Blue Sea Burning (31 page)

Someone's coming up the road.

Maybe it's Adonis!

No, it's just an old man.

HE LIMPED AS HE WALKED,
his left arm hanging useless in a dirty sling and his back so bent that the overstuffed satchel hanging from his good shoulder threatened to slip off and fall to the ground. He wore a nobleman's clothes, but they were so filthy it looked like he'd dug them out of a hole in the ground before he put them on.

Or someone had dug him out of a hole in the ground.

Poor fellow. Ripper's pirates must have treated him rough.

As the distance closed between us, I saw his chin jerk up in surprise at the sight of me. He straightened his back, squaring his shoulders, and I realized he was much taller than he'd seemed.

Then his ragged, salt-and-pepper whiskers split apart to reveal a line of white teeth.

I'd just put a smile on his face.

Another grateful Sunriser. I bet he's going to hug me.

He was digging in his satchel.

Savior's sake, he's going to give me a present!

I could get used to this hero business.

I was almost upon him. His head was down, searching his pack. I stopped to wait.

“Good morning,” I said brightly.

He finally found what he was looking for.

He raised his head, and I saw his ice-blue eyes for the first time as he drew the pistol and pointed it at my chest.

The grin on his dirty face slowly spread from ear to ear.

“And here I thought my luck had run out,” said Roger Pembroke.

The Rowboat

“DOWN THE STEPS.”

We were standing on the cliff above the cove where the slave ship had docked. Pembroke was behind me. It was the first time he'd spoken since he'd turned me around, ordered me off the road, and started marching me uphill through the trees with a warning that if I opened my mouth or made any kind of noise, he'd shoot me in the head.

What I couldn't understand was why he hadn't shot me already.

I started down the steps, trying not to look at the dizzying plunge to my left—or at the distant lump at the bottom of the stairs that was Birch's body.

When I reached the bottom, I hurried past the body without a second look.

I could hear Pembroke's footsteps pause behind me.

“Well, that should make you happy,” he said. “Keep going.”

I ducked under the archway that led to the dark inner cove.

“All the way to the back.”

The slave ship and Cyril's boat were both long gone, and at first I thought the cove was empty. Then, as my eyes adjusted to the dim light, I realized it extended much farther back than I'd noticed before. I walked along the platform cut into the rock, passing the series of iron cleats where the ships had been tied up. Beyond them, several large storage trunks were lined up against the side of the platform.

Just in front of the back wall, hanging on davits from the ceiling over the water, was a small rowboat.

“Get the boat in the water.”

I did as I was told. While I was wrestling with the rowboat, I could hear Pembroke banging around in the storage trunks.

When I heard iron clanking behind me. I risked a glance over my shoulder.

“Did I say turn around? Get it in the water!”

I managed to do as I was told.

“Tie it up.”

I wound the bow rope around a cleat at the edge of the platform.

“Now, hold still.”

I heard the clanking iron again, coming closer.

Something cold and hard struck me on the ankle.

Then I heard a heavy
click
and felt a weight press on the top of my foot. As I looked down, I felt the cold weight against my other ankle. There was a second
click.

He'd shackled my legs with the same kind of chain I'd taken off the Okalu slaves.

“Get in the boat. And mind you don't fall in the water. The chains will drown you.”

I somehow managed to tumble into the boat.

“Take the rear seat. Turn around. Back to me. That's it.”

The boat bobbed, lightly at first, then sharply.

“Turn and face me.”

I did. He'd settled into the bow seat, facing forward with the pistol still trained on me. There was a burlap sack at his feet, stuffed with who knows what.

“Start rowing.”

I got the oars in their locks and started to row. With all the bruises around my ribs, rowing hurt like a demon, but I managed to maneuver us out of the cove and into the open water. The boat lurched against the rough sea.

The plume from the volcano was smeared across the sky in front of me, thick and angry.

“Did I tell you to stop?”

“No,” I said. “But you didn't tell me which way to go, either.”

