An Unconditional Freedom

by Alyssa Cole

  The two men spoke to each other in Russian again and laughed, low and insinuating.

  “Hm. What are you willing to give me for such valuable information?” Vasiliev held Janeta’s gaze and smiled lecherously.

  Daniel stepped closer to her. His instinct was to block her from the view of the men, but he pulled himself up short. He wouldn’t do the same for a male detective. Besides, he needed to see how she handled this.

  She batted her lashes at the men, and Daniel frowned. If she wanted to flirt in addition to being a burden, they were going to have to part ways sooner rather than later, Dyson be damned. He didn’t want to have to watch over her more than he already was.

  “It depends, Mr. Vasiliev,” Janeta said, her smile wide. Her teeth pressed into her bottom lip for a moment and Daniel was physically jolted by it, though he wouldn’t examine why. “I suppose I can give you many things, but if you keep looking at me like that the only thing you’ll receive is the sharp end of my blade.”

  The Russian sputtered out a laugh. Janeta did not. Instead, she reached into her pocket and pulled out a thin, flat blade, suitable for throwing. She held it with a delicate control, paired with an air of bored expectation, as if it didn’t matter to her either way whether she had to draw blood.

  The jolt of annoyance that had gone through Daniel resolved itself into amusement and something that warmed his neck a bit. There was more to Sanchez than he’d given her credit for; perhaps he would have known that if he hadn’t spent most of their time together focusing on the aggravation it caused him. He’d planned on ignoring her because she seemed unequal to her task, but he was going to have to reevaluate. She was still green, but some people had innate talent, and if it was the latter he’d be in for an entirely different journey.

  Sokolov nodded and raised his hands, as if acknowledging that she had been justified in her threat. “I like that. Yes, I like it a lot. But I do not like blood, so I will apologize.”

  “Accepted,” Janeta said graciously, though her mouth remained an impassive line and her gaze was serious. She slipped the knife away.

  Sokolov spoke. “A town called Enterprise. His name is Roberts. Brendan Roberts. We cannot go ourselves after the incident with our ships. Russians would raise suspicion and, well, we are what we are.”

  “I suppose we could try passing ourselves off as aristocracy, like that Pole did for the Union,” Vasiliev said, chortling. “Can you believe these Southerners? So hungry for legitimacy that they treated a Pole like a king because he said he was a duke.”

  Sokolov laughed disdainfully, before turning back to Daniel and Janeta. “We will not do that, though it might be amusing. But perhaps you will find some useful information and, if it is relevant to our mutual interests, make sure that the Russian consul at the capital is informed of it.”

  “I can do that,” Daniel said absently. His head was already spinning: they’d have to get to Mississippi without being captured, find this Roberts, and figure out how to insinuate themselves into his life.

  “We’ll come up with something. Thank you for trusting us with such valuable information,” Janeta said.

  Things would be different from when he traveled alone. He’d have to take Janeta into account. He’d have to think for two, and wouldn’t be able to just sleep rough, or deal with more unseemly elements. Or maybe he would. If he could get rid of her before he got to Enterprise, he wouldn’t have to worry about her getting into trouble.

  “Thank you for your help, gentlemen,” Daniel said.

  He and Janeta walked in silence after leaving the tent. Her expression was now contemplative.

  “The group they mentioned,” she said quietly. “The Sons of the Confederacy. They really are bad men?”

  “You know nothing of them?” he asked irritably. He was tired but also anxious for the journey ahead, and this was beyond ignorance. It was negligent for a detective, recruit or no, to be this ill-informed.

  “No,” she said, then heaved a sigh. “Well, I’ve heard their name mentioned. But I don’t know who they are or what they do.” She looked up at him, and he could see her humiliation in having to ask what she did. “Please. I know I should be more aware, but you are training me. Tell me who they are.”

