North! Or Be Eaten (25 page)

If only Gammon had come three days later. Then Ronchy would have known what to do about fat Oskar N. Reteep showing up for the first time in months, wanting to smuggle three children and their guardians to the Ice Prairies. Ronchy knew immediately these children had to be the rumored Annieran heirs. It was no secret that Reteep was from Glipwood and believed the tales about the distant isle—the Shining Isle, it was called in stories.

What was Ronchy to do but help? How was he to know Migg Landers was as rotten as he smelled? If only Gammon had been there, he would’ve told Ronchy what to do. Likely, Gammon himself would have smuggled them north.

Now everything was a mess.

The tavern was a mess, and his alleyway door was broken to bits. The children had been so young, their features so fine, their eyes so hopeful when they looked at him. And old Reteep, probably dead now or bleeding in a dungeon.

This was what he got for trying to help.

Ronchy still wore his nightgown and cap. He hadn’t slept a wink the night before. He had locked and barred the alley door, trudged upstairs and into bed, and put Reteep and the rest out of his mind—until he heard the awful scream. The old pirate called Landers a traitor, then came a crash, then the sound of his beloved tavern being wrecked. Rather than facing the mess in the dark, Ronchy had lain in bed all night, dreading what he would find in the morning.

At the first hint of dawn, he came downstairs with a heavy heart, wondering what had become of Reteep, his friends, and the children.

He swept what was left of his back door into a dustpan and tossed the debris into the alley, then pushed through the swinging door and into the common room. He took stock of the windows (none broken, which was a nice surprise), the front door (open but intact, thank the Maker), and the wreck of tables and chairs (seven broken chairs, three broken tables). With a heavy sigh, Ronchy righted the fallen tables and scooted chairs under them. In a few hours his first customers would wander in, and they would want a place to sit. The less they knew about his involvement with last night’s events, the better.

Ronchy found them in the back corner of the room. Two boys, asleep in each other’s arms. Their faces were filthy, streaked with either tears or sweat, the smaller one’s head resting on the older one’s chest.

It was such an unexpected thing to discover that Ronchy McHiggins stood over them for a long time, unwilling to disturb such a simple, beautiful thing. The dawn sang through the windows in fat, golden beams, and to his great confusion, tears rose from somewhere deep within him and streamed down his face.

He decided to help them.

W
hen Janner woke, he saw before his face the antennae of a bug.

Then the fog in his mind cleared, and he recognized the gaunt face and sweeping moustache of Ronchy McHiggins. The previous night’s events came back to him with a panic that caused him to gasp and sit up straight. The movement woke Tink, who yawned and rubbed his eyes.

“Breakfssst,” he mumbled; then he too remembered their situation and opened his eyes as wide as his sleepiness allowed.

“Hush, young fellers,” Ronchy said, his croaking voice a strange comfort to Janner. “It’s all right. I don’t know where your keepers or your sister are, but the Fangs aren’t here. For the moment.” Ronchy glanced at his front windows. “They may be back soon with questions for me, though, and you can’t be here. They might sack the whole place just for the joy of it. Happens all the time.”

Janner shook his head, trying to take in all Ronchy was telling him, but sleep still clouded his thinking. “Wait—you betrayed us! Migg Landers—”

“Betrayed
me
, lad. I intended to get you safe to the Ice Prairies, just as I figured Gammon would want me to. Either Migg Landers is one of Gammon’s men and he has reasons for wanting you in the hands of the Fangs, or Migg Landers is a thief and a liar. I think Migg is the problem, not Gammon. But then, I’m just an old tavern boss. What do I know?”

“What…where do we go?” Tink asked.

“Not sure yet, but you need to be scarce by the time customers start filing in. Children are a rare thing in this town—Annieran ones even rarer.” He winked.

How did he know they were Annieran? Janner thought. And why were children rare in Dugtown?

