Southern Republic (The Downriver Trilogy Book 1)

by Ramsay, Lex

  Rather than breach protocol, and have the floor warden complain to her manager, a Protector’s Assistant who had a reputation for vindictiveness, Sulla weeded out the minimally threadbare pieces for replacement. Looking through the few pieces of barely damaged fine linen and lace work, Sulla placed them in a bag she had brought with her. If she couldn’t use some common sense and mend them, she could at least pass them on to someone who would appreciate them.

  Even though she felt most of the other slaves hated her, Sulla had made it a practice to slip the supervisors she came in contact with—cookhouse supes, garment worker floor wardens, and even nursery minders—little packages of food, clothes or household goods that would otherwise have been thrown out.

  She tried to do this casually, and usually salted her gifts with harsh words just to let them know she wasn’t trying to put on airs and give them charity. Mostly her gifts were taken in the same way, with insolent looks and nary a word, but she liked it better that way. That way there was no need for pretending, no false sympathy or practiced gratitude.

  Sulla knew she had to be careful giving away clothes, though, especially the Askew’s clothes, because if they ever saw a slave wearing one of their cast-offs, there would be hell to pay. She usually pulled those clothes apart and gave away the pieces with strict instructions to the garment worker floor wardens to have them made into household items the Askews would never see.

  She thought back to the time she had given one of Olivia’s evening dresses that had a wine stain one it to ol’ Quincy over at the bake house, thinking he’d have the sense to pull it apart. That fool must have given it to Magdalena, one of his bakery assistants, because next thing she knew Sulla heard tales of Maggie floating around the compound in the dead of night, playing at being someone she wasn’t.

  Anyway, Sulla thought, she was feeling particularly big-hearted today. For the last several days since her rendezvous with Protector Askew in Eugenia’s dressing room, she had been walking on clouds. She had always approached her position as Protector Askew’s woman and head of his household with mixed feelings.

  On one hand, she had never felt as loved or cherished as she did when she was with him, or even when she wasn’t—just knowing that he loved her and protected her from the harsh realities of life for a slave was enough to warm her from within. But on the other hand, her bliss was always tainted with the knowledge that it couldn’t last. From the very first she had known that however long she had his love, however many children she bore for him, no matter how much of her heart and soul she willingly gave him, that one day it would have to end—and the knowledge of that day was always looming over her.

  Now she felt as if that ever present fear, that always unspoken yet inevitable reality, had been banished from her future. Her man had promised to take care of her and their children, to make sure that she was treated the way she deserved, the way he had always looked out for her and loved her no matter what the Rules said.

  Sulla didn’t know exactly how he would keep his promise, only that he would. He always had.

  She wondered if he would send Eugenia away. It happened sometimes, she knew. She had heard of situations like that before, where the Protector had made his wife move to an urban center, or to another Protectorate run by a family member. There was never any divorce, F.F.C. just didn’t believe in that, but there were separations that lasted the life of the marriage.

  Maybe he would send Eugenia away like that, too. It would certainly make it easier for him to break the ten-year rule. Then all they’d have to contend with was Olivia, and Sulla was confident they would work a way around her.

  Come to think of it, Sulla thought, she had heard Olivia sneak out of her room the other night after Sulla had returned from her lover. Sulla had heard the door to Olivia’s room open while she lay replaying her man’s words in her mind as sleep escaped her.

  Sulla smiled at the memory, then again at the memory of the ruckus a couple of years ago when Protector Askew had moved Sulla’s room from the row of servants’ rooms downstairs to the second floor—right on the same hallway as the rest of his family’s bedrooms. True, there were two wings to the second floor, and the long hallway joining the two traversed a length of nearly one hundred feet, with Eugenia’s dressing room placed pretty much in the center; but the boldness of the move was amazing.

