The Sensual Flex

Previously: Nia Muto (the captain) does a number on Daniel (the turncoat) and his teeth, then Dezzetti (the cowboy) (named after a comic strip I drew when I was very little) tries to kill Nia but Kleina (the hot tub sniper) kills him first. I want to say this chapter will be less violent but that would be a fib.

— 59 —

In the resulting commotion, Batya finds herself right back down on the floor, knocked aside by the captain’s bodyguard who was far too late to guard any bodies. Her ears are ringing and she can’t quite make out what everyone is yelling, which is fine.

Her eyes land upon Nia Muto, there in the eye of the yelling, looking tickled by the attempt on her life. She takes out a frilly mouchoir, dabs the spray of the cattleman’s blood from her cheeks, then delicately drops it to the floor like an old-timey flirt.

Bat feels a tiny sharp pain in her hand. She takes a look and sees a tooth embedded there in her palm. Gotta be one of Daniel’s, right? Sure enough, the kid is right there next to her, mouth and nose bloodied, scrabbling for his incisors like he’s gonna get them replanted in his head somehow.

She thinks back to when she got her own front teeth punched out and how furious it made her, but also how it felt like a kind of violation, an insult to her body that went deeper than any of her innumerable scars. And so her urge to boot Daniel’s danglers into next week subsides into gentle pity. Kid’s a bottom feeder trying to get through the day, just like her. I mean, she wouldn’t’ve turned rat quite as fast as he did, she does believe in something called—you know what, never mind. Now that she’s had a taste of how his boss operates, she probably would’ve done the same thing.

See, people in this industry like to crow about having a code, but in Bat’s opinion that’s just a lie we tell ourselves to give us some temporary scrap of dignity. And anyway the code changes from day to day, always bending into whatever shape it needs to be. So she gives the kid his tooth back and they help each other to their feet and then give each other a look that says: Stay alive, compadre, it’s almost the weekend.

A bosun or first mate or the like sticks his head in the doorway and says, “Heard a ruckus, cap’n.”

“That one meant to assassinate me,” Nia says, pointing at Dezzetti being dragged away by a pair of sailors, his spurs scraping twin trails along the planks. “A pigeon-livered stab at a coup.”

“Gosh,” the bosun says, hardly glancing at the corpse as it passes by.

“Fret not, matey, Kleina nipped it.” Nia nods her head in the direction of the hot tub sniper, who nods back.

“Wasn’t dreadful fretted,” the bosun says. “Anyhow, Gorgon’s locked and laded.”

“Good, being ashore this long gives me the jigs.” She flips up the lid of a flared copper voice pipe installed by the bar. “This is Captain Muto speaking,” she says, her voice reverberating through the ship. “I am the morning star that brings you life and warmth. We are once again stocked to the brim with liquor and lucre, and thus it is time to sever the thin fleshy fibers that bind us to land and set sail into the exhilarating freedom that only the Salty Abyss can provide. Anchors aweigh.”

The crew looks like they’ve heard this patter before, perhaps every week, every moon, forever.

Bat feels the Gorgon’s engines come to life and a surge of panic courses through her veins. Her escape routes are vanishing fast, too fast. She has no intention of being trapped on this ship out in the middle of the ocean, so she does what she thinks Mina would do. She makes her voice as professional as possible and says, “Well, my work here is done, thank you for a swell time but I should probably disembark the fuck out.” (Her nerves made her lose grip on the Mina voice toward the end there.)

“Nonsense,” Nia says, slapping the lid of the tube shut. “Thanks to your interruption, our game now has an empty chair that needs filling.”

“What!” the Harbormaster cries. “She is not taking Dezzetti’s place. He’s out, fair and square, that’s one less person I have to beat.”

Nia looks at him with disgust. “Without the four cardinal points, the game loses all sense.”

The spider-veil woman lets out a sigh that sounds like a crypt being pried opened after a century. “Sense has nothing to do with it, Nia. We play on with three.”

Nia runs her fingers through the pool of warm blood on the tabletop, then sniffs its scent. “I find it concerning that I have to remind you whose ship you are on, and who the dealer is.”

The hubbub among her crewmembers hushes into sweaty silence.

“The rules,” she says, “which we all spent an exhausting amount of time negotiating, dictate that we need a new East. As dealer, I have the authority to choose the player. And I choose the courier. She inherits Dezzetti’s deck, along with his debits and credits.”

“Outrageous!” the Harbormaster says, slamming down his meaty fist.

Bat’s getting the gut knots. The Gorgon lurches seaward. “This sounds like a fun time and all but I don’t even know what the game even is, so–”

“You ever play poker?” Nia says.

