Ashes of the Earth (27 page)

They
worked in silence, grateful at least for the fresh air. After his
third trip Hadrian stole a quick glance at the boiler, confirming
that it bore the numeral one on a brass nameplate that read carthage
world industries, one of Jonah's little jokes. The old scientist had
fussed over the construction of the engine, finally deciding it was
overdesigned and using a simpler version on subsequent boats. But
Jonah had always been fond of the Anna, named for his long-lost
daughter, and the vessel, a prisoner herself in a way, somehow felt
like an old friend to Hadrian. Building her ten years earlier had
been a labor of love, an important benchmark in the development of
the colony's economy. The day of her launching had been declared a
festival day, and Hadrian had arranged for wide-eyed schoolchildren
to take rides on her across the bay.

As
he climbed onto the deck for another load of wood, a boathook flashed
out and grabbed his ankle. He stumbled painfully against the rail,
then a boot on his back slammed him facedown onto the deck. Rolling
over, he froze.

"Wade!"
Hadrian cried. It was impossible. He was in prison.

The
bearded man glanced at the wheelhouse, where Hadrian saw the wheel
tied to a peg, then tossed the hook from hand to hand. He leaned so
close Hadrian could smell his sour breath. "Ate any good books
lately?" he asked with a guffaw. As Hadrian desperately looked
about for a club, a length of rope, anything to use as a weapon, the
boat lurched against a wave. Wade spat a curse, then tossed the hook
into the wheelhouse and leapt to the helm.

The
rest of the crew seemed to warm to Hadrian as he worked beside them
and made no effort to return he and Waller to the hold when the
engineer declared their work done. By the time they entered the
harbor, one of the men, a giant with long black hair plaited in a
tail at the back, joined Hadrian at the rail to explain the strange
little community they approached. The big man, a First Blood who
introduced himself as Sebastian, pointed to the long two-story stone
structure that dominated the village.

"Long
before the ending," he said, "this was a convent. St.
Gabriel. Famous for making lace. When it shut down it was bought by a
farmer. There were four such buildings, the nuns' cells on the top
and working rooms underneath. It was already a century old even then,
and he converted one to his home and the others to chicken barns.
When the big blasts came, they were all from the north, from the
cities along the shore. The buildings were parallel, identical stone
structures. The other three shielded the last, so that when it was
over just this one stood. When my family came out of the cave we hid
in, there was nothing left, so we went to the lake and worked the
fish along the shore to survive. Weeks later we came upon this, the
only intact building anywhere, with three huge piles of cut stone
ready to be used. A couple of weeks later others showed up, a band of
men in grey clothes. We agreed to share the place."

"We
always thought people up here were living in tents and crude
lean-tos." Hadrian said with an uneasy glance back at the
wheelhouse. Wade was distracted with the docking of the boat. When
asked, Jori had confirmed there had been no other report of escapes
from the prison. Wade was meant to be serving a month for stabbing a
man.

"Some
of my people still do, by choice. Some, like my brother Nathaniel,
are making their way in the exile camps. Most of the salvage teams
are from my tribe. My youngest brother left on one months ago and we
haven't seen him since."

An
ache grew in Hadrian's heart as he gazed at the old convent building.
The two-hundred-foot-long structure was the most elegant building he
had seen in twenty-five years. Nearly fifty people lived in
apartments in the old chicken house, Sebastian explained, with
another three hundred in the sturdy stone houses constructed about
the landscape on either side of the large structure. Their roofs used
the same jumble of materials as in Carthage's early dwellings, split
logs, pine bark, metal sheets, even thatch—but the walls were
of the same precisely cut grey stone. Yet something was jarring about
their lines, something incongruous.

Sebastian
saw the way he cocked his head toward them. "We didn't know how
to make good mortar or even how to lay stone until a few years ago,"
he explained. "We call them the crooked houses." The thick
walls, though made of perfectly squared stones, bulged and twisted.

Hadrian
looked back at Wade, speaking with the engineer now, then scanned the
handful of rough-looking men and women at the waterfront, busying
themselves with ropes for the berthing. There seemed to be no armed
escort waiting for them. Jori looked almost wistfully at the hold
where they'd been kept, as if ready to make the return trip. Suddenly
a young girl ran out of a nearby shed and up the gangplank. Sebastian
bent over as she whispered in his ear.

"You're
with me," the tall First Blood said. As he pressed his hand
tightly around Hadrian's wrist, two men moved up the gangway. Hadrian
heard Jori's cry of alarm and turned to see the engineer grab her as
she tried to flee. One of the approaching men laughed. It was
Scanlon, whose finger Jori had shot off. Without speaking, and with
no warning, he raised his good hand and slapped her so hard she
dropped to the deck. She was unconscious as they dragged her off the
ship.

Hadrian,
too, was
a
prisoner, he realized as Sebastian guided him beyond the waterfront.
He was being allowed to wander among the crooked houses of St.
Gabriel but it soon became clear he would not be allowed to stray
beyond the reach of Sebastian's long, powerful arms. The First Blood,
however, was an affable enough watchdog, letting Hadrian choose their
course along the perimeter of the settlement, not hesitating to
answer his questions, though shoving him forward whenever he
hesitated to look back at the building where they had taken Jori.

As
they walked Hadrian contrasted the image of the northern community he
was seeing with that conjured up by the Carthage fishermen. The
sparse population of the myth lived in primitive conditions and their
home did not even have a name. They were just the northerners, and
the term was always spoken in a tone of pity.

