Tabitha

The Excess Café was busy; there were five people sitting at tables, each at different tables, pointedly ignoring each other.  There were three people queuing at the counter, and the one that Lehar was serving at the moment was unusual.  The two behind her in the queue were just plain weird.  And then the door opened, and another person came in.
I was sitting in my customary table one row in from the window where I could see the street outside without being dazzled by the glare of the sunshine.  It was a beautiful day, wintry cold but clear, deep, blue skies as far overhead as you could see.  It made me want to stand outside, tilt my head back, and stare upwards as though I were forever falling into its blueness.  I could hear most of the conversation up at the counter as well.
"Can you burn the beans?" said the woman at the front of the queue.  She had stringy blonde hair poking out from underneath a knitted cap and was wearing some kind of smock that looked muddy.  It smelled worse though, and I was currently hoping that there was just mud on it.  "I like the beans to be a bit crispy, if you get me."  Lehar nodded, though I knew perfectly well she didn't get the woman.
"Tea or coffee?" she asked, her voice bordering on the insolent.
"Both, please," said the woman.  "In the same cup.  Milk for the tea, none for the coffee."
I almost turned round in my seat to stare at her then, and it was only by dint of great effort that I held myself in place.  I heard Lehar murmur something that was probably only borderline polite, and then the hiss of the hot water urn as she mixed the drinks together.
Across the aisle from me, the man at the table there turned the pages of his newspaper. It was an Arabic language one, but I think only I'd noticed.  I knew who he was and why he was here; like me he was waiting for the real customers to leave.
"Is there anything else?" asked Lehar, her voice lilting softly.
"Oh well, I don't really like to ask," said the woman and I couldn't stop myself from thinking So don't!, "but, well, could you run the sausage under the cold tap after you've cooked it?  Only I don't like them hot and greasy."
"She's in the wrong place, really, isn't she?" said a soft voice opposite me, and I opened my eyes and started.  If the plastic chairs weren't all part of the table to stop people picking them up and throwing them about I'd have shot backwards by a foot.  As it was, the whole table jerked with me and a little of my Assam tea spilled on the formica surface.
"Who are you?" I said, looking at the woman who'd come in most recently.  She had small, soft features like a child or a manga-character, a spray of freckles across her nose, and a turban wrapped tightly around her head.  Her skin was milky white away from the freckles, and her coat's high collar was turned up against the cold of winter.
"Tabitha," she said.  "You're the writer, aren't you?"
I openly stared at her now; there were no writing materials on the table in front of me, no dictaphone or its iPhone substitute, not even an interesting National Geographic with bookmarks of pictures that were inspirational or holiday locations that were aspirational.
"Who says?" I asked, my voice a little tight.
Tabitha didn't answer me at first.  Instead she started unwrapping her turban, pulling the long fabric away from her head with slow, steady strokes, letting it unwind at its own pace.  Out of the corner of my eye I saw that Dax had laid down his newspaper and was watching with professional interest.  Somewhere behind me I heard a male voice say, "I don't like seeds in my tomato, can you ask the chef to scrape them out please?"  As the turban unwound, a soft grey smoke emerged, smelling of the souk, of spices and heat, underlying notes of sweat and acrid tones of humans and animals mixing.  The smoke seemed to hang a little way above Tabitha's head, spreading out to form a quiet cloud over the whole table, me included.  I didn't need to sneak a glimpse sideways to know that Dax would be tensed now, wound like a steel spring, ready to act.
"I say," she said, her voice sounding as though it came from a long way away.  "I've met you before, on a road less-travelled.  You're Anna's friend."
"Anna has no friends," I said.  She could only be referring to Anna-Mix, and she was so many worlds of trouble that I'd lost count of all the reasons for not spending any time with her.
"Anna doesn't see it that way.  I have a warning for you, which is why I've sent you Tabitha.  Noura has found ink for her pen, and she will be writing in the book soon."
"And I must stop her?"  I couldn't have controlled the sarcasm if I'd wanted to try.
"No.  But if no-one stops her then we must at least know what it is that we're accepting."
There was a click, the sound of the hammer of a pistol being cocked.  My vision suddenly returned, though I'd had no idea that it had gone; I was no longer in a grey fog listening to a distant, but familiar voice, I was sat in the Excess Café with a woman called Tabitha wearing half a turban sat opposite me.
"I want a name," said Dax.  "Now.  Or I pull the trigger."
"Names are power," said the voice.
"These bullets are inscribed with the nine-thousand names of God," said Dax.  Somehow that was parry and riposte.
"...very well.  You may call me Djina, though the writer will remember me better as Violet."
Dax looked at me and I nodded.  I definitely did remember Violet.

