Page 35 of Empire of Shadows

Mrs. Linares let out an exasperated sigh as she slumped back against her chair and put her fingers to the bridge of her nose.

“Let me guess. The knife was like this?” She held up her hands roughly two feet apart.

“That’s right,” Ellie carefully agreed.

“Tall fellow? Beautiful eyes? No shoes?”

“Yes!” Ellie confirmed.

“That is Adam Bates,” Mrs. Linares said flatly. “Those are his pants.”

She nodded toward the end of Rosalita’s pole, which the girl had lifted out from the tub. A pair of khaki trousers were suspended from the end of it.

They looked familiar.

“He is a barbarian, but he is harmless,” Mrs. Linares continued. “They would not have made him assistant surveyor general for the colony if he were actually crazy.”

Ellie nearly choked on a sip of limeade. “I’m sorry… did you sayassistant surveyor general?”

“Hard to believe, I know,” Mrs. Linares confirmed wryly. “But he is actually very good at it. Before he came—oh, five or six years ago?—everything was a disaster. The surveyor general, he has no interest in going out into the bush, so he just sits in his office and hires whoever comes through the door to do the work for him. But they were all a bunch of grifters. Then Mr. Bates arrived and sorted it all out. He does most of the work himself—and now the others must get proper training and be certified. And he has fixed up all the maps so people actually know where they are going.”

Ellie was familiar with the job description. An assistant surveyor general would be responsible for plotting property lines and roads, charting land grants… and expanding the maps of the colony’s territories into its as-yet-unexplored regions.

With a silent, dawning horror, Ellie absorbed that the knife-wielding maniac was likely the single person in British Honduras with the most knowledge of the very places she needed to go.

No, Ellie thought furiously. Absolutely not. There had to be a better option.

But she wouldn’t find it if she didn’t ask. Ellie quickly mulled over her impression of Mrs. Linares. The woman seemed friendly, honest, and straightforward.

“That reminds me of something I was hoping to ask you about,” Ellie said carefully.

“Oh?” Mrs. Linares turned a sharp and curious gaze on her.

“I am actually trying to find a reliable guide to the interior. To the mountains, specifically,” Ellie explained.

“What do you want to go there for?” Rosalita blurted from her place by the tub.

Mrs. Linares arched a fine black eyebrow thoughtfully.

“Rosalita is being a bit abrupt,” the older woman chided with a pointed glare at her daughter.

Rosalita dropped the trousers back into the laundry vat with a wet thwap and began pounding at them again with the stick.

“But she is not wrong,” Mrs. Linares continued. “Even those who live here in the colony don’t go into the bush unless they are scouting for one of the logging companies or looking for a land grant—and nobody wants a land grant in the mountains. There’s nothing out there but monkeys and bugs.”

“I know it sounds a bit daft, but it’s really quite important,” Ellie pressed. “I need to find a guide who knows the land and who won’t try to take advantage of a woman traveling alone.”

Mrs. Linares exchanged a troubled look with her daughter.

“I am not sure that is such a simple thing to find,” she said. “I can think of two I might trust not to rob you or leave you out there, but neither of them would agree to do it for a woman—especially a bakra woman.”

“What about Mr. Bates?” Rosalita suggested, resting on her pole.

Ellie froze in her chair.

“He knows the territory better than anyone, and he is honest,” Mrs. Linares conceded, oblivious to Ellie’s reaction. “He thinks better of women than most… but I think even he would stop at bringing one into the back country. And anyway, he has his own duties to attend to.”

Ellie let her head fall against the chair, absorbing this with quiet frustration.

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