“And a paper maker,” Hadrian surmised.
Sebastian nodded. “Just off the square. The old woman makes heaps of the stuff.”
Ten minutes later they were stepping into the shop. In a side room a young woman in a grey tunic was ripping salvaged clothing apart at the seams, tossing it into a boiling vat for recovery of its fibers. Hadrian touched a stack of paper sheets on the counter. They were too thin to be used for the smuggled shotgun shells, but they were of the same speckled pattern, the same texture. It would not be difficult to make a heavier version. He watched as a silver-haired woman directed another indentured worker to carry what seemed to be heavier sheets through a doorway at the rear of the room. As Hadrian made a move to follow, Sebastian pulled him away.
They wandered along the waterfront in the fading light, pausing to watch a line of silent, fatigued riders with packhorses arrive at a building that had the look of a warehouse. Sebastian put a restraining hand on Hadrian’s shoulder as he stepped toward the salvage riders, pointing him instead toward a double door at the end of the chicken house where a woman was hanging two large oil lanterns. Several figures who had been lingering along the waterfront were converging on the doors.
The tavern was already getting noisy by the time the two men entered. Hadrian paused after his first step through the door, unable to suppress a surprised grin. It was hard not to respond to the woodpaneled walls, the fire crackling in the potbellied stove, the motley collection of bottles on the bar reflecting the light of two dozen candles. The impression was one of undeniable cheer.
“Hadrian Boone!” boomed the burly man behind the bar as they approached. He had a broad face and long greying hair tied behind his neck. Wiping his hands, he reached across to grip the newcomer’s hand. “Rene Sauger.” He offered his name with a wide smile, then pounded the bar with a pewter mug to get the attention of his other patrons. “Hadrian Boone! A founding father of Carthage!” Several customers stared at Hadrian with intense interest as Sauger raised the mug to him, others glanced and quickly looked away.
Sauger poured Hadrian and Sebastian pints of ale and led them to a table by the stove. Hadrian cautiously sipped at his drink, watching the genial publican, trying to fit together the puzzle that was St. Gabriel.
“I’m confused. AmIaprisoner? Or am I a new friend?”
The First Blood sidestepped. “I think that is up to you.”
“She’s innocent, Sebastian,” Hadrian said. “She doesn’t know anything. Outside of Carthage she has no authority. She is no threat.”
“We know about police. In the old world they were always the enemy of my people.” He took a swallow of his ale. “In the old world more than one of my family was thrown into their prisons.”
“In the old world.”
“We don’t need a prison here. You have a prison in Carthage because you have police.”
Hadrian didn’t know if it was his fatigue or the image of Lieutenant Kenton that flashed in his mind’s eye, but he could find no words to argue.
As they drank in silence, Hadrian studied the men at the tables around them, inhabitants of this alien world. Several of them spoke with an uplifting at the end of their sentences, the Canadian accent he had heard at the signal lantern above Carthage. Four patrons sat apart, at a corner table, their clothes dusty, their hard but weary faces lifting as other customers brought them pints and stopped to talk. He realized he’d seen them before, riding into town. Even in Carthage those who regularly made salvage runs were a breed apart, transformed somehow by their repeated visits to the ruined lands.
He gazed with appreciation at the heavy wood beams overhead, the polished wood of the long bar. There were carved flowers and cherubs along its corners. Over it, and scattered on high shelves along the walls, were nearly a dozen stuffed martens, most arranged in attack pose. The long benches along the wall bore the same designs as the bar’s carvings. One of the tables was covered with a lace doily.
Hadrian looked back at the bar with sudden discomfort. The chicken house had been a convent, which produced lace. The tavern was in the chapel, the bar an ornate altar, the benches old pews. He glanced back at the martens. Tree jackals. He studied the crowd again. At least half a dozen wore medallions. He shuddered. St. Gabriel was populated with jackals.
“So what shall we serve you for supper?” Sauger asked some time later, stirring Hadrian from something close to slumber. “Our mutton stew is the best for a thousand miles,” he offered. It had the sound of an old joke. “Or twenty kinds of soup.”
