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  Ryan caught Krysty’s eye as she smiled around at everybody, playing the ideal dinner guest in a way that wouldn’t have been out of place at a baronial party in Front Royal. Her expression hardened briefly as she caught Ryan’s attention.

  Guests, he knew she was thinking, as he was. Six sec men with hands behind their backs and sidearms and truncheons hanging from their belts stood at ease around the dining room. Brother Joseph might call the companions guests, but there were still blasters ready to come out if they started actually acting like them. They were prisoners, no matter how well they were being treated.

  Fattened? Ryan didn’t like the taste of that line of thought.

  “In their honor, and in honor of our wonderful ville and the service rendered it by a succession of heroic Barons Savij, I propose that we bring out Saga to give us the story of Soulardville!”

  That brought out another round of applause. It was louder and more enthusiastic than before, although Ryan thought he caught some eye-rolling, too. Apparently there wasn’t unanimity on the locals’ appreciation of this Saga.

  The palace was a big place. Ryan had the impression it had expanded beyond the building’s original footprint, possibly by breaking down walls between it and neighboring buildings. Though they might’ve built additions to the structure, too. They’d had plenty of time. He had seen the walls they’d built around their ville, to seal it off from the outside world.

  So Ryan wasn’t sure where the old man in the walker shuffled in from. He was tiny and wizened and the color of aged mahogany, with a thrusting blade-nosed face and a shiny egg of skull with just a fringe of white fluff like cotton puffs glued on. Bright green tennis balls, right out of the scavenged can, capped the front legs of his walker. He wore sandals and a brown-and-black-striped dashiki that hung to his knees, and a cap halfway between a skullcap and a fez knitted out of gold, red, yellow and green yarn on his crown. Like Booker, he wore dark glasses.

  “What with wrinklie?” Jak asked, gesturing with a roasted chicken leg.

  “I think he’s some kind of bard or chronicler,” Krysty said.

  “Looks like he could have come here with the first Savij,” Ryan said, sopping up some beans bubbled with molasses and bacon from his heavy blue earthenware plate with a crust of bread.

  The far end of the table from Brother Joseph had lacked a chair or place setting. Now Saga thumped his walker to the spot. At a gesture from Brother Joseph a chair was placed for him. He sank onto its cushion with a grateful sigh and with help from an attendant set his walker aside. Then he leaned forward and placed hands that looked like claws carved from aged hardwood on the table.

  “Hear me now, children of Soulardville and visitors from the wasteland!”

  Ryan almost jumped out of his chair. The old man’s voice was triple-loud and trumpet-brassy, especially coming out of such a dried-up old cicada-husk of a body.

  “Hear me as I tell the tale of Savij, the gangsta who made the ville! Out of the very flames of the big nuke he strode into Soulard. Him and his posse. And the people of Soulard cowered in fear before him.

  “But he didn’t bring destruction. He brought life. Life! Because he was a prophet and had seen the end coming. He had studied and he had calculated. He knew. He knew!”

  The ancient paused to lubricate his aging vocal cords with a healthy slug of wine from a glass jar.

  In the hiatus in the old man’s oddly hypnotic rhythmic shouting, Mildred leaned toward Ryan across the table. “Savij was a big conspiracy theory buff,” she said quietly. “He got into survivalism and all kinds of crazy stuff.”

  She shook her head, making the beads in her plaits rattle.

  “Guess he wasn’t so crazy after all, was he?”

  “The S-Man!” Saga exclaimed. “In his wisdom he taught the people of the ville how to survive the fire and the poison that fell from the sky. But the travails of the bad old world outside weren’t over. Oh, no! The New Mad rid! The New Mad rid the earth of tens of thousands who had lived through the blasts and the fire and the invisible death! The earth shook, the buildings fell down, the mighty river jumped its bed!

  “And then the sky went dark. Earth grew cold. And so it was for many years.

  “But the first Baron Savij bade the children go forth into the ruins, amid the cold and the darkness, and seek out the means to live. And so we did, over those terrible, terrible years of shadows and ice.

