IN THE MOUNTAINS OF FIRE by Dolores J. Nurss
Volume
II: Tests of Fire and Blood
Chapter 29 Girls Like a Little Fun
Thursday, May 21, 2708, continued. Lufti holds the basin as I wash off Gaziley’s red eyes. Not that I can see much of the actual eyeballs, the way he keeps squinting. I have to position him to face into the
sunlight, which doesn’t help him, either, but I have to get a good look to see
how bad it is. “Man, that homemade
eyeliner is not doing you any good at all!” Little bumps of irritation rim the lashes, on
upper and lower lids alike, but so far none have gotten infected. (I like to put on the
eyeliner especially thickly when I give the orders for battle.) (“She really piled
the eyeliner on thick,” Merrill says, walking beside me in the unlit dark
between the warehouses, shadowed from the gibbous moon. The little guy fairly seethes; one dark curl
bounces on his brow as he walks. “She
always does that when she intends to say or do something cold.” Randy just shakes
his head. “Not the black stuff, I
hope. Blondes look terrible in that. Did she try the charcoal blue like I
recommended?” Merrill snarls,
“That’s not the point!”) Gaziley shrugs. “I
don’t care if I’m beautiful or not—that’s not the point.” “Do you care if you go blind?” (Merrill would blind
me if he knew how beautiful he looks to me—that porcelain skin, those flashing
eyes. I guess I’ve just got a thing for
shorter men. No. He wouldn’t hurt me. He’d feel like the queer one, to harbor such
a bias. He’d hate himself for wanting to. We keep the pretense of a closet door between
us more to protect him than me.) Damien says, “I know a story of a blind warrior...” “...but I’d rather not have anybody lose their sight in my band,” Lucinda interrupts. “Not if I can help it.” She puts an arm around my shoulders, and
another around Chulan. “Listen, we’re
not that far from Chicamoq, and I’ve got a little bit of cash on me—we need
more food to go around, and I’ll trust you to get your denar’s worth on that,
yet it won’t take but a dab to buy a stick of real eyeliner. Chulan, you’re good at finding the best
make-up for cheap; see what you can do.
Deirdre, you go with her and cover her back.” (They can think what
they want of me, but they can’t turn a blind eye to strategy this good. We can send reinforcements from Chicamoq to
cover the main assault force...here.
Yes. Right into the rat’s
nest. Right where they breed.) (Competing thumps
and growls of music increase in volume as we walk through the factory district,
most of the businesses closed for the night.
We stop at the loudest point, under a sign that creaks in the wind: “The
Rat’s Nest.” Removable, on the wall of an
old, burnt-out factory—a large-scale bakery, I’d say. They look ready to pack up and hide whenever
policia sniffs around. I turn to Merrill
and ask, “Are you sure?” It smells like
Rhallunn—not his kind of place. He shrugs. “Boy’s night out. This looks about right. Zanne would hate it.” Don winks at
me. “I hear they put chili in the
cocoa.” “Hey!” Merrill protests. “It’s not my fault if I can’t drink
alcohol. If you lads hadn’t made me so
desperately ill when I was young and trusting...” I grin. “You seemed to like it at the time.” “Until I threw up
all over the ice rink!” Randy says, “Don’t
worry; I doubt they’d serve onion wine, here.”
Merrill turns green to hear it named. Don points out a
playbill. “Hey, Wound Culture’s playing at the Soldier of Fortune Saloon,
downstairs. Let’s check it out.”) Chulan leads the way,
considerately pointing out various trees as landmarks for the way back to camp,
should we get separated. This one here
has an intricate network of roots, with all manner of animal cubby holes tucked
into it; I won’t likely forget it. (Merrill leads the
way down the stairs, into not so much a dive as a whole network of dives, separated
by mildewy sheets of wood (portable, I notice) and doorways strung with
bone-bead curtains, into distinct theme bars, all based on sociopathic
subcultures throughout history. Each one
snarls out its own jangly brand of music, clashing with each other around the
edges, shaking the rough, black rafters that look as if the building inspector
has never laid eyes on them. Merrill leads us
through a speakeasy, a pirate’s lair, an opium den, and a cheap but detailed
miniature of the ballroom of the Murder Palace of Kalorcabori. “And yes,” he tells us, “they do serve chili-spiced
cocoa—not everybody wants to risk an unsteady hand in the knife-throwing
competition.” “Dang!” Don
exclaims. “We should have brought Lisa!” Randy concurs. “I’ve never seen anybody beat Lisa at
mumblety-peg with all their toes intact.” Merrill grumbles,
“You can make it your next date destination.
But not tonight.” Randy and Don
blush simultaneously, not certain which of them he answers. I center myself on the alert; Merrill in an unkind mood could
lead to anything.) Chulan explains, as we slip through the jungle, in a light rain mist, under an umbrella
of birdsong, “Be ready for anything. Everybody
for miles around comes to Chicamoq to trade.
It’s the closest thing we’ve got around here to city life.” “Something of a destination, huh?” She nods, waiting for an especially fat snake to finish
crossing our path, then continues. “Uh
huh. Some of the oldest paved roads in
the Charadoc lead to it, and people still maintain some of them, especially the
one to the coastal towns, where the ships come in.” We navigate around a fallen tree. “They say that at Chicamoq you can find
everything you need and half of what you want.”
She blushes, saying, “I used to work at Chicamoq, before my pimp did me
a favor and died. Then I went down that
ol’ seabound road, and got me a better position.” I step around a couple trees dripping with moss, and tread
carefully across some stones above a tinkling little waterfall. “You mean that place where you met Lucinda
and Fatima?” She nods. “Yep. The Happy House.” She smiles.
