Excerpt: The Abolitionist

Chapter 1
Katy limped as fast as she could—not fast enough. Amos swept his daughter up and ran for the other side of the street.
And then he fell, and Katy, shaken by the fall, pulled herself up and looked at her father and looked at the blood and the screaming crowd didn’t matter and the flying bullets and flashing knives didn’t matter, nothing mattered but the blood slowly staining her father’s back crimson red.
She might have knelt there forever, staring and staring and staring, if someone hadn’t stumbled by and grabbed her arm and pulled her to her feet and down the alley and behind a pile of trash, where a slave woman knelt with her child, wide-eyed and shivering.
Katy doubled over and cried. Until a bullet cracked into the bricks above their heads, raining dust and spinters down and making the baby scream. Then she remembered, and she stood up and looked around.
Northside Church couldn’t be far. If it was, they were dead. Beckoning, she limped down the alley, and the others followed. They caught up quickly, and the young man who had pulled her away from her father pulled her along again until the stone church towered above them.
There was a little wooden door in the back—unlocked. They hurried into the hallway beyond, and Katy rapped on the wall panels until they swung aside and the priest peered out. “Katy! Where’s your father? What’s—come in.”
There were already four people in the room—a family. The parents watched the newcomers with apprehensive eyes; the children slept, blissfully unaware.
“What’s happening out there?” the priest asked.
“Slave rebellion.”
“And your father?”
Katy’s face went blank. “Dead.” She slid down the wall to the floor and stayed there.

Closing the gates was the most important part of the plan; Julea supervised it herself. The portcullis at the Madelyn Gate slammed down in time, but the soldiers who guarded the Louis Gate were well-armed, well-trained, and determined to hold the gate until reinforcements arrived from the mainland. They were succeeding.
“Colin!” she yelled. “Colin!”
He appeared at her side. “Any ideas?”
“Can we get at the ropes holding up the portcullis?”
“Worth a try.” He headed through the mob for the gates.
Down at the other end of the bridge, a dark line was forming. Soldiers.
The portcullis had to go down, now. The fighting was thickest at the lower windows of the gatehouse, but at the upper windows a few gunmen were taking their pick of the crowd below.
Julea aimed and fired—one, two, three—and ran for the ladder some genius had found and leaned against the gatehouse tower.
Colin and others were swarming up the walls to the ropes and pulleys that held up the portcullis. It would be close; the soldiers were starting across the long bridge.
The men Julea had shot were dead, and the upper rooms were empty, but for the men and women who followed her up the ladder.
The winches for the portcullis were on the ground floor, but the ropes and pulleys were on this floor. Julea found them in an adjacent room and peered down the grille made for boiling oil. Colin was clinging to the other side of the grille, hacking away at one of the few ropes within reach—the rope for the drawbridge.
She shouted—the rope snapped. Colin smiled up at her, noticed the portcullis, still in place—
The solders, halfway across the bridge, began to fire—
Colin’s face went pale—blood trickled out the corner of his mouth—he fell.
Julea screamed.
The soldiers were advancing, the portcullis was still up. Julea drew her knife and sawed at the ropes, hacked at the rope, cut away at them until they parted and the iron grill slammed down in its grooves, between the city and its defenders.
The soldiers in the gatehouse were dead, and the gate could be held. Julea left and didn’t look back.
She found Lyno and Marcus in the square where it had started, surrounded by newly-freed slaves and torching the auction block. “The city, too,” she told them. “We’ve waited long enough for revenge, haven’t we.” She turned to the newly-freed and shouted. “Haven’t we!”
They roared in assent—all but one. He stood there, looking sad and a little frightened. “I don’t want revenge,” he said. “Not like this.”
Julea spat in his face and turned away.
“You’re no better than they are.”
She turned around. “You can forgive being beaten and sold because of your mother’s skin color? You can forget never having a choice about anything?”
“I—can try.”
“Go be a saint somewhere else.” Julea took the newly-lit torch Lyno handed her. “Come on, we’ve got a city to torch.”

Katy rubbed her red and swollen eyes and tried to smile at the others. It didn’t really work. “If the wagon’s still there, and the horse….”
“Don’t worry about it,” the father said.
“But if it doesn’t work, the rebellion, it’ll be even worse if you get caught.”
“Wait…”
They looked at the young man in the corner, the one who had come in with Katy.
“So, you’re fugitives?”
Katy winced. “Listen, um—”
“—Chris—”
“Chris. Thank you for saving my life.”
