Ashes of the Earth (39 page)

"I
don't think she was a waitress, Emily," Hadrian inserted. "She
worked in the rooms upstairs."

Emily
went very still. "Surely you wouldn't..." her voice
cracked. "God no, Jonathan," she moaned. New births were
vital to the survival of the colony. Performing an abortion, or
having an abortion, was not simply a felony, it was tantamount to
treason to many minds.

Salens's
voice was filled with pleading now. "You don't understand. These
girls would be taken to herbalists or black-market midwives. God
knows what damage would be done. One of her friends died of
hemorrhaging last year."

"You
did this and then the owner used it against you to get the death
reports changed," Hadrian stated. "Who was it?"

He
knew the answer before it left Salens's lips. "He has grown rich
from the fishery these past years. He fancies becoming the richest
man in the colony. Talks about building a mansion that will rival
that of the governor."

"Fletcher!"
Emily spoke the name like a curse.

A
knot was forming in Hadrian's gut. "Was it he who hosted the
dinners before Hampden and Bishop died?"

"I
don't know," Salens murmured. "I suspect so. He just said
he would turn me in for what I did to the girl if I didn't fix the
ledger."

"He
told you what to write?"

"He
told me what to delete."

The
silence was like thin ice.

"What
were you thinking?" Emily asked at last. "Why keep the
original pages?"

When
Salens did not speak, Hadrian offered the answer. "Insurance. If
Fletcher sought his help again, he'd have the leverage to say no."

Salens
sighed.

"Did
he?" Hadrian demanded. "What else did he ask for?"

"He
told me to check certain records in the laboratory, to change the
inventory sheets so nothing would be missed. I told him no one had
time to keep accurate records and he dropped it."

"But
you checked anyway," Hadrian suggested. "Out of curiosity."

"Records
are kept, but only of current inventories to see when stock has to be
replenished. There were some levels of an antiseptic that were lower
than normal."

Emily
approached Salens, hovering over the young doctor like a vengeful
fury. "Of what exactly?" she demanded.

"Silver
nitrate."

She
struck him on the cheek with her open hand, hard, then pointed to the
door. Salens's face lost its color. He did not speak as he left the
chamber.

"I
don't understand," Hadrian said.

"He
did," Emily spat. "The heart symptoms could have been
induced by any number of agents that are freely available in the
colony. A concentration of yew, rhubarb, bloodroot, or half a dozen
other herbs could have done it. But they can vary widely in their
effectiveness, and most could be reversed by a good doctor. The
discoloration along the arms means silver nitrate, which isn't
available anywhere but in our lab. We make our own. The effects of
ingestion would be irreversible. It would have guaranteed death."

CHAPTER
Thirteen

The
Zeus
was
the largest of the
skipjacks left to winter in the ice, tied at the end of its solitary
wharf. The thin crust of snow on her deck crunched as Hadrian stepped
on it. He looked back at the clapboard house by the shipyard that had
become the refuge of the jackals, then at the distant dock where ice
freighters were launched, the only wharf where men seemed to be
working. No one seemed to have noticed him, no one had followed.
Perhaps no one had even seen the dim cabin light he had sighted when
scanning the harbor through the telescope in Jonah's workshop.

His
heart leapt as a cat jumped out of a shadow and disappeared down a
companionway. He noticed movement on the lake, an iceboat speeding
toward the docks, and quickly followed the cat into the darkness. The
hinges of the cabin door gave a low groan as he stepped inside the
chamber. The solitary candle lantern on a large table revealed an
oddly disjointed chamber. On one wall drawings were tacked, artful
charcoal renderings of cats and fish and sailing ships, some of them
fanciful images of huge square-rigged men-of-war. On the opposite
wall, between portholes, were nailed the leathery skins of several
sturgeon.

The
far end of the table held a small arsenal. A long-handled ship's hook
leaned beside a pole with a spearhead. On the table lay two clubs, a
knife, and one of the heavy cleavers used for chopping off fish
heads. Beyond the weapons, a small brazier smoldered beside a pile of
blankets.

As
he inched along the table, another cat emerged from under it, hissing
a warning. The pile of blankets began to stir. One of them suddenly
rose and extended a knife at him.

"If
you came to steal, I'll slice you belly to brisket!" the figure
warned.

Hadrian
wasn't sure whether to laugh or run away. The sturdy stranger who
threw off the blanket was fully a foot shorter than himself but had
the most muscular build, and most leathery skin, of any woman he had
ever met. He held up his hands, palms outward. "I only seek a
word, Captain Reese."

"Tell
him to go fuck himself. And his tree dogs too."

Hadrian
ventured a step closer. "I don't know who you mean. My name is
Hadrian Boone. It's about Jamie. I just wanted to—" Her
fist slammed into his jaw before he could finish the sentence. She
was suddenly all arms and legs, pounding him, then kicking him as he
dropped to his knees.

"Goddamned
scrub!" she snarled. "How dare you show your face!"

As
Hadrian tried to raise his head a cat leapt onto his neck. When it
began to sink its claws into his skin he rolled into the pile of
blankets, knocking it off and burying his head. Captain Reese jumped
on him and pummeled him through the blankets.

He
fought for breath, finding a gap in the blankets. "I never hurt
your son!" he shouted. "I tried to help him! I am trying to
find his killers!"

