The Book of Fire (29 page)

They leave the dragons behind again, a ways down from the rise in the shadow of what’s left of a two-lane overpass. The big guy eyes the crumbling piers, then eases his bulk up beside the tallest and widest to nose the weathered concrete.

N’Doch touches the baron’s elbow, real respectful and all. “Watch this.”

Köthen tenses reflexively, but his eyes follow N’Doch’s gesture, just in time to see the brown dragon still himself utterly and seem to vanish into the gray, man-made stone. He stifles a gasp.

N’Doch grins. “Neat trick, eh?” It can’t hurt to have the baron considering how the dragons could be used to his advantage. He’s glancing down that road already. While the girl’s explaining this particular bit of dragon magic, N’Doch
wanders over to where Water has tucked herself into a slice of shade. She looks half her normal size, whatever normal is for a dragon. She’s always beautiful, but now she’s almost cute. N’Doch’s hand strays to her silken neck.

“That was cool, what you did back at the power line.”

Saved your butt, buddy boy!

“Mine! What about his lordship’s?”

Same thing, under the circumstances.

“Yeah, well, okay, forget about it.” N’Doch spins on his heel to gather up the girl and the baron. “I’ll see ya ’round.”

Köthen moves out smartly, still insisting on taking the lead. They stick to the highway as it curves around the city until N’Doch spots an off ramp that looks like fairly easy going.

He points it out to Baron K. “That should get us off the main road and down into town.” Then he adds, “If you want.” Maybe he’s underestimated this dude. So he was hasty about assuming leadership without even checking to see who else agreed. At least he doesn’t take the responsibility lightly. Since the power-line incident, since his first long look at the city, Köthen’s questions have come at him steadily as they walked, smart questions, too. The sort that go right to the heart of what’s what in a place. And, to N’Doch’s disgust, the sort that expose the limits of his own knowledge. A layman’s rap on electricity is easy enough—how’s the guy gonna know any better? But actual ground intelligence? Access roads and fortifications? To say there aren’t any just brings a disbelieving frown. And sooner or later, he and the baron have got to have a serious chat about guns.

“You sure ask a lot of questions, Baron K. Sorry I don’t have all the answers.” N’Doch hears the girl swallow a little moan, as Köthen’s eyes flick up at him dangerously. She sees his free play with the dude’s name and title as just one more offense he’s committed among many, but for whatever reason, Köthen lets it pass without comment.

Instead he says, in the dry cadence of a schoolmaster, “Information is a weapon like anything else. The good soldier gathers up as much as he can, and never wastes his time regretting what he doesn’t have.”

“Smart move,” says N’Doch. This is no news to him, but
he likes the sense that Köthen’s repeating something told him a long time ago, like maybe when he was N’Doch’s age. Which really isn’t that long ago, now he thinks about it. He guesses Köthen’s about ten years older than he is, maybe thirty, maybe not even that. The other impression he gets strikes him as funny: the baron has clearly decided to take him under his wing. It’s a laugh only because, of course, N’Doch sees it the other way around. But he doesn’t care. The dude’s all right, really, for all his arrogance and attitude, and N’Doch would rather have him on his side than not. Plus he knows from his years in the gangs that some guys just gotta be sure they’re the boss.

So they take the exit, like he’s advised, and N’Doch lets the baron lead the way. He’d rather be rear guard anyway, since most sneak attacks come from behind. Now that they’re moving down in among the deserted gas stations and the empty strip malls, N’Doch feels his adrenaline start to pump. Every window has been busted out. There’s broken glass crunching underfoot, buried in a layer of what looks like dried mud, the same mud that cakes the bases of the buildings and the burned-out trees for at least a meter up.

“See that? The water’s been even higher than it is now. And not all that long ago.”

