by Geoff Rodkey
Millicent was shaking her head in amazement. “I can’t believe it. Neither of you knows how to sail?”
“We’ve got oars. Can’t we just paddle?”
“Not if you actually want to get anywhere! How far are you going?”
“Deadweather.”
She sighed. “I’ll just have to take you myself. Ridiculous! And dressed like this!”
“It favors you.”
“Don’t make me blush. Now get those oars out.”
“Hang on.” Guts was staring suspiciously at Millicent. As he spoke, he gestured at her with his knife. “Just ’cause yer comin’ don’ mean yer sharin’ the treasure.”
“Don’t be stupid. I don’t need any treasure. Besides, you’re barking mad if you think you’re going to find it on Deadweather.”
“Good enough for me,” I said, handing Guts one of the oars. The thought of Millicent coming with us was making me a little light-headed.
Reluctantly, he put down the knife to take the oar. Then he leaned in, muttering in my ear. “Don’t trust her. She’s witchy.”
“She’s not,” I said. “Believe me.”
“I’m not what?” asked Millicent.
“Nothing,” I said.
“Witchy,” said Guts.
“Oh, terribly! In fact, I’m planning to kill you both at sea,” said Millicent. “Now, give me that oar,” she said, holding her hand out to Guts.
“Why?”
“Because they work much better when you’ve got two hands.”
His face twitched with anger, and he drew back the oar like he was going to swing it at her. I quickly got a hand on it.
“Don’t. Please. She’s only teasing.”
He made an odd, angry gurgling noise. But he let me take the oar. As I turned to give it to Millicent, he snarled at her. “Watch yerself!”
“I’d suggest you do the same, but I don’t know how you could watch anything with all that hair in your eyes. Next time you’re play-acting with that knife, why not use it on your bangs?”
There was another angry gurgle, and he went for his knife. So did I. He got there first. But at least I managed to put myself in between him and Millicent.
“She’s only kidding. Really. Even though she’s being an idiot.”
“Excuse me?”
“You are. Seriously.” I took my eyes from Guts just long enough to glare at her.
Guts growled again. “Don’t have to take this.”
“You’re welcome to step off. Wait for another girl to come by with a boat.”
“MILLICENT!”
“No? Right, then. Why don’t you make yourself useful and fetch the main? It’s in the sack down in the cabin.”
“Not yer—— servin’ boy!” Guts took a step toward her, and I had to put my hands out to make sure he couldn’t stab her without hitting me first.
“Of course you’re not, and she’s being a complete idiot—”
“Who’s the only one among us who knows how to sail. And happens to own the boat.”
“And there’s that. So please, please, don’t stab her.”
“And do fetch the main. It’s rather critical to the entire undertaking,” she said with a smile.
Guts twitched like he was halfway to a seizure, and made some more growling noises, but he let me steer him toward the cabin.
“She actually does mean well,” I told him quietly.
“Keep her out my way.” He stomped down the cabin steps, twitching and muttering.
When he was gone, I lit into Millicent. “For Savior’s sake, would you stop winding him up? Do you want to get stabbed?”
“He’d never use that knife.”
“He would, actually. He’s quite violent. And not well in the head.”
“What kind of ‘not well’?”
“The kind that stabs people! Look at this.” I opened two buttons on my shirt and pulled it far enough off my shoulder to give her a good look at the blood-crusted bite mark on my shoulder.
“Oh, that’s awful! Does he have a dog?”
“No, that was him.”
Millicent’s eyebrows jumped. “Right, then. Good to know. Thanks for the tip.”
Millicent laid off Guts after that, settling for bossing me around instead. She tried to give me orders like I was an ordinary seaman, but she quickly realized that words like clew and halyard were going straight past me, so she had to settle for pointing and using simpler instructions, like “pull down on that rope” and “let Guts do it.”
