” Guy says quickly, firmly.

  He clamps a hand on Joey's shoulder, gives a solid gaze into his eyes.

  “Pierrot, ruler of this realm of Themes! I have—”

  Pierrot slaps his hand away. Guy stalls.

  “I have,” he starts again, “come hither from the hills where pure white snowflakes fall forever.”

  There's a pause. The hand that doesn't hold the knife opens and closes at Pierrot's side, a cat stretching its claws. I edge away a bit; Jack looks like he's prepared to pounce. Guy stands there, simply waiting for the line. A hundred heartbeats as Guy faces Joey's madness down.

  “What urgent message do you bring?” says Joey.

  And our breath is audible as it's released.

  “I've seen, O King,” says Guy, “the frantic maidens who flew out in barefoot frenzy from the city's gates. I come to tell you and the city of their awful deeds, things more than strange.”

  Pierrot's knife picks nonexistent dirt out from beneath his fingernails.

  “But first I need to know,” says Guy, “can I speak freely? Should I trim my tale or tell all that I saw? Your temper is so quick, m'sire; my lord, I fear your sudden wrath, the power of your ire.”

  “Speak,” Joey says. “There's nothing you need fear from me.”

  He seems to rein himself in, burying his anger. I glimpse guilt in how he glances at me, keeps his eyes away from Jack.

  “Rage taken out upon the innocent is wrong,” he says.

  But still the quiet threat is strong.

  “The grimmer news you bring about these rites,” he says, “the grimmer fate awaits this bastard who's seduced our women with his song.”

  “Well, then, it was today,” Guy as the messenger begins, “in the first light of dawn …”

  Gazelles Held in Their Arms

  In the first light of dawn, the earth grows warm in the sun's rays, and young Elixir feels the grass soft underneath his feet. He bats at the long stalks with his switch, sings as he drives the lowing cattle up toward the hill's ridge where the pasture's best. The morning air is fresh and, thinking of Accordion with his goats, his gifts of quinces, chestnuts, plums and voice, Elixir smiles. Sung him a song, he did, the other day, that got Elixir all stirred, in that way, you know. Not that he'd ever show it, mind, oh no. A thousand lambs out on the hills and ever-flowing milk from all his flocks and herds—Accordion's a find. Play hard to get for now, Elixir thinks.

  Koré circles his feet, circles her tail in wild wags, wet nose nuzzling his leg, and he's shooing her out to circle the flock not me, silly, when he sees them. What's this, girl, eh?

  They lie there, some in beds of needles fallen from the pine trees, others with their heads on piles of oak leaves. Ssh, girl. Fast asleep in deep exhaustion, there's three groups of them; there's Indo and Autonomy, each dreaming with their troops, the rest gathered around—is it? it is!—the Basilisk's own ma. He whistles underneath his breath, calls Koré back, and crouches down to hold her.

  He had heard Iacchus was in town.

  It was all quite decent, sire, he'll say, not lewd as people claim, with them all out to sate their lusts, alone in the woods, crazy with wine and the soft music of the flute. That's what he'll say when he's run down through the long grass and through the town to hammer on the Basilisk's wooden door, stood with his hands on hips, bent double and panting till he's caught his breath. That's what he'll say to the Basilisk, yes. But later, with Accordion and Chrome and Mains
ail and the rest, he'll whisper tales with even less breath. Ssh. Come here.

  I saw the Bacchae, he'll say.

  He watches them until the lowing of his cows stirs the Basilisk's old ma and she rises up among them, gives a loud cry to awake the rest. Wiping the sleep out of their eyes, they rise, the old, the young, women and girls. Elixir watches them, in wonder at this sight of grace so modest as they smooth hair from their faces, flick it back to fall over their shoulders, stretch. If the Basilisk were here, if he could see this with his own eyes, thinks Elixir, he'd be praying to the deity he despises.

  A flash of thigh—his heart beats faster—till the girl fastens her fawnskin where it's come untied. Hush, girl. Sit nice. Elixir, crouching in the bushes, blushes as he peeks, ashamed but more in awe than anything until he sees …

  Snakes curl around the dappled hides, tongues darting out to lick the women's cheeks.