  Anyway, Sulla’s room was at the end of the hallway, and she’d had to pass the room shared, however infrequently, by Olivia and Mister Bryce, then Mister Bryce’s separate bedroom and finally Olivia’s bedroom, on her way to her room that night. Just as she had started to drift off, she heard the door next to hers open, and had quietly slipped out of bed and eased the door open a crack to peer out into the hallway.

  Sulla saw Olivia tip-toeing down the hallway, and, thinking she was creeping out for an assignation of her own, was surprised when she passed the stairway in front of Eugenia’s dressing room and continued down the hall. Sulla waited a few seconds and opened the door wider, only to see Olivia stick something in the lock of the control room, and slip into it moments later.

  Yes, she had a feeling she should keep a close eye on Olivia. You never know what kind of useful information you might run across, Sulla mused, especially information that could solve what she’d begun to think of as the “Problem with Olivia.”

  • • •

  “I’ll be gone for two days, Lily, not two months,” Olivia told her Ladies’ Maid. “Pack my blue lightweight wool suit with the oyster grey silk blouse, the chocolate brown velvet dinner dress and my Elaina Davies knit suit and be done with it.”

  Olivia was busy supervising Lily in what should have by now been second nature to the dolt. “And make sure you pack the right shoes and purses with each outfit. I’ll be wearing my camel hair coat, so I’ll need the matching scarf and my tan leather gloves as well.”

  Just as Olivia turned from that tiresome task she spotted her tiresome husband leaning against the doorway. “Bryce, when did you get in? Sorry I’ve got to rush, but I’m leaving for Atlanta and D.C. this morning, you understand, don’t you dear?”

  “Oh I understand, all right, Olivia dear,” Bryce replied sarcastically. “I understand you timed your little trip for the very day I was scheduled to return home.”

  Olivia looked Bryce over. She had to admit, he was a fine looking man … too bad he was dumb as a box of rocks. Olivia loathed Bryce. She loathed his eagerness to conform to anything F.F.C. She loathed his mean-spiritedness—his need to put others down in order to elevate himself. She hated that he was such a dullard, a trait made all the more aggravating by the fact that he thought himself clever.

  Needless to say, Olivia did not respect Bryce, either. Not even the kind of begrudging respect she might hold for an enemy. Bryce returned the favor, though, and it was precisely because of his disrespect for her that she held him in such contempt. Bryce had always underestimated Olivia, viewing her as nothing more than a means to an end, a mindless vessel for his precious heirs, one-half (albeit the lesser half in his mind) of a partnership that would ensure him prosperity forever.

  Of course Bryce was solidly F.F.C. and under the Rules all F.F.C. were equal. But some F.F.C. were more equal than others. Just as some of the Southern planters and landowners of days gone by had been major players and some minor, so it was in today’s S.R. Bryce’s family, the Hempsteads, had just slipped under the qualifying wire by the skin of their used-to-be rich teeth.

  They had managed to hold onto some of the land amassed by their forebears, but since that wasn’t a whole lot to begin with, their fortunes had dwindled in the years since the Great War.

  Marrying into the Askew family had been their salvation. And rather than be appropriately grateful, Bryce thought that a prize like Olivia was merely his due. The fact that he’d never taken the time to get to know his wife was only slightly more galling than the fact that even if he had, he wouldn’t have been able to comprehend what a jewel he had—for Olivia was at least his equal i
n all things and his superior in most.

  Bryce was a dunce, all right; and if there was one thing Olivia just couldn’t abide, it was a dunce.

  “That’s just like you, Bryce, to assume that the Sun rises and sets on your whim. Has it ever occurred to you that my trip has nothing to do with you one way or the other?” Olivia snapped.

  “I’m not complaining for myself, Olivia my love, but what about little Winston? When’s the last time you’ve even seen our son?” Bryce whined.

  Olivia almost snorted at the thought of this fool thinking she would soil herself by bearing him a son, but stifled the urge to belly laugh and point. “I see Winston every day, Bryce, in case you’ve forgotten, I live here … and unlike you I take my role as a parent quite seriously.”

