An Unconditional Freedom

by Alyssa Cole

  He breathed in slowly and then out. She was passing right in front of him now and for a moment he was struck by the utter loneliness of a life lived in the shadows. This was every day for him; having someone this close yet being utterly unable to reach out.

  “I understand that you don’t want to work with me. But acting like a child won—”

  Her boot caught on his foot and though part of him was content to let her crash to the ground, he reached out instinctively to catch her. His hands gripped a soft, pliant waistline as her skirts crushed against his legs, and he heard her gasp and curse just before she realized he had her secured against his chest.

  “Ay Dios,” she exhaled on a ragged breath.

  “Quite the detective,” he said. “Literally tripping over your quarry.”

  The next few weeks really would be a waste of his time. Pairing him with an unskilled, annoying, and greener-than-collards detective was something Dyson would pay for later.

  Anything for the Union.

  She shifted in his hold as she got her bearings and his grip tightened on her hips, steadying her. He could smell her, sweat and sweet vanilla, and he could feel her warmth in the cool night. A sensation that he hadn’t felt in a long while streaked down Daniel’s spine and settled into a bittersweet ache in his groin. This was the danger of reaching out from the shadows—you might catch hold of something that felt this good, when goodness was far from what you needed and the last thing you deserved.

  He released her as if she’d burnt him, and she stumbled and then righted herself. There was shuffling, then the scratch of a match and a burst of illumination revealing the pleasing planes of her face and the way her brows were drawn in annoyance.

  “Well, I suppose that’s why I’ve been assigned to work with you,” she said. “You must be their best operative for them to put up with such an endearing personality.”

  She closed the short distance between them and took a place on the log beside him, not waiting to be invited. Her match guttered out along the way, leaving them in darkness again as she settled herself.

  “They paired me with a new detective with no training and no common sense because they know I won’t show you any mercy— and to punish me for my contrariness,” he said bluntly. “And they put up with me because the North needs all the help it can get, and because it’s useful to have someone like me around.”

  “Someone rude and antagonistic?” she asked in a sweet tone that belied the insult.

  Daniel felt another strange sensation burble up in him. Laughter. She hadn’t appreciated his jab. Well, he didn’t appreciate her presence.

  “Someone who doesn’t mind getting his hands dirty now and again.”

  Someone who perhaps enjoyed it. Who saw each life he’d taken as payment toward a debt that could never be cleared.

  “I wouldn’t think that would be too hard to find in this war,” she said. “That’s one thing men seem to have in common, no matter what side they’re on.”

  She pulled at the lapel of her jacket, elbow pressing into him a bit as she rummaged around for something. Then there was a popping sound and the smell of sweet alcohol mixed with the tangy scent of her.

  “You like rum?” she asked.

  “Was it made by slaves?”

  “Probably. Yes.” She sighed. “There isn’t much in this godforsaken world that isn’t right now.”

  True. So true that it could have crushed him if he dwelled upon it for too long.

  He heard a gulp and a harsh exhale; then the flask was being pressed against his arm, slipping a bit against the dirt-worn fabric of his jacket. He hesitated, then reached for it. There was a quick brush of fingertips as they made the exchange, and he expected her to lean away from him then, but she stayed where she was—improperly near. It was disconcerting, as his fellow detectives usually gave him a wide berth. Logan chanced the occasional touch, but understood that Daniel didn’t like it, so those were often accidents that he apologized for. Janeta didn’t know much about Daniel yet, and clearly didn’t have the sense to leave a suitable space between them. He could have asked her to move, as he wasn’t exactly afraid of hurting her feelings, but he stayed quiet. He told himself it was simply a human need for body heat; she served as a buffer from the brisk wind that had been pressing through his thin jacket. If he had to be saddled with her, she could at least serve some purpose.

  “You said you’d met one of my countrymen before,” she said eventually. “Hablas español?”

