Not once had he made any sounds that could be taken as words, but there was something about Doc’s conviction that the mutie could speak, and perhaps tell them something, that made the one-eyed warrior stiffen in the shadows.
“Yeah, Doc, why do you think that?” he asked softly, echoing Jak’s question.
“Our friend here is holding out on us, I fear,” Doc said, bending toward the mutie baron so that his face was almost level with that of the bound man. The smell from the mutie’s gangrenous wound made him gag, but he paused, waiting until Sunchild made eye contact. “You see, I feel sure that he is following every word we say. The body language of the man suggests that he is braced against the big chill, but that he has his pride, and will take his secrets to the grave with him. To protect part of himself, keep it close. By not giving in, he feels that ultimately he will win. Don’t you?”
“Shit, bastard and fuck. Can you believe this complete bullshit?” Harvey raved, turning imploringly to Blake and Downey. “What the fuck kind of jolt is this old shithead on?”
The two sec men exchanged puzzled glances. If their chief was right, and Doc was wrong, then why the hell were they there anyway? And if the old man was right, then why was Harvey getting so worked up?
Ryan stepped forward into the light. He fixed Sunchild with his icy blue eye. “Do you know anything about my son?” he asked quietly.
Sunchild returned the stare. Doc stepped back so that there was nothing between the one-eyed warrior and the mutie baron except the charged and empty air. Despite the wounds, the blood and the ugliness of his mutated features, the mutie leader assumed a sudden dignity that took all but Doc and Ryan by surprise.
“I know nothing of your son, One-eye. Are you the one of legend? The one who searches for the north?”
“I may be,” Ryan replied in a hushed voice. “What do you know of me?”
“Men we have sacrificed to the gods have spoken of you before dying. Yes, we know your tongue. My fathers and myself long ago learned that we would need it to communicate and learn from those who would join the gods. You and your people are legend to some. I tell you this—if I had your son, he would have been chilled and consumed as a sacrifice, and a noble one…one of much power. I would have welcomed that, and it would have been a fine chill for him, to meet the gods as a chosen one. But we have not done this.”
“I believe you,” Ryan said quietly.
Time seemed to stand still, and there was no one else in the room besides the two of them. All else faded in the eerie calm of Sunchild’s voice. Ryan had only heard him bellowing the strange dialect and chant of his people. To hear him speak a normal tongue, and so quietly, was bizarre. He spoke it as though it were a foreign language, haltingly but with a measured precision to every word.
“You have taken our totem. The means of destruction, the coming of the purifying fire.”
“Yeah. The last thing we wanted was another nukecaust around these parts,” Ryan replied. “If the positions were reversed…” Despite himself, he found that he held a degree of respect for the mutie baron, who seemed to carry with him the dignity of an inherited line.
“Our view would be different. Naturally, as you do not believe. For many generations, we have coexisted here, allowing your heresy in this ville. But things are worsening. I can feel her power growing.”
Doc stepped forward. “Her?”
“Mutie fucker’s talking shit again,” Harvey interrupted.
“Shut up, Harv,” Blake hissed. “Let him have his say.”
The sec chief shot the wizened deputy a glance of pure venom but said nothing.
Sunchild continued. “The woman who would control. You think I have not been aware of her heresies? The sacrifices that have been corrupted by her hand?”
“She is mutie like us. I can feel her near, feel the hate. Think what you like of us, One-eye, and you, old man,” Sunchild said, turning to Doc. “We are as noble as you, but we have different views. You are not bad, just wrong. But she is bad. Her blood was tainted in the underworld, and that continues. She has white-coat fever, and will seek the final solution—”