"I am on England's side still," Victor Radcliff said once more. "Yes, of course you are." The sergeant didn't believe it, not for a second. But he had no real reason to disbelieve it, no proof Radcliff was anything but what he claimed. He looked unhappy, but he jerked a thumb toward the swaybacked horse. "Climb on your old screw and get out of here."

"Obliged." Victor pretended not to notice his reservations. When he mounted Sam, the deep curve in the horse's spine left the stirrups only a few inches above the ground. He pressed his knees against the animal's sides and flicked the reins. Away Sam went. He'd get where he was going, but he wouldn't do it in a hurry.

Don't look over your shoulder, Victor told himself. He didn't want to give the redcoats any more chances to see his face. Sam ambled along. The soldiers could still call him back. They could, but they didn't. The road swung around behind a stand of native pines. Only then did Victor breathe easier.

He was riding a better horse by the time he came to Hooville. Someone took Sam back to the farm where he'd labored for a lot of years. Maybe his role in helping Victor escape Hanover would be celebrated in songs and paintings in years to come. He couldn't have cared less. All he got out of it were a couple of carrots. Blaise waited in Hooville. "Good to see you," he said when

Victor rode in. "I wasn't sure I was going to."

"Well, neither was I," Victor said. "But here I am. They didn't know they had me in their hands, and now they don't, and so they won't."

"Custis Cawthorne is loose, too. He's on his way to New Hastings," Blaise said.

"Good for him-and that's the right place for him to go, too," Radcliff said. New Hastings held fewer loyalists than any other town in English Atlantis. Other places might be noisier in their disapproval of the mother country, but it ran deeper and wider there than anywhere else.