  How she had gotten this far without knowing who they were was a mystery, but she seemed sincere enough that Daniel actually felt a pang of something like pity that he’d be the one to tell her of such evil. It was possible that she was simply trying to force conversation; he’d seen plainly enough that she excelled at winning people over to her side. He’d tell her; if she truly didn’t know, she was about to learn exactly what they were dealing with.

  “ ‘Bad men’ was an understatement,” Daniel said. “Just as there are forces like the Loyal League that conspire to push the country toward reunification and freedom, there are those that push toward chaos and slavery for their own selfish aims.

  “The Sons show how a passionate belief can be twisted: while the Confederacy at least pretends that their true aim is financial freedom, the Sons push for the idea at the core of that desire for freedom—that the white race is superior. Any person or institution that challenges that idea is a traitor or threat that needs to be crushed. They glory in causing pain and chaos, and their sworn enemies are the North and the Negro. I’ve been tracking them and had a few run-ins, but most people run the other way if they hear that group is around.”

  “But . . .” Janeta shook her head. “I don’t understand.”

  “Look, why did you join the Loyal League?” he asked tersely, and her head whipped in his direction. For a second, she looked afraid, and her fear worked his nerves, which were already taut. He wouldn’t pity her; she’d signed up for this job just as he had, and she had to know what it entailed.

  “You told me you joined because of abolition and justice or some similar tripe. The Sons? They don’t give a damn about justice. They want this country to be a place where men like them will always have absolute power. They are driven by hatred and contempt for anyone who is not one of them.”

  “I see,” she said quietly, looking at the ground.

  “Do you?” He felt an incomprehensible annoyance at her presence, at the way she walked so close to him, like he was a friend, and asked him questions she damn well should have known the answer to, given their situation.

  He was suddenly tired and frustrated thinking of days and maybe weeks more of this nonsense; when he’d spoken to Logan he’d agreed to stay with her for as long as it took for the mission to prove fruitful. With their newfound information, it seemed he’d be stuck with her for longer than anticipated, and in more dangerous territory than he’d imagined.

  “Your Russian, your one supposed skill, was a great help,” he spit out, knowing the words were harsh and unnecessary and only served to vent his anger. That didn’t stop him from going on. “Slow, ignorant, and not even able to garner anything useful to us. You’ve been a boon to this investigation.”

  Janeta didn’t look at him, but he wished she would so he could will her to acknowledge what he’d told her from the beginning.

  Now do you see? This is why no one wants to be partnered with Cumberland.

  “The information they gave us is unverified. They’re using us as canaries in the coal mine because they have no idea what this fellow in Enterprise is up to,” she said calmly. “They have conflicting reports and want us to see if he’s really for the Confederacy, and if he is, they want to know what he’s been up to and what it means for Europe. They want to know why a member of the British aristocracy would take a station in a small Mississippi town, and whether his promises are being made to those who would harm their interests.”

  She looked up at him.

  “They also wanted to know whether you were fucking me, and whether you would be willing to share.” Perhaps she had expected the curse to shock him, but it was her eyes that did. They were dark with anger and a frustration that resonated deep within him.

  “Why
didn’t you—”

  “Why didn’t I what? Reveal the one advantage I had over them by letting them know I understood? I thought you were supposed to be training me, Detective Cumberland. Perhaps you aren’t as wise as you imagine.”

  With that she strode ahead of him, walking up to Lake, a smile on her face as if the conversation between her and Daniel had never occurred. Daniel had underestimated both her and the Russians, distracted by the news they had given him. He’d need to be more careful. If not, the plan brewing in his mind would be over before he could think it through. And though he was quite willing to die, he now had a definitive purpose. It awaited him in Enterprise.

  CHAPTER 8

  Janeta wished for privacy, but that wasn’t something available at the contraband camp. Many things were not available, things that she’d thought were a given in life until she’d set off on her mission full of guilt and absent foresight.

