by Geoff Rodkey
“Ch-ch!” The other servant uttered something that sounded like a bird call but must have had some meaning specific to their business, because Percy broke away from me, pleading as he went.
“Don’t forget your old Percy—put in a good word—wouldn’t mind tutoring!”
Then he was gone, and within an hour, I’d managed to put him out of my mind again.
Just like, I’m embarrassed to admit, I’d mostly put my family out of my mind. And not accidentally, but intentionally—because thinking about them forced me to think about how living with the Pembrokes might only be temporary, and it was so wonderful, and life with my own family had been so lousy, that I never wanted to leave.
But sometimes the thought of Dad would creep in, and I’d get a little gnawing pang of guilt, thinking about how hard he used to work, and how he’d never had the chance to live, even for a day, as richly as I was living at the Pembrokes’.
Then I’d force myself to remember all the times he cracked me for lazing around, and how he never seemed to crack Adonis nearly as much even though Adonis was easily twice as lazy as me. Or how he never said a word or lifted a finger when Venus or Adonis went at me.
That made it easy to forget again. And when Mr. Pembroke updated me on the search, with vague but confident promises of search parties “leaving no stone unturned” or “scouring every corner of the map,” I’d nod and smile and quickly change the subject.
This seemed to be fine with the Pembrokes. Everything seemed to be fine with them—fine and rich and effortlessly happy.
Except for Millicent and her mother. They fought constantly, not in the normal way, but in their own odd style—with words that seemed pleasant on the surface, but had ugly meanings stuck to their undersides.
“I’ll be at the stables, Mother,” Millicent would say as we went out, but the way she said it made the words mean something more like leave-me-alone-you-shrew.
“You’ve finished your lessons, then?” Edith would reply. Meaning don’t-you-dare-leave-without-doing-your-work.
“In spec-tacular fashion,” Millicent would say, or really, haven’t-done-a-bit-of-it-but-just-try-to-stop-me.
I couldn’t understand why they didn’t get along, because Mrs. Pembroke seemed like the nicest person I’d ever met, and even though Millicent had a wicked streak, she was smart and funny and beautiful, and what more could a mother want in a daughter?
Eventually, I got up the courage to ask Millicent about it. We were in the library reading, and Mrs. Pembroke had just paused at the entry to call out Millicent’s name, in a way that meant don’t-sit-with-your-legs-over-the-side-of-the-chair-because-it’s-not-ladylike. Millicent grudgingly sat up straight, but as soon as her mother was gone, she swung her legs right back over the chair again.
“How come… you and your mother…?”
“Why is she such a hectoring shrew? Is that what you’re asking?”
“She doesn’t seem like a shrew.”
“Because you’re not her daughter.”
“No, but… I mean, she doesn’t even smack you—”
“Like to see her try.” Then Millicent sat up and turned in her chair, leaning in toward me like she was telling a secret.
“Know what her problem is? She’s insanely jealous. Because I’m going to run Daddy’s business one day—he already lets me sit in on meetings, and he tells me absolutely EVERYTHING about what’s going on. Things he’d never tell her, because she doesn’t understand business in the slightest. And it drives her mad with envy, and all she wants to do is keep me from it.
“But of course she can’t contradict Daddy, so she crosses her arms and clucks like a hen, and makes silly comments, like”—Millicent’s voice rose to a mimicking, high-pitched whine, which didn’t actually sound like her mother at all—“‘Dah-ling, you don’t know WHAT you’re getting yourself into!’ Or ‘I just want you to be happy, sweetheart.’ Like she even knows what’d make me happy! Sometimes, she even convinces Daddy to keep me out of his meetings. He has to shoo me out of his office, and when I complain, he says, ‘Love to have you, princess, but we don’t want to upset your mother.’ And then of course, when I confront her, she denies the whole thing. Pfft!” She let out a little huff of disgust.
“What WOULD make you happy?” I asked.
