Salamaine's Curse

by V. L. Burgess

  He finally managed to grab a rope as his shoulder hit the edge of a horizontal mast that divided the upper and lower. He caught it with both hands and held on tight. He swung out wide, sailing over the river and back across the deck, knocking down two of Umbrey’s men in the process—both of whom had been too busy fighting scavengers to pay attention to Tom’s wild acrobatics.

  His second pass over the deck wasn’t quite as dramatic. Unable to direct his flight, he slammed straight into the mainmast, hitting it dead-on. The force of the impact sent him reeling backwards. Once again he found himself lying flat on his back, blinking up at the night sky. The ship pitched and rolled beneath him as he fought to regain his senses.

  For the second time that evening, Umbrey leaned over him, his scruffy face blocking the night sky.

  “You know, lad, there are easier ways to come aboard.”

  Beside him, Porter let out a sharp breath. “Oh, but we couldn’t have that. Then he might not be the center of attention.”

  Tom looked at his brother. Ignoring the protests of his aching ribs—he’d slammed the mast hard—he eased himself into a sitting position. “What?”

  “You heard me.”

  Porter stood with his arms crossed over his chest, his features tightened in an expression of simmering hostility. As though he actually believed Tom had wanted to tumble off the gate, slide headfirst through the rigging, crash into the main mast, and risk splitting his skull like an overripe melon. Just to get a little attention.

  Willa stepped between them. “Look, forget it, both of you. We all made it aboard and that’s what matters. We can’t fight among ourselves. Not if we want to get the book.” Turning to Tom, she said, “Now, are you all right?”

  He rose and stepped around her, standing nearly toe-to-toe with his brother. “What’s your problem?”

  “No problem.” Porter gave a cool shrug. “It’s been a while. I guess I’d just forgotten how you love to play the hero.”

  “Play the hero? Are you serious?”

  “We had a plan. All you had to do was get on the ship. But I guess that was a little too complicated for you.”

  “What’d you expect me to do? Just stand there and let those scavengers attack that woman and her kids?”

  “It wasn’t about you! Her husband was right there, seconds away. But you had to go and risk everything—”

  “And what if I hadn’t?” Tom challenged. “What if I’d just followed you aboard? You would have crashed into those gates. That’s what would have happened. This ship would be torn to pieces, and we’d all be in that river right now, fighting off scavengers. Think about it. Is that what you want?”

  Porter’s eyes went icy. “Like I said, you’re a hero. You saved us all.”

  A sharp gust of wind blew across the deck. The upper sail, likely the one he became tangled up in when he’d fallen, bellowed out with a deafening crack! Tom’s rope whipped past them, slithering across the deck like some kind of underwater snake.

  “Where’s my crew?!” Umbrey bellowed. “Do you lazy bilge rats need to be told to tighten the halyard line?!”

  A sailor sprung to and secured the wayward line. Umbrey watched the man see to his task, then returned his attention to Porter, Willa, Mudge, and Tom.

  “I’ve got bigger problems on my hands than your petty little squabbles. I run a ship here, not a blasted nursery. Split up and cool off.” He looked at Willa and Mudge. “You two go below decks and get some sleep. And you two …” He reached for a pair of long wooden poles equipped with vicious-looking iron hooks. He thrust one pole into Tom’s hands, the other in Porter’s. “You start on the starboard side, you start on the port. Comb the hull for scavengers. You find any of those slimy creatures, hook ‘em and cast them far enough out to sea that they can’t come back. You let one sneak onto my ship and I’ll personally feed you to it. Understood?”

  Tom gave a tight nod, as did Porter.

  “Good. Get to it.”

  Willa sent them both a fuming glare and stormed away without a word, which made Tom feel far worse than Umbrey’s scolding had. She was right. If they were going to make it through the Cursed Souls Sea, he would have to find a way to get along with his brother.

  By the time he had finished his task (he’d only found one scavenger on his side, but judging by the hissing and howling and subsequent splashes he’d heard on the opposite side of the ship, Porter had had to deal with three), he was considerably calmer. He triple-checked to make sure he hadn’t missed any, then returned his pole to its proper place by the main mast.

