Sime had produced a small radio and everyone was listening to the news from the Baltic English-language station. She buttoned up her duster, picked up the sword-stick, and followed Stamp, who was dressed in her nice camel-colored long coat, out the door.
They explored the Beehive. It was already humming with human, vehicular, muscle-powered, and horse-drawn traffic.
Duvalier noticed there were little decorative bees everywhere. On signposts, in store windows, on the door handles of a few of the more expensive shops. She commented on it and Stamp just shrugged and said, “Let’s ask.”
In every store where they engaged in casual conversation, they asked about the bees. They received a slightly different answer every time.
No one knew where the bee symbol came from. Some said it was Newfoundland honey, a “free” three-ounce jar of which was given away to every immigrant, thanks to the resources of the Newfoundland Relocation Resource, the entity that helped refugees find a useful life on the island or elsewhere in Canada. Others said it was a manufacturer symbol, that of a large cutlery concern that had set itself up in Halifax, reputedly owned by some French. Others claimed it was the Mormons, whose missions also did a great deal of fine work with the most destitute of the refugees. Or it might have been the Canadian currency, which featured a bee
on its hundred-dollar bill. It could be that bees were also relative newcomers to Newfoundland, and had prospered under the altered weather patterns of the Kurian Order.
In any case, bees were a theme of the Beehive. They were pictured in shop windows, decorated lampposts, and glowed golden brown when painted on lampshades. The town certainly buzzed; despite the cold, everyone seemed to be outdoors: talking, standing around with steaming mugs or glasses in their fists, enjoying the night and the camaraderie. There were string quartets playing and accordions, with rival musicians playing spirited dance numbers—Duvalier recognized the “Pennsylvania Polka”—or sadder, wistful songs. She noted that the livelier players had larger audiences and more money thrown into the proffered hat.
And the food! There were street vendors and restaurants, cafés and bakeries, all doing a thriving business, with everything wrapped up in brown paper and string that all seemed to come from the same source. Every three steps a new aroma seemed to strike: coffee, yeast baking, chocolate melting, meat roasting (she had to follow that one; it turned out to be a vast wheel of spiced flesh rotating on a heated spit that a man would shave and then sell with a little red onion and sour cream on a piece of flatbread, her first encounter with a “gyro”).
The Old World must have been something like this, she thought.
She mostly watched Stamp shop. A few of the Canadians remarked on her syrup-sweet Southern accent, but not as many as Duvalier would have thought.
When their feet grew sore, they stopped in one of the cafés.
“You haven’t bought anything,” Stamp stated, as though it were an accusation.
“I don’t need anything.”
“Oh, sweetie pie, you should treat yourself. I wasn’t expecting Canada to have so much. I figured I’d have to wait until we got to Europe. But wouldn’t it be nice to have some fresh, stylish clothes for the trip?”
For just a moment, Duvalier was jealous of the world that Stamp inhabited. She had time to think about clothes, how they looked, what others thought about how they looked. It seemed both frivolous and appealing at the same time.
“Listen, Alessa, I have a stash of gold coins. I want to change one of them for the funny-money currency they use around here and spend it shopping and eating. They have cheap seafood everywhere here, and I’m in the mood to stuff myself, enjoy some wine, and pick up something nice.” Stamp wore an inviting but practiced smile.
Duvalier wondered briefly what she meant by “pick up something nice.”
“Why me? Sime seems more the type for perusing a wine list.”
“You seem like you don’t know what girl time is. I like exploring. This is the first time I’ve had an opportunity to travel, and I need a partner in fun. I’d feel a little safer with someone tough around. I don’t want one of the guys. I’m not looking for a date or anything like that. Certainly I don’t know you, but I feel comfortable around you and, well, I’m sorry to be blunt, but you look like you need it. Don’t take that the wrong way.”
How many guys have given her the “diamond in the rough” line? Not as many lately. “Honestly, I’ve never been one for appearances.”
“Well, I think you could be really something if you made a little effort. You’d be shocked at how little it takes. C’mon, as a personal favor. I know a lot of people between Austin and Little Rock. I should be able to do you a good turn someday, when you’re no longer doing front-line work. Truthies.”
“I don’t care for the front lines any more than you do,” Duvalier said. “I avoid them if at all possible. But what I do, I plan to keep doing until they get me. There are a lot of forgotten bodies out there, people swallowed by the crematoriums after the Reapers have had their fun, who deserve a little payback.”
Stamp looked a little ashamed. “I should really do more to support the cause. Maybe I can get a hospital built by one of the foundations. I’m on three boards.”
Duvalier found herself smiling back. “Okay, build a hospital and name the operating room after me. Or maybe a mortuary room. Something sharp and bloody would be a nice legacy.”
Stamp’s smile grew more natural. “There you go, then. Deal.”
With the beginnings of a bond formed, Stamp asked her to “truthies” on Valentine. While Duvalier had no end of anecdotes that might be entertaining, she didn’t much feel like issuing them in exchange for a few pieces of clothing.
Refreshed, they wandered around the blocks for a few more hours, looking through windows. Off the main streets and in the alleys there were a lot of secondhand-clothing stores, places to get shoes repaired, and on every other corner there was a place to sell valuables. Duvalier looked at the gleaming jewelry behind armored glass and thought about the broken dreams each piece represented.
Of course, she’d never had much in the way of dreams to break to begin with. The only rings she’d ever worn were as fake as a thirty-dollar bill.
The raw spring cold made them hungry again quickly, and as Duvalier’s ever-troublesome stomach growled, they looked at menus posted next to doors until she found a seafood place where Stamp liked the look of the “plating.” The only kind of plating Duvalier was familiar with involved armor on reconnaissance vehicles, but she figured Stamp was in her element when it came to how the forks should lie on the napkins. She just nodded when Stamp asked her if she wanted to get a bite.
She had a chowder soup and a pan-fried piece of cod covered with little pealike things that Stamp told her were capers. They were nicely salty, without the overtaste of olives, and went with the cod admirably. Stamp drank wine and Duvalier had a cola. It was a real cola, a wonderful combination of fizzy and syrupy with a hint of fruit cocktail—the restaurant’s own concoction, which they called an Italian Cola, though the waiter seemed to take it as a personal insult that she wouldn’t drink wine with the meal.