Southern Republic (The Downriver Trilogy Book 1)

by Ramsay, Lex

  Lifting the object from under the floor, Sulla turned it in her hand, puzzling over what it could be. It was metallic looking and had little buttons on it with tiny numbers and letters on each one. Frowning in confusion, Sulla reached again into the hole and retrieved another item like the first, and a slim device with a protruding metal stick, both equally mysterious. Thrusting her hand in a third time, Sulla felt a broad, smooth surface, and she pulled out a large object that was about the shape of a book, but with no cover, just a blank, gray face.

  Satisfied that she’d discovered all that the hole had to give, Sulla didn’t bother to replace the plank or rearrange the closet. She had found what she’d been looking for—whatever the curious objects were.

  • • •

  Protector Askew had been drinking a lot lately, much more than usual. He knew he had been drowning his sorrows in the proverbial bottle, but then again, a man had to have his diversions, didn’t he?

  What with the fiasco with that idiot Bryce and the automation equipment, and the pressure of the fast approaching Project Exodus, he had been a tad overwrought. Then there was the quandary of what to do with Sulla? Let her face the same fate as the rest of the slaves, or trade her on the Arab Exchange.

  Ah, the old Arab Exchange—a convenient way to rid oneself of incorrigible yet valuable female stock. Of course, under the Rules, a disobedient slave, no matter how luscious, was to be put to death.

  But in the practical world, once you had spent years training a woman to your tastes, you shouldn’t just kill her because she didn’t prefer to be traded to another protector. Then there were the ones who’d been traded a time or two and had become unmanageable.

  Under the Rules, such slaves were to be destroyed, and indeed that did happen. But why put a slave down when, on the Arab Exchange, she could fetch you thousands of dollars in undocumented income?

  No, he couldn’t just callously see Sulla gassed like livestock. She’d be traded on the Arab Exchange, make him a little money, and make some lucky man very, very happy.

  And here was the lovely Sulla now. Sashaying toward him like the Venus she was. He could almost picture her in a belly dancing costume.

  She beckoned him with a wave of her hand, looking around conspiratorially, and he followed her into the study off of the parlor.

  Sulla turned and unwrapped a bundle she had been carrying in a sheet, laying the contents on the desk in from of him.

  “Look what I found in Olivia’s room,” she hissed, squinting her eyes in disapproval as though she knew the nature of the contraband she’d unearthed.

  “I heard her talking to someone in her room, when no one could have been there … and she broke into the control room … I saw her sneaking in when … uh … I went to turn down your bed one night.” Sulla caught herself before admitting that she’d been spying on Olivia, but from the look of surprise on Askew’s face, she realized she needn’t have bothered.

  “And when I heard her talking to someone, she was talking about the R.A.” Sulla figured she’d strike with the most damning news while the iron was hot.

  Askew picked up the two cell phones, turning them in his large hands, and stared down at the lock pick and the e-tablet, seething at his daughter’s impudence.

  How dare she challenge his authority like this. She had always been a high-spirited, willful child, but this was inexcusable.

  “Where’s Olivia?” Askew roared.

  “She went to the train station to pick up that delivery for her Angels of Mercy group,” Sulla answered, a satisfied grin spreading across her face.

  Askew stormed over to the drink cabinet and let the amber liquid tumble into his waiting glass.

  “She’s gonna need the Angels of Mercy when I get through with her. You let me know as soon as she comes back.”

  CHAPTER 32

  ‌Olivia was gone just long enough to allow her father to work himself up into a rare state.

  She closed the front door softly behind her. As she turned to cross the parlor toward the staircase, she heard her father call her name from the study.

  Olivia tried to steel herself for the confrontation she knew must come, and reminded herself to be as impassive and docile in the face of the expected onslaught as her character would allow.

  Opening the French doors, she saw her father seated behind his desk. Arrayed before him on the desk were her cell phones, her e-tablet and the lock pick.

  Suppressing the shudder that rippled through her body, she took a seat in one of the guest chairs across from the desk, and sat silently before him.

  “I’d hoped for a boy when you were born,” her father began unexpectedly, “but once you were here and I resigned myself to the fact that you were the only child I’d ever have, I admit I spoiled you rotten.

  “I was even willing to overlook the fact that you were something of a slut, and that you tried to pollute my bloodline with that little pickaninny bastard son of yours. And still I did nothing, partly out of a sick sense of pride at your audacity, and partly out of recognition of the fact that you were my own creation and I was responsible for you.

  “So I confess I am somewhat to blame for the fact that you never learned your rightful place as a woman of the F.F.C.

  “But now, Olivia, now you have struck at the very foundation of our great society, on our very way of life. You have violated the sanctity of the control room on Lord knows how many occasions. And for all I know you’ve plotted with those godless heathens of the R.A. against your own kind.

  “You shame me as my daughter, and I can barely stand the sight of you. By tomorrow morning I want you out of this house. Your name, and that of your bastard child, will be stricken from the Hall of Ancestors.

  “I don’t know where you’re going to go and I don’t care. And the last thing I’ll ever do for you is to eliminate any association between you and the proof of your sinful past. So you don’t have to worry about your little half-breed bastard, he’ll be going on a journey of his own very soon.