“Running Daddy’s empire! Certainly not skulking off to Rovia to marry some boring old twit and live in some moldy castle like SHE wants for me.”
“I thought only kingdoms had empires.”
“Oh, Egg…” Millicent looked at me with a sort of amused impatience. “Daddy IS the kingdom around here. He runs EVERYTHING.”
“Doesn’t the governor do that?”
“Who, Burns? That sorry old man? He’s just a puppet.”
“What’s a puppet?”
“You know.” She raised a hand and fluttered her fingers, like she was operating a marionette. “He moves whichever way Daddy tells him to. It’s the same way with the soldiers.”
“What, is your dad a general or something?”
“He doesn’t have to be—he pays all their salaries. Right down to the garrison commander.”
“And he runs the silver mine, too?” I’d gathered that much just from overhearing Mr. Pembroke’s conversations in the entrance hall with the men who were continually coming to visit him in his office.
“He doesn’t just run it—he owns it. It was all his idea, you know. The mine didn’t even exist before Daddy. And he’s got plans to expand way beyond it. In fact, he’s working on something now that he says will make the silver mine look like a street meat shack.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s business—you wouldn’t understand,” she said, more than a little haughty. Which annoyed me, because I got the impression she didn’t really understand, either. I was about to tell her as much when she lowered her voice and said, “He controls the pirates, too.”
That was so preposterous that I had to laugh. “No one controls the pirates!”
“That’s what they want people to think. But it’s not true—or anyway, Daddy’s got an understanding with them. Nothing happens on the Blue Sea without his say-so.”
She looked so sure of herself I couldn’t quite muster the confidence to tell her she was crazy.
“So that’ll be you someday—ordering pirates around, telling the governor what to do?”
I meant it as a joke, but I had to admit it was surprisingly easy to imagine Millicent at the big mahogany desk in her father’s study, yelling at the governor to do her bidding.
“Don’t tease me, Egg. I’ll have you killed. I could do it, too.”
“I’ll be sure not to beat you at croquet, then.” I’d almost won a game the day before, and she’d gotten so mad she broke a mallet and wouldn’t talk to me until dinner.
“Like to see you try,” she said with a smile, standing up and smacking my leg as she headed for the door. “Let’s have a go.”
Something about that conversation upset me badly. I had no idea why at first, but all the way through the croquet game that followed and the horseback ride after it up to the big meadow in the foothills, I was glum and snappish with Millicent.
At first, she didn’t notice. Then she noticed and teased me about it. Then, when the teasing just made me more short-tempered, she resorted to pleading.
We’d tied the horses up and were walking through the meadow when she saw a mountain gopher and took off after it, yelling for me to help her run it down. I didn’t bother, because it seemed stupid and pointless—she chased them every time we went to the meadow, and no matter how often she failed to even gain ground on one, let alone catch it, she never seemed to lose faith that she’d eventually outrun one of them.
She gave up after about fifty yards and sauntered back toward me. As I watched her approach, her eyes bright and laughing, her golden hair shining in the sun, I felt an ache building in my chest. Like my glum mood, I didn’t know what it was at first.
“Stop th
at infernal frowning!” she called out. “It doesn’t suit you at all! Bring back the real Egg! I don’t like this surly one! Not one bit.”
She closed the distance between us, reached out, and took my hands in hers. “Come on—tell me what I need to do to bring you back.”
The answer jumped into my head so quickly it almost slipped out of my mouth before I could stop it.
Marry me.
There were a hundred reasons why thinking that was crazy, starting with the fact that we were only thirteen. But there it was. I couldn’t unthink it. And right away, I realized what the ache in my chest must be.
She was still holding my hands, waiting for me to answer.
“I haven’t gone anywhere,” I said finally. “And I don’t want to.”
“Well, who says you have to?” she replied, her smile widening as she let go of my hands. “Come on. Race you down the mountain.”
