by Geoff Rodkey
I got up and walked toward the noise. About twenty yards away, I came upon Millicent, sitting hunched over on the hillside with her knees tucked to her chest, sobbing into her arms.
When she heard me coming, she tried to pull herself together.
“Leave me alone,” she said in a scratchy whisper.
“What’s the matter?”
“I said leave me alone!”
I sat down next to her.
“No,” I said.
She started sobbing again.
“I don’t want the others to see me like this,” she said miserably.
I put a hand on her back, figuring she’d pull away. But she did the opposite, shifting closer and pressing her head against my chest. I put an arm around her and ran my hand back and forth across her shoulder until it grew warm from the touch.
Eventually, she stopped crying. She nuzzled my chest a little, but I wasn’t sure if she meant it, or if she was just wiping her runny nose on me.
Then she sat up straight and stared out at the moonlit pasture with a wrung-out look in her eyes.
“It just gets worse,” she said. “Every time, I think, ‘That’s it. It can’t get any worse.’ But then it does. It never stops.”
I wasn’t sure what she was talking about. But opening my mouth hadn’t been working out too well for me lately, so I kept it shut.
She started to cry again. “The whole silver mine,” she whispered, her voice quavering through the sobs. “They’re all slaves up there. They always have been.”
I gave her arm a gentle squeeze. “It’s okay,” I said.
“No, it’s not.” She buried her head in my chest and really let go. Her whole body shook with grief, and as I held her, I finally understood why she hadn’t wanted to talk about the slavers, or even admit they existed.
She’d spent her whole life rich and happy and carefree. But all that happiness had been paid for with other people’s pain. And knowing it was too much for her.
Eventually, she cried herself out. She straightened up and took a few deep breaths. Then she let out a long, shaky sigh.
“I’m not a bad person,” she said.
“I know you’re not,” I told her.
“I had no idea! Nobody on Sunrise does. They say they’re paying them. And it’s not like anyone goes up there to see for themselves. Mother doesn’t know, I’m sure of it. I mean, she’s beastly, but she’d never put up with that.”
Millicent sighed again, wiping her eyes. “And he’s such a good liar…When I’m with him, and he looks me in the eye, and turns on all his charm…You should have heard Daddy on the way back from Deadweather. When we first got on that boat, I didn’t even want to speak to him. But he was so kind, and he seemed so sorry about the whole mess…
“He told me it was all a terrible misunderstanding. That he’d just asked Birch to lean on you a bit, like businessmen do. But that Birch misunderstood. Daddy said it’s because of the way he manages employees—he gives them too much leeway, and some of the more ruthless ones go overboard trying to impress him…He said the same thing happened with the lawyer, and the legal papers. And when Birch went over the cliff, he completely misread the situation, and didn’t realize the truth till he got to Deadweather—but now that he knew it, he’d leave you be.
“And he did—I mean, first thing when we came back to Sunrise, he had all your wanted posters taken down, and I heard him tell Birch’s brother and the garrison commander you were innocent, and not to be bothered if you showed up.”
It was such obvious nonsense it made me burn a little to hear the way she talked about it, like there was any chance her father had ever been telling the truth.
“He admitted he’d bungled the whole thing, and never should have brought troops to your plantation, but he said he’d been too distracted by the Cartager problem to think it through. I asked him what he was talking about, and he told me Cartage was plotting against Rovia in the Blue Sea—and maybe even planning to invade Sunrise. And it was really the Cartage Navy, not the pirates, that attacked the Earthly Pleasure.”
“That’s ridiculous,” I said. “I was on that boat—it was a pirate attack.”
“I know! When Daddy first told me Cartagers were to blame, I thought it was absurd. But back on Sunrise, I kept hearing the same thing. Everybody was whispering that it must have been the Cartage Navy behind it. Even the refugees from the Earthly Pleasure—to hear them tell it, all the pirates were Short-Ears.”
I thought about that. “It’s true Ripper Jones is a Cartager…So are a few of his men. But not a lot—maybe five or six out of fifty.”
