Ashes of the Earth (26 page)

"You
should have turned back when you saw the camps, Sergeant. You have no
idea what you stepped into."

"And
you do?"

"They
are conspiring to take over Carthage. Buchanan and his police have
become their sworn enemies."

"That's
the trouble with you old survivors. You overdramatize everything.
Feast or famine. Utopia or apocalypse. If this was a war, I'd be
dead."

"The
most convenient killing ground is the middle of the lake. Did they
take your gun?"

She
gave a resentful nod.

"In
the old days a policeman losing a gun had to get it back to restore
his honor." Hadrian regretted the words even before he felt her
baleful stare.

Waller
muttered a curse and stepped to the far side of the hold, making sure
with a stomp of her boot to splash bilge water on Hadrian. He leaned
against the bulkhead, knees bent, burying his head in his folded
arms. He could not understand why he always felt compelled to taunt
the woman.

The
sturdy vessel was steadily picking up speed as she moved out of the
shoreside currents, settling into a rhythmic heaving motion as she
crested low swells. After several minutes he rose and began studying
the beams and planks, running his fingers along joints that seemed
familiar.

He
suddenly froze and surveyed the hold and what he could see of the
wheelhouse through the hatch. The Anna. It was impossible. Yet he was
certain he recognized the boat, recalling how he had joined in her
construction years earlier when Jonah had become impatient to install
his first steam engine.

He
felt the sergeant's stare and turned for a moment. "The tenth
boat," he said. "You were right. It turned into a phantom.
The Anna never sank, she was stolen."

Jori
replied with a grim nod.

Jonah
and Hadrian had both felt a personal loss when the Anna had been
reported lost, though by then the shipyard had grown more
sophisticated, had moved on to larger and more functional workboats.
The Anna was small and fast. A smuggler's dream.

His
mind raced as he tried to understand how her loss could have been
fabricated. He'd attended the hearing, had heard how a sudden gale
had overtaken her as the crew had shut down the engine to repair a
leaking pipe. He closed his eyes, recalling the witnesses, the two
heroic survivors who'd clung to an overturned dinghy for two days.
They were Fletcher and Jamie Reese who, with unfortunate timing, had
agreed to leave the Zews to fill in for an ailing crew member. They
had testified that the two other men on board had drowned, and so a
wreath had been laid for them in the cemetery. Flynn and Wheeler. He
remembered the governor calling out their names in the roll of the
colony's heroes. Jonah had given a speech.

Suddenly
he went still. On his last journal page Jonah had written how he had
seen all ten boats of the fleet. Wanderers all returned home. Jonah
had known, had deliberately recorded the truth, as if it would have
been meaningful for someone who understood his secret journal.
Hadrian had not fully appreciated the journal. It held secrets within
secrets.

Hadrian
studied the bulkhead that divided the hold, a new wall erected to
create a separate compartment in front of the engine room. He touched
his pocket and to his surprise found his knife still there. Settling
on a large knot in the wooden planks, he began chipping away at its
edges.

Ten
minutes later he had his eye pressed to the open knothole, gazing
into a small chamber with an elevated floor. The hatch cover overhead
was ajar, allowing enough light for him to plainly see six of the
small kegs that had been wheeled out of the compound, carefully
secured with rope to cleats on the wall. He felt a touch on his
shoulder and straightened to let Waller look.

"What
could the camps make that would be so valuable to some impoverished
fishermen in the north?" she asked.

"Gunpowder."

"No,"
the sergeant shot back. "I went to the library two days ago,
looked in the old science textbooks. Nitrate, charcoal, and sulfur is
what is used. The sulfur is yellow and stinks like sour eggs."

"All
of which they could find if they look in the mountains. You forget
that many of the original exiles were scientists. Jonah had no
trouble setting up a gunpowder workshop when they needed it to blast
channels for the water works."

"I
remember going to that workshop. It had that terrible smell. There
was nothing like that at the compound. They ignored me at first when
they took me, just kept me tied and gagged while they readied this
shipment. The kegs have smaller kegs inside, wrapped tight in
deerskin and sealed with wax. There were other smells, like spices.
And that strong stuff they use in paint."

"Turpentine."

Hadrian
bent and stared at the kegs at long time. Whatever was inside was
Kinzler's brainchild. Kinzler, the camps' answer to Jonah.

He
stood and braced himself against the bulkhead, filled with new
foreboding. If they didn't contain gunpowder, they contained
something just as dangerous. Somehow Jonah had understood and would
have known how to deal with whatever alchemy Kinzler was wielding.
Jonah would have been a threat to Kinzler.

Waller
settled below the hatch, where she watched the sky. "Have you
been there?" she asked. "In the north."

"No,
Sergeant, I haven't."

She
cast an annoyed glance at him. "My name is Jori. Not Sergeant.
Not Waller."

"No,"
he offered again, feeling an unfamiliar awkwardness. "No, Jori.
I haven't been there." As far as Carthage was concerned, there
was no there in the north, no real settlement, no community, no one,
and no place that mattered to the colony.

"The
reports all say it's just a few hardscrabble farms and fishermen
living hand to mouth."

"The
reports," Hadrian reminded her, "all come from the
fishery."

Jori
looked as if she had bitten something sour. "What happened?"
she asked toward the sky. "All these years life goes slow and
steady in Carthage. Then suddenly I don't recognize the world I live
in. Every day it gets ..." She searched for a word.

"Bigger,"
Hadrian suggested after a moment.

She
sighed. "Bigger," she agreed. "I asked about that
afternoon before Jonah died," she added after a moment. "No
one saw Kenton. He wasn't at the prison. He probably just went to the
races at the fair like half the other officers on duty."

