The clans murmured amongst themselves, looking back and forth between the king and his defiant challengers. Some of them, especially most of the Dragons, laughed Jim and Lacey off, but more than a few of the others began eyeing the King suspiciously.
“Silence!” the king roared, and with a flick of his eyes, Red’s Dragons rushed out and grabbed Lacey around the arms, putting a hand over her mouth. “Lies! These are all vicious lies! Who is it that always keeps you out of school? Out of the orphanages? Out of Butterstreet’s claws? Don’t I always leave you with your own share of what you take? Do I ever even ask what you do with it?”
“It’s not a lie!” Jim shouted, turning his head to the court as best he could with a fistful of his coat in the king’s grip. “I did see the book. Just like Lacey said. The amulet is real! The pirates have it, and as soon as the king gets his filthy hands on it, he’s going to take all the gold and ditch us like an old hat!”
The restless buzz rose in volume over the clans. Children are marvelously natural lie detectors, but the King of Thieves was such an adept liar, such an artful con, and had been doing it so well for so long, that his hold on the clans was strong. However, Jim was the boy with the magically locked box, and never before had the King turned the Dragons on another clan member to quiet her before. Some of the suspicion in the children’s eyes began to turn into outright mistrust.
Jim turned back to face the furious king, whispering fiercely to him. “I’ve seen it with my own two eyes, King. And if you ever want to see it with yours, you’d better be willing to make a deal.”
The king took a good long look into Jim’s eyes, and then a slow pan around the court. The clans were starting to grumble, beginning to see the holes in the King’s lies, their eyes brightening one by one like clever little lamps as they got the picture. The circle of thieves around the King and Jim began to tighten as the clans pressed in angrily on every side. Even the Dragons held Lacey a little less firmly, searching the king’s face for any evidence of trickery. Finally, the King dropped his eyes back down to Jim Morgan’s defiant stare, and could do nothing to stop a small grin from forming on his own long face.
“This is both a surprise and not, Jim Morgan,” he said quietly. “I wasn’t sure when you first came to us, but now, I have indeed seen you are a born criminal. You were made for this. You really are one of us.” The sticky smile spread all the way across the king’s pale cheeks. “Now what are your terms?” He added the last part darkly.
“The clans get the gold - what’s here and what’s at the pawnshop. All you keep is enough to bribe the pirates to let the Ratts go. Me and Lacey go free. And I get the box back.”
“You ask a great deal, Jim Morgan,” The King said through gritted teeth, the smile slipping off his face.
“The Amulet of Portunes is worth a great deal, isn’t it?” Jim growled right back.
“So it is. So it is.”
The King of Thieves stood still for a long time, and Jim watched the conniving wheels of his mind turn and turn behind his eyes. The clans had drawn even closer by then, some even shouting and pointing accusing fingers toward the King and his Dragons. But just before a riot could break out, that slippery smile stretched wide across the king’s cheeks once again, and he dropped Jim down, patting him on the head and standing straight and tall before the crowd of restless crooks.
“Boys and girls, ladies and gentlemen,” the king all but sang in his honey-dripped voice. “This is really all just a slight…miscommunication between Jim and myself.” He laughed a little, then rushed on quickly with a nervous gulp when the clans failed to laugh back. “To prove to you how much I care, and that I would never take what wasn’t rightfully mine: I believe I will take a turn to share and share alike!”
The king scooped up a huge handful of gold from the pile and tossed it into the crowd of thieves, who erupted with whoops and screams, their anger overtaken by greed as they snatched the falling coins and jewelry out of the air and off the ground. “Take it all! Take everything!” The King announced, and the throng of street pickpockets poured forward to take back their shares of the treasure, laughing and cheering. Even the Dragons, save for Red and his lunks, abandoned the King then, shoving other, smaller children aside to grab fistfuls of gold and silver off the ground.
“Don’t stop there!” the King encouraged them, as though they needed it. “Run as fast as you can to the pawnshop on Barque Street. Break down the door! Smash the windows! Take all you find, it’s yours!”
