Blue Sea Burning

by Geoff Rodkey

  “And there’s no plan the five of us can cook up that’s going to liberate that mine,” Cyril huffed. “Thirty soldiers are still thirty soldiers.”

  Then they started to really go at it. I stopped listening to the argument, because I needed to think—if I could just come up with some kind of plan, good enough to not just free the slaves but show Millicent I was worth more than this twittering snob . . .

  But the snob was right. We needed men.

  “You want change, it’s got to come from within!” Cyril was telling Millicent.

  Come from within . . .

  “They’ll do it themselves,” I said.

  Everyone looked at me.

  “The slaves. There’s probably hundreds of them. Right? So we just have to arm them, and open the gates or whatever, and they’ll do the rest. They’ll free themselves.”

  Everyone’s eyes widened . . . except Cyril’s, which narrowed.

  “You’re going to haul two hundred rifles up a mountain? And give them to men who might not even know how to shoot?”

  “Not rifles. Slings.” I looked at Kira. “Do you know how to make a sling?”

  “Of course.”

  “Could we make a lot of them? Hundreds?”

  She began nodding eagerly.

  “And there’s no shortage of rocks in a mine—”

  “Egg, this is brilliant!” Millicent was beaming at me.

  Cyril had his mouth slightly open in a look of bewilderment. I couldn’t help rubbing it in a little.

  “You probably didn’t learn this in your school,” I said, “but the Okalu fight with slings. If you know how to use one, they’re every bit as good as a rifle. And a lot easier to haul up a mountain.”

  “We’ll need money for materials,” said Kira.

  “I’m sure I can get that from my uncle,” I said. “He was free enough with the money we used to bribe Percy. And if we just need rope, cloth, and thread—it can’t cost that much.”

  The mood in the room had turned from gloomy to bright.

  “This is really brilliant,” Millicent repeated.

  “Nice thinkin’,” Guts told me.

  “Indeed!” said Cyril. The smirk was back on his face. “Congratulations. You’ve just devised the perfect plan for slaughtering a thousand innocent people.”

  Everyone turned to stare at him.

  “Once again: game it out,” he said. “You’re going to put deadly weapons in the hands of a couple hundred freed slaves, then set them loose on an island full of the very people who enslaved them? If you think they won’t take blood revenge on every man, woman, and child—”

  “My people would not do that,” Kira said through gritted teeth.

  “All people would do that,” he shot back at her. “It’s human nature. And what’s more—” Cyril turned back to me. “How do you propose to get all those freed slaves off the island? Because without some kind of escape plan, once they’ve finished slaughtering every Rovian on Sunrise, they’ll be stranded there. And sitting ducks for the soldiers who show up to avenge the killing.”

  The mood quickly turned gloomy again. Now it was Cyril’s turn to rub it in.

  “Other than that, it’s perfect. Just got to tidy up the part where everybody dies.”

  “Oh, shut up!” snapped Millicent. “It’s like you don’t even care!”

  Cyril looked offended. “Of course I care! There’s nothing more important to me than justice—”

  “Or at least talking about it,” scoffed Millicent.

  Cyril recoiled like he’d just been slapped. I had to bite my lip not to smile. A few more minutes of this, and there’d be no question who Millicent favored.

  “Nonsense! I want to stop that slaving as much as you do! But we’ve got to come up with a plan that works!”

  “Then help us come up with one! Stop shooting everything down with that stupid smirk on your face!”

  For a moment, I thought Cyril was going to storm out of the room. I stared at the floor and prayed for it.

  Please leave. Please leave. Please leave in a huff.

  But in the end, he flopped back onto the bed and started to stare at the ceiling again, only without the smirk this time.

  “We need a diversion,” he said. “To draw the troops away . . .”

  IT WAS ALMOST TIME for lunch when I finally came up with a diversion that made sense to everybody.

  “Ripper Jones.”

  “What about him?”

  I told them what I’d heard from my uncle about the Ripper—that he’d been itching to attack Edgartown and Sunrise for years, and might even be planning a raid.

  “So we’ll tell the soldiers guarding the mine that the Ripper’s just invaded Blisstown,” I said. “And they need to come quick and save us.”

  From there, it took just a couple of minutes of back-and-forth to settle on the particulars: Millicent and Cyril would run screaming up to the mine, terrified out of their minds because the Ripper’s crew had just landed and was going to put all of Sunrise to the knife if every able-bodied Rovian on the mountain didn’t rush right down to the port to save the day.

  “Then how do we free the Okalu?” asked Kira. “If they are locked up, how do we get the locks open?”

  It took hours to puzzle that one out. Eventually, we tracked down a pirate from the Grift who’d worked as a locksmith, and learned from him that there were six or eight types of skeleton key, which between them should open just about any lock we might encounter. Then we found a smith in Edgartown who agreed to set us up with a full set of skeleton keys for thirty gold.

  After that, it was on to the next question.

  “So we’re standing outside the mine with a couple hundred Okalu,” said Cyril. “How do we get them off the island without starting a war?”

  “The same way they came in,” said Millicent. “Through the secret port in the cove on the south side of the island. If we do it in the middle of the night, they wouldn’t be likely to run into any Rovians on the way.”