Millicent shrugged. “People are sheep. If everyone around them says up is down, soon enough they’ll start saying it, too. I remember once…”
As she went on, the memory of the Cartager pirates from Ripper’s crew who’d harassed Guts back in Pella Nonna jumped into my head. For a moment, I tried to puzzle out whether their meeting with Li Homaya meant there was any truth to Pembroke’s claim that Cartage was behind Ripper’s attack on the Earthly Pleasure.
But Millicent was still talking, and I couldn’t think and listen at the same time, so I had to quit trying to think.
“There was a lot of bluster about making Cartage pay for what they’d done. One morning, I came down to breakfast, and Daddy was talking to Lord Winterbottom. As I walked in, I heard Daddy say, ‘One stroke, and we’ll own the whole continent.’ He wouldn’t tell me what he meant by that. But later, Cyril came over. He and I talked it through, and we pieced together that they were talking about invading the New Lands.”
At the mention of Cyril, my heart sank. I’d been hoping he didn’t really exist, and she’d just invented him to get back at me for not being nicer to her when she first showed up.
“Then the night before I was supposed to leave for Rovia, Cyril came—”
“Wait—‘leave for Rovia’?”
“Oh. Right…A couple days after I got back from Deadweather, my parents sat me down and said they thought it’d be a good idea if I went across the Maw to school. There’s a famous boarding school for girls, called Winthrop. All the Rovian noblemen’s daughters go there, and I’d been itching to go for years. But Daddy had always said no. And now suddenly, he was practically begging me to get on a boat.
“So I agreed. I mean, I knew he was just doing it to get rid of me after I caused so much trouble running off to help you. But even so, going to Winthrop was a dream come true. There was a ship coming down from the Fish Islands to pick up the Earthly Pleasure refugees and bring them back to Rovia, and they got me a ticket, and the ship came in, and I was all set to leave.
“Then Cyril came over the night before I left, full of news. He’d eavesdropped on a meeting his father held at their house. His father works for Daddy—I mean, Cyril would tell you they’re partners, but it’s nonsense, Daddy’s the one who calls all the shots. Mr. Whitmore’s just a glorified bookkeeper…”
It was strange how Millicent could manage to be completely disgusted by her father and still not be able to resist bragging about how important he was.
“Anyway, the meeting was all about some attack they were planning—lots of talk about troops, and ships, and bombarding something from the sea—”
“How can your father do all that? He’s just a businessman.”
“Daddy’s not just any businessman. And this wasn’t just him. He’d somehow gotten the approval of the Governor-General in Edgartown. That’s why it was so important for people to think the Earthly Pleasure was attacked by Cartagers. Because then it wasn’t a pirate attack—it was an act of war. And Rovia had to fight back.”
There was so much to keep straight that my head was starting to hurt from it. And Millicent was still talking.
“At one point in the meeting, someone mentioned Birch—not the dead one, but his brother. They said he was leaving for the New Lands in two days.
“Someone else said, ‘What’s he up to?’ And the answer was, ‘He’s off on Pem
broke’s errand.’ ‘What errand?’ they asked. The man said, ‘The one he advertised all over town,’ and they all laughed. And right away, Cyril figured out they were talking about your wanted posters, and Birch was coming after you.”
I didn’t much like hearing that a room full of evil rich men were laughing about Birch coming to kidnap me. And I was even less keen on hearing this Cyril fellow had relayed the news to Millicent.
“I knew I had to help you if I could. But they were putting me on the ship for Rovia the next day, and if I ran off, Daddy would tear the island apart looking for me. So Cyril and I went to see Etsy Featherton.”
“You mean that girl who cuts her hair exactly like yours?” I’d met Etsy once while I was staying with the Pembrokes. Millicent and I had run into her in Blisstown, and even though Millicent wasn’t exactly nice to her, Etsy had spent hours tagging along after us like a hungry puppy.