The
pounding did not stop immediately, but slowly it diminished. When it
finally stopped he ventured a look and saw his attacker on a stool,
wearing a stunned expression. "Killers?" she murmured. "My
Jamie died because of the hospital. You and that bitch doctor are why
he died. Everyone says so."

He
silently rose to his feet and straightened his clothes. Three cats
were on the table now, staring at him. "Then everyone is lying."

"My
name is Hadrian Boone," he began again. "I am..." he
had no idea how to describe himself anymore. "I am trying to
help. I am fighting the same people your son was fighting."
Blood trickled from his lip.

"Jamie
weren't any fighter," his mother said. "He was the hero
from the
Anna."
She leaned back,
opening a porthole. Her hand extended outside and returned with a
ball of snow. Hadrian accepted it and pressed it to his bleeding lip.

"There
was a police investigation into Fletcher's smuggling. I think Jamie
had begun to realize, like I have, that the smuggling was a cover for
much worse things. He was going to help with the investigation. But
Fletcher found out."

"No.
He had an accident. The hospital should have cured him but it
didn't."

"Captain,
how did Jamie wind up on the
Anna?
Did he ever speak to you about the sinking?"

"Fletcher
said my boy had no future on a sailing ship. It near broke my heart
but when Fletcher needed an extra hand I let him go off to see what
those steamers are like. All soot and noise. It was just his second
trip out when she went down."

"But
surely he told you about it."

"Sailors
don't talk of such things. Bad luck. Two died, two survived. I went
to church for the first time in years when he came back alive."

"The
Anna
never went down that
day. I saw her, I sailed on her last month. Fletcher staged the
sinking. He didn't want your son as a sailor, he wanted him as a
jackal. But Jamie had second thoughts. Because he had a good
upbringing," Hadrian suggested. "Because you taught him
right from wrong. So Fletcher saw to it that Jamie went out on
another of his boats, then they forced drugs into him. The drugs put
him into a coma. The only thing the doctors did to hurt him was to
tell two of Fletcher's men that he would probably recover. They came
back in the night, from the jackals' house, and suffocated him with
his own pillow."

Captain
Reese stared into her rough, callused hands. A big grey cat moved to
her side as if to comfort her.

"Fletcher
and the men in St. Gabriel killed your son."

In
the long uneasy silence Hadrian lowered himself into one of the
chairs.

"St.
Gabe is a wicked place," she said at last.

"You've
been there?"

"Only
to take on cargo. Ordered by Fletcher. I told him I already had a
full hold and he said that wouldn't be a problem."

Hadrian
studied the woman, sensing invitation in her words. "Fletcher's
steamers take the smuggled salvage."

The
captain went to a cabinet and pulled out a bottle of whiskey and two
glasses. When Hadrian declined his glass she poured her own, then
turned his upside down and dribbled some of the spirits onto the
upturned bottom. The grey cat eagerly licked it up.

"Fletcher
hates the sailboats. Keeps trying to use the guild to shut us down.
All the 'jacks are owned by independent captains, no one who kisses
his arse. But he knows what I think of the government, so he asked me
to haul something special. I'd walk ten miles barefoot on the ice to
rile that son of a bitch Buchanan. I think the police were sniffing
around his smuggling operations. No one ever pays attention to the
skipjacks. We come and go without any hoopla. No wood to take on, no
smoke to show our path. Last month when he asked me to start carrying
some of those men from St. Gabe, I asked for payment. He nearly hit
me. Said the payment I get is not having jackals burn my hull to the
waterline."

As
she spoke raucous cries rose outside. They both bent to a porthole to
see a small crowd on the main wharf, cheering a procession coming
from the iceboat that had just docked. Four men with ice poles were
herding someone in a cloak toward town.

"Pay
me shit and they rake in a thousand for a little afternoon cruise,"
the captain muttered.

The
figure fell as a pole prodded a shoulder. When the prisoner rose, the
cowl slipped away. With a shudder Hadrian saw her bald head.

"Buchanan
will have to schedule the execution between ice bullet races if he
wants it done this week," Captain Reese said.

"How
did they get her so easily?" Hadrian wondered out loud.

The
captain shrugged. "Word is there was some kind of trap out on
the lake. No one is going to outrun an iceboat."

Hadrian
fought his emotions as he turned back to the table. "Wooden
boxes," he said. "That's what you hauled first. Boxes full
of shotgun shells. They would fit easily under this table."

Reese
drained her glass and poured another. "I never said I looked
inside them."

"Jamie
did. Inside the boxes, and inside the shells. It was why he suddenly
was interested in talking with the police."

"No.
You don't compass it. The government goes too far. People have to
defend themselves. It's only right the fishermen have shotguns."

"Jamie
discovered that most of the shells contained drugs. Lying about the
Anna's
sinking, helping with
the smuggling, that was just part of getting ahead in the fishery.
But shipping illegal drugs into Carthage was different."

The
captain's glass stopped in midair. "No," she said in an
uncertain tone. "That's old world. We don't have such things
now. It was ammunition. Everyone has the right to bear arms, I don't
care what the damned governor says."

"Do
yourself a favor. Find one of those shells and cut it open. It was
the powder inside that got your son killed. It's killing others in
the colony. You've been helping the jackal drug runners."