“Except such smiths as use their left hand exactly as often as their right, just so they keep their balance.”

  Austin chuckled. “Well, then, that solves the mystery. You are a smith.”

  “When I got me a bellows, and charcoal, and iron, and a good pot.”

  “I don’t reckon you carry that around with you in your poke.”

  “Sir,” said Alvin, “I been to Camelot once, and I don’t recollect as how it was good manners there to talk about a man’s poke or his shoulders neither, upon such short acquaintance.”

  “Well, of course, it’s bad manners all around the world, I’d say, and I apologize. I meant no disrespect. Only I’m recruiting, you see, them as has skills we need, and yet who don’t have a firm place in life. Wandering men, you might say.”

  “Lots of men a-wanderin’,” said Alvin, “and not all of them are what they claim.”

  “But that’s why I’ve accosted you like this, my friend,” said Austin. “Because you weren’t claiming a blessed thing. And on the river, to meet a man with no brag is a pretty good recommendation.”

  “Then you’re new to the river,” said Alvin, “because many a man with no brag is afraid of gettin’ recognized.”

  “Recognized,” said Austin. “Not ‘reckonize.’ So you’ve had you some schooling.”

  “Not as much as it would take to turn a smith into a gentleman.”

  “I’m recruiting,” said Austin. “For an expedition.”

  “Smiths in particular need?”

  “Strong men good with tools of all kinds,” said Austin.

  “Got work already, though,” said Alvin. “And an errand in Barcy.”

  “So you wouldn’t be interested in trekking out into new lands, which are now in the hands of bloody savages, awaiting the arrival of Christian men to cleanse the land of their awful sacrifices?”

  Alvin instantly felt a flush of anger mixed with fear, and as he did whenever so strong a feeling came over him, he smiled brighter than ever and kept hisself as calm as could be. “I reckon you’d have to brave the fog and cross to the west bank of the river for that,” said Alvin. “And I hear the Reds on that side of the river has some pretty powerful eyes and ears, just watching for Whites as think they can take war into peaceable places.”

  “Oh, you misunderstood me, my friend,” said Austin. “I’m not talking about the prairies where one time trappers used to wander and now the Reds won’t let no white man pass.”

  “So what savages did you have in mind?”

  “South, my friend, south and west. The evil Mexica tribes, that vile race that tears the heart out of a living man upon the tops of their ziggurats.”

  “That’s a long trek indeed,” said Alvin. “And a foolish one. What the might of Spain couldn’t rule, you think a few Englishmen with a lawyer at their head can conquer?”

  By now Austin was leaning on the rail beside Alvin, looking out over the water. “The Mexica have become rotten. Hated by the other Reds they rule, dependent on trade with Spain for second-rate weaponry—I tell you it’s ripe for conquest. Besides, how big an army can they put in the field, after killing so many men on their altars for all these centuries?”

  “It’s a fool as goes looking for a war that no one brought to him.”

  “Aye, a fool, a whole passel of fools. The kind of fools as wants to be as rich as Pizzarro, who conquered the great Inca with a handful of men.”

  “Or as dead as Cortez?”

  “They’re all dead now,” said Austin. “Or did you think to live forever?”

  Alvin was torn between telling the fellow to go pester someone else and leading him on so he could find out more about what he was planning. But in the long run, it wouldn’t do to become too familiar with this fellow, Alvin decided. “I reckon I’ve wasted your time up to now, Mr. Austin. There’s others are bound to be more interested than I am, since I got no interest at all.”

  Austin smiled all the more broadly, but Alvin saw how his pulse leapt up and his heartfire blazed. A man who didn’t like being told no, but hid it behind a smile.

  “Well, it’s good to make a friend all the same,” said Austin, sticking out his hand.

  “No hard feelings,” said Alvin, “and thanks for thinking of me as a man you might want at your side.”

  “No hard feelings indeed,” said Austin, “and though I won’t ask you again, if you change your mind I’ll greet you with a ready heart and hand.”

  They shook on it, clapped shoulders, and Austin went on his way without a backward glance.

  “Well, well,” said Arthur Stuart. “What do you want to bet it isn’t no invasion or war, but just a raiding party bent on getting some of that Mexica gold?”

