Piotr never spoke to me again except formally, which pleased me well enough. And it would be very, very reassuring to have Baroness d?Ath here now. Or to be back in Todenangst. Or anywhere I wasn?t in Anthony Heasleroad?s power.
But the only rescue she was likely to get was one she or her friends came up with themselves.
Mary pierced with sorrows, pagan though he is, Rudi was also born of woman. Help him! Help us all!
DES MOINES CAPITAL, PROVISIONAL REPUBLIC OF IOWA BOSSMAN?S
?At least I?m not hanging up by my thumbs,? Ingolf Vogeler said to himself, looking up at the gray cracked concrete of the cell?s roof and breathing the smells of iron and old sweat and piss and less pleasant things.?Or being hammered with lead-lined hoses. Or being strung up and hammered. Yet. Rudi?s got a couple more days before the month is up.?
It was too dark now to read the graffiti. He?d spent several days tracing the opinions of a generation of prisoners about the Heasleroads, father and son. The standard of literacy had gone down but the sentiments were pretty uniform-and he agreed with every one of them. He?d been tempted to add his own, at length. He?d been born a Sheriff?s son back home in the Free Republic of Richland and sat through schooling every winter until he was fourteen or so, his family being masters of broad acres and able to spare his labor without hardship.
But it was always possible that it would make things worse. Venting was a luxury he could only afford if he gave up every scrap of hope, and he couldn?t do that. For Mary?s sake if not his own, and for the others. ?Here?s my plan!? someone screamed in a cell down the row.?Just listen! First we catch the rats and train them and then-? ?Shut up!? half a dozen others bellowed, until the madman drifted off into grumbles and then snores. ?Fucking politicals!? one of the other voices yelled, and gave the bars of his cell a rattling kick before he lay down again.?Fucking loonies, every goddamned one of you!?
The common prisoners were genuinely angry. Sleep was the only real escape from the State Prison, at least for the hard-cases who made it to this pen inside the perimeter wall of Des Moines? inner citadel. The other ways out led to places that were even worse. The main punishment for of fenses against the-permanent-Emergency Regulations was life at hard labor. Which only meant four or five years in the salvage gangs or quarries or in the mines grubbing out coal, or a miserable decade if you were rented out as a part of a convict chain gang. The Heasleroads thought capital punishment was wasteful, save in exceptional cases. And far too merciful.
Anthony will probably make an exception for me, if Rudi doesn?t get those wagons to the bridge on time. Or maybe even if he does.
The close confinement here was a compliment, in a way; it meant they were taking his capacity to do harm seriously, even if they didn?t believe it had been a Cutter spy who?d betrayed him and Vogeler?s Villains when they were nearly back to the Mississippi with the plunder of Boston?s galleries. Here the Church Universal and Triumphant was a barely noticed oddity somewhere far, far out west, beyond Nebraska and the ranchers and the Sioux. He?d learned better, painfully…
And Rudi?s quite a guy, but he?s not going to pull four Conestoga wagons two hundred miles by himself. Or even with that damned spooky black mare of his, and Edain to help. And even if he did, I somehow doubt Tony Heasleroad will pay up on the bet. Though Rudi may actually have a better chance at it than I would. The Villains just cut their way through and back-he doesn?t have any blood feuds among the wild-men. ?Back in goddamned Iowa,? he muttered, with a quirk of the lips. ?Nothing?s gone right since I took that Boston job from Tony H.?
He sighed, remembering one place near Boston. It had a four-story internal courtyard with a mosaic floor and a marble throne in it, still dimly lit by the great pyramidal glass roof at the top, unbroken by some miracle. The galleries around it had held some things that had riveted him, even in that place of hideous peril; paintings, carved wood, a curious statue with its hand upraised in blessing and an infinite compassion in the ancient stone face. Treasures and wonders beyond knowing lying doomed behind dusty glass, looming up out of the darkness as their lanterns passed, then fading into oblivion. They?d had a list to salvage, but it was a fraction of that one single treasure house.
And if we?re lucky, the stuff we did get is still in those steel boxes on the wagons.
The keepers had solidly boarded the doors and windows to preserve their charges, before they went off to meet their deaths. He?d admired that at the time, and the more so as he saw what was within. There had been this wall of stained glass like nothing he?d seen in all his life, far too large and fragile to take…
I got to see that. It came all the way from Europe! And I met Mary. That was better than right. Hmmm. Unless meeting the one woman you want to settle down with just makes this worse? Giving you more to regret, you betcha.
He?d set up an exercise program when they put him in this cell, which for a wonder he had to himself-except for the miniature inmates in the cornshuck mattress. The sit-ups and chin-ups and push-ups and running in place ought to have left him tired enough to sleep easily, but the stinks and snores from the other cells kept him wakeful.
Now he lay on his back with his hands behind his head, a tall powerfully built man just short of thirty, with a pleasant battered face and a nose that had healed a little crooked long ago after an encounter with the blunt end of a Sioux tomahawk, brown hair and short-cropped beard, and dark blue eyes now half closed. He was barefoot, and his trousers and undershirt were getting a little gamy, but he?d known worse conditions-as a hired soldier in a free company, and then as a salvager leading a gang working the dead cities.
Memories drifted through his mind on the verge of sleep. His home, Readstown, the day he?d left with the volunteers who were going to fight the short glorious war against the Sioux, turning to watch petals from the blossoming apple orchards blowing like frothing white mist down towards the river. Mountain-tall towers in Chicago, scorched and leaning against each other like drunken giants long asleep, with their feet in swirls of lake water running in whitecaps through rivers that had once been streets. Dawn breaking up like thunder out of the Atlantic-he?d been one of the few men from the civilized lands to see that, since the Change. That weird little village on Nantucket, and the even weirder… place… that shared the island with those refugees out of time. Mary?s one bright blue eye laughing at him, as she reached for him with long-fingered slender hands.
Mountains rearing above the half-built bulk of the Temple in Corwin…
He awoke with a shudder; he?d been back there for a moment. His chest heaved under a film of sweat, and he called up something they?d taught him in the Valley of the Sun this last winter, in the Monastery of Chenrezi-a mandala, and a chant. The patterned figure began to turn, drawing his mind into its depths, and heart and breath slowed.
Heels beat a staccato on the concrete, hobnails grating. A bright Cole-man lantern showed, and then the man carrying it as he turned the corner. None of the other occupants complained, even if they felt inclined; the man wore the harness and uniform of the State Police, not the turnkeys. They were the Bossman?s personal retainers, and widely-and justly-feared. And this one had Captain?s bars on the shoulders of his plain mail shirt; he carried a cloth-wrapped bundle as well.
Edgar Denson, by God! Ingolf thought, with a sudden prickle. Come to kill me in person? Possibly. Though he?d probably have brought a crossbow if he had that in mind.