by Geoff Rodkey
After that, we moved inland as best we could, zigzagging when the water got too deep for us to pass.
The swamp seemed to go on forever. We must have waded through it for hours, long past the point where we couldn’t hear the surf behind us anymore. Every so often, we stopped and listened for the men.
The water slowly grew shallower. By the time the sky turned from black to purple, it was only up to the top of my thighs, and I could almost see over the reeds.
Then the sky was pink, the water was shallow enough that my head cleared the reeds, and I could make out high ground a few hundred yards ahead. It was much slower going by then, because in such shallow water, we could barely move at a walk without making noise.
Halfway to the higher ground, we stumbled on a flock of birds, which caused such a racket when they took flight that my heart jumped into my throat. We spent several minutes after that crouched on our knees in the reeds, terrified the noise had alerted the men looking for us.
But we didn’t hear the men anywhere, and once we started moving again, we quickly reached the firm but muddy ground.
The brush was as thick and tangled as the stuff we’d crashed through when we first came ashore. Trying to move through it silently would be a challenge, and with the sun up, we’d be easy to spot.
And we were exhausted.
So we found a little hollow under one of the larger shrubs, with no more than a few feet of visibility in any direction. Then we curled up together like a litter of wet mice and drifted off to sleep.
ON THE MOVE
When I woke up, I wasn’t sure if it was morning or afternoon. I itched all over, but especially in my face, which was riddled with mosquito bites and little scratches from the run through the brush. My mouth was dry and cracked, and I was shaky from hunger.
Millicent was asleep to my right, lying on her side with her back to me. Her sailor’s shirt was splotchy and stained, and as I watched her shoulder rise and fall with her breath, I tried to puzzle out why I wasn’t more thrilled to see her.
It was all wrong somehow. I’d spent the past three weeks pining for her, cooking up all sorts of fantasies about what would happen when we finally saw each other again.
Not one of them involved cowering in a bug-infested swamp.
And all my fantasies were about a completely different Millicent from the one who’d actually shown up. In my dreams, she was perfect—beautiful and clever, sharp-tongued and self-assured, light on her feet with that wicked glint in her eye.
She was never haggard or weak, brain-fogged or bewildered, sallow or stringy-haired. And she definitely never smelled bad.
But the Millicent lying next to me had been all of those things—and practically none of the good ones.
It was confusing.
It was worse than confusing. I was almost mad at her.
And I was mad at myself for feeling that way, because I knew there was something cruel about it. But I still couldn’t help feeling it.
A noise near my feet startled me.
It was Kira. She must have been awake for a while, because she’d had time to unload everything in her soggy pack and set it out to dry. As she crouched near my feet, fussing over a few small tins, I looked over her provisions.
There was a big, soaking wet blanket that must have taken up half the space in the pack; what looked like a couple of Native cotton shirts; a second full skin, probably of water; two more banana-leaf packets of corn pancakes; a few tins and a corked jar that I guessed held food; a pair of flints; a small drawstring sack filled with something that rattled softly when she moved it; and some rolls of cloth.
Then there were the weapons: two machetes, one of them now missing its sheath; a few twinned strings of rope with pouches sewn to one end that must have been slings; and a pistol, along with a canister of shot and a powder horn.
As I watched, Kira uncapped the powder horn and turned it sideways, tapping it gently.
After a moment, a glop of sludgy black goo dribbled out. It was useless—and without it, so was the pistol.
Kira cursed under her breath. Then she looked at me with her big dark eyes.
I was full of questions, but the first one that came out was: “How’d you make the fireballs?”
Even whispering—I didn’t want to make too much noise for fear the slavers might be nearby—my voice cracked from the dryness in my throat.
She pointed to the little corked jar.
“That’s pitch,” she whispered. “You know pitch? It burns easily. You soak pieces of cloth”—she pointed to the rolled-up cloth—“in it. Then you heat stones in a fire. When they get hot, you wrap them in the cloth and use the sling to throw them. If the stone is hot enough, and you throw it fast enough, it catches fire in the air.”
“Can I have a go at that?” Guts was sitting up to my left, his voice croaky and dry like mine.
Kira shook her head. “It’s very hard to throw so fast. You could not do it.”
Guts scowled and twitched at the slight, muttering a Rovian curse. His voice cracked in the middle of the word, which only made him angrier.
Kira shrugged. “It’s not an insult. Just the truth. Here.” She handed him the full skin. “Drink, so you don’t sound like a frog.”
Guts’s cheeks reddened as he put the skin to his lips, and I remembered how smitten he was with her. I wondered if there was any chance she liked him that way, too. It was hard to tell. She wasn’t exactly being sweet with him, but I got the sense that she wasn’t the type to act sweet with anybody.
“The hardest part was making the fire to heat the stones,” Kira said. “Right away when the Moku handed you over, I knew I had to burn the sails if they ran them. But the ship left so quickly, I almost didn’t have time.”
“They were Moku?” I asked. “The men who kidnapped us?”
“Yes. Why did they take you? Because of the map?”
