Vengeance by Colin Harvey Page B

showed a hint of the real man's undoubted charm. Judging by what emerged from the spellhound's efforts, working overalls were his usual garb, although there was an occasional glimpse of finer clothes, as if a curtain were drawn back then dropped again.
    She never ceased to be delighted with the spellhound's talents. Whenever it ‘asked’ a witness about O'Malley, it would conjure up the portrait, and the more it learned of their quarry, the more substantial that portrait would become.
    —He has had the spells out. Here, here and here.—It pointed and O'Malley simulacra held the box of Imrhaddyon.—Some spells have been taken by other people.—
    She bit her lip: Two trails to pursue . “I want the other spells."
    —It would make more sense to pursue O'Malley. He still has most of them.—
    "Hmm,” she said doubtfully. “I still want those other spells. I need to think on this. Can you sketch the other people?"
    Images began to form beside O'Malley's. The first and weakest of them was an old woman dressed in Atlantican costume. “Oh joy. Some of the spells are halfway around the world,” Jocasta said. “Duff won't be pleased. More expense."
    —Lack of resolution means she's probably only visited once.—
    The second image was of a young man dressed in a loincloth and face paints. “From the Meroë Matriarchy,” Jocasta said.
    The image was no better than the first.—A single visit?—
    The last image was a young man, tall and handsome, and Jocasta gasped at his almost unbearable beauty; he was too good-looking to be called merely handsome. He had curly brown hair and dark brown eyes. The mouth was wide and generous, and looked as though it might once have smiled a lot, although that wasn't his current expression. The strength of the image implied that he had visited often. She wondered with mounting excitement what on earth he could want here. “The frequency of his visits suggests he's local. Could he be sheltering O'Malley?” She had to know. “Bring him,” she said. “For the moment forget O'Malley. Bring him here, alive."
    —I think you're making an error. Duff's instructions—
    "If you want to work for Duff so badly, maybe I should sell you to him, and when he's finished with you he can boil you down into glue or experiment on you. In the meantime,” she took a deep breath and continued more calmly, “you work for me."
    —As you wish.—
    It left, leaving her alone in the quiet and dark.
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5
    In the maze of canyons to the south of the City of Light, amongst the foothills of rubbish, was a collection of boxes. Here was where the detritus of civilisation came to rest. Some of that detritus walked on two legs and spoke. Slum, ghetto, shantytown, barrio: All just words, labels to describe different facets of the insect eye of poverty.
    It was a landfill tip, except that what was rubbish to others—such as the rusted hulks of vehicles or carcasses of containers—was treasure to the canyon dwellers.
    Flyblown and nauseatingly redolent of ordure, sweat and decay, the canyons hunkered beneath an unforgiving sky which only softened when the rains came, bringing in their wake flash floods that scoured the canyons.
    Even the gulls and rats avoided the place, lest they end up as dish du jour. Only the insect kingdom fought with these lowest of the low, poorest of the poor, for the scarce pickings of the sites. To many outsiders, the detritus were little better than vermin themselves, not even human. To those outsiders they were incapable of pleasure and pain, love and hate. And therefore whatever was done to them, whatever they suffered, was of little or no consequence.
    In the canyon maze, the detritus went about their daily business of survival. Disease was rife, malnutrition the norm rather than the exception. They had no time, even had they the inclination, to consider that they lived on the very margins of life and death. They were too busy scratching an existence from the