by Geoff Rodkey
There was no light in the shed, and I could just barely make out the other men clustered behind him, all as rail-thin as he was. Farther back in the darkness, I could hear the sound of many more—a clanking, impatient mass of men.
Why are they clanking?
“Muto! Muto!” Kira beckoned for the first Okalu to step though the hole that we’d opened up, a couple of feet off the ground and more than wide enough for his skeleton’s body.
He hesitated, and the hollow men behind him craned their necks, wondering like we were why he wasn’t coming out.
He gritted his teeth and tried to hop over the splintered wood, but he tripped and fell, splaying out onto the ground with a rattling clank—and I realized what all the clanking was coming from, and why he’d had so much trouble stepping over the low section of wall.
His legs were manacled together at the ankles with an iron chain.
“Where are the keys?” Kira asked me.
I looked around for the rucksack I’d left on the ground when I started swinging the ax. After a panicky moment, I spied it a few feet away and quickly fetched the ring of skeleton keys from it.
By the time I did, Kira had helped the first Okalu to his feet, five more were standing beside him, and Guts and Millicent were on either side of the hole in the wall, helping to support the next man so he could get his manacled legs up and over the splintered wood.
I knelt down at the first Okalu’s feet and inspected the manacles. Each collar had a small keyhole near the back, just above the tab where the chain attached.
“Hurry, Egg!”
I tried a key. It was too big for the keyhole.
The sound of clanking iron was building on all sides. Helped by Millicent and Guts, the Okalu were filing out of the shed in a steady stream. They crowded around me, blocking out the moonlight.
“Kira, tell them to back away! I can’t see what I’m doing.”
She did. I could see again, just barely. I went back to the ring and searched the keys until I found a small one.
It was still too big for the lock.
“Hurry!” Kira said again. “The pirates are coming!”
I could hear her handing rocks and slings to the men as they traded urgent words in Okalu over the sound of the clanking chains. But with those chains on their legs, the slings were next to useless, because the men couldn’t step forward and put their weight behind the throws.
I fumbled with the ring, looking for the one key—I hoped there was one—small enough to fit.
“Hurry!” The fear was rising in Kira’ voice.
I dropped the ring.
When I picked it up, my hands found the small key almost immediately. I tried it.
Too big.
That’s the last one. I could feel panic tightening my throat.
“Hurry!”
Try the other one again.
I searched out the other small key, the one I’d tried before.
No. This was different. A squared edge, not a rounded one.
I must have accidentally stuck in the same key twice.
I tried the small square one. It slid into the lock.
But it wouldn’t turn.
I jiggled it, back and forth, in and out—
Click.
The first manacle opened on its hinge and fell away.
A few more seconds, and I got the second one off. Click.
Clank. The manacle fell off, and the first man was free.
“Gadda.” I didn’t need to know Okalu to understand he was thanking me. Before I could look up, his bone-thin legs stepped away, and another pair of legs clanked into place in front of me.
“Hurry, Egg!” It was Millicent. She didn’t need to tell me. I knew.
Click . . .
Click . . .
Clank.
The second set of manacles fell away. Two more skinny legs stepped up, clanking as they came.
So thin . . . Their legs are so thin . . .
Click . . . Click . . . Clank. As I pushed away the discarded manacles, another Okalu stepped up.
Kira was trying to organize the men. Their voices mixed with hers, increasingly loud and urgent.
Click . . . Click . . . Clank.
Click . . . Click . . . Clank.
“We need more stones!” It was Millicent’s voice.
The men were running off as soon as I unshackled them. I tried to glance up to see where they were going, but all I could make out were more legs.
Click . . . Click . . . Clank.
Click . . . Click . . . Clank.
They were crowding me again. I didn’t have light to see.
“Back away, please!”
They didn’t back away.
“KIRA!”
She was gone. I didn’t know where.
“Guts! Millicent!”
They were gone, too. Where did they go? I felt for the next set of legs. They were turned the wrong way, and I couldn’t find the keyhole.
“BACK AWAY! I CAN’T SEE!”
For an agonizing moment, nothing happened.
Then an Okalu voice called out, “Kotay balu na!”
Others took up the call. “Kotay balu na!”
The circle widened. I could see again, just barely.
Click . . . Click . . . Clank.
Click . . . Click . . . Clank.
“Kira? Guts? MILLICENT?”
Where did they go?
Click . . . Click . . . Clank.
Click . . . Click . . . Clank.
Click . . . Click . . . Clank. The empty manacles were piling up. I had to scurry backward on all fours to give myself more room to discard them.
The sea of clanking legs moved with me.
Click . . . Click . . . Clank.
Click . . . Click—
A gunshot rang out.
Then a dozen of them, going off like firecrackers.
Voices were yelling—Rovian voices, shouting in anger and surprise—and they were close. Much too close.
Now the Okalu were yelling. The clanking around me grew so loud it nearly washed out the gunfire that kept crackling in my ears. The men around me were desperate to get their chains off before the pirates fell on them.
