Ashes of the Earth (12 page)

"He
put me on suicide patrols for a month," Waller said, "watching
tall trees on the ridges, and threatened to fire me if I failed him
again."

"You
came here to resurrect your old case?" Hadrian asked.

Waller
looked down at Reese. "What if what happened to him was because
of me?"

Hadrian
gazed at the sergeant as if seeing her for the first time. "Dangerous
sentiments for someone working for the governor."

"Working
for the governor," Waller replied, "is an honor few members
of the corps ever get."

"That's
better," Hadrian said as she cast him a smoldering glance. "Now
tell me. The two men who follow me. Do they report to you or Kenton?"

She
grimaced. "Officially they are assigned to me. But Kenton gets
whatever information he wants from them, whenever he wants, without
bothering to ask me."

"Let
them keep up their playacting," he instructed her. "And
resurrect your old case by all means. I don't need to see you again.
Write up your report on me and give it to the governor in a couple of
days. Mark it secret, so Kenton will be sure to read it. Show them at
last you have grasped the essence of good police work. Say your
subject exhibits dangerous antisocial behavior, that he harbors
delusional suspicions of criminal conspiracies taking root in
Carthage. If left unchecked, he threatens to be the seed for a whole
new hooligan class. Don't forget his psychotic tendency to believe
only he knows how to discover the truth."

Emily
fixed him with a withering gaze. "I have medicine that will shut
him up, Jori." She moved closer to Waller as if to protect her.

Hadrian
smiled grimly. "I took my last medicine twenty-five years ago,
Em, and never woke up."

CHAPTER
Four

Hadrian
watched from
a
window in an empty hospital room as Sergeant Waller conferred with
her two men on the rain-slick street below, pointing to the
second-floor corner room where she'd last seen him. Then he darted
into the corridor, down to the kitchen, and out the back door.
Minutes later he stood at a large building whose four chimneys
churned out clouds of wood smoke. The textile works in its early
years had been constructed to turn salvaged fabric into fibers for
papermaking. It had eventually expanded and now took in raw wool to
be processed into cloth for the colony's apparel makers.

"I'm
looking for the owner," Hadrian said to the woman who sat at the
front desk. She appraised him coolly as he self-consciously pushed
back his ragged hair, then she disappeared behind a closed door. He
waited several minutes before she reappeared, gesturing him inside
with a frown.

He
followed her past great steaming vats, through a room stinking of wet
wool, into a huge chamber filled with carders and spinners, then up a
staircase to a quiet room where half a dozen large looms were being
worked. Hadrian stood uncertainly after the woman turned and
abandoned him. Looking about, he saw a stocky, bearded man by a rear
window, who gestured to him with his pipe.

Hadrian
knew Hastings from years earlier, when the burly man had supervised
the construction of the school, but had had little contact with him
since he had gone into private enterprise. He stood silently as
Hastings filled and lit his pipe, puffing out richly scented clouds.

"I'm
not sure how this is supposed to go," the mill owner stated. "Am
I supposed to cooperate with you because the governor finally took
the yellow band off your arm or throw you out for being the feckless
antisocial ass he has always told us you are?"

Hadrian
breathed in the fragrant tobacco smoke. There was something almost
church-like about the quiet industrious air of the loom chamber. "I
think I'd rather you cooperate because I
am
the feckless antisocial
ass he warned you of."

Hastings
grinned, then spoke in a near whisper. "At bedtime when the
youngsters climb under their comforters my wife and I tell them of
the way it was when we were young. But we make them promise never to
speak of it at school."

It
was an extraordinary confession, a gesture of trust, a renewal of old
friendship.

Hadrian
offered a grateful nod. "Including your son Micah?"

"When
he was younger, yes."

"Is
that why he was so eager to go on a salvage scout?"

Hastings
round face seemed to grow thinner. "I told him more than half
never make it back. Hell, we don't even know if it's disease or
radiation or wild beasts that take them. But at that age they feel
immortal. He had become a market hunter. He knew the woods, thought
he'd be the one to blaze new trails, like those early pioneers in the
lessons. Every day his mother keeps hoping for a message from one of
the other hunters. I keep reminding her that his was a long scout,
beyond the usual hunting lands."

"Did
he tell you where?"

"Southwest
somewhere," he said. "Then Buchanan wanted him to follow
the old canal there toward the old factory towns along what was the
Hudson River. Christ knows I told him those towns got hit hard,"
Hastings muttered, "that they still could be hot with radiation.
He could hike a month in a hot zone and never know until he dropped.
I wanted him to learn this business since he was the eldest but he
said I had other sons for that."

Hadrian
hesitated over the distant way the father spoke of Micah. "Before
he left, was he in some kind of trouble?"

"Trouble?"

Hadrian
shrugged. "With the law. With the gangs. With paying debts.
There are a lot of reasons someone might want to leave for a few
weeks or months."

Hastings
gazed at him as he worked the pipe stem in his mouth. "Of course
not," he said, then hesitated. "Not that I know of,"
he amended with an edge of worry in his voice. "He was making
new friends, frequenting taverns along the waterfront. He'd moved
into rooms with a friend from the fishery. We hardly ever saw him."

The
low murmurs of the looms filled the silence that followed. Hastings
turned to face the window. "There's folks who say that Buchanan
thought Jonah Beck was getting too powerful," he said abruptly.

