Hadrian had puzzled over how Nelly would organize her first caravan, but she had insisted she would find a way when she had hurried him off to arrange its reception in Carthage. Now he saw a familiar face and understood. Sebastian kept the bag of grain on his shoulder until he dropped it onto the wagon, followed by his brother Nathaniel and half a dozen more of the First Bloods, who then hurried to help the others. He stepped to the edge of the dock. At least half the party were Sebastian’s tribesmen.
When Nelly finally appeared she looked close to collapse, the fingertips sticking out from her tattered gloves frostbitten. Emily quickly guided her into the fish plant, where hot tea and soup were waiting, followed closely by Jori, who’d brought a carriage to take Nelly to Mette’s house once she had eaten. Hadrian glanced with worry toward town. Those in the caravan who were not tribesmen were clearly on their last ounce of strength.
But they were far from out of danger. With a sinking heart he now saw a man with a boathook appear from behind a stack of barrels, then two more with fishing spears. Sebastian stepped to his side, picking up a fish club.
“Stand tall, you scrubs!” came a sudden shout.
The fishermen stiffened and looked back at the compact woman who began calling out orders as she arrived with a dozen more men. Captain Reese of the Zeus had brought the crews of the skipjacks and was quickly positioning them as guards. Hadrian pushed down Sebastian’s club and looked back at the big house that had been the jackals’ headquarters. Its windows were blackened, its doors smashed in. While he was gone the jackals had been attacked in a running street fight, the smugglers’ apartment stripped and its door nailed shut. The next day the paper had referred to an accidental fire gutting the house on the waterfront. Hadrian no longer had any doubt who had caused it.
They’d nearly finished loading the grain into the wagon when a buggy appeared, from which a plump man in spectacles emerged. Hadrian stood in the shadows as Emily walked up to the man, the editor of the colony’s newspaper. Gazing in wonder at the precious cargo and the strangers who had brought it, he took from Emily a folded paper, which she read before handing it to him.
“The people of New Jerusalem,” she recited, “freely donate this grain to the schoolchildren of Carthage.”
DR. SALENS’S FACE had grown gaunt since Hadrian had last seen him. When he saw that Hadrian had followed him into his house as he carried wood to his stove, Salens did not speak. His eyes drifted toward a carton on the table, containing a stethoscope and a framed certificate. He lifted a bottle marked with a medicinal label and took a long swallow.
“I just have one question, Doctor,” Hadrian said, “one thing that’s been troubling me. You said the police couldn’t find your painting after it was stolen. But surely you wouldn’t have asked for their help, not with those death ledger sheets in the back.”
Salens cast a sullen glance at Hadrian. “I didn’t say that. I just said they couldn’t find it.”
“I don’t understand.”
The thin, dark man gazed at the bottle in his hand. “You’re the one who caused all my problems.”
“Fletcher’s dead,” Hadrian replied. “I saw him drown.”
“She won’t even speak to me.”
“The camps are getting a new clinic. It’s going to be hard on whoever goes as the new doctor. They won’t trust him. A lot of his early patients are going to be too sick to save. They’ll hate the doctor for giving them false hope.”
Salens was slow to react to the invitation behind Hadrian’s words. He put the bottle down. “They came to me,” he said at last. “I didn’t report the lost painting. They came to me and asked what it looked like.”
THE MEETING ROOM at the rear of the newly restored library was lit only by a solitary oil lamp when Lucas Buchanan angrily shoved the door open. He paused, trying to make out all the faces at the long table.
He decided to address Emily. “You didn’t say there was a Council meeting,” he growled, gesturing to the two farmers who flanked her. “The others should be notified.”
“The others are gone,” Emily replied in a level voice.
“Then you must wait until they return,” the governor snapped.
“If you refer to the heads of the millers, merchants, and fishing guilds, they have all disappeared. We have it on good authority Captain Fletcher is dead. It seems that when they received word about that particular accident, the other guild masters fled. One of the ice sloops was seen going north, toward a place called St. Gabriel. Perhaps you have heard of it?”
