by Alex Bledsoe
“Is your shoulder up to it?” he challenged.
“It works just fine.” I left out the part about it hurting like a bastard.
“And if there is treasure down there?” Clift said.
“Eddie will tell us,” Jane said with the kind of certainty that brooked no further questions. “And then we’ll decide what to do next.”
Duncan proved to be useful, though. He shimmied out onto the branch and threaded the rope through the block and tackle. I tied a loop in one end for my foot, and some knots to give me handholds. After the lizard fight and the climb up the steps, I didn’t want to rely on just my fading strength to keep me safe. Finally, I sat on the edge of the hole, arranged the rope, and looked back.
“Two tugs means pull me up now,” I said. “Three means I’ve hit bottom. Depending on what I find, I might tie something to the bottom of the rope and send it up first. If I do, I’ll tug four times.”
Suhonen nodded. He’d wrapped the rope around the tree’s trunk, then around himself; he would be in charge of playing it out as I needed it. “How long do we give you before we send someone else down?”
I looked at Jane. “Captain Argo will determine that. If you lose contact, she takes over for me.” I turned to Clift. “If that’s all right with you.”
“Seems my opinion and three gold pieces will buy you a nice dinner,” he snorted.
The sky was turning darker behind the mountain. The storm could pass us by as Clift said, but I didn’t have that kind of luck. I took a deep breath, peered down into the blackness, and yelled, “Anyone down there, don’t panic. I’m coming down, and I just want to talk.”
“Would you believe that if you were down there?” Clift asked Duncan.
Duncan, self-conscious at being so casually addressed by the captain, merely shrugged.
I kicked off the lip, then braced my feet against the edge of the shaft. If I straightened my knees, my back pressed against the opposite wall, which made stopping very easy.
The sides of the shaft had once been shored up with wooden planks. Many had fallen, and roots poked through the dirt. Insects and other vermin clung to the walls near the surface, but as I descended into the darkness, they grew fewer and fewer.
“See anything?” Jane called down.
“Bugs and tree roots,” I answered. “If I run across Miles, I’ll give him your regards.”
Her laugh echoed in the shaft.
Close spaces didn’t typically bother me, but something about this one did. The tropical heat and humidity had me sweating, but some of the perspiration was ice cold. It wasn’t just the physical narrowness, it was the same dread I’d experienced going in the opposite direction to question Rody Hawk. I’d had just enough contact with the supposedly unreal to let my imagination conjure all sorts of things below. After all, I’d encountered ghosts within the safety of the Red Cow; anything could be at the bottom of this hole.
The bugs didn’t help. I couldn’t see them, but I felt them as my hands brushed the sides of the shaft. There was no wooden shoring here, and whatever lived this deep crawled with impunity until I shook them off. Ordinarily bugs didn’t bother me either, but this wasn’t an ordinary situation, and I kept anticipating painful bites that thankfully never came.
As the circle of light above grew smaller, I saw a dim pinpoint far beneath me. And when I was equidistant between the two, I felt a light breeze rising through the shaft. It grew stronger as I descended, until it was whistling around me.
“Seems to be open at the bottom,” I called up. “There’s light and wind.” I waited, but no one replied. I might have been too far down to hear it, or something might’ve happened to them. I tried mightily to believe the former.
Then I was there at the bottom, my feet hanging into open space. Diffuse sunlight shone on a flat patch of rock. Planks and dirt that had fallen from the shaft still lay piled there. I braced my legs and back against the shaft’s bottom lip and waited. Beyond the wind, I heard the sound of waves and running water. When I looked up, I could not see the top of the shaft.
I took a deep breath, bent my knees, and let myself drop through the hole. I hoped Suhonen was ready to take my whole weight. I felt the jerk as the rope snapped tight, and my cut shoulder protested. I spun in place, quickly at first and then more slowly. The cooler air felt wonderful. Finally, I was lowered through the open space toward the ground twenty feet below.