“I feared at first it’d be too classy for me, but I think they took me
in because, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’m really Chinese. So I settled right in, tended bar a few weeks
until I got a feel for the customers, and then got to the real work.” (We settle in at at a
bar with a mercenary theme, under the wails of Wound Culture. The waitresses wear camouflage bras, olive
shorts and combat boots. They vary,
though, in their tattoos and props, such as the weaponry strapped all over
their bodies, which may or may not be fake.
The barmaid who takes our orders wears a dirty army-nurse’s cap and a
stethoscope, with a low-slung holster over each hip; her eyepatch, too, might be
real or not. I like their beer
list. I order the Scotch Hop. Then somebody down the bar calls for “More of
what the medic ordered” to the laughter of his peers; she smiles sourly at what
must have become a tired joke to her. “I’ll have the
South-South Tropic Ale,” says Don. I raise a
brow. “That stuff is not ale.” I look to Merrill for
corroboration, but he just points to the Cocoa Diablo without a word. The band takes a
break; we can hear ourselves think.
Randy downs a gulp of Lizzie’s Gizzard-Grater and after theatrically
gasping, fanning his mouth and grinning, asks, “So, Merrill, what’s up with you
and Zanne? Why’s she putting on her
war-paint for you?” Merrill broods over
his mug. “She wants us to go on separate
missions. She wants to prove that she
can do it without me.”) “So is that why Lucinda split you and Fatima up?” I ask, as
we pull ourselves up an embankment by the tree-roots that hang from it. “Because two women from the same brothel might
bring the wrong kind of attention?” Chulan shrugs.
“Maybe. And maybe she wants to
give you a chance to go out a bit, separate from most of the band, to show her
trust in you. Is it true you used to be
a captive?” I grin, and she looks relieved to see it. “I won’t deny it. But I saw the error of my ways.” (“It gets worse,”
Merrill says, barely audible above a fight over the pool table. Waitresses pull guns and knives and
everything suddenly quiets down, just in time to let the whole room hear Merrill
raise his voice over the nonexistent din.
“She wants to vacation in Darvinia first! All by herself!” Laughter bursts out all around. Everybody knows Darvinia’s reputation. The band starts up again while Merrill sinks
his head to the bar. Ms. Merc-Medic
leans over our way. “Now honey, did your
sweetheart actually say she wanted to go alone?” Red-faced, Merrill looks
up and says, “Well that’s what it means when somebody says ‘I think I’ll go to Darvinia
first’.” Merc-Medic laughs,
the stethoscope clicking against the bar.
“Don’t take a woman so literally, honey!
She wants to aggravate you into inviting yourself along. Otherwise she’d
conceal her plans till the last minute.” Randy laughs and
raises his glass to her. “Looks like we
found the right bar for Boy’s Night Out after all!” Merc-Medic
straightens up and, at my nod, draws me a refill. “Girls like a little fun, but not all by
themselves. She’s giving you one last
chance, honey—I suggest you take it.”) “But just because I don’t want that kind of attention, doesn’t mean I can’t have a little fun
while in town.” Chulan pushes through a
red and pink flowering vine that smells like spiced rum, plucks a blossom to
put behind her ear, and says, “You don’t know how to flirt, do you?” My face burns as I step over a log. “Is it that obvious?” She smiles, kindly.
“Not to everyone. I learned to
watch for things like that in my last profession. That’s okay.”
She pats my shoulder. “You can
play the shy card, too. Men love the
challenge.” “Uh...maybe I’m better off not knowing how.” Just how long before we get to that dadburned
village, anyway?” She takes me by the shoulders and turns me to face her,
stopping right there in the middle of the ferns. “No.
You have to know. Chicamoq is
kind of, well, a pick-up town.” As hot as my face felt before, it now feels dead cold as the
blood rushes out. “You mean they’ll
wonder why a couple of unescorted women have come into town if I don’t...flirt?” She laughs. “It’s
not a death sentence, Deirdre!
Listen—you can play the innocent country cousin, curious about a bit of
excitement, but not likely to go too far, and I’ll play the worldly one,
showing you life beyond the chicken-run.
That way I can beg out of anything that could get too sticky, saying
it’s not your thing, and I have to watch over you. But girl, you’ve got to flirt at least a
little.” (“I don’t know,” Merrill
says into his cocoa. “Honorably, I’ll still
have to give her the chance to go without me, unless I actually hear her tell
me that I’m welcome to join her. I won’t
play her games. Let her flirt with
whomever she wants. Let her have
affairs, for all I care.” “Merrill,” I say, “Sometimes
I can’t fathom what you do and don’t call honorable.” Don finishes his “ale”
and says, “Anything that confirms his low opinion of himself,” before ordering
another. “Because he’s so proud of being
humble.” “Why would I expect
either of you to understand?” Merrill sighs. Randy says, “Because,
oh, I don’t know, maybe because we know you better than you want to know
yourself?”) Chulan sits me down on a log. “It’s simple, really, when you play the coy
card. Just catch a man’s eye a bit
longer than usual, then glance down, embarrassed, as if you just realized you
were staring, and then, shyly, sneak a peak back. If he smiles at you, smile back, tentatively,
a little bit shocked at yourself. Let
him buy you a drink, but act flustered if he goes any further than that. Then I’ll step in and rescue you.” She kisses me on the cheek . “I won’t let anybody eat you alive. I promise.” You never know what you’ll learn on a mission. (Merrill doesn’t respond. Instead he turns on his stool to survey the set-up for the competition. He says, “Let’s throw knives.”)
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