Deadweather and Sunrise (13 page)

This wasn’t going to work. I couldn’t board the ship, half-dressed and dripping wet, without getting a lot of questions.

I turned away, losing my nerve—but then I saw, up the shore road to the south, a pair of soldiers headed for town on horseback. Were they the same ones I’d sent to chase imaginary Natives? Or the ones from the exploring party that saw Birch die? Or neither? From that distance, I couldn’t tell. But just seeing them made me turn back to the ship. I wasn’t going to get a better chance than this.

The purser at the far gangway looked older and sleepier than the first one, so I slipped over to that line. I was getting odd looks from the other passengers, but I hoped the fact that my pants and shoes were from the Pembrokes—and as expensive as anything the others were wearing—would help convince them I belonged on board.

As the line floated forward, I folded my shirt carefully over my forearm to hide both the cut and the worst of the shirt’s stains while I practiced smiling for the purser.

“Last-minute swim! Hope Mum’s not cross!” I called out cheerfully as I passed him.

“Mmph,” he grunted, barely looking at me.

A few moments later, I was inside the ship. The gangway led to an entry door in the second deck, where passengers were crowding down narrow, lamplit corridors into a warren of cabins. A stairway heading down into the lower decks was clogged with people, but the one going up was nearly deserted.

I climbed one flight to the gun deck, which was wide and empty except for the rows of cannons and a cluster of younger kids playing some sort of game in the middle of the deck. Strange patterns of triangles and squares with numbers inscribed in them had been painted onto the floor, and the kids were sliding large, flat stones over them using long sticks with padded bumpers on one end.

As I strode past them, trying to look like I knew where I was going, one of them yelled at me for stepping onto what must have been a particularly important triangle. He looked about ten years old, had a cruel face, and cursed me with words I thought only sailors used.

“Watch your mouth! I’ll call for your father!” I told him, not because I had any intention of doing it, but because I thought I’d look even more suspicious if I let his insults pass.

“My father will sue you!” the kid shot back.

I didn’t even know what that meant, so I just kept going.

When I reached the aft end, I found a row of doors, but they were all locked. There was another set of stairs, but I didn’t want to take them, because the lower decks were full of passengers, and I figured if I went up to the top deck, I’d run into the crew.

I looked around. In the corner, a large canvas tarp was thrown over something wide, square, and waist-high. I gathered up an
edge of the tarp—there was an excess of it, bunched around the sides—and peeked underneath.

There were four large crates of cannonballs. Not the sort of thing anyone should be needing any time soon. And there was a couple feet of space between the boxes and the bulkhead, enough to lie down in.

I looked down the deck at the children. Their backs were to me, engrossed in their game. I quickly put my wet shirt back on and crawled under the tarp, burrowing all the way to the back corner and bunching the stiff tarp up over me, keeping it propped between the box and the wall like a tent so I could lie on my back and breathe without rustling the tarp.

It was cramped but not too uncomfortable. I lay still, listening to the kids play their game. From the sound of it, they were horrible brats, arguing with each other over every move and tossing ugly threats back and forth about all the terrible things their rich and powerful fathers would do if they didn’t get their way. Mostly it was torture and imprisonment, but whatever “sue” meant, there was a lot of that going around, too.

My clothes started to dry out, making me itch in all sorts of places I couldn’t scratch for fear I’d jostle the tarp and reveal myself.

After a while, the noise of footsteps going up the nearby stairs began to increase, and the kids abandoned their game and went up themselves. The muffled sound of feet on the deck above grew until it seemed like the entire boat was walking around over my head.

Then there were heavy thuds of what I guessed were ropes hitting the deck, and a great cheer went up from the crowd. We were under way.

I could feel the boat moving now, lumbering out to sea. The feet slowly filtered back down to the lower decks. A bit later, the sun must have gone down, and what little light had been peeking into my hiding place died completely.

Time passed. The smell of cooked food reached me from a distant deck. I was starving by now, and as I lay there in the darkness, I wondered what the passengers were having for dinner and whether I could steal some of it later.

Somewhere below, a band began to play.

It had been silent on the gun deck now for a long time. The fear of being discovered that had kept me frozen in place for the past few hours slowly faded, and I let myself readjust my position and scratch my various itches. But I wasn’t going to let myself get up and look for food until I was sure the passengers and crew were asleep, which meant hours more of lying in the quiet.

I tried to nap, but I had too much to think about. My brain was calmer now, though—the shock of everything that had happened was wearing off, and I gradually managed to wrestle my thoughts into straight lines.

We were sailing east, out of the Blue Sea and across the Great Maw to Rovia. Once we got there, I’d be safe from Roger Pembroke. Evil as he was, he only wanted to kill me for the treasure back on Deadweather. If I disappeared and never came back, he wasn’t going to hunt me down across an ocean.

I could start my life over in Rovia. I’d never been there, but most of the books I’d read were Rovian, and I sort of figured I knew what I was in for. There were cities and rich people and poor people, and it was hard for the poor people to become rich, but it happened sometimes, at least in the books.

I’d be starting out poor, that was obvious, but if I worked hard, and was clever about it, things might turn out okay for me. I’d find a tradesman—a printer, maybe—apprentice myself to him, and slowly work my way up to respectability and a decent life.

I’d never have to come back. Pembroke could have the treasure. The field pirates could have the ugly fruit plantation. All I wanted from the Blue Sea was Millicent.

