Mearsies Heili Bounces Back

by Sherwood Smith

  Then Klutz got a great idea. She flitted to the balcony outside the main bedchamber. When Lady Snord stalked through, scattering servants like chickens in a barnyard, Klutz leaped off the balcony, a glowglobe held under her chin so she looked like some kind of horrible ghost.

  I promptly made an illusion writhe up from Klutz, like a monster ghost.

  We all shrieked, and Lady Snord shrieked the loudest—and fainted!

  While the servants ran to her aid (or away) we nipped into the room she’d just left, which, sure enough, was her treasure room. Talk about treasure!

  We all loaded up on necklaces, rings, brooches, jeweled belts, and a whole lot of tiaras good enough for queens. Klutz grabbed what she thought was a beautiful sea-green gown. (It turned out to be a nightgown, which annoyed her, but Gwen took it, ripped off the decorations, and wore it as a gown anyway.)

  Then we went on down the hall to what we discovered was the daughter’s room. The girl, a teenager, was asleep. She had even more tiaras than her mother, and about fifty rings, plus enough fancy clothes for the entire cloudtop city. We piled more loot onto our stash (Klutz wearing five tiaras at once) and moved on down the hall at a much slower pace.

  There were twin boys. They woke up. One hid, whining and pleading, the other tried to tackle the closest of us, which was Id. Seshe and Id wrapped him up in his own blankets like a giant worm, then we looked around. There were some jeweled swords, and some fine hats with expensive curling feathers, a beautiful carved and begemmed board-and-marker game, and a treasure box with keepsakes in it. We dumped out the keepsakes (game markers, a note, a worn piece of riding gear), threw a few things into the box, and lumbered on downstairs to meet the others.

  I won’t list all the booty, except for the huge, fold-topped, high-heeled buckled boots that Puddlenose took from the lord’s gigantic wardrobe. He delighted in clumping around in those stupid things—though they didn’t last long on the deck of a ship, which was wet more often than not. But the boots reminded me of an idea I’d gotten a while back.

  Puddlenose jokingly said I should try them as they’d be good for booting enemies. Not if I couldn’t get one on, or kick well ... but what if I put a spell on a shoe in order to launch enemies away, like a mighty kick? I was always on the watch for some way to give us girls an edge in a fight, when none of us wanted to be ventilating anybody’s innards.

  Puddlenose also got a plumed hat, and a fine sword that Snord had lifted from someone. Puddlenose named it Lordsnordsword, and vowed that he was going to learn how to use it.

  Captain Heraford called us all together and said, “Now you kids don’t have to listen if you haven’t a mind, but we always talk over a raid after.”

  We all said we wanted to hear what he had to say. I was hoping to hear praise, which we got, but then he said, “If you’re going to be privateers, and not pirates, you should always be neat. Don’t throw things about. Take a moment to see what’s worthwhile, and leave the rest be.” He grinned. “Besides, it makes ’em madder when you’re neat. It’s called style.”

  Puddlenose grinned. Klutz and Id laughed.

  “You did make good picks,” the captain finished up, touching some of the things we’d added to the loot pile that would go to upkeep on the ship, food, and pay for the sailors. “And you were fast.”

  “We got plenty of practice being fast at the Squashed Wedding Cake.” I touched a tiara made with tiny sprays of emeralds. “Only nothing in Fobo’s horrible palace is pretty!”

  Captain Heraford said, “I’d had a rule, no kids. Seems some are more trouble than aid. But I might just change that rule.”

  We grinned, and some of us put more into the loot pile.

  NINE

  “Halfway: And On to Home!”

  And so we sailed east on a strong wind. The privateers had stocked up from the Snords’ pantry and buttery for a long trip, and off we went, straight toward the dawn.

  The days melted away, one after another, as we got used to shipboard life. It was wonderful! It took me a while before I dared to climb all the way to the tops, but once I did, I could see that much farther. When we got away from land, we began to see the occasional spouts of great whales in the distance. Sometimes dolphins leaped around, playing with each other and showing off, and one time, some mer girls with kelp woven into caps on their hair leaped with the dolphins, waving to us and laughing.