  He looked around. Porter was gone. The flickering lights and shrill chaos of Divino were long gone. Umbrey’s crew, or at least the ones who remained above deck, moved about their tasks with quiet efficiency. The stars had shifted. Time had passed, but there was no way to guess how much. An inky black sea surrounded them. It lapped against the hull, setting a soft, steady rhythm to the night.

  Tom was suddenly aware how exhausted he was. His muscles ached and his eyes were sore with the strain of keeping them open. He wanted to find Umbrey and find out more about the scavengers, but his thoughts were too cloudy. Better to wait until the morning.

  He’d followed a crewman below decks earlier that night when he’d changed his clothes. Not knowing where else to go, he headed in the same general direction, hoping he’d stumble upon the sleeping quarters. The Purgatory was a large ship, fitted with rough-hewn ladders that led from one level to the next. Tom wandered through a maze of dimly lit passageways, descending deeper and deeper into the belly of the ship.

  The thick scent of kerosene oil and greased gears greeted him as he moved lower, causing him to wonder if Umbrey used some sort of engine to power his ship, a mechanical thrust to give them extra power beyond the capacity of the sails. But he quickly dropped the thought as he came upon the crew’s quarters.

  It was a large, low room with maybe thirty hammocks suspended from the ceiling joists. A chorus of deep, throaty snores greeted him as he entered. A single lantern, the wick turned down low, hung from a central beam and gave the room a shadowy glow.

  He spied Porter, his pale blond head a beacon in the darkness, sitting in a hammock at the far edge of the room. A lone empty hammock swung beside him. Tom bit back a sigh and warily approached him. He’d hoped, after their argument, to put a little distance between them, but apparently that wasn’t going to happen.

  “Where are Willa and Mudge?” he asked.

  Porter tilted his chin toward a blanket that had been hung in the corner, providing Willa a makeshift space for privacy. Mudge rocked in a hammock on the opposite side of the blanket, fast asleep.

  Tom turned back to find him holding two pewter mugs brimming with a warm, sweet-smelling liquid. He passed one to Tom. “Here.”

  The unexpected gesture surprised him. He regarded Porter curiously. Was the offer of a drink an apology for lashing out at him or a sign he meant to start over? Or neither one? The only thing Tom was sure of was that his brother looked as exhausted as he felt.

  He lifted the mug but hesitated at the unfamiliar smell. Grog? he wondered. He wasn’t exactly sure what that was, but he’d heard pirates drank it aboard ship. All he knew was that at the academy, being caught with anything alcoholic resulted in an automatic suspension, and he was pretty sure Lost would apply that rule to the Five Kingdoms as well. Still, the drink smelled delicious.

  “What is it?”

  “Slipper. Sugared milk and spices, mostly.” He shrugged. “The cook sent it down from the galley.”

  Tom took a cautious sip.

  Rich and foamy, the drink bubbled slightly as though carbonated. It was warm and soothing at the same time, with a sweet caramel aftertaste.

  “It’s good.”

  Porter nodded. “Our mother used to make it for me when I was a boy and couldn’t sleep.” He drew up one knee and rested his arm atop it. A faraway expression softened his features, as though he was caught up in some warm, distant memory.

>   Tom fought back envy. Porter had enjoyed a lifetime with their parents. He had memory after memory to draw upon. Tom had nothing. Just a portrait given to him months ago with their likenesses. But those images were flat, with no voice or flesh to them at all. Impossible to picture what sort of people his parents had been. Sort of like trying to imagine an entire dinosaur when all he’d been given was a prehistoric pinky toe.

  He glanced at Porter, watching as he sipped his foamy brew, and allowed his mind to wander. What if they’d been raised together, as brothers? Would there still be the same simmering tension between them? Or would they maybe, just maybe, get along? Would they have spent nights sipping—Tom searched his mind for the word—slipper together, staying up late to build forts, tell stories, and all the other stuff brothers did when they were growing up? Would that have changed anything?

