“He is only saying that Mr. Johansson must have worked to deceive everyone,” I said. To the sheriff, I added, “Johansson does have free Negroes in his possession. I know this because I paid for their release and sent them to the North myself. They must be freed. That is why I am here tonight.”
A collective gasp went up from the guests. A complaint by someone not present held little weight compared to a live witness, especially a white, obviously well-to-do witness. I was acutely aware of Smith behind me, whose shock was greater than anyone’s.
I didn’t dare look away from Cardiff’s narrowed eyes. I’d given him a way out, a way to put the blame on Johansson. But would he take it? Forty slaves and a look into past sales meant a considerable sum, but even if they uncovered hundreds of violations, this setback would mean relatively nothing to him. He had centuries to amass untold wealth.
His nostrils flared and anger briefly exploded from his mind, then disappeared just as suddenly as he controlled himself. I suspected the anger meant he wasn’t going to end this peacefully, but what remained to be discovered was if I could beat him. The Emporium were known for breeding combat Unbounded, and if that was his ability, my focus would be more a question of holding out until Ritter arrived than beating Cardiff myself. I had prepared for something like this confrontation the entire past century, but he might have also.
Outside, a sudden wind rattled the windows. An unnatural wind. The concentration on Cardiff’s face was unmistakable.
Maybe my chances of besting him weren’t so bad after all.
EVEN AS I HAD THE thought, the storm outside grew stronger. People stared at each other in confusion and worry. Two women and three men hurried to the windows. Murmurs started, and at least one woman fainted and had to be carried to a couch. Only Cardiff smiled, his eyes holding mine, his face arrogant and self-assured.
Assured as I was when I took someone’s memories or felt their emotions.
“Perhaps,” Cardiff said to the sheriff, “it would be wise to take this up another day. It appears there is a severe storm gathering.” As if to punctuate his words, the entire house shook.
I alone realized that it wasn’t just a chance storm. I’d heard of an Emporium agent with the ability to manipulate wind. He had caused us many deaths over the years, but we’d never identified the Unbounded with the gift.
Until now.
“Like the tornado five years ago!” a woman cried out. “Oh, dear. I have to get home to the children!” She grabbed her husband’s hand and hurried out of the parlor, heading toward the entryway.
Amusement filled Cardiff’s eyes. “I think it would be wise if we all secured our homes.”
Smith moved around me and lunged toward Johansson. “He’ll be coming with us, then.”
A sword suddenly blocked his way. “I think not.” Cardiff’s smile mocked us. I hadn’t seen him grab the sword, but I wasn’t surprised he had one. All Unbounded carried them close these days.
“Mr. Cardiff is right,” said the sheriff, retreating with his companions toward the entry. “We can deal with Mr. Johansson later. If it’s anything like that tornado five years ago, we have far more important things to concern us.”
More important than a stolen life, he meant. Because after all, the people I was trying to free were considered only a subspecies, while a tornado might kill whites. His implication made me furious despite the very real threat Cardiff represented.
The house rattled again more violently as guests hurried toward the entryway, many without pausing for their outerwear. I knew why. The tornado of 1840 had come just as suddenly, and more than three hundred lives had been lost, with numerous boats, plantations, and dwellings destroyed. The total deaths in reality were rumored to have been much higher because slave deaths often went unreported.
Smith retreated from the sword but returned immediately with a poker he’d grabbed from the fireplace. Johansson cowered behind Cardiff. “Now, now,” said the sheriff, “we will settle this later.” I had to admire Smith’s courage, even though he was ultimately not a match for Cardiff.
From outside there was a huge crash and several women closest to me screamed and tried to force their way into the growing crowd spilling from the parlor into the entryway. At the same time, slave women flooded in from the back hallway where I’d gone looking for Frances earlier. Their eyes were wide with terror, and a few of the younger ones sobbed. I spied Frances among them and gladness spread through me. I would take her to her family, and tomorrow Smith and I could worry about the others.