Then he remembered the burrow. The last thing Podo had said before the Florid Sword appeared was that they should meet at the burrow. He assumed his grandfather meant the burrow on the hill outside of town, the one where they had spent
the night. If indeed the others escaped, Podo must have found another Strander tunnel, and the family could be back at the burrow even now, waiting for Janner and Tink to arrive.

Janner stood and pulled Tink up with him.

“I don’t mean to trouble you, Mister McHiggins, sir,” said Tink, “but do you have—”

“Breakfast? Of course I do. Nobody leaves the Roundish Widow with a rumble in his belly. The rolls should be done by now.” Ronchy led the boys into the kitchen, removed a pan of hot, buttered rolls from the oven, and served them with a bowlful of sugarberries mashed into a curious paste, which they ate with wooden spoons. Tink guzzled a cup of water from Ronchy’s cistern, burped, then asked nicely for a refill.

“Mister McHiggins, we need to find our family,” Janner said finally. “There’s a Strander burrow at the edge of town—”

“
Shh!
Keep your voice low, lad, if you’re going to talk about such things. Never know when a Strander might have an ear to the wall. They don’t take it easy on you if you blab their secrets, and if you know the location of a burrow, then that’s a
big
secret. Leave me out of it.”

“Sorry, sir,” Janner said.

“We just need to get to the east side of Dugtown, up on the hill,” Tink said between bites. He had already finished three buttered rolls and the second cup of water and was slurping up the sugarberries.

“The hill on the east side of Dugtown,” Ronchy repeated, twirling his moustache between his thumb and forefinger. “Near the river?”

“Yes sir,” Janner said.

“Ah. That’s a fair walk from here, but it’s easy enough to find. Just follow Riverside Road till it wends away from the river…”

The tavern boss croaked out directions, explaining to them how to take a shortcut to avoid a dangerous stretch of Riverside Road.

The more he talked, the higher the sun flew, and without warning, Dugtown awoke. Outside the Roundish Widow, wagons squeaked past, people murmured and grouched, and birds fluttered about in flocks. The great beast of the city stirred into motion, its citizens crawling about on its back like fleas on a dog.

“Now, you lads be careful. This city was a fearful spot long before the Fangs came to Skree. Now that trolls and lizards traipse the streets, things are worse than ever. The Fangs drive us like slaves. They don’t pay for their drink or their food or for the damage
when they fight. They mock and imprison, and the children—” Ronchy’s croaking voice clogged. “They take the children. There are hardly any left in the south side of the city. The Black Carriage comes and takes what it pleases, be it child or mother. How could they kidnap a mother? Even Stranders have mothers and shrink from doing a woman harm, especially a woman with a child.”

Janner saw a colored drawing on the wall beside the cupboard. In it, a younger, happier Ronchy McHiggins stood beside a pretty woman who cradled a baby.

“I’m sorry, sir,” he said.

Ronchy took a deep breath. He turned and nodded at the boys. “Go. Be wary.” Then he dried his hands on his apron and shuffled through the swinging door and into the common room, where he croaked a greeting to his first customers.

Janner and Tink stood alone on the threshold of the door that led to the alley.

The tidy kitchen of the Roundish Widow was a hen’s nest of safety, a place where the nearest thing they had to a friend had fed them and filled their flasks with clean water. On the other side of the door stretched a world of Fangs and trolls and scoundrels—a world through which they must pass in order to find their family again.

Janner peeked around the corner and into the alley. To his relief, Migg Landers’s body was gone, probably tossed into the river sometime in the night.

“Ready?” he asked, feeling the gravity of the moment.

“Yep.” Tink scratched his armpit with one hand and picked sugarberry seeds from his teeth with the other.

Janner led his little brother into the alley and left the Roundish Widow behind.

Looking out from the quiet alley at Riverside Road, all Janner could think of was the thundering white water of the Mighty Blapp. Wagons, horses, trolls, Fangs, merchants, fishermen, boat captains, carriages, cries of surprise and anger and irritation, squeaking wheels, tromping boots, jangling pots and pans, cracking whips—all meshed into a violent, unstoppable rush that scared Janner frozen.

