Empire of Shadows (Raiders of the Arcana #1)

Nine

The next morning

The sun was high and bright as Adam Bates reclined in a wooden chair in the Rio Nuevo’s front garden, plowing through a bowl of mamey sapote fruits. The brownish orbs had something of the look of fuzzy avocados, but the rich orange flesh inside tasted of yam and apricot with a hint of spice.

He pried the seeds out neatly with his machete, flicking them into the shrubs. Ximena de Linares hated it when he did that, but Adam always made it a point to yank out any rogue sapote trees that tried to sprout up amongst her parrot flowers.

He had only been back in town for a day, but he was already feeling restless—which wasn’t particularly surprising.

Six years ago, he had chosen to come to British Honduras, and he had no regrets about the move. He was glad he lived someplace where nobody knew he was a Bates of the Bates insurance empire. In British Honduras, Adam never had to worry that the people he met would start immediately calculating what they might be able to get out of him.

Sure, the colony was hot. The mosquitoes were obnoxious. The town was a literal swamp, and getting a decent pair of boots took some finagling—but Adam would still take it over San Francisco, where everybody was always trying to measure how relatively important you were.

There were still people who did that here, of course, but they all stayed at the Imperial. Adam didn’t have to worry about running into them at the Rio Nuevo—which was why he kept a room there.

That, and the food was great.

For a long time after he’d arrived here, Adam had simply been happy to have escaped his old life—solidly thwarting all of his father’s hopes and ambitions for him in the process. Lately, though, some of the shine had been wearing off.

Adam loved his time in the wilderness—living by his knife and his wits, constantly learning about what might kill him and what might make for decent eating. Still, he was less excited than usual about the prospect of heading out on another mapping expedition even as he itched at being confined to the insular world of the capital.

There were reasons for that lack of excitement… reasons he was pretty sure he wasn’t going to be able to ignore for much longer.

Every once in a while as Adam listened to the howler monkeys raising a racket outside the glow of his campfire, those same reasons had him wondering whether he was meant to be doing something else with himself.

Or maybe no matter what he did, there was always going to be a down side.

Adam sliced another sliver of orange flesh from his mamey, popping it into his mouth—then paused in his chewing as a trim, feminine figure hurried down the steps from the lobby.

The lady from the bath looked different with all of her clothes on… not that she’d looked at all bad in that soaking wet dressing gown.

Adam was fairly certain she wouldn’t appreciate him noticing that—but last time he’d checked, he still had a pulse.

As he swallowed his mouthful of fruit, Adam admitted that maybe kicking down her door with a machete in his hand hadn’t been the best move. Would he really have done the same thing if it’d been Diego or one of those annoying English guys from the lounge who’d done the shouting? Maybe he would at least have knocked first before busting the lock.

It simply hadn’t occurred to him that a woman would be capable of handling whatever was going on in there. To be fair, if there had been a coral snake in that tub, she might not have gotten the chance for a second scream.

Adam wondered what could’ve brought her to the colony. Foreign women hardly ever came here, and those who did were almost exclusively the wives of some higher-ranking government official—or nuns.

He was fairly certain the lady from the bath wasn’t a nun. So what the hell was she here for?

She turned the corner, heading toward the bridge over the river. Her chestnut hair was pinned up into a mercilessly respectable bun under her flat-brimmed hat. He could picture the freckles he knew she had scattered across the back of her neck.

Before he quite knew what he was doing, Adam had tossed his half-eaten mamey into the parrot flowers and followed her.

She moved in the opposite direction of Fort George, which was where most of the colony’s white residents and travelers stayed. The neighborhood she headed for instead was still perfectly respectable, but it wasn’t the sort of place he would’ve expected an unaccompanied Englishwoman to trek into.

She finally stopped… at a door Adam recognized.

The tidy clapboard house was set on stilts, like most of the other construction in Belize Town. The paint on the boards was still bright, and the front garden was abundant with a mix of flowers and fruiting shrubs.

Adam tucked himself into a gap between the houses across the street and waited.

The woman was inside for about ten minutes. When she came out again, a deep, cross furrow shadowed her pretty eyebrows.

Whatever she’d heard in there, it clearly wasn’t what she’d been hoping for.

Adam fully expected her to head straight back to the hotel, but she continued further down the street instead, stopping at one point to politely ask another woman for directions. As she turned a familiar corner, Adam had the uncomfortable suspicion that he knew exactly where she was going.

Sure enough, the woman stopped at the house of Cedric Barrow—the second-most-reliable and trustworthy guide in town.

The first-most-reliable, Winston Decker, had been the owner of the other house she’d gone to.

Her stop in Cedric’s house took a bit longer. That didn’t shock Adam. Cedric’s wife, Maxime, didn’t let a visitor escape until she’d plied them with more snacks than they could eat without bursting.

Finally, the lady emerged, this time with Cedric beside her. The two of them shook hands politely, but Adam could still read the disappointment on her face as she left.

He waited until she was a couple of blocks up the road before jogging across the street to where Cedric lingered on his shaded porch.

“I was wondering why the assistant surveyor general was lurking under Se?ora Herrara’s bougainvilleas,” Cedric commented dryly, his tones touched with his Kriol accent.

Cedric was a bit on the shorter side, with tightly curled hair and a neatly trimmed beard. The hair was tinged with gray. Adam knew that Cedric had been making noises about scaling back his work after some trouble with his knees.

