City of Ruin - Mark Charan Newton [72]
He removed her clothing in the usual fashion – nothing new here – first lifting her outer garments off quickly, then getting down to her underwear. He kissed her neck: stubble on her skin. Her own guilt and his predictability soon removed any sense of excitement.
She closed her eyes and thought of Lupus.
EIGHTEEN
‘Fucker’s gay?’ JC said.
‘No shit,’ Duka added.
It was snowing as the three of them stood hunched together in Port Nostalgia. The light from the two moons fell brokenly across the sea, as Malum focused on the tips of the waves, searching them for anything unnatural. He’d only recently returned from dropping off a bribe to members of the Inquisition to cover up after the boys had discarded some blood-drained corpses rather too recklessly, and he still had plenty of work ahead. Running the underground city was no luxury: it was hard graft, and he had to do most of the dog-work himself.
Dusk, and the streets were calmed after a full day’s trading – even the buildings seemed to be breathing a sigh of relief. The city was easing itself into night.
It always amazed Malum how – given the ice age – so much product could still be traded. Horses cantered through the emptying streets, and somewhere, as always, a firegrain pipe coughed streams of vapour into the icy air that plagued Villiren like a thousand ghosts.
‘So what we gonna do about it?’ JC shuffled from foot to foot to keep warm, both hands buried in the pockets of his hooded coat. Malum watched him and wondered if he was drunk again. The man always seemed to hide it so well – his inability to get through a day without touching the stuff. He’d been losing his fitness, and his freckled cheeks had puffed out of late. Malum might need to have a word with him sooner or later, even threaten him with expulsion if he didn’t get his shit together.
‘We can’t have a queer running things. You think we should tell other people? That is, Lutto and the likes?’
‘I suspect there’s not much point in that.’ Malum had not wanted to tell them about this discovery because he knew how revulsion would take over and come to the forefront of their minds. These were men who reacted to one thing at a time and, now the union issues were out of the way, and they had the cash in their pockets, they were free to concentrate on issues of a more personal nature.
‘Who the fuck would believe us, anyway?’ he went on. ‘Just be our word against his. No, I’m going to confront him about it, the albino, and we’ll see what he has to say. Prove himself that he’s a real man, not one of . . .’ Malum shook his head. ‘If he thinks I’m going to get the street gangs on board now, he’s got another think coming. If his army can’t fight their own stupid wars, then fine. We’ll just use the escape tunnels like everyone else.’
‘We should rough him up,’ Duka said. ‘Beat him to death, like. I mean, it’s sick what he does, ain’t it?’
Malum reaffirmed again that it was. He himself was disgusted that this could occur so high up in the military. It was certainly not what men did, was it, to stick their dicks into other men. He didn’t have much regard for the Jorsalir church, but they had established some codes of conduct that were certainly worth sticking to. So, yeah, maybe he should teach that commander a lesson, to show him what a real man was like. ‘Leave it with me.’
At that moment something shattered the surface of the water and glided up onto the dockside with an unlikely grace. Another followed, then another. Slender, and with a dark skin tone, the arriving figures shambled along the docks, their movements at first improbable.
‘Merpeople are here,’ he announced to the others.
‘Fucking freak me out they do,’ Duka grumbled.
Several more figures emerged from the background, and began hauling up crates onto the quayside. One approached Malum, and he strode forward to meet it. ‘Evening,’ Malum began.
Indigo skin stretched taut over thick musculature, thick gills splicing each side of his ribcage, the merman’s feet were