He smiled a bit. “Thank you for saving mine.”
“You’re welcome. And, yes, they’re on the Freedom Road.”
“Oh.”
Very little noise seeped through the walls, but in the little that did, they could hear gunshots.
“Now what?” Chris asked.
Katy drew a breath. “Why don’t we read the Psalms?”

The Madelyn Gate was barred. The Louis Gate was barred.
The Fish Gate, the tiny gate on the underpopulated eastern shore, wasn’t. The man leading the attack on the guard had been one of the first to die, and without leadership the assault disintegrated into skirmishes and half-hearted charges, easy prey to the disciplined soldiers who soon poured over the bridge and into the city.
The first Julea found out about it was when a regiment of soldiers came around the corner of the street where she and her followers were plundering and burning what had once been a quiet neighborhood.
They hadn’t expected a fight, though preparation might not have made any difference. They ran down the streets and through the alleys and away, growing in number as those they passed joined the retreat.
Lyno was still in the square; she and a host of others were watching the auction block burn. They had thrown the bodies of the auctioneer and the slavers into the fire, and the ghastly smell drifted through the square with the smoke.
“What is it?”
Julea gasped in the acrid smoke. “They got in the Fish Gate. Where’s Marcus?”
“North at the Peak Building. —Should we try to ambush them?”
Julea jumped up on what was left of a wagon. “Listen! LISTEN. Soldiers are coming from the west, and they’ll be here soon. Get into and behind the buildings and hide until they’re in the square. Then attack!”
Those who heard—most—obeyed, but half of the crowd was still in the square when the soldiers arrived, firing.
Julea lead the retreat, and the soldiers followed the seemingly panicked mass. When nearly a thousand soldiers were in the square, she turned and fired the few bullets she had left. No more? But she had her knife.
The freed slaves turned, teeth bared, knives and pistols out, at the enemy. They appeared from every building, from the smoky ruins by the still-blazing auction block, from behind the ruins of market stalls, and attacked for freedom and for vengeance.
They were winning.
More soldiers appeared, to the south this time. Julea pressed through the crowd to the newcomers from the south and stabbed and carved and whittled away and began to be afraid as the enemy’s numbers swelled and slaves fell all around her, dead and dying.
Then Marcus came from the north with his horde, and she hoped again.
Behind Marcus's band were more soldiers, these from the Peak Building. The square was a muddle of slaves and soldiers, yelling and killing and being killed. Julea tripped over a dead slave and her knife skittered away across the pavement. Somebody kicked it, and it flew out of sight.
The dead man had a revolver--empty. No knife, no sword--as if she'd know how to use it anyway. She pushed herself up and looked around for another weapon. All around her people were dying, as the disciplined soldiers hewed their way through the enraged, untrained rebels. They wouldn't win. They couldn't.
If Julea stayed, she would die. A soldier would kill her or they would catch her and put her on trial and execute her and all she would have accomplished was a little revenge and no freedom. Nothing would really change for the better.
She ran, stumbled and ducked to the edge of the square and sprinted down the alley. She wasn't the only one running, but she was one of the few.
By the time she got to the western wall, she was out of breath and her calves felt like they were on fire. As she stood by the stairs up the wall and gasped, she could still taste the sticky-sweet taste of burning bodies in her mouth.
How many stairs up? One, two, three. And on and on until she stood at the top and stared out over the city, the burning city. There were still gunshots coming from the square, but the city was quiet, quieter than she had ever known it to be, day or night.
On the other side of the wall, a tiny spit of land, and the river, flowing brown and thick.
She scrambled up on the crenellations and dove as far out as she could, hoping the river was deep. And it was, and she floated and swam down the river with the leaves and the branches and the other failed rebels, and she cried.

Chapter 2
The city was silent.
They sat in the little hidden cellar and waited. The children slept. Katy slept. Chris stared at his hands and the others stared at each other and listened for gunshots, footsteps, anything. Anything at all.
Above them, soldiers scoured the city for survivors. Thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, were dead, and almost as many slaves as free. Smoke rose over Old Island City, older today than it had ever been.
Hours since the last noise, they heard footsteps ahead, and someone pulled the latch to the secret door.
It swung open, and everyone in the room sighed when a scruffy, tired-looking man appeared.
“Is it over?”
“Yes.”
Katy stirred. “When will it be safe to leave?”
“To leave?”
She nodded toward the children.
“The Lewis and Madelyn Gates are closed, and the Fish Gate is guarded.”