The
real settlement was far more interesting, and far more unsettling,
than its fabled counterpart. The town of crooked houses was
flourishing, many of its inhabitants attired better than the average
citizen of Carthage. As they rounded a corner and came into the
central square, Hadrian's heart leapt. A market was underway, with
vendors selling from tables arrayed along the edge of the square.
Their wares comprised a rich assortment of salvage.

"The
destruction here must not have been as severe as in the south,"
Hadrian ventured, noting now nervous glances being cast toward
Sebastian. He had almost forgotten that where he stood once had been
a different country from his own. Canada had always tried to remain
on the sidelines of international disputes.

"Not
much difference," Sebastian replied. "All the government
efforts at peace for all those years just meant forty-eight hours'
delay before the destruction came. But last year we found a corridor
of warehouses four days' ride to the west, where half the buildings
still stood. I was in the hunting party that discovered them. At
first they looked like just more hills but when we got closer we saw
they were structures covered with vines and brush rooted in their
roof cracks. Our pack trains have been slowly emptying them."

Hadrian's
eyes widened as he took in the breadth of goods. Soaps and cosmetics
in original wrappers. Stacks of apparel, including T-shirts and ball
caps emblazoned with the emblems of extinct teams. Board games. Toy
trucks. Dolls in their original boxes. Comic books, their colors
still vibrant. As he watched, a woman purchased a table lamp refitted
to take candles, tendering three copper coins. Carthage dollars. She
gestured for another woman, much more shabbily dressed, to carry her
purchase. He realized more men and women in the crowd were carrying
heavy loads, all wearing drab grey or brown clothes, all with their
eyes lowered.

"Servants?"
he asked.

"Indentured.
Those who can't make it, those with no one to provide for them can
sign on for five years to serve a household in exchange for room and
board. It's how they survive."

Hadrian
studied the averted eyes, the empty gazes on several of those who
wore the drab clothes. "They don't look too happy about it."

Sebastian
shrugged. "Sometimes troublemakers get assigned to indenture.
Cheaper than a jail."

They
roamed now past small shops and then beyond another row of crooked
houses, eventually arriving at a knoll overlooking the settlement.
Hadrian surveyed the landscape, realizing that each new piece of the
puzzle made the whole harder to grasp. "Where are your farms,
your food?"

"Some
grains are grown on farms near here," the First Blood explained.
"The rest we hunt or buy."

"Fish
from Carthage."

"More
than fish," Sebastian said, then he frowned. Hadrian sensed he
was worried about revealing too much. "Most of the land beyond
here was agricultural, for two hundred miles. Half our people had
starved to death by the time we found them." He grinned at
Hadrian's confusion, then relented. "Cattle and sheep gone
feral, meat on the hoof. Huge herds now, in the thousands. Keeping
long stretches of the old pastures grazed down."

"I
thought hunter-gatherers were supposed to have a more hand-to-mouth
existence," Hadrian said, looking back at the town. By many
measures it was a prospering community but as he watched more of the
servants he noted their looks of melancholy, if not outright
suffering. They weren't servants, they were slaves.

"With
all those who died of starvation in the early years no one begrudges
a full belly now."

Changing
the subject, Hadrian asked offhandedly, "Who teaches
the
children?"

Sebastian
shrugged. "Why?"

"In
my experience only two things are of real importance in life—
who teaches the children and what they teach them."

"The
mothers have a group, do the best they can. My own mother runs a
school for the tribal children but she insists it be away, in the
deep woods. We have artisans," the First Blood added, "wood
carvers, pot makers, a couple of painters."

"And
a paper maker," Hadrian surmised.

Sebastian
nodded. "Just off the square. The old woman makes heaps of the
stuff."

Ten
minutes later they were stepping into the shop. In a side room a
young woman in a grey tunic was ripping salvaged clothing apart at
the seams, tossing it into a boiling vat for recovery of its fibers.
Hadrian touched a stack of paper sheets on the counter. They were too
thin to be used for the smuggled shotgun shells, but they were of the
same speckled pattern, the same texture. It would not be difficult to
make a heavier version. He watched as a silver-haired woman directed
another indentured worker to carry what seemed to be heavier sheets
through a doorway at the rear of the room. As Hadrian made a move to
follow, Sebastian pulled him away.

They
wandered along the waterfront in the fading light, pausing to watch a
line of silent, fatigued riders with packhorses arrive at a building
that had the look of a warehouse. Sebastian put a restraining hand on
Hadrian's shoulder as he stepped toward the salvage riders, pointing
him instead toward a double door at the end of the chicken house
where a woman was hanging two large oil lanterns. Several figures who
had been lingering along the waterfront were converging on the doors.

The
tavern was already getting noisy by the time the two men entered.
Hadrian paused after his first step through the door, unable to
suppress a surprised grin. It was hard not to respond to the wood-paneled walls, the fire crackling in the potbellied stove, the motley
collection of bottles on the bar reflecting the light of two dozen
candles. The impression was one of undeniable cheer.

"Hadrian
Boone!" boomed the burly man behind the bar as they approached.
He had a broad face and long greying hair tied behind his neck.
Wiping his hands, he reached across to grip the newcomer's hand.
"Rene Sauger." He offered his name with a wide smile, then
pounded the bar with a pewter mug to get the attention of his other
patrons. "Hadrian Boone! A founding father of Carthage!"
Several customers stared at Hadrian with intense interest as Sauger
raised the mug to him, others glanced and quickly looked away.

Sauger
poured Hadrian and Sebastian pints of ale and led them to a table by
the stove. Hadrian cautiously sipped at his drink, watching the
genial publican, trying to fit together the puzzle that was St.
Gabriel.