by Geoff Rodkey
“Watch your mouth! I’ll call for your father!” I told him, not because I had any intention of doing it, but because I thought I’d look even more suspicious if I let his insults pass.
“My father will sue you!” the kid shot back.
I didn’t even know what that meant, so I just kept going.
When I reached the aft end, I found a row of doors, but they were all locked. There was another set of stairs, but I didn’t want to take them, because the lower decks were full of passengers, and I figured if I went up to the top deck, I’d run into the crew.
I looked around. In the corner, a large canvas tarp was thrown over something wide, square, and waist-high. I gathered up an edge of the tarp—there was an excess of it, bunched around the sides—and peeked underneath.
There were four large crates of cannonballs. Not the sort of thing anyone should be needing any time soon. And there was a couple feet of space between the boxes and the bulkhead, enough to lie down in.
I looked down the deck at the children. Their backs were to me, engrossed in their game. I quickly put my wet shirt back on and crawled under the tarp, burrowing all the way to the back corner and bunching the stiff tarp up over me, keeping it propped between the box and the wall like a tent so I could lie on my back and breathe without rustling the tarp.
It was cramped but not too uncomfortable. I lay still, listening to the kids play their game. From the sound of it, they were horrible brats, arguing with each other over every move and tossing ugly threats back and forth about all the terrible things their rich and powerful fathers would do if they didn’t get their way. Mostly it was torture and imprisonment, but whatever “sue” meant, there was a lot of that going around, too.
My clothes started to dry out, making me itch in all sorts of places I couldn’t scratch for fear I’d jostle the tarp and reveal myself.
After a while, the noise of footsteps going up the nearby stairs began to increase, and the kids abandoned their game and went up themselves. The muffled sound of feet on the deck above grew until it seemed like the entire boat was walking around over my head.
Then there were heavy thuds of what I guessed were ropes hitting the deck, and a great cheer went up from the crowd. We were under way.
I could feel the boat moving now, lumbering out to sea. The feet slowly filtered back down to the lower decks. A bit later, the sun must have gone down, and what little light had been peeking into my hiding place died completely.
Time passed. The smell of cooked food reached me from a distant deck. I was starving by now, and as I lay there in the darkness, I wondered what the passengers were having for dinner and whether I could steal some of it later.
Somewhere below, a band began to play.
It had been silent on the gun deck now for a long time. The fear of being discovered that had kept me frozen in place for the past few hours slowly faded, and I let myself readjust my position and scratch my various itches. But I wasn’t going to let myself get up and look for food until I was sure the passengers and crew were asleep, which meant hours more of lying in the quiet.
I tried to nap, but I had too much to think about. My brain was calmer now, though—the shock of everything that had happened was wearing off, and I gradually managed to wrestle my thoughts into straight lines.
We were sailing east, out of the Blue Sea and across the Great Maw to Rovia. Once we got there, I’d be safe from Roger Pembroke. Evil as he was, he only wanted to kill me for the treasure back on Deadweather. If I disappeared and never came back, he wasn’t going to hunt me down across an ocean.
I could start my life over in Rovia. I’d never been there, but most of the books I’d read were Rovian, and I sort of figured I knew what I was in for. There were cities and rich people and poor people, and it was hard for the poor people to become rich, but it happened sometimes, at least in the books.
I’d be starting out poor, that was obvious, but if I worked hard, and was clever about it, things might turn out okay for me. I’d find a tradesman—a printer, maybe—apprentice myself to him, and slowly work my way up to respectability and a decent life.
I’d never have to come back. Pembroke could have the treasure. The field pirates could have the ugly fruit plantation. All I wanted from the Blue Sea was Millicent.
And someday, she’d come to Rovia. She’d talked about it with me—how much she wanted to see the cities, and the rest of the Continent. She’d show up one day, our paths would cross, and she’d be torn at first, not wanting to give up the chance to rule her father’s empire. But eventually she’d realize she loved me, and she’d stay. We’d be together forever, thousands of miles from her father.