Mercenaries

It was Tuesday and the weather was still sultry.  There were people on Regent Street tending to the palm trees, an illustrative point to the climate deniers.  We'd had four years of summer, and though we continued to complain about it, we were getting used to it.  We were even getting suntans.  I picked up a locally-grown orange from a street-stall just down from the Apple store and peeled it with the machete I keep on my belt.  People walking past gave me odd looks, but no-one complained.  The ever-present heat had slowed people down a little.
A way further on and I reached a coffee-shop.  The sign on the door was turned to show that it was closed; I ignored it and pushed the door open anyway.  An alarm sounded briefly and a red light flickered over my face.  I stopped, and tried not to blink.
"Dax," said a mechanical sounding voice.
"Wretched thing," said another voice, this one human sounding and female.  There was a thump somewhere over by the espresso machine.  "That's not Dax, Dax is out the back.  You identified him already earlier."
"On the third try," said another voice, this one thin and reedy, could be either male or female.
"Still got troubles with it?" I asked, closing the door behind me and shivering blissfully in the air-conditioned room beyond.  The chairs and tables were laid out in standard coffee-shop style; there was a dusty, faded blue sofa in the window, and a coffee-ringed low table there scattered with old, torn magazines.
"Just weird ones," said Zaïre, her dark face appearing briefly and then disappearing again.  Something else got thumped.  "It's doing the iris identification perfectly, but it's not matching them up in the database right.  And that's not possible, it's a one-to-one look-up."
"So it thinks we all keep swapping eyes?"
"Hah, yah, well that would do it right enough.  Hey, you don't, do you?"  Her face reappeared, looking slightly worried, which on her was sexy.
"No," I said, smiling.  "Sounds like it would be painful."
"Oh no, I know how we'd do it," she said.
"No way!"  That was Dax's voice.  "No eye-swapping.  This isn't a Phillip K Dick life."
"Nah, it's Ballardian," I said, gesturing back outside.  "If people calm down a little more I reckon we'll go into one of those pauses he wrote about, where the whole world just sits and waits for a few years, trying to decide if there's anything to do that's still worth doing."
"Namaste," said Dax.

I headed further into the coffee shop, into the gloom where it got a little colder.  Dax was sitting at a little bank of tables, all pushed together to form a longer one.  On the tables were boxes of bullets, each box holding twenty-four steel rounds.  Each round engraved with the nine thousand names of God.  I counted quickly, there were eight boxes, and a ninth not yet full.
"Where did you get so many?" I asked.  My skin crawled very slightly to see them all lying there like that, so much potential power inert and inactive.
"Anna-Mix," he said, not looking up.  His fingers were tying something almost invisible around another bullet, preparing it to go into the ninth box along with the rest.  "I don't know where she gets them from.  I know it's not the Needle, he's not doing much business at the moment."
"Is he recovered then?"
"Somewhat.  Seems like being the subject of prophecy can leave its marks on a man."
"Is he safe still?"
"Harder to say."  Dax placed the bullet into its box, and started putting the lids on each of them.  "Two hundred and eight," he said.  "The Needle won't be any use to us until we know for certain what's come back, so count him out.  This time, we do it without him."
"No great loss," I said.  It was, but he hadn't featured heavily, except maybe a way to resupply ammunition if we needed it, and with two hundred and eight rounds, maybe we wouldn't.  I'd never expected to be able to get that many.
"Mr. Bendix?"
"Isn't saying much at the moment, so She can't be saying much either.  They won't tell us what's going on until they think we need to act."
"Could be too late by then."  Dax nodded, and I half-smiled.
"Lehar's still at the Café," he said.  "She's keeping an eye on the Street.  She says it's all quiet so far, but Lissa's been missing for the last two days and Asian Steve's been seen twice."
"Twice?"  Lissajoux was a joker in the pack, a card I'd love to have on our side, but we had no hold over him.  Asian Steve was a barometer, and if he was coming out of his den then he was worried that it wasn't safe in there.  And that man had better defences than most fortresses.  I'd seen him face down an angry Oni and walk away.
"Yeah.  Lehar said he had to be nervous because he was so calm and controlled."
Dax finished putting the lids on the bullets and pushed one box over to me.  "You need these."
"I know."  I was still reluctant to take them.  Each bullet would be the undoing of something or someone; sometimes catastrophically.  I felt uneasy knowing I had such power to hand.
"Remember the Septentrional Fortress?" asked Dax.  He didn't wait for a response.  "This will be worse.  Much worse."