  “He taught me a thing or two,” Daniel said. He hadn’t spoken of Pete, as the master had renamed him, to anyone before. Pete, who had told him of the horrors of cutting cane and shown him his arms scarred from stripping the abrasive leaves. “Yo soy Daniel.”

  She giggled, and instead of annoying him as it should have, he found that he wanted to hear it again. He would speak no more Spanish, though, as he only remembered one other phrase apart from some random cuss words and it was nothing to laugh at.

  Un día seré libre.

  “What’s your last name?” he asked. Allowing her to sit beside him was intimate enough; he wouldn’t call her Janeta, as if they were friends, or more. He took a pull of the rum, a sweet burn that left a pleasant warmth in his chest.

  “Sanchez,” she said, taking the flask back from him. Her cold fingers briefly wrapped around his as she got a grip on the metal this time, and the hairs on Daniel’s arms raised.

  “I don’t want to work with you, Sanchez,” he said bluntly, crossing his arms over his chest.

  “You could have told me that before drinking my rum,” she replied evenly.

  Daniel smiled and was glad for the darkness that hid it. “See? You don’t want to work with me, either. Rude, antagonistic, etcetera. Also, most definitely prone to getting in your way, as you demonstrated a moment ago. Tomorrow morning, ask Dyson to reassign you to someone who won’t trip you up.”

  That might resolve this situation. It was worth a try if it meant not having to mind this woman for the foreseeable future. There were certainly others better suited for the task.

  “And what if he says no?” she asked. Daniel knew that she really meant, What if I refuse to?

  “Then we set off tomorrow. And you’ll regret not taking this opportunity.”

  She stared at him for a long moment. “If that’s the way you want things to be, all right.”

  She stood and moved away without saying anything else. He doubted she was too put out. If she had any sense at all, she’d do as he suggested.

  A gust of wind snaked through the meager protection of his jacket, and before he could stop himself he was thinking of Janeta’s warmth. Funny how quickly the body adjusted to the presence of another. How it made you feel their loss. He rubbed his hands together and forced himself to endure the chill night air.

  For both of their sakes, he hoped she was marching straight to Dyson for reassignment.

  CHAPTER 4

  Cool autumn air slipped through the cracks in the shabby room where Janeta was sleeping four to a bed with the other female detectives. The breeze was a crisp, unfamiliar caress over her face. As a child, she’d only ever experienced the tropical heat of Santiago. She remembered being read a story about a man who fell off a boat into the ocean and froze, and laughing at that impossibility. How could the ocean, warm and wonderful, cause someone to die from the cold? Her world had been so small then. Florida had been warm as well, though when the war started and the Yanquis arrived to “safeguard” the port town, they’d complained so much about the weather that Janeta had finally begun to understand that there were places where the sun didn’t heat your skin every day and humidity didn’t make your clothes stick to your skin.

  She was frightened of what true winter would be like in the North.

  She was just plain frightened.

  Come, you are a Sanchez. You are made of stronger stuff than this.

  Lynne shifted and stretched beside her, easing herself from sleep, and Janeta slammed her eye
s shut. She wished for her soft, comfortable bed, her private room, and a life where her every wish was attended to. Her toilette had been laid out each morning, her dresses were buttoned up for her, her hair had been brushed and oiled and pinned—all by someone else. The house had been cleaned, food had been cooked—all by someone else. In her worst moments of discomfort since she’d left Palatka, she’d thought perhaps the Southerners had the right of it, for a life without servants was a harsh one indeed. But servants was the gentle word for the people who toiled for her family. There were harsher, and more common, terms—slave. Darkie. And worse.

  In those moments of weakness, when she longed for someone else to make her life easier, she remembered her mother and was ashamed. But Mami had been freed from enslavement, eventually. It was Mami who had taught Janeta that only the Lord could judge you for what you did to survive in this world. Benita Sanchez had risen from the ranks of slave girl to Don Sanchez’s beautiful second wife, whom he’d loved to the point of obsession despite the gossip and judgment from the Santiago elite.

  La gente me llama descarada y tienen razón, querida. Soy descarada y soy libre.

