Jax, one hand pocketed, strode to the bow. The way he stood, moved, spoke was all assumption: he expected the world would bend to his wishes, because it so often did. But Kai knew tyrants, and he lacked their scorn. Eberhardt Jax was a machine more than a man, a system of ideas, a rumor and a fortune and a set of contracts dedicated to building that fortune. Eberhardt Jax, the meat, the person who once was born and might one day die, was incidental to that machine. He guided it, built some parts and directed others, but the machine did not need the man. Many of Kai’s pilgrims, no matter how
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