by Geoff Rodkey
They’re all dead.
Adonis will never forgive me. Adonis will be thrilled to see me again.
There’s a mess, and I’m going to have to help clean it up.
As we got closer, the plume got bigger. Around late afternoon, just as Sunrise’s coastal cliffs were coming into view, ominous brown threads began to appear in the gray-and-white column of smoke.
“So much fer findin’ that treasure,” Guts muttered.
“Shut up, Guts,” Millicent said sharply. She and Kira had spent the whole afternoon telling me not to worry, that it was going to be all right, that maybe volcanoes poured oceans of smoke from time to time without erupting, and I shouldn’t jump to any conclusions.
I would’ve told them not to fuss over me. But all the attention from Millicent was driving Cyril nuts, and I couldn’t help milking it a little just to make him suffer. Eventually, he was reduced to what he must have thought was a heroic-looking stance, sitting bolt upright at the tiller and staring at the horizon while the rest of us ignored him.
He was doing such a good Lothar the Lone impression that I started to wonder if he’d read Throne of the Ancients, too.
I’d gone back to staring at the plume rising from Deadweather when I heard his voice, in what I’m sure he must have thought was a very serious and grave tone.
“There’s more smoke,” he said. “It’s coming from Sunrise.”
I rolled my eyes. Nice try.
“He’s right,” said Guts. “Look over there.”
I turned from the distant volcano to the island looming ahead of us. The air around Mount Majestic was clear, but a hazy smudge of black hung low in the sky along the eastern edge of Sunrise.
Something was burning in Blisstown.
HALF AN HOUR LATER, we were closing in on the shore off North Point. The volcano on Deadweather was already forgotten, even by me.
The black smoke rising from Sunrise had faded at first, then sprang up again in a different spot, thicker and darker than before. Both times, it was coming from somewhere in Blisstown, but the island’s cliffs kept the harbor hidden from us, and it was impossible to tell exactly what was on fire.
As best we could figure, there were only three possible explanations for what we were seeing. Accident. Cartagers. Or Ripper Jones.
The fact that there were at least two different fires, burning in two different places, seemed to rule out an accident.
And we couldn’t for the life of us figure out where a Cartager invasion might have come from. Their only military base within easy sail of Sunrise was on Pella Nonna. Even if Pembroke had lost it by now, my uncle had sunk all the Cartagers’ warships.
That just left the Ripper. But nobody was discussing what that might mean, I think because we were all hoping it wasn’t true. For all the time we’d spent cooking up a story about Ripper Jones invading the island, we’d never once discussed what we might do if it turned out to be true.
We’d just rounded North Point when the explosion came, louder than thunder. Almost instantly, an angry black cloud billowed up from the cliff above the far side of town.
It was the southern fortress—or what was left of it.
“Must’ve been the magazine,” said Guts. “Somebody blew all their powder.”
The northern fortress was coming into view atop the cliff on the near side of us. There was smoke rising from that, too, thin and ragged now—but the hole where one of the fortress walls used to be told us its magazine had been blown as well.
“We’re getting out of here,” said Cyril, heading for the cockpit.
“Gimme yer spyglass!” yelled Guts.
“What does it matter?”
“Give it!”
Cyril threw him the spyglass, then headed to the tiller. Guts took the spyglass’s narrow end in his teeth and telescoped it out, then scanned the harbor.
“It’s the Ripper,” he said. “Red Throat’s tied up at that middle pier.”
The sloop began to carve out a sharp turn, away from Blisstown. Kira and I were on the port side, and we both had to duck as the boom swept over our heads.
“Cyril, what are you doing?” Millicent called to him.
“Going back to Edgartown!”
“Wait—let’s think about this!”
“There’s nothing to think about!” he barked. “They’re burning the island!”
“My mother’s on that island!”
“So’s my whole family!” Cyril yelled back at her, his voice rising to a yelp. “But what can we do?!”
“Well, let’s talk about it!”
Cyril didn’t answer. Instead, he straightened the boat’s course, and North Point slid past on the port side as we pulled away from Sunrise.
Millicent turned to Guts. “What will Jones do to the townspeople? If they cooperate, will he leave them be?”
Guts shook his head. “Ripper don’t leave nobody be. He’ll kill ’em all.”
“Cyril, stop!” Millicent cried.
“You don’t know that!” Cyril yelled at Guts.
“Sure I do,” said Guts. “I been on raids with the Ripper. He don’t leave nobody alive.”
“Not even the Okalu in the mine?” Kira asked.
“Not them neither.”
“CYRIL!” Millicent was practically on top of him. “We’ve got to do something!”
Cyril clenched his teeth and sucked in a deep breath through his nose. “We are doing something. We’re going back to Edgartown to get help.”
Guts shook his head. “No time. Take six days, there and back. Raid like this don’t last no six days.”
Cyril stared at Guts. Then at Millicent.
But he didn’t move to change course.
Guts pushed past me and disappeared into the cabin.
