University in Durbin, West Country

Pia had left the garden gate open. Martin locked it at his back, and went in through the kitchen. Leaving his boots in the scullery for Lila to clean, he climbed the service stairs. The house was dark and quiet. Light showed under Deja’s door. He went past it into his suite. He had hung up his jacket and was pulling off his loop-tie when Deja called to him. Opening the connecting door into Deja’s suite, he went through the half-light of the bedroom into the sitting room, where Deja was settled at his worktable.

“Sorry I’m so late,” Martin said, fighting his collar stud. It was jade set in platinum, very pretty and very tricky. Deja had given it to him a few months before.

Deja sat back in his chair. “How’s Tsilla?”

Martin passed on his store of information. “She doesn’t like the Xavier boy,” he finished. “Which one is the Xavier boy?”

Deja grunted. “He’s that lout who ran his gelding into the Corman horse last Winter Games. We can do better than that. What’s Sudi thinking? How was your museum?”

“Oh, that was good.” Martin went back to the dressing room to put the collar stud away. Fishing the meteorite from the pocket of his jacket, he brought it out. “I got you a present.”

Deja smiled. “Did you?”

“It’s stupid,” Martin warned him. He sat on the worktable and gave it over.

Deja studied it. “A rock.”

“It’s a meteorite.” Martin turned it over in Deja’s hand to show him the clip on the bottom, which, if Deja ran it, would tell him things about the meteorite. But he told Deja everything about it anyway: that it was a stony-iron meteorite, that, due to the asteroid belt for which Julian’s system was famous – a lot more famous than it was for Julian itself, despite Julian’s abundance of water and arable landmass and friendly atmosphere – this was the most common sort of meteorite to hit Julian, that the dark color was from the stone melting as the rock went through the atmosphere, that this particular meteorite was called a Karlinite meteorite, because it had been found in the Karlin mountains, in the far South Country. Deja was smiling. Martin shut up.

“It’s a stupid present.” He reached to take it back.

Deja closed his hand around it. “I like it.”

Martin tried to smile, but he knew Deja was laughing at him. He had known it was a stupid thing to do. Should have left it in my pocket, he thought, swallowing against his temper.

Deja brushed his hair back from his face. “I do like it,” he insisted, and kissed Martin by his eye. “Why are you upset?”

“I’m not,” Martin lied.

Deja started to kiss him again. Martin, seeing where this was going, bent his head, trying to bury his anger further, and Deja stopped him, taking hold of his face. “What’s this?”

Martin had nearly forgotten the Trackbacks. “Nothing.”

Deja’s grip tightened. “What?”

Alarm ran through his stomach. “I meant – I just meant nothing much. Just Transit Security pulled me off the platform. It was no deal. That’s all I meant.”

Deja’s hand did not loosen. “If that’s what you meant, why didn’t you say that?”

“It was a random search. It was nothing.”

“They searched you?”

His heart pulsed hard. He could hear Deja breathing.

Deja’s fingers dug into his face. “Why do you lie to me?”

“I ain’t,” Martin said, not loudly. “I didn’t. It was nothing.”

Deja shoved him away. Martin stood braced against the worktable, trying not to tremble. “I saw your Lord Harper this afternoon. Apparently you quite impressed him.”

Martin, caught off-guard, looked up. “What?”

“That’s what I said. Just what have you been up to, over at that university?”

“Nothing.”

Deja turned to send him a hard look. Martin bit his lip, heat running under his skin. He lowered his head. “Come here,” Deja said.

“I’m sorry,” Martin said swiftly. “Deja.”

“Now.”

He pushed off the table, feeling light-headed and unsteady, and crossed the few steps to where Deja stood. He kept his head down. He was shaking hard, and he knew Deja saw it.

“Tell me what you’ve been doing, and don’t lie to me again.”

He folded his arms over his chest, scared. “I just, I just.”

“Tell me,” Deja ordered.

“I only,” he dragged air into his lungs. “When we came up here, you know, that, that admissions crew, they linked us that prospectus, what came with your packet? I’ve just been, I sort of been doing that route for the geology track.”

The room was silent. Martin risked a glance up. Deja was frowning, his fine eyebrows lowered. Finally, he said, skeptically, “You’ve been putting yourself in line for a First in geology?”

