by James Axler
Her face darkened. “Brother Joseph could be the best, if he cared about anything but power.”
“We reckoned there was no point letting that rad-sucker know I was healing fast,” J.B. said. “Now that you’re back, I think he calculates I’ll be a drag on you, so I ought go back to being your problem.”
“But his possession of you was what brought us back with the princess in the first place!” Krysty said. “Why would he relinquish that?”
“Because he hates to waste resources, as he says,” Strode said. “He has the princess back. You can care for him now.”
She studied each of them in turn. “You seriously expect me to believe that was your motivation in returning that poor child to such a horrible fate? Concern for Mr. Dix rather than reward?”
Krysty laughed as Ryan waved at their surroundings. “Here’s our reward, Healer.”
Mildred put both hands on J.B.’s shoulders. “And here’s our reward. We’re whole again.” The Armorer reached up to pat her hand.
His own hand was still gray and a bit on the skeletal side, Ryan noted. But coming back from a wound like that was never easy. He knew himself.
Strode shook her head. “I admit, I don’t know what to make of you people. You know that in your absence, Savij was murdered?”
“No,” Ryan said, drawing out the syllable, “but I reckon none of us’re much surprised.”
“How did it happen?” Krysty asked.
“Horribly. Apparently that…creature, Booker, came up with some raw plutonium.”
“How come he’s not thrashing and shitting himself to death?” Ryan asked in amazement.
“It was only a tiny amount. A single shaving, perhaps. The baron was fed it in his stew.”
“Wouldn’t it take an awful lot for rad sickness to act that fast?” Mildred asked.
“Not rad sickness at all,” Strode said. “From what I read in an old battered science book, plutonium is violently toxic. Once it gets inside you it eats its way right through you by sheer chemical action. It’s like being burned alive from your guts outward. I’d have given him poison to finish him quickly when he started shrieking and bleeding from the mouth and rectum. Or broken his neck. But Garrison’s goons held me back.”
She was in full-on glare mode at the companions again. “How can you be so stupe? Or are you just evil? Brother Joseph will—”
The door opened. The angry word stream shut off as if a floodgate had slammed shut. A mellow baritone laugh rolled into the hot and humid living room like liquid honey.
“Perhaps our visitors aren’t the only ones with impaired mental capacity,” he said, “since your passion apparently caused you to overlook the dangers of loudly spewing sedition before an open window.”
She turned to him. “Fine. You caught me. Go ahead and strap me to that sadistic lunatic altar of yours and sacrifice me in front of the whole ville. See how the people love you then!”
He laughed again. “No need,” he said. “I, like everyone in this ville, am under your care. I repose perfect confidence in your total adherence to that predark saying of yours—first, do no harm. I have nothing to fear from you.”
Her big shoulders rose as she drew in a deep breath, then she let it out in a sigh.
“Don’t feel bad, Healer,” Krysty said. “Your spiritual leader is a man with a gift for knowing where to grab people to get a hold on their souls.”
“Why, yes, I am, Ms. Wroth,” he said. “Most astute of you to notice.”
“It wasn’t a compliment.”
“Ah, but I took it that way. Have you never heard the phrase, ‘the meaning of a communication is the message received’? Another ancient truth from the days before the cold and darkness that is widely overlooked today.”
He looked around at the rest. “You will join us for dinner tonight,” he said.
“What if we fail to find ourselves in a social mood?” Doc asked.
Brother Joseph laughed that maddening happy laugh of his. “Why, Doc, whatever led you to believe that was an invitation?”
Chapter Twenty-Four
“Eat up, Jak,” Ryan said. Around them conversation gurgled and chucked like water underneath an old wharf, and utensils clattered on dishes as if there was nothing unusual about having dinner with a group of people in chains. Emerald, similarly chained, sat wearing a simple shift at the table head beside Brother Joseph.
“How eat?” the albino youth asked, fixing Ryan with hot ruby eyes.
