Ashes of the Earth (41 page)

"It's
taken months, probably more, to put this together. Wheels within
wheels. Crimes within crimes. I never suspected the scope of their
ambition."

"Speak
plainly," the governor snapped.

"The
pieces were all there. The guilds always cut corners. The merchants
had secret salvage trips. The fishermen had their smuggling. The
millers had found a way to divert some grain to eventually sell to
the exiles. It took the genius of those in St. Gabriel to combine it
all. When they found they could make drugs they were unstoppable. The
sum of the parts became far greater than the whole. The smuggling
made them rich. Now destroying the grain brings Carthage to its
knees. The drugs provide the deathblow."

"Nonsense,"
Buchanan said, but his voice lacked conviction.

"With
our granaries gone, they'll expect you to beg for food," Hadrian
said.

"They
can't possibly have enough."

"They
were running the Anna back and forth for months hauling salvage one
way and grain on the return. And what's enough? Their point isn't
really made until people start dying. But they won't offer us the
means to stay alive, not yet. St. Gabriel first wants the people here
desperate, so they won't question what their new government does so
long as it feeds them. Then the drugs will destroy any resolve to
resist. You'll end up begging."

"Like
hell," Buchanan growled.

"And
when you refuse they'll make it clear to the people that you have
turned down the means to avoid starvation. They won't have to get rid
of you then, because they know the people will. How long will your
flying squad last when five hundred citizens storm your mansion?"

"To
hell with them!" Buchanan remained defiant. "I will not
beg!" As he spoke a wagon drove by, laden with a family and
their household furnishings, no doubt bound for relatives on some
distant farm. A man struggling with belongings jammed into a blanket
on his shoulder walked by. The disintegration of Carthage was
beginning before their eyes.

"You
will beg for it," Hadrian said, "you'll pay double, triple
what it is worth, transfer the entire government coffers to St.
Gabriel if that's what it takes."

"You
forever misjudge me. I will destroy them."

"No.
You misjudge them. I am not speaking of the governor. I am speaking
of the father. They will keep Sarah addicted for a while, then
withhold the drugs. She will start to scream, scream until her throat
is bloody. She will weep with pain, she will shout hideous things at
you and her sister. She will suffer things no child should ever
suffer. You have already shown those in St. Gabriel that there is no
boundary between what you do for the state and what you do for your
family. As part of the negotiations they will secretly offer you what
Sarah craves. You will not refuse."

Buchanan's
expression turned desolate. "My little Sarah," was all he
said.

Jori
approached, with cool determination in her eyes. She held his gaze a
moment before he turned back to the governor. Hadrian sighed and
gazed toward the western horizon as he spoke.

"Their
power rests with the drugs and the grain, but also with their secret
allies in Carthage. Unless we find those working inside Carthage, the
ones who always seem to know our every step, we can trust no one. And
the truth is not here. It is out there," he said, gesturing
toward the wilderness. "So we will go find it, the three of us,
and follow the trail of evidence back here."

Buchanan
watched a family of older colonists go by with their belongings piled
on an oxcart. The veterans were the first to leave, because they knew
what lay ahead. Hadrian knew the governor was glimpsing the same
nightmarish memories of their first two winters, when dogs and cats,
sparrows and mice had gone into stewpots, when bodies had gone into
mass graves, when women had offered their bodies for half a loaf to
keep a child alive.

Hadrian
did not believe Buchanan had heard until he slowly turned to him.
"Three?"

"Nelly's
coming. She can get us inside closed doors. She possesses secrets
that will help. But she will never reveal them in your prison."

"The
people have to see we are still in charge," Buchanan said. "They
need a distraction," he said after a moment. "I should move
up her hanging."

"Nelly
is a thorn in St. Gabriel's side. They made sure she was here when
Jonah died. They've made her a pawn in this, just like you. They want
her hung, to eliminate any dissidence on their side. Her death will
mark the point of no return. She must go with me. Say she is still in
official custody."

"Never."

Hadrian
closed his eyes a moment, then opened them to the sound of an
animal-like whimpering. A young man was traveling with his fleeing
parents, who had been obliged to tie him down in their cart. He was
laughing hysterically one moment, muttering gibberish the next. Their
voices were despairing, stoic pain on their faces as they tried to
soothe him.

Buchanan
watched them, saying nothing.

Hadrian
fingered the shell of powder in his pocket. He hated himself for
saying the words even before they left his mouth. "I will leave
you enough of the drug to last Sarah a week."

Buchanan
stared at the family disappearing over the hill before speaking.
"Bjorn will go," he suddenly declared. "He will have
orders to kill her if she tries to escape."

The
fishery had
a
haunted air about it in the winter night.

M
The larger boats lay trapped by ice against their wharves. Smaller
ones, hauled by teams of oxen onto log racks, resembled stranded
whales. The moonlight, filtered dim and blue through a bank of fog,
rendered the solitary sentry an otherworldly scarecrow.

The
iceboat freighters lay beyond the guard, tethered to the dock as if
they might float away. Hadrian and his three companions crouched for
a quarter hour in the shadow under one of the boat racks, assuming
the sentry would soon move away from the shed where he lingered to
patrol the rest of the docks. When the moon finally rose out of the
fog and lit the man's face, Bjorn rose.

"I
know that Norger," was all he said before marching deliberately
toward, him.