The grubby children shrieked with delight, and in less than two minutes, the shining pile of trinkets and coins was wiped clean, and the courtyard stood empty of everyone save the king, Wyzcark, Red and his yes men, and, of course, Jim and Lacey.
Seeing no point in keeping her quiet any longer, Red’s lunks released Lacey, and she immediately stomped her feet, spouting her fury at the king. “You should be ashamed of yourself! You’ve lied to all of us all along. How cruel! To make a bunch of kids think you’ll help them escape these crummy streets, when all you really cared about was finding that stupid amulet!”
The king took the brunt of Lacey’s fury with a shrug. “Well, I did give them a refund just now, didn’t I?”
“I suppose so,” said Jim. “But is it worth all that for one treasure?”
“For one treasure?” The king’s slick smile twisted up and snapped into a snarl. “All treasure!” His eyes grew wide and his face pulled taut as a stretched rope. “You may not believe this Jim Morgan, but I began this life much as you did. Oh yes, we are not so different you and I. I know you are a nobleman’s son. It takes one to know one, as they say. And all of us born into such lives are born thieves – born believing we deserve everything we ever desire.
“But for all the wealth my family possessed, for all that was promised to me from my first breath, it would never be enough, not once I learned of the Amulet of Portunes. I discovered it in a book in my father’s library when I was a boy not much older than you. It became my obsession, and once I learned what it was and what I could do with it, I knew I would stop at nothing to make it mine. After my father died, I spent all his fortune unearthing clues – gathering the tools and allies I would need to take all that I deserved.
“When I have the amulet I’ll be one step closer to having all that a man could ever desire. I quested for this prize my whole life, and I would break a thousand more little children’s hearts just like yours to have it!” By the end of his declaration, the King of Thieves’ face was as pale as the snow, his eyes bloodshot and red as fire, his hands clenched so tight that Jim thought his bony knuckles might pop right through his skin.
Jim stared at the king, not quite sure whether or not the man was going to lose complete control and go mad. But, slowly, as though remembering himself and where he was, the king calmed himself, straightening his coat and hat, taking one last deep breath and fixing his slippery smile back in place. “So, Master Jim Morgan, if you please, where is the amulet?”
“Where it belongs, I guess,” Jim said smartly, though not too much so, for he had just seen the monster that lurked beneath the king’s smooth exterior. “The captain of the pirates told his man to put it in the Vault of Treasures.”
Now it was Wyzcark’s turn to pale, and suddenly he looked as if he was about to lose his dinner. “The Vault of Treasures!” he cried. “Ve’re lost…finished!” He threw up his hands and started pacing about in circles, shaking his head.
“So, it does exist,” the king said, much more calm than his friend Wyzcark, the gleam in his eye returning. “How very interesting.”
“Interesting?” Wyzcark was beside himself with hysteria. “Interesting, says he! It may as vell be at the bottom of the ocean. All this time, all this planning, all this investment, vasted! Oh, ve are finished, king, finished!”
“Oh, shut up!” the king snapped, fixing his gaze on Jim’s defiant face. “We’re not done yet.”
“What’s the Vault of Treasures?” Red piped up.
>
“The Vault of Treasures,” said the king, matter-of-factly, “is a hiding place in London for pirate booty, constructed by the first pirates to ever set foot on these lands, the Vikings. They built into it traps and obstacles of the most lethal variety. Some say they even cursed it with pirate magic.” The king smiled even as Wyzcark came close to tears. “And as time has passed, each generation of pirates has added their own twisted measures of security to its formidable defenses.”
“Doomed!” Wyzcark wailed.
“Well,” Jim said with a shrug. “Good luck with that, and all.”
“Good luck?” The king smiled even wider, that wicked gleam still prowling behind his dark eyes. “Oh yes, you’ll need luck to break in and take the amulet for me.”
“Me?” Jim cried. “No way! I just told you where it is, so if you’ll please hand over my box and enough coin to spring my friends, I’ll be out of your hair forever – as we agreed. Besides, I don’t even know where in blazes this place is, I just know that’s where they took the amulet!”