But it didn’t feel right. Even with Millicent in it, there was something uncomfortable about the fantasy of escaping to Rovia. Something that made me uneasy. And more than that, ashamed.
I lay there for a long time, pressing at the feeling like a rotten tooth, before it broke loose and I saw what was under it.
It was my family. I was never much for them, Adonis especially, and I’d spent I don’t know how many nights lying in my straw bed back on Deadweather, wishing I could escape from them.
But they were the only family I had. More important, I was the only family THEY had, and Roger Pembroke had killed them, and if I didn’t do something about it—I didn’t know what, but something—no one would ever know, or care.
And he’d take what he wanted from our land, just like it was his, and no one would try to stop him.
I didn’t want any part of it. I wanted to run away, forget it had ever happened, and not think about any of them ever again, except Millicent.
But I knew I couldn’t. I could run, I could cross the ocean, but someday I’d have to come back.
Because I couldn’t let him get away with what he did to my family.
And I couldn’t let him have that treasure.
UNINVITED GUESTS
By the time I finally crawled out from under the tarp, I was a wreck. Everything hurt. My knee was swollen and didn’t want to bend, my shoulder complained when I tried to raise my arm, muscles I didn’t even know I had ached in my legs and below my ribs, and my back was so stiff from lying in wet clothes on the wooden deck for all those hours that I could barely stand up.
I was also shaky from hunger, because after three weeks at the Pembrokes’, my body had gotten so used to big, regular meals that it didn’t want to work without them. And the hunger wasn’t half as bad as the thirst, which must have been why I was so dizzy.
Fortunately, the gun deck had been deserted for hours—if there was a watchman making rounds, I hadn’t heard him pass. So I took my time getting started, holding the cannons for support as I slowly felt my way around in the gently rolling darkness.
Other than a dim glow coming from the stairwells, it was almost as black as it had been under the tarp. This seemed odd—the cannon portals were all open, and there should have been plenty of moonlight—until I looked out a portal and realized we were sailing through a fog so thick I could practically hold it in my hands.
Once my muscles loosened and I got used to both the dizziness and the pitch of the boat on the sea, I headed for the aft stairs. Oil lamps hung from the ceiling beams in the middle of every flight, and since I felt safer under the cover of darkness, I moved quickly, down through two levels of cabins to the dining room.
It was as wide and open as the gun deck, and even in the shadowy light of a few lamps hung along the walls, I could see it was spectacular. Dozens of big, round tables filled the floor, surrounded by hundreds of delicate carved-wood chairs with velvet cushions. The walls were plastered over and painted with elaborate murals of sea battles, fought between everything from ancient water gods and sea monsters to pirates and naval officers. In the middle of the room was a raised platform jutting out from the wall that I guessed was a stage for entertainment.
Unfortunately for me, the room was spotlessly clean—whatever feast had been served here that night, ther
e wasn’t a crumb left.
But there had to be a galley somewhere. At the fore end of the room, I found a wide door, secured with a latch. I quietly flipped it open and peeked inside.
It was pitch-black. I shut the door quickly—if any of the crew were asleep in there, waking them would be disastrous. But my thirst and hunger convinced me to risk it. I took an oil lamp from the wall and reopened the door.
It was the galley—and it was massive, stuffed floor to ceiling with barrels, tins, containers, and cabinets. Along one wall was a giant stove, its thick metal flue disappearing into the ceiling, and in the center of the room, a long, sturdy tabletop stood over an island of cabinets.
I started with the barrels. The first one I opened held a thick liquid that must have been cooking oil. But the second one was water, and I bent over it and drank with my hands until I could feel my belly begin to swell against my belt.
Then I moved on to the food. In a big metal tin, I found a store of salted fish and must have put away a pound of it within a few minutes, hardly bothering to chew.
The food and water made me feel so much better that I temporarily forgot to be scared—and living with the Pembrokes must have spoiled me into thinking I deserved all the comforts I figured those brats from the gun deck were enjoying every night.