“Deadweather Island. And be quick about it.” He glanced over his shoulder. “I'd like to get there while it still exists.”

I started to row.

But it didn't make any sense.

“It'll take days to row there.”

“Not days. Not if you're quick about it.”

“But why?”

“Because you're going to lead me through the Valley of the Choke Plants, to the Red Cliff—do those names ring a bell?”

“Yes. They're from the map.”

“And do you know where they are? Can you find them?”

“Yes.”

“Excellent. Once we're there, you can dig me a treasure. Perhaps I'll join you, if I'm feeling up to it.” He raised his wounded arm a few inches in its sling.

It still didn't make any sense.

“The Fist isn't magic,” I told him. “You said so yourself. It's—”

“I don't need magic. I need money. And the dowry of the Dawn Princess ought to be just the thing.”

“What if we can't find it?”

“Then it won't be for lack of effort. Come, now—I'm sure you can row harder than that.”

I did my best. But the chop in the water was pushing the boat back.

And he was wrong. It'd take days to row to Deadweather.

Smoke was still pouring from the volcano.

This is madness.

“But the volcano—”

“—makes our destination rather hard to miss, doesn't it? So you needn't worry about getting lost.”

“It'll kill us.”

He shrugged. “Can't say that bothers me. Truth is, I've had quite a run of poor luck lately. Rolled the dice on a rather large gamble and crapped out. So much so that when I loaded this gun, the target I had in mind—”

He raised the pistol to his head. “Was me.”

He frowned and gave the pistol a little jerk, pretending to fire it.

“But then you came along.” His eyes brightened, and the frown became a smile. “And I realized the Savior Himself had picked up the dice and put them back in my hand for one last throw.”

The pistol was pointing at me again.

“Now: is the treasure really there? Is the volcano going to blow? Are we rowing toward certain death? I can see as how these questions might be important to you. But personally, I don't care a fig. As a practical matter, boy—I'm already dead.”

He settled back in his seat with a pleasant sigh. “And this is my play for resurrection.”

I ROWED FOR A WHILE
in silence, trying to make sense of it.

“You need money?” I asked him.

“Rather desperately, yes.”

“But you're the richest man I know.”

“Was. Mmm. Had a tidy little fortune, I did.” He got a wistful look on his face. “A lesser man would have been more than satisfied with that. Not me. I had grander dreams. And they — near came true. If I'd pulled it off, they would have written about me in the history books. This whole part of the world would have been mine.”

He sat up, suddenly animated, and leaned in toward me as he gestured with his pistol at the western sky, in the direction of the New Lands. “Do you have
any idea
how much undeveloped potential is in those lands? It's a continent full of riches! With free labor as far as the eye can see! And nobody's got the vision to build it out beyond a couple of petty gold mines. Except me.”

He sighed and shook his head. I was about to point out that what he called “free labor,” most people called “slaves”—but then he was talking again, too fast for me to interrupt.

“But when you're surrounded by small-minded, fearful little men with no ambition but to hang on to what they've got, and no appetite for risk, no matter how great the rewards—well, you've got to do it all yourself, don't you? Pay for the troops, pay for the ships, pay for the guns, pay for the food—and even then—
even then!—
they all want bribes under the table and ironclad guarantees of a fat cut if you pull it off, and Savior save you if the going gets rough, because they'll all run like rats and leave you to twist in the wind.”

His eyes narrowed, simmering with resentment, and I thought he was finished. Then he exploded again.

“And I was
so close
! So — close! If I'd only held Pella a few more weeks, until the gold trains came in . . . it would have been all over. I would have won. If that blustering pig
Li Homaya
hadn't shown up out of nowhere . . . And it was all your fault! Bloody — hell!
It was all your fault!
”

He was spitting rage, waving the gun at my face, and I shrank back from him, wondering how he could've known I'd tipped off
Li Homaya.

“If your fool of an uncle hadn't run off on me and taken his men with him, I could've beaten back those Short-Ears without breaking a sweat.”

