"Didn't he run?" Annette said in amazement.
"Sometimes people are stupid," Luisa Javier said. "Sometimes they're smart—for a while. Not smart enough, usually, though, and not for long enough. Now it's payback time." That sounded more vengeful than Annette felt most of the time. Today? Today she liked it fine.
230
Twelve
After Khadija disappeared, the people who ran the manor tried to act as if everything were normal. Maybe they even made most of the slaves think so. Not Jacques. Maybe the way they'd grilled him made him notice changes in routine more than he would have otherwise. Or maybe the guards just weren't so good at hiding how worried they really were.
They kept going up and down the stairs to the subbasement room where the transposition chamber came and went. They hadn't done that very much when things were running smoothly. They didn't look happy when they came up, either. Something down there was wrong, badly wrong.
Jacques was tempted to ask the guards what it was. He fought the temptation. Fighting temptation was supposed to be a virtue. Jesus and Henri would have approved of it. That wasn't why he did it, though. He didn't want to make the guards pay special attention to him again. The last time they did, he'd got away with one needle stuck in his arm. He had the feeling he wouldn't be so lucky if they glanced his way again.
Going out to work on the road seemed a relief. The guards swaggered and strutted. "Let's see the savages bother us now," one of them said. "This time, we taught them a lesson they'll remember for years."
No doubt he was right. But the locals had done damage here, too. The almonds and the olives and the vines and the rest of the crops would be a long time getting over their raid. If this were an ordinary farm, one that depended on what it grew, Jacques would have worried about going hungry. But it got food from elsewhere, as it got people from elsewhere.
Or it had. Jacques wasn't so sure it did any more. By the way the guards kept going down those stairs, maybe things had stopped coming. Did that mean just food? How much ammunition for their repeating muskets did they have? If the locals tried attacking again, could the guards rout them so easily? If they couldn't, what would happen then? Nothing pretty—Jacques was sure of that.
But he was also sure the locals wouldn't be back right away. For all he knew, they were still running. The copper-skinned tribes across the Atlantic couldn't face the muskets and cavalry the Muslims and his own people were using against them. The fight here was even more unfair.
For all the guards' bluster, Jacques wasn't the only slave who saw things had changed. "Why are they frightened?" Dumnorix asked him when none of the men in mottled clothes stood close by. "They took you in. They did things to you. What did you learn?"
He wanted to rise up against the guards. Jacques saw that right away. Dumnorix was a warrior, first, last, and always. If he saw a chance, he would fight—and he was looking for that chance.
"You know how you came here?" Jacques said. Dumnorix nodded. Jacques thought hard before he spoke again. He and Dumnorix didn't have enough words in common to make talking about the transposition chamber easy. "They, uh, bring things here in that box."
"Yes, yes." Dumnorix sounded impatient. "And so?"
"If that box is, uh, broken, then they cannot bring things," Jacques said. "Cannot bring . . ." He broke down. Dumnorix didn't understand about bullets. In a lot of ways, he was a savage himself. Jacques tried again: "Cannot bring arrows for thunder-sticks. Cannot bring food."
Dumnorix's eyes were the blue of a lake under a summer sky. They flashed fire now. "We can take them!" he said. His hands tightened on the handle of his shovel till his knuckles whitened. It might have been the neck of the guard he hated most.
"Jesus and Henri, be careful!" Jacques whispered. "They still have, uh, arrows." He hoped Dumnorix was following him. The redhead would get himself killed if he didn't watch out. He'd get a lot of other people killed, too. "For all I know, more will start coming tomorrow, too."
"Maybe." But Dumnorix didn't believe it. Jacques could see that. Those fiery blue eyes flicked towards a guard. "They don't think they can get more. Otherwise they wouldn't be so worried."
He might have been right. Even if he was, what difference did it make? "They aren't worried about us," Jacques said. "They're worried about enemies from their own people."
"So much the better." No, Dumnorix wasn't listening. All he could think of were battles—battles with him as a hero, as the hero. "We can take them by surprise."
"How?" Jacques asked. Dumnorix waved that aside. It didn't bother him a bit. Jacques wanted to take his own pick and bash the redheaded man over the head. He wondered if even that would help. He wondered if anything would.
When Annette got back to the United States, all she wanted to do was pick up the pieces of her life. She knew she would have to start at Ohio State a year later than she'd planned. Mom and Dad had made sure she could do that. It wasn't her fault she'd missed the start of the semester. She'd learned some things at the manor she never would have at the university. Whether they were things she wanted to know . . .
She wondered what she would do with herself till fall semester rolled around again. That turned out not to be a problem. Wondering, in fact, turned out to be foolish. Every police agency in the country seemed to want to talk to her.
It had been snowing in Ohio. When her plane landed in Seattle, it was raining instead. Variety, she thought. A cop met her in the baggage-claim area. She would have recognized him as a cop even if he weren't holding a sign with her name printed on it. He was built like a slightly undersized linebacker. He wore a suit that would have been almost stylish five years earlier. He looked like a man who'd seen too many nasty things, and who knew he would be seeing more.
"Miss Klein?" he said as she came up. She nodded. He held out his hand. "I'm Kwame Daniels."
"Pleased to meet you," Annette said.
"And you." He smiled, his teeth very white against his dark skin. The baggage carousel started going round and round. "Now we see if your suitcase ended up in San Francisco or Singapore."
"You know what? I don't care," Annette said. "As long as I'm back where I belong, I'm not going to jump up and down about the luggage."
"You're smart," Detective Daniels said. "Knowing what's important, that helps a lot. Too many people get all hot and bothered over stuff that doesn't matter." Annette plucked her bag off the carousel and pulled up the handle. He asked, "Shall I take you to your hotel first, or do you want to get right to it?"
"I'd like to get it over with, if that's all right," Annette said.
"My captain told me, however you want it, that's how we do it," Daniels said. "You're doing us a favor being here."
"No, I don't think so," Annette said as they started for the parking structure. "What I went through, what those other poor people are going through . . . That needs smashing. How could I look at myself if I didn't do everything I could to set it right?"
"You get no arguments from me." Daniels popped open a big umbrella to keep them dry while they crossed the street.
The police station to which he drove Annette looked like a fortress. Inside, though, it might have been almost any office building. Men and women sat at desks. They talked on the telephone. They sent and read e-mail. They typed or dictated reports. In most offices, though, very few of the workers would have been armed.