“That’s the one. Complete prat. But she’s always been desperate for attention, and she positively hates her family, so when I offered to pay her to stow away on the ship to Rovia and pretend to be me, she jumped at the chance. Didn’t even have to pay her that much. But that’s the thing about most people—dangle a few coins in front of them and they fall all over themselves. It’s sad, really.
“Anyway, the next day, right after I boarded the ship and said good-bye to Mother and Daddy, Cyril paid a couple of deckhands to start a fight on the dock. During the commotion, we snuck Etsy on board and into my cabin. We traded clothes—she was thrilled about that—and I told her to pretend she was seasick and stay in the cabin the whole trip. That way, no one would see her except the crew when they brought her meals. And none of the crew knew what I looked like, so nobody’d be the wiser until the ship got to Rovia.
“When we sailed out past North Point, I jumped from the portal window and swam to shore. Cyril met me there, and we waited until the middle of the night, then went to the cove—Daddy’s secret port, where you and I got the boat to Deadweather. I understand why it’s there now, and why Daddy made me promise never to tell anyone about it. He always said it was so he could come and go without being bothered. But the truth is, that’s how they get the slaves up to the mine without anyone in Blisstown knowing about it.”
She paused, and for a moment I thought she might start to cry again. But she didn’t.
“Birch’s ship was anchored there, and I snuck on board and hid down in the hold. The next day, it set sail for the New Lands. The whole thing went off beautifully, except I didn’t bring enough food and water. And I couldn’t have managed any of it without Cyril—he thought the whole idea was mad, and he never stopped trying to persuade me not to go through with it. But he came through for me. I really owe him for that.”
I guess I did, too. Which was annoying, because it made me feel guilty for hating his guts.
“Thanks for doing all that,” I said.
Millicent shrugged. “You would have done the same for me.”
I still had my arm around her, and as we sat in the silence, I started to wonder whether it might be a good idea to try and kiss her.
I turned my head toward her. She met my eye with a pained look.
“I’m sorry for what I said about marrying Cyril. I know it was cruel.”
I smiled at her. “That’s okay. Long as it’s not true.”
I waited for her tell me it wasn’t. Instead, she turned her head away to stare glumly into the distance.
My stomach started to sink.
“It’s not true, is it?”
She shook her head and made a noise that was somewhere between a sigh and a huff. “It doesn’t matter. Not at a time like this…I understand why Daddy wants the Fist now. You heard Kira—you know what kind of power it’s got. He’s going to use it to take over this whole continent. And he’ll make slaves of them all. Every one.”
“He doesn’t need that many slaves to run a silver mine.”
“The silver mine’s just a drop in the bucket. Daddy wants an empire.”
“You really think the Fist is that powerful?”
Millicent nodded. “Whatever else my father is, he’s no fool. He’s been searching for the Fist of Ka my whole life. If it wasn’t that powerful, he wouldn’t be trying so hard to find it.”
Her eyes met mine again. The pained look was gone, replaced by a fierce one.
“And we’ve got to make sure he doesn’t get it.”
THE CLUTCH
It took us three more days to reach the foothills, and aside from the nagging sense of dread I could never quite shake, it turned out to be a wonderful trip. The weather was sunny but not too hot, the Flut croplands were easy on our feet, and we all did our best not to mention any subject that might get one of the others riled up.
That was a long list: military invasions, nervous twitches, slavery, murdered parents, evil parents, missing limbs, illiteracy, and people named Cyril were all off limits.
Partly because everyone was so careful not to bring up the more serious stuff, we wound up spending a lot of time teasing each other about little things—like Millicent’s bossiness, or my embarrassing inability to fart silently after meals, or Kira’s talent for spying cute little furry animals and killing them dead with her sling.
They were mostly gophers, and to be fair they were usually so far away it was hard to tell how cute they really were. Kira walked with her sling at the ready, collecting stones as she went, and she had such sharp eyes that the first glimpse we usually got of her prey was a puff of red mist, followed a second later by a distant, dark streak as the little corpse returned to earth.