  The words of the Russians kept replaying in her memory. Not the leering—that was common enough—but the assumption they’d made that their information would be safe because it benefited Janeta and Daniel to keep it so, simply because of the color of their skin. Little did they know that it benefited her more to tell.

  “It would be a pity if him and your sisters found out that he’d been imprisoned because of you . . .”

  Henry had been right, of course. Her family would have been devastated that her lack of caution had led to their father’s imprisonment, and she had always known that her place with them was tenuous after Mami’s death. She couldn’t risk it. But when she had gone to Henry for help, she’d expected support, not to be sent out into the thick of the war to get information he needed. She knew penance was necessary for atonement, though, and she would do anything for that.

  “Don’t you want to make the Yanks pay for what they’ve done to your father?”

  She’d wanted that, too, in the immediate aftermath. Revenge. To make the Union soldiers who occupied her town and her home suffer for their actions against Papi. She had been righteous in her fury, but now she looked around her and her surety faded. If she were honest, it had begun to fade very soon after she’d set out on her journey.

  In Palatka, at Villa Sanchez, the war had been very clear-cut—the Yankees were villainous, trying to bend the noble South to their will. Any doubts had been drowned out by the constant tales of evil Northerners, the talk of how secession was what was good and right, and how once the South was free, men like Papi would be able to grow their fortunes without interference. But once she’d left, she’d been able to think of how those fortunes would grow unfettered.

  How many times since she’d set out had she been ready to stop? At first it had been because she was tired and afraid, but as she’d traveled, she’d seen and heard things that had shaken her resolve. Only knowing that her father’s freedom and perhaps his life was on the line pushed her forward.

  Before, she hadn’t known better. And she hadn’t known about the Sons of the Confederacy. Henry had only mentioned them a handful of times, this group he wanted to join. The men whom he would be passing Janeta’s information on to. She’d thought it was just a silly name they’d given to themselves to feel important, as men were wont to do.

  Daniel’s description of them had made her blood run cold; there was nothing silly about their intentions. If she gave Henry any information, these men would benefit. She would be aiding evil. Could she do this? She hated to ask herself, because she’d said she would do anything for love of her father, but did love have its limits?

  She took a tiny bite of the succulent roast pork she’d been given without question, then forced herself to raise her eyes and look at the people it’d been so easy to forget about when she had desperately agreed to Henry’s plan.

  “It’s good, huh?” the man who had called her over to join them for dinner asked. He was lean, but she could see his strength in the forearms revealed by the rolled-up sleeves of his shabby shirt. The firelight danced over his dark skin, showing the gray creeping through his short hair.

  “Sí. Yes. Thank you.”

  It was delicious, considering the food she’d been subjected to since she’d left Palatka. She almost told him about the tangy mojo sauce that she ate with pork at home, but then she remembered that sauce was made by their cook, Roberto. Roberto was enslaved, as this man had been. Roberto had always been nice to her, sneaking her sweet bread and not telling her sisters when he caught her sharpening her knives. He’d even been kind to her after the day she’d found him weeping in the kitchen, when his own son had been sold away to another plantation.

  Why? Why didn’t Roberto hate me?

  She forced herself to take another bite of her food.

  The man smiled. “When them Yanks showed up and drove off ol’ massa, we didn’t rightly know what to do. We was scared. Then we realized we was free. I spent most of my life raising these swine and got nothing but chitlins and pig feet and tails. So I rounded up a bunch of the hogs and put them on the wagon with us. Wasn’t exactly a comfortable journey, but now we get to eat that which we put our sweat into. All of it, not just the scraps. Now we get to share it. And that’s how it should be.”

  He smiled, but there was deep emotion in his eyes as he took another bite. Janeta swallowed, her throat dry. She didn’t deserve to share this meal.

  She glanced over at Daniel, who was flanked by two small children. He had out a little notebook and some charcoal, and the children looked on in excitement at what he was writing.

  “S-I-M-O-N-E,” he said. “Simone.”