  “What we gonna do for a boat?” asked Guts.

  “Birch’s slave ship,” said Millicent. She looked at Cyril. “When we left, it was docked in the cove. And no one was on it.”

  “What if we get to Sunrise and it’s not there anymore?” Cyril asked.

  “Then we’ll wait around until it is.”

  “How do we sail it?”

  That stumped everybody. By breakfast the next morning, the best we’d come up with was either to have someone teach us how to sail a ship that big ourselves—which seemed like it could take ages—or hire a crew, which promised to be not only expensive, but difficult.

  “If you were a sailor,” asked Millicent, “how would you feel about getting approached by five teenagers who wanted to buy your services for a secret mission they wouldn’t even describe to you beforehand?”

  Nobody said anything. We all knew the answer, and it was depressing.

  But then Cyril—who, although he’d stopped sounding scornful when he pointed out problems, hadn’t exactly been killing himself to come up with solutions—surprised us all.

  “Oars,” he said.

  We looked at one another. “Is that possible?”

  “Long as we have enough. Forty should do the trick. We’ll buy them from the shipyard here. Lash them to the deck of my sloop. Then either . . .”

  He thought for a moment before continuing. “Either we’ll sail straight into the cove, or dock at North Point and carry them overland in the middle of the night. Hide them near the stairs on the cliff top above the cove.”

  “It’d take forever to get them overland like that,” said Millicent. “If we try to get it all done in one night—”

  “Better to break it up,” said Cyril. “Land on the first night and stow the gear. Spend the next day resting in the wood
s and scouting the layout of the mine. Then the next night, you and I will create the diversion, and the others will lead the slaves down to the cove.”

  He grinned. “By George, I think we’ve got it. All we need are forty oars and half a dozen skeleton keys.”

  The grin on his face was annoying. I was glad we finally had a workable plan, but until that moment, I’d still been hoping that Cyril would back out of it and wreck his chances with Millicent.

  “And two hundred slings,” Kira added.

  “Are those really necessary?” Cyril asked. “I mean, we’ve gone to quite some trouble to put something together that’ll avoid bloodshed. Do we really need to arm the Natives?”

  “Maybe we don’t—” Millicent began.

  “No,” said Kira sharply. “We must have the slings. They will give the men who carry them confidence. And they will help solve any problem that arises.”

  Cyril smirked. “Of course, by ‘solve any problem,’ you mean, ‘kill anyone who stands in the way’?”

  Kira narrowed her eyes. She didn’t care for Cyril any more than I did. “Yes,” she said. “That is what I mean.”

  “But it won’t come to that,” said Millicent. “It’s a good plan. It’s going to work. And nobody’s going to get hurt.”

  Cyril winked at her. “From your lips to the Savior’s ears.”

  She smiled back at him, and for a moment, I felt like kicking something.

  ONCE WE’D WORKED OUT where we were going to buy all our supplies and how much they’d cost, it was my job to hit my uncle up for the money. I found him late that morning in a tavern off the main street, where forty of his men were celebrating Quint’s initiation as a full-fledged member of the Grift’s crew.

  Apparently, the initiation involved quite a lot of drinking. When I got there, Quint was passed out on top of the bar, his skin bright red around the edges of the brand-new flame tattoo that had been inked on the side of his throat. Several crew members were standing over him, swaying boozily as one of them held up a scary-looking tattoo needle.

  “Wot say we give ’im another? In a funny place?” the crew member slurred.

  They all looked at Healy for his approval.

  He shook his head. “One’s enough, boys. Needle down. There you go.”

  They looked disappointed, but quickly perked up again when one of them had the bright idea to shave a Healy mark into the jungle-thick hair on Quint’s back.

  “This way, Egg. Unless you’re looking for a haircut.” Healy led me to a far table, where he ordered a beer for himself and a sugared lemon for me. The bandage over his eye had been replaced by a simple black patch.

  “You got a patch,” I said.

  “Mmm. Hoping the eye heals and I’m not stuck with it permanently. Rather annoying to be such a cliché.” He shrugged. “So! How are you liking Edgartown?”

  “It’s all right.”

  “I see you managed to spring your girlfriend. Kudos on that.”

  My cheeks flushed. “She’s not my girlfriend.”

  “She is a friend, isn’t she? And rather obviously a girl. So, logically . . .”

  “How’s your problem with the bank coming along?” Anything to change the subject from Millicent.

  He lifted his hand, palm down, and waggled it from side to side. “Seem to have hit a wall at six million. They’ve put the touch on some other towns in the Fish Islands for the last four. But it might be a while. Although”—he looked back at the bar, where the shaving of Quint’s back was in full swing—“if the boys keep drinking like this, they’ll end up spending four million on credit, and that’ll be that.”

  I nodded, not sure if I was supposed to act like that was a good thing or a bad thing. Or whether this meant I’d have any trouble getting the money we needed from Healy.

  “So, um . . . I was wondering . . .”

  He smiled. “Is this the part where I’m supposed to get my wallet out? How much do you need this time?”

