“I remember sitting at campfires with you and Jonah in the early years. We were going to plant fields of flowers and never talk of war. We were all so scared of the guns from the early salvage that we threw them into the lake.” He slowly raised his head to meet the governor’s gaze. “Don’t do this, Lucas, I beg you.”
Buchanan gave a humorless laugh. “It’s been decided. For the good of the colony those slags will have a fair trial. Then they will hang.”
WHEN HADRIAN APPEARED at her table in the coffee shop near Government House the next morning, Sergeant Waller leapt up to flee. He grabbed her shoulder and forced her down, then sat beside her.
“Those two exiles took a great risk coming to town to mourn Jonah. They are as innocent as you and me.”
She shrugged. “A few days in jail and then they will be escorted to the border.”
Hadrian unfolded the paper he’d just ripped from a public board down the street and shoved it across the table. Waller paled as she read the headline.
“I keep wondering why Emily wanted to tell me you came from a good family. Perhaps she wanted me to forget that you’ve been lying to me, Sergeant, that you are charged with special missions for the governor, that he gave you at least two operatives to follow me. But then you did warn me that you would only pretend to help me.”
“I can’t just—”
Hadrian raised a hand to interrupt her. “So I am going to pretend to save you.”
He watched as her school-girl expression faded, replaced by a scowl. “Good,” he said. “First, I will pretend you know Lieutenant Kenton can’t be trusted. Next, that the truth meant something to your father if not to you. And that you don’t want to live in a town that hangs innocent people. Finally I am going to pretend you understand the only two people in the colony who can do something about that are sitting at this table.”
Waller stared into her mug of brewed chicory. When she looked up she began slowly shaking her head. “I was in class one of those times you got removed by members of the Council. I could hear you arguing in the hallway, pleading, almost weeping. It was embarrassing. You were supposed to be this great wise founder and you turned out to be this bitter ne’er-do-well who couldn’t control his emotions. We could see you in the window sometimes crying as you watched us play. We had chants we used when we played jump rope. Boone, Boone, Boone, we sang, he’s a loon, loon, loon. You want me to stop pretending? Fine. Buchanan means to be rid of you once and for all. That’s the evidence I am assembling, the file to convince the Council to expel you permanently. I meant to ask you about hooligan. Is that with a u or two o’s?”
“Listen to me. There isn’t a soul who survived from the old world who isn’t a lunatic in some way. It’s the ones who don’t show it you have to worry about.”
“He’s given me a whole sheaf of fresh paper to write up my report.”
“Kenton, Buchanan, and I pulled a body out of the sludge pit. It was the scout Hastings, stabbed in the gut months ago. Jonah was tortured and hung that night. The killings are connected somehow.”
“You’re lying to save yourself.”
“You’re becoming part of the lie, Sergeant. Which means you are helping to protect murderers. Do yourself a favor. Try to find out where Kenton was the night of the fire. Everyone else was pitching in to save the library. He was off disposing of Hastings’s body in the lake. He got promoted the next day.”
“A loon, loon, loon,” the sergeant sang under her breath as she rose. She tossed several coins on the table and headed for the street.
HADRIAN HAD NOT set out for the long-closed saw pit, had only been in desperate need to clear his head in the chill morning air, but when he suddenly realized he had walked past the fields at the edge of town he paused, recognizing the overgrown path beside him. The little canyon had been one of the most active venues of the early colony, chosen for the way its low ledges eased the skidding of logs into place for sawing with the long two-man blades. He and Jonah had spend many hours in the pit dug between two of the ledges, pulling the long blades on the downstroke, steadying them on the upstroke as they cut planks for the first houses, then resting in shifts in the little log hut near the pit. They had been long and happy days, spent in the special camaraderie of those who share arduous labor.
