Earth was not happy. He hunkered down, looking more like an outcropping of rock than usual, and rumbled uneasily.
THIS IS A SICK PLACE. A DEAD PLACE.
Water agreed.
Why would he come to such a lifeless place, our pleasure-loving brother?
BUT IS HE HERE, DO YOU THINK?
I AM SURE OF IT.
Erde had been so preoccupied with the dilemma of introducing Baron Köthen to his altered situation that she had neglected the dragons almost entirely. Now she said she needed time to tend to them, that the two men should go on and she would catch up. She let Köthen straighten his battle-worn blue-and-gold tunic in bemused exasperation and strike off west on his own. Keeping up her brave false front had wrung her out. Besides, it was useful to let him test his apparent freedom. She doubted he’d go far unless those he had chosen to lead were actually following. The dragons drew her into a detailed discussion about what evidence of Fire’s presence was already presenting itself, and in which direction they were likely to find him. Only N’Doch watched as Köthen blithely walked away.
“Don’t you get it?” He grabbed up his woolen tunic and crammed it into his pack. “He doesn’t care if we go after him or not.”
Erde’s heart wanted to go after him, of course, but her heart was also with the dragons. Besides, he’d made it so clear that he still saw her as the witch, his enemy. “Yes, he does. Let him walk it off a bit. Remember, he rode into Deep Moor bound as a prisoner.”
“Fine, great, but what if we lose him? What if he loses himself?”
She was surprised by her own irritability. “Then you’ll be rid of him and you’ll be glad, won’t you? You didn’t want him here in the first place.”
“Yeah, but . . .” N’Doch’s shrug was surprisingly rich with ambivalence. “Well, he’s right about finding food and shelter, y’know.”
Water uncurled her long neck to study the baron’s receding back.
It wouldn’t be a good idea to get separated right from the start.
N’Doch resettled his pack on his shoulders. “We’d all better keep up with him, then, ’cause he ain’t waitin’ for us.”
So it was agreed that the humans would keep up, but the dragons would join them later, when they were done assessing this new place they found themselves in. N’Doch was uneasy about leaving Water behind. Erde had warned him many times about the futility of interrupting dragon discussions, but still he insisted on reasoning with them as if they were human. What she hadn’t told him was that ever since Earth learned that he possessed a better means of transport than his four stubby legs, he’d not been keen about walking long distances. He’d much rather she went on ahead, then sent him an image to come to. Erde told N’Doch not to worry. The two of them would catch up with the baron. Later, the dragons would catch up with all of them.
Köthen had set a stiff pace, but so far had kept to the old roadway. It took a while to catch up to him, and when they did, he offered them no greeting. He just began talking to them as if they’d been there all along.
“So let me get this straight,” he said, to neither one of them in particular. “You’re in search of another dragon. And he doesn’t want to be found.”
“Two dragons, actually: Fire and Air. We hope one will lead us to the other.”
“Water thinks one is concealing the other,” N’Doch put in. Erde dutifully translated, though not without conveying Earth’s disapproval of this notion.
“Ah, yes. I recall now. The difference of opinion. This’ll teach me to assume that there’s any kind of conversation unworthy of my attention.”
His words were reasonable enough, but Erde had learned enough about Adolphus of Köthen by now to recognize the rage still simmering beneath his flat tone and his collected surface. He was angry in a way that no ordinary balm would assuage. But perhaps it wasn’t entirely at her.
“So, first, we must find the dragon Fire.”
“Sneak up on him’s more like it,” N’Doch retorted.
When Erde translated, Köthen’s eyes never wavered from the horizon. “Really? How does one do that?”
N’Doch smirked. “Good question. I think she’s hoping you’ll have some ideas.”
“I won’t tell him that.” Erde moved up into the yard-wide gap between the two men. A mile ago, it had been three yards. She threw N’Doch a barbed parody of a smile. “You know, N’Doch, if you tried speaking that German I know Lady Water has been teaching you, you could get into trouble with his lordship again all by yourself.”
“Ha,” said N’Doch. “His lordship, huh?”