“Well, no.” Martin bent his head. “The trium, it’s humanities and math and science, and that humanities, it wants sh – uh, things like Core literature and music and a couple Core languages – this one called English and this other one Latin?…anyway, I ain’t do any of that, just the bits what had to do with rocks. The ones I could see had to do with rocks,” he admitted, because for all he knew Core literature did have something to do with rocks. Looking at the clips, he hadn’t been able to see what, and he had, after fighting through the first six files of something called Pynchons Rainboy, given up trying.

Deja kept frowning. “And you didn’t tell me about this why?”

Martin rubbed his ear. He hadn’t not told Deja. “It’s rocks. You know I like rocks.”

Deja laughed, half under his breath. “Come now, Martin. There’s a difference between you messing with rocks in the garden and you working toward a First in geology.”

Martin shrugged, his head still lowered. What had Deja thought he was doing, all evening every evening, messing on that handheld? Accessing porn?

Deja strolled over to stand looking down into the garden. “Harper wants your contract.”

Martin went cold. He lifted his head. Deja pretended not to notice this reaction.

“He says you’re interesting. Teachable. He thinks he could use you.”

Martin tried to wet his lips. He couldn’t move. He tried to think if he had heard anything about Lord Harper.

“Did you ask him to do this?”

Martin blinked. “What?”

Deja was watching him in the reflection of the window glass. “Answer me.”

“No. What – no!” He tried to get his breath.

“Don’t lie,” Deja warned.

“I’m not. Deja!” He stared across the room. “Why would I do that?”

Deja kept watching him in the glass. “You like rocks. I know you don’t like law. Or history, that’s been pretty obvious.”

Martin fought for breath. “I don’t hate it that much. It beats field work,” he said, trying for a joke. Deja did not laugh. Martin rubbed his forehead, the bad headache there. “I didn’t ask him to do this. I ain’t.”

“I heard you.”

“I’m not shopping for a new holder.”

“I said I heard you. Shut up.”

Martin shut up. He felt sick.

“What have you been doing over there, then?” Deja asked.

“I – just going to lectures. And – reading clips. I haven’t been doing anything. What do you mean?”

Deja watched his reflection. “Not sleeping around on me.”

Martin felt his stomach jump. “No.”

“Not lying down with other holders.”

“Deja. I ain’t.”

“That’s not what Harper means when he says you’re interesting.”

Martin flinched.

“Is it?”

“I wouldn’t do that.”

“You did it with me,” Deja said. “Why wouldn’t you do it to me?”

Martin shook his head. “I wouldn’t.”

“You’ve got the morality of a mongrel in a gutter, Martin. You’ll do anything you think you can get away with. Who do you think you’re talking to here?”

Martin bit the corner of his lip.

Deja turned to look at him. “Are you having sex with Lord Harper?”

“I’m not doing sex with anyone but you. I ain’t.”

“I can find out if you’re lying to me, you know.”

Martin’s stomach was cold.

“You know what will happen to you if you are.”

“I’m not lying.”

“I asked if you knew what would happen.”

“I know,” Martin said.

Deja was silent. After a moment, he said, “What are you doing, then? If it’s not sleeping around on me, why would you be spending all this time at that university?”

Martin swallowed, and swallowed again. He was so scared it was difficult to speak. “I’ve been learning things. That’s all.” Deja watched him. Martin looked away. “It’s really all,” he said, barely aloud.

The room was quiet. Deja came away from the window. “Let’s go to bed.”

“You’re not…” Martin hesitated. “Are you sending me to Security?”

To be questioned, he meant. To be tortured. So Deja could find out if Martin was fucking around behind Deja’s back.

“I don’t know that yet,” Deja said. “Get in the bedroom.”

He went. He was in there, mostly undressed, when Deja finally joined him. From the dressing room, Martin glanced at him covertly. The holder had brought along a tumbler, whisky and ginger showing amber through its crystal sides. His skin tight, Martin moved a little further away and folded his shirt carefully into the laundry press. He had his own area of the dressing room, filled with his own clothing and gear, and Deja was very strict about his keeping everything in order.

Deja prowled the bedroom, sipping from the glass. He had said they were going to bed, but he was making no move to undress. Martin felt the muscles down his back twitch.

“Why are you standing like that?” Deja demanded.

Martin lifted his head. He couldn’t make himself face Deja, though. “Sir.”

“Look at me.”