  “And when the skies at last cleared, he led the children out into the healing rays of the sun and said, ‘Yeah, motherfuckers, can you feel it?’ And verily they said, ‘Fuck yeah!’”

  “Fuck, yeah,” the other diners echoed reverently.

  Mildred’s left eyebrow rose. She looked around at the others. Doc stared amiably into infinity at a point just above the others’ heads. Jak was fidgeting in his chair like a little boy who needed to go pee. Krysty maintained a suspiciously frozen expression.

  J.B. wasn’t there to grin and shake his head and perhaps mutter a wise-ass crack under his breath. For the first time Ryan really missed the runty little bastard, keenly felt the hole his absence left.

  He hadn’t had luxury to do it earlier. To miss his friend and hard right hand, even during their hours locked up, when other needs like eating and drinking and sleeping took priority.

  “Fuck yeah,” Ryan said loudly, hoisting his mug in salute. Then he took a swallow of beer to cover his grin. Mildred shot him an outraged glare. It went right up her back for him to go along with this mumbo-jumbo. That was part of why he said it.

  And partly, he thought, as he swigged the beer, it was because these Soulard fusies had given them good grub and better beer, and also they outnumbered them and took their blasters. It didn’t cost him anything to say crazy shit if that made his hosts happy.

  He hoped Mildred would chill out before she got them chilled, period.

  “So the days passed. We waxed and grew strong. Strong! The first great Baron Savij, the founder, set us to work on the building of the walls and fences and the planting of the hedges that protect us to this day. Praise him! Praise his memory!

  “Came the day for him to lie down and give his bones to the earth. But from his studly loins he had brought forth a fine, strong son. The new Baron Savij was good and wise and strong. He carried on his father’s mighty work.

  “Thus we built our strength and built our wealth. We came to trade with the others who had somehow managed to survive, despite lacking the wise firm hand of Savij to guide them. The scavvies in the ruins, the haughty opportunists from Breweryville, we traded with them. Lo, people came from as far away as Fort Zellich and even Camp Knappenberger, far in the wooded mountains to the west. They crossed the perilous river from Eastleville. Because we had the good shit. The best food, meds, wine, the best pottery, the best salvage. We were for real! And we still are, praise Baron Savij!”

  He hoisted his wine jar, which a young boy kept topped off from a large ceramic jug. A seismic wave of the red fluid slopped over the side and splashed onto the tabletop. The diners, who had finished eating, by and large, moved their chairs back with scrapes on the brick floor to avoid getting splashed or dripped on. Beyond that no one paid any attention.

  “But something was lacking.” He drank deeply, belched in satisfaction, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, belched heroically and set the glass jar down with a clunk on the tabletop.

  “Something was lacking, my children. We had soul, but that soul cried out for nourishment. Then one day, one glorious day, a wanderer came to us. A man who quenched our thirst for the spirit. A man who brought us the compact, just in time to protect us from the new menace from the sky—Brother Joseph!”

  The diners burst into wild applause. It seemed to Krysty there was an overstretched quality to some of the smiles, a glassy look to certain eyes. But no one seemed willing to let his or her neighbors out-do them in zeal.

  “Wait,” Jak whispered, as Joseph rose, smiling. “What menace from sky?”

 
Krysty pressed a finger urgently to her lips.

  The ville’s spiritual leader spread his hands before him, palms down, for silence. As though he were stilling the waters, the frenzied approval ceased.

  “Thank you, Saga,” he said. “An inspired performance.”

  Saga’s jaw dropped. “But I’m not done.”

  “You must be exhausted. My acolytes will help you to your rest.”

  The wrinklie went ashen. “I’m goin’, Bro Joe! You know me! I’m your biggest fan!”

  “Of course,” Joseph said, nodding magnanimously. “And I yours.”

  A couple of husky young men in T-shirts tie-dyed similarly to the preacher’s appeared. They lifted Saga to his feet, planted him gently but firmly in his walker. Then with him clutching frantically to its metal bars they lifted him by his matchstick arms and hustled him out.

  When Saga and his unwelcome attendants were out of sight and earshot, Brother Joseph swept the table with his pale amber gaze.