“Is the Peak Building safe?” Chris asked. “My parents were there.”
“You’re lucky, then.”
Chris smiled, and Katy tried.

Wilbur, the man who had found them, led them a slow, roundabout way to the wagon, avoiding the street where Amos Coffin lay. Katy leaned on his arm and looked at the city and felt her eyes blur with hot tears. When they arrived at the wagon, Wilbur promised to return and left, heading in the direction they came.
The horse was alive, and the wagon, though emptied of corn, had remained where it was. Katy released the horse and ran over it with her hands, then turned to Chris. “You won’t say anything, will you?”
He looked up from studying the ground. “What?”
“The family we hid with—they ran because their master was going to sell the children away from their parents.”
“Oh.”
“What I mean is, you know now that the room in the church, and the rest of us, we’re part of the Network. Please don’t turn us in.”
Chris scuffed his feet on the cobblestones. “I don’t like it.”
Katy bit her lip.
“But you saved my life, so I won’t. Tell, I mean.”
“Thank you.” Katy turned back to the horse and began reharnessing it to the wagon.
“It’s getting late. My parents could find you a room in the Peak Building, if you like.”
“Thanks, but no. I’d like to get all—well, I guess it’s six now—all six of them out of the city and away. They’re safer in Aris.”
Wilbur returned, and the shoulder of his shirt was bloodied. Katy saw it, and looked away.
"You'll go together to the Peak Building, then?"
Wilbur shook his head. "You shouldn't go alone, Katy, not now."
"You did." Katy smiled a bit and glanced down at her right foot. "Anyway, I'll be leaving the city alone."
"So this is goodbye?" Chris asked.
"I guess so."
"Where will you go?"
"Probably to my aunt and uncle's, down by Grantville. And--thank you."
Wilbur helped her into the wagon, and she clicked her tongue at the horse and headed back toward the church. They looked after her until she turned onto the street and was gone.
Father Paris was waiting behind the church. "Katy?"
"Yes?"
"Would you like us to—I mean—"
Katy closed her eyes. "Is he here?"
"Wilbur brought him in."
Katy nodded and eased herself out of the wagon. She took the priest's arm and they entered the church.
Amos Coffin was in the sanctuary, his face peaceful and pale. Katy knelt next to him and clasped his bloodied hand and sat there, staring through blurry eyes.
Finally, she stood, and they made their way back outside, where they watched and waited, making sure they were alone. Katy found the clasp on the bottom of the wagon and popped it, then checked the inside. The space below the false bottom was covered with a thin sheet, and there would be, with a little work, enough room for three adults, two children, and a baby.
One by one, they crammed themselves into the wagon's false bottom, carrying their prepared bottles of water and packets of food. Once they were all in, Katy closed the flap and latched it tight.
"The corn is gone," she said.
Father Paris raised his eyebrows.
"There's nothing to cover the false bottom. We were going to buy bolts of cloth, flour, and other goods to fill it up."
"Let me think... just a moment." He disappeared into the church and returned carrying a basket of used clothes and a sheet. "These were donations. You can give them away after."
They scattered the clothes over the wagon bed and stared at the rather disappointing results.
"I guess it's time to go."
"Are you sure you'll be all right for the journey? I could come along."
Katy shook her head. "You've got people to look after and--dead to bury." She lurched into his arms and hugged him for a long, long time, then pulled herself away and scrambled up to the seat at the front of the wagon. "God bless you, and thank you."
"God bless you, Katy Coffin."
The streets were slowly coming to life as Katy drove down them. People stood by the road, dazed, or ran, looking for lost family. One house was still on fire, but there was no fire brigade and no attempt to quench the flames.
In the wagon, it wasn't long to the one remaining gate, the Fish Gate. Katy joined the que of people waiting to leave the city--the most living people she'd seen in hours--and closed her eyes and tried to ignore the bodies, which were plentiful here. They were mostly slaves.
Traffic began to move, but the soldiers in the gate weren't bothering to inspect most wagons. One wagon driver had his slave riding in the wagon bed, and that caused a long hold-up, but time moved on, and Katy passed through the gate by the time the sun hovered over the trees on the western horizon.
Once on the road, she let the horse go faster, pitying him the task of carrying seven. There was no other choice, though, so she let him pick his own pace.
When the sun was down, she lit the lantern and hung it on the pole to light the way. The moon rose, and the crickets chirred their song late into the night, and she drove on. Only a few hours more....