  Janeta had been called descarada, shameless, too, without doing much at all besides being a girl with dark skin who would someday be a woman. That had been shameless in itself, it seemed, judging from how women had snubbed her and men had leered at her as soon as her figure had begun to shape the bodice of her dress.

  Janeta had begun hiding herself away, then, but Mami had told her she was beautiful and that her beauty was a gift she must use as best she could—a currency that she couldn’t afford to hoard. She’d stared at Janeta’s face with such intensity at times that it had been frightening, stared and smiled as she told her that she would one day be lovely enough to bring any man to his knees.

  Este es nuestro poder, she’d said the first time she’d applied rouge to Janeta’s lips. This is our power.

  Her mother had seemed formidable to Janeta—after all, hadn’t the women who visited Villa Sanchez envied her beauty and the men who visited wanted to possess it for their own?

  Her mother had been ignorant of neither thing and played both to her advantage. Sometimes it had embarrassed Janeta, but now she wondered if Mami hadn’t simply been using the only tools she had: her body and her brown skin, and what value society placed on them.

  “I knew when your father first looked at me that he would give me anything I asked for, except for my freedom outright,” her mother had said one day, after she had become ill. “So I watched and I waited and I learned what he liked; I know what your father likes better than he does, can anticipate his every need, and because of this I was worth more in his parlor than in his fields.”

  Janeta had used her body the night before, “tripping” over Daniel as if she hadn’t seen him. He’d caught her; his touch hadn’t lingered, though a shock had gone through her at the strength of his hands around her waist. She’d wanted only Henry to touch her, had rebuffed the other men who’d tried to seduce her. But Daniel’s grip had been firm—his hands had the strength of a man who would hold his woman and not let go. And with the way he’d released her, almost pushing her away, he was still holding on to someone tightly. She wondered about the woman who could be loved by a man like Cumberland.

  These are not the things you need to be thinking about.

  She’d known as soon as the warmth had rushed to her cheeks that playing the seductress wouldn’t work well for her in this case, but she was still her mother’s daughter.

  “I know what your father likes better than he does, can anticipate his every need . . .”

  Daniel needed an ally to make him feel strong more than he needed a woman to make him feel big. Everyone saw his anger and disdain, but they were simply the shiny, distracting clasps that held the cloak of loneliness he wore in place. He’d liked having her beside him, even as he’d told her to go away. She wouldn’t. She would be his partner and make him pleased that she was. She much preferred that role, especially since she could still feel the press of his fingertips through the layers of fabric if she thought on it too long.

  Friendship was better, even if desire was easier to secure; Mami hadn’t told her about the double-edged blade of giving all of yourself to a man to ensure he loved you. Janeta had seen what came of that, though.

  Mami’s power had not been infinite, and it had cost her everything.

  The other female detectives began to talk more loudly as they prepared for their day, signaling their consideration for the exhausted recruit had reached its end and it was time for Janeta to get up. She tossed a bit and began to go through the motions of awakening.

  “I’d be reluctant to get out of bed today if I was you, too,” Abbie, a former cook from Maryland, said before gliding out of the room.

  “I’m making a crossing into Louisiana today and that’s more tolerable than the thought of being paired with Cumberland,” Carla said. The short, plump woman pulled out her derringer and inspected it before tucking it back into the pocket of her jacket. She pulled out the matching gun from her other pocket and began inspecting it in the same way.

  “Nice guns,” Janeta said, and not just to fit in. She’d always appreciated a finely made weapon, to the exasperation of her family.

  “The sisters do right by me,” Carla replied with a broad smile. “What’s your make?”

  Janeta stretched, then reached under the rolled-up petticoat she had used for a pillow and produced the two beautiful guns that fit perfectly into the palms of her hands. Silver inlaid with ivory; artworks in miniature. Her father had gifted them to her at the party celebrating her fifteenth birthday and her passage into young womanhood, but Janeta had learned to use them long before, during afternoon walks with Mami. The guns had originally belonged to her mother, given as protection against the near-constant fear of a slave uprising amongst the plantation owners. Now they were hers, and these women thought they would be used to help stop slavery.