And someday, she’d come to Rovia. She’d talked about it with me—how much she wanted to see the cities, and the rest of the Continent. She’d show up one day, our paths would cross, and she’d be torn at first, not wanting to give up the chance to rule her father’s empire. But eventually she’d realize she loved me, and she’d stay. We’d be together forever, thousands of miles from her father.

But it didn’t feel right. Even with Millicent in it, there was something uncomfortable about the fantasy of escaping to Rovia. Something that made me uneasy. And more than that, ashamed.

I lay there for a long time, pressing at the feeling like a rotten tooth, before it broke loose and I saw what was under it.

It was my family. I was never much for them, Adonis especially, and I’d spent I don’t know how many nights lying in my straw bed back on Deadweather, wishing I could escape from them.

But they were the only family I had. More important, I was the only family THEY had, and Roger Pembroke had killed them, and if I didn’t do something about it—I didn’t know what, but something—no one would ever know, or care.

And he’d take what he wanted from our land, just like it was his, and no one would try to stop him.

I didn’t want any part of it. I wanted to run away, forget it
had ever happened, and not think about any of them ever again, except Millicent.

But I knew I couldn’t. I could run, I could cross the ocean, but someday I’d have to come back.

Because I couldn’t let him get away with what he did to my family.

And I couldn’t let him have that treasure.

B
y the time I finally crawled out from under the tarp, I was a wreck. Everything hurt. My knee was swollen and didn’t want to bend, my shoulder complained when I tried to raise my arm, muscles I didn’t even know I had ached in my legs and below my ribs, and my back was so stiff from lying in wet clothes on the wooden deck for all those hours that I could barely stand up.

I was also shaky from hunger, because after three weeks at the Pembrokes’, my body had gotten so used to big, regular meals that it didn’t want to work without them. And the hunger wasn’t half as bad as the thirst, which must have been why I was so dizzy.

Fortunately, the gun deck had been deserted for hours—if there was a watchman making rounds, I hadn’t heard him pass. So I took my time getting started, holding the cannons for support as I slowly felt my way around in the gently rolling darkness.

Other than a dim glow coming from the stairwells, it was almost as black as it had been under the tarp. This seemed
odd—the cannon portals were all open, and there should have been plenty of moonlight—until I looked out a portal and realized we were sailing through a fog so thick I could practically hold it in my hands.

Once my muscles loosened and I got used to both the dizziness and the pitch of the boat on the sea, I headed for the aft stairs. Oil lamps hung from the ceiling beams in the middle of every flight, and since I felt safer under the cover of darkness, I moved quickly, down through two levels of cabins to the dining room.

It was as wide and open as the gun deck, and even in the shadowy light of a few lamps hung along the walls, I could see it was spectacular. Dozens of big, round tables filled the floor, surrounded by hundreds of delicate carved-wood chairs with velvet cushions. The walls were plastered over and painted with elaborate murals of sea battles, fought between everything from ancient water gods and sea monsters to pirates and naval officers. In the middle of the room was a raised platform jutting out from the wall that I guessed was a stage for entertainment.

Unfortunately for me, the room was spotlessly clean—whatever feast had been served here that night, there wasn’t a crumb left.

But there had to be a galley somewhere. At the fore end of the room, I found a wide door, secured with a latch. I quietly flipped it open and peeked inside.

It was pitch-black. I shut the door quickly—if any of the crew were asleep in there, waking them would be disastrous. But my thirst and hunger convinced me to risk it. I took an oil lamp from the wall and reopened the door.

It was the galley—and it was massive, stuffed floor to ceiling with barrels, tins, containers, and cabinets. Along one wall was a
giant stove, its thick metal flue disappearing into the ceiling, and in the center of the room, a long, sturdy tabletop stood over an island of cabinets.

I started with the barrels. The first one I opened held a thick liquid that must have been cooking oil. But the second one was water, and I bent over it and drank with my hands until I could feel my belly begin to swell against my belt.

Then I moved on to the food. In a big metal tin, I found a store of salted fish and must have put away a pound of it within a few minutes, hardly bothering to chew.

The food and water made me feel so much better that I temporarily forgot to be scared—and living with the Pembrokes must have spoiled me into thinking I deserved all the comforts I figured those brats from the gun deck were enjoying every night.

So instead of doing the sensible thing and sneaking back upstairs, I started looking for dessert.

I figured there probably wouldn’t be jelly bread, but there must be sweets. And there were—on a high shelf was a large, square box marked
CHOCOLATE
in big block letters. None of the other food containers were labeled that way, which should have alerted me that something wasn’t right.

I reached up, fully extended, and tugged the box from the shelf.

A dozen empty tin cans came down with it, tied to the back of the box in a booby trap. The room filled with a deafening clatter. I could’ve dropped a box of cannonballs on the floor, and they would have been quieter.

The brats from the gun deck must have been here before me, on the trip out, and the cook was ready for them this time.

But I wasn’t thinking that, or anything, just then. I was in a
blind panic, running for cover. I was almost out of the room when I heard a door open somewhere behind me and a voice yell for me to stop, but I didn’t look back.

In the dining room, I took the closest set of stairs, vaulting the steps two at a time. But whoever was chasing me was a lot faster than I was—by the time I passed the upper level of cabins, he was nearly on my heels.

I tried to speed up by leaping three steps at a time, but on the second leap, my busted knee crumpled and I fell.

Then he was on me, a big man with meaty fists that grabbed me tightly.

“What’s your name?”

“James Basingstroke.” I hoped he didn’t read novels.

He squinted at me, taking in not just my face but my clothes, especially the bloodstains and dirt smears on my shirt.