  “Can we go play with them?” Sherry asked. “They look friendly.”

  “You could, I suppose,” Captain Heraford said. “But I’ve never heard of anyone coming back.”

  We decided not to swim out to meet the mers. If they swam close and talked to us, we’d talk to them, but they never did.

  A few thunderstorms roared through. I was so glad I had my magic, though again, I didn’t want to zap back to MH and leave the others to whatever happened. Some princess I’d be! So I stayed on my bench in the wardroom, where most of the others were huddled. We all felt better together, even if all you saw in the light of the swinging lamp was scared faces.

  Puddlenose was not there. He was up on deck having fun watching the giant waves come as the ship climbed up and up. Dhana was ... somewhere.

  I tried hard to look unconcerned as I leaned way forward. The bow slanted upward like a rocket about to launch. Then it would plunge down, and I’d brace my feet on the deck and lean back. I never liked roller coasters, I thought dismally ... but finally I realized we were climbing a shorter time, and not so steeply. Same with the plunges.

  The wind howled less, and once again we sped under plain sail, the white water feathering up behind to frame our wake.

  Everybody except the weary watch crew stuck on duty crawled into their bunks and slept.

  o0o

  Much as I loved being on Tzasilia, and good as I’d gotten at my chores, I was ready for land again. You really have to like being wet a lot to sail, and you have to not mind that you can’t do the work and then let your surroundings just be for a while, like in moving to a new house. You’re constantly doing jobs, especially with the sails. It’s worse than washing dishes, because it’s heavier, and you’re out in the weather. Not that Captain Heraford gave us the tough jobs. The grownups got the worst of them. But we did have to serve night watches, to be fair, which means staying up all night, or sleeping with your head on your knees, and jumping up if the watch mate calls for the hands.

  Anyway, the lookout yelled that land was nigh, and sure enough we started to smell a kind of muddy wood whiff that was different than the sea. We spotted a lot of sea birds swooping and skimming and diving, and finally there were the bumps on the horizon, and new land.

  “We’re brushing Aleya,” Captain Heraford told us as we sailed near. “You should be all right. Last time we were this way, there’d been trouble, but nothing like the Chwahir.”

  “Are you stopping?” Sherry asked.

  “No. Nothing much for us here. We might poke north, see what’s what,” the captain responded.

  So when we neared the bay, we loaded up our souvenirs from our raid. Mostly that was colorful clothes. I’d gotten to work on my Shoe, which was one of the fancy boots discarded by Id, who’d grabbed two pairs. It took a long time to layer on the spells, but I had the time. The result was, I’d transferred the Shoe to beyond-space, but I could transfer it back by saying certain words and touching my necklace. Then, if I said a couple other words, I could kick a villain and a ball of air would boot ’em away from me, kersplat!

  Nobody wanted to be my guinea pig after the first couple of experiments, though all the kids wanted to watch me launch someone besides them. It was pretty funny.

  So anyway, we loaded up our gear (Klutz had adopted that horrible shirt, it was so ugly she could not bear to leave it) and the crew rowed us ashore.

  We waved, thanking them again and again. The last I heard was, “If you are ever in Danai ...”

  They set sail, and slanted away to the north, leaving us on shore.

  For a long ti
me we didn’t see anything except low, scrubby, boring land, pretty much like many other places.

  We’d gotten food from the cook, so we were all right for a couple of days of walking, at least. And a couple of days it was. I mean we saw nothing, except some distant forest way far to the south. But we needed to go east, so east we walked. And walked. And walked.

  At the end of the first day, Puddlenose turned all the way around, and said suddenly, “I think I know where I am.”

  We all exclaimed variations on “Really? Where?”

  He wrinkled his nose. “Kinda hard to say. I might be wrong,” he added.

  Okay, we could sure understand that. Unless there’s some landmark they only have in one place, trees are more or less trees, rocks are rocks, and so forth. This particular landscape was flat but rocky, only that forest in the distance, so I could see mixing it up with someplace else.