Erde understood now that her scheme to kidnap the baron, while having many obvious advantages, had failed to take N’Doch’s feelings into account. She had asked him, pro forma, then she’d swept all his objections aside and done what she wanted to anyway. “Just try to get along with him, N’Doch. Please?”
“This is getting along,” N’Doch growled.
When Köthen moved ahead, Erde did not try to keep up with him. Let him go. She was glad he’d not asked about the aspects of the Quest that she herself knew little about, like what will the dragons do when they find either Fire or Air? Would he ever understand her willingness to follow the dragons whatever happened? She feared he would not.
But she’d worry about that later. It was time to start paying some attention to where she was. The dragons would be wanting the information. N’Doch hung back beside her, uncharacteristically lost in his own thoughts. The odd road twisted and turned, though it didn’t seem to be curving around anything in particular, just more piles of rubble or clumps of desiccated trees. Erde recalled this same seamless surface from N’Doch’s homeland. When he pointed it out and exclaimed in disgust, “Look at this road!” she understood that it was meant to be smooth and unbroken, not split by long cracks full of dusty weeds. Unhealthy-looking bushes sagged along the verges. Their scant leaves were leathery and crisped at the edges. Many of the stunted trees had no leaves at all. The grass seemed to be faring the best, growing tall and brown and coarse, with stingy little seedheads. Erde had never seen a drought before, except in N’Doch’s land. But there, all the vegetation had been strange to her anyhow, so she wouldn’t have known if it were suffering. Here, most of the plants were reasonably familiar, and their dire condition was obvious even to her.
They plodded along in silence for a long while. Then, echoing her musings uncannily, N’Doch remarked, “We got to be pretty far north, doncha think?”
“Why?”
He shrugged. “Well, I seen pictures.”
“That look like this?” She wondered what kind of sad painter would bother to render such a devastated landscape. Unless it were to represent some new vision of Hell.
“Maybe like this might have looked before, y’know, whatever happened happened.”
“How do you know something happened?”
“Well, look at it!” He spread his arms and did a little half-turn in the road so that he was walking backward. “This isn’t the way it’s meant to be! It’s bad in my time, but not this bad. You see, where I come from, it’s meant to be pretty hot and dry anyway, only not so hot as it is. But not here. Look at those plants and trees. They’re meant for greener pastures.”
Greener pastures, Erde mused. Like where I come from. Only it’s not green there now either.
“You know what?” N’Doch nodded, confirming for himself what was clearly a recent epiphany. “I think this here is the future of my future. Like, after me . . . maybe even after I’m dead.” He completed the turn and grinned up at the hazed amber sky. “And here I am, still alive! How ’bout that?”
Erde thought he was mad to grin like that. This same thought had haunted her all during those weeks she’d been in his own time, but she’d bravely kept it to herself. How like N’Doch to find it funny instead of terrifying. “This future does not look like a happy one, N’Doch.”
“Maybe. Or maybe the milk and honey’s right over that next hill.”
“The what?”
Again, that little shrug. The one he always made when he’d just said something with great bravado, but wasn’t really sure of it at all. “Just something my mama used to say.”
He can’t imagine why his mama’s on his mind again, but he wishes he’d told the dragons to check on her when they went back for Papa Dja. The old man’ll take care of her somehow. N’Doch lets himself believe that. But it does weird him out, thinking of how he’s up here in the future, her future, and she’s back there behind him in 2013, still weaving and watching her stories on the vid. He can’t think of her as dead. That just doesn’t wash.
N’Doch shakes his head. Heat must be getting to me. And the silence. First it makes him jumpy, then it lulls him into inattention, so that he comes to with a start to realize he’s been walking for what could be an entire klick without being aware of a single centimeter of it. Each time, he checks the sun right off. The road’s turned north a while back. From the high spots, where the road tops a rise, he can still see the bay off east, through the notches in the hills. Probably the road runs along the water, then into the city from there. Just what he’d do if he was a road.