He followed the path for several minutes, then with a melancholy pang he saw the faded chalk drawings on the long slate wall that lined one side of the canyon. The children who had watched had entertained themselves by sketching the workers and other scenes of colony life. Jonah was going to explain the pictures, Dax had said. Hadrian had thought it strange that Jonah had chosen the pit to meet the children. He had misunderstood. He had assumed Jonah was going to explain the plates in Treasure Island. But he knew now that Jonah was going to explain the chalk drawings, the forgotten pictographs of the early colony.
He walked along the wall, lost in a flood of memories. The drawings, sheltered by an overhanging ledge, had aged surprisingly well. The first crude rendering showed a team of horses pulling a log toward stick men waiting with a jagged object that must have been a saw. Next came a group of women who held up a net stuffed with fish. He remembered the happy day when the first net, fashioned with thread unraveled from sweaters, had harvested dozens of fish and provided the biggest meal they had had in months. More drawings showed the house built from the first planks with a proud family holding hands in front of it, then soapmaking at a kettle, a moose chasing a woman, a small structure with a bell tower that had been the first school, run by Hadrian.
In another, figures with uplifted heads watched the moonlit sky with a dozen arcing lights. Jonah had referred to those months as the summer of the satellites. Without their ground support, satellites had begun falling from the sky, the biggest a space station that had become the tomb for a dozen astronauts who had watched their world flicker out below. Children had exclaimed with glee and made wishes on the falling stars.
He found himself at the sawman’s shack, opening the flimsy door on its rotting leather hinges. Jonah would have brought a surprise snack for the children, would probably have invited them into the little structure where so many original colonists had rested, making bold plans for the future. The rough table used for meals was still there, with a heavy chair beside it, as were all the initials and messages carved into the wood of the posts and beams. He ran his fingers over the names of old friends, many lost in the expulsions, then looked back at the chair. It was a sturdy wooden armchair, not part of the original furnishings. Near the chair the flotsam that littered the table had been cleared away to make room for an assortment of tools. Neither the chair nor the tools had any dust on them. They had been placed there recently. Had Jonah made an advance trip, preparing for the visit of the children? With new curiosity he stepped closer, studying the objects by the chair. Four short lengths of rope. An old soldering iron, the kind left to glow in coals before use. A rusty pair of pliers. A sewing needle, the heavy kind used for sail making. A carpenter’s clamp.
Suddenly he recoiled in horror. Someone was meant to be tied to the chair. Jonah was expected but had died before his visit. Someone had been preparing to torture Jonah in the little isolated canyon.
He found himself outside, his heart hammering in his chest, suddenly fearful now that he was being watched. He picked up a piece of wood to use as a club and pressed himself against the outside wall for several minutes, studying the rocks and stumps along the trail, finally reassuring himself that no one waited in ambush. As he hurried away he paused only at the pit. Several of the covering logs had been rolled away. As if someone had planned to dispose of a body in the hole.
Suddenly he was running, stopping only when he reached an outcropping that gave a semblance of protection. His fear was irrational, he knew, but it was real. Cold-blooded killers had been there, preparing to torture and kill Jonah. But someone had beaten them to it. No, he told himself, as he collected his thoughts. There was only one team of killers. They had planned Jon
ah’s killing, apparently planned it far in advance, using a secret from their young jackal recruit. His old friend had already been marked for death when Hadrian had last met him in the library. But the killers had changed their plans. For some reason they had to kill Jonah two days early. But why, what had happened? Hadrian fought the answer, tried futilely to escape its torment, tried to convince himself there was no proof, but it would not be denied. The killers had suddenly attacked Jonah in the library because Hadrian had uncovered the murdered scout.
UNDERCOVER POLICE WERE a recent innovation in the colony, and Hadrian almost felt sorry for the two who inexpertly tailed him as he left the coffee shop.
He led the two men on a stroll along the waterfront, weaving around horse-drawn wagons and bicycles, then pausing at a shop to watch their reflections in the glass. He paused again to study the little stall where a tinker bent over a brazier, heating an iron to solder a metal pot. Hadrian had watched the man trade with his customers before and spotted a familiar leather pouch between his feet. He breathed a silent apology and stepped into the shadow of an alleyway.