He tried to. He was wearing only his trousers and undershirt and he was very cold. The dark outside the house felt wide. Deja came over to him. “What are you afraid of? What have you done that you think I’ll find out about?”

He shook his head, confused. “I ain’t…that ain’t…”

Deja smacked him across the ear; Martin bit his lip and shut up.

“This isn’t a field you’re standing in,” Deja said, his voice dangerously calm. “Suppose you stop talking as if it is.”

Martin swallowed. The room was quiet. Deja prowled back to the liquor kit, where he poured more ginger into his whiskey. “Well?”

Behind his back, Martin put a careful hand over his slapped ear. “I haven’t done anything, sir. That’s not the issue.”

Deja grunted. “Well, what is the issue? What has that look on your face?”

Martin stared at the intricate pattern of the rug, woven by clever contract fingers, cots long dead now, no doubt, hating Deja, hating every holder on the planet. What’s the issue? You smack me around, you threaten to have me tortured, you offer to, to—

“Answer me,” Deja warned.

“Don’t sell me,” Martin said, the words breaking from him without his will. More of what he felt than he meant got into the words, too. Deja turned from the liquor kit, his brows lowering. Martin felt his skin go hot. He bent his head further. “Please,” he said, not able to keep from it. “Please, Deja.”

He felt Deja’s surprise. He wished fiercely to be tougher, braver, to be someone else. Deja came toward him. He flinched, bracing to get hit again; except Deja cupped his face gently. “Stop that.”

He had been trying to back away. He kept trying. Deja’s grip tightened, and, by near reflex, Martin went still. Never fight back: it was one lesson he had been taught hard. Don’t ever fight back. No crying. Do what you’re told. He held as still as he could in Deja’s fists and waited, his blood scalding his veins, to see what was going to be done to him now.

“Look at me,” Deja ordered.

He tried. Do what you’re told. He couldn’t actually see anything, that was all.

“What have I told you?” When he didn’t answer, Deja slipped fingers further up into his hair and twisted hard. “What?”

Martin shook his head. “You won’t sell me.”

Deja jerked at his hair. “What?”

“You won’t sell my contract.”

“How many times have I said that?”

“I don’t know,” he said helplessly. “Lots.”

Deja loosened his grip and stroked Martin’s hair, pulled his head forward to kiss the crown of his head. “Why won’t you believe it, you little idiot?”

Martin shook his head again.

Deja pulled him closer, kissed his temple. “I love you. I’m not going to sell your contract.”

Martin nodded. Deja held him close, petting him down the spine, murmuring to him. He had an erection, Martin noted eventually, and felt his cock begin to thicken in response. He rubbed his face against Deja’s chest, brushed a hand against his thigh. Deja’s murmur deepened, took on an amused tone. “Little cot,” he said. “Come on then.”

Afterwards, they lay together on the high bed, moonlight green and silver across them, lax from sex, the cold air growing colder. Martin wanted to pull up the blankets, or put on a shirt, or pile more wood on the fire; but Deja liked him naked in bed, and didn’t think it was cold, anyway. Resting, Martin watched the moons through the windows, letting Deja handle him. In the summer, the windows opened into a balcony; now they were shuttered for winter, shut down to a window-seat arrangement. Through their upper bit, he could see the small moons trailing above the pecan trees in the garden. Deja was running his fingers over the burn scars on Martin’s belly, along the ridged scars that snaked along his ribs, tracing the fat thick scar under his arm. He loved Martin’s scars. “What about this one?” he asked, touching the curved scar that bisected Martin’s collarbone. “You haven’t told me about this one.”

“Boss in the potato fields. Got me with the stick.”

Deja smoothed the scar with his thumb: it was fat and dark, slanting across the bone, and in fact Martin had no idea how he had gotten it. “What did you do?”

“Mouthed off, probably. I was a mouthy cot, in those days.”

Deja snorted. “In those days?”

Martin smiled, his eyes shut. He hated Deja’s fascination with his scars, and he hated this part of sex – where Deja wanted tales of how he’d been a bad cot, and paid for it.

Deja, as if hearing these rebellious thoughts, reached to tip Martin’s face toward him, and touched the bruise the Trackback had left beside his eye. “Is that what happened here?” he asked. “Did you talk back to JTS?”

Martin twitched. “No.”

“Is that why you got pulled for questioning?”

“It was a random search.”

“If it was a standard search, they wouldn’t have hit you.”