It wasn’t until late that night, as I lay awake in the big feather bed, that I realized why Millicent’s telling me about her father’s empire—and her plans to inherit it—had put me in such a dark mood.
I’d always known Roger Pembroke was rich and powerful, but until then I hadn’t really grasped just how exceptional he was. And the moment Millicent laid it all out for me, I knew—deep down, in the place where you feel things before you understand them or even realize they’re there—that this meant I couldn’t marry Millicent.
Never mind the fact that no one got married at thirteen—King Frederick might have been paired off at twelve with the Umbergian princess who became Queen Madeleine, but for commoners, it wasn’t even a theoretical possibility until you were north of seventeen.
And never mind the fact that I had no idea if Millicent liked me that way. She did on some level, clearly—it never seemed to bother her that I was always following her around, we never lacked for things to talk about or do together, and since that first smile out on the lawn, I’d gotten dozens more from her, both big and little.
But whether she liked me the way I liked her, with the kind of feeling that put an ache in my chest—that was a mystery. And no matter how carefully I picked over every one of her smiles, gestures, and offhand comments, rerunning them in my head for hours afterward, I couldn’t solve it one way or another.
Never mind all that—because I’d read enough novels about rich and powerful people to know it didn’t matter. If her father was that important, he’d never consent to her marrying someone like me. And as his heir, she’d be duty bound to agree.
Unless…
Unless I could prove myself somehow.
So from that point on, I spent hours every day fantasizing about how I could accomplish something so spectacular that both Millicent and her parents would realize I was worthy of her.
At first, the fantasies were grand and world-shaking—leading an army, conquering a new land, building an empire of my own.
But those all seemed to take an awfully long time and require endless levels of planning. So eventually they went out the window, replaced by feats of bravery and daring—saving Millicent from a burning building, or pulling her from raging floodwaters, or single-handedly fighting off a band of ruthless savages intent on murdering her.
At first, the savages seemed more promising than the other options. After all, I could wait around forever before a building caught fire with Millicent in it. And Cloud Manor was on awfully high ground, so a flood seemed just as unlikely. But the Natives in the silver mine were not only foreign and mysterious, they were close at hand, and if they ever descended from the mine to Cloud Manor, they might create useful peril in all kinds of ways.
But something felt wrong about making villains of those tiny, hardworking specks I’d glimpsed from the sea as they toiled away on the far side of the mountain. They didn’t seem ruthless so much as put-upon, and I couldn’t imagine they had much in the way of weapons, so vanquishing them, even in my head, felt less thrilling than sad.
Then I hit on the idea of swapping them out for pirates, who were not only reliably well-armed, but villainous by occupation.
It was a little trickier to work out the specifics—Millicent had said her father controlled the pirates, which I only half believed, but if true, it complicated things immensely. Eventually, I put together an elaborate fantasy in which the pirates, seeking bloody satisfaction from an unpaid gambling debt, infiltrated Sunrise dressed as Rovian businessmen and stormed Cloud Manor, taking the entire family hostage. Armed at first with only my wits, then a length of rope, then a succession of knives, followed by a brace of pistols, a rack of muskets, and finally a sword from the scabbard of Burn Healy himself, I slaughtered a truly staggering number of pirates, until their corpses had piled up like cordwood in the hallways of Cloud Manor and earned me such tearful gratitude from Millicent and her parents that our eventual marriage was decided upon within minutes of Healy’s body hitting the floor.
It sounds crazy now. But that’s how much I loved Millicent—enough to kill pirates for her. And not just a few pirates. A lot of them.
And that was the state of my mind three weeks into my stay, when Mr. Pembroke stopped Millicent and me in the entry hall on our way out for an afternoon ride. He’d left before breakfast that morning on an errand to Blisstown and was just coming back in the door with a sheaf of papers.
“Precious, why don’t you go out alone today? I have some matters I need to discuss with Egg.”
“Make it quick, Daddy. It’s no fun riding alone.” Millicent stuck her tongue out at him. Then she turned to me. “I’ll take the meadow path. Catch up when you can.”
