She had been tracking this group for several days, and had already witnessed two of their “performances,” for want of a better word. She balked at calling them sermons; there was nothing holy or reverent here that she could see. The group had come to recognize her, not in the least since her appearance was so distinctive, and she had told them her name was Mitra, a preferred alias she had used a few times while infiltrating similar pseudo religious groups. As “Mitra” she was trusted, a gentle-hearted innocent with a sickly parent who was looking for a new family in the form of this congregation. The story gave her enough credibility to pass herself off unnoticed as the false sermon continued.
While the crowd’s attention was on the preaching Stone Widow, Domi ducked under the stage and peered at what lay beneath. The stage had been constructed of several sheets of wood, placed end to end and held aloft by piled cinder blocks at regular intervals. Visibility was poor underneath, but Domi could see that the area was being used for storage. She wanted to know what was being stored.
The woman speaker’s coat was under there, neatly folded and placed by the open end of the stage. Other than that, the usual kind of things one would expect from travelers—several canteens filled with water along with some travel bags. Domi crouch-walked toward the bags—one of which was unbuckled at the top—and peered inside, spying a change of underwear along with some dried strips of cured meat in a separate bag with a clasp tie at its top. She sniffed the latter bag for a moment before moving on, head ducked beneath the stage. The height of the stage was about three feet, and Domi had to move slowly to find her way around.
Above her, the woman continued her proclamations about being the mother of the god’s child, and the crowd oohed and aahed as prompted. Through the medium of the low stage, the voices sounded hollow and eerie, as if coming from a great length of tunnel.
Up ahead, Domi spotted a wooden box that had been pushed a little more than arm’s length from the stage’s edge and against the side wall, just enough to keep it safe. The box was about fourteen inches in height and roughly square.
Checking the edges of the stage for movement and confirming there was none, Domi made her way slowly toward the crate on silent tread.
* * *
UP AT THE FRONT OF THE crowd, the Stone Widow was continuing to explain her role in the New Order. Words like messiah were being bandied about, child of god, saviour. The audience was lapping it up. The sense of relief was palpable; these people craved something to believe in now that their god was gone.
“When this child is born,” the woman continued, “he will be the first step in the evolution of our new world. A child born of god and woman. A force to lead us all.”
Edwards had reached the front of the group now, and he stared at the woman, eyeing her belly. Edwards had been seeded with one of the semisentient stones that came from Ullikummis to fulfill his will. While most of the stone growth had now been removed from his skull, parts of it tenaciously remained—not enough to do any damage to Edwards, but enough that he could sense other obedience stones and their ilk. He sure as hell could detect something here, but it was dull, like a niggling itch.
“Well?” Kane asked over the Commtact. “Anything?”
“Definitely something here,” Edwards replied. “Gonna have to pinpoint the source.”
As he spoke, Edwards reached forward, hand outstretched, and slapped his palm against the speaker’s ankle, the way others of the congregation had.
The woman was surprised by the hard grip, and she stopped midspeech to stare at the shaved-headed man who had grabbed her. “Let go, you’re hurting,” she said.
“Just wanted to touch the sainted lady,” Edwards explained as the robed figures came hurrying toward him from the back of the podium.
“Get away from the glorious widow,” one of the robed goons ordered.
The woman on stage kicked out and stepped back from Edwards, leaving him stumbling forward into the stage. The buzz in his head was there, but it was slight, and touching the so-called Stone Widow didn’t seem to make any appreciable difference.
“I just wanted to,” Edwards said, “to be close to the new life that’s coming.”
“So do I,” another member of the crowd called. “Let me feel the new life.”
“Let me be close,” another shouted.
“And me!”
Suddenly, Kane and Grant found themselves being pushed forward in a human wave as the crowd surged to get closer to the Stone Widow, even as Edwards was shoved violently against the edge of the stage itself.
“Fuck, Edwards, what have you started?” Kane muttered into his Commtact link.
* * *
BENEATH THE STAGE, Domi’s crimson eyes widened as the wooden box began to throb, its contents rattling within.
* * *
CONFUSED, BLACK JOHN Jefferson peered around him, trying to figure out where he was. He was surrounded by jungle, dense foliage thick with sap and the buzzing of insects like a wall of sound on the air. Tiny black flies swarmed about his wounds, feeding on his blood.
There was no real path to speak of, and Jefferson looked behind him, trying to recall if that was the direction he had come from. He had been on board the sinking fishing scow, had dipped under the waves when it had finally disappeared. The wound on his head had felt bastard hot where the sun struck it, but the salty water of the sea had made it sting even worse, doing nothing to cool either his skin or his temperament.
He had floated there awhile, the waves rolling about him, sending him on an undulating journey to wherever they chose. He remembered a beach, golden sand, a jungle running along its edge, palm trees and rubber plants. He had to have blacked out somewhere and had since been running on instinct.
He could recall nights like that when he’d been drunk, and his body had continued functioning anyway, whether his mind was really awake or not. Instinct could do that to a person—the deep-rooted instinct to survive.
Black John pushed the stem of a plant away as it tickled at his nose, shoving it aside with a groan of pain. His body ached and the wounds on his chest were still weeping, a clear pus coming from the broken skin where the bullets had struck, along with tiny slivers of congealing blood like red splinters. He’d kill them; that’s what he’d do. Salt, Six, all of them. They should have followed his number-one creed—to leave no witnesses. Leaving him alive would be the last mistake those ungrateful sea dogs would make.
He battled on, fighting with the foliage, seeking something to vent his anger upon. Then, as he shoved the low branches of a towering palm out of the way, he saw the building. It sat there, nestled in the jungle’s green embrace, as big as a cathedral. Constructed of stone the color of sand, the building had grand, sloping sides and a wide expanse of steps running up its center to a smaller structure that rested at its apex. The walls were notched with carvings, shadowed crevices in some script that the pirate couldn’t recognize but assumed to be written words.
Black John eyed the building, estimating it to be more than three stories in height, but still shorter than the tallest of the palm trees surrounding it.
With nowhere left to turn, Black John trudged toward the structure, wondering if anyone was inside. He was in need of medical attention, he knew, and the blood-spot trail he left on the jungle floor informed him he likely didn’t have that much time left. He reached down for the gun in his holster only to find it was gone. It didn’t matter—whoever lived there would either help him or he’d execute them and then he’d help himself with whatever he could find. In the end, it was always that simple.
Chapter 4
Lakesh