He
spoke only briefly with the guard, pointing down the docks. Even from
the distance it was clear the big policeman was berating the man for
staying out of the cold wind instead of making his rounds along the
waterfront. No one ever argued with Bjorn. The sentry offered a
gesture like a salute and trotted away.

They
chose for themselves a sleek midsized craft with a small cockpit that
opened through a hatch into the oval-shaped hold. As Nelly settled
into the hold beside their packs, Hadrian and Jori collected blankets
from the other boats, quickly cutting the rigging on each as they did
so. Jori lit the onboard lamps then began to explain how Hadrian and
Bjorn must push the outrigger struts to position the boat out on the
open ice where it would catch the wind as she unfurled the mainsail.

Bjorn
bent to untether the boat, then paused and suddenly sprang to the
shadows behind a piling and heaved out a small figure. The boy's legs
flailed the air as Bjorn held him at arm's length. Dax ignored Bjorn,
calling to Boone.

"I
know you'd have to go!" the boy said. "As soon as I saw
those jackals steal the ice freighter after the fire last night I
knew you'd be following."

Bjorn
slowly lowered the boy to the ice and Dax scrambled to the strut,
where he began pushing. When the boat did not move, he quieted and
fixed Hadrian with a solemn expression. "I told you. I have to
get that book back so Mr. Jonah can rest on the other side."

Bjorn
snapped a curse and was about to pull the boy away when Hadrian held
up a restraining hand. The Norger glared at the two a moment then
shrugged and motioned Hadrian to join him on the struts.

In
past winters Hadrian had crewed on the ice bullets, as the small
racing craft were called, and had suffered so many rough landings on
the lake ice when the unstable boats had veered or toppled that the
bruising and discomfort had begun to outweigh the thrills of the
winning runs. This larger boat was a different creature. The bullets
might behave like erratic hares, but as the craft they were on now
picked up speed, she was a long graceful snow leopard, loping toward
the silver horizon.

As
Bjorn, Nelly, and Dax settled into the compartment under the heavy
blankets, Hadrian leaned on the rail beside Jori. Her eyes darted
from the rattling sail to the rigging, the outriggers, the compass,
the ice ahead. He had never seen her so confident, so at ease with
herself. She was in control, at a task at which she obviously
excelled. Everyone remembered her as a lacrosse star, she had told
him when they had argued about who should pilot the boat, but her
passion had always been ice sailing.

"Following
the coast, it's nearly a hundred miles to the camps," he said,
raising his voice over the wind. "Can we make it by dawn?"

Jori's
face seemed to shine as she watched the shoreline speed by. "Much
sooner. Funny thing about these ice luggers. With their shape and
displacement, they'd sink like a stone in the water. But on the ice,
riding on the outriggers, they are speed demons. We're doing thirty
knots at least." She paused and gave him an inquiring glance.
"But the camps aren't our destination," she ventured.

"There
must be a salvage trail leading from them to the southwest. From the
harbor we'll have to slip through New Jerusalem to find it."

She
asked no more, only nodded, then lifted his hand and rested it on the
tiller. She spoke no more of the dangers ahead, but only of the
rigging and headings, pointing out how the compass had been cleverly
mounted in a case embedded with mirrors and crystals that
concentrated the light so the needle was illuminated by the small oil
lamp built into its base. With her gloved hand resting on his, she
showed him how only the subtlest movement was needed to shift
direction, then moved to the side, letting him steer. "A good
skipper watches the needle and embraces the music," she told
him. For a quarter hour she stood silently, the wind whipping her
hair, the stars filling her eyes. At last she yawned and lowered
herself to the deck, wrapping herself in a blanket before leaning
against his legs.

Hadrian
had seldom known a feeling of such exhilaration, of such freedom. He
was on a strange icebound planet, between known worlds—the
catastrophe that was Carthage behind him, the ruined land of killers
and thieves ahead. But for the moment, in between, as the aurora
danced overhead and the ship ghosted across the empty lake, he was
free. Gradually he understood Jori's words, gradually the music
reached his consciousness. When they were in perfect trim, the tight
rigging ropes emitted a low humming noise as the wind stroked them,
the brass pulleys offered a baritone drone, the runners sang on the
ice.

He
was not sure when Nelly awoke, simply became aware of her kneeling at
the hatch below him, her head cocked, listening to the song of their
passage. After several minutes she rose and faced forward, loosening
her blanket, letting the cold wind whip into her. She had seemed
hesitant about leaving the prison with Hadrian, and he realized that
of all the mysteries that plagued him, one of the most painful was
why Nelly had seemed so ready to die on Buchanan's scaffold. It had
not been for Kinzler, and certainly not for the criminals of St.
Gabriel. He almost had convinced himself that she was just worn out,
too weary of the world and the mess that humans had again made of it
to care about living. But there was no resignation in the woman who
stood before him, scoured by the wind.

"I
didn't know the grain was to be burnt," she declared when she
finally turned to him.

"I
never thought you did," Hadrian replied.

"That
grain was part of Jonah's dream of unification. He wrote me about it.
There was finally enough to share with us. Wouldn't it be a world
shifter, he wrote me, if New Jerusalem brought the medicines to cure
the sick of Carthage and Carthage opened her silos in gratitude?"
She raised her chin toward the stars.

"Jori
saw log buildings on the island offshore from Kinzler's compound. Two
stories, with only a single door and a small hatch opening near the
top. Did you ever ask what they were for?"

"They
were hidden from shore by the trees. Men from St. Gabriel did the
construction. Storage, Kinzler told us. Warehouses for all the trade
we expected."