  “And there were others wearing crowns of ivy, oak or flowering bryony. With gazelles held in their arms like—”

  “—mothers with full breasts of milk for babes at home in town. They're out there suckling the whelps of wild wolves even—”

  “—now she takes her thyrsus, strikes it down into a rock, I swear, and then this stream of clear, fresh water gushes—”

  “—out it spouts, a spring of wine, a fountain where she drove her wand into the—”

  “—ground where they had scratched a fingertip, these streams of milk flowed, all they wished for—”

  “—trickling honey from—”

  “—staffs wreathed in ivy.”

  In the babble of the gathered herdsmen, all these strange, incredible events rush out. The boys war with each other for the floor, talk over one another, try to shout each other down.

  “O you who live up on the mountains …”

  Over the noise within the hut, Accordion's voice resounds. He's got a skill of speech, learned from his time in town, and when he stands up in the midst of them they listen.

  “You who live up on the holy mountain heights,” he says. “What do you say we do the Basilisk a favor, chase his mother from her Bacchic rites?”

  A murmur goes around the crowd, but they're not sure; there's tales of what the Bacchae do to those who interrupt their rituals. Some are keen—there's Chrome and Mainsail eager to begin the hunt—but others seem quite unconvinced, like Thirst and Palomino, who both argue that it's not their place.

  But in the end it is Accordion who wins his case, and so they go.

  And now Elixir waits in ambush, hidden among the thick of leaves again. It's time. The rites of the Bacchae start with waving wands, and then, in chorus, they call on Iacchus, god of beer and brine, the son of Deus; and the wild things answer. The whole mountain echoes with their shout. The whole of nature roars as they set out upon the hunt.

  HELLHOUND ON MY TRAIL

  The airtram shudders from side to side as it hurtles along its thread, the banshee howl of its chi-jet engines drowning commuters’ shouted conversations inside, setting feral dogs to barking frenzies in the streets below. It Dopplers past the un-derlit Wagnerian architecture of the concert hall and retail galleries at the top of Buchanan Street and roars over the swastika-bannered pedestrian precincts of Sauchiehall Street, passes the waiting platforms of Cowcaddens altogether, arcs wide by St. George's Cross, swinging ever westward. One, two, three stations where it should have stopped, and still it thunders on across the sky. But, then, airtrams tend to do that when you throw the driver through the windshield and fire a chi-beam point-blank into the few controls still left intact after a bareknuckle slamfest worthy of the Trynovantium Colosseum.

  I brandish the chi-gun with psychotic zeal as I kick through the splinters of the separating door and sprint down the carriage, passengers throwing themselves out of the way. A window shatters to my right, a suit is cut down to my left, as my pursuer's chi-beams slice the air around me. Striding down the aisle, punching passengers out of his path, Joey Narcosis comes after me, slow and steady, a dogged hellhound on my trail, in suit and overcoat as sharp as his eyes, as black as his heart.

  A chi-beam glances off my shoulder and I spin, unbalanced, firing as I turn and dropping to one knee. I hit him square but he shrugs off the blue-green blast of energy like a lightning rod catching St. Elmo's fire, channeling it down to the ground. Fifth-dan aikido, I would guess; not bad at all. Course, I can take him anytime.

  With a considered casual callousness, he picks off every commuter between the two of us, blasting through the padded seats they cower behind, cutting them down as they dive in panic for the emergency cord, for doorways, for any escape. Clearing the decks, I think you call it. When there's only little me left, he grips the gun two-handed, raises it, takes aim …

  I leap for the broken window, grab the upper rim of it and swing my full weight out and up and over, onto the roof of the airtram. Wind whipping my longcoat out behind me, I stand up from a crouch, boots clamped to the metal roof, and start to run for the front of the carriage, as chi-beams pierce the steel under my feet—from below and from the skies above, militia ornithopters strafing me. It's like a swarm of fucking locusts overhead. I leap to the next carriage and keep running, jumping, running, pulling a stick of dynamite out of my jacket. No love grenades this trip; something more drastic is called for.