Hadrian
grew very still. This was dangerous ground. "I was just
wondering about the fire."

"There
was a fireman who saw Jonah hanging," Hastings said. "He
got drunk, starting saying the fire didn't start elsewhere in the
building, but right there in the workshop. And not where Jonah could
have started it by kicking a lantern. People are saying we can't
trust the newspaper anymore." He fixed Hadrian with a somber
gaze. "If you're so interested in the fire, then why ask about a
scout patrol five months ago?"

Hadrian
didn't reply. The starting place wasn't the scouting mission, it was
the link between Jonah, Buchanan, and the scout.

Hastings
waved his pipe toward the courtyard below, where a thin, careworn
woman was watching two small children play in the puddles. "Don't
burden her with all these questions, Boone. She's troubled enough not
hearing from Micah."

Then
the woman looked up, telling the children to wave to their father,
and suddenly Hadrian had the answer he had come for.

The
old mill
appeared
empty as Hadrian approached. There were no boys with lethal bows nor
any acrobat on the waterwheel. He stepped cautiously inside, studying
the old works, running his hand along the tops of beams, testing for
a loose floor board that might conceal a hiding place. He froze as
overhead the ceiling creaked. Footsteps rose, then faded, moving
toward the ladder at the far end of the building. He waited,
listening. When no one appeared from the corridor of small chambers
below the ladder, he stole into the shadows, remembering now how Dax
had momentarily disappeared when retrieving his precious figurine.

The
boy was in what had been the mill foreman's office, lying under a
hanging lantern on a bench that extended the length of one wall,
gazing intently at the little wizard in his hand. From just beyond
the entry Hadrian studied the chamber, trying to discern where the
boy kept his treasure hidden. There was a wooden bucket with a sack
in it. A work station was built into the opposite wall, consisting of
a narrow desk with a single small drawer. Above it were planks with
rows of nails where once had been pinned orders and invoices. One
plank was slightly ajar.

"That
day up on the ridge," Hadrian said abruptly, standing in the
doorway to block any attempted retreat, "Kenton said he'd seen
you the night before, spoke about looking for something you had. What
was it?"

Dax,
holding the wizard to his chin as if for protection, watched him
warily, not offering a reply.

"I
am trying to help, Dax. What do you do for the jackals?"

"We
do fine without help."

Hadrian
realized how little he knew about the boy. He was not quite a child,
nor yet an adult. Now he recalled the boy speaking of orphans. "What
happened to your parents?"

"Crossed
over, years ago," Dax answered in a flat voice. "My uncle
says he don't have time for delinquents whenever he sees me."

"What
did Kenton do the night before?"

"Cornered
us in one of the stables. Took two of the older ones for a salvage
crew, hauling rails over the mountains for a couple months."

"Older?"

"Eleven,
maybe twelve. Says he will keep taking one of us every week."

"But
surely their parents—"

"Orphans
too. Live at the school, like I do when it gets too cold to sleep
here. Kenton fixes things with the teachers when he wants us."

Hadrian
could barely contain his emotion. The police corps seemed to be
spreading its tentacles further every week. "He threatened you
but doesn't take you. Which means he took the others as salvage
slaves to put pressure on you. What do you have that he wants?"
As he spoke Hadrian stepped away from the door, to give the boy a
chance to escape. Dax did not move, except for the tiniest flicker of
his eyes toward the desk.

Hadrian
was an instant faster than the boy and already had his hand on the
loosened board when Dax grabbed his arm to stop him. Hadrian pulled
the board out, reached inside, and extracted a rolled-up piece of
paper.

Dax
seemed to coil, as if to leap at him. But Hadrian shoved him forcibly
onto the bench and unrolled the paper on the desk.

It
was a hand-drawn map. Its central feature was a long, arcing curve
facing east below a meandering line with little waves above it. There
were no other features except the image of a snarled, dead tree to
the west of the curve and small circles placed equidistant along the
arc, all with dates below them. Ten circles, seven of which had X's
inscribed in them.

Hadrian
looked to Dax for an explanation but the boy just stared woodenly at
his wizard. He pointed to the waves. "The lake," he
observed, then put his finger on the withered tree. "The haunted
oak above the ravine." He pointed to the space above the arc,
just below the lake. "The fishery plant would be here. Is this
what you do for the jackals, keep secrets for them?"

Dax
said nothing.

The
first dates under the circles were from three years earlier. The
realization began as a pinching in his throat, then fell upon him
like an anvil. He dropped unsteadily onto the bench beside the boy.

"Suicides,"
he said slowly. "The children." He recognized several of
the dates, had helped recover more than one body after responding to
the screams of parents out searching for a tardy son or daughter. In
recent years the ridge had turned into a favorite location for child
suicides. A groan escaped his throat. "Why would you record the
suicides? Why would Kenton care?"

He
moved his finger along the dates and circles, then suddenly found his
finger touching the next empty circle, with a date a month into the
future. He grew very still. When he finally spoke his voice seemed
frail. "How long have you had this map?"

"A
year, maybe more."

Hadrian
closed his eyes for a moment. It wasn't a record of suicides. It was
a master plan for them. He indicated the empty circle. "A
suicide has been ordered for there next month."

The
boy did not argue. "People decide for themselves when to go."