Don’t panic. Keep working.
Click . . . Click . . . Clank.
There was no lull between the gunshots now—they just kept popping off, one after the other.
It takes time to reload a gun. There had to be a lot of them for that kind of barrage.
Keep working.
Click . . . Click . . . Clank.
Click . . . Click . . . Clank.
There were screams and grunts and curses and more gunshots and the awful sounds of men fighting to the death with their hands.
They sounded like they were on top of me. I couldn’t look up. There were too many chains to unlock.
Click . . . Click . . . Clank.
My hands were shaking.
Click . . . Click . . . Clank.
I couldn’t see again.
“BACK OFF!”
“Kotay balu na! Kotay balu na!”
Click . . . Click . . . Clank.
Click . . . Click . . . Clank.
More gunshots. More screams.
“Millicent? Guts? Kira?”
No answer. I risked a quick glance up, in the direction of the road. All I could see were skinny legs and grimy loincloths.
I yelled as I worked. “Speak Rovian? Anyone? Rovian?”
No answer.
Just do your job.
Click . . . Click . . . Clank.
Click . . . Click . . . Clank.
Click . . . Click . . . Clank.
More gunshots. Someone cried out in agony. Men were running, callin
g to each other in Okalu.
“What’s happening?”
No answer.
Click . . . Click . . . Clank.
“Who speaks Rovian?”
Click . . . Click . . . Clank.
“Anybody speak Rovian?”
Click . . . Click . . . Clank.
“I speak.”
I looked up. I wasn’t sure which of the dozens of men surrounding me spoke Rovian.
“What’s happening?” I asked.
“Fast! You go fast!”
I lowered my head and kept working.
Click . . . Click . . . Clank.
Click . . . Click . . . Clank.
FINALLY—HOW LONG had it been? Minutes? Hours?—I unshackled a man, and when he ran off, no one stepped up to take his place.
I raised my head and looked around. I’d started out maybe five feet from the hole in the shed. Now I was fifty feet from it, with nothing between me and the shed but a dark, ugly field of discarded manacles.
I was staring at that field of manacles, dumbstruck, too numb to wonder why the sounds of battle had died away, when I heard a voice.
“Egg?”
In the predawn gloom, I could see a crowd moving toward me. Skeletons, walking ghosts.
Except for the three in the middle. My friends.
There was no urgency to the way they moved. Just exhaustion.
“What happened?” I asked.
“We won,” said Kira.
CHAPTER 31
The Last Plan
“WHERE ARE STAIRS to ship?” The Okalu leader’s name was Iko, and he was getting impatient.
“It’s not important now,” said Millicent, for at least the third time. “The rest of the pirates are—”
“We go to ship first.”
“The pirates are in the town!” She was losing her temper.
Iko stopped walking and held up his hand. The few hundred hollow-eyed Okalu on the road behind him—many of them loaded down with jugs of water and sacks of half-spoiled food from the mine’s storehouses—came to a stop as well. So did the rest of us.
Iko placed his hands on his hips and stared down at Millicent. Even with his body half wasted from starvation, he was an imposing figure.
“First we load ship,” he said. “Food and water. Then we go to town.”
“You can leave the supplies by the road and get them later! We have to hurry—”
“No. We go to ship first.”
Millicent clenched her teeth. “Kira—”
Kira traded words in Okalu with Iko. I tried to read their tone of voice, but neither one was giving much away.
Finally, Kira turned back to Millicent.
“They have to see the ship. To make sure it is there, with the oars, like we said.”
“Then they’ll help us? Like they promised?”
Kira sighed.
“There are fifty pirates left!” Millicent’s voice shook. Dawn was breaking and we hadn’t slept or eaten since the day before.
“Maybe not fifty,” Guts muttered. Millicent and Kira both looked at him.
“Maybe just forty,” he said.
“Kira, they have to promise us they’ll help!” She turned to Iko. “You have to!”
He stared at her, unblinking. “We go to ship,” he said. “Or we do not help.” He waved his hand toward the side of the road. We were close enough to the cliff that I could see ocean through the trees.
“Is close. You show us.”
Kira spoke to Iko again in Okalu.
“I’m not taking them to the ship if they’re not going to help us!” Millicent insisted.
Iko replied to Kira. She nodded.
“They will help,” she told Millicent.
“I need a promise!”
Iko’s mouth split into a grin. “Okay, girl. Promise. Now take us to ship.”
BY THE TIME we reached the stairs, sunrise had turned the sky the same eerie reddish orange we’d seen at sunset. The stairs were so well hidden that without Millicent showing the way, I could’ve walked past the spot a dozen times without seeing it, and I’d been there twice before.
Once she showed them the entrance, Iko gestured to his men. The ones closest to him began to file down the steps—not just the men who were carrying food and water, but all of them.
“Wait—you’re just dropping off the food!”
“They see the ship,” said Iko.