  Porter’s thoughts must have been running in a similar vein, for he gestured to his mug and asked, “Do you have something like this in your world?”

  Tom took another sip. It was more than good. It was warm and sweet and strangely comforting. He nodded. “Hot chocolate.”

  Porter’s pale brows knit together. “Does it taste like this?”

  “No. It’s …” He searched his mind, groping for a way to describe the taste of hot chocolate to someone who’d never tried it before. “It’s sweet and smooth, but kind of darker, with more of an edge to it. And sometimes there are marshmallows on top.”

  His words made no sense, but he couldn’t come up with any better way to describe the drink. Porter nodded politely and looked away, his expression once again carefully guarded. In that instant, Tom understood they’d both reached the same conclusion. Trying to connect after so many years was futile. The gulf between them was simply too wide.

  Porter set down his mug. “You get ‘em all?”

  “Yeah.” Tom visualized the scavenger he’d scraped off into sea. An ugly, hideous thing with sunken gray skin, tangled tufts of hair protruding from its skull, and jagged yellow teeth. He couldn’t tell if it had been male or female.

  “There aren’t any scavengers in your world?” Porter asked.

  “No.”

  Tom thought about mentioning the zombies he’d seen in horror films, but everybody knew those weren’t real. Not like here. And scavenger hunts? A silly party game where teams ran door-to-door looking for things like tiny paper umbrellas, a pair of dice, or a purple shoelace. Random things like that.

  Once again he was struck by how parallel their worlds seemed, only his had been put through a filter of safety, with all the ugliness and danger rubbed away.

  Porter stretched back in his hammock, his hands tucked behind his head, staring up at the low ceiling. “Earlier tonight— you don’t have to be like that, you know.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like it’s all up to you to be the hero. Rushing in like you’re the only one who can save us.”

  “That’s not what I did.”

  His brother let out a sharp breath that indicated, better than any words could have, he didn’t agree. Thick silence hung between them. Porter was the first to break it.

  “It’s too late, anyway. You wasted your time coming here. We’ve already lost. No map can change that—especially not a cursed one.”

  Tom looked at him. “What happened? How did everything get so bad?”

  “It just … did.”

  “And the scavengers? What are they? Where did they come from?”

  Porter continued to stare at the ceiling. Though he didn’t say a word, his expression changed, becoming harder, more closed off than usual. He rolled over, presenting his back to Tom.

  “It’s late,” he said. “You can ask your questions in the morning.”

  Tom noted that he didn’t say he would answer them, only that he could ask them. A minor distinction, but an important one.

  A few moments later he heard Porter’s breath change, and knew from the rise and fall of his shoulders he had fallen asleep. Tom wasn’t sure he’d be able to sleep at all. He was exhausted physically, but his thoughts were racing. As he set down his mug and stretched out in his hammock, his fingers brushed the folly’s rattle he’d stuffed in his pocket. Incredibly, he’d forgotten all about it.

  He drew it out and held it up, admiring its pinkish-orange glow. It was hot, but not burning, just warm enough to fill his hand with dry heat. He watched it throb in a steady rhythm, somehow matching the cycle of his pulse, beat for beat. Almost as though it was directly connected to his heart.

  A wish, he thought. He could wish for anything …

  He blinked heavily. The combined effects of the warm drink and softly swaying hammock were rocking him to sleep. He tucked the rattle away and pulled up the rough wool blanket folded at his feet.

  Porter was wrong. It wasn’t over yet. Tomorrow, he thought, as he closed his eyes. He’d figure everything out tomorrow.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  MAYDAY!

  A shrill bell pierced the silence. Tom clenched his teeth in irritation and attempted without success to block out the noise.

  Just two more minutes, he thought, burrowing deeper into his bed. He shrugged his blanket over his shoulder and rolled over, only to suddenly realize two strange things: his bed was swaying, and coarse rope rubbed his cheek where his pillow should have been.