  “Why Olivia, darling, what about your role as a wife … haven’t you been pining away for me in my absence?” Bryce nearly purred, as he crossed his legs and leaned even more heavily against the doorframe.

  His absence this time had been occasioned by the need to visit with Ardelia Bledsoe, that tramp from the Clarksburg County Protectorate in Tennessee, who was Bryce’s latest diversion. The official story, of course, was that Bryce was checking out some method of protecting the cotton crop from pests, but Olivia was sure that the only research he’d managed to do down there was between the sheets with Ardelia.

  “So how’s Ardelia, darling,” Olivia shot back at him, “tedious as always I’m sure. But then again, I guess you two deserve each other—she’s a fool for a man—any man I might add—and you’re a man who’s a fool.”

  Olivia had been saving that little tidbit for a more opportune moment, but the sight of Bryce jauntily leaning in the doorway like the viper digesting the mouse just set her off.

  Bryce’s mouth dropped open and he struggled to come up with a reply, but before he could Olivia swept passed him and took her parting shot.

  “Close your mouth, Bryce honey, you’ll let the flies in.”

  CHAPTER 17

  ‌Patrick stepped off the jetway into the terminal at the Ithaca airport and glanced around for the driver he knew his mother had sent for him. No matter how often he told her that he preferred to travel a bit more inconspicuously, she insisted on having a chauffeur at his disposal from the moment he arrived in town until he was driven back to the airport.

  His fears were confirmed when he saw a man in the standard livery uniform walking his way with an expectant look on his face that said he recognized Patrick from the description given him. Well, he should have known. After all, one did not argue with Regina Duquesne Edgerton—at least and live to tell about it.

  He had been summoned to Ithaca by his mother with the promise that it would be “Just a quick trip up and back down to D.C. Won’t take more than a day and a night and surely you can spare your family a scintilla of your time every once in a while.”

  His mother usually didn’t resort to guilt to get him to come home—she didn’t have to since she preferred the more direct approach—the command performance.

  As he watched through the window at the changing leaves on the tree-lined roads the car traveled, Patrick had to laugh when he thought about his mother, that Grand Dam of the Edgerton Clan. That his father, Jerome, had put up with her all these years was a miracle. But then again, despite Jerome’s hen-pecked demeanor, Patrick knew it was all just an act. Jerome loved having Regina take charge; and Regina loved taking charge.

  He could tell that his father actually thrilled at Regina’s sharp wit and commanding aura. Jerome’s eyes still lit up at the sight of her, no longer just for her physical beauty—which was still in evidence in her sixty-eighth year—but because of her presence. Patrick’s mother could walk into any situation and take charge as effortlessly as if she had been born on a throne.

  But Patrick also knew that Jerome, though preferring to sit back and watch any show in which his dear wife was featured, was the only person who could actually influence Regina, and the only one who ever had. It was because of Jerome’s influence that Regina had for the most part let her children live their lives unfettered by constant advice or intrusion.

  Patrick was a lot like his father, and felt he understood him better than his siblings did. His sisters Clarissa and Erica unabashedly wound Jerome around their little fingers—and any other finger they chose on any occasion; and his brother Austin mistook his father’s retiring nature as weakness.

  His mother’s ostensible reason for Patrick’s visit was to get his advice on the automation features of one of the family homes she was busy renovating. The Edgerton family’s prosperity had started with old Euphrates LaRue Edgerton and had continued unabated through two generations. Easton LaRue Edgerton, the son of Euphrates and Livonia Bascomb had married Olympia Curtisson, herself the daughter of a successful inventor of some sort. The Easton Edgertons had maintained the family home established by Euphrates and Livonia, and had purchased a stylish slate-roofed French Revival mansion for their child (and Patrick’s great-great grandfather) Jeremiah Bascomb Edgerton on the occasion of his marriage to Lelia Manning.

