“I don’t recall hearing anything.”
“Could be nothing. Accidental drownings happen all the time.”
Of course, if it hadn’t been an accident, if the girl had jumped into the river to escape the visions she didn’t understand … Families that had blood prophets either hid among normal humans in solitary fear or gathered together. So a blood prophet in one family could lead to other girls living in the same area who were also cassandra sangue.
“Fine,” the Controller said. “Go east. See what you can find. I assume you’re splitting your expenses among all your potential buyers?”
“For the most part,” Jones replied. “Expenses for obtaining a particular girl for a private acquisition would be paid by the buyer.”
“Of course.” He considered a moment. “Some trouble will be stirring around Lake Etu. Just something to be aware of when you’re traveling.”
“Trouble tends to stir the pot and bring what is hidden to the surface.” Jones stood and tugged his jacket into place. “Well. I must be off. I’ll call you when I have a potential delivery.”
The Controller watched the man leave the office. He had sent trained fighters to the Lakeside Courtyard to reacquire Meg Corbyn. They had failed. More than failed. Perhaps Phineas Jones’s quaint looks and mesmeric abilities could do what guns and explosives could not.
Jean pulled the broken needle out of the seam of her slipper. It wasn’t much to work with, but she’d taken it while the Walking Names were distracted by another girl having a fit of hysterics.
No water in the girls’ cells. Nothing but a bedpan if a girl couldn’t wait for her turn to be taken to the toilet. And with the Walking Names preoccupied by what might be happening outside the compound, they weren’t following the schedule as diligently as usual, especially now that some of the girls had seen things so terrible even the euphoria hadn’t shielded them completely from the horror.
She knew about terrible things and horror. The wounds that were inflicted on her to harvest her blood produced visions too. But they gagged her because they wanted her pain, so she saw the terrible without anything to shield her mind.
She didn’t know if she was halfway crazy or all the way crazy now. Her mind worked. What she overheard, she understood, and she overheard plenty because the Walking Names no longer paid attention to her presence and talked about the other girls they had to deal with—girls who were breaking down mentally because of what they had seen.
Girls talked about cities in ruins, about fields burning, about people killing each other for the last bags of food in a store, about corpses damming a stream that provided the drinking water for a village. They talked about glass jars full of smoke, and a community swimming pool full of severed heads. For the past few days, it didn’t matter what the client asked about, whether it was business or politics or the best time to plant crops. The questions didn’t matter because all the girls were seeing things too terrible to forget.
She’d seen those things too, but the streets and buildings she saw didn’t match any of the training images for cities or towns in Thaisia, and the street signs were in a language she didn’t recognize.
The Controller and other men like him had set something in motion. They thought prophecies would help them control the world and everything in it. They hadn’t considered that they wouldn’t be able to control how people felt.
The Others weren’t anything close to human, but they had feelings too. They had lots of feelings.
Jean wet a spot on her nightie’s hem, then rubbed the needle clean as best she could. Pricking the skin deep enough to draw blood wouldn’t give her enough, but a scratch made by a needle would draw attention because the Walking Names would know it wasn’t caused by a razor or a beating.
There was one place they wouldn’t think to look.
Hooking the side of her mouth with one finger, she put the needle in her mouth and dragged the point along the lower left-hand side of her gum. As the blood welled up, she wiped off the needle and carefully put it back in the slipper, fighting against the building pain and the need to speak. As long as she didn’t speak, she would remember the visions, remember the prophecy. But without spoken words, there would be terrible pain instead of the euphoria.
The Walking Names. The ones who touched me today. What is going to happen to them?
She swallowed the blood and the pain … and saw the first visions of the prophecy.
Too much. Too terrible.
She grabbed her pillow and covered her face. Then she whispered, describing the images to no one. Euphoria rolled through her body as she spoke, replacing the pain and clouding the images as she described them.
When the prophecy ended, Jean lowered the pillow.
What she’d seen. It was coming here. Maybe not all of it, but enough.
Shivering, she lay down on her narrow bed and pulled up the covers.
She tried not to think about how the Walking Names were going to look one day. Instead she focused on the last image that came to her as the prophecy ended. She had stopped speaking out loud by then, so this image was clear in her memory.
For the rest of the afternoon, she pondered the significance of seeing her own hand holding a jar of honey.
CHAPTER 11
On Earthday morning, Monty left the Universal Temple and walked down Market Street toward home. As he did every Earthday, he stopped at Nadine’s Bakery & Café and picked up enough food for the day. Kowalski had invited him over for the midday meal, and he intended to go, but if something came up and he couldn’t make it, he wanted a bit of fresh food in the house.
Besides, stopping at Nadine’s was a way to feel connected to the people in his neighborhood and hear the gossip on the street.
On Windsday evening, he and Captain Burke were the only people in Lakeside who knew the residents of Jerzy were going to be evicted. By Thaisday, the television news was broadcasting the terra indigene’s decision coast to coast. On Firesday, Lakeside radio talk shows were full of outrage that humans could be thrown out of their homes, and did Elliot Wolfgard want to comment.
Elliot Wolfgard’s only comment was that, like anyone who rented property to a tenant, the terra indigene were within their rights to refuse to renew a lease if the tenants proved themselves to be unsuitable. That caused enough histrionics that Captain Burke put all his men on standby in case a mob formed to move against the Courtyard.
His concern proved unnecessary. As soon as the sun went down on Firesday evening, a storm swept through the city. High winds and sleet encouraged everyone to stay home. Lightning struck with such precision that it almost took out all the radio and television stations. The next day there was no mention on the TV news of anything happening outside the Northeast Region of Thaisia, and all radio talk shows were replaced with music.
Warning given. Warning heeded.
So today at the temple and on the street where he’d become a familiar face, several people watched him because they knew he was a policeman, but no one approached and asked him the question that was on everyone’s mind: if provoked, would the Others really evict the two hundred thousand people living in Lakeside?
No one had asked the question. Probably because everyone already knew the answer—and feared it.