by Geoff Rodkey
“NO, MR. BIRCH, PLEASE!” I didn’t expect mercy. I just needed an extra second. And begging had always bought me time with Adonis, because he loved hearing it so much. It might work with Birch, too, if he liked his cruelty the way my brother did.
Birch’s foot stopped moving, the toes settling back onto the ground. I couldn’t see his face, but I was sure he was smiling. He was the type who liked it.
I lowered my voice to a whimper. “Please, sir, please… oh, please, don’t…”
My left leg was in the guts of the root system now, pushing through clods of dirt as it worked its way into the stiff, thick roots. Almost up to the knee.
“Sorry, son. Boss’s orders.”
Birch’s foot rose again, first drawing back, then moving in a swift arc toward my head. I let go, pushing off with both hands, and blue sky swooped into view, then a blur of forest and rock, and then the horizon was upside down and I felt blood rushing into my head.
I was hanging from the underside of the cliff by one leg, tangled in a knot of roots. Somewhere above me, Birch was cursing.
I managed to pull myself up far enough to grab a fistful of roots with my left hand. I was bringing my right arm up when I felt something brush against it. I should have drawn it back, into my body, but at first I was confused, thinking I’d hit part of the root.
It was Birch’s hand. He got me by the wrist and began to pull me away from the tree roots.
For a long, panicky second, I fought a losing battle to keep my grip. I could feel my leg beginning to slip back through the tangle of roots when everything—me, Birch, the tree roots, the cliff—suddenly lurched downward.
Birch let go, his arm disappearing, and I felt him fall backward, away from the edge, cursing again as we both realized what was happening. The cliff was threatening to give way under our weight.
It was quiet for a moment. As I carefully readjusted my hold, digging in tightly with my arms and working my second leg into the roots, I felt the shudder of Birch’s feet, walking back from the cliff toward the horses.
I was searching the underside of the cliff for some way to escape that wasn’t directly overhead when I felt him return. There were a few little tremors as he adjusted his position.
His hand reappeared with a knife. He slashed at me, blind but vicious, drawing a thin cut across one forearm and missing my head by an inch as I flattened myself against the roots.
He withdrew his hand. As I watched the blood run in little crooked lines down my arm to drip from my elbow into the empty sky, I felt him readjust, moving carefully so as not to bring the whole cliff down with him.
He’d be farther out now—close enough this time for the knife to do its job. I knew if I didn’t do something fast, I was going to die.
I shifted my weight as far to one side as I could, tensing my body backward into a crouch. The knife reappeared, slashing out, missing me by a hair with the first strike. As Birch drew it back, I let go of the roots and grabbed his forearm with both hands, yanking it straight down as hard as I could. I hung on until I felt his body tumble past me, threatening to take me with him.
His boot hit me on the ear on its way down.
I swung from my knees in the air, feeling the cliff top shudder above me. My eyes were squeezed shut, praying it would hold, when I heard the echoing boom of Birch’s body hitting the rocks.
Then there were more echoes, garbled voices of shock and surprise, and I could feel the men of the exploring party staring up at me as I crawled along the roots, slowly making my way back up to the top. I didn’t dare look down.
Once I reached the top, I collapsed onto my back, taking deep gulps of air as I sorted out the pain in my arms and legs. They ached everywhere, my knees especially. There was a burning tightness in my sides, and while the cut on my forearm looked shallow, it was still bloody. One ear was ringing, its upper half throbbing and hot where Birch’s boot had struck me as he fell.
I lay there, unable to move—not because of the pain, but because of the thoughts running through my head.
Birch tried to kill me.
On Roger Pembroke’s orders.
Roger Pembroke wants me dead.
Why?
I had no idea.
But that wasn’t going to stop him from trying to kill me again.
I had to get out of Sunrise. Fast.
I got up and ran for the horses.
RUN
I took Birch’s horse because it was bigger and faster, and even though I didn’t know where I was going, I figured I had to get there in a hurry.
This turned out to be a mistake. It was too big, and too fast—my feet couldn’t reach the stirrups, and once the horse got going down the mountain, there wasn’t any stopping it. Just to keep from falling off—or getting knocked off by a low branch, because the horse seemed to be going out of its way to pass under as many of them as it could find—I had to flatten myself against its back and dig my hands into its mane, and from that position, I had trouble pulling back on the reins.
I yelled “whoa!” and “stop!” and some words that would’ve gotten me smacked if I’d ever used them near Dad, but they didn’t do any good. So I pretty quickly gave up and just tried to hang on, letting the horse make the decisions while I tried to get my brain to work out where I was going. And what I was going to do. And why Roger Pembroke wanted to kill me.
Thoughts buzzed around in my head, dizzy and thick, like flies on a carcass.