And “watch out for the boom.” Which I wish she’d said a little faster, because then I might have ducked in time and not gotten clouted across the back when the arm of the sail swung over the cockpit. But at least it didn’t hit me in the head.
Eventually, we got under way. Millicent set a course to the west and settled back in the cockpit with her hand on the tiller.
“It’s chilly,” she said, hugging her arms to her chest. “Can you fetch me a blanket from the cabin?”
I went inside and found Guts already fast asleep, curled up in one of the cabin’s small but cozy beds. I took a wool blanket from the other one and brought it back to Millicent. She wrapped it around herself like a shawl as I took the seat beside her on the other side of the tiller.
It was still an hour or so before dawn, and the sea was calm under the moonlight. I watched Millicent for a while, studying the curve of her cheekbone and the long wisps of hair that the wind blew across her face, until she caught me at it and I had to stop.
“What are you looking at?”
“Nothing.” I turned away and studied the water instead.
“Tell me what happened,” she said. “With Birch.”
I told her the whole story, careful not to look at her when I got to the part where Birch said “boss’s orders.” I knew she wouldn’t like hearing it, but I wasn’t going to leave it out.
“That’s not how they told it at all,” she said when I was finished.
“Who’s ‘they’?”
“The men in the gorge. The ones who saw it happen.”
“What did they say?”
“That Birch was waving to them from the top of the cliff, and they were waving back when they saw you step out from behind and push him over the edge.”
“They told you that?”
“No. They told Daddy. He was very upset.”
“Millicent… I’m telling you the truth.” I could feel my jaw tighten as I spoke.
“Sometimes when things happen very fast, especially if they’re scary—”
“It’s got nothing to do with scary! He tried to kill me! You think I’m lying?”
“No, I just—”
“Why on earth would I push him off? I didn’t even know him!”
“Don’t get angry—”
“And he didn’t know me! Why would he try to kill me, if someone hadn’t told him—”
“STOP!” It was a sharp, sudden burst of temper, a kind I’d never seen from her. And one that reminded me of her father.
Just like him, she quickly reeled it back in. When she spoke again, it was practically in a whisper.
“Let’s not talk about it. We’re not going to convince each other of anything. And I believe you. I’m sure Birch attacked you first. But I also know, in a million years, Daddy wouldn’t have ordered him to do that. Somehow there’s been a terrible misunderstanding. And I’ll get it worked out. I’ll fix it, I promise. I’ll make it right between you and Daddy.”
There was no point in arguing. Like she’d said, we weren’t going to convince each other of anything. So I changed the subject.
“Why don’t you think there’s any treasure on Deadweather?”
“Because Daddy would have told me. And it’s not part of the legend.”
“What is the legend?”
“Of the Okalu?”
“What’s the Okalu?”
“Seriously? You don’t know any of it? With all the books you’ve read?”
“I neve
r read one about that.”
She sighed. “Right. Where to begin…? A hundred years ago, when the Cartagers first came to the New Lands, there was a Native tribe that ruled the whole area. They called themselves Okalu. The People of the Sun.
“And they were quite advanced for savages. They had cities and writing, and supposedly they could do things we can’t even imagine. Like setting things on fire just by looking at them. Some people think there was a trick to it, like a technology or something we don’t know about.
“But others think, and the Okalu themselves said, that they had magic powers. Which they got from the sun—they said it was a living thing, a god in the sky that they called Ka. Every morning, the whole tribe would bow down to worship the sunrise and give it thanks. And every night, they’d do the same to the sunset, and ask it to come back again and renew their powers for another day.
“They had two main temples. One back on the mainland, that they used all year round, and one on Sunrise, on top of Mount Majestic, that they only went to once a year. I’ve been there. It’s mostly ruins now, but looking at it you can imagine, back then, it must have been magnificent.
“No one lived on Sunrise. It was sacred ground, just used for the temple. And once a year, at the summer solstice, the whole tribe would cross the Blue Sea from the mainland and come there, and they’d have a huge ceremony, called the Marriage of the Sun.