“Don’t be ridiculous. You can’t just—”
“Sit down, Lucas. Now.”
“That grain came directly from the camps. An obvious admission of their crimes.”
Emily pointed to the chair across from her. “Sit down.”
The governor stared at her a moment, then gestured his new bodyguard out of the room and sullenly pulled out the chair. As he did so, two more lamps were lit. His eyes flared as he saw Hadrian sitting in the corner.
“It is a long and convoluted story,” Emily continued, “that apparently begins with the Dutchman and arrangements you made with the smugglers.”
“Hadrian will tell you anything to turn you against me,” Buchanan protested.
“Actually the evidence has been presented to us by your own trusted Sergeant Waller. And you must stop interrupting or we will rule you out of order and remove you.”
For a moment Buchanan leaned forward, seeming to consider leaving the chamber, but then he studied the stern expressions of the other Council members and sank back in his chair.
It took Emily nearly half an hour to recite the facts that had been presented to the Council, reviewing the smuggling, the drug network, the subversion of the guilds, the destruction of the drug factory, the deaths of Bjorn, Kinzler, and Fletcher, even the assistance provided by Sebastian and the First Bloods.
“Hadrian Boone is just trying to get a seat on the Council,” Buchanan charged. “He wants to pretend nothing has changed.”
“I think he would be the first to admit much has changed. And yes, the Council is changing.”
“I don’t understand.”
“The three of us”—she gestured to the two farmers who flanked her at the table—“with you make all that is left of the Council. An emissary from New Jerusalem has presented a formal proposal. Their Tribunal has unanimously voted to merge with us. One Council, one colony, with two settlements. For us to accept such an extraordinary change we need a unanimous vote as well. Before you leave this room the four of us will vote to accept the proposal.”
“Impossible! You cannot ignore the other Council members.”
“We have police out looking for them, interviewing those present at the docks when that ice sloop mysteriously departed. An interesting question, Lucas, is whether you really want us to find them. Before they could participate again on the Council they would have to answer some very inconvenient questions. About what happened to their predecessors in the guilds. About how Captain Fletcher and a committee in St. Gabriel directed their votes. About how you and they were always voting together. About the murders of Jonah Beck, Micah Hastings, Officer Jansen, and two former guild masters. By the time we finished we would need a new wing on the prison.
“Alternatively our first order of business can be a vote to expel them, thereby formally ending their roles in the Council. We will then vote to accept the proposal of unification with New Jerusalem. We are prepared to recommend your continuation for a term as governor of the combined colony, with much-reduced powers of course. The police will report to the Council. The schools and hospital will report to the Council. No more censorship. You will be an administrator.”
Hadrian saw now that Buchanan held something in his hand. His marble rook, clenched now with white knuckles. Hatred flared in his eyes as he gazed at Hadrian. For a moment Hadrian thought he was going to throw the rook at him.
“There will be much work for you. A clinic, a new dining hal
l, houses to be built in New Jerusalem. That bridge across the ravine and a new road to connect the towns.”
Buchanan stared only at his chess piece now. Hadrian almost felt sorry for him. He well knew the feeling of worlds collapsing around him.
“The emissary from New Jerusalem believes they have an antidote to the drugs, Lucas, a cure for the addicts,” Emily said in a softer tone. “The recipe was developed by Jonah, just before he died. We will dedicate a floor of the hospital to their recovery. Your Sarah will have a bed there.”
Hadrian had whispered an apology to Jonah when he had pulled the plaque from the wall in the vault and uncovered the complete formula for the antidote. He had noticed the newness of the plaque when he’d first sat in the vault with Jonah’s journal. It had been placed there, he was now certain, after Jonah had witnessed the dying of the light in the addict at the mill. The antidote had been his weapon to defeat the criminals, and in the end it had worked. Emily had immediately made sense of the recipe when Hadrian had explained how to read it. H had been for hellebore, MAN for mandrake, SS for solomon seal, BC for black cohosh.