She stopped once on a little, curving side road, to give her passengers a breath of fresh air and the horse a drink, then carried on, nodding hello to the few horsemen and carts she passed in the night. A doctor, a messenger--probably with news about the rebellion--a teamster getting an early start to the day.
Long after midnight, she passed her farm--yes, it would be her farm now, wouldn't it?--silent and empty in the midnight air. Down the road to Grantville and onto the Evansville road, and she came to another house. She turned the horse down the long, winding driveway, and stopped in front.
Katy limped up to the front door and pounded on it until a dim light appeared in an upstairs window.
Annette appearred at the door. "Katy, dear, what's wrong?"
Katy leaned on the doorpost, drooping. "I've got six in the wagon."
Annette wrapped her arm around Katy's shoulders and helped her to the wagon. "Where's your father?"
"Not now." Katy undid the latch as Simon appeared in the doorway, and the three of them eased the cramped and sweaty passengers out and helped them into the house, where Annette was already preparing a meal.
"Will you stay?" Simon asked.
Katy closed the flap at the back. "I just want to go home."
Home, now, was her aunt and uncle's house. Katy left the wagon by their barn and unbridled the horse, rubbing him down and leaving him with food and water in the stable, then slowly walked to the house. The sky in the east was graying.
The door was unlocked. Katy let herself in and stumbled to the couch in the parlor, where she lay, staring at the ceiling, until her youngest cousin bounced down the stairs in the morning and found her there.

Chapter 3
Julea pulled herself out of the river at sunset, dripping and exhausted. She had seen some of the others who escaped crawl to the shore hours ago, and some still floating. She had seen a few sink.
The woods were deserted but for the crickets and a squirrel, which chittered at her until it found a stray acorn.
Watching the squirrel, she wrang her clothes out as best she could and, shivering, set off into the woods. This part of the country--if she remembered correctly--wasn't far from where she was born.
The cabin was buried in the woods, not too far from the main house. She didn't try the house, but the cabin was deserted. It had also rotted half away. The door creaked open, then fell off its hinges, and Julea stepped around it and inside. No lantern that she could see in this light, but there were still some blankets in the corner. She huddled into the blankets, wet clothes and all.
She could remember when the cabin had been warm and comfortable, and she missed those days now, with all her heart.

"We know who the leader was, now," Sammi told him.
Taylan looked up from the reports already filling his desk. "Who?"
Sammi scowled. "Slave woman, 35, free father. Her name is Julea."
"Where is she?"
"We know a number of slaves, during the defeat, escaped over the western wall into the river. She's not among the dead and she's not among the prisoners, so unless she's hiding in the city, that's our best bet."
"Can you find her and get her alive?"
Sammi nodded. "I think so. I'll take my team, and 20 to 30 soldiers, and we’ll look for fugitives both sides of the river."
Taylan scribbled out an order and handed it to her. "Good luck."
"I don't need luck." Sammi headed out the door and handed the order to Burr, her second-in-command.
Fifteen minutes later, they were off. Burr led 20 soldiers along the northern side of the river, and Sammi led her slave hunters and the remaining 10 soldiers along the southern side.
It wasn't long before they found the first escapee, and not too long after that before they found the second. Every so often, they left a group of the now-bound slaves with two soldiers, and continued on into the night.
On the north side of the river, Burr ground his teeth at the noise the clumsy soldiers made, but said little. On the south side, the slave hunters crept silently through the woods while the soldiers--there were 4 left by now--stepped on every twig they passed. After several hours, they still hadn't found Julea.
When the moon was overhead, Sammi whistled across the river to Burr, and both groups stopped. Sammi took six of her slave hunters and headed inland. If she remembered, it wouldn't be too far away.
It wasn't. Sammi placed her hunters around the cabin, leaving the door side for herself, then, swallowing hard, crept into the cabin.
Without the moonlight, she couldn't see anything. Sammi paused and let her eyes adjust to the darkness, and listened.
Soft breathing in the corner. Julea.
Julea woke. "Who--?" She saw Sammi silhouetted against the door. "You."
Sammi laughed dryly. "Me. Julea, you started a rebellion."
"I'm proud of it."
"Why? You lost."
Julea shed the blankets and stood. "I got revenge, some of it. And I'm not done."
Sammi's voice was little more than a growl. "Oh, yes, you are."
“And how do you plan to stop me? –I’ve already faced down guns today, little sister. That doesn’t scare me.”
Sammi swallowed hard and held her gun hand steady. “Put your hands in the air, Julea, or I swear I’ll shoot you.”