  “S-I-M-O-N-E,” the little girl beside him parroted, then burst into laughter. “That’s me!”

  “Yes, it is,” he said, and for the first time since she’d met him, his features were relaxed. Calm. “Those six letters make up your name.”

  “Mama say I gonna get to go to school now, just like massa’s son.”

  “I wanna go to school, too,” the boy on Daniel’s other side said anxiously, like if he didn’t say it, he might get left behind.

  “You can do anything you want now, boy,” the man beside Janeta said. “We free people now. We done reached the promised land. Once you learn them letters, ain’t nothing can stop you.”

  Daniel sighed and closed his notebook, slipping it back into his pocket. “Lake said we can sleep in his tent, Janeta. I’m going to go to bed. We have a long journey ahead of us.”

  He didn’t say anything to the children as he stood heavily, but he did briefly rest a hand on each of their heads before walking off. He moved slowly, as if he dragged a weight behind him. Janeta was used to thinking of how to give people what they wanted, what they needed, but she didn’t know what to give to a man like Daniel. She didn’t know why she wanted to give him something.

  “That fella of yours. He got it bad, huh?”

  Janeta whipped her head to the man beside her. She thought about correcting him—Daniel wasn’t hers—but that wasn’t necessary. They were leaving in the morning.

  “Got what?” she asked, her mind flipping through English words trying to figure out his meaning.

  “There’s some folk who survive in body, but they souls got all crushed, understand? My brother was like that. Massa sold his wife and baby boy, and after that, he just started . . . wilting, like a plant baking in the heat with no rain for weeks. One day he walked off into the woods and they found him floating in the lake.” The man shook his head. “Massa said he was trying to run off, but Deke ain’t know how to swim; he wouldn’t try to cross no lake. I think he walked in and didn’t want to walk back out.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said. A memory that she’d avoided for years swam to the forefront of her mind. Mami—who had prided herself on her beauty and stylishness—thin and weak and unkempt in her bed, tears slipping down her cheeks.

  “You must be perfect. I tried. I tried so hard. The minute you are not perfect they will remind you that you’re just another morena who should be cutting cane. That they can send you to
the field and nothing will save you.” Janeta tried to give her mother some of the cane juice Roberto had pressed for her, and Mami knocked the glass to the floor, shattering it. She grabbed Janeta by the wrist, hard, and rubbed at the skin of her face with her bony hand. “I wish you hadn’t been born so dark, princesa. What will they do to you? What will they do?”

  Janeta’s chest went tight. She wasn’t supposed to think of this. She tried to remember only the good times with Mami, of her beauty and flirtatiousness and how she was the queen of any parlor she entered, not her sobs that echoed in the halls until one morning there had been silence. But she wondered about this soul crushing. Maybe Mami had walked into the lake of her own pain and not wanted to walk back out.

  The man sighed. “Watch out for him, all right?”

  Back home, big, strong men like Daniel were valued for how much cane they could cut and how much value they brought a plantation. The idea that they, too, had inner lives—emotions, hopes, and dreams—was not a consideration for those who owned them. If a master was kind, he thought of the strain on a slave’s body. She’d never heard of one who thought of the strain on their slaves’ hearts and souls.

  “They don’t feel the same way that we do. They are happier with this life, because they need guidance. They cannot think for themselves. We are helping them.”

  This didn’t make sense to Janeta. She knew Papi was the smartest man in the world, but it seemed to her that the slaves were the ones helping him. After all, he couldn’t work the land himself, could he? Or clean the house or maintain the sugar mill?

  “But, Papi, if they’re happy, why do they try to escape? And how do they come up with a plan if they cannot think for themselves?”

  “Because some of them are wicked, and they are punished for this wickedness.”

  “But if Mami was happy being a slave, why did you free her? Mami is sad and can’t get out of bed. Is it because she misses being a slave?”

  “Dios, Janeta! Enough of the questions. Finish your dinner.”