  We camped out, and started the next day, Id first making us wait while he tried to figure out a way to tie all his clothes on so he wouldn’t get overheated. Even though he hadn’t paid for them, he couldn’t stand the idea of giving up any of his fancy clothes, Just In Case.

  At midday, Puddlenose said again, “I really think I know this place.”

  And that night, “I’m pretty sure I know where I am.”

  We camped again, and when he said it the next day, after more of the same sort of boring countryside, nobody responded for a time. Until Seshe said, “How can you tell?”

  Then Puddlenose scratched his head. “If I’m right, I can’t tell you.”

  “What!”

  Dhana crossed her arms. She was hot, dusty, tired. “How annoying!”

  Now, here’s a weird thing. I can be super mad at someone, but I manage not to blast ’em with some choice pocalubes. But if someone else says the mean thing I’m thinking, I grin and add a mental ha ha!

  But if the person doesn’t snap back—and Puddlenose never does—then zap! I feel sorry for the first person I was mad at, and my mad switches to the one who said something mean.

  That’s what happened here. Puddlenose scratched his shaggy head, looked around, then said, “Well, maybe you’ll find out why. Then you’ll keep the secret, too. If it’s right.”

  “I don’t know about right and wrong, but I smell lots of water ahead,” Dhana said, her tone completely different.

  We discovered we were on a ridge—though the land had seemed perfectly flat—until we reached the edge, and below these rocky palisades that we hadn’t known we were approaching lay a kind of market city with a lot of tents and some open-sided buildings. It was built beside a wide, slow-moving river that dumped into the sea not far away on our left; on the far side of the river, straight east, was a line of very rocky-looking mountains.

  “I was right,” Puddlenose exclaimed. He started forward, then stopped. “Except I don’t remember a lot of guards.”

  Some poking about revealed a narrow goat track going downhill in zigzags. As we got closer to the market town, people veered widely around a lot of clods in the sort of tunic and trousers and boots that most military types wear in various styles, and each was loaded with pointy things—spears, swords, knives, the works.

  We reached the bottom, where a meandering road led from the market to the mouth of the river. There, a bazillion houseboats floated on the water, some connected by ropeways of various types, so it was obvious that they didn’t all travel. Farther out—way farther out—ships were anchored. They had to row in, which suggested a long, shallow beach.

  Puddlenose started talking to the people coming out of the market. Most of the older ones waved us away impatiently, some shrugged as if they didn’t understand us. Many scowled, and a few looked back in worry.

  Finally we got a family of traders with a kid near our age, who spoke a very accented type of Mearsiean (which is related to other languages).

  “Bad king,” she said, walking backward.

  The mother turned around and yelled at the girl in a Hurry up and stop blabbing tone of voice.

  The girl cupped her hands around her mouth. “Bad king gone—then loyalists worse!” She made a spitting motion after the word ‘loyalist.’

  “Are these fellows the loyalists?” Puddlenose yelled, pointing at the warrior guys uglying up the landscape.

  The girl yelled something we couldn’t understand, then her mother yanked her around and they bustled away, carrying their baskets tightly against themselves.

  As we got closer, the traffic thickened. We followed some people in, and got some weird looks, what with Id and all his clothes, Puddlenose wearing those stupid boots again, plus a plumed hat, Gwen in the fancy nightgown, Klutz wearing the terrible shirt with her skinny freckled legs sticking out below, and her bare feet. There I was, more or less normal except for the velvet cloak I’d pinched, and a very fine knife with a carved hilt stuck through my sash (orange, yellow, and chartreuse stripes—pinched because I had an idea about leaving it at PJ’s castle and seeing if it would start a new fashion), and Dhana with Lord Snord’s black velvet cloak dragging on the ground behind her.

  No one showed much interest in us, other than some skeptical, laughing, or disapproving looks as we wound our way into the crowded marketplace.

  Puddlenose took the lead. He seemed to know where he was going. I could barely see anything, what with all the grownups going every which way, some pushing carts, most carrying baskets.

  We finally entered a huge square, which was surprisingly empty, considering the throngs everywhere else. Here, we could see the rooftops of a lot of open-sided buildings, and lots more tents and pavilions and temporary booths.