“Maybe I was just admiring the flowers,” Adam replied innocently.

Cedric scoffed. “You got an interest in this bakra woman, then?” he pressed easily.

Adam rubbed at the bridge of his nose. There wasn’t much point in denying it after he’d been spotted skulking about.

“Just curious. What was she after?” he asked casually.

“She wants a guide to take her into the Cayo,” Cedric said.

“The Cayo?” Adam echoed, blurting out the word with shock.

The Cayo District was the westernmost portion of the colony and by far its most unexplored, underpopulated area. The region was more or less a big, fat blank on Adam’s maps, mostly because the rivers ceased to be navigable once they reached the mountains—rugged peaks that topped 3,000 feet, covered in thick forests.

Nobody went to the Cayo. Even the loggers didn’t bother with it. Why should they when they’d have to haul any mahogany or dyewoods they harvested out the hard way, instead of just tossing them into a river?

The land wasn’t farmable. It took days of slogging through the virgin bush to get there. The Cayo was, in short, a virtually impenetrable wilderness.

“What does she want to go there for?” Adam demanded.

“Du ah luk de fool?” Cedric retorted in crisp Kriol. “A bakra woman like that always got a father or brother or husband somewhere in the background. Doesn’t matter how many gray hairs I have in my beard—job like that gonna be nothing but trouble. I didn’t let her get to the reasons. Just let her down easy while Maxime filled her up with powderbuns.” He nodded up the road. “Better catch up if you want to keep following her.”

“Hell,” Adam said and darted down the steps.

Cedric’s chuckle sounded from behind him.

The woman’s figure slipped around a corner. Adam made a quick calculation, then dashed into an alley instead. He dodged a cluster of stray chickens, which squawked at him with alarm.

“Wach dehn fowl, bwai!” an older woman snapped sharply.

“Morning, Miss Ivy,” Adam called back.

She waved him on with a huff of disapproval.

Adam spilled out of the alley into the street that led to the bridge, making it just in time to see the Englishwoman walking his way. He adjusted his pace to match her quick steps as he slipped alongside her.

“Nice day for a walk,” he commented casually.

She glared at him. Her eyes were hazel, with little sparks of green and silver that flashed at him across the splash of freckles on her nose. They were nice eyes—even when they were shooting daggers at him.

“You,” she hissed.

“I heard you were looking to make a little jaunt to the interior,” Adam said.

She stopped walking, and her glare deepened.

“Were you spying on me?” she demanded.

“It’s a terrible idea,” Adam continued, ignoring the accusation. “The rainy season here is due to start any day now. Once it does, any paths or game trails will turn into muck. The water level rises in all the rivers, and the current turns three or four times as strong. Even with a reliable steam engine to drive you upstream, that’s tough going—not to mention the flash floods, the mudslides, and all the fun of trying to set up camp in a mosquito ridden downpour.”

“I don’t recall asking for your opinion,” she shot back.

“Nah,” Adam returned easily. “You just asked two of the best guides in the colony—besides myself, obviously. And they both turned you down. I’d like to think you’re smart enough to realize that there’s not much point going on to the less reliable guides… because any of them who tell you yes are either going to rob you or get you killed. What are you after in the Cayo, anyway?”

Her fury was a sight to behold. It slid over her body like another skin, tensing every muscle and turning her eyes to a flashing silver fire. Adam vaguely recalled the way she’d whacked him with the towel rack in the bathroom. If she had that towel rack now, he was pretty sure she’d be using it to try to knock him into the river.

She refrained from assault this time, limiting her response to an outraged growl.

“I have about as much interest in your opinion on the matter as I do in engaging myself to a pig,” she seethed. “So unless you are about to direct me to someone who can actually assist me—”

“I mean, I could,” Adam mused, cutting in.

That shut her up for a minute.

“Sorry?” she said.

“Apology accepted,” Adam replied innocently.

The fury flashed in her eyes again. Adam went on before she took it in mind to express her feelings in the form of a kick to his balls.

“I could take you where you want to go,” he offered. “As it happens, I know the Cayo better than even Cedric Barrow does.”

Adam clamped his mouth shut before it could do anything even more stupid. Had he actually just offered to take this woman into the mountains? She’d get them both eaten by a jaguar in five minutes. She had that jaguar bait air about her.

Nor had Cedric been wrong. She was far too well-dressed and well-spoken not to be respectable—and respectable women usually had a small army of overprotective relatives lurking at their backs. Just because Adam hadn’t seen any of them here in Belize Town didn’t mean they didn’t exist. Adam was better positioned to weather that kind of trouble than a guy like Cedric, but it was still a hell of a lot more hassle than he ought to be asking for.

“Why would you offer that?” she demanded.

“Not entirely sure,” Adam admitted. “Now that I think of it, it’s probably a terrible idea.”

She glared at him with a white hot focus, and then stalked across the bridge toward the hotel.

Adam let her go… but not without a shout at her departing back.

“You know what—just forget about it!” he called out.

She whirled around, flashing him a rude gesture with vehemence.

Someone chuckled beside him. Adam turned to see a grizzled South Asian gentleman carrying a crate with a live rooster on his back.

“What are you laughing at, Mr. Nohri?” Adam demanded.

“About time you found yourself a woman, surveyor,” the older man replied with another wheezing laugh before continuing on his way.