Emily’s words quieted Buchanan.
“Emissary?” Buchanan looked toward the shadows at the other end of the room.
“The new chairman of their Tribunal.” Emily made a gesture toward the side door. Nelly stepped forward, Jori at her side.
Buchanan shot up from the table. “She is a convicted murderer!”
“She has the right of appeal. You know the law because you wrote it, when you controlled the Council. The appeal is to the Council. We have heard the evidence. She killed no one. Sergeant Waller heard the confession of Jonah’s true murderer before he died. Perhaps you would like us to call the witnesses you put forward at Nelly’s trial to see if they wish to stand by their testimony?”
Buchanan again sank back into his chair. Hadrian rose and stood at the end of the table. “There is still a final piece of the puzzle,” he stated. “The one who made everything in Carthage possible, the one who was able to keep everything so secret, the reason the drug dealers could operate openly. I’m talking about the one who arranged Jonah’s murder and then Nelly’s escape from the prison. Those who plotted from outside Carthage were powerless without the involvement of someone in the government.”
Buchanan spoke in a flat voice. “You said Fletcher is dead. We were watching him. We knew what was going on. Kenton stayed on top of it. He told me about everything. That secret journal. Signals on trees, secret boats at dawn. Black market smuggling, that’s all Fletcher was interested in. Fletcher is dead,” the governor repeated.
Hadrian looked past the table to Jori. Her eyes were filled with warning as their gazes met, as if she somehow anticipated his lie. He broke away, and took a deep breath before addressing Buchanan. “I have one of the drug dealers finally, ready to talk. Let the corps know. He’s meeting me tonight at sundown, at the cavern warehouse used by the smugglers.”
THE TRAIL THAT curved around the edge of the steep ravine had not been used since the last snow. Hadrian’s boots crunched loudly in the still air. He paused at the outside of the sharp turn, surveying the landscape. Tatters of red cloth still hung in the old signal tree. The crews working on the new ice road to New Jerusalem, laying sand and straw to ease the passage of wagons, were streaming back to town. The cemetery lay in quiet repose, with a single solitary figure in a red coat kneeling at Jonah’s grave.
Dax had waited for Hadrian before going to Hamada’s barn that afternoon. The old man had welcomed them with a new energy, then introduced them to one of the exiles who had carried grain, a grey-bearded professor sent by Nelly to discuss a new library in New Jerusalem. Dax had asked Hamada to be seated at his desk, then solemnly presented the missing book. Hamada couldn’t stop grinning. He seemed to have lost ten years in age.
“I guess you think I’m a fool for putting that old phone in his grave,” the boy had said as they left the compound. “I know now it is just one of those old things. As good as a rusty nail.”
“Jonah would have understood.”
“Maybe it was better,” Dax had said after a long silence, “when I thought I could speak to those on the other side.”
Hadrian gestured him to a bench overlooking the lake. Children were skating along the shoreline. Dax watched them with a distant expression. Not for the first time Hadrian considered the torment the boy had endured, the many ways in which his world had been shattered, how he’d been forced to deal with truths most adults would flee from. In the time Hadrian had known him, Dax had outgrown his childhood.
“I once knew an old man from China who would write letters to his mother,” Hadrian said at last. “She had died years earlier, on the far side of the world. He would take each letter to a quiet spot and light a match to it, then watch the ashes rise up to heaven. He said he knew his mother always received his messages.
“I’ll tell you a secret, Dax, that no one in all the world knows. I write a letter to each of my dead children on their birthdays. I take it out on a ledge by the lake and burn it at sunset.”
The boy considered the words a long time in silence, then finally nodded. “There are things I have to say to Mr. Jonah. I don’t have any paper.”
