The Noble Prisoner (Empire of the North Book 2)

by Brendan DuBois

  He was back in his bunk, eating the last of the cinnamon bread, having earlier given a piece to Tompkins. He wiped at his face with his handkerchief. Armand thought again of the beatings, the betrayal, the death of Windsor Senior and Martel, and found himself surprised at his reaction. He thought he would be weeping from all the emotions storming through him.

  But his eyes were dry.

  The time for weeping was over.

  It was time to start surviving.

  And to find out how and why he was betrayed.

  At some point the lights dimmed and went dark, save for one bulb by the stall that served as a bathroom. The gentle rocking motion of the train made him sleepy and he curled up on his side, pulled the thin and smelly blanket over him. The pleasant taste of cinnamon bread was still in his mouth. In the darkness he thought of his younger sister Jeannette. So he still had at least one friend back in Toronto. Armand rolled so he was facing the wooden wall. It was rough and slatted, and he could see the passing scenery through gaps in the wall. There was a partial moon, enough light to illuminate the wide empty fields and the few forests that seemed to fly by as they traveled west through the empire.

  He shivered under his thin blanket, briefly saw a light, out there in the distance. Who or what was out there, showing a light? A farmhouse? A military fort? Another in the chain of prisons that the empire maintained out here for those who had sinned? He tried to follow the light as the train sped, but it was soon lost to view, and then Armand fell asleep.

  Sometime during the late morning the train stopped again, and once again, they were led out to stretch their legs. The meal this time was oatmeal. Armand sat with Tompkins and looked out to a slight rise of land. “Tell me, what do you think that is?”

  ‘That’ being a spot about a hundred meters away, a small hill that was clustered with wrecked machinery of a type Armand had never seen before. There were long metal barrels, rusted hulls, and tracks of a type of chain mail. The metal was rusted and burnt and shrubs and a few trees were growing through the mess.

  “That?” Tompkins said, squinting his eyes, peering out. “Looks to me like war machines.”

  “From the War of the World?” Armand asked. “I didn’t think the fighting reached this far north. I mean, I know some of the suburbs around Toronto were hit hard… but not out here.”

  Earl wiped at his lips with the back of his hand. “There are lots of things we don’t know. The War of the World went on for decades in many places at many times. So many places that we’ve forgotten about. For all we know, that little hill over there was a decisive battle in the defense of the old country. So much we don’t know. Like names, for example. What was this place called before it became an empire?”

  “Canada, something like that.”

  “True. Good on you. And do you know why so little is known about the scope of the War of the World?”

  Armand scraped the bottom of his metal bowl. “I have a feeling you’re going tell me.”

  That brought a laugh. “True. My student teacher instincts come to the fore. Come, this is a nice change. A student who will actually listen to me without looking at the clock. We know so much about what life was like a hundred or so years before the War of the World. Of places like France and Amerka and old England and even older empires, of Roma and Greece. But the time up to and including the War of the World… almost nothing. Why?”

  “Because the recordings were burnt,” Armand said. “The machines they had they recorded and transmitted information… they were burnt.”

  He nodded, like a young hungry crow sitting on a tree branch. “That’s right. They had elaborate machines, built like the finest crystal. Beautiful to look at, beautiful to use, able to do the most amazing feats of recording and transmission. But oh so delicate. One hard push, one special kind of bomb, and the crystal was shattered, the recordings lost, here and everywhere else in the world. A spasm of destruction that destroyed what was probably millions of books, millions of photographs, all lost forever. The old ones had the information of the entire world at their fingertips, the ability to listen to music while they walked, to talk to anyone on the planet in seconds. But in one war-filled day, it was all gone.”

  Armand thought of a lecture from a Jesuit priest, and a delicate glass vase, shattering on the classroom floor. Tompkins crossed his legs, let his spoon fall back into his bowl. “You may not believe this, but once I found a scrap of an old newsjournal, some decades before the war, which talked about their libraries. How some of their libraries decided it was no value to have real books of paper. So to make room for their recording machines, books were being thrown away, burnt, tossed in dumps.”

  Astounded, Armand said, “That’s crazy.”

  “It surely was. Which is what they did was so ironic. We know so much of ancient history because everything back then was written and preserved in papers and books. But for those years leading up to the War, and the War itself… almost nothing. A blank. For the machines that stored and transmitted the information were all destroyed. Oh, there are pieces here and there. Old books, a few of the older newsjournals, scraps of information. But it’s trying to understand a speech from another room, when all you can here is the odd word and phrase.”

  There was a shout, up the line. “Hello,” Tompkins said. “What’s that?”

  A man in an orange jumpsuit was running away from the train, heading to the hill with the wrecked machinery of the old ones. He ran desperately, legs pumping, arms flailing, and there were shouts from the other prisoners line up and down the railway, urging him on.

  Armand quickly stood up, and so did Tompkins, though he said, “Don’t move, don’t move at all, don’t give other guards an excuse.”

  “Do you think he has a chance?” Armand said, standing up on his toes, trying to get a better view.

  “Damn, I can’t believe he’s made it this far,” Tompkins said with awe in his voice.

