His descent was like tumbling through the riptide of a wave, and at the same time, so much worse. Dean felt as if the great Lord Neptune had taken all seven of his seas and poured them down upon his head at once. The force was incredible. It flooded his ears, eyes, and nose. Dean thought it would never stop. When he reached the bottom, he didn’t even know it. He felt as though a fist made of water had pulverized his body, and now he was inside that fist, spinning in endless dizzy circles.
The spinning did end, eventually. The water pouring down from the falls pushed him out and away from the rocks they ran off. Dean found himself drifting slowly away, alive and whole. He felt at his chest and flexed his fingers, confirming that everything was still in working order. It was a miracle. The water was calm in the pool at the foot of the falls. He had a few moments before the current swept him away again. He could make it to the river’s edge. He was nearly there!
“Ha!” Dean shouted. “I’d like to see the look on your face now, Jin Ralian!” Instead, Dean saw a blue tiger with orange stripes prowling around the riverbank. “Okay, maybe not,” Dean said, reversing his course and pushing away as fast as he could. The tiger showed its teeth and growled at Dean as he made a hasty retreat. Several more blue tigers stalked the river’s edge in the places where it was safe enough to swim, and by the time they were gone, it no longer mattered. Dean scowled as the kayak picked up speed again and the current pulled him back down the river. “Nothing so fierce as the snapdragon,” he muttered. That was what the regent had said. “So much for that!” Dean watched the garish blue cats shrink from sight as the third and final waterfall drew near.
Time was running out. The massive two-hundred-foot behemoth falls next to the palace would be Dean’s final fall in more ways than one. He was desperate to find something—anything—that might save his skin, when suddenly the trees thinned out and the forest opened up. Dean grabbed the kiteboard and unwrapped the sail, flapping it open in a single motion. Seconds later, he had traded his kayak for the board and was out of the water, being pulled by the wind to the falls. “Thank you, Ronan!” he shouted as he took to the air, riding up over rocks and splashing downstream. A strong wind carried him down the river. He rode the current right up to the falls and over the edge. The kayak flew out unmanned and was lost in the water. Dean breezed down safely, gliding peacefully beneath the kiteboard sail.
A large crowd had gathered at the base of the falls outside the Aqualine Palace. Everyone was looking the wrong way. They all expected him to paddle in on his kayak by way of a stream that ran around the falls. As he descended, Dean searched the crowd for Waverly. The regent was there, as Verrick had promised, but he was alone. When he turned and saw Dean floating down over the massive waterfall, his eyes went wide. One by one, the other people saw too, and as a wave of recognition washed over the crowd, their exultation shook the castle walls. Once again, Dean had not only survived the trial, he had conquered it in spectacular fashion.
A reveling sea of people rushed to greet Dean as he landed, crowding the water’s edge. Of everyone present, Lord Kray cheered the loudest. He even waded out to meet Dean, dressed in all his noble finery. The regent showered Dean with exuberant praise. “Amazing! Simply amazing! You finished the course with half an hourglass to spare! Over the great fall no less!”
“Where is Jin?” a voice called out. “Where’s my son?”
Dean looked and saw Arjent Ralian standing with Junter and Jarret. They were the only people not applauding. “That’s a good question,” Dean said.
As if on cue, Jin paddled into sight. He was rowing across the same stretch of river that everyone had expected to see Dean arrive on. The look on his face suggested disbelief and wonder. Dean could tell he was terrified. As well he should be.
“You’re alive?” Jin said meekly.
Dean crossed to Jin and greeted him like a brother. “Of course I’m alive! You worry too much.” He turned to the regent. “Jin insisted on taking the long way down. Some people have no sense of adventure. More is expected from a prince.” Dean helped Jin out of the water and put his arm around him as though they were mates.
“I don’t understand,” Jin said.
“Neither did I. Until now.” Dean patted Jin on the shoulder and gripped his side in the same place he had stabbed the failed assassin two nights earlier. “I learned a great deal from this one.” Dean smiled as Jin winced in pain. “A great deal indeed.”