  “But at least that way, wherever you do end up, you’ll have your unblemished whiteness to take with you, because you won’t have anything else. I’ll have to inform Bryce of your treachery, of course, but what he does about his dishonor is his business, not mine.”

  At last Askew stopped his sermon. And despite Olivia’s promised restraint, she decided that she had nothing left to lose but what remained of her dignity.

  “You know Father, you needn’t fret about never having had a son, ’cause you’ve got at least one that I know of from your whore Sulla, and who knows how many others.

  “I’ve done nothing that you haven’t been doing for your entire hypocritical life, you filthy old man. And at least I had the backbone to acknowledge my mistakes instead of selling them down the river.

  “When I think about all the years I spent trying to measure up to your standards in all things—even in your debauchery—I realize what a wasted life I’ve had. Living out here in the middle of nowhere, clinging to a way of life that should have died centuries ago, we have become the parasites of the human race, and you … you Father, are the worst among us.

  “But the sad thing is, you’re not even unique in your savagery, you are simply a product of all that’s come before you, no more than that.

  “So don’t congratulate yourself for having done the ‘honorable’ thing by me, or for upholding some lofty principles you don’t really feel. You’re not brave, or daring, or even marginally original—you’re just another pathetic old man trying to make some sense out of a completely meaningless existence.

  “I will say this for you though, you are certainly a man of your times, Father. Only trouble is, those times are over.”

  Olivia got up, walked across the study, grabbed the handles to the French doors and slammed them so hard on her way out that she cracked several panes of the beveled glass.

  • • •

  Sulla woke abruptly from her dream, still hearing the low chanting of the hooded
men as if the nightmare was trying to make itself real by clinging to her subconscious as it broke through to the waking world. Shaking her head to escape the dream, Sulla couldn’t get that horrible chanting out of her head. Freeing herself from the grip of the nightmare, she realized the chanting wasn’t a remnant of sleep—she could still hear it even though completely awake.

  She sat up in her bed, pulling the curtains from the window to peer into the compound yard below. Terror clutched her throat so tightly she could make no sound, for there below her coming up the walk were ten hooded men, each carrying a candle rather than the dreaded wand.

  Just then the door to her room broke open, and before she had a chance to even rise from the bed, the other two of their number were upon her.

  In one of those moments of surreal clarity that appears in the face of utter chaos, Sulla realized that she should have known there were another two already inside since they always came in groups of twelve—the number of the apostles for which they stood.

  One roughly grabbed her by the wrists and wrenched them behind her back where the other placed waiting manacles around them. Then they yanked her by her hair and dragged her to her feet and out of the room.

  As they pulled her into the hallway, Sulla thrashed and bucked, using her feet as skids on the carpet and trying to free herself from her captors with every inch of strength within her.

  “Protector …” she screamed, “you promised … you promised me!” Sulla was rushed past Olivia’s door, and as she turned her head wildly around, seeking some way to break free, she saw Olivia standing in her doorway. Sulla, even in her extreme distress, looked at Olivia and saw not the gloating smirk she expected to see, but a look of such complete despondency that it would have shocked Sulla to her core had she not already been far beyond that state.

  “You promised …” Sulla wailed, “You promised to save me!” Sulla yelled as she kicked her legs and yanked on the chain to which the manacles were tethered.

  As the men rounded the top of the staircase, Sulla hooked her leg around a spindle and went down. While on the floor, the men struggling to unwind her leg, she saw Eugenia step out into the hallway and, with a weary shake of her head, turned and went back inside her room.

  Finally they were able to get Sulla off the floor and struggled with her down the staircase, holding her suspended by the shoulders, her feet kicking inches from the stairs. One of her kicks landed sharply on the knee of the man to her right, and he viciously struck her on the side of the head with his fist.

  Sulla’s head lolled to the side, stunned from the blow and feeling a tunnel of darkness engulfing her vision. Somewhere in the background of her fading consciousness, she heard the words the hooded men outside were chanting. It was the 11th Rule.

  “Thou shall bear no witness against any member of the white race on penalty of damnation of your eternal soul.”

  As they dragged her limp body out of the house and dumped her into the back of the waiting wagon, Sulla rolled her head to the side, looking out the back of the wagon at the Big House.

  The last thing she saw before succumbing to the blackness was Protector Askew standing in the doorway of the house, pressing his fingers to his lips and blowing her a kiss.

  CHAPTER 33

  ‌For the last five hours Olivia had existed in a state of terror unprecedented in her 32 years. She’d retreated to her room after receiving her father’s sanctimonious edict, where she’d railed and cried and broken things until her fury had transformed itself into fear.

  And in her fear she was beset with a multitude of questions without answers. How could she escape the S.R.? All the traditional means normally at her disposal, car or train, were foreclosed to her now.

  She could steal a horse, but aside from the major obstacle of getting across the heavily guarded border, she would have to travel over 100 miles during the night. And Olivia had overheard her father telling the head groomsman he had summoned to the house to put a guard at the stables tonight. So even if she managed to evade the guard, she had no doubt that her father would report the theft the moment it was discovered, along with the fact that his disowned, spymaster daughter was heading straight for the border.