  The man kept on running, there were more shouts of encouragement, and then two guards were in pursuit, unlimbering their carbines as they ran. The escapee made it to the slope of the hill, just a score of meters away from the first bits of wreckage, and Armand said, “There’s cover. Look, there’s cover. If he makes it that far, he just --–“

  A gunshot, then another, and then a third, and the man crumpled to the ground, like a marionette whose strings had suddenly been severed. There was a muffled groan from the other prisoners, and guards were now pushing them back onto the boxcars, faces set, carbines out. Armand climbed back up and helped Tompkins up as well, and he looked and saw two guards now at the form of the dead prisoner, tying a rope about his ankles, and then dragging him back to the train.

  “Procedure must be followed,” Tompkins said, bitterness in his voice. “Each boxcar left Toronto with sixteen occupants, and each boxcar will arrive to the Authority with sixteen occupants. Some dead, most alive, but all they will care about is that the numbers matched.”

  That night Armand was dreaming of what it had been like, before he had gone to Potomick with Father and had set in motion the whole change of events. The dream was of a fine meal and then climbing into bed, and then the bed changed shape, the sheets now filthy and torn, grabbed around him, and the fine meal had curdled into something foul, something that had to be vomited up. There was a shout, gasp, and a thud, and Armand woke up, realizing he wasn’t dreaming anymore.

  On the straw-covered floor next to his bunk, the thinner of the Patterson brothers was coughing, a hand to his throat. Standing next to him, rubbing his fist, was his bunkmate Tompkins Earl. He looked to the younger brother and said in an innocent voice, “Sorry about that. Sometimes I sleep very lightly, and when I heard you come by, I overreacted. My sincere apologies.”

  The brother stood up, spat on the floor, and stalked off. Armand felt chilled, knowing what Tompkins had just prevented. “Thanks,” he whispered, “thank you very much.”

  Tompkins winced as he rubbed his hand again. “That was very go
od bread, you know. The best I’ve had in a long time.”

  “But how did you know --–“

  He climbed back up to his bunk. “Get back to sleep, Armand. Tomorrow we arrive at the Authority. It will be the first in a very long series of days.”

  Armand went back to his bunk and tried to sleep, but it was impossible. He looked through the cracked slats of the boxcar, to see if there were any lights out there, but all he saw was the night.

  Chapter Two

  It got colder in the morning, as the train slowed, then speeded up, and then slowed again. By some unspoken agreement, nobody sat in their bunks: they stood around, like they could not handle waiting to what was going to happen next. Tompkins sidled up next to Armand. “I hear there’s a screening process, a quick interview. Don’t pull your I’m-a-wronged-member-of-nobility nonsense when you get there. Do that and you’ll be cleaning latrines and sewer pipes, breathing in crap and piss, for the rest of your life. You’ve got one chance. Don’t blow it.”

  “So what do I tell them, then?”

  “Tell them you’re educated. You know how to read, write, figure numbers. Impress them with those skills, and with luck, you’ll end up inside one of the account houses. You’ll be sheltered, warm, and be relatively safe. Whatever you do, don’t volunteer for anything else, and pray to God you don’t become a stoker.”

  “A what?”

  “A stoker. You just make sure --–“

  Armand never got to hear Tompkins finish his sentence, for they jolted to a halt, and the doors were unlocked and slid opened.

  Shouts.

  Bright lights.

  Dogs barking.

  Armand moved forward with the crowd, jostling about and being bumped, and he looked for Tompkins, but lost him in the moving press of prisoners. All about them was the thick stench of oil. They were in a train yard, with guards moving, carbines on their shoulders, some of them with leashed dogs before them, the dogs barking and snapping at them. Armand and his fellow prisoners struggled to form some sort of line. Armand looked at the dogs and their snarling faces, felt a pang of sadness at old Martel, friendly Martel who had never growled at anyone in his life, and ---

  He looked behind him, thought he saw Tompkins Earl back there --– his only friend on this trip west --– and as Armand moved to see if it was so, he was struck on the back of his legs with a truncheon.

  Armand winced and a guard with a two-day growth of beard growled, “Keep in line, move ahead, no stepping out. You step out, you got tossed in the box. Move!”

  He didn’t have any idea what the box was, but Armand didn’t want to find out. He kept on moving forward, glancing back now and then, but his new friend was gone.

  The line moved forward, through a series of open gates, and Armand thought sourly of all the men Father had sent to this very place, the place that was now his son’s home. Wire fences stretched out in all directions, with watchtowers and bright electric lamps. Off in the distance were buildings and sheds and smokestacks, the whine and clunking of machinery, and above it all, the scent of oil. They shuffled forward until they stopped in a courtyard of packed earth. The guards came through and separated them out into columns, using last names, and then smaller columns still. Armand was taken into a small wooden room that had a filthy floor, and a man sitting at a desk, his muddy boots splayed out before him. The room had no windows, just a door leading off behind the seated man, who was flanked by two guards, unarmed save for wooden truncheons hanging from their belts.

