Liberty's Heirs

Chapter 20

Some bricks were red, some were brown, a few were a yellowy off-white.  The bricks were of a wide variety of sizes and shapes that were somehow put together to form walls.  Very few were undamaged, most were stained with soot.  They must have been left overs from a hundred different buildings destroyed during the war.  The bricks were stuck together using concrete which, in places, had a crust of dissolved minerals that had leached out.  The floor was covered in straw which had mildewed in spots.

He was at one end of a long room with a little window near the top of the wall where he could look up and see the perpetually gray sky and occasionally the dark silhouette of a passing bird.  The window had five rusty metal bars that would prevent a person from escaping.  Probably rain blew in occasionally causing the mildew in the dusty straw.

Blion sat on a little wooden bench, solidly made but worn from centuries of use.  To his left was the window.  In front of him was blank wall that he had spent hours staring at as he counted its bricks: 32 yellow, 179 red, and 231 brown.  On his right was a cleverly woven steel mesh with vertical wires that zig-zagged in such a way as to interlock into a diamond pattern. Vertical steel poles, rusty in spots near the bottom and top, were mounted in the concrete and stone floor where the fence met the walls. There was also a locked gate sufficient for holding a man of any strength in so long as he had no access to tools.

The Sheriff's deputy was seated a desk that looked like it was of Ancient craftsmanship, unlike the well-made bench that was clearly made after the war.  It had a manufactured look: a wooden surface with a thick veneer of some sort of glassy material.  It had chipped near the edges.  The metal legs were mostly painted gray though in some spots the Ancient paint had been rubbed off.  The place was reasonably clean except that Ancient cabinets covered in a thick layer of dust, undoubtedly full of records of crimes long since forgotten, lined the walls.  Ironically the rest of the building was so cluttered, Blion cell was the most roomy spot.

Hanging on the wall behind the desk was a small flag, the flag of the United States of America. He would have found the historical artifact far more intriguing if he were not in an undesirable situation. As he was going in, he had seen another, larger flag hanging on a pole near the entrance of the office. It hung limply and he could not make it out clearly but it seemed to be an alternative form of the United States flag.

Next to the desk were two small cots.  The deputy had slept in one the previous night and the night before.  Though it was infinitely inferior to a bed back home, it was much to be desired by a person who had to sleep on a too-short bench.  No doubt the remaining cot was intended for the Sheriff when both he and his deputy were forced, for whatever reason, to simultaneously sleep in the Sheriff's office.

The deputy had no uniform such as the purple or black robes an Advocate would wear.  A small star-shaped badge made from some silvery metal served to distinguish him from common men.  Blion had deduced the significance based on the fact that the Sheriff also had one and whenever the deputy saw someone, he proudly puffed his chest out asymmetrically to show off the metal object.  The deputy's brown pants and thick green shirt looked to be in slightly better condition than most people's but were otherwise unremarkable.  He had an extraordinarily long protruding nose and though he was only slightly older than Blion, he was already starting to lose his long reddish-brown hair.  He complexion was pale with reddish blemishes along with freckles.

The young deputy was looking intently at some papers and writing with a feather plume which he periodically dipped into an ink well. "Looks like you're working hard over there," Blion said.  The deputy ignored him.  A the gentle pattering of a few drops of rain became audible outside.  The fire in the fireplace near the deputy was dying out.  The room was chilly and the deputy's hands were turning a bluish purple color.  Blion tried to figure out what the deputy was writing by looking at the way the pen moved.  It didn't take long to figure out that Blion didn't have that talent.  Or if he did, it would take years to cultivate.