  Janeta swallowed against the sourness rising in her throat. Lying had been much easier when she hadn’t done it to purposely hurt others.

  But you’ll be helping Papi. Remember this!

  Carla let out a whistle, and Janeta caught herself before she startled.

  “My kind of woman,” Carla said with a wink. “Hope you won’t have to use them on your partner today. Though Cumberland’s so hardheaded, a gun wouldn’t be of much use.”

  Everyone in the room laughed, and Janeta felt the brief happiness brought by good fellow-feeling. She had so rarely shared the weapons, or the feeling of camaraderie, with other women. Her sisters loved her, but had been constantly after her to stand properly and sit properly—to stop being herself entirely. Janeta had become all too good at that.

  “So I watched and I waited and I learned what he liked . . .”

  Janeta had studied at her mother’s knee, had perhaps surpassed her. She’d hidden herself under so many layers of pleasing aspects, with those aspects constantly shifting depending on whom she was speaking to, that she wasn’t even sure that herself still existed.

  Her sisters had hated her guns, and her knives even more, because they weren’t feminine, and of course Janeta had to try harder to be feminine because she didn’t share their pale skin. Janeta had hidden her weapons, told her sisters they had just been a phase, though she’d still secretly trained with her knives every once in a while. She could think of nothing more feminine than the way a blade curved down to a sharp tip or a trigger fit snug against the crook of your finger. She had been called mi princesa hermosa, but the tales her mother had told weren’t only about the pale blond ones locked in towers waiting for a prince to come. Janeta had heard tales of African princesses, brave and strong, fighting to protect their people.

  Shame edged up on her as she looked at Abbie and Lynne, but she shook it off. Protecting her own family was important, too, even if she had to lie. Even if she had to undermine everything the Loyal League was working toward.

&
nbsp; Papi.

  “This would be my weapon of choice, if I had to deal with Cumberland,” Janeta said, forcing herself to be chipper. She pulled the slim throwing knife from the sheath in her sleeve, grinning when Carla’s eyes went wide with admiration.

  “Definitely my kind of woman! If I wasn’t leaving today I’d ask you to show me a thing or two with those.”

  Janeta blushed at the insinuation in Carla’s tone, and at the pleasure of sharing something she loved with someone who understood it. No one judged her or called her a wild girl. No one said she brought shame to herself and her family, or that she had to behave herself at all times because she didn’t want to be confused with them.

  “You must not play with Julio anymore, Janeta.”

  “Why, Mami? Julio is my friend.”

  “Julio is a slave. You are not. Everyone, especially you, must be very clear about that difference.”

  If she were back home, she would have averted her gaze from Lynne and Carla, and never deigned to speak with them. She would have carefully erased them from her reality, as she had been taught to do. But no one had ever taught her what to do when she stared into her looking glass every morning—she couldn’t erase that.

  “I should warn you not to pull that weapon, or any weapon, on Cumberland, even in jest,” Lynne cut in. “I’m not saying you need to walk on eggshells around him, but sometimes he get spooked by regular things, and act before he think.”

  Janeta had wondered when he’d stormed out of the barn; it was strange behavior. But he hadn’t seemed too bothered by her toppling onto him in the woods.

  “I’ll be careful,” Janeta said before splashing water over her face from a shared basin. The water contained no scented oil to mask the fact that it was far from fresh.

  “He was born free, you know,” Carla said, shaking her head. “Fine, upstanding family. Got snatched up by some men pretending to be abolitionists.”

  A sick, sharp shudder hit Janeta in the stomach like a fist. She had always been warned to be careful, of course, but her family had been rich. Powerful. She’d never truly seen slavery as a threat to herself. Her family owned slaves and she was not one. It was as simple as that. Or at least it had been before she’d left Palatka. Now, with the things she had seen along the way, she wasn’t so sure.