“Officer Jansen, isn’t it?” Hadrian asked as the older officer passed by, nervously scanning the street. Jansen blushed, then awkwardly accepted one of the two cheap cheroots Hadrian extracted from his pocket. “If I’m not mistaken, I was there with the Council when you received your badge.” Hadrian struck a match on the wall.
Jansen, a sturdy, unpretentious man, hesitantly accepted the light. “That was years ago,” he said uneasily, a hint of Norwegian in his voice.
“Point taken,” Hadrian admitted as he lit his own cheroot. “Times have changed. You’re a leading officer of the law and I’m an ex-prisoner.”
The Norger glanced at Hadrian’s sleeve as if looking for an armband. “Habitual offender,” he added.
“Ever hopeful of reform,” Hadrian offered. “And still offended by other lawbreakers.”
Jansen looked at him uncertainly.
“There’s still a bounty on undeclared copper if I’m not mistaken.”
“Fifteen percent.”
“You could buy your wife a nice trinket. If you’re quick.” He nodded at the stall across the street. “That tinker will take payment in kind. He’s been collecting little seashells with treasure inside that should have been declared long ago.”
Jansen cast a confused glance at the tinker.
“Watch him carefully. When you approach he is going to drop something to cover the little pouch between his feet.”
Jansen studied Hadrian suspiciously. “It will take me a while to finish this cheroot,” Hadrian told him, then watched as the stalwart policeman puffed up his chest and stepped to the stall. The tinker pushed a rag from his knee onto the pouch. Jansen pushed him aside and grabbed the pouch, dumping its contents onto the tinker’s counter. At least two dozen little electric motors tumbled out. Jansen picked up the tinker’s hammer and tapped one. The motor popped apart at its pressed metal seam, revealing the bright copper wire densely wrapped around the apertures. Jansen’s eyes went round. The motors would yield enough for at least a fifty-dollar coin, a month’s wages for many in the colony. The tinker turned pale, then darted away through a line of wagons filled with firewood. Close in pursuit was Jansen’s partner. The Norger hesitated, glancing at Hadrian, then grabbed the pouch and joined the race, no doubt worried about his claim to the bounty.
Hadrian slowly stepped into the street, laid his cheroot on the tinker’s counter, helped himself to the hammer, and trotted away in the opposite direction.
THE ADDRESS LISTED for the comatose patient was in the warehouse district, a rundown loft in one of the old buildings thrown up in the early years. It was a brute of a structure with a first floor consisting of heavy logs lined with large metal sheets cut from shipping containers. At the top of the stairs that ran up the rear of the building, the door was fastened with a padlock. With a single stroke of the hammer he knocked away the flimsy lock and stepped inside.
The salvage stacked along the walls of the apartment was no real surprise. Half of the young males in the colony dreamt of making a black market fortune. Most of the stock cluttering the rooms was familiar. A box of razors. A carton of plastic toys. Piles of corroded pots and pans. Toothbrushes. More cartons contained small vases, glass paperweights, and other baubles being hoarded for the holiday markets. Several smaller boxes were lined up on a table by a cold pot of vermilion wax, waiting for a forged tax seal. Hadrian paused and looked out the kitchen window. The apartment was at the edge of the woods, half a mile from the clearing on the ridge where he’d been attacked. Someone familiar with those paths would have no trouble bringing the contraband to the apartment in the predawn hours.
He began a closer search of the apartment, pausing more than once as an item stirred some distant, blurred memory. A metal lunchbox with a large brown cartoon dog. Crayons still in their golden box. A little bronze rendering of the Statue of Liberty. There were tattered suitcases filled with girls’ party dresses and three flattened soccer balls awaiting discovery of the pump needed to inflate them.