Exploring party saw everything. They’ll tell others. They’ll tell Pembroke. Got to hurry. Got to get off the island.
How? The two Healy pirates, waiting offshore. No, that was weeks ago. They’re gone by now. The rowboat at the dock. Is it still there? How far can I get in a rowboat? Back to Deadweather?
There’s a fork in the trail down below. Got to make the horse turn right. If it goes left, I’ll be back at Cloud Manor. Where Pembroke is.
He wants me dead. Why? Wouldn’t let him adopt me. Why did he want to? What did he want from me? The ugly fruit plantation? My family’s dead, it’s mine. He adopts me, it’s his. If I’m dead… whose is it? His?
TREE!
That was close. Branch nearly took my head off. I’d swear the horse swerved toward it. The horse wants me dead, too. Should’ve taken the other horse.
Need help. Who would help me? Mung. Quint. Stumpy. Maybe some of the other field pirates. Back at home.
Have to get home.
How? Need help—here on Sunrise. From who? Millicent. No. Can’t go back to Cloud Manor. Anyway she’s not there. Don’t know where she is. Gone with Mrs. Pembroke.
Does she want me dead?
No. Doesn’t matter. He does.
What’s he want with an ugly fruit plantation? Not the fruit. Something Native.
That was why we came here. Dad found something Native on the plantation.
And Pembroke wants it. That king he asked me about—The Fire King. What did Millicent call him? Hut-something. Said he had a treasure.
There’s a treasure. Somewhere on the plantation. It’s—
TREE!
Rotten horse… The horse wants me dead. Its owner is dead.
I killed its owner.
No. I could never kill a man.
Did I?
He tried to kill me. For the treasure. What is it? The books could tell me. Back in Pembroke’s library. The ones I couldn’t get because the ladder was gone.
He took the ladder. Didn’t want me to know what was in the books. Millicent knows. Wanted to talk about it.
He shut her down. Told her it didn’t exist. He lied.
About everything…
Need help. From who? Percy. Where is Percy? Cloud Manor? Can’t go there. Percy never liked me anyway.
There’s a treasure. On our land. Big enough to kill for. Dad knew. Dad found it. Did he? He found something. But he didn’t understand it—that’s why he brought us here. To Sunrise.
Who can help me here? The harbormaster? Soldiers? No. They al
l work for Pembroke. He pays them. Millicent said so.
I’m all alone.
Don’t think about that.
Dad took us to Sunrise because he needed to find a Native. To translate that parchment. What was on it? Native gibberish, Pembroke said. Pembroke lied. Not gibberish. What?
Why did Dad show it to Pembroke? Dad doesn’t trust anybody. Why did he trust Pembroke?
Fork’s coming up soon. How do I get the horse to go right? If he goes left, how do I get off?
Where am I going? Need help. Who else? Dad’s lawyer. Archibald. No. He works for Pembroke, too. Dad showed him the parchment.
I saw him run. From his office back to the Peacock. Where Pembroke was.
Dad didn’t tell Pembroke. The lawyer did. And Pembroke was nice to us because he knew there was a treasure on the plantation.
TREE!
The horse probably works for Pembroke. Everybody does on this island.
Pembroke is evil.
And was nice to us. No one on Sunrise is ever nice to us. Pembroke was. Invited us to stay with him. Gave us a balloon ride…
He wanted me on that balloon. He was angry when I jumped off.
It wasn’t an accident. He planned it.
He killed my family.
He killed them for the treasure.
He’ll kill me for it, too. And I don’t even know what it is.
The fork is coming.
The horse is going left.
I’ve got to get off this horse.
I grabbed everything I could—the reins, the horse’s mane—and pulled back hard. The horse must have thrown me, because suddenly I was on the ground with my head ringing and one shoulder throbbing in pain.
The horse stopped about fifty feet down the hill, half hidden by the trees. I got up, rubbing my sore shoulder, and tripped on a rock, nearly falling over again.
The horse turned its head back toward the noise. Stared at me for a moment. Then turned away and started to saunter down the trail, disappearing into the trees in the direction of Cloud Manor.
I ran down the right fork, taking the steep trail as fast as I could without falling. I knew from my rides with Millicent that it emptied out onto the shore road above South Point. From there, it’d be a couple of miles downhill to Blisstown, and I needed to get to the port as fast as possible. Once the horse made it back to Cloud Manor, Pembroke would start looking for me, and if I wasn’t gone by then, I might never make it off the island.
By the time I reached the shore road, I was pouring sweat. Fortunately, the road was empty. I didn’t see a soul for the first mile or so, all the way down past South Point, until I neared the sentry post at the foot of the road up to Cloud Manor.
I’d forgotten about the two soldiers posted there until I turned a corner and they came into view. I must have been making a lot of noise, because they were already out in the middle of the road, watching me approach.