“What do we do, Massa?” a slave asked Johansson.
“Git out of here!” Johansson spat. A stream of curses followed as he lashed out at the nearest woman, who shrank away from him.
In the midst of the slaves, I spotted the girl from the barn at the same time she saw Smith. Keeping as far from Johansson as she could, she ran toward us. “Please, the servants say we’re goin’ t’die!”
Smith had already begun moving toward her when Cardiff leapt forward, his sword singing through the air. Time seemed to slow as I turned, watching it slice with amazing precision.
Smith! I thought.
My own short sword was abruptly in my hands, and I moved to counter, even as the sword struck the slave girl. The blade sliced through her neck, coming out the other side. She took another step before her head rolled off her shoulders and her body collapsed. Her life force vanished.
Horrified screams echoed from both the whites and the slaves.
“Get back to the kitchens!” Cardiff shouted at the slaves. “Go, you filthy, blood-sucking wretches! You belong to me, and if you don’t leave now I’ll slaughter the lot of you!”
The crowd of whites looked toward the sheriff and his men, but we all knew there wasn’t a court in the land that would convict Cardiff, especially if his Virginia contacts could provide evidence that the girl had been in cahoots with abolitionists.
With a great swelling, the slaves and the guests fled from both sides of the room, until only Cardiff, Johansson, Smith, and I remained. Several heartbeats passed as the wind howled and banged at the windows.
Cardiff smiled and raised his sword toward Smith.
This time I was there first, blocking him, move for move. He was good, but I’d been trained by better. His attention was also on the wind, as he controlled and manipulated it.
“Renegade,” he said with a sneer.
I smiled. “Took you long enough to figure it out.”
His only answer was a knife that sailed toward Smith where he grappled with Johansson. The knife dug into Smith’s shoulder and he cried out. Johansson took the opportunity to scurry away, but Smith tripped him with the poker and jumped on him, fists pumping.
Cardiff laughed, and outside the storm grew louder. He fumbled for another weapon inside the folds of his coat, but this time I stopped him with my own throwing knife. I’d always been rather good, but I missed his throat by several inches, partially embedding the knife instead in his upper chest. Not a fatal wound, unfortunately, but one that would slow him down.
He swiped at the knife, pulling it out, then attacked with fervency, as though determined to beat me back with sheer determination and the larger size of his sword. But he was tiring. I just had to play it out long enough to let his wounds and his efforts with the storm weaken him further. From the corner of my eye, I could see that Smith was on top of Johansson, tying his hands behind his back. In a moment he’d be free to help me with Cardiff.
Or maybe to get in the way.
From the back hallway, I sensed another life force approaching the parlor. Reaching out, I saw Frances—and that she gripped a heavy cast iron frying pan in her stiff hands. I needed to end this dance before either she or Smith were hurt.
“Hold!” Cardiff sidestepped my lunge. “Truce,” he said. “I let you and this mortal go free. I’ll also stop the wind.” Not stupid, he had come to the same conclusion I had about his likelihood of beating me.
I gave a very
unladylike snort. “That’s assuming I believe you, which I don’t.” With a series of furious blows, I had him scrambling backwards. “And assuming this mortal means something to me, which he doesn’t.” This I said so he wouldn’t waste energy killing Smith. The sentiments, though not typically Renegade, should be close enough to his own to be believed.
“Then the whole town dies!” Cardiff shouted.
Wind exploded the windows, punching into the room and stealing my breath. The doors banged open and then shut and open again. The pins ripped from my hair, throwing the strands across my vision. My skirts billowed and wrapped around my legs. Pictures flew off the wall, lanterns fell over, food sailed through the air. The wind screamed and howled liked damned souls in hell, and I had to fight not to clap my hands over my ears.
Yet I noticed the flames from the oil lamps blew out before they could light anything on fire and the heavier furniture stayed in place. Whatever else he did, Cardiff planned on saving his house.
