[PSL] in this sense the open jaws of wild beasts will appear no less pleasing than their prototypes

[katabasis]

The bread that is over-baked so that it cracks and bursts asunder hath not the form desired by the baker; yet none the less it hath a beauty of its own, and is most tempting to the palate. Figs bursting in their ripeness, olives near even unto decay, have yet in their broken ripeness a distinctive beauty.

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[aletheian]

"James." His voice is rougher than he expects - from the smoke or something else? he's not sure - and Thomas has to try again to be heard above the increasing storm of destruction around them. He squeezes his hand. "James. The gates don't match the roads. Let's see if Liam or Bettina picked up the map from the office. I didn't see it when I looked."

This place is built to be disorienting. Thomas knows because he's been outside the plantation before, huddled and hiding for days on end as he and his ill-fated party slowly made their way from the wilds down to Charleston. It should have been far enough away, the search should have been centered on only Savannah, but god, had he ever underestimated this place. And Peter.

It would be very convenient if they could just melt into the night by themselves and vanish into a new life.

Someone yards away shouts Thomas's name, beckoning he and James over to a structure built in the wake of the barn's destruction. Not yet on fire, and it's downwind, meaning they won't be choked by smoke if they head over. He hesitates, but the call sounds pointed, and they really can't go running off into the woods only to get shot or drowned immediately.

It's Barnaby and Cuthbert with a few others and--

"God," is not who else is with them but a startled exclamation when Thomas realizes that the small group of of men has another on their knees, hands shackled. Overseers, some beaten and bloody, most in their nightclothes. Marshall is on one end.

"These ones gave up," Barnaby tells him, sounding uncertain. "I dunno, should we execute 'em? Perry ain't ever been to bad, was he? And Thompson's got kids."

[katabasis]

There's a mad split second where he resists the course change - where some flicker of heat that has nothing tk do with Thomas and everything to do with this place and what it requires sweeps through his chest and he thinks, That didnt warrant mentioning earlier? Then the thought folds over and over, compresses into a knot that unravels. He lets Thomas steer him around, lets himself be led, to follow the call when it comes for them.

He doesn't know what he expects to find in the temporary shed. Bags of grain and flour and apples maybe, given the task he'd last set these men to. A string of bloodied overseers on their knees isn't it. Mostly, he thinks, he's surprised any of them have been left alive at all. That no one stove their skulls in on sight. There's only one - Hunt - that's nursing a more serious wound, broken arm clutched awkwardly across his chest and wrist clearly shattered if the black bruising of his fingers is any indication.

Somewhere between the yard and here, James's hand came unravelled from Thomas's. It's fine. It's a temporary state of affairs.

His attention sets on Marshall there at the end of the string for a moment before his eye slides to Thomas. There's something in the lines of James's face then: a look that might be a question. Your opinion? or maybe just looking for a long enough hesitation to say his own.

[aletheian]

There will be many moments like that, big and small, in the days to come. Thomas may be more practical than he was in London, but the changes to him have not been made in any effort to be more industrious or self-sufficient. He knows this about himself, and of the others, too. What do they know about survival? Surely some of the men knew how to shoot or hold a sword before having their lives erased, but Thomas didn't, and certainly wasn't being given fencing or tracking lessons here.

He knows a little about the area. He's used to the climate. He can go a few days without sleep and still be functional; when they're walking, he'll probably be able to go the longest without rest, and his feet won't hurt, or he won't notice if they do. As far as his usefulness goes that's the breadth of it - there's no more room in the world for someone like him the way he was. Even the way he is. He doesn't want to be a burden on James or make this harder, so he'll adapt, he has to, or...

They're all looking at him. Why me. Liam and the few remain with him personally - Hannah and her sister, more of the girls behind them - are approaching, like this is some twisted court.

"How many of them went headhunting when I got out?" Thomas feels a flare of aggravation at the silence that follows, unsure if they don't understand or if they can see where this line of questioning - perhaps the worst thing he's ever said - is going. "When I got out, with Stephens and Clinton and Hector, I know they were all offered an up-front cash bonus to go looking, and more if we were found. Who took it?"

"Hunt didn't," says Barnaby, sounding strange. "I remember him staying. Complained about being too sick."

"So he wanted to." Thomas's voice is dull. Strangely authoritative despite it. "Who else."

"Adams didn't." Gravely and a little wet, Marshall sounds like his nose has been broken. He spits watery blood. "Quit after for a while. Just ain't much work around here." He pauses, and whether or not he's looking at Thomas is hard to say. In a tone that says You already know this, but, "Neither did I."