Martin choked. “Security always hits you!”

“Oh, please.” Deja yawned, stretching his spine. “This is why you shouldn’t lie,” he informed Martin. “You’re bad at it.” He went on handling Martin’s body, stroking down his belly, feeling the sheath of muscle over his ribs, cupping the flesh over his pelvis. Martin, who knew what this last was about – Deja, checking for body fat – tried not to tense. If Deja thought he was putting on weight – getting thick, as Deja put it – he would cut his suppers until Martin was skinny enough to suit him. Since the nanotropes kept him, in the normal run of things, heavy with muscle, solid as a truck, staying skinny enough to suit Deja meant a lot of hunger.

Deja let it go tonight, though, just went on petting him. “You know how much I love you,” he murmured. “Do you?”

Martin smiled, reaching to touch Deja’s face.

“Willful little cot. Why won’t you believe me? I’ve loved you since the day we met.” Deja kissed Martin’s callused fingertips. “You were such a sullen boy in that quarry. Giving me those sulky looks and refusing to answer half my questions. How could I help falling in love?”

“I knew what you wanted,” Martin said. “Boy to speak Pirian, my neck. I could see what you were after from the first five minutes, and it ain’t my ability to read Pirian, either.”

Deja smirked. “Well, I did need someone to translate Pirian.” Holding Martin down on the bed to bite at his shoulder, he added, murmuring in his ear, “If he also turned out to be hot property, what’s wrong with a multipurpose tool, I ask you?”

“Tool, is it?” Martin slid further under Deja. “We want to talk tools?”

Eventually, Deja went to sleep. Not Martin. For one thing, he was too hungry. For another, despite Deja’s promises, he was still scared. He knew how much weight to give a Lord Holder’s word: he’d been sold seven times now, twice by holders who swore he was the sweetest thing in their life.

When Deja’s breathing had evened into deep sleep, he slipped from the bed, found a shirt and trousers, and made his way to the fireplace, where he put fresh wood on the embers. He sat on his heels on the hearth, watching the new flame grow and run over the wood, blue and yellow and orange, trying not to think about how hungry he was, trying only to think about the warmth on his face and arms, trying to believe he would be all right. He thought a little about Lord Harper, what sort of holder he might be; but that made him too scared, so he shut down that line, hugging his knees hard.

He had known Deja Lord Strauss was trouble the moment he saw him, up at the quarry. Lord Averill, his sixth holder, one of those who swore he loved Martin, who said he would never sell him, had been away at Parliament, and he had just cut Frisco, who had been his Estate Manager for years. The new hire, Nelson, who replaced Frisco, was useless.

Which was what had happened – Deja Lord Strauss arrived, wanting to rent Martin for a week, to take him back to the university to translate Pirian. Frisco would have known better, or would have at least cleared it through Averill first. Nelson just whistled Martin out of the quarry and said he had to go. The minute Martin saw Deja, he knew what would happen. He tried to argue, tried to say Nelson should clear it through Averill; Nelson took this as Martin trying him out, and asked if he wanted to get his ass in the truck now or after he got the stick.

So Martin went. But he had known who would pay when Averill returned: not Nelson, and not Deja Lord Strauss. And he had been right about that. When Averill returned home, he had yanked Martin from the quarry, whipped the shit out of him, and put him in the field: unskilled labor with the raw hands. Martin spent over two months at this work. Then one afternoon in the middle of a thunderstorm, the boss came to fetch him out of the huddle of field workers sheltering from the lightning under the machine shed, and told him his contract had been sold.

“Secretary,” the boss said, driving him across the field in a tractor, highly amused. “You been contract as a secretary. I ain’t know you can write, Martin.” He laughed uproariously.

Martin, braced on the floor of the tractor, filthy, wet, bug-chewed, starved to bone and skin, would have laughed too if he’d had any strength. He could write – anyway, he reckoned he would remember how, once he had a desk under his hands – but this had to be some new fucked decision on someone’s part. He rubbed at the mud on his face with the front of his shirt. It was funny all right.

Back in the empty barracks, the boss let him scrub and change to clean if equally worn field gear, and then drove him up to the house, where a boss from another estate had been waiting with a transport. Someone had not only bought his contract, they had sent a transport and a boss, just for him. That was when his stomach had first started to fill with an edgy ripple of uneasiness, which had never quite gone away, through all the months he had been held by Deja Lord Strauss.

