Page 138 of Empire of Shadows

“It’s complicated,” Adam replied.

“C’est une femme,” Lessard returned flatly as though the connection betweenwomanandcomplicatedshould have been obvious.

“Any particular reason you’re being marched around here with a gun at your back?” Charlie asked mildly.

Adam rubbed his face tiredly. “It’s a long story.”

Lessard frowned at the empty sheath on Adam’s belt.

“Where’s your knife?” he demanded.

“Your bosses took it,” Adam replied. “Got my Winchester, too.”

“My condolences, mon ami,” Lessard replied.

It sounded like he actually meant it. Then again, it didn’t surprise Adam that Lessard might consider losing one’s machete to be a bit like the death of a beloved aunt.

Adam couldn’t entirely blame him. He’d had aunts he cared less about than his knife.

“Lessard and I thought we best check in,” Charlie said with another puff on his cigarette. “Won’t be long before our boy Staines finds out nobody was asking for him, so we’d best check quick.”

“Who’s running this line?” Adam asked.

Charlie pointed across the camp with his cigarette. The ember picked out a tall, lanky Jamaican with a precise mustache.

“That’s Bones,” Charlie said.

“Haven’t heard of him,” Adam noted.

Adam’s lack of familiarity with the man was worth noting. He had been pretty sure he knew everybody in the colony who might run a caravan like this. After all, there were only about six of them—himself and Charlie included.

“He’s former West India Regiment, fresh out. Knows his business well enough, but not much for a joke,” Charlie explained.

“How about these guys with the guns?” Adam pressed.

“Company men,” Charlie returned flatly.

There was only one company that mattered around here—the British Honduras Export Company. Run by a board of executives who did their decision-making from cushy chairs in a London office, the Company owned the vast majority of the land outside Belize Town and claimed a monopoly on logging rights. Most of the local colonial officials were solidly in the Company’s pocket—and it didn’t shy away from using less-than-scrupulous methods to expand its land claims or remove obstacles to timber harvesting… obstacles like some of the local Maya.

The Company’s hired guns weren’t chosen for their high morals. They got the job because they didn’t ask questions, and because they said yes to whatever needed to be done.

“Great,” Adam grumbled.

“Except for the bakra,” Lessard added helpfully.

“What bakra?” Adam demanded.

“What bakra do you think?” Lessard shot back. “The one that looks like somebody dropped him a few times when he was a baby.”

Adam scanned the camp. His gaze locked onto one of the only other white men in the vicinity. He looked to be around twenty. He was a few inches shorter than Adam, with a scraggly blonde mustache and blue eyes that bulged a little.

“That guy?” Adam asked.

“Pickett,” Charlie filled in with a tired sigh. “Boy falls a little short of Company standards.”

“Probably because he spawned from all your Confederates marrying their cousins,” Lessard cheerfully offered.

Adam was familiar with the local Confederates. A contingent of them had landed in British Honduras after the war. They set up new plantations in the Toledo district. Though slavery had been against the law in the colony for about a hundred years, Adam figured the rebel sons had been drawn south by a combination of cheap land, lax indentured labor laws, and a general terror of sleeping just down the road from the justifiably angry people whom they and their ancestors had once owned.

---