In the kitchen he opened every drawer and cabinet, then the icebox. Inside were two wooden containers with sliding lids that he lifted out and set on the table. The first was full of cinnamon, laced no doubt with the powder smugglers used to cut the spice. The second was filled with salvaged tins of spices, the containers rusty and corroded but their contents still fragrant. Marjoram. Nutmeg. Cloves. Cardamom. White pepper. All exotics, probably worth as much as all the other salvage in the apartment combined.
Hadrian pushed back furniture from the walls, revealing several lewd renderings scratched into the plaster but nothing more. The drawers of the chests in the two bedrooms yielded nothing but men’s clothing. But lying on top of one of the chests was a hand-carved fish on a lanyard. On its belly was inscribed the word Zeus. Hanging from a bedpost in the second room was a carved deer on a leather strap. Hadrian stared at it, then reexamined the clothing in the nearby chest. On two shirts he found a faded name inked along the tails. Hastings. The dead scout and the fisherman in the hospital had lived together.
Suddenly the floorboards by the entry squeaked. He grabbed the hammer from his belt and flattened himself along the wall, inching toward the door to glimpse the intruder.
The figure there stood very still before lifting the broken lock from the floor, then stepped inside and closed the door.
“I couldn’t have you think all of us are as incompetent as Jansen and his fool,” came a tentative voice.
Hadrian lowered the hammer and revealed himself. “Jansen was doing his patriotic duty, Sergeant,” he observed. “Probably his biggest arrest in months.”
Jori Waller nodded slowly. She seemed to have aged since he had seen her last.
“Jamie Reese is dead,” she said abruptly. “I went back to see if he’d regained consciousness. The nurses were wrapping him in a sheet. That doctor of his, Dr. Salens, was already reporting it as an industrial accident. But I told them I needed to examine his body, alone. I looked at his eyes. They weren’t white anymore, they were pink. Blooming with broken capillaries. I looked in his mouth.”
“His mouth?”
She reached into her pocket for a folded square of cloth. From its creases she lifted a tiny feather. “From the back of his tongue. I found another in his nostril. The hospital uses goose-feather pillows.”
Neither said anything for a long time. Hadrian became aware of the hammer in his hand and dropped it onto a crate. Jamie Reese had been smothered with his own pillow. “You should report it,” he said.
The sergeant looked at the floor as she spoke. “I asked the doctor for paper. I sat by the bed for an hour writing it up, linking it back to my smuggling case. I tracked Kenton down to submit it, but he only laughed at me and tore it up.”
Now she noticed the disarray of the furniture in the bedroom behind him. She stepped past him and began to move the chest of drawers away from the wall, revealing a c
arton on the floor that had been concealed underneath. It was filled with cheap metal spoons.
Hadrian watched her, realizing he was more confused about Jori Waller than ever. “Exactly how close are you to the governor?” he asked abruptly.
His words took a moment to sink in. Her lips twisted in anger. “To hell with you!”
He stared at her.
“The governor was against me being admitted to the corps,” she explained in a brittle voice. “When a few Council members supported me he decided I was political, a player in his world. He has that small team that does special assignments for him. His flying squad, he calls it. Bjorn and two or three others. I went to him with a theory about the smuggling, made a proposal to him. He decided to audition me.”
“What theory?”
“Smuggling has always been for entrepreneurs. If someone was out of work and had the spine for it they could make one trip into the ruined lands and earn enough to support them for a year. After the governor reached his accord with the merchant guild, more goods were coming in through the licensed gates but more forged tax seals were appearing as well. Smuggling was happening on a much bigger scale.”
“You mean it became more organized. The deal with the guild became a cover for more sophisticated smugglers.”
“No one really cared. Revenues were up, enough to pay for the new colony projects.”
“Meaning Buchanan had no cause to tamper with the status quo.” He cocked his head at her. “Until you came in with evidence. And he knew you had the ear of at least one member of the Council. If he didn’t listen, he knew Emily would.”
“The corps had been told to stop worrying about the salvage trade. What was good for the guilds was good for the colony.”
Ashes of the Earth Page 10