Never had he seen so many people in one place. He had believed the Dragon Day Festival to be a great ruckus—and for the Glipwood Township, it was—but now he saw that Glipwood and its humble festival was nothing but a quaint diversion in a quiet corner of a giant world. This was one street in a city of hundreds of such streets, on a continent of many such cities, in a world of—well, nobody knew how many continents sprawled across Aerwiar.
¹
Janner watched the pandemonium with the feeling
he was about to leap into the white water of the Mighty Blapp and be swept away to certain death.

“Look at all these people!” Tink said, beaming.

“Yeah. This is going to be harder than I thought,” Janner said gravely.

“According to Ronchy’s directions, we need to turn left,” Tink said. “Left is east. Come on.”

And before Janner could stop him, Tink plunged into the river of people.

After several harrowing minutes fighting the current, being bumped, cursed at, elbowed, and tripped, Janner realized the traffic on the river side of the street moved east, the direction they wanted to go.

“Tink!” Janner cried. “Get to the other side of the street! The
other side!
”

Tink ran into the path of a carriage, and the horse reared. Tink darted to the right and out of sight. With great annoyance, the horse and driver pushed on. Janner waited until the carriage passed, then ducked in front of a whiskery fisherman toting a string of redgill over one shoulder.

He stood on his tiptoes in the narrow refuge in the center of the street, where the crowd grumbled past him on either side in different directions. There was no sign of Tink. Janner wanted to call out for him but was wary of drawing too much attention to himself. Then Tink’s head appeared above the crowd, under the awning of a boathouse on the far side of the street.

Janner clenched his teeth, waited for a space to open, and dashed into the traffic. He pushed for the far side and nearly fell twice. Before he reached the boathouse, an empty space, a sort of bubble in the crowd, appeared around Janner, and an unbearable odor filled his nostrils. He didn’t need to turn around to know a troll was nearby. Janner lowered his head and pushed through to the roadside.

Tink stood on a barrel, staring wide-eyed at the troll as it rumbled past. Dugtowners with purple faces scrambled to escape its smell. The troll thudded along, twirling a club around its finger on a loop of twine. It looked happy as a fed baby, and its chin glistened with slobber.

“Don’t do that!” Janner snapped as he yanked Tink from the barrel by his shirt collar.

“Do what?” Tink jerked away from Janner and glared at him.

“We need to stay close. All we did was cross the street, and already I lost you. The only way we’ll both get to the burrow is if we stay together.”

“Why? We both know where it is,” Tink said hotly, straightening to his full height, which was a head shorter than his brother. “I was standing right there when McHiggins gave you directions. Do you think I’m not smart enough to find it alone?”

“It’s my job to protect you.”

“What if I don’t want to be protected?”

“You don’t have a choice. I’m a Throne Warden. You’re a king. That’s the way it is. I have to keep you safe. I have to get you to the Ice Prairies.”

“Well, what if I don’t
want
to go to the Ice Prairies? What if I want to go home?”

“Are you serious?” Janner rolled his eyes. “We
can’t
go home. Besides, Glipwood was never really our home, anyway. Our home is Anniera, and you’re the king.”

Tink sighed and turned away, mumbling something under his breath.

“What did you say?” Janner demanded.

“Nothing.”

“Tink!
What did you say?
”

Tink gave Janner a seething look. “I said, ‘I don’t want to be king.’ And don’t call me Tink anymore. My name is Kalmar.”

The crowds moved past in a blur, too busy to notice two boys arguing in the shade of a boathouse.

Janner lowered his voice. “Fine, then,
Kalmar
. But it doesn’t matter if you want to be king or not. I’m the Throne Warden, and I’m going to get you safe to the burrow. If you don’t want to be king, tell it to Mama or Grandpa.”