“Then it’s not a drought?” the girl asks dutifully, but N’Doch can see that his concern is not deeply shared. For all she knows, the folks of this time build their cities in the water. Who’s he kidding? For all he knows, they might. But not this city. This city is too familiar, not which or where it is, but how. Parts of it he knows were built in his own time, and parts were built before, like this big gray stone building on the corner that Köthen has stopped to stare up at. It’s crumbling a bit, and there’s weeds and scrawny old trees growing up out of its windows, but it has a kind of falling-down grace to it. Big cornices like on the Presidential Palace at home, and a couple of weather-beaten stone lions flanking what used to be the steps up to the door. N’Doch is no historian. He couldn’t quote place or date, but he’s sure seen buildings like this in vids. He looks around, then trots across the street to haul on a rusted sheet of metal he’s spotted sticking out of a rubble pile. He pulls it free and brushes away the top flaked layer
of mud. Sun-bleached letters appear through the brownish film.

The sign says: DRY CLEANERS.

“Omigod!” N’Doch scrabbles around in the wreckage for more signage. He can read a little English, and speak a bit more. He guesses from the bits of slangy ads he sees, and the bold, plain styles of the lettering. “Can it be? Oh, man, I think we’re in the States!”

“What’s the states?” asks the girl, coming up beside him.

He tells himself, don’t jump to conclusions now. It’s only a coupla signs. The English doesn’t mean anything. People everywhere were using it by his time. But his hunch feels right, and he’s seized by an old excitement. He goes out into the middle of the street, peering up and down for more convincing evidence. He’s not sure he really needs any. “Oh, man, the States! I always wanted to come here!”

He’s slipped back into French, and Köthen asks for a translation. When he gets it, the baron frowns. “Why didn’t you, if it meant so much?”

The excitement makes N’Doch high and reckless. He turns on Köthen with a wild grin. A sharp retort about the abuses of power and privilege nearly escapes him, but he bites it back. What’s the point? This dude was born to all that. How could he possibly understand about something you can’t afford, or the yearning for a Promised Land? Instead N’Doch says, and he tries to say it proudly, even though his papa was nothing to be proud about: “I’m a poor man’s son, Baron K. I never could go just anywhere I wanted.”

Köthen meets his gaze without reproof. N’Doch is taken aback by the bleak and bitter compassion he reads there. “Like you think I can? Think again, lad. Besides, you’re here now, aren’t you?”

N’Doch catches himself grinning right into the man’s eyes. And he sees an ironic ghost of his grin reflecting back at him. Flustered, he looks away. “Well, hell, yes, I guess I am.” Then he lets the laugh rise up, lets it fill his lungs and echo along the blank faces of the buildings and down the mud-caked streets. “Hey! I guess I am! Hel-lo, America!”

P
aia toys with her breakfast. Usually she is infused with a reverent, energetic calm for many days after worshiping the God. Usually she goes about her Temple duties with a pious intensity that inspires both her subordinates and the Faithful alike.

“What does he say to you?” Luco ventured once, as they prepared the Sanctuary for a water ritual. He smoothed the red altar cloth absolutely flat and lined up the twelve candlesticks just so, six to either side of the sacred golden bowl.

“It’s not what he says, it’s what he does.”

A candle poised in each hand, Luco gazed at her, his lips slightly parted. His blue eyes were particularly clear and guileless.

“He fills me with light.”

“Light.” Luco sighed. “How wonderful. I would give anything to . . .” He stopped, abashed. “Forgive me, my Priestess. I don’t mean to presume.”

Deeply into her calm that day, Paia was feeling generous. “Perhaps if you went to him, Luco . . .”

The priest’s bronzed cheeks paled visibly. “Enter the Sanctum? Me? I can’t imagine it.”