  For a moment, he could make no sense of where he was. Then it hit him. He wasn’t in his dorm room at the academy anymore, but on Umbrey’s ship, the Purgatory. His eyes flew open and he sat up, shaking off the foggy cloud of sleep that held him in its grip. Next to him, Porter’s hammock was empty.

  He glanced around the room. The other hammocks were full, but the occupants looked different from the shadowy glimpses he’d had of the men who’d been sleeping last night. A crew shift, he guessed.

  He slipped out of his hammock and hunted around until he found the bathroom. The space consisted of a small stool and rough table with soap, a water pitcher, and wash basin. He understood how those items might be used to clean himself, but he didn’t understand why that was all there was to the room. He looked around blankly. For a desperate moment, he considered waking one of Umbrey’s crewmen to ask him where the toilet was, but the idea was too mortifying to seriously entertain.

  The words The Necessary, scrawled across a hatched portal in the floor, caught his attention. He cautiously eased open the door and found himself staring, through a small opening perhaps ten inches beneath him, at the ocean. No plumbing or drains to worry about here. Evidently everything was immediately flushed out to sea. Now that was definitely something he hadn’t read about in any history book.

  He finished and soaped up, splashed water on his face, rinsed his mouth, and tugged his fingers through his hair. Once the basics had been taken care of, he realized how hungry he was. He climbed up to the main deck. A mild sun shone directly overhead, making it near noon, he noted with surprise. He couldn’t recall the last time he’d slept so late. No wonder he was famished.

  Umbrey spied him and waved him over. “’Bout time you got out of bed. I was beginning to think you’d tumbled overboard.”

  As there was no reply he could possibly make, Tom ignored the comment, choosing instead to say hello to Willa, Mudge, and Porter, who stood beside Umbrey on the quarterdeck. Their greetings were friendly enough, but Tom couldn’t help noticing the quiet tension that ran through the group.

  He turned his attention to the surrounding sea. A shroud of heavy mist rose from the surface of the water, giving it a sinister, swamp-like appearance. The horizon was dotted with a series of small, rocky islands, through which the Purgatory carefully navigated. Free-floating masses of algae, some of them thick enough to support a man, drifted past. Tom had been in a decent mood when he woke up, but no longer. The creepiness of the place sent a wave of dread through him.

  “Is this the Cursed Souls Sea?” he asked.

  Umbrey shook his head. “The Straits of Dire.” He rapped a knuckle on the map mount
ed beside the ship’s wheel. “We’re here, between northeastern end of Aquat and the Cursed Souls Sea. If we make it through, we’ll continue on.”

  If, Tom noted, not when.

  Willa rubbed her hands over her arms, as though warding off a chill. “We’re passing through the trade route,” she said.

  The trade route. Tom mulled over her words, thinking of the vast cargoes of goods that left Asia aboard enormous ships bound for Europe. “You mean, like spices and silks?”

  Porter, who’d been scanning the horizon as well, gave a barely imperceptible shake of his head. “Slaves,” he said. “Aquat slavers claim these waters. There’s a penalty for traversing them.”

  “What sort of penalty?”

  “One I’m not willing to pay,” Umbrey answered flatly. He lifted a spyglass to his eye and slowly surveyed the horizon. A long, narrow island jutted out of the sea directly ahead of them, slicing the channel in two. Umbrey lowered his spy glass and glanced from Tom to Porter. “Well, mapmaker’s sons? Which is it? The northern route or the southern one?”

  “North,” said Porter.

  “South,” said Tom.

  “Naturally,” said Umbrey, a wry smile curving his lips. He arched a shaggy brow and looked at Mudge. “Well, majesty? It appears a royal verdict is needed.”

  Mudge smiled. “We’ll go south. Tom’s way.”

  Tom mussed Mudge’s hair. “Excellent choice.” Although he kept his tone light, he didn’t miss the way Porter stiffened.

  Umbrey conveyed the order to his crew and the Purgatory veered to starboard, entering the channel through the southern side. That accomplished, he nodded to a crewman standing just over Tom’s shoulder.

  “The cannon ready?”

  “Aye.”