  “Hard to guess,” said Alvin. “But he talks free enough, for a man proposing to do something forbidden by King and by Congress. Neither the Crown Colonies nor the United States would have much patience with him if he was caught.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” said Arthur Stuart. “The law’s one thing, but what if King Arthur got it in his head that he needed more land and more slaves and didn’t want a war with the U.S.A. to get it?”

  “Now there’s a thought,” said Alvin.

  “A pretty smart thought, I think,” said Arthur Stuart.

  “It’s doing you good, traveling with me,” said Alvin. “Finally getting some sense into your head.”

  “I thought of it first,” said Arthur Stuart.

  In answer, Alvin took a letter out of his pocket and showed it to the boy.

  “It’s from Miz Peggy,” said Arthur. He read for a moment. “Oh, now, don’t tell me you knew this fellow was going to be on the boat.”

  “I most certainly did not have any idea,” said Alvin. “I figured my inquiries would begin in Nueva Barcelona. But now I’ve got a good idea whom to watch when we get there.”

  “She talks about a man named Burr,” said Arthur Stuart.

  “But he’d have men under him,” said Alvin. “Men to go out recruiting for him, iffen he hopes to raise an army.”

  “And he just happened to walk right up to you.”

  “He just happened to listen to you sassing me,” said Alvin, “and figured I wasn’t much of a master, so maybe I’d be a natural follower.”

  Arthur Stuart folded up the letter and handed it back to Alvin. “So if the King is putting together an invasion of Mexico, what of it?”

  “Iffen he’s fighting the Mexica,” said Alvin, “he can’t be fighting the free states, now, can he?”

  “So maybe the slave states won’t be so eager to pick a fight,” said Arthur Stuart.

  “But someday the war with Mexico will end,” said Alvin. “Iffen there is a war, that is. And when it ends, either the King lost, in which case he’ll be mad and ashamed and spoilin’ for trouble, or he won, in which case he’ll have a treasury full of Mexica gold, able to buy him a whole navy iffen he wants.”

  “Miz Peggy wouldn’t be too happy to hear you sayin’ ‘iffen’ so much.”

  “War’s a bad thing, when you take after them as haven’t done you no harm, and don’t mean to.”

  “But wouldn’t it be good to stop all that human sacrifice?”

  “I think the Reds as are prayin’ for relief from the Mexica don’t exactly have slavers in mind as their new masters.”

  “But slavery’s better than death, ain’t it?”

  “Your mother didn’t think so,” said Alvin. “And now let’s have done with such talk. It just makes me sad.”

  “To think of human sacrifice? Or slavery?”

  “No. To hear you talk as if one was better than the other.” And with that dark mood on him, Alvin walked to the room that so far he had all to himself, set the golden plow upon the bunk, and curled up around it to think and doze and dream a little and see if he could understand what it all meant, to have this Austin fellow acting so bold about his project, and to have Arthur Stuart be so blind, when so many people had sacrificed so much to keep him free.

  It wasn’t till they got to Thebes that another passenger was assigned to Alvin’s cabin. He’d gone ashore to see the town—which was being touted as the greatest city on the American Nile—and when he came back, there was a man asleep on the very bunk where Alvin had been sleeping.

  Which was irksome, but understandable. It was the best bed, being the lower bunk on the side that got sunshine in the cool of the morning instead of the heat of the afternoon. And it’s not as if Alvin had left any possessions in the cabin to mark the bed as his own. He carried his poke with him when he left the boat, and all his worldly goods was in it. Lessen you counted the baby that his wife carried inside her—which, come to think of it, she carried around with her about as constantly as Alvin carried that golden plow.

  So Alvin didn’t wake the fellow up. He just turned and left, looking for Arthur Stuart or a quiet place to eat the supper he’d brought on board. Arthur had insisted he wanted to stay aboard, and that was fine with Alvin, but he was blamed if he was going to hunt him down before eating. It wasn’t no secret that the whistle had blowed the signal for everyone to come aboard. So Arthur Stuart should have been watching for Alvin, and he wasn’t.