So instead of doing the sensible thing and sneaking back upstairs, I started looking for dessert.
I figured there probably wouldn’t be jelly bread, but there must be sweets. And there were—on a high shelf was a large, square box marked CHOCOLATE in big block letters. None of the other food containers were labeled that way, which should have alerted me that something wasn’t right.
I reached up, fully extended, and tugged the box from the shelf.
A dozen empty tin cans came down with it, tied to the back of the box in a booby trap. The room filled with a deafening clatter. I could’ve dropped a box of cannonballs on the floor, and they would have been quieter.
The brats from the gun deck must have been here before me, on the trip out, and the cook was ready for them this time.
But I wasn’t thinking that, or anything, just then. I was in a blind panic, running for cover. I was almost out of the room when I heard a door open somewhere behind me and a voice yell for me to stop, but I didn’t look back.
In the dining room, I took the closest set of stairs, vaulting the steps two at a time. But whoever was chasing me was a lot faster than I was—by the time I passed the upper level of cabins, he was nearly on my heels.
I tried to speed up by leaping three steps at a time, but on the second leap, my busted knee crumpled and I fell.
Then he was on me, a big man with meaty fists that grabbed me tightly.
“What’s your name?”
“James Basingstroke.” I hoped he didn’t read novels.
He squinted at me, taking in not just my face but my clothes, especially the bloodstains and dirt smears on my shirt.
“What cabin?”
I didn’t answer. He shook me with his thick arms.
“Give me the number!”
“Six.”
He didn’t look convinced, so I added, “-teen.”
“Sixteen? That right?”
“Yes. And my father will sue you if you don’t let me go!” I narrowed my eyes, trying my best to look like an arrogant rich boy. Might as well go all in.
He laughed. My heart sank.
“So your father… is Lady Cromby of Esqueth?”
He started up the stairs, dragging me behind him. “Let’s you and me go see the director.”
TEN MINUTES LATER, I was sitting in a luxuriously outfitted cabin on the quarterdeck, my hands tied behind me with a ribbon, being stared at by a man the cook addressed as Mr. Pilcher. He was big, and not just in size—his words and his movements were all melodramatically exaggerated, like he was acting in a play and needed to make sure the people in the back of the audience didn’t miss anything.
He hadn’t liked being woken up—when he first opened his cabin door to find us standing there in the damp fog, he gave the cook a lecture about his need for sleep that was so emotional I thought it might end in violence.
But once the cook explained things, he seemed to warm up to the situation. It was his idea to tie my hands, and he gave the cook both the ribbon and some very specific instructions about how to use it.
Now he loomed over me, eyes bugging out under his thick eyebrows, wearing a sleeping gown of creamy silk that fit him like a tent.
“Tell me, my filthy little thief—what are you doing on my excursion without a ticket?”
I didn’t know how to answer that. I wasn’t about to tell him the truth—I knew Roger Pembroke was one of the Earthly Pleasure’s owners, which made this man another Pembroke employee. But it was obvious I’d come from Sunrise, so I needed to account for that somehow.
“Hellooooo? Anybody home?” He rapped me lightly on the head with his knuckles. As I looked up at him, he wiggled his bushy eyebrows, which made him look so comically strange it was hard to concentrate on my answer. I lowered my head and stared at the floor.
“I was… cabin boy. On a ship. Docked at Sunrise. The captain was cruel and vicious… and—”
“What sort of a ship?” He put his hand under my chin, lifting it up so I was forced to look into his buggy, dancing eyes. “Hmm? Was it a merchant? Or perhaps—”
Then he suddenly reared back with a gasp, putting his hand to his mouth.
“Oh, my…” He turned to the cook, a smile spreading across his face. “I’ve just had a brilliant idea! Keep an eye on him. Back in a jiff.”
He threw on a long, fur-lined coat and dashed from the cabin. A few minutes later, he returned with another man—tall, stooped, and grizzled, with a gray-streaked beard. He wore a simple wool greatcoat and was still buttoning his pants.
