Free So Vile a Sin by Ben Aaronovitch, Kate Orman Page A

brain wouldn’t do anything it oughtn’t.
    62
    She switched the light off again, pulled the pillow over her head, and prayed to the Goddess of Justice and Mercy that she would get some sleep before work tomorrow.
    Although the Yellow Oasis never closed, there was a period around noon when no customers were expected and things were relaxed enough for Roz to sit at the bar in peace.
    Her engagement ring clinked against the shot glass of Wakeywakey as she downed the viciously bitter stuff. Mei Feng was right: she should have taken it off – real emeralds, real gold, real conspicuous.
    She’d had only about three hours’ sleep for the last four nights.
    Twelve hours of combined security and domestic work, half an hour back to the hotel. Trying to fall asleep with the thumping music and herbal stench of the bar still in her head, wondering when Mr Cheesecloth was going to pick the lock on her door and come visiting.
    Mother of Nobody was lurking behind the bar, washing glasses and peering out across the main room with her tiny eyes. They were almost hidden beneath the shelf of bone that protected her low forehead. Her skull was mostly bald, except for a fringe of dirty hair at the back and a few wiry hairs sticking out on top.
    Practical Xenoculture had barely mentioned the Ogrons. There wasn’t much to know about them, the course designers figured: sub-Neanderthals who didn’t have much to say, useful for manual labour and as grunt infantry. So long as one wasn’t pointing a weapon at you or trying to eat your leg, they were safely ignored.
    That’s what the course designers thought, anyway. Roz had had some run-ins with the oggies in her time that had made her wonder just what was going on inside those inch-thick skulls.
    Besides, Mother of Nobody didn’t just wash glasses. She owned a third share in the bar.
    The Ogron matron had been alternately bossing her around and making sure she was all right all week. She’d seen the Ogron stop a customer beating up one of the Skagettes, while Roz was still struggling through the dancing crowd. Mother of Nobody had 63
    picked up the slender alien as though she was a baby, staring down at the drunken lout until he whimpered and crawled away.
    ‘Penny for them,’ said Mother of Nobody.
    Roz snapped back into awareness. She’d been staring out across the room, looking as though she’d been working, but the exhaustion had worn her edge right down.
    ‘I was just wondering how Genai was doing,’ she said. ‘That was a pretty nasty cut over her eye.’
    ‘She fine. Lying down. Not working today,’ rumbled the Ogron. ‘Give me someone to look after.’
    ‘Someone to boss round,’ said Roz.
    Mother of Nobody rumbled again. ‘Lie down, Genai, stay lying down, no drink anything or shoot up today. Lie down, lie down.
    Now, Ogron boy,’ said Mother of Nobody, ‘he easy to lead, not like girl with splitting head and bad temper. You act like he stupid and he follow: he act stupid. Got mind like mud.’
    ‘You mean clay,’ said Roz.
    ‘I mean mud,’ said Mother of Nobody, emphatically. ‘Slippery, slip through fingers, out of ears and make mess on floor. His mother or mother-sister clean up mud, put back in head. Ogron boy with no mother is lost boy. He get notion to work for metal gods or human or any damn thing that tell him what to do. You understand?’
    ‘Yeah,’ said Roz, thinking suddenly of Chris. ‘I understand.’
    ‘Show you something.’ Mother of Nobody reached down behind the counter and brought out a stone, which she placed on the bar. ‘This good rock,’ she said. Then she put a second stone next to the first. ‘This bad rock. You see difference?’
    Roz looked. Both rocks were of the same size and, as far as she could tell, of the same grainy blue-grey stone. ‘I’m no geologist,’
    she said.
    Mother of Nobody’s chest rumbled again. ‘You can’t tell difference between good rock and bad rock, no human can,’ she said. ‘And you call we