I nodded. At the mention of the word map, my brain automatically started running through the hieroglyphs: feather, cup, firebird…
“How’d ye know to follow ’em?” Guts asked Kira as he handed me the water skin.
“I was coming to your apartment when I passed them on their horses. They had you in big, long bags. I thought you were sacks of grain. But at your house, the door was open, things were thrown on the floor…I went back, and the men were stopped at the city gate, arguing with the watchmen to open it. I looked closer and thought the grain was maybe not grain. Then I saw them bribe the watchmen with silver coin, and I knew what they were.”
Guts and I must have both looked confused.
“A Moku with silver coin works for the slavers,” she explained. “They buy my people with that silver.”
I handed the skin of water back to her. I’d had enough to wet my throat, but not enough to really stop my thirst.
“Thanks for following us,” I said.
She sighed. “It was hard. They did not stop.”
Then she opened up one of the tins. Inside was a brick of hard cheese. She cut a few pieces with a machete and offered them to us.
“Here. Eat.”
We helped ourselves. She took some herself, then nodded in Millicent’s direction as she chewed.
“Who is she?”
“A friend.”
“She was on the slavers’ ship?”
I nodded. “Her father is their leader.”
“Her father is a slaver?”
“He’s the slaver,” I said. “He runs the silver mine that—”
“I BEG YOUR PARDON!” Millicent must have been awake and listening, because she suddenly rolled over and sat up, roaring her objection so loudly that all three of us went “Ssssshhhhh!”
“Oh, shush yourselves!” she shot back.
“Quiet!” hissed Kira. “If they find us, they will kill us!”
“They’ll kill you. They’ll give me a ride home,” snorted Millicent, quieter but no less angry. “And I can arrange that if you don’t stop slandering my father with th
is ‘slaver’ nonsense.”
“Millicent—” I started to say.
“Don’t ‘Millicent’ me, Egg! I’m not saying Daddy’s pure as Mandar linen. But accusing him of slaveholding? That’s ridiculous! He’d never do something that vile.”
The look on my face must have told her what I thought of that.
“I didn’t say he was good!” she protested. “Just not that bad!”
“Nuts!” croaked Guts. “You was on that ship. Who ye think they chain up down in that hold?”
“The likes of you! Insubordinate sailors! I don’t know! All I know is—”
“Be quiet!” Millicent was getting loud again, and Kira was glaring daggers at her.
Millicent ignored her. “I have never, in all my life, seen a bigger pair of ingrates! I saved your stupid lives, and this is how—eeegh!”
Kira sprang forward, and before I knew what was happening, she had Millicent pinned to the ground, with one hand over her mouth and the other holding a machete to Millicent’s neck.
“Shut your mouth,” Kira told her.
Millicent jiggled her head, her eyes as big as saucers. Having gotten the point across, Kira got off of her.
Millicent glared at me, like it was my fault she’d gotten jumped on.
“What on earth…?!” she whispered in a quavery voice.
“I don’t…think that was necessary,” I told Kira, even though I was pretty sure it had been necessary.
“Thanks for sticking up for me,” Millicent muttered.
There was an awkward silence after that. Millicent looked longingly at the last hunk of cheese in my hand. I held it out for her. Instead of taking it, she looked past me to Kira.
“Is there anything to eat or drink…?” she asked.
Kira scowled, but she held out the tin of cheese. Guts offered up the skin of water. Millicent took a long, gulping pull of the water, then started in on the cheese.
“Who are you?” she asked Kira between mouthfuls.
“My name is Kira Zamorazol. I am a translator for the Viceroy of New Cartage. But my people are Okalu. Who are you?”
“I’m Millicent Pembroke.”
“Pembroke?” Kira repeated, staring hard at Millicent. “From Sunrise Island?”
“Yes. What of it?” Millicent asked, glaring back at her.
“Your father is Roger Pembroke?”
“He is. How do you know him?”
Kira’s nostrils flared as her eyes stayed locked on Millicent’s.
“I don’t. I only know my father was murdered on his orders.”
At first, Millicent looked like she might burst into tears. Then she turned angry—at me.
“You put her up to that, didn’t you?”
“What?”
“You told her to say that! What’s the matter with you?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about!” I said. “I didn’t tell her to say anything!”
“Well, what did you tell her?”
“Nothing!”
“About what?” Kira wanted to know.
“About…” Millicent shut her eyes and sighed sharply, shaking her head. Kira gave me a questioning look.
“Her father killed my family,” I told Kira.
“This is absurd…” Millicent’s voice was quavering again, and her eyes welled up as she glared at me. “Why did I even help you, when all you can do is—”
“Shhhhhhh!” Guts held up a hand in warning. He sat up straight, staring past us into the swamp, in the direction I guessed was south.
We all shut up and listened. In the distance, there was a steady and unmistakable splashing.
Something was coming through the swamp toward us.
KIRA WAS UP and moving first, sweeping all the supplies into her pack except the soggy blanket, the worthless powder horn, and the two machetes.
“Gimme the gun,” said Guts.
“No powder,” she said as she handed me the second machete.
