The Black Lung Captain - Chris Wooding [28]
THE RAIN LESSENED SLIGHTLY as night fell, but the clouds stayed in the sky, and there was no light from the moon. Under Hodd’s direction, they pitched camp on a patch of high ground and stretched a tarpaulin between several trees to act as a roof. Hodd arranged stones to make a raised platform and somehow managed to get a fire going on it.
Jez had to admit, the man knew his survival skills. And he still appeared confident of the route. His manner and his history inspired mistrust, perhaps, but a man didn’t spend a lifetime as an explorer without picking up a few things.
The rainforest came alive at night. The treetops were busy with shrieks and wails. Insects clattered and hummed all around them. Bats flitted through the air. Repulsive things slunk and crept.
Jez was among the volunteers for first watch, but she intended to take second and third as well. Her eyesight was better than anyone else’s in the dark, and she had no need of rest. Usually she took pains to disguise her condition from strangers. She went through the motions of eating and sleeping so as not to arouse suspicion. But, just this once, she’d plead insomnia. The afternoon and evening had passed without incident, but she didn’t trust their luck to hold. She didn’t want anything sneaking up on them tonight.
She stood with her back to the camp, her head bare to the elements, brown hair plastered to her forehead. The hood of her coat was down, so as not to block her peripheral vision. Behind her, the men were cooking up the last of the soup. Some were huddled close to the fire. Others had already crawled into their sleeping bags, exhausted.
Standing there in the rain, she tried to bring on the trance. When she slipped into that strange state of hyperawareness, she’d feel the forest instead of merely seeing it. She’d be able to sense the animals and identify any threats. In the past, she’d even shared their thoughts. Once, during a gunfight, she’d read a man’s mind, right before she shot him.
In the chaos of sounds from the forest, she fancied she could hear the cries of the Manes. But no trance came. She couldn’t make it happen. They took her without rhyme or reason, and she didn’t have the trick of controlling them. Perhaps she never would.
She heard someone approaching from the direction of the fire. Looking over her shoulder, she saw Silo. Only his beaklike nose showed from the shadow of his hood. Without a word, he sat down on a rock next to Jez. He drew a shotgun from under his coat and stared out into the forest.
They watched the forest together in comfortable silence for a time. Some of the crew found Silo awkward to be around, but Jez rather enjoyed his company. Everyone else talked a lot, usually about nothing important. Silo talked hardly at all, but she had the impression that he made up the difference by thinking.
“There’s rage in my family,” he said, out of nowhere. Jez didn’t know what to say to that, so she didn’t say anything.
“My papa had it,” he went on. “And his brother. And their papa, and my brother. All them dead now, but they had rage. It’d just come explodin’ out o’ them, and you better not be in their way when it did.”
Jez was mildly surprised that he’d volunteered the information. She didn’t even know he had a brother. She’d been aboard the Ketty Jay more than a year, but she still knew hardly anything about him. Neither did anyone else, as far as she was aware.
Silo propped his shotgun against a tree and began making a roll-up, hunching forward to shield it from the rain. Jez wondered if that was the end of the conversation, but then he spoke again.
“My brother, one time, he got the rage when we was all chained up in the pens. Broke his ankle against the manacles, tryin’ to get at some feller. Weren’t fit for work for a long while after, but he was a strong ’un, so they wanted to see if it’d heal.” He licked the paper and sealed the roll-up. “Didn’t. Bones knitted bad, gave him a limp, so they killed him.”
There was a hiss of phosphorus as he struck a match, then the smell of acrid