CHAPTER 22
EYES ON THE PRIZE
We shouldn’t be here,” Rook groused.
“Where’s that?” asked Dean. “Here on this island or here hiding in these bushes?”
“Take yer pick,” Rook said. “We oughta be lootin’ this rock with a fleet of pirates, not sneakin’ around like—”
“Spies?” Dean cut in. “That’s what we are, in case you forgot.” Night had fallen and the three boys were watching the watchtower, waiting for it to empty out.
“The time for spyin’s come and gone,” Rook said. “I’m a pirate. Ask me, it’s high time we got back to piratin’. Why don’t we send the bird out and tell One-Eyed Jack where we are? He’ll turn this island upside down and shake its gold from every tree branch and pocket. We don’t have to be wastin’ our time like this.”
“Stow that talk,” Ronan told Rook. “I told you I’m not going to see One-Eyed Jack lay waste to this island. It’s not going to happen. Not by my hand.”
“Nor mine,” said Dean. “You want to call in One-Eyed Jack, you should’ve done a better job of finding the orchard.”
“It’s been two days and we haven’t found a single golden leaf,” Rook said. “Let alone a whole orchard! For all we know, there isn’t any gold left to find. It’s probably all been harvested and sent out with the traders. We’re running out of time, and we wasted all day today trying to get into that blasted watchtower.”
Ronan took umbrage at that. “We didn’t waste anything. I got us into that tower.”
“So? We didn’t find anything.”
“We found out how the Watchers do their job.”
“We didn’t find out nothin’ worth nothin’,” Rook spat. “We don’t know where the orchard is or when the storm is gonna break next. If we’re not careful, we’ll end up completely empty-handed.”
“That’s why we’re here tonight,” Dean said. “Insurance.”
His plan was to sneak into the watchtower and find out when the traders would ship out with next year’s harvest. If Dean and the others got that information to One-Eyed Jack, he could be ready with the whole Black Fleet when they did. A king’s ransom, his for the taking. He’d have to wait a little while for it, but that was better than nothing. If worse came to worse and the golden orchard couldn’t be found, Dean could at least give him that much.
“Insurance,” Rook said, mocking Dean. “One-Eyed Jack wants his gold now, not some poker chip he can’t cash in till next year.”
“We’ll get him gold,” Dean said. “There has to be something here worth stealing. We just have to think smaller. Find trees bearing gold that didn’t bloom in time for the trade ships. We’ll give One-Eyed Jack Zenhala’s bearing, the great storm’s timetable, and whatever gold we can find. That ought to be enough. That ought to hold up our end of the bargain.” He nudged Ronan. “Right?”
Ronan gave a nod that was lacking in confidence. “It should.”
They both looked at Rook to see what he thought. Rook smirked as if they were signing their own death warrants. “You better hope so. It’s yer funeral, if it don’t. Yers anyway, MacGuire. Seaborne won’t be leavin’ this island alive. We know that much.”
“That’ll do, Rook,” Ronan growled.
“I’m not sayin’ nothin’ he ain’t already figured out hisself,” Rook countered. “There’s been a knife at his throat since we first got here.” He turned to Dean and jerked a thumb in Ronan’s direction. “This one I understand. He’s all wrapped up in Gentleman Jim’s idiot code, but you … why’re you so soft on t
hese people who’re all tryin’ to kill ya?”
“They’re not all trying to kill me,” Dean said.
Rook shrugged. “Only takes one. I’m just lookin’ out fer ya here. No one else is. Not yer mate Ronan, and not yer pretty little lady, either.”
“Leave her out of this.”
“Hah!” Rook cackled. “That’s what I told ya to do, remember? But you wouldn’t listen. A boy like you’s got no business with a girl like that. I’ll wager she knows it too. Ain’t stopped her daddy from tryin’ to kill ya, has she?”
Dean frowned. “No.”