“They’d take one girl from the tribe—the Princess of the Dawn—and they’d cover her in gold and jewels and offer her up to the sunrise to be Ka’s wife. And supposedly, she’d rise into the heavens, draped in her jewels. And never return.”
Millicent smiled. “When I was little, I used to pretend I was Princess of the Dawn. And I lived in the sky, and ruled over everyone.”
That wasn’t hard to imagine.
“In exchange for his bride, Ka would grant his powers for one more year to the head of the tribe, the Fire King, who he blessed with a sacred object, the Fist of Ka, this sort of”—she gestured toward the knuckles of her hand—“giant ring or glove, or something. It’s unclear exactly what it was. But when the Fire King wielded it, he had all the powers of Ka: to burn, to kill, even to heal.
“And then the Cartagers came. Just a few explorers at first, but eventually they sent a whole fleet of soldiers to conquer the mainland. And they had guns and horses, neither of which the Natives had ever seen, and the Okalu thought they were Thunder Gods, come to destroy the People of the Sun.
“At first, the Cartagers won every battle, and they got all the way to the gates of the main Okalu city, where the Temple of the Sunset was. But then the Fire King, Hutmatozal, raised the Fist of Ka against them, and supposedly, most of the Cartagers were struck dead in an instant. The only ones who survived were those who’d agreed to worship Ka themselves.
“What was left of the Cartagers retreated to their ships and were about to set sail when another tribe—the Moku, who’d been ruled by the Okalu forever and hated them—came to the Cartagers and offered to help. They told the Cartagers about the yearly pilgrimage for the Marriage of the Sun, which was just about to happen.
“So the Cartagers set a trap on Sunrise. They took the cannons from their ships and set them up on the harbor cliffs, where the fortresses are now. The Okalu arrived. And supposedly, because they thought the reason they’d nearly been wiped out by these Thunder Gods was because they hadn’t been generous enough to Ka, they brought with them their entire treasury as the princess’s dowry—every bit of gold and jewels the tribe had. The moment they landed, the Cartagers opened fire and slaughtered them all. And that was the end of the Okalu.
“But the Cartagers never found the dowry. It disappeared, along with the princess and the Fire King himself and the Fist of Ka that supposedly gave him his power. The legend is that they disappeared inside Mount Majestic. And someday, the Fire King will reappear, along with a new princess, and offer the treasure again as her dowry. And Ka will give his blessing, and the Okalu will rise again.
“That’s the legend. And that’s why, if the Fire King’s treasure really exists, it must be on Sunrise somewhere.”
It was a lot to absorb. And I didn’t know what was real and what was just legend. Nobody did, from the sound of it.
“All I know,” I said, “is there’s something on Deadweather. And it’s Native. And it was important enough to make my dad come to Sunrise and look for someone to help him understand it.”
“That could be anything,” she said. “But I wouldn’t go thinking it’s some huge treasure. Let alone the Fire King’s.”
I didn’t know what to think. “Guess we’ll find out.”
“Guess we will.” She stretched her legs out across the deck and leaned her head back against the seat, cocking it toward me. I wished the tiller weren’t between us, because if it hadn’t been, she might have rested her head on my shoulder.
“I missed you, Egg,” she said.
She missed me. My heart soared.
“I missed you, too.” I turned toward her, opening my mouth to spill out my guts, to tell her how much I loved her. But before I could form the words, she caught my eye and grinned, scrunching up her nose.
“It’s no fun with just Daddy and Mother.”
No fun?
I came back down to earth, slumping back in my seat. I’d read enough books about star-crossed lovers and doomed romances to know that when the person you love gets accused of murder and has to run away, there’s a lot of ways you can react. Inconsolable weeping, suicidal hysteria, violent rage—even silent brooding’s okay, as long as you’re plotting something underneath the silence.
But saying it’s “no fun”?
