Ashes of the Earth

by Eliot Pattison

  Jori Waller spoke over his shoulder. “The Dutchman didn’t die at his farm. He was murdered. At least six months ago.”

  Emily looked up with a shocked expression. “No. Impossible!” She thought a moment. “He’s been on the Council, casting his vote.”

  “And he hasn’t attended meetings for all these months,” Waller said. “Buchanan saw his body. There’s no mistaking what happened. But he somehow forgot to inform the rest of the Council about that detail.”

  Emily opened her mouth as if to speak again but said nothing and finally just lifted the bottle to her lips. Hadrian caught its sweet scent.

  “It’s not even noon, Emily,” he observed, “a little early for corn whiskey.”

  She turned the bottle toward Hadrian, displaying its medical label. “We put in some tincture of hellebore and call it anesthetic. And it’s not early for me. I haven’t been to bed. In surgery all night. Some fool announced he could fly and jumped off a barn.” She took another drink. “You need to get out, Hadrian. The paper has begun to criticize the governor, blaming him for Nelly’s escape. Now he has to deal with a dead policeman. And Buchanan has the notion that all his troubles are somehow your fault. Find one of your holes and disappear for a month or two, let things cool off. Go to those friends of yours in the mountains.”

  Instead he stumbled up the stairs as the sergeant shoved him forward.

  “Dammit!” But Emily’s protest died away as Waller pulled away the policeman’s tunic that covered him, revealing his blood-soaked shirt. Fletcher had sliced deeply. “You sorry bastard,” the doctor muttered, then motioned him inside. Hadrian picked up the bottle as he passed the rocking chair.

  When Emily left them in the little exam room off the kitchen, he drank deeply, then turned to the sergeant. “This is where I thank you and say goodbye.”

  “I didn’t do it for your thanks,” the sergeant said stiffly. “You saved me last night in front of the governor.”

  “I save you, you save me. The trouble is, Sergeant, both times it was me who took the beating.” He forced a small grin.

  Her expression did not change. “Tell me why Fletcher was so worried about you or we go straight back to the prison.”

  “You’re probably the first Carthage policeman to ever fire a gun in the line of duty.”

  The sergeant shrugged. “The pistols were just issued.”

  “I was impressed with your marksmanship.”

  She blushed, looking at the floor. “I was aiming at the barrel beside him.”

  “Reducing the criminal population one finger at a time.” Hadrian closed his eyes for a moment against the rising tide of pain. “Fletcher was scared of me for the same reason he was scared of you,” he said. “He’s worried that we might start following the trail you found last summer.” His arm felt as if it were on fire. “Kenton or Buchanan told someone about discovering Hastings’s body. The killers found out and for some reason had to attack Jonah that very night. We need to find out whom they told. Kenton probably went back to the prison when I went missing that afternoon. Someone there helped Nelly escape.”

  Waller seemed not to hear. “What did you expect to find at Jamie’s boat?” she asked. “Why trail that woman?”

  “Why follow me?”

  “I wasn’t. I was looking for the Zeus, thought Jamie’s mother might be more interested in talking now that he’s dead. But some carpenter said I should get coordinated with the old schoolmaster and pointed inside. Why did you follow that woman? Why let Fletcher trap you like that?”

  “You don’t understand, Jori,” came Emily’s voice over the sergeant’s shoulder. “Hadrian’s life is all about doing penance. He decided long ago that the end of the world was his fault. If on a given day someone doesn’t kick him, cut him, or beat him, he’ll find a stick and flog his own back raw.”

  Jori backed away as the doctor pushed Hadrian onto the table. He helped peel away the blood-soaked shirt for Emily, grimacing as the fabric stuck to his skin. “A permanent armband,” he said, and tried to grin through his pain.

  “We should have thought of it years ago,” Emily muttered, then pushed him flat.

  He clenched his jaw as she poured alcohol over the incisions.