  I light it, lob it and leg it—back the way I came—and leap through a plume of blue-orgone vapor that hisses from a ruptured ray tank, straight into the face of my would-be assassin, the two of us almost crashing off the roof together in our collision. I push away and hit him with a kung-fu kangaroo kick (spring-loaded boots—a kick with a kick) but he rolls backward and comes out of it on his feet. Great Western Road flashes under us. Next stop, Kelvinbridge and the Rookery. Overhead, the ornithopters thunder.

  “You're dead,” says Joey Narcosis. “You're fucking dead,”

  “Aren't we all?” I say, as the dynamite explodes in the driver's cabin and the airtram, roaring through flame and smoke, careens off its thread and screams downward, down toward a streak of Ian dulled filth that used to be a river.

  A Hand with Eagle's Claws

  “By rivers of a sophist, down through valley fields which bear full fruit, rich harvest for our themes, we come. Through towns below the peak of zither, on we come. To his eye and her other eye, we come. The flame that does not burn us in our hair, we speed like hawks, we sweep the air with evil aim, we swoop and scatter all, and gather children from their homes, our game.

  “We come to her, agaves queen and anesthesia princess, our eternal Columbine, mother of sorrow, she who leads us.”

  Phreedom ignores the bitmites’ babblings and slings the antique rupters of brass and iron, one over each shoulder. There are latches, straps on them where they're meant to be clipped to angel armor, but she wears them slung diagonally across her back so there's no danger of them falling to the dust. The leather straps form an X on her synthe-vested chest like bandoliers. The crossbars of the rupters, fluttering with angel scalps, look like the pinions of some creature's wings. But then that's pretty much what they are. She flexes her right hand, gazing at the ivory talons where her fingernails used to be, the black filigree of bitmites that sleeves her bare arm. Too long in the Hinter, she thinks. Still, the claws make her feel more at home out here, one of nature's children. And they have their uses; who needs cold steel when you have a hand with eagle's claws?

  The bitmite tattoo on her arm, the scar of the C-section on her belly, the clawed hand which, she swears, she'll use one day to rip the heart out of the last unkin, Phreedom's metaphysique is just one reminder after another of what she's lost—her brother, her son, her humanity. She no longer blames Finnan for teaching her the truth of the unkin and the Cant. She no longer blames Metatron for what his Covenant spear carriers did to her brother and to Phreedom herself. But that's largely because the blame has been replaced by hunger.

  Down in the valley, the grazing cattle look plump and appetizing. One of the Bacch
ae at her side sets up a howl.

  The sleek calf gives a scream, bucking its head, whites visible around the edges of its panicked eyes, legs skittering as it goes down beneath her. She digs her claws into its throat like it's a lump of clay her fist is ripping off. Blood sprays as, with her other arm locked round its jaw, she twists its head to break its neck. The others dive into the scattering herd like wild dogs, tearing heifers limb from limb with claws and teeth and sheer brute force. A white bull snorts and charges, glaring down its horns; it turns, tossing its head in rage and fear, and barges at another pack, but as it plows into their midst it's tripped, dragged down by countless hands. Its broken bits of carcass bounce above the crowd, hurled hand to hand this way and that, all ribs and hoofs, the flesh stripped quicker than a prince could blink in shock and gag into his perfumed handkerchief.

  It's over within minutes.

  One of the women holds two broken horns up to her head and bellows, charges laughing at her fellow hunters. Others are still breaking animals between them here and there. A group of four heave, two at each side of a rib cage, trying to split it open like a corpse in autopsy. One girl hammers on a severed head with a splintering thighbone. But most are simply gnawing on the pieces.

  Phreedom runs her hand over strips of flesh that drip where they hang from branches on the pine trees, licks the blood from her open palm.

  The force of the chi-dart knocks her sideways as it hits her shoulder, and she staggers back to catch her footing. Though the bitmites in her body won't let her bleed, she feels the cold iron of the thing like poison in her body, claws at her shoulder to pull it out. Bastard!

  “Ambush!” she shouts.

  They leap out onto the track that leads from town; they come from behind and from the side, come crashing out of hiding all around. The villagers rush toward them with weapons even more archaic than her own in their hands, ancient needlegun-crossbow things that fire wildly, furiously, at the pillagers. Another chi-charged quarrel thumps into the tree beside her, sparking blue-green.