It was a sea-cut cave, big enough to hold a dozen ships. Along one wall was a huge, jagged horizontal gap through which I saw the gray overcast sky. Outside, birds hovered in the wind, and I heard that same faint squawking we’d all mistaken for a party. Rubble beneath this crack showed where the outer wall had collapsed to form the opening-quite recently, if the debris was any indication.
A dark pool took up a third of the cave floor, the water deep beneath the still, glassy surface. One section of the wall was huge and smooth, and the image of a ship had been painted on it as part of a mural. I couldn’t make out the details as I slowly corkscrewed my way to the ground.
At last, I touched bottom and took my foot out of the loop. I gave the rope three hard tugs and hoped Suhonen remembered our cues. Then I tied it to the base of a stalactite so that it couldn’t be pulled up. That wouldn’t stop anyone at the top from throwing down their end, but I had no control over that.
I put my hands on my knees and took several deep breaths. I hadn’t realized how truly creepy the shaft was until now, and my chest hurt from breathing shallowly on the way down. My shoulder throbbed from my neck to my fingertips. Here the air smelled of salt and damp, and the wind swirled in and out of the cave like water. There was another smell, vaguely familiar, but for the moment I couldn’t place it.
When my head was back to normal, I looked at the mural. It depicted a ship on the bottom of the ocean, skeletons half buried in the sand around it. I recognized the same hand that had painted the hut’s interior and the cover of the mysterious book. Along the bottom were the words THE FATE OF THE BLOODY ANGEL, and beneath it a list of names. The postscript read, SENT TO
THEIR DEATHS BY THE TREACHERY OF BLACK EDWARD TEW.
And all this was written in Arentian.
I drew my sword. The strange man in Blefuscola assured me I’d find my quarry alive, and I didn’t want to do it just before he drove a knife in my back.
“Black Edward Tew!” I called. My voice sounded thin and distant over the ever-present wind. “Angelina Dirnay sent me to find you! I don’t want your money, she just wants to know what happened to you.”
I waited. Except for the wind, there was nothing. The clouds outside grew thicker, which dimmed the light in the cave. It was so eerie that if Dorsal and his little girlfriend had stepped out of the shadows, they would not have seemed out of place.
A man-made divider of stacked rocks stuck out from the wall at a ninety-degree angle and hid one corner of the cave from view. I moved toward it carefully, making as little sound as possible. It was ten feet high, and the end reached nearly to the pool, with just a narrow space to squeeze around. There was nothing alive in the water: no algae, no fish, no small crustaceans along the edge. I picked my way around, trying to watch every direction at once, including up.
On the other side of the wall, in the shadows, I saw the opening of a small sub-cave. I stayed by the edge of the pool and waited for my eyes to adjust to the comparative dimness. After weeks on the Cow going from deck to hold and back, it didn’t take long.
This secondary cave was closed off with iron bars. Thick as my arm, they were stuck deep into the uneven floor and the smaller cave’s ceiling. I couldn’t see past the bars into the shadowy interior, but what they guarded wasn’t much of a mystery.
An iron wall sconce held an old torch. I turned my back to the wind and struck flints until it lit. I waited for the flame to settle. When it did, I knew I was in the right place.
Behind the bars, the cave held a pile of treasure as big as my bedroom. Maybe larger: I had no idea ho
w far back it extended. Wooden chests were stacked to the ceiling; those closest stood open, the torch light sparkling off the gold and jewels within them. No dust could fully hide that kind of glimmer. I couldn’t conceive of how much this would be worth. More, certainly, than the whole national treasury of a backwater kingdom like Neceda. More than my old family fortune back in Arentia. More than I’d ever earn as a sword jockey in a dozen lifetimes.
I’m a little bit ashamed to say I was so dazzled by this that I didn’t notice the other thing behind the bars. On the floor, one hand in an open chest, lay a dead body. He was facedown, and had the same distinctive black hair as Duncan.
“Hello, Edward,” I said softly, the disappointment so heavy, I could hardly stand upright. I made a mental note to slap the guy in Blefuscola if I crossed paths with him again. I leaned my forehead against the bars. “Looks like Jane was right. Let’s keep that between us, okay? She’s insufferable enough.”