Pilcher sent the cook away with a curt order to get breakfast going. Then he introduced me to the grizzled man with a grand wave of his hand.
“Captain Lanks, meet our pirate.”
“I’m not a pirate,” I said.
“You are now,” said Pilcher.
The captain looked from me to Pilcher, still blinking sleep from his eyes. “That’s no pirate. He’s too well-fed. And not enough scars.”
Pilcher rolled his eyes. “Captain, use your imagination! With a bit of makeup… possibly some wardrobe… I can turn this boy into a sharp-eyed devil sent to prepare an ambush by the most ruthless pirate on the Blue Sea! The advance party of Burn Healy himself! What do you think? Stroke of genius?”
He waited for the captain’s response, eyes shining with excitement.
The captain just looked tired. “Not sure I’m following you.”
Pilcher sighed impatiently. “It’s my job to provide our guests with a thrilling journey to an exotic but dangerous land. And they’ve had exotic coming out their ears. But the dangerous part’s been a real bust. There weren’t even any snakes on Sunrise. That Native in chains we paraded around just looked depressed. And there’s been grumbling. Because these people want some danger for their money—”
“And it’s my job to make sure they don’t get it.”
“Not the real thing! Just some vicarious experience of it! A frisson of danger! The suggestion of peril. And when it comes to the Blue Sea, nothing says peril like pirates.”
“Fine. Say he’s a pirate—”
“I’m not—” I started to protest.
“Shut up, boy. Say he is… what do you want to do? Flog him?”
“Obviously that. The boy stole food, it goes without saying. But more. And bigger.” Pilcher’s eyes danced with intrigue. “I want to maroon him.”
My chest started to thump. Marooning meant slow death by starvation. Or madness.
The captain winced. “Once we’re on the Maw, there’s no island within a thousand miles of latitude. And the prevailing winds will make it next to impossible to double back—”
“We’re not on the Maw yet, are we
? We’re still in the islands! Surely there’s a deserted one nearby.”
The captain was silent. Pilcher pressed him.
“There is! Isn’t there? Captain, don’t make me assert my—”
“There’s a handful. To the north, above Pig Island. But we’d have to change course immediately. And it’s dark, and we’re in heavy fog—”
“What’s that got to do with anything?”
“If we change course now, we’ll lose our escort.”
“Pffft.” Pilcher made a funny gesture with his hands, like he was shaking water from them. “Morning will come, the fog will lift. He’ll see we’re not on course. And he’ll wait. We’ll catch up in no time. Snip, snap.”
The captain sighed. “Mr. Pilcher. Your job is entertainment. Mine’s getting us back to Rovia safely. And the Blue Sea, I’d remind you, is full of ACTUAL pirates. Some of whom are actually dangerous.”
“And the worst of them’s protecting us! What do we have to fear?”
“Losing him! Without his escort—”
“We’re not going to lose him! How long could it take?”
“Half a day, at least.”
“That’s nothing! This marooning’s going to be priceless! I’m already imagining the ceremony in my head! Now, turn us around, man! We won’t lose him in half a day.”
Lose who? I vaguely remembered Pembroke boasting to my father about the precautions he’d taken to ensure the Earthly Pleasure’s safety… and Millicent telling me her father controlled the pirates. I hadn’t really believed her. But apparently it was true, of at least one pirate, anyway.
The captain was shaking his head. “I’m not in favor of this.”
“I don’t need your approval. I just need you to turn the ship. And quickly—if we don’t get the marooning done by midafternoon, I’ll have to reschedule the shovelpuck tournament.”
“For Savior’s sake… Can’t we just make him walk a plank?”
“There’s no mystery in that! Plop, thrash, and he’s dead.”
“He’ll die if you maroon him.”
“But not while we’re watching. There’s a fine line between entertainment and barbarism. Now, get it done! I’ve got LOADS of planning to do.” Pilcher opened his cabin door and motioned for the captain to exit.