  “And now, if our guests would be so kind, I think we’re all dying to hear the chronicle of their undoubtedly strange and terrible journey that has led them here to our garden of peace and prosperity.”

  Chapter Ten

  In the book-lined study Brother Joseph sat leaning back in a secretary chair with his hands folded across his bit of paunch. When a quiet female acolyte wearing the signature tie-dyed T-shirt ushered them in, the preacher seemed lost in thought or meditation.

  Or asleep, Ryan thought.

  The self-proclaimed holy man kept his offices in the back of an erstwhile commercial space across the plaza from the palace, which he had converted to a temple of sorts. The front room had chairs arranged in forward-facing rows, as well as tables around two sides of the room. A couple of those seekers Joseph had mentioned at dinner sat poring over books by the light of candle lanterns. From the smell Ryan guessed the candles were made out of animal-fat tallow.

  Bro Joe’s inner sanctum was snug and modest. A slow sluggish breeze blew in through the window. It carried smells of some night-blooming flowers that competed with incense remnants that permeated everything, especially the shelves and shelves of books arranged around the room. The volumes were mostly histories or inspirational and religious titles, Ryan saw with a cursory skim of his eye. The shelves were interspersed with predark posters sandwiched between plastic sheets, the sort that showed pictures of flowers and sunsets and carried inspirational messages in flowing script. Ryan ignored them, too.

  He did flick a glance to Krysty and wondered how Brother Joseph kept hold of these people if weak beer was all he had to offer.

  To all appearances these people had it triple soft easy. But this kind of prosperity drew predators and scavengers the way a fresh corpse did. Soulardville’s occupants hadn’t laid down the enormous effort and sweat it took to build, much less maintain, the perimeter around the ville without mighty powerful incentive, more than either the most charismatic or coercive baron could supply. There had to be threats. Clear and ever-present ones.

  Plus, the tactician in Ryan knew walls like Soulardville’s meant dick without manpower to keep eyes skinned on them. And blasters to back them. The razor tangles, fences, hedges and stone barriers wouldn’t have kept him out ten minutes; they’d barely make feral child Jak Lauren break stride. And Ryan and company knew for a fact the Soulardites had weapons and knew how to use them.

  No, no matter how soft they had it, these people weren’t soft. It took grueling work to grow the food and perform all the other more mundane tasks of keeping a settlement this size alive. So he had to ask himself what kind of hold Brother Joseph had on the Soulardites.

  The guru’s eyes opened. They were amber, unremarkable eyes…you’d think. But somehow he had a trick, a bit of theater, that made it seem as if spotlights had come on in the lantern-lit dimness, augmented by a smile whose whiteness argued that predark toothpaste was a prized item of salvage hereabouts.

  “So, my friends,” he said. “Welcome to my sanctum sanctorum.”

  “We couldn’t very well refuse the invite,” Ryan said. The invitation had been relayed by a soft-voiced acolyte. Given the way Garrison sat at the preacher’s right hand at dinner—and the alarmed way Saga reacted to having some of Bro Joe’s beefier acolytes called in on him—Ryan had been under no illusions it had been anything but a command.

  “After your wonderful hospitality at dinner,” Krysty added, giving Ryan a quick admonitory lash of her emerald gaze.

  Brother Joseph’s smile, which had relaxed a bit, expanded once again. “It was truly my pleasure,” he said. “Our pleasure, I should say. Obviously, entertainment is at a premium in a community such as ours. And our people naturally hunger for news of the outside world—unrelievedly grim as it tends to be. We all found your accounts of your travels riveting. Although, I don’t doubt, unduly modest.”

  Ryan caught a grin tugging at the sagging corners of Doc’s mouth. He could read his thought easily enough: My boy, you don’t know the half of it.

  The one-eyed man certainly hoped Brother Joseph didn’t know the half of it. By now they had a canned account of their doings and goings, recent and otherwise, down as pat as any professional con artist. It was every syllable dead-center true: no point risking getting tripped in a falsehood, however minor. And you could never tell what bizarre bit of rumor or news might have filtered in here.