“Why’s he get the knife?”
“You have the hook.”
Keeping the second knife for herself, Kira began to push her way inland through the thick brush.
“That’s going to make a racket,” I said.
“No choice.”
We followed her, making a racket as I’d feared. We didn’t use the machetes much—it was faster to just plow through as best we could—and it was hard going.
But by the time we stopped to listen, we couldn’t hear the splashing anymore, and it didn’t sound like anyone was following us through the brush.
We worked our way through it for an hour or so, long enough to cover our faces and arms with more little cuts and scratches, until finally the brush gave way to a forest of thick-trunked trees with low, spreading branches.
It was a relief to be able to move over the more open ground. But it didn’t last long. We’d been hurrying through the forest for just a few minutes when I heard the familiar shriek of a bird, somewhere ahead of us. It was the same call I’d heard the Moku use to signal the slave ship.
I stopped. “It’s the men.”
There was an answering shriek, off to the left.
“They’re close,” said Kira.
There was no knowing which way to go—not straight ahead, and not to the left. But what if there were more of them off to the right as well?
I looked up. The bottom branch of the nearest tree was easily within reach—and its trunk soared well out of view above the thick cover of its leaves.
“That way,” said Guts, pointing to the right.
“Wait—what if we go up?” I suggested.
The others raised their heads and stared up into the tree.
Instead of answering, Kira grabbed hold of the lowest branch and started to climb. The rest of us followed.
We went up about thirty feet, until we couldn’t see the ground through the leaves. Then we waited.
Every few minutes, we heard another pair of birdcalls. The first was always more distant, but the answering call kept getting closer.
Then one came from right underneath us.
I stared down through the leaves, trying to get a glimpse of whoever it was. One of the slavers? Their Moku allies?
Birch himself? If so, he’d be in a bad way—Guts had stomped him pretty good while he was laid out on the ship. There wouldn’t be any mercy after that. They’d kill Guts instantly. Probably Kira, too.
I’d be next, once they got the map out of me.
I still had the machete, and I tried to think about the best way to fight with it if someone climbed up after us.
Maybe they wouldn’t. Maybe they’d just sit and wait us out.
There was a faint tremor of movement through the branch as Millicent, sitting beside me, adjusted her weight. I turned my head to look at her.
She was staring down through the trees. Her eyes were sharp and clear, nothing at all like the hollow stare of the night before.
Then she raised her eyes to meet mine, and in an instant, all the misgivings and disappointment I’d felt about her vanished.
Even dirty, scratched, and mosquito-bitten, she was beautiful. But that wasn’t what made me ache when I looked in her eyes. Pella Nonna had been full of beautiful girls, and none of them, not even Kira, had anything like the light in their eyes that Millicent had. It was as if there was a furnace burning somewhere deep inside her, and the heat and the light from it shined through her pupils in a way that was brilliant and fierce and warned she was nobody’s fool and not to be messed with.
That was the look that kept me up at night thinking about her. The look that—even at a moment when one wrong move or accidental noise could bring disaster down on our heads—was capable of making me forget about everything on earth except her.
As she looked back at me, her eyebrows bunched up, as if to say, Why are you staring at me?
There were stray hairs falling across her face. I lifted my hand to reach out and brush them away.
She drew her head bac
k, out of my reach. Then she glared at me, her lips pressed together in a tight frown.
If it weren’t for the circumstances, I think she would have smacked me.
I was trying to figure out what I could do to make her less angry when we heard another birdcall in the middle distance. This time, the answering call was at least a couple of trees away from us.
The men were moving on.
We waited until the birdcalls faded away, in the direction I thought was north. Kira handed out another round of soggy pancakes. We ate in silence. By then, the sunlight was starting to weaken—and given the heavy canopy of the trees, pretty soon it’d be too dark for us to see our way out of the tree, much less through the forest.
We held a whispered conference and agreed we should start moving. We climbed to the ground and headed west, toward the sun and at a right angle to where we’d last heard the birdcalls. We went as fast as we could without making too much noise.
The ground gradually sloped upward, and the forest began to thin. The terrain turned a bit rocky, and Kira paused a few times to pick up fist-sized stones and stuff them into her pack. It wasn’t until the third time she did it that I realized she was gathering ammunition for her sling.
It was almost sunset when we topped a short rise with enough of a break in the trees that we could see a line of hills a mile or two ahead, off to the right.
“Should we head for the hills?” asked Millicent. “Or keep going straight?” She pointed in the direction of the sunset.
“We should go north,” Kira said. “Into the hills.”
“That’s where them slavers went,” said Guts.
“Will you stop calling them slavers?” said Millicent in an irritated voice.
No one answered her.
“They weren’t going to the hills,” I said. “They were headed more”—I pointed farther to the right, between the hills and the coast—“straight up the coast.”
“Right, then. Hills it is.”
“Wait,” said Kira, looking toward the sunset. She turned to Guts. “Do you still have the necklace?”
“Yeh.”
“Can I have it, please?”
Guts dug into his pocket and pulled out the firebird necklace. He handed it to her.
