The Reader (8 page)

Sefia eased out of the boy's grasp and settled more securely among the branches. But she did not speak, and she did not come down.

She and the boy waited while the storm swept over them, bringing more rain. In the late afternoon, when the deluge finally let up and the thunder became a distant echo, they descended from the branches with deep shuddering breaths. Sefia's legs and arms went limp as wet rags. She sank to her knees. The mud was cold and slick under her, but at least she was on the ground again.

The boy stood next to her, peering into the trees in the direction Hatchet's men had gone.

“I would have been caught if it weren't for you,” Sefia said. After a moment, she added, “Thanks.” The word felt clipped and unnatural on her tongue.

He looked down at her and nodded gravely. His hair was plastered to his forehead.

“I'm not after them, you know.” She tried rubbing her
muscles to get them working again. “But I guess you'd come with me anyway.”

The boy nodded again.

She sighed and got slowly to her feet. She was a little wobbly, maybe, but otherwise fine. “We can't stay here,” she said, glancing at the bloodstain and the matted-down places in the ferns. “And we've got to be more careful.”

He smiled then. A real, warm smile that seemed to surprise him, as if he hadn't known he could still do it. His smile was a soft buttery thing.

We.

“Yeah, yeah. Come on. They're bringing the tracker.” She began hiking away from the clearing, taking care with her tracks. Placing his feet where her feet had gone, the boy followed, still smiling.

• • •

B
rittle, brightly colored leaves arranged in a forest-floor collage:
This is a book.

C
aptain Reed jogged across the
Current of Faith
, avoiding coils of rope and redheaded chickens that squawked under-foot. As he passed, his sailors pressed themselves against the rails then closed behind him like waves in a wake, the clicking and scraping of six-shooters and swords rattling at his heels.

Across the water, the
Crux
rode huge and golden on the waves, sea spray sparkling along her gilded figurehead—a wooden woman holding a diamond the size of a cow skull.

Out of the corner of his eye, Reed saw them lower a rowboat into the sea. Dimarion was coming. They had to be ready.

He slapped both of the chase guns at the bow—
nine, ten
—and turned down the starboard side.

By the carpentry workshop, he found Meeks, the second mate, lounging in the doorway while Harison sat outside, running a cleaning rag over his revolver.

“They say Dimarion killed one of Roku's last dragons for
it,” Meeks said. The leader of the starboard watch was a short, spry man with neatly kept dreadlocks twined with beads and shells that winked like gems in black chenille. He was cheeky and liked a good story more than anything else. The rest of the crew enjoyed giving him a hard time, but they listened when he spoke. Even when he was supposed to be readying his watch. “The battle lasted an entire day, and when the dust settled and the smoke cleared, it was Dimarion who remained standing, and it was Dimarion who claimed the diamond.”

“And Cap invited
him
onto
our ship
?” Harison's voice cracked on the last word.

Reed smacked one of the sixteen-pound guns on the starboard side—
eleven
—and chuckled. “Right, you weren't here for that bit with the Thunder Gong, were you? Must've been five years ago that happened.”

Meeks grinned, showing the chip in his front tooth. “Cap stranded Dimarion in a maelstrom. Remind me to tell you about it when we're done here.”

Harison shook his head. “Sometimes I still can't believe I'm on your crew, Cap.”

Reed liked the ship's boy. He was a goofy kid with a broad nose and big wide-set eyes. Ears like a bush baby, but that didn't stop the girls in port from cooing over his smooth brown skin and short black curls. “Believe it, kid,” he said. Then he jerked his head at Meeks. “Don't you got a watch to get in order?”

Meeks snapped to attention and tipped him a mock salute. “Yessir, Cap, sir!” Flicking his dreadlocks over his shoulder, he strode across the deck, calling orders to the rest of the starboard watch.

Reed rolled his eyes and finished his circuit of the ship, slapping the last sixteen-pounder—
twelve
—and taking the stairs to the quarterdeck two at a time. He liked eights best, but he'd settle for fours, sixes, twelves, sixteens, any even number, really. Made him feel like things were in order.

On the quarterdeck, Aly, the ship's steward, was busy arranging a table for two, laying out fluttering linens and gleaming silverware. Two long blond braids hung over her shoulders as she made a quick set of pleats in a napkin. “Before you ask,” she said as he approached, “I already stowed my rifle under the gunwale.”