  “Fishing crews are working double shifts,” he explained as she began stitching his skin together. “Everyone’s on edge. I saw people wearing sunglasses for no good reason.”

  “It’s a fad, that’s all,” Emily replied as she worked. “The old man who grinds lenses down the street says suddenly there’s a demand for them. And the sunny season is over.”

  Hadrian bent his head up. “Why would you ask him?”

  Emily pushed him down. “The day after Jamie was admitted someone left a pair of sunglasses by his bed. I didn’t really think about it but after he died I realized they must have known what was going to happen to his eyes.”

  Hadrian studied his friend, recognized the lingering anger on her face. “That’s enough to make one a little curious. But what made you mad enough to do something about it?” he asked.

  “Yesterday Buchanan came with his Norger brute while I was in surgery. He got one of the junior doctors to sign a statement saying that Jansen was stabbed. The bullets I extracted have disappeared from my office.”

  Hadrian glanced into the shadows. Waller sat in a chair by the door. She was very still. He flinched as the suture needle entered his skin again. “One of the people wearing sunglasses had washed-out irises. No one is born with eyes that color.”

  “No one is born that way,” the doctor agreed.

  “No one in their right mind jumps off barns to fly.” His words quieted Emily. Her face began to cloud with worry. “In college I knew people who would stay awake for days straight, people who would lay as if in a coma then wake up with a smile. Some might try to fly off a barn.”

  Emily frowned. “Lost world. Lost technologies.” She paused and tilted his head, holding the bottle to his mouth.

  Hadrian watched the doctor in silence, seeing not just exhaustion and anger there now, but an edge of something that could be fear. “There were a lot of types, lots of names—speed, ecstasy, acid, meth, fly powder.”

  “This is Carthage, Hadrian. This is the other twenty-first century.”

  “Different world, different technologies. You make your own anesthetic. Who else would know how to manufacture drugs today?” It wasn’t just the alcohol that was setting his head in a spin. He was finding no answers, only more questions. Smugglers. Drugs. Murder by jackal. Munitions. Jonah had started calling the exiles rebels.

  “Jonah. Me, when I have time to think about it. Our pharmacy, for making the extracts and tinctures out of the plants the herb collectors bring us. I don’t know of anyone else. We don’t teach much chemistry beyond what they need in the foundry and processing plants.”

  Jonah. Suddenly Hadrian remembered the books spread out over the desk in his secret vault. Biochemistry. Physiology. “Did Jonah use your lab?”

  “Of course. Has all these years, at night or when others didn’t need it. But when it comes to producing synthetic chemicals like those that people used as hallucinogens, it would take special materials and equipment. We have the most advanced lab in the colony and we couldn’t do it.”

  There had been another book on Jonah’s desk. Botanical chemistry. “What if they were using plants like you do?”

  She dripped more alcohol over his wound as she closed it. “Of course there are native plants, dangerous as hell. Nightshade, foxglove, mayapple—not to mention twenty kinds of mushrooms.” Emily slowly shook her head. “No. They’re unpredictable, more likely to kill you if you don’t know how to handle them.”

  “I don’t understand what you’re calling dangerous drugs,” Waller inserted. “You use drugs in the hospital.”

  Emily frowned. Hadrian realized she’d forgotten the sergeant was still in the room.

  “In the old world there were pills that would take over your mind. Make you do things you’
d never think of without them. Make you forget even who you are. Make you crave still another pill, and another, until eventually you’d do anything for just one more.”

  The sergeant was clearly struggling to understand. “You make it sound as if they enslave people somehow.”

  The doctor slowly nodded.

  “But there are other people who know about them,” Waller continued, “who remember them.”

  “We regularly work in the lab with many plants. Nightshade can make belladonna, a good sedative. Foxglove makes a heart medication if processed carefully.” Emily turned back to Hadrian. “These are not recreational drugs. You’re talking about complex compounds that couldn’t be made in the simple lab we have. My staff wouldn’t even know about the kind of drugs you’re talking about. No one in Carthage.”