Hadrian
replied with an absent nod. He had realized others could have seen
Hastings's body. Two young girls had definitely seen it. He bent and
retrieved a small brown husk from the floor of the hold, then saw
another, and another.

"Grain?"
Jori asked as he dropped the husk into her palm. "The farmers
don't use boats."

The
little husks sent a chill up Hadrian's spine. "They're moving
grain," he said. "You saw grain moving into the port at
night. The millers were smuggling."

"No,"
the sergeant protested, "the governor explained I was wrong."
But she could not argue against the proof in front of her. "God
no, not our grain." It was the lifeblood of the colony and, as
such, strictly controlled, stored only in five huge government silos
at the edge of town. "They couldn't. The millers' guild watches
over the harvesting and processing. The police guard the silos."

"This
boat smuggles goods to Carthage, then brings grain back," he
observed, though he had no idea of where it could be going. Those
exiles he'd seen in the camps surely were not benefiting from it.

"Near
that harbor," Jori ventured in a worried voice. "I was
studying the settlement from the hill above before I was captured. I
saw an island with tall windowless cabins, by a small dock. Like
square silos." She picked up another of the husks. "I don't
understand. The smuggled ammunition. These secret kegs. Now the
grain. What does it mean?"

Hadrian
had no answer.

Half
an hour later the hatch was pulled back and a bucket was lowered
containing a jug of water and four apples. Hadrian ate in a brooding
silence, trying to make sense of his discoveries. As they were
finishing their meager meal a familiar figure dropped through the
opening. Hadrian sprang up to catch the boy, then saw that Dax was
hanging by his hands from the hatch frame.

"Ain't
it prime!" exclaimed the boy, swinging himself back and forth.
"The wind and the water and millions of fish all around! I saw
the back of a sturgeon at the surface, as long as a hay wagon!"

Hadrian
grabbed the boy and pulled him down. "You turned her over to
them, Dax. She's a police sergeant."

Dax
eyed Jori a moment then shook his head. "Not outside Carthage,
that's what they said. Outside Carthage she's just some nosey hag."

"It's
Carthage you have to worry about, if you ever mean to go back. She
didn't tell anyone there about your connection to the jackals."

"You
can't know that," Dax shot back. "You were in the camps
before she came." He eyed the sergeant suspiciously.

"I
know she wouldn't do that," Hadrian insisted. "Not yet. And
she was with me at the apartment where that policeman was killed."
Then he added, "If Kenton finds out you're connected with the
jackals, he'll probably pull your old mill down."

Dax's
face darkened but he said nothing.

"How
many?" Hadrian asked. "How many messages for Jonah did you
carry to Nelly?"

"Once
a month," came the hesitant reply. "Four letters, once a
month, for Miss Nelly. She would give me things. Little carved
animals. One of those knives with a turtle shell handle they make in
the camps."

Four
letters. Jonah had composed one journal page a week, Hadrian reminded
himself. Four a month. As if he had been reporting to Nelly what he
recorded in his chronicle. "Did you ever read any?"

"Never
in life! The professor trusted me to keep them secret. Miss Nelly
kept them secret too, locked in a box."

"Did
anyone else see them?"

The
boy frowned. "That Shenker. Lieutenant Shenker, he makes the
others call him in that compound of theirs. Once he blocked my path.
When I tried to get out of the way he hit me. I told him I was a
jackal when he took my letter, but he only laughed. He read it over
again and again, as if he had trouble understanding. When he gave it
back, he said there was no need to tell Nelly he had seen it."

Hadrian
hesitated as Dax reached for the water jug. "Who did you tell
about Jonah meeting you at the saw pit, Dax?"

"No
one," the boy said insistently.

"I
was there. Someone had brought in a chair and tools. They were
expecting Jonah. They were going to torture him and kill him there.
Jonah was going there because of you, because of the book he was
reading to you. They were going to be waiting."

"That's
a lie!"

"No.
Something happened that made them act sooner. But if Jonah hadn't
died at the library, he would have died two days later. They would
have tied him to that chair. They were going to burn him, to break
his bones, to cut into him. Who did you tell, Dax?"

The
boy's face darkened but he spoke no more, just took the apple cores
and empty jug, dropping them into the bucket before grabbing the rope
and whistling for it to be hauled up. As Hadrian watched Dax rise
through the hatch, he wondered at the many boys who lived inside him.
He was the orphan, struggling for years to stay alive on his own. He
was the smuggler, the messenger for criminals. He was also the boy
who listened, enthralled, to Jonah reading Treasure Island and wanted
to learn about the stars. He was the jackal who ran with ghosts. And,
Hadrian reminded himself, on arriving at the camps the boy had not
gone straight to Kinzler but rather sat with the children like an
older brother, then distributed secret letters to exile families.

It
was late
afternoon
when the Anna began to slow, buffeted by a chill autumn wind that
quickly subsided as they entered a small bay. Hadrian and Jori had
been released from the hold an hour earlier, arriving on deck as a
man in soot-stained coveralls berated two teenage boys who had
collapsed, clearly exhausted, by a pile of wood at the stern.

"Goddamned
lubbers!" the man roared. "You'll be fish bait when I'm
through with you!" As the youths spun about, Hadrian saw the
fear on their faces. They were wan, thin boys, sons of New Jerusalem
being sent north. Being sent to serve those of the north, he realized
as the man—clearly the engineer, in charge of the engine
below—violently threw a log at the nearest boy. It hit the boy
in the chest, knocking him backward. As tears welled in the boy's
eyes the engineer laughed, then turned to Hadrian and Jori. "Wood,"
he commanded, gesturing to the pile of fuel. "Down to the
engine. Now."