She might as well not have missed me at all.
I crossed my arms and went into a heavy sulk. But she didn’t even notice. She was staring up at the dimming stars.
“Mother wants to send me away. Off to some boarding school on the Continent. Thinks I’ll never be a proper lady if I stay on the island.”
Fine. Go. See if I care.
“Daddy will never let her, though. He needs me too much. Hasn’t got nearly enough levelheaded advisers. This whole Earthly Pleasure fiasco made that perfectly clear—”
Given everything that had happened, it was also perfectly clear that Millicent wasn’t half the confidant of Roger Pembroke she thought she was. But the words were tumbling out of her so quickly that all I could do was shake my head and roll my eyes.
“—although Daddy seems strangely thrilled about it, like there’s some kind of opportunity to be had. Which I can’t fathom in the slightest—I mean, Rovia’s finest families, robbed blind, stripped to their underwear, scared to death, and abandoned at sea? How on earth could that be a good thing? But Daddy thinks there’s some angle to be played involving Cartage and the New Lands… It’s a terrible waste, you know, the Cartagers control this whole continent full of resources, and they never do anything with it. Still, I can’t for the life of me understand what that’s got to do with a pirate attack. But that’s the thing about Daddy—he’s brilliant, always three steps ahead of everybody else, and he plays his cards very close to his chest—”
“Millicent.”
“What?”
I was staring at the horizon. Straight ahead of us, the skyline was turning pink.
“Are you sure we’re headed west?”
“Of course.”
“Then why’s the sun rising in front of us?”
She sat up straight, staring at the bleeding edge of dawn.
“That’s the strangest thing… It’s rising in the wrong place.”
My jaw dropped. “Is that what you think?”
“What else could it be?”
“We’re going the wrong way!”
“Impossible. I had us going west.”
“What’s more likely—the earth started turning in the other direction, or you went the wrong way?”
She let out a little huff of annoyance. “Whatever. We’ll change course and it
’ll be fine.”
BUT IT WASN’T FINE. We’d been under way well over an hour by then—long enough for Deadweather to be on the horizon if we’d been headed the right way. Instead, there was nothing but ocean in all directions.
We sailed west, the direction we should have gone in the first place, until Guts woke up and started an argument about whether it was the right way to fix the problem. All three of us had a different opinion, but no one knew for sure, and the maps we found in the cabin were useless because we didn’t know where to locate ourselves on them. West of Sunrise? East? South? How far?
The sun climbed higher, searing our faces and making everyone sweat up a thirst. But we only had a skin of water, and it was two-thirds gone before we realized we’d need to make it last.
We took to the cabin to escape the sun, tying off the tiller and sitting in a tense silence while taking turns poking our heads out to see if anything—a spit of land, another ship—had appeared on the horizon.
Nothing did. Hours passed. We were well and truly lost, trying to make our way west, because at least that way we’d eventually run into the New Lands. And while they were mostly trackless jungle, sailing in any other direction could guarantee us a slow death on a thousand miles of open sea.
But the sun was high, and the wind kept shifting, and soon we weren’t even sure which way was west.
Millicent and Guts picked at each other until a screaming fight broke out. After the yelling burned itself out, both of them refused to speak. Not that there was much to say. Just bitterness and fear. Fear that we wouldn’t sight land or another ship, and fear that we would, only to find ourselves at the mercy of pirates—or, in my case, anyone who knew five thousand pieces of silver were theirs for delivering me to Roger Pembroke.
The sun started to drop, and the wind died down, leaving us nearly becalmed. My head hurt from lack of water, and I realized it had been almost two days since I’d slept.
So I wedged myself into the corner of one of the beds and fell into a heavy sleep, full of strange nightmares—of gods dressed as pirates, and savage battles, and pigs feasting on jewels that spilled from the guts of slaughtered Native children.
I woke up to the sound of Millicent’s voice.
“We’re saved!”