“Oh no, Jim.” The king shook his head grimly. “We have a new deal. I will put your precious little locked box into your hand, along with a bag full of enough gold to bribe any band of scurvy-ridden pirates for ten prisoners.” The King leaned in close, peering deep into Jim’s face. “But only after you’ve put the amulet in mine.”
“But you just said so yourself!” Lacey all but screamed. “It’s nearly impossible, and lethal! And Jim already told you, we don’t even know how to get there!”
“Oh, don’t worry, Lacey, my dear. Leave the details to me.” The king straightened back up, once more calmly tapped the tips of his long spider fingers together. “We’re all going together, and even I will lend my own thieving expertise to ensure our mission’s success.”
“All of us?” Red asked timidly.
“All.” The king folded his arms behind his back, and the suddenly much-relieved Wyzcark, seeing that there would be plenty of others to brave the traps of the vault before himself, swept around behind the children, cracking his own little grin.
“Come then, young ones,” he snarled. “Vaste not the hours given us!”
Jim sighed and marched along as Wyzcark herded the young pickpockets out of the courtyard. He had made a gamble coming here and getting the King involved. If he won, he could not only get back his box, but set his friends free as well. But if he lost…Jim gulped hard. Well, he didn’t even want to think about that.
TWENTY–EIGHT
he strange little party, made up of the King of Thieves, his henchman, Wyzcark, Jim, Lacey, and what remained of the Dragons, marched into the snowy streets.
“So what are we going to do?” Lacey pleaded with the King. “Walk around London until morning, asking everyone we meet if they wouldn’t mind pointing us to the Vault of Treasures? We’ll freeze to death before we find it, won’t we?”
“You really should quit nagging, young lady.” The king stopped in the middle of an empty intersection, looking about nonchalantly. “It really is most unbecoming of a young woman.”
“Oh, but if I were a boy, it would be all right, wouldn’t it?”
“Just be quiet please,” the king said without looking at her. He was looking at Jim. “What did you think Jim? That I had been searching fruitlessly for magical artifacts all this time without success? Well, that wouldn’t have kept me going, now would it? My thieves have not always come back completely empty-handed.”
From around his neck the King withdrew a delicate chain, a silver object dangling from its links. He leaned down and showed Jim the small charm, a perfectly forged replica of a dragonfly.
“What’s that for?” Jim asked, staring at the metal bug. The detail was impossibly intricate, down to the maze of veins running the length of the wings, which, though silver, were somehow translucent in the moon’s light.
“This is a seeker. It finds places we know to be there, but not the where of the there,” the king whispered, the dragonfly reflected in his glowing eyes. Jim watched those eyes and came to the unmistakable conclusion that the King of Thieves was not exactly sane. “The only trick is, you must know for a fact, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that the place you seek awaits you. And since you heard the pirate speak of the Vault with your own two ears, I think it would be best if you told the seeker where to fly.”
The king held the small, metal bug just beneath Jim’s lips, and from his chin to the tip of his nose, Jim thought he could sense the slightest bit of heat emanating from its silver skin. When he flicked a glance to Lacey and the Dragons, he found their eyes also fixed on the magical item, their mouths open in anticipation, and their faces nearly as white as their ghosty breaths.
“Don’t do it, Jim!” Lacey finally cried, but Jim knew he had no choice. He turned his eyes back to the silver seeker.
“Find the Vault of Treasures,” he said, and no sooner than the frosty breath from his lips touched the wings of the dragonfly, than it burst to life with a crackle of blue light. It zipped into the air, twittering to and fro just like a live dragonfly, until it blazed off down a street to Jim’s right, leaving a bright blue trail of light in its wake.
Lacey, Red, the Dragons, and even Wyzcark gasped in surprise, but the king, who was no stranger to magic and mystery, wasted no time. “Quickly!” the king commanded, pointing after the already dimming trail of blue fire floating in the air. “We must not lose the path!” With Wyzcark pushing them madly from behind, the small band of thieves rushed down the streets and alleys of London, chasing after a sparkling streak of blue lightning.