“Twenty?” Hadrian asked incredulously. He hadn’t smelled any soup kettles.
Sauger’s eyes twinkled. He gestured Hadrian to follow and led him to a door behind the bar. The chamber inside was nearly as large as the tavern itself, though far dimmer. At a candlelit table in the center, wearing a dull expression, sat Dax with a bowl and two tin cans in front of him. Sauger lifted a candlestick and stepped to the nearest wall.
Hadrian stared in wonder. The wall was lined with shelves, every shelf filled with cans of food. Hundreds wore once-familiar labels, artifacts of his childhood, soups and stews often served to him by his mother. The scale of St. Gabriel’s salvage was beginning to sink in. “Surely they can’t be good after so many years?”
“The cans with leaks and contamination popped open long ago. Most of these are usable. If it’s a little stiff we add some broth. We have spices to take the staleness away.”
Hadrian picked up one of the cans. It was a most unexpected treasure. He turned it over. With an ache in his heart he read the expiration date. 2024. What marvelous confidence it seemed now, to have printed such a date. In the minds of many survivors there had been no such year, for the end had come first. Civilization had expired, but its soup had endured.
“Chicken noodle,” he said, not understanding why he was whispering. “I always liked chicken noodle.”
“Two cans,” Sauger declared.
“I’ll sit in here,” Hadrian ventured, gesturing toward Dax, who had not acknowledged him. There was a dark patch on his cheek, a fresh bruise.
Sauger considered the boy with a sober expression, then grinned at Hadrian. “Nonsense. You are ours tonight,” he said, then put his hand over Hadrian’s shoulder and led him away.
They sat at a table using hallmarked silver. He ate the decades-old soup in a china bowl, the scent of it arousing long-lost memories of sitting in his mother’s kitchen after building a snowman. Sebastian, tucking into the mutton stew, watched him with amusement.
In one corner men played darts, throwing at a wooden plank painted with a bear. He realized now there were women scattered among the tables, young ones wearing tight-fitting clothes and makeup. He blinked self-consciously as he became aware he’d been staring at a red-haired woman in her twenties who now met his eyes with an inviting expression. One of her companions, a tall blond, led a member of the salvage party out a side door. The back of the vest he wore was embroidered with a skeleton holding a shovel. DEATH DIGGER, said the slogan underneath.
Raucous laughter burst from a corner table. Wade and the ape-like engineer from the Anna seemed to be holding court with other members of the salvage crew. Clearing their table were the two youths who had arrived with them from New Jerusalem, now wearing the grey clothes of indentured servants.
“What do you think of our paradise?” Sauger asked as he took a seat beside Hadrian.
“You never feel so blind as when you finally learn to see,” Hadrian replied.
Sauger seemed to take the words as a compliment. Grinning, he gestured toward the red-haired woman, who brought fresh glasses and an old soda bottle capped with a cork. “You can make vodka from almost anything,” he declared, then opened the bottle and sniffed as if it were a fine wine before pouring it out. “Turnips and elderberries, steeped in cedarwood. You’d be surprised.”
“I can’t help wondering why we in Carthage have been so ignorant of these miracles in the north.”
Sauger smiled li
ke a Buddha. He contemplated Hadrian, then lifted his glass in salute before sipping his vodka. “We’re just coming into our own, you might say. Before that, it was all about surviving.”
Hadrian gripped his glass, struggling with a reflex that demanded he drink, but also hearing the voice that shouted his days as a drunk were over. He stared at the glass and realized he no longer had an appetite for liquor. Somehow it seemed Jonah’s doing, as if something inside him had made a pact with his dead friend to stop drinking. “Still, our fishermen have been sailing north for years,” he replied.
“Mostly, we discourage them. When they first started appearing on the horizon we’d send canoes out to meet them with furs and woodcarvings and warnings about terrible shoals closer to shore. They kept venturing farther and farther. Once here they found they enjoyed sampling our tattoos and women. They like our tattoo artists. The First Bloods have been inking skin for hundreds of years.” Sauger shrugged. “Punic pilgrims, our people started calling them, sailing in for a little quick salvation at the convent before heading back to stuffy old Carthage. No doubt they worry that sharing the secret would spoil their fun. We do like to keep to ourselves.”