“I’m Vandeer,” the boss said, as they drove west.

“Martin.”

Vandeer had smiled. “I know that.”

Martin had hidden his anger, expertly. “I ain’t a secretary. Stoneworker.”

“Right. Just kindly keep that to yourself, son.”

Martin considered this. “Who bought my contract?”

“Deja Lord Strauss.” Vandeer glanced at him. “You’ve met, I hear.”

Martin had looked out of the window, at the fields they were zipping past. Fields of flax, alternating with oat, alternating with mani. Fields he had prepped and planted over the past weeks. “You hungry?” Vandeer asked.

“I am, a bit,” Martin said, which was a lie. He would have eaten the legs off a woolly beetle at that point. He’d been eating weeds for a month.

“Sandwiches in the kit.” Vandeer gestured to the middle seat.

Martin retrieved the box. There were six sandwiches and two bottles of tea. He ate four of the sandwiches before it occurred to him that maybe some were meant for Vandeer.

The drive to the West Country had taken fourteen hours. Martin slept the last twelve, a deep, exhausted sleep, a combination of psychological dread and physical exhaustion. So he had been groggy when he walked into Deja’s house for the first time. Vandeer had headed for the kitchen. Martin lagged behind, looking at the front hall, which was impressive, all that sandstone and slate and cherrywood, not to mention the stained glass up over the gallery.

Sudi had cut through his admiration. “Vandeer?”

“Ah,” Vandeer said. “Evening, miss. I was just – is Lord Strauss at home?”

“He is not.”

Martin didn’t know Sudi’s name yet, but he knew who she was the minute he saw her, in her cascading fawn overdress, her trousers laced tightly at her slim ankles, her lovely dark hair and arched cheekbones.

“He went up to the university this morning, and has not yet returned.” Sudi glared at Martin. She knew who he was the minute she saw him too.

“Ah,” Vandeer said helplessly.

“And who is this?”

“Ah, well. This is the new secretary he ordered.”

Sudi’s tiny mouth curled. “Secretary.”

“Yes, Lord Ixton,” Vandeer said.

“Secretary, Vandeer? This is a secretary.”

“Yes, Lord Ixton.”

Sudi had crossed the room to stand facing Martin. She was exactly his height, though her bones were much finer, and her skin very light. She glared at him. He looked at the floor. “What is your name?”

“Martin, miss.” He said it clearly. Speak up when they talk to you.

“Are you a secretary, Martin?”

He said, clearly, “Yes, miss.” Because he was now, is it?

She made a noise of contempt. “Show me your hands.”

He hesitated. Then he gave them to her. Do as you’re told. She ran the tips of her tiny delicate fingers over his palms, over the heavy callus made by stone and tools, not to mention the past weeks in the field. She flung his hands away. “What did you do before you were a secretary, Martin?”

He swallowed. “Stonework, miss.”

“And where did you meet my husband?”

Fuck, Martin thought. He looked sideways, toward Vandeer.

“Don’t look at him,” Sudi warned. “I’m asking the questions. Look at me.”

He didn’t; he looked at the floor.

“Where did you meet my husband?”

“East Country, miss. A quarry.” He glanced up, wondering if he should say what sort of quarry.

She didn’t care about that. That wasn’t what she was after. “And how many times did my husband have sex with you?”

Martin, panicked, looked at Vandeer.

Sudi put her forefinger under his chin, turning his face toward her. “How many times?”

“Eleven, miss.”

Sudi’s eyes widened. It occurred to Martin, too late, that he should have lied. She was staring at him. Martin, realizing he was looking back at her, dropped his gaze, scared.

“Well,” Sudi said. Martin could feel his skin prickling up all over him. Sudi said, “Show my husband’s new secretary to his room, Vandeer, will you please?”

“Yes, Lord Ixton,” Vandeer said.

Sudi swept from the hall. Martin lifted his head, looking in the direction she had gone. Then he looked at Vandeer, who shook his head and gestured toward the stairs. Martin went that way with Vandeer, up the stairs. About halfway up, he said, “My room?”

“Right,” Vandeer said.

“I get my own room?”

“You do.”

“Hey then. All right then.”

Vandeer shook his head again.