The rage ebbed away. He sank back in his seat and gave a heavy sigh as he looked down at his injured arm. “Still can't figure out how on earth
Li Homaya
wound up coming at me from the north.”

I was wrong. He didn't know.

I sent them. I sent
Li Homaya
to stop you. And it worked.

“What are you smiling about?”

“Nothing.”

He scowled at me for a moment, then went back to his brooding.

“A hundred more men, and I could've held that city. Fifty, if they'd had any fight in them . . . Fifty good men, I'd be there still. That simp Burns and the rest of the king's lackeys would be falling all over themselves to kiss my ring. Instead of scurrying around, trying to cover their rears by hanging the blame on me . . . I mean, the sheer — insanity of it! The way they spoke to me this morning! I'd barely set foot on the dock—”

The rage was boiling up again. “
My
dock! I
built
that dock! I built that whole — town from scratch! Everything they've got came out of
my
hard labor! And the whole lot of them . . .

“It's not just the ingratitude. It's the incompetence! Such a pack of bumbling idiots, I can't even leave town for a month without seeing the whole place sacked! By
a single — ship
! Ripper Jones? He's an oaf! The man can't buckle his belt without an instruction manual! And they let him waltz in and burn down half the town? —! Savior's —!”

It was some curse. Guts would have been proud of it.

“And they've got the gall to suggest it's somehow
my
fault? And that the business arrangement—which had profited them all so handsomely, and for so long—has to be disavowed and discarded just because that little . . . oh, this is where it
really
gets irritating . . .”

He leaned in toward me again, his blue eyes fierce. “Tell me this: what in Savior's name did my daughter say to those people?”

I would've smiled again if the look in his eyes hadn't been so disturbing.

“That there were slaves working the mine. And it was wrong. And it could never happen again.”

“Oh, my —! The hypocrisy! How many people heard her say this?”

“Everyone.”

“Everyone?”

“Everyone who wasn't dead.”

He grimaced. “—! I should have had a son.”

He shifted the pistol to his injured hand, grunting a little in pain as he inched the arm halfway out of its sling to keep the pistol pointed at me. Then he rubbed his face with his good hand.

“Well, that's the end of that, isn't it? So much for my grand experiment in respectability . . . I'm done with that game. But I'm not done with them. Not by a long shot. They want to make me a villain? Next time, I'll give them a reason to. When those fools see me again, it won't be pink-fingered Roger Pembroke in a silk shirt. Reggie Pingry's going back to his roots.”

Reggie Pingry?

“You're going to find me that treasure . . . and it's going to buy me a fast ship . . . and a hungry crew . . . and every one of those simpering cowards who sold me out is going to know what fear is.”

He saw the look on my face, and smirked.

“Didn't your uncle tell you? About his old pal Reggie? Who taught him everything he knows? He used to lie at my feet, begging for scraps. Little Billy Healy. Who wanted nothing more than to be like me.”

“That's not true!” His eyes were so wild and demented I didn't want to provoke him by talking back. But I couldn't help myself.

“Oh, it is,” he said, nodding. “And then some. But, of course, he wouldn't tell you any of that, would he? 'Cause he wants you to think he's somehow better than I am. And that there's actually such a thing as an honorable pirate.”

Pembroke—
or was it Pingry?
—laughed to himself. Then he stared at me for a long time, with a little smile playing on his lips.

“And if he never told you about me and him . . . I suppose it's a given he never told you about me and your mother?”

I dropped the oars. The rowboat was lurching in the waves.

“That's right, boy . . . I could have been your father. I very nearly was.”

The smile on his face was almost tender.

And I was going to be sick.

“No . . .”

“Oh, yes. Jenny was going to be my bride. Nothing would have made her happier.”

The waves slapped against the boat. My hands were trembling.

“You're a liar.”

“I'm far past the need for lies, boy. And I can well understand your sense of shock—I felt the same way when I first made the connection. Standing on those palace steps in Pella, watching you with a noose around your neck. Imagine what Jenny would've thought if I'd hanged her son . . .”