Sauger raised his glass to Sebastian, who drained his glass with a hesitant nod toward the tavern keeper. Did Hadrian detect distrust in the First Blood’s expression?
“But it didn’t seem fair for Carthage to keep all her steam trawlers.”
“No one stole the Anna. She just changed her home port.”
“But she’s owned by the head of the merchant guild. Funny how he never objected.”
Hadrian had landed a blow. Sauger’s grin disappeared, and Hadrian continued. “I think that you are telling me that the Anna is still part of Fletcher’s fleet. Despite the touching monument to her in our cemetery. I remember how the captain wiped away a tear as he laid out the wreath for her dead.”
As if on cue a door opened and the man who’d disappeared with the blond woman earlier returned, alone now, carrying his vest in his hand. For the briefest of moments, in the light under one of the bright lanterns hanging from the ceiling, the salvager glanced at Hadrian, then quickly turned his face away. But it was long enough. Hadrian had spent time with him in Carthage, on the docks when they were training men for the first steam ships. The death digger’s skin was darker, and now heavily tattooed, his hair longer, but Hadrian knew him. Wheeler. He was one of the Anna’s missing crew members. His name was carved on the monument in the Carthage cemetery. The children’s choir had sung a song in his memory.
“What I don’t quite understand,” Hadrian went on, “is why you have gone out of your way to welcome me. Or perhaps you just want to keep the meat tender for your stewpot.”
Laughter flashed in Sauger’s eyes. He played the role of the publican perfectly, but Hadrian was beginning to glimpse the restless cunning behind his eyes. “We savor your—” he searched for a word, “your uniqueness, Professor Boone.”
The two men seemed to be carrying on different conversations. Hadrian forced a sip of his vodka, watching as the blond woman reappeared, now leading away Wade. “I was wondering if I might meet your mayor. Or chairman. The head of your government.”
“I like your new friend, Sebastian,” Sauger said to the First Blood. “He gets right to the nub of it!”
“I don’t understand.”
“We have learned our lessons well. We have no government. We live by mutual benefit. Social symbiosis. Everyone embraces their roles. Rethink your world, friend. Ever notice how all the big problems in history were caused by governments?”
“But now St. Gabriel is recruiting for new roles,” Hadrian replied. “Putting your agents in the camps. It’s a big world, as they say, now more than ever.”
“Just trying to make new friends, to find new mutual benefit.”
“Or perhaps you are reinventing the world.”
Sauger ignored the comment, just gestured around his tavern. “If you need something, just ask.”
In a clear voice Hadrian said, “Give me the killer of Jonah Beck.”
Sauger’s expression grew less genial. “The murder of a prominent citizen. Sounds like an internal problem for Carthage.”
“I once thought just that,” Hadrian said, then shrugged. “But, as you said, I have to rethink my world. What if our problems started here?” After a moment he added, “How would you even know Beck was a prominent citizen?”
“Old wizards cast long shadows.” Sauger signaled to the red-haired woman. She picked up a leather pouch and walked toward them.
The woman dropped the pouch by Sauger, who shoved it toward Hadrian. He opened it. Inside were four cans of chicken soup.
“What price do I put on such treasures?”
His host smiled again. “A gift. Always a pleasure to connect a man to something he will truly appreciate.”
“Would that all your prisoners got such treatment.”
Sauger shrugged his broad shoulders. “You saw the boy enjoying our bounty. Let’s call it two out of three.”
The tavern keeper held him with a steady gaze but Hadrian didn’t miss Sebastian’s glance toward the door behind which the blond woman kept disappearing. Hadrian lifted his glass. “To bigger worlds,” Hadrian toasted. Sauger and Sebastian tapped their glasses to his, then the bartender rose with a raucous laugh and left them.