“I know where we can find some.”
The library was almost empty in the middle of the afternoon. No one seemed to notice when Hadrian took Dax into the now restored workshop on the second floor. Hadrian helped the boy settle at the desk, pulling paper, pen, and ink from the drawer, then told the boy he would cross the street to visit Mette.
“I am a baker without flour,” the Norger woman had said in greeting, then insisted he stay for a plate of apples sautéed in maple syrup. Her nephew, one of the first to receive the new medication, had been awake and asking about his family when she visited him that morning.
Half an hour later he returned to find Dax folding his letter. As he handed the boy a bag of sweets sent by Mette, Dax pushed the letter toward him. “I don’t know. I never learned how to pray or anything like that.”
Hadrian hesitated, then saw the boy’s anxious expression and lifted the letter.
Dear Mr. Jonah,
I am very sorry you had to die. Sometimes when I walk in the woods I feel you by my side. I was the one that stole that book and never told you. I wanted to be a jackal. But Mr. Hadrian showed me the true things about jackals. We stopped them good, and they are in a big black boat at the bottom of the lake. I know about your old world now and I am sorry it got broken. I think I understand about keeping the spark alive.
Out in the ruined lands I heard a wolf and smiled cause I thought it might be you. Mr. Hadrian and me have nobody else now. I will ask him to help me learn the constellations like you wanted me to. And maybe we can read books together sometime. He and I have to protect the spark now. I want to be the boy you thought I was.
Amen,
Dax
Hadrian refolded the letter and returned it to the boy. “No one could do better,” he whispered to Dax.
As he watched now, he saw a small flame flicker at the head of the grave. He did not move until all the ashes of Dax’s message had spiraled up to Jonah.
Minutes later he shoved the long bar on the cavern entry with his shoulder, let it fall to the ground, and dragged it away before swinging open the doors. The tattered wingback chair was still in the entry, across from the mounted moose head. He sat down and waited.
A deer appeared and began browsing on the shrubs that jutted out from the bank before disappearing behind the door against the steep bank. A crow cawed from the far side of the ravine.
The sky was deep purple when a cloaked figure appeared around the bend, carrying a lantern. Lieutenant Kenton offered no greeting as he set his light down on a barrel. “The governor explained things, said the bastard might try to get away, that we’ll want to hold him. I can hide,” he suggested with a gesture toward the shadows of the tunnel, “take him from behind.” He tossed his cloak behind the barre
l.
Hadrian gestured toward a bench on the opposite side of the entry. “Take a seat. It’s a fine evening. The stars will be out soon.”
“You never listen, Boone. I have to hide.”
“The bastard’s already here.”
Kenton’s head snapped toward the tunnel. His hand went to the pistol on his belt.
“Sometimes the best place for a pig to hide is right in the barnyard. I always underestimated you, Kenton. You were the perfect instrument for Sauger.”
The lieutenant lowered himself onto the bench. “I hear long spells out on the ice can damage your brain, Boone. You need a good long sleep in a small warm cell. I can arrange that.”
“It’s hard to put together a puzzle when you don’t know if you have all the pieces, don’t even know its final shape. Lots of misleading pieces. I was impressed when I heard you were looking for that map of the suicides. But you weren’t trying to help the children, you wanted to make sure it didn’t reach the wrong hands. Once I had all the pieces, though, it was remarkable how quickly they fit together. It’s been months since the Dutchman died, but he was sending messages through you until a few weeks ago. You told Buchanan you got them through someone in the guild. You spent a lot of time in the horse barns at the fair. It’s where you went after we found Hastings’s body, to arrange for Jonah to be killed that night. You probably checked on your racehorses. How are your stables in the south? The Dutchman spared no expense in building them. Were you there when the martens were feeding on him?” He should have known, Hadrian chided himself, that night he had waited in the governor’s smokehouse. Sarah had attacked a police badge with a hammer.
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