Carnival

The next thing he felt, unfortunately, was his fingers. Which made him wish for one long, brutal instant that he’d just been a good well‑behaved secret agent and lain there peaceably waiting for the firing squad.

The pain filled his sinuses, flooded his nostrils, floated his eyes in their orbits. It was physically blinding–he couldn’t see the darkness for the flashes in his vision. Beyond pain, and into a white static he couldn’t see or move or breathe through. Michelangelo gritted his teeth, pressed his forehead to thumbs while tears and snot streaked his face, and held on.

It would crest. It would peak and roll back.

All he had to do was live through it.

All he had to do–

He wheezed, hard, when his diaphragm finally relaxed enough that he could get a breath, and then threw his head back, panting. “Bugger,” he said indistinctly, and let his hands fall against his chest.

His fingers felt thick and hot, and they bent only reluctantly, but he could feel them, and they hurt less now than did his wrists.

“You ever needed to disprove the existence of a Creator God,” he said, “the miracle of efficiency that the human body isn’t would be a fucking good place to start.”

“Miss Kusanagi‑Jones?”

Deities or not, there was obviously still room in the world for miracles. Miss Pretoria honestly sounded scared.

“Under the circumstances, call me Michelangelo. Will you roll onto your stomach, please?”

Her wrists were more important than his ankles. He knelt over her, hands on either side of her waist, and used his teeth on these cords, too. His fingers weren’t strong enough.

She whimpered once or twice, but overall, he thought she made less noise than he had.

When he was done, and she was taking her turn coiled shaking around the agony of returning circulation, he sat up and began fumbling at the strapping on his ankles. It was adhesive, wound tight, but he managed to feel the torn edge. It came off noisily, along with a generous quantity of hair.

A ripping sound in the darkness, followed by a series of half‑breathed “ow”s, informed him that Miss Pretoria didn’t need any instruction in order to follow his example. “Now I understand why males complain so much about waxing their backs for the Trials,” she murmured, barely audible under the sawing and bowing of whatever animals infested the jungle night.

Kusanagi‑Jones stifled a laugh. “Hold onto that strapping,” he said. “Might come in useful.”

“It’s sticky.”

“And strong,” he answered, attempting to disentangle his own length so as to wind it around his waist. “See anything yet?”

“Now that you mention it, it might be graying. Slightly.”

He thought so, too. If the walls were boards, as he suspected, and the roof was thatch, the slivers of faint brightness he saw might very well disclose the first grayness of morning. The exotic noises outside were increasing in volume, frequency, and complexity.

Dawn was coming.

“You don’t have a theory why pirates would want to kidnap a couple of diplomats, do you?”

“Not yet,” she answered, and now he could make out enough of her silhouette to see her, head bent, tucking the strapping around herself like a sash. “I’m also curious about how they’ve come to recruit so many young women.”

“Including your daughter.”

She lifted her head to stare at the dimly outlined wall. Her lips were pursed. Her eyes caught the growing light, glistening. She didn’t blink. “Maybe they’re all the daughters or sisters or lovers of males associated with the Right Hand. Maybe…” She sighed and shrugged. “I don’t know. If they can infiltrate Pretoria house, they could be anywhere.”

“Could be facing a revolution.”

She licked her lips, turned, and blinked at him. “Did you think for a moment there was a possibility we aren’t? Come on. Let’s make a break for it.”

She shook herself and moved toward the door they could now see outlined against the far wall, her hand twitching toward a nonexistent weapon. The door was chained around the post, but Kusanagi‑Jones thought he could handle it. He touched the chain, stroked it, rust rubbing off on his fingertips. That chain would hold against anything he could manage barehanded.

The planks of the door, on the other hand…

“Sneak, or rush?” he asked Miss Pretoria.

She crouched beside him, examining the door. “There will be a stockade,” she said. “If they have any sense. A kind of barrier of cut thorn trees.”

“A zareba.”

She blinked at him. “I don’t know that word.”

There was enough light now to show a smile, so he made it a good one. “If you had ever lived in Africa, you would. Before the Diaspora, people walled themselves in with stockades made of thornbushes, to keep out predators like hyenas. Village was called a kraal or enkang. Stockade was a zareba.”

For a moment, he thought she was about to ask him what a hyena was, but instead she returned his smile and dusted her hands on her knees. “Miss Kusanagi‑Jones, I think that’s the longest speech I’ve heard you make.”

He grunted his answer and stepped back, gesturing her to one side as he squared himself before the door. She went, standing with her back against the wall, but the curve of her lip told him she wasn’t about to leave it alone.

“Why do you let people assume you’re the lump of dumb meat on Vincent’s elbow?”

“Suits me,” he said, after a long enough pause to let her know she’d overstepped. His own fault for giving her the opening. “You never said: got a better route out of here than kicking the door down?”

“No,” she answered, rubbing her wrists. “I don’t.”

She’d missed the opportunity to really see him move when he’d saved Claude Singapore’s life, and during the previous evening’s skirmish she’d been only peripherally aware of what he did, the phenomenal efficiency and speed with which he’d managed three armed women.

“Farther left,” he said, waving her aside. “Splinters.”

Another time, she might have taken him to task for his lack of deference, but she didn’t want to break his focus, so she edged two more steps away from the door frame and flattened herself against the wall, breathing steadily, ready to spring out and intercept the swinging panel on the rebound. She shielded her face with her hand, but couldn’t resist watching between her fingers as Kusanagi‑Jones took one deep breath.

“If I go down,” she said, “run and keep ru

He didn’t spare her a glance. “Try not to be the one that goes down.”

Without breaking the steady rhythm of his breathing, he took two fluid steps, spun, and kicked out, hard. The door shattered against the chain, and Lesa kicked off the wall and slung herself through it, catching the rebound on her flat hand. Flesh tore on splintered wood, but she didn’t hesitate.

As she cleared the doorway and broke into a bare, scuffed‑dirt yard, the unwary guard lunged for her and missed. The unshod footsteps behind her were Kusanagi‑Jones’s. She heard the grunt and thud as he slammed into the sentry and hoped Michelangelo had body‑checked him hard enough to break bones.

Not hard enough to shut him up, unfortunately, because he was shouting before he’d picked himself up on his elbows. But Michelangelo was still with her, pulling up beside her, ru

Gunfire spattered around her, ended by a curse. Chemical accelerant had a distinctive sound. These were lethal loads, and they came close enough to sting her with kicked‑up earth and splinters. Kusanagi‑Jones grunted as he dropped back a step, falling in behind her, shielding her body with his own.

She wasn’t going to get him shot by ru