"And you never said why."

Silence in return. Beside them, Liam is loosing a machete from his belt, as if he's already figured out where this is going. One of the overseers on his knees has, as well, and begins to struggle. Thomas feels ill.

[katabasis]

Something closes - a bolt in a latch, a sword hilt snapping gently against the metal guard at the top of its sheath. The urge to step forward and say something differently must live behind it. He can feel it there in his chest, but doesn't know what it looks like or what shape it might take if it was allowed to come through. For a long time he's as silent as he can be, breathing rattling again from the effort and smoke and all the desire not to be here - fixed on the thin measure of distance between his shoulder and where Thomas stands.

It's ruinous. And so is this place and everything that belongs to it. The men on their knees and the sound of the man there in the middle twisting against the hand on his shoulder as Liam meets them. They can't be allowed to live because they'll come for them. There must be one or two that won't be afraid the minute they're not under a blade. This place, with its blood and misery and cruelty driven by some phantom intention to do good, is a deep, dark pit and here they are at the edge of it all untethered.

Thomas looks wrong, a hundred familiar lines rattling toward some broken shape and an old nightmare drags itself forward through the night. Thomas alone in the black horror of Bedlam, every right piece of him being stripped away until--

(The letter had come in the summer; Miranda had been stark as a sheet when he'd arrived in her doorway. What is it? I'll make some tea. Followed by a thousand small aborted lines of conversations where she grew to look stranger and stranger, frightened and remote all at once. James, I need to tell you something and you must listen to everything I have to say. Of course. Anything. James,-- like she means to say anything but what she does-- Thomas is dead. He killed himself.

There's more. What does she say after? Something must fill that blind space on the porch in Nassau's summer with all the heat ast the back of his neck. Why not have the conversation inside? Why not to the moment he'd arrived? Why not sitting beside him instead of across a table with a thousand smaller, more delicate things between them?)

James clears his throat.

"Bind the ones who went hunting here and leave any who didn't. Killing them like this would bring along every dog in the colonies after us." Never mind the bodies in the yard, the fields, the family in the house. The fire will disguise Bettina's handiwork. It might do something for the rest as well.

"The fire will come along soon enough. The free men," he says, with a glance toward the end of the line where Marshall is quiet and still. His eye slides toward Thomas, ear deaf to the stress of the overseer under Cuthbert's hand and blind to Liam's machete in his belt. "Can take care of themselves and anyone else how they please."

[aletheian]

Thomas feels like he is standing nowhere, in nothing; a void, blackness all around them in every direction, this scene just a set-piece like a bit of theater. If anyone steps too far this way or that they'll vanish. As he thinks about it, the world compresses. He hasn't had to make a real decision in over ten years. Has he done anything of his own free will in ten years? He feels dizzy. With James, he has, in this weeks (months?) together. Unless that's all just been responding to him, editing himself to work with him like he's cut away pieces of himself to survive through everything else.

For a moment he's so angry it has to be apparent, the broken line of his shoulders, the tension in his face. No one has moved yet because they're waiting for him to say something, to acknowledge what James is saying and confirm or deny it, because-- he doesn't know why, surely not because he has any actual say, about this or anything.

Marshall is staring at him like he can read his mind, like he can hear Thomas thinking you should all die screaming for what you've done.

"He's right."

Anger leaves him. James is correct and adding the weight of determined vengeance to those who will come after them on top of what mayhem is already being wrought is dangerous; besides, they don't have time. Marshall is saying something. Directing them to where to pick up laundry meant for the overseers, saying they'll be easily mistaken at a distant look, and that 'some of you fuckers definitely need hats'. He looks like a beaten dog that doesn't want it's owner to leave, and Thomas doesn't know how he doesn't shout at him. What did he think. That they were friends.

Bettina, Charlotte, and a few of other other girls are near them now, watching with expectant looks, laden down with bags like pack animals. They stand behind James and Thomas looks over at them, at him, and wants to reach for his hand again but also wants to--

He's fine.

"We'd better get a hat for you and go," he manages.

[katabasis]

It isn't a relief. It isn't anything but necessary. Thomas's anger and the unraveling of Cuthbert's grip and the uneven, rocky feeling in his chest all get left here whether or not it's satisfying. Barnaby is already loping off to fetch some rope and James turns from the overseers (Marshall included) as easily as breathing. There. Sorted. On to the next thing that requires his attention.