“No.”

“Good, it’s nothing like that. Sit.”

Bat feels very confident that if she sits in that chair she will never get back up, and will in fact soon have her very own head-hole courtesy of Kleina. She desperately tries to scrape together a plan but then remembers what Margaret said the other day:

My dearest Batya, our work demands absolute faith in one’s instincts, in being able to quickly assess any given scenario and respond to it as it happens. This is why improvisation is always superior to planning. Because it reckons with the actual as opposed to the forecast. And my favorite thing about you, sweet beautiful Batya, is that you always know exactly when to jettison the plan and just do whatever feels right.

This is not what Margaret said—at all–but Bat, in this moment, tries to believe this thing about herself, and then she does believe it, and then without thinking about it too much, or at all, she just does whatever feels right.

She shrieks and runs toward the door. Three toughs are in the way (not deliberately, they just happened to be hanging out between her and the exit) and she hurls herself into them. En route, she takes a moment to appreciate the sensual flex of her tailored slacks. Then she punches her rings into an eye. She grips a goatee and pulls it hard to one side. She puts her good elbow against a jaw and feels something give way.

What did her sister say? You’re an animal that’s good at hurting people and that’s it.

That’s right. That is exactly right.

And now that the contretemps is good and warmed up, she figures she’ll take out a concealed weapon to escalate things a little bit. And this morning, like every morning, she did indeed stash various items in her clothes, including her stiletto and a pair of throwing stars. However, the secret pockets in her new pants are in unfamiliar locations and, out of habit, she reaches for an old hiding spot and finds nothing there and gets flustered. And that’s all it takes for someone to get through her defenses and hit her in the throat.

That someone is Nia Muto herself.

They go at it and Bat is pleasantly surprised by how fierce this dainty cuckoo is. She skips the getting-to-know-you sparring and goes straight into clawing and jabbing Bat’s tender parts. Bat lets her do what she wants for a bit, then pops her in the mouth to dizzy her up. The captain finds this funny, and Bat finds it funny that she finds it funny. Nia spits out some blood, then they trade punches, then get in a clinch, then Bat bites her neck. Her false front teeth go in deep and Nia gasps.

Then she does a bizarre twist Bat’s never seen before and manages to get a grip on her arm and bend it back at an awkward angle.

The pain is severe, and immediately gets Bat hot and bothered. She’s thinking about how she might prolong this skirmish when Nia pushes harder and dislocates her shoulder.

Fight’s over. The sailors give a perfunctory cheer.

Nia catches her breath, fans herself with her hand. “Goodness,” she whispers. “You are quite the hellhound.”

Bat is very pale and very still and very stimulated. “Apologies, ma’am, that was uncalled for.”

“Never apologize for what you are. You need to put your shoulder back in?”

“Yes,” Bat says. She wants to ralph, does not ralph. The Gorgon picks up speed and she can hear the din of the docks fading away behind them.

“Quickly, then. You and I have business.”

Bat shakily makes her way over to a wooden column by the soaking tub. She gives the sniper girl a tight-lipped smile, then slams her arm against the pillar. It doesn’t seem to fix the problem.

The Harbormaster is still over there harrumphing. “I wonder, will we ever get back to the game? Or do you intend to assault every single lowlife that heaves into view?”

“I do not trouble myself with intent, Roger,” Nia says, seating herself at the head of the table. “When I see something wrong, I simply put it right.”

The veiled woman says, “Like that lad’s teeth.”

“Yes,” Nia says, reaching under the table and taking out a long, flat case. “Now, I would like to show our new East what she’ll be playing for.”

Bat’s about to go round two with her shoulder but stops to see what’s what. “Is that a lot of cash? Because I could really use a lot of cash.”

The Harbormaster says, “This prize is the reason we’ve all been holed up in this stinking room for two days straight. A prize you do not deserve.”

Nia unlocks the case and opens it up, tilting it toward Bat so she can see. Inside, nestled within a custom-carved notch lined with faux velvet, is a black scimitar.

Bat’s laugh is hoarse and delighted. “Oh my god. I know that sword.”

“There is nothing funny about the Merciful Wind,” the veiled woman says.

“It’s called the Harmattan,” Bat says. “It’s really sharp.”

Her pain-fueled delirium suddenly blossoms into good spirits. She again rams her shoulder into the column and this time the ball goes back in the socket and, for the two or three seconds before she blacks out, she’s the cheeriest she’s been all week.

+++

This has been Chapter 59 of Chokeville, a novel by Josh Fireland.

Next up: The Game is Carrick