“We have to do something,” Millicent hissed at Cyril. “My mother—”
“I know! I know who’s on that island!” His face was bright red. He looked like he might cry. But he wasn’t changing course.
“Maybe . . .” I started to say.
Everyone looked at me.
“Deadweather’s only three hours,” I said.
“Who will help us on Deadweather?” Kira asked.
I thought about it. The answer was nobody. If there were even people left on Deadweather by now, they were all busted-down field pirates. With no weapons.
Or they were real pirates—and more likely to help the Ripper than to fight him.
I shook my head. “Nobody.”
“There’s nothing we can do,” Cyril said. “We’ve got to save ourselves.”
Millicent sat down next to him. “Cyril . . .” she said in a quivery voice. “We can’t just run away. Our family, our friends, everyone—”
“Millicent!” he hissed. “This is bigger than you! These men are killers! You’re not invincible—”
“Turn the boat around, Cyril,” she said, her voice rising.
“We can’t help them—”
“We have to!” She took a deep breath, trying to steady herself. “This is the moment . . . of a lifetime. And if you don’t do what you—”
“This isn’t some melodrama!” he barked at her. “This is real!”
“TURN THE BOAT AROUND!” she screamed.
“DON’T BE A FOOL!”
“Better a fool than a coward,” she spat.
Cyril’s eyes blazed with fury. Millicent had crossed the line. There was no walking back from an insult like that.
Cyril looked to Kira and me, but our faces must have told him we were on Millicent’s side. So he tried to laugh it off, but the laugh came out hollow and forced.
“Think you can taunt me into doing what you want? That only works on children, darling. Afraid you’ll have to try another tack.”
“How ’bout this one?”
We all turned toward Guts’s voice. He was standing on the top cabin step. In his hand was a cocked pistol, aimed at Cyril’s head.
“Turn the boat around, Feathers.”
CHAPTER 28
Nightfall
“IT’S TOO DARK to maneuver—we’ll break up on the rocks. We should stop.”
We were approaching the entrance to the secret cove where Pembroke’s men docked his slave ship. It was the first time Cyril had opened his mouth in almost an hour.
“I’ll fire up the lantern,” said Millicent. “We’ll hang it from the bow.”
“What if someone sees it?!” His voice wavered on the edge of panic.
“If there was anyone around,” she told him, “they’d have a lantern, too. And we’d have seen them already.”
She put the lantern in her lap and was drawing a match when Cyril reached out a hand to stop her.
“Don’t,” he said, sounding defeated. “Not yet. We’ll make do with the moonlight till we get inside.”
Under any other circumstances, I would’ve enjoyed how miserable he was. Instead, I was trying to think of ways to lift his spirits. We needed his help.
We needed all the help we could get.
And ever since Guts had pulled a gun on him, all the life had gone out of Cyril. He did as he was told, bringing the boat around to circle the cliffs of Sunrise until we reached the cove. But he rarely spoke, even though the rest of us had done nothing but talk for the past two hours, puzzling out how the pirate raid had happened and what we could do to help save its victims.
And that annoying smirk of his had disappeared for good.
When sunset had come, flooding the sky with eerie shades of burnt orange and blood red that would have been beautiful if they hadn’t felt like the end of the world, I’d been glad for it, because it meant I wouldn’t have to see the pasty look of fear on Cyril’s face anymore.
Now I was wondering if we shouldn’t have spent some time trying to buck him up instead of ignoring him. If we weren’t careful, that fear could end up getting us all killed.
“Is there anything I can do?” I asked him. “To help you see better? I could move forward, or—”
“No. Just paddle slowly.” The sail was down. Kira and I were on either side of the boat, oars in the water, while Cyril steered from the cockpit.
I watched the black mouth of the cove grow larger as we floated toward it, praying Millicent was right and there weren’t any pirates lying in wait inside.
Nobody was supposed to know about this cove except Pembroke and his slavers, but we figured the pirates must have come this way before us. It was the only explanation that made sense. Sunrise Island was sheer cliffs nearly all the way around—outside of Blisstown’s harbor, there was no place to land a ship except the cove.
And if Ripper Jones had tried to sail the Red Throat straight into the harbor, he would have been pulverized by cannon fire from the two fortresses. The fact that they’d both been stormed and blown up meant that the pirates must have had the advantage of surprise.
Guts guessed that Jones had landed most of his men at the cove in secret and spread out from there in a surprise attack, leaving just a handful of crew on board to sail the Red Throat around to the harbor, where they could load their plunder right from the dock. Guts had seen him use a similar tactic before, against a Gualo missionary outpost down south.
And Guts figured the fact that we’d arrived just as the pirates were blowing up the fortress magazines meant it was still early in the raid—which was good, because no one would be dead yet except for any soldiers who’d tried to resist.
“Way he does it,” Guts explained, “is smash anybody with fight in ’em. Then get all the folk together in one spot—church, or meetinghouse, or some such. Lock ’em up an’ scare the blun out of ’em, so if there’s plunder hidden, they’ll tell him where. Then gather the plunder, load it all in . . . an’ burn ’em alive on his way outta town.”
