A fortnight later, the Nori and the Ghost girl warily trotted up a dry, winding path bordered with tussock as red as Weixiang's wrath. Dome's dialled to zoom, Ping spotted him high above, his mischievous smile twisted into a cruel grimace. He was flanked by a buxom wench on his left who looked as if she was wearing a trailing tussock atop her head, and a shelf of a man on his right whose bearing was not dissimilar to the rocky outcrops surrounding them. Without breaking stride Ping stripped the Domes from her face and single-handedly stowed them.
She felt like swearing at Jamie's cowardice but used her training to stifle the urge. They were here now. She needed to move on to the next scene. Her mind needed to be cold, chill like the mountain air she was still acclimatising to. An ordinary citizen would probably have died by now, eye lids encrusted with death like the frost bitten Jamiels of the cities' namesake. Nori training eschewed the womb-like temperature control citizens lived under. You learned to self-regulate or you were recycled. Nori law.
"Pity you can't recycle ghosts," she muttered, shooting a glacial look at Jamie's matted crown keeping pace with her left boot. She resisted the urge to kick it, after all, it had taken days before the feral girl could be persuaded to keep pace with her.
At least she had an element of surprise, the equivalent of flying in on a flame-breathing dragon – for Ping was riding in on a horse. She deeply and suspiciously inhaled its musky animal stench. The surrealism of the situation made it unreal. She was far from the Lotus Cities now, embedded in her mission. Ping was no longer Ping Brunder, Nori, heir to the Sukh house. She was a character in her own archaic art-doci, riding into a life-threatening situation on a mythological beast that hadn't been seen alive in over a century. Nothing mattered except gaining access to that group of ragtag pakeha. Nothing.
The enraged scream of the beast filtered through her mind, shredding the dualism into one compact, lethal identity: Nori. Thigh muscles clenched, gripping its copper flanks as it reared up, tossing pale dawn hair into her mouth. She grabbed the hank in her hands tightly, instinctively. Hooves chopped the dry air, desperately trying to cleave to the fiery head weaving in front of it, welcome blade in hand.
Ping's training took over. Pupils dilated she assessed the immediate threat: one female, red-headed, heavy, but well conditioned and strong. Secondary threat: rock man. Intuition fed her the same height and weight as Connell so he should move the same, without the martial training. Other danger: well, the rest of the camp. They had stopped setting up and were watching, with an air of menace. Weapons: hands and feet, killing blade, beast. Jamie – nowhere. Typical.
The analysis took micro-seconds. The pale blue mountain sky filtered through her narrowed eyes, her dark head an artificial horizon, a storm about to break on her opponent below. Ping squeezed her thighs, forcing the horse to shoot towards the harpy, heavy artillery. A little closer and she could break that dusky neck with one well-placed boot without losing her seat. She breathed in the mad-eyed woman's fear, shifted her weight slightly, a few more seconds and those delicate bones would implode. Ping wanted her blow to be the killing force, not the beast's.
"Serena." The name was barked out by Weixiang, a clear order.
Tossing those red curls into the flaming tussocks, Serena hit the dusty earth and crumbling shale, rolling out and away from the noise and heat and dust that made up the horse. Ping saw her swallow her fear and through some alchemy, turn it into a sulky look.
"But my lord, you wanted the insect dead?" she said, turning the defiance into a querulous question. "I can kill it for you." Without thinking she stamped her foot, looking for all the world like a dancer about to break into flamenco.
"Things have changed. She has the Kaimanaiwa. We go to the Wu. Come"
"I think they're talking about you," Ping said to the horse, nudging him with her foot. She was eager to get this charade over with, so she could get started.
The beast kept rolling its eyes and snorting whenever Serena's scent came anywhere near so she was forced to sway elsewhere. Ping stowed her delight in the same cavity she stashed apprehension.
Expressionless she spotted the blonde Jamie keeping pace with the posse from a safe distance. "Such a coward," she thought again, consciously slowing her breathing, trying to relax her muscles in preparation for the next challenge.
Ping rolled through the old abandoned suburb, senses on high alert, taking in every detail from the beast's height: "Large man, blunt face, white hair like fibre; young girl, lanky, cloud pattern UV-burn on her face." Ping hoped her subdermal shot had boosted her melanine sufficiently to cope. It should last six months. She knew her dewy, unblemished face was a rarity, even in the protected Lotus Cities.
She scanned the tussocks carpeting floors and walls roofed only by the sky. Framed by ragged concrete, a mother squatted in a pile of bundles, cleaning her stoic child. The Kaimanaiwa slowed, snorted. Ping swung her head around, eyes front.
"Ancient," she thought, feeling that sense of wonder that always struck when something truly disgusted her. It almost broke through her china features.
He was a mirror of the empty house behind him; rotten mouth, sightless eyes, sheets of hair missing and flaking from his ancient mottled skull, bones brittle and worn down by the elements.
"The Nori," said Wei, opening his arms in an expansive gesture as if revealing her to the wizened Wu. Wei nodded his head to show respect. "Yours now," he said.
The Wu shuffled to his feet, using a carved, wooden staff for support. His rheumy eyes were dead, as dull and tarnished as the joinery lining the window sockets behind him. Sightless, he moved towards the front of the horse, hand extended. Both breathed each other in, tasted no threat. It whinnied once, then stood still.
