The room was twenty degrees hotter than the corridor and filled with a madness of noise. Steam vented and hissed, clouding the room in white. Through the steam he could see machines, and around them, women. It took him a moment to realize that he had stumbled into the laundry room, great vats of water hissed and bubbled while the women stirred them with long wooden sticks. The constant motion agitated the detergent and kept the clothes both wet and soapy. One of the women looked up. Her face was sheened with a film of sweat. She wiped her forehead with the back of her hand and stepped away from the vat. She held the stick in front of her like a makeshift weapon. She lowered it as she recognized him.
Teal’c had seen her before, one of the wretches from the food line.
“What are you doing here?” Her voice was as broken as her spirit; too many years down here breathing in the chemicals, the steam and the dyes.
“I mean you no harm.”
“I didn’t say you did,” she said, setting aside her stirrer. None of the other women broke from their routine. The sound of the wooden sticks clanging against the sides of the metal vats was like some peculiar music of slavery.
“I need to find a way out.”
“There isn’t one, not for the likes of you.”
Teal’c raised an eyebrow curiously.
“A prisoner,” she said, filling in the silence.
“There is a way out of everywhere there is a way into,” Teal’c assured her. “It is the nature of doors: the way out is the way in.”
“But you don’t want to try and walk out of the front door, believe me. They’d cut you down before you took a second step.”
“I will take the risk.”
“No you won’t.”
Again Teal’c arched his eyebrow.
And again she filled in the silence, “If you haven’t looked in the mirror recently, let’s just say you don’t exactly look like one of us.”
“That is true.”
“Meaning you do not really blend in. You can’t exactly sneak out the front door disguised as a guard.” Before she could finish her train of thought there was a bang at the door. “Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t hand you over to them. Quickly. One reason?”
Teal’c shook his head — trying to clear it, to think — she took it to mean he had no reasons to tell her.
“Quickly,” she urged, this time reaching out to drag him deeper into the steam. Still shaking his head, Teal’c followed her. Behind them the door opened.
“Where is he?” one of the guards bellowed, his voice venting with the same angry hiss as the steam. Not one of the women answered. Teal’c followed the guiding hand of the woman as she drew him down behind her huge laundry vat. She pressed a finger to her lips. “We’ll find him,” the guard said, “and when we do, we’ll kill him, and we’ll kill anyone we find helping him.”
“That means you,” another voice said, making it clear he meant each and every woman in the room. Teal’c felt them stiffen. He waited for the betrayal, expecting it at any moment. It didn’t come. He knew it wasn’t him they were protecting; it was the woman helping him. That made him all the more determined to deliver a reckoning on their behalf.
“We know he’s in here,” the guard repeated. Teal’c could hear him moving about in the steam.
Still the women said nothing.
The footsteps came closer, slowing ominously as they neared the unmanned vat. “Where’s the woman meant to be working this load?”
“I’m here,” his helper said, moving around to stand between the man and Teal’c’s hiding place.
“Why weren’t you at your station?”
“Call of nature,” she said. “That, or maybe I was helping the poor wretch you’re chasing get away. That’d be just like me, wouldn’t it?”
Teal’c stiffened.
“Yes, Namaah. Just like you. What did you do?”
“I washed him up with the boil wash and shrunk him real small like a pair of your skivvies, dried him out and popped him in one of the fresh laundry baskets. I’ll roll him out later and none of you will be any the wiser.”
“You’ve got a smart mouth, woman,” the guard said. Teal’c didn’t like the way he sounded when he said it. He heard the slap of hand and flesh and, shifting his position slightly, saw the guard grabbing at the woman. “Maybe I should tell Keen that I’m claiming you. What do you think?”
“I’d rather boil my ovaries in vinegar,” she said, sweet as could be.
“It can always be arranged,” the guard promised, matching the woman’s tone. “Now, just this once, how about you tell me the truth?”
“No one came in here ‘cept you,” one of the other woman said, putting an end to their little dance of lie and flirt.
“That so ladies?” the man grunted. When none of them said anything different he moved on, walking down the line. Still they talked, their voices like ghosts. Teal’c couldn’t make out half of what was being said, but what he heard was enough to know they’d found the guard’s bodies. Finally the door closed and they were gone. Teal’c heard one of the women come up and berate his helper, voice low, tongue sharp. He didn’t move from his hiding place until she came to get him.
“You need to get out of here,” she said, stating the obvious.
He followed her as she led him further into the huge laundry room. There was a second door, and through it a set of servant’s stairs that led back up to the ground level. He followed her up.
“Why did you help me?”
She didn’t answer him. She moved with a curious limp he noticed, and between steps the fabric of her simple dress slipped back enough for him to see the withered flesh beneath. She pulled it back across quickly, but not quickly enough to hide the hard white lattice of scars that had been cut into her calf and ran all the way up to her thigh.
“Who did this to you?” Teal’c asked.
“They said they were trying to help me,” she said. It was enough.
“Come with me,” he said, meaning it. He could not imagine what so-called help could cause such scarring. It was barbaric.