The baron’s a dozen paces ahead. He’s stayed like that most of the way, wrapped in his own personal silence as thick as the silence of the landscape around him. The girl, trudging at N’Doch’s side, watches the baron like she’s trying to read his mind. N’Doch envies the man his inner privacy. No dragons worming their way into Baron Köthen’s soul, no sir. He finds himself watching the dude also—how he moves, brisk but graceful, never releasing his erect, chin-up carriage, even in this pounding heat. To amuse himself, N’Doch tries imitating the baron’s walk, but it makes him want to look around for his audience. On him, this walk is a performance, some broad kind of caricature of manliness. On Köthen, it looks perfectly natural. N’Doch ponders this puzzle for a while until he’d just rather think about something else. He peels off into the shade of a rock face, where the road cuts through a hill, and unstraps his water jug.
The girl plods a few steps more, then stops. She calls ahead to the baron, real polite and tentative now, then comes back to join N’Doch, looking worn already by the sun and heat. She wipes her face with the tail of her shirt.
“Nice day, huh?” N’Doch grins. “Thought you’d already got used to this back where I come from.”
“Never.” She borrows his water jug and goes at it with long straining gulps.
“Whoa, girl, slow down. Told you to drink less, but more often, remember?”
She nods, still drinking.
“And take another layer off.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re dripping wet. Strip down, girl.”
She shakes her head, glances out into the sun, and to his delight, she blushes. So the sexy baron’s made her self-conscious. Got her thinking about her body at long last. N’Doch grins. He’s got her number now.
“Okay, then, how’s the scaly duo doing?”
She rolls her eyes at him, and he sees this particular way of baiting her has lost its effect. “You could ask them just as easily as I, N’Doch.”
“Yeah, but you’re so much better at it.” And, N’Doch notes to himself, you like it.
She sighs. “They’re fine. Lady Water says the salt bay is not healthy. There are no fish in it.”
“She went in?” Suddenly, he’s very concerned. “She shouldn’t do that!”
The girl regards him with more pity than patience. “She’s a dragon, N’Doch. What’s dangerous to humans will not harm her.”
“Well,” says N’Doch uneasily. He has this odd notion that a dragon is something old-timey. Might not be hip to the modern horrors, like toxic waste or red tide or whatever. He’d really hate to see that silky blue velvet hide of hers eaten away by some gross corrosive in the water. He’s not surprised about the fish. “I guess she can take care of herself.”
Köthen appears out of the sun and just stands there, looking at them. N’Doch hides a smile. He can almost hear the dude asking: hey, did I call a break? But like the girl, he’s a little the worse for wear. His handsome square-jawed face is flushed and sweat-stained, so he seems willing to hold back and just pace a bit in the shade. These northern types, N’Doch notes with satisfaction. Just not cut out for the heat. He’s carrying the girl’s pack, plus he’s wearing the chest section of his body armor, with the blue-and-yellow silk over and his tunic under. Both he and Wender wore that much of their mail all the time at Deep Moor, even around the house. N’Doch shrugs. Soldiers. The fine-linked mesh is amazingly flexible and gorgeous workmanship, but it’s got to weigh a couple or ten kilos. The dude ought to just take it off, but N’Doch’s not sure he should be the one to suggest it. He passes the baron his water jug.
He doesn’t take it right off, but when he does, there’s no tossing the water down like the girl did, like there’ll always be more of it. Köthen drinks conservatively and hands the jug back with a curt nod, like it pains him to be beholden. “I would have brought my own, had I any warning.”
N’Doch laughs, but the baron just cocks a cool brow at him and looks away.
Finally they move on, back out into the grinding heat. Köthen and the girl have exchanged maybe three words, and she’s looking about as beaten down as N’Doch has ever seen her. Hunh, he muses. The baron’s not humoring her, he’s punishing her. He sees she’s got this thing for him, so he’s getting back at her this way for shanghaiing him. N’Doch’s not sure he approves. Mental cruelty has never been his idea of a fair fight, especially with women. But, hey, it’s none of his business, even if he does find himself feeling a little protective of her lately. Anyway, he’s been telling her it was time she grew up, and falling for some mean dude twice your age is one way to do it. But he wonders, if she really was his sister, would he be telling her there might be easier ways?