“Hungry,” Ryan said, taking another bite from his roast chicken drumstick.
“I can’t believe they bull-rushed us,” Mildred said. Just around sunset the front and rear doors had burst open simultaneously and a dozen sec men armed with truncheons had charged the companions, who were sleeping soundly on their pallets after their sleepless, frantic night. Ryan hadn’t even known the back security door opened.
“It was a hell of a way to get invited to dinner,” Ryan agreed. “No reason not to eat hearty, though.”
Mildred looked as if she were about to pursue the matter, then her face went studiedly blank. Ryan suspected J.B., who was sitting slumped in his wheelchair at her side as if semiconscious, had given her a quick thigh-squeeze with his hand under the table.
They’d need their strength to jump when the opportunity presented itself, he thought. And if it never came, why die hungry?
Anyway, the food was plentiful and good. No denying that. Even if Emerald, the guest of honor, didn’t seem to have much appetite.
Doc was chattering away about nothing consequential. The plump little shopkeeper sitting next to Doc was hunched all into himself as if hoping his flab would serve as a turtle shell, to protect him from the strange wrinklie who wouldn’t shut up. Jak was sulking, and Krysty sat right across from Ryan eating with her usual good appetite, without an apparent care in the world.
The meal ended. Nervous young servers plucked the plates and utensils away from the captives under the stony gaze of the same twelve sec men, six to a side of the table, who’d fetched the companions here to the baronial palace. Ryan was amused. They hadn’t even been allowed butter knives or even forks, evidently for fear they’d try to take a hostage or maybe fork their way to freedom.
It was strike they were all used to eating with their hands. Even Doc in full-on Victorian gentleman mode seemed to think nothing of chatting away, casually waving around a half-eaten pork chop. The ville people around them looked scandalized, which didn’t exactly hurt Ryan’s feelings.
An annoying ringing sound came from the head of the table. Booker had stood up beside the guru and was beating on a big gold-colored metal goblet with a ladle for attention. He persisted until everybody shut up and dutifully looked toward the self-proclaimed holy man, who sat there with eyes half-lidded, smiling as if he were listening to God telling him what an ace job he was doing.
“Thank you,” Brother Joseph said when he had full silence and attention. He rose.
“Sisters and brothers of Soulardville, on the heels of the worst of news, I bring the best—our beloved princess, daughter of our lost lamented leader Baron Savij, has been returned to us, safe and sound! And of course, a greater obligation has superseded Princess Emerald’s earlier duty. She is now called upon to step forward and assume her beloved father’s mantle as Baron Savij of Soulardville.”
The applause started out tentative, then swelled to thunder. People cheered.
Then they began to falter and look confused. If Emerald was the new baron, why was she being treated as a captive in what was after all her own palace?
Brother Joseph, beaming, spread his hands and
smoothed them all to silence.
“It is my privilege and pleasure to announce my betrothal to the Princess Emerald,” he said. “In three days, in the best interests of Soulardville and our beloved people, we shall be wed.”
The girl jumped up. “You’ll have to rape me, you fake!” she shouted. “I’d rather give myself to the screamwings than you!
”
Into the shocked silence Brother Joseph shook his head sadly and said, “The poor child still suffers nervous exhaustion engendered by her terrible struggles and privations. She is clearly not herself. She will be removed to my chambers, where she may be cared for properly.”
Burly young male acolytes in the guru’s signature tie-dyed T-shirts stepped forward and grabbed Emerald’s bound arms to hustle her off.
When the new Baron Savij had been hauled kicking and screaming up the stairs to her father’s former quarters, a boil of excited conversation was bubbling off the dark-stained rafters. Booker banged furiously on his improvised gong.
“Shut it, motherfuckers!” he screeched. “Your spiritual leader is gonna speak! Shut your holes or win the lottery for free!”
That silenced the house. Brother Joseph would never suggest his so-called compact and the lottery that fulfilled it so bloodily, month after month, were pure tools of terror and social control. Oh, no, he was much too benign and holy for that. But what else was a toady for?