He takes two of the bags from Charlotte, slinging them across his shoulders with a grimace, and is already moving to follow Marshall and Thomas's direction. The women - Charlotte and Bes and Bettina and two of the other girls from the laundry are already following. One of them breaks out ahead at a run, crying back that she'll find them things to wear.

James, washed along by the wave of young women, isn't really that far behind her.

But before they can stray far - or before Thomas can follow too closely - Hannah catches Thomas by the elbow. "Mister Thomas--" She might take him by the hands if there were time to do so. Instead she just anchors briefly to his sleeve, mindful of his scarring forearm. She holds him there for just a moment as the women are swallowed up by trailing smoke and ash smell, devolving into darker shapes in the orange streaked night as they cut across the yard for the laundry and James follows after.

"Take care," she says. Not Thank you for saving me or Thank you for all you did. She says: "You're a good kind of man, Mister Thomas. Goodbye."

Then she looses him from her grip, hoists her bags on her shoulders and turns to join her brother and Liam.

[aletheian]

"Don't look back."

What a thing to say.

He doesn't know why.

Bettina does indeed have a map, it turns out, and Marshall wasn't lying about where to collect clothes - he's uncharacteristically quiet as he shoves a pair of boots at Thomas with the kind of mulish intent that says he'd be shouting at him to take them if he could cough anything up. He continues to glare at him until he can't, and sets about showing one of the girls where a rifle is, apparently knowing better than to pick up a weapon right now. Bes shoulders it and lets Thomas have her bags, after he's changed out his shoes. He stares at himself after and almost pulls them off, realizing he'd done what a fucking overseer wanted him to while the plantation is burning. Maybe James sees the blank expression on his face and the look of disgust and horror that flashes there before he returns to normal.

Men are being burned alive at the other end of the field. He wonders if one is Mr Browder.

Marshall tries to say something to James - there's a look on him that means it's important, but whatever it is he just can't make himself get it out.

If he had another minute, perhaps. But they have to go, they have to go right now, and Thomas does have James's hand this time, heading towards the far end of the plantation that'll take them north. There's only one other farm that way, too wild and unsettled still for conquerors of the New World. They'll loop around, one way or the other, but the main roads will be too dangerous right now - to be sure, plenty of men running water to and fro in frantic hope that it doesn't catch the trees and spread to their own property will ignore runners in favor of damage control, but some won't. Some will take pot shots in the dark, some will have dogs.

They have to disappear while they can.

Getting everyone over the damaged fence is easy, somehow, even laden down and most of them in skirts; between the time they leave Marshall and the time they leave the plantation they've attracted one more, a Jacobite named Robert with blood streaked down the side of his face and a pack full of food. He was one of the maybes, and one of the younger convicts. They're five meters out, then ten, and Bettina makes a sound like a sob. Thomas holds her arm and she staggers against him, trudging forward despite her choked crying. Their heads bent together Thomas tells her, "He wanted you to leave. He did. He'd only forgotten."

She doesn't slow.

[katabasis]

Sturdy shoes, a hat, a coat. They aren't the only good things had out of Marshall, but they're certainly the last. They likely count for more than anything the man might have had to say; should it be disturbing how easy James finds it to leave him behind in favor of anything else, everything else, or does it just go without saying that Marshall should understand himself as owning some strange, complicated form of his gratitude. It would've been easy to kill the man, James doesn't think. That should be enough for anyone. He isn't going to say Be well or Thank you to anyone who helped pin Thomas thrashing to the ground. To anyone who had any part in making Thomas so angry, so disparate, so hacked open. He doesn't have the capacity to even think of it.

Bes uses a kitchen knife to cut three strips from a dark shirt. She uses one to tie around the knife's handle and secure it to her apron string, tucking the blade neatly into her pocket. The others she gives to James; he knits them together for a belt, tucking Andies' pistol against his hip. From a distance, he knows the lot of then might almost be mistaken for people. It seems like a strange conclusion to draw, though. Even after they've cut across the firelit landscape and climbed over the fence, passing into the underbrush where the stench of smoke and burning doesn't hang so heavily in the air, it doesn't feel as if anything has shifted like it has.

It's the same night here as it was in the yard. The glow of fire burns through the trees and they are not radically different people from the ones they were forty meters ago. Again and again and again.

Then they plunge North into the deeper wood, Thomas's hand in his in the midst of women and a young man who can hardly grow his beard, and they see that place for the last time.