Past the cut through the rock, the road flattens for a long stretch. A little wind kicks up, like a draft from a blast furnace. N’Doch feels the heat rising off the pavement and signals the girl off to the side to walk along the weedy verge. There might have been farm fields here once. He recognizes the squared-off outlines, marked now by dead tree trunks and isolated sections of rusted wire fencing. Nothing in these fields now but brown grass and weeds and dust that the wind is blowing right in their faces. He shows the girl how to tie a corner of her extra shirt across her nose and mouth to veil the grit, then wrap the rest around her head against the sun.
“There!” He approves of his handiwork. “Now you look just like a desert woman!”
And even better, he’s made her laugh. Well, smile a little at least, and he’s glad about that. Grinning, he glances ahead to see Köthen disappear around a bend. The road beyond is masked by a tall stand of scraggly evergreens growing in unnatural rows. The rows mount the hillside to the right like soldiers marching in rank. Half of them are dead or dying, but their trunks march right along anyway. Over the pincushion of pine tops, N’Doch spots the towers of a high-voltage power line. Instantly, he’s on the alert, he’s not even sure why. Those lines could be dead as a doornail, but in his own time, power was getting precious, and the major transmission lines were either guarded or remote-protected in some fairly lethal ways. Up ahead, the baron could be walking into something nasty. He touches the girl’s elbow, quickens his step.
“What?” she says.
“Just got a bad feeling. Keep your voice down, but hurry it up.”
“What could . . .?”
“Shh!”
They lope along the edge of the road. There’s no way they can keep really quiet. The crush of the dry weeds is as noisy as the slap of their feet on the pavement would be. As they get closer, the widening gaps between the slim, straight tree trunks reveal a bright strip of open land beyond, and the pale green stanchions of the nearest tower. N’Doch slows as he comes level with the first row of trees. He can see Köthen now, a small figure alone in the sun where the open swath crosses the road. He’s staring up at the tower, a rusting metal latticework that’s probably taller than any man-made structure the baron’s ever seen. And finally N’Doch identifies the low background hum he’s been hearing without being really aware of it—that edgy, teeth-itching drone of flowing megawatts. He sees that some of the lines are down, great dark loops of cable lying like thick snakes across the road, mere meters from where Köthen is standing.
“Oh, man . . .” he murmurs.
And sure enough, Köthen, still looking upward, takes a few steps sideways to better his view of something on the tower. N’Doch catches his breath.
“Tell him to stop!” he snaps at the girl. “Tell him not to move!”
“What?”
“Tell him to stand still!”
But the girl says, “What? What?” again, and N’Doch breaks into a dead run because he can’t imagine what her damn problem is, can’t she see the guy’s about to back into a live power line?
She starts up after him, but she’s no match for N’Doch in his finish-line sprint. He leaves her instantly behind. He can hear her calling out now, finally, and the baron does stop and look their way. But he’s too far away to hear her clearly. By now, N’Doch is almost on him. Köthen sees him bearing down, hears the girl shouting madly and does what N’Doch’s afraid he’ll do: he jumps to exactly the wrong conclusion, and goes for his dagger.
N’Doch pulls up short. The insulation on the cable is badly worn all along the swag just behind Köthen’s head. In some spots, the wires are completely bare. N’Doch can smell the scorch of raw power in the air. He spreads his hands, palms out, away from his own weapon.
“Just don’t move, man,” he says quietly. “Just don’t fucking move.”
Köthen’s at ready, knees flexed, his knife arm extended to one side, too close to the cable. One more step back or even an unlucky arcing, and the man’s a goner. N’Doch hears the girl pounding down the road behind him, but she’ll never be there in time. He needs the language, the right words, and there’s only one place he can get them. No reason he should be busting his butt for this guy who keeps wanting to kill him, but he’d really hate to watch him burn to a crisp, especially in front of the girl. So he does the thing he hates most of all, the thing that erases him, makes him feel like he’s falling into a bottomless pit. He gives himself over and calls to the dragon, the way he knows he can and never does, and she puts the words into his head and guides his tongue.
N’Doch points at the cable. “Fassen Sie das nicht an!”