“They don’t all need to see it! STOP!”
She pushed in front of them, blocking the way to the stairs.
“Millicent . . . ,” Kira began.
“They lied, didn’t they?” Millicent’s eyes blazed as she glared at Iko. “You lied to me!”
His lip curled in a snarl. “What are lies, to the children of slave men?”
“They fought bravely—” Kira began.
“The fight’s not over! We saved them!” Millicent had one of Guts’s pistols in her hand.
She started to raise it.
Everyone moved at once. There was a brief, ugly scuffle, during which both Millicent and a couple of Okalu nearly went over the edge of the cliff. But when it was over, Kira and I were holding Millicent back while the Okalu continued to file down the stairs.
She was in tears, and curses were coming out of her mouth with such a vengeance that even Guts looked a little shocked.
Iko stood between us and the Okalu, staring at Millicent as she raged helplessly at him.
Eventually, she wore herself out and sank to the ground in defeat. I sat down next to her and rubbed her back, because I didn’t know what else to do.
The last of the Okalu filed past Iko and disappeared down the steps. Before he turned to follow them, he asked Kira a question.
Her brow furrowed with doubt. She looked down at Millicent and me. Then at Guts.
Guts understood what was going through her head. “Gonna go with ’em?”
Millicent looked up. Her red-rimmed eyes met Kira’s.
Kira turned to Iko and shook her head.
“Ka folay,” she said.
He nodded. “Ka folay.” Then he was gone, leaving the four of us alone on the cliff top.
THE OKALU WEREN’T what you’d call experienced sailors. We sat on a rock at the edge of the cliff, eating leftover biscuits we’d brought from Edgartown and watching the slave ship blunder into every rock outcropping in sight as forty men who’d probably never held an oar in their lives tried to maneuver out of the cove and into the open sea.
I wasn’t too worried for them. They’d get the hang of it soon enough. And as long as they could keep the ship pointed west, the New Lands were too big to miss.
The job we’d been left with was a lot harder.
How were the four of us going to stop Ripper’s fifty pirates from murdering everyone on the island?
I tried to think, but my brain wasn’t good for much. It had been too long since I’d slept.
“It’s not supposed to happen this way,” Millicent muttered. “You’re not supposed to save two hundred people’s lives and then just have them run off on you. It’s not fair! If this was a book, I’d throw it across the room.”
A book.
How would they do it in a book?
“Basingstroke!”
Millicent looked at me. “What about it?”
“Remember when James was being chased by that squad of cavalry?” I asked her. “And he tricked them into plunging off a cliff? Well, we’ve got a cliff.”
“The pirates aren’t a cavalry,” she said, sounding irritated. “And there’s too many of them. You might be able to trick two people into falling off a cliff. You can’t trick fifty.”
“Could be just forty,” said Guts.
“My point stands,” said Millicent, with a roll of
her eyes.
“Wot’s that mean?”
“Forget the cliff,” I said. “What I mean is—we’ve got to trick them somehow.”
“Trick them into what?” Kira asked.
“I don’t know. Locking themselves up or something.”
“Where?”
“The silver mine,” said Millicent.
“None of them buildings gonna hold forty pirates for long.”
“What about the mine itself?”
“How would you close it off?” I asked. “It’s not like a mine has a front door you can lock.”
We were all silent for a moment, thinking.
Suddenly, Guts’s whole upper body jerked to life in a massive twitch.
“Blow it up!”
“What?”
“Got black powder! Up at that mine! Sun’s up now, we can find it. Get all the — pirates inside the mine and blow the entrance! Bottle ’em up!”
Millicent perked up. “How do we get them up there?”
Guts snorted. “Where all the pudda silver is!”
She hurried to her feet. “Let’s go. Quickly!”
THE BLACK POWDER was right where the Okalu said it would be, in a storehouse near the mouth of the mine. There were half a dozen short kegs of it, along with several spools of fuses.
But just looking at the mine’s entrance, we knew the plan would never work. It was too enormous. No matter how much powder we detonated, we’d never be able to seal the whole thing shut.
Then Millicent came up with another idea.
“The temple ruins,” she said.
“What?”
“The Temple of the Sunrise. Where the Okalu used to hold the Marriage of the Sun.”
“Mata Kala,” said Kira.
Millicent nodded. “Right. What’s left of it is just around the mountain.”
“But it’s a ruin,” I said.
“There’s a chamber. Underground. With a long tunnel leading in. It’s perfect. There’s room enough in the chamber for at least fifty people. And the tunnel’s narrow—if we set a charge at the entrance, we can collapse it with no problem.”
“How do we get the pirates in there?”
“Same way as the mine—we’ll tell them that’s where the silver is.”
“Why would there be a hoard of silver inside the temple?”
Millicent cocked an eyebrow at me. “In a secret underground chamber? Under an abandoned ruin on the side of a mountain? If you knew pirates were invading your island, where else would you put your silver?”
