Liberating Atlantis Read Free Page A

Atlantis had passed since gave much sign of it.
    There had been uprisings, here in the southern parts of Atlantis where slavery remained a legal and moneymaking operation (assuming there were differences between the two). Planters and farmers and white townsfolk put them down with as much brutality as they needed, and a little more besides to give the slaves second thoughts next time. Once or twice, the Atlantean army helped local militias smash revolts. What were the odds the army wouldn’t do the same thing again?
    Frederick sighed one more time. You couldn’t win, not if you were colored. You couldn’t even break even—not a chance. And they would hunt you with hounds if you tried to run off to the north, where Negroes and copperskins were free. They weren’t sure to catch you, but they had a pretty good chance.
    He’d never had the nerve to flee. Things weren’t too bad where he was. He could tell himself they weren’t, anyhow. The top circle of hell wasn’t supposed to be too bad, either. Good pagans went there, didn’t they? The only thing they were missing was the presence of God. Frederick nodded to himself. Yes, that about summed things up.
     
    The first carriage rattled up to the big house before ten in the morning. A black man in clothes as fancy as Frederick’s drove it. A frozen-faced Negro in an even more splendid getup—he looked ready to hunt foxes—rode behind. When the carriage stopped, he jumped down and opened the door so Veronique Barker could descend.
    Like Clotilde Barford, she was from an old French family that had married into the now-dominant English-speaking wave of settlers who’d swarmed south after France lost its Atlantean holdings ninety years before. Henry Barford wasn’t a bad fellow. By everything Frederick had ever heard, Benjamin Barker was a first-class son of a bitch.
    Sure enough, Clotilde had changed into her new gown by the time Veronique arrived. The mistress swept down to greet her guest in blue tulle and a cloud of rosewater almost thick enough to see. “So good to have you here, dear!” she trilled. Then she switched to bad French to add, “You look lovely!”
    “Oh, so do you, sweetheart,” Veronique answered in the same language, spoken about as well. Frederick could follow them—his own French was on the same level. Here in the southern Atlantean states, most people had at least a smattering, though English gained year by year.
    Arm in arm, chattering in the two languages, Clotilde and Veronique went into the big house. Veronique thought nothing of leaving her driver and footman standing there in the hot sun. Frederick’s mistress probably would have been more considerate, but there were no guarantees.
    Pointing, Frederick told the driver, “Why don’t you put the carriage under those trees? Horses can graze there if they want, and they won’t cook.”
    “I do that,” the driver agreed. “Marcus and me, we won’t cook in the shade, neither.”
    “That’s a fact,” said the footman—presumably Marcus.
    “Before too long, we’ll bring you out something to eat, something to drink,” Frederick promised.
    “Got me somethin’ to drink.” The driver pulled a flask from one of his jacket pockets, then quickly made it disappear before anyone white could see it. “Food’d be mighty good, though. When the white ladies gits together, all the niggers who takes ’em gits together, too.”
    “That’s a fact,” Marcus said again. When he reached into his pocket, he pulled out a pair of dice instead of a flask. “Me, I aim to head on back to Master Barker’s with some of their money.”
    “Good luck,” Frederick said, wondering how much luck would have to do with the dice games ahead. Maybe those were honest ivories. Then again, maybe the footman had reason for his confident smile. Frederick decided he wouldn’t risk any of his small, precious hoard of coins against Marcus.
    Odds were he’d be too busy to get the chance even if he wanted it.