Köthen’s not sure he’s heard right, but his eyes flick to where N’Doch’s pointing, then back again, narrowing. He thinks it’s a ruse.
And then it’s all there, the language N’Doch needs, an awkward tumble of German syllables, but enough to bring the dude at least halfway off battle alert, enough to talk him a few steps forward, away from the waiting cable, away from sure and instant death. N’Doch drops to a crouch, heart pounding, and rubs his forehead, trying to clear his brain of the adrenaline rush. Because now there’s this dragon inside there that he’s got to make a lot more room for.
Köthen does not sheathe his dagger, but he turns around warily to stare at the thick swag of cable. N’Doch can see he hasn’t a clue what the danger is, but he’s read and believed the urgency in N’Doch’s voice and body and words. He takes a few extra steps away.
The girl catches up finally. “What is it, N’Doch?”
“Your boy here nearly fried himself, is all.”
She stares at him, horrified. N’Doch thinks about what he’s said, and recalls how the big dragon tends to translate to her in visual images. Probably they’ll both get him wrong this time, but he can’t help himself. He puts his head down and starts to laugh.
Erde’s scowl was reflexive. She shouldn’t be angry with him. She knew by now that laughter was N’Doch’s usual release after a crisis. But the image of Köthen burning had left her shuddering and nauseous, so she had to frown at him anyway, like she always did. “It’s not funny, N’Doch!”
“No,” he agreed, laughing. “I guess it ain’t.”
Baron Köthen put up his dagger finally and crossed his arms. “Well, does he speak German or not?”
“When he feels like it,” Erde was forced to admit.
“It’s not like that,” N’Doch protested, in French.
Köthen nodded. “I begin to suspect . . . no, never mind. Was I actually in danger?”
N’Doch glanced up from his crouch. “You bet your ass you were.” But he said it in French, and Erde refused to translate. Caught, he stared at the ground, almost bashfully, as if listening very hard. Then he repeated it, in substantially more proper German. Erde privately thanked Lady Water for her refined sensibilities, but still, she wanted to cheer out loud. All her previous efforts to get N’Doch speaking her language had failed. Köthen had succeeded without even trying. And of course he had no idea what he’d accomplished. One quick glance, a curiously arched brow, and he’d accepted N’Doch’s sudden acquisition of fractured but comprehensible German as if it was just one more in the series of bizarre events he’d been swept up in.
“You watch, now,” said N’Doch. He rose from his crouch and walked over to the huge structure that towered over them like the tallest siege engine Erde could imagine. He searched around beneath it, picked something up and knocked it against one of the tower’s pilings. It rang like metal, and the sound vibrated up the length of the piling. He brought the thing back to them, a length of hollow metal.
“Stand back,” he said. “Way back.”
Baron Köthen eyed the metal thing, seemed to decide that it was both too short and too rusted to be much of a weapon. He joined Erde where N’Doch directed them, into the shade of the pine trees. N’Doch moved back also, then he faced the dark, dangling ropes and lobbed the metal thing with a big underhand toss, right into the most frayed part of the loop.
Light exploded around it, white and blue and sizzling. There was a crack like lightning, sparks flew in all directions and the ropes danced and snapped like battle pennants in a gale. Erde felt the surge to the roots of her hair, and beside her, Köthen muttered. Then it was over, and the ropes were quiet again, and the metal thing lay on the ground, singed as if from the forge.
N’Doch offered them a death’s-head grin, then let the dragon speak for him. “So whaddya think? That could’ve been you, Baron K.”
Köthen wet his lips. “I don’t think I’d have liked that.”
N’Doch laughed softly. “Damn straight you wouldn’t.”
Köthen looked up at the tower. “What is this thing for?”
“You really want to know? How much time have you got?”
Köthen heard the challenge. Erde felt, rather than saw, him tense. He seemed to be considering his options, none of which he was very happy about. But he understood that his life had just been saved. Perhaps he felt he owed N’Doch a hearing, for he returned the same, soft laugh and said, “I seem to have all the time in the world.”
