Shadowplay

WATCHER 5

The woman sitting at the sewing machine glanced up from her work, gaped at something across the dick-locking room. The worker next to her noticed the lessened noise, snatched a look, then began staring on her own. The infection spread. Then the first woman got up and walked out, leaving her machine and her work without a word, ignoring the shouts of the overseer. With the same intensity of purpose, the nineteen other women got to their feet and walked out.

The Nakiskwen Gospah scowled at the screens that took transmissions from his Na-priests and the kanaweh sleds they rode by courtesy of the Nistam who might be a brainless idiot but who had the survival instincts of a wolverine.

The roads were freckled with walkers, heading north, heading south, all of them bound for the Pilgrim Way.

He turned to the Na-priest standing beside him, black vizard pushed back, the exposed face more of a mask than the mask itself. "One thought one had kept the rumors out," he said, his meager features twisted into a scowl.

The Na-priest shrugged. "One has. One has canvassed the Confessors and the Wik priests. No whispers. None. Every Wik in the country is clean. Someone would have heard something about the tattlers if that is how word got through about the Avatars."

"If they are Avatars and not a fraud dreamed up to catch us napping. What news from your sources in Kwamitaskwen? One wouldn't put anything past that old buzzard."

"Nothing there. He's got the same problems at a slightly less advanced stage, seems to be a factor of distance from the Mistiko Otcha Cicip."

There was a crack of laughter from the Gospah, then a series of snorts. "Same problems, eh? That does bear thinking about. Oh yes, it does."