  But those weren’t what drew Puddlenose’s attention. He kept on to the other side of the square, and the least crowded area—except for a lot of those military guys roaming around looking tough.

  “Ahah,” Puddlenose exclaimed, pointing to a building. Bars divided the windows—and faces pressed between the bars. Lots of faces. All sad. He turned to us. “When the local lockup is crammed, then either you’ve got a rotten town, or else you’ve got a rotten leader.”

  “How do you know that?” Dhana asked, staring from the unhappy faces in the jail to Puddlenose.

  “Because when the town is rotten, I usually get thrown into the klink,” he explained. “They’ll have a million rules and the first one almost always is that travelers are crooks. So they get a lot of free work out of you. It’s especially true if the millions of rules are new. Then you look for some villain who’s taken over.”

  He looked at us expectantly.

  “So, I guess we should get going?” Sherry said, her forehead puckering. “I do so want to get home.”

  “Me too. But first, what are you thinking?” I asked Puddlenose.

  “The people here are good ones,” Puddlenose said.

  “These?” Klutz looked around.

  “These are different, they’re traders. I don’t mean they’re bad. Traders are traders. But the local people.”

  “How do we tell the local people from the traders?” Id asked, impatiently adjusting some of his clothes. The sun was warm.

  “Ah ... well, how’s this,” Puddlenose suggested. “Let’s spend the day here. Someone’s bound to speak some language you know. We’ll meet at sunset, and compare notes.”

  I looked Seshe’s way. She shrugged, hands turned out.

  What’s one day, I thought.

  So that’s what we did.

  I mostly wandered around, looking at the things people made. By the time I’d admired fine inlay boxes and fire screens and painted vases and embroidered cloth and amazing weaving in both picture form and in pretty patterns, I was ready to get back to my own art projects. I’d forgotten all about spying out the local government.

  But the others hadn’t.

  When we met at an open air eatery where they served chicken pies, we sat around a table, leaning in. Kinda like a football huddle over a picnic.

  “Local war lord tryin’ to get this kingd
om,” Id said.

  “What kingdom?” Sherry said.

  “But not a Robespierre.” Klutz held her nose and waved. “Sounds more like a bumbler.”

  “What kingdom?” Sherry said.

  “People are mad because there’s a big tax on things now.” Dhana’s thin fingers flickered, suggesting rolls of coins. “I heard some people complaining about it. ‘We’re taxed so those big clodhoppers can eat and march around getting in the way,’ is what someone said. And somebody else said, ‘What do we need guards for? We need guards to get us away from the guards!’ But one of those fellows was right behind, and she got hauled away and stuck in the slammer. Then more guards took her booth down, and carried off her goods.”

  “What did everybody else do?” Gwen asked.

  “Nothing. Just grumbled, and looked around, like to make sure no more of the busybody guys were there.”

  “What kingdom?” Sherry asked patiently.

  Everybody looked at her. Seshe said, “I guess whatever lies beyond the forestline in the south, there.”

  “Don’t they just mean this market?” Dhana asked, her hands fluttering outward.

  Sherry said, “I heard. Three times. People don’t pay any attention to me. They must think I’m stupid. Or can’t hear. But they said things like, ‘He’s a king, but what does he want to be king of?’ And another said, ‘Why do they keep nosing on about the other cities? I’ve been coming here twenty-eight years, and I’ve never seen feature nor twitch of another city.’ So I want to know, what kingdom?”

  Z-z-z-t! Heads snapped Puddlenose’s way.

  He grinned.

  “All right, slobbinizer,” I gritted. “You’ve been dropping ominous hints like a sick elephant—”

  “Eeeuw, CJ!” Klutz bellowed with laughter.

  “I meant tromping around!” I had to wait for the yuk fest to die down, but after 400 years or so, it finally did. “Well? You want us to stick our big feet into this mess!”

  Puddlenose examined the moisture ring from his root brew as though it held the Secret Message of Doom. When nobody said anything he looked up. “The people are really, really nice.”