Ashes of the Earth (28 page)

"I'm
confused. Am I a prisoner? Or am I a new friend?"

The
First Blood sidestepped. "I think that is up to you."

"She's
innocent, Sebastian," Hadrian said. "She doesn't know
anything. Outside of Carthage she has no authority. She is no
threat."

"We
know about police. In the old world they were always the enemy of my
people." He took a swallow of his ale. "In the old world
more than one of my family was thrown into their prisons."

"In
the old world."

"We
don't need a prison here. You have a prison in Carthage because you
have police."

Hadrian
didn't know if it was his fatigue or the image of Lieutenant Kenton
that flashed in his mind's eye, but he could find no words to argue.

As
they drank in silence, Hadrian studied the men at the tables around
them, inhabitants of this alien world. Several of them spoke with an
uplifting at the end of their sentences, the Canadian accent he had
heard at the signal lantern above Carthage. Four patrons sat apart,
at a corner table, their clothes dusty, their hard but weary faces
lifting as other customers brought them pints and stopped to talk. He
realized he'd seen them before, riding into town. Even in Carthage
those who regularly made salvage runs were a breed apart, transformed
somehow by their repeated visits to the ruined lands.

He
gazed with appreciation at the heavy wood beams overhead, the
polished wood of the long bar. There were carved flowers and cherubs
along its corners. Over it, and scattered on high shelves along the
walls, were nearly a dozen stuffed martens, most arranged in attack
pose. The long benches along the wall bore the same designs as the
bar's carvings. One of the tables was covered with a lace doily.

Hadrian
looked back at the bar with sudden discomfort. The chicken house had
been a convent, which produced lace. The tavern was in the chapel,
the bar an ornate altar, the benches old pews. He glanced back at the
martens. Tree jackals. He studied the crowd again. At least half a
dozen wore medallions. He shuddered. St. Gabriel was populated with
jackals.

"So
what shall we serve you for supper?" Sauger asked some time
later, stirring Hadrian from something close to slumber. "Our
mutton stew is the best for a thousand miles," he offered. It
had the sound of an old joke. "Or twenty kinds of soup."

"Twenty?"
Hadrian asked incredulously. He hadn't smelled any soup kettles.

Sauger's
eyes twinkled. He gestured Hadrian to follow and led him to a door
behind the bar. The chamber inside was nearly as large as the tavern
itself, though far dimmer. At a candlelit table in the center,
wearing a dull expression, sat Dax with a bowl and two tin cans in
front of him. Sauger lifted a candlestick and stepped to the nearest
wall.

Hadrian
stared in wonder. The wall was lined with shelves, every shelf filled
with cans of food. Hundreds wore once-familiar labels, artifacts of
his childhood, soups and stews often served to him by his mother. The
scale of St. Gabriel's salvage was beginning to sink in. "Surely
they can't be good after so many years?"

"The
cans with leaks and contamination popped open long ago. Most of these
are usable. If it's a little stiff we add some broth. We have spices
to take the staleness away."

Hadrian
picked up one of the cans. It was a most unexpected treasure. He
turned it over. With an ache in his heart he read the expiration
date. 2024. What marvelous confidence it seemed now, to have printed
such a date. In the minds of many survivors there had been no such
year, for the end had come first. Civilization had expired, but its
soup had endured.

"Chicken
noodle," he said, not understanding why he was whispering. "I
always liked chicken noodle."

"Two
cans," Sauger declared.

"I'll
sit in here," Hadrian ventured, gesturing toward Dax, who had
not acknowledged him. There was a dark patch on his cheek, a fresh
bruise.

Sauger
considered the boy with a sober expression, then grinned at Hadrian.
"Nonsense. You are ours tonight," he said, then put his
hand over Hadrian's shoulder and led him away.

They
sat at a table using hallmarked silver. He ate the decades-old soup
in a china bowl, the scent of it arousing long-lost memories of
sitting in his mother's kitchen after building a snowman. Sebastian,
tucking into the mutton stew, watched him with amusement.

In
one corner men played darts, throwing at a wooden plank painted with
a bear. He realized now there were women scattered among the tables,
young ones wearing tight-fitting clothes and makeup. He blinked
self-consciously as he became aware he'd been staring at a red-haired
woman in her twenties who now met his eyes with an inviting
expression.

One
of her companions, a tall blond, led a member of the salvage party
out a side door. The back of the vest he wore was embroidered with a
skeleton holding a shovel, death digger, said the slogan underneath.

Raucous
laughter burst from a corner table. Wade and the ape-like engineer
from the Anna seemed to be holding court with other members of the
salvage crew. Clearing their table were the two youths who had
arrived with them from New Jerusalem, now wearing the grey clothes of
indentured servants.

"What
do you think of our paradise?" Sauger asked as he took a seat
beside Hadrian.

"You
never feel so blind as when you finally learn to see," Hadrian
replied.

Sauger
seemed to take the words as a compliment. Grinning, he gestured
toward the red-haired woman, who brought fresh glasses and an old
soda bottle capped with a cork. "You can make vodka from almost
anything," he declared, then opened the bottle and sniffed as if
it were a fine wine before pouring it out. "Turnips and
elderberries, steeped in cedarwood. You'd be surprised."

"I
can't help wondering why we in Carthage have been so ignorant of
these miracles in the north."

Sauger
smiled like a Buddha. He contemplated Hadrian, then lifted his glass
in salute before sipping his vodka. "We're just coming into our
own, you might say. Before that, it was all about surviving."