“We see, for the second time, strangers in our midst,” Brother Joseph said, nodding toward Ryan and his friends. His face looked less kindly now. “When first they came among us we made them welcome guests, did we not?”
“Yeah!” shouted someone enthusiastically. It was one of the bully boys in the gaudy shirts, Ryan noted without surprise.
“And now,” Brother Joseph said, “we see how they repay our hospitality. Charged with safely returning the precious princess to us, they did accomplish that task. But they also misused her in a most indecent and unacceptable way.”
“What!” Mildred exclaimed in outrage.
“Relax,” Krysty told her lightly. “They’re going to play their little game.”
“Yes, these men especially laid their profane hands upon her naked flesh,” Brother Joseph intoned. “Our princess. Daughter of our lost, exalted leader. They have profaned the very flesh and blood of our righteous Baron Savij, profaned our new baron. What price shall we exact, with sorrow in our hearts, for such an outrage?”
“Death!” shouted one of the acolytes.
“Death! Death!” shouted more.
It took a while, but the acolytes were young. They had leather lungs and boundless energy. They kept chanting, “Death! Death! Death!” until, one by one, the whole crowd joined in. Even the fat-rabbit pot maker sitting next to Doc was red-faced and pounding on the table.
By the end, Ryan figured, the crowd probably thought it was all their own idea.
AN HOUR after the spectacular conclusion to the evening’s banquet, Strode appeared at the door of their prison house.
The companions were nursing black eyes and bruises, and Jak had got another split in his scalp to join the first one. As one they had decided not to go peacefully. Except for J.B., of course, who was still playing possum. He’d been griping the entire hour since about how he didn’t get to take part in all the fun as Mildred and Krysty tended the group’s hurts as best they could with no equipment but water and some rags.
Strode bustled in without ceremony, lugging a huge pack on her broad pack. This she dumped in the center of the floor and began to root around in, taking out rag bandages and jars of alcohol.
“You show up so Bro Joe’ll have us in good shape to face his chillers?” Ryan asked.
“Don’t be stupe,” the healer said. “You, boy—”
She pointed a finger at Jak, then at the floor before her. “Sit,” she commanded.
“Uh-uh,” he said.
“You took at least two severe blows to the head,” she said. “You need care so your brains don’t start coming out your ears. And don’t even think about what’ll happen if those scalp wounds get infected through lack of attention.”
Jak growled.
“Jak,” Krysty said, “do what she says.”
Pouting, the albino youth got up from his pallet, padded to stand before the wide healer and knelt. The hair at the back of his head was pinkish, now, from Krysty doing her best to wash it with their limited supply of water. Strode, examining his wounds, called for her attendants outside to hurry up and replenish the water.
“Why are you helping us, then?” Ryan asked.
“You’re in my ville,” she said. “You need healing.”
“Ow!” Jak yipped, as she began to swab his wound with a clean rag dipped in alcohol. “Stings!”
“Don’t whine or I’ll show you the real meaning of sting,” she said. “And quit wriggling. Or I’ll have to clean this cut out all over again. I won’t be gentle!”
When Strode had finished her cleaning and patching as best she could and was repacking her gear, Ryan, who sat on a pallet next to Krysty, said, “We need you to take a message to Tully.”
“Tully?” she asked, continuing to pack without glancing at him. “He likes you less than I do. He’s a big defender of Emerald’s, if you didn’t notice. And there’s the little matter that you killed his buddy Lonny.”
She stowed the last item, sealed her bag and turned to face Ryan with hands on hips.
“Lonny was a pig,” she said, “but did you have to actually kill him?”
“Yeah. Now listen. Please. This is for Emerald and the ville as much as us. Tell Tully we can help him if he’ll help us.”
“What is it you want him to do?”
“Break us out.”
Strode laughed in Ryan’s face. “Why would he do that? He hates you like poison.”
“You know McCoy, a little black kid?”