One of them held up his hand for me to stop. As he did, the second one unslung his rifle with the kind of motion that suggested he wouldn’t mind using it on me.
I knew I couldn’t stop—these were Pembroke’s men, as sure as the butlers in Cloud Manor were—but they were telling me to, and had guns, and were in the middle of the road.
So I yelled, “HELP! NATIVES ARE COMING!”
It worked. The one with the gun immediately aimed it past me, up the hill.
“Where?” yelled the other one.
“BEHIND ME! THEY’VE GOT KNIVES!” I cried as I ran right between them.
I didn’t look back, but I could hear them shouting to each other as they ran up the hill. This seemed helpful, because hunting Natives would occupy them for a while, but also a problem, because once they figured out there weren’t any Natives, they’d probably come after me.
I tried to run faster and wound up tripping over myself, kicking up dust as I tumbled down the steep road. When I got up again, my knee didn’t work quite right—every time I landed on it, I felt a warning pain like it was going to crumple. So I had to slow down and favor it, limping like a hunchback as I ran.
Half a mile later, I passed a delivery wagon coming from the other direction, and the look of alarm on the driver’s face as he watched me run past made my chest thump with fear—I couldn’t go into Blisstown looking like I did. If I’d been back on Deadweather, I could’ve walked through Port Scratch at midday and not gotten a second glance, but a dirty, bleeding, exhausted teenage boy with a gimpy leg wasn’t exactly going to melt into the crowd on Heavenly Road. And how much time did I have before Pembroke knew to search for me? Between Birch’s riderless horse and the men at the bottom of the gorge who’d seen him fall, probably not much.
I had to find cover. To my right, the cliff would begin tapering off toward the beach soon, but not before I had to pass the southernmost of Sunrise’s two fortresses. Fortunately, the left side of the road was thick forest, so I ducked in and tried to follow the road from inside the brush. It kept me concealed, but it was rough going. The ground was covered with low, prickly shrubs that tore at my pant legs and were so thick I couldn’t move at much more than a walk. I struggled through the underbrush for a few hundred yards, until I was well past the fortress and the cliffs on the other side were giving way to beach. Then I returned to the road.
I was less than a quarter mile from Blisstown now. I could see the docks up ahead, still dominated by the massive hulk of the Earthly Pleasure tourist ship, and the usual heavy traffic of people in and around Heavenly Road.
I ran across the road and onto the beach, taking off my shirt and shoes, rolling up my pant legs, and trotting along the waterline, hoping to look like a carefree beachgoer. I don’t know how convincing it was, but the beach was mostly empty, and from there at least I could keep my distance from anyone on the shore road.
I also had a better view of the dock, and as I approached, I scanned it for the rowboat we’d tied up when we arrived. I could see a small craft in about the same spot we’d left it, and for a moment I thought I was in luck… until I saw a fisherman climb in and cast off.
The rowboat was long gone. If I wanted to get out by boat, I’d have to steal one.
Fear was setting in again, and I had to force myself to keep walking. I was just a hundred yards from the dock now, and I had no idea what I was going to do when I got there.
There were three little kids up ahead, all barefoot, laughing and chasing each other in the surf while their stern-looking parents watched from up the beach, holding three little pairs of shoes. The children all wore velvet short pants and silk shirts. The shirts were soaking wet, clinging to them like second skins.
“That’s enough, children! Time to board!” called their mother.
They ignored her. After a moment, her husband bellowed out, “The ship’s sailing! Want to be left behind? Want us to go back to Rovia without you?”
As the kids reluctantly dragged themselves from the water, I looked up at the dock. Two gangways were open on the Earthly Pleasure, admitting a steady stream of rich, suntanned Rovians, many of them carrying shopping bags from the stores on Heavenly Road.
I didn’t want to go to Rovia. But I couldn’t stay on Sunrise, and I didn’t seem to have any better options.
I looked a mess, and I needed to do something about that. I put down my shoes, waded into the water with my shirt in my hand, and dunked my body in the surf.
I came out dripping wet but feeling, and hopefully looking, a bit less filthy. There was still a long cut down my forearm, stinging now from the salt water, but without all the dried blood, it looked a lot less gruesome. My shirt was too badly stained to wear, so I left it off, hoping I could pass as an avid swimmer with poor manners.
The family of five were fussing over their children’s shoes at the foot of the stairs leading up to the dock. I skirted around them, up the stairs, and joined the line of people heading into the gigantic ship.
The closer I came to the foot of the first gangway, the more nervous I got. The
re was a uniformed porter standing in front of it, smiling and greeting the tourists as they boarded. His eyes passed over mine, ten people back, and I saw his lip curl with distaste.
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.