He showed Martin the room, and the scrub connected to it, and the clothes in the dressing room, which Deja had ready for him. Martin could tell Vandeer was angry. Well, who could blame him? Vandeer could see clearly the trouble Martin would cause on this estate. He had a kitchen girl fetch Martin a late dinner, though, before he went off.

After he ate every bite of the dinner, and the garnish that came with it, Martin had another scrub, hot water this time, all he wanted. He also used the shaver, the first real shave he had had in weeks. In the field it was a handful of dep twice a week, never enough of it and it never worked well either, tending to melt beard hair more than removing it, leaving sticky stubs against the skin. He studied his face while he shaved: dark eyes, high broad cheekbones stark against scarred ginger-dark skin; the evil haircut field cots got every month, a close clip against the skull, which had left his black hair a scabby stubble. He did not look anything like a secretary. He looked, in fact, exactly like a field worker.

In the dressing room, he sorted clothing from the abundance hung about on his side of the room. He had no understanding, then, of the quality of the clothing. He had known how it felt under his hands, though, heavy and good. He had known how it looked, too. He had been studying the effect in the mirror, dismayed, when Deja arrived.

“Oh, dear,” Deja said.

“I know.” Martin shrugged, trying to make the jacket fit better. “This is hopeless. Bad enough in field gear. Clothes like this, I ain’t fool a blind idiot.”

Deja came to take the jacket off him. “First, you wear that one over another jacket. It’s a topcoat. Second, don’t worry. You’ll learn.” He began unbuttoning the shirt under the jacket.

Martin watched Deja in the mirror. He had been good at stone since he had first put his hands to it, which had felt strange enough, since it wasn’t any stones uphill, so it wasn’t like stonework was anything he ought to have known about; but this was where his true gifts lay. When Deja slipped a hand inside his shirt, he caught his eye and smiled. “Met your woman.”

Deja smiled back. “I heard.”

Martin grinned. “I bet you did. Where she sleep?”

“Downstairs. Different wing.”

Martin made a pleased noise, a purr. Which Deja liked, as Martin had known he would. “And you?”

Deja moved his head at the door behind them. Martin let his grin widen. He turned in Deja’s arms, moved in close, smiling up into his eyes, just as if that truly had been the best news ever.

Holders loved it when they thought you wanted them.

Later, in Deja’s high bed, Martin’s first night in that bed, Deja had stroked him, traced the lines of his scars, murmured over him like some lovely toy. “You’re all bone.”

“Ain’t get fed lately.”

“What, not at all?”

Martin, who had been drifting to sleep, opened his eyes in the dark. Because Deja’s voice had been amused: like Martin had just said something cute. Deja’s finger bumped over his ribs. Martin realized Deja had assumed Martin was lying. All contracts lie, you know. It’s in their nature. How do you know a contract is lying? His lips are moving. He lay still in the bed, afraid if he moved, he would betray the surge of anger inside him.

“Well?” Deja insisted.

Martin made himself answer. Stupid not to answer. “No meals in the field at Lord Averill’s, just a food drop. His cots keep together. They have to, is it? But I ain’t have anyone to back me. So I ain’t get fed.”

“Ever?” Deja doubted, lazily.

“I got some.” He didn’t say how. He didn’t figure Deja to be any more understanding about sharing his boy than any other holder on this planet.

Deja pushed up to his elbow to watch him in the dark. “He had you in the field?”

Martin smiled his sexy smile. “Ain’t get this tan on the beach, sir.”

Deja stroked Martin’s cheek, running his fingertips over the lumpy row of beetle stings there. “I bought your contract as soon as he’d sell it.”

Martin kept smiling. He did wonder if that were the truth. Well, no doubt Deja had bought his contract as soon as he had gotten around to it.

“Everything will be all right now,” Deja had promised. “You’ll be safe now.”

Almost three years on now, nearly half a continent away, in the dim of the night, wearing the fine clothing Deja had taught him to wear, his hair long and silky in the pricey cut Deja insisted on, his skin cared for, his teeth and nails perfect, hungry, bruised, scared, Martin huddled close to the fire, thinking, as he sometimes did, of the rebels in the hills. If the rebels in the hills really existed. If he could ever really tail it for the hills, and reach the hill-country Revolutionaries before Labor Security caught him…if he did…what would happen then? He tried to think that place, the hill-country, the rebels, a place where he might be free. He couldn’t believe it, not even in his dreams, and after a time he rested his face against his knees and watched the fire instead.

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