  Next Olivia considered riding the trains along with the escaping slaves. All she’d have to do was retrieve one of the first aid kits she’d had the P.A.s distribute liberally around the protectorate.

  But E-Day was two days away, so she’d have to survive in hiding until then. She could get Joshua from the stables to help her. He could find her a place to hide and she could lead him to the first aid kits and to freedom. That had seemed her best hope. Until Bryce threatened to kill her.

  She had reached the point in her frantic planning where she was deciding what she should take with her to live in the rough for a couple of days when she heard what sounded like a wild animal’s death wail coming from downstairs.

  It was only after she heard a thunderous pounding on her door and Bryce’s bellowing voice that Olivia realized that Bryce was the source of the animal-like cry.

  “Olivia,” he roared. “Come out here now and face me Olivia! You never were much of a wife to me, dammit, but passing off some black bastard as my son … I’ll kill you, I swear to God I’ll kill you for that Olivia!”

  Olivia had slid the bolt home just as Bryce started kicking the door, and she feared it wouldn’t hold much longer when she heard her father coming down the hall.

  “Bryce, what you do with her once she’s out of my house is your business, but until that time I’ll thank you to stop kickin’ up a ruckus like a damned fool.”

  She listened with her ear to the door and heard Bryce being pulled away, his protests echoing down the hallway.

  All her planning faded away right along with Bryce’s receding voice, for now Olivia knew she’d be hunted down the minute she left the Protectorate House. Her father had just given Bryce license to murder his own daughter, all for a matter of so-called honor. And she knew Bryce would take the opportunity not only to vent his wounded masculine pride on her, but to ensure his place as successor to Askew’s property and position—that social climbing white trash.

  Considering all the abuse Olivia had gleefully heaped on Bryce throughout their brief and unhappy marriage, she could well imagine his murderous rage. She had never taken pains to hide the fact that she thought him idiotic, and ironically, like many a dunce Bryce had always prided himself on his intellectual prowess.

  And while she had to make a show of being discreet about her sexual adventures with the S.P.s for her father’s sake, she had no qualms about matching Bryce stride for stride in his licentious ways.

  She acknowledged that Bryce would gleefully avail himself of opportunistic, yet fully sanctioned, “murder for honor,” and while Olivia was sickened with terror, she was not in truth shocked into disbelief. No, she could all too easily picture Bryce in all his instigated self-righteousness, carrying out his threat with relish.

  Even as Olivia wrestled with the barbarity of her husband’s brutal scheming and her father’s blithe complicity in his own daughter’s murder, she heard a sound, rising uninvited from the background of her tormenting thoughts, like haunting Gregorian chants, and looked out her window down in the compound yard and beheld the ghostly specter of the Apostles.

  Olivia had seen only two Sinners’ Circles close up in all her life, but she’d never heard of the Apostles being unleashed on a white woman!

  She held her breath as she listened to the foot falls of two of them passing her door, then quietly slid the bolt back and peeked out at heir robed backs.

  They kicked in Sulla’s door and she heard the sounds of a violent struggle within.

  Olivia’s relief at not being the target of this viciousness was momentary. As much as she loathed Sulla, as long as she had been the object of her purest hatred, as vehemently as she had wished Sulla sold, now that it was actually happening she felt nothing but revulsion and despair.

  It was not so much th
at she had suddenly discovered a groundswell of newfound love for Sulla, rather it was that Olivia now truly realized that both she and Sulla were merely playthings in her father’s menagerie. Both dancing to his tune. Both endured only so long as they provided some form of sick entertainment. But as soon as they became an inconvenience, or dared to challenge his authority, they were both simply removed from the game like pawns from the chessboard.

  It would be as if they never existed—wiped from the rolls of humanity at his whim.

  As Olivia watched Sulla being dragged down the hall, screaming about the promise her father had made her, she felt as if her last chance of escaping this nightmare had been snatched away.

  It was all closing in on her. Relentlessly squeezing her into a corner—making her choose when there were no good choices. Leave the protectorate and trust herself to Bryce’s non-existent mercy. Stay and be savaged by the Apostles—for while she’d never heard of them being used on a white woman, she also knew her descent into the ranks of fair game would exactly coincide with her ouster from her father’s house.

  How had it come to this so fast? She had made the circuit from elation at the hope of a new life to despair at the ruinous state of the old inside of two days, and one part of her wanted to believe that if she just hung on—just survived a little while longer—the circuit would come round once more.

  But she knew better. She would never leave here alive. She would never see Patrick again, or make a new start, or even see another sunrise. She saw no way around it.

  All that was left was the “when” of it—and maybe the “how.”

  CHAPTER 34

  ‌Bryce lay sprawled across the divan in the sitting room, shirt pulled out of his pants, collar torn open and barely maintaining his grasp on the decanter of scotch he’d nearly drained. Knocking back shot after shot, Bryce had worked himself up into a rare state, marinating his wounded pride in drink while trying to muster the courage to kill his wife.