New Lands (THE CHRONICLES OF EGG) (25 page)

A
donis stared at me like he was seeing a ghost. “Ye come lookin’ fer us?”

I shook my head. “I had no idea—”

“Where to look!” Millicent broke in, talking over me. “At first. But thank heavens we found you. Egg was worried sick!”

We both turned to stare at Millicent. I had no idea what she was talking about. My brother scrunched up his face and squinted, trying to figure out why she looked so familiar. Then he remembered.

“Yer that Sunrise girlie! Come to get yer balloon back?”

“Of course not! We came to rescue you! Egg insisted on it!”

“No, I di—” I started to say.

She kicked me hard in the foot. I shut my mouth.

What she was saying made no sense. But at the moment, nothing did.

“Fer true? Ye really come to rescue us?” For the first time in my life, Adonis was looking at me with something besides a scowl.

Did he say “us”?

“Dad and Venus are here?”

“Course! Didn’t ye see ’em?” He jerked his head skyward. “Dad’ll be by soon. Brings me dinner round now.”

My head felt like it was floating up off my shoulders.

My family’s alive. All of them.

“Fola batakay!”
The crazy-seeming Moku was pacing back and forth against the far wall, yelling at us.

“Tuma pa!”
Kira yelled back at him.

Adonis stared at her, then at Guts.

“Who’s these two?”

“I am Kira Zamorazol.”

“Name’s Guts.”

Adonis’s lip curled up in a sneer. “Kind o’ name izzat?”

“Pudo la,
ye
billi glulo.”

“They’re friends of mine,” I managed to say.

Adonis looked confused.

“Since when ye got friends?”

“Since…uh…” I was having a hard time making my brain work. “How did you
get
here?”

“Landed. Didn’t have no choice. Can’t steer a balloon. How’d
you
get here?”

“Walked.”

“Across the Blue Sea?!”

“Oh…That part was a boat.”

“Still got it?”

“Got what? The map?”

Millicent kicked me again. But Adonis didn’t even blink at the word. He had other things on his mind.

“The boat, stupid!”

“Oh…No.”

“How ye gonna rescue us with no boat?! Crimey, Egbert! Can’t do nothin’ right.”

“Can I sit down?” I was starting to think I might pass out.

“Yeh. On them rocks. Keep yer back to the wall—otherwise, that lot’ll shank ye.” He nodded in the direction of the crazy-seeming Moku, who’d retreated to a dark corner to mutter
“fola batakay!”
at us.

We all sat down on some big rocks at the far end of the pit.

It was a relief to get off my feet. My whole body ached from the day’s forced march. And my head was spinning like a top.

“How’d ye know where to find us?”

“Just lucky, I suppose,” said Millicent. “We’ve been scouring the countryside.”

Adonis scrunched up his face again. Thinking didn’t come easy to him.

“Ain’t
too
lucky, if yer in the pit,” he finally said.

“How come you’re down here, and Dad and Venus aren’t?”

“’Cause Venus is a — —,” he said, using two of Guts’s favorite words. “Tryin’ to get me killed, she is! And Dad can’t keep her in line. She was
my
daughter, I’d smack her silly ’fore I’d let her go on like that with them savages.”

“Go on like what? What did they do to her?”

He snorted. “
Do
to her? Made her queen’s wot they did!”

“What?!”

“Lives inna palace! Runs the whole show!”

What he was saying was so crazy I must have misunderstood him.

“You can’t be…what?”

“Yells ‘boo,’ they all jump! Look wot she did t’me! Had ’em toss me in here—”

“Adonis!”
The unmistakable growl of my father’s voice boomed down from the mouth of the pit. “Heads up! Dinner comin’!”

I looked up. One of the big woven baskets I’d seen lying near the pit was dangling above us on a rope. Just past it, I could see Dad standing at the pit’s edge, feeding the rope through his hands.

“Dad!!” I yelled.

He stopped lowering the basket and craned his neck out over the hole. “Izzat…?”

“It’s Egbert!” Adonis yelled to him.

“WOT?!”

“It’s me,” I said. “Egbert.”

The light was behind him, hiding his face in a shadow as he stared down at us.

“How the blaze…?”

“Came to find us, them savages tossed him in here,” Adonis explained. “Drop the food, will ye? Starvin’!”

“Is it really you, Egbert?”

His tone of voice wasn’t at all like the Dad I remembered—it was husky and low, almost tender. I felt another big lump swell in my throat.

“It’s me,” I croaked.

“Savior’s sake…Saw ’em bringin’ in prisoners, but I never woulda—”

“Dad! The food!” Adonis wasn’t about to let our reunion get in the way of his dinner.

“Right.” Dad began to feed the rope again, and a moment later the basket bumped to the ground. There was a small corked jug and a leg of what looked like either a big chicken or a little turkey, charred black from a cooking fire. Adonis snatched them up and hurried back to his rock, turning away from us as he tore into the bird leg.

“Would you mind sharing that?” I asked him. “We haven’t eaten in a while.”

“Ai’m muff fu fare!” Adonis protested through a mouth stuffed with meat.

“Think I might jump him fer it,” Guts muttered to me as he licked his lips.

Dad spoke up again. “Ye really come all this way, Egbert? Just to find us?”

Millicent kicked me in the side of the foot again.

“Will you stop!?”
I hissed at her. Then I called up to Dad.

“We, uh…sure did,” I said. I must not have sounded too convincing, because Millicent gave an annoyed snort.

But it was good enough for Dad. “That’s sumpin’…Sure is…”

He started to hoist the empty basket back up.

“Gimme a few. See ’bout gettin’ ye outta there.”

“Wait! I brought friends. There’s four of us.”