  “No one in Carthage,” he repeated, fixing the doctor with a pointed stare.

  Emily said nothing, just finished his sutures, jerking the last knot closed so hard Hadrian flinched in pain. As he tried to sit up he swayed, feeling light-headed.

  “You have to stay still, dammit. You lost a lot of blood. Two, three days at least,” Emily declared as she begin wrapping a strip of linen around his arm. “The shed out back has a couple of old mattresses. Technically that won’t be in the hospital.”

  Hadrian looked up at Waller. “Two mattresses. You can lie down and watch me suffer.” The sergeant made a wincing expression. “Or you can go back to that loft. The killers weren’t there only when they killed Jansen. They’d been using the place, probably came and went for months. They must have left signs. Witnesses along the street perhaps. And there’s a boy named Dax who carried messages for Jonah but he also does favors for the jackals.” He gave her an assessing look. “Or maybe you’re better off going back to being Buchanan’s goon.” His head began to spin and he lay back onto the table, throwing his arm over his eyes.

  He heard the two women take steps toward the door. There was a oddly forlorn tone in the sergeant’s voice as she spoke to Emily. “I remember him, from school,” she said in a near whisper. “He would say funny things, but sometimes they were inspiring. He would bring in baby animals and read poems. Now he wears borrowed clothes and sleeps in sheds. He plays games with me like I’m still a little schoolgirl. He lies even. Does he always lie, Doctor?”

  A blanket was thrown over Hadrian. “He never lies about the important things, Sergeant. Remember that.”

  Five minutes later Emily returned and pulled away the blanket. “You’re not asleep, Hadrian.” As he rolled over she extended a clean shirt.

  The stitches pinched his flesh as he sat up. “You’ve never told me why you help her, why you defend Sergeant Waller.”

  “I’ve known her family a long time. She deserves my help.”

  “Why, Doctor, does she need your help?”

  Emily helped him into the shirt. “Her father was ill from the start, one of those who kept his condition hidden to avoid being expelled. Her mother started a business to support them. He died when Jori was only ten or twelve. When she applied to the corps after school and the question of her acceptance came before the Council, Buchanan laughed, said we needed our young breeding stock focused on making babies. I said he was a damned fool, that he was going to accept her and promote her, to give encouragement to other young women. He reminded me I was demanding the Council pay for a new wing on the hospital.”

  “What new wing?”

  She cast a peevish glance at him.

  “Christ, Em,” he said as realization sank in. “You gave up your new wing to get her into the police corps?”

  She shrugged. “He would have found some other way to block it.” She tightened the bandage covering the wound on his forehead. “I’ve been to their house for dinner many times. The last time, Jori was on duty. Her mother showed me her room. She has an old photo of her father in his uniform, with his badge, on a little table like a shrine. Her mother hates it, says the only way Jori will ever succeed with the police is to become like Kenton.”

  “Kenton,” Hadrian replied, “will wise up and give her a new assignment any day now. In another week she’ll be calling on farmers to collect the cattle tax.”

  Emily said nothing, just pulled out her pipe and lit it. “Buchanan,” she confided with a glance at the door, “has ordered the recruitment of a dozen new police, with bonuses to be paid for signing on. He’s building an army.”

  “Buchanan hasn’t a clue about what’s going on. He’s been played like a puppet for months. Now he reacts the only way he knows how.”

  “There’re rumors about more exiles hiding in town,” Emily said. “Kenton’s talking about doing a sweep of every block. God help Nelly if she’s caught.”

  “Do you still keep that old nag at the flax farm south of town?” he asked as she turned to leave.

  “I keep my well-seasoned mare there, yes,” came Emily’s taut reply. She paused as she considered Hadrian’s words. “You’re in no shape.”