He then shuffled around the horse, leading with his left hand, until he found her boot. Grabbing her ankle with a deceptively strong grip, he lowered his wrinkled nose to it and sniffed her, like the beast had when she first subdued it.
Ping resisted the urge to kick the old man. He was clearly powerful and had influence. Maybe a holy man to these people.
He abruptly let go of her. He raised his hands. Two young boys darted out of the decaying house and ducked under his arms to support his elbows. The Wu started shaking like the sensor nets when an electric storm hit the Lotus Cities, white wisps of hair quivering antennae-like with each fit. Those aluminium eyes rolled back and he started shouting. The horse took a rapid series of steps back. Ping had him under control but she could feel he was spooked.
"A wasp will rise, sting hidden, memory long. Peace rides on the Kaimenawa. Time for the hidden to be revealed, bringing great suffering and great knowledge."
Definitely a holy man.
If the boys hadn't been holding him the old man would have collapsed. He had paled, shadows pooled in the furrows of skin. A thin saliva stream ran out of the corner of his mostly toothless mouth.
Wei looked up at her broad, high cheekbones, slung under the slanted shards of eye. Ping felt like prey under the watchful stare of a hawk.
"Hey bitch, get off that pony." Decision made, it was time for Weixiang to assert his authority. The Wu had spoken.
Ping paused, just long enough to show him she was choosing to do so, then slid off the palomino's sweaty flank. The long, impractical skirt on loan from Jamie wrapped around her ankles forlornly. If the Nori's balance wasn't so honed, she would have fallen to her knees in front of this warlord.
His raised eyebrow implied that he knew this and relished the day when he did bring her to her knees. "You missed the meet hookup so technically, deal's off," he said. "But Wu here seems to think the Kaimanawa is pretty special. So here's a new deal. You fight Serena here for the position of feera. She dies, you take her place, you do your service for one year."
His smooth voice carried through the skeletal suburb, ghosts watching. In a voice carefully pitched to exclusively reach her ears he said: "And the rest of our deal will stand as before. But if she kills you, you're not my problem any more, yeah?" The slight upwards lilt hovered at the end of his words, a pakeha marker..
He projected again: "Old rules, to the end."
The onlookers shouted: "To the end," as if it was a salute in a drinking game.
Ping could see betting breaking out, men and women sizing up the height and weight of the opponents. She wondered what a feera was. Didn't want to lose face at the start of a crucial fight so didn't ask, at this point, didn't care.
"Renunciation is not getting rid of the things of this world, but accepting that they pass away," she recited to herself as if studying for an exam. "Aitken Roshi, Hawaiian Zen Buddhist master. One red head is about to be renounced."
She tossed a a metal disc at Wei, who snatched it out of the air. "I'm betting on myself," she said, nodding at the makeshift bookie on the sidelines.
The sheet-like, canvas skirt was peeled off next like the husk of an exotic fruit long lost to this land. Someone started an erratic drumbeat. A lone voice, so rough and scratched it lifted the scab on buried emotion, sang of the impending fight.
Serena sauntered over, green eyes and Medusa curls glowing fire in the setting sun, feral features reflecting off the rough blade in her hand. Ping stripped off the thigh-length top, revealing the slick black Nori skin underneath. Standard issue, top quality. She quickly snaked the shirt around one forearm, tightly securing it with a one-handed knot. The slim backpack made a small bulge in her back, an alien egg sac, while her pale hands and face seemed to float in the afternoon's gloom, like a mime. The betting increased feverishly, the staccato tink, tink of falling metal adding to the beat.
Wishing she could globe this, Ping went into the quiet, still space inside, the one that helped her fight. She breathed in. Time slowed, the jibing and music dulled to a dim din. She breathed out. Serena struck, snaking her generous curves in, slash, out.
Ping parried, shirted block taking the nick. Weary, she was weary, hungry and tired. Fortunately that made her meaner, more focused. Less time to do damage so every stroke had to count. She read tiredness in the whore's footsteps, in her frustrated frown.
"Better not think I'm going to be your whore," she mumbled, pushing the thought away into the back of her mind, a trunk that like Pandora's box, she only opened occasionally. She jumped back, Serena trying to kick her legs out from under her, viciously stabbing at her eyes.
Then down, wrenching her shoulder as she turned to her side to avoid damaging the Domes, curling up a little to let her protective skin catch the filthy toenails attached to the end of inflamed feet.
"It is better to conquer yourself than to win a thousand battles. Then the victory is yours. It cannot be taken from you, not by angels or by demons, heaven or hell," she recited, neatly taking her own meaning from Buddha's words.
Serena straddled her side, knife raised above her head, looking like some ancient demon Academy students would tease each other with when still in the Crib. Those rosebud lips parted, letting the poison out: "You're dead bitch," was the last thing she said, unbound breasts heaving. The speed of the drum matched a user's heart on Glow, and the pakeha were yelling, screaming, spitting.
Conquering herself, Ping rolled to her front, unbalancing Serena; and whipped out the concealed hunting blade. Simultaneously she grabbed a handful of locks, courser than the horse's, and scalped her, backhand.
The living corpse screamed once, long and loud, pumping a crowning crimson glory to rival the dying sun. Drum stilled. Crowd hushed. Serena dropped to the dusty earth sideways. The sun darted under the horizon as if hooked by her spine. Thud. Her body offered the victory beat.
Ouch! How's that for a bloody sunset? Vote, comment and share please :-)
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