His head swiveled from side to side as he peered down into the pit. “How’d ye get friends?”

“Just…did.”

“Mm…See wot I can do. Dunno wot kind o’ mood she’s in.”

“Who?”

“Yer sister.”

“Is it true? Did they really make Venus queen?”

His shoulders slumped a little. “Sumpin’ like it. Yeh.”

Then he started off. “Back soon.”

“Wait!”

“Wot?! Gettin’ dark!”

“We’re awfully hungry. Thirsty, too.”

“Awright. See wot I can do.”

DAD WAS GONE
until after sunset had taken our last bit of light. By that point, it was clear to me that Adonis wasn’t himself. He was still generally horrible—I’d had to stop both Guts and Kira from getting into fistfights with him after he made some ugly comments about both Guts’s missing hand and Kira’s sundown prayer to Ka. But in the hour or so we spent together, he didn’t slug me once, or even take a swing at me, which was some kind of record for him. And the handful of insults he lobbed at me were halfhearted at best. I wasn’t sure if it was because he knew he was outnumbered, or if he’d genuinely changed how he felt about me.

The Moku might have had something to do with it. It was clear he was terrified of them. “Stone killers…,” he kept saying. “Treat ye rough…Ye’ll see.”

“But why on earth did they make Venus queen?” My sister was the last person I could imagine inspiring a bunch of strangers, let alone the Moku. She was vicious enough for them, I guess, but they seemed like a pretty clever bunch, and Venus was dumb as a post, and lazy on top of it—back home, she didn’t even like to cut her own food if she could get somebody to do it for her.

“Dunno,” was about as much as Adonis had to say about it—he repeated that about twenty times in response to my questions, along with “can’t figger it” and “stone crazy, it is.”

And he had a thousand questions of his own, some of which were tough to answer—especially with Millicent sitting next to me with her foot at the ready.

“Why do you keep kicking me?” I muttered, quiet enough that Adonis couldn’t hear.

“Because you can’t tell him the truth!”

“Why not?”

“What do you want them to think—that you’re a hero? Or a treasure hunter?”

“I’m neither,” I protested.

“You’ll be one or the other to them. And we need their help.”

And it wasn’t just hard explaining things to Adonis because I couldn’t tell him the truth about the treasure. My brother wasn’t exactly quick-witted, and he had a hard time getting his head around even simple concepts, like the fact that Roger Pembroke had tried to murder our whole family.

“I’d want to kill a bloke, too, if ’e lost my balloon.”

“You didn’t lose his balloon—he had his men cut the tethers so you’d drown in the ocean!”

“Stuff! Who’d waste a balloon like that? ’Sides, if ’e wanted to kill us, why’d ’e buy us lunch?”

“To butter you up!”

“Wot fer? Coulda plugged us on the spot…Fine meal, too.
Still
thinkin’ ’bout that jelly bread.”

“Adonis—he’s
evil.
”

“Says you. Bought us lunch and gave us a balloon ride, says me.”

“You know the silver mine on Sunrise? He owns it—and all the people he’s got working there are slaves.”

“So?”

“So?! He’s a
slaver.
He buys human beings and works them to death.”

“Smart move if ye can pull it off. Beats payin’ ’em…Dad oughta do that. Get slaves fer the plantation. Be a sight easier to manage than ’em lazy field pirates.”

After that, I gave up on trying to talk to Adonis. I figured Dad would tell me what I wanted to know.

Meanwhile, Kira managed to start a conversation with the surly Moku, but she had a hard time getting anything useful out of him, either.

“Did you ask about my sister?” I whispered to her after they’d been talking awhile.

“I am trying. First, he only wanted to talk about why he was innocent.”

“Innocent of what?”

“Stealing. That’s why he’s here. And now he won’t stop talking about how much he hates your brother. But I will keep trying.”

Once darkness fell, their conversation died out, too.

“Did you learn anything?” Millicent asked Kira.

“Not much. He is very afraid he will be put to death soon. He wants to sleep now. But he says we can talk more when morning comes.”

WE MOSTLY FELL SILENT
ourselves after that. I was so wiped out, I was starting to doze off by the time Dad came back, along with a middle-aged Moku warrior. They both carried burning
torches, and after ordering us to stand back, Dad dropped his torch into the middle of the pit.

“Here! Give ye light to see the food.”

He lowered a basket with food and water for us. The empty basket went back up, and before I’d had time to take more than a few sips of water, Dad tossed the end of a knotted rope into the pit.

“Climb up, Egbert. Just you.”

Adonis didn’t like that. “Dad! Wot the deuce?!”

“Watch yer mouth! Know where ye stand with her. Doin’ me best, but it takes time. Now, c’mon, Egbert. Get up that rope.”

“What about my friends?” I asked Dad.

“Tried. Nothin’ doin’. Maybe tomorrow.”

I didn’t want us to get separated—it made me worry for both them and me—but there didn’t seem to be any choice.

“Sorry about this,” I said to the others. “I’ll get you out. I promise.”

“Be careful,” said Kira.

“See about gettin’ my hook back,” said Guts.

I turned to Millicent, and to my surprise she wrapped her arms around me in a fierce hug. I hugged her back just as hard.

Then she pulled away, just far enough to take my head in her hands with her fingers nestled in my hair, and stared into my eyes.

I stared back, mesmerized by that inner furnace I could see glowing behind her eyes even in the dim flicker of the torch near our feet.

For a moment, time seemed to stop. Or at least my heart did. First, I thought she might kiss me. Then I thought maybe I was supposed to kiss her.

Then I realized if things went badly, I might never have another moment with her like this one, and I should tell her I loved her so I’d never have to regret not having said it.