Kira shrugged off our half-amused, half-horrified catcalls. “They eat the crops,” she said. “The Flut would thank me. So should you. If I have to hit something tomorrow, it’s better I practice today.”
Of the four of us, Guts was the easiest to wind up. I tried to avoid rattling his cage because I didn’t want to get a hook in the neck, but the girls were rightly confident he’d never attack them, and they thought his spluttering rages were so hilarious that they couldn’t resist. Kira kept a running tally of the number of words he could speak in a row without cursing (he broke ten a few times, but never reached twenty), and one night around the campfire, Millicent did an extended impression of Guts as the Governor-General, dispensing justice (“kill ’im, kill ’im, kill ’im, kill ’im…wot, already dead? Kill ’im again!”) that made Kira and me laugh until our sides hurt.
It sent Guts into such a fury that he threatened to kill us all, which only made the girls laugh harder. Then he jumped up and declared he was leaving us for good. But Kira reached up and grabbed him by his good hand.
“Oh, stay,” she said with a smile. “The sharpest knives are for the closest friends.”
“Wot’s that mean?”
“It means we laugh because we like you,” she said as she yanked him down off his feet. Then she wrapped him up in a hug and planted a kiss on his cheek.
His face glowed as red as the embers in the fire. He didn’t say a word for the rest of the night, but it wasn’t because he was angry. And the next morning, right after Kira teased him again for not being able to put a sentence together without a curse in it, I caught him smiling when he didn’t think anyone was looking.
We all did a lot of smiling over those three days, me especially. Just being able to spend hours on end with Millicent, listening to her stories, laughing at her jokes, and arguing with her about books we’d both read, was a real gift. If you asked me to imagine a perfect day, a long walk through a sunny field with Millicent would be one of the highlights. And I got to do it all day long, for three days in a row.
Having Guts and Kira along made it that much better. By the time we left the valley, we were all getting on so well that I’d started to think of them as the brother and sister I’d always wished I had. Strangely enough, thinking that way made me wistful for my real brother and sister, and I found myself ransacking my memories for moments when Adonis and Venus hadn’t be
en completely horrible to me.
The fact that I couldn’t seem to come up with any made me appreciate Guts and Kira all the more.
The deeper we traveled into Flut territory, the more we had to pay for food, and the harder it got for Millicent to haggle over the price. Not only were the northern Flut much less likely to speak Cartager, but even the ones who did weren’t thrilled about negotiating with a girl.
In one village, they refused to speak to her at all, and I had to buy our food. I did my best, but we wound up paying five shells each for a single meal, and I never heard the end of it.
In the middle of the third day, we reached the last Flut village before the foothills.
“We need to buy all we can,” Kira warned us. “The only settlements between here and the Cat’s Teeth are Moku. And all they sell are humans.”
The Flut village was larger than most, and we were relieved to find out we weren’t the only outsiders. A Cartager had arrived just ahead of us, a journeyman trader with a beard that nearly reached his stomach and a pack mule piled high with goods. When we showed up, he was finishing his business with the tribal elders. Since none of them spoke Cartager, the trader offered to translate for us.
We were happy to accept the offer. Millicent quickly settled on a week’s worth of food and two blankets, which Kira told her we’d need at night in the mountains.
By then, we’d spent almost all of our shells, and I figured we’d gotten everything we needed. We traded farewell bows with the Flut elders, but as we were packing up the food, Millicent and the trader started a fresh conversation.
Kira jumped in, and judging by the tone of her voice, she had a very strong opinion about whatever it was they were discussing.
A moment later, the trader beckoned the girls over to his mule, and Guts and I followed them.
“What’s going on?” I asked Millicent.
“Tell you in a minute.”
The trader pulled a beat-up tin box from one of his packs and opened it to show the girls what was inside. I looked over Millicent’s shoulder and saw a few dried clumps of a fuzzy, greenish-blue substance that looked like dead tree moss.