Julea sneered. “Just like last time?”
“No. I’ll do it this time, I swear I will.”
Julea took a step forward. “You wouldn’t dare.”
Sammi fired, and Julea jerked back, eyes wide—but the bullet hadn’t come near her. They stared at each other for one long, hushed moment.
Then the slave hunters swarmed in through the windows and door and ruined wall, and Julea was bound and gagged—Sammi insisted on the gag—and pulled back to where the others waited in the woods. They stared strangely at both their leader and her captive, but said nothing.
Burr was waiting in the shadows on the other side of the river when Sammi came to the bank. She waved to him and pointed upriver.
They didn’t bother much with silence on the way back, just picked their way through the woods, gathering the soldiers and escapees as they went.
Sammi didn’t look at Julea more than once or twice, but the others constantly eyed her out of the corners of their eyes. The two hunters who pulled her along kept their distance as best they could.
The captured slaves, some of them, stared at Julea curiously. One or two had seen her earlier and looked at her with wide eyes now and then.
Julea herself didn't look at anyone. She watched the sky and the trees and where she put her feet. Her nostrils flared as she breathed in and out, and she almost seemed to chew at the gag in her mouth. The ropes around her wrists chafed into her arms, but she ignored them.
They stopped to rest when the moon set, and waited until the sun rose before setting off again.
An hour after dawn, they reached the end of the woods and crossed into the farmlands, where they met Burr and his group, who had been ferried across the river by an old ferryman who judiciously decided not to demand a fee. Not long after the farmlands, they reached the roads and Old Island City.
The fires were out and the bodies were gone, but the city was quiet. Few shops were open, and there were no slaves to be seen anywhere. People stared at them as they passed through the Fish Gate and down the streets to the Peak Building, where the prison had spilled over into roped-off, heavily-guarded sections of the walled courtyard. Lyno was there, and Marcus. Julea kept her composure and didn't look at them, didn't look at anyone, as Sammi and Burr left the others in the courtyard and led her to a small door in the side of the Peak Building itself.
"Wait here a moment," Sammi told them when they reached Taylan's office, and went in herself.
Taylan and Chris were there, looking at an official paper, but they looked up when she arrived. Chris took a half step back. "You caught her?" Taylan asked.
"Yes. But there's a bit of a problem."
"Oh?"
Sammi shifted from one foot to the other. "I've met her before."
"Where?"
"She was the daughter of my father's slave, sold away when I was still young. Also, about ten years ago, I was hired by the farmer who'd bought her, to bring her back. So, she hates me, and she's been claiming I'm her sister."
Taylan paused. "Are you?"
"No," Sammi said with finality.
"Well, then," Taylan said, "I'll keep that in mind. Bring her in, please."
Sammi opened the door and Burr pulled Julea in, then undid her gag.
Chris took another half step back, found himself against the wall, and decided to lean on it nonchalantly.
"So," Taylan said, "you're Julea."
Julea worked her jaw around, swallowing and wishing for water. "I'm going to kill you," she rasped.
Sammi slapped her.
Julea glared at Sammi. "But I'll kill you first, you lying, pitiful excuse for a sister."
Sammi rolled her eyes, and Burr was the only one who seemed a bit puzzled. "Later," Sammi mouthed at him, and he nodded.
"You're going to go on trial, you know," Taylan said.
"For what, wanting to be free?"
"For murder, conspiracy—there's a nice-sized list of things we could charge you with."
Julea didn't look impressed.
Taylan drummed his fingers on his desk. "You’ll likely get a death sentence or life in prison.”
"If there are ghosts, I'll haunt you. If I get prison, I'll get out. Either way, I won't be the last."
Taylan shrugged. "You only have to be the last for now. If the trials go right, nobody will dare to rebel for quite a long time." He nodded at Sammi. "She gets a cell to herself, and someone watching her all the time. I don't want her committing suicide."
Julea had managed to work up a wad of spit, and she spat in Taylan's face. "I'll kill you, see if I don't. You and your pansy of a son there, too."
Taylan stood up so fast his chair toppled over. "Get her out of here!"
Sammi pushed her out the door and stuffed the gag back in her mouth. "You're going to get it, Julea," she hissed. "You're really going to get it, and I hope you enjoy every second you have left of your miserable little existence, because if I have to find you and bring you back again, I'm bringing back your head and nothing else."
Julea sneered at her as best she could with a gag in her mouth. Just try it, little sister. I dare you.