Ashes of the Earth (22 page)

Instead
he stumbled up the stairs as the sergeant shoved him forward.

"Dammit!"
But Emily's protest died away as Waller pulled away the policeman's
tunic that covered him, revealing his blood-soaked shirt. Fletcher
had sliced deeply. "You sorry bastard," the doctor
muttered, then motioned him inside. Hadrian picked up the bottle as
he passed the rocking chair.

When
Emily left them in the little exam room off the kitchen, he drank
deeply, then turned to the sergeant. "This is where I thank you
and say goodbye."

"I
didn't do it for your thanks," the sergeant said stiffly. "You
saved me last night in front of the governor."

"I
save you, you save me. The trouble is, Sergeant, both times it was me
who took the beating." He forced a small grin.

Her
expression did not change. "Tell me why Fletcher was so worried
about you or we go straight back to the prison."

"You're
probably the first Carthage policeman to ever fire a gun in the line
of duty."

The
sergeant shrugged. "The pistols were just issued."

"I
was impressed with your marksmanship."

She
blushed, looking at the floor. "I was aiming at the barrel
beside him."

"Reducing
the criminal population one finger at a time." Hadrian closed
his eyes for a moment against the rising tide of pain. "Fletcher
was scared of me for the same reason he was scared of you," he
said. "He's worried that we might start following the trail you
found last summer." His arm felt as if it were on fire. "Kenton
or Buchanan told someone about discovering Hastings's body. The
killers found out and for some reason had to attack Jonah that very
night. We need to find out whom they told. Kenton probably went back
to the prison when I went missing that afternoon. Someone there
helped Nelly escape."

Waller
seemed not to hear. "What did you expect to find at Jamie's
boat?" she asked. "Why trail that woman?"

"Why
follow me?"

"I
wasn't. I was looking for the Zeus, thought Jamie's mother might be
more interested in talking now that he's dead. But some carpenter
said I should get coordinated with the old schoolmaster and pointed
inside. Why did you follow that woman? Why let Fletcher trap you like
that?"

"You
don't understand, Jori," came Emily's voice over the sergeant's
shoulder. "Hadrian's life is all about doing penance. He decided
long ago that the end of the world was his fault. If on a given day
someone doesn't kick him, cut him, or beat him, he'll find a stick
and flog his own back raw."

Jori
backed away as the doctor pushed Hadrian onto the table. He helped
peel away the blood-soaked shirt for Emily, grimacing as the fabric
stuck to his skin. "A permanent armband," he said, and
tried to grin through his pain.

"We
should have thought of it years ago," Emily muttered, then
pushed him flat.

He
clenched his jaw as she poured alcohol over the incisions.

"Fishing
crews are working double shifts," he explained as she began
stitching his skin together. "Everyone's on edge. I saw people
wearing sunglasses for no good reason."

"It's
a fad, that's all," Emily replied as she worked. "The old
man who grinds lenses down the street says suddenly there's a demand
for them. And the sunny season is over."

Hadrian
bent his head up. "Why would you ask him?"

Emily
pushed him down. "The day after Jamie was admitted someone left
a pair of sunglasses by his bed. I didn't really think about it but
after he died I realized they must have known what was going to
happen to his eyes."

Hadrian
studied his friend, recognized the lingering anger on her face.
"That's enough to make one a little curious. But what made you
mad enough to do something about it?" he asked.

"Yesterday
Buchanan came with his Norger brute while I was in surgery. He got
one of the junior doctors to sign a statement saying that Jansen was
stabbed. The bullets I extracted have disappeared from my office."

Hadrian
glanced into the shadows. Waller sat in a chair by the door. She was
very still. He flinched as the suture needle entered his skin again.
"One of the people wearing sunglasses had washed-out irises. No
one is born with eyes that color."

"No
one is born that way," the doctor agreed.

"No
one in their right mind jumps off barns to fly." His words
quieted Emily. Her face began to cloud with worry. "In college I
knew people who would stay awake for days straight, people who would
lay as if in a coma then wake up with a smile. Some might try to fly
off a barn."

Emily
frowned. "Lost world. Lost technologies." She paused and
tilted his head, holding the bottle to his mouth.

Hadrian
watched the doctor in silence, seeing not just exhaustion and anger
there now, but an edge of something that could be fear. "There
were a lot of types, lots of names—speed, ecstasy, acid, meth,
fly powder."

"This
is Carthage, Hadrian. This is the other twenty-first century."

"Different
world, different technologies. You make your own anesthetic. Who else
would know how to manufacture drugs today?" It wasn't just the
alcohol that was setting his head in a spin. He was finding no
answers, only more questions. Smugglers. Drugs. Murder by jackal.
Munitions. Jonah had started calling the exiles rebels.

"Jonah.
Me, when I have time to think about it. Our pharmacy, for making the
extracts and tinctures out of the plants the herb collectors bring
us. I don't know of anyone else. We don't teach much chemistry beyond
what they need in the foundry and processing plants."

Jonah.
Suddenly Hadrian remembered the books spread out over the desk in his
secret vault. Biochemistry. Physiology. "Did Jonah use your
lab?"

"Of
course. Has all these years, at night or when others didn't need it.
But when it comes to producing synthetic chemicals like those that
people used as hallucinogens, it would take special materials and
equipment. We have the most advanced lab in the colony and we
couldn't do it."