  “It is always our pleasure,” Doc said, “to sing for our suppers. All things considered, it’s one of the lightest prices we pay to eat.”

  Brother Joseph nodded. It wasn’t news to him, likely, if it was really true he’d wandered the Deathlands himself before drifting in here.

  He leaned forward across his desk. “I have a proposition for you,” he said.

  “We’re listening,” Ryan said.

  “As you may have gathered, the baron’s beloved daughter, Princess Emerald, has disappeared. Roughly two weeks ago.”

  “Princess?” Mildred all but snorted.

  Brother Joseph shrugged. “It’s what everybody calls her. She enjoys a certain popularity among the citizens of our commune, notwithstanding her definite willful streak. As for her going missing, there’s no mystery as to how or even why. She left on her own power, in order to escape certain civic obligations.”

  “And the baron wants her back,” Krysty said. “As any father would.”

  Brother Joseph nodded. “Naturally,” he said. “But I emphasize there’s more at stake here even than the wishes of our beloved, if tragically stricken, leader. Her return is imperative for the continued safety and security of this ville. I daresay even its survival.”

  “Want we bring back,” Jak said.

  Joseph smiled as if the youth had revealed a remarkable truth. “Precisely! And we are prepared to reward you most handsomely for her safe return.”

  “How handsomely might that be, Brother?” Ryan asked.

  “We’d provide you ample supplies of ammunition, food and water as well as medicine. We can pay in local jack as well. And of course, there’re the considerations of the meds and attention provided to your friend Mr. Dix, today and during his convalescence.”

  They dickered some as to specifics. In the end Brother Joseph gave in to most of their demands.

  “We enjoy a degree of prosperity here,” he conceded. “And our need is great. Lady, gentlemen, I believe we have a deal.”

  “Not guarantee princess alive,” Jak said. “You know?”

  Brother Joseph sighed. “I understand the realities of the world without our walls all too well, my friends. Princess Emerald is a highly intelligent young woman, however spoiled. She was obviously resourceful enough to slip outside the perimeter despite our vigilance. Despite her relatively sheltered life, I would expect her chances of surviving to be good. But as we all know too well, so much of survival in the aptly named Deathlands relys on mere chance.”

  “Yeah,” Ryan rasped.

  “So while obviously we should prefer that our errant chi
ld be returned to us safe and sound, we will accept conclusive evidence that you have indeed discovered her should she have met with some…misfortune.”

  “What does she look like, Brother?” Krysty asked.

  “She’s seventeen years old. Black complected, considerably darker than your Mildred or myself. She has straight black hair that she wears about shoulder length. She’s perhaps five feet eight inches tall, broad of shoulder and rather…full of breast and hip. Beyond her tender years, one might even say.”

  “Fat?” Jak asked.

  Brother Joseph chucked. “Not at all. She’s most athletic. Muscular and agile. Her father, though perhaps a bit indulgent in many ways, insisted she be thoroughly trained in armed and unarmed combat starting as soon as she could toddle unassisted. Her most striking characteristics, overall, are her eyes. They are a brilliant green. Her mother named her for them.”

  “Where is her mother?”

  “Sadly, she died five years ago. One of the earliest victims of King Screamwing’s flock, in fact.”

  He rose. “And now I need to ask your indulgence to retire for the evening. We have an important civic ceremony tomorrow morning at which I officiate. I must get my rest.”

  “Sure,” Krysty said.

  “Some of Mr. Garrison’s people are waiting to escort you to your quarters,” the preacher said. “I bid you good-night.”

  “GUESS WHERE we stand?” Jak said as they walked across the plaza in the moonlight. A pair of Garrison’s sec men toting longblasters followed them, not close enough to listen in but close enough to leave no doubt they were shepherds.

  “What else did you expect, young Jak?” Doc asked, strolling grandly along with his cane, his straggle-haired head held high as if he were walking out on some high-society promenade back in his day. “In the end we remain at the mercy of our hosts. For myself, I find I quite prefer their gentle approach to whips and chains.”

  “I liked the subtle way he reminded us they’ve got J.B. hostage,” Mildred said sourly. “Ryan, are you sure this is a good idea?”