Querry ran to Reg, who still held Frolic’s sword. Reggie drew deep, ragged breaths while Querry approached him. Querry wasn’t used to being the one being protected. He was the protector, not the one who had to calm his companions afterward. Nonetheless, Querry tried to soothe his lover, encouraging him to release the weapon. Reg’s limbs trembled with anger or fear, Querry couldn’t know which, but Reg released the sword. “This is disgusting,” Reg murmured, as if only now noticing the blood coating him.
“You saved us all, though,” Querry said with a slight chuckle.
“I guess I did,” Reg answered as he collapsed to the ground. Frolic crouched beside him and guided Reg’s head to rest against his shoulder.
Starling and Teezle emerged from the forest. They looked disheveled, scraped but not seriously injured. The baron looked very angry as he picked his way over the broken bodies of the crew.
“Querry,” Reg whispered. “I don’t know what came over me.”
“Hush.” Querry reached down and smoothed Reg’s bloody hair out of his face. “You were amazing. You did what needed done.”
A small black boy appeared from the gate and joined the diminished party. Frolic gave Querry a significant look, and when Querry nodded, he left Reg in Querry’s care and hurried to speak with the child.
“You fought like some kind of legendary warrior,” Querry told Reg. Querry’s tone was husky with arousal. “It was—” Querry paused to lick his lips. “—impressive.”
Reg blushed bright red. “I just did what needed done, like you said.” He offered Querry a small smile, and Querry kissed the corner of Reg’s mouth at the only spot free of gore.
The native boy offered the mercenaries water as what was left of the party regrouped. Some of the sailors helped their wounded comrades toward the compound, while others dragged the bodies of their dead friends. Starling and Teezle examined the remains of the Boar-man, harvesting bits of the monster’s corpse. Querry curled his lip. He made sure Reg recovered, helped him clean up, and when Frolic rejoined them with Corny in tow, Querry stood back while they embraced. Starling chuckled, drawing Querry’s attention.
“You find something about this funny?” Querry stalked toward the baron and his faerie steward, wanting answers. The Boar-man encounter seemed like too much of a coincidence. Starling glared at Querry, interrupting the thief’s approach. The two men stared each other down for a painful moment. Starling shook his head once. Querry decided in that instant he was going to punch that smug look off the baron’s face, no matter what the consequences.
He took one more step before the pain shot through his limbs. He gritted his teeth and took another step. This time the pain brought him to his knees. Querry was sweating and panting. One punch, he thought. Just one. The bastard deserves it. He managed to stand, and his gaze fell on Tom Teezle, who wore a look of concern mixed with curiosity. Querry pleaded with his eyes, and the faerie shrugged almost imperceptibly and shook his head slowly. Despite his every instinct against it, Querry decided to abandon his current plan of action, and as soon as he finished the thought, the pain evaporated like it was never there. He’d get his chance. Reg would find the loophole in the contract, and Querry would get his chance.
Their young ambassador grabbed Querry’s arm, drawing his attention from the baron and interrupting his vengeful train of thought. Reg, Frolic, and Corny joined him. Querry was relieved when the scrawny black boy led them to and through the gate to the settlement. His relief quickly faded when he saw dozens of men in the towers lining the walls, their rifles trained on the diminished party. The gate closed behind them.
Chapter 14
THE SUN rose over the jagged edge of the barricade as Reg, Querry, Frolic, and the rest of them stepped into the yard. The pale, pink light of early morning touched their backs as probably fifty guns clicked above them. It all felt unreal to Reg, like they couldn’t really be here, halfway across the world, covered in the blood of a monster with men ready to shoot them. It was all so ridiculous he almost wanted to laugh. The thick, mossy logs, muddy ground, and simple, wooden buildings looked as fuzzy and insubstantial in the dawn as if they’d walked into an impressionist’s painting.