  Not that Alvin doubted where he was. He could key right in on Arthur’s heartfire most of the time, and he doubted the boy could hide from him if Alvin was actually seeking him out. Right now he knew that the boy was down below in the slave quarters, a place where no one would ask him his business or wonder where his master was. What he was about was another matter.

  Almost as soon as Alvin opened up his poke to take out the cornbread and cheese and cider he’d brought in from town, he could see Arthur start moving up the ladderway to the deck. Not for the first time, Alvin wondered just how much the boy really understood of makering.

  Arthur Stuart wasn’t a liar by nature, but he could keep a secret, more or less, and wasn’t it just possible that he hadn’t quite got around to telling Alvin all that he’d learned how to do? Was there a chance the boy picked that moment to come up because he knew Alvin was back from town, and knew he was setting hisself down to eat?

  Sure enough, Alvin hadn’t got but one bite into his first slice of bread and cheese when Arthur Stuart plunked himself down beside him on the bench. Alvin could’ve eaten in the dining room, but there it would have given offense for him to let his “servant” set beside him. Out on the deck, it was nobody’s business. Might make him look low class, in the eyes of some slaveowners, but Alvin didn’t much mind what slaveowners thought of him.

  “What was it like?” asked Arthur Stuart.

  “Bread tastes like bread.”

  “I didn’t mean the bread, for pity’s sake!”

  “Cheese is pretty good, despite being made from milk that come from the most measly, mangy, scrawny, fly-bit, sway-backed, half-blind, bony-hipped, ill-tempered, cud-pukin’, sawdust-fed bunch of cattle as ever teetered on the edge of the grave.”

  “So they don’t specialize in fine dairy, is what you’re saying.”

  “I’m saying that if Thebes is spose to be the greatest city on the American Nile, they might oughta start by draining the swamp. I mean, the reason the Hio and the Mizzippy come together here is because it’s low ground, and being low ground it gets flooded a lot. It didn’t take no scholar to figure that out.”

  “Never heard of a scholar who knowed low ground from high, anyhow.”

  “Now, Arthur Stuart, it’s not a requirement that scholars be dumb as mud about . . . well, mud.”

  “Oh, I know. Somewhere there’s bound to be a scholar who’s got book-learnin’ and common sense, both. He just hasn’t come to America.”

  “Which I spose is proof of the common sense part, bein’ as this is the sort of country where they build a great city in the middle of a bog.”

  They chuckled together and then filled up their mouths too much for talking.

  When the food was gone—and Arthur had et more than half of it, and looked like he was wishing for more—Alvin asked him, pretending to be all casual about it, “So what was so interesting down with the servants in the hold?”

  “The slaves, you mean?”

  “I’m trying to talk like the kind of person as would own one,” said Alvin very softly. “And you ought to try to talk like the kind of person as was owned. Or don’t come along on trips south.”

  “I was trying to find out what language those score-and-a-quarter chained-up runaways was talking.”

  “And?”

  “Ain’t French, cause there’s a cajun what says not. Ain’t Spanish, cause there’s a fellow grew up in Cuba what says not. Nary a soul knew their talk.”

  “Well, at least we know what they’re not.”

  “I know more than that,” said Arthur Stuart.

  “I’m listening.”

  “The Cuba fellow, he takes me aside and he says, Tell you what, boy, I think I hear me their kind talk afore, and I says, what’s their language, and he says, I think they be no kind runaway.”

  “Why’s he think that?” said Alvin. But inside, he’s noticing the way Arthur Stuart picks up exactly the words the fellow said, and the accent, and he remembers how it used to be when Arthur Stuart could do any voice he heard, a perfect mimic. And not just human voices, neither, but bird calls and animal cries, and a baby crying, and the wind in the trees or the scrape of a shoe on dirt. But that was before Alvin changed him, deep inside, changed the very smell of him so that the Finders couldn’t match him up to his sachet no more. He had to change him in the smallest, most hidden parts of him. Cost him part of his knack, it did, and that was a harsh thing to do to a child. But it also saved his freedom. Alvin couldn’t regret doing it. But he could regret the cost.

  “He says, I hear me their kind talk aforeday, long day ago, when I belong a massuh go Mexico.”

  Alvin nodded wisely, though he had no idea what this might mean.