But Dean wasn’t so sure Waverly’s father wanted him dead. Not anymore. Back on the river, Jin had said he wasn’t working for the regent. Whether Jin was the regent’s man or not, he wasn’t likely to admit it, but Rook’s taunting stuck in Dean’s craw just the same. He had sworn not to be taken in by Lord Kray again, but despite everything that had happened, Dean still found it hard to see the man as a killer. He just didn’t get that feeling about him. Dean had known bad men in his day. Bad men were all he’d ever known. Waverly’s father didn’t fit the bill.
Unfortunately, he couldn’t take the chance of being wrong. He couldn’t go to the regent with the Ralians’ treachery. Not when it was still possible that he was the one behind it. He couldn’t tell Waverly what Jin and Junter had done, either. She’d want to tell her father, and then Dean would have the same problem all over again. Dean did trust Verrick. He could tell him what was happening, but Verrick would cause such an uproar that the regent might be forced to call off Dean’s last trial. He couldn’t have that. Dean knew the trial was a death trap, but it didn’t change the fact that he needed it to distract the islanders while Ronan and Rook searched for the orchard. Dean was trapped, same as always. The only course he could plot was none at all.
Dean sensed that Ronan could see the wheels turning in his head. Ronan patted his shoulder. “You’re in a bad spot, Seaborne. I know it. I do. If it means anything to you, you’ve got my respect for seeing this thing through.”
“A lotta good that’ll do ’im when he ends up dead in a ditch,” Rook said. “When you’re layin’ there, just remember you did it to yerself. Yer the one that wanted to be a prince and make time with the regent’s daughter.”
“I told you to leave her out of it,” Dean warned.
“Livin’ in a dream world, you are. That’s what ya get. A target on yer back, front, port side, and starboard.” Rook laughed. “They’re comin’ at ya from all angles, mate.”
“I’m not your mate, Rook.”
“Not my prince, neither,” Rook said through gritted teeth. He gave Dean’s head a shove.
Dean lunged for Rook.
The two boys grappled with each other in the brush until Ronan broke them up. “Belay that!” he rasped in a hoarse, angry whisper. “Both of you, stop it! We’re here to do a job, not meddle with each other. Your words, Seaborne, remember? Now, look down there.”
He pointed over the bushes. Lights were going out in the watchtower windows. Dean and Rook hushed up. A few moments later, the last two Watchers left the building and locked up for the night. Dean remained silent even after they disappeared down the mountain trail. He was upset with himself for letting Rook get to him. That shouldn’t have happened. He had to do a better job of staying cool.
“You all right?” asked Ronan.
Dean shook his head. “This isn’t how I work. I’m used to keeping a low profile. This job … everything about it has been wrong from the start.”
“It’s a new experience for me too,” Ronan said. “What do you say we just keep our eyes on the prize?”
“Eyes on the prize,” Dean repeated. He got up and started off toward the watchtower. “No bones about it.”
CHAPTER 23
ALL ALONG THE WATCHTOWER
The watchtower stood alone on a promontory overlooking the ocean. It was a squat, blocky structure that, due to its position on the peak, had seemed taller from afar. A wooden staircase wrapped around the mountain all the way up to the main entrance, which had been left unguarded. It was an easy enough thing for Dean to pick the lock on the front door and slip inside. Ronan and Rook hurried after him. They waited until they were safely inside the tower before they lit their lanterns, just in case anyone was watching.
The tower’s lower levels were a chaotic mess. Cluttered desks were covered with journals, calendars, and bits of scrap paper that had been scrawled with illegible handwriting. Everywhere Dean looked he saw books—sturdy new ones and brittle ancient tomes written in a dozen different languages. They were jammed into shelves, piled high on tables, and stacked up in corners on the floor. There were pieces of wind gauges and weather vanes at workstations. Star charts were spread out on drafting tables and marked with quizzical notations. Dean spied a roll of parchment that took up an entire wall and couldn’t help but feel intimidated by it. The paper was littered with symbols he didn’t recognize, and equations he couldn’t understand. Everything about the place reeked of wisdom beyond his ken.
“I’m starting to see why they don’t post guards at the door,” Dean said. “How could anyone but the Watchers make sense of this?”