Hadrian
gripped his glass, struggling with a reflex that demanded he drink,
but also hearing the voice that shouted his days as a drunk were
over. He stared at the glass and realized he no longer had an
appetite for liquor. Somehow it seemed Jonah's doing, as if something
inside him had made a pact with his dead friend to stop drinking.
"Still, our fishermen have been sailing north for years,"
he replied.

"Mostly,
we discourage them. When they first started appearing on the horizon
we'd send canoes out to meet them with furs and woodcarvings and
warnings about terrible shoals closer to shore. They kept venturing
farther and farther. Once here they found they enjoyed sampling our
tattoos and women. They like our tattoo artists. The First Bloods
have been inking skin for hundreds of years." Sauger shrugged.
"Punic pilgrims, our people started calling them, sailing in for
a little quick salvation at the convent before heading back to stuffy
old Carthage. No doubt they worry that sharing the secret would spoil
their fun. We do like to keep to ourselves."

Sauger
raised his glass to Sebastian, who drained his glass with a hesitant
nod toward the tavern keeper. Did Hadrian detect distrust in the
First Blood's expression?

"But
it didn't seem fair for Carthage to keep all her steam trawlers."

"No
one stole the Anna. She just changed her home port."

"But
she's owned by the head of the merchant guild. Funny how he never
objected."

Hadrian
had landed a blow. Sauger's grin disappeared, and Hadrian continued.
"I think that you are telling me that the Anna is still part of
Fletcher's fleet. Despite the touching monument to her in our
cemetery. I remember how the captain wiped away a tear as he laid out
the wreath for her dead."

As
if on cue a door opened and the man who'd disappeared with the blond
woman earlier returned, alone now, carrying his vest in his hand. For
the briefest of moments, in the light under one of the bright
lanterns hanging from the ceiling, the salvager glanced at Hadrian,
then quickly turned his face away. But it was long enough. Hadrian
had spent time with him in Carthage, on the docks when they were
training men for the first steam ships. The death digger's skin was
darker, and now heavily tattooed, his hair longer, but Hadrian knew
him. Wheeler. He was one of the Anna's missing crew members. His name
was carved on the monument in the Carthage cemetery. The children's
choir had sung a song in his memory.

"What
I don't quite understand," Hadrian went on, "is why you
have gone out of your way to welcome me. Or perhaps you just want to
keep the meat tender for your stewpot."

Laughter
flashed in Sauger's eyes. He played the role of the publican
perfectly, but Hadrian was beginning to glimpse the restless cunning
behind his eyes. "We savor your—" he searched for a
word, "your uniqueness, Professor Boone."

The
two men seemed to be carrying on different conversations. Hadrian
forced a sip of his vodka, watching as the blond woman reappeared,
now leading away Wade. "I was wondering if I might meet your
mayor. Or chairman. The head of your government."

"I
like your new friend, Sebastian," Sauger said to the First
Blood. "He gets right to the nub of it!"

"I
don't understand."

"We
have learned our lessons well. We have no government. We live by
mutual benefit. Social symbiosis. Everyone embraces their roles.
Rethink your world, friend. Ever notice how all the big problems in
history were caused by governments?"

"But
now St. Gabriel is recruiting for new roles," Hadrian replied.
"Putting your agents in the camps. It's a big world, as they
say, now more than ever."

"Just
trying to make new friends, to find new mutual benefit."

"Or
perhaps you are reinventing the world."

Sauger
ignored the comment, just gestured around his tavern. "If you
need something, just ask."

In
a clear voice Hadrian said, "Give me the killer of Jonah Beck."

Sauger's
expression grew less genial. "The murder of a prominent citizen.
Sounds like an internal problem for Carthage."

"I
once thought just that," Hadrian said, then shrugged. "But,
as you said, I have to rethink my world. What if our problems started
here?" After a moment he added, "How would you even know
Beck was a prominent citizen?"

"Old
wizards cast long shadows." Sauger signaled to the red-haired
woman. She picked up a leather pouch and walked toward them.

The
woman dropped the pouch by Sauger, who shoved it toward Hadrian. He
opened it. Inside were four cans of chicken soup.

"What
price do I put on such treasures?"

His
host smiled again. "A gift. Always a pleasure to connect a man
to something he will truly appreciate."

"Would
that all your prisoners got such treatment."

Sauger
shrugged his broad shoulders. "You saw the boy enjoying our
bounty. Let's call it two out of three."

The
tavern keeper held him with a steady gaze but Hadrian didn't miss
Sebastian's glance toward the door behind which the blond woman kept
disappearing. Hadrian lifted his glass. "To bigger worlds,"
Hadrian toasted. Sauger and Sebastian tapped their glasses to his,
then the bartender rose with a raucous laugh and left them.

Hadrian
forced himself to drink, slowly but steadily, making sure his escort
matched him glass for glass. He challenged the big First Blood to
darts, then tipsily missed half his throws. As a fiddler began to
play he joined the others in a song, then pulled the redhead from her
stool. They began to dance. Her skin seemed to shimmer as he held her
close, then he saw that it was covered with Angel Polish, the
cosmetic from the Carthage fishery.

A
brute of a man in sooty denims cut in on a youth dancing with one of
the women. When the younger man tried to reclaim his partner a few
minutes later, the bigger man lashed out with a fist, knocking the
youth to the floor. As he turned to kick him before he could rise,
Hadrian recognized the surly engineer from the Anna.

"Tull!"
Sauger barked, and pointed to the door outside.

The
engineer, clearly drunk, halted, glaring at Sauger, then grabbed a
bottle and left the tavern.