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“Hey, Jade,” a few of the villagers greeted her.
“‘Evening, everyone,” she said as she passed by on her way to hang her jacket on a hook in the far corner.
The tavern was as faintly lit as the streets. Candles on the long wooden tables and sconces hanging on the stone walls provided the only illumination, with the exception of the occasional lighting of a twig or dried needles set against a flame when a patron splurged on a hand-rolled cigarette.
Electricity, among other things, was not a commodity in this part of the country. Jade had heard years ago that the
humans on the west coast had struck a bargain with the warlord serving as steward in their region and he had permitted them to restore limited power lines within larger communities. The technique employed was rumored to be circa late-nineteenth century, when electricity first made its way into homes in America.
Thus far, the biggest concession in that vein the easterners had achieved was mass purification of water. Desalination procedures using condensers fueled by fire that boiled the liquid and pumped steam through salvaged pipes created condensation that turned into drinkable water. This made it easy to keep the icehouses stocked with both the huge blocks cut from frozen lakes for general purposes as well as sterilized cubes.
The blocks were good for packing metal replicas of refrigerators in order to keep perishable items cold. Though in the winter, that was hardly necessary, since the units could be moved outdoors and they’d be equally effective without any ice at all. Come tomorrow, the kegs at the tavern would be intermittently stored out back in the thick banks of snow and monitored regularly to ensure the beer remained cold, but didn’t freeze.
Since Jade had never lived in a world with electricity, she didn’t miss it. She could prepare meals over a fire and read by candlelight. Having purified water for a bath, cooking and drinking was by far a greater necessity in her mind.
A smaller concession was that transportation by way of horses and wagons were allowed, as were the occasional steam locomotives following the restoration of a main coast-to-coast railroad. The demons themselves preferred their own two feet—or four, in the case of various animal shifters—or the gleaming black Arabians they were prone to breed.
Modern creature comforts, it seemed, were of little use to the demon population, and that meant no major manufacturing plants or advanced technology. Unfortunately, the humans who’d lived before the wars and had survived them suffered because of lack of innovation, but most had adapted to rustic life.
On the plus side, domestic importing had not been outlawed and breweries in the west shipped kegs of beer to the east. When business was good for the tavern, particularly in the winter when the villagers weren’t tending to outdoor crops and instead were bellied up to the bar for warmth and companionship, they were also able to acquire a few casks of wine and brandy. The owner, Michael Hadley, had built his own distillery for vodka.
After yanking off her gloves and stuffing them in her coat pocket, Jade stoked the fire in the tall hearth. She then rounded the bar, where Michael served beers to the regulars gathered at the counter. The pine surface was deeply scarred, but nobody seemed to mind. One simply had to be careful where they set their mug, so as to not perch it precariously in a groove.
“Damn cold out there, isn’t it?” he asked her.
“Still mild, relatively speaking. Jinx predicted a long, hard winter. After today, we won’t be seeing the ground for another six months.”
Jinx Cromley was the local psychic who had plenty to say about everything. Jade enjoyed his ramblings for the most part, but never paid much attention when it came to his forecasts that the human world would someday more closely resemble what it had been at the turn of the millennium.
The early 2000s had seen its share of highs and lows, mostly economically, but the historians had reported the people of those times had enjoyed sophisticated technology, including computers, phones and televisions. Obviously, with no electricity, Jade had never seen a TV in real life—not that there were production companies to generate programs—and she’d never made a phone call or sent an email. Even the famed Internet she’d read about ceased to exist at the advent of the series of wars.
“Ah, the town crier strikes again,” Michael mused.
Indeed, the old psychic Jinx was the one they counted on to spread the word, no matter what the topic, given there was no newspaper in Ryleigh. What news didn’t come from Jinx came from those few people who dared to travel the regions, despite the threat of attack by rogue demons not in the king’s alliance.
Michael continued. “Jinx isn’t one to dampen spirits, but his winter predictions always leave something to be desired.”
“I don’t mind the snow,” Jade admitted as she reached for Donovan Jak’s mug to refill it. She pumped the keg and cracked the tap. “All that fluffy white helps to counter the bleak gray and brighten up the village.”
Just as the daily grind of serving drinks and chatting with the locals helped to take the edge off Jade’s jangled nerves over once again having been followed. Though she didn’t allow herself the luxury of false security. Something waited for her outside the doors of the tavern.
No demon other than the king or the general of his army had the authority to pass through a human door without invitation—which was something she’d never heard of happening—but the law didn’t exactly put Jade’s mind at ease. Nor did knowing she had a half-hour walk home ahead of her at the end of the evening.
“Did you see our shipment of merlot came in?” Michael asked. He reached for one of the non-labeled wine bottles he recycled. The dozen or so he stocked didn’t fill the two six-foot-tall recovered riddling racks made of mango wood that he’d mounted on the wall behind the bar. However, it was nice to see the bottles had finally been put to use again. “Wanna sample it?”
“Sure.” She preferred wine over beer, though the former was a rare treat because of the exorbitant prices. So many of the vineyards back east had been trampled during the wars and there weren’t enough experienced vintners or workers to fully revive them.
Money was an issue as well. As a rule, the humans didn’t possess much of it. For most, bartering was a way of life, not the exchange of funds for goods and services, with some obvious exceptions. Jade, for one, had nothing to trade, so she needed the small wage Michael provided her.
He pulled the cork on the merlot and splashed a decent amount into two glasses.
“Here’s to your favorite season,” he said before tilting the rim of his wineglass to hers. It made a soft clinking noise she enjoyed hearing. There were too few toasts to make in their lives, so even the most inconsequential one was a nice change of pace. “May we not freeze our asses off this year.”
“Not like we’re going to run out of wood for our hearths anytime soon.” Thick patches of forest surrounded the village and there was also plenty of ground debris to gather.
Jade sipped her wine, hoping it would relax her further. But the glass Michael poured was all she’d allow herself. Clearly, she needed to keep her wits about her.
“Not bad, huh?” he asked as he gave her a casual grin.