She shook her head. “No.”
“This is no life.”
“This is my life. Go. There is a door halfway down that passage. It opens into a service room. There is a small window at the back of the room. You will need to break it. None of the windows in this place open. This one looks down upon the garden maze. It will be unguarded now; Keen has had his fun for the day. It’s probably the safest place in the city for you. Skirt the maze and make for the buildings on the far side. You’ll be in what used to be Eltis, the old temple district. Aim for the largest of the buildings, you’ll see one with a brass weathercock, behind it the ground dips away. Follow the slope down. There are barbed fences, you’ll need to go over or under, and then you have to cross the railway tracks. As you come up the slope on the other side you should see the first of Keen’s ravens. They’re painted all along the walls. Head for the birds. They mark the streets as unclean. In the ghetto you’ll find others, they’ll help you.”
“Come with me,” he repeated.
“I can’t,” she said, shaking her head. This time he realized how much she wanted to go through that window with him, and guessed what was holding her back. “My son is here. If I’m not back at my station in a few minutes they’ll know I helped you and he’ll be made to suffer.”
Teal’c understood. She turned to walk away before he could stop her, but at the corner she turned to look back. “You want to know why I helped you? Find Kiah, she will help you understand it all.”
“Why would she risk herself?”
“Because my mother is a better woman than I am. Now go. Please. Or this will all be for nothing.” And then she was gone.
Teal’c did not wait to see who came around the corner next.
Chapter Twenty-six
Fall At Your Feet
The Mujina sat alone amid the bones of the temple.
It had chosen to make its nest among the
dead — it gave the creature a unique connection to the place. The memories of the fallen clung to the marrow of their bones. If it closed its eyes, the creature could lose itself in all of it, in all of the sadness and joy of the dead, from the first touches of skin against skin, the first kisses, the first nights as lovers — firsts that affirmed and reaffirmed life — to the lasts: the last kisses, the last sighs, the last breaths and last goodbyes. The bones remembered. All of those intense moments were written forever on the bones of the dead, along with so many more triumphs and tragedies in between. All it needed was someone with the gift to read them and set them free so that they might never be forgotten.
The Mujina did not forget. Not once. Not one memory. It remembered.
And in remembering, it consumed, taking on the loves and hatreds and petty jealousies of the dead as though they were its own. All of those emotions lived once more, this time inside his skin. They vented with their own voices, clamoring inside his skull. The chorus of the damned was as maddening as it was compelling. It needed to be heard and the Mujina needed to hear it. That was new. It had lived such a long time, so much of it alone, but this was the first time it had nested among the dead, the first time the bones had shared their secrets.
Of course the dead were no sort of company. They did not need it, not the way it needed the others. The way it needed the woman. Its loneliness never faded. It had thought that in her it had found someone who cared. It had sung to her. It had wept at her touch and her promise. It had waited. But she had not returned. Was she out there now, looking for it, trying to make good on her promise to come back? Was she as lost as it was? Or had she forgotten it?
The Mujina did not forget. Not once. Not one memory. It remembered.
And in remembering, it hurt.
All of these others crowding around its nest, they meant nothing compared with her. It was all for her. When it remembered the woman it hurt, but the hurt was beautiful as much as it was cruel.
The creature looked up from the fibula it cradled in its lap to the high walls. It truly was an amazing construction, a temple raised from human bones. Skulls set one atop another and another formed the pillars with which the walls were supported. The bones had yellowed, some more than others, giving each curve and angle a subtle hue. The shades came together to merge into the color of decay. Some of the bones were childishly small, barely formed, while others showed the effects of bone-eating sickness and age. The Mujina sat with its back against the altar, the pelvic bone of a dead mother pressing into the base of its spine. It shared the moments of birth with her, the echo of her screams coming down through the centuries to swell inside its head. So much hope and so much pain. And for what? Her son was interred in the pillar beside the nave. He didn’t live into his second year. This necrotic temple didn’t discriminate against age or disease; every corpse was welcome to add to its twisted majesty. The only aspect shared by the dead was their heritage; they were all Kelani. The temple was a mocking monument raised by Corvus Keen to show the world that even in death the Corvani were masters.
The Mujina drank it all in, bloated on it.
But it was not enough.
It was never enough.
Because she was not there.
The others were outside, the superstitious and the sacrilegious, waiting to fall at its feet in their devotions. They came because it was a gift from the gods themselves, a thing worthy of worship. They brought it gifts, things they thought it might like or deem worthy, chipped and battered relics, sacred stones, parchments of lost wisdom, lucky charms, coins, but all it craved was their love. No, that wasn’t true. It had craved their love, but now it had come to savor something darker, something it had not tasted for so long: fear.
It was such a potent thing. They adored it, but even that was not enough to mask their terror; they feared it every bit as much as they adored it. The Mujina contented itself with that duality. But it knew it wasn’t enough, not when there were worlds out there, thousands upon thousands of them, that could both love and fear it. The thought was potent. Toxic.