So for the next several miles, N’Doch and Baron Köthen walked side by side, one long, safe pace apart, while N’Doch discoursed on the magical force called electricity. Erde trudged along behind, only half listening. Master Djawara had already explained this to her, when they’d visited his compound in the bush. Mostly she listened to hear Köthen’s response, to hear if he believed N’Doch’s insistence that electricity was not magic or if he, like her, was reserving judgment. But Köthen’s response was so reserved, she couldn’t even tell what it was. He just listened, nodded, asked a quiet question or two, and nodded some more, walking along with his hands tucked behind his back like he was out for a stroll in his castle yard. Perhaps, she decided, he doesn’t believe any of it at all.
She was beginning to look forward to another rest in the shade when, ahead of her, the men pulled up short at the top of another big rise. Something in the angle of Köthen’s shoulders made Erde quicken her step. What she saw when she drew up beside him left her speechless.
A city lay spread out in the lowland. A city half submerged in ragged foliage and the same green water she’d seen back at the broken bridge. She knew it was a city by its straight lines and squared angles, its so obviously human geometry. But it was like no city she’d ever seen. Except . . .
Without thinking, she put an urgent call out to Earth. He must see this with his own eyes. Sure that she was under some sort of attack, both dragons flashed into existence in the road right behind them. The hot air churned. The dust boiled up in small cyclones. Köthen whirled and swore, but when he’d got hold of himself and slid his dagger back into its sheath, there was a spark of admiration in his eyes.
“That’s how we . . . arrived?”
Erde nodded.
He let out a breath. “With a whole army like that, you’d be invincible.” Then he returned his attention to the city, which seemed to amaze him even more than the traveling methods of dragons.
He gave it a long, slow study, as they all did. The tall, rigid, boxlike structures rose in clusters out of the parched foliage, or in places, right out of the long green bay that coiled up from the south to partly encircle the city. The boxes were all different sizes, and reflected the sun in bright, blinding shafts. One towering rectangle seemed to be made entirely of burnished gold. But some were stunted, collapsed or broken off partway. Their gleaming skins were scorched and peeled back, exposing their understructure like the blackened bones of a decaying corpse.
“My God,” Köthen whispered finally. “It really is the future, isn’t it.”
N’Doch grinned. “You got it, man.”
But Erde shivered. OH, DRAGON! IS IT THE MAGE CITY?
They had dreamed a city like this, together: a tall-towered, fantastical city. But their city was perfect and whole and shining, not with the reflected light of a grim red sun but with an inner glow of purity and wisdom. And they knew a mage dwelt there who would help the dragon fulfill his quest.
THE CALL IS STRONG, BUT . . . NOT FROM THAT DIRECTION.
IT IS THE MAGE CITY, I KNOW IT IS! BUT IT’S IN RUINS! DRAGON, WHAT DOES IT MEAN? ARE WE TOO LATE?
WE CANNOT BE TOO LATE. I WILL NOT ACCEPT SUCH A POSSIBILITY.
Erde trusted the dragon’s superior instincts and loved him for his stubbornness. But she was uneasy about the hopelessness that had settled over her in this desolate place, as heavy as a winding shroud. What if he was wrong?
Köthen beckoned N’Doch closer. Erde shook herself out of her gloom and prepared herself to keep the peace. But N’Doch’s snatching Köthen from an unexpected peril seemed to have proved his usefulness. And now that the baron had established the chain of command to his satisfaction, he could treat the man he’d so recently drawn on and thrown to the ground as his new lieutenant. Even more astonishing, N’Doch did not seem to object. He’d given up all pretense of being unable to communicate. He stepped up beside Köthen, and they studied the city together.
“Do you know this place?”
N’Doch shook his head. “But there are cities like this where I come from. That is, the buildings look sort of the same. The landscape’s real different.”
“How many years since . . .” The baron stopped, cleared his throat awkwardly.
“Since your time?”
Köthen’s mouth pressed back against the flood of questions he obviously longed to ask. He shrugged, nodded.
“Well, we know it’s at least eleven hundred years, ’cause that brings us to my time and everything looks pretty familiar to me so far. Closer than that, it’s hard to say. We’re sure to find some bit of something that’ll tell us.”