Luco, First Son that he is, has never touched the God, has never laid a palm to the vital heat of the God’s shimmering skin. Not even once. He says his restraint is born of worship and profound respect, but Paia sees the primal terror barely submerged in Luco’s eyes when the God is near. She is often amazed herself that her love for the God so readily overcomes her fear of him, that she alone, of all the God’s servants and Faithful, can bring herself into contact
with his physical presence without swooning in terror. Luco is a brave man, for all his fussiness and vanity. His big muscular body bears the scars of his service in the God’s Wars of Conversion, before he was elevated to the priesthood. Not many men or women have made that leap. It’s a testimony to Luco’s management and political skills, but to his nerve as well. Yet he cannot bring himself to face the God alone in the dark furnace of the Sanctum. Paia tries to imagine Son Luco in holy ecstasy. It might all be just a little too messy for him.

Bringing her attention back to her uneaten breakfast, she sees there’s no melon on her plate this morning. The kitchen will surely put up the defense that it’s unhealthy to eat the same thing every morning, and that the delicate egg-and-cheese pastries are a worthy substitute. But Paia suspects that they’ve run to the end of the melons earlier than usual in the Temple garden, like with the spring strawberries, and she’ll see no more until next season. For no particular reason, she recalls all those blank blue screens on the House Comp’s monitor bank. She should have asked him what they meant. She would have, had the God not summoned her. Paia slumps in her chair, inexplicably disconsolate. Perhaps the blackberries will be bearing soon.

She pushes the plate away, gets up, and finds herself pacing. This odd restlessness. It’s so unfamiliar, she doesn’t know what to do with it. It’s like she’s waiting for something to happen, but there’s no reason to be expecting anything. Except for the occasional attempt on her life, there are no events in the life of the Citadel, only the endless rolling out of the Temple calendar: daily, monthly, yearly routine and ritual. Perhaps it’s this most recent attempt, not only the threat but the humiliation of it. Perhaps she’s absorbed some of the God’s concern about these enemies he mentioned. She wishes he had told her more, but he’d refused to discuss the matter further.

Paia wonders if Luco knows anything about the God’s enemies. She’s aware that he and the God have long sessions together in Luco’s office when the God is safely in man-form, to deal with the management of the Temple and its estates. Do they discuss other things as well? Would Luco even tell her if they did? She checks the Temple calendar. Luco has the morning free until the noon Call to
Worship, which she allows him to officiate at without her. She throws on an off-duty red Temple robe and hurries downstairs to look for him.

The affairs of the Temple and the Citadel are managed out of a suite of rooms on the second level, rooms that Paia’s father, in happier days, had used as reception rooms for meetings with members of the local communities, with village elders, with the occasional hardy visitor from outside. In one of Paia’s earliest and most vivid childhood memories, she is watching from the balcony of her nursery, as dozens of shining hovers arrive, one by one, and settle on the narrow valley floor like a gathering of dragonflies sunning their wings. Each is met by her father’s last functioning APC, and the passengers are transported in armored safety to the Citadel. This is a Big Important Meeting, her nanny explains, so we mustn’t bother Daddy and Mommy while they’re tending to their guests. The conferences and receptions went on for days, and late into the nights, and then the hovers went away. Paia saw one or two after that, dropping in for brief visits, but soon they stopped coming altogether. And the reception rooms fell into disuse, especially after her mother died. Her father let his chief steward assume the day-to-day operation of the Citadel and increasingly withdrew to the Library and his collection of precious books.

When Luco was promoted to First Son, he asked for these rooms to use as his office. Paia, eager to see them alive again, readily agreed. Just as she’d expected he would, Luco made their cleanup and restoration his first major project as operational head of the Temple. Not until their teak moldings and parquet floors were gleaming again, and their coffered ceilings were repainted and regilded, could he settle himself and his staff into them comfortably. Though Luco would protest that he is most fulfilled by his Temple duties to the God, Paia thinks he’s at his most satisfied when seated behind her father’s vast fruitwood desk, with a pile of production reports and levy accounts in front of him.

But it is quiet in the office today. Luco’s staff, four handsome young Second Sons, glance up from their work as Paia barges through the front doors. They fall to their knees right there at their desks.