Captain Reed grinned. Dimarion was coming. But they were ready. “You're as sharp as you are sweet, Aly,” he said.

She beamed.

The chief mate had not stirred from his place at the rail. An old man with a lined rectangular face and a scar across the flat arch of his nose, he was the leader of the larboard watch and Reed's right-hand man. At the sound of Reed's footsteps, he turned, dead gray eyes probing. “Is it today?” he asked. The same question he asked before every adventure. Before every dangerous caper.

Reed ran his fingers through his thick brown hair, listening to the waves wash against the hull. “Nah,” he said. “Not today.”

The mate's frown deepened as he handed the captain his high-crowned hat. “How close is he?”

As much a part of the ship as the timbers themselves, the chief mate could see and hear anything on the
Current
—the face you were making behind his back, the state of the holds,
the conversations of the crewmen in their bunks at night—as if the beams of the ship were extensions of his eyes and ears and nose and sense of touch; but anywhere except the ship he was blind, his milky eyes sightless. People said he never left the
Current of Faith
, and that as long as he lived, he never would.

The
Crux
's rowboat was nearly at their hull now. Dimarion's back was to them, but there was no mistaking his mountainous form. Reed even fancied he saw four sparkling rings on the man's right hand.

“Close enough.” He tapped his fingers along the rail. Eight times.

The mate smiled grimly. “Dimarion isn't a man for bygones. Do you think he's angling for a fight?”

“If we're lucky,” Reed answered.

When Dimarion and the
Crux
showed up on the horizon that morning, well, the smart thing would have been to run. The
Current
was quick, and she didn't have the double gun decks and the heavy artillery of the
Crux
. But being smart was overrated. Being stupid and brave and curious? Now that's something stories are made of.

Dimarion's boat struck their hull with a dull
thunk
, and the chief mate grunted. “Get your guns up. Here comes trouble.”

Meeks scampered by, his dreadlocks flying behind him. “It's a good day for trouble!” he cried.

Captain Reed laughed. The men were waiting for his signal to bring up their guests. The water was blue and the wind was fine and the smell of salt and tar was strong in his nostrils. They were ready.

• • •

C
ooky and Aly had done all he asked and more. In addition to the fine china and the shining silverware, they'd added crystal glasses, a bottle of deep-red wine, and a wide platter of delicacies. Eight slices of apple; sixteen grapes; four halved figs, their insides shining pink and gold in the sun; twenty-four slices of cheese; twenty-four round crackers dotted with herbs; and four squares of dark chocolate already softening in the sun.

Dimarion whistled appreciatively and seated himself. He was tall, taller than the legends said, so large his legs wouldn't fit under the table, and he extended one booted foot toward Reed. The gold tip glinted in the light. “I hope you didn't go through all this trouble for me.” He chuckled. He had a deep melodious voice like a finely tuned instrument.

Reed sat in the chair opposite, one hand tracing interconnected circles on the tablecloth. “Nothing but the best for my old enemy,” he said.

“Enemy!” Still chuckling, the captain of the
Crux
twirled his glass between his huge oak fingers. He had smooth brown skin that matched his powerful bassoon-like voice. “And I'd so hoped we could be friends.”

“With respect, we been on the wrong sides too many times to be friends. Seems a shame to go and change all that now.”

Dimarion tipped the wine into his mouth and swished it between his cheeks before swallowing. He smiled and selected a cracker and a slice of cheese. “I suppose that suits us, doesn't it? After all, you did steal my gong.”

Reed crammed a cracker into his mouth. “What gong?” he asked.

“
My
gong.”

“Oh, you mean the gong that by rights is mine, as restitution for the way you marooned me on that island?” He grinned slyly.

“Have you used it?”

Truth was, the thing didn't even work, but he wasn't about to tell Dimarion that. Instead he shrugged and countered with a question of his own. “How'd you get outta that twister?”

Dimarion smiled and drained the last of his wine. Aly, who was waiting nearby, refilled his glass and slipped away again. He didn't thank her, barely even glanced in her direction. Reed would have been insulted if her tendency to fade into the background wasn't so useful.

The large man nibbled a cracker and hummed with pleasure. “This isn't abysmal,” he said. “What a shame for an artist like Cooky to end up a dough-slinger on a ship like yours.”