Ronan lit a lantern by the stairs and motioned for Dean and Rook to follow him up. “Not to worry. This is just the science behind their machine. We don’t need to understand how it works. It’s enough for us to know that it does. Up we go now. Step lively.”
When Dean got upstairs, he found it sparse, clean, and empty. At first glance, it was the exact opposite of the floor below. There was nothing but a white stone pedestal in the center of the room, with an iron brace around it. Upon closer examination, Dean saw that both the pedestal and the brace ran up through a wooden platform overhead, where a complex network of gears and hydraulic pistons split off to line the bottom of the decking above. Dean whistled.
“Impressed?” Ronan was already climbing a ladder up to the next level. “That’s nothing. Wait until you get a load of this up here.”
Dean followed Ronan up to the observatory level, where he came face-to-face with the largest spyglass he’d ever seen. It was five times the size of a cannon, perched high atop a wide steel shaft. A spiral staircase twisted up toward a seat that had been planted at the base of the telescope, and the shaft holding up the entire apparatus was connected to the web of gears beneath the floorboards. There were handles, levers, and cranks aplenty to adjust its position. Rook shifted a few. “Don’t play with those,” Dean said, swatting his hand away. “Ronan, you really understand how to use this thing?”
Rook shook his head no.
Ronan heaved on a line that ran through a series of pulleys on the wall. “I understand enough.”
Each hard tug of rope opened a hatch in the tower’s dome roof a little wider. After Ronan finished sliding the roof open, he pushed a big red button. Pumps in glass tubes pressed down, water bubbled, and pistons fired. Dean heard the sound of compressed air being released as the steel shaft extended, stopping only after the end of the spyglass had been raised up out of the tower.
“Amazing,” Dean marveled.
“That it is,” Ronan said. “The Watchers spend all year maintaining and calibrating this contraption. Apparently, it can only predict the storm’s next break now, before the winds pick back up. They get one shot at this and that’s it, so they have to make sure their tools are precise.”
“How do they know?” Dean asked. “How’d they figure all this out?”
“You’re asking me?” Ronan replied. “I don’t know how they cracked this nut, but they’ve been doing it since before we were born.” He pointed up at the night sky. “You line up Orion’s belt in the sights of that spyglass, and it’ll tell you when next year’s storm will die down.”
“Orion’s belt?” Rook said. “What’re you talkin’ about?”
Ronan sighed. “Weren’t you paying attention in here today? Orion’s belt! How long have you been a sailor, and you don’t know your stars?”
Rook scowled. “How long you been a pirate, and you don’t know how to …” He trailed off, trying to come up with something clever.
“Don’t think too hard, Rook,” Dean said. “You’ll hurt yourself.” He put a hand on Ronan’s back and lowered his voice. “Ronan, this contraption is beyond the likes of us.”
Ronan shook his head. “The Watchers told me how they do it. It’s not as hard as it looks.”
“They just volunteered all this today?” Dean asked. It sounded too good to be true.
“It was just like you said. Once I buttered them up, I couldn’t shut them up. Half the time, I didn’t understand what they were talking about, but what I did catch was simple enough. The answers we want are written in the stars.”
Dean shook his head in wonder. “This I have to see.” He started up the spiral staircase that led to the spyglass. “Rook, you keep an eye out that window. Let us know if you see any trouble coming our way.
Ronan, can you work these levers by yourself?” Ronan spit into his palms and rubbed his hands together. “Aye.”
“All right,” Dean said, climbing into the red velvet chair beneath the spyglass. “Let’s get a look at the weather.”
Dean settled into his seat and got his bearings. The end of the spyglass was there for him to look into, and below that, a console filled with confusing controls. There were sliding switches, knobs, and a calendar readout made up of three wheels. There was one wheel for months, one for days, and one for years. Dean looked through the spyglass and saw three circular targets he could adjust. He twisted a few knobs on the console, and the date wheels scrolled as the targets moved. The readout would reveal the storm date to him once the targets clicked into place along Orion’s belt.
“Do you see it?” Ronan called out. “The constellation?”
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