Then the body moved.
This was the second time, after Rody Hawk, I’d thought someone dead who wasn’t, and I almost let out a shriek like a startled girl. But when he rolled onto his back, I saw that his cheeks were hollow from starvation, and his eyes sunken into dark pits. They were open, though, and despite their milky glaze, they slowly moved to look at me.
I wasn’t sure he could hear me over the pounding of my heart. “You
… you’re Black Edward Tew.”
He nodded. I swear I heard his bones creak. One thin hand raised itself imploringly in my direction. Around his arm-so loose, it dangled to his elbow-was a golden bracelet. I saw the angel wings engraved in the band.
His jaw worked, but no sound came out. His lips were thin, and his gums had drawn back from his teeth. Then the hand fell limp to the floor and the head lolled to one side. His eyes closed. This time I knew he was truly dead. Both Jane and the crazy old man had been right.
There was a door as well, with a heavy lock mechanism and a socket for a lone key. I tried it; it was shut tight.
Fate gave me little time to mourn my loss or Tew’s death. Something bubbled, and it took me a moment to wrench myself back to the present and look around for the source. The middle of the dark pool churned and roiled, and waves rolled out and slapped against the flat rocks. The water rose so that it swamped the narrow path around the end of the divider. It surged toward me and I backed up to the bars. I returned the torch to the sconce to leave my hands free.
And then the source of the disturbance appeared.
“Shit!” I yelled. I’d walked right into the same goddamned trap again. On the plus side, I had learned where Wendell Marteen got the idea. So I wasn’t a total failure as a sword jockey.
Maybe instead of Clift’s noble quote, that would be my epitaph: Not a total failure.
Chapter Thirty-one
It was the same kind of sea-living killing machine Marteen had chained to the bottom of his ghost ship, but if this first glimpse was any indication, Clift had been right: That one was a mere juvenile. What rose from the pool, slimy skin gleaming in the light, was bigger than the Red Cow herself.
It had the same bulbous head with at least one round eye. The oblong pupil, black as Rody Hawk’s soul, was big enough to reflect me full- length, which it was in fact doing. I froze, hoping that if it saw no movement, it would think it had been mistaken, but that was futile. This was a staring contest I’d never win. It knew damn well I was there and had nowhere to go.
The odor was ghastly as well. The creature on the ship had smelled like this, but here it was a thousand times stronger, and my gag reflex barely held on. This was what I’d smelled but couldn’t identify: the stink of the monster.
Two thick tentacles rose from the water, weaved a bit in the air, and then grasped a pair of thick stalactites. The creature lifted itself farther from the pool. For the first time, I wondered if it might not be just aquatic, but amphibious as well.
Not that it mattered, because its tentacles were plenty long enough to reach me. It was in the process of illustrating this, as a half-dozen arms unrolled their way across the cave floor, guided by that looming, all-seeing eye.
I desperately rattled the treasure vault door. Alas, the lock was sturdy. I slashed at the first tentacle tip near me, and it withdrew like a burnt finger. The others halted their advance. I glanced at the hole in the ceiling, using all my will to conjure a battalion of Suhonens dropping through to save my ass. They did not appear.
I couldn’t get over the partition wall, or behind the vault’s bars. I couldn’t attack a vulnerable spot on the monster, because none were within my reach. I thought of throwing my boot knife at the enormous eye, but I figured the last thing I wanted to do was seriously piss this thing off. If I was very lucky, it would crush me to death quickly before stuffing me into the shiny black beak that waited below the water. If I made it mad, though, it might toy with me.
More tentacles appeared, grabbing the edge of the pool and providing more leverage. The creature surged up even more, sending a wave at me that soaked me to the waist. The good thing was that if I wet myself like Duncan, it wouldn’t show. I’d be squid food with the appearance of dignity.
The water went through the bars and shifted Black Edward’s corpse. I could see his skull- face now, grinning at my predicament. A fine way to treat a fellow Arentian in trouble.