“The chief mate don't settle for less than the finest grub.”

Dimarion swirled the wine in his glass. The burgundy liquid swept up the sides of the bowl and dripped slowly down as he held it to the sunlight. No stranger to snobbery, he even wore a silk scarf tied around his head to keep off the sun. For an outlaw who spent his time pillaging merchant ships and taking the survivors as galley slaves, he was impossibly clean.

But the life of an outlaw attracted all sorts. For all the petty bickering of the Five Islands, the jurisdiction of a kingdom extended only so far as you could still see its lands. The rest of Kelanna was free ocean. Outlaws could be as good or as
immoral as they pleased, and they didn't answer to any authority but the gun and the sea.

“But you didn't come here to jaw about Cooky's grub,” Reed said.

Dimarion inspected his neatly trimmed fingernails. His four rings, tipped with sharp canary diamonds, flashed in the sun. If he ever got the chance, he'd use those rings on Reed. That was how the captain of the
Crux
marked his enemies; if he hit you hard enough—and Reed knew from experience, he hit
hard
—you'd have four star-shaped scars, one for each ring, for the rest of your life.

Dimarion took a fig from the glistening tray of fruit and popped it into his mouth. Its pinkish pulp squished between his teeth. “I have a proposition for you.”

Reed watched as Dimarion's gaze flicked to his tattoos. They sprawled across Reed's arms, disappearing beneath his sleeves and reemerging at the parting of his collar where the top button of his shirt was missing—a sea monster with long sucking tentacles, a school of winged fish, a silhouette of a man with a smoking black gun. Every important thing he'd ever done was there, dark and permanent. If you looked closely, you could find the stories of the Lady of Mercy, the Rescue at Dead Man's Rock, and his love affair with the cold and perilous Lady Delune.

But Dimarion was only looking for one: in the crook of Reed's left elbow, a tiny tattooed ship perched at the edge of a spinning maelstrom—a reminder of their last encounter. Dimarion cracked his knuckles. “Treasure,” he said.

“I got treasure.”

“Not treasure like this.”

In spite of himself, Reed sat forward in his chair. Only one treasure could ignite that deep greedy yearning in Dimarion's voice. “The Trove of the King,” Reed whispered.

It wasn't only the size of the hoard that gave the Trove its allure, it was the mystery of its disappearance and the desolation of what had happened when it was lost. According to legend, Liccaro had been a rich kingdom once. Though much of its lands were sand and high desert, its mines had yielded more precious metals and gemstones than any other in Kelanna. With such fine raw material to work with, the Liccarine people became the best artisans in the world; travelers from all over came to see their work, and to buy it if they could afford it. And then one day, for no reason at all, King Fieldspar took all the scepters, the crowns, the jeweled cloaks and necklaces, the fine enameled vases, and he spirited them all away, deep into the labyrinth of caves beneath his kingdom, and was never heard from again. People said his ship sank in the Ephygian Bay on his attempted journey home, but no one knew for sure. The kingdom fell into disrepair. The mines dried up. Drought and famine struck. Divided and corrupt, the regents did nothing. The people suffered. The cities were abandoned, and shrank to a fraction of their original size, all their considerable wealth sold off to pay for seeds that didn't grow, for land they couldn't water.

“As long as there are people to hear it, they'll tell the story of the man who discovers it,” Dimarion said, his eyes never leaving Reed's. “Another story for your collection.”

Reed rapped the tabletop with his knuckles. Sometimes at night when he couldn't sleep, he lit a flickering candle and counted his tattoos. He counted them until he forgot the darkness looming at the portholes and the fringes of his life. Sometimes he needed more than one candle.

“Why you tellin' me this?” he asked.

“What if I told you I knew how to find it?”

“I'd say if you really knew where the Trove was, you'd already be on your way by now.”

“Ah, but I need your help.”

“For what?”

“I didn't come by this information on my own.” Dimarion placed a hand over his heart, and said, his voice laced with venom, “I had a source in the employ of a certain captain we know . . . a fine woman dear to both our hearts.”

Reed swigged his wine and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. There was only one woman Dimarion hated as much as he respected her: the captain of the
Black Beauty
, the quickest ship in the southeast. Reed snuck a glance at the surrounding sea, but there was no sign of another ship. “That's what you need me for,” he said. “Battlin' the
Beauty
.”