  Lelia Manning was the teenage bride who had started the family’s hundred-fifty year-plus affiliation with the R.A. and its predecessor, the Underground Railroad. Their son Mitchell Easton Edgerton’s fortunes were not so rosy, however, and during his life he had sold off his parent’s house and left the family home in disrepair for many years, barely able to pay taxes on the property.

  Just as certain genetic traits skip a generation, so it must have been with the gift of making money, for Mitchell and Erica Linwood’s son, Austin Manning Edgerton, certainly had the gift in abundance. By the time he had met and married Cynthia McCleary, a mathematics professor at the university, Austin had bought back his grandparents’ home and totally renovated the neglected family estate.

  Now Regina was continuing the tradition, and had renovated two lake houses that had belonged to ne’er do well siblings of her beloved Jerome as well as updating the home built by Austin and Cynthia in what was at that point the outskirts of town.

  “The Farm” as Regina called it was a six bedroom English cottage built in 1906 set on seven acres of land just off Highway 34. She wanted to automate the home services with the latest software and connect the home computer to state-of-the-art hardware.

  But Patrick sensed that all this urgency surrounding the automation of the Farm was a ruse. He knew his mother too well to believe there was no back-story to her stated desire for his immediate attendance. He’d just have to wait and see what it was this time.

  As the car wove its way through the miles of country roads separating the airport from his destination, Patrick took the opportunity of rare down time to reflect on what he had learned about the S.R.’s plan to annihilate the slaves.

  For the last several weeks—ever since his meeting with Relic—Patrick had been consumed with solving the puzzle of the S.R.’s plan to wipe out the slaves. He knew from a memo Relic had forwarded him from Olivia Askew that the S.R. planned to use some type of nerve gas, something called S-18, but after scouring every reference he could find he couldn’t identify that particular agent, and the mere description of “nerve gas” covered a lot of territory.

  Patrick believed that the only way to combat the diabolical plan was to first understand it completely, and to do that, he had to consider every aspect of the situation from as many angles as he could.

  He had tapped into the S.R.’s transportation control center in Missouri and committed the high-speed train schedule to memory. He had exhaustively researched the most efficient methods of mass extermination. Unfortunately, there was no shortage of material on that subject. Interestingly, government libraries provided the most fertile ground for his studies in the encyclopedia of atrocities. Department of Defense classified files and archives had an abundance of data on kill rates, efficiency quotas, saturation radiants, spillover ratios and a host of other death-measuring statistics associated with innumerable poisons.

  Ca
lculating the distance between each transportation hub and every protectorate in the three states they served, Patrick was able to determine the parameters within which whatever toxic agent the S.R. had chosen would have to fit.

  After loading all the factors that Patrick had considered pertinent into a pre-existing program he borrowed from the DOD, Patrick was fairly confident that the toxin of choice was one of three possibilities—a biological agent perfected by the South Africans called ET-302, an agent developed by the oil companies as an accidental byproduct of the refining process, or a derivation of the old tried and true Sarin gas, used with lethal efficiency in previous World Wars.

  Given the extreme volatility of the petroleum byproduct, and the rather esoteric nature of ET-302, Patrick’s bet was on some variation of Sarin gas. Of the three it was the most stable, relatively non-incendiary and non-corrosive, so that it could be packaged in any number of materials.

  By mapping out the train routes and working backward from what he had come to think of as E-Day, Extermination Day, Patrick was able to work out what he felt must be the plan.

  Patrick closed his eyes, both from exhaustion and in response to the rhythmic motion of the car and was immediately transported to the world of dreams. He saw the poison being distributed to each protectorate and unloaded by the robots the S.R. sometimes used on its largely automated train system. Cold, sterile cars carried the message of genocide as impersonally as they would have carried the cotton or sugar that was their usual cargo.

  He saw the slaves being gathered in a central location, probably the Servants of the Field first, being congregated around the plots of soil that had stolen their humanity generation after generation.

  He saw the garment workers gathered for their evening meal, herded into outbuildings for disposal. He saw the Servants of the Protectorates corralled together in the Protectorate Compound to partake of the sacrament of death.