By now, the monster’s bulk blocked most of the light. If it rose much higher, all it would need to do was fall on me. There seemed to be no way out; I seriously considered cutting my own throat just to get this over with. But I knew that no matter what, I’d go down fighting.
Then a woman’s voice said, “Don’t hurt it again!”
I looked around. I saw no one, and it was such a ludicrous request, I called back, “Okay!”
“If you make it mad, I can’t stop it.”
That sounded reasonable, even though I had no idea who was speaking, where she was, or what she had planned. “So what do I do?”
“Just stand there and be quiet.”
I did. The tentacles did not attack again. In fact, they withdrew into the water. The ones attached to the ceiling released themselves as well. Slowly, so that very little water was disturbed, the massive monster sank back into the pool. It managed to keep that lone spooky eye above water until the last moment, looking at me with crustacean malevolence. Then with a ripple, it was gone. The water around me receded.
I waited until every last wavelet had vanished from sight before peeling myself loose from the bars. I crept around the end of the wall, the whole time watching the pool. When I reached the other side of the partition, I finally saw my rescuer.
She squatted by the pool, two big empty jugs beside her. She wore a man’s vest and ragged pants cut into shorts. She was barefoot, and her skin was deeply tanned. Her hair was wavy and untamed, and bits of leaves and other debris clung to it. I couldn’t see her face; she concentrated all her attention on the water.
“Just stay there,” she called. “This stuff puts it to sleep, but not for long and not if it’s agitated. You’re luckier than you know.” At last, she said, “I think it’s gone.” Then she stood and faced me.
I was speechless.
She put one hand on her hip. “Come on, I know I’m not the ugliest thing in the world, but you don’t have to make that big a deal. Or have you just not seen a woman in a while?”
My voice entirely escaped me.
“Okay, you’re making me nervous. I know you can talk. Say something.”
I took a breath, and forced out the only word that seemed to matter at the moment, because this woman standing before me, on an island thousands of miles from Neceda, was unmistakable.
“Angelina?”
Chapter Thirty-two
It wasn’t Angelina, of course. The resemblance was striking, but the voice was completely different. It took a minute for that to register, though.
The woman laughed. “No, I’m… My name is… My name is.. ” She seemed to be struggling
to remember. “Barbara. My name is Barbara.” She shook her head. “But he called me Angelina. Or Angie. Or Angel. And made everyone else do it.”
I really needed to sit down now, but made do with leaning against the wall. I said, “Are you the only person on the island?”
“Except for him,” she said with a gesture toward the treasure cave.
“It’s just you now,” I said.
She blinked a couple of times, and her face went blank. Then she grabbed me by the hair. When she snarled, “What?” I felt spittle on my cheek. “What did you say?”
I didn’t try to break free. At the moment, it didn’t seem to matter. “I said, he’s dead. Just now.”
“Oh, no,” she whispered, and let me go. She walked a few steps away, quietly repeating, “No,” to herself.
I didn’t know what else to say, so I said, “I’m sorry.”
It was the wrong thing.
“Sorry?” she yelled as she whirled on me. “For a month, I’ve been sitting outside that cage, waiting to watch him die! I’ve given him just enough water to keep him alive, watched him wither, listened to him beg the way he made me beg! And now you tell me I missed it?” She began to laugh. Then it changed to sobs. Then it exploded into full-blown hysterics that rang off the ceiling.
I glanced nervously at the pool, but the surface was motionless.
I couldn’t just sit by and listen to this, so I stood up and put my hand on her shoulder. “Look, is there anything I can-?”
At the moment of contact, she drew a knife from her belt and spun at me. I reacted reflexively, blocked her thrust with my forearm, and hit the point of her chin with the heel of my other hand. Her head snapped back and she dropped to the ground. The sound of her skull hitting the rocky floor rang like a lone drumbeat.
The whole altercation happened so quickly that it was over before I really comprehended it. She sprawled on the rocky cave floor as if she’d fallen from the sky. “Shit,” I whispered to myself. I seriously worried that I might have killed her.