  Painted signs hung from the walls: SILENCE. OBEY. WORK. There was also a splotch of paint on the wooden floor before the seated man: two outlines of shod feet, in dull yellow. Two prisoners were in front of him, and with a flick of his wrist, one by one they went up. They talked in low tones for just a few seconds, and then they walked through the door.

  He looked at Armand, with the dull eyes of a farmer, looking over a cow or a goat. A flick of the wrist. Armand stepped forward, carefully placing his feet on the painted yellow outlines. The man had a mess of filing cards set before him and a small wooden box, with lengths of rawhide dangling over the side.

  “Name?” he asked.

  “Armand de la Couture.”

  “Mmm,” he said, his dirty fingers thumbing through the cards. “Knew I saw your name here earlier. A noble… very interesting. Rare that we see one of your kind through here. Know why?”

  “No, I don’t,” Armand politely said, remembering Tompkin Earl’s earlier warning.

  He laughed, his teeth stained. “Because you nobles, you do something bad enough to tick off the Emperor, usually your head gets spiked. Rare that you make out to our little facility. Ah, here we go.”

  He picked up a card, placed it down, and then put a dirty hand into the box before him. He pulled out a thin metal disk with a piece of rawhide and threw it at him. Armand caught it and the man said, “That’s your new identification, noble. Imperial prisoner number N19283. Put it around your neck and never take it off. It ever comes off, a month in the box.”

  Armand looked at the poorly stamped piece of metal, noted the letter and numbers, and tied it around his neck.

  The man then picked up a pencil with the end carefully chewed off. “Now. Skills?”

  Again Armand recalled Tompkins Earl. “Writing, reading, stenography, and accounting.”

  His eyes flickered at that last one. “Accounting? Really?”

  “Yes… my father… he worked in the Ministry of Trade. I’ve done a number of internships there, and my school skills were --–“

  He held up a hand. “Enough. Accounting. Not bad.”

  A few scribbles and he handed Armand a card. “Through the door. You’ll be processed, and then give to the card to the checker at the end. Hope you like numbers, kid, ‘cause you’re going to be seeing them in your sleep for the rest of your life.”

  Holding the card like an unexpected birthday gift, Armand went through the door.

  On the other side the door, processing was quick, impersonal and to the point, with stations set along a long tiled hallway. His head was shaved, he was told to remove his jumpsuit so he could be sprayed with some sort of de-lousing chemical, and then Armand was sprayed again with a burst of cold water. He wiped himself off as best as he could with a damp towel and then he got dressed again, had his photograph taken as well as fingerprints. Still carrying that precious card that would let Armand work in some sort of accounting function, he went to the end of the hallway, to another man --– better dressed and groomed than his counterpart across the way --– who took Armand’s card and sniffed. He was seated at a desk, and there was a man standing next to him, a guard Armand had first thought, but then he looked again and thought, no, he was from Imperial Security. He wasn’t sure how he knew, but his time in their Toronto ministry had changed the way Armand thought and looked at people.

  The man at the desk sucked in his breath. “Ah, Sire de la Couture… it looks like you’re going to be placed in --–“

  The standing man, wearing an old but still fashionable suit, took the card away without protest. “Yes, he’s going to be placed at a location where his skills can be used, and his debt can be paid.”

  The card was slapped back on the desk.

  “Stoker.”

  Armand bit his lip as the seated man just nodded and made a notation, and Armand quickly said, “There must be some sort of mistake. I was told that --–“

  The standing man smiled. “No mistake. Or haven’t you heard? No mistakes are ever made at His Imperial Majesty’s Oil Sands Authority, Sire de la Couture. And your assignment has been chosen. Stoker. Now, get out of here, before I put you in the box for a month, just because I can.”

  His feet seemed to move on their own. Armand went out the door and a guard grabbed his upper arm, and brought him through two more gates and then to a low wooden building. The guard went up to a side structure, talked to someone inside, and then came out with a pile of clothing and such, which he tossed to Armand.
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  “There,” he said, gesturing to the building. “You’re in barracks nineteen. Juvenile males. Don’t forget it. You get lost, you might get dumped in with the adult males… and a sweet young boy like you wouldn’t last a week.”

  Armand held his new belongings tight. “What do I do when I get in there?”

  “Don’t rightly care,” he said. “You’re a bright one, I hear. I’m sure you’ll figure it out.”

  He slogged back through the mud, back to the gate, and Armand went up a set of wooden stairs, into building nineteen.

  Noise and laughter and the stench of unwashed young boys and dirt and oil.

  Music being played from a wireless set somewhere in the building.

  Armand was in a crowded barracks room, with bunks of two beds, stretching out in all directions. He was mostly ignored as he walked in, holding his new possessions close to his chest, looking for an empty bunk. He found one near the latrine, which made sense: smelling as it did, it would always be the new guy’s place.

  He unrolled a thin mattress and spread out his meager possessions. A jacket that was too big, two thin wool blankets, a lumpy pillow, and a plate and spoon. That was it. Someone came by and said, “Hey.”

  Armand looked up. A squat young man, maybe a year or two older than Armand, dark hair, shirtless, with tattoos on his sunken chest and arms, smoking the stub of a cigarette.

  He gestured with the cigarette. “Gotta pay a fee, a bunk fee.”