CITY OF DREAMS
Chapter Eighteen
Edward sat out on the Bulwark Café’s long stone terrace atop the dike. Behind him, the marsh glowed russet under a bank of blue gray clouds, but all his attention was focused on the crowded streets and close packed apartment houses to the east. He was waiting for Diorina and marking, with a cup of coffee and a handful of chocolates, the anniversary of Kara’s Absence. It had been two years, two years almost to the day, since he had loitered the afternoon away, worrying about her health. So though he could have met Diorina in any number of more convenient places, somehow the Bulwark was the only choice for what he wanted to say, for what he was going to ask her.
Two years! Two years during which Ancient Hartford had come to seem no more than a dream, a wave lasting but a moment, as the Water Priests said. Would that was all they said! He’d been hearing their drums all afternoon, and now he glimpsed one of their black robed processions, sweeping arrogantly along the Dike Road _ expecting Carters and Fishers and ordinary folk with real business to clear out of the way. They’d be going to the Tower Point just below the Komunikator mast, set to drum up a storm and awaken the neighborhood with flares. This was something new, this veneration for a nub of ruin long neglected, and Edward had the uneasy suspicion that he might be the cause, for during one of his interminable interviews with the SafetyMen, he had mentioned a tower.
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