Hadrian forced himself to drink, slowly but steadily, making sure his escort matched him glass for glass. He challenged the big First Blood to darts, then tipsily missed half his throws. As a fiddler began to play he joined the others in a song, then pulled the redhead from her stool. They began to dance. Her skin seemed to shimmer as he held her close, then he saw that it was covered with Angel Polish, the cosmetic from the Carthage fishery.
A brute of a man in sooty denims cut in on a youth dancing with one of the women. When the younger man tried to reclaim his partner a few minutes later, the bigger man lashed out with a fist, knocking the youth to the floor. As he turned to kick him before he could rise, Hadrian recognized the surly engineer from the Anna.
“Tull!” Sauger barked, and pointed to the door outside.
The engineer, clearly drunk, halted, glaring at Sauger, then grabbed a bottle and left the tavern.
As the room began to empty, Hadrian clung to the woman with a drunk’s ardor until, with Wheeler nursing a mug in a corner and Sebastian asleep at his table, Sauger whispered to her. She led Hadrian to the side door where all the other women had gone. Slurring his words, Hadrian reminded the woman to bring his precious soup, then followed her into the dim corridor.
He had counted six different women who had gone through the door. As his companion led him into the seventh doorway, Hadrian saw three more rooms before the end of the hall.
His companion disrobed in a quick, professional manner. When she wore nothing but her linen smallclothes, she turned and stripped Hadrian to the waist, hesitating a moment over the soiled bandage on his arm. As she touched his belt he tottered backward, twisting so he landed belly down, face to the wall. She laughed, then hearing his exaggerated snores, poked him several times to no avail.
“You old fool,” she groused, then sat on the bed and began to dress. His intemperate habits had left him with a remarkable tolerance for alcohol. He waited several minutes after she left, then rose and began doing push-ups to burn off the liquor in his system.
He estimated it was past midnight when he cracked open the door and peered into the corridor. It was empty. He picked up his leather pouch and stepped to the end of the hall. The last door swung open, releasing a musty smell. The room was stacked with crates. As he touched the handle of the next door, a frightened moan came from inside, followed by the sound of furniture toppling over. The door would not move. He stepped back and saw now the padlock holding the door fast.
Retrieving a lantern from the wall, he went back into the storage room. A quick search revealed an iron bar. Moments later he’d wedged it inside the hasp of the lock, then, with a ne
rvous glance down the hall, he gave a violent shove. The screws popped out of the aged dry wood of the doorframe.
As he stepped inside, a figure scrambled away, dragging a table with her. Hadrian leapt to her, clamping a hand over her mouth. When she fought him he slapped her, then covered her mouth again. “It’s me, Jori. Do you hear me?”
The sergeant’s chest heaved up and down but she stopped resisting as he held her. Hadrian saw that her hands were tightly bound with a rope tied to an iron ring fixed to the table. He quickly cut the bindings, then, with a sinking heart, saw that the room’s window was blocked with bars.
“Can you walk?” he asked.
Her voice was tremulous. “At first they just asked questions, gave me food and drink. But when I didn’t give them answers, they came back. They caned me, hit me with switches on my legs and arms.”
“You have to be able to walk. Now. I know where the horses are kept. We can be twenty miles away by dawn.”
Jori bit her lip, scrubbed the tears from her cheeks, and nodded.
They inched down the hall silently, Hadrian fearing what they would encounter when they reached the tavern. He held a finger to his lips as they reached it, then raised the pouch of cans he still carried like a weapon and pushed the door.
Only three candles burnt now, their light so dim that they were halfway across the room before he saw Wheeler still at the corner table, his head cradled in his folded arms. Jori pointed to another dark shape, on the floor by the stove. Sebastian was curled up near the warmth of the fire.
The sky was brilliantly clear, with the light of a half-moon and the aurora enough for them to navigate through the village. They had perhaps six hours until dawn, but before Hadrian went to the stables he had one stop to make.
The paper maker’s shop had no lock on its front entrance, only a padlock on the inner door he’d noted that afternoon. He quickly ripped it away with the iron bar, found a candle, and stepped inside.
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