He felt doubly nervous walking in there this particular morning. It must have shown, because Lorenzo said, "Don't worry. This is what we decided. If the white folks don't like it, that's their hard luck."

Frederick shook his head. "Liable to be everybody's hard luck. That's what I'm worried about."

"We whipped them," Lorenzo said. "Let them sweat."

With an effort, Frederick made himself nod. The white men sat there waiting for him and Lorenzo to join them. Frederick didn't trust any of them. Consul Stafford was an open enemy. Consul Newton was less of one, at least openly, but Frederick wondered what he thought down deep of Negroes and copperskins. As for Colonel Sinapis… Maybe it was Frederick's imagination, but he thought the foreign officer looked down on the two Consuls almost as much as they looked down on the uprisen slaves they faced. That puzzled Frederick. Did coming from Europe count for so much? He thought Colonel Sinapis thought it did.

"Good morning," Newton said as Frederick and Lorenzo sat down across the table from him. "What have you decided about my proposal?"

After a deep breath, Frederick answered, "Sorry, but we aren't going to take it."

Newton looked as if he'd bitten into something sour. "Are you sure? Many-even most-of your people would benefit from education. Only a handful would take advantage of intermarrying, and chances are some of them would end up sorry they'd ever tried it."

"You may be right. You likely are. But that isn't the point," Frederick said.

"Oh? Suppose you tell me what is, then." Newton's voice was light and clear, as usual, but the Consul was provoked enough to show the iron underneath, which he seldom did.

Frederick took another deep breath. He needed one. He tried to hold his own voice steady as he answered, "Point is, if we're gonna be equal with white folks, we got to be equal every way there is. We deserve to get schooled same as white folks if we're equal. And we deserve the right to marry no matter what color somebody is. If we say you can take that away from us, what are we sayin'? We're sayin' you're better'n we are, an' all the talk about bein' equal is just that-talk."

The white men glowered at him and Lorenzo. Lorenzo glowered right back. Frederick only sat there waiting. Slowly, Consul Newton said, "It's hard to negotiate with you if you give us nothing to negotiate about."

"That's what I'm trying to tell you. That's why we rose up," Frederick said. "How can you negotiate about freedom? Either a man's free, or he ain't. If we got to be free, we got to be all the way free."

"A matter of principle." Consul Stafford sounded less scornful than he often did.

"That's right. A matter of principle." Frederick nodded. The white man had come out with what he was trying to say.

"We have our own principles, you know," Stafford said.

"Sure you do." That was Lorenzo, answering before Frederick could speak. "You can buy us and sell us and lay our women whenever you've got a stiff dick you don't know what to do with. Only you can't, not any more. That's how come we rose up, too."

Stafford didn't explode, the way Frederick thought he might. All he said was, "Getting this past the Senate will be harder than you seem to think."

"Tell 'em you're doing what's right," Frederick said. "It's the truth."

"As if that matters," Leland Newton muttered, more to himself than to anyone else.

"It better matter," Frederick said. "If it don't, we got to start over. An' startin' over means the Free Republic of Atlantis an' lots more shootin'."

"I told you before-we can start shooting again if you push us hard enough. You won't like what happens if we do," Stafford said.

"You won't like it, either," Lorenzo promised, and exchanged more glares with the Consul from Cosquer. But they weren't the same kind of glares as they had been before the two leaders drank together on the overgrown streets of Slug Hollow. Then, Stafford might have been scowling at a dangerous dog, Lorenzo eyeing a fierce red-crested eagle. Now each recognized the other as a man. That much was plain. Whether such recognition improved things was, unfortunately, a different question.

"We rose up on account of freedom," Frederick said. "If we could've got it without fighting, we would've done that. But it wasn't about to happen-you folks know it wasn't, and you know why, too."

"Do you see the day, then, when one of the Consuls of the United States of Atlantis will be a Negro and the other a copperskin?" Jeremiah Stafford didn't sound as if he saw that day, but he didn't-quite-sound as if he were mocking Frederick, either.

Since he didn't, Frederick judged he deserved a serious answer: "Not any time soon. More white folks than there are colored, and people just naturally vote for their own. But maybe the day will come when nobody cares what color a man is, as long as he's a good man and he knows what he's doin'."

"A noble sentiment," Consul Newton said softly.

"Well, so it is," Stafford agreed. He looked across the table at Frederick. "You'd better not hold your breath waiting for that day, though."

Frederick looked back at him. "No need to worry about that, your Excellency. I don't aim to."

"I don't care if a copperskin gets to be Consul," Lorenzo said. "What I care about is whether it's against the law for him to try. Long as he can try-long as nobody ties him to the whipping post and stripes his back for even thinking about it-I won't fuss. Same with marryin' out of your color: I don't reckon it'll happen real often, but there shouldn't be a law against it."

"That's right," Frederick said. "That's just right. That's how it ought to be."

"Easy enough for you to say so, out here in the middle of nowhere," Consul Stafford said. "As I told you a little while ago, it won't be so easy to convince the Senate in New Hastings."

"Do we have to bring the war across the mountains, then? We can do that." Frederick wasn't really sure the insurrectionists could do any such thing, but he wanted to keep the white men worried.

By the looks on their faces, he did. "Even if we give you everything you say you want, you may not end up happy with it," Newton said.

"If the law says we're free, we'll be happy with it," Frederick answered.

"If the law says we're equal, we'll be happy," Lorenzo added.

Colonel Sinapis suddenly spoke up: "Not matter what the law says, white men will keep running Atlantis for a long time to come. You are right-there are more of them than there are of you. And they have more money. They have more experience running things, too. You may not be slaves in law any more, but you will not at once become equals, no matter what the law says."

Frederick Radcliff glanced over at Lorenzo. The foreign colonel's words seemed much too likely for comfort. Lorenzo spread his hands, as if to say he felt the same way. But what came out of his mouth was, "Chance we've got to take."

"I think so, too," Frederick said. "We have to start somewhere."

Leland Newton had drafted the accord that would, with luck, put an end to what almost everyone these days was calling the Great Servile Insurrection. He wrote it in language more simple than he would have used most of the time. He was a barrister; keeping things simple wasn't something he normally did. But, while Frederick Radcliff could read and write, he wasn't trained in the law. Newton didn't want him to be able to claim he'd signed something he didn't fully understand.

"Why not?" Stafford said when Newton remarked on that. "It'd served the damned nigger right."

"We came to Slug Hollow to stop trouble, not to stir up more of it," Newton said.

"We came west to stamp out the insurrection," Stafford replied, "and look what a good job of it we did."

"If we bring home a peace the whole country can live with, we will have done well enough here," Newton said.