“Does it always go that way?” Millicent asked in a whisper.
“Pretty pudda much, yeh.”
“He doesn’t ever show mercy? Let people live if they cooperate?”
“Nah. Tells ’em he will. But he never does.” Guts twitched hard. “He likes it when they burn.”
It was around then that Cyril had quit talking.
I couldn’t blame him. For a while after that, I had a silent argument going in my head over whether I should tell the others that I thought he was right—that we should turn around and go back to Edgartown, because we were out of our minds to think we could do anything but get ourselves killed.
But the others weren’t thinking that way.
“Once we figure out where they’re keeping everyone,” Millicent said, “we might be able to help them escape.”
“Better off doin’ what you can round the edges,” Guts said. “Big enough island, they probably missed a few folk the first time through. Thing to do is make sure they get themselves hid. Far side of the mountain, say.”
“That’s where the mine is. They’ll go there looking for silver.”
“Somewhere else, then. Point is to stay hid till Ripper lifts anchor. Won’t be more’n a day.”
Millicent was still stuck on the idea of saving everybody. “If they put the townspeople in the meeting hall, there’s not more than . . . two doors, I think. But if they’re locked in the Peacock Inn, in the big dining room—we might have a chance. There’s loads of exits.”
As Guts and Millicent kept talking past each other, I watched Kira. She was silent, thinking hard, and I was half hoping she was thinking the same thing I was.
But she wasn’t, not at all.
“We have to stick to the plan—and free the Okalu,” she announced, loud and firm enough that Guts and Millicent instantly shut up and turned to her.
“We have to,” Kira repeated.
Millicent got a pained look on her face. “Kira, my mother—”
“The Okalu are the only ones who can help your mother! If they are still alive, and we free them, and arm them with slings—they can stop the pirates.”
I knew right then there was no point in suggesting we turn around. For their own reasons, neither of the girls would stand for it.
“The question is,” Millicent asked Kira, “would the Okalu kill the pirates? Or would they help them kill the townspeople instead?”
Kira’s eyes flashed, and she opened her mouth to fire back. But the words never came out, because the logic of what Millicent was saying began to sink in.
Guts twitched and gave a little snort. “Ripper won’t take help from no Natives. Ain’t even people in his book.”
“Then the Okalu will fight,” Kira said. “One way or another. And I can talk to them. They will listen to me.”
She didn’t sound too sure of herself.
“What if we free them,” I asked, “and it just makes things worse?”
“Nah.” Guts shook his head. “Can’t get worse than it is.”
I heard Cyril let out a heavy sigh. And once again, I couldn’t blame him.
THERE WERE A THOUSAND THINGS to worry about, but as the sloop reached the mouth of the cove, they all fell away except one: what was in the cove?
The best we could hope for was the slave ship—so the Okalu would have a way out, if we managed to free them and they somehow took care of the pirates without everyone getting slaughtered—and no people, because Ripper’s pirates would kill us without a second thought, and although Pembroke’s slavers were only our second-worst enemies at the moment, they were still enemies.
We got lucky. The slave ship was docked in the cove, tied up snug and taking up so much room that we could barely maneuver past it to tie up ourselves.
And there were no people—or at least, no people left alive. We quickly transferred the stacks of oars from Cyril’
s sloop onto the deck of the slaver. Then we gathered the bulging rucksacks full of slings, took the pistols and ammunition that Guts handed out, and followed Millicent under the low archway to the steps cut into the side of the cliff.
She stopped short for a moment at the base of the steps. The passageway was so narrow that I couldn’t see around the others to learn what had stopped her until it was time to step past it myself.
It was the body of a man, curled up like he was asleep.
But he wasn’t asleep.
I climbed the narrow, wet steps as fast as I could, trying not to think about what I’d seen. The deadly drop to the water just inches to my right made me dizzy enough as it was.
I’d just reached the top and was bent over, catching my breath, when I felt a tap on my shoulder.
It was Guts. “See his face?” he asked.
“Whose?”
“The body.”
I shook my head no. “I didn’t look.”
“That porsamora from the slave boat. One whose head I kicked in.”
Birch. The worst of Pembroke’s slavers. The man who’d tortured the map out of me in Pella Nonna.
I might’ve expected to feel glad, or at least relieved, that a man that evil was dead. But I didn’t. I just felt hollow.
And I didn’t have time to wonder why, because there were voices in the trees, and they were moving toward us.
CHAPTER 29
The Mine
WE ALL FROZE in place. Almost as soon as we heard them, the voices stopped. There was a rustle of branches, then nothing.
I heard the click of a pistol cocking. Guts.
Then there was a muffled whine that didn’t sound quite human, followed by a short struggle that ended in the high-pitched yelp of a lapdog.
My shoulders sagged with relief. Ripper’s men didn’t have lapdogs.
“Who’s there?” Millicent said in a loud whisper as she stepped through the gloom toward the sound. “Come out. We won’t hurt you.”
“Is that Millicent?” It was a woman’s voice, stuffy and rich. “Oh, my dear!”