Again, Erde watched the baron closely. Would he share her nightmares about the weight of all those intervening years? But he only nodded again and murmured, “Eleven hundred years.”
“I could be wrong, y’know? I guess it could be less, but it’s probably more.”
Köthen waved a hand as if to say, how can a few years more or less even matter? “And what would such a city signify . . . in your time?”
“Signify?”
The baron pointed, measuring the city’s breadth between the span of his outstretched hands. “Is it likely some king’s capital?”
“Well, it might be a capital, but there probably isn’t any king.”
“Why is that?”
“Not a lot of kings left in the world, ’least not in my day. ’Course, now, you never know. But, seemed to me, kings were pretty much done for in the history of the world.” N’Doch regarded Köthen sideways, as if gauging the distance between them, just in case the offense he implied was actually taken. Erde thought it another sign of his madness that he should needle Baron Köthen so rashly, over and over again. But didn’t they make an interesting contrast side by side? The shorter, solid blond who carried himself like a much larger man against N’Doch’s slim, towering darkness. N’Doch bending his head slightly to catch Köthen’s terse and quiet questioning, Köthen not looking at him, as that would require him to look up.
“No kings. Is it a city of merchants, then?”
N’Doch laughed. “Oh, there’s probably plenty of them, all right, if there’s anybody.” The German was coming easier to him, she could see, as he relaxed into it and let Lady Water guide his tongue. No doubt, Erde reflected sourly, he would soon be able to abuse her language as outrageously as he abused his own.
“If?”
N’Doch gave his little shrug. “Don’t know. Just a feeling I have.”
Köthen frowned. “Still, perhaps we’ll find shelter there.”
“Yeah. Just hope we don’t find a lot else besides.”
They leave the dragons behind again, a ways down from the rise in the shadow of what’s left of a two-lane overpass. The big guy eyes the crumbling piers, then eases his bulk up beside the tallest and widest to nose the weathered concrete.
N’Doch touches the baron’s elbow, real respectful and all. “Watch this.”
Köthen tenses reflexively, but his eyes follow N’Doch’s gesture, just in time to see the brown dragon still himself utterly and seem to vanish into the gray, man-made stone. He stifles a gasp.
N’Doch grins. “Neat trick, eh?” It can’t hurt to have the baron considering how the dragons could be used to his advantage. He’s glancing down that road already. While the girl’s explaining this particular bit of dragon magic, N’Doch wanders over to where Water has tucked herself into a slice of shade. She looks half her normal size, whatever normal is for a dragon. She’s always beautiful, but now she’s almost cute. N’Doch’s hand strays to her silken neck.
“That was cool, what you did back at the power line.”
Saved your butt, buddy boy!
“Mine! What about his lordship’s?”
Same thing, under the circumstances.
“Yeah, well, okay, forget about it.” N’Doch spins on his heel to gather up the girl and the baron. “I’ll see ya ’round.”
Köthen moves out smartly, still insisting on taking the lead. They stick to the highway as it curves around the city until N’Doch spots an off ramp that looks like fairly easy going.
He points it out to Baron K. “That should get us off the main road and down into town.” Then he adds, “If you want.” Maybe he’s underestimated this dude. So he was hasty about assuming leadership without even checking to see who else agreed. At least he doesn’t take the responsibility lightly. Since the power-line incident, since his first long look at the city, Köthen’s questions have come at him steadily as they walked, smart questions, too. The sort that go right to the heart of what’s what in a place. And, to N’Doch’s disgust, the sort that expose the limits of his own knowledge. A layman’s rap on electricity is easy enough—how’s the guy gonna know any better? But actual ground intelligence? Access roads and fortifications? To say there aren’t any just brings a disbelieving frown. And sooner or later, he and the baron have got to have a serious chat about guns.
“You sure ask a lot of questions, Baron K. Sorry I don’t have all the answers.” N’Doch hears the girl swallow a little moan, as Köthen’s eyes flick up at him dangerously. She sees his free play with the dude’s name and title as just one more offense he’s committed among many, but for whatever reason, Köthen lets it pass without comment.