  “And I says to him, How come black folk be learning Mexica talk? And he says, They be black folk all over Mexico, from aforeday.”

  “That would make sense,” said Alvin. “The Mexica only threw the Spanish out fifty years ago. I reckon they was inspired by Tom Jefferson getting Cherriky free from the King. Spanish must’ve brought plenty of slaves to Mexico up to then.”

  “Well, sure,” said Arthur Stuart. “So I was wondering, if the Mexica kill so many sacrifices, why didn’t they use up these African slaves first? And he says, Black man dirty, Mexica no can cook him up for Mexica god. And then he just laughed and laughed.”

  “I guess there’s advantages to having folks think you’re impure by nature.”

  “Heard a lot of preachers in America say that God thinks all men is filthy at heart.”

  “Arthur Stuart, I know that’s a falsehood, because in your life you never been to hear a lot of preachers say a blame thing.”

  “Well, I heard of preachers saying such things. Which explains why our God don’t hold with human sacrifice. Ain’t none of us worthy, white or black.”

  “Except I don’t think that’s the opinion God has of his children,” said Alvin, “and neither do you.”

  “I think what I think,” said Arthur Stuart. “Ain’t always the same thing as you.”

  “I’m just happy you’ve taken up thinkin’ at all,” said Alvin.

  “As a hobby,” said Arthur Stuart. “I ain’t thinkin’ of takin’ it up as a trade or nothin’.”

  Alvin gave a chuckle, and Arthur Stuart settled back to enjoy it.

  Alvin got to thinking out loud. “So. We got us twenty-five slaves who used to belong to the Mexica. Only now they’re going down the Mizzippy on the very same boat as a man recruiting soldiers for an expedition against Mexico. That’s a downright miraculous coincidence.”

  “Guides?” said Arthur Stuart.

  “I reckon that’s likely. Maybe they’re wearing chains for the same reason you’re pretending to be a slave. So people will think they’re one thing, when actually they’re another.”

  “Or maybe somebody’s so dumb he thinks that chained-up slaves will be good guides through uncharted land.”

  “So you’re saying maybe they won’t be reliable.”

  “I’m saying maybe they think starving to death all lost in the desert ain’t a bad way to die, if they can take some white slaveowners with them.”

  Alvin nodded. The boy did understand that slaves might prefer death, after all. “Well, I don’t speak Mexica, and neither do you.”

  “Yet,” said Arthur Stuart.

  “Don’t see how you’ll learn it,” said Alvin. “They don’t let nobody near ’em.”

  “Yet,” said Arthur Stuart.

  “I hope you ain’t got some damn fool plan going on in your head that you’re not going to tell me about.”

  “Don’t mind telling you. I already got me a turn feeding them and picking up their slop bucket. The pre-dawn turn, which nobody belowdecks is hankering to do.”

  “They’re guarded day and night. How you going to start talking to them anyway?”

  “Come on now, Alvin, you know there must be at least one of them speaks English, or how would they be able to guide anybody anywhere?”

  “Or one of them speaks Spanish, and one of the slaveowners speaks it too, you ever think of that?”

  “That’s why I got the Cuba fellow to teach me Spanish.”

  That was brag. “I was only gone into town for six hours, Arthur Stuart.”

  “Well, he didn’t teach me all of it.”

  That set Alvin to wondering once again if Arthur Stuart had more of his knack left than he ever let on. Learn a language in six hours? Of course, there was no guarantee that the Cuban slave knew all that much Spanish, any more than he knew all the much English. But what if Arthur Stuart had him a knack for languages? What if he’d never been a mimic at all, but instead a natural speaker-of-all-tongues? There was tales of such—of men and women who could hear a language and speak it like a native right from the start.

  Did Arthur Stuart have such a knack? Now that the boy was becoming a man, was he getting a real grasp of it? For a moment Alvin caught himself being envious. And then he had to laugh at himself—imagine a fellow with his knack, envying somebody else. I can make rock flow like water, I can make water as strong as steel and as clear as glass, I can turn iron into living gold, and I’m jealous because I can’t also learn languages the way a cat learns to land on its feet? The sin of ingratitude, just one of many that’s going to get me sent to hell.