There
had been another book on Jonah's desk. Botanical chemistry. "What
if they were using plants like you do?"

She
dripped more alcohol over his wound as she closed it. "Of course
there are native plants, dangerous as hell. Nightshade, foxglove,
mayapple—not to mention twenty kinds of mushrooms." Emily
slowly shook her head. "No. They're unpredictable, more likely
to kill you if you don't know how to handle them."

"I
don't understand what you're calling dangerous drugs," Waller
inserted. "You use drugs in the hospital."

Emily
frowned. Hadrian realized she'd forgotten the sergeant was still in
the room.

"In
the old world there were pills that would take over your mind. Make
you do things you'd never think of without them. Make you forget even
who you are. Make you crave still another pill, and another, until
eventually you'd do anything for just one more."

The
sergeant was clearly struggling to understand. "You make it
sound as if they enslave people somehow."

The
doctor slowly nodded.

"But
there are other people who know about them," Waller continued,
"who remember them."

"We
regularly work in the lab with many plants. Nightshade can make
belladonna, a good sedative. Foxglove makes a heart medication if
processed carefully." Emily turned back to Hadrian. "These
are not recreational drugs. You're talking about complex compounds
that couldn't be made in the simple lab we have. My staff wouldn't
even know about the kind of drugs you're talking about. No one in
Carthage."

"No
one in Carthage," he repeated, fixing the doctor with a pointed
stare.

Emily
said nothing, just finished his sutures, jerking the last knot closed
so hard Hadrian flinched in pain. As he tried to sit up he swayed,
feeling light-headed.

"You
have to stay still, dammit. You lost a lot of blood. Two, three days
at least," Emily declared as she begin wrapping a strip of linen
around his arm. "The shed out back has a couple of old
mattresses. Technically that won't be in the hospital."

Hadrian
looked up at Waller. "Two mattresses. You can lie down and watch
me suffer." The sergeant made a wincing expression. "Or you
can go back to that loft. The killers weren't there only when they
killed Jansen. They'd been using the place, probably came and went
for months. They must have left signs. Witnesses along the street
perhaps. And there's a boy named Dax who carried messages for Jonah
but he also does favors for the jackals." He gave her an
assessing look. "Or maybe you're better off going back to being
Buchanan's goon." His head began to spin and he lay back onto
the table, throwing his arm over his eyes.

He
heard the two women take steps toward the door. There was a oddly
forlorn tone in the sergeant's voice as she spoke to Emily. "I
remember him, from school," she said in a near whisper. "He
would say funny things, but sometimes they were inspiring. He would
bring in baby animals and read poems. Now he wears borrowed clothes
and sleeps in sheds. He plays games with me like I'm still a little
schoolgirl. He lies even. Does he always lie, Doctor?"

A
blanket was thrown over Hadrian. "He never lies about the
important things, Sergeant. Remember that."

Five
minutes later Emily returned and pulled away the blanket. "You're
not asleep, Hadrian." As he rolled over she extended a clean
shirt.

The
stitches pinched his flesh as he sat up. "You've never told me
why you help her, why you defend Sergeant Waller."

"I've
known her family a long time. She deserves my help."

"Why,
Doctor, does she need your help?"

Emily
helped him into the shirt. "Her father was ill from the start,
one of those who kept his condition hidden to avoid being expelled.
Her mother started a business to support them. He died when Jori was
only ten or twelve. When she applied to the corps after school and
the question of her acceptance came before the Council, Buchanan
laughed, said we needed our young breeding stock focused on making
babies. I said he was a damned fool, that he was going to accept her
and promote her, to give encouragement to other young women. He
reminded me I was demanding the Council pay for a new wing on the
hospital."

"What
new wing?"

She
cast a peevish glance at him.

"Christ,
Em," he said as realization sank in. "You gave up your new
wing to get her into the police corps?"

She
shrugged. "He would have found some other way to block it."
She tightened the bandage covering the wound on his forehead. "I've
been to their house for dinner many times. The last time, Jori was on
duty. Her mother showed me her room. She has an old photo of her
father in his uniform, with his badge, on a little table like a
shrine. Her mother hates it, says the only way Jori will ever succeed
with the police is to become like Kenton."

"Kenton,"
Hadrian replied, "will wise up and give her a new assignment any
day now. In another week she'll be calling on farmers to collect the
cattle tax."

Emily
said nothing, just pulled out her pipe and lit it. "Buchanan,"
she confided with a glance at the door, "has ordered the
recruitment of a dozen new police, with bonuses to be paid for
signing on. He's building an army."

"Buchanan
hasn't a clue about what's going on. He's been played like a puppet
for months. Now he reacts the only way he knows how."

"There're
rumors about more exiles hiding in town," Emily said. "Kenton's
talking about doing a sweep of every block. God help Nelly if she's
caught."

"Do
you still keep that old nag at the flax farm south of town?" he
asked as she turned to leave.

"I
keep my well-seasoned mare there, yes," came Emily's taut reply.
She paused as she considered Hadrian's words. "You're in no
shape."

"No
shape to walk thirty miles over the mountains, no," he agreed.
"And I'd rather not have to steal the horse I ride." He
returned her cool stare. "Buchanan has told the colony that
Nelly was Jonah's killer. Now he has to blame Jansen's death on her.
He will never allow her to elude him for long. He will hang her, the
truth be damned. I owe Jonah the truth, whatever the cost."