Instead he says, in the dry cadence of a schoolmaster, “Information is a weapon like anything else. The good soldier gathers up as much as he can, and never wastes his time regretting what he doesn’t have.”
“Smart move,” says N’Doch. This is no news to him, but he likes the sense that Köthen’s repeating something told him a long time ago, like maybe when he was N’Doch’s age. Which really isn’t that long ago, now he thinks about it. He guesses Köthen’s about ten years older than he is, maybe thirty, maybe not even that. The other impression he gets strikes him as funny: the baron has clearly decided to take him under his wing. It’s a laugh only because, of course, N’Doch sees it the other way around. But he doesn’t care. The dude’s all right, really, for all his arrogance and attitude, and N’Doch would rather have him on his side than not. Plus he knows from his years in the gangs that some guys just gotta be sure they’re the boss.
So they take the exit, like he’s advised, and N’Doch lets the baron lead the way. He’d rather be rear guard anyway, since most sneak attacks come from behind. Now that they’re moving down in among the deserted gas stations and the empty strip malls, N’Doch feels his adrenaline start to pump. Every window has been busted out. There’s broken glass crunching underfoot, buried in a layer of what looks like dried mud, the same mud that cakes the bases of the buildings and the burned-out trees for at least a meter up.
“See that? The water’s been even higher than it is now. And not all that long ago.”
“Then it’s not a drought?” the girl asks dutifully, but N’Doch can see that his concern is not deeply shared. For all she knows, the folks of this time build their cities in the water. Who’s he kidding? For all he knows, they might. But not this city. This city is too familiar, not which or where it is, but how. Parts of it he knows were built in his own time, and parts were built before, like this big gray stone building on the corner that Köthen has stopped to stare up at. It’s crumbling a bit, and there’s weeds and scrawny old trees growing up out of its windows, but it has a kind of falling-down grace to it. Big cornices like on the Presidential Palace at home, and a couple of weather-beaten stone lions flanking what used to be the steps up to the door. N’Doch is no historian. He couldn’t quote place or date, but he’s sure seen buildings like this in vids. He looks around, then trots across the street to haul on a rusted sheet of metal he’s spotted sticking out of a rubble pile. He pulls it free and brushes away the top flaked layer of mud. Sun-bleached letters appear through the brownish film.
The sign says: DRY CLEANERS.
“Omigod!” N’Doch scrabbles around in the wreckage for more signage. He can read a little English, and speak a bit more. He guesses from the bits of slangy ads he sees, and the bold, plain styles of the lettering. “Can it be? Oh, man, I think we’re in the States!”
“What’s the states?” asks the girl, coming up beside him.
He tells himself, don’t jump to conclusions now. It’s only a coupla signs. The English doesn’t mean anything. People everywhere were using it by his time. But his hunch feels right, and he’s seized by an old excitement. He goes out into the middle of the street, peering up and down for more convincing evidence. He’s not sure he really needs any. “Oh, man, the States! I always wanted to come here!”
He’s slipped back into French, and Köthen asks for a translation. When he gets it, the baron frowns. “Why didn’t you, if it meant so much?”
The excitement makes N’Doch high and reckless. He turns on Köthen with a wild grin. A sharp retort about the abuses of power and privilege nearly escapes him, but he bites it back. What’s the point? This dude was born to all that. How could he possibly understand about something you can’t afford, or the yearning for a Promised Land? Instead N’Doch says, and he tries to say it proudly, even though his papa was nothing to be proud about: “I’m a poor man’s son, Baron K. I never could go just anywhere I wanted.”
Köthen meets his gaze without reproof. N’Doch is taken aback by the bleak and bitter compassion he reads there. “Like you think I can? Think again, lad. Besides, you’re here now, aren’t you?”
N’Doch catches himself grinning right into the man’s eyes. And he sees an ironic ghost of his grin reflecting back at him. Flustered, he looks away. “Well, hell, yes, I guess I am.” Then he lets the laugh rise up, lets it fill his lungs and echo along the blank faces of the buildings and down the mud-caked streets. “Hey! I guess I am! Hel-lo, America!”