We both watched her go. Then Roger Pembroke placed a hand on my shoulder.
“Come into my study. We’ll be more comfortable.”
COMING DOWN
By the time I sat down in one of the big leather chairs facing Mr. Pembroke’s desk, my stomach was hollow and fluttery, and my whole body felt weak. Something was clearly about to change for me, and for the first time in my life I didn’t WANT anything to change.
Pembroke stood a few feet in front of me, leaning back against his desk with his arms folded.
“It’s been three weeks now since your family disappeared. The last of the search teams I dispatched has returned. Like the others, they found no trace. And…”
He took a deep breath. “Given what we know of wind conditions, and the extent of ocean to our west, I believe… and I want to be completely honest, because as painful as it is, you’re a very intelligent young man, and you deserve the truth… I believe the odds of survival are so small as to be—”
He went on, but I stopped hearing him, because an image had just flashed in my mind—of my family in the balloon, coming down in a dark and empty sea in the middle of the night, a hundred miles from shore—and suddenly I felt dizzy and scared and sick and I knew I had to force that image from my head and not think about it again or I might break down completely.
Fortunately, Pembroke was still talking, and I was able to distract myself by listening very hard to every word that came out of his mouth, even though they’d stopped adding up to sentences and for a moment I couldn’t understand a thing.
“—leaving you an orphan. I’m sorry… But I want you to know you’ll be taken care of. More than that—given that I feel some responsibility for what happened, and because we’ve all grown to have such affection for you these past weeks—Edith and I have been talking. And I’ve just been down to see Mr. Archibald, the lawyer. And…”
He pulled a document from the sheaf of papers he’d brought back from Blisstown and handed it to me. “We’re hoping you’ll join our family.”
It was a single page of thick, tiny writing, titled CERTIFICATE OF LEGAL ADOPTION. There were two lines at the bottom for both of our signatures. Pembroke’s space was already signed.
I stared at the words, but my head was still so addled I couldn’t comprehend them. And I must have looked as confused as I felt, because he repeated the offer, more clearly this time.
“We want to adopt you, Egg. If you sign this document, I’ll be your lawful father.”
All I could do was stare at him. This was too much to handle.
I’m not sure how long the silence lasted, but finally Pembroke moved to take back the document.
“It’s too soon. I’m sorry.”
“No, it’s—” I hung on to it, because I could tell he was disappointed, and even though my thoughts were a complete muddle and I couldn’t think straight at all, I knew I didn’t want to disappoint him.
I forced myself to talk. My voice was all quivery. “You’ve been so nice, and you’re all so kind and”—I just barely stopped myself from saying “rich” here—“nice. And…”
The meaning of this was starting to drift into focus. I would be Roger Pembroke’s son. I could stay here forever…
I stared up at him in disbelief. “Are you sure?”
“Yes, Egg. I’m sure. I want you to be my son.”
“Mrs. Pembroke—?”
“Wants to be your mother. She cares about you very much.”
That got the tears rolling. It was madness how easily the Pembrokes made me cry. Before I’d met them, I hadn’t cried in years, not even the time Adonis dislocated my shoulder and Quint the house pirate had to pop it back in its socket using two blocks of wood.
Eventually, I got hold of myself again. “Thank you.”
“There’s no need to thank me.”
“I don’t know what else to say.”
“Say yes.”
I nodded, wiping my eyes. “Yes.”
He smiled. Then he dipped a quill pen in ink and offered it to me. I took the pen and tried to sign the document against my leg, almost breaking through the paper.
“Here—use the desk.”
He stepped aside, making room for me. I stood up and immediately felt the room start to spin. I think I’d forgotten to breathe for a while.
Pembroke looked amused. “Deep breath, Egg. There you go.”
I gulped some air and managed a chuckle at myself. Pembroke gave me a warm smile. I stepped up to the desk to sign my name.