In its mind the Mujina imagined worshippers spread all across the galaxies, infinite in their devotion, thousands upon thousands of their bone churches erected to glorify it, their icons fashioned in its own shifting image. There was glory in that, but more, it would be able to help them all; every story of suffering and pain it heard could be soothed. All it wanted to do was use its gifts to help.
And one day it would find her. It could go to her if she could not find her way back; they could still be together.
Then it would not be alone.
It had carved the faces of its saviors into the bones of the altar, to honor them; to the Mujina the faces of O’Neill, Carter, Teal’c and Daniel Jackson were nothing short of icons. And then, it had rendered her beauty in bone — an exquisite recreation of its Madonna. Its love and its weakness. A terrible, fatal beauty etched into the dead of this place. All of the carvings were loving representations, they could be nothing less, after all these were its most cherished disciples: the ones who had set it free.
The Mujina rose slowly and walked across to the door, content to let the devotions begin for another day.
Chapter Twenty-seven
Ghetto King
The city beyond the railway tracks was a desperate place.
It wasn’t merely the architecture of despondency, the weeping brickwork with its bullet striations and the crumbling façades with no building left behind them, it was so much more. The spray painted ravens marked the beginning of the ghetto, the spread-winged birds looking down upon the Kelani like so much carrion. The desperation was ingrained in every face Teal’c saw. Every line was weathered in hard, none of them down to laughter. Sallow-faced women hunched over cracked and broken stoops scrubbing at the bald stone with wire brushes as though they could scour the despair out of their lives.
He walked the streets for hours, not sure what he was looking for. He had no idea how he was supposed to find the old woman, Kiah.
With the night drawing in, a young girl in a tight red dress half-skipped half-walked down the center of the road, following the remains of the white line. No one else looked at her. That in itself interested Teal’c. He watched the people not watching the girl. A boy, all skin and bones and broken promises sat hunched over the curb playing with a tin soldier, his rat-at-tat death knells gunning out to punctuate the rhythm plated by the wire brushes. Across the street a hag beat away at a hanging rug with a stick, great clouds of dust billowing out with each whack. She coughed up a lungful of phlegm as Teal’c walked past her. She watched him with an ugly sneer on her lipless face. Teal’c nodded to her. The hag ignored him, taking her aggression out on the threadbare carpet. An off-white pigeon settled on the rope beside it. Two more settled on the broken glass that topped her wall. Teal’c studied the birds with a detached curiosity. They showed an almost domesticated disregard for humanity. More birds settled along the guttering of some of the nearest tenements as he walked down the center of the street.
He felt rather than saw the curtains twitch and the curious stares behind them.
Teal’c followed the girl in the red dress.
It felt like the only thing he could do — and part of him was sure she was leading him to wherever these people wanted him to be, so it made sense, too. She looked over her shoulder as she neared the corner, to be sure he was following as she skipped across the street and disappeared between two tumbledown houses. Their windows were boarded up. The doors hung drunkenly on broken hinges. Behind the houses, the girl in the red dress squeezed between slats in one of the broken fences. Teal’c was more than twice the size of the opening. He didn’t need to worry, before he could stoop to peer into the gap three men emerged from the building opposite. They were roughly dressed in layers of dirty rags and coats. Each wore at least five coats, one on top of another, like armor. Not that any amount of wool could have saved them from a bullet or shrapnel form a bomb blast. The coats bulked them
up, but even so, none of them were a match for the Jaffa’s powerful physique.
“You’re not welcome here, stranger,” one of the men growled. He stepped forward, crossing his arms over his chest defensively. Teal’c studied the man.
“I was told to seek out Kiah,” he said, watching all three faces for any flicker of recognition the name might bring.
“Were you now? And who would have told you to do that, eh?”
“Her daughter.”
That earned a sharp exchange of looks from the men. The second sniffed, hawked and spat as he stepped forward. He brushed his coat aside to reveal the stock of an old shotgun. It wasn’t much of a weapon, but it was a weapon just the same. “You were in the compound? How’d you escape?”
Teal’c looked down at the wad of phlegm on the cobbled stone at his feet. “She helped me.”
“Did she now? And tell me, why would she want to do a thing like that?”
Teal’c said nothing. Instead he maintained steady eye contact with all of them, weighing up the threat they posed. None of them looked particularly well nourished with their stark cheekbones and hollow-eyed stares. If it came down to a fight the first blows might hurt, but the second, third and forth would be lacking strength — meaning they would attack with an explosive burst of fury or not at all. Teal’c looked down at their thighs; the muscles appeared relaxed, not tensed. “I was told to seek out Kiah in this place because she might help me. You are not Kiah so I am not looking for you. Take me to her and I shall not harm you.”
The leader laughed. It was an open and surprisingly honest sound. He looked at his partners in crime. The second man shrugged. The third had what looked like an old pair of night-vision goggles dangling around his throat and a pistol tucked into the rope belt keeping his trousers up. They were dressed for war. “Well would you listen to the big fella? Maybe we should teach him a lesson in manners, hey boys?”
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