I glanced toward Smith and saw with relief that he was holding his own. Relief because I did care very much about him; I’d been caring about him and his family for over a hundred years.
The violent turbulence eased slightly as Cardiff again went for the weapon in his coat. I was faster. Despite the wind, my pistol rang out, the ball flying true and clear to carve a hole in his forehead. He toppled forward, missing Smith and Johansson by a few inches.
Instantly, the wind ceased.
I reached out mentally, searching for Frances. She was still in the hallway, frightened and hugging the ground, if the glow from her life force was any indicator, but she was not in any pain.
Dropping the pistol, I stepped closer to Cardiff, raising my sword in both hands. Never again. He was too dangerous to let regenerate.
“What are you doing!” Smith yelled, jumping to his feet and grabbing my hands. “He’s already dead.”
“No, he’s not!” I shouted. “And if I don’t do this, you and everyone in this town will be dead before the week is over.”
“What are you talking about?” His face was close to mine, his eyes disbelieving.
“The wind—listen! It’s gone. It was him! I know you don’t understand it, but believe me when I say he was responsible. He’s not going to sit back while we take what he sees as his property. He’ll make sure everyone pays. In fact, your sheriff and his friends are already as good as dead if I don’t do this. Now let me go!”
Horror filled Smith’s face. Whether because he believed me, or because he decided I was crazy, I wasn’t sure. He released me and stepped back. I brought the sword down hard, slicing through Cardiff’s neck and severing it. Blood spilled onto the ground. One focus point to go and he’d never be coming back.
As I moved into position, my foot sent his head rolling to a nearby couch, where the slave girl’s head had been wedged by the wind. My stomach roiled. It was my fault she was dead. Mine and Smith’s. If we had never gone to the barn, she might still be alive.
I raised the sword again, but in the next instant hands were taking it from me. Ritter. I recognized his emotions of fury and regret—surface emotions he let me see.
“I’ll take it from here,” he said in my ear. Now his surface emotions were gone, tucked behind the block in his mind with the rest that was buried too deeply for me to ever glimpse. Maybe I never wanted to.
I relinquished the sword because cutting through a man’s torso was far more difficult and Ritter was better equipped than I was, both in strength and weaponry. “What took you so long?” I said.
“Ran into a minor complication with some other slavers. Locke is still finishing up.” His eyes took in the room. “Not as complicated as here, it appears.”
I shrugged. “I found Frances.”
Finally a hint of a smile. “Never doubted that you would. Who’s he?” He jerked his head at Smith.
“An ally of sorts. Don’t kill him.” This last I said only half-jokingly.
“Maybe you’d better get him out of here then.” Ritter sounded deadly serious. I laughed.
Smith was hauling Johansson to his feet as we talked. I sensed he wasn’t happy about my exchange with Ritter, but sometimes with Ritter it was better safe than sorry. Because if Ritter thought for even a second that Smith was a danger, he would kill him without thinking twice about it.
“Stay here,” Smith said to Johansson, shoving the man into a chair. Then he turned to me. “This must be the guy from your letter.” His gaze flicked over Ritter, his eyes hard.
“Letter?” I had no idea what Smith was talking about.
His tone relaxed and the hint of amusement was back, which impressed me quite a bit with Ritter still glaring in his direction. “My competition,” Smith explained. “The man who wrote that letter you were reading so intently at the hotel.”
“Oh, that letter.” I wanted to laugh at the absurdity. “No, this is a colleague of mine. We work, uh, in the Underground Railroad together. About the letter. There’s something—”
At that moment Johansson jumped to his feet and ran for one of the windows, throwing himself through it. With an exclamation, Smith sprang after him.
I sighed. “Well, go on,” I told Ritter, nodding at Cardiff’s body.
“Hadn’t you better go after them?”
“Johansson’s hands are tied. Smith should be able to take care of himself.” The words didn’t exactly match my feelings about him, but Cardiff was too dangerous to ignore. As the leader of our little band of Renegades, my duty was clear: I had to take care of him now.