  “Eighty-six gold, three silver?”

  “To spend on what?”

  I got out the list and read it to him. “Six days’ rations for five, forty long oars, one set of skeleton keys, four hundred yards of half-inch rope, ten square yards of sturdy cloth, fifteen spools of size twenty thread, and five darning needles.”

  He gave me a blank stare. Not one of his terrifying ones. More just confused.

  “Darning needles. Of course. I should have guessed.”

  “Do you, uh, need to know why—”

  “No, no! It’s far more sporting to try to puzzle out just what on earth you’re cooking up with those ingredients.”

  He reached into his pocket and came up with a handful of coins, which he plopped onto the table in front of me. “Should be about twenty there. Get you started. Hunt me down tomorrow after lunch—I’ll likely have the rest by then.”

  “Thanks,” I said, getting up from the table.

  “But could you do me just one small favor?” he asked.

  “Anything,” I said.

  “Come by sometime when you don’t need money. Just to have a sit. It’s good politics—gets me thinking you actually like me for me.”

  “I do! Quite a bit! Really!” My stomach went queasy at the idea that he might think I only cared about his money, and that I wasn’t thrilled just to have him for an uncle.

  “If the money’s a problem, you don’t have to—” I started to say.

  Then he smiled, in a way that I knew meant he understood.

  “Go on. Spin your web. I’ll still be here when the spinning’s done.”

  I EXITED INTO the sunlit morning and started up the street, gripping the coins tightly in my pocket so they wouldn’t jingle and attract the attention of the soldiers who were still prowling the town, confiscating money to give to the pirates.

  I was halfway to the corner when Millicent came around it at a run, followed by Guts, Kira, and Cyril.

  “Egg!” Her face was pale and anguished. As she approached me, she threw a nervous glance back over her shoulder.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “My mother’s here.”

  CHAPTER 25

  The Other Pembroke

  “PLEASE, EGG! YOU’RE the only one who can do it!!”

  Millicent had me backed up against a wall. Literally. We were in a narrow alley about a hundred feet up the street from the jail.

  She wasn’t begging in a flirty way. She was too desperate for that. And I was glad for it—if she’d tried to be flirty, I would have seen right through it and gotten angry.

  The desperation was more effective, anyway. I couldn’t stand to see her in that kind of distress.

  But I wasn’t sure I had it in me to do what she was asking.

  “Please!”

  “Can’t we just avoid her?”

  “No! If she happens on us, she’ll blow up the whole plan! And I can’t have her worrying so—did you see the way she looked when she left the jail? It was heartbreaking!”

  Millicent was right. The brief glimpse I’d gotten, from our hiding spot in the alley, of Edith Pembroke in tears as she walked out of the jail after learning that the daughter she’d come to fetch had vanished . . . It was definitely heartbreaking.

  But that was just going to make lying to her face all the more difficult.

  “Can’t Cyril do it?”

  Cyril shook his head. “Sorry, old boy. Afraid she’ll never believe Millicent went home without me.”

  “Then Guts or Kira—”

  “She doesn’t know them,” said Millicent. “They won’t have any credibility with her.”

  “Can I at least tell her the truth? That you’re safe, but you can’t see her right now, and she should just go—”

  “No! That’d be disastrous! If she thinks you know where I am, she’ll never le
t you out of her sight. And if she knows I’m in Edgartown, she’ll never leave without me. We need her back at home, on Sunrise. That way, if the plan goes wrong, she might be able to help us.”

  It was the first time I’d heard Millicent admit that our plan might go wrong—and that she’d already been thinking about what would happen to us if it did.

  “I thought you hated your mother,” I said.

  Millicent sighed. “I thought I did, too. But I was just being a brat. After I came back from the New Lands, we talked for hours. Days . . . And I understand now. The way he kept her in the dark, about everything. I can’t even be angry at her for being blind to it, because she’s so angry with herself. And it’s over—she’s leaving him. Soon as she can get a boat back to Rovia. Even though it means she’ll lose everything she’s got.”

  Millicent’s eyes were glistening. “I’m all she has left—and I just keep running away from her. I don’t want to hurt her any worse than I already have. Not if I can help it. But we’ve got to get her on the afternoon ship back to Sunrise.”

  Guts and Kira returned just then, out of breath. They’d followed Mrs. Pembroke after she left the jail.

  “Where is she?” Millicent asked them.

  “The hotel,” said Kira. “She’s trying to get a room.”

  Millicent turned back to me. “You’ve got to go quickly. If she settles in . . .”

  “What am I supposed to say to her?”

  “That you paid Percy to bail me out. But then you and I had a fight. And I went back to Sunrise.”

  “With me,” Cyril added.

  “With Cyril.” Millicent took my hands in hers and squeezed them so tightly it hurt. “Can you do it, Egg? Please?”

  I would have rather tried to save her from sharks.

  “I’m not a good liar,” I warned her.

  She winced at that, which didn’t exactly make me more confident. “You can be. You’ve got it in you. I know you do!”

  There was no getting around it. I started toward the mouth of the alley.

  “Don’t forget to act surprised! Like you’re just bumping into her by accident.”