  “No shape to walk thirty miles over the mountains, no,” he agreed. “And I’d rather not have to steal the horse I ride.” He returned her cool stare. “Buchanan has told the colony that Nelly was Jonah’s killer. Now he has to blame Jansen’s death on her. He will never allow her to elude him for long. He will hang her, the truth be damned. I owe Jonah the truth, whatever the cost.”

  Emily stared at him silently, pleading in her eyes.

  “I can’t sleep without seeing his dead face. He had grand plans, Em, plans to fix all our past sins, and someone has perverted them into death and greed. I have to stop them.”

  The doctor sighed. “When’s the last time you were there, Hadrian?”

  “A few months ago. In early spring I hauled in a packful of grain and cut firewood for a few days.”

  “You mean you stole a packful of grain from the government silos,” Emily said with a shake of her head, then worry creased her face. “Things have changed a lot. The softness is gone in the survivors. They’re—” she searched for a word, “antagonistic. They will know what Buchanan plans for Nelly, and they won’t hesitate to commit violence against one of us.”

  Hadrian lowered his legs to the floor, fighting the pain and dizziness as he stood. He pulled away the now bloody bandage from his head. “You misunderstand, Em,” he said. “I’m not one of us anymore.”

  CHAPTER Seven

  HADRIAN COULDN’T SHAKE the sense that he was in some bizarre dream of the old American West, limping into the ragged, dusty town, leading his exhausted horse as fearful children ran to announce the stranger’s arrival. Every step brought new pain, not only to his arm, where the wounds kept opening, but also in his legs and back. The aging horse had been steady and forgiving in her gait but he had passed out twice on the trip over the mountains and fallen, the mare nuzzling him awake on the ground.

  His mount now saw the watering trough in front of a crude log building. Dropping the reins, he let her trot past him, then stumbled the last few feet to the trough. With his last ounce of strength he loosened the saddle and knelt, gulping down the fresh water, then sluicing it over his head. Ignoring the rivulets of blood flowing down his arm, he sat propped against the trough and studied the main thoroughfare of the exile community. Heads poked out of tattered platform tents, erected during the original expulsion, that some exiles still called home. Here and there could be seen a new log building with roofs thatched with marsh grass and reeds, though most of the homes were the decrepit clay-and-wattle structures put up in the early years.

  Men and women moved by, some observing him with suspicion, others with idle curiosity. More than a few hobbled on crutches or leaned on canes. Several wore strips of cloth around their faces to hide disfigurements. He watched for familiar faces but received only hesitant, nervous nods from a few older men and women he and Jonah had helped years earlier.

  His head began to throb. The mare gazed at him, her nostrils flaring. She smelled fresh blood. Hadrian looked down to see another, new red pat
ch swell across his sleeve. He grabbed the side of the trough and heaved himself up.

  The world spun as he took a step. His head swam and he collapsed, his eyes fluttering open and shut as he sank into unconsciousness. True to his dream, the last thing he saw was a tattooed Indian hovering over him.

  He awoke on a straw pallet in a pool of light from the afternoon sun. A familiar figure wearing a brightly embroidered skullcap sat beside him, washing his still-seeping wound.

  “The fugitive finds her stalker,” he said to Nelly. “Ever the contrarian.”

  “It wasn’t you I was escaping from, old friend,” the bald woman said with a sad smile.

  As he sat up the pain from his arm made him wince. “I dreamt an Indian was attacking me.”

  “An Indian,” Nelly said slowly, gesturing out the open rear door of the little cottage, “who wisely carried you here before an angry crowd gathered around the trespasser from Carthage.” A large, swarthy man could be seen chopping firewood.

  “We used to be welcome here.”

  “Amazing what being treated like diseased animals for a generation can do for diplomatic relations.”

  Hadrian looked back outside. As the man chopping wood bent to pick up a piece, Hadrian saw that half his face was obscured in patterns of ink. “Really an Indian?” he asked in disbelief.

  “They call themselves First Bloods. I found Nathaniel washed up on the beach last spring after a storm, more dead than alive.”