“I delivered him,” Strode said. “Like every other Soulardite born in the last twenty-three years.”
“Tell Tully to send him outside the perimeter. He knows ways through.”
“He does?”
“Trust me,” Ryan said. “Or, nuke that. Ask Tully. He knows. Tell the kid to poke around some outside the ville. Especially down by the river.”
“You want me to send a child into an area infested with stickies?”
“If he didn’t know how to keep out of the stickies’ suckers, Healer,” Krysty said, “do you think he’d still be alive? He can obviously go through the fence whenever he likes.”
“He’ll find a crew of scavvies led by a dude named Dan E. Kind of a heavyset guy, white, thirties, brown hair, brown eyes. Got a goatee. Totes a SIG handblaster at his hip. Or this Dan E.’ll find him, more like.”
“What then?”
“If Tully can get Dan E.’s bunch inside, they can help him. Twenty-thirty scavvies, armed to the teeth and hard as rail iron. Together with Tully’s allies here in the ville they ought to be able to spring Emerald. Shift the balance of power, like.”
“It’ll take time for all this to happen,” Strode warned. “Tully may not go for it. A thousand things could go wrong.”
“So?” Ryan said. “What do we have to lose? What do you got to lose? Or do you want to go on delivering kids so Brother Joseph can have his screamwing pals rip them to bloody rags?”
She stared blue hate at them, then she shook her silver-haired head. “No,” she said. “I’m not going to hate you for telling me truth to my face. Mebbe for other things, but not for that.”
“Will you do it?”
“Yes,” the healer said without hesitation. She was a person who picked a direction quick and just put her head down and went that way. Ryan admired that.
“I can’t lie to you and tell you I see any realistic chance of your plan working,” Strode said, “but it’s the best shot I can see. For you or for us.”
NEXT DAY they were awakened at dawn to have a big bowl of oatmeal and some spoons thrust through the slot to them. They got fresh water and towels, too.
The companions mostly passed the day sleeping. J.B. was still healing; he had plenty of that left to do, for all that he claimed to be mobile and fully functional. The others were exhausted by their quest for the fugitive princess and their thumping of the night before.
It was too rad-blasted muggy to talk or even think. Sleep was the on
ly sanctuary.
The sun was spilling light over the peaked gray roof of the house behind them through the back door security bars when hammering on the front door’s steel frame roused them.
It was the hard fist of Garrison himself raising the racket. He had a dozen of his men to back him.
“Get yourselves straightened up,” he said.
“Why exactly should we?” Mildred asked, sitting up from the sleeping pad she shared with J.B.
Garrison showed yellowish teeth in a brief grin. “Because Brother Joseph would prefer you turn out to the plaza without being all beat to shit,” he said. “If you would, too, get hustling.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
The late-afternoon air, enriched by the yellow slanting sunlight, seemed to crackle above the heads of the crowd with electricity. The glow turned Brother Joseph’s face and beard the color of gold.
“People of Soulard!” he cried, holding high his staff. “I have prayed and meditated upon the vexing problem of how to handle these strangers who have abused our hospitality and our virgin princess!”
“Wonder if still virgin after last night,” Jak muttered. Then he sagged at the knees as the sec man behind him gave him a savage baton jab to the kidneys. Mildred and Krysty caught him by the elbows and saved him from banging his knees on the pavement.
“Likely she wasn’t when she left here,” Ryan said. He glanced over his shoulder at the sec men behind him. “Any of you boys want to feel what’s like having one of those sticks broken off in your ass, feel free to give me a poke with it, any old time.”
The companions hadn’t been bound when Garrison and his sec men hustled them to the plaza. The sec men guarding Ryan gave him the evil eye but decided to do nothing.
“I have consulted my most trusted advisers,” Brother Joseph was saying. He waved a hand to indicate Booker and a clump of five or six local burghers, all of whom looked scared and uncomfortable. “All signs lead to one, the only possible conclusion.”