I readied the black bag from the supplies Ritter had brought, while he made sure Cardiff was permanently dead. Afterward, I went to find Frances. It took time convincing her the danger was past and to pry the frying pan from her hand, but that was just as well. When I returned with her to the parlor, Cardiff’s remains were already packed away. Ritter had also found a blanket and placed it over the slave woman, her head lying where it would have been in life. Sometimes he surprised me.
Blood stained the floor and the scent was overwhelming, but my stomach didn’t heave. A tight numbness had filled me, which was almost as bad because it reminded me of my baby. Of losing Wymon and Eva. How many times would I have to battle evil in my very long lifetime? And if I didn’t fight it, who would? As long as the Emporium existed, Renegades were the only force standing between them and the enslavement of all mortals, regardless of the color of their skin.
“I’ll make them pay for what they did to her,” Ritter’s voice grated against my ears.
He thought he was referring to the dead girl, but I knew he really meant it for the woman he was to have married. He carried her ring and those of his mother and little sister on a gold chain around his neck. He was never without it.
“Don’t blame yourself,” I told him. “Neither of us could have stopped it.” I let a few seconds go by before adding, “And we both know that death is not the worst thing a person can suffer.” Saying it somehow eased the numb feeling in my chest.
He didn’t reply, and I had no idea if the words had helped him, but I would keep at it. Someday I would get through. And someday he would find another reason besides revenge to give his life purpose. I knew because I was finally ready to find another reason for myself.
Smith came in then, the proper way through the door, pushing a bruised Johansson in front of him. Smith bent momentarily to peek under the blanket at the slave girl, his mouth set grimly. I wanted to tell him it wasn’t really his fault, but I knew it wouldn’t help.
“I need to take Johansson to the sheriff,” Smith said, “but I have no idea what I’m going to say about Cardiff.” His chin jerked toward the black bag at Ritter’s feet, which looked more like a bundle of laundry than the remains of a man, though clearly Smith deduced the contents. The bag wouldn’t leak, but the blood already on the floor and the disarray caused by the wind made the place gruesome.
“There isn’t going to be any reporting of anything,” I said. “Cardi
ff was one of ours”—so to speak—“and he’s our responsibility. The local authorities wouldn’t have been able to hold him long anyway.” It wasn’t the time to explain the politics of Unbounded to him, or how they manipulated the mortal world.
Smith regarded me for several quiet seconds. “Okay, I can live with that. What about him?” He glanced over at where Johansson stared dejectedly at the blood-stained floor. “He saw it all. I still need to take him in so I can free some of the people he’s taken. But he’s bound to talk.”
“He’s coming with us,” Ritter said.
I nodded. “And his so-called cargo. All of it.”
Smith stared, and Johansson looked unnerved. “You can’t do that!” Johansson growled. “They’re mine.”
“Not anymore,” I said. “You lost that right—if it ever was one—the minute you began abducting free people.”
“They ain’t people!” he roared.
I nodded at Ritter, and with a blurred motion, he crossed the room and slammed Johansson against the wall, a knife at his throat.
I moved closer until my face was near Johansson’s. “Listen and listen good. I’m only going to say this once. They are people, and you will never own or sell another one again. Ever. I will know if you do, just as I know about the many times you’ve abused and forced yourself on their women, and the fact that your own grandmother was a slave.”
He gasped at that and pulled away from me into Ritter’s knife. Three beads of blood sprang up along the edge of the blade. “If you so much as raise another hand against a Negro for any reason,” I continued, “I’m sending Ritter here after you. Now where are your papers for the people you’ve got up at the Forks of the Road? You’re going to set every man, woman, and child free, or I will kill you myself. Like I did Cardiff. But without the bullet. And far more slowly.”
He nodded, eyes wild, his entire body shaking. Ritter released him with a hint of disappointment.
“Time to leave,” I announced.
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