Chiaroscuro

Anna-Mix moved quickly, her carpet-bag pulled tightly against her hip. The carpet-bag was blue, and wriggled now and then. She clutched it at the top like an outsize purse in a single hand, even though it was large enough to fit a child inside. A string of yellowed fake-pearls rattled around her neck, and her dress, long and white, floated on the air around her.

She moved along old paths, fast paths, paths that weren't hidden from sight but somehow went unseen amongst other people. She crossed the park in eighteen seconds, leaving behind her joggers for whom the traverse took several minutes. There was a scent of bonfires in the air, and a crispness like an October morning in the north, and then Anna-Mix had stepped off one path and onto another and the park was gone, a fleeting memory of much space condensed into something intense. The new path wound by the river, lengthened by the presence of flowing water and unable to cross it. Anna-Mix quickened her pace, aware of something in the water that was just as aware of her. An old pact was being remembered, and a decision being taken about whether it was too old to be honoured.

Another moment of transition, another couple of seconds back where everyone was, where people could see her as clearly as she could see them, and then she was on yet a third path, one that threw tiny sparks up behind her wherever her feet trod. She glanced behind her now, every few seconds, scanning for a hunter. There would have to be one, because there always was. She would outrun the hunter because she had no choice.

Just for an instant the path wavered and faded and a busy road emerged from the background trying to instate itself and she felt her grip slip. Something twisted, and her breath caught in her throat. Her eyes stung with acrid tears and she almost reached for a hand that wasn't there, a suggestion of a friend who would stand her aside from the chase and hide her until the hunter had gone by. The siren of an ambulance wailed and she heard a voice shouting.

'For the good name of paediatrics you must die!' screeched a man nearby and she believed him.

The path faded. The sparks from her steps hung again in the air, tiny burning embers, emissaries of a hell long unseen, and the ambulance stayed its course, Anna-Mix frozen between its headlights.

The carpet-bag wriggled and Anna-Mix blinked. The path reappeared like an elastic band snapping back and the siren of the ambulance wailed away somewhere else. She turned, and looked behind her again, and although there was no-one watching, no-one waiting, she turned back to her path forwards and started to run.

In the Excess Cafe, Dax walked through the door, and looked over to the table where the writer sat, tasting the rage in the salt.

Northern Dawn

Dax stopped walking and leaned back against the trunk of a nearby Sycamore. The trees ended a few feet further on, and beyond them was a grassy plain. A herd of zebras were grazing on the grass and hadn't noticed his stealthy approach. In one hand he held a stiletto, its blade four times longer than its handle and darkened so as not to reflect light and give him away. In the other hand he held a bola, three heavy balls connected by strong, thin lightweight cord that he'd use to bring a zebra down before moving in for the kill. His face was smooth and pale though, definitely not the face of an outdoorsman or hunter.

There was a soft crunch in the undergrowth off to his left, but he didn't react. A man came forward, crouching slightly. He was wearing a pin-striped business suit, italian leather shoes and clutching a document wallet in one hand. He looked uncomfortable.

"We have a task for you, Mr. Dax," said the besuited man. He offered the document wallet. On the grassy plain the zebras started looking around nervously at the sound of his voice. Dax sighed and slipped the stiletto into a sheath at his hip that ran down the side of his leg. He took the document wallet and opened it. There were two pieces of paper inside. One was a glossy photograph, and the other was a brief biography.

