"We don't have to love each other. All we have to do is work well enough to keep from shooting," Victor said.

"You have more guns, which makes this easier for you to say," the farmer replied-and, again, he had a point. Since he did, Victor tipped his hat and rode away. No one from the farmhouse or the bam shot him in the back, which was as good a bargain as he could hope for.

General Howe's army landed at Cosquer, the oldest French town on the coast. Victor had expected that. The only other choices the redcoats had were to land at St. Denis, a seaside hamlet south of Cosquer, or to sail around the Spanish-held southern coast of Atlantis and put in at New Marseille or even at Avalon. No one could stand against them in the west, but they would be too far away from the more settled regions to harm the uprising much.

"Nouveau Redon again?" Blaise asked when the news came in.

"I don't think so," Victor answered. Nouveau Redon, up the Blavet from Cosquer, had been French Atlantis' greatest fortress till English soldiers and settlers besieged and took it. The siege involved cutting off the unfailing spring that watered the town. Without it, Nouveau Redon had to rely on the river, and was far more vulnerable than it had been.

"Now we have to see how many people in these parts bend down and kiss King George's boots," Blaise said.

Victor had trouble imagining the King of England in boots. Apart from that, Blaise knew his onions. If the locals flocked to the Union Jack, the war down here would be hard. If they didn't… In that case, General Howe would have more work to do.

Blaise also had other things in mind, even if he didn't mention them now. Plenty of people in these parts cared not a farthing for either King George or the Atlantean Assembly. But those people had skins either black or coppery, and people with white skins-people who counted, in other words-cared not a farthing for what they thought.

Most of the time, Victor wouldn't have cared, either. He owned no slaves, and had no great love for men who did. Then again, he also wasn't one of the stubborn hotheads who thought Negroes and copperskins should all be free. If they made their owners money, he was willing to let them go on doing that.

If they rose up against General Howe and the redcoats, he was willing to let them do that, too. If they rose up against the Atlanteans… That was a different story. And they might, because Howe had little to lose in inciting them to rebellion. He'd shown farther north that he wasn't afraid to play that card.

"Blaise…"Victor said.

"What is it, General?" By the way the colored sergeant said it, he was a natural-born innocent. Victor smiled; if he believed that, he was dumb as a honker.

"I must make myself clear here, Blaise," he said. "We didn't cross the Stour to free the slaves. We came down here to free ourselves from the English. Once we manage that, we can look at the other, too. But I fear we can't even look at it till we free ourselves. Do I make myself plain enough?"

The Negro's scowl said he made himself much too plain. "General Howe won't care about any o' that," Blaise said, which paralleled Victor's thoughts of a moment before much too closely.

"Whatever he tries to do, we will set about stopping him" the Atlantean general said, "And we will not do anything or say anything about the way of life in these parts unless we have no choice in the matter. Do I also make myself plain there?"

"I'll say what I please about it," Blaise retorted. "It's filthy. It's wicked. By God, I should know. I wouldn't have run off if it weren't."

Victor wasn't so sure about that. Some people-blacks, whites, copperskins-felt the urge to be free so strongly, they would run from even comfortable surroundings. But Blaise had been a field hand, not a house slave, so he was likely telling the truth.

In the grand scheme of things, it didn't matter much, and Victor Radcliff had to worry about the grand scheme of things. "One of these days, this whole business will sort itself out, Blaise," he said. "You know that's true as well as I do. If you think a little, you'll know this isn't the right day."

"Don't want to think," Blaise said sullenly. "Want to-" He mimed aiming a flintlock and pulling the trigger.

"One thing at a time. I've said as much before." Victor sounded as if he was begging. And he was. "Most of the time, we have enough trouble managing that. When we try to do two things at once, we go to the Devil."

"He can have the bastard who brought me over here, the white-toothed dealer who sold me, and the mangy hound who bought me," Blaise said. "If anything in your religion is true, they're all bound for hell."

"I am a Christian," Victor said. So was Blaise… most of the time. But Victor had grown up with and in his faith, and took it as much for granted as the air he breathed. Coming to it first as an adult, Blaise enjoyed tinkering with it and trying to figure out how it worked, much as a watchmaker might enjoy disassembling a complicated clock and then putting it back together.

Blaise looked at him now. "You are a Christian when it suits you. You are a Christian to white Atlanteans-even to white Englishmen. When will you be a Christian to niggers and mudfaces?" Only in southern Atlantis, a region with reddish dirt, would that have stuck as an insulting name for copperskins.

Victor's cheeks heated. "One thing at a time," he said yet again, "Once we drive the English from this land, we can make it what we want it to be for everyone who lives. Everyone."

"How long will you and I be dead before that day comes?' Blaise asked.

Victor wasn't fifty yet, while Blaise wasn't far from his age. He didn't want to claim they'd see the day he'd talked about. Well, he wanted to, but Blaise would only mock him if he tried.

He did say, "I think it will take longer if England wins. General Howe cares more about slaves because he can use them against us than for any other reason."

"And you are proud this is so because…?" Blaise asked.

Try as Victor might, he found no good answer for that. Blaise's smug look said he hadn't thought Victor would.

Victor hadn't seen the Blavet for a long time. The river was at least as important in the history of French Atlantis as the Brede was to English Atlantis. He'd crossed it several times during the war, and more than once before that. And he'd helped besiege and capture Nouveau Redon even though the French thought the fortress impregnable. Custis Cawthorne's judgment on that had been "An impregnable position is one in which you're liable to get screwed", as usual, pungent and cogent at the same time.

Since taking Nouveau Redon, Radcliff had assumed the French Atlanteans would love him better at a distance. No one from the south had ever told him he was wrong, either. That left him sad but unsurprised.

But among the things war made you do were ones you'd stay away from in peacetime. And so here he was on the river again, peering across to the south bank to see if he could spy any sign of General Howe and the redcoats. No unusual plumes of smoke in the sky, no hanging dust that told of an army marching up a dirt road. Howe's men were somewhere on the far side of the Blavet, but farther off than Victor had feared.

Flapjack turtles swimming in the river stared, only their heads and long, snaky necks above water. They made good eating, but you had to treat them with respect: a big one could bite off a finger. Worse things than flapjack turtles lurked in the rivers down here, too. Spanish Atlanteans called them lagartos-lizards. English Atlanteans mostly used the Biblical word: crocodiles.

Bridges still spanned the Blavet, a sure sign fighting in these parts hadn't been going on for long. "Are we going to cross. General?" Habakkuk Biddiscombe asked.

The cavalry officer sounded dubious, for which Victor could hardly blame him. All the same, he answered, "Yes, I think we are. We came down here to fight the enemy, not just to keep an eye on him."