After much pattering and stomping of feet down the cobblestone streets, the small cavalcade skidded to a halt in front of perhaps the plainest, most nondescript building in the entire city. The silver dragonfly floated in a bubble of blue light before a gray brick wall between a bank and tailor’s storefront. When the king approached the dragonfly, its glow dimmed and it dropped neatly into his palm, only a piece of metal once again.
Jim caught his breath in the cold air and was, in spite of the grim situation, still proud to see that Red and his lunks, and the king and his tubby little friend Wyzcark, were far more out of breath than he.
“This?” Wyzcark raised his hand toward the building with a face half-perplexed and half-gasping for air. “This is the Vault of Treasures? I vas expecting something a bit more…piratey.”
“Or maybe just a sign out front that says Pirate Treasure’s Here?” the king snapped.
“Pirate treasure here! That was a good one, sir!”
“Spot on the mark if I ever heard anything spot on before.”
“A sign out front! Pirate treasure hidden here? Hilarious!”
With a tired sigh, Red snapped his fingers to prevent his yes men from over yessing the King. It apparently wasn’t easy leading a gang of lunks, Jim imagined without the slightest bit of sympathy.
“So what now?” Jim asked, hands on his hips. “I suppose we could knock since we don’t even have a bleeding key to this place.”
“Tsk, tsk, Jim my boy,” the king said, analyzing the building with greedy eyes, once more tapping his long fingers together at the tips in excitement. “They don’t call me the King of Thieves for nothing. As it so happens I am somewhat familiar with the legend of the Vault of Treasures. And as with most pirate treasure, whether buried on a hidden island or tucked away in the dark places of the earth, the vault employs neither guards nor traditional locks to bar intruders.”
“No guards or locks?” Red asked breathlessly. “Well, then what are we waiting for?”
“He said no traditional locks,” said Lacey, rolling her eyes in exasperation.
“What kind o’ locks then?” Red retorted, grinding his knuckles into his palm and glaring at Lacey.
“The same kind of locks buccaneers the world over have used for centuries, Red,” the King said. “Booby traps! Pirates are nothing if not overly romantic, aren’t they? They believe anyone with the skill to pass their barriers is wor
thy of the treasure they seek.”
“Booby traps?” Jim suddenly got a sinking feeling of what was about to happen. “What kind of booby traps?”
“Oh, only the most deadly,” the king said with a smile, as though he’d thought them up himself. “And according to the stories, there are three here, each one a unique challenge. As the ancient pirate poem that tells of this place sings:
To those children of the sea,
Who under the black flag sail,
In the Vault face trials three,
Of magic, mystery, and travail.
Ah, how I love pirate logic!” The king laughed gleefully, cruelly pointing his ever-so-dark eyes in Jim’s direction. “So Jim,” he said, unfurling one spidery hand in the direction of the plain building that was supposed to be the Vault of Treasures. “After you, if you please.”
“This wasn’t part of our deal!” Jim stomped his foot hard on the street, staring right into the black, greedy eyes of the King of Thieves.
“But it is now, Jim!” the king cried, nodding to Wyzcark. The King’s squat partner in crime snatched Lacey up in one arm, unsheathing a crooked little dagger, old and worn enough to have committed many a dirty deed, and held the gleaming point to Lacey’s throat.
“Just some incentive, to keep you honest and…on point,” Wyzcark said with a grin, the lunks laughing like hyenas at his pun.
“Well, Jim Morgan.” The king folded his skinny arms across his chest and stalked over to Jim, speaking in nearly a whisper. “We’ve come a long way, haven’t we? I thought you too soft when I first saw your fair face in my court. And from what I heard from the outset, I thought I was right. But now look where you are. The fate of all your friends lies in your hands; little Lacey here, and on some pirate ship, so soon to leave the docks I’m sure, the Brothers Ratt, quailing under their new master’s lashes. And let us not forget your precious box, cursed with gypsy magic, hiding the secrets you hold so dear. So much at stake, and all you have to do to fix it, is that which you’ve been doing for the past several months, my boy. Steal the amulet, share and share alike, and the King will make all things right for you.”
Jim Morgan and the King of Thieves Page 20