"This is Anna-Mix," said Dax holding the photograph up in front of the besuited man. "There has been a mistake."
"There is no mistake," said the besuited man. He was sweating, and there was a slight tremor in his voice. The zebras in the distance were starting to jostle each other as they prepared to flee.
"This bio is incomplete," said Dax, returning the photograph to the folder and looking at the other page. "There's no real history here, the last-known location is given as a city, not an address -- what are you expecting me to do with this?"
"We pay more when the information is somewhat, ah, constrained."
"I'm not taking this one."
"Mr. Dax," said the besuited man, his voice gaining steel from somewhere and scaring the zebras enough at last that they bolted, a black-and-white stampede across the plain. "There is no question of you not taking this, this is your job."
"What did she do?"
"She has gone rogue, Mr. Dax. She purloined one of our operatives who was monitoring her behaviour, which we were doing because she'd not checked in in three months. You will do your job, and you will see to it that we are not compromised."
"None of that is in here," said Dax. He frowned and checked the backs of both pieces of paper. "If I'm tracking down a rogue, then I need more information, not less. This maybe a game to you and your --" he paused, and managed to somehow spit "gentlemen", just missing an italian leather shoe, "but to me this is a matter of life and death. Even possibly mine."
"You have what we think you need to know."
"I'll need a contact then. Someone who thinks I need to know more."
"You'll meet him in the usual place. We've been keeping his salt refilled."
Dax sighed again, and stared at his feet for a few seconds. "The Excess Cafe," he said quietly. "It's strange what you can't leave behind you."
The besuited man turned away, and started picking a path back through the undergrowth. Dax waited for him to get about twenty-feet away, then whirled the bola around his head a couple of times and threw it. It span through the air and coiled tightly around the legs of the besuited man, bringing him down with a sharp cry.
"There are lions out here," said Dax, walking past him. "And the strings of the bola are coated with curare, so be careful about getting it on bare skin."

Anna-Mix

Anna-Mix trembled and talked to herself in a quiet voice. She wore a long white dress like an old-fashioned night-gown, a string of yellowed fake-pearls around her neck, and carried a carpet bag. Sometimes she found things and put them in the carpet bag; no-one ever saw her take anything out of it. Two days ago she'd found a ripped blue dog collar and had put that in her bag, smiling hugely and showing her teeth. Now she was eyeing some soft lemons rolling in the gutter next to crisp autumn leaves and the fingers of her left hand were twitching spasmodically.

Across the street from where she was stood, her face almost hawk-like as she concentrated on her lemon-prize, was a small white Ka in which were sat two small white men: midgets. The driver was smoking a cigar from which greasy gray smoke rose, and the passenger was pointing a digi-cam at Anna-Mix. A little red light on the front of the digi-cam told anyone who cared that it was recording. The midgets had been following Anna-Mix for three days.

There was a moment when everyone seemed to pause: just for an instant no-one moved, the traffic waited for a light to change colour, a young girl to cross at the zebra crossing; people looked in shop windows and their attention was caught, or sunlight through the leaves of the trees in the park across the road from Anna-Mix sparkled brightly and hypnotically and enchanted them; the postman stopped kicking the dog just before his foot connected, and the elderly matron whose dog it was froze while she gathered all of her righteous indignation, normally saved for accusing people in church of backsliding. Just for an instant the local area seemed to exist in an inter-calary second, and somehow in that extra moment of time, that spare second that was unowned, unrecognised, Anna-Mix moved.

The traffic started again, people moved on unsure why they'd stopped, and the postman and matron started an argument that would end in nine months time in a still-birth of both child and marriage. And Anna-Mix plucked the midget from the passenger seat of the Ka and put him and his camera into her carpet bag.

Soft, rotting lemons rolled in the gutter with crisp autumn leaves that were waiting to crunch under someone's foot and there was a sensation of neglect, and then it was gone again. The midget driving the car looked round and saw no Anna-Mix, and then looked the other way and saw his passenger had disappeared. With a soft expletive spat out next to the cigar he started the Ka's engine and drove away.