Out of habit, Reg looked over at Querry, expecting Querry to do something, to save them somehow. He quickly realized not even Querry could stop a bullet, though, and they had nowhere to go for cover. Reg pushed his way to the front of the group and raised his hands above his head. He looked up at the men in the towers, squinting to get a better view of them among the shadows still clinging to the walls. “We are not your enemies!” he called out. “We were shipwrecked and came here looking for help.”
Only the twitter of birds in the trees beyond the compound answered him, and Reg cleared his dry throat to speak again. He had to make these people understand they had nothing to fear from his group, or they’d pick them off one by one, and nothing would save them. It might not save them anyway; these people could be savages for all he knew. Still, he had to try.
Lord Starling pushed past Reg as he decided what to say. Even dirty and disheveled, the baron exuded confidence and his ever-present dash of arrogance. “I am Lord Gavindale Starling, Baron of Greymont and Sele, and also the Viscount du Marches. I wish to speak with whoever is in charge here.”
“Are you a Belvaisian?” one of the men yelled down.
“I am an Anglican noble,” Starling answered.
“We ain’t impressed,” another man called in a lilting accent Reg couldn’t identify. The rest of them laughed.
“I’m not asking you to be impressed. I’m merely requesting you behave like civilized human beings and cease pointing your weapons at us.”
“And if we don’t?”
“I may take offense,” Starling said, provoking more laughter from the men. One of them even hurled a large, green fruit at the baron with a whoop and an insult. Starling calmly raised his hand, and the strange melon stopped in midair and hung there for a moment before exploding and showering the ground with its pulpy, pink innards. The laughter above them ceased abruptly.
“I wish to speak to the man in charge,” the baron repeated.
A few minutes later, a gate similar to the one they’d entered swung open in front of them. Reg noted that the builders of the fortress had designed it much like a medieval castle, complete with a killing field between the outer wall and the inner. The realization did little to reassure him, and he wove through the throng to get near Querry and Frolic again.
Reg didn’t expect what awaited them on the other side of the second wall. He’d envisioned crude shacks, maybe even tents, not the rows of well-built, if simple houses. Though the sun had just come up, men, women, and children busied themselves with daily chores as they might in any small village. As they followed the men who had opened the inner gate, Reg observed almost a proper city. Thousands probably called it home. Most of them were black, while a few looked like native people. Still, it felt distinctly military, with armed men patrolling the streets and watchtowers rising above the shops and homes.
Finally, they reached what appeared to be a central square. A large, rectangular, wooden house, three stories high with green shutters around the windows and even some baskets of flowers hanging from the eaves, stood across the dirt path. It might have seemed welcoming if not for the eight men with rifles standing in front of it. Their company stopped while one of the men leading them talked to the guards. Then he departed, leaving them standing beneath the heat of the strengthening sun for what felt like an hour.
Then the door opened, and the guard closest to it motioned them in with a cant of his head. Starling led the way into the large, empty interior. Reg blinked to adjust his vision to the cool, gray shadow, and realized they stood in some sort of meeting hall lined with simple, wooden benches. Four men sat at a table near the front of the room, backlit by a large, bay window. Starling strode up to them, his shoes clicking against the polished wooden floor. As he approached, one of the men stood. Little distingu
ished him from the guards outside; he was tall and muscular, had a clean-shaven head and a large gun strapped to his back.
The baron introduced himself and extended his hand. The other man clasped it. “My name is Abiya e Silva. Welcome. You and your friends should sit down, and then we can speak.”
All of them pulled the benches closer to the table. Reg made sure he, Querry, and Frolic had a spot near the front, just to the left of Tom and the baron, where they would have a good view of the proceedings. “Just what is this place?” Reg asked.
Abiya e Silva looked a bit surprised. “You have not been here long,” he observed.
“No,” Reg said. “Our ship crashed about a day’s walk from here. We lost all of our supplies and came here in search of aid.”
The large man leaned his elbows on the table, angling his head closer to them. Reg could read no motivation or emotion in his large, dark eyes as he studied them. “You are here for our help?”
“That’s right,” Reg replied. “But you still haven’t answered my question. Why did you draw weapons on us when we arrived?”
“You really don’t know? Very well, then. We were simply being cautious. Our guards in the towers reported a group of armed, white men approaching the quilombo. That normally only means one thing.”
“Quilombo?” Starling asked.
Abiya nodded. “It is what we call settlements such as this. All of us are runaway slaves.”
Reg gasped with sudden understanding. He remembered reading vehement editorials against the slavery on the coffee and sugar plantations here. He also knew many opposed it, not for moral reasons, but because the cheap labor harmed profits from plantations on the Anglican island colonies. He’d had no idea the runaways had formed such elaborate garrisons as this one.
“I assure you, you have nothing to fear from us,” Starling said. “We are on an archaeological expedition and have come here in the hopes of trading for some supplies. If any of your people are interested, I may also have need of skilled help, particularly guides familiar with the area. I can pay quite handsomely.”
Reg wondered how the baron planned to get his hands on any funds in the middle of this jungle, but he said nothing.
“I am afraid we have no supplies to spare,” Abiya said. “We are not as cruel as those we have fled from, however. We can offer you water, a meal, and a night of rest. After that, I’m afraid we must ask you to leave.”
Jack Owens stood up. “Pardon me, mate, but all of you seemed pretty well-armed. You honestly expecting us to believe you can’t spare any weapons?”
“We have cartloads of raw materials we can offer you in exchange,” Starling added.
“And knowledge,” Cornelia said. “If you have a place I can work, I can make you almost anything you want. Machinery, weapons—”
Their host held up a large hand. “I’m afraid we’re not interested.” The man to his right cupped a hand over his mouth and whispered in Abiya’s ear. The rest of them waited in tense silence as the leader’s eyes darted back and forth while he listened and considered. When his associate finished speaking, Abiya knit his brows and nodded. “We may be able to reach some sort of an arrangement after all.”
“Go on,” Starling said.
“There is a large plantation about thirty miles west of here, where hundreds of my people are kept in bondage. We have a small camp in the jungle outside it, and we have been trying for months to free them. To do that, we need to get weapons to that camp. The roads are watched, however, and we can’t sneak past. A white, Anglican lord and his party of explorers might, though.”
“If we do this for you, you’ll provide us with provisions, weapons, supplies, and a guide for our expedition?” Starling asked.
“We’ll offer you all we can spare.”
“Then we agree.”
“Wait,” Reg said. “I sympathize with this cause, truly I do, but what will happen to us if we’re caught?”
“We won’t get caught,” Querry said.
“I remember you saying that back in Thalacea,” Reg reminded him. “The authorities here might just shoot us and leave us to rot in the jungle. Who would ever know? Or, they might construe it as sanctioned, Anglican aid to a slave revolt. This could lead to hostility between the two empires. We can’t take this decision lightly.”
“I think we must help them,” Frolic said. “It’s absolutely abhorrent that these people are kept as slaves. If we can help them be free, we must do it!”
“Frolic, I agree with you,” Reg said. “But we won’t do them any good by getting ourselves killed. I think this is very risky.”
“It hardly matters,” Starling said. “If doing this will facilitate the expedition, then we’re going to do it. It’s my decision, and I’ve decided.”
“We won’t be going with you,” the first mate said. The other sailors voiced their agreement. “We’ve lost enough to this already. After we bury our dead comrades, me and the rest of the crew will head to the nearest port and hopefully find a ship we can serve aboard long enough to get us home, or at least away from here.” With that, the remainder of the Thalacean seamen stood and left the hall.
“We’ll need time to prepare,” Owens said. “More than a day. More like a week or two. We need to make repairs and get ourselves a plan.”
“Agreed,” Querry said. “We’ll need a way to transport these weapons.”
“We should be ready to leave after we make the delivery,” Starling said. “I have no wish to backtrack after losing so much time already. We should be ready to continue on, which means we’ll need our supplies before we leave.”
“Wait,” Abiya said in his musical cadence. “If we give you food and weapons now, what guarantee do we have you’ll make the delivery? What would stop you from just keeping our weapons for yourself?”
Starling looked absolutely affronted. “You have my word as a gentleman.”
The big man laughed. “Forgive me if that is not enough. I have known too many so-called gentlemen who were the vilest of liars and tyrants. No, I will send some of my men with you.”
“But that doesn’t make any sense,” Reg said. “Isn’t the whole point to send white men so you won’t be suspected?”
“I have a man I can send with you. The rest of my people will disguise themselves as your slaves. No one will doubt an Anglican lord owning half a dozen or so.”
“I beg your pardon, sir!” Starling trembled with rage. “Anyone who has ever met an Anglican gentleman will know we would never stoop to something as vile as claiming ownership over another human being. How repulsive!”
“What about Tom?” Frolic asked, his indignation matching the baron’s.
Starling spun on the ball of his foot and curled his lip at Frolic. “It’s hardly the same thing. Keep your mouth shut, boy.”
“No! It’s exactly the same thing—”
Querry’s bitter laughter interrupted Frolic’s words. “Pretentious, hypocritical bastards, the lot of you bleeding aristocrats. I grew up in slavery. Reg grew up in slavery before he was adopted. We’re your countrymen. Fellow Anglicans! Just because you don’t call it slavery doesn’t make it any better. Think about why me and Frolic are even here, you prick.”
“Need I remind you, Mr. Knotte, that I apprehended you and your companion robbing my villa? Don’t make me regret the mercy I showed you.”
“Mercy?” Reg practically shouted.
“You know what I think of your opinions, Mr. Whitney, so save your strength for the mission.”
“This is getting us nowhere,” Abiya said, looking rather amused at the spectacle they created. “In this country, there are two types of people: rich, white, landowners and their black slaves. No one will wonder over your country of origin. It is not in my nature to compel you. I would like to be generous and offer you goods freely, but you cannot imagine the suffering of my people. I must ask this of you. I have no more to say. Wait here, and I will send one of my people to show you to rooms so you can prepare.”
“I’ll need a place to work,” Corny said. “Er, that is, if I’m welcome to accompany you. I’d like to come along.”
Starling nodded once as if he didn’t care either way.
“I’ll see you have access to a shop and tools,” Abiya said as he stood from the table. He and the others left the hall.
Reg slumped back down on the bench, feeling utterly miserable. The blood drying on his shirt reeked in the intense heat. His empty stomach knotted up. He had a week to find a way out of Querry and Frolic’s contract, or they’d have no choice but to go along with this fool’s errand. He dropped his elbows to his knees and rubbed his temples. If only he could see something in the words, something he’d missed before…. Then they could join the sailors and try to find a way home. He shuddered to think what would happen to them if he failed. The idea of losing Querry and Frolic terrified him, but he didn’t know how to prevent it.
AS SOON as the leaders of the quilombo left the room, the others split into groups: the three mercenaries in a corner near the window and Starling and Tom near the door. Querry went to the benches where Reg, Cornelia, and Frolic sat talking in hushed tones. Reg looked devastated, and he flinched when Querry laid his hand across his shoulder.
“Reggie, we’re doing the right thing,” he said.
“I agree,” Frolic added.
“This is foolish,” Reg said, shaking his head and looking pale. “I agree with the sentiment, but we’re involving ourselves with something far beyond the scope of the original mission. I don’t like it, but it’s not like anyone ever listens to me. If you did, none of us would be here at all. We’d be home fixing dinner. Safe. Damn it, I hate this.”
Querry kneaded Reg’s tense muscles as he considered what to say to reassure him. He wasn’t worried about a handful of backwoods guards when he’d been eluding the constables in Halcyon since he’d been six. No way would these colonial fools outwit